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Impressions
by NabLa on Friday 11/Jan/2008, @07:38
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THE BAD:
* Hmmm how do you add new things to the bottom panel? I removed everything and there is no context menu or anything at all for it... I can't even shut it down to use the old kicker instead (I can fire up kicker, but there is a lot of wasted space at the bottom where the panel sits)... and drag & drop from desktop doesn't seem to be possible (wasn't this one of the Plasma goals?)
* kwin: window compositing seems to be extremely slow, and it corrupts the contents of new windows very frequently... yes, I've got all the proper X configuration and I can run compiz on no XGL very nicely and I've got a nice beefy nvidia card.
* The new menu is awful... The old menu is still there, however, I cannot add it to the panel as stated above... I can't change the size of the panel either, it's insanely thick... I've got a 1280x800 screen so vertical space and clearance is certainly an issue.
* Well, basically, Plasma seems as uncooked as it was a couple of months ago, just slightly prettier... yes, I know all about "setting the foundations blah blah", but its quality is beta at the very best... it has crashed a few times (leaving a very nice white screen behind). I'm sure the underlying libs are shiny and nice, but the actual interface is very klunky...
* Oxygen: i wish it differentiated better between the active window and the rest of inactive windows in terms of different top window colour etc... There is a nice composite plugin that does the job, but compositing seems to struggle on my computer.
* I plugged in my iPod and... nothing happened on the widget that was supposed to tell me about it...
THE GOOD:
* The new apps are amazing. okular, kopete, etc they all work really well... even if I fall back to KDE3 for a while I'll still use them as they're far superior to KDE3's in most of the cases. Marble is a joy.
* Sound works perfect without the massive overhead of the, gone for good, arts daemon.
* Oxygen: looks really pretty and easy on the eyes. I love it.
/*** SO ***/
All those issues are due to the Kubuntu Gutsy packages being crap, or KDE4 being very flimsy?
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Re: Impressions
by Boudewijn Rempt on Friday 11/Jan/2008, @07:55
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Try to drag from the desktop widget toolbox onto the panel -- it's not quite perfect, but it does work.
The slowness may be due to a buggy nvidia driver. Nvidia already has released an update in December.
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Re: Impressions
by NabLa on Friday 11/Jan/2008, @09:31
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Cheers Boudewijn, I'll try what you suggest :)
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Re: Impressions
by opensuse user on Friday 11/Jan/2008, @08:44
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Well I'm using the opensuse packages on 10.3 and haven't had any crashes and compositing works snappily on my fairly average go5700 nvidia card (latestdriver).
The panel is less functional than kicker for the moment but what it does it does well. I had no problem dragging the lockout applet to it for example, and the menu now allows you to add items to panel or desktop (rightclick to access). I don't know how good the kubuntu packages are but the suse ones seem to have been polished (if only little opensuse idents here and there) and they have the most paid developers working on it (correct me if I'm wrong please), summary here http://www.kdedevelopers.org/node/3196 and always upto date packages so I'm biased.
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Re: Impressions
by Bobby on Saturday 12/Jan/2008, @02:39
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I can only confirm what you said. I am also using openSuse 10.3. I had a little problem with compositing yesterday (I have a nVidia card) but that also improved after using a tip somebody here gave.
The only funny thing that I am experiencing is that the panel flickers and gets transparent sometimes when I am writing in FIrefox. It might be a bug. I might report it later. Otherwise things seem to be quite smooth and stable. I am slso using KDE3 apps without a problem. Just checked my e-mail using Kmail and burned a CD with K3b.
I would also like to say a very special thanks to the openSuse people who made it possible for us to get an almost daily update of the KDE 4.0 packages upto release. Well done :)
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Re: Impressions
by Chaarles Fryett on Saturday 12/Jan/2008, @08:12
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And today, just one day after release, the suse packages are yet again updated.
ps I wish I had never installed kubuntu as a quick fix after a dead HD with gentoo on it. openSUSE you guys rock (oh... and the kde devs ;) )
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Re: Impressions
by Iuri Fiedoruk on Saturday 12/Jan/2008, @09:18
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My personal impressions:
BAD first:
- Some apps like ktorrent and dolphin are slower than it's KDE3 counterparts.
- Plasma.. is still like a baby, it does have potential, but right now it just eat and produces some bad-smelling material ;) Not being able to drag and drop a plasmoid from desktop to taskbar is bad.
- Oxygen style needs more work. Much of criticism (fair ones in my opinion) that was made about it was not fixed. Having the same color for window title for focused and non-focused windows is horrible, no matter what oxygen team says.
- Still immature, BUT it is way, way better than the release candidates, so 4.0.1 should be much better. Let's hope it dosen't take more than 2 months to it arrive.
GOOD ones:
- splash and logout screens are wonderful. It look very professional and in my opinion should serve as an example to other areas to follow.
- Seems much more simpler than 3.X, this will probally be a good thing for new users once things mature enought for them being able to use it without much bugs and not-yet-done parts.
- Uses qt4. Currently I belive qt is much superior than KDE (for 2.0 and 3.0 I tought the inverse), so KDE have to catch this quality in the code.
Overall not impressive, but I'm betting KDE 4.1 will be.
I think this first release should be called KDE 3.9.
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Re: Impressions
by Morty on Saturday 12/Jan/2008, @15:21
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>Not being able to drag and drop a plasmoid from desktop to taskbar is bad.
Funny thing, something like this was never possible with the old Kicker(You could drag icon/links, but not applets etc).
And as far as i know, that kind of functionality are not avaliable in any other desktop either. But Plasma will eventually make it possible.
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Re: Impressions
by Sebastian on Monday 14/Jan/2008, @01:08
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No, you are wrong - he just used some misleading phrases:
In KDE3.5,
(1) it is possible to drag a desktop object to the kicker panel.
(2) it is possible to frag a desktop object to the pager (kpager2) to be opened there.
(3) it is possible to drag a taskbar item to the desktop (then the corresponding link/URL/process name will be saved)
KDE3.5 got some nice and handy drag/mouse/key shortcuts, just that most people didn't know...
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Re: Impressions
by Bobby on Saturday 12/Jan/2008, @16:12
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"Plasma.. is still like a baby, it does have potential, but right now it just eat and produces some bad-smelling material ;) Not being able to drag and drop a plasmoid from desktop to taskbar is bad."
Plasma is still under heavy development we were told so what we see is just the beginning. Still we are the babies, we are the ones who have to learn how Plasma behaves.
If you want to drag and drop a plasmoid (widget) to the panel then you won't be successful by draging it from the desktop. You have to DRAG IT FROM THE PLASMOID DIALOG BOX. Yes the same window (whatever it's called) that you use to add the plasmoids to the desktop is where you have to drag them from to the panel. You can right click on icons in the start menu in order to add them to the panel or desktop :)
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Re: Impressions
by Koko on Sunday 13/Jan/2008, @04:19
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What I would like to see is "panel versions of plasmoids" build in every plasmoid. For example dragging NewsTicker plasmoid into panel should give me a smaller plasmoid with news which would look there better. (AFAIR Aseigo was talking about sth like this so maybe tit will happen :) )
btw. section "Plasmoids" is on kde-look.org instead of kde-apps.org. ATM Plasmoids are all C++ apps which need compilation. So IMO they should be placed in kde-apps.org (on kde-apps.og there are already 2 plasmoids because authors didn't new that proper place is look.org ). Ideally ATM there should by Plasmoid sections on -look and -apps which content would be the same.
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Re: Impressions
by Anon on Sunday 13/Jan/2008, @05:30
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"What I would like to see is "panel versions of plasmoids" build in every plasmoid. For example dragging NewsTicker plasmoid into panel should give me a smaller plasmoid with news which would look there better. (AFAIR Aseigo was talking about sth like this so maybe tit will happen :) )"
Yes, this is explicitly a core goal of Plasma, so you can definitely expect it. All of the infrastructure is there; applets writers simply need to respect the information provided by the Plasma core and adjust their applets accordingly. Some already do this, IIRC.
"btw. section "Plasmoids" is on kde-look.org instead of kde-apps.org. ATM Plasmoids are all C++ apps which need compilation. So IMO they should be placed in kde-apps.org (on kde-apps.og there are already 2 plasmoids because authors didn't new that proper place is look.org ). Ideally ATM there should by Plasmoid sections on -look and -apps which content would be the same."
Full agreement, here - kde-look.org is the last place I would have thought of looking!
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Re: Impressions
by Adrian Baugh on Saturday 12/Jan/2008, @16:28
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My iPod was detected just fine (kubuntu latest debs). But my 3rd generation iPod really struggles to speak to linux. Not sure if it's the iPod being crappy, or the sbp2 firewire driver, but it's never been happy through various iterations of the kernel. Works fine over usb though (but doesn't charge...)
I have to say, I'm not keen on the new menu. But I found it okay to replace it with the old one.
As you say, the compositing is dog slow (nVidia 5200 here, works okay with compiz, ack pfft!) even with the NVIDIA_HACK trick but hey, it's only a .0.0 release so I'm sure the optimisation will follow. Now the artists have finished their generally good work on oxygen, perhaps they could turn their attention to the effects - I had a better "exploding windows" effect on WindowMaker 8 years ago, with no accelerated graphics...
Plus, with a load of files on my desktop those little plasma borders look pretty ugly - hopefully future editions will bring a way to turn them off? I don't see much need to rotate and resize the icons for the random selection of ready-use files I keep on my desktop.
However, congratulations to the developers. Overall it's a massive achievement and with a bit of optimisation 4.1 will be a stunning general-consumption desktop!
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