On Thursday 28 August 2008 19:29:28 Philip Webb wrote: > > Reading all those KDE4 reviews I really can not understand > > why KDE4 may be more useful for me rather KDE3. > > My estimate (also based on reading & screenshots) is > that it is 60 % eye candy, 30 % hype & 10 % useful improvements: > the basic motivation is to make it work well with Qt 4 .
To be fair to the KDE devs, KDE4 is not meant to be a replacement for KDE3, or even a natural evolution of it. It's a break with the past and a trip down a new road in interface design. The code that has been put there forms a framework to make new stuff possible in the future, and that new stuff is intended to be very different from the usual computer desktop that is pretty much unchained since Xerox designed it 30 odd years ago. The eye-candy IS eye- candy, but it's eye-candy with a purpose and has not been done for the sake of mere bling and keeping up with the Joneses using compiz. But these new cool changes have not been written yet. Only the framework that will make them possible has been written. The apps that have been ported are by and large the existing 3.5 apps and work pretty much the same way, just as a start to get KDE4 into use. So KDE4 falls very short of being a fully usable desktop, so much so that if anyone wants the functionality of KDE-3.5, then they should stick with that branch. As traditional desktops go, there's nothing wrong with it, and it is still actively maintained. -- alan dot mckinnon at gmail dot com
