KDE 4 now ready for prime time
This Saturday I installed Kubuntu 8.10 (Intrepid Ibex) on my home desktop, and finally got my hands on KDE 4.1.
This is not the first time I tried KDE 4, as I had installed Kubuntu 8.04 (Hardy Heron) with KDE 4 several months ago, but I didn’t like it by that time. Kubuntu 8.04 had a version with KDE 4.0, but at that version, KDE 4 looked more like a new concept than a “real deal” window manager. KDE 4.0 was released to gather feedback and to help developments on top of it. It wasn’t meant to be used by end users, so I sticked with rock solid KDE 3.5 for some more time.
Well, with KDE 4, we now have the real deal. Although it took me a couple of hours to do the mental shift from the previous version to this new one, I’m now enjoying it a lot. Regarding usability, the most noticeable feature consists in the “Plasmoids“, which are desktop widgets. These widgets are very similar to those present in Windows Vista, except that they don’t weigh a ton like its Vista brothers. Actually, KDE 4 performance seems to be similar to KDE 3, which is nice, since it’s better than Gnome’s and much better than Vista’s. KDE performance is similar to Windows XP desktop, so it runs pretty well in any machine built in the last 5 or 6 years.
In the picture below, you can see that I’m using some Plasmoids, like the Notes, the folder view (featuring my Desktop content) and a useful Dictionary plasmoid. I could think of several useful plasmoids, like Wikipedia and calendar plasmoids, and I’m pretty sure they’ll be avaiable some time from now. There are many plasmoids already avaiable at KDE-look, but from what I could see they’re still mostly beta and need a bit more work. But it’s indeed promising.
If you’re already a KDE user, I definitely recommend you take a look at this new version of the window manager. If you’re still a Gnome user, waste no time and get yourself a KDE desktop! :) If you’re not using Linux yet, well… nevermind.