KDE is known for it’s high level of customizability (Gnome users/developers hate this, for whatever reason). However, with the 4.0.0 release of KDE, I found a desktop that was neither usable in it’s default configuration, nor was it otherwise customizable (not even close to the level of KDE 3.5). This “release” is not feature-complete (not even close), and I won’t be moving from KDE 3.5.8 any time soon. Some people need to re-focus on what release cycles are supposed to be like…
- Alpha Release -> Not feature complete; a taste of what the final product has in store; perhaps (very) buggy
- Beta Release -> Feature complete, but still needs polish (and bug-fixing); stable enough for normal users to test (but not use in production)
- Release Candidate -> Feature complete with all (known) major bugs fixed. This could be a final release, if no one finds any major problems
- Final Release -> Everything that the users have been salivating over, and MORE!
I hate to say it, but KDE 4.0.0 seems to fit in what we’ve traditionally classified as an “alpha” release. I’m not saying that because it’s unstable; KDE 4.0.0 is stable for the most part (still can’t get Konsole to start up without crashing). The reason I’d call it “alpha” is that it’s not feature complete.
For example, the first time I logged into KDE 4.0.0, I noticed the panel…OK, well who couldn’t notice the panel? It’s rather large with a massive digital clock on the right side. I mean, a blind man with two missing fingers would notice the panel right off the bat. So, since I don’t like my panel to be so monstrous, I right-clicked the panel and chose “Task Manager Settings.” A configuration dialog popped up with (wait for it)…ONE OPTION!! The one option was weather I wanted tool-tips or not! So, I thought maybe the panel will size down automatically if I reduce the font size of the digital clock. So, I right-click the clock and chose “Digital Clock Settings.” In that dialog I saw options for choosing a font, weather it should be bold or italic, the clock color, weather or not to show the timezone/year/day-of-the-week, and weather to show in 24-hour format, but NO FONT SIZE OPTION!!!
You might say: “Well, Jared, perhaps the people working on the panel just were having a bad year or two…why not give the rest of the release a chance?” Oh, my friend, I have indeed given the rest of the desktop a chance. I set aside my experience with the panel so that I could give the rest of the Desktop my full, undistracted attention. Next, I turned my attention to the icons I saw on the desktop. These icons were the ones that I had there while running KDE 3.5 (the contents of the “Desktop” folder in my home directory). The first thing I noticed was that they weren’t lined up nicely; they were kind of there in no particular order, at least none that I could determine. Odd perhaps, but something I could once again overlook.
Each icon had a translucent backdrop with rounded edges: “A nice touch” I thought to myself. One thing that troubled me, however, was that the icons were on the other monitor from the panel. I have gotten used to having both on the same monitor, so I tried to move them. I tried to select multiple icons and drag them to the other monitor. Much to my surprise, I could only move ONE icon at a time. So, I resigned my self to just move them one-by-one. After trying to move the first icon, I found that once the icon left the screen that it was on, it became invisible on the other monitor. After playing around with it a bit, I suspect that the desktop background on the second monitor was being rendered over top of the icon. But this isn’t the worst of this part of the story: after trying to move the icon back THE ENTIRE DESKTOP STARTED TO MOVE!!!!11111one!
Now that I’ve given you a good horror story of KDE 4.0.0, let’s get back to the topic that I started with. Aaron Seigo, who seems to be the voice of the KDE team these days, has been on the war path of KDE 4.0.0 these days. He has been saying that people aren’t expecting the right thing when they expect KDE 4.0 to be a full replacement for KDE 3.5. They shouldn’t expect that until later releases of KDE 4. He says that people are used to the “closed source” method of software releases. He says that Open Source has generally worked different than closed source software. I agree with Aaron, but only to the point that open source projects are _usually_ a LOT more careful about what they label as a final/stable release. They release early and/or often, sure, but they usually do so with labels like “alpha” or “beta” so that would-be users know that it’s not what they might expect from a final/stable release.
I think that KDE 4.0.0 was released so that the KDE developers could get back into heavy development without users constantly clamoring about when KDE 4 was coming out. It was a bone to those of us in the community who have been waiting for years (literally) for KDE 4. Well, I must say, I’m not impressed with 4.0.0. It has potential, but potential never won any awards, and it certainly isn’t what should constitute a final/stable release of a major Linux Desktop contender.