[[http://kde.org|KDE 4.0]] has [[http://kde.org/announcements/4.0/|been released]]. Since I have been using KDE as my primary desktop environment for well over 5 years now, this is certainly something I am very interested in. In the past few months, I did try out the previews and the RC releases, but mostly just to play around with them, never really considering them for serious daily usage. And it was real easy to start a KDE 4 session inside my KDE 3 session (as described [[http://kubuntu.org/announcements/kde4-rc2.php|here]], for example). I used this small script (save it as ”start-kde4.sh”):
export LD_LIBRARY_PATH=/usr/lib/kde4/lib
export KDEDIRS=/usr/lib/kde4
export PATH=/usr/lib/kde4/bin/:$PATH
export KDEHOME=~/.kde4
Xephyr -dpi 96 -screen 1024x768 :1 &
DISPLAY=:1 /usr/lib/kde4/bin/startkde
But now that KDE 4.0 has been officially released, I wanted to take it for a serious test drive. So I updated all the packages, logged out, deleted ”~/.kde4” (so I could get a clean start), took a deep breath, and logged in.
=== Oxygen looks good ===
I like the icons as well as the theme itself — its very slick, the window decorations are subtle yet stylish, over all I really like what the Oxygen folk have accomplished. Great job! The only sore point just sticks out for me is the look and feel of the current panel. Its too big, hardly configurable, the fonts are large and generally feels weird. Of course, this is all very much still in evolution and with user feedback, I’m sure it will develop into something totally kick ass.
=== KickOff mostly works ===
The new menu/launcher (Kickoff) is nice. I have used Kickoff in earlier incarnations of KDE so this wasn’t something totally revolutionary. Some things don’t work as advertised, however, but it might be due to my system configuration (still investigating). For instance, the KDE 3 applications are supposed to show up with a (KDE 3) next to them. However, when I search for say Kopete (for which I have both the KDE 3 and the KDE 4 versions installed), only the KDE 4 version gets listed.
=== KWin is smooth, not quite ready to replace Compiz-Fusion yet ===
With KDE 4.0, KWin gets native compositing support. The good thing is that it works nicely with the rest of the desktop (unlike Compiz Fusion, which still has some quirks when running in KDE). Things that work great: //Present Windows// (essentially Expose), //Desktop Grid//, Thumbnail previews, Shadows, Transparency etc.
Things I miss from Compiz Fusion: Desktop Cube, better keyboard bindings, plugin to easily take screenshots, and Shift switcher (like the Apple CoverFlow effect).
=== Phonon is sweet ===
Worked out of the box for me, using the Xine backend, which in turn automagically used ESD (well PulseAudio actually). It falls back to using the hardware directly if the ESD option fails for some reason. The sounds scheme is also subtle and fresh, I like it so far. In my regular KDE desktop I hardly have sounds enabled for any action or notification, but now I’m thinking maybe it is not such a bad idea after all. Sound can offer important cues without being intrusive like a visual bell or notification.
=== KRunner: a long way to go ===
I envision the new KRunner to become a universal search and action mechanism for KDE, just like Quicksilver is for Mac. I have written about Quicksilver alternatives for Linux before, but KRunner is nowhere even close. I have recently started using GNOME Do and it is shaping up rather nicely. In its current state, KRunner is just an application launcher with some goodies (like a Calculator, ability to launch web pages, web searches etc). Of course, under the hood a lot of the mechanism to build on top of it is already in place, but the functionality still needs to get to a point where it is useful to the user.
Even the application launching has quirks right now. For example, I open KRunner with ”Alt+F2” and start typing “Fire”. It gives me several options for Firefox, but the key bindings are not intuitive. If I press the arrow key (say I want to select the third option), it doesn’t let me. I first need to press Tab to get to the options listing and then the arrow keys work. There is a “Show Options” button that gets enabled if I click on an option, but it is not clear to me exact what it does.
I’m eager to see a proper plugin framework around KRunner so that people can start building actions to all kinds of services (both on the web and the desktop). A few example: amarok, kopete, kontact, beagle, strigi, google, remember the milk, twitter etc.
=== KDE 3 Apps work fine ===
I’m running Amarok, Kontact and Kopete and all seem to work fine. Oxygen integrates nicely with KDE 3 apps as well.
==== Overall: Exciting, stable but not ready for most users ====
Most of this is already well known. I do think distributions should be pro-active in advertising KDE 4.0 as a “Technology Preview” release. I really don’t think it is ready to be used by most people yet. The problem is not stability — it is very stable, and very fast. It is feature completeness: a lot of applications have not been ported yet, SystemSettings is missing a lot of modules, many things that users will expect are simply not there yet (configuring key bindings).
I’m expecting to see some quick point releases in the coming few months as the community pushes to bring KDE 4.x to a state where it is fit for consumption by the masses. As other pieces of the puzzle start to fit in (Akonadi, Strigi, Nepumuk etc), KDE 4 should evolve into a really fantastic platform. I’m excited! But for now, I might end up going back to KDE 3 :-)
