KDE 4 and usability

rafo · Posted: Tue Oct 13, 2009 3:05 pm Post subject: KDE 4 and usability

KDE 4 has been around for some time, and recently it appeared in (stable) Portage. Being a not too adventurous Gentoo user I haven't tried it a lot yet.

I have read various articles saying that KDE 4 looks good (in a visual sense) compared to KDE 3. So aesthetic progress has been made!

However, I am wondering, if you are primarily an application user for whom the desktop is the place to run applications X, Y, Z, and a file manager, and an editor, etc, what added value does KDE 4 bring in terms of usability?

As an example of what I consider a usability improvement, some of you may remember Windows 95 and Windows 98. With Windows 98 we got the little quickstart buttons that could be placed on the {StartButton,Task,SystemTray}-bar. Quite useful, and not surprisingly they made their way into desktops like KDE.

Another example: Many releases of Windows (95, 98, ME, NT4, 2000, ..) offered a desktop, but just a single one. In contrast most X desktops have a "virtual desktop" feature, very convenient if you work on different tasks during a workday.

It would be interesting to hear some opinions: What are the main usability goodies when going up to KDE 4? Or is it more a matter of many little advances that play together in a nice and coherent fashion?

SamuliSuominen · Posted: Tue Oct 13, 2009 3:13 pm Post subject:

If you are still using KDE3, it's about time to switch since KDE3 is about to be removed from Portage.
Or moved into a overlay, it's not maintained anymore (by upstream or gentoo).

That said, I've found KDE4 to be the first usable KDE in terms of usability. Took me an hour to strip the unnecessary candy out of it, but after that's done...

Yamakuzure · Posted: Tue Oct 13, 2009 3:22 pm Post subject:

The two most important things I noticed (for me!) that changed from KDE3 -> 4 are:

Suspend to ram/disk works ootb now without any problems
No more hassle with printers, the KDE4 printer setup found all network printers at my company and set them up in an instant.

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SnowCrashv5 · n00b Joined: 25 Jan 2008 Posts: 27

KDE is completely unusable and I don't think the 4 series will be.

Kwin has huge performance issues with effects all turned of.

Kwin with any effects turned on makes X freeze (had this happen with several distros, several KDE point releases, on mesa/nv/nvidia driver.

Amarok... i could write more about this than i could KDE. The gui is awful, features are still missing, last i used it the lyrics and wiki scripts woudln't work. The compositing crap for the center column that allows you to add widgets and such would get all sorts out of wack..

Kde's panel would randomly reorganize itself.

The statusbar would continually try to load all the icons all over each other, so i could never click on the one i wanted.

Akondi's server is A) a dumb idea to begin with and B) it crashed every time i logged in anyways. It took until 4.2 to have proper dual monitor support.

Dolphin has become bloated compared to what it was before official inclusion into KDE.

Oxygen is ugly (yes i know it can be changed), it has usability problems (Lacelott and Kickoff are awful designs) Yes I know you can go back to classic menu.

This has been on Gentoo, Arch, Fedora, Opensuse, and Ubuntu (Kubuntu and kde-core). 4.0, 4.1, 4.2 and 4.3.

All of this crap for what? So people can spin widgets round and round on their desktop?

gerard27 · Posted: Tue Oct 13, 2009 6:45 pm Post subject:

Well I now have both kde3.5 and 4 on my box.
I can't help it but I am not fond of kde4 at all.
I wanted to change the login wallpaper but couldn't.
It seems you need to write an xml script to accomplish that!
And there are lots of other things that don't work well (yet?).
When I run glxgears in kde3 I get about 205 fps full-screen.
In kde4 I get 195 with desktop effects disabled.
What's eating the resources?
It feels sluggish compared to the snappishness of kde3.
Gerard.

Edit:How and what did you strip ssuominen?
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alkan · Posted: Tue Oct 13, 2009 9:14 pm Post subject:

I loved kde3 (long time user) and starting to hate kde4. I installed every version since 4.0. My opinion is that usability hit rock bottom with kde4 series. I strain myself everytime i use it. It has some promising features but GUI design is horrible. Take dolphin, how much of the precious screen estate usable, less than 50 percent? how (not)easy to navigate and do common file operations. Sure you can tweak it, but it is beside the point. I also kept open mind and assumed it is just a new thing and will take time to get used to, but that is not happening.
I am still hopefull and will keep an eye on every release.

Gusar · Posted: Tue Oct 13, 2009 10:35 pm Post subject:

@gerard82: Glxgears numbers? Really? That's your beef with KDE4? Holy eff.

The reason I don't like KDE4 is bloat. By that I mean stuff I don't care about like the whole "widgets 'r' everything" craze that everything is into nowadays (meaning ,I don't particularly care about plasma), and the whole "semantic desktop" and "desktop search" stuff (nepomuk, strigi, and company). I really don't care about that stuff, I don't need it. I also don't like the oxygen theme and even less so the oxygen icons, but at least that is easily changeable.
All in all, when KDE3 is removed from portage I'll either follow it to the overlay, or I'll switch to LXDE.

gerard27 · Posted: Wed Oct 14, 2009 8:47 am Post subject:

@gusar,
You can't read English?
Gerard.
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Yamakuzure · Posted: Wed Oct 14, 2009 9:22 am Post subject:

gerard27 · Posted: Wed Oct 14, 2009 9:39 am Post subject:

@Yamakazure,
Of course only root can change login wallpaper.
Same as in kde-3.5.
When you open the system settings in 4 there's no button "Administrator Mode".
You have to start system settings with alt-F2 kdesu systemsettings (crappy).
I wanted to use the recently published 10 years Gentoo wallpaper but that won't work.
Gerard.
_________________
To install Gentoo I use sysrescuecd.Based on Gentoo,has firefox to browse Gentoo docs and mc to browse (and edit) files.
The same disk can be used for 32 and 64 bit installs.
You can follow the Handbook verbatim.
http://www.sysresccd.org/Download

toralf · Posted: Wed Oct 14, 2009 9:42 am Post subject:

gerard27 · Posted: Wed Oct 14, 2009 9:53 am Post subject:

@toralf,
I now have both 3.5.10 and 4.3.1 installed.
Fortunately it's possible to choose either one at startup.
I have my /home on a diiferent partition.
What I do is make a backup of my / on a usb-disk.
In case kde-3.5 gets clobbered I will replace it with the saved one.
I don't want to mess with overlays.
Gerard.
_________________
To install Gentoo I use sysrescuecd.Based on Gentoo,has firefox to browse Gentoo docs and mc to browse (and edit) files.
The same disk can be used for 32 and 64 bit installs.
You can follow the Handbook verbatim.
http://www.sysresccd.org/Download

Gusar · Posted: Wed Oct 14, 2009 10:18 am Post subject:

@gerard: I believe your sluggishness problems are real. Qt4 uses different rendering paths than Qt3 and if those aren't accelerated by your graphic card (or it's drivers lack support for that), you'll hit software fallbacks, resulting in sluggishness. But glxgears is in no way an indication of any of that.

numerodix · l33t Joined: 18 Jul 2002 Posts: 743 Location: nl.eu

kde4 usability is dreadful indeed. I just recently did a fresh gentoo install with kde3. How I wish they hadn't thrown away all that good work.
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Sujao · l33t Joined: 25 Sep 2004 Posts: 677 Location: Germany

I just updated to KDE 4.3. I must say that I expected much more from 4.3. At the moment KDE is more like 4.0.

Some things I don't like:

There is too much eyecandy, transparancy and stuff. This leads to the problem that it's not obvious what is a button, what is clickable and what not. So I end up clicking everything with trial&error trying to find this out. Thats definately some steps back in usability. Example: After you pluged in a new usb device you see a new "button" in the device widget with the symbol of a usb dongle and it has a hover effect so you click it. It also says "2 actions for this device". But where are they? Where can I see them? You have to click the whole device button for the old "What do you want to do?" Window to appear. But then I see all the actions anyway, why show them earlier? And after it has been mounted, there is a smal icon on the right of the device button. But has no hover effect of its own so one assumes its just a status indicator. But NO, if you click on that symbol you will anmount the device! How should I know this? Oh and then I realize there is a smaller icon on the picture of the usb dongle too. Is that clickable too? No, not this time. You get my idea?
Most of the desktop styles look all the same. And with most of them the taskbar is almost the same color. You can't see what the active window is, because the active task is merely different from the others. Again, too much "looks over usability".
Same thing with the title bar of windows with the oxygen theme. Those 2 blue lines dont really set the active window apart. I switches back to plastique theme.
A lot of widgets don't work. I tried the Atheist Quote and it fails to reload the content. It simply becomes black. No error message. Same with weather or comic applet. Only thing to do is deactive them.
Very unstable, altough this is the third so called stable release. During 2 hours of configuring the new apps and testing stuff I had about 8 crashes.
Overall it all looks like a motley mix of styles and and UI-concepts. Much more than in KDE 3.5.10.

Do you agree? What are things you don't like? This is not supposed to be a bug collection but more a "How do I feel about it" thread.

doctork · Posted: Sat Oct 17, 2009 1:48 am Post subject:

No, can't say I agree. I've been running kde4 since 4.1 and haven't had many problems, at least not since I turned off the (IMHO) useless semantic desktop stuff. I run in the "classic menu style" so things don't appear much different from 3.5.*.
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Ant P. · Watchman Joined: 18 Apr 2009 Posts: 6920

It feels slightly... laggy? Mushy? Not sure the right word for it but it's definitely not as responsive as anything else. The OpenGL stuff even feels slower than compiz.

I've been trying KDE4 on and off since it came out and it's a lot better now than 4.0 was, but in the end I've gone back to using xfce.

d2_racing · Posted: Sat Oct 17, 2009 2:18 am Post subject:

Right now, I' running with Kde 4.3.1 on my Quad Core with an Nvidia Top 260 and I must say that it's pretty fast like Kde 3.5.10 actually.

But, on my Thinkpad T61 with a cheap intel card, it's pretty slow actually.

So, like we used to say, Kde est une usine a gaz, I don't know if there is an english expression for that, but if we translate, Kde is like a big gaz factory.

platojones · Posted: Sat Oct 17, 2009 2:28 am Post subject:

First version was so bad as to be unusable. I dumped it right away and went back to kde 3.5. When 4.2 came out, it was stable enough, that I finally did away with 3.5. Now for me, it's relatively stable...I've run into only a few, very minor, glitches and those really don't have any impact on my day to day use.

I will say, like all KDE versions in the past, it is very configurable. So you can turn off those eye candy features you don't like. Also, you can make it behave a lot like KDE 3.5 in general.

Re-writing the entire code base and changing so much of the interface behavior was a big risk by the KDE team....and I think the results were mixed. But having used it exclusively now for many months, I'm comfortable with it. Still prefer it over gnome.

rahulthewall · Veteran Joined: 01 Nov 2007 Posts: 1264 Location: Zürich

Running 4.3.2 on a laptop which is now 3 years old.
Processor: Intel® Core™ Duo Processor T2300 (2M Cache, 1.66 GHz, 667 MHz FSB)
Video: Intel 945 GM
RAM: 2.5 GB

And I say that I do not have any problems at all. It runs pretty fast, is very responsive, and does not lag even when I have more than 6-7 programs running.
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rafo · Posted: Sat Oct 17, 2009 7:40 am Post subject:

Thanks all of you who commented! It appears that progress has been made with some features: Suspend to disk, suspend to RAM, and the printer setup tool. At the same time there seems to exist a bunch of annoyances.

The dolphin file manager was mentioned. IMHO the file manager is an application that Microsoft did very well ever since Windows 95, and many X-based file managers have been less fun to use. Not surprisingly my favourite so far is 'xfe'. Now since Dolphin is highly configurable, is it possible to set it up so that you can use it more or less like Windows Explorer?

(There is a kde-misc/dolphin package that I was able to emerge against KDE 3.5. A typical example of all those less usable X file managers since it does not provide a tree view. But maybe I should look at the KDE 4 version instead, kde-base/dolphin-4.3.1.)

energyman76b · Advocate Joined: 26 Mar 2003 Posts: 2048 Location: Germany

shift+alt+f12, eyecandy gone

also, there is more than just the two bars to mark the active window.

also ever tried the right button on your mouse?

oh - and if you can't distinguish the active button in the taksbar, you are definetly using the wrong theme. With all themes I ever used it was very, very simple.
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gerard27 · Posted: Sat Oct 17, 2009 11:46 am Post subject:

I have searched the system settings but I can't find the classic menu style.
Another thing I'd like to have the same as in 3.5 is ctrl-tab desktop switching.
How do I set these in kde4?
Gerard.
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To install Gentoo I use sysrescuecd.Based on Gentoo,has firefox to browse Gentoo docs and mc to browse (and edit) files.
The same disk can be used for 32 and 64 bit installs.
You can follow the Handbook verbatim.
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Apheus · Guru Joined: 12 Jul 2008 Posts: 422

Sujao · l33t Joined: 25 Sep 2004 Posts: 677 Location: Germany