KDE 4.2 released!
When Linus jumps ship and switches to gnome, I start using it. The first version that is usable by normal people just got released. For a good review of the new things I recommend KDE 4.2 Review From Inside Out. Part 1 and Part 2. And here’s a good overview of the new desktop effects. There’s also a visual guide released with the announcement.
- My KDE4.2 desktop
Theres still things missing though, so I think 4.3 will be better for people who just wants things to work. At the top of my head digicam, krusader and basket, and a few I don’t use anyway like k3b, koffice and kdevelop, is missing. Surely not showstoppers, and anyway you can run the KDE3-version instead.
So some of the programs clearly need more time to reach full potential here, but first of all the whole experience can feel somewhat slow (akregator especially when browsing quickly through the updates) and buggy. Turning off desktop effects can greatly reduce the CPU-usuage, but some of the effects are just so nice to have, it’s hard to do. Buggy because from time to time rectangles will appear on your screen, atleast for me. This is only an issue with desktopeffects enabled. Use ctrl+alt+f12 to switch between a normal and accelerated desktop, that has always gotten me out of various oddities that (rarely) happen. I am getting a new videocard in a while, hopefully that will make things a bit better (although I think my 7900gt card should be more than up to the challenge). I just can’t decide between the ATI/AMD 4870 and NVidia 260.
Also, some annoyances here and there. Some shortcuts have to be set (vol up/down) on each boot for me. Some programs only support one set of shortcuts. Others (like amarok2) still use this old (?) shortcut scheme and try and get around it by duplicating shortkey-entries. For me, konsole usually starts beneath other applications, which is annoying. Amarok2 a few times just stops playing and needs to be started again to work. I used sqlite on kde3 though, and WOW what a difference in search-speed. It’s almost instant now, down from a few seconds before.
Anyway, although previous versions have not been usable for me, this one looks like it is. You are starting to get the kind of easy control over settings you have in KDE3.5 (I wouldn’t be surprised if 4.3 achieves parity here). I’ve had a seperate “playground” partition where I’ve followed KDE4 since pre 4.0. My mainpartition runs KDE 3.5 and I’ve been waiting for KDE4 to mature enough to make the switch. It looks like KDE 4.2 might be it – I’ve been running it for the last week here now. There’s some cool stuff starting to materialize here.
I think the coolest things so far for me in 4.2 vs 3.5 are kwin, krunner, pim-suite, dolphin, konsole and just the general appearance. Digikam looks like it will be very nice, amarok2 works well enough but it still needs time to grow up. The same goes for the akonadi/decibel technologies.
Congrats and thank you to all the involved!