November
Getting noticed
Posted by Stu at 1:10 PM
Following on from a mildly controversial but quite interesting dot story from a user who has found taken a new look at KDE 4 and thrown away some of his prior conceptions from KDE 3, a Fedora contributor has posted an interesting blog entry about trying KDE 4. He’s got some nice observations about plus and minus points coming from a Gnome perspective, some of which are distro-specific.
A couple of choice quotes:
“The [KWin] composition performance feels faster than Gnome + Compiz, and much better integrated”
“It still doesn’t match all my needs but it’s very close to being as usable as Gnome”
Not bad for someone who says he’s always been quite happy with Gnome.
One thing I should say – this isn’t about stealing users from Gnome (is Steven going to switch permanently? I don’t know and I think he should just use whatever is best for him). But it is nice to see KDE 4 attracting interest from people who haven’t previously had any interest in KDE software. Part of this is because KDE 4 is new and shiny and I’m sure I’ll want to check out Gnome 3 when that arrives, but if we’re attracting positive attention from Gnome users then perhaps we’re also better placed to appeal to users of the real competition.
Tags: reviews
Been using KDE3/4 for a long time, but switched to Gnome recently. And I can honestly say Gnome+Compiz sucks d1ck compared to Kwin regarding performance and number of issues.
Gnome 3 seems interesting, really looking forward to see how KDE4 and Gnome 3 evolve, but for now I have Windows 7 on one of my machines I use the most and I’m happy with it, cool start menu, fast, stable and the little enhancements and task bar are really cool; not much crap to fiddle with and most important… it’s here!
KDE4 has too much shit to fiddle with and the apps are not there yet, Gnome is more simple and the apps are better; I don’t wanna move stuff around, I want the desktop to be sort of ‘chrome-less’, stiff and not much crap to configure/move around because it’s about getting work done, not about ‘oh look how pretty it is’ kind of stuff, so Gnome 3 might have a huge advantage over KDE4 in that area.
Who uses Compiz anymore?
Was hyped long ago, but now we have metacity, and soon mutter, which will be so far ahead
Is metacity a practical alternative as a compositing window manager at the moment? I mean, does it have all the useless bling we need – or at least, want?
Dunno about Windows 7 – thing is though, even if (I’m not in a position to comment on this) it’s better at the moment, that’s what Windows is going to be for the next couple of years or so. KDE and Gnome will keep on getting better in that time. But really, whatever suits you best.
Not sure about the apps argument though: Gnome has something better than Dolphin, Konqueror, Amarok, KOffice? (Firefox is not a Gnome app any more than Arora is KDE, ditto OpenOffice.org). Still, I suppose the fact I use KDE suggests I prefer the KDE apps anyway, so I’m obviously biased.