Why do so many people hate kde4?

[Naiki Makuri]

Originally Posted by pol666 Well I don't understand it, because KDE4 is the best... certainly It may be envy. ^^

Envy? Whats to envy

[73ckn797]

Cause so many also love it.

[Calmatory]

Why do I hate KDE? Because the menus are tightly padded. Because the icons for most programs are confusing and small. Because of the panel design. Because it is heavy. Because of K-programs.

Why do I hate KDE 4? Because it is(well, was when it was released) unstable. Because switching to KDE 4 instead of 3.5 broke compatibility between applications and issued few minor annoyances. Did I mention it was unstable?

Yeah, I know I should get into it deeper. I've used Kubuntu for few months, ArkLinux for few months and Mint for few weeks but meh. I just prefer Gnome, simplier, easier and more stable(KDE 4 really scared me. ), maybe thats just me but yeah, can't change the past experiences.

[zenithdave]

I love it personally, been tweaking for 3 days (im out of work)

It's the only distro that i have shown to my die hard Windows friends and got a good reaction, maybe it is like windows so what!, in fact it's years ahead of Windows or any graphic desktop around imo.

And it runs fine on a decent desktop. Silky smooth.
Snowflakes included

[fredbird67]

I too am one of those KDE4 haters. Interestingly enough, my first introduction to Linux was back in early 2004 with Mandrake (now Mandriva, of course), and they're very much a KDE-oriented distro. At the time, it had KDE 3.2 (I think) on it, and I was hooked on KDE -- I loved it, even though it may have gone a bit overboard on offering everything but the kitchen sink in its menus, which could be quite a maze to navigate! LOL

But I was perfectly happy with it, and that's all that mattered. One time in the summer of 2004, I tried a GNOME-based distro (RedHat, I think), and as someone who was still used to Windows at the time but wanting to move completely to Linux, I didn't know a thing at the time about how Linux could have more than one graphical interface, and honestly, I thought it was butt-ugly and a real pain to use. And then, I later found out that that was GNOME, and as far as I knew, I had no interest in using it at all.

When I finally made the switch to Linux in early 2005, my first distro I had installed was Mandrake. I switched to MEPIS in mid-2006 and then to PCLinuxOS during the summer of 2007. The latter are both very fine distros, and for anyone who wants a KDE-oriented distro, I recommend both MEPIS and PCLinuxOS highly.

But when KDE announced version 4, I tried it...and did I ever feel LOST in it! Not to mention, I was especially put off by its attempt to look like Vista. I had also recently begun dabbling with Xfce, which kinda grew on me, and I also learned that GNOME uses the same themes and icons and such...so I switched to GNOME and Ubuntu, and that's where I am now!

[edvar]

I've been using KDE4 since it's release:

4.0: a joke, not worth to comment
4.1: better but still with lots of issues
4.2: great stuff! They are getting there but still some few problems to solve

I used KDE 3.5 before and liked it despite of some issues but I have to say KDE 4.2 is way better! I understand when you compare KDE 4.0 or even 4.1 with kde 3.5 and hate it but now with 4.2 they finally came up with something better.

Some things that bug me about KDE 4:

- I hate how all my Windows die-hard friends tell me how it looks like Vista
- Dolphin is slower and freezes every time I try to access my 800Gb partition. Nautilus on Gnome is much faster compared to it.
- Sound on my KDE was always a pain. I had to constantly execute "sudo alsa force-reload" on it. With Gnome I had some hiccups with ALSA/Pulseaudio but not as bad as with KDE on Kubuntu Hardy.
- KWin effects compared to Compiz are a joke. How come you cannot drag windows to a different workspace on the cube as you do on Compiz? And, at least for me, Compiz is much faster and snappier. But anyway, KWin is not all that bad and some effects work quite well.
- Great deal of the Plasma widgets are crap. They are not very configurable and you just don't have many options. People prefer to develop Google Gadgets or Mac OS Dashboard Widgets I guess.

Some things I like :

- I love how all my Windows die-hard friends tell me how cool it looks
- It looks much more professional than Gnome. Gnome, despite of the stability, it's just plain ugly! Looks cartoonish compared to other OSes.
- Oxygen Plasma transparency is beautiful
- Folder View and Quick Access plasma widgets are my favourites. There's no counterpart on Gnome.
- The Search embedded on KMenu is great. At least for me, it's way better to click the big K and search straight away than press ALT+F2 or ALT+SPACE (Gnome-Do)
- Applications like KTorrent, Amarok and K3B are brilliant and, compared to Gnome counterparts are light years ahead
- The version 4.2 is quite stable compared to the previous ones

However, despite being a KDE 4 fan, I'm back to Gnome on my Kubuntu box. Let me explain... I use Kubuntu on my HTPC as Media Center OS and was using KDE 4 on it for quite some time. Until I gave it a try and installed Gnome with Netbook Remix on my recently upgraded Kubuntu Jaunty. My computer is no netbook and it's connected to a 40 inch LCD TV. I just love they way it looks with all the glass effects and transparencies. It just makes sense with the big icons and the screen real estate to watch movies on my TV or even browse on Firefox. I still have KDE installed and all KDE apps I love but for the past couple of months I have to say they finally did something great with the Gnome Interface.

I'm still using a Fedora 11 with KDE 4.2 on my desktop at work tough.

[Styx]

Originally Posted by =^,^= Kwin is still pretty crappy though! And the opensource ati driver has annoying bugs!

Still better then the official ati drivers. Those do note support the X1400 anymore and the older driver dose not support the new X11 version. So in the end the only option is the opensource ati driver if you like to use compiz and Kubuntu 9.04 with this ati card.

[omar8]

Been using KDE for a few days and here are my issues with it:
Too many programs seem to be crashing, pretty much every hour I get a prompt saying some program has crashed.
Doesn't seem to play nice with pulseaudio.
- Limited to Kubuntu - Options which I change don't seem to actually change properly, for example, setting the cursor results in the cursor pointer changing while everything else stays the same. Turning off the feedback doesn't turn it off.

In my opinion while KDE4 has really been about the new libraries, audio backend, plasma, you would think that the actual desktop would be better. I think that KDE should aim to produce a desktop similar to the mock up by that pinheiro guy.
http://pinheiro-kde.blogspot.com/200...nd-kde-43.html

[Kimm]

KDE4 has potential, but its not there yet.

I recently moved from Ubuntu to Kubuntu, desiding to give it a fair shot at proving itself. I stuck with it for about a month before switching back to Gnome.

The main problem I had was this: My X11, never _ever_ fully crashed while I was using Gnome, but that seemed to happen now and then with KDE4, especially in conjunction with running games.

KDE4 did, however, make me long for a little more desktop bling in Gnome, which is why I now run a more customized Gnome desktop (with AWN and Screenlets). I've found that Gnome can be just as pretty as KDE4, and since most apps use GTK these days, I dont see the point in moving to KDE.

Though, I don't like what I'm seeing in Gnome 3 so far, so you never know, I might go back to KDE, or I might switch to XFCE4, it all depends on what the Gnome team comes up with in the end.

[sertse]

Gnome with plasma is the new black.