kde4 never ceases to delight me.

[jaydot]

my beautiful toshiba laptop gets played with less often than my desktop, though i think that will soon change as i wind up my courage to convert it to kde4.

when i do fire up the tosh and update, i find a pleasant surprise after restarting the x server.

this evening, i updated and set as default the oxygen theme i'd read about.  the entire desktop is transformed into a pleasing, harmonious whole.

many of my favourite applications have been updated to be more visually appealing and have better functionality.  in particular, knetwalk now has more variety and features.  the new mahjongg is utterly beautiful and my old faithfull freecell is easily configured to just how i like it.

getting to know kde4 while keeping kde3 for my main machine allows me to explore at leisure and take my time learning the new ways of doing things and the wealth of new materials to play with without losing any of the previous functionality i enjoy and rely on.  i still have all the desktops i want and can carry on with the way i am accustomed to working.

i am lucky having more than one machine to mess about with, but had i only one, i would find space on the hard drive to have a kde4 installation.  as i watch it progress and see the care with which texstar introduces new elements i am constantly impressed.  although kde4 is marginally slower than kde3, it does everything i want and entices me with the 'more to come'.

i've just discovered exploding closing windows and will let that entertain me until i've learned how to enable exploding windows.

thank you texstar and all those who help to make this the finest linux os there is bar none.

[Chuck Chunder]

You raise an interesting point. Having the luxury of an additional machine is a good way to dip your toes. The machine I am typing on was still running .93 six months ago. Though I had surely by that stage moved on, I couldn't bare to nuke it.

So the solution is, as you say, to find more room on the same system. I have another machine with heaps of little pclinuxos partitions from the first 2007 release and incremental working 'snapshots' over time until now. You can see little nuances(nuisances?) come and go. I fired up an old (  ) version of kde4 the other day and noted along these lines: "Gee, I'm glad that's not on there any more."

 

[jaydot]

for me it's mostly 'oh, that's different. it's rather nice.' or 'that's pretty and useful too'.  i wasn't keen on the idea of parting with konqueror as my file manager, but dolphin is pleasingly easy to use and i'm sure more features will be added in time.

while my desktop still works and can safely be updated, i expect i shall keep it until we are warned that updating might break the install.

by then i expect to have learned a little more about kde4 and not mind a bit.

[bicol_willem]

for me it's mostly 'oh, that's different. it's rather nice.' or 'that's pretty and useful too'.  i wasn't keen on the idea of parting with konqueror as my file manager, but dolphin is pleasingly easy to use and i'm sure more features will be added in time.

while my desktop still works and can safely be updated, i expect i shall keep it until we are warned that updating might break the install.

by then i expect to have learned a little more about kde4 and not mind a bit.

  For me it's more like Linux to the state "for geeks only" 

I always find things that worked the easy way now converted to a extended difficult way .....
The ease of use of Dolphin is still way surpassed by Konqueror so what the heck?
Well, let's keep learning and hoping 

(At least I found ways to work with it so Windows 7 got to wait again  )

[davecs]

I have Dolphin set up so that there are three tabs on the left, Folders, Information and Places. I have enabled the Search bar at the top. Now it has the functionality of Konqueror, just took a little messing about.

[jaydot]

davecs, can you use kim with dolphin?

[davecs]

davecs, can you use kim with dolphin?

Hee hee, hope this answers your question! Also, demonstrating the tabbed left panel I set up.


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[jaydot]

excellent.  thanks, davecs, i'm coming ever closer to converting my desktop.  i like kde4.

[Hootiegibbon]

J.

I also have had a slow turn-a-round to KDE4, although now, - on my laptop at least - I have switched to KDE4 as my main DE , it 'feels' a little too heavy for the AcerOne , but my wifes laptop is faster than ever! - she has not said anything bad since I switched her from KDE3.

I have two other regularly used desktop machines that I will be switching from KDE3 so I will try KDE4 with Both.

I have also started to advise some of my previous converts that now i the time.

Jase

[davecs]

The default KDE4 setup has Desktop Effects enabled, and in some cases where there is 3D but it's not all that good, the computer will struggle. KDE Control Centre > Look and Feel > Desktop > Desktop Effects and you can turn them off. You'll find a netbook becomes surprisingly nippy after that.

[ElCuervo]

It has been delighting me for quite a while, and it delighted me again last night. I had one hold-out box that contained a boatload of data that I needed to back up. Over the weekend I bought an external HD that holds 1.5TB and got the job done by running rsync all of Sunday night. Last night I updated it to KDE4.

I didn't need the backup! I did have to tweak a few settings, but no BFD.

[jaydot]

i'm in luck as i upgraded my dual-processor tosh to 2gb.  it did struggle a bit with only 512mb.  2gb should be plenty for all that kde4 has to offer.

[MGBguy]

Not wanting to start a new thread, I am now totally KDE4!!! After tryin' VERY hard to break a test install with all my applications on a VERY old system I made the leap to KDE4 on my main system.

All appears WELL!  I apologize for ever doubting that things would work out!

I tend to stay somewhat behind the curve of this OS development... but from now on I'm putting my FULL FAITH in you people! 

Thank you all, and full speed ahead!!!!

[tschommer]

You won't have to apologize, MGBGuy - there are enough doubters out there for all of us faithful! 

I was lucky enough to start off with sufficient hardware, and a motherboard with Nvidia chipset. Intel chipsets as well as Intel graphics seem to be giving KDE4 hell (if I read the other posts correctly).

But right now I'm totally exhausted from trying to help people with KDE4 and in the end just getting a reply like "the panel is not fully transparent so this is total <put here whatever you like> so I'm switching to another DE". WOW! What do these people do when they get a new cell phone? Sue everybody and get drums instead???

[OldJimbo]

there are enough doubters out there for all of us faithful!

One less, since I changed over today. Installing KDE4 went very smoothly , since I followed advice. While there are lots of changes, everything works. And while I have lots of playing and customizing to do - I can see the logic of the changes.
I'd tried LiveCD's with earlier versions of KDE4 and wasn't too impressed, so I had my qualms about upgrading. And more than most I'm pretty fixed in my ways (to the point of fossilization.). While things went easily for me and I don't seem able to cause any crashes - I sympathize with those people who have a harder time due to hardware issues, or needed programs not working correctly. That's what I expected here, too.
Overall I couldn't be happier.