KDE 4.2 – "The Answer" Reviewed

Published on January 30, 2009 in Linux and OpenSource and Views and Reviews. 1,083 Comments

The post I am writing, is a small mini-review of KDE4.2, released a couple of days back, nicknamed “The Answer”. If you want a single line review and a picture (worth a thousand words) before reading the rest, let me put things in a nutshell:http:

KDE 4.2 is simply AWESOME!

KDE 4.2 Default Desktop

The KDE 4.2 Desktop - Simply Superb

The first thing I saw when I ran KDE4.2 is that its fast, atleast when compared to KDE4.1 and Gnome. But don’t run it unless you have more than 512MB RAM. 512MB is the  minimum for a good experience. If you have 256MB RAM like me, you are in for some serious lagging, though its still usable and you can comfortably unitask.

But the visual effects, plasmoids, menus and the whole interface – its simply fabulous. I have never seen a better Desktop Environment in my life, and this beats MacOS 10.5, Windows 7 and Gnome 2.4 hands down. Its ULTIMATE. See <<THIS VIDEO>> to know what I mean.

And now I am 99.99999% sure that Windows 7 superbar is nothing but an imitation of KDE4’s Plasma Panel.

KWin-compositor is much lighter on resources than Compiz Fusion, but its obviously not as light as xfce’s basic composite capabilities. But yeah, KWin-composite now has several features to REALLY start rivaling compiz fusion as the eye-candy of choice for lay-users.

The applications have not changed much, because the way they look remains the same in KDE4.2 as in KDE4.0 and KDE4.1. But they are definitely faster and much more responsive. I couldn’t review them due to lack of time. But see  <<THIS VIDEO>> if you want to see KDE in action. It shows the KDE window manager in action.

Konqueror has a spell checker which has a small issue – it checks spelling as I type each letter, and not as I type each word. So for example, when I just typed example, it underlined the word when I had finished typing “exa”. But I can live with it.

Amarok2 and DigiKam are both out in KDE4, but sadly, K3B is still in development. Once K3B comes out, KDE4 would be 100% ready for desktop use. Another app you may miss is Kaffeine, but luckily, since the VideoLAN team has switched VLC Media Player from wxWidgets to QT4, you can use VLC instead of Kaffeine. And Amarok2 supports both video and audio, and is now the best jukebox ever, effortlessly outclassing wmp, itunes, realplayer, etc thanks to its great interface and features along with support to play ALL media formats.

And yeah, on a personal note, I am still sticking to Xfce4.4 because I have less RAM, however, when I get an upgrade, I am coming back to KDE4. And hopefully, KDE4.3 will be out by the time my new rig arrives, around June-July.

Till then, feast your eyes on the KDE 4.2 visual guide.

But for now, HATS OFF TO THE KDE TEAM.

My Tips to migrate to KDE 4.2

1.

Remove .kde and .kde4 and any other KDE related folder or hidden configuration file from your home directory before installing KDE 4.2.

2.

You need _minimum_ 512MB RAM to run it. 1GB recommended by me.

3.

It has desktop effects on by default, and they slow down weaker computers, especially those with IGPs weaker than Intel GMA 950. Disable them and restart KDE if you want to experience a faster interface

4.

You can use ANY distro for trying KDE 4.2, but my personal advice is that don’t buy things people say like SuSE having best KDE support and hence use only that. I personally recommend you use KDE from a Rolling Release distro, either vanilla or with some trusted patches.

I personally recommend Gentoo and ArchLinux. The problem with SuSE and Ubuntu is that they optimize the DE for next releases and right now you can’t expect the best of KDE 4.2 in them. On the other hand, distros like Gentoo and ArchLinux are totally different and they keep rolling out updates and never have feature freezes for a release. Hence they often have the latest of updates.

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