KDE 4.2 is simply AWESOME!

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.

BSNL promised to deliver cheap 2.0Mbps broadband to every house in India. But that is hardly broadband anymore. Its more like online torture for its customers. Personally speaking, I use BSNL H500, a Rs. 500 plan which, if not for BSNL’s shitty nature, would have been actually GOOD by Indian pricing standards. It has a monthly data cap of 2.5GB, with happy hours from 2:00 AM to 8:00 AM when there is no data cap. During non happy hours, it bills Re. 0.90 for every MB which exceeds the 2.5GB cap. But yeah, its still horrible, and yet I am forced to use it. Why ? Read on…

2Mbps is not really 2Mbps

BSNL claims it offers 2Mbps internet, but its never really 2Mbps (or 256KBps). Most of the time, speed is around 200KBps, and during the happy hours, the speed per connection is often throttled, to very low speeds. This is clearly a cheap stratagy to decieve and cheat people, since it officially states that it offers “upto” 2Mbps connection speeds. Legally speaking, its not doing any wrong, but this twisting of language does decieve many people. Under normal circumstances, “upto” can be refered to being somewhere “around” 2Mbps. But as far as BSNL is concerned, its not true at all.

The customer care service personal with questionable knowledge level BSNL employs only make things worse by confusing people. Many of them think “browsing” speed is different from “download” speed, and say that the 2Mbps refers to the “browsing” speed. Despite several attempts to explain them about browsing being the same as downloading html files and then opening them, they are determined to believe that browsing is different from downloading. A few cite customer reviews stating that they get 100mbps connection, and claim that its much higher than 2Mbps and that its the system thats at fault.(note: most lan cards in PCs have a max connection speed of 100mbps which is cited by windows as 100mbps connection speed in connection properties, fooling novice customers.)

Broadband means “ALWAYS ON”, right ? Well, with BSNL, it DOES NOT.

OK, let me set speed throttling aside, next comes the reason BSNL Broadband is so horrible when it comes to downloads from connections which don’t allow resume. I am refering to several FTP sites and many file sharing websites. The internet keeps reconnecting. Reconnecting again and again, without warning, for apparently no reason at all. I remember, the last time I bothered to count, I noticed that while I waited for a rapidshare.com timer to count down from 100 to 0 seconds, the internet reconnected approximately 8 times in 4 minutes. Its impossible to use BSNL broadband with filesharing websites like rapidshare, and several popular mirror sites for gnu/linux distros.

Can I atleast browse normally, despite reconnections ? NO again.

Then comes the famous BSNL down times. Often, the network cannot be accessed because of downtimes at BSNL. They appear to turn off the network every week for several hours, and in extreme cases, I have gone days without networking. This with all my life being online. Wait there is more – these downtimes often occur in happy hours, the hours when we download the most.

2Mbps ? Wow!!! Compared to the older service of 256Kbps, my pings are low, aren’t they ? NO AGAIN.

The download speed may go upto 2Mbps, but pings are still very high. This is the reason I am hardly able to game, and its also the reason several people still prefer a local ISP’s limited 256Kbps connection for gaming to BSNL’s service. My friend with 256Kbps gets a ping of 100 while with BSNL 2Mbps I get 200-300 pings. This ping again fluctuates, with me getting 100 ping once in a blue moon and sometimes the ping going upto 800, all on the same server, while my friend happily games on with his 100 ping. [note: as I was typing this, I just reconnected...]

Are there any other crazy BSNL issues ?

Well, I can’t remember any more related to MY internet, however, BSNL has some crazier internet plans. For Rs. 150 per month, they advertise one of their plans as India’s cheapest 2mbps broadband. But guess what ? It has a data cap of 150MB, and it costs you an additional rupee per extra mb downloaded. Wow BSNL, thats like 20 whole minutes of downloading. Great. Just great. All hail BSNL, the lord of cheapness.

Edit: And yeah, BSNL is known for their riddiculous SMS service for their mobile phone schemes. SMSes sent through them take several hours to reach someone. Its next to only snail mail.

Then why the hell do I STILL use it ?

Unfortunately, I couldn’t find any other ISP with a plan of this type thats priced the same or below. Due to a small wallet crunch, I am stuck with BSNL, atleast for the next several months. While there do exist some rather highly attractive (relative to BSNL plans) plans in the 265Kbps unlimited segment, I need 2Mbps, and hence, I am still with BSNL.

PLEASE CLICK ME TO DIGG THIS

edit: When B is capitalised in kBps it means kilo BYTES, and when B is not capitalised in kbps it means kilo BITS. 8 bits make 1 byte. Thanks to http://www.dslreports.com/faq/2388 for explaining the convention clearly, and thanks to Cr0nor for pointing out my mistake.