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1

Tuesday, August 12th 2008, 8:59pm

The "I was completely wrong about KDE4" thread.

Okay, so it turns that Dolphin is actually sort of awesome... like Plasma. It's human nature to resist change, and I'm as human as they come. I owe everyone involved a humble statement of contrition, to be made publically, and to be made more than once. Folks, I was so very very wrong about KDE 4. It's still pretty buggy and underdeveloped, but I now believe it's going to turn out to be everything that it's cracked up to me.

When Steve Ballmer sees Plasma,he'll probably love it so much, he'll try to patent it.

You should never pay attention to my opinions ever again. That's how incredibly wrong I was. I have elevated wrongness to the level of a superpower.

But I wasn't the only one, was I? Anyone else need to sign their name to this thread? :thumbsup:

2

Saturday, August 23rd 2008, 7:27am

What exactly is awesome about Dolphin compared to Konqueror 3?

(When I say "Dolphin" in the list below, I'm also largely referring to Konqueror 4, because it uses a lot of the same crippled components as Dolphin. When I say Konqueror, I mean Konqueror 3.5)

Some of my gripes with Dolphin so far:

- Konqueror could split the view as many times as you wanted, horizontally and vertically. Dolphin is limited to one vertical split.

- In Konqueror, it's possible to switch quickly between thumnails view and details view. In Dolphin, it takes two clicks on different buttons (Icons mode, then previews on).

- Konqueror had more info columns in detailed view (symlink destination is the one I miss most).

- Konqueror had file info tips. These took up no screen space at all until you used them. Dolphin's info thingie constantly uses part of the window.

- Konqueror had filename-width select. For some reason I prefer that vastly over full-column select in Dolphin. (Probably 'cause I could do nifty tricks when selecting a bunch of files that all had longer names than their neighbours...)

- Konqueror scrolled quickly; Dolphin scrolls slowly (the motion looks choppy). This is probably something to do with the new visuals (which I've disabled or simplified to the best of my ability btw), but something as basic as scrolling should not get worse with new versions.

- Copying in the same folder is no longer possible with the mouse. I didn't realize how much I used this feature until it went away (I'm probably strange for doing that, but still :P)

- The resume button the "do you want to overwrite this file?" dialogue is apparently gone now.

- Dolphin does an auto-column-resize when you split the view. I find this very annoying, because I frequently need a very long Filename column and this always ruins it. Then I have to go and adjust it myself, and *then* because of full-column select (above), I have to travel a lot farther to the right when I want to select some stuff. Also, a very narrow filename column makes renaming files annoying.

- Dolphin has no option to display file sizes in bytes. This is a show-stopper for me -- I will not use a file manager that requires me to right-click a file and go to Properties to see exactly how big it is. I frequently use the exact byte size as a very quick indicator of whether two files could be the same. I'm used to arguing this one with people; a friend of mine once said "What, would you measure the distance from the earth to the moon in centimetres?" to which I replied, "If it was a perfectly exact number of centimetres; hell yes!" -- why approximate when it's not needed? If you can fit a much more precise measurement into the same amount of screen space (roughly), then do so.

- The free space indicator is visually identical to a progress bar, which is very distracting. I keep glancing at it expecting it to move rapidly, and it takes me about a second and a half of thinking each time to work out that it's not really something I need to watch.

- Konqueror had lots of configuration options. Dolphin has very few. I'm one of those who believes that there can never be too many config options (as long as there are sensible defaults and as long as having them configurable doesn't slow the program down much).

I'm sure there's other stuff I haven't discovered yet. I'd be interested to hear your responses, unless of course they're "well, ordinary people/users would never need that!" (which seems to be the philosophy behind KDE4...)

Rest assured, I'll be filing bug reports about all of this soon :)

~Felix.

3

Friday, August 29th 2008, 11:01pm

What exactly is awesome about Dolphin compared to Konqueror 3?


Oh God, Nothing! Please don't interpret anything that I say to mean that Konqueror 3 doesn't kick Dolphin's... uh, tail!

Actually, it's a little embarassing, but I would like to withdraw from the "I was wrong about KDE4" thread. I no longer think I was wrong. After two to three weeks, I went back to using KDE3.

4

Sunday, August 31st 2008, 2:11am

Lol mood swings!
Yeah I'm having a love/hate relationship with KDE4; i think it depends how many bugs or quirks I get on a given day.
I certainly wouldn't want to run any production machines with KDE4 but for tinkering it's fine.

I'm still a fan.... there are workarounds for most things so far and I like some of the new concepts. Hopefully when a more completed version is released (4.2?) the capability to customise will be more complete, rather than all the 'dummy' settings :)

5

Thursday, September 4th 2008, 5:35am

I used to have a love/hate relationship with KDE4, but right now I don't have any relationship with it at all. I suppose I'll be back. I really think that in the end, they'll fix Konqueror, and that's really all that matters to me. I discovered lots of cool possibilities with KDE4, but the funny thing is that I was able to take most of them verbatim back to KDE 3.

What tripped me up was that I was so used to being wrong about this sort of thing that I was expecting to change my mind in the end. Once upon a time, I was a charter member of the He Man Ubuntu Hater's Club, and now it's my favorite distro... but what happened after two-three weeks of KDE 4 wasn't that I hated it. I just became indifferent to it. What I hate, so far is Konqueror 4x.

Bottom line, I don't see how it's really all that revolutionary. The plasmoids that I have seen are all just applets that have to be moved and adjusted and locked and unlocked all the time. The trouble with widgets is that you always have to fidget with them! :rolleyes: If KDE4 is not all that revolutionary, I guess it's not going to be that hard to live with, once they fix Konqueror.

I reserve the right to love KDE 4.2. I have no predictions about that.

Incidentally, have I missed something? Is there a plug-in for KDE4 that will restore the classic filter bar to Konqueror?

This post has been edited 2 times, last edit by "blackbelt_jones" (Sep 4th 2008, 7:12am)


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6

Thursday, September 18th 2008, 9:01am

Konqueror could split the view as many times as you wanted, horizontally and vertically. Dolphin is limited to one vertical split.

- In Konqueror, it's possible to switch quickly between thumnails view and details view. In Dolphin, it takes two clicks on different buttons (Icons mode, then previews on).

7

Friday, September 19th 2008, 9:40pm

What exactly is awesome about Dolphin compared to Konqueror 3?

(When I say "Dolphin" in the list below, I'm also largely referring to Konqueror 4, because it uses a lot of the same crippled components as Dolphin. When I say Konqueror, I mean Konqueror 3.5)

Some of my gripes with Dolphin so far:

- Konqueror could split the view as many times as you wanted, horizontally and vertically. Dolphin is limited to one vertical split.

- In Konqueror, it's possible to switch quickly between thumnails view and details view. In Dolphin, it takes two clicks on different buttons (Icons mode, then previews on).

- Konqueror had more info columns in detailed view (symlink destination is the one I miss most).

- Konqueror had file info tips. These took up no screen space at all until you used them. Dolphin's info thingie constantly uses part of the window.

- Konqueror had filename-width select. For some reason I prefer that vastly over full-column select in Dolphin. (Probably 'cause I could do nifty tricks when selecting a bunch of files that all had longer names than their neighbours...)

- Konqueror scrolled quickly; Dolphin scrolls slowly (the motion looks choppy). This is probably something to do with the new visuals (which I've disabled or simplified to the best of my ability btw), but something as basic as scrolling should not get worse with new versions.

- Copying in the same folder is no longer possible with the mouse. I didn't realize how much I used this feature until it went away (I'm probably strange for doing that, but still :P)

- The resume button the "do you want to overwrite this file?" dialogue is apparently gone now.

- Dolphin does an auto-column-resize when you split the view. I find this very annoying, because I frequently need a very long Filename column and this always ruins it. Then I have to go and adjust it myself, and *then* because of full-column select (above), I have to travel a lot farther to the right when I want to select some stuff. Also, a very narrow filename column makes renaming files annoying.

- Dolphin has no option to display file sizes in bytes. This is a show-stopper for me -- I will not use a file manager that requires me to right-click a file and go to Properties to see exactly how big it is. I frequently use the exact byte size as a very quick indicator of whether two files could be the same. I'm used to arguing this one with people; a friend of mine once said "What, would you measure the distance from the earth to the moon in centimetres?" to which I replied, "If it was a perfectly exact number of centimetres; hell yes!" -- why approximate when it's not needed? If you can fit a much more precise measurement into the same amount of screen space (roughly), then do so.

- The free space indicator is visually identical to a progress bar, which is very distracting. I keep glancing at it expecting it to move rapidly, and it takes me about a second and a half of thinking each time to work out that it's not really something I need to watch.

- Konqueror had lots of configuration options. Dolphin has very few. I'm one of those who believes that there can never be too many config options (as long as there are sensible defaults and as long as having them configurable doesn't slow the program down much).

I'm sure there's other stuff I haven't discovered yet. I'd be interested to hear your responses, unless of course they're "well, ordinary people/users would never need that!" (which seems to be the philosophy behind KDE4...)

Rest assured, I'll be filing bug reports about all of this soon :)

~Felix.


I'm reminded of my own words, in trying to explain to people why the command line is valuble, but that using the command line doesn't mean giving up the GUI. If I've said it once, I've said it a hundred and fifty times: It's not about one tool being better than another tool. It's about two tools being better than one tool.



Konqueror is irreplaceable because it contains virtually all of the power of KDE in one interface. This has all sorts of possibilities for a creative user. In KDE4, Konqueror isn't its old self, and that needs to be addressed. Recent limitations in Konqueror (filterbarfilterbarfilterbar!!!) have often forced me to use Dolphin, and-- as anyone who has read any of my last fifty or so deranged posts in various forums and blogs knows-- I've got a huuuuuuuge problem with that. However, it's also taught me to admire Dolphin. It's an awesomely intuitive interface. We need Dolphin... so let's not make this Konqueror vs. Dolphin. Yeah, I know, I've done the same thing.

8

Tuesday, September 23rd 2008, 10:13am

It's about choice

Upgrades of distributions are increasingly using KDE4 as the only option for KDE. While I've still got a choice which I use I don't have a problem. Ubuntu 8.10 comes out in just over a month and I will be upgrading, not because I like KDE4 but because I want an up to date computer. When that time comes, I will re-evaluate KDE4 and then make my rants.

One thing though, why is it that I'm using Konqueror 4 on KDE4 now and the cursor in this text editor is one character behind where it should be!

9

Tuesday, September 23rd 2008, 6:17pm

Nope, I'm still right about it

I still can't unzip files from any file manager. Konqueror is better than Dolphin. I can't open a NTFS usb HD from KDE. My date + time always consumes too few pixels, chopping half of the day and the 8 of "2008" away. Selecting files with dragging a rectangle around them is hard in both konqueror and dolphin because you can't start dragging on the "name" field even if the names are short. You can't drag anything at all to the very important tree view of both konqueror and dolphin. There are sometimes weird graphical glitches, whether or not those are the NVidia drivers causing this, it still is for KDE 4 to solve that because it's proven that it's possible with the current NVidia drivers by Beryl. Dolphin always forgets I want the full path visible. File open and file save dialogs always open files on single click while I want it with double click, no matter what settings I try. I can't even have two rows in my taskbar, namely a row of icons to directly launch programs and a row with the buttons of open windows! Man, KDE 3.5 was so much better except for the graphical effects, fix the details instead of adding new features to KDE 4 now please, I don't miss any programs, but I do miss lots of things the applications and desktop can't do!

dejamuse

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10

Thursday, October 2nd 2008, 5:35pm

KDE4 ramifications

Having just played with a Mac (Powerbook G4/10.5) for the first time, I can see where KDE4 got its inspiration. I was completely nonplussed by my Mac experience, frankly. I thought just about everything in the UI was awkward, and counter intuitive, with insufficient control over the look and feel.

I have been using KDE4 on PCBSD7 for a few weeks now and I'm totally disappointed. Losing the tree view in the file manager was the final straw. Dolphin is a clone of the Mac approach as well as the file manager used in Gnome - ugh. I frankly don't see how one could improve much on Konqueror. Aside from the myriad bugs, the total experience, especially the klutzy desktop widget concept, was a real downer.

A lot of people like me are saying that KDE3 had it all pretty much right but for a few details. All the eye candy and 3D desktops, and whiz-bang visual effects are undesirable and useless to the vast majority of users. Let Apple do its own thing and just make KDE easy to use. The desktop environment is not be an entertainment center most of us. We just want a rock solid system that's intuitive and productive.

A lot of people are imploring the devheads at PCBSD to maintain an update path for KDE3, paired with FreeBSD7.x. I second this motion. I don't think KDE 4 will be ready for at least a year. They clearly did little to no actual usability testing, but they're sure getting some heavy feedback now!

11

Friday, October 3rd 2008, 8:54am

I have been using KDE4 on PCBSD7 for a few weeks now and I'm totally disappointed. Losing the tree view in the file manager was the final straw


Little more curiosity please:) Did you look at Dolphins "View" menu?

dejamuse

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12

Friday, October 3rd 2008, 7:05pm

Yeah, I looked everywhere and couldn't make it do what I wanted and it was slower. But in the last article below it does clearly show a tree view mode in Dolphin, so I guess I rushed through it. I would have expected it to be the default mode.

But there are many issues with KDE4. My overall point is it's a bad idea to copy the look and feel of either Mac or Gnome. Let KDE be about straightforward simplicity over eye candy.

Here are some useful discussions:

http://aseigo.blogspot.com/2008/09/on-kde4-performance.html

http://itmanagement.earthweb.com/osrc/article.php/3758446

http://itmanagement.earthweb.com/feature…cle.php/3761781

13

Saturday, October 4th 2008, 11:50am

Here are two pictures showing how Dolphin can be configured to show directories. I have also moved all panels to left and so they don't take much space



simplicity


Well, for example I love that KDE is NOT simple, that there are many ways to configure it and take advantage of all those nice features. Simplicity just is not word do describe KDE. For users who like simple, easy, small etc, I think is Gnome, xfce, fluxbox... are better choices

dejamuse

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14

Monday, October 6th 2008, 11:48pm

Yes, I agree about the configurability being desirable. By simplicity I meant a UI that is intuitive. I found OSX to be terrible for configurability, and I see KDE4 trying to copy a lot of OSX behavior.

Having a tree menu in the KDE3 control panel just made a lot of sense. But the new version is awful and is a copy of the Mac style.

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