Recently, I decided to try using KDE after using Gnome for several
years and FVWM prior to that. I have used KDE in the past, even since
version 1.0, but I never really spent too much time in it before moving
back.
Now I've had a week or two to get used to it I can appreciate more of
what is there in the latest versions. Keep in mind that this overview
mostly covers things with the default setups, I know its possible to
correct or enhance things with KDE or Gnome or Xfce or whatever your
obscure desktop manager is, but there is a lot to be said for having
things available and ready to go from the start.
- Here are some good things I've found about using KDE -
1. Customization - This is probably the number one gripe I have with Gnome.
Part of what makes the open source world of computing great is that you
can customize things exactly the way you want. Gnome has gotten away
from this in recent years and I've heard that KDE has been pushing this
more. Its definately true, with the default KDE setup, you can
customize exactly how windows work. For instance, if I want to have a
specific class of windows not take priority for focus of the mouse
pointer, I can do that. One place we're I've had to use this is when
watching a movie or something on my desktop, I'll have the movie playing
on one monitor and with the default settings, if I switch desktops, the
movie will sometimes grab mouse focus and I don't like that,
fortunately, KDE provides the facilities to easily change that.
There are many other places where this is the case too, for instance
in the Konsole terminal emulator, you can easily override the keyboard
layout just within Konsole. So if you want to make F1 do something else
inside Konsole than Kate (text editor) does, you can do that easily.
2. Desktop widgets. I'm a gkrellm man. I usually put my gkrellm
monitoring display over on the side of the desk and leave it alone. But
with KDE widgets, I haven't even started gkrellm yet. I guess I just
found that having one CPU graph is good enough and the LCD weather
display is nice. Plus, having RSS feeds that don't fall into the window
class category makes sense to me.
3. Quickly access an application with Alt+F2 (using Krunner). At first I
thought that the KDE application menu was a bit clunky to use, but then
I realized that the real power comes with using Alt+F2 and then typing
in part of the name of the application you want. Its much better than
Gnome's program execution window as it quickly displays icons and
descriptions of programs you might want. I haven't had to do it yet,
but Krunner can be configured to be command oriented or task oriented.
4. This is not that important really but desktop backgrounds can be set
differently on different screens of a multi head display. Thus freeing
you from having to stretch a 1024x768 res picture in weird ways or
making your own. I can't believe that Gnome hasn't tacked this one yet.
Seems like it would be easy to do.
5. Although I don't use it much, the file manager in KDE is nice and
fast. Gnome's isn't too bad, but the KDE one offers more options and
seems more powerful, so I will probably end up using it more.
6. Last but not least. KDE is fast and snappy. I didn't really expect it
so be slow, but it definately doesn't have slowness problems. Gnome
isn't really slow either, but its nice to know that both desktops are
strong in this area, which no doubt is a major draw to Linux for people
seeking an alternate desktop environment.
- Places that can use some improvement or that I don't like. -
1. Some settings not organized well. Even though KDE has lots of
configurability, its been a bit difficult to find some settings that
seem like they should be easy to find. The interface for changing
settings is inconsistent and I'm still not sure in what places I need to
single click and what places I need to double click.
2. Taskbar applications are shown for all desktops. In other words,
instead of the application taskbar showing only the items for the
current desktop, it shows it for all desktops. Maybe someone will be
able to help me with this as I haven't found a solution for this yet.
It seems like this would be an easy thing to set, but apparently its
not. This probably falls under my #1 gripe as well.
3. Lock desktop widget is too big. This is the OCD part of me, but the
widget for locking the screen is made for a lock icon and a logout icon.
I rarely logout of my desktop when I leave for the day, but there is a
way to disable the displaying of the logout icon. But when you do that,
the widget still takes up the same amount of space.
4. Konsole doesn't have a setting in the GUI for terminal geometry and
the --geometry option doesn't seem to work as advertised. This really
annoys me because its 2009 and some of the most basic options for X
windows are being ignored by people who should know better.
6. Kmadness. Why does every application for KDE have to have to start
with a K. I guess its kinda like how many x applications start with an x
for x windows. While it might make it nice for discovering new commands
by using tab completition, it gets mundane after a while. I feel like
my desktop is a big pun.
7. Fonts aren't as good. I thought this was more X specific, but I
guess not. Some of the fonts that KDE uses by default are not as smooth
or as readable as the ones I was using in Gnome. I realize that the
fonts can be changed, but changing fonts is generally something I leave
alone because you're never sure whether the font you choose is going to
have all the charcters or cause other issues like overflowing the
boundary area for the text.
8. Some weird issues with Konsole. Sometimes when I select text in
Konsole, it doesn't render the whole window and it seems as if the
window closed, but it just needs to be redrawn by moving it or switching
desktops. This might be related to compositing.
Right now the desktop still feels a bit strange because I'm getting used
to things like having to press Ctrl+shift+n for a new terminal tab
instead of Ctrl+Shift+t. But those are minor things that will pass.
We've definately come a long ways since the days of the FVWM window
manager, which could do pretty much anything you wanted, but you had to
modify a text file to do it and then reload FVWM.
--
Mark Krenz
Bloomington Linux Users Group
http://www.bloomingtonlinux.org/
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