As promised, I installed Fedora 9 – and promptly moved back to Fedora 8. The problem is not Fedora – its KDE. KDE 4 is not yet ready for normal use. And if you are a KDE user, I would suggest that you stay away from Fedora 9.
The purpose of KDE 4 is to make KDE compactable with Qt4. Its not for actual use. Sure, it could be used as a desktop, but it will lack many features that you expect in KDE.
I am surprised that Fedora decided to include KDE4 – despite its ‘alpha-ness’. But they have their reasons
Problems With KDE4
- Customizable Panel
- I could not find any options to customizing the panel – KDE 3.5 have a lot of options.
- Many Options/Settings are missing.
- It will be coming in the future releases – but its missing now.
- Desktop Icons have no consistency
- Some icons are bigger than others. On the other hand, you can rotate these icons – but I fail to see any practical application for that.
- And many more…
- Random crashes, dolphin, irremovable ‘Add Plasmoid’ option on the desktop, etc.
Long story short, I am back in Fedora 8. And I will be on it until Fedora 10 is out. And even then, I’ll wait some time before upgrading.
Links
Fedora 9/KDE4 Positive Reviews
- Fedora 9 Review
- Fedora 9 and the road to KDE4
- Review Roundup: Fedora 9
- Fedora 9: Leading edge or bleeding edge?
- Hats off to Fedora 9
- 5 Reasons Why You’ll Love Fedora 9
- aseigo: talking bluntly
- KDE 4.0 – why now?
I’ve installed KDE4 on Kubuntu, and your totally right, there are to many futures that are missing (yet) from KDE4. Also, on Kubuntu, KDE4 crashed quite often. So, as you said KDE4 “its not for actual use”. Too bad you post this article after my experience with KDE4 :p
yes, I agree, I installed 9 and then within one night, I decided back to Fedora 8, KDE4 sucks!
I agree. Its sad that I wont be upgrading to openSUSE 11 because of KDE4 – its not yet ready for primetime
I understand Fedora’s stated objective is to be ‘leading edge’. Another one of their objectives is ‘just works.’ Well, it’s not happening this time. Not only is KDE4 an epic disaster for all involved, xen virtualization doesn’t work either. This release is dead on arrival. Take the author’s advice and just dump it immediately. I made the mistake of fighting it for a few weeks and now I’m so frustrated I’m dumping the whole mess for another distro (looking at CentOS or Ubuntu)
Please, do yourself a favor and retest Fedora with KDE 4.1 RC1. Although a little buggy, KDE 4.1 RC1 is a 100x improvement over KDE 4.0.0. I want to summarize the new features for KDE 4.1 in few words.
1. It WORKS.
2. KMail, Kontact, KOrganizer and the rest of KDE-PIM are all native.
3. You have the FolderView plasmoid. Try it, and you’ll see after 15 minutes that your existence without it was sad and unmeaningful, and you’ll have something more to convince Windows Bostaâ„¢ fans out there
4. You can configure your Plasma desktop to your likings, it is fast (Sempron 2500, no dual core monster with gigs of RAM here) and 3/4 of all meaningful settings are NOT missing now ;).
Note: “Bosta” is a south american word meaning, literally, “a pile of bullshit”. It is meant to replace “Vista”, and sounds alike too!
@Alejandro
Thanks for the update – I’ll try it as soon as I get the chance.
I’m on Ubuntu – and I hear Hardy is a bit awkward compared to Gutsy in some aspects. I’ve not experienced any, because I’ve started to use Ubuntu regularly only on Hardy (though I’ve installed and played around with Gutsy).
I guess it is a matter of pushing the deadlines and objectives and what not.
PS: I’ve subscribed to your blog – I hope you’ll post more general Linux tips and Ubuntu tips.