Wednesday 26 December 2007

KDE4 in Kubuntu Hardy - A few thoughts

You may have seen my previous post about the upcoming Kubuntu 8.04 Hardy Heron and KDE4. If you haven't, I'll sum it up for you:
  • Due to high demand for KDE4, Kubuntu Hardy will be available with either KDE 3.5 or KDE4 as the default desktop (presumably with separate ISO images available for download)
  • As a consequence of this, Kubuntu Hardy will, unlike Ubuntu Hardy, NOT be a Long-Term Support edition as was planned.
I suspected they'd have to do something about KDE4. After all, it was very inconvenient timing to have KDE4 released so soon before an LTS release of Kubuntu. While I'm in no doubt that this was a difficult decision for the Kubuntu developers, I feel the answer they came up with was the right one. After all, there was huge demand for KDE4. This way, people get to choose between the stability of KDE3.5 and the unproven KDE4. The loss of LTS status was unfortunate, but was the price that had to be paid.

For myself, I haven't decided which I will use when Hardy is released, but there's a lot of things in KDE4 I really like the look of (such as the KTwitter widget) so I will certainly give it a try. I may find myself going back to the KDE3.5 version if it's not stable enough, but we'll have to wait and see.

Finally, I know this is a bit belated, but I'd like to extend to all my readers my best wishes for a merry Christmas and a happy and prosperous New Year (regardless of religious beliefs or lack thereof).

2 comments:

Paul said...

Great! I'm a Kubuntu fan also. I've grown tired of KDE 3, and especially Qt 3 when compared to Gtk+, which is many times more aesthetically pleasing than the former. I've tried KDE 4 betas for a while, but none had the required usability of day to day life. But on the stability side of KDE 4, I can gladly tell you I didn't encounter any bug, crash or anything like that (more to that now that the final release reached the stores). I'm not a great fan of Gnome on the other hand, but you just can't give it credit for the looks (just look at the Murrine engine). Now things are different with Qt 4; the Cleanlooks theme seems to be a great new move towards aesthetics for Qt. I'm currently downloading the forth alpha iso image of Ubuntu Hardy so I wish us both good luck. ;)

MattBD said...

Thanks for your comment Paul-Sebastian. I tried KDE4 in Kubuntu myself the day it came out, and I didn't really have any problems with the desktop itself either. However, I do use some Gnome apps, including Pidgin (Kopete has never really been my cup of tea), and I couldn't get Pidgin to start in it, so at least until Hardy is released I won't be using it as my normal desktop. Hopefully I will be able to get Pidgin to work OK in Hardy with KDE4.
Incidentally, I've seen the announcement for the Kubuntu Hardy alpha 4 and it looks very impressive - the KDE3 version has a great new wallpaper, but I'm particularly impressed with the new Desktop Effects package - as someone who has had difficulty getting Compiz Fusion working in Kubuntu, I can't wait for that!