2008-08-03: Review of KDE 4.1 on Mandriva Cooker

Since KDE 4.1.x was recently released and was made available in Cooker, I decided to give it for a test drive. So I created a new UNIX account logged in to the console and ran startx. KDE 4 started, looking like I was used to, and I started making it behave like I was used to.

Here are a few problems I encountered, with solutions or workarounds, based on my memory and my IRC logs:

1. I had problems putting an icon of Konsole, the KDE terminal emulator, on the panel. The problem was that the KDE "K" menu was configured in Mandriva to be the "Classic Menu", where the right mouse button does not work. After switching it to the Kickoff style, I could right-click the menu item to add it to the panel.

   I don't understand why the right-mouse button does not work in the classic menu, or why I cannot drag&drop menu items to the panel.

2. Right-clicking on an applet or application launcher in the panel does not give one an option to move it. The only way to do it is by clicking the GNOME-logo-like icon at the right of the panel and entering into panel-editing mode. There is a "Move" option in the context menu of panel icons in KDE 3, so I wonder why it's absent.

3. There doesn't seem to be a system tray by default in the panel, and after I added it its display of the akregator icon is a bit awkward.

4. There aren't any tooltips for any of the icons in the panel, so it's hard to know what they are all about (One needs to click them to find out.)

5. I had problems finding the equivalent of the KDE Control Centre (kcontrol) in KDE 4. Apparently it's called System Settings in the menus, and is invoked using "sysetemssettings".

6. I had problems making sure the taskbar only displays windows from the current virtual desktop. Apparently, one has to click on the taskbar in a place where "there's no application" (i.e: in the space between applications) and then choose "Task Manager Settings", where the option is present.

   This option is not present in the KDE 4 "system settings" because it's relevant only to an individual taskbar, of which there can be many. Still, I would like to see a button on the left of a taskbar invoking a context menu.

7. The "Expandable" property of the "Details view" of Konqueror does not get preserved across invocations of Konqueror, despite the fact that I pressed "Apply" and "OK". This seems like a bug.

8. Finally, on Mandriva, KDE 4.1 does not make use of KDE 3's data, so KDE 4.1 applications like KMail, Akregator, etc. are useless to me.

Of course, KDE 4.1 still seems likable, and I enjoy using it. But I feel like they need to work on better usability. I am not a newbie - I'm actually a computer geek and an experienced software developer - and I felt like I could not make sense of some of the new UI there.

I'll try filing bugs in the KDE bug-tracker about it next, and see where it leads me. Hopefully these usability problems will be fixed in KDE 4.2.

Syndicated 2008-08-03 13:29:15 from shlomif