KDE4.  I've mentioned it before, although that was a while ago when it was new and really not in a usable state...

New ubuntu came out last month, and I have it running on my work machine. Installed as kubuntu, but after one week I was so fed up with it that I switched to xfce, so it's more xubuntu now - and I've even changed the bootsplash to reflect that

That's all fine, and not especially worth talking about.  But the other day I found myself reading Planet Debian or Planet KDE or similar, and some discussion about whether or not it was right to ship intrepid with 4.  And I'm tending to agree with the "no" point of view.

The big issue I was having was stability.  In that week of use, it completely locked up and crashed three times.  Well, I say completely locked up - the mouse would still move.  But no reaction to any clicks or keyboard mashing, so the only way out was a hard reboot.  Eek.

But there's also still the whole customisation thing.  Yes, it's a lot more flexible than the last time I checked.  But still nowhere near enough!  Options moved around I can cope with and get used to.  But stuff like missing context menus, and panels that are far too fixed to their design/size... it's irritating.  Also, too many useless widgets, and once again not enough scope for fiddling with them.  And so on.  I tried, but I just was not getting on with it.

This is the whole point though - it's new and different, so of course 'old' users are going to complain about it.  Yes, fair enough - I'd agree if there weren't quite so many actual bugs and broken things.  Removing 'complicated' customisation options and making it look a bit like vista (oh, did I say that?) is probably great for attracting new users, but in terms of usability... No.

So yeah, xfce.  I can't face full on gnome because it's just too ugly, but I can cope with xfce because it doesn't crash and doesn't annoy me.  Wouldn't want it at home though, so I think I'll be sticking with KDE3.5 - and so with Hardy - for a little while.  Hopefully 4.2 will be better.

tags: linux