KDE 4.1 is here

[kanishka]

...and it seems it's (finally) good and stable:
http://www.linux.com/feature/142661

Will someone try it on Mint KDE CE? I'm not sure about it, I would like to but I don't want to mess up everything...

[rfpa]

I'm eager to try it. Dolphin makes life easier when dealing with huge amount of documents..And it has plenty of other features that are very well conceived.

I hope Linux Mint 6 will have a KDE Edition based on KDE 4.1. Let's wait.

[drizake]

I think I'm going to try this on my MINT 5.0 installation.

http://news.softpedia.com/news/How-To-I ... 1034.shtml

Has anyone else tried it?

[kanishka]

Nice article! I may wait for you to try first
(I will try on an openSUSE 11 partition of my box )

[drizake]

No worries. I'll back up my home dir prior to trying it. Installing Mint and adding my extra apps takes all of an hour. I do NOT miss the windows days.

[AK Dave]

I have a Kubuntu/Hardy partition waiting for this. I'll give it a try, but I don't expect to be impressed by KDE4 until it hits 4.2 or better. By having low expectations, I open myself to being pleasantly surprised when I complete the install.

[msuggs]

Nothing there to tempt me yet. Still to many key features missing

[rivenought]

I have an openSUSE 11 KDE 4.0.4 install which I have been neglecting while I use Mint everyday. What can I say except that I really like Mint more? Anyway, I decided to do the one-click install to 4.1 today after reading these posts. I did not want to mess up my Mint, so if I bork openSUSE, it is not a big deal. I am quite adept at clean-installs.

My initial impressions are extremely favorable. There are certainly some massive improvements to the desktop. That horrible cashew in the upper-right hand corner of the screen is no longer hyperactive. The plasma widgets are still unusual, but more tamed. Plasma is so different from anything in KDE 3.5, and especially GNOME, that it is going to take a while for me to get used to how everything interacts. After some time in the openSUSE forum, I should have a better grasp on the situation.

As for stability, openSUSE's implementation of KDE 4 is being heralded as the best, though I have not used KDE 4 in any other distro to corroborate that opinion. I do know that everything works and is stable. Nothing I have done has flaked out or gone all wonky. There are still several KDE 3 applications being used due to no KDE 4 version.

KDE 4 is getting better, and it is ready for use on a daily basis if you do not expect flawless perfection. As soon as more applications are updated, such as Amarok, it should be an even more exciting experience.

That being said, I still prefer Clem's Mint 5 GNOME.

[kanishka]

I used openSUSE's one-click install too, and everything went smoothly.
4.1 is significantly better than 4.0.X in my opinion; it needs time to get used to, however. I'll keep it there and try to get familiar with it, it seems worthwile.

[drizake]

I tried the instructions that I linked to above last night. They worked well. I basically just added the repo and installed the kubuntu KDE 4.1 package. When prompted, I choose Gnome as the default desktop. I then logged out and logged back in selecting KDE for that session only. It looked like I expected it to. My only complaint is that ALL of the software I installed is not available from the menu. Most of it is. Also, it's going to take me a few days to get used to the new/updated features and decide if the performance is up to par with Gnome as far as stability and responsiveness.

[msuggs]

Well curiosity got the better of me and I installed 4.1 through the kubuntu repos. My only comment is that I am now removing the 180 or so pieces of rubbish that I just put on my system. While I have used some kdelibs to run a few programs here and there like amaorK I really can't see what all the fuss is about with kde4. Maybe when amaroK 2 comes out I'll venture to add some kde4 libs again.

I think I just need to accept that I'm a gnome fan boy and move on

[drizake]

Yeah, I only used it for a day or so. I'm not uninstalling, because I have plenty of HD space, but I probably won't use it again while it's installed.

[locutus]

Well I took the plunge and added 4.1 to my M5-KDE beta and everything worked fine, that is, nothing got screwed up in either 3.5.9 or 4.1. Each works as it's supposed to.

I didn't particularly like 4.1 but then I don't like Kubuntu, either. Anyway I played around configuring it as much as I could. I got the kicker panel moved to the top of the screen so I could use AWN on the bottom; that worked. I got the wallpaper changed, but the selection was poor to start with, so I'm not happy with it. I forgot to try and get superkaramba working . The ugly, thick borders have changed to a normal size in 4.1, that's a plus. But I couldn't figure out how to change the default color scheme from black, which is much too Vista-ish for my tastes. I've seen screenshots of Suse or Mandriva, I forget which, where the black was gone and replaced with a medium blue, so it obviously can be done, I just couldn't figure out how. But I didn't look too hard, either. I'm sure a default install would be easier to figure out but mixed up with 3.5.9, looking for things would likely be pointless.

Overall, 4.1 is a great improvement over 4.0, but I'll stick with Mint's default for now!

[Randy3011]

Hello all:
I have tried KDE4.1 on openSUSE 11. with upgrade, upgraded Mandriva Spring 2008.1, and the latest Kubuntu 8.10 Alpha 4 release that comes with 4.1 exclusively....well....I will stick with Mint Gnome until KDE4 has a mileage under the belt. I find the widgets a bit confusing to use. 3.5.9 has always worked without problems for me. Some of the functions that were available in 3.5.9 aren't there in 4. especially in control center - mounting NTFS partitions in particular.

I just this past weekend dumped my whole Mandriva box and installed MInt 5.0R1. Took a whole lot less time to set up because everything I generally use is already there. I especially like the Software Portal.

Regards,
Randy3011