When reading articles like this one thought comes to mind: Lipstick on a pig. KDE has been hijacked by obsessive tinkerers and glamour shot addicts. Functionality and stability took distant second place to eye candy. This article is an example of this. Just look at all the shiny things you can put on your desktop now. I just dragged an icon across the desktop and Plasma crashed. Ha!

What's wrong with K3B? I guess the people who are complaining about it are the ones who haven't tried it for more than a year.
I can burn CDs, DVDs what ever I want. I don't have a Blu-Ray drive so I don't know if K3b can manage that but I can do all that I want without a hitch.

KUbuntu IMO is a very bad distro to test drive KDE. Anyone who is seriously interesting in KDE 4 should try openSuse or Mandriva.

@ Author: activate both Fall Apart and Explode and see wht you get (Desktop Effect).
I am also very happy that I don't have to install Compiz in order to get the goodies of Eye-Candies.
I didn't really like the first implementation of Magic Lamp but it has improved so nicely over the past versions that I am even loving it now even more that the original Compiz version.

KDE 4 is a very innovative,beautiful and powerful Desktop and it gets better with each version.
The only thing that I am personally missing is a full featured Kaffeine 4 (1.0).

One of FOSS features is having many choices, but it is getting very annoying. Let me re-phrase that, it is making many users to become very annoying.

You want K3B replaced, go ahead, pick your favorite out of many available to chose from. Why the heck do you want to replaces it when many many Linux users like it and wouldn't like any other? You want to dictate to others what to use? Fat chance Mister, may be you are better off using other DE or different OS all together.

I think anyone who was turned off by KDE4 when it first was released, should give it another try, now that it is much more stable and complete.

Personally I like that I no longer need to install compiz for desktop effects.

out of the box, gnome will at least switch virtual desktops easily. after a day of using it, i haven't seen how to assign keys for kde to do this.

plus, suspending kills my wireless (not so when I run gnome on same system). what's up with that?

Thanks for writing an article for those who'd like a KDE Plasma workspace that looks like a good old KDE 3 desktop. You're not the first to do so, but it's good to have it widely documented.

That said, I'd really encourage you to check your facts, preferably with those who actually know the internals, so that you don't spread misinformation and mistaken guidance.

For instance, in this article:

"inception in November 2007"

4.0 was released in January 2008. That's not a big deal, though :)

"The absence of desktop icons has caused no end of concern. By default they're replaced by a "containment"-- a semi-transparent window displaying the contents of the Desktop folder."

The Folder View on the desktop area is a widget like any other. It is not a "containment", at least not when it's used in that way. We also don't use the term "containment" outside of technical jargon and development talk (where it has some actual meaning) and refer to "Activities" instead. This is important since "Activity" is the wording you'll find in all the GUI configuration. Using jargon like "containment", particularly in the wrong context, is probably only more confusing. It's understandable why one might get that wrong, as it's a technical term referring to aspects of the internal code-level design.

"Adding icons to the Desktop or Panel
To do this you first need to switch to the Kickoff menu style."

At least in version 4.4 the same right click menu exists in the menu-based launcher. (I don't have a 4.3-ony build nearby as I write this to test this with.) You can also just drag and drop items from the menu.

"To modify it, right-click in an unused area and choose Panel Options followed by Panel Settings. "

You can also, often much more easily, just click on the toolbox button at the far right. This is a lot more convenient than trying to find an unused area and is far quicker as you don't have to open a menu, navigate to an entry and select. Just throw the mouse over to it and click, voila.

"Ctrl+Alt+Backspace to restart the X server is disabled by default"

That's really something that's up to the Linux distributor and has nothing to do with KDE.

"In the next part we'll explore some of KDE 4s core concepts"

I look forward to this article, and I'd like it to be as accurate as possible. To that end, you can find us (and me :) on #plasma on irc.freenode.net, plasma-devel at kde dot org or you can even reach me personally with aseigo at kde dot org.

Cheers ...

> I'm just waiting for a replacement for K3b

Why? I use Mandriva 2010 and K3B 1.69 and I haven't had any problems so far with K3B.

Containments are a good idea, poorly implemented. It can display files from any directory. But I can't minimize a containment, or restrict it to a particular workspace. And containment resize is junk (try it). Why didn't they just make containments like other windows?

"I'm just waiting for a replacement for K3b."

While the K3B team still call v2 alpha, it works great for me.

To the author. This was a fair entry, and while I respect your decision to revert back to KDE3 familiarity with kick-off, konqueror, folder view containment, etc. I would encourage new users to give the new workflow a try.

I've personally never been one for icons on the desktop, it's a useless place to put things once the first window is opened.

I find Dolphin to be superior to Konqueror in file management. Perhaps I'm just ignorant to what made Konq so much better, but I can't think of anything Konq did that Dolphin can't.

kick-off, application launcher is probably more a personal preference, I personally use KRunner (alt+f2) for most everything and only revert to the launchers when I don't know what to type. (The quick calculator feature of KRunner is now crucial to my computing experience)

Again, it's all personal taste, and if reverting is truly what you prefer, then more power to you. I would just encourage users to try the new workflow before reverting.

Some side notes:
It's simpler to click the cashew on the panel than to right-click in an unused portion, and select panel settings

The ctrl+alt+backspace is not disabled by KDE, but instead by Xorg. This was a little unclear in the post.

It seems that the bulk of KDE instability, etc comes from people using Kubuntu, perhaps that's just a statistics thing, but perhaps those wanting to use KDE would be better served by a distro that focuses more on this DE.

I used to be a KDE user from when I started using Mandrake in 2000, up until the end of 2008, when I moved to Ubuntu.

Every time I try out any Distribution with KDE4 I either end up with a slow dog of a system or I can't install it at all. For example machines that will quite happily run Ubuntu with (1 Gig RAM) either fail to install kubuntu or Mandriva with KDE4, or are so pathtically slow as to be unusable.

As far as I'm concerned KDE4 continues to be one big FAIL.

as for the BS
If you don't like Dolphin, KDE 4's new default file manager, you can switch back to Konqueror.

Everything I hate about Dolphin is integrated into Konqueror. So it's an exercise in futility.

Lancelot Menu.

This is a plasmoid that is shipped with most KDE4 distributions. It has integration with Krunner. To use it, simply add the Lancelot Menu widget to the panel. I would suggest that you move the widget to the left-hand edge of the panel, and then right-click on the Lancelot icon and adjust the properties. I would suggest enabling the option which shows the menu categories as separate icons in the panel.

Lancelot Menu is one of the many significant improvements that KDE4 brings over KDE3.

> KDE4 is still not ready for big time simply because there are too many regressions

Name one.

For every alleged "regression" that you might attempt to name, I can probably list 10 improvements in KDE4 that KDE3 simply cannot match.

I use kubuntu and also I have ubuntu at the moment but I also use other operating systems through virtual box (for windows)

It is all personal choice, for me, working in KDE 4.3 is much more productive than working in Gnome. I seriously don't like simplicity and the usability madness of Gnome.

"KDE4 is still not ready for big time simply because there are too many regressions..."

Like what?

I am a Gnome user but I have tried Kubuntu before and will be watching your posts with interest. I am glad we have a choice and we may all need KDE when Gnome 3.0 is released ;-).

Sure KDE looks nice - but after the first few versions of 4, I have gone back to the simplicity and functionality of GNOME.

I would like not have DM "sooo exciting" but simply productive. After all if I needed excitement on LCD screen I would buy Nintento Wii.

KDE4 is still not ready for big time simply because there are too many regressions, so for now there are not much compelling reasons to make a total switch from KDE3.
But it is worth to make some tests for sure, to make it better sooner.

I am loving KDE4. I started my journey in Linux with GNOME and then moved to KDE in order to help a friend. Now I am using KDE only.
I agree that the windows falling apart is a nice feature. I am also amazed at the wallpaper section especially the Globe wallpaper where I can interact with the wallpaper. I have not seen a wallpaper like that ever before!

Since version 4.3, KDE really rocks.

I'm just waiting for a replacement for K3b.