MEPIS Community Forum

I'm not the first to jump on the boat. But I'm not the last either. uncle mark says it extremely well. I can add nothing except to note that totally damnable 'learning curve'. For this old fart it was almost as bad as when I was learning Windows 95/98/98 SE. DOS was better!

I can attest to the learning curve, I've install KDE 4 at least a 4 dozen times and I still have trouble getting the panel setup like I want. Once done I can do everything in KDE 4 that I could do in 3, plust a bit more.

Saists right about KDE5, I didn't elaborate but everything I've read shows the upgrade to 5 from 4 will be pretty smooth.

For KDE 3 users I would find a distro specifically built around Trinity, it would just be a lot simpler in the long run.

I'm just the opposite. Given the choice between KDE4 and KDE3, there's no way I'd choose the latter.

I found the learning curve very shallow. Within a couple days I was quite proficient.

One thing I still don't like (from KDE 4.5.3 in Mepis 11 on up to 4.8.3 in Fedora and Sabayon) is configuring the date and time on the panel. For example, in 4.8.3 I can adjust the time's font right there in the digital clock settings, but I still have to go somewhere else (System Settings > Application Appearance > Fonts > Small font settings) to change the date's font. Maybe KDE needs a new plasmoid or something. Maybe there's a better one for the panel that I don't know about, but if there is, it should be the default one anyway.

Hm, and another thing, it would be nice to be able to do something as simple as right-clicking on the panel to get to a setting for adjusting its transparency/opacity. At the moment, I happen to be logged into GNOME 2 in Debian Squeeze, where adjusting panel transparency/opacity is a piece of cake:.

Me too, thanks to Warren's implementation with SM 8.5. He made the transition from KDE 3.4 intuitive and painless.

Having used KDE 4.x for a couple of years, I must admit I'm hooked on the desktop effects. Other desktop environments seem primitive and retro in comparison. Fortunately, my hardware has been up to the task, and was able to handle the extra load without slowing down or stuttering. We'll see about KDE 4.9.

Speaking of Hardware effects. The QT developers are looking at OpenGL 3.x class support: http://lists.qt-project.org/pipermail/d ... 04707.html

On paper this should ultimately give KDE4/KDE5 the ability to accelerate the interface on any system with OpenGL 3.x support. As of right now MESA does support at least OpenGL 3.0: http://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/m ... 21473.html

Between MESA and proprietary drivers like fglrx and nvidia-glx almost all of the current graphics chips sold by Nvidia, AMD, and Intel should be able to achieve hardware acceleration with QT+OpenGL 3.x. This includes Intel's Ivy Bridge and Sandy Bridge processors.

Older chips back to the RadeonHD 2x00 series from AMD and the Geforce 6x00 series from Nvidia should also be able to get hardware acceleration through MESA on QT+OpenGL 3.x. On paper the out-of-box hardware and acceleration support should give some performance jumps to KDE running on this older hardware.

Older ATi and Nvidia chips probably won't see any major changes to desktop rendering. So if it works right now, great. If it doesn't, things are not likely to change.

Older Intel users on GMA probably won't be seeing any changes to desktop rendering either.

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Kind of as a side note for those aware of AMD's Catalyst API exposure problems: viewtopic.php?f=6&t=33234

We -SHOULD- be seeing some of those API issues addressed later this year. So hopefully by the time KDE on QT5 arrives, Radeon hardware acceleration won't be a complete and total excementshoot.

Is the boat in the water yet, I want to get on. I wish the Debian Kde/Qt package maintainers were bleeding edgers.

Once I learned all the magical things that the new Dolphin can do, I was totally hooked. No going back.

At first I missed some KDE3 features missing from KDE4, but little by little some have been reintroduced. The responsiveness of 4.8.3 has gotten snappier too, which is a good thing on my old hardware.

Yes, it was painful to give up all those great DOS tools accumulated over time.

Although..... some of them come in handy once in a while even yet.