I’ll be honest, I’m surprising myself by not returning to Openbox. I’m still running Chakra with KDE, and I still love it. It needs a couple extra seconds to boot, but afterwards it feels just as fast as Openbox. More specific, applications feel as fast in KDE as they do in Openbox. Of course, Dolphin is slower than Thunar, Kate slower than Leafpad, etc, but Emesene, Firefox, Transmission, and all the other applications I normally use feel just as fast.
Other nice points:
- K3b: simply the best burning software out there
- Gorgeous, GORGEOUS Air theme
- SmoothTasks
- Dolphin is actually a very decent file manager, with tons of nice little options, like the + and the – to select files and directories, which means I can finally see the attraction of single click behaviour, and a twin panel mode.
I’ve been meaning to use the spare partition on my HD to install Arch, XFCE and a dock, just to try it out, but I feel like I can’t be bothered. KDE as it is now is just too easy.
What I could do is install the latest Mandriva, Kubuntu and OpenSuse to test their KDE flavours…hmmm…
San
Celettu's Weblog 
Performance: Will KDE4 run “reasonably” on Celeron 450 (2.2 GHz, single core) with 2 GB RAM and Intel GMA 3100 integrated? (I currently run Ubuntu 9.04/Gnome happily on that HW.)
Stability: I tried Chakra in Live CD mode and found the supplied browser extremely flaky. Is the rest of Chakra/KDE reasonably stable? I’d use Firefox anyway…
@secdroid From my experience, KDE4 runs reasonably on significantly less hardware (Kubuntu, anyways), so I’d say to give it a try.
Installing from the repos is a little messy though, and I prefer to have just one desktop environment per OS, so maybe set up a partition before you convert completely.
Thanks for the tips, Ezekiel. I have setup a test partition that I’ve used for a manual Arch/LXDE install and a test install from Godane’s Arch/XFCE Live CD. Both were successful.
I’ve only spent a few minutes with Chakra LiveCD and had no difficulties except with the browser. I’ll go ahead and install Chakra to my test partition. If I like it, I’ll wipe it and do a manual Arch/KDE4 install.
Gnome and Ubuntu seem to be going in the wrong directions. Arch really appeals to me and I’ve had minimal issues with my Arch test installs.
Sure wish I had Dusty Phillips’ “arch linux handbook” when I did my first install. Very handy little book!
I also love KDE4. I’ve been running it on my desktop and my MSI Wind netbook for probably 5 months or so now. It runs VERY well on my Wind even with desktop effects turned on. It looks amazing and is much quicker that I ever expected on an atom processor. I would say it should run great on a 2.2Ghz computer. Oh, and I only have 1GB ram on the Wind, but KDE uses less than 200 megs most of the time.
Hmmm, I’ve got an Acer Aspire One netbook (1.6 GHz, 1 GB RAM, 120 MB HDD). The supplied Linpus Linux sucks. I was waiting for Ubuntu Netbook Remix 9.10, but it sure looks like 9.10 has quality issues.
Arch wiki has a nice article on my netbook. I think I’ll try Arch rather than UNR.
@secdroid, at this very moment I’m running KDE 4.3.2 (Debian testing) in a Pentium IV, 1.5 Mhz, 384 MB RAM and runs terrific and smooth.
I still can’t get into kde4 it just seems so ‘big’. From a visual standpoint it just drives me absolutely nuts. With Gnome if I crank all the fonts down to 7 point I have a reasonable amount of screen space for applications and a pleasant reading experience – even with kde4 the window boarders seem huge and besides maybe one or two (of at least the standard ones) the rest of the window boarders seem horribly dated.
I still think KDE4 is leaps and bounds more appealing then KDE3 *ever* was to me to the point where I can say ‘if it was the only option, I could use it’ – but as it stands I certainly cannot prefer it.
I don’t understand your statement:
I’ve been meaning to use the spare partition on my HD to install Arch, XFCE and a dock, just to try it out, but I feel like I can’t be bothered. KDE as it is now is just too easy.
Isn’t Chakra “Arch” made easier to install? It isn’t a separate distro. You also should be able to install XFCE and choose it instead of KDE when logging in.
FreeBooter:
Well yes, I could, but I don’t do that. KDE is my main DE right now on that partition, it works, and I don’t want to mess it up. If I try something new, I always do it on a spare partition….a hard lesson learned, I might add.
KDE makes me happy also, i just wish that there was a big distro with its focus on KDE, like Ubuntu has for GNOME. Kubuntu I just cannot get behind, the whole *b untu family and the specific Kubuntu itself I am not a fan of.
When SimplyMepis comes out with a KDE4 release, that is likely the killer newby distro for KDE fans. Debian’s great base and some nice customization and clarification on top of it.
But there is one: Opensuse. It will default to KDE with 11.2 which seems to be an excellent release btw.
Firefox, Openoffice etc will integrate nicely to KDE4.
For an opinion about 11.2 pre-release, see
from 1:29:00 forward (first part is Windows 7 review). We can hear some kind words from these guys..
[…] KDE makes me happy I’ll be honest, I’m surprising myself by not returning to Openbox. I’m still running Chakra with KDE, and I still love it. It needs a couple extra seconds to boot, but afterwards it feels just as fast as Openbox. More specific, applications feel as fast in KDE as they do in Openbox. Of course, Dolphin is slower than Thunar, Kate slower than Leafpad, etc, but Emesene, Firefox, Transmission, and all the other applications I normally use feel just as fast. […]
[…] KDE makes me happy « Celettu’s Weblog a few seconds ago from kdemicroblog […]
Much to my amazement, I am currently using openSUSE 11.2 with KDE4, after using a Debian testing/LXDE setup for awhile. I have never been an openSUSE fan, but I had heard so many good things about the new release, that I figured I’d give it a try. They really have done a stellar job with this release. Almost every other KDE4 implementation I’ve tried has been intolerably slow on my Thinkpad T42, sidux being the only other exception. Everything works, and works very well. The package manager is no apt or pacman, but it gets the job done.
I did also try the latest Mandriva and Kubuntu. Mandriva was OK, but just didn’t grok with me, for some reason. Kubuntu was an EPIC FAILURE, I don’t even want to go into it! I think I’m officially swearing off the *buntus for good. With openSUSE, this is the first time in a long time that I’ve ventured outside my usual Debian/Slackware/Arch realm. Really, at this point, my only issue with openSUSE is purely philosophical: their unholy alliance with Microsoft. So I guess I’m being pragmatic, eh?
[…] KDE makes me happy I’ll be honest, I’m surprising myself by not returning to Openbox. I’m still running Chakra with KDE, and I still love it. It needs a couple extra seconds to boot, but afterwards it feels just as fast as Openbox. More specific, applications feel as fast in KDE as they do in Openbox. Of course, Dolphin is slower than Thunar, Kate slower than Leafpad, etc, but Emesene, Firefox, Transmission, and all the other applications I normally use feel just as fast. […]