The KDE and Xfce editions of Linux Mint 18 "Sarah" recently came out. Over a month ago, I had reviewed the MATE edition, and while I was generally happy with how it worked, there were a handful of minor usability issues and other niggles that detracted from the experience enough that I couldn't recommend that a newbie install it by him/herself. Given that, I wanted to see if maybe the KDE or Xfce editions could make up for the deficiencies that I observed in the MATE edition. Follow the jump to see what each is like. Given that the main base of Linux Mint 18 "Sarah" is common to all of these editions, I'm not going to spend too much time rehashing things like application installation for their own sake; instead, these reviews will be shorter, and will focus on the differences relative to the MATE edition.
Showing posts with label qt. Show all posts
Showing posts with label qt. Show all posts
2012-01-12
Review: Razor-Qt 0.4.0 (via Ubuntu Razor-Qt Remix)
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| Razor-Qt: Main Screen + Right-Click Menu |
There's a new kid on the DE block, and it's called Razor-Qt. It aims to be a lightweight, traditional-style DE, sort of like KDE, Xfce, and LXDE. The best way to put it is that it aims to be to KDE what LXDE has been to GNOME; it is stripped-down and manages the desktop in a more minimalistic way, but it is still compatible with KDE and Qt applications, just as LXDE can still take GNOME and GTK+ applications just fine.
I am trying Razor-Qt as a MultiSystem-made live USB in the form of Ubuntu Razor-Qt Remix. Follow the jump to see what it's like.
2011-02-12
Revisited: KDE 4.6
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| Main Screen |
I tried doing all this in VirtualBox on a Linux Mint 10 "Julia" GNOME live USB, because MultiSystem, the multiboot live USB creation tool, seems to have messed up VirtualBox on my installed Linux Mint 9 "Isadora" GNOME system. I allocated 1024 MB of RAM to the guest OS, used a 10 GB virtual hard drive located on my physical hard drive for installing ArchBang, and went on my way. The installation procedure was fairly straightforward; it was a text-based ncurses-esque interface. After installing, I restarted the virtual machine and then ran the following commands in sequence in order to update the system: "su", "pacman -Syu", "exit", log out, log back in, "su", "pacman -Syu" for good measure, "pacman -S kde", and finally "exit". I also edited the ~/.xinitrc file to start KDE instead of Openbox by default. I then logged out and logged back in. Follow the jump to see what KDE 4.6 is really like.
2011-01-31
Review: KDE 4.6
A couple days ago, KDE 4.6 was released for the world to enjoy. It boasts myriad bug fixes, new features for applications like Dolphin and Marble (among others), a revamped Activities feature, and better integration of GTK+ applications. I've come to enjoy testing new KDE 4 releases because it gets noticeably better with each release (or so I would hope), as opposed to GNOME, Xfce, LXDE, and other DEs which don't change much between "point" releases (i.e. X.Y ("X point Y")).
That said, it's not available for Linux Mint 9 "Isadora", and I don't plan on upgrading that until the next LTS release (Linux Mint 13 "M[...]a") unless some radical change (that I don't like) makes me switch distributions (but given the lead developer Clement Lefebvre's recent statements on the matter, that is highly unlikely). Right now, it's only (in terms of Ubuntu-based distributions) available in Ubuntu/Kubuntu 10.10 "Maverick Meerkat" and Linux Mint 10 "Julia" through a backport PPA. As I had a Linux Mint 10 "Julia" GNOME live USB handy, I used that to do testing; I will say that this method may have been the cause of many of the problems that you will read about shortly. Follow the jump to see how it went.
That said, it's not available for Linux Mint 9 "Isadora", and I don't plan on upgrading that until the next LTS release (Linux Mint 13 "M[...]a") unless some radical change (that I don't like) makes me switch distributions (but given the lead developer Clement Lefebvre's recent statements on the matter, that is highly unlikely). Right now, it's only (in terms of Ubuntu-based distributions) available in Ubuntu/Kubuntu 10.10 "Maverick Meerkat" and Linux Mint 10 "Julia" through a backport PPA. As I had a Linux Mint 10 "Julia" GNOME live USB handy, I used that to do testing; I will say that this method may have been the cause of many of the problems that you will read about shortly. Follow the jump to see how it went.
2010-02-14
KDE 4.3 - A Second Look
This comes after I (unsuccessfully) tried to install the new KDE 4.4 on my computer. It seems that Ubuntu hasn't come with packages for versions earlier than 9.04 "Jaunty Jackalope"; the only packages are those available for 9.10 "Karmic Koala" and the (currently beta) 10.04 LTS "Lucid Lynx". I use Linux Mint 7 "Gloria" which is the equivalent of Ubuntu 9.04 "Jaunty Jackalope", so I found myself out of luck. It is my intention to upgrade this computer to Linux Mint 9 "Isadora" when that comes out; hopefully I will be able to get the new KDE packages then, as I am eager to try them out. Until then, I thought of taking another look at KDE 4.3 (which I had already installed and reviewed), as I thought some of my comments were a bit unfair. I found that KDE 4.3 redeemed the old problems (to an extent) while presenting new problems. I have been doing this for about a week.
First, I want to review and maybe show how KDE managed to rectify the old problems.
The biggest annoyance was the lack of integration of Mozilla Firefox, OpenOffice.org, and GTK+ applications. I have since learned that there is a theme for GTK+ applications called QtCurve to integrate them into KDE 4.X. I'm not going to do that as I want to have a native look in GNOME as well; it's a shame that KDE can't integrate GTK+ applications even close to as well as GNOME integrates Qt applications. I know a lot of distributions with KDE 4.X have this theme for included GTK+ applications, but as I also use GNOME, I won't be following this.
OpenOffice.org is a nightmare in this regard. As it turns out, the theme management for OpenOffice.org is near-dysfunctional; even in GNOME, I can't even change the theme to one of the included themes (forget installing a new one).
Firefox is a bit better. I installed the KFirefox theme which gives the menu a look combining the Windows Firefox back/forward buttons with the Konqueror look for the other menu buttons and the scrollbars. Sadly, the buttons in the webpages still look like they come from Windows 3.X. Oh well, at least it is a little better than before.
The Facebook Plasmoid still doesn't work. Oh well.
On a brighter note, Plasma has not crashed on me. KDE also seems notably more responsive and snappy (and quick to load) now. Maybe the latest update brought a serious shot in the arm for speed. That's good.
I managed to fix the problem of window labels in the Task Manager showing up across all virtual desktops, defeating the purpose of virtual desktops. There is an option in Task Manager to turn this off, so that in any given virtual desktop, the Task Manager will only show window labels from that virtual desktop. It's a good improvement, but I would like to see it like that by default in the future as in Linux Mint GNOME's default behavior (once the virtual desktop panel application is added to the panel).
I changed the main menu to the "Lancelot" menu, which is a slab menu similar to Linux Mint's MintMenu. I like it as I like all slab menus, but it has some quirks. Every time I unclick and reclick the menu, it resets to the default view rather than showing me the tab I was looking at before I unclicked the menu. It's a little annoying, but I can deal with it. I was hoping for a bit more customization of the menu as well in terms of determining what appears and what doesn't and in what order the icons go, but oh well.
I've changed the theme from the bland default "Air" to the more appealing (to me) "Oxygen". It looks a lot nicer now.
A new quirk I've found is that even though I've disabled these applications from startup, the applications Pidgin and Cairo Dock are still executed upon startup. I'm not really sure how to change this behavior now.
One thing I have done now that I didn't do before was to enable Activities. These basically enable me to keep Plasmoids (except for the panel but including the desktop background Plasmoid) on different desktops, greatly reducing the number of Plasmoids running at any one time. It's a neat feature, but I think only organizational freaks will find use in it.
I'm a little concerned that I can't really set default applications in KDE like I can in GNOME. It doesn't even give me the option of choosing Pidgin as my default IM client (it only gives Kopete as an option); the issue is similar with Firefox vs. Konqueror. Thankfully, OpenOffice.org is listed as an option for default applications.
Finally, I've found a quirk in Dolphin. For some reason, I can't permanently delete anything - I can only send it to the trash, which may not work if I'm deleting a particularly large file (like a Linux installation DVD ISO); it almost makes me want to use Nautilus again (and as I now know, in the newer versions of GNOME, Nautilus, like Dolphin, has split-pane viewing).
For all of these bright and dark spots, my opinion of KDE 4.3 is higher (but only by a little) than before. I'll probably be able to tolerate it a little longer than before - that is, before I get sick of it and decide to switch back to GNOME.
UPDATE: There are two things to update.
I got another weather Plasmoid. This one looks kind of nice, but still doesn't have a forecast.
More importantly, think of the devil... As I tried to use the "Lancelot" menu, it crashed. I guess it had to happen. Thankfully, that's the first time a crash has occurred since the start of this re-review.
UPDATE: Oops. Sorry I forgot this biggie.
For some reason even though KDE has a setting for power management, though I have set the computer to automatically suspend to RAM after 20 minutes of inactivity, this has never happened in KDE (though it faithfully happens in GNOME). I later did a manual suspend action and then resumed the session to find that suspending to RAM also logs the current user out of KDE. That explains a lot. It's a pretty big bug, though, as suspending to RAM can save a lot of power over leaving the computer on in full (even when inactive). A lot of people are used to this in Windows, and GNOME does it beautifully. KDE needs a lot of work in this regard.
First, I want to review and maybe show how KDE managed to rectify the old problems.
The biggest annoyance was the lack of integration of Mozilla Firefox, OpenOffice.org, and GTK+ applications. I have since learned that there is a theme for GTK+ applications called QtCurve to integrate them into KDE 4.X. I'm not going to do that as I want to have a native look in GNOME as well; it's a shame that KDE can't integrate GTK+ applications even close to as well as GNOME integrates Qt applications. I know a lot of distributions with KDE 4.X have this theme for included GTK+ applications, but as I also use GNOME, I won't be following this.
OpenOffice.org is a nightmare in this regard. As it turns out, the theme management for OpenOffice.org is near-dysfunctional; even in GNOME, I can't even change the theme to one of the included themes (forget installing a new one).
Firefox is a bit better. I installed the KFirefox theme which gives the menu a look combining the Windows Firefox back/forward buttons with the Konqueror look for the other menu buttons and the scrollbars. Sadly, the buttons in the webpages still look like they come from Windows 3.X. Oh well, at least it is a little better than before.
The Facebook Plasmoid still doesn't work. Oh well.
On a brighter note, Plasma has not crashed on me. KDE also seems notably more responsive and snappy (and quick to load) now. Maybe the latest update brought a serious shot in the arm for speed. That's good.
I managed to fix the problem of window labels in the Task Manager showing up across all virtual desktops, defeating the purpose of virtual desktops. There is an option in Task Manager to turn this off, so that in any given virtual desktop, the Task Manager will only show window labels from that virtual desktop. It's a good improvement, but I would like to see it like that by default in the future as in Linux Mint GNOME's default behavior (once the virtual desktop panel application is added to the panel).
I changed the main menu to the "Lancelot" menu, which is a slab menu similar to Linux Mint's MintMenu. I like it as I like all slab menus, but it has some quirks. Every time I unclick and reclick the menu, it resets to the default view rather than showing me the tab I was looking at before I unclicked the menu. It's a little annoying, but I can deal with it. I was hoping for a bit more customization of the menu as well in terms of determining what appears and what doesn't and in what order the icons go, but oh well.
I've changed the theme from the bland default "Air" to the more appealing (to me) "Oxygen". It looks a lot nicer now.
A new quirk I've found is that even though I've disabled these applications from startup, the applications Pidgin and Cairo Dock are still executed upon startup. I'm not really sure how to change this behavior now.
One thing I have done now that I didn't do before was to enable Activities. These basically enable me to keep Plasmoids (except for the panel but including the desktop background Plasmoid) on different desktops, greatly reducing the number of Plasmoids running at any one time. It's a neat feature, but I think only organizational freaks will find use in it.
I'm a little concerned that I can't really set default applications in KDE like I can in GNOME. It doesn't even give me the option of choosing Pidgin as my default IM client (it only gives Kopete as an option); the issue is similar with Firefox vs. Konqueror. Thankfully, OpenOffice.org is listed as an option for default applications.
Finally, I've found a quirk in Dolphin. For some reason, I can't permanently delete anything - I can only send it to the trash, which may not work if I'm deleting a particularly large file (like a Linux installation DVD ISO); it almost makes me want to use Nautilus again (and as I now know, in the newer versions of GNOME, Nautilus, like Dolphin, has split-pane viewing).
For all of these bright and dark spots, my opinion of KDE 4.3 is higher (but only by a little) than before. I'll probably be able to tolerate it a little longer than before - that is, before I get sick of it and decide to switch back to GNOME.
UPDATE: There are two things to update.
I got another weather Plasmoid. This one looks kind of nice, but still doesn't have a forecast.
More importantly, think of the devil... As I tried to use the "Lancelot" menu, it crashed. I guess it had to happen. Thankfully, that's the first time a crash has occurred since the start of this re-review.
UPDATE: Oops. Sorry I forgot this biggie.
For some reason even though KDE has a setting for power management, though I have set the computer to automatically suspend to RAM after 20 minutes of inactivity, this has never happened in KDE (though it faithfully happens in GNOME). I later did a manual suspend action and then resumed the session to find that suspending to RAM also logs the current user out of KDE. That explains a lot. It's a pretty big bug, though, as suspending to RAM can save a lot of power over leaving the computer on in full (even when inactive). A lot of people are used to this in Windows, and GNOME does it beautifully. KDE needs a lot of work in this regard.
2009-11-22
Review: KDE 4.3
The desktop environment (DE) that I've been using since I started using Linux is GNOME. Currently, with Linux Mint 7, I'm using GNOME 2.26. I really like GNOME for its simplicity, its lightness on RAM, its great collection of applications, its customizability, and its stability.
However, I took one look at some screenshots of the newly released KDE 4.3 (really, 4.3.2) and I was instantly smitten. I decided to try it out, so after configuring the proper repositories (the Ubuntu/Kubuntu 9.04 repositories don't have KDE 4.3, only KDE 4.2.2), I went ahead and installed it.
First, let's have some history (or, at least, what I remember off the top of my head; you can verify this information in Wikipedia by looking up the articles on "KDE" and "GNOME"). KDE was actually the first DE for the GNU/Linux project. It started around 1996 alongside the development of the Qt libraries. However, around 1999, issues arose over KDE using the non-GPL Qt libraries, so a group of KDE and Qt developers left and started GNOME and the GTK+ libraries.
Now comes the actual review on my 2004 Sony VAIO desktop with a 2.8 GHz Intel Pentium 4 HT (single core) processor, 1 GB RAM, and ATI Radeon 9200 graphics card.
My first impression after booting up and logging in (I haven't bothered to change the login screen from the default Mint 7 "Dew" theme to something more KDE-like) is that KDE takes a bit longer to load than GNOME; it almost takes as long as Windows XP on my computer. This may be because of KDE's higher level of polish and greater number of features, but in any case it is slightly but noticeably slower than GNOME.
Next, I played around with the Desktop a bit. The first startling revelation is that the contents of the Desktop aren't shown on the desktop; one must either open the Desktop folder in one's favorite file manager (more on that later) or create a nice snazzy Plasmoid (yes, that's the name for widgets in KDE 4's new Plasma desktop manager). The Plasmoids themselves are quite nice looking and functional, though the weather Plasmoid is rather lacking in information (it doesn't even have a forecast!). The way to access Desktop icons without opening the folder is to create a Lancelot Part Plasmoid and drag and drop the Desktop folder into the Plasmoid; this will create a permanent housing for the Desktop folder's contents. However, clicking on any file or folder in the Plasmoid will reopen the file manager rather than create a new Plasmoid.
I was intrigued by the new "Social Desktop" Plasmoid (one of the more talked-about features in KDE 4.3) until I found out that this did not mean that I could use Facebook from the Desktop without opening a browser. The "Social Desktop" is its own service (for KDE 4.3 users), while the Facebook Plasmoid itself doesn't work. That's a moderately large letdown right there.
The menu works very nicely; the layout is slightly different from the default MintMenu, but it is intuitive enough.
One quirk I found is with the virtual desktop management. For some reason, even if one switches to a different virtual desktop, windows in other virtual desktops remain on the panel. It doesn't seem buggy, but GNOME actually keeps applications minimized to a panel in a certain virtual desktop in that virtual desktop when the virtual desktop is switched. This greatly reduces the clutter on the panel.
One bug I did find was when KDE's panel (formerly Kicker) crashed on me twice on the same day. This is seriously buggy behavior and frankly unacceptable. I have never had a problem even close to this in GNOME.
One thing I like about GNOME is that it integrates Qt (KDE libraries)-based applications very nicely. Sadly, the reverse (KDE integrating GTK+ (GNOME libraries)-based applications) is not so true. Yes, GTK+ applications still work in KDE, but when running, they look like one is running Windows 95. It's a big disappointment aesthetically, considering GNOME completely carries over the Qt-look from Qt-based applications when running in GNOME.
This extends to even non-GTK+-based applications like Firefox and OpenOffice.Org. It's especially bad in OO.O as all of the icons turn into boxes of text, hiding half of the menu bars due to the long boxes of text. KDE probably wants one to use the native KOffice, even though this isn't even installed by default with KDE 4.3. Even worse, KOffice has much worse feature, font, and cross-product/file type compatibility support than OO.O. This is probably also why GNOME doesn't force AbiWord and Gnumeric on users by default except on lower-end distributions (and even then, AbiWord and Gnumeric have much better support for features and cross-software compatibility than KWord and KSpread). This isn't as much of an issue in Firefox, but GNOME integrates Firefox much better than KDE does. KDE probably wants one to use the native Konqueror browser (though it doesn't even come with KDE 4.3 by default), but GNOME doesn't usually require the native Epiphany browser like this; furthermore, versus Firefox, in terms of customizability and proper rendering of pages, Konqueror is on par with Internet Explorer 5 - it just isn't there.
One very bright spot is the selection of games (not real games, just diversions a la "Solitaire"). The selection of games is much nicer in KDE than in GNOME, and I would definitely play those just to keep myself busy for a few minutes when not doing something else.
The other, more important, bright spot is the file manager Dolphin. Nautilus (GNOME's file manager), take note. Dolphin has a lot more support for different types of viewing, like Mac OS X Finder-style split-pane viewing combined with tabbed viewing. It has a preview pane which allows one to really see a big (not tiny) preview of the document in question before opening it.
I will be keeping KDE 4.3 on my computer, but after spending a week with it, I'm ready to go back to GNOME. There are simply too many compatibility issues with non-Qt-based applications to continue with KDE, and the speed and stability isn't really what I'm used to from a Linux system. That said, I will still use Dolphin and all of the neat KDE games (in GNOME), but I will wait to truly switch to KDE.
However, I took one look at some screenshots of the newly released KDE 4.3 (really, 4.3.2) and I was instantly smitten. I decided to try it out, so after configuring the proper repositories (the Ubuntu/Kubuntu 9.04 repositories don't have KDE 4.3, only KDE 4.2.2), I went ahead and installed it.
First, let's have some history (or, at least, what I remember off the top of my head; you can verify this information in Wikipedia by looking up the articles on "KDE" and "GNOME"). KDE was actually the first DE for the GNU/Linux project. It started around 1996 alongside the development of the Qt libraries. However, around 1999, issues arose over KDE using the non-GPL Qt libraries, so a group of KDE and Qt developers left and started GNOME and the GTK+ libraries.
Now comes the actual review on my 2004 Sony VAIO desktop with a 2.8 GHz Intel Pentium 4 HT (single core) processor, 1 GB RAM, and ATI Radeon 9200 graphics card.
My first impression after booting up and logging in (I haven't bothered to change the login screen from the default Mint 7 "Dew" theme to something more KDE-like) is that KDE takes a bit longer to load than GNOME; it almost takes as long as Windows XP on my computer. This may be because of KDE's higher level of polish and greater number of features, but in any case it is slightly but noticeably slower than GNOME.
Next, I played around with the Desktop a bit. The first startling revelation is that the contents of the Desktop aren't shown on the desktop; one must either open the Desktop folder in one's favorite file manager (more on that later) or create a nice snazzy Plasmoid (yes, that's the name for widgets in KDE 4's new Plasma desktop manager). The Plasmoids themselves are quite nice looking and functional, though the weather Plasmoid is rather lacking in information (it doesn't even have a forecast!). The way to access Desktop icons without opening the folder is to create a Lancelot Part Plasmoid and drag and drop the Desktop folder into the Plasmoid; this will create a permanent housing for the Desktop folder's contents. However, clicking on any file or folder in the Plasmoid will reopen the file manager rather than create a new Plasmoid.
I was intrigued by the new "Social Desktop" Plasmoid (one of the more talked-about features in KDE 4.3) until I found out that this did not mean that I could use Facebook from the Desktop without opening a browser. The "Social Desktop" is its own service (for KDE 4.3 users), while the Facebook Plasmoid itself doesn't work. That's a moderately large letdown right there.
The menu works very nicely; the layout is slightly different from the default MintMenu, but it is intuitive enough.
One quirk I found is with the virtual desktop management. For some reason, even if one switches to a different virtual desktop, windows in other virtual desktops remain on the panel. It doesn't seem buggy, but GNOME actually keeps applications minimized to a panel in a certain virtual desktop in that virtual desktop when the virtual desktop is switched. This greatly reduces the clutter on the panel.
One bug I did find was when KDE's panel (formerly Kicker) crashed on me twice on the same day. This is seriously buggy behavior and frankly unacceptable. I have never had a problem even close to this in GNOME.
One thing I like about GNOME is that it integrates Qt (KDE libraries)-based applications very nicely. Sadly, the reverse (KDE integrating GTK+ (GNOME libraries)-based applications) is not so true. Yes, GTK+ applications still work in KDE, but when running, they look like one is running Windows 95. It's a big disappointment aesthetically, considering GNOME completely carries over the Qt-look from Qt-based applications when running in GNOME.
This extends to even non-GTK+-based applications like Firefox and OpenOffice.Org. It's especially bad in OO.O as all of the icons turn into boxes of text, hiding half of the menu bars due to the long boxes of text. KDE probably wants one to use the native KOffice, even though this isn't even installed by default with KDE 4.3. Even worse, KOffice has much worse feature, font, and cross-product/file type compatibility support than OO.O. This is probably also why GNOME doesn't force AbiWord and Gnumeric on users by default except on lower-end distributions (and even then, AbiWord and Gnumeric have much better support for features and cross-software compatibility than KWord and KSpread). This isn't as much of an issue in Firefox, but GNOME integrates Firefox much better than KDE does. KDE probably wants one to use the native Konqueror browser (though it doesn't even come with KDE 4.3 by default), but GNOME doesn't usually require the native Epiphany browser like this; furthermore, versus Firefox, in terms of customizability and proper rendering of pages, Konqueror is on par with Internet Explorer 5 - it just isn't there.
One very bright spot is the selection of games (not real games, just diversions a la "Solitaire"). The selection of games is much nicer in KDE than in GNOME, and I would definitely play those just to keep myself busy for a few minutes when not doing something else.
The other, more important, bright spot is the file manager Dolphin. Nautilus (GNOME's file manager), take note. Dolphin has a lot more support for different types of viewing, like Mac OS X Finder-style split-pane viewing combined with tabbed viewing. It has a preview pane which allows one to really see a big (not tiny) preview of the document in question before opening it.
I will be keeping KDE 4.3 on my computer, but after spending a week with it, I'm ready to go back to GNOME. There are simply too many compatibility issues with non-Qt-based applications to continue with KDE, and the speed and stability isn't really what I'm used to from a Linux system. That said, I will still use Dolphin and all of the neat KDE games (in GNOME), but I will wait to truly switch to KDE.
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