With KDE 4.0 only two days away from being released, the KDE news page has a link to a blog with a screenshot tour of the latest KDE build. I have been following the progress of KDE4 for some time now and this screenshot tour was really new to me

http://drowstar.blogspot.com/2008/01...e400-with.html

It looks nice and might be fun to play with. I don't intend on using it in a stable OS, however, until 4.1 though. I'm interested to see where plasma will go.

@shadowsnipes:
You are absolutely correct. Keep in mind though that KDE 4.0 is not KDE4! KDE 4.0 is a release for application developpers so that they can allready start to port/create their apps for KDE4. The thing with KDE 4.0 is that it's core (read frameworks) is finnished, but not the stuff that is visible to the end user for daily use.

See here a showcast of KDE 4.0's compositing effects: YouTube Flash video
Update: You can download the openSUSE KDE Four LiveCD for i686 Here

Nice little video. I wonder if anyone knows if superkaramba themes will still work in this?

Looked cool (tried a live-cd) but it seems it's still lacking some "features", or how should I put it..it's "unfinished" as of now.

Read about it on the web, and it appears (I haven't really thought about this before - has not been that close to my heart) that the developers think a 4.0 release - which you must not call "4" but "4.0" or you're nailed upside down to a cross and thrown at with sharp rocks - is still a "development release", nothing close to ready. What I, as a regular user, thought was that "alpha", "beta", ".98", ".99", ".999" and such releases were development releases - that a software project could only be given a ".0" release number only when it was ready enough that the developers believed it's mostly functional, and couldn't come up with anything big to fix on before somebody blew it out. It even appears that some folks consider a software project "stable" or "ready to be used" when it's at ".4" stage or somewhere around that - like 4.4 for example. I'd say that's already half way to the next release, but maybe I'm just being ignorant here

In the past software version dot-something was development version, dot-something-small usually enhanced version of the dot-zero version, and dot-something-big a not-yet-ready next dot-zero version (1.3 compared to 1.0, or 1.9 compared to 2.0). Nowadays it seems that has gone completely upside down.

Why couldn't we just stick to a sane version numbering, where full numbers would represent something ready and non-full numbers something non-ready? I would have loved it if they had kept KDE4(.0) version 3.98898977979 or something until it really was ready to be released, with all parts working, and it's version number changed to 4.0. But no, it appears it's something more cool if they can release a half-paralyzed 4.0 version and say "you should wait until 4.3 or 4.4 before this is fully working really".

Hmmm..now that most of the steam has gone, I can only say don't take this post seriously. I'm just being overheated or something. And starting to learn C++..

They've made a rather different, "new" KDE, so I think it deserves a full new version number.

I'm compiling on Slackware right now..

Are you compiling? How long will it take to finish?

Depends on your machine, of course - I've got just an old Thinkpad with 1.6 GHz, so: several hours (I'd say around 4-ish - 6-ish), but it looks promising and seems to be compiling all clean and nicely.

I'm through with kdebase within the hour, I think, but I had to install all this Blitz and Soprano and whatever stuff I've never heard of before.

I've been using Gnome but after viewing the aforementioned video, I might have to go back to KDE. That looks fantastic.

First impressions - totally subjective and by no means even near to something "fair" or "balanced"...

* looks way WAY more "contemporary" - but still very candy-like and visually cluttered

* feels extremely sluggish and slow while sliding through menus and stuff - every web-page responds faster (I hate effects like "click" 1, 2, 3 ah and there the menu entry is highlighted..)

* compiles nicely and cleanly up until kdebase - and more I haven't got finished yet.

* The widgets are neat, I like that, feels better integrated compared to gdesklets and they look nicer.

* very 2.0-ish appearance (KDE 2.0 wouldn't be totally off )

* still too much clicking around for my taste - every mouse click to be clicked to get somewhere instead of immediately actvating something is one click too much for my taste - this pop-up thingie down below on the usal bar where I can open applications and stuff is a navigation nightmare

* despite the fact that I personally hate the candy-shiny-glossy look, KDE4 lets Gnome look suddenly rather out of fashion. I think, it's due to all this transparency shiny stuff. Interesting impression.

(Is it just me or does someone else get the feeling that from a GUI point of view, well written webpages seem to look more fancy, respond faster and have more neat little visually pleasing animations like all this on mouse over stuff? Somehow, I'm totally not impressed - not really... I expected more... or am I just tied to my browser too much?)

You would hope KDE looks better than GNOME considering it has about 10X the amount of lines of code.

For those thinking I'm bashing either one I am not. I regularly use KDE on my main distro and use GNOME on others.

Su-Shee, from your review I'd have to say I'll stick with 3.5.8. It already has more than enough eye candy for my taste. But, then, I'm just not an eye-candy person. I value functionality more than visual effects. If I run across some packages in -current maybe I'll give it a try. It did promise some under the hood improvements. But I'm not gonna spend hours compiling sources to be unimpressed.

b0uncer, you make a good point. I, too, have noticed that it seems the guidelines for version numbering have been thrown out and programs are being released with whatever number the developer decides. I hardly pay attention to them anymore except for Linux and Slackware itself. Maybe for the last few years we should've still been in the 3.1 series of KDE, anticipating 3.2(instead of 4.0) while still using 3.141592654.

marciobarbalho - I have merged this thread with the existing one in Linux-News to keep the discussions in one place as far as possible