I used KDE 3.5.x since slackware 12 to slackware 12.1 after I reinstalled slackware again and after 2-3 months I upgraded to current...KDE 4.2 is just fantastic, sometimes some bug comes out, but it's not a problem, they're just little ones, if somebody asks me I'd upgrade to KDE 4.2 again.

I could google that and give you a list but you could do that too and it's too early for me to get into a slanging match. It works fine enough, looks good enough for me and artsd has been resigned to a legacy mode so that's a step in the right direction AFAIC

My daughter who is 14 says she's not interested in kde-4 until it goes into stable. Her choice, my choice and your choice.

Did that. It would appear more people like 4.x than 3.5, but base their opinions on its appearance. There was very little about why 4.x is "technically superior" to 3.5.x

Not looking for a fire fight (flame war), just a polite, intelligent discussion on the merits of each in the hope someone will enlighten us "end users" as to why 4.x is so much better (in their opinions).

Apart for KDE being a bit more pretty, my main reason to go towards KDE 4 was the abberation that's called aRts in 3.5; I'm not finding KDE 4 notably slower than KDE 3, in fact in some occasions I even found it a tad faster. Dumping aRts was reason enough for me to go KDE 4 and stick with it. Right now there are some small bugs that would make me say it's not entirely production-ready (in terms like "any version of windows is not production ready")

I, for one, hope slackware continues in good old slackware fashion and wait for a more stable and bugfree kde 4.x until they replace kde 3.5.x. I'm using kubuntu 9.04 Beta on my laptop, and IMHO KDE 4 isn't quite slackware material yet.

Good to know, dude. Thanks for that, there's a chance then that KDE4 may run okay on my Plll 850 MHz units.

By the time 13 (or whatever) comes out, any problems with KDE4 will have been sorted out. So I guess I'll have to learn to put up with it.

Not going to give you guarantees; I have a 4GB quadcore system here which may have gotten some better support for in KDE / QT 4.

That said; I had the feeling that KDE 3.5 initially required less memory than KDE 4 (in terms of about 100 MB less iirc) whereas on longer runs KDE 4 seems to manage the memory usage better.

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By the way: I was a tad sad to see how the KDE 4 packages had been compiled and installed; I had more hoped to install KDE 4 and 3.5 alongside each other, so that you could switch about and have more reliable comparisons.There are probably good reasons to not do that; and while trying to make my own packages (which is extremely time consuming) I came close to have something working, but each time "not completely"; due to it being so time-consuming I gave up for the time being to try another day.

Thanks for the clarification. Good to hear that KDE4 has good memory management:-) My main system, a 2.8 GHz Intel Core Duo unit with 2 GB RAM, will run KDE4 just fine. If my three 850 MHz boxes choke on KDE4 I'll move to XFce 4.6.0 for those units. It is all good.

There are hundreds (if not thousands) of articles about the changes and improvements brought by KDE 4 on the internets. If you can't find an answer to this question on the first page of a simple Google search, then nobody here will be able to convince you.

At the moment, here in Australia, the government wants to spend $42b on a new communications infrastructure. Basically, they want to replace all of the existing copper wires with fibre optic cables. They're guaranteeing 100Mbps to most parts of Australia and 12Mbps wirelessly to the rest of the country. And what do the conservatives (currently in opposition) say? Exactly what you're saying about KDE4. Why do we need it? Who needs 100Mbps? Personally, I think that such an infrastructure will be priceless in the future.

And so it is with KDE 4. Open your eyes and see.

i pay a lot for 2mb here. see it? our needs are differents but, like me, you too like kde a lot.

Nicely written, but, with all due respect, like those "hundreds (if not thousands)" of articles you mention, it is all generalities and no specifics. I understand the advantages of fiber optic cables vs. cooper wire (a flawed analogy, but it will do), so what technically is the difference between KDE 2.5.x and 4.x? That is, what is going to be benefit in the future?
Thanks.

The Vista look (j/k)

Slowly I have seen some developers start moving towards KDE4 and the QT4 interface. I do think that there will be some bugs to iron out still. However, when the time is right things will shift. Just like from the 2.4.X kernel to the 2.6.X. In fact you could almost say that they (KDE3.5- KDE4 and the 2.4.x - 2.6.x kernel switch) are incredibly similar by the fact that at the beginning they were both buggy as hell and could have been considered beta's but that over time everything got ironed out and that there is new innovation on the horizon.

Just my philosophical 2cents

If you really wanted to find the specifics, you would have by now.

How about starting here: http//www.kde.org. It is an open project, you know...
Pasted from the link provided above:

Sounds like there's some pretty good future-proofing work being done to me. Core libraries have been re-written to allow for "pluggable" back end services. This adds flexibility and extensibility. They've also added support for multi-core CPUs.

But if that's still to general for you:
I hope that helps.

Thank you for the information.
However, I do think I'll wait a few versions before trying 4.x again and give the 4.x versions of the applications I use daily, time to catch up to their 3.5.x predecessors in functionality and "configurability."