I installed Slack13 in a virtual machine the other day to tinker with it. And I was appalled at what they did with KDE4. Moving and hiding system settings is new, but it is not an improvement. There's no way to select dvorak layout without going to command line and using qwerty is just painful for even one single keystroke. And that's only one issue I have with it. I guess I'll just use fluxbox, but does anyone really like the 'improvements' they did with KDE4? Sure, the interface looks nicer, but that doesn't amount to a hill of beans when I get a headache from trying to find simple settings.

To clear any confusion, this is not a criticism of Slackware, I'm just confused why it was included. Maybe I missed an option in the install sequence to use KDE3?

I haven't shined up to KDE4 either, but I understand what Pat was doing:

http://www.slackware.com/releasenotes/13.0.php

http://www.slackware.com/changelog/stable.php?cpu=i386

So, it's pretty safe to say goodbye to KDE3.

I can't speak to the "improvements" as I never used kde3, but I like kde4 a great deal, but then again, I do like eye-candy, and for a machine that I spend my recreational time on (which is what my slack boxes are), it's a MUST.

I preferred KDE3 over KDE4, but it's HIGHLY unlikely that KDE3 will be the default in any future slackware. For the time being at least, Pat has made KDE3 for Slack13 available on the mirror sites, and there are other KDE3 builds for Slack13 floating around too, but I suspect that eventually, like when KDE4 gets up to full speed and some of the latest bugs are ironed out and missing features re-added, KDE3 will fall to the wayside.
From what I've read, the newer KDE4 versions are rapidly improving over the earlier KDE4 releases.

Well, I just hope they get around to fixing the system settings. The organization of the settings looks like a chimp vomited all over Windows' control panel. At least in Windows the control panel is ordered alphabetically...

For the life of me, I can't figure out why they didn't keep the old Konqueror settings layout. If it ain't broke don't fix it. Or at least leave it in so that people like me won't bitch and moan.

Hey, it's not just you

How about this: boot into XFCE, and have a look through the system menu -- it's half XFCE settings, and half KDE settings making for a pretty retarded time of setting your settings!

Well, I just finished seting up KDE like so:

• Upgraded to Vincent Batt's KDE 4.3.1 packages
• Checked "Enable Desktop Effects" in System Settings->General->Desktop
• Used Xfce to set GTK apps to use Oxygen-like themes and icons from gnome-look.org
• Added xfsettingsd to System Settings->Advanced->Autostart
• Disabled Nepomuk and Strigi in System Settings->Advanced->Desktop Search
• Checked "Start with Empty Session" in System Settings->Advanced->Session Manager
• Set the panel to auto-hide

So far, so good. We'll see how I feel about it in a week.

When someone says that "using qwerty is just painful for even one single keystroke" it suggests that the problem is not so much that KDE is bad but that it is different. So the system settings is different now. If it really looks like "a chimp vomited all over Windows' control panel" then click on Configure and select "Classic Tree View". You're welcome.

PS Why can' you select Dvorak? I can choose no less than 6 Dvorak variants for the US keyboard layout.

I'm using KDE 4.3.4 in -current and to be honest it's seems to run absolutely fine. Just like KDE 3 again, I think it's on feature parity with KDE 3 too though I'm not sure, it is with all the features which I use. I'd say that most of the show stoppers are ironed out though and I've not experience any problems with 4.3.

Also regarding KDE 3.5. It's understandable why it was dropped because it's not being maintained anymore. When KDE 3 first came out it was a bit of a bugger to switch from 2 to 3 initially but once everything was up and running I was really pleased with it and I'd say the same thing is true of 4 now.

I think XFCE is mature enough, with enough of its own desktop utilities and the availability of other non-GNOME lightweight GTK+ apps, that XFCE should be the default desktop with future Slackware releases. Of course this is just my own opinion but I think it would be cool to see XFCE as the main focus desktop in the future.

I don't know what Pat, Eric and other top Slackware contributors use as their primary desktops, I think Robby mainly uses XFCE though.

I can no longer withhold my sarcasm, I'm sorry it's just too much to bear.

Yes, absolutely.

And it will be a 2.4 kernel.

Oh and there's this new thing called telnet.. I'm sure Pat's gonna wanna get in on the ground floor with that one so look forward to seeing it replace SSH in the next release.

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I don't think so. KDE 4.3.4 in -current is simply beautiful. I love it.

Yes that is ugly isn't it.

The latest XDG desktop menu standard (monstrously over-complicated IMO) has a "OnlyShowIn" property on the menu items which looks like it'd sort this sort of thing out. I don't know whether XFCE/KDE4 will support this feature though.

I would hazard a guess that KDE3 is history. KDE 4.3.4 in -current is mature, feature-rich and it runs smoothly with less system overhead than KDE 4.2.4. I prefer XFce 4.6.1 because of the lower memory footprint, but, KDE 4.3.4 is a winner.

I have been using KDE4 since 4.0. If you ask me to switch back to KDE3, my answer is "NO WAY"!