i should be working (but i'm fixing my computer).

My love-hate relationship with KDE 4 continues.  KDE 4.4.1 has been released to fix some significant 4.4.0 bugs.  (Why does that not surprise me?  The analog clock now works ... and more important, I can actually see my screen -- although the brightness slider has not returned ...)

...

I just finished a post on Jolicloud and these two approaches to desktop are polar opposites.  KDE 4 programmers are in a really, really big hurry to test the bleeding edge.  In order to do that, they have produced a permanent beta, which is okay here in permanent betaland.  I've learned a lot about vision and where computing may be going from KDE 4.  It's important to realize, also, that KDE 4 is a lot more than just the plasma desktop -- most of the apps I regularly use are from the KDE 4 SC (Software Collection).

But in their rush to roll-out their "vision" of the future, the KDE 4 team has built a (well-deserved) reputation for an unstable desktop.  This is not just "me," less-than-humble blogger to the search engines, talking.  As noted in a few posts, I spent a weekend at SCALE recently specifically demonstrating and promoting KDE 4.

Lots of non-KDE users stopped by to tell me precisely what they didn't like about KDE 4, and at the top of the list was its instability.  The insane crashes that kill plasma and require you to delete the config files to get it up and running again.  Stuff like that.  (Try to explain THAT fix to your Mom.)

I defended valiantly.  I demonstrated the really neat, forward-looking Plasma features:  the multiple activities, the internet enabled widgets that build into the background, etc.

I also defended KDE 4 stability, based on my 4.3 experience.  Because I found 4.3 to be very resource-frugal and stable.  I haven't had to delete the kde4 config files for a really long time.  There are MANY features I really like, but I run it on some computers that lack a lot of firepower.  And, I found that I could get all the KDE 4 features without much sacrifice over a much more spartan IceWM or Gnome desktop.

That was then.

Then along came KDE 4.4.  More glitz, more features, more vision of the future!

Oh, yeah.  And at least double the CPU usage at idle.  And even weirder, much HIGHER CPU usage once the screen powers off than either at full active screen or screensaver.  What's up with that?

But ... OpenSUSE Factory is now at 4.4.  I don't think I can actually rollback to 4.3, as I think the "Stable" version is 4.1 -- a version I really don't like.  In any event, I never like to backtrack.

So, in the meantime, I am running most of my computers with an LXDE desktop on the OpenBox windows manager.  LXDE very nicely wraps Gnome and KDE applications into its own very low resource usage desktop.  Add compiz for effects and google gadgets for widgets, and you are set to go!  (By the way, this was odd: ggl-gtk, which runs the gtk version of google gadgets provides me with a non-working analog clock.  Whereas if I run ggl-qt, the clock runs okay.)

So, in any event, we see that the real power and strength of open source software is the ability to synthesize and use "whatever works" from wherever you can get it.

In ultimate fairness, I have to say that any programming I do is the amateur version of KDE 4 -- if it sort of works, I'm real happy and that's about as far as my projects go.  "Works for me" is the paradigm.

But, I can see the Jolicloud "it just works" paradgim as potentially having much more market acceptance.  Ultimately, that's what Windows, Apples and Macs brought in place of the morass of  "it works for me" DOS programs we struggled with back in the dark ages.