Recently I have installed Kubuntu 9.10 on my school computer, just to see how it would work under the stress of all the school work I do. I must say – it’s excelling at the job.
A while back I gave KDE 4 a pretty rough review, slamming it on it’s look, its function, and stability. So far, I have to say that I was wrong. It looks absolutely fantastic, the applications are working well, and I have only experienced a few crashes.
One thing that has surprised me the most is Konqueror. I have long said that Konqueror was a better file browser than web browser, but it appears that quite a lot of work has gone into the program as of late. When I first started the program, I received a message informing me that it would like to install all sorts of libraries to make web browsing better. Thinking I would be installing Firefox after using Konqueror for a few minutes, I installed all the libraries just to give Konqueror a chance. Konqueror has been running great with no problems with the majority of web sites and with flash integration. Also, when logging in it asks if I would like to save the password in a bar at the top of the window, much like Firefox. It is shaping up to be quite the web browser. I have been using it as default for a few days now.
I think I am falling in love with the KDE desktop again simply because it is the power-user’s desktop. There are so many controls and things to configure that I am sure many KDE 4 desktops do not look anything alike. The stability has improved greatly and so has the software. I would encourage anyone who is a KDE 4 skeptic to give it a shot; it may just change your perspective, just like it did mine. Good work KDE team, keep it up!
