It’s hard to describe it all, so perhaps take a look at the screenshot below. In it you will see task grouping in the taskbar, more transparency in the taskbar, UI upgrades that make it look prettier (look at previous screenshots in my previous posts), desktop effects that work better, more plasma apps, a folder view as a desktop for traditionalists, custom glow colours around windows … well, here’s the screenshot: (click for higher resolution)

Of course, there are much more not shown in the screenshot, such as a prettier start menu (Oxygenised), Vim mode in Kate (woohoo!), upgrades to konqueror, a superb krunner, Strigi file indexing (seriously, I typed sc[rot] and it already popped up with loads of files), more desktop effects (with the almighty desktop cube), upgraded panel settings … wow, and I’m discovering new stuff all the time! I must say, it’s amazing how well the developers are doing! (It’s feature freeze now though).

I have been able to crash it though, the ZUI gives some nasty screen offsets if I use it too much, as well as plasma crashing every time I try to change back to a Desktop (instead of classic Folder View). The nepomuk thing lurking in my systray seems to have a habit of locking my X whenever I try to configure it too. Evil thing. Evil.

Aha, and as a final note, I’m finally using KDE without lag (or very very minimal lag)! Kudos to all the folks working on the nvidia-drivers, as installing the nvidia-drivers package (v180.11) from the berkano overlay significantly improved my graphics performance. Hurrah!

So anybody here still on a stable KDE, it’s time to get risky and install whatever kde snapshots your distro provides you with. It’s worth it (you can run both stable and unstable at the same time and choose which one to log into via kdm).

Finally, sorry for the lack of regular postage, as I’m somewhat busy with an upcoming exam (not to mention other things). However, I do believe I’ve got several posts in my drafts folder awaiting competition including a short (positive) rant about MVC frameworks in PHP, the ISSDC Aerospace competition, and another How to Use Your Computer part. So stay tuned.

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