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Describe HardyHeron/Alpha4/Kubuntu/Feedback here.

Looks great!.. Please make it easier for users to use KDE 4.0.2 (by the time of release) KDE 3.5 is nice and stable, but KDE 4 is where all the great improvements are. Make it easier for people to switch to KDE 4 pls. Also please enable compiz fusion / Kwin 4 by default automatically on computers that are fast enough to handle it. That's where Kubunut was always lagging behind Ubuntu and other distro's. Please customize the panel a bit. Give it a Kubuntu flavor. It looks so basic when I first boot up. openSuse, Fedora, etc. all feel "unique". Kubuntu just uses the default. (It would be great if support for KDE 4 was much better, as that's where the future lies.)

Please make it easier for users to comment/give feedback/give suggestions. This method is waay to hard to access this page. What's worse: Most people don't even know it exists!!!

• Looks great so far. Need to test compiz on my other PC, because Alpha 3 with KDE4 installed was a little bit disappointing in that matter. To be able to boot I need to pass kerneloption acpi=off on my laptop (MSI S271 Turion TL-56). But WPA2-PSK works out of the box first time (RaLink RT2500 802.11g Cardbus/mini-PCI (rev 01) ) (Ratz)

• I loved it, jriddell

• Desktop Effects needs to installed by default by release. Compared to Ubuntu, Kubuntu has been very neglected in this area. In the current release of Mandriva Compiz fusion is enabled by default with either KDE or GNOME. --Angrykeyboarder

• REALLY like Alpha 4 so far ... quite an improvement !!!!!! (georghess)
• I really like the new wallpaper, it looks great. Also very pleased about Desktop Effects - I've found Compiz Fusion to be a pain to get working in Kubuntu, and Desktop Effects goes a long way to changing that. (MattBD)
• I think the wallpaper is far too busy for a default. Please choose something simpler for the default and have this as an optional paper. The last gutsy background was far better (jools)
• Agree on the the wallpaper being too busy for a default. Something like blue bend would look more professional. (sboden),
• I tried it on a Lenovo R60e laptop, and I really like the improvements over the previous alpha. It seems more polished and more stable now. An HP 3055 printer was automatically install and worked out of the box, although there was no pop-up icon or any other visual feedback. Compiz integration is much improved, but I was still unable to enable compiz with gui - I had to use the command line. Additionally, I noticed the following:

  • I think Dolphin is still in a bad shape. its look & feel is much improved, but some of the comments that were given in the Gutsy feedback page are still relevant. For example, it won't remember view settings (i.e. changing the view from 'preview' to 'detail list' for all folders), despite giving visual feedback claiming that it will remember the new settings. That makes it completely unusable to me.

  • Desktop Effects should be in main, and I agree that it should be installed by default. It is very nice that it installs compiz for you, but it's only doing a half-hearted job. I think it should also fetch ccsm, the main and extra plugins, and the compiz kicker and pager applets. Otherwise users will install packages on their own anyways, duplicating the effort.

  • I haven't seen anything related to PulseAudio or PolicyKit? Sorry for the ignorant question, but Is there a plan to integrate those with kde, or are they gnome-specific features?

  (Jonathan Amir)
• Sorry, I don't like the default wallpaper either. Prefer plain blue blend of past more. With transparency being used (for example konsole), the swirls can make it more difficult to read some text. (pauls)
• I'm indifferent about the wallpaper. Looks good to me. It's relatively minor compared to the road ahead to 8.04.
• I have a different gripe though:
  • Kubuntu still looks like the "red-headed stepchild" of Ubuntu. It doesn't look finished. There is pretty much no customization. openSUSE in contrast looks finished, has a nice taskbar, nice splashscreen, embraces KDE 4, etc. * The OS selector screen is still b/w and looks like it came out of the MS-Dos days. Please update it.
• For some reason 8.04 Alpha 4 still feels cartoonish - childish with the default settings. Please follow suit with the rest of KDE distro's and "mature it up". I'm tired of people making fun of me when they see the default desktop.

• Please add some Kubuntu specific branding to KDE (at least as a default option) Neither Gutsy, nor Hardy feel refined. Visually it feels like users just get the basic no frills KDE the way it came from kde.org, much like an afterthought. Ubuntu is branded, why can Kubuntu be too? (look to openSUSE for visual inspiration, but make it our own. )

• Weren't we also promised that 8.04 will include KDE 4? Where is it? There should be an easy way for users to switch to KDE 4.0 that is "beginner friendly". Include 3.5.9 for compatibility and legacy reasons, but KDE 4 is where the hype is at. That's what users will expect to see when they first install it.
• Please add a way to read Windows/Vista partitions by default. It is NOT beginner friendly. No beginner will want to go through 15 minutes worth of google searching for a complicated work-around just so he/she can access read/write files on his Windows partition.

• Oh, make some cool/simple Kubuntu specific plasmoids. I'm sure people will enjoy that.

--I apologize if the above seems too critical. I'm passionate about Kubuntu and want to see it succeed!! -Max--

• I think KDE4 was promised for Hardy + 1, Hardy would only have a community supported KDE 4 installation disc. But KDE 3 would still be the default. So you can install it easily if you want. But the KDE 4 integration and applications to make it look like a pro are on their way, still on their way when Hardy is shipped. So it's good that people who don't know what Linux or KDE is (yes, there are such Kubuntu users and I'm their admin ) can have a stable and unified playing ground. About the NTFS thing, it was a bug in Gutsy that you need SUDO for accessing the NTFS partitions. And I think it was fixed in some of these Alphas (regression? I haven't tried Alpha 4). --ToniHelenius

• I really don't like the new background. It is not good for a normal user (pegu).

• i finded hardy alpha 4 more stable than gutsy... in my case is like that, Xorg don't freeze more with Superkaramba themes (with latest Nvidia drivers GeForce 6100) when i leave my desktop without work some minutes... until now is really good. about the Desktop Effects (compiz) is true that is easier with Ubuntu (that is integrated in default install). With my WiFi USB adapter Belkin 54g F5D7050A there's not automatically (not all is good!!) With gutsy is not easy and now i will try with hardy (why not automatically??? rt2500 or rt73 or rt2x00 and doesn't works.... so i continue with this wifi adventure). I like default wallpaper, but systematically after a fresh install i change the wallpaper and the desktop features for my mood, so finally is not so important for me... about KDE 4.0... I'm not happy, it's in evolution, i know, but i prefere the stability of KDE 3.5.8 ( and 3.5.9 in the future, i hope). I prefer linux (and kubuntu) for a lot of reasons but for somebody that begins with linux (after a lot of years with MS) probably KDE 4 (stable in all features, so not even now) will be easier, but even with this reason i prefer kde 3.5 like default desktop (and wait the really stable version of KDE 4). i really prefer this alpha4 than Gutsy... for an alpha release it's great... and really important .. Kaffeine play really good a lot of formats (like wmv or mov) with only kubuntu-restricted-extras package (with gutsy sometimes i have problems with wmv format or the audio track of mov files, so i forced to install vlc player or mediaplayer but after i have a lot of media players...so now is really easier, for me and for the friends because how to explain to MS-win users that you must use different media player, in depend of kind of format?? ) that is a great improvement in this release. And the precedents comments around Dolphin or NTFS, or wifi.... i'm agree too... luis

• > (why not automatically??? rt2500 or rt73 or rt2x00 and doesn't works.... so i continue with this wifi adventure) I'm in the same situation....

• For a background I would like more (just nitpicking)... the backgrounds you see when you put the live-cd of hardy in your computer (but not booting it), the background in the screenshots you see then are more my preference. Or the other way around, imagine those screenshots be taken with the current default background, it wouldn't look the same.

Backgrounds are easy to change of course, but it's more a first impression thing.

• KDE doesn't start on my machine. Installed to hard drive, did a dist-upgrade. Try to login from KDM, KDE crashes back to KDM login page. Try to login again, KDE crashes again with a small Xaw window on the KDM page, stating that it is unable to start ksmserver. I love the new blue fractal KDM wallpaper. I've just installed KDE4 in Hardy, it started up OK.
• why don't you use the slideshow function with the kde4 wallpaper?
• I would also like to comment on the new wallpaper - I find it stands out too much for something which is supposed to be a background. Perhaps the creator could redo it slightly, making the colours lighter and the contrasts less sharp? (-MichaelJT)
• it looks great, and works great. contrary to ubuntu, whose sound system makes the via high definition audio wheeze with a high constant sound, kubuntu works great! also system settings - desktop settings let configure the compisite settings like "present windows" (kompose, expose). the only problem is that konqueror comes without flash by default.