KDE 4.0 is a test build at this stage. It's also a .0 release, so it's too early to judge it as though it's a truly mature desktop.

Oh, I know! Tomorrow I'll review Hardy Heron and talk about all those major bugs in an LTS...

@schestowitz

I agree with the concern expressed in the article.
If KDE 4.0 is to be released on Dec 11th, then we are testing code which is meant to become *stable* in a bit more than 2 weeks...
I very much dislike what i have tested so far, from the general look and feel to the applications. Trying to imitate GNOME is not really the path to follow, i think.. and boy, Dolphin reminds me SO much of another restrictive file manager
Anyhow, i'll only start to take KDE 4 seriously in like a year.

The problem with KDE 4 (or maybe it should be called SKDE 4, for "Superkaramba Desktop Environment") is that it, as you noted, is scheduled to be released on December 11, and yet it doesn't act like an OS. It acts like a mockup of an OS.

If you try the latest KDE 4 Live CD from openSUSE, which is KDE4 RC1, you'll see that you can't even put a damn icon on the desktop. The System Tray's been floating out in space for quite a while now, with no indication on how to incorporate it into the new...whatever they're calling the kicker/taskbar these days. Context menus are few and far between. And on, and on...

I think they're rushing it out before it's ready. Wonder why. (They should put the Debian devs in charge of it. )

Personally, I don't like what I've seen of the UI. It's like they've taken what I like about KDE and thrown it out the window. Why are they doing this? I guess I'll get adjusted to it, because it won't be like I can resort to KDE 3.5.8 a year from now when I'm using an updated version of my favorite distro, PCLinuxOS. I'll be stuck with my choice of KDE or something else, and KDE still beats them all, despite what I feel is a step backward.

I do like how they are cleaning it up, though. The current KDE is starting to feel cobbled together because of all the additions since KDE 3.0 was released. However, I've never had luck with SuperKaramba being stable, and I hope they really fix that under KDE 4, since it seems the whole release is centered around it.

On the positive side, the RC1 version has much better performance than the Beta4 version (taking into account it's running from a CD with non-accelerated video).

For software, I typically view an RC1 release as being mostly feature complete--if this KDE4RC1 is largely feature complete, it spells trouble. Eco2geek is right, you can't do simple things like drag an application icon onto the desktop. For an RC1 it feels incredibly unfinished.

I think it's time the KDE team faced up to reality here--a December/January release might be a huge mistake. Better to go for a February/March time frame. But, what do I know, I'm not a KDE developer--perhaps they can pull it off. But, I'm not holding my breath.

I tried the preview in opensuse 10.3, and I tried the debian live cd, and I just couldn't figure it out. Luckily, ctrl + alt + del hadn't changed.

What I found really disheartening was my first encounter with dolphin. I tried to open a terminal window, it opened to ~ instead of the pwd. It's like they decided to add a feature from Konqueror without trying it to see what it actually does.

If it's not ready, why do they keep shoving it at us like Florida swampland or the Iraq War? Why is dolphin the default file manager for Kubuntu all of a sudden? It looks interesting, it just doesn't look like KDE. They should call it something else, and leave KDE alone. The fact they seem to have abandoned the old (and getting older all the time, I will confess it!) "K" naming convention should make it easier. Seriously, KDE4 needs to go fork itself!