So I bit the bullet and installed KDE 4.0 on Gentoo. Version 4.0.4 recently hit the tree, and with some minor hackary to package.unmask and package.keywords I have a nice spartan KDE 4.0.4 desktop that I am typing this in.

My observations:

Like Gentoo’s KDE3 packaging, you are given KDE4 pretty much as it is packaged upstream. It certainly lacks the polish that Fedora 9 and OpenSUSE 11 have been able to apply.
The desktop is somewhat of an afterthought at this point. Basic icon grid alignment and drag selection don’t work. Icons on the desktop are treated as widgets which means you can rotate them and such which may be something to build on in the future. However this area basically needs work.

Oxygen is beautiful.

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