“However, when I looked at the full feature list on KDE.org’s techbase website, looking through the full feature list on yielded a handful of complete features, all of which were completely underwhelming.”

“The semantic desktop has not eventuated, desktop search barely works… kmail was (in the past) my favorite mail client ever. However, it simply does not work…”

If your complaint is that things aren’t working, the last thing you should be asking for is new features. In fact, I wish KDE would just do a 2-3 *YEAR* feature freeze. Absolutely no feature, no matter how small, should be developed in. It should all be bug fixes and usability improvements all the time, until the queue is small enough to count on one hand.

Maybe even go on a feature-killing spree. Why is there both akonadi-google and akonadi-googledata!? Do they work reliably? Why is there a Facebook Plasmoid installed by default? How many clock plasmoids should be part of the standard desktop? Why does akanodi and nepomuk index my email even when I’m on battery power? Why is there more than one CPU monitor plasmoid? I could go on and on.

Since at least 4.x, KDE has had way too many new features, at the expense of stability. Those complaints you have about stability? They’re because KDE is way too ambitious with new features. The problem with KDE, since around 3.x, has been that it has too many loose ends, too many unfinished projects, too many “in progress” integrations. As a user, I shouldn’t need to know what nepomuk or strigi are, or why virtuouso is pegging my CPU. Since probably roughly 2% of users care about plasmoids outside of their panel, don’t bundle lots of variations by default — put them on a repository and let people download them if they want them.

KDE 4.8 is great. I switched (back) to it after the Gnome 3/Unity fiasco. But what KDE desperately needs is a massive trimming of the fat. It needs bug fixes, usability fixes, little things. Big features? No thanks.

It is great to see someone give a reasonable view of these editors – so often posts are written by fans of the software, who simply address quirks or flaws as if you just need to learn to use it properly. Instead, your comments on several of these editors mirrors my own experience with them.

I had heard the buzz about OpenShot, and eagerly installed it. I was sorely disappointed when it crashed every time I opened a video with it.

I had heard of kdenlive, but it was not one I had tried. Based on your comments I’ve now installed kdenlive and edited my first demo video. It was easy, intuitive, and best of all, stable.

Thanks so much!

This would also give you the benefit of being able to toggle over to it when you need to.

Thanks for your assistance

Thanks for your assistance

“Once that was done, then the true user facing innovation that the 4.x series was promised to deliver would be built on top of a solid foundation.”

We have a problem event has happened to build a solid foundation. Remember KDE 4.x series started 2007 and first release was 2008. Nokia releasing QT LGPL 2009 this is a rock hitting plans punching many holes. Yes the plan was designed if this did not happen.

2010 and 2011 upstream submitting of patches has proven workable with QT. This now triggers this alteration in plan to make a solid foundation.

http://aseigo.blogspot.com/2011/08/important-announcement-coming-today-at.html
http://community.kde.org/KDE_Core/Platform_11/Eliminating_Duplication_With_Qt

Start of the clean up processes to make a proper solid foundation starts in KDE 4.8. This is allowing scripting by QML instead of KDE own internal script engine.

KDE 5.0 will be focused on cleaning up back-end even more. Getting rid of duplication between KDE libraries and QT Libraries. And removing KDE libraries from being bring in everything and the sink just because you wanted to use one library.

Advantage this clean up should make KDE and its applications lighter. Also reduce some of the integration issues between KDE applications and everything else.

Even you notice a lot of applications still don’t work right. So a slow down and catch up has been due.

“KSecretService, enabling password storage which is available to non-KDE apps on the plasma desktop and vice versa.”

This is very revolutionary for KDE. Think about it when was the last time KDE was creating a API to be used by everyone.

Yes no flash stuff in 4.8 and most likely no flashy stuff in 5.0. Price to make a solid base.

What is the storm coming. Web, Wayland and Multi-touch.

Without a solid foundation making the applications above support web, wayland and multi-touch and maybe the out there running in a web browser is going to be hell.

Yes QT5 does run inside nacl inside chrome browses. So this could truly see some KDE applications running everywhere.

Future road ahead is busy. Time to make sure you have everything securely tied down basically.