KDE 4

I have been following KDE 4 with interest since before the early alpha releases.  I have seen it evolve and even tried it out as my main desktop for a few days.

My verdict? (it that is worth much):

Its pretty damn good.

I am all for usability, KDE3 is quite...cluttered in my opinion.  Gnome has gone too far the other way, for example if I want to change the text on a text screensaver I have no hope.  KDE4 is a great middle ground.

I know a lot of things have caused controversy in the KDE community but I believe a lot of it had to be done.  Dolphin is great, a bit buggy still in 4.0.3 (it crashed a few times for me) but really goo at what it does, and I think the tagging and ratings are a really good idea in a Web 2.0 (and Desktop 2.0?) world.

There are still things I'm not so keen on yet, there are big bugs still, gaping holes where packages are missing (ie. no replacement for KDE3's Kontact yet) and using the launcher to find what program I want can be a bit fiddly.  But this is all being addressed at an incredible pace, most will be sorted by KDE 4.1 this summer.  I do personally think that KDE 4 will be the future of the desktop, and may well be using it as my primary desktop with OpenSUSE 11.