I’ve been spending time in KDE on the weekends since I usually don’t need to update my podcasts (which I manage in Rythmbox) and here are my current impressions.  Now that the latest nVidia drivers have come out, I was able to enable the desktop composite effects in KDE.  This does not use Compiz, but rather KWin’s built-in effects.  The default effects were nice.  They slowed up my computer a little, but I was still able to run Blender, which is more than I can do in Gnome with Compiz turned on.

I finally learned how to make the panel only show the programs open on that desktop.  Apparently, I just hadn’t found the magic spot to right-click on the panel to bring up a menu that has a simple checkbox to do that.

So far my only complaint is that KDE 4 is uglier than Gnome 2.x.  I can’t put my finger one what it is, but something offends my visual senses.  Particularly, I don’t like how Kontact looks.  I think it looks heavily 1990s.  The calendar part, in particular, doesn’t seem as polished as Evolution.

However, there are a lot of great things going on.  The widgets are really neat and better than any equivalent thing happening in Gnome.  I will keep checking them out to see where it ends up.  Also, I’m anxious to see where Amarok 2 takes us.