1. “KDE 4 Desktop” looks like a poor Vista clone. Is Vista the pinnacle KDE is trying to achieve? And besides, who still uses analog clocks when there’s a large-font clock in the lower right-hand corner? Can no one think of a better “widget” to show off?

2. “Configure Taskbar” shows that, alas, dialog box writers neglect to read Strunk and White; it should be “Show tasks only from…” not “Show only tasks from…” Also (as a previous poster has pointed out), what’s up with virtually the same icon for Ok and Apply? At the very least, why is Ok blue and Apply green?! The title of the dialog box seems like it would be important, and yet it’s cut off without any indication that it is. This could be quite problematic in general. Or perhaps the KDE designers believe no one is reading the dialog titles.

3. Kickoff: aren’t we ready to move past these kinds of start-menus? Mac OS X no longer has them, and they’re a pain to navigate. Evidently, KDE’s approach is “make it bigger.”

Just a few Kickoff menu comments:

a. “Multimedia” is antiquated.
b. I don’t understand why “System Settings” is showing up in the “Computer” view.
c. Why include the user and host name on the start menu? And why include a KDE plug when you could make kickoff sleeker?

4. “Configure Launcher” seems too complex to me. I’m not 100% sure what an Application Launcher is, but I presume it is a level of indirection from the application itself (e.g., to add some commandline arguments). In general, this is unnecessary and confusing.

5. “Coverswitch” looks like it is not well-incorporated. I never got much out of this visualization anyway, especially as an application switcher, but, again, if Vista is what KDE is striving for…

6. “KGet” - You’re telling me that the default column widths are set such that the speed is 3x wider than it needs to be but status is too narrow to display in full?! Also, the “transfer details” are confusing; the information moves (and no longer matches the columns), and it turned the window from a big gray blob into a huge blue blob to add the full path information. Not a huge return-on-investment.

7. “Kolor lines” - why is there such a *HUGE* gray blob at the top of this game? So much wasted space!

8. “Task scheduler” - I haven’t seen an uglier task scheduler in years. This is effectively the same as scheduling a calendar appointment (where the appointment is a program), so why is it such a huge leap backwards from calendar UIs?

9. This one’s nitpicky: “Marble” I’m not exactly sure why a maps program would be considered part of a desktop environment (or the games for that matter), but I suppose you want flashy apps to try to attract people to you. Whatever the case, why would users not lean toward Google Earth?

10. Amarok: I’m not impressed with this UI, either. There are large unused spaces, and then super-dense spaces. Also, I can’t imagine using anything with a logo on permanent-display.

Everyone copies from anyone.
And the thing is: YOU can change it. Make KDE better.