I am in search of the perfect LDE4 distro, and this is going to be a looong series. I am going through various distros, and have not found a perfect one yet.

Recently, with my review of Linux Mint KDE two of the commenters pointed out that my scoring for Mint’s WiFi did not make sense.

The Issue At Hand

I gave Linux Mint KDE4 a decent score for WiFi, but in the text I complained about KDE4 – at least the version I have used thus far – having no or limited support for WEP encrypted networks.

It was pointed out that my scoring made no sense – and the commenters were correct.

Even though KDE4 on Mint had good support for my device, connected to most networks with ease, kept the wifi working after several ruspend/resume cycles and when connected stayed stable – the lack of WEP support should have given it a much lower score.

I have decided to add two things to my scoring system that I use for full reviews, one a WEP support score that will either be 0 or 100, and then a Disqualifier score.

I will also add a Disqualifier rating to my Desktop, User Friendliness and Q-ratings. Here I will expand and rate the OS at hand with regards to issues that might disqualify it from use by some or all users.

I will not be comment on software availability here because I can easily disqualify any OS for something.

What about me using KDE4 then?

Lack of WEP support is a major issue for me. I do not know if it has been fixed or not in a newer release. As far as I can see it has not – but I might be missing a newer build that have fixed it.

If I cannot find a version of KDE4 that supports this I will be forced to go back to Gnome – I need to connect to WEP networks regularly, at least multiple times per month.

Is KDE4 Lost to me?

That depends.

I am really beginning to feel at home with KDE4 now – there are minor gripes to be sure, but it is on a par with most windows managers as far as it being my “office” is concerned.

There are some nice utilities that are part of the OS, like Kontakt that allows me to manage a lot of things in one place.

Summary

This was just a short update to the series – KDE4 still has a lot of good points, and computer users learn to live with the flaws in their chosen desktop environment.

As someone who reviews stuff I guess I need to be a little more critical of flaws such as the one I spoke about in this piece – it is grounds for the OS not being usable by many.

Look out for my new ratings, and for my updates to some recent reviews.

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