The Road to KDE 4: Konsole Gets an Overhaul

Again, after a delay , we return to bring you updates on the state of Konsole, KDE's UNIX terminal program. Konsole has been a staple of KDE since KDE 1.0, as has been showing signs of a little bit of clutter and wear. So, Robert Knight ,the authority in charge has stepped in to clean up the program's code, and more than anything else, fix a cluttered and difficult interface.

When the KDE 4 development series commenced, Robert Knight took over maintainership of Konsole. The end result is a Konsole for KDE 4 that is visually very similar, functionally improved and with a settings system you can actually stomach. The screenshot shows that the main window has not changed too much. .The once-intimidating settings menu now becomes very simple. It may look like the configuration options are gone, but they are still all available in a sanely organized fashion.

And lastly, the appearance people will appreciate this dialog: its implementation is effective and its use becomes obvious. Additionally, Robert has implemented style previews in an intuitive manner. As you mouse over the style, the Konsole window in the background automatically applies that style in an active preview. So you can very rapidly look through and appreciate the styles just by hovering over the list.Side-by-side comparisons aside, Konsole also offers a number of other improvements. Among them, split-view mode, faster scrolling (thanks to a smarter line redrawing scheme), hotkeys and more.