Slashdot Mirror

Foobar2k --> Amarok (there's tons of other music players on Linux)
Traktor Pro --> Mixxx

KDE5/Plasma5 has been very solid for me, but I use KWIN with XFCE only as the compositor/window manager.

A lot of the instability people discuss around KDE5 is actually an Intel bug which features in Plasma 5 seem to trigger on Intel chipsets.
If you're using an Intel chipset and have weird issues, artifacts or instability you might want to try switching to the older UXA driver instead of SNA that's shipped with more recent distributions.

/etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/20-intel.conf

Section "Device"
        Identifier "Intel Graphics"
        Driver "intel"
        Option "AccelMethod" "uxa"
EndSection

The only browser I can think of that isn't tied to some other browser is Konqueror but unfortunately I find KHTML to be somewhat awful and even if it wasn't Konqueror is *nix only.

Konqueror works fine on Windows. The last time I tried it on Mac OS X, it worked fine too, but that was back in 2008 or so.

The only browser I can think of that isn't tied to some other browser is Konqueror but unfortunately I find KHTML to be somewhat awful and even if it wasn't Konqueror is *nix only.

Konqueror works fine on Windows. The last time I tried it on Mac OS X, it worked fine too, but that was back in 2008 or so.

there is no support for screensavers

Congratulations, you are among a tiny minority of 2%: https://forum.kde.org/viewtopi...

Should have remained in the oven for two more releases at the very least.

The story is about openSUSE Tumbleweed, a rolling release distribution for advanced users.
Regular openSUSE still comes with Plasma 4.
openSUSE 13.3 has not even been dated yet and will come with a future Plasma 5 version.

Apparently you use (K)Ubuntu: Their QA track record regarding anything by KDE is absolutely horrible and their reputation for jumping onto new features way too early. Read the "Suitability and Updates" paragraph of https://www.kde.org/announceme...
KDE has been absolutely forthcoming. Plasma 4 is maintained until at least August 2015 for a reason.

I'm not the AC that complained about bug handling, but I did just get hit by a 3 year old konsole bug a couple days ago, so I can definitely understand the frustration. The last comment on it is that "both emacs and konsole are guilty" because emacs isn't protecting against faulty terminal behavior.

Konsole has long been my favorite terminal emulator -- it's the fastest "feature-filled" one, and does everything I want -- but that bug annoyed me enough that I gave up and went looking for an alternative. Which wasn't easy to find, actually, because every other term I tried seemed to have some bug or another (like with xterm-256color support -- thanks xfce4-term), or printed reverse as italics (fuck you gnome-terminal). Settled on roxterm-gtk3, after fighting through some configuration glitches.

I don't care about the damn blame-shifting bullshit in the bug report, I had to waste hours figuring out the source of the problem and then hunting a non-broken terminal emulator because finger-pointing was more important than fixing a years-old bug.

On the flip side of the coin, I've reported some bugs and feature requests against Krita, by way of their forums, and the experience has always been great. The krita devs are helpful and responsive to requests, even sometimes if they don't initially agree with the request, if users can provide a good use-case example for it. I've even seen them helping users with graphics tablet problems that weren't specifically Krita problems.

KDE is a large collection of projects with different developers, and the experience isn't always the same. Overall, it's still pretty good about fixing problems, though of course it could be better. At least they're not as bad as the "NOTABUG, WONTFIX" not-invented-here-loving GNOME devs.

perfectly

For idiotic values of perfectly.

Just one of many threads being discussed :
https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bi...

A KDE discussion :
https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug....

https://www.kde.org/announceme...

Ok, here is one. I didn't even have to google.
https://www.kde.org/announceme...

Agreed. It looks very similar to previous versions. Nice thing with KDE is you can usually customize it to however you want it to look

https://www.kde.org/announceme...

... and I am a KDE-person. Wow, holy sh**. I fled from Gnome to KDE some years ago, happy so far, and now it seems I have to look again; for a place to escape. A place that I can configure freely, and one that does not look like a Metro-Spin-Off. Yep, the screenshot on the ostatic-blog mentioned in the summary looks exactly - no, not the same, but like a similar mental breakdown of the people behind the design.
On KDE 'Activities' were fine, though abandonware before ever fully developed https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug..... For ages, I have been sitting on my personal configuration of the 'plasma-netbook'. With a 1920x1200 24" monitor. Meaning, *a lot* of reconfiguration. I tried Plasma 5, and - gone it was! Okay, I could stay on Plasma 4 for some more time, though the writing seems to be on the wall. Why do some people tend to think that the market leader is the market leader for their cr** desktop designs? I can promise you one thing, 'Year of Linux on the desktop' or not - none of my Windows users has ever told me how beautiful the desktop was. On the contrary, they usually preferred mine aesthetically, and theirs for the simplicity of functions.
 

I'm playing around with viewing OSM data. I like the MarbleWidget. (And despite the KDE link, it only needs Qt, not the whole KDE Stack.)

How can KDE shed some of its bloat by using some of the services and API provided by Systemd?

I thought this was meant to be a joke. Then I looked at the list of suggested ideas, and this is the second one:
Project: Port KSystemLog to use journald as a backend
https://community.kde.org/GSoC...

Granted, I didn't see any others in the large number of other suggestions. Still a bit of a coincidence.

You are quiet rude with us. This is a community based project trying to help children all over the world. Many contributors are not native english but we do an effort to do everything in english to have a wide audience and ease the translations. That said, feel free to send us patches for our web site, the source code for it is here: http://quickgit.kde.org/?p=web...

In this case they're giving away some but not all of the activities included with gcompris with the Android version. It's possible, then, that the core software remains Free Software, while those other activities (for which you also have to pay on Windows and MacOS) are commercial, for-pay software.

However, I'm already downloading some stuff right now, so I'm not downloading the 280MB tarball to find out

No worries. I’m happy to tell you that all of GCompris, each and every activity, is free software. If you download the source code, you get the source code for all the activities.

If you want to, you can compile the software yourself. (Actually, there’s not much compiling required. GCompris Qt is written in Qt Quick, so it’s mostly just JavaScript code, that doesn’t need any compiling.) You can get the latest version of the source code at the KDE Git repository, or at a GitHub mirror.

The linked release notes mentions that GCompris is fully translated into 8 languages. But note that it’s also partially translated into (currently) 29 languages. In fact, some of the languages supported don’t even exist as native locales on the Android platform (but you can still choose the language manually, in the GCompris preferences menu).

GCompris was only very recently moved to the KDE infrastructure, and it’s still in the review phase (see the KDE software lifecycle), so not all translation teams have started translating it yet. But hopefully, many more languages will be fully supported in the future. Note that ‘fully supported’ also means custom word lists for each language (for the reading practice activities), and even voice sound files for some of the activities.

I think good language support is very important for educational software like GCompris. And the number of languages (partially or fully) supported shows the power of free software and the free software community. The software can (and will) be translated into smaller languages that are not commercially viable for proprietary software. (Full disclosure: I have been translating GCompris to my native language for a number of years.)

The linked release notes mentions that GCompris is fully translated into 8 languages. But note that it’s also partially translated into (currently) 29 languages. In fact, some of the languages supported don’t even exist as native locales on the Android platform (but you can still choose the language manually, in the GCompris preferences menu).

GCompris was only very recently moved to the KDE infrastructure, and it’s still in the review phase (see the KDE software lifecycle), so not all translation teams have started translating it yet. But hopefully, many more languages will be fully supported in the future. Note that ‘fully supported’ also means custom word lists for each language (for the reading practice activities), and even voice sound files for some of the activities.

I think good language support is very important for educational software like GCompris. And the number of languages (partially or fully) supported shows the power of free software and the free software community. The software can (and will) be translated into smaller languages that are not commercially viable for proprietary software. (Full disclosure: I have been translating GCompris to my native language for a number of years.)

Requiring fees based on the deployment platform used does not constitute "free" software under any open source definition I have ever read.

The software is licensed under the GNU GPL 3, and is thus certainly free software. It follows all four freedoms in the free software definition. It is also open source, under the offical Open Source Definition. In fact, being able to sell the software is integral to it being free software. From the GNU licence FAQ:

Does the GPL allow me to sell copies of the program for money?

Yes, the GPL allows everyone to do this. The right to sell copies is part of the definition of free software. Except in one special situation, there is no limit on what price you can charge. (The one exception is the required written offer to provide source code that must accompany binary-only release.)

And, of course, the source for GCompris Qt is available, at both a KDE Git repository and a GitHub mirror. You’re welcome to compile it yourself, and play it for free, on either a Linux system or an Android system (or any other system you wish to port it to).

Kexi, created in 2002, in addition to competing with MS Access contains Qt-compatible data-aware widgets: forms, reports, tables, queries. And all designers for them. Also import/export with strong CSV support. C++ developers can employ all this in their apps, this happens from time to time.

Predicate is a database connectivity and creation library, something more than QtSQL and alikes. You can create database without backend-specific SQL. Predicate origins are in Kexi, it competes with Qt SQL and contains many more than it. See https://community.kde.org/Pred.... There's even SQL parser that helps to 100% control of what SQL is passed by your users. It's Qt-only. We're porting Kexi to it these weeks.

So you have visual designers, and data-oriented framework, both interacting with each other.

Feel free to ask for more info: https://community.kde.org/Kexi...

Cheers, Jaroslaw Staniek

Kexi, created in 2002, in addition to competing with MS Access contains Qt-compatible data-aware widgets: forms, reports, tables, queries. And all designers for them. Also import/export with strong CSV support. C++ developers can employ all this in their apps, this happens from time to time.

Predicate is a database connectivity and creation library, something more than QtSQL and alikes. You can create database without backend-specific SQL. Predicate origins are in Kexi, it competes with Qt SQL and contains many more than it. See https://community.kde.org/Pred.... There's even SQL parser that helps to 100% control of what SQL is passed by your users. It's Qt-only. We're porting Kexi to it these weeks.

So you have visual designers, and data-oriented framework, both interacting with each other.

Feel free to ask for more info: https://community.kde.org/Kexi...

Cheers, Jaroslaw Staniek

Kexi, created in 2002, in addition to competing with MS Access contains Qt-compatible data-aware widgets: forms, reports, tables, queries. And all designers for them. Also import/export with strong CSV support. C++ developers can employ all this in their apps, this happens from time to time.

Predicate is a database connectivity and creation library, something more than QtSQL and alikes. You can create database without backend-specific SQL. Predicate origins are in Kexi, it competes with Qt SQL and contains many more than it. See https://community.kde.org/Pred.... There's even SQL parser that helps to 100% control of what SQL is passed by your users. It's Qt-only. We're porting Kexi to it these weeks.

So you have visual designers, and data-oriented framework, both interacting with each other.

Feel free to ask for more info: https://community.kde.org/Kexi...

Cheers, Jaroslaw Staniek

You realize that KDE uses WebKit now, right? Apple forked KHTML into WebKit, and a few years ago, KDE decided to go with the forked KHTML, aka, WebKit.

https://techbase.kde.org/Proje...
https://konqueror.org/features...

Update: I just learned that there is indeed a way to tag files in Linux (well, in KDE apps at least). In its current incarnation it is called Baloo, and it is now implemented pretty much like tags are implemented in OS X, that is by incorporating the tags in an extended attribute for the file.

Unfortunately when I google "baloo kde" I do see quite a bit of pages asking or showing how to disable Baloo. I guess it's still in its infancy and still suffers from performance issues. (Baloo actually does much more than tagging, it is the whole file indexing system, so it is more akin to Spotlight on the Mac side.)

That is fantastic! Thank you very much for the info!

For others that may be interested in file tagging in Linux, it seems there are two systems: the old one called Nepomuk and its replacement Baloo.

Nepomuk uses a database that needs to be running permanently which associates tags and files. That approach has too many drawbacks, and quite frankly would be an unsatisfactory substitute for OS X's tagging.

Baloo, on the other hand, does things the right way, by incorporating the tags into an extended attribute for the file. That is exactly the way it's done in OS X, and it works awesomely provided that you have a good indexing system that indexes those extended attributes like Spotlight does. (Close-to-immediate searches are fundamental for the success of a system-wide tagging system.)

Thanks again for the info!

That is fantastic! Thank you very much for the info!

For others that may be interested in file tagging in Linux, it seems there are two systems: the old one called Nepomuk and its replacement Baloo.

Nepomuk uses a database that needs to be running permanently which associates tags and files. That approach has too many drawbacks, and quite frankly would be an unsatisfactory substitute for OS X's tagging.

Baloo, on the other hand, does things the right way, by incorporating the tags into an extended attribute for the file. That is exactly the way it's done in OS X, and it works awesomely provided that you have a good indexing system that indexes those extended attributes like Spotlight does. (Close-to-immediate searches are fundamental for the success of a system-wide tagging system.)

Thanks again for the info!

The systemd project is not the systemd init system. It's like the KDE Software Compilation KDE SC http://www.kde.org/ that consists of the KDE framework, the KDE Plasma, etc. And you can use software that depends on systemd-init just fine by using systemd-shism, which provides the API that usually systemd-init provides.

From the Gnome bug report:
https://bugzilla.gnome.org/sho...

Some key dates for the use of the word "activities":

14 April 2008: "Add Activity" button implemented in KDE Plasma
http://websvn.kde.org/?view=re...

29 April 2008: KDE 4.1 Alpha 1 released
http://www.kde.org/announcemen...

29 May 2008: First detailed press reports on KDE's activity concept
http://arstechnica.com/open-so...

29 July 2008: KDE 4.1.0 released
http://www.kde.org/announcemen...

11 October 2008: "Activities menu" concept added to GNOME wiki during the
Boston GNOME Hackfest
http://live.gnome.org/action/d...

From the Gnome bug report:
https://bugzilla.gnome.org/sho...

Some key dates for the use of the word "activities":

14 April 2008: "Add Activity" button implemented in KDE Plasma
http://websvn.kde.org/?view=re...

29 April 2008: KDE 4.1 Alpha 1 released
http://www.kde.org/announcemen...

29 May 2008: First detailed press reports on KDE's activity concept
http://arstechnica.com/open-so...

29 July 2008: KDE 4.1.0 released
http://www.kde.org/announcemen...

11 October 2008: "Activities menu" concept added to GNOME wiki during the
Boston GNOME Hackfest
http://live.gnome.org/action/d...

From the Gnome bug report:
https://bugzilla.gnome.org/sho...

Some key dates for the use of the word "activities":

14 April 2008: "Add Activity" button implemented in KDE Plasma
http://websvn.kde.org/?view=re...

29 April 2008: KDE 4.1 Alpha 1 released
http://www.kde.org/announcemen...

29 May 2008: First detailed press reports on KDE's activity concept
http://arstechnica.com/open-so...

29 July 2008: KDE 4.1.0 released
http://www.kde.org/announcemen...

11 October 2008: "Activities menu" concept added to GNOME wiki during the
Boston GNOME Hackfest
http://live.gnome.org/action/d...

You can actually run alternate desktops on Windows. Explorer.EXE is the default, and the only one built in unless you count boot-to-CMD (which I'm not even sure is still an option on client versions) and Server Core (boot-to-powershell). However, it's one registry value to change that default shell to something else. There are a few third-party alternatives that are explicitly Explorer replacements, and you can also use thinks like KDE Plasma (and all the other KDE utilities, if you want) from http://windows.kde.org/ (the first question on the FAQ tell you how to set Plasma as your Windows shell).

You can actually run alternate desktops on Windows. Explorer.EXE is the default, and the only one built in unless you count boot-to-CMD (which I'm not even sure is still an option on client versions) and Server Core (boot-to-powershell). However, it's one registry value to change that default shell to something else. There are a few third-party alternatives that are explicitly Explorer replacements, and you can also use thinks like KDE Plasma (and all the other KDE utilities, if you want) from http://windows.kde.org/ (the first question on the FAQ tell you how to set Plasma as your Windows shell).

Your ID is way too low to play on your alias.

I *think* you could understand how to use it; though you could not easily understand how to use all its features. Correct me if I am wrong. KDE unfortunately loves to pop in new concepts, or even old ones, with hitherto unknown labels. Activity is one of those, and its further development was kind of abandoned before it was actually ripe to harvest. I for one use it, and curse it for being incomplete. Was it complete, you'd have not 2, 4 or 8 (identical) desktops, but 2, 4 or 8 totally different desktops, according one's current needs. Imagine one for photos. Not cluttered with other crap; just optimised for photos. Another for search and search results. One for when you happen to have a touch screen monitor. Maybe a kiosk-type desktop, if you wanted your kids or some stranger to just use a single application and not see your personal stuff immediately. That's the potential, though a half-hearted and half-done implementation prevents this from happening. https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.... is an old, and inactive bug report on this misery. And then they want to compete with MS, the 'semantic desktop' and had some Nepomuk earlier, Akonadi, and since neither ever worked, now 'baloo', which is closer to the term that describes what it actually is. And impossible to deactivate, effectively.

To me all this is just sad; on the best desktop that I know. Aside of Windows XP. With some serious focus in the project's intestines, it could be the best desktop that I know, among all that I know.

https://www.kde.org/announceme...

Is that PHP code in the lower right Clipboard thing supposed to be there?

Keep dreaming. Linux on the desktop yet? :)

At the rate Microsoft is going in their mad race to piss off & alienate just about everyone with a high-end workstation (by pushing Windows towards dumbed-down touch-based interfaces), that goal is actually starting to look attainable. Five years from now, one of two things will likely happen:

* Microsoft will have finally pissed off & alienated enough users for some critical mass of high end desktop/workstation power users to decide Windows is annoying them more than making their lives easier, and vendors like Adobe will notice & release their flagship software for Linux (effectively destroying what little market would remain for high-end Windows applications).

* Hedging their bets, companies like Adobe will port their flagship apps to Linux... then port them back to Windows with "kde6.dll" as a dependency. IMHO, this is Microsoft's ultimate nightmare scenario. If the apps high-end workstation users care about are all native KDE apps with equally good Linux versions, there's literally nothing left at that point to keep them chained to Windows. They'd basically be running Linux under a Windows kernel through a compatibility thunking layer anyway. ESPECIALLY if the apps are licensed in a way that allows users to buy the app once, then install & run it under BOTH Windows AND Linux.

Why KDE, and not Gnome? Licensing & logistics. KDE is Apache-licensed, so there's nothing to stop Adobe from bundling an installer for KDEwin directly into their own installers to auto-install it if the user hasn't done so already. And KDE for Windows already exists in beta form (see: http://windows.kde.org/ ).

Five years from now, we might not all be running Linux per se... but most of us will probably be running "Winux" (Windows kernel, Linux UI).

I think he/she means KDE Remote Desktop Sharing http://docs.kde.org/stable/en/kdenetwork/krfb/index.html and is talking about the concept of the X11 root window http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Root_window

If the Qt project goes under, the KDE Free Qt Foundation has authority to distribute it under a BSD license.

But who will maintain and improve it and fix the bugs ? You need a commercial company for this, otherwise Qt will being free will bit rot and that'll be the end of it.

If the Qt project goes under, the KDE Free Qt Foundation has authority to distribute it under a BSD license.

You posted the wrong link, here's the cure... http://www.kde.org/

Melissa at NASA says more than "...taken by astronauts on the station are the highest-resolution night imagery available from orbit...", really? Is the resolution better than 1.3nm? Till that is given this is nothing more than puffery on their part.

Now that server time has reduced in cost, you can add continuous integration to a project and make full documentation a requirement.

For example, here is a CI tool for KDE which tracks missing documentation at English Breakfast Network http://ebn.kde.org/

Besides, who wants all the extra kruft that goes along with Gedit or Kate on a server?

If you want to use Kate to edit files on a server:

File > Open > fish://servername/path/to/file

More about fish: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F...

That's just one thing I love about Kate. Something else I like is the 'map' of the file you're working on, in the scroll bar.

Settings > Configure > Editor Component > Appearance > Borders > Show scrollbar mini-map.

Screenie: http://docs.kde.org/stable/en/...

What if Microsoft released a commercial "Window Manager" for Linux?

What if they made KDE for Windows to use as an alternate desktop environment and window manager?

Oh... wait a minute... http://windows.kde.org/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?... (demo video of KDE running under Windows 7)

It's coming back in 5.1, in a different, more general form.

For the time being there are two menu installed by default in Plasma 5: Kickoffa "modern" launcher, and Kicker a more classic menu-style launcher.
For the time being you have to switch manually from one to the other.

http://www.kde.org/announcemen...

I see Apple's flat style is continuing to be copied^H^H^H used as inspiration for UI developers.

KDE 4.0 was pretty much the same way. The developers proclaimed quite loudly that it was not meant for everyday desktop use. A few Linux distributions took software that they were clearly told was not ready for end users and gave it to end users.

There wasn't a single hint of this in the official release announcement and they were pushing it like crazy to end-users. Quote:

The KDE 4 Desktop has gained some major new capabilities. The Plasma desktop shell offers a new desktop interface, including panel, menu and widgets on the desktop as well as a dashboard function. KWin, the KDE Window manager, now supports advanced graphical effects to ease interaction with your windows.

KDE 4.0 is the innovative Free Software desktop containing lots of applications for every day use as well as for specific purposes.

The idea that KDE 4.0 wasn't intended for end-users and that the developers were clear about this was just an excuse they fell back on when it became apparent 4.0 was a miserable failure in the eyes of end-users.

The cause of the problem was a piss-poor attitude towards release management compounded with a complete inability to take responsibility for their choices. Yes, I'm aware of all the excuses, but they don't hold up to the slightest bit of scrutiny. Read that press release. Can you honestly say that's warning non-developers to stay away?

Which is the active window in the official screenshot:
http://kde.org/announcements/p...

It looks like usability took a back seat to "Apple-like" flat, monochromatic design on this one.

While I agree with you in general terms - this is an issue that has bugged me ever since migrating to KDE4 and apparently I'm not alone. Still waiting for a proper solution (adding another input field in settings doesn't seem to be that big of a deal, configurability is what KDE is about after all, but I'd be willing to edit a text file by hand if that's what it takes; but no progress on the issue so far).

Improv may be axed but other projects still need money, so if you like free software, donate! http://www.kde.org/fundraisers... https://www.kickstarter.com/pr...

He's asking for a free copy of windows to play vidya games on, not the opinion of some KVM spergelord on how it performs it's intended task of running VMs.
 
Currently installing KDE for Windows (apparently that's a thing), then I will see if I can get steam and direct X on here.
 
KDE for Windows installer link for those who are curious - http://download.kde.org/stable/kdewin/installer/kdewin-installer-gui-latest.exe.mirrorlist