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I love that people are arguing that KDE 4 is missing a "core feature" that was actually a third-party add-on for KDE 3, but at the same time argue that installing a plasmoid means the feature doesn't really exist.

KDE 4 was designed to be extendable, and supports multiple methods of easily installing plasmoids. Installing content from the internet into KDE 4 was a core underlying technology since 2008.

http://userbase.kde.org/Plasma/Installing_Plasmoids
http://newstuff.kde.org/

Can't decide if it's embarrassing or impressive. Maybe a little of both.

Or none of the above. ;-)

Reading the reply from adawit, seems more like in some rare situations that involve restarting the "cookiejar" (the service that stores the cookies), there is possibly undefined behaviour (depending on what the compiler does).

I think is an interesting bug fix, and maybe even a nice blog post from the developer, but I don't think is worth the Slashdot frontpage, even less with that headline.

If you read another developer's response to this commit you will see that the actual feature (reject cross domain cookies) was not affected by this blunder: instead the issue was completely different and only occurred when the KDE daemon was restarted.

somebody please correct me if i'm wrong; it was on slashdot i read that standardised ODF format lags so far behind what open/libreoffice are using at the moment that the only way to create fully compatible documents is to read their source code and implement that. (which is why calligra, word, abiword suck at odf) i'm not sure if that was a microsoft shill's FUD campaign or reality and i would like to know.

calligra's odf compatibility page: https://community.kde.org/Calligra/ODF_Problems

Vim and gvim are available for Win32 (native port, I believe using MinGW), Win32-via-Cygwin, and POSIX on NT (SUA via Interix; the [g]vim package is available from http://suacommunity.com/ or any other Interix package repo). Kwrite and KATE (KDE's text/code editor programs, with KATE being mostly a multi-doc capable Kwrite) are available for Windows (along with the rest of KDE4) from http://windows.kde.org./ I'm sure there are many others.

Isn't this a dupe? They already released 4.1 years ago.

You build things over it, like desktops (like KDE) or mobile (like the upcoming Sailfish) environments.

See here and here for a sampling. Canonical is listed, but they're hardly the only one. Then there's also the famous (infamous?) Gnome Census from a couple of years ago.

This friendly fire stuff is uncalled for. Everyone who claims to be the only one who really cares about Linux, on the desktop or as a whole, should be reminded of the Judgment of Solomon.

It works fine for me at least, though it loads a bit slow. Has all the features you describe except calendar integration, but you can get that by using Kontact (which gives access to both Kmail, calendar and contacts in the same interface). Integrates with KDE address book, syncs with Google contacts/Google Calendar, PGP+S/MIME encryption/signing, modern UI, import/export, Sieve rules editor, modern UI (threaded message list, though no Gmail-like threading).

KMail developers and maintainers seem hellbent on breaking existing functionality every few versions. And by break, I mean stuff like "delete all your old mail" and "make your mail go away after version upgrade, maybe forever, maybe just a few weeks". If you've avoided these issues in your upgrades, you've been lucky -- so far. Akonadi and Nepomuk, whatever the hell those are, really aren't ready for prime time. As such, KMail has gotten too "alpha quality" to use in such mundane, critical, production work as -- well -- email.

And before Transformer was the Lenovo IdeaPad S10-3t, which is still being used here daily, and quite liked. It runs Windows 7 most of the time, but I dual boot Linux on it sometimes... specifically Kubuntu with the plasma netbook interface. Linux works pretty well, the main thing missing for me is "long tap" support -- lenovo and/or windows detects long presses and pops up context menu (like mouse middle click). Interestingly the S10-3t extremely rarely gets the screen flipped around to tablet mode. It turns out the clamshell is more convenient 95% of the time. Even reading in bed with it... just sit the laptop on the bed beside pillow and have the desktop rotate the display (or use FBReader's built-in display rotation). It sits up nicely with no hands needed, while you lay comfortably reading.

The full size lenovo keyboard is very nice on such a small thing; being able to touch click/drag things is icing on the cake.

Never tried on W8, but surely you're aware of http://windows.kde.org/?

Yes, I am. However, you should notice that they do only offer x86 - binaries while Windows RT is ARM...

Never tried on W8, but surely you're aware of http://windows.kde.org/?

Do you still feel that a child should have the right to pick who they have sex with - http://stallman.org/archives/2003-may-aug.html - "The nominee is quoted as saying that if the choice of a sexual partner were protected by the Constitution, "prostitution, adultery, necrophilia, bestiality, possession of child pornography, and even incest and pedophilia" also would be. He is probably mistaken, legally--but that is unfortunate. All of these acts should be legal as long as no one is coerced. They are illegal only because of prejudice and narrowmindedness. " while holding the belief that "Writing non-free software is not an ethically legitimate activity, so if people who do this run into trouble, that's good! All businesses based on non-free software ought to fail, and the sooner the better." http://lists.kde.org/?l=kde-licensing&m=89249041326259&w=2 So, to recap, an adult selling closed source software is wrong while an adult having sex with a child isn't. That is rather strange....

Tim Berners-Lee promotes the idea of linked data everywhere. Wikipedia is on board with wikidata. The Nokia N9 features a triple store, the same one that is used in Gnome. KDE implements Nepomuk. The UK is linking all legislature with RDF.

Ubuntu could make a large contribution by making the data graph of the user and of the distribution visible and searchable. Do you see a future for the semantic web and will you participate in it?

https://git.reviewboard.kde.org/r/105319/

Looking like no.

There are two ways you can do it, one is via a javascript plasmoid type hack, and the other is by having a "current_wallpaper" file somewhere, setting it as your wallpaper, then overwriting the file to change it (KDE (should) pick up the change and set the wallpaper accordingly).

Of course, both of these options are absolutely ridiculous. It's understandable how something like this got missed in the switch from dcop to dbus, but it's annoying how long it has sat there (especially as the fix is really simple, and has already been written).

KDE 4.10 gets definitely back into the fun zone. Hunting down bugs is more fun when there are few. The news test environments like Jenkins seem to be helpful, as well as reviewboard and EBN/krazy. Does KDE 4.10 compile with LLVM compiler?

KDE 4.10 gets definitely back into the fun zone. Hunting down bugs is more fun when there are few. The news test environments like Jenkins seem to be helpful, as well as reviewboard and EBN/krazy. Does KDE 4.10 compile with LLVM compiler?

Still no focus adding an onscreen keyboard with word completion. This needs to be added. KDE is now in the mainstream. Windows 7 onscreen keyboard is great...Linux alternatives, suck. https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=265452

The way you work is likely what is broken if you're opening a second terminal. You should be using Guake or Yakuake if you're in the terminal for any significant amount of time.

I second this. Keep killing bugs. Keep reducing memory use and CPU overhead. Add features where they make KDE more useful to actual users.

To the point made by the author of the linked article; the default "Desktop" mode of KDE is fail. Everyone just switches to "Folder" view and moves on. Whatever the intent of "Desktop" mode is has been lost on KDE users, and that's not their fault.

DO NOT indulge iconoclasts. They can fork and show you how it's done if necessary, but it's up to you to keep them from ruining KDE.

KDE has managed to survive some close calls with these kinds of people. The last festering wounds still left in KDE must be akonadi and nepomuk. If all of the applications that rely on Akonadi vanished tomorrow I wouldn't notice and I doubt many others would either. My problem with Nepomuk begins right on the project home page; two paragraphs that convey absolutely nothing. Another 'framework' than could quietly disappear.

>

KDE is one of the only environments left that doesn't treat its users like morons. It isn't a perfect piece of software, but it's one of the only remaining things that isn't after the "dumb everything down!!" mantra. The others: Windows, Gnome, Unity, OSX, IOS, Android, all seem to be chasing the other roads.

For that reason alone, I've found it worth giving them money, which you can do here: http://www.kde.org/community/donations/ - I've given them about euros 100 over the last year.

FWIW two others that don't treat users like morons are Cinnamon and MATE. I prefer Cinnamon, but if you're running from Gnome either would probably be an easier adjustment than KDE. I just wanted to point out donation options for people who'd like to keep a Gnome 2-like UI.

On the Google+ thread there are some recommendations for Yakuake, which Linus might find useful since I'm sure he does quite a bit of work from the terminal.

Work still in progress: https://projects.kde.org/projects/extragear/base/plasma-mobile/activity

Take a look at https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=147094 for the use cases.

In case you can't be bothered -- my use case is having a shell script that opens up several windows (konsole and other tools) as my dev environment in a standard way. The konsoles are put into the appropriate directories, commands executed in certain windows (cscope, etc..). The konsole windows are not all of the same size. And mixing in the other tools precludes using the built in (but very restrictive) Konsole profile capabilities.

This functionality worked great in KDE3 (and all the X WMs I used for many years before that).

So corner case? No. Missing functionality? Yes.

I guess if all you do is browse the web and write emails that this wouldn't be a very important feature.

All these new features into KDE and the developers still won't (can't?) fix a 4+ year old bug that is about basic functionality -- that of honoring the -geometry command line option.

Please vote for this bug to be fixed!

https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=165355

+1 for Potato Guy: http://www.kde.org/applications/games/ktuberling/
My 3-year old loves it, learned mostly on his own how to use the touchpad.

Of course you can do that - it is not peoples business if they know the person or not. It means something to you. That matters.

http://www.kde.org/announcements/4.9/

And KDE has dedicated releases to deceased contributors as well. Why not? A small note in the release notes and perhaps in the About box would be the most tasteful option in my opinion, but it's your grandmother, so you decide.

Why? These phones will just come with the same binary blobs as all the other mobile OSes. It'll have zero effect on getting good gfx drivers for desktop Linux.

It's probably true that Jolla will compromise and do exactly what you say in order to deliver the very best phones with the newest hardware. However, there seem to be some in the Mer community who are very determined to get open devices. They even seem to be succeeding. Since the Android community is also realising that binary blobs are a nightmare there is getting to be real commercial and cost pressure to get rid of binary blobs.

This is not going to eliminate binary blobs but it's going to mean that people who produce them are going to be gradually forced out of major markets.

Why? These phones will just come with the same binary blobs as all the other mobile OSes. It'll have zero effect on getting good gfx drivers for desktop Linux.

It's probably true that Jolla will compromise and do exactly what you say in order to deliver the very best phones with the newest hardware. However, there seem to be some in the Mer community who are very determined to get open devices. They even seem to be succeeding. Since the Android community is also realising that binary blobs are a nightmare there is getting to be real commercial and cost pressure to get rid of binary blobs.

This is not going to eliminate binary blobs but it's going to mean that people who produce them are going to be gradually forced out of major markets.

It remembers the configuration until you restart.

FTFY

I don't get it, why they want notifications to be so huge, continually visible and include all kind information when not related to current task?

I so hoped that they would listen community what has come with better ideas like: Passive notification system with intuitive actions

I voted that (and so seems lots of people) but still need to wait that idea author or someone else would implement that.

Perhaps you'll have better luck if you state your feature request over here.

I'd recommend using an operating system that will build skills in an area where the skills will be reusable.

I'm a professional software developer. I started out with computers that are horrible brain-dead toys in comparison with modern computers, using horrible brain-dead languages (proprietary flavors of BASIC). Nonetheless, the general lessons and skills proved useful to me.

Microsoft moves everything around in Windows every few years. Are you going to claim that experience using Windows XP will help kids get around in Windows 8 (with the "no-longer-called-Metro" UI)? How much less useful could it be to use a non-Windows desktop?

And I specifically suggested Linux because it is so easy to get free stuff and install it, and since you are pulling from a managed repository you are less likely to get spyware and other malware. If I had a 7-year-old, I'd set him up with the Potato Guy software, which turns out not to only feature a potato guy but also trains, airplanes, and lots of cool stuff. I'm an adult and I thought Potato Guy was fun; I have to imagine a 7-year-old would go for it. And that's just one of the free things that he could find and install (on his own or with help).

7 years old might be a little bit young for a scripting language, but maybe not. I wasn't much older than that when I wrote my first program, which was something like:

10 PRINT "STEVE "
20 GOTO 10

For some people, a programming language is a fun toy, and it turns out I am one of those people. Maybe the 7-year-old in the question will be one also.

Anyway, when I'm browsing all the free stuff I can get from the Ubuntu repositories, I sometimes get a "kid in a candy store" feeling. My hope is that an actual kid might get that feeling also. And he won't need to spend his allowance.

steveha

Oh come on. Miguel has done more for OSS than most people here.

Yes, but what? No, really: what does he have contributed that was worth it? He worked a lot of time, that's for sure, but all his projects, or his views on the projects he contributed to, don't seem of much value. At the time Evolution was the great program that GNOME users praised the most, I remember perfectly that he told us in a conference in Barcelona that it "now that we completed it, it's clear that it was a mistake writing it in C because it took too much time". I honestly don't see much value in what he contributed. Specially if we consider the negative impact that his other "endeavours" have done (Mono, OOXML, and texts like the one that started this).

His pragmatic approach and understanding that computers should be for people and not just computer geeks is refreshing and was helpful in developing Linux into a desktop OS.

You say that in a way that implies that everybody else wanted Linux to be used only with a text console. Go read Matthias Ettrich's original announcement about KDE. He repeats GUI and END USER a bazillion times. Because he wanted applications and user interfaces for the average user... like everybody else!

I do trust that serious/critical bugs will get fixed almost immediately (sometimes even the same day a discovery is made) versus other vendors that can take months or years to fix (if they ever fix it at all, Microsoft is an example here, dunno about Apple.)

So what's the typical difference between time-of-developer-being-informed and time-of-fix for, say, Firefox or $PICK_YOUR_DESKTOP_ENVIRONMENTS_PDF_VIEWER or $PICK_YOUR_OTHER_FREE_SOFTWARE_BROWSER? This particular PDF vulnerability was reported to the vendor (the Xpdf developers, presumably) on 2007-10-17, and a KDE fix was announced on 2007-11-07, so that delta was about 3 weeks.

Freedom Respectfully disagrees

Because what you say is fucking bullshit. The KDE team only had the balls around 4.3 to state that it's not for the general public. With 4.0, they used the "for developers" excuse in some blogs, like Aaron Siego's, mailing lists as a response to complaints, but never in the most visible places.

The 4.0 release announcement mentions nowhere that it's for developers. It reads just like the announcement of any major version. The main page of kde.org featured a prominent link to downloading the latest 4.0. It was handled in exactly the same way as major version releases are handled. 4.1. did better, explicitly mentioning early adopters in the announcement. 4.2. said it's okay for the "majority of end users"

It was a complete fuck-up. The quality of KDE 4.0 was in no way RC-like, it was like an early beta. The team did not admit this in the high-profile pages and announcements, and they tried to pull some stupid shit by messing with widely adopted conventions of version numbering.

And their idiotic "KDE 4.0 is not KDE4". Of course it didn't help that several distributions essentially bought into this being a complete product, and offered KDE 4 as a normal (or default) end-user option with 4.2 or even 4.1.

Because what you say is fucking bullshit. The KDE team only had the balls around 4.3 to state that it's not for the general public. With 4.0, they used the "for developers" excuse in some blogs, like Aaron Siego's, mailing lists as a response to complaints, but never in the most visible places.

The 4.0 release announcement mentions nowhere that it's for developers. It reads just like the announcement of any major version. The main page of kde.org featured a prominent link to downloading the latest 4.0. It was handled in exactly the same way as major version releases are handled. 4.1. did better, explicitly mentioning early adopters in the announcement. 4.2. said it's okay for the "majority of end users"

It was a complete fuck-up. The quality of KDE 4.0 was in no way RC-like, it was like an early beta. The team did not admit this in the high-profile pages and announcements, and they tried to pull some stupid shit by messing with widely adopted conventions of version numbering.

And their idiotic "KDE 4.0 is not KDE4". Of course it didn't help that several distributions essentially bought into this being a complete product, and offered KDE 4 as a normal (or default) end-user option with 4.2 or even 4.1.

I agree that there is a plethora of Linux distros. But in this case, there being another application like Calligra Suite is simething similar to the days when in Windows, you had a choice of MS Office, WordPerfect Office and Lotus Ami Pro. Yeah, they were 3 different companies making competing products, but one would hardly say that 2 of them should never have existed, and that everyone should have worked @ Microsoft (even though MS Office ended up being the default)

Also, as others have pointed out, Calligra Office is made up of Qt parts that can be included seamlessly in other Qt applications - an advantage that one doesn't have w/ LO or OO. Besides, aside from the QA and QC that you mentioned, what Linux (and BSD) need are more apps. Not 100 word processors or 50 music players, but all sorts of applications - be it business software (incidentally, in the KDE suite, they have an financial manager application called Skrooge, which allows import/export to Quicken data formats. That's the great thing about KDE that no other DE has - an effort behind developing a range of apps. They need to do a greater variety of these apps, be it medical transcription software, small business manager (I'm not sure whether Skrooge is adequate) and other such things.

The other thing about KDE is that they optimize projects for every target platform. As has been noted before on /., they don't try to fit a phone interface on a desktop or a desktop interface on a tablet. They have 3 different interfaces for desktops, tablets and netbooks, and for those who claim that KDE has too many bells & whistles & is a resource glutton, they even have a lightweight DE called Razor-qt. Other DE projects, such as Gnome, would do well to emulate their example.

And no, I don't think it has anything to do w/ their licenses, since KDE and KDE apps are under LGPL (anybody know of any major differences b/w LGPL2 and LGPL3? I couldn't figure that out by reading them, but then again, IANAL) and Qt itself is dual-licensed (I wonder whether their new owners Digia will be using the QPL). KDE is a lot less fanatical about licenses than GNU (Incidentally, why don't they make Gnome3, which so many loathe, GPL3 as well?)

There is really a plethora/bonanza (depending on how you look @ it) of audio/video players. Dragon Player, Juk, Kaffeine (my favorite - I prefer a single window to play both video & audio), KMPlayer, KPlayer, and more. I do wish, however, that they all could handle iPods, iPhones, IPads, Androids and everything else seamlessly.

Have to disagree, the open source hardware is much more similar to theirs. I still fail to say how the other two can be seen as being related in any way, unless it's because they both have the word "open" in their titles.

Dolphin has its regressions. My current favorite is that when you open the built-in terminal-emulator on some recent distros it doesn't load your ~/.bashrc unless you do a "source ~/.bashrc"; that bug has existed in Ubuntu since 11.10 and KDE since 4.7 and hasn't been fixed yet, AFAIK.

And in konqueror the terminal has not followed the directory of the GUI file manager since version 3.5. Dolphin has a great file filter feature, but it doesn't seem to exist for konqueror. And you can't split dolphin windows up in to more than 2 horizontal panes, unlike konqueror, which you can subdivide in to as many vertical and horizontal panes as you need. And good luck adding a "Edit File Type" button to your dolphin toolbar (though you can do it with konqueror). If KDE could somehow combine the best elements of dolphin and konqueror they would have a better file manager than any other EXCEPT for konqueror in 3.5. Not only did konqueror used to show meta-data if you highlighted a file (even on a removeable drive that isn't indexed by neposuck), a feature that it seems they are just getting around to adding back in, but you could actually edit mp3 tags from the file manager by choosing Properties from the context menu.

KDE3 really was the greatest DE ever. I just wish there was an easy way to just add KDE3 konqueror with all its kioslaves from Trinity KDE without pulling in all the other buggy crap from that little project.

Dolphin has its regressions. My current favorite is that when you open the built-in terminal-emulator on some recent distros it doesn't load your ~/.bashrc unless you do a "source ~/.bashrc"; that bug has existed in Ubuntu since 11.10 and KDE since 4.7 and hasn't been fixed yet, AFAIK.

And in konqueror the terminal has not followed the directory of the GUI file manager since version 3.5. Dolphin has a great file filter feature, but it doesn't seem to exist for konqueror. And you can't split dolphin windows up in to more than 2 horizontal panes, unlike konqueror, which you can subdivide in to as many vertical and horizontal panes as you need. And good luck adding a "Edit File Type" button to your dolphin toolbar (though you can do it with konqueror). If KDE could somehow combine the best elements of dolphin and konqueror they would have a better file manager than any other EXCEPT for konqueror in 3.5. Not only did konqueror used to show meta-data if you highlighted a file (even on a removeable drive that isn't indexed by neposuck), a feature that it seems they are just getting around to adding back in, but you could actually edit mp3 tags from the file manager by choosing Properties from the context menu.

KDE3 really was the greatest DE ever. I just wish there was an easy way to just add KDE3 konqueror with all its kioslaves from Trinity KDE without pulling in all the other buggy crap from that little project.

The good news is you aren't alone being about the way that wallpaper changing didn't transfer from dcop to dbus. https://git.reviewboard.kde.org/r/105319/diff/3/ is a patch someone's created for adding this functionality back into dbus. Hopefully it will make it into an official version of KDE sometime before the heat death of the universe.

If you are a Mac user, as a drinker of the Kool-Aid you have no choice.

Really? I have no choice of staying with the previous release of the OS that I'm already happy with? I have no choice to install another OS? I have no choice in running KDE or GNOME?

Seems to me I have a lot of options. Probably more than you do.

Yaz

I still don't see any map libraries for non-web applications. A few months ago I developed a mobile in QT, and haven't found any library to easily show a map in on screen.

I haven't found one for QT for desktop either, or any of the other common widget libraries.

Have you checked KDE Marble? They advertise the possibility to use their widget for displaying maps in other applications, see the developer section on the Marble website.

There are also various libraries for use with OpenStreetMap in particular listed in the OpenStreetMap wiki's "Frameworks" page, though I cannot tell for sure which of these smaller projects are good or even still alive.

ESA Summer of Code in Space 2012 (SOCIS 2012) is a program run by the European Space Agency. It aims at offering student developers stipends to write code for various space-related open source software projects. Through SOCIS, accepted student applicants are paired with a mentor or mentors from the participating projects, thus gaining exposure to real-world software development scenarios. In turn, the participating projects are able to more easily identify and bring in new developers.

Let's see...

Are the students in space? No.

Is someone in space communicating with the students? No.

Is the coding going on in space? No.

Is this just trying to capitalize on Google Summer of Code and tack on "in space"? No....I mean, yes.

Is the code going to end up in space? Not really... -- most of the projects are viewers for data here on earth. I clicked on a bunch of them and I don't think any of them are trying to actually do dev work that will end up "In Space."

How about calling it "ESA Summer of Coding for Space Projects" or "ESA Summer of Code Destined for Space" (actually "Code for analyzing heavenly data" would be more accurate) or even go over the top and sound actually funny with "ESA Summer of Code: To Infinity and Beyond" ?

*shakes head*

ESA Summer of Code in Space 2012 (SOCIS 2012) is a program run by the European Space Agency. It aims at offering student developers stipends to write code for various space-related open source software projects. Through SOCIS, accepted student applicants are paired with a mentor or mentors from the participating projects, thus gaining exposure to real-world software development scenarios. In turn, the participating projects are able to more easily identify and bring in new developers.

Let's see...

Are the students in space? No.

Is someone in space communicating with the students? No.

Is the coding going on in space? No.

Is this just trying to capitalize on Google Summer of Code and tack on "in space"? No....I mean, yes.

Is the code going to end up in space? Not really... -- most of the projects are viewers for data here on earth. I clicked on a bunch of them and I don't think any of them are trying to actually do dev work that will end up "In Space."

How about calling it "ESA Summer of Coding for Space Projects" or "ESA Summer of Code Destined for Space" (actually "Code for analyzing heavenly data" would be more accurate) or even go over the top and sound actually funny with "ESA Summer of Code: To Infinity and Beyond" ?

*shakes head*

I seriously doubt the NSA has anything to do with this.

This is more than likely developers complaining about their source of revenue drying up as people can no longer be marketed as products to the advertisers, and Apple saying okay okay we'll pull it.

If the NSA wanted, they could just turn on your cellphone mic remotely and eavesdrop