KDE 2.0 Beta 3 Is Out

As the title says - KDE 2.0 beta 3 is out. Announcement is here. The KDE development team worked really hard to make KDE 2.0 beta 3 stable - and people who have tested the snapshots can testify about it. Grab it, test it, torch it, and please - submit bug reports. Great work, KDE team!

Comments

Re:GNU bias?

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually the bias is far less. A couple of years ago it was far, far, far worse.

It definitely still exists though. Not only within the readership of /. but unfortunately within many of the article posters themselves. (Witness the recent poll of login managers omitting kdm.....)

It is a shame really, IMO KDE deserves every bit as much coverage as Gnome. It really is a fantastic effort and even many of the features of Gnome were "borrowed" from KDE(don't get me wrong, I'd like to see more of this cooperation). For instance, I read recently that Gnomes new HTML engine is actually based on Konquerors!

Also to those who complain of KDE looking like Windows, but who who evangelise Gnome and in particular GOffice and Evolution, I would ask them to look to Miguel de Icaza, who is involved in leading several of these projects and his stated(yes he has been quoted saying this, but I haven't time to find links to quotes not) that he wants to make his programmes work just like those from Microsoft. (BTW for even more proof that KDE does not have to look like Windows anymore(I admit to a vague resemblance in 1.X(though I though 1.X was more OS/2ish) check out the new widget and window manager styles, these aren't just pixmaps but coded styles that change their appearance in accordance with your colour settings!

A lot of the criticism of KDE is unfair and misinformed, but thankfully it is gradually getting better, hopefully it will improve even more.

I think I'll stop here, before I go even more off topic.

Re:Ugg, massive uncalled for waste of screen space

[RPoet]

I've been using KDE2 beta for several days now, and I'm *never* going back. It is a fact that KDE2 uses less screen real-estate than both KDE1 and GNOME. First of all, the widgets are more compact, and don't ask for more space than they require to do their things. Secondly, the panel can be auto-hidden. I've configured it so that it goes away as soon as I move the mouse away from it. Third, any status line and tool bar can be switched off.

Ever tried the new Konsole? Remove all borders, title bar of the WM, the menu bar and the tool bar, and turn on "Full screen". Voila, you're using *every pixel* of the screen, with no crap to distract you.

I've already found several bugs which I have reported, but no real show-stoppers except for some rare crashes of konqueror. This thing is going to do wonders for Linux on the desktop.

(Posted from Konqueror, btw ;)

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Bug report

[viktor]

Grab it, test it, torch it, and please - submit bug reports.

There seems to be a bug in your software that somehow automatically crossposts any and all update announcements to the slashdot forum.

This bug cannot lie in any of the source code files, but must somehow be a metabug (perhaps a virus?) that has infected the source code system as such. I would do a virus check of all files, beginning with the CHANGES file, since updates of that file is what seems to trigger the errorenous behaviour.

If no bug can be found, I would guess that the source code is simply feeling lonely and in need of attention, and that this is the cause of it's many slashdot announcements. Perhaps a nanny could be appointed to talk to it, feed it and take care of it?

KDE is getting there

[91degrees]

It emulates the look and feel of Windows quite nicely. Its got the user friendliness of Windows. It's surpassed the speed of Windows. All it needs now is to crash a bit more so that it can get to the stability of Windows.

good, I'm happy... oh, so happy...

[chowda]

The last version I tryed... my wheel mouse worked, my browser didn't crash, my sound sounded better, my monitor looked sharper, my slashdot posts were funnier, my GF looked thinner, my lawn was greener and I got a raise... I CAN'T WAIT to see what this version does for me!!

Whence "beta"

[FascDot Killed My Pr]

Does anyone know where we got the term "beta" for "nearly (but still un-) finished software"? It just seems to me that "Beta 3" is a little bit of an odd phrase. Why not "alpha", "beta", "gamma", "delta"?
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Re:Whence "beta"

[Migrant Programmer]

From the Jargon File, we have:

beta /bay't*/, /be't*/ or (Commonwealth) /bee't*/ n.

1. Mostly working, but still under test; usu. used with `in': `in beta'. In the Real World , systems (hardware or software) software often go through two stages of release testing: Alpha (in-house) and Beta (out-house?). Beta releases are generally made to a group of lucky (or unlucky) trusted customers. 2. Anything that is new and experimental. "His girlfriend is in beta" means that he is still testing for compatibility and reserving judgment. 3. Flaky; dubious; suspect (since beta software is notoriously buggy).

Historical note: More formally, to beta-test is to test a pre-release (potentially unreliable) version of a piece of software by making it available to selected (or self-selected) customers and users. This term derives from early 1960s terminology for product cycle checkpoints, first used at IBM but later standard throughout the industry. `Alpha Test' was the unit, module, or component test phase; `Beta Test' was initial system test. These themselves came from earlier A- and B-tests for hardware. The A-test was a feasibility and manufacturability evaluation done before any commitment to design and development. The B-test was a demonstration that the engineering model functioned as specified. The C-test (corresponding to today's beta) was the B-test performed on early samples of the production design, and the D test was the C test repeated after the model had been in production a while.

GNU bias?

[Taurine]

I am beginning to 'smell the coffee' as far as moderation on /. is going. If this comment were posted to a discussion about GNOME, it would be equally funny. But that's not the moderation it would get. It would be flamebait. I guarentee it. Is it because GNOME fans moderate it this way here to further their anti-KDE agenda, or is it that KDE people read KDE stories and can laugh at themselves?

Glad to see that people still dare to make jokes around here anyway (nothing beats a bit of geek-humour ;-), and Go KDE! I will begin downloading this as soon as the smoke stops coming out of my nearest mirror! Now where did I put my last KDE2 build script...

On time, Under budget

[Metrol]

When was the last time you could say that about a software project, much less one of this scale? Based on the last update on the KDE site, we should be along the following time line...

3 weeks until KDE 2.0 RC 1 (14 August)
6 weeks until KDE 2.0 Final (4 September)

With so many projects out there with as of yet undetermined schedules, it sure is nice to see folks like over at KDE show how it's done. Set a realistic schedule with achievable goals and stick to it.

Mozilla, are you listening?

Building on Solaris

[Otter]

Read this thread. An engineer at Sun has a page with the tweaks he needed to get KDE to work on Solaris. Note that the beta is from a week ago, so you may need to get new snapshots or CVS updates to get this to work. (Or you may not -- I have no idea.)

Re:Keyboard shortcuts

[Rob Kaper]

I've recently started using KDE and the one thing that bugs me is the lack of keyboard shortcuts for many things.

K -> Control Center -> Look & Feel -> Key Bindings

Not everything can be bound, but play around with KDE2 for a while and you'll notice that _a_lot_ is configurable.

Re:Recent Screenshots?

[Rob Kaper]

On the KDE site, there is only 1 year old screenshots. Is there anything newer out there?

These are five minutes old... ;-)

• kde-20000731-1.jpg
• kde-20000731-2.jpg

Showing Konqueror, KMail, the Alt-F2 minicli, Konsole and KControl.

Re:Keyboard shortcuts

[Wonko42]

You don't own a mouse? Wow. We've really gotta do something about that. You should go down to your local "Olde Computre Shoppe" and buy at least a cheapo two-button mouse. You can get 'em for around $5.

Then again, if you're too lazy to do that (or if you can't afford it) send me an email and I'll be more than happy to go out, buy you a cheapo mouse (do you want parallel or PS/2?) and mail it to you for free. My treat. Just let me know. I can't stand seeing people go mouseless...

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