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KDE 2.0 Final Release Candidate Is Out
As the title says - The final Release Candidate (RC2) of KDE 2.0 is out. Announcement is here, Red Hat RPM's available here (for Red Hat 6.2 and 7.0). SuSE and other distributions RPM's available through the mirrors. Solaris 8 packages will be out soon. Please test this release and if you'll find any showstopper bug, then please report it.
Just a note - if you've got a stock RH7 box that you're planning on installing this on, you'll want to make a trip over to http://www.rpmfind.net and pick up the RH7 rpms for zip and unzip (just do a search and look for the green highlight) as the KDE rpms complained about not having them (why they didn't install by default is beyond me - I'm just passing the info on.)
Score 2 Interesting?
What rot. "Mac OS X will conquer all, you will kneel, it was designed by EXPERTS with LETTERS after their name who KNOW this stuff"...
Go buy a Mac, troll boy. Be sure to get the matching curtains too.
I've finally had it: until slashdot gets article moderation, I am not coming back.
The -only- package I've seen this with is the gimp, which was only half-working until I installed gnome-apt; with all those gnome parts installed, suddenly the gimp worked great. D'oh.
However, I was -very- suprised at this behaviour; normally, Debian is very good with this. Well. Caveat there: There are bugs in 'non-free' that are deadly and have lurked for years. Debian focus is on liberated software almost to the exclusion of contrib on non-free.
I -will- admit, as happy a Debian user as I am, that Debian is not 'scaling' well; as it grows in size, it is becoming a bit tangled, some packages are not well debugged (eyeballs are spread thinner, I guess, with so many packages) and the isolation of non-free and contrib does create some technical problems in favor of political correctness. All that said though... even if I have some theoretical complaints about Debian's scaling, a) nobody else is doing as well, and b) this is being addressed with the no-files metapackages that simplify installation of certain complex systems.
Oh, and a final point about Debian-thinking... if you're a Debian user, you're part -of- Debian. It's not 'Debian' as a whole that messed up package X, it's the package maintainer for package X and the users that didn't report the bug. Unlike Redhat, Debian isn't a company, it's just an offshoot of the liberated software process.
--Parity
--Parity
'Card carrying' member of the EFF.
I think you're slightly out of touch with what drives the Gnome project and what the foundation is based on. I suggest you go to The Gnome Foundation site and browse. In particular, read the mission and charter. The Gnome Foundation is not driven by "big-money influences" in the sense you are implying. I'll also mention that Gnome also relies heavily on its volunteers, of which I am one. There are those who are paid for hacking on Gnome (what on earth is wrong with that? sounds like a dream job to me...do something you love and get paid for it!). Most of those hackers started out as unpaid volunteers working because they love what they do. Now they have the opportunity to devote much more time to the project because their income comes from doing what they love to do--promote, hack, design in the Gnome world. As for the corporate backing which you so heavily criticize, I fail to see the reason it is a bad thing. Again I suggest you read the charter so you fully understand the role that companies such as Sun, HP, IBM and others will play. The Gnome Foundation Elections are coming up, so register now if you've contributed in any way to Gnome (advocacy, documentation, code, debugging, artwork, etc.) Cheerio!
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Celebrate the finer things in life
I think I should post a link to an informative thread I found on dot.kde.org. It's about possible causes for relativly slow performance of kde and how to avoid them.
Don't know how the binaries of this KDE2-RC packed though, but anyway, people thinking of KDE2 as slow should at least check if their install is built with QT-exceptions. The post of fura in the above thread explains how to do that with your installation.
You can compile in GIF support for your own use, no problemo. But FreeBSD didn't want to take the risk of shipping GIF enabled code. The way I look at it, I personally am not dealing with any Unisys owned information, Trolltech is. I'm certain that they already have an arrangement with Unisys, so I have no worries.
The fix is easy. For Qt, just set the unisys license environment variable (look in the Makefile to see what it is) and "make install". This is what I did and it works fine.
Also, I know that Mandrake ships QT with GIF support, does this mean that they paid Unisys, or that they are breaking the law?
I don't believe that they paid Unisys, but they are not breaking the law. Unisys is just too jealous in its IP, and often oversteps its bounds. If Unisys came after Mandrake they would be making the PR disaster of the decade, and they would lose the case.
but before I put it up on my website I wanted to make sure that I (as a Canadian citizen) am not going to get into trouble.
I wouldn't. I think as a Canadian citizen you are in the clear, but IANAL. It's easy enough to post the "fixed" port, and let the users automatically build it themselves.
A Government Is a Body of People, Usually Notably Ungoverned
It should have had feature freeze and most of the bad bugs fixed.
It's been in feature freeze for quite a while now. No new features. During the freeze all commits (besides art) were to be bug fixes. RC1 had no known serious bugs. But some were found so now there is a second RC. If serious bugs are again found, expect a third.
For every bug fixed, expect three new ones to be introduced. So only the showstoppers get fixed in the release candidates. The less serious bugs and annoyances have to wait for 2.0.1
Can somone more knowledgable than I (can't be hard) post a summary of "why you should upgrade?"
I can speak about upgrading from 1.1.2, but not GNOME, since I haven't used that for quite a while. konqueror is a replacement for kfm. It is now a full fledged web browser. It ROX. Component based so you can trim off the stuff you don't want to run. A lot of the stuff have been put on a high-protein, low-fat diet. DCOP/kparts. Themable widgets, including GTK themes. KOffice. The first 100% free (as in RMS) and open (as in ESR) integrated office suite. Most of the core applications, such as kmail, have been revamped for increased functionality and usability.
It's like KDE-1 was a caterpillar, and for the last year or so was stuck in a chrysalis. Now it's hatching into what it was meant to be. "Look at me! I'm a butterfly!"
And finally, but not least, Shisen-Go now has gravity mode! Woohoo!
A Government Is a Body of People, Usually Notably Ungoverned
I respect the KDE developers for going with what they feel is the best solution using the best technology available (in their opinion). Rather than politicise the programming process, they built a desktop environment for themselves.
Don't forget that a project (Harmony) existed until recently to create a LGPL clone of Qt. By the time Qt was QPL'ed (an Open Source certified license), the writing was on the wall that TrollTech was going to open Qt, when Qt was GPL'ed, there was no reason to pursue the project any longer.
I think KDE is a great example of the fact that Open Source and Free Software can work with traditional business, and wind up with a "Free as in Speech" solution. In the end, both motivation and results in the KDE and TrollTech groups have consistantly worked towards greater Freedom in the use of their work. This is the kind of case study that validates that the Free Software Model can exist and succeed in the real world, interacting with traditional corporate models.
Disclaim: I currently use the BlackBox WM with KDE2 apps.
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Evan
"$30 for the One True Ring. $10 each additional ring!" -- JRR "Bob" Tolkien
Actually, Linux-Mandrake 7.2 will ship with a pre-Final KDE2, because they need to get their boxes out for the Christmas sales. Each box will include a voucher to have a Mandrake 7.2.1 CD sent to you for free, and this CD is the one that will feature KDE2 Final.
So for anyone looking forward to Mandrake 7.2 -- don't. Wait for 7.2.1, which of course not only will have KDE2-Final, but also the fixes for the usual "gotcha's" that always follow a point release.
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"Oppression and harassment is a small price to pay to live in the land of the free." -- Montgomery Burns.
.. that is SHOULD be stable enough to be used.
But this decision is taken throughout the next weeks. There needs to be _real_ showstoppers for it not to be released now.
You can put it this way; neither a beta or this is released, but while the beta is expected to have plenty of bugs, this one is not.
It will become stable October 23.
KDE2 gets built with them off - however, Qt seems to enable them by default, even though it doesn't use them.
The info about how bug of improvement is very real - Qt shed about 3.2 megs on my system, and kde2 as a whole over 15 megs (apparently the exception table is per-process and is not shared memory)
Here is a patch against qt2.2.1 to disable the exception code on linux/g++
diff -ru qt2.2-2.2.1.orig/configs/linux-g++-shared qt2.2-2.2.1/configs/linux-g++-shared
--- qt2.2-2.2.1.orig/configs/linux-g++-shared Tue Oct 10 21:28:49 2000
+++ qt2.2-2.2.1/configs/linux-g++-shared Tue Oct 10 21:33:10 2000
@@ -76,7 +76,7 @@
SYSCONF_LINK_LIB_STATIC = rm -f $(DESTDIR)$(SYSCONF_LINK_TARGET_STATIC) ; \
$(SYSCONF_AR) $(DESTDIR)$(SYSCONF_LINK_TARGET_STATIC) $(OBJECTS) $(OBJMOC)
# Compiling application source
-SYSCONF_CXXFLAGS = -pipe -O2
+SYSCONF_CXXFLAGS = -pipe -O2 -fno-exceptions
SYSCONF_CFLAGS = -pipe -O2
# Default link type (static linking is still be used where required)
SYSCONF_LINK_LIB = $(SYSCONF_LINK_LIB_SHARED)
diff -ru qt2.2-2.2.1.orig/configs/linux-g++-shared-debug qt2.2-2.2.1/configs/linux-g++-shared-debug
--- qt2.2-2.2.1.orig/configs/linux-g++-shared-debug Wed Oct 4 04:55:22 2000+++ qt2.2-2.2.1/configs/linux-g++-shared-debug Tue Oct 10 21:34:49 2000
@@ -76,7 +76,7 @@
SYSCONF_LINK_LIB_STATIC = rm -f $(DESTDIR)$(SYSCONF_LINK_TARGET_STATIC) ; \
$(SYSCONF_AR) $(DESTDIR)$(SYSCONF_LINK_TARGET_STATIC) $(OBJECTS) $(OBJMOC)
# Compiling application source
-SYSCONF_CXXFLAGS = -pipe -g
+SYSCONF_CXXFLAGS = -pipe -g -fno-exceptions
SYSCONF_CFLAGS = -pipe -g
# Default link type (static linking is still be used where required)
SYSCONF_LINK_LIB = $(SYSCONF_LINK_LIB_SHARED)
diff -ru qt2.2-2.2.1.orig/configs/linux-g++-static qt2.2-2.2.1/configs/linux-g++-static
--- qt2.2-2.2.1.orig/configs/linux-g++-static Tue Oct 10 21:28:49 2000
+++ qt2.2-2.2.1/configs/linux-g++-static Tue Oct 10 21:34:06 2000
@@ -76,7 +76,7 @@
SYSCONF_LINK_LIB_STATIC = rm -f $(DESTDIR)$(SYSCONF_LINK_TARGET_STATIC) ; \
$(SYSCONF_AR) $(DESTDIR)$(SYSCONF_LINK_TARGET_STATIC) $(OBJECTS) $(OBJMOC)
# Compiling application source
-SYSCONF_CXXFLAGS = -pipe -O2
+SYSCONF_CXXFLAGS = -pipe -O2 -fno-exceptions
SYSCONF_CFLAGS = -pipe -O2
SYSCONF_LINK_LIB = $(SYSCONF_LINK_LIB_STATIC)
SYSCONF_LINK_TARGET = $(SYSCONF_LINK_TARGET_STATIC)
diff -ru qt2.2-2.2.1.orig/configs/linux-g++-static-debug qt2.2-2.2.1/configs/linux-g++-static-debug
--- qt2.2-2.2.1.orig/configs/linux-g++-static-debug Wed Oct 4 04:55:21 2000+++ qt2.2-2.2.1/configs/linux-g++-static-debug Tue Oct 10 21:34:32 2000
@@ -76,7 +76,7 @@
SYSCONF_LINK_LIB_STATIC = rm -f $(DESTDIR)$(SYSCONF_LINK_TARGET_STATIC)
; \
$(SYSCONF_AR) $(DESTDIR)$(SYSCONF_LINK_TARGET_STATIC) $(OBJECTS) $(OBJMOC)
# Compiling application source
-SYSCONF_CXXFLAGS = -pipe -g
+SYSCONF_CXXFLAGS = -pipe -g -fno-exceptions
SYSCONF_CFLAGS = -pipe -g
SYSCONF_LINK_LIB = $(SYSCONF_LINK_LIB_STATIC)
SYSCONF_LINK_TARGET = $(SYSCONF_LINK_TARGET_STATIC)
The Matrix is going down for reboot now! Stopping reality: OK. The system is halted.
Yes, they're going straight to /usr - that's because I don't see a need to keep KDE 1.x around now that 2.0 is stable.
It's an update, and should be handled as such. (I'll be putting together a kde1-compat package to keep old KDE 1.x apps running in a while, though updating to KDE 2.x versions is of course preferred).
This message is provided under the terms outlined at http://www.bero.org/terms.html
Upgrading depends on what you've used before.
If you've used a previous 2.0 beta, you want to update because of tons of bugfixes.
If you've used 1.x, check the KDE-2 launchpad.
As for switching from Gnome to KDE 2.x or vice versa, my recommendation has always been to try out both and check which you like better.
Since you can run KDE applications inside gnome and vice versa, you may like Konqueror and a couple of other new tools even if you decide not to switch.
This message is provided under the terms outlined at http://www.bero.org/terms.html
KDE2 fixes the issue you're complaining about - The file manager (konqueror) and the desktop icons (kdesktop) are separate.
This message is provided under the terms outlined at http://www.bero.org/terms.html
Well, the original post is a troll, but somehow worth repsonding to anyway...
As a longtime NeXT user who has also been using the various alphas and betas of OS X over the past two years, I tend to respectfully disagree with you. My current desktop system is KDE 2 in (as of today) its latest-but-one incarnation, and in terms of useability for my particular line of work (computer graphics R & D), it is better suited than the current OS X beta.
Why? As other posters have mentioned before, OS X has a certain "macified kludge" feeling about it that was totally absent from NeXTStep. It is a serious compromise, away from a power user desktop like NeXT towards an OS that everyone and his inbred dog can use. And, contrary to the more open and multi-use philosophy behind e.g. KDE or GNOME, OS X is pretty static insofar as it enforces pretty similar handling habits on everyone who uses it through comparatively rather sparse UI config options. Which in turn means that power users will find it somewhat lacking to their taste in one or the other way.
Several UI aspects of the OS X interface (such as the giant photorealistic icons and the current version of the dock) have yet to be proven as effective improvements over previous standards, and the Aqua interface certainly will be refined for quite some time yet (which makes it a bit premature to speak of a new standard).
After all, OS X introduces very few new UI ideas, but rather presents old ones in an arguably unprecedented style and beauty. But just having the coolest 2D rendering engine out there (which, apart from a bastardised UNIX filesystem, is the only huge innovation in OS X) does not automagically make it a winning proposition by itself.
As for X windows, well, everyone knows that it could suck planet sized marbles through bent straws. But at least it works, and it is free. Having something like the Quartz rendering engine on Linux instead of X would certainly be an improvement, but don't count on anyone writing one soon.
Just my two cents... (and kudos to the KDE team!)
Alexander Wilkie
Solaris only supports GNOME now. Didn't you hear the GNOME Foundation? PS Troll -1
(Please browse at -1 to read this comment.)
The CVS will be tagged for release next monday. This means that if you want your patches/bug reports to have any effect, they should be posted as soon as possibly, preferably today. Please report critical issues only.
What ever happened to releasing software when it was ready. Is Debian the only distribution that does this?
This improved performance on my machine by at least 30%. Credits go to fura (that's the nick used on dot.kde.org, anyway) for this information.
Recommended, of course, is to download the latest Mandrake release candidate from www.linux-mandrake.com; then report bugs to their bugzilla.
A quick query on that site shows that there aren't too many release-critical bugs, but if you find any, PLEASE REPORT THEM.
Free Anne Tomlinson!!