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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.
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 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.
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.
--
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.
--
"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.
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.