KDE 2.2 Released

Well, we had covered it being tagged last week, and now, after a hardware problem with one of the main download servers, KDE is ready for download. Except that you'll probably want to go to the mirrors to actually get it. You can get more about it about it from Dre's dot.kde post, or you can read the KDE announcement - and have a good time!

Comments

Site-specific popup policy

[kdgarris]

Konqueror already has the ability to allow or not allow Javascript on a per-site basis,a nd also has an option to disable the Javascript window.open function globally, but what I'd really like to see is the ability to disable window.open on a site-specific basis as well.

Popup windows are annoying on some (okay, most) sites, but a few require them in order to make use of the site.

-Karl

Re:Site-specific popup policy

[Drone-X]

but what I'd really like to see is the ability to disable window.open on a site-specific basis as well.

Or even better, ignore window.open being used when loading or unloading a page but allow it when I click a link. Now that would effectively stop banners without having to keep going to the configuration dialog.

Improvements...

[chill]

Now that I've installed it and played for a hour...

1) Was KDESUPPORT not upgraded? It wasn't in the Mandrake binary section or the source section. They should either include it or put a link so people who AREN'T UPGRADING can download it (if it is still necessary).

2) After install ROOT logged in fine, but my users had to kill some .kde files in their home before it would use KDM instead of WDM. I like the Preferences Wizard.

3) First Crash! Something (KDE Daemon) poped up with a SEGFAULT and then disappeared. Nothing seemed to be affected.

4) It is faster and more responsive. I like the new eye candy. Automatic antialiasing (if you turn it on in the Wizard) and everything looks SMOOTH!

5) Better compatibility with some of the web sites I visit. No problems any more for my kids when playing Flash games on Disney.COM. Now if I could figure why half the sites (like Disney) find my Flash plugin and the other half (like Cartoon Network) DON'T, I'll be happy.

Over all, a nice desktop. A very good first impression.

Re:Improvements...

[bero-rh]

1) kdesupport is gone. It was a collection of libraries that are used by KDE, but not part of KDE.
On the Red Hat side, I've replaced it with the non-kde subdirectory on ftp.kde.org.

2) kdm configuration has changed quite a bit, but I don't see what could be causing this. Please send me your old kdm config files.

3) backtrace?

4) agreed ;)

5) The best way to fix this is to tell them to fix up their setup - we can't keep trying to figure out what proprietary browsers are doing forever. ;)
Most of the cases where Konqueror "misrenders" something can be traced down to the fact that it's actually more intelligent than it's proprietary counterparts. Take a look at a couple of changes in the KDE_2_2_BRANCH in CVS for examples.

Mirrrors list (someone had to do it, right?)

[pdiaz]

Europe:
ftp://gd.tuwien.ac.at/hci/kde
ftp://sunsite.cnlab-switch.ch/mirror/kde
ftp://sunsite.mff.cuni.cz/MIRRORS/ftp.kde.org/pu b/ kde/
ftp://ftp.rz.uni-wuerzburg.de/pub/unix/kde
ftp://sunsite.informatik.rwth-aachen.de/pub/Linu x/ kde
ftp://sunsite.auc.dk/pub/X/kde
ftp://ftp.dataplus.se/pub/linux/kde
ftp://ftp.dit.upm.es/linux/mirrors/ftp.kde.org/p ub /kde

Asia:
ftp://ftp.au.kde.org/pub/kde
ftp://casper.yz.yamagata-u.ac.jp/mirror/kde
ftp://linux.sarang.net/mirror/desktop/kde

Africa:
ftp://ftp.sun.ac.za/sites/ftp.kde.org/pub/kde
ftp://ftp.na.kde.org/pub/kde

America:
ftp://ftp.matrix.com.br/pub/kde
ftp://mirror.chpc.utah.edu/pub/kde
ftp://ftp.rutgers.edu/pub/kde

Now, could anybody tell me when the debian (potato) packages of the 2.2. will be available?

Mosfet's Liquid Style Engine

[kdgarris]

For a great visual effect, check out the Liquid style engine which was designed for this version of KDE. I'm running it now, and it looks beautiful:

http://www.mosfet.org/liquid.html

-Karl

Re:Work with the GNOME people (and vice versa)

[Drone-X]

Better interoperability between KDE and Gnome could only improve the situation for both desktops. Isn't The X Desktop Group supposed to be working on with KDE and Gnome on this?

There is activity going on on their mailing list. E.g. right now they're coining up a standard for storing image thumbnails so Nautilus, Konqueror and the GIMP will be able to share them.

Re:some notes

[rleyton]

A small gripe - but what I'd most like to see is some breakout of the individual apps into seperate packages. As my post above states, I love kmail - but I do wish I could keep up with stable(ish) development releases of that, without having to download the entire kdenetwork module.

Been running it for a week now, great release.

[cybrthng]

KDE 2.2 is a huge leap in usability for KDE. I personally can't wait for 2.2.1 as they may include a prelinker for compiling that optimizes the loadtimes on the applications. It shouldn't take the amount of time it currently takes to load, but it is usable.

New features I like:

Pulsating icon when program is loading

Interface cleanup - Finally looks good on hi-res LCD

Bug fixes - Browser is getting more usable day by day

Kdevelop - intriguing program. Hope it continues to mature at it's current pace. Very familiar coming from MS Vis Studio.

Koffice - Hope to see you at 1.1 soon! looking great

Schemes, Colors, Sounds and everything are much snappier

Control panel cleanups!

Setup wizards (makes it easy for windows converts

And lots of GUI toys & options - can change icon & font rendering, window popup speed and much more. eye candy for sure

Again, compile times suck. It takes a few hours to compile kde_base alone on a 1ghz P3 with a gig of memory.

Hopefully Gcc 3.01 /3.1, QT 3.0 and KDE 3.0 will be the killer desktop. 2.2 is a VAST improvement, but only that.. an improvement on existing interfaces and bugfixes.

I do like KDE's object model of sorts, widgets and kparts. Very will thought out implementations, i just hope they learn to quit breaking binary compatibility with each major release :)

Keep up the good work KDE team!

Re:Been running it for a week now, great release.

[10Ghz]

i just hope they learn to quit breaking binary compatibility with each major release :)

Doesn't GCC 3 break binary compatibility regardless? KDE decided to move to QT3 when they did so end-users would have easier time. If they did it otherwise, users would lose binary compatibility when changing to GCC 3, and then again when moving to KDE/QT 3. This way they can move to GCC/KDE/QT 3 in the same time, breaking binary compatibility only once (instead of twice)

There was a long discussion about this among KDE-developers

KDE and Ximian Gnome Can't Get Along?

[idonotexist]

Apt-getting kde, noticed kde removes gdm. I thought --- well, I'll install kde 2.2 and then reinstall gdm. After installing kde, apparently an install of gdm is not possible without removing kdm and kde.

While I enjoy using gnome more than kde, I like to occassionally use kde by selecting kde in gdm. However, with kde 2.2, this no longer seems possible. Does someone have any suggestions to allow gdm with kde 2.2?

Ok, user friendly with no installer?

[joshv]

Such a major project with an emphasis on usability and user friendliness and the package has no installer. Sure different distros can wrap it up in whatever package manager they use, but this is still a pain. Why can't they have something like mozilla's binary installer so end users (who may not know their distro) can download it and just go.

-josh

some notes

[HeUnique]

Hi people,

Just few words about this release (and future road-map)..

This is the final major version of KDE 2.2 - expect KDE 2.2.1 next month with all the last-minute bug fixes (without any new features), and translations update..

The next major version is going to be KDE 3.0 that will be out at around January 2002 featuring QT 3.0.x (with all the QT 3 features), and some changes in the backend, among other things. Most of KDE will be ported from 2.2 to 3.0. SO people who want to either developer QT or KDE applications might want to download QT 3 snapshot and play with it. It's got some bugs - but it's pretty stable.

People who would like to contribute to the KDE development are most welcome to join - you don't have to be a C++ programmer in order to contribute - Graphics artists, GUI guru's, HTML experts and others are more then welcome to join the big KDE famility of developers..

I thin it's also a good time for you - the reader/user to post what do you want to be changed in KDE? what do u hate about KDE? what do you like? What do you think should be improved? What do you think should be removed? most of the KDE developers read slashdot - so maybe your request will be fullfilled - you never know...

As for other platforms - expect KDE 2.2 to be available within days for Solaris (X86 & Sparc), HP/UX, SGI's Irix, IBM AIX, and others..

Enjoy the release people - lots of work has been done on this one - and you get as a bonus %30-%50 speed increase..

Re:some notes

[ozbird]

I thin it's also a good time for you - the reader/user to post what do you want to be changed in KDE? what do u hate about KDE? what do you like? What do you think should be improved? What do you think should be removed? most of the KDE developers read slashdot - so maybe your request will be fullfilled - you never know...

I would dearly love to roll out KDE as the Unix desktop at work - works great on Intel platforms (with > 64MB RAM to avoid "excessive" swapping to disk) but ran into some problems when trying to get it working under Solaris. I haven't tried 2.2 yet - hopefully this fixes some of these issues.

What I would like to see changed are its resource requirements. Slim it down! We're considering replacing our current X-terminals (some old Labtams, Tektronix and NCD boxes) with diskless PCs running Linux - disks are not an option. If KDE can run on a diskless machine with 128MB RAM (with an NFS-mounted /home directory) - this would be a real winner.

Increase scalability. Apart from RAM, KDE spawns a bunch of processes. On a workstation this isn't a problem, but scale it up to a several hundred users on a large box and things can get a bit ugly. (Haven't pushed it this far - extrapolating for a handful of trial users.) Do you really need so many kdeinit jobs?

I love KDE; my boss likes it. Now if I could just get it to work as well as the users expect things to work...

Re:some notes

[bero-rh]

Twist some arms and get C++ apps to load faster. Konqueror takes 18 seconds or more, and I'm pretty sure most of it is accounted for by resolving function addresses for every object with virtual functions.

Fixed. Get the glibc, binutils and prelink packages from the current Red Hat Linux beta, and run prelink --all.

Work with the GNOME people (and vice versa)

[Nailer]

My suggestion: work closer with GNOME (and vice versa. Its entirely possib;le to have 2 seperate projects without the current incompatibility and lack of standards between the two.

Users don't pick their apps based on toolkit. They pick them based on quality. For almost all users, that's going to be a mix of KDE and GNOME apps.

Create a standard for:

* Component models. Really. We know its hard to agree on, but it must be done.

* File types - > application mapping database (some people call these MIME types).

* Launcher menus. Application developers and end users are tired of having to add new apps Mozilla to two different sets of menus. Nobody says `I want a QT app...oh, and by the way, can it be a web browser'?. They say `I want a web browser'. They don't care about toolkits and neither should the desktop menus.

* Panel applets.

* Icons. GNOME uses 48 x 48. KDE uses various sizes (which is probably a better way to do it - 48 x 28 icons do notRe:some notes not look pretty). Have a kind word to the GNOME folk and suggest they use the same approach as KDE.

* Package deployment. I'd love to download KDE via Ximian's Red Carpet, or a KDE interface for the same.

Re:KHTML & IE compatibility. Bah!

[A coward on a mouse]

You're absolutely right. And if, by adhering to a standard not adhered to by the browser used by the rest of the world, 90% of pages look like shit in Linux, well, fsck 'em, we didn't want to look at those pages. And if nobody uses Linux because 90% of all web pages look like sh*t, well, fsck them too, we don't want those kind of people using Linux. I'm sure that everyone will feel so bad that the colicky Linux users aren't participating that the world will change.

Seriously though, your hardline standards-compliance stance is an idea whose time has either passed or whose time is not yet come. Some facts:

1. The defacto standard *is* IE. If you don't believe this, you are in denial.
2. The vast majority of web authors are not interested in finding a "long term solution". Not only is finding long term solutions difficult, but doing so harms the web author's job security and besides, most clients expect a complete re-work of their site every once in a while, to keep it fresh.
3. As a result of the above, most of the web is optimized for IE.
4. Approximately 0% of average users give a good goddamn whether the web page they are viewing is standards compliant.
5. Approximately 100% of average users don't care if the browser uses black magic to render the pages as long as the pages be readable.

If Linux wants to attract users, Linux will need a browser that can render the millions of pages already written for IE somewhere near as well as IE can render them. On the other hand, if Linux is hoping to go down in history as a highly standards-compliant system that was too good for this world, then your way is the right choice.