KDE 2.2.2

loopkin writes: "Seems that the last KDE 2 is out. KDE 2.2.2 is faster and more stable and secure than 2.2.1, as stated in the Changelog. You will appreciate the trick that makes the icons load 5% faster in particular. Announcement is here. Please use mirrors for download, but original FTP is here. Note as well that maybe for the first time, there are _official_ RH packages for a _stable_ release (7.2)."

Comments

Re:Question

[mirko]

Though I am running Linux on a PentiumIII laptop, I also avoid KDE for the following reasons:

• Some cryptic error messages boxes which remind me of Windows'GPF...
  
• My laptop boot Linux in 30 seconds, then it needs 45 seconds to load KDE2.
  

I am now using WindowMaker too and seeing it up and running in 3 seconds (including the numerous applets I use) is really damn satisfying.

There are many good ideas behind KDE, for example it has been the best one when it came to deal accurately with furious trackpad moves while scratching over MP*s.

But I reckon it doesn't fit on a laptop which is supposed to be switched on and off quite often, hence losing some precious productive time waiting for a GUI to be up and ready.

I know I may not have understodd with question but just consider that KDE may also be problematic on "recent" hardware.

Re:A feature to make many switch.

[brunes69]

The crossov rplugin has nothing t all to do with KDe... it's a Netscape/Mozilla plugin. It does work in Konqueror, but the KDe team had nothing to do with it.

You're thinking about reaktivate, which is the KPart in KDE-CVS which does essentially the same as the crossove plugin (runs windows AcitveX controls ), but with one big difference - its free, as in beer and speech. It's nowhere near ready for primetime yet though (I don't even think its planned for release with KDE 3.

Re:Objprelink?

[Anonymous Coward]

You do mean of course:

"So it trades stability for speed."

Don't you? Otherwise you are saying that objprelink makes KDE slower but more stable.

Are 5% speedup noticable ?

[willamowius]

My general rule of thumb ist that a speedup below 30% for GUI applications isn't noticed by the user.

Did anyone try KDE 2.2.2, yet ?

Re:Good grief!

[Anonymous Coward]

I haven't found a description of the trick to appreciate yet - I was expecting some cunning algorithm or something that would be interesting to read about...

Re:Objprelink?

[swright]

Hi bero, I'm having a play with prelink, but having a few troubles - is there a web site or FAQ for it anywhere, I'm sure others will be having similar troubles

(it cant prelink some stuff.../usr/sbin/prelink: /lib/i686/libc.so.6: Could not parse `lookup 0x40000000 0x00007114 -> 0x40000000 0x00132b14 /0 _nl_current_LC_CTYPE')

Thanks

Fantastic!

[deepstephen]

kio-smb: don't leave smbclients using 100% cpu hanging around.

This has been really annoying me. I'm the sole Linux user in an office full of Windows 2000 boxes, and it's been pretty tough to evangelise Linux's interoperability with Windows while I have to keep killing zombie smbclient processes any time I use SMB.

I haven't had a chance to download it yet (deadline tomorrow, y'see) but this, along with the other speedups and so on, could finally mean it's feasible to start winning people over to KDE.

Good work KDE fellas. You are all very lovely indeed.

Reiserfs

[BlueUnderwear]

so that all the applications don't perform the same searches of (possibly very long and crowded on the system of someone who likes eye-candy) icon directories

... which would be a non-issue anyways if you use reiserfs...

My observations of KDE + drive performance.

[GISboy]

On a p3 550 system I built at work from the ground up I was suprised that I did not get written up for computer abuse because I had it booting, via LILO, Slackware 7.X, Redhat 7.X, Win98se, Win2K and even BeOs.

I was curious about the speed of a default Slack and Redhat install and while not scientific, it was very interesting, indeed.

If there was ever a reason not to use static libs (a la RH) this would be one point to hammer home.

I had KDE 2.X installed seperatly on both boxes (yes, I know it is "wasteful" of space, humor me) and proceeded to get some benchmark utilities off of freshmeat.net.
You see, what I had noticed was KDE 2.X was "snappy" on Slack and slightly "dogged" on Redhat... so it set me to wondering if it was just the RPM install vs compile on Slack.

Turned out that was part of the problem/question.
Memory performance was about +/- 10% with in each other, but hard drive performace was the "killer" of KDE's performance on RH.

This is what I found using hdparm (plus switches that escape me at this time) turned on/off between SL/RH:
MB/s on the same ATA66 drive and even another ATA66 drive just to be sure.
No hdparm init: RH=3.6Mbs, slack=8.6MB/s
hdparm init: RH=8.4MB/s, slack=8.9MB/s.

Hummm...I says. With hdparm init'ed on RH, KDE was quite snappy, despite the rare stumble and thrash of the drive.

Oh, and a word of warning aboud using hdparm (also in the readme) on older drives: not recommended unless it can do > PIO mode 2, IIRC.

So, yes, HD speed does affect KDE more than you would think. Something to be aware of.

Re:Question

[Adam Wiggins]

If you think that, then you haven't really used KDE. As a person who didn't even start using X until a few years ago (console mode gave me everything I wanted), I know exactly where you are coming from.

Let me tell you a few of the features in KDE that make me vastly more productive, and which I feel crippled without.

• Alt-F2 to run programs.
• Alt-F2, then type in a URL (eg, slashdot.org) to launch Konquerer, instead of the slow process of clicking on the icon, then clicking in the URL bar, then typing the URL and pressing enter.
• Alt-F2, then type "gg:linux" to do a Google search, "dict:pedantic" to look something up in the dictionary, or "fm:tclink" to look up an entry on Freshmeat.
• Klipper, for cut-n-paste history. I mean really, how does anyone live without this?
• KPrint/KUPS, which makes printer setup a SNAP - something UNIX has needed for a very long time. I just _love_ the ability to print from any application directly to a PDF.
• The ability to drag URLs to my desktop, for "quick access" bookmarks.
• A dock panel that I can configure by dragging icons around instead of editing configuration files or using some sort of external GUI config tool.
• Easy to configure keyboard shortcuts for everything. X Windows (much like the Macintosh) has always been over-reliant on the mouse. KDE can be driven 100% from the keyboard, like Windows - but even better, because you can make hotkeys for actions like Windows minimize. (I use Alt-F1.)
• File browser - not something I really use, but many people love it. I like to use it for browsing pictures on my digital camera because of the image preview.
• KMix, which makes it really easy to adjust sound volume at any time.
• Konsole, which has the ability to open multiple terminals inside one window. Switch between them with Alt-LeftArrow and Alt-RightArrow.
• The KDE control panel. Just look at it, it's great. What other control panel lets you configure your kernel compilation parameters?
• Apps, apps, apps! KOffice is very cool all around (though KPresenter is the only thing that is yet equivilent in features to other office suites). Konquerer for web browsing, KYahoo for chatting, Kreate for burning CDs, KMail for reading mail, Node for reading news, KScheduler for tracking appointments and sending automated reminders, Personal Time Tracker for keeping track of those consulting hours, the list goes on...apps are what the desktop is all about, and KDE has them in spades.

I spent many years using WMs such as CDE, Afterstep (1.0 is the only good version, IMO), WindowMaker, BlackBox, and so forth. I have also used GNOME quite a bit, as well as MacOS, various flavors of Windows, and so on. None of them made me want to give up my console (though in some cases I had to because I was doing web design or something). But with KDE, I don't miss the console at all.

Re:Icons load 5% faster

[dfaure]

Can't get excited ? Don't, that wasn't the purpose. I agree that the announcement here was a bit exxagerating about that change. But have a look at the icon loading code, and try to make it faster than that, then we'll talk.

How come everyone seems to think that developers make thing slow _on purpose_ ? When we find a way to make things faster, we do, even if the result is only a 5% difference. Small steps, but they accumulate. Would you prefer that we don't fix the things we find ?

David,
actually happy about his icon loading fix....
and disappointed everytime he reads Slashdot, by this habit of criticizing really _everything_.

PS: note that the announcement could have said "icon-loading speedup" and nothing else. You could at least appreciate that someone took the time to measure the actual speedup even if the result isn't huge.