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: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.

SuSE RPM's

[pwagland]

SuSE has already had these RPMs out for a couple of days. This has KDE 2.2.2 for SuSE the various SuSE versions on the various platforms.

Please note that these are not officially

They also have a similar service for Gnome.

As always, use the mirrors Luke...

Re:Objprelink?

[bero-rh]

prelink works better (if your ld.so and binutils support it), and fixes the whole problem rather than just adding a workaround for the specific case of KDE.

Re:Question

[grytpype]

You have the right idea for sure... just run WindowMaker, and if you want to run an occasional KDE or Gnome app, just run it. Forget about that "desktop" idiom B.S., that's just an over-the-hill paradigm that isn't worth the extra overhead to run.

I mean, I just got a 1.2 GHz Athlon box, and I have no intention of giving up my nice, barebones WM desktop. It's perfect.

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.

No speed difference

[srichman]

I just installed 2.2.2, and there is no real noticeable speed difference in my opinion. Icons 5% faster? Maybe, but if KDE 2.2.1 was too slow to be usable on your system, KDE 2.2.2 will be as well.

Re:This is excellent news

[be-fan]

I doubt KDE 2.2.2 will be *that* much better than 2.2.1. Certainly not enough to bridge the gap between KDE and Win2K in terms of performance. Linux, however, does have faster things to offer than KDE. Right now, I'm running IceWM with mostly GTK+ (and the occasional GNOME) applications. GTK+/GNOME seems to be a whole lot faster (on my machine anyway, 300MHz 256MB GeForce2 MX) and more responsive (especially in load time and resizing) than Qt/KDE-2. For example, starting a new Galeon window takes much less time than starting a new Konqueror window. Also, I can resize Sylpheed and AbiWord and Gnumeric without excessive rubber-banding, while KMail, KWord, and KSpread are significantly "springier." None of it is quite Win2K yet, but its almost there. Maybe it's even better on a faster machine.

If you chose to go the Linux/GNOME route, here are several hints:

1) Stay away from GNOME like the plague. Apps that use gnome-libs (like Galeon or Eye of GNOME) are for the most part fine, but actually running gnome-session (with the toolbar and control panel and whatnot) and Sawfish slows everything down enormously. Instead, use a fast window manager (IceWM, Blackbox, Window Maker, or even XFce) and GNOME apps.

2) Choose the GTK+ apps over the gtk+gnome apps. GTK+ apps tend to be more mature and snappier than their gnome counterparts. Specifically, Sylpheed is (IMO) a better mail client than Balsa, and GQView works better than Eye of GNOME. Also, ROX-Filer is the fastest Linux GUI application I have ever seen and you should try it out instead of going with the usual gmc.

3) You really have to tweek your system. Linux doesn't come nearly as well optimized as Windows out of box. Mainly, it boils down to making fonts look nice, making sure that X runs at a priority of -10, and setting up the Linux kernel to use preemption and low-latency patches. I've decided to write a HOWTO for this, it should be up here in a few days.

4) Use a good distro. I like Mandrake 8.x because it lets you install the XFS filesystem from the beginning, its i586 optimized, and its good about keeping packages up to date. Also, its urpmi tool mitigates many (but not all!) of the advantages Debian/APT has over the RPM-based distros. No matter what the distro, go minimalist. Install only the software you need and don't choose the bloated default installs. Also make sure you trim your startup so stuff that you don't need (like sendmail) doesn't get run when you start the computer.