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KDE 3.0 Release Plan Updated
loopkin noted that the dot is running a bit about the KDE 3 Release. Here's
the release schedule,
and as you can see, the upcoming weeks will be interesting. I guess
I should figure out why my truetype fonts all broke on a recent
update to debian unstable so that
I can actually enjoy the new releases :)
With a small amount of playing around, KDE can be made to look suspiciously like a certain product made by a certain evil empire. Add to that the fact that it's free and you've got a great alternative to an operating system made by a company that charges you more than the price you paid for the OS for every patch. (win95,win98,winME,winXP - all bugfixes for win3.1)
The KDE release timing has absolutely nothing to do with Gnome. Take a look at the 3.0 release plan -- it's been like this since at least last September. In fact, I wish KDE had got 3.0 out sooner - it was originally supposed to just be a port of KDE 2.2 to Qt 3, but some new features have snuck in. These range from the productive (much faster html processing, better dcop architecture), to the useful (much improved javascript support), to the useful and pretty (better file selection dialog), to the pretty and useless (alpha blending / transparent menus), to the totally useless (animated mimetype icons).
-- Help Digitise the Public Domain at DP.
as for the Klipper, the problem doesn't rely only on KDE.. actually, there as been a bug sneaking in QT, more or less fixed in Klipper, and then fixed in QT, so problems occured in Klipper... well... as u can see, it's a complex mess.
what is as stake is copy-pasting URLs. If you deactivate "Actions" in Klipper, it works much better. Or using a good couple of QT/KDE. The work done by RedHat in their last updates is good, and everything works fine for me (seems Bero finally went back to qt-2.3.1).
FYI LICQ has the same problems as Klipper.
On area I think KDE really excels is with kioslaves, which allow *any* KDE application access 'files' by a wide variety of means.i ma p4*nntp*sftp*tar
*audiocd*samba*filesystem*ftp*gopher*gzip*http*
To list but afew in the CVS.
Plus people's homebrewed slaves:
*shell commands*Nomad Jukebox*Digital camera*deleted files*over ssh
for example.
This can give rise to many useful applicatons. All KDE graphics programs instantly able to grab pictures off digital camera. Ripping CD by just dragging icons in the file browser. Seemless network browsing, just like Network Neighbourhood in Windows (ok, takes abit of setting up to work properly).
Does gnome do anything similar. I know there is gnome-vfs, although haven't looked into what it does in too much detail.
One thing that I think really needs to improve with KDE is the speed. It is still much slower than Winblows if you ask me. But it's free, and very customizable, so I don't mind the trade-off.
(I sure hope they've fixed the fonts system now. Whenever I try to change the fonts to anything other than default, all my fonts turn into A.D. Mono.) CanadaDave
i for my own think it was a wrong way, if both groups would work on ONE desktop then today we could be far ahead as we are today.
you guys make it totally different that way for people no one can really decide what to use. should i go to kde, should i go to gnome. then 2 days later the people switch back to this and then to that again.
because of these 2 splitting groups i think the DESKTOP for linux is almost dead. sure you can argue the way like 'if there was no kde, then development for gnome wouldnt go that fast. same for kde' but i think in reality everyone wants a nice desktop even those puritans who still think their BB owns all and in reality they still have a kde or gnome installation running. i think because of this ONE project would be better..
I am a pretty unsophisticated desktop user. My entire reason to be is to program db apps, and the like.
User interfaces were never a strong point of mine.
In a nutshell, what are anti-aliased fonts? How do I use the million and one fonts that are installed in X, when all I can see are a few in the various apps that use them?
Is there a top down reference for neophytes on fonts. I need a general discussion followed up by X implimentation issues.
I am sure I would be more impressed with who supports anti-aliased fonts, if I'd just understand what they were, and how to show them on my system.
I know it seems like a stupid problem, but I am sure I can't be the only one.
One thing that has allways irritated me is the inability of most systems to make use of some inherent methods to buid an efficient GUI. I am mostly thinking of Fitt's law here. Do any of you know if there is work being done on this area in KDE now?
Otherwise it's an exellent product, that's getting better. Thanks!
With the recent/upcoming releases of:
XFree 4.2.0
KDE 3.0
Gnome 2.0
glibc 2.2.5 (claimed compatible with GCC3)
GCC 3.0.x
2.4.x Kernel du jour
I sense upcoming releases of next-rev-level distros.
Now if it can only all be made to play nice together.
Learning HOW to think is more important than learning WHAT to think.
For Audio and Video:
There is not yet a standard for Audio/Video.
There are some codecs available, some players, but they all follow their own rules.
Along with Gnome2 there will be a multimedia framework Gstreamer.
It is not really aimed at Gnome, it is meant to be able to build apps on it, so Kde could use it too.
There is discussion planned at Kde about how to deal with Multimedia. Somehow I hope they choose to build on Gstreamer, and support the building of one standard.
Well, don't worry about that. We can get you back before you leave. (Dr. Who)
But they really need to get over the Not-Invented-Here syndrome in so many places. One thing that stands out to me is that noatun is a crappy media player compared to other applications out there. Only video files I managed to get to play with it were MPG video files, and even then it crashed 8 times out of 10 (And this was KDE 2.2.2). In it they use mpeglib, which now works, but I wonder why they didn't use smpeg, which was more mature, from the start, was it simply because the lib was written by the author of kmpg, an older KDE media player? I wonder why they didn't have avifile support, that would be an easy way to play a *lot* more files. Compare noatun to, say, mplayer, which plays avi/asf, mpg, viv, rm (few), and mov, not to mention others. Within a couple of days using smpeg and avifile you can write a better media player than noatun...
.ogg files.. In modern systems there is no reason to use wav anymore, and .ogg gives the KDE team a nice, perfectly legal way of reducing filesize (unlike mp3, which probably would be better for this except for legal reasons, since ogg takes more CPU time to decode still)
On a positive note, it is good to see the widespread planned use of
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
How about:
While chasing Microsoft, let's not forget to stop and smell the alternative roses...
All about me