KDE 3.0 is Out

Emilio Hansen noted that KDE 3.0 is on their site. There is no official announcement yet, but this looks like the real deal. No debian packages yet, but you can snag RPMs from various distros or src for the do it yourself. Updated by HeUnique:Here is the announcement, enjoy.

Comments

Watch out...

[IIOIOOIOO]

It's a trap! Some guy on the KDE team has his desktop calendar all screwed up... he think's that TODAY is April 1!

Re:Watch out...

[knulleke]

It's a trap! Some guy on the KDE team has his desktop calendar all screwed up... he think's that TODAY is April 1!

I wish I had a beowulf cluster of april 1st jokes.

KDE 3.0 Scoop

[fruey]

What I want to know is who is spending time lurking on ftp sites to get scoops like this?

Re:KDE 3.0 Scoop

[SubtleNuance]

...how about the 'auto-sync' script's log for a mirror host-operator?

Re:KDE 3.0 Scoop

[Rushuru]

Just check the KDE cvs

KDE 3.0 was tagged a couple of days ago..and they didn't want to announce it on April 1st :)

Re:KDE 3.0 Scoop

[abdulla]

why lurk when you can script :)

Re:KDE 3.0 Scoop

[swright]

It was tagged more than a couple of days ago - I've been running 3_0_BRANCH since 28th March - RELEASE has been around since 26th or so.

My take on it: Much faster, much more options (very useful ones too), interesting and annoying changes to clipboard behaviour, KMail much improved, Liquid for KDE3 looks sooo sweet its unbelievable, basically just loads more of what we love!

Give them a chance...

[rleyton]

Good grief.

Give the poor sods a chance to get the distribution ready, please. Perhaps they didn't WANT people downloading it just yet... Hence no announcement, just yet??

Bandwidth and hosting costs money, as poor old distributed.net is finding out. A few mirrors being updated, and then linking to the appropriate announcement would be a bit more considerate than putting up the first submission on the 3.0 release.

Re:Give them a chance...

[Peyna]

It's not really slashdotted, just all the anon slots on their ftp server are full, so they really won't be using any more bandwidth than they wanted to.

Re:Give them a chance...

[SuiteSisterMary]

Yeah, but accepting a TCP/IP connect, and sending a "we're full" message back, for thousands of Slashdotters, some of whom will have their software set to retry every second, will bring the box down.

Re:Give them a chance...

[flipflapflopflup]

Surely if they didn't want people to get it yet, it wouldn't be visible on the ftp site yet! There are simple ways to allow the mirrors to get hold of copies before joe public, if they wanted to.

How about giving the developers a bit of credit - I'm sute they know exactly what they are doing. I wouldn't be surprised if they leaked this "scoop" themeselves ;o)

Re:Give them a chance...

[BorgDrone]

Also, you have to wonder how half the news on the front page has been reported weeks before by other news organizations, yet stories like this that would probably be best reported late are always reported early.

Does the name "murphy" ring a bell ?

Re:Give them a chance...

[laserjet]

Not if the box is running Windows 95, thought. The box should not even be phased by this.

moderators: this a called sarchasm.

Re:Give them a chance...

[Darren Winsper]

Actually, Konqueror 3's rendering engine is a damn site better than Opera's. While Konqueror 2.x's was nothing to write home about, I'm very impressed with how far they've come since then.

Re:Give them a chance...

[Rob Kaper]

The KDE project is famous for its funded and organised trolling of weblogs and message board associated with Linux and Free software/open source.

So there is money in open source! :-)

Re:Give them a chance...

[dimator]

The guy at church who rings their bell is named Murphy... is that what you meant?

Long awaited by KDE'ers!

[NewbieSpaz]

As a user of KDE (and GNOME and WMaker), I am very happy to see this release. The RC's looked great so this must be even better. Now it's GNOME's turn... Keep the competition going, it makes everything better! Congrats to the KDE Team.

Re:Long awaited by KDE'ers!

[epukinsk]

To quote GNOME developer Havoc Pennington,

"The clipboard has been well-specified for 10 years or more, you just need to file bugs on any specific apps that are doing the wrong thing. http://www.freedesktop.org/standards/clipboards.tx t">

Great idea!

[codexus]

Slashdot their main FTP before the mirrors are ready. That's a really bright idea!

Re:Great idea!

[kableh]

Yea, really.

Eds, you really shouldnt be posting a link to their FTP site. It encourages too many people to follow that link. Didnt we learn this lesson with kernel.org? Post a link to their mirror page.

How Incredibly Discourteous

[gnugeekus]

The KDE developers have not announced the release of KDE 3.0 yet because the mirrors have not gotten KDE 3.0 yet. Since they have not announced the release, do you think there might be a *reason* they have not announced it?

The editors at slashdot *know* the effect it has on a web site or ftp site when a story runs about that site. They *know* that the kde ftp site will get hammered because of this story. The *know* that the KDE developers obviously aren't ready yet BECAUSE THEY HAVE NOT ANNOUNCED THE RELEASE.

Yet, you announce the story anyway, before the actual release. Now, the ftp site will be slammed *before* the mirrors get a copy, which insures that things will be a huge mess for quiet some time.

This is the most incredibly discourteous and unprofessional behavior I've seen on a web site. Show some freaking respect towards the open source developers who create code (and give you something to write about on this site) and DO NOT ANNOUNCE A RELEASE BEFORE THE RELEASE.

Your lack of caring about the impact of your actions on this site really disgusts me.

Re:How Incredibly Discourteous

[gnugeekus]

What good would that do? Someone would find the files on a mirror, and instantly we'd get a slashdot story about the kde3 release with a link to the ftp site, and it would get slammed again.

I think it is much easier and simpler for slashdot to not run false stories. In fact, the kde developers have NOT announced the release of KDE 3.0, and therefore, KDE 3.0 *has* *not* *been* *released*.

Re:How Incredibly Discourteous

[Accipiter]

They've done this before, and had the nerve to try to pass the blame on to the developers.

Looks like this stupidity affects more than one of the editors.

Re:How Incredibly Discourteous

[DarkDust]

Well, I'm writing this with Konqueror/KDE 3.0.0 which I downloaded about six hours before this story got posted here. Ya know, there are some people who just can't wait ;-)

And there won't be a mess, things *might* just slow down a bit. After all, the KDE FTP server is not a homebrewn dial-up server or shit.

I show some freaking respect towards the developers. I like their stuff that much that I couldn't wait a minute to get my hands on their newest creations.

The only thing I dislike about this story getting posted is that there is no link to the mirrors page, which was were I looked first of course. Or a link to download.kde.org which shows there already ARE some FTP mirror sites having the 3.0 release.

You should've pointed towards theses URLs instead of flaming around, IMHO...

Re:How Incredibly Discourteous

[FortKnox]

Isn't it funny. All the editors think this is just a personal site of theirs, and they don't need to have a perfessional manner.

The fact is, they are a professional website, they get paid for running it, and they should act like professionals.

Don't even get me started on how rude Michael really is, either...

Re:How Incredibly Discourteous

[mark_lybarger]

oh please! kde could have gotten the mirrors to sync yesterday morning before it was available for the general public. the release has been ready for a few days now.

i've been trying to get 3.0 for a few days, (wanted to try rc3, but it wasn't available anymore), and saw it on kde's servers last night, but only the rpms, no source. i saw source this morning, but had to be persistant to get the downloads (350 of 350 anonymous users). i checked the mirrors this morning and they were a day behind. i would like to see someone from kde come out and explain why there isn't some corrdination with the main mirrors (download.us.kde.org, etc) to get them the files before the public can get them.

Re:How Incredibly Discourteous

[pbryan]

With due respect to your position, the KDE group should know by now that if news like this is leaked and there's a credible place to verify it (e.g. an FTP site), it will be reported on by sites such as Slashdot.

The onus is on anyone who wants to keep a secret, and steps should be taken to keep it that way until they're ready for its announcement, and IMHO this includes the KDE development team.

A possible solution? Put the distribution on a mirrors-only site, let it propogate to the mirrors, put it up on your FTP site last.

In my opinion, what the KDE group faces is the ante for participating in the information freedom, everyone collaborates, communicates and participates age.

Re:How Incredibly Discourteous

[Rob Kaper]

The fact is, they are a professional website, they get paid for running it, and they should act like professionals.

If you don't like the lack of professionalism at Slashdot, don't go here. Don't trust it when it says "abc 1.2.3 released", ignore those stories and ignore those links. Ignore Slashdot alltogether and start/join a more professional site. Only take release announcements seriously from Freshmeat or something like that.

This should indeed be fixed on the developers side. A simple solution would be a private FTP server from where all servers including ftp.kde.org sync. Shouldn't be too hard to set up, so I'll propose that on the mailinglists tonight. As KDE developer I might not be pleased with Slashdotted servers, but the closer to the source this can be fixed, the better.

If Rob hadn't posted it, some other asshole would've placed a link on his site. ;-)

Re:How Incredibly Discourteous

[KidSock]

They *know* that the kde ftp site will get hammered because of this story. The[y] *know* that the KDE developers obviously aren't ready yet BECAUSE THEY HAVE NOT ANNOUNCED THE RELEASE.

I never understood this. Why aren't these releases mirrored in hidden directories. Then each mirror operator just does mv secret/kde-3.0.0 ../kde-3.0.0 after they have it all (or it's built into the script).

Re:How Incredibly Discourteous

[dimator]

But seriously though, why don't the KDE developers fill up their mirrors before they even put it up on their own ftp? Someone explain that to me. You don't have to have your mirrors use public ftp to get stuff; private ftp, scp, newsgroups. Hell, just email.

We can all blame slashdot, but it could have been anybody that broke the news that caused the hammering of the main site. The fact is, it is preventable. If I'm the KDE developers/maintainers, I'm not going to assume everyone in the world just a nice guy, and won't hammer me or break the news until my mirrors are ready. I'm going to assume everyone's an asshole, and take steps before they have a chance to be assholes.

Valgrind and memory leaks

[johnjones]

I am still finding memory leaks via valgrind

oh well it is a .0000000

hopefully GNOME people will profile their code like KDE did for memory leaks

because it really stablized when it was percived that memory was something to worry about

regards

john jones

Re:Valgrind and memory leaks

[mmusn]

I haven't had memory leaks in C++ in years--they are straightforward to avoid with consistent use of constructors/destructors. Where do those leaks occur in KDE code? Don't the KDE style guidelines make memory leaks impossible? If not, why not?

Re:Valgrind and memory leaks

[Anonymous Coward]

Umm; try writing some real world application with more than 5 lines of code in it, and then come back here telling about impossible memory leaks.

Re:Valgrind and memory leaks

[Wavicle]

Wow! Not that I don't believe you but my impression of C++ was that memory issues were worse because the compiler makes it easy to get a bitwise copy of an object and the first destructor that runs could leave dangling pointers in every other copy. Thus requiring consistent use of copy constructors, if only to print a message saying "you didn't really mean to copy me, did you?".

You've always had to pair allocate/free constructs in C and C++. The syntax being different shouldn't make them less likely to occur. Whether I allocate a bit map using new char[10000] or malloc(10000), doesn't make much difference.

Re:Valgrind and memory leaks

[Anonymous Coward]

• I haven't had memory leaks in C++ in years--they are straightforward to avoid with consistent use of constructors/destructors

Translation: I haven't seen any memory leaks in my C++ code in years. Plus, I'm the world's greatest lover. Uuuh yeah, baby.

Re:Valgrind and memory leaks

[swillden]

You've always had to pair allocate/free constructs in C and C++

I haven't done that for years. I just use constructs like the following:

{
auto_ptr<Foo> f = new Foo();
// ....
}

Or, in some rare cases where the lifetime of the object is less obvious:

{
smart_ptr<Foo> f = new Foo();
// ...
}

Add the careful use of auto-destroying and smart pointers to careful implementation of constructors and destructors and memory leaks are a complete non-issue for my C++ code. Using auto and smart pointers inside classes wastes a small amount of memory per instance, but, in many cases, makes default copy ctors and destructors do the Right Thing, reducing programmer error. Same thing works for other resources as well, like file handles, drawing contexts, etc.

Thus requiring consistent use of copy constructors, if only to print a message saying "you didn't really mean to copy me, did you?".

There's a better way. Make a class "Uncopyable", like so:

class Uncopyable
{
public:
Uncopyable() {}
private:
Uncopyable(const Uncopyable&);
void operator=(const Uncopyable&);
};

And provide *no* implementation for the copy ctor and assignment operator. Then, when you have a class that shouldn't be copied, just mix in Uncopyable like so:

#include "uncopyable.h"
class MyClass : Uncopyable
{
//...
};

There you are! Most accidental copies will be flagged by the compiler, because the copy methods of Uncopyable are private. Copies made within, for example, MyClass won't be caught by the compiler, but since there are no implementations of the Uncopyable methods, the linker will barf. This method has zero overhead; the only Uncopyable method that will ever be "called" is the default ctor, and it's empty and inlined. Uncopyable has no virtual functions, so no vtable. Any code that happens to generate calls to the copy ctor or the assignment operator is a bug that will be diagnosed by the linker.

Re:Valgrind and memory leaks

[frank_adrian314159]

try writing some real world application with more than 5 lines of code in it [without] memory leaks.

It's quite doable if you use a decent language to start with. I'd recommend Smalltalk, Lisp, ML, etc. All of these (especially ML and Lisp) can reach "good enough" speeds to compete with C/C++ in the case of most GUI app and, where they don't, a few simple C stubs (which are much easier to check for memory leaks) are usually sufficient to remedy the issue.

In short, don't excuse the difficulty of writing software on the basis of YOUR choice of poor technology.

Re:Valgrind and memory leaks

[mmusn]

Not that I don't believe you but my impression of C++ was that memory issues were worse because the compiler makes it easy to get a bitwise copy of an object and the first destructor that runs could leave dangling pointers in every other copy.

C++ doesn't make bitwise copies of objects. The default copy constructors in C++ does a per-member assignment; that's important. And in order to avoid bad pointers, you disable the default copy constructors. That's easy to do and hard to overlook (in fact, you can grep for its occurrence).

You've always had to pair allocate/free constructs in C and C++. The syntax being different shouldn't make them less likely to occur.

It's not a question of syntax. With almost no exceptions, the only places new/delete should occur in well-written C++ code are in constructors and destructors. That, and a few other rules, ensure that you can't get memory leaks while still being able to express whatever you could in C. If KDE code calls new or delete anywhere else, it's unnecessarily inviting memory leaks.

Re:Valgrind and memory leaks

[mmusn]

Will a few 100kloc do?

C++ is very different from C in this regard because it has constructors, destructors, access control, user-defined assignment, and exceptions. If you use them right, it's easy to avoid memory leaks. If you write C code in C++ (i.e., invoke new/delete all over the place), of course you'll get memory leaks.

Re:Valgrind and memory leaks

[mmusn]

Oh, I have seen plenty of memory leaks in my C++ programs--from other people's libraries, often C libraries. That's why I have to look. But I haven't found any in my code.

Re:Valgrind and memory leaks

[e-Motion]

Both of the concepts you mentioned are implemented in boost's library (http://www.boost.org). Actually, std::auto_ptr is implemented in the C++ standard library, but boost has many different pointer types, including reference-counted pointers, weak-referenced pointers, and plain-jane scoped pointers. The library is robust and easy to use, and I highly recommend it.

Re:Valgrind and memory leaks

[spitzak]

There's a better way. Make a class "Uncopyable", like so:

Unfortunately MicroSoft has f**ked us there, if you are interested in making portable shared libraries. It will fail to build a shared library if the implementation of the function is not there. The best this does then is that non-member functions cannot do a copy, but unfortunately member or friend functions still can. Of course you can make the function abort but that is enourmously less useful than detecting things at compile time.

I ifdef these things out on Unix but this useful thing is lost on Windows users.

KDE3 -pre is in Red Hat's Skipjack

[MSG]

I tried the CVS release of KDE 3 included in Red Hat's Skipjack beta. Like a man admiring his neighbor's well groomed lawn, I've got to say that it looks *beautiful*. There's some good stuff in there.

One of my favorite features is that the panel can optionally display the "description" of each item, rather than the "name" of the application. That's far more useful for the novice user. I suggested that the GNOME panel do that about.... 2 years ago (??) on one of the gnome mailing lists, but never got around to submitting a patch myself.

Re:KDE3 -pre is in Red Hat's Skipjack

[epukinsk]

I believe the Gnome 2.0 menu proposal implements something like this. For example,

Web Browser (Mozilla) [Browse the World Wide Web or local HTML documents]

Email (Evolution) [Read and send email, manage tasks, contacts, and calendars]

CD Player [Play music CDs]

Where the [bracketed] text is the tooltip.

-Erik

Re:KDE3 -pre is in Red Hat's Skipjack

[MSG]

Tooltips are very nearly junk. They're only really useful when used to describe icons that don't have labels; that's only acceptable if the labels would have taken up too much space to make the UI usable.

Displaying the description in the app menu should make it immediately obvious what the menu items *do*, and damn what they *are*. Why should anyone care about the name of the application they're using? Isn't the function of the software what's important?

Re:KDE3 -pre is in Red Hat's Skipjack

[epukinsk]

Right, which is what they are planning to do:

Web Browser (Mozilla)

is the menu entry, and

Browse the web, blah blah blah

is the tooltip. Like I said. Like you said. Program description in the menu (with app name in parenthesis for backwards compatibility) and detailed description in the tooltip.

-Erik

Good reporting!

[Gannoc]

Emilio Hansen noted that KDE 3.0 is on their FTP site. There is no official announcement yet,

Thanks, ./ and Emilio. Maybe they wanted it to go out to mirrors, etc first before their sites were steamrolled.

New KDE version?

[Nighttime]

Then it must be time for the following posts:
- how KDE kicks GNOME's butt
- GNOME is now a dead-end for the Linux desktop
- why GNOME 2.0 will be better
- KDE looks too much like Windows
- KDE loading times
- KDE/GNOME are bloated, use iceWM/XFCE/Blackbox/whatever
- who needs a GUI? the command line is where it's at
- people making lists of expected posts :)

Any more?

Re:New KDE version?

[volsung]

"Go buy Windows XP, you cheap bastard, and get some real work done."

Re:New KDE version?

[mark_lybarger]

30 posts about how /. shouldn't have this until all the mirrors are updated.

10 posts telling the above to get a clue

and people adding to the post list

Ethics in Journalism?

[Trilaka]

Is it just me, or does anyone else find this unethical behavior? Granted, the release of KDE 3.0 is News for Nerds, and Stuff that Matters, but is it so important to get the scoop on something like this that you are unwilling to allow time for propogation? For a popular software release like this, I believe the editors should consider it their ethical duty to wait for the official announcement, and post a list (or at least a link to a list) of mirror sites.

The way it stands now, the mirrors may be having difficulty getting a copy of the distribution, as a hoard of eager slashdotters floods the primary ftp site.

Just to recap, I have no problems with someone submitting this story as soon as they see they possibly can, but I believe the editors have a responsibility to be respectful in their decision when to post the story.

Re:Ethics in Journalism?

[stienman]

Slashdot is a journal, and as such wants 'the scoop'. When they get 'the scoop' they post it. While it may not be nice, there are dozens of things the ftp manager can do to limit their problems. First (and most important) is to NOT RELEASE IT if it's not released. They can do this by disabling anonymous access to that directory, while enabling mirrors to log in and get access (either using IP, or ssh ftp with usernames and passwords, etc). This is something they will have to implement for following releases. It's plain common sense to give official mirrors front row seating and advance notice. Independantly run mirrors can wait like everyone else.

No one would be complaining if some other tidbit of software was available but not announced at some other FTP site.

The sooner people start treating slashdot like the Enquirer, the fewer people will complian. This site is not much more than mental candy for nerds, and provides very little real value to its users. But it is fun, interesting, and often entertaining.

-Adam

Re:Ethics in Journalism?

[glwtta]

What you are saying would make a lot of sense, if you didn't call it "ethics in journalism" and go on about "duties" and such. It's a software release, there's no fucking ethics involved; and /. sure as hell doesn't have anything to do with "journalism"

KDE 3.11

[9633]

When it reaches that version then we will have reached nirvana.

Re:KDE 3.11

[bbh]

And when we reach 3.14... does that mean we have come full circle?

bbh

Re:KDE 3.11

[HiThere]

Wait for the good one: 3.14159...

Re:Looks like KDE won the desktop war.

[CactusHack]

The beauty of Linux is that we will always have a choice. KDE 3.0 will help me get my wife to use Linux, but I prefer something more hardcore, like scwm .

Its' great

[mike_mcc13]

I'm using the skipjack beta and the cvs version was so good i killed gnome

apt-get[able] for Conectiva Linux

[rsd]

KDE 3 is already apt-get_able for Conectiva Linux for a few days

Just make sure you have the snapshot in your /etc/apt/sources.list the lines:

rpm ftp://ftp.nl.linux.org/pub conectiva/snapshot/conectiva main extra orphan gnome experimental games kde
rpm-src ftp://ftp.nl.linux.org/pub conectiva/snapshot/conectiva main extra orphan gnome experimental games kde

then:

apt-get update
apt-get install task-kde
apt-get clean

and go for it.

of course if you are not using the snapshot version yet, you might want to:
apt-get dist-upgrade

Maybe it's not Discourtious..

[Havokmon]

Let the techies get to the stuff before it's announced, so the general public isn't locked out of the servers...

Re:Maybe it's not Discourtious..

[fobbman]

It's only the techies who would be downloading 3.0 instead of simply finding it on the CD of the distribution that they just purchased from CompUSA.

Maybe this is in some way /. trying to get a First Post.

Re:GNOME & KDE

[Rosonowski]

My sister (15 year old mall rat) now REFUSES to use windows, since I showed her linux. She used to complain that the box I had set up for her kept crashing, so I set up a dual-boot for her, to see if she could learn. Obviously, I wouldn't want her to become frustrated with something just because she couldn't understand it, so I set up something closest to what she understood.

She understands how KDE works, because, for the most part, it's fairly intuitive. She did use linux. Not only is this a (small) proof of viability for linux in a consumer market, but it does show where even a "bloated" window manager can have it's place.

Tell me, would you rather have a bloated window manager and the linux kernel, or windows for someone you loved?

What's the correct way to upgrade my KDE?

[antdude]

I have Red Hat Linux 7.1 and 7.2 boxes. What's the correct way to upgrade from KDE v2.2.1 and v2.2.2? Should I uninstall KDE packages and then install or use rpm -Uvh?

Thank you in advance. :)

Re:What's the correct way to upgrade my KDE?

[ZaMoose]

It's generally a better practice to remove all your previous KDE packages. I've never gotten a -Uvh to work. Crashes, freezes, all sorts of wackiness usually result.

I have been using the KDE3-pre that's included in RH's Skipjack and I do have to say that it appears to be well worth the upgrade. It seems slower to start initially, but once it's running, it seems just fine.

And the xrender menu transparencies finally work (semi)correctly (i.e. less/no annoying menu flicker as it grabs the image behind itself).

Re:What's the correct way to upgrade my KDE?

[ZaMoose]

KDE crashes/freezes/etc. Not Linux itself.

I can usually just ssh back into my box and kill any offending processes.

'Cept on my dual Athlon MP box at work. Then again, that seems to be a chipset issue...

Re:What's the correct way to upgrade my KDE?

[Anonymous Coward]

Ooh! Ooh! I know this one:

# lynx -source http://go-gnome.com/ | sh

Sometimes it's just too easy....

(PS, this is a *joke* people. If you don't have a sense of humor, you don't need to be moderating....)

Re:What's the correct way to upgrade my KDE?

[Asic Eng]

Is it necessary/a good thing to remove the old packages at all? I remember that for the switch to KDE2, there was a seperate /opt/kde2 directory.

I kept both /opt/kde and /opt/kde2, so that I could continue to use a few old kde1 apps.

I'm not sure whether this applies to the problems discussed, I'm compiling from source, so the RPM install may have different constraints which I'm not aware of. Also I should add another disclaimer, that I haven't compiled any version of kde3 yet.

Re:What's the correct way to upgrade my KDE?

[HanzoSan]

Its not Xrender

its fake

Re:What's the correct way to upgrade my KDE?

[ZaMoose]

'Cept RedHat dumps all KDE files into /usr/local. No such /opt/kde (a SuSE-ism, apparently), unless you did a --relocate at install.

So, yes, I'd have a working GNOME install before I uninstalled KDE completely, but other than that, a clean uninstall-install seems to be the only way I've had any success.

Re:What's the correct way to upgrade my KDE?

[nitehorse]

Actually... /opt/kde is a throwback to the KDE1 days, when it was recommended to use it (and ./configure defaulted to it as the prefix).

Now, /usr/local/kde is generally regarded as the "correct" place to install it. I install it to /opt/kde3 as it was meant to be, though. :)

-clee

Re:What's the correct way to upgrade my KDE?

[nitehorse]

Care to back that up?

(And no, mosfet's web page doesn't count. How about you look at the code and decide for yourself?)

Here, I'll back up the fact that it IS XRender. (code is from a CVS copy of kdelibs/kdefx/kstyle.cpp.)

// Here we go, use XRender in all its glory.
// NOTE: This is actually a bit slower than the above routines
// on non-accelerated displays. -- Karol.
void TransparencyHandler::XRenderBlendToPixmap(const QPopupMenu* p)
{
KPixmap renderPix;
renderPix.resize( pix.width(), pix.height() );

// Allow styles to define the blend pixmap - allows for some interesting effects.
kstyle->renderMenuBlendPixmap( renderPix, p->colorGroup(), p );

Display* dpy = qt_xdisplay();
Pixmap alphaPixmap;
Picture alphaPicture;
XRenderPictFormat Rpf;
XRenderPictureAttributes Rpa;
XRenderColor clr;
clr.alpha = ((unsigned short)(255*opacity) << 8);

Rpf.type = PictTypeDirect;
Rpf.depth = 8;
Rpf.direct.alphaMask = 0xff;
Rpa.repeat = True; // Tile

XRenderPictFormat* xformat = XRenderFindFormat(dpy,
PictFormatType | PictFormatDepth | PictFormatAlphaMask, &Rpf, 0);

alphaPixmap = XCreatePixmap(dpy, p->handle(), 1, 1, 8);
alphaPicture = XRenderCreatePicture(dpy, alphaPixmap, xformat, CPRepeat, &Rpa);

XRenderFillRectangle(dpy, PictOpSrc, alphaPicture, &clr, 0, 0, 1, 1);

XRenderComposite(dpy, PictOpOver,
renderPix.x11RenderHandle(), alphaPicture, pix.x11RenderHandle(), // src, mask, dst
0, 0, // srcx, srcy
0, 0, // maskx, masky
0, 0, // dstx, dsty
pix.width(), pix.height());

XRenderFreePicture(dpy, alphaPicture);
XFreePixmap(dpy, alphaPixmap);
}

Now, like I was saying, where's your backup? Hell, I'll even quote mosfet's web page about this one.

(from mosfet's liquid web page)

Where Liquid and KDE3's implementation differed was that KDE3 can optionally use XRender to shade the background pixmap, while Liquid will always use the blending methods I included in KPixmapEffect.

Now, mosfet has a funny position here. He says "It's not really XRender" and then he admits that we use XRender to shade the background pixmap. This is exactly what we claim. The method of transparency is chosen by the user in the KDE Control Center. There are options for Software Tint, Software Blend, and XRender Blend. Nobody claimed that these were 100% Real Translucent Menus (Just like in MacOS X!). We're still waiting for keithp and his magical X Translucency Extension before we can promise that.

But really. Don't you have anything better to do than troll about how "it's fake"?

Re:What's the correct way to upgrade my KDE?

[Rimbo]

Yo! Someone mod the parent of this one up!!! It's actually *gasp* informative!

How Incredibly Discourteous (NOT)

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh please!

If you don't want it to be downloaded, don't make it available. If you want to conserve bandwidth to, let's say, push it out to the mirrors, then MODIFY YOUR ANONYMOUS USER ACCESS LIMITS.

You have complete control of how your stuff gets posted on your public ftp servers. Don't complain too loudly if you screw up and get slashdotted.

Gnome Panel and descriptions

[dmauer]

Gnome's panel *does* display a description rather than a name, and has for quite some time. When you click 'properties...' on a launcher, there's a field called "Comment". That's what shoes up when you mouse over the description.

-d

Re:Gnome Panel and descriptions

[MSG]

I know about the tooltips, but that doesn't help novices much. Can you imagine a novice user looking at the menu for the first (or second, or ...) time and mouse-over'ing every item? (Ooo, what's this? Ooo, what's this? etc.)

KDE's panel can now display the comment *as the menu label* which is what I suggested to the GNOME devel group way-back-when.

Slashdot != Professional Journalism

[Seanasy]

Don't confuse Slashdot with journalism. The site is still run like a college kid's pet project. Sure they're making money and have thousands of readers but that doesn't make the staff qualified journalists/editors. They're geeks with a popular geek web-site -- nothing more.

I come here almost everyday to see what they've collected because it's usually a nice mix. It has a the right amounts of tech, science and politics to keep me coming back. But, I never read their 'editorials' or Jon Katz because it's amateurish bunk. And, usually skip or skim the comments for the same reason :).

Re:Slashdot != Professional Journalism

[Trilaka]

Don't confuse Slashdot with journalism. The site is still run like a college kid's pet project. Sure they're making money and have thousands of readers but that doesn't make the staff qualified journalists/editors. They're geeks with a popular geek web-site -- nothing more.

Even so, those who disseminate information have a responsibility for the information they disseminate. The editors have a choice about whether or not to publish a story, and they should be fully aware of the repercussions of those choices, and should act in an ethical matter. Based on the facts that they know that this release has not been announced, and that web sites posted on slashdot generally get a large amount of traffic (heck, this is so prevalent that they named the phenomenon the Slashdot Effect), they should have chosen to be respectful.

Whether or not the editors are professional journalists (which I believe it could be argued), is rather irrelevant. I don't believe that professionals are the only people that should be expected to be ethical.

Re:Slashdot != Professional Journalism

[Seanasy]

Oh, I agree with you 100%. They should put more effort into growing as journalists/editors. I just don't expect them to make that effort. I do agree that they have a certain social responsibility to maintain a level of professionalism, I just don't think they can or are willing to make that commitment. Which is why I will never subscribe and I block ads on this site. I don't have the energy to try to push for change and I don't think they're interested.

I could go on at length about this but I don't want to get into it that much. To summarize -- I don't think the editorial policy will ever change; not through public pressure either by complaints or exodus. So, I don't worry about it. I take what I can get from the site and move on.

Re:Slashdot != Professional Journalism

[Rogerborg]

• I never read their 'editorials' or Jon Katz because it's amateurish bunk

Who? Oh, I remember, the guy who was picked on a lot in high school, and now gets paid money to troll. I heartily recommend a two-click process to purge your system of his venom. First, click here: http://slashdot.org/users.pl?op=edithome then scroll down and click on Exclude Stories from the Homepage / Authors / JonKatz

You'll find that you detox fairly quickly.

Re:Slashdot != Professional Journalism

[aussersterne]

Don't confuse Slashdot with journalism. The site is still run like a college kid's pet project. Sure they're making money and have thousands of readers but that doesn't make the staff qualified journalists/editors.

Slashdot is journalism (journalism lies in how it is read, now how it is written), and it is professional (after all, it is for-profit)-- it's just also a tabloid for the geeks. An in the greatest tradition of tabloid, Slashdot cares not about the subjects it covers, only about getting the "scoop" for its readership and then sensationalizing it.

Re:Slashdot != Professional Journalism

[Seanasy]

I agree mostly but it's a matter of semantics. I could have used a few more adjectives, I suppose. The heart of the matter is more of professionalism in the sense of someone who knows what the hell they are doing and shows some responsibility to their work. I think we all agree that Slashdot has none of that. It's about respectability and confidence. People want to be able to come here and trust the editors for fair, unbiased reporting -- the ideals of journalism. They're disappointed. It's Slashdot's distance from the ideals that make them seem less professional than their paychecks and less journalistic despite the daily updates.

Can you expand on the bit about "journalism lies in how it is read, now how it is written." Standard definitions go contrary. Is this literary theory?

Re:Is it me or is KDE3 slow?

[DarkDust]

Actually, I find it way more responsive and faster than KDE2. I'm using SuSE 7.3 and downloaded the SuSE RPMs which were pretty painless to install with only two or three path-corrections to the /etc/profile and stuff.

Especially Konqueror is much faster and responsive now. Maybe the slowdown of the RC-version you installed was due to debugging features ?

Besides the faster Konqueror, I like the improved KMail most. I'm using the new KDE3 for half a day now, and it's really stable, no crashes yet, and I found no obvious bugs yet (as I did in 2.0). Congrats to the KDE folks, really good work IMHO.

Re:Screenshots anyone?

[Paladin128]

Check some screen shots out here. Keep in mind, these are only some of the possibilities. KDE is super-themable.

New to Linux world (please be gentle)

[nobodyman]

So, I'm really really ignorant of all of these window managers and what the distinctions are between X11, KDE, Gnome, Windowmaker, etc. I've been to gnome.org and kde.org, but I was hoping to find one big uberpage that laid it all out from square one.

I feel somewhat like Homer Simpson when he tried to drum up business for the bowling alley (first reading advanced economics, then introductory economics, then finally websters dictionary).

Anyone got a link or two?

Re:New to Linux world (please be gentle)

[OpCode42]

This link is pretty good.

Re:New to Linux world (please be gentle)

[Rob Kaper]

KDE has its own window manager, while Gnome lets the user run whichever one he wants.

Correction: KDE lets the user run whichever netwm-compliant window manager he wants, but uses its own kwin window manager by default.

Re:New to Linux world (please be gentle)

[Jagasian]

In addition, there is a distinction between a window manager and a desktop. Examples of Linux desktops are KDE and Gnome. Desktops are a collection of common applications for managing your computer, such as filesystem explorers, web browsers, task bars, clocks, icons, sounds, in addition to a window manager. So from the end user's point of view, you are concerned with what desktop you want. Window managers are really of a more low-level concern, while desktops are of a high-level end user concern. A desktop contains a window manager, while a window manager does not contain a desktop... if that makes any sense.

I almost posted about this (Re: How Incredibly...)

[InodoroPereyra]

This is the most incredibly discourteous and unprofessional behavior I've seen on a web site. Show some freaking respect towards the open source developers who create code (and give you something to write about on this site) and DO NOT ANNOUNCE A RELEASE BEFORE THE RELEASE.

I totally agree. Even LinuxToday, beaten up to death some time ago by /. , was respectfull of the schedule and at least up to now did not announce anything (which by the way is natural since there was no announcement yet).

Yesterday night I saw 3.0 in ftp.kde.org, and I almost posted a story (not supposed to be published) asking the /. editors to please NOT announce anything until the release was official . Then I thought, no, they will not do that again. Oh well ...

Re:Yeah its always /.'s fault...

[HiThere]

Just consider. Presume that 97.5% of Slashdot readers will be courteous. No, make that 99%. That means that only .01 will react inappropriately. Say that there are 10,000 slashdot readers who are both discourteous enough and interested enough to do the download (with a 5 second interval between tries).

Then that gives 100 people trying every 5 seconds. This averages one try every .05 seconds. How long does a response cycle take?

Now try to make a better guess at the real numbers.

There are things that are wrong to do because of the effects that you can predict with fair certainty that they will have. In fact, those are the only things that are wrong to do (they are also the only things that are right to do, but that's a separate discussion).

It is fairly certain that the posting of this story will cause the distributing servers to become clogged at nearly the worst time. Causing this to happen sounds to me like an ungood thing. If you do something, and the effects of doing it are predictable, then those effects are caused by what you did. Therefore this posting is the Slashdot editors causing the KDE servers to be overloaded.

I'm not saying that the individual downloaders aren't also culpable. But that sure doesn't exonerate the Slashdot editor.

Re:Yeah its always /.'s fault...

[gnugeekus]

The news story they posted isn't true. KDE 3.0 has NOT been released yet.The fact that there are some packages on their ftp site does not mean it is a release.

The KDE 3.0 release happens when the developers say that the release is official, and slashdot should respect that.

The KDE developers *are* being reponsible. They put the packages on the main ftp site so that the mirrors could mirror it. They were obviously going to wait until the mirrors had finished before announcing it.

This has nothing to do with violence and video games or any other half ass analogy you may try to make. This is clear cut and simple. Slashdot ran a false news story about an application that has not been released yet.

At least use a mirror!

[RPoet]

It's not even been announced yet, so please don't take down kde.org by slashdotting it. Use a mirror, list here. I got it from the Norwegian mirror which was very fast for me (I'm in Norway, YMMV, look out your window and check). It's a cool 100 megs though.

Re:Your "o p i n i o n" but I'll reply anyway...

[mark_lybarger]

i think the "war" was started when:

1. RMS decided KDE's licensing issues were'nt sufficent enough for his GNU system.
2. the KDE group was unwilling to call it GNU/KDE.

whey you come out slinging mud like this some people can call it a war. they (gnu zelots) could have been more mature about it, saying they were going to make a different desktop environment based on different technologies (.NET), but no, they start it all off with license issue mud slinging "we don't like your license so we're going to build our own replacement". childish.

Re:Screenshots!

[LMCBoy]

Here's one.

Unfortunately, my laptop screen is 1024x768, so I don't have a lot of real estate to show off. Note the menu transparency.

Yay

[mnordstr]

I found a fast mirror... Stay away!

Re:Screenshots!

[brunes69]

You can see my screenshot, showing off KDE3's built in translucent menus here. Warning, it is a bit over 600k (big).

Screenshots of KDE 3.0

[Andreas(R)]

Kde 3.0 is looking goood! Have a look at my screenshots here and here!
I must say that Konqueror 3.0 looks really good with antialiased fonts and great themes!

Kde 3.0 is an awesome release, that surely will help Linux to gain some users from you know who :)

Re:Screenshots anyone?

[brunes69]

This is my desktop.

KDE For Workgroups!

[wiredog]

I can't wait...

Better looking....

[JPriest]

Although I am still working on getting connected the to ftp server and have not yet installed it, I have seen some Screenshots of the 3.0 theme and think it's overall smoother and more professional looking than 2.2.

Re:feature list?

[jonathan_ingram]

About screenshots:

KDE 3 is very tunable, but most of the user interface hasn't changed significantly from KDE 2.2.2 (most of the work has been in polishing the internals, to correspond to the move to Qt 3) - apart from a couple of things, like the new file selection dialogue. Your best bet to see what KDE 3 can do is to go to the KDE theme website, KDE-Look.org.

About the feature list:

Here is the internal KDE 3 feature plan. There's also a link there to the features planned to be in KDE 3.1.

Have you installed the right font infrastructure?

[Moritz Moeller - Her]

Are your truetypes well integrated? "less $(xlsfonts)"

Do you use a recent freetype2? The later the better. Earlier versions CRASH on certain fonts.

Do you use Xfree86-4.2.0? No version before that is recommended with fontaliasing.

Do you use the right qtlibs?

You really need to get out more

[drew_kime]

Linking to the kde.org ftp site before they've had a chance to mirror and announce it first is like bombing a hospital.

No it's not. It's not even close. If I really have to explain why, it wouldn't do you any good anyway.

Re:You really need to get out more

[Elwood P Dowd]

If /. prematurely announces popular software, then the terrorists have already won.

Compiling QT with XFT

[Foxman98]

Has anyone else had problems compiling QT with -xft on Mandrake 8.1 ? Despite having XFT working in 2.2, when I specifiy -xft in configure, it still compiles without it. Anyone?

Re:Fantastic , more bloatware eyecandy

[pcs305]

And this is the beauty of using Linux, if you do not like the interface....don't use it! Use gnome or command line or any one of the other windowing interfaces. Unlike Windows. If you must use XP but don't like XP well then you have no choice you use XP. Ain't free software beautifull? Not only is it free but it gives you variety and choice... it gives you freedom. (I can see a geek running through a field of flowers jumping over fallen XP users laptop in hand, laughing like a love sick maiden) aaagh... just use something else if you don't like KDE!

Re:Have they fixed the fonts?

[tweek]

Try this (from google's chache

It all may be moot with 3.0 anyway but if you don't feel like upgrading right now ;)

Re:Looks like KDE won the desktop war.

[FooBarWidget]

Who modded this post as "insightful"?
I can't see any reason why this is supposed to be insightful. There IS NO "desktop war"!
No, there is no war between GNOME and KDE
wether you believe it or not, that is the truth.
They aren't fighting over anything, this is healthy competition people! KDE wouldn't have to so far if GNOME didn't exists, and GNOME wouldn't have been so far either without KDE.
You don't believe me? Subscribe to the mailing list, congratulate the developers about that they won the "Linux desktop war", and they will flame at you instead, saying that the desktop war does not exist.

Still not convinced? Both GNOME and KDE have already decided on a unified launcher format (.desktop files), drag and drop (both QT and GTK+ support Xdnd) and cut & paste (the clipboard code in QT 3.0 is fixed, so yes, you CAN cut & paste properly between GTK+ and QT apps). Now they are even working on a unified theme format.

Really, comments like this make me sick.
You're acting as if everything in life is meant to be competitive and to kill each other.

Re:My wife uses KDE and likes it..

[WildBeast]

well her needs are probably more than extremely basic. I tried that experience with my cousin, a casual user who doesn't know much about computers, so I rebooted in Linux and told him to try it out. His first impression is that it was ugly. He used KWord and plenty of other apps and most of the time he was unable to understand what was going on because of the lack of messages. Why not put messages like "Please wait while loading", "Cannot open file", etc.? Some apps have it but many don't.

For some reason, he didn't like Mozilla. What bothered him is that he couldn't use the microphone to talk with his MSN Messenger Buddies, he could only type the messages. He didn't like the games much, im some games he had to use the mouse in other games he had to use the keyboard. What bothered him most in this is that he couldn't exit some games by clicking on the X, I told him that he had to press ESC.

In short, there's way too many usability problems. If KDE or GNOME had at least 1 usability expert helping them, they would get rid of most of those problems.

solution for projects' main FTP sites

[the_olo]

There's a solution for that different nonprofit projects' FTP main sites that don't want to be hammered before mirrors catch up.

Junkies posting stories to Slashdot use ftp.
Mirrors use rsync.

So just make it so that rsync and ftp processes access the release directory as different users on the server.
Don't allow access to the FTP user on the new release directory for some time until all mirrors update through rsync. Only then chmod the latest release directory to let anonymous ftp users in.
Chmod only takes a fraction of second to execute.
So in addition, there will be no poor soul that in a hurry would download a partially copied, uncomplete file...

One thing that's starting to annoy me about debian

[gid]

Let me start out with saying that I think the Debian people are doing a good job with the resources they have. I love the distribution and the ease of upgrades. It takes a lot of time to package something correctly ahearing to all the Debian rules, but it's starting to annoy me how if I was just running Redhat, I could be running KDE 3 already, whilst it'll probably take another 4 months or so for KDE 3 to make it into sid. Maybe this is one of the downfalls of Debian, because of the strict packaging guidlines, authors aren't willing to release .debs because of the ammount of time it takes to package them.

I suppose I could just grab and compile it myself.

Re:Community (dis)service

[JabberWokky]

Look, twonk, first off, ftp.kde.org bounces you to a random mirror ftp.

Second of all, I found out about the release on usenet last night at 2am (EST), and downloaded it then, so the files had been up for at least 9 hours before Slashdot reported it, likely longer, and plenty of time to mirror.

--
Evan

Re:Screenshots anyone?

[Rob Kaper]

I'm committing the official KDE 3.0 screenshots to CVS (and thus www.kde.org) tonight. I had some nice ones ready for the longest time, but one of theme had a style theme that isn't in 3.0 release (stupid stupid) so I'm redoing that one first, after dinner. Expect them to be there around 9pm CEST.

I'm not telling.

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm pulling down the Redhat rpms at 154K and I'm not telling any of you where I got it from. yayaya prepositions at the end of sentences blah blah blah

beta2 - KDE3 final diff?

[cgleba]

Does anyone know off hand how I can get diffs from beta2 to KDE3 final?

I would like to conserve bandwith of the mirrors and I'm sure that a lot of other people would like to do the same.

Thanks in advance for you help.

Why not post it to Usenet?

[Dr. Spork]

Look, obviously, a ton of people will be downloading this, and the people hosting it are just volunteers who support KDE out of goodwill. I think major releases like this should just be posted to usenet. I mean, 100 Megs (or even 700 megs for all the different binary distributions) is barely a drop in the usenet bucket, everyone would get excellent transfer rates, the ftp would be for people without usenet access, and everyone would be happy!

Also, it would be an important example of how usenet binaries serve and important and legal purpose.

I would really support a Slashdot code of ethics that says: you can't announce major software before the developers do unless you have already posted it to Usenet.

Re:Why not post it to Usenet?

[delta407]

Or, you could post it to Freenet. It's designed to be an efficient distributed caching and load balancing system and is architecturally built to counter the dreaded Slashdot Effect.

Basically, the idea is that people run a Freenet node and data gets passed around from node to node. If no one requests a file, it eventually gets dropped from nodes that are "far away" in the keyspace, and eventually from the only node that remains carrying it. But, if a bunch of people request it, the file will be cached at a large number of intermediate nodes, effectively giving the requester a whole lot more bandwidth to work from.

Also, it would be an example of how Freenet can serve an important and legal purpose, instead of just a haven for software pirates and child pornographers.

Re:Why not post it to Usenet?

[Dr. Spork]

This is a very good point. I looked at Freenet load balancing a bit, and it's a neat system. Of course, one benefit in telling people to just "get it on Freenet" instead of the FTP is that many people would actually install Freenet.

As a pretty bad coder (my education is in the humanities) who would like to do something to help out worthy OSS projects, I'd feel good about myself if I contributed some of my bandwith towards the distribution of KDE3, or Mandrake8, or whatever.

It's ironic, the more I think about it, that there are two very independent "from the people, to the people" movements on the internet. One is the P2P movement, where regular users are the sources and the recipients of files. The other movement is the OSS phenomenon, where regular smart people write programs that the rest of us use. It's amazing that there is so little P2P distribution of OSS. I'd much rather see all the hosting costs go towards paying programmers.

Since I will try uninstalling KDE...

[antdude]

Does anyone have the list of KDE packages that I need to dump? Obviously, rpm -qa |grep kde would be a start, but I think there are other KDE packages aren't obvious.

Thank you in advance. :)

Re:Since I will try uninstalling KDE...

[ZaMoose]

If you try to remove all those kde packages, rpm'll generally complain (since many of those non-"kde*" packages depend on the base packages) and you can trace it back from there.

Or, you could go to a KDE respository for your particular version, take a look at the packages themselves and then just try to eliminate all of those from your install.

Re:One thing that's starting to annoy me about deb

[sab39]

In my experience, if you run sid, it usually takes less than a week to get a new release of something. The main exception is XFree86, because it's such a complex package and completely vital to almost every system, and so the maintainer is (rightly, IMHO) very change-averse.

I would be surprised if it takes more than a week for KDE3 to hit sid. If you want the increased stability of woody, you have to wait a little bit longer, but you don't get days like today where python is completely broken.

I'm pretty sure there have been aptable repositories for KDE3 provided *by the Debian KDE maintainers* for some weeks already (as a GNOME user myself, I wouldn't know for sure, but I've seen it mentioned). So the bulk of the work is done.

The GNOME2 betas are a little harder to play with, because unless you want to destabilize your existing GNOME setup, you can't parallel-install GNOME2. Nonetheless, most of the beta is packaged, if you're willing to take the risk of installing it.

Re:FreeBSD packages ready?

[bluGill]

There are some freeBSD packages at freebsd.kde.org, but they are not yet right. There is at least one known problem. They will be re-generating the packages soon, but they would like experts (those who can work around the current known problems) to find any other problems that need to be fixed before a general release is done.

A general release will probably be on freebsd.kde.org long before anyplace else. I'd expect ports to be updated in a couple days though, so cvsup once in a while.

Re:KDE 3 Out? there goes 200 more MB of RAM.

[sheimers]

FluxBox is no replacement for KDE, only for kwin, and it has KDE support.

Will this instruction work from KDE3's README?

[antdude]

To remove the old packages and install the new ones, run:

cd /where/you/downloaded/the/KDE3/RPMS
rpm -e `rpm -qa |egrep ^kde`
rpm -Uvh *rpm

I still think I will be dealing with dependency issues as you noted. :(

Re:Will this instruction work from KDE3's README?

[Isaac-Lew]

You could try 'cd /where/you/downloaded/the/KDE3/RPMS; rpm -Fvh *rpm' (-F = freshen, will only update kde packages you have installed on your system). You may have to do it twice; once to see what packages complain & again to install the kde packages.

News Flash!

[tswinzig]

Let the techies get to the stuff before it's announced, so the general public isn't locked out of the servers...

Hate to break it to you, but 'the general public' is not going to be downloading KDE!

Re:KDE is great

[C0vardeAn0nim0]

BTW: Does anybody know if the WYSIWIG Problems
of KWord are solved?

not yet. according to http://developer.kde.org/development-versions/koff ice-1.2-release-plan.html the WYSIWIG problem will be solved in kword 1.2, wich means several months of waiting.

Re:Our double standards...

[tswinzig]

This is like saying that Napster shouldn't have let the cat out of the bag on mp3 sharing until the music industry had time to react. Tit-for-tat, be consistent.

No, it's not anywhere close. Slashdot could wait a few hours for the mirrors to get the files and for the KDE team to ACTUALLY ANNOUNCE THE RELEASE. No harm would come by waiting.

Conversely, the same argument cannot be made for your flawed Napster analogy.

Re:Have they fixed the fonts?

[Genom]

Well - I couldn't get it to work for everything, but in /etc/XftConfig, adding a line similar to:

match any family == "helvetica" edit += "verdana";

...seemed to alleviate at least some of the problem. Replace "verdana" with whichever font you want the offending "default" replaced with.

Re:Our double standards...

[SkyLeach]

Goodness. Nobody likes a person to rock the boat eh?

Look at it like this: who is responsible for violations of copyright protection? The people who violate the copyright is what I believe. You copy a book, movie, software and give it away for free then you are the violater, not the copying machine manufacturor, the CD Burner company or your hardware vendor, and certainly not the people who write the software that uses the internet to copy any files reguardless of their content.

I say the same thing is true of a news service: If you start along the line that the news service is responsible for what people do with the information then you are saying that CNN should be unable to report that the terriorsts which flew into the world trade center were arabs just because it might cause racism.

Where do we start drawing the lines? Just because you might draw them at a safe place (don't post it until the official release), doesn't mean that the person behind you won't come along and redraw the lines at something more rediculous (don't post it until a full week after the official announcement and a nice hand-signed letter from the development team telling you you can). It's not where you draw them that scares me so much, is that they are being drawn at all.

Perhaps /. should have used better judgement, perhaps they just wanted to get the story out before ArsDigita, either way they broke no laws, written, spoken, or otherwise.

My opinion is that we are all too opinionated. :-)

flipflapflopflup is not insightful

[JoeBuck]

Um, Mr. flipflapflup, there is evidently something you do not know. For a high-visibility package such as KDE, in order for everyone to get it, it has to get to the mirror sites. That's why when a release is made and put on a site, no announcement goes out: this is to allow at least a day for it to get to all the mirrors. If some dork posts an alert to Slashdot prematurely, the primary site gets hammered and the mirror sites can't get in. Everyone suffers from horrendously slow downloads from the primary site.

What's scary is that CmdrTaco evidently still does not realize this, and continues his irresponsible policy of announcing releases prematurely.

Re:flipflapflopflup is not insightful

[Peyna]

I think that posting something on an anonymous FTP server and not expecting something like this happen, and that people will be respectful is about like setting a stack of 50 cds on the sidewalk, and expecting only the people who run mirrors to pick them up. They should have a private FTP for mirrors to grab the package from if they were that concerned about it. Don't most places do that anyway?

Not quite

[SpinyNorman]

First, if you shout fire in a crowded theatre and people get crushed in the panic, then you're responsible, not the movie theatre for not being able to handle the rush.

Secondly, most sites (except the largest commercial ones) certainly can't handle 1/2 million slashdotties all hitting them at once, so to put the blame on the site just doesn't cut it. If slashdot wants to be a good netizen then they should warn web masters before linking them - especially if they're going to be hit with a gazillion attempts to download a huge tarball.

Re:Not quite

[SkyLeach]

"First, if you shout fire in a crowded theatre and people get crushed in the panic, then you're responsible, not the movie theatre for not being able to handle the rush."

True, but the movie theater isn't responsible for keeping you from yelling fire either. That's my point. Immagine a bar has a sign in the window that says "Free beer on Friday". The bar expects maybee 100 people to see the sign in their window because they aren't on a crowded street. Immagine that a frequent patron at the bar works in a theatre. He puts the sign up on the big screen "Free beer at Moes on Friday". Has he done anything wrong? No. Should he have asked Moe? That would have been nice, but that isn't an obligation and can't be enforced on the theater owner. Moe should have considered the possibility.

"Secondly, most sites (except the largest commercial ones) certainly can't handle 1/2 million slashdotties all hitting them at once, so to put the blame on the site just doesn't cut it. If slashdot wants to be a good netizen then they should warn web masters before linking them - especially if they're going to be hit with a gazillion attempts to download a huge tarball."

And they never will be able to with or without warning. I like the suggestion that /. mirror sites which can't handle a good /.ing. You still are assuming that /. shouldn't have reported the news, and by this you are implying that they shouldn't report news based on the effects caused by the news. That's a lot to put on the editors shoulders. Does this mean that they will be liable for the effects of the news next?

Re:FreeBSD packages ready?

[Satai]

They used ports to generate the packages; they're waiting on the official release to put them on CVS.

Re:BLOATWARE!

[dmarien]

you're right -- it can only hold 17 Gb minus 60 Mb after you install KDE -- maybe you should invistigate a NAS solution

Too hard to install

[HanzoSan]

They need to write a script which can automatically download and install kde, similar to garnome

Re:My wife uses KDE and likes it..

[Flower]

fwiw, Gnome has already had one usability study done which, iirc, was funded by Sun.

KDE also has a site here but after a quick look I don't see a formal study done. Maybe somebody closer to the project can provide more info?

Re:Screenshots anyone?

[Rob Kaper]

I have send them to Dirk Mueller (the KDE 3.0 release coordinator) and he will committed them at the same time as the official release announcement.

In the meanwhile, check out KDE 3.0 Beta2 screenshots and screenshots of early 3.0 CVS.

No, there is little stuff which looks groundbreaking new GUI-wise.
Yes, KDE looks like Windows if you want it to.
No, I don't have PNG's for the old shots but they will be there for the new ones.
Yes, I use Tahoma [Xft] which is evil.

Re:GNOME & KDE

[krmt]

Careful man... some of the younger trolls might start hitting you up for your sister's name and phone number. I mean... she uses Linux and hates Windows! ;-)

Re:Screenshots anyone?

[Rob Kaper]

And as of now there is the new page with the official KDE 3.0 screenshots as well. :-)

Edge Flipping?

[poopsie]

Does KDE by any chance now support edge flipping (IE. Move your pointer to the edge of the screen and jump to the next screen)?

This is the single reason that I can't use KDE for more than about five minutes before becoming totally exasperated. I use this feature CONSTANTLY in Gnome. What's the point of having four desktops if I can't move to 'em quickly? (I know I could probably do this with keyboard shortcuts, but it's not the way I work).

KDE 1.X had this feature, and when 2.X came out I switched to Gnome. Seriously, the coolness of this feature is what got me hooked on Linux desktops in the first place - it is, to me, the most useful feature of any desktop environment/window manager.

Anyone wanna code this into KDE for me?

Re:Edge Flipping?

[jonathan_ingram]

Does KDE by any chance now support edge flipping

Yes, it does. Although, you could have had this feature in KDE 2 just by using a window manager other than kwin.

Re:My wife uses KDE and likes it..

[Junta]

Same kind of situation here. Linux is the preferred operating system. The problem is the only reason it works that way is because I'm around to configure things and fix things that may break, or provide more insight into errors she encounters. Unix systems can be a fantastic boon for usability, stability, and flexibility, *but* I admit that without someone with decent computer administration skills, linux is less usable. Of course windows gets messed up without knowledgeable care, but it remains more usable than linux even in such a state... If user without a lot of knowledge can explain their needs to someone with expertise, it works great, they can set up a pretty static configuration that the user will have a hard time breaking. But if they have to do it themselves, or become root to try to change things themselves, trouble is likely to ensue...

So...why should I get this

[CosmicDreams]

There has been a lot of discussion about KDE 3.0 here, but I haven't found one bit about why 3.0 is better than 2.0.

Heck, I can't even find that on KDE's site.

They'll probably have that up soon. Can someone fill me in on why 3.0 is a must-have.

My Quick Review

[chroma]

I found a quick mirror, downloaded and installed it today.

I had some problems getting the right support RPMS with my RH 7.1 system, but that's nothing I'm not used to.

As noted here by someone else, it's a little slow to start up. I wonder if that is an artifact of it starting up for the very first time. The look and feel are very similar KDE 2.2.2 for me.

The big difference so far is performance. Menus snap into place quickly, window operations are faster, pages render more quickly, the file manager is fast, and so on. My computer has a 300Mhz Celeron.

Also, a lot of web pages now work correctly, where they didn't in the 2.x series.

Overall stability is unknown at this point.

Re:My Quick Review

[Spy Hunter]

As noted here by someone else, it's a little slow to start up. I wonder if that is an artifact of it starting up for the very first time.

Yes, the first startup of KDE 3 will be MUCH slower than every other startup afterwards (and the startup of KDE 2) because during that time all of your old settings from KDE 2 and related programs (KMail, etc, in the ~/.kde directory) are being migrated to their new KDE 3 settings.

KDE 3.0 is Out

[Arandir]

KDE 3.0 is Out
Posted by CmdrTaco on 10:17 AM April 3rd, 2002
from the congrats-to-our-gumshoes dept.

Fred Furburger noted that KDE 3.0 is on mirrors-only site. There is no official announcement yet, but this looks like the real deal since it is on the mirrors-only site. Updated by HeUnique: No debian packages yet, because the mirrors-only site seems to be down. Don't know why...

Release Party!

[ThatComputerGuy]

Head over to #kde on irc.openprojects.net for the release party :)

Re:Fonts

[spitzak]

It looks to me like the antialiasing is turned off.

I am using KDE2 with antialising turned on. The main problems are:

1. Use that new libXft that a big article was posted about in Slashdot a few weeks ago.

2. The defaults in KDE are awful, apparently it picks the first font alphabetically if it can't figure things out, which is some unreadable cursive thing called "Arioso". Changing all this was a chore, as the control panel is unreadable, and there were a zillion bugs so that the fonts kept reverting. Log out, log back in, try to fix them again, repeat a few times, and eventually I got them. Still get that cursive font every now and then.

Anyway after that bit of hell, it does look quite nice. And I did not do any of the stuff people say is needed: I did not install Windows fonts and I did not edit the .xftconfig file.

KDE3.0 I hope will fix these problems:

1. When they turn antialiasing on, default to something usable. Even better is to ship KDE with antialiasing turned on by default.

2. Change the font selection to select everything in pixel size (rather than "point size") so that the sizes don't change when your X server is upgraded to something that claims a different resolution (this also caused some pain for awhile). If they insist on this, please allow users to select fractional sizes. I would also round to the nearest pixel size if the selected pixel size is within about .1 of an integer (this may be Xft's responsibility).

3. Distribute the fixed libXft as part of the distribution so everybody gets nicer fonts without having to think about it.

Differences between Gnome and KDE?

[Bilbo]

Didn't we just finish saying that the reason why we want Linux to succeed in a world of Windoze boxes is that, real competition forces all contenders to get better over time?

Seriously, I don't want to start a flame war, but I've tried to run KDE a couple of times, and I keep switching back to Gnome. I'm not saying that Gnome is better than KDE, but I have yet to find a compelling reason to throw out all the experience I have with the Gnome tools and way of doing things, to learn Just Another Window Manager.

My question is, what does KDE offer that Gnome doesn't? Why should I make the effort to switch?

Re:Differences between Gnome and KDE?

[infiniti99]

My question is, what does KDE offer that Gnome doesn't? Why should I make the effort to switch?

From a user perspective, it boils down mostly to applications, looks (available themes) and handling (gtk vs. Qt). Both are highly configurable systems that are trying to achieve the same goal, just taking different roads.

As a developer (not a KDE developer though), I am very impressed with KDE's underlying architecture. I have only heard good things (never bad) about KDE application programming, and the joys of working with DCOP and KParts. In contrast, I haven't really ever heard much of anything positive about GNOME development. If anything, I hear negative (maybe I converse with the wrong crowd).

Anyhow, because of the good KDE architecture, the core developers are able to get stuff done, and get stuff done quickly. Konqueror, Kmail, Koffice, etc. Only a handful of people work on these projects, but they keep getting better and better at a very fast rate.

So that's why I choose KDE.

Of course, you can always run GNOME apps under KDE, or KDE apps under GNOME, or KDE and GNOME apps under BlackBox, so it doesn't really matter too much what environment you spend your time in. The only real decision comes from developers, when they must decide whether their app should be for KDE or GNOME.

Re:One thing that's starting to annoy me about deb

[Daniel Stone]

KDE 3.0.0 final tarballs were released to a group of packagers 9 days ago. That's how everyone has final packages, and that's why I have some packages that end in _3.0.0-1_i386.deb.

Re:One thing that's starting to annoy me about deb

[Daniel Stone]

We have had experimental debs for some time, but have not wanted to release them to the public as they weren't ready for general consumption. The only release that was vaguely public was the whole RC4 fiasco, and its being made public was not my doing.

KDE3 won't enter sid for a while yet; not until woody is released. Don't hold your breath. The reason we do this is because KDE2.2.2 currently takes up about 2.5gig of archive space, and forking with KDE3 would not only cause havoc with the woody release, but it would also make it impossible for us to issue any 2.2.2 fixes, and bloat the archive massively. I'm not going to be a party to this.

*cough*youwillhaveanaptsourcefrommeinabout12hours* cough*

Hardware Alpha Channeling?

[HanzoSan]

Well Thats what I want. Ok so you use Xrender, wheres keiths alpha channel extention? I've been waiting for that and hes been working on it for what seems like years now.

Re:HYPOCRISY

[Afrosheen]

Posting the news is up to the responsibility of the editors. They page through stories all the time, probably thousands of submissions per day, and if they posted this prematurely, it's not the fault of the submitter. They should be fair enough to allow a day or so to pass...it's not like www.pclinuxonline.com is gonna scoop them or anything.

Re:Screenshots anyone?

[Afrosheen]

Not Found
The requested URL /screenshot.png was not found on this server.

Apache/1.3.24 Server at vibers.ca Port 80

That's a pretty unusual screenshot, kde3 looks alot like your average 404 apache message.

Linux hostility towards usability people

[Ukab the Great]

Unfortunately the linux development world is often extremely hostile towards usability people. Usability is largely viewed by many linux developers as a BS field of study. Practitioners of usability engineering are told that they are doing nothing more than simply whining or, in the words of one kernel hacker "I can't believe people actually get paid for criticizing the work of others." Usability problems won't go away in KDE or GNOME because they are not problems with the underlying technology (mostly) they are problems with the way that certain humans (i.e. programmers) think. Debugging people's opinions is a hell of a lot harder than debugging software.

Couple of questions

[be-fan]

I'm just waiting for the KDE 3.0 to get into sid, so I have a few questions for people already using it:

1) Is it really faster? I keep hearing this, but apparently, most people think fast actually means slow. I've been trying to find a decently fast desktop for my 1.5GHz/256MB Athlon XP, and so far, only Fluxbox+GTK fits the bill. It runs Galeon, Evolution, etc at a pace only slightly slower than Win2K on my 750MHz Duron... Still, I like KDE better (prettier, certain apps like KDevelop are nicer than comparative GNOME ones) but so far, 2.2.2 is unusably slow. I don't want to hear anything about packages and optimizing and whatnot, been there done that. I'm running Debian sid with 2.4.18 + xfs + preempt + lock-break + O(1) sched, with X at -11 (per Debian defaults) and Fluxbox at -10. Doubt I can optimize much more. I just want to know: Does KDE 3.0 finally make KDE even remotely comparable to (well-optimized installs of) Win2k/XP?

2) Did they fix the annoying font display problems? There is this peculier issue with all KDE applications that causes the Microsoft Courier New font to be displayed very strangely. The text itself is fine, but it looks like all the lines are double spaced. When using Courier new in KDevelop or KWrite, one gets about 70% as many lines on screen at once as one can in any GTK+ or regular Xlib program. I've seen this problem reported in a few places (such as here ) but I've never seen a resolution. I doubt its on my end, since I've had this problem in every single install of KDE 2.x I've ever used, including Mandrake and Debian.

3) Does anyone besides me think that the whole OS-X UI on Linux is an asthetic nightmare? First, I don't much like the OS-X look. Second, KDE isn't OS-X. It's KDE. It should have it's own personality. It's getting hard these days to find a theme that doesn't look like some other OS. Even then, the themes are never as well put-together and consistant as the originals they copy.

4) Is it hard to understand that you can have good looks without all the glitzy, performance robbing features? I have yet to see a Linux UI that matches the elegance and polish of BeOS or MacOS. In the end, the UI does little more than move some bitmaps and text around the screen. XF86 4.x on my RivaTNT can blit 3000 100x100 bitmaps to the screen every second. It is trivial to make a UI that looks good (which is more a function of the quality of the drawing in the bitmap) and is also fast. Additionally, stuff like transparency and animation, while nifty, doesn't make up for the fact that there is not a single Linux UI that looks polished and elegant. GTK+ looks dated, and 3rd party themes are of depressing quality (and not really developed much anymore, apparently). Plus, GTK+'s container mechanism makes for some rather annoying display quality. Resizing a Gaim window, for example, causes the 4 icons along the bottom to spread farther apart, to the point a comical distance seperates them. KDE is a bit better, but there are still many places where it just doesn't look professionally put together. It's like American cars vs. European cars. Sure American cars have all the things that European cars do, but they're just not as well put together.

aRts version backstep?

[Zocalo]

Looking at the file list it looks like KDE 3.0 includes the file "arts-1.0.0-1.i386.rpm", yet my KDE222 distro, and a few others I've checked, have the file "arts-2.2.2-2.i386.rpm". Any idea what gives, or is someone's version number out of sync?

Re:aRts version backstep?

[Zocalo]

you might want to file a bug report in bugs.kde.org, cuz i think this is serious :)

Not as serious as the grief KDE are going to get when all the less savvy Linux users try and do an upgrade install. I fear that this is not going to be one of their reputation's finer moments in many peoples eyes, a shame given all the hard work people have obviously put into this software.

If you were using Debian Linux...

[Jagasian]

If you were using Debian Linux, installing KDE would be as difficult as typing:
apt-get update
apt-get install kdebase

This causes apt-get to automatically search for the required software packages, and then it installs them in the correct order - automatically.

But for some reason, people think that using a Redhat based distro is easier and more user-friendly. They are wrong. Of course, apt-get exists for Redhat based distros, but because it doesn't rely on the Debian community, policies, and package sources... its not as good.

Re:Its nice, but its KDE

[shadowbearer]

You might try going into KDE Control Center and turning off the animations. I have it on a 800mhz Duron box (256mb, GF2) and it performs beautifully.
KDE defaults to a "middle of the road" setting for window effects, etc. Turning them off speeds it up considerably. I've noticed much the same difference in speed ratios in Windows XP, and I suspect they are more hardware or hardware related driver issues then anything else.

One thing I also noticed was a small improvement in 2D desktop speed with the latest Nvidia driver rpms released a short time ago.

No matter what OS one uses, we still have to tweak for performance...

Cheers
Shadowbearer

Sig Mod: Only if the Dock DIES!

Re:Fantastic , more bloatware eyecandy

[10Ghz]

There is nothing beautiful that both the leading software environments are bloated. These are the "apex" of linux wm's. By switching to a less bloated wm you lose all the funtionality and usefullness.

Have you ever considered that adding functionality and usefullness is the cause of that bloat? Reduce the bloat, reduce the functionality. Add functionality, add bloat.

1.0 is correct, 2.2.2 isnt

[anno1602]

No, the arts-2.2.2 is incorrect. The real version of arts shipped with kde 2.2.2 was 0.4 or 0.6, kde3 ships with arts 1.0. So your distro numbered the arts after the kde version numbers and not the arts version numbers. If they keep it up, it shouldn't matter (and you'll get arts-1.0 sold to you as arts-3.0), if they don't, go hit them with a stick ;-)

Re:My wife uses KDE and likes it..

[IamTheRealMike]

His first impression is that it was ugly.

This is subjective and probably caused by you using an ugly theme. Perhaps your cousin should have gone to kde-look.org and chose a look he liked?

For some reason, he didn't like Mozilla.

Did he give a reason? Again, somewhat subjective. Perhaps he'd have preferred Konqueror.

What bothered him is that he couldn't use the microphone to talk with his MSN Messenger Buddies, he could only type the messages.

This is not a fault of Linux per se, just an individual application. It's nothing to do with usability either, simply that the developers haven't added that feature yet, quite possibly because only the very basic MSN protocols are documented.

He didn't like the games much, im some games he had to use the mouse in other games he had to use the keyboard.

This is a joke right? That's been the case in all games since the beginning of time! That's definately not a usability issue. And if he didn't like the games, well Linux isn't right for him yet is it? There aren't many games out there right now, but the ones I've played haven't had any usability issues.

What bothered him most in this is that he couldn't exit some games by clicking on the X, I told him that he had to press ESC.

Once more, not a fault of Linux, you will find this is the case with most games on all platforms. In fact, there are lots of apps you can't quit using the X button, especially games. You could regard this as a usability issue, but limiting the times when a game can quit is quite normal.

In short, there's way too many usability problems. If KDE or GNOME had at least 1 usability expert helping them, they would get rid of most of those problems.

You've based this assertion on a study consisting of 1 person, your cousin who appears to not like Linux due to some vague dislikes and not complete MSN Messenger compatability. Having usability "experts" would not eliminate any of these problems, as they are caused either by application bugs, or the fact that your cousing simply doesn't like it that way.