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

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

[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...

[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...

[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! :-)

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.

Great idea!

[codexus]

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

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

[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. ;-)

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

[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

[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.

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?

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

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

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: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?

[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"?

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

[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: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.

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.

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: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.

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.

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.

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: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: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.

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: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: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.

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: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?

Release Party!

[ThatComputerGuy]

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

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: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*

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.

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.