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KDE 3.1 Alpha1 is Here
navindra writes: "A brand new alpha of the breath-taking KDE 3.1 development branch has been announced. This release sports everything from wonderful new eye candy to tons of popular new features including new and exciting "easter eggs" (aka bugs) just waiting to be discovered. Remember, this is not a stable release -- those of you concerned with stability should use KDE 3.0.2, whereas those of you who want to help KDE 3.1 be the best KDE ever should use this alpha. Kudos to Dre for writing the announcement and to the tireless Dirk Mueller for coordinating this release. Party!" On a related note, pAlpha writes: "Over the past years a large amount of myths has built up around KDE. Recently Aaron J. Seigo released a page about the KDE myths and facts." Good for convincing the boss.
Right click on the clipboard icon and uncheck "Enable Actions"
From the 3.1 feature plan:
KRfb:
NEW IN KDE: VNC-compatible server to share KDE desktops
Remote Desktop Connection (KRdc):
NEW IN KDE: VNC-compatible client
Now you don't have to have a seperate instance of KDE running with the vncserver - you can share your CURRENT desktop just like you can with Windows and vnc. This is mucho cool - I will use it often!
Derek
At this point, at least for the 3.x series, it's mostly 'tweaks' for improved useability, more standards compliance, and so on.
I update my copies of the current KDE CVS a few times per week, though I only occasionally compile and install from there (once every few weeks). I just like to watch what's being updated.
Last few times I updated the core KDELIBS CVS, for example, I noticed more updates to the html and ecma/javascript code. KMail has had a lot of individual updates...you get the idea. I can't honestly say I know how SUBSTANTIAL the changes have been, but I can at least spot when a section that I use frequently has had updates. so that if I get curious or run into problems in that area (something that hasn't happened to me in some time) I know to try an update...
I notice a bunch of the less "core" utilities (e.g. K3B, the video transcoding utility) have been moved from the core libraries to a new area ("KDEEXTRAGEAR", if I remember correctly). I need to check out that module too, now...
Hacker Public Radio is our Friend
I head that at the beggining they tried to reassemble CDE - desktop environment popular on unix workstations.
:wq
Um. Pardon me, but how else are you supposed to render translucent objects? You always have to calculate the final result somewhere. If you have a card and driver combo that supports it in hardware via XRENDER, it does it there. If you don't, it emulates it in software (you can force it one way or the other via the Control Center). Other than hardware or software, where else is it supposed to be rendered? By amish stained glass sculptors sitting on a three legged stool next to your monitor?
--
Evan "Ya, Mister Godwin, that looks good. I'll have the next menu ready for you in about three hours, sure enough".
"$30 for the One True Ring. $10 each additional ring!" -- JRR "Bob" Tolkien
I've set up a mirror of the screenshots site:
/
http://wuarchive.wustl.edu/users/tom/kde31alpha
Enjoy!
I am already starting to see comments in this thread like "feature X is just a ripp-off of product Y", who decided to put in feature Z, I hate it", etc. I just finished reading Survival Is Not Enough, by Seth Godin, who is a former Executive at Yahoo, among other things. These complaints are features that really should be applauded instead. Which criticizm is good, just the fact that a feature is similar to something else another product has is not bad.
Much of the book has to do with the evolution of products suchs as web sites and software. Evolution happens in software just like in life forms. Much of the book pushes the idea of making as many "mutations" in a short time with as little money as possible. Let the bad ones die, keep the good ones. If another product has a feature that works well, why not use as much of the basic concept as possible. Image what the word processor world be like to day if none of the publishers used features other software had already implemented. Cross polination in evolutionary terms. This is along the lines of the tabbed browsing in Konquer, and the "Qwertz" toolbar thing.
The rant about the stupid KDE clipboard function? I admit, I don't use the feature either. Is it bad it was put in? No. As many "test" features as possible should be put into the public view to see which are good and which are bad. The good features will stay, the bad will be phased out. These "mutations" of the core are what helps create innovative features. Who knows, someday a desktop envirnment might be considered horrible if it doesn't have whatever the KDE clipboard thing does. (I don't even KNOW what it is supposed to do, which may be more the problem.)
These are not bad, and in my mind should be encouraged of both the Gnome team and the KDE team. As many people here know, innovation happens much faster when there are competing technologies, and not just a big monopoly in any given market.
-Pete
(Book link is an affiliate link...I read the book and liked it. I think you will too.)
Soccer Goal Plans
KAudioCreator is an audio file creation solution for kde. It allows you to use whatever encoder you wish to encode your audio files while providing a comfortable gui. KAudioCreator also provides a job control system so you can see what files have succeeded, failed and stop or cancel jobs as the application progresses.
Screenshots!
and for those kde 2 users I have back ported it to kde2 and put it on my webpage. -Benjamin Meyer
Do you changes clothes while making the "chee-chee-cha-cha-choh" transformation sound?
I know, but the binutils 2.12 solves part of the linking problem by prelinking.
Just today, the objprelink programmer, Leon Bottou, posted on the kde-dev mailinglist, stating that the objprelink option is no longer necessary. When using the newest glibc, binutils and gcc, you already get large speedups.
You can find more info on objprelink here.
If only I could come up with a good sig
they should be able to decide the frame rate [ of the icons]
Who? The creator of the icon can do that right now - the icons are MNG files (the animated form of PNG files), and they have a framerate set inside them. What you want is for the desktop user to be able to override that? I suppose it's possible, but I for one just don't see it as a desirable feature.
As for having several different animations based on status, there has been some talk of that (Mosfet at one point discussed it, and he's got some code for animated widgets written, but not, afaik for animated icons). While a developer might suddenly write it, I'd think that to do it right (maybe a .desktop file with scripted dcop calls?) would entail enough time to a stable product that it's unlikely to appear in the very near future. The framework is there, but there's not much demand from the application authors for such an ability.
The fact that it's getting down to such minor details ("I want to globally set the framerate on the animated icons") shows that it's a mature desktop. (Incidently, if you *really* want to change the framerate, you can always open the icons in an editor, change the framerate and save them... Me? One of the first things I do on a new KDE desktop is turn the animations *off*. They bug me... and there's a nice, easy setting for that in the Control Center)
--
Evan
"$30 for the One True Ring. $10 each additional ring!" -- JRR "Bob" Tolkien
Hmm... i started krfb before I knew the Remote Assistance feature in WinXP. But when I saw it I got a number of ideas from RA, no doubt.
The question is: dont you want a feature anymore just because MS implemented it first?
One of the reasons why MS gets the cool stuff first is because KDE still needs to catch up. Many people claim that Linux/KDE is already competitive, but that isnt true. There are many things that Windows has and Linux/KDE doesnt, so be prepared to see even more copied features before KDE gets the big features that Window lacks.