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.

Comments

My favorite new things:

[friedmud]

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

Re:My favorite new things:

[aminorex]

You can do this with any X desktop, using x0rfbserver.

Re:Maybe but I doubt it

[Dr.Dubious DDQ]

I just dont see how the best can get better.

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...

Re:Alpha menus & drop shadows

[JabberWokky]

Yes, in other words it is bullshit fakery

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".

KAudioCreator

[IceFox]

As many of you know kde2->3 was not much for eye candy and was more underneith and even then was mainly bug fixes. 3.1 was the first time that developers got to put up new stuff. One of the least known new items is KAudioCreator which is a ogg/mp3/everything audio ripping tool. From the website:

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