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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.
Now I'm no longer using mozilla, since it doesn't start quite as fast as konqueror and the tabs where the only thing better about it (that and the antialiased fonts in konqueror look much better).
There are lots of (small) improvements in the kde code that make the whole environment a real joy to use.
Kde 3.1 is a great thing to look forward for.
If only I could come up with a good sig
I looked at the screenshots, and the transparent menus and the drop shadows on the menu look really nice. I'm curious - are these KDE application things? Are they part of the windows manager that comes with KDE? Are they QT? And will they work over everything, or will they only work when QT menus are displayed over QT aps?
Just wondering if it is possible to have such nifty eyecandy work with my 95% GTK+/Sawfish environment, or if I would have to switch to the KDE environment to see this features.
_sig_ is away
I'm pretty sure that it originally stood for Kool Desktop Environment. I think now the official position is that the K doesn't stand for anything, but I think that they're just covering up the dumb idea to deliberately misspell cool :-)
I've also read that they chose K because it was the first letter after L, for Linux. I believe the former more than the latter though.
"I may not have morals, but I have standards."
KDE 1 - 2 were attempts to copy windows UI with some small differences.
It now appears that KDE 3.1 is going for the Appple OS X Aqua look. Look at the screen shots. The task bar looks like the OS X dock and they even called it Qwertz.
I love Linux on the desktop, and I love KDE, but unless it offers something original, something that Windows and Mac OS don't, then what's the point?
KDE stands for: ;)
(The) Kalle Dalheimer Experience
(See http://www.kde.org/people/kalle.html)
I agree, I prefer KDE over GNOME (but I use both) installation is the one thing that GNOME does much better than KDE. I whish they'd make it easier to update, something on the order of RedCarpet.
Ummm... Hi there.
/. is frequented by folks who know what "it's an Alpha version" means, yet will still download and try it? Ya, them "geek" types.
/. therefore does the community a service when they announce new developments on major OSS projects, by pointing the right eyes to the source code.
You do realise that
There's a lot of these folks here, too. This translates to lots of knowlegeable, quailty testers for the KDE team. Quality testers == a quality product for the rest of us. Knowlegeable testers == help for the KDE people in fixing bugs.
BTW, I think it's cool that the only major browser without tabs after KDE3.1 is released will be IE. The Galeon folks should be proud.
Soko
"Depression is merely anger without enthusiasm." - Anonymous
After looking at the new screenshots, I can honestly say that this will be the first KDE which I will not have to alter the look of significantly from the default install. This will mean good things for people unaware of kde-look.org and other enhancements that are 3rd party to kde. KDE will finally look very polished and professional (if not a little bit over the top like XP .. but definately far more attractive than XP).
Tis better to be silent and thought a fool, than to open your mouth and remove all doubt --Abraham Lincoln
well, to be fair, i didn't "start up" the KDE usability project. it just wasn't very active before i and a few others descended upon it and decided to get some actual reports written and some actual coding done.
...
i believe jono started the project and others such as chris howells were involved early on.
the time and effort of everyone who took the initiative has resulted in more and more of the KDE developers and users (along with some new devels and usability people) getting on the list and getting involved.
it's fun to be part of something positive and intense as it unfolds
AJS
The developer's dilemma .... it's been rehashed on a bunch of lists (KDE included) many times .... do you enable all the cool stuff (at least in the first release it's there) so that people can learn about it and start using it, or do you disable it by default and run the risk that 90% of the people who would be helped by it never find out that it exists.
It's a delicate balance and probably has to be figured out feature by feature - I found the clippy thig so annoying it got turned off right away - some people might find it usefull and want it left on - I suspect it's on the border-line.
With something like this it may make sense to enable it by default for a couple of releases so that enough people know it's there if they need it then disable it by default