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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.
Can they improve upon the best? Honestly....can they?
In college, really poor, need a flatscreen.
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
...is Slashdot the place for alpha announcements?
i'm sure there are plenty of KDE fans here and all, but this isn't even beta yet. if Slashdot announced every alpha release of every decent-sized Open Source project... Oh wait, they do.
Cretin - a powerful and flexible CD reencoder
"Over the past years a large amount of myths has built up around KDE..."
:P
Number one of which is: KDE does NOT stand for "Killer Dog Eaters"
This is my sig. Its pathetic.
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
Aaron J Siego also started up the KDE Usability Project, in order to spearhead work on improving the KDE UI. I was following the list for quite a few weeks, until the traffic grew too substantial to keep up with. But according to the 3.1 alpha release notes, some of their intial work, including work on Kicker, is going to be included in the new release.
This is a wonderful thing. From reading the list, I know that they've painstakingly thought through the work they've done, modeled and remodeled, discussed and argued all the little details to get things as good as they could. Progress has been slow for that reason, but it is substantial, and over time I think it'll bring KDE's usability to something we can all really be proud of.
Features are nice, but I think improving the usability of KDE will help everyone in the long run.
"I may not have morals, but I have standards."
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
I'll agree that the new KDE *THEME* seen on the screenshots looks a lot like WinXP, but keep in mind that it can be made to look like almost anything you want.
Also, I disagree with "every body knows that XP was just a pretty GUI". Compared to Windows2000, perhaps it was; but most consumers weren't using Win2k, but Win9x. And WinXP is insistently aimed at home users too, touting new, unheard-of features like STABILITY (whoaaaaaa) and stuff like that. WinXP mixes all that stuff.
Finally, WinXP's prettyness can be argued with; i think it looks childish and dumb, but that's just me..
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?
What's the point? Freedom, for starters. You get a first-rate GUI without sacrificing Freedom. Isn't that worth celebrating, even if the GUI is not totally "original"?
Besides, why is it necessarily desireable for a GUI to be completely original? It's been said often before, but I guess it bears repeating. Most modern GUI systems look very similar. They all use "windows", "menus", "icons", "buttons", and "desktops". Does this mean that no one can think of anything new, and it's all about "A copied B copied C copied D! Shame on A, B and C!" ? Perhaps. But it's also possible that the Desktop metaphor just makes sense and it works well. Would you rather KDE make a completely new computing paradigm, even if it meant it was harder to use? Just for the sake of being "different"?
Besides, KDE offers plenty that Win/Mac don't, besides Freedom. Themability, for one. You claim to "love" KDE, and yet it seems you don't understand that the way your desktop looks is largely up to you in KDE. You can make it look very similar to WinXP, or very similar to OSX, or not really like either. The person who took those screenshots chose to have a panel that looks like the OSX dock. Others have an XP-like panel. Mine looks like neither. KDE gives you the freedom to build a desktop that suits your needs and style. How is that copying either OSX or XP?
I guess I shouldn't even bother...there will always be naysayers. I remember when they were saying "KDE will never be as good as Windows or Mac!". Now it's "Ok, KDE is just as good as Windows/Mac...but it's not BETTER, so what's the point?!"
Indeed, what's the point?
Liberal (adj.): Free from bigotry; open to progress; tolerant of others.
I've set up a mirror of the screenshots site:
/
http://wuarchive.wustl.edu/users/tom/kde31alpha
Enjoy!
It is fully VNC compatible and supports the latest codecs.
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?
KDE stands for: (The) Kalle Dalheimer Experience ;)
ghobe' bIlughbe' ji-bIlugh Klingon Desktop Environment
naDev tlhInganpu' tu'lu' yaj'a' majQa'
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.
What about tabbed browsing?
What about multiple desktops?
What about opening new browser windows with the MMB?
What about themes!
What about scrollbar-jumping?
What about the Alt-modifier key for faster window-manipulation?
MSFT copied often enough and is now clearly lagging behind KDE in the GUI area because they still have a lot to copy to catch up.