KDE 3.1 Second Beta Released

desau writes "The good folks over at KDE have released the second beta of 3.1. Binary packages are available for most major distributions, save one."

Comments

Except one?

[tunah]

Two Three Four and even Five

The rest of the world *does* exist you know.

Re:Except one?

[ntr0py]

Don't forget Six.

Re:Except one?

[Anonymous Coward]

Everyone knows Debian isn't an Operating System. It's a slang term for geeks to seek acceptance by and it won't work.
Fucking loser.

Re:Except one?

[tunah]

I thought the debian packages would probably be under contrib, which I can't access (damn /.).

Re:Except one?

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow, I didn't realize that the *BSD's and Windows were now calling themselves "distributions". I'll make sure and tell Theo that he is working on a "distribution", I'm sure he'll be thrilled.

Idiot.

Re:Except one?

[KnightStalker]

http://download.kde.org/unstable/kde-3.1-beta2/Deb ian/woody/

suitable for placement in your apt-sources.

Re:Except one?

[Arandir]

KDE does not make those binaries. The distros do, and contribute them back to KDE for posting. This is why a lot of distros and systems don't have binaries available at the time of the announcement.

FreeBSD has binaries of this beta available. But these are beta packages of a beta release. It does not make sense to widely disseminate packages that are known to be broken. These binaries are for testing purposes only, so that packages will be available for 3.1 in a timely manner.

Lets get this over with.......

[optikSmoke]

Before it even starts:

Do we really need to announce beta releases of desktop environments on Slashdot? Is that all this site is becoming?

Is a large portion of slashdot, being geeks/techies/OSS-types, and probably users of [KDE|GNOME], not interested in hearing about realeases of [KDE|GNOME]?

But...... I....... I mean.... umm..... why isn't this kuro5hin?

You poor confused bastard.

Re:Lets get this over with.......

[Hard_Code]

Hey, can we have a "Why was this posted on slashdot?" topic? It can have its own icon. And it can be excluded by default. All whiners can post there.

Gentoo?

[Anonymous Coward]

No binaries for gentoo, either.

Re:Gentoo?

[Thomas A. Anderson]

What dork modded this down - it's funny, get it?

Re:Gentoo?

[fava]

But the sources are available.

Just type emerge kde-3.1_beta2 and it will download, compile and install automatically.

Simple (even if a little time consuming)

Re:Gentoo?

[TomorrowPlusX]

As a gentoo user with a broken startkde script, due to this update, I'd recommend holding off until the package matures just a bit. I gather bugs have been submitted, and in the gentoo world these things get fixed pretty quickly.

For explanation, the kdebase ebuild has a broken patch it runs against startkde, which I, in my ignorance, ignored. I'll fix it later. kde 3.1beta2 runs fine from the console, using startx.

Anyhow, this is a gentoo packaging issue -- not a kde problem. And further, I've been running 3.1 beta 1 for a month or so now with 100% stability -- I was holding off, but speaking as a developer kde 3.1 brings-in/fleshes-out some new APIs which are really quite superb. I didn't feel like waiting!

The real reason for this post...

[Erebus]

is to provide yet another forum for everyone to comment on the micturation competition between KDE and those people .

Vodak rantings

[Vodak]

Most people who jump on the Linux bandwagon begin with Redhat, a good number of these people aren't capable of compiling and installing the system on their own and it's simply juvenile note releasing binary packages for Redhat. Good game showing Redhat who's boss. Let's forget the fact that your denying newbies access to your latest environment and keeping them out of not only new features but bug fixes.

Re:Vodak rantings

[movement]

> it's simply juvenile note releasing

I notice you're quick to assume the reason must
be some alleged grudge between Red Hat and the
KDE people. From where do you derive this ?

To horribly paraphrase [disputed origin elided],
you are too quick to attribute conditions to villainy
that simply result from the fact nobody
has actually done it yet.

Re:Vodak rantings

[Phexro]

The work done to produce binaries is not done by the KDE Project, it's done by the vendors or volunteers. The KDE Project only releases source, but they mirror the binaries.

RedHat is much more interested in Gnome, and the RH developer who maintained the KDE packages resigned because of the modification of the KDE look & feel in RH 8.0.

Had you read the release announcement, you would have noticed the section which reads:

"Binary Packages. Some Linux/UNIX OS vendors have kindly provided binary packages of KDE 3.1beta2 for some versions of their distribution, and in other cases community volunteers have done so. ... Please note that the KDE Project makes these packages available from the KDE web site as a convenience to KDE users. The KDE Project is not responsible for these packages as they are provided by third parties..." (emphasis mine)

Has your knee stopped jerking yet?

It's a Beta Jackass

[aufecht]

I think we need a few new moderation categories:

-2: Too damn whiney
-3: Oh, it's you again. Why do you visit Slashdot and post comments and do nothing but bitch. Way too fucking whiney.
-4: Just shut the fuck up will ya.
-5: You are the biggest moron that ever lived.

Taco? Can these be incorporated into the moderation system?

Re:It's a Beta Jackass

[Phexro]

You'd be getting a -4 right now if we had these.

How childish!

[sp00nfed]

It seems to me that open source nowadays is all about screwing over each other.

Red hat wants a unified desktop, KDE doesn't like that idea, what a bunch of crybabies. Maybe if they had put in the work to become the standard desktop for Linux everyone would be happy... but then again Gnome is pretty damn cool.

KDE and Red hat are both playing in the open source playground, however KDE should realise they can't take their ball and go home, because of the licence they CHOSE to realise their work under.

Re:How childish!

[pyman]

KDE are in no way obligated to release binaries for Redhat...

Its GPL, which means they have to provide the source if someone asks for it. In what what is KDE taking their ball and going home?

Re:How childish!

[LMCBoy]

Not only are KDE not obligated to provide binaries for Redhat, KDE do not provide binaries for any distribution. The distributions provide their own binaries.

Redhat chose not to provide binaries for 3.1 beta2. So who exactly is being childish here? Certainly not KDE, and probably not even Redhat. I'd say it's you.

Gentoo,where patience is a virtue(not the AC post)

[Anonymous Coward]

Well crap.

The announcement comes out right after I just typed `emerge --update world`.

Maybe I'll be checkin' out KDE 3.1b2 by Friday.

Hmm....

[Anonymous Coward]

Stick that paradox in your philosophical pipe and smoke it.

Slashdot moderation

[0x0d0a]

It'd be kind of interesting to support a couple of new tags.

I'd like to see as negatives:

* Factually Inaccurate (people mark incorrect things as "Troll" or "Overrated" currently...just silly.

I'd like to see the "Offtopic" removed as a negative Slashdot moderation. I think that a lot of good conversation threads "spin off" the main thread, and that people unfortunately often get modded as "Offtopic" for material that is quite useful and refreshing.

I also think that there's a reasonable argument that "Overrated" should go. That's really what M2 is for, and having an M2-proof M1 sort of defeats the whole purpose of M2.

and as for good posts, I think that Insightful/Informative/Interesting are overly similar. They get used interchangeably. Perhaps better would be:

Remove Insightful, Informative, and Interesting. They're redundant.

Underrated should go for the same reason that Overrated should.

The following could be added:

* New Information (for posts that introduce additional facts to a story, like "I worked as an engineer at the company and...")
* Interesting. Merge of Insightful/Interesting, as the two are not distinguished between by any moderators that I've seen.
* Well-written. It would be nice to encourage good syntax on Slashdot. That's one nice thing about kuro5hin -- most users write like professional journalists. Also, there are some really nice things that people make -- relevant haikus, clever bits of story, and the occasional brilliant manifesto -- which really deserve a moderation category of their own.

Thoughts, anyone?

Re:Slashdot moderation

[TephX]

I'd like to see the "Offtopic" removed as a negative Slashdot moderation.

See my sig. :-)

I also think that there's a reasonable argument that "Overrated" should go. That's really what M2 is for, and having an M2-proof M1 sort of defeats the whole purpose of M2.

It can also be used as a miscellaneous category, though. How about having a "miscellaneous good" and "miscellaneous bad" that are still subject to M2, but don't force you to give a predefined category? (Or even allow people to enter their own categories of a word or two, although I can see the trolls using this to post obscene words...)

New Information (for posts that introduce additional facts to a story, like "I worked as an engineer at the company and...")

This is what Informative is supposed to be for, as far as I know (although it's also used to moderate up people who post copies of the story when the original site is Slashdotted)... I think Informative covers this category reasonably well.

Interesting. Merge of Insightful/Interesting, as the two are not distinguished between by any moderators that I've seen.

I do distinguish between these, actually, in a way: I never use Insightful, because it implies agreement with the poster. Since I have very strong opinions, I almost never agree with every statement in a post of decent length. On the other hand, Interesting just means that I think the comment is worthy to be read. Also, I think Interesting is a "safer" moderation in M2 - I know it is when I'm the metamoderator.

Of course, none of this is a counterargument to merging the two into just Interesting.

One further suggestion: you didn't mention Redundant. I think it's similarly useless to Offtopic, perhaps even more so since there can easily be a post that says roughly the same thing you're saying that you haven't seen (or even that was posted while you were writing your comment!)

I think Crapflood (or some more PC variant thereof) should replace Offtopic, for posts that are truly junk (you know what I'm talking about if you ever read with a threshold under 1) rather than just not terribly related to the story they're attached to.

Other possible moderation categories:

+1 Famous (for when Linus Torvalds posts. Sounds stupid to have a category, but the point is that some people can set it to not give a bonus if they want to)

+1 Original (for haikus and such)

Re:Slashdot moderation

[fstanchina]

That's one nice thing about kuro5hin -- most users write like professional journalists.

Do you mean that they write very good prose about things they don't really understand?

(disclaimer: not really reading much kuro5hin -- this was meant to be a joke, nothing more)

Re:Slashdot moderation

[wunderhorn1]

I agree wholeheartedly about over/underrated, and having a "wrong/incorrect" mod.
I think insighful should mean you gave an interesting opinion, and informative should mean you gave an interesting fact. If there are any other broad reasons why something would be intersting enough to read, add them too, but "interesting" by itself is fairly pointless.
I also agree that it would be nice to encourage good syntax, but would you really want to see something just on the basis that it was well-written?
I see your point, but it just doesn't seem like that should be the sole reason for modding something up (what if it was a really well-written troll or something? You get the picture.)

Cheers!
p.s. This is my first time posting from Lynx, so if things get messed up, that's probably why.

Re:Slashdot moderation

[Anonymous Coward]

Mod parent down, offtopic

Tabbed Konqueror?

[juju2112]

Does this mean that we will finally have a stable version of Konqueror that has tabbed browsing?

Re:Tabbed Konqueror?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes. :)

Six

[DreamerFi]

Six

KDE reminds of Fisher Price

[boy_afraid]

I'm not Linux/KDE bashing, just speaking the truth. I love Linux because of what it is not, what it is, and what capabilities it has to become. I know I've been poisoned by MS Windows, but I think KDE reminds me of some Fisher Price interface. I think KDE is the best GUI for Linux yet, but I think it could be better. I know I could just shut my trap and go build my own WM, but I don't have the skills to build one from scratch. I do have an idea of what I would like for one to be, but I'll take KDE any day over GNOME.

Now, back to the topic. I like the functionality to drag-n-drop items from my file manager to any application, but I can't seem to do that with KDE. The interface looks kind of "thick" on the borders and widgets, also. I'm kinda partial to Enlightenment.

How does one go about to build a Windows Manager from scratch? Do I need to know C, C++, or one of the other library frameworks?

Re:KDE reminds of Fisher Price

[Seli]

> How does one go about to build a Windows Manager from scratch? Do I need to know C, C++, or one of the other library frameworks?

You need to know more. Developing a window manager isn't exactly the same level like 'Hello world' apps.

Re:KDE reminds of Fisher Price

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow! Way to encourage someone to help the Linux community!

Re:Slashdot moderation (OT)

["Zow"]

Remove Insightful, Informative, and Interesting. They're redundant.

Does that mean they should get a -1?

Sorry, couldn't resist. All good points, although the moderation system hasn't effectively changed since M2 was introduced, so I'm not holding my breath.

-"Zow"

mod parent up

[oliverthered]

It's a shame I just run out of mod points..

To most people, well writen means full of shit. Believe me, I have to send emails via my 'please can you put some shit in here manager'. My Manager doesn't know what the emails about but there good enough at blagging (there managed to be a manager after all) to produce a 'well written?' document.

Umm not just redhat is missing

[nurb432]

Id consider FreeBSD to be "major".. no bins listed yet.. ( or at least I dont see them )...

Re:Umm not just redhat is missing

[Arandir]

That's because the poor overworked KDE ports maintainers at FreeBSD haven't submitted one. You see, KDE does not create, maintain or support those binaries at their site. They only host them.

You'll also note a lack of binaries for any community developed distro or system. You won't find NetBSD, Gentoo, Debian, etc. You see, these teams don't get paid by corporations for producing broken packages for beta releases on impossible time schedules.

FreeBSD is focusing on the kde-3.1 release. Hurdles that must be overcome are producing stable packages for -current (gcc-3.2) and -stable (gcc-2.95), the occasional linuxisms that crop up, and the irrational expectation by users that packages must be flawless. Expect stable 3.1 packages to be available at the time of the official announcement or very shortly thereafter.

Re:Umm not just redhat is missing

[nurb432]

Ah, that will be nice when it does get finished. Looking foward to the remote desktop stuff being integrated. ( eyecandy isnt that important to me )

I didnt mean to sound like i was basing the *bsd team, or the KDE people.. It was mostly just a comment on the original story post..

*All* coders have a monumental task, and they should all get credit.. Be it for KDE, a kernel or even a 'minor' utility..

Really fast

[be-fan]

I'm typing this in beta2 right now, and holy shit this is fast. My P4 2 GHz running Gentoo (freakish optimizations, check) now feels just as fast (UI-wise) as my old 750 MHz Duron running Win2K! And it (my P4, not beta2) compiles stuff a lot faster too! Beta2 only took 4 hours (kdelibs + kdebase, still building the other stuff :)