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What To Expect From KDE 3.1
Moritz Moeller - Her writes "As most of you desktop users already know, the KDE Project recently released KDE 3.1beta2, which will be the final development release before KDE 3.1. The good news is, KDE 3.1 is scheduled for release in just a few weeks. The following page gives a nice overview about what is coming with many screenshots. It will certainly be the best KDE ever."
i really want to thank all kde people for this great work. right now i am sitting here at home and switch from GNOME (cvs) to KDE (cvs). keep up the good work for this professional desktop. it's a cool useroriented, fast and quickly developed desktop. thank you all.
Using it since lunch. Every KDE release seems to get faster and faster. It's actually faster than fluxbox. F' plain window managers if full desktop environments are faster than them. F' twm.
Is it just me or is the kde.org server extremely slow? Is this related to that downtime I heard about a few days ago?
Anyway, I do have to admit, KDE is one of the more attractive desktop environments - even better than WinXP (with its ugly green/blue combo - it don't work). I would use KDE as my main desktop environment, cause my favorite distro - Mandrake installs the d.e. by default. But I've never decided to use KDE (nor GNOME) because the two are extremely fat and slow on low-end systems. Even on my high end systems, I'd rather give up looks for power and speed.
As most of you desktop users already know, the KDE Project recently released KDE 3.1beta2, which will be the final development release before KDE 3.1. The good news is, KDE 3.1 is scheduled for release in just a few weeks.
KDE 3.1, the strongest KDE release to date, promises new goodies for just about everyone who gets to enjoy the full KDE desktop experience. Here is a sampling of what is in store for you:
Browsing with Tabs. The many fans of tabbed browsing will be delighted by this new addition to the KDE web browser ( Konqueror ) (screenshot). To simplify downloading a large number of files, a new download manager (KGET), which fully integrates into Konqueror, has joined the network package (kdenetwork). It manages any number of downloads in one window, where transfers can be added, removed, paused, resumed, queued or scheduled. A dialog displays transfer status, including progress, size, speed and estimated time to completion.
Eye Candy. The artistically-inclined KDE contributors have showered us with a basket of new eye candy. As shown in this screenshot, KDE 3.1 will ship with the contemporary Crystal icon set as well as the original new Keramik theme. The screenshot also shows the new drop-shadows. To help manage these stunning themes, KDE will provide a new theme manager with improved theme style and color decoration previews (screenshot). Menus and other desktop windows can also use attractive drop shadows, as shown in the screenshot above.
Personal Information Management. On the PIM front, the email client ( KMail ) has gained several privacy and security enhancements - namely S/MIME, PGP/MIME and X.509v3 support - in collaboration with the Aegypten project, an IT security project sponsored by the German government (screenshot). The calendar / scheduling application (KOrganizer) features a new Exchange 2000 plugin. The address book (KAddressbook) has gained the ability to fetch contact information from one or more LDAP servers. It can also print contact information and import industry-standard vCards.
While not included in the 3.1 release, the next quantum jump in KDE's email / groupware architecture is scheduled for KDE 3.2, when KDE will ship a completely copy-lefted, integrated groupware system. Currently known as the Kroupware Project, it is being sponsored by the German government and will integrate the major KDE PIM applications (screenshot, screenshot). More about this project, and some additional screenshots, can be found on the dot. KDE 3.2 will also feature the ability to use Vim as the mail composer (screenshot).
File Management. The file manager (Konqueror) has a number of new goodies, such as folder icons which reflect a folder's contents, a video thumbnail generator and a number of plugins for providing enhanced- or meta-information about various file types (e.g., images, binary packages, source code). The file search utility can now search file meta-information for searching multi-media files.
Desktop Sharing. For those who switch work stations frequently, KDE offers a new VNC-compatible desktop sharing framework. It enables users to share a KDE desktop across multiple machines (screenshot).*
Enterprise. Enterprises, Internet cafes and similar users will appreciate enhancements to the KDE Kiosk framework (the Kiosk framework provides an easy way to disable certain features within KDE to create a more controlled environment). In addition, the panel (Kicker) now supports fully customized menus.
Multimedia. The multimedia framework (kdemultimedia) has a new video decoder based on Xine. Xine is a video framework which provides support for various video formats, such as AVI, DivX, Cinepak, Sorenson Video, MPEG 1/2 and 4, QuickTime / MOV, ASF and others.
Games. For the playful among us, KDE 3.1 will offer a number of new games in the games package (kdegames), including a golf game ( Kolf ) (screenshot), an Atlantik and Monopoly-type game ( Atlantik ), a Blackjack game ( Megami ). and a Same-like game ( Klickery ).
Ease of Use. A number of other improvements are meant simply to make the desktop easier to use and configure. For example, the application finder (KAppfinder) provides a nice tree view for selecting the applications to include in the KDE desktop menu hierarchy. Two new user notification methods have also been added for providing non-obtrusive informational messages: a passive popup window (KPassivePopup), which pops up next to the application's entry in the panel's taskbar (without stealing the focus), as well as messages which appear in an application's title-bar (KWindowInfo). In addition, the control center (KControl) has received a face lift and better organization (screenshot).
Miscellaneous. Of course work under the hood continues for KDE 3.1 as well. It provides a number of speed improvements, such as Konqueror start-up time, a number of usability enhancements by the KDE Usability Project, as well as almost 1,000 critter fixes.
More information about planned KDE 3 features is available for KDE 3.1 and KDE 3.2.
Some interesting KDE statistics: the KDE CVS source code repository consists of about 2.6 million lines of code (LOC) (for comparison, the GNU/Linux kernel version 2.5.29 consists of about 3.1 million lines of code). The KDE Project consists of hundreds of active contributors, with 300 of them translating KDE into over 70 languages (KDE 3.0.4 shipped in 51 languages). In May 2002 over 11,014 CVS commits were executed. The KDE website has 24 official mirrors in 16 countries and the KDE FTP site has 71 official mirrors in 30 countries.
I think you mean mandrake 8.2 and red hat 7.3
If you want a fast window manager combo, how about ratpoison+screen?
Open Source Java Web Forum with LDAP authentication
Here are a bunch of screenshots for your enjoyment while the current server is recovering...
Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum viditur
Well, Konqueror gives you the option of using the mozilla rendering engine with konqueror via kmozilla. I'm tried it out here in Redhat 8 and it works quite well. Windows' desktop manager is also integrated into the OS. KDE is not...
Microsoft kinda offered you less choice.
If he doesn't like it, then he doesn't have to use it.
If he has some time, but doesn't know how to code then he can contribute documentation.
If he is not willing to help make the project better then it is better that he shut the fuck up, because his whining doesn't help anyone or anything.
First, I want to say that KDE has come quite a long way. I've used KDE from 1.0 through 3.0 and I really like a lot of the changes I've seen. Many of the changes have been for the good. Opening the code, Konqueror, SMB access, printing, Keramic, etc... The only problem is that a lot of the apps still have arse looking icons. As a rule icons today should be 32-bit color, 128x128 pixels with alpha blending. Some of the icons in Kaplan and Kmail look like they are from Windows 3.1. There are no transparent areas, etc... I kind of wish that someone would come up with a common framework for look and feel that works consistently throughout the environment. The icons in Kicker are awesome! But we need the same quality in the apps for the whole thing to have any real appeal. This is still where GNOME has KDE beat. The icons in GNOME are much nicer looking. Keep it up KDE hackers!! :)
I have a gripe regarding the theme used in this screenshot:
UI developers: please stop using curves in widgets and window decorations unless use can use alpha blending to make the edges of the curve look smooth. I'm sorry but monitor resolution just isn't sharp enough to make curves look good without alpha blending and anti-aliasing.
Windows isn't a desktop environment. It is an Operating System and has been since Windows95. KDE is not OS. You can do anything you want on a Linux box without a browser (and KDE). You can't say the same about Windows.
(Anyone who used Windows98 (tm) much will remember how easy it was for IE to corrupt the whole OS).
And WindowsME, and Win2k, and WinXP.
Just on Monday night a mate brought over his Win2k laptop, which had been reinstalled that very day, so that he could grab a few gigs of music from my server. IE , which was idle in the background, spontaneously crashed. This then caused Explorer to have an unintelligible error, causing CPU usage to rise to about 85% (we were doing nothing except copying files over smb)! Exlorer continued to copy files for about 20 mins ("256118237 minutes remaining"), then crashed, causing his file transfer to be stuffed up. This all happened while we watched, with our hands off the computer, running a newly installed OS which was doing nothing at all except for copying files over the network.
I just can't believe that people use Windows as a server OS! But getting back to my original point, IE can do a lot of damage in all Windows versions, not just Win98.
bukharin
If you went to the download section of SuSE's support center you would notice the SuSE KDE service which offers fresh SuSE RPM's of the latest versions of KDE.
m l
http://www.suse.de/en/private/download/index.ht
Go to the section titled 'LinuKS: SuSE Linux KDE Service'. Enjoy.
Anything in Konquere can be browsed with a tab. If you want to have one tab with audiocd:/, another tab with http://www.slashdot.org, another tab with lan:/, and another with file:/usr/lib you can.
The tabs are so you can have seperate konqueror "views" without multiple instances of konqueror running.
You have missed an opportunity to upgrade your unstable box to 3.0.4.
3 .0.4/Deb ian
l
The KDE mirrors have Debian packages available for both Sid and Woody:
ftp://download.us.kde.org/pub/kde/stable/
Add that to your apt.sources and party on. I believe it's a good idea to remove 2.2.x entirely before doing the 3.0.x upgrade.
FAQ here:
http://davidpashley.com/debian-kde/faq.htm
2ndly, Microsoft Windows(tm) isn't a "desktop environment" (unlike KDE). After version 3.11, it because an entire operating system. Integrating a web browser into the operating system is a big technical mistake, because it infects the OS with instabilities and inefficiencies that are tolerable in a standalone application.
Actually, Windows itself has never really been considered a "Desktop Environment" but, rather an Operating environment up until windows 3.11 because it ran on top of DOS, and even then Windows 95 to Me are still Running on top of DOS "Microsoft Just hid it in Windows ME" so technically they are still "Operating Environments".
The only True Windows Operating Systems are Windows NT, Windows 2000 & Windows XP.
The Konqueror file browser works w/ the tabs.
I don't believe you can do anything fancy w/ the tabs though.
Apparently they're waiting for gcc 3.2 to be the default compiler before they upload kde 3 to unstable. As to what's holding gcc 3.2, go figure. I read somewhere that they're waiting for glibc 2.3, or was it the other way around.
Yeah, but adjust your release schedule according to which major package? As it stands now, many distros nudged their scheduled so they could release with gcc 3.2. While many desktop users may never touch the compiler, in this case it's important since gcc 3.2 has a different C++ ABI than previous versions.
Another point is that major releases of big projects tend to have quite a few bugs. If you wait a while you can use the bugfix releases, which inevitably follow any big release.
For reference, .debs have been available for every single KDE 3.0.x release from -rc1 onwards. If you read the FAQ, or even done something really simple like asked debian-kde, or apt the bot, you'd know this. But instead you seem content to spew incorrect crap all over Slashdot.
Please, grow up.
The poster further down is right, the transition to g++ 3.2 has to be complete before KDE can go in; the alternative is renaming every library, which will be much more painful (trust me). Plus, the maintainers just don't have the time.
-DanielS, occasional KDE package monkey
In any case, if 3.1 has cool new stuff, you may want to wait until 3.1.1 for the bugs in the cool new stuff to be fixed.
Over in FreeBSD land folks have set up regular builds off the KDE CVS to allow for much more testing than in the past. It's part of the FruitSalad project (not gonna link it, cause I don't wanna crash it) which you can fine linked from the KDE on FreeBSD project site.
Anyone doing something similar for any of the Linux distros?
The line must be drawn here. This far. No further.
Write your fucking desktop program so that people upgrading can do so seamlessly and painlessly
Why I left Linux behind. This is a distro issue, not KDE's. On FreeBSD, to upgrade from 2.x to 3.x looks just like this...
# pkg_delete -rf qt*
# portinstall kde3
This removes the old stuff, compiles the new stuff, and installs it. Don't have time for a compile?
# pkg_add -r kde3
Done.
I am forever amazed at the folks that can actually get stuff like RPM working properly to upgrade large packages like this. I'm guessing these folks are not that numerous, as there appear to be a lot of folks posting here waiting for their distro to come out with a totally new release just to get KDE updated.
The line must be drawn here. This far. No further.
this shouldn't be a surprise, but: you can switch from A4 to US Letter size paper in the print dialog or the print control panel. as for the rulers, right click on one and be happy to see you can switch to inches (among other choices).
the defaults may be european, but that might be because the people who wrote those features are in europe.
you may also want to expect your American distro maker to set it up for Americanized defaults.
>Apparently they're waiting for gcc 3.2 to be the default compiler before they upload kde 3 to unstable.
Well, I have 3.2 on a stock Mandrake 9.0 setup on an Athlon-XP 1600+ and the compiler craps out say once in every 15 compiles (of average-sized files). Last night I was compiling the multimedia package of kde3.1 beta2 and had to start a while loop of makes because one big file (artsmodules.cc I think - some 13,000 line computer generated file) kept choking it to death. It's such the annoyance.