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KDE 3.1 Released
Ashcrow writes "KDE 3.1 was released early this morning and boasts new usability enhancements, VNC-compatible desktop sharing, tabbed browsing, and a new download manager, among other enhancements.
You can read the release anouncement here and start downloading from the closest mirror. Kudos to the KDE Team!"
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Don't know how the lameness filter got involved, but here's what I'm doing about it.
Don't think that a small group of dedicated individuals can't change the world. it's the only thing that ever has.
what an awesome (and of course slightly :) behind schedule) release.
tabbed browsing is an excellent that i love to use in moz. i notice it in konqueror, but the hot keys are different. perhaps there's a way to change them, but after months and months of using ctrl+t to get a new tab, i konq uses something different. i'm curious why not use the "standards" the moz dev team included. yeah, there's probably not an rfc for hot keys on opening a new browser tab, but something i use daily is standard.
another thing. i test drove konqueror in rc6, and pop-up windows were enabled by default. i guess this just makes the user find out how to turn them off? most people might not even know that they can turn them off. i think pop-up s/b off by default.
all in all - a very well polished desktop. the kde team delivers quality code as usual!
> What this does is provides a KDE-based VNC viewing program
What does it do that vncviewer doesn't do?
> as well as a very Windows-XP like application to send an invitation to someone else using KDE or VNC to allow them to connect to your desktop.
What does this do that e-mail doesn't do?
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
Well, it integrates into KDE, for one. It doesn't look like ass, for two.
Nothing, it uses email to send the invitation (although it can be configured to send over other methods, iirc). However, it's a lot easier to simply type in the invitee's email address and let krfb set up the VNC server, and send the email with instructions on how to connect. It automates things so that the user doesn't have to know anything about configuring a VNC server.
Here's the thing (about Ctrl+T).
See, KDE 2.0 had support for embedding a Konsole frame into the Konqueror window. As I'm sure you noticed, if you hit Ctrl+T, 3.1 still embeds a Konsole frame in the Konqueror window.
Fact of the matter is that we had a binding for Ctrl+T first... and changing around things that our users are used to as far as keybindings go is obviously a no-no. (Believe it or not there are people who use the embedded Konsole stuff. And it is pretty nifty.)
However, if you go to Settings->Configure Keybindings, you can alter it to change it from Ctrl+Shift+N to Ctrl+T or add Ctrl+T so you can use both. KDE has really good keybinding support, and it's very configurable.
Hope this helps.
This is another terrific release by the KDE team and I commend them on yet another release of some pretty sweet code.
I have one concern though, that I have seen others raise in the past and which makes me wonder if we're heading in the right direction. A quick scan through the new features is almost like reading about the new features introduced in a previous version of Windows. Is KDE simply trying to be 'more like Windows', which in turn would make KDE a much more familiar 'interface' for newbies to use? If so, then that's great and I'm sure that it will help increase its use amongst the masses.
What bothers me is that I'm beginning to see less and less 'innovation' and more and more 'feature copying'. Now, I understand that it's difficult to add a killer new feature without first having a base that an average user would expect to have, but when will we be able to reach the point where we can begin to 'differentiate' KDE from Windows in a unique way in order to furthur 'entice' potential users who simply see KDE as a 'Windows wanna-be'?
I for one love KDE and have used it as my primary desktop environment for at least a couple years now, and I always look forward to updates such as this one. They're always full of neat goodies. But I always get that feeling in the back of my mind that maybe we should try to 'think out of the box' a little more...
Well, if you know how, CVS has most of the Safari patches merged in, and the Safari guys are also integrating stuff from our branch into theirs. We're gradually moving towards a unified source tree for both projects (originally, they took a snapshot from the KDE 3.0.2 version of KHTML) but we're not quite there yet.
:)
(I'm using CVS HEAD and let me tell you, Konq is faster than ever. It's actually faster than Mozilla on my machine.)
I wonder if the 'save this process' trick is in 3.1. I've been using CVS for so long that I sort of forget which features make it into release and which don't.
(The 'save this process' trick is a way to have a set number of Konqueror processes stay alive after you quit the last Konqueror window. This way, the next time you click on the Konqueror icon, it re-uses the last process that was open, which is a nice little hack that makes Konq appear to launch faster when it's not actually launching at all.)
I've been a long-time GNOME user, and I'm just about ready to try something else.
I recently made some new themes for my GNOME2 desktop and was stymied by my GTK1 applications that... well... just wouldn't cooperate.
I'd previously made some GTK1 themes that more-or-less matched the GTK2 ones, but I cannot figure out how to convince GTK1 apps to use certain themes under my GNOME2 desktop environment. It's completely opaque.
There are so many apps I use that are still GTK1 (Galeon, Evolution, GAIM, etc etc etc) that my desktop is just plain ugly right now.
I'm getting fed up, and am trying to find something that will give me a nice even look & feel across applications. My main fear is that KMail and Konquerer won't be good Evolution/Galeon replacements.
In the end, I'll probably go OS/X, but I really hope it doesn't happen.
fifth sigma, inc.
A quick scan through most of the comments on this page reflect the sentiment that KDE represents one of the pinnacles for why any windows user would want to switch to linux, and why linux "is ready".
My two cents on this matter is that what I feel should be Linux's selling point, what should be the reason why people start using Linux, is not so much a single desktop GUI, a smattering of 'features' that windows lacks, or anything. It should be the notion that Linux is an aggregate whole of multiple works, and that under Linux there is always more than one answer to something.
*sniff*
Now wasn't that sentimental and goo-gahish.
Congrats to the Kdevelopers for Kde 3.1
Any web page that has valid HTML and doesn't render properly in Konqueror should be reported as a bug.
:)
If the web page has invalid HTML, we really shouldn't have to care about whether or not it renders "properly" since it wasn't written "properly" - but even a very large majority of those pages are displayed properly, because Konq has an IE-compatible mode that renders most pages the same way that IE does. (IE renders a lot of broken HTML when it shouldn't.)
The Apple guys working on Safari have made huge progress with the IE-compatible mode, as well as making KHTML even faster. Konq uses KHTML, and the code in CVS is both faster and more correct with rendering than any released version of Konqueror or Safari. It's rapidly approaching Mozilla's Gecko engine for correctness, and it's got it beat for speed.
Plus our JavaScript engine is also constantly improving, to the point where it's also ridiculously fast (thanks to the Apple guys, in great part) but it's also very correct. Code that works in IE's JavaScript interpreter almost always works without fail in Konq's, and the cases where that isn't true are being targeted and eliminated. All in all, it's a really great time to be a KDE user.
The speedup in 3.1 is very noticeable. It looks great but also everything is much more responsive then before. :) but it feels so much different (i.e. better). The only issue I had before was that KDE was always slower compared to windoze running on the same machine but that difference seems to be almost completely gone.
I don't quite understand the complaints people have about KDE looking like windoze. Yes, it has windows
Once again, I am absolutely amazed at what this little thing called Open Source can do.
Just six years ago, an ambitious proposal was made to the world by a German university student named Matthias Ettrich. The goal of the project was to create a user-friendly, open source desktop environment similar to CDE, the Common Desktop Environment. CDE, at the time, was popular on Solaris and many proprietary Unix platforms. However, CDE's code base was closed and the Linux community was searching for a suitable replacement. Enough support built up that dozens of developers came together to create an entire desktop environment out of nothing. Over 20 months later, KDE 1.0 was released to the public. And there was much rejoicing.
Taking on Sun was an ambitious enough goal. But who would have imagined that Microsoft (Word document) (Google cache) would ever specifically name KDE as a viable competitor to Windows?
Microsoft may even start to get a little hotter under the collar if recent events are to show anything: Wal-Mart's on-line shopping site quickly ran out of their PC's built with a Linux distribution using KDE for its interface; most of the government computers in Largo, FL run KDE; and Apple implements a new Web browser based on KDE's KHTML library.
And if there is nothing else that the release of KDE 3.1 proves, it is that the naysayers are wrong again. All too often, there are those who try to suggest that there is some sort of heated conflict between the GNOME and KDE projects. Nothing could be further from reality. For example, on the Xdg mailing list prominent developers from both the GNOME and KDE projects work together in forming a consistent .desktop file standard. The
people that actually make GNOME and KDE have nothing but the highest respect for one another's projects. There is
none of the hostility that so many trolls would like others to believe.
It has just been wonderful seeing this release happen. I have been watching the KDE developer's mailing lists since July and I find it fascinating how the whole thing has come together. The graphics designers, the documentation writers, the translators, the event organizers, and, of course, the coders. All of these groups have been equally important in making KDE the enormous success it has become.
So, I just want to say thank you to everyone who made it happen. I just have to wonder what the next six years will bring!
Do not worry about finding a list of mirrors. download.kde.org will automatically forward you to an open mirror.
For a direct link to the packages, here are:
Note that you need a version of Qt >= 3.1.0. There are additional requirementsfor 3.1 you may want to know.
One thing I have never figured out with KDE is the lack of an installer. I like the installer from Ximian for Gnome. It is simple, and it handles dependencies (moderately well).
With KDE, I have to download a ton of files, and then figure out the aRTS dependencies and whatnot. I also have to figure out how to make Linux use KDE instead of Gnome. I can do it and get it installed, but why not have an installer?
Lest anyone be accusing Red Hat of animosity towards KDE, note that RH's kernels are also behind the latest releases from Linus, and yet nobody ... well, nobody worth listening to -- claims that RH has it in for Mr. Torvalds' little project. I think it's far more likely that RH just has a rigorous QA process with the aim of releasing no package before its time than that they hate KDE. By the way, when the update for security problems in a recent version of KDE came out, RH came out with them in a timely fashion. This (3.1) release has lots of new neat features, but it's not a security update. Perhaps they believe (rightly, IMO) that users can wait for shiny new objects.
Besides, have you looked at how many packages it takes to install KDE? Eeep! I suppose up2date can handle that. Of course, the upgradability issue is there with GNOME; and I can't recall off the top of my head when RH has offered a point-release update for GNOME that wasn't security-related [ that's a hedge -- I can't recall when they have release a point-release update for GNOME period ].
For those of you who absolutely must have the latest, then take a look in the "rawhide" directory of any RH mirror, e.g. this one.
"Oh, I hope he doesn't give us halyatchkies," said Heinrich.
I was a long time GNOME follower. Knowing GNOME 1.x and 2.x of it's best but I must admit that KDE 3.1 is the best Desktop Environment that I've seen so far.
- It's fast,
- Clean,
- Consistent,
- Really integrated,
- Usable,
- Beats Windows in certain situations on length.
I belive that with the 3.1 release of KDE that there is no real future for GNOME and I sometimes wonder why they still work on it and put so much effort into that project. GNOME will never comes out of the 'development' phase. Once an application looks halfway usable (still in development phase) it then starts to get changed once again which then makes it unusable for the next couple of months again.
There are a lot of nasty issues in GNOME even now in the stabilized gnome-2-2 branch which will get released in 2 days.
- Log in as user under console (not gdm) and then enter startx to load up X and GNOME then try to immediately log out. Nothing happens for the next 3-5 minutes. Then one time the logout dialog pleases itself to show up and let you log out (even this doesn't work seriously often). This problem has been announced on bugzilla.gnome.org and hasn't been fixed till yet.
- Gnome-Terminal install the bluecurve theme and fullsize it. The theme disappears.
- Bonobo and Glade toolbars are looking differently get a look here.
- Documentation for programmers. There are still no sign for usable GNOME 2 documentations, how should a programmer get into GNOME 2.x development when he knows shit about howto use the functions and what purpose they have. There is the API reference manuals for all libraries (still unfinished and incomplete), there are old documentations for GTK1 and GNOME1 and there is the GTK 2 tutorial which only describes the first 20% of the Toolkit but nothing more. No documentation explaining Gnome-VFS, Bonobo and other complex things. You've been told to 'use the source Luke' all the time but it's hard spending 3 months into buggy code of others to get a clue how things are made and then adapt maybe buggy code to your own project because you don't know it better howto use these things.
- Still nothing as simple as a Fileselector yet,
- Still no snap to grid feature.
- GNOME is mostly a hacking around when I have the mood to it or when I feel that I need to tweak this and that. There is no real roadmap or featureplan such as in KDE even months ago I was able to read and KNOW what will be in KDE 3.1 and even now I know what will be in 3.2
GNOME are hyping and making shitty things such as 'open recent' features look like its a revolutionary progress in the desktop while on the other hand its a little gift from KDE.
Sorry to come over with the same shit all the time but people tend to compare KDE and GNOME all the time so do I. I really like KDE and I also like GNOME very much (used to be a GNOME follower) but all this is soo sad. Now seeing KDE 3.1 and compareing it with 3.0 then I ask myself wow. What's wrong with GNOME ? 2.0 and 2.2 is no big step if you compare it with the changes made in KDE.
Well this can endlessly be expanded. I appreciate and welcome the work of the GNOME developers they are definately trying to do a good job but imo it's not enough for the public. And it makes me sick reading all the shit from GNOME zealots replying to KDE people how much mature GNOME is (which it definately is not). Fancy themes and icons doesn't make a good desktop environment.
You know this K-naming thing has really gotten to the KDE folks when you read about the new game Atlantik: "Inspired by the famous boardwalk in Atlantik City, New Jersey...".