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KDE 3.2.0 Released
Quique writes "KDE 3.2 has just been released. The official announcement is available at the KDE site and the source tarballs are being replicated to the mirrors. There are already binary packages for a few distributions. Besides the usual bugfixes and new features, this release has been highly optimized and runs way faster than previous versions. This is a good opportunity for Windows users to migrate to a free desktop."
*Raises hand* Excuse me, when is it "not" a good time to switch from Windows?
And I thought KDE tried to provide (among other things) familiarity for people with previous expirience with windoze.
I've been using the "unoficial" .deb's for a while now, and I gotta say that it really is a major release. Many bug fixes, faster than ever, I haven't seen kde running so smooth since kde1... Now since I had been using it on a teste machine, now all I have to do is wait for it to come in to debian sid to have it on all my desktops!
Great job by a great team.
Of course it is...I only spent the mandatory 2 days last week compiling 3.1.5.
Well here we go again.
Gentoo already has this, but it's masked.
/usr/portage/kde-base/kdebase, and there is an ebuild for it:
Go to
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 7922 Jan 18 23:35 kdebase-3.0.5b.ebuild
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 3971 Jan 13 12:40 kdebase-3.1.4.ebuild
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 3630 Jan 29 08:42 kdebase-3.1.5.ebuild
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 3084 Feb 2 07:26 kdebase-3.2.0.ebuild
You'll have to unmask it, so see The Masked Packages FAQ at Gentoo.org.
libertarianswag.com
Great Job !!
"This is a good opportunity for Windows users to migrate to a free desktop."
Again?? I believe last week there was a good opportunity too... had something to do with a virus.
I want my karma, and I want it now!
If it still takes some 15 secs to startup even on high-end machines, it'll not be faster enough for me.
XFCE for me...
Being that KDE (GNOME, etc) have different aims than that of XFCE, I think its totally resonable that KDE and friends take a bit longer to load.
Sunny Dubey
I see a lot of foolish comments about not being able to do anything useful with a KDE desktop. the only thing you cannot do just as well with kde3.2 compared to winXP is play games. thats it people, nothing more no arguements accepted. so in the corperate areana windows can put it's head between it's knees and kiss it's ass goodbye
If you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can imagine....
slackware packages are already available at:. 2/contrib/Slackware/9.1/
http://download.kde.org/download.php?url=stable/3
# ssh -l neo the_matrix; killall -9 agent_smith
that work on integrating kde with OO.o is moving forward. This isn't just a look-n-feel thing, mind you, its much deeper than that. Details in the link.
Yes, unmasking is easy, but the files aren't there yet:
...done! /s -1.2.0.tar.bzs -1.2.0.tar.bz2l ving ftp.easynet.nl... 195.86.128.57
emerge -u kde
Calculating dependencies
>>> emerge (1 of 17) kde-base/arts-1.2.0 to
>>> Downloading http://ftp.easynet.nl/mirror/gentoo/distfiles/art
2
--14:28:58-- http://ftp.easynet.nl/mirror/gentoo/distfiles/art
=> `/usr/portage/distfiles/arts-1.2.0.tar.bz2'
Reso
Connecting to ftp.easynet.nl[195.86.128.57]:80... connected.
HTTP request sent, awaiting response... 404 Not Found
14:28:58 ERROR 404: Not Found.
Sit back and watch it try all the mirrors it knows. Noone has them. Yet.
Try the debian kde wiki for info on where to get the packages.
http://wiki.debian.net/?DebianKDE
It should be going into sid fairly soon. There have been lots of CVS commits on the 3.2 branch and the matainers have made nosies about having a version ready for sid on time for the relese of 3.2.0
Maybe your purpose in using a computer is running Windows apps, most people want to get their work done.
Let's face it, the only value of an OS or computer is running the software _I_ want to run. And the desktop is little more than a very superficial interface to the OS.
The value of an OS is letting you do what you want to do. That may or may not involve running specific software.
The whole thing is like saying "now, see, we can give you a dashboard for your car that looks exactly like an airplane dashboard." Uh. And the point is? It's still a car, and it still can't do what an airplane does. Nor viceversa.
Huh? KDE is not trying to be Windows, its trying to be a useful desktop. One factor in being a good desktop is being able to look like Windows, so that many people will find it less difficult to switch - but its not its purpose.
The same applies to Linux vs Windows. Repeat after me: putting a Windows desktop manager on Linux, doesn't make it a Windows substitute. And viceversa, putting CDE (or a clone thereof) on Windows, doesn't make it a Unix workstation.
KDE is not a Windows(TM) desktop manager.
A good desktop is a substitute for Windows.
;) That'll do Linux a world of good.
But even if we're discussing desktop makeups: does Linux now have CUA guidelines? Did people start actually sticking to the same behaviour for their widgets? Did people actually start testing their interfaces with 100 dpi fonts? Etc.
In the Free Software/Open Source world - such tests come for free. People use the software with all sorts of configurations and report problems.
Not to mention Qt (And other modern toolkits), unlike Windows, uses pure logical layouts and handles font sizes/etc very well.
Because changing the desktop means very little, when Joe Average's day still involves dealing with 10 different programs, using 6 fundamentally different widget sets, 8 fundamentally different keyboard shortcut sets, and 4 different ways of even persisting his preferences.
That's exactly the purpose of KDE. Creating a consistent GUI to do all those things. KDE is slowly getting rid of the GUI concept of "application", integrating capabilities to run software in contexts of all apps and windows (KPart/IOSlave technologies). KDE also has a very consistent default keyboard shortcut setup.
KDE is not about Gtk+ integration and consistency, but about internal integration and consistency (even though some projects to similarize do exist).
A lot of Windows's or a Mac's appeal doesn't come just from the way the desktop looks, nor from their particular flavour of widgets. It comes from the fact that everything running on it has the same standardized interface.
KDE is now more uniform and consistent than Windows and the vast amounts of inconsistent 3rd party apps. As for Macs, I haven't tried - but its probably hard to force UI guidelines/etc on 3rd party companies as you can force them with Free Software (simply modify any inconsistent application to follow the guidelines).
The way a Windows scroll bar or file open dialog works isn't perfect. (I actually prefer the Motif scroll bars.) But you can learn to use it _once_ and then apply that knowledge instinctively in all programs, from now until kingdom come.
Oh, I haven't seen my KDE scrollbar changing across applications.
Basically what I'm saying is: KDE is good and fine, and optimizing it doesn't hurt, but... IMHO what would really do Linux a world of good is enforcing a consistent interface across _all_ widget sets. Drag the good Qt, KDE, Gnome, Motif/Lesstif, GTK, etc people into a room, and don't let them out until they can aggree on a common interface standard
You can always use themes and such to make Gtk+/KDE look and behave similar. However, you're really supposed to be able to get along with just one of the toolkits - not having to worry about such inter-toolkit consistency.
466mhz Celeron, 256mb ram, 2.4.x kernel, KDE 3.14 built from source, a lot of things installed to make KDE prettier but not necessarily faster, and a ton of stuff loading during boot. Total time to go from off to mucking around in KDE - ~35 seconds. Total time to go from bash prompt to clicking on pretty icons and stuff - ~10 seconds.
Time it took to go from off to clicking on pretty icons in Win2K on the same machine: Well over a minute, possibly two. Can even play movies with mplayer without a skip that would be unwatchable in Windows.
More than fast enough for me.
ftp://ibiblio.org (28 hours)
ftp://kde.us.themoes.org (11 hours)
http://mirrors.isc.org (14 hours)
http://ibiblio.org (28 hours)
http://mirrors.midco.net (8 hours)
http://ftp.us.kde.org (10 hours)
ftp://kde.pandmservices.com (11 hours)
http://ftp.gtlib.cc.gatech.edu (11 hours)
ftp://ftp.rutgers.edu (9 hours)
ftp://ftp.oregonstate.edu (24 hours)
http://ftp.rutgers.edu (9 hours)
http://kde.oregonstate.edu (24 hours)
http://csociety-ftp.ecn.purdue.edu (13 hours)
ftp://ftp.gtlib.cc.gatech.edu (11 hours)
ftp://mirror.xmission.com (29 hours)
ftp://ftp.us.kde.org (10 hours)
ftp://mirrors.midco.net (8 hours)
You want binary packages? You get them from a distributor. That's what distributors do. They take .tar.gz packages; they compile them, setting options in a way they consider sane; they package them up in a binary package; and they offer it for download.
.rpm packages. But you'd do as well to just download the source tarballs and compile them yourself, taking notes as you go along. Distributors will take your requests much more seriously if you can show you've tried something. In my experience, source .tar.gz files are the way to install software; more reliable and more configurable. You could even -- shock, horror -- create your own binary package from the source you downloaded and compiled!
KDE just provide source packages, which will compile -- with perhaps a little tweaking -- on any setup which is computationally complete enough. Out of the goodness of their own hearts, they link to binary packages that other people have created; but the job of making it easy for non-programmers to install software falls to distributors. Think of it this way: the KDE developers are like farmers, growing basic food ingredients. Meat, milk, eggs, veg, grains. You can get really fresh ingredients from a farm, but you still have to prepare them before you can eat them. And that takes hard work. The distributors - Debian, Red Hat / Fedora, SUSE and so forth - are like chefs, taking those ingredients and preparing them in a ready-to-eat form. Sometimes that limits your options as a consumer; but nobody is stopping you buying fresh ingredients and preparing and cooking them your own way.
If you really can't spell make you could just keep pestering your distributor to provide you with
Je fume. Tu fumes. Nous fûmes!
Where I live (Sweden) You are not allowed to use the word "free" (or gratis which is the translation) in an ad without really giving it away.
:-)
.haeger
Free (gratis) means no strings attached here so if someone sais "Buy one, get one for free" You can actually go in and ask to have the "free" one and they can't deny You that. If You know your rights.
Naturally noone in their right mind uses the word "gratis" in ads anymore here.
One could only hope that our government would disallow more bastardisations of words (and standards).
You are not entitled to your opinion. You are entitled to your informed opinion. -- Harlan Ellison
Konqueror in 3.2 has been vastly improved..
- rewritten tab support
- a lot faster
- better standards compliance (many patches from Safari)
It's replaced Firebird as my main browser. I can't say that Konqueror renders as many pages as good as Mozilla yet, but it's getting there. Hopefully with Apple's Safari/Webcore 1.2 coming out in a few months and more syncing between KDE and Apple, Konqueror in KDE 3.3 is going to be great.