KDE 3.2.1 Released

TheSurfer writes "The KDE project today announced the immediate availability of KDE 3.2.1, a maintenance release for the latest generation of the most advanced and powerful free desktop for GNU/Linux and other UNIXes. KDE 3.2.1 ships with lot of bug fixes since KDE 3.2 and is available in 49 languages (now including Bengali, Icelandic, Japanese, Lithuanian, Low Saxon, Latin Serbian and Tajik). Sources and contributed packages are linked on the KDE 3.2.1 info page."

Comments

Aha

[stratjakt]

Now we know why the government needed that 2.5TB chunk of RAM.

Re:Aha

[Anonymous Coward]

so thats what the next version of windows needs?

Re:Aha

[cuban321]

Off topic, but that episode of Aqua Teen quoted in your sig is the best episode yet.

Re:Aha

[Anonymous Coward]

hahahaha, great stuff. you made my day with that quote ;) I prefer gnome, but i imagin that ram would also be needed there too.

Re:Aha

[slimsam1]

Well, at least they mod some posts correctly...

Re:Aha

[Billly Gates]

YOu mean they run emacs?

another link

[Anonymous Coward]

another lews link with coverage here

Re:another link

[Anonymous Coward]

Why on earth is this +5, informative? Is there any reason to follow the link? I suppose there is the odd person who wants strictly less information than the Slashdot blurb....

Low Saxon

[guacamolefoo]

You know, I've really been holding out on using KDE because it didn't support Law Saxon. What a relief.

Re:Low Saxon

[willy134]

since KDE 3.2 and is available in 49 languages (now including Bengali, Icelandic, Japanese, Lithuanian, Low Saxon, Latin Serbian and Tajik). I sure can't wait till it comes in English ;)

Re:Low Saxon

[notque]

You know, I've really been holding out on using KDE because it didn't support Law Saxon. What a relief.

Forget Low Saxon, Tajik is where it's at!

Re:Low Saxon

[jamshid42]

I'm still annoyed that they don't support Sindarin or Quenya. How am I supposed to work with this?

Re:Low Saxon

[kfg]

For the record, Low Saxon is an extant language used every day in parts of Germany and the Netherlands.

It may be a somewhat obscure language, in the sense that Icelandic is an obscure language, but just as is the case for Icelandlic it is not an obscure, dead language.

KFG

Re:Low Saxon

[Chalybeous]

They're still waiting for biometric logon features, namely voiceprint-based passwords.
"Speak 'friend' and enter!" ;-)

Re:Low Saxon

[Vlad_the_Inhaler]

You too can be a volunteer - you can add the language support. I am sure the KDE crew would welcome your input.

Re:Low Saxon

[kfg]

Bantu is a language group, not a language. Like Semetic. The most important of the Bantu languages is Swahili, which many people who have a great deal of use for KDE speak as their first language.

The clicking language of Namibia is not part of the Bantu group.

By the way, Zulu is already supported by KDE, and a Swahili translation project is underway.

I also have a sneaking suspicion that in the heavily industrialized, educated and rich portions of western Europe where Low Saxon is spoken they have a good deal of use for KDE as well.

KFG

Re:Low Saxon

[Ulven]

If you mean the 'click' languages, they are part of the Khoisan language group, which is itself part of the Bantu family.

As are most of the sub-saharan languages.

Re:Low Saxon

[wild_pointer]

Hey, stop making fun of our language!!! Icelandic is spoken by about 300.000 people... yeah ok, I get your point ;)

Re:Low Saxon

[Ulven]

My mistake, Khosian isn't a Bantu language.

Re:Low Saxon

[cjellibebi]

For more details on Low Saxon, see this page. There's even a link to a map of the areas where it is spoken.

Re:Low Saxon

[kfg]

However, it is difficult to deny that in the realm of classical literature your people loom much larger than their mere numbers.

The importance of a language goes far beyond such trivialities as how many people speak it. What they have to say is also of great social and political import.

Oh Lord, won't you buy me. . . .OW! Sorry. I'm better now.

KFG

Re:Low Saxon

[Anonymous Coward]

Your language is worth making fun of!

Silly icelanders haven't even gotten rid of cases.. it's practically german!

Just compare it to a nice, rational scandinavian language:

Singular:
hestur - hast
hest - hast
hesti - hasten (definite article suffix)
hests - hasts
(OK gentive still exists - I'll give you that one)

Plural:
hestar - hastar
hesta - hastar
hestum - hastarna (definite)
hestas - hastarnas

Re:Low Saxon

[Frizzle Fry]

You omit the critical distinction that while Icelandic is merely an obscure living language, Low Saxon is an obscure living language with a funny name.

Re:Low Saxon

[Anonymous Coward]

Hmm, I'd best root your box while I still can, then ;)

The root password is probably 'me11on' ... hehhehheh ...

Re:Low Saxon

[Quo_R]

Thanks for pointing that out to me! I didn't know my local language was called Low Saxon in English along with Low German. Can't wait to test it out. Wer ook immer de Idee har, ick mutt seggn de Idee is wunderbor.

Re:Low Saxon

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, all of the calls in the region require a reed-driven instrument--the Low Saxo-phone.
Arguably the stupidest joke I've ever made on /.

Re:Low Saxon

[utopyr]

Nice link! About halfway down the page, there are parallel lists of placenames--this is the pair that caught my eye:
Das Altes Land -- Dat Ole Land
This does make the point just how complex linguistic inheritance and influence can be. Haw!

Re:Low Saxon

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah... Let's all make fun of languages that aren't ours...*

I'm an American, but my family came here from Lithuania, and strangely, it is a nation I have a great deal of pride in. Whenever I see a Lithuanian-looking name, hear a Lithuanian-sounding accent, or hear something about Lithuania (even this KDE article), it sort of brings a smile to my face...

So... Make fun of Lithuania, and I will knock you out.

(yay for lietuva!)

--
* Personally, I like to make fun of Portuguese, because it's so horrible.

Re:Low Saxon

[vegetasaiyajin]

They're still waiting for biometric logon features, namely voiceprint-based passwords.

This security scheme would be very weak. Someone can record you while you say 'friend' and later use the recording to log on. Old-fashioned passwords are better.
Worse, you can change your password if someone steals it, but you can't change your voice, or fingerprints. If you want more security you have to consider three elements:
1. What the user knows. That is, the password. This is the most versatile.
2. What the user is. You use biometrics for this.
3. What the user has. You can use smart cards or RFID tags or similar.

If you can only afford one of these, you have to pick good old-fashioned passwords.
I think there are free PAM modules for smart-card authentication. Check MUSCLE for more info. Don't know about biometrics PAM modules. Since KDE login screen uses PAM for authentication, it shouldn't be too hard to support combined password, biometrics and smartcard authentication.

Re:Low Saxon

[CheeseTroll]

Thanks for the link! I also found this which goes into a bit more detail.

Most of my ancestors are from the northwestern part of Germany (Oldenburg, Hanover, etc.), and my grandparents spoke "Low German" here in America until 1917, when English suddenly gained in importance. Whenever I asked my grandparents if they still remembered much German, they would say something like, "Oh, sure, but it's just that Low German." I never really understood what they meant by that - I figured they were just being their usual overly-modest selves.

Re:Low Saxon

[Joey7F]

Islandisk sounds great. It may be spoken by 300k people, but that doesn't matter. Actually all the Scandinavian languages are cool as hell sounding.

--Joey

Re:Low Saxon

[kragaroth]

Icelandic sounds more like Scandinavian languages 1000 years ago... And it's cool as hell sounding!! :D

Re:Low Saxon

[jpkunst]

For the record, Low Saxon is an extant language used every day in parts of Germany and the Netherlands.

Yes, but as a colloquial spoken language, hardly as a written language. For that, standard German and Dutch are used. I doubt that many people from Germany or the Netherlands feel the need to have their software in Low Saxon instead of German or Dutch. Icelandic, being the official language of Iceland, is a different story.

JP

Re:Low Saxon

[mOdQuArK!]

This security scheme would be very weak. Someone can record you while you say 'friend' and later use the recording to log on.

Maybe you can use the public key-like "challenge-response" setup - where the security tells you some random stuff to say, you repeat it and the security analyzes your voiceprint to figure out if the right person is saying it. (Of course, if the security accidentally gives you a tongue-twister, maybe the way you screw up the words is also part of your "voiceprint"...)

Re:Low Saxon

[kfg]

More to the point, perhaps, is that Low Saxon doesn't even have its own defined orthography, so I'm at a certain loss how it can be supported as a written language.

Still, someone considered it important enough, perhaps for sociological reasons, to make the "translation." Much as a Welshman might be perfectly comfortable in English, but prefer to conduct himself in Welsh at times.

KFG

Re:Low Saxon

[Anonymous Coward]

I can buy Norwegian or Icelandic sounding cool... but there's something wrong with you if you find the silly sing-song intonation of Swedish cool.

Re:Low Saxon

[Chalybeous]

That's an interesting post. I'm deeply surprised that someone would take the time to write something so insightful and detailed in response to a short post intended purely as a joke (I just couldn't resist riffing on The Fellowship of the Ring when Elvish languages were mentioned - specifically the part where the Fellowship is trying to open the door into Moria).
I remember a movie from a few years back called Sneakers, where Robert Redford and his buddies actually do fake a voiceprint-based password using fragments of a recorded conversation. I certainly wouldn't trust something like that on critical access.
Anyway, thanks for the effort and the insight. I found it interesting, even though I don't work in the IT industry.

Re:Low Saxon

[Anonymous Coward]

I live in the Netherlands and have never heard of Low Saxon... that's how obscure it is!

Re:Low Saxon

[DataCannibal]

" the heavily industrialized, educated and rich portions of western Europe where Low Saxon is spoken "

Let me guess, you've never been to the parts of Holland and Germany where this is spoken have you ?

Sheep say "Baa" all over the world :-)

Re:Low Saxon

[cozziewozzie]

Can you say 'Hamburg'?

It's only Europe's second largest port and the city with most millionaires per capita in the world. Many Low Saxon speakers there.

Re:Low Saxon

[DataCannibal]

But only when spoken by females. When males speak them they just sound like teh swedish chef :-)

Re:Low Saxon

[kfg]

Yes, but they are rich and educated sheep.

KFG

Re:Low Saxon

[DataCannibal]

Low Saxon ?
My wife is a german scholar and teacher and she grew up speaking Low German (or Niederdeutsch or Plattduutsch) und "Ick kunn ok een betten platt schnacken" despite the fact that I'm English, who are supposed to be the worst people in Europe at learning foreign languges

My wife always refers to it as low german in English and in German academic texts it is always refered to as "Niederdeutsch". I have never heard of it referred to as Low Saxon

Lower Saxony is one of the states (Laender) of Germany and Low German is spoken in parts of it, particularly in the countryside. Maybe someone from there is the KDE translator and has decided to hijack the name of the language :-)

It's a very interesting language with a long history. It was the lingua franca of the Hanseatic League. There is no official orthography for Low German although it is generally spelled phonetically using modern german pronunciation of the letters ( a bit like writing "parlay voo" as a phonetic english spelling of "parlez vous"). It is almost impossible for "normal" or High German speakers to understand someone speaking Low German. Funnily enough, I come from a part of England where the local dialect is strongly influence by scandinavian and germanic (North East England) so that because I could speak High German and the traditional dialect of my region, I had very little problems understanding Low German the first time that I heard it. In fact some words are exactly the same. For example we pronounce water as "watter" and low germans say "vatter". For going we say "gannin" and they say "ga'an".

I think that there are still some pockets of Low German speakers in the USA.

So there you go, a quick introduction to Low German.

Keek mol weder een !

Re:Low Saxon

[NightWhistler]

You would probably know it as 'Gronings' or 'Drents'.

I'm originally from Groningen, one of the parts of the Netherlands whose dialect falls under the Low Saxon area. My experience however is that the dialect tends to differ from village to village, so I'm very curious which form the language takes in KDE... I'll certainly be installing in just to see how much of it corresponds to the version of Gronings I was brought up with...

Offtopic: this reminds me a lot of the "Roampies 2000" joke... Dutch people will know what I mean... ;-)

Re:Low Saxon

[Elektroschock]

Low saxon (ISO: Nds) is not called low saxon by its speakers, they call it plattduutsch. There is even a own Wikipedia op platt. Plattduutsch is one of the European regional languages, however stuck in the middle of Dutch and German and dansk. In each of these states it is often regarded as a dialect. It is even spoken in parts of paraguay and the mennonite community as many mennonite culture groups were founded by Frisian and today most Frisians speak platt.

Re:Low Saxon

[kfg]

Yes, in Germany it has been known as Low German for many years, primarily due to political/sociological reasons in denying it to be anything other than a variant of German, rather than a language in its own right.

Although there may be pockets of speakers in Lower Saxony I doubt it was anyone from that area that had anything to do with this, since neither the "Low" or the "Saxon" have anything to do with Lower Saxony. Low Saxon is the Saxon language of the Low Countries. In other words the coastal region. It seems more likely to me that the originators of the translation come from one of the port cities.

And yes, there are pockets of Low Saxon speakers here in upstate NY (heavy colonization by people of the low countries), which is where I first became aware of the language (my SO's grandparents being German immigrants).

KFG

Re:Low Saxon

[Anonymous Coward]

Nah, it's just that you 'rational' scandinavians were too stupid to learn the cases properly, so you had to simplify the language...

Re:Low Saxon

[DataCannibal]

Yup I can say "Hamburg". I lived there for ten years. Have you any figures for how many Platt speakers live there ?

I mean proper speakers not just someone who can belt out a couple of verses of "Ick hev een Hamburger veermaster seen". I met very few. All the platt speakers I met in Hamburg came from the countryside. None of them were born in Hamburg.

Re:Low Saxon

[cozziewozzie]

Unfortunately, I don't have any figures, but I have met Platt speakers while living in Hamburg. It's true, they are not in the majority, but this has a lot to do with the growth of Hamburg and the arrival of people from other parts of Germany. The number of people whose families have lived in Hamburg for generations is quite low. It is the same way that Bavarian is not the predominant language/dialect in Munich even though it's spoken almost exclusively around it.

I have actually met several people from Hamburg whose mother tongue was Platt. There's plenty of literature available in Plattdeutsch. Hell, most of the city's locations have Plattdeutsch names. There's plenty of speakers in Hamburg still, at least it's my impression.

They'll never get into the schools though, until:

[kfg]

It supports Elvish.

Klingon, however, has already been determined to be "silly."

KFG

The Mandrake curse?

[Akai]

Poor Mandrake, seems like every time they go gold on a release one of the major components gets a major upgrade :)

Re:The Mandrake curse?

[haystor]

No kidding, I'm installing 10.0 now just to get the stuff that barely missed out being in 9.2.

Re:The Mandrake curse?

[Njovich]

Very good point that Mandrake often is unlucky with release dates. But this is a maintenance release/bugfix, not really a major upgrade, so I don't really see how your point goes up here? These minor KDE releases happen quite frequently...

Re:The Mandrake curse?

[Simon]

Except for the fact that 10.0 has heavily patched KDE 3.2.0 packages which are almost 3.2.1. My KDE here is at package version 3.2-70mdk, 70 meaning that it is the *70th* version of this package. i.e. it has been patched and rebuild roughly *70 times.

Try:

rpm -q -changelog libkdebase4 | less

Oh, Mandrake hasn't gone gold either. The boxed version will go gold in May as I understand it.

Mandrake's luck isn't _that_ bad. :) They're even coming out of Chapter 11 too.

--
Simon

Re:The Mandrake curse?

[Anonymous Coward]

And they missed out on 2.6.4 too! and GNOME 2.6! and $YOURFAVORITESOFTWARE_X_Y!

New software is being released all the time. Sure KDE is a fairly large component, but why hold up an entire distribution for a point release?

The point is that sometimes things need to get shipped. There's always the possibility to get updated packages for your system, or just wait until the next Mandrake point release, which can't be more than a few months away.

Re:The Mandrake curse?

[imr]

They didnt go gold, only the comunity went out. Not that it means that kde3.2.1 will be in the final. It Would be a nice move tho', since some of those bugs are really bothering.

Re:The Mandrake curse?

[shystershep]

Is it a curse, or just a factor of having an insane (in a good way) release schedule. You can hardly turn around without them offering a new version, with all of the then-current bells and whistles. So the latest stable release doesn't have the most bleeding edge components -- just wait a couple months.

Re:The Mandrake curse?

[phoxix]

Poor Mandrake, seems like every time they go gold on a release one of the major components gets a major upgrade :)

Not true:

First, Mandrake 10.0 was NOT the final release, it was the community release. The final release of Mandrake 10.0 (due soonish) will have all the fixes and whatever else is desired.

Secondly (don't quote me on this), but I believe many of Mandrake's KDE 3.2 packages have the various patches needed to make it a better desktop all around.

Sunny Dubey

Re:The Mandrake curse?

[danidude]

So the latest stable release doesn't have the most bleeding edge components
Exactly. Or it is stable or it is bleeding edge. Choose one.

Re:The Mandrake curse?

[Anonymous Coward]

Its really heartening to see that although Mandrake is just coming out of the red, they have tremendous support in the community ... Go Mandrake!

Re:The Mandrake curse?

[AigariusDebian]

You know what *REALLY* surprises me about this?

This time Debian developers do indeed follow the upstream and the release of KDE 3.2.1 went to Debian unstable almost faster then it was released upstream.

All the best, folks!!! Thanks and congrats!

And here come the flame

[Anonymous Coward]

the most advanced and powerful free desktop for GNU/Linux and other UNIXes
Please don't put such things on the main page, we have enough boring flame wars already...

Re:And here come the flame

[Anonymous Coward]

Do you mind? We're in the middle of a vi versus Emacs debate here.

Re:And here come the flame

[Shut the fuck up!]

Please don't put such things on the main page, we have enough boring flame wars already...

Oh, so you're one of those holier-than-thou anti-flamewar fanatics, huh? Well, I personally think flamewars rock. We need more of them. I could use a good mysql flamewar right now.

Re:And here come the flame

[Vlad_the_Inhaler]

NO WE DO NOT.

Flamewars are a menace and those who propagate them should be horsewhipped. ;-)

Re:And here come the flame

[Anonymous Coward]

I think the OS X advocates are intelligent enough to know when they've been beaten by a superior gui, so I doubt there will be a flame war.

Re:And here come the flame

[Anonymous Coward]

We need more of them. I could use a good mysql flamewar right now.

Ok. RIGHT HERE, RIGHT NOW!

MySQL lacks features needed to be a mature DBMS and it takes away resources from PostgreSQL which is much further along in this regard. As such, the authors of MySQL and all of its supporters MUST be drawn and quartered.

By the way, I hate instigators like you who think they can just start a flamewar any time they please.

Re:And here come the flame

[solic]

It is true, however. There is not a single desktop that can match KDE in it's elegant architercture, flexibility and power. KConfig XT, DCOP, KParts, the great API documentation of the classes, Qt, etc. It beats GNOME by a mile and is second to none. GNOME is really lousy when it comes to its architecture, but it does have a nice itnerface and programs, some of which ar ebetter than KDE's such as GIMP vs Kimp ;p

Re:And here come the flame

[bogie]

Why not? Free Software isn't allowed to do any marketing? What so the people at KDE shouldn't be proud of their work? They should say "one of many Desktop Environments but really Gnome might be better?". Gimme a break pal.

KDE has every right to say their software is the best. By all rights it IS the best Free Desktop for GNU/Linux or any Unix. I'd even argue its superior to the closed source OS X but that's a whole other ball of wax.

It isn't a flame from the KDE camp, its A)marketing and B) mostly based in fact. Don't like it? Tough cookies.

Re:And here come the flame

[Frizzle Fry]

Why not? Free Software isn't allowed to do any marketing? What so the people at KDE shouldn't be proud of their work?

The arugment isn't that the KDE people shouldn't advertise their work, it's that the slashdot front page shouldn't "advertise" their work. An editor easily could have edited the writeup to remove the blatant marketing and simply state the facts (that it's been released, that it supports Low Saxon, etc.).

Re:And here come the flame

[aled]

-Agreed. No, wait, I mean against!
-At least let's find something more interesting to flamewar, that is not a good topic.
-It is!
-It's not!

Re:And here come the flame

[Anonymous Coward]

Abusing Michael's sense of what is boring and inciteful is SO last year.

Re:And here come the flame

[xpl_the_myst]

How does parent get +4 Insightful? The crib was with the /. mention not with KDE marketing.

These days, it seems pretty easy to get a good rating on /. if you simply go against some conventional logic in a pseudo-reasonable manner.

But, guess what! conventional logic aint wrong most of the times.

Re:And here come the flame

[ShadowRage]

pfft, use notepad, you outdated command line junkie! :P

*note to mods, not a troll*

Re:And here come the flame

[shivanan]

We need more of them. I could use a good mysql flamewar right now.

MySQL? Isn't that the cheap watered down version of PostGreSQL?
Besides, real men don't use databases. They do find | xargs grep

Re:And here come the flame

[tanveer1979]

Do you mind? We're in the middle of a vi versus Emacs debate here.

Debate? What debate. We already know Emacs is better.

Re:And here come the flame

[tropicflite]

Is NOT!

Re:And here come the flame

[Anonymous Coward]

This brings to mind a famous quote by Orson Welles:

In Italy for thirty years under the Borgias they had warfare, terror, murder and bloodshed but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci and the Renaissance. In Switzerland, they had brotherly love; they had five hundred years of democracy and peace and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock.

In short, I like heated debates over the merits of opposing sides. Not name calling. Some profanity. Lots of advocation for one side or the other. Things seem to move in the right direction when this happens rather than people sticking to their own statuses quo.

There are times when a person or group of people need someone to light a fire under their ass(es). The Mozilla project comes to mind. Honestly, the Linux community needs the occasion Steve Jobs to go rogue asshole and motivate.

Re:And here come the flame

[Tukla]

GIMP, of course, isn't actually a GNOME app.

Woohoo a maintainance release!!!

[stratjakt]

Hail from every rooftop!

Some bugs are fixed!

Re:Woohoo a maintainance release!!!

[Vlad_the_Inhaler]

Well, I was looking for some updated .rpms this afternoon and noticed then that 3.2.1 was available.

It has sorted all of the problems that were previously annoying me. The only (very minor) problem is that I had to de-install kdenetwork3-chat to install some of the new packages. The package kdenetwork3-InstantMessenger seems to have replaced it.

No new bugs so far.
Your mileage may vary.

Re:Woohoo a maintainance release!!!

[aliens]

I can't believe you have two +5 Funny comments on the same story.

You trying to become a karma god? ::) Or have you just perfected the jokes that /. finds funny?

Re:Woohoo a maintainance release!!!

[mhesseltine]

I can't believe you have two +5 Funny comments on the same story.

You trying to become a karma god? ::) Or have you just perfected the jokes that /. finds funny?

Of course, keeping in mind that funny mods no longer add to karma, I think moderators are more willing to throw around funny mods.

Hmmmm

[Anonymous Coward]

I bet the person who posted the release was all like , "3.....2.....1.....NOW!" when he posted it.

Re:Hmmmm

[PSUdaemon]

No, probably more like "3...2...1...Kontact!"

This latest release is..

[adamgreenfield]

Yet another great effort from the guys in the KDE camp. Seems to fix quite a few issues users were bumping in to.

Re:Now I just need...

[Anonymous Coward]

Just kidding! Not that my karma can get worse ;)


If you're still posting, it can.

Most advanced and powerful? -1, Biased.

[bjarvis354]

Come on...All we need is another Gnome vs. KDE flamefest. It is getting old.

Re:Most advanced and powerful? -1, Biased.

[Enahs]

GNOME is for furries.

Re:Most advanced and powerful? -1, Biased.

[Fancia]

Funny, I'm a furry and I use KDE. ;b

Re:Most advanced and powerful? -1, Biased.

[Tukla]

Not this furry. KDE all the wee. Uh, I mean, way.

But wait!

[slackingme]

...and is available in 49 languages (now including Bengali, Icelandic, Japanese, Lithuanian, Low Saxon, Latin Serbian and Tajik)

But does it have Esperanto? Aspiring Esperantists want to know! But really, KDE is a pretty nice window manager. It's always nice to see open source projects release new versions--they prove software can actually _improve_ instead of just bloating up and slowing down ;) Go KDE!

Re:But wait!

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, there is a project for Esperanto. It is only 40% complete though, so go and help!

Re:But wait!

[Anonymous Coward]

Hey.. You can't knock a language William Shatner used on Slashdot, can you?

most powerful?

[DuckWing]

latest generation of the most advanced and powerful free desktop

I'm not sure I'd agree with this statement. KDE Suffers from many shortcomings over Gnome, and visa versa. I'd agree with ONE of the most advanced and powerful, but not THE most advanced and powerful.

Just my $0.02 worth.

Now /. covers maintenance releases?

[JohnGrahamCumming]

I can understand it being front page news if a significant project like KDE releases a significant release, but seriously why does a maintenance release make it to the front page?

I released POPFile v0.21.0, perhaps I should have submitted a story?

And while we're it at, could we stop with the posturing "the most advanced and powerful free desktop for GNU/Linux".

John.

Re:Now /. covers maintenance releases?

[Anonymous Coward]

And I'm sure your wonderful program has millions of users too, right?

Re:Now /. covers maintenance releases?

[Misch]

Oooh... thanks for the notice. *goes to download it*

Re:Now /. covers maintenance releases?

[SmilingBoy]

And I'm sure your wonderful program has millions of users too, right?

Well, me. And it is one of the most active projects on Sourceforge. So maybe not millions of users but still quite a lot. Everybody who is whinging about spam should use it.

Oh, and I use KDE as well.

Re:Now /. covers maintenance releases?

[Anonymous Coward]

Probably not... but then neither does KDE. So what's your point?

Re:Now /. covers maintenance releases?

[TheTomcat]

Please submit a story when it support IMAPS.
(-:

S

Re:Now /. covers maintenance releases?

[Anonymous Coward]

well, shoot, there goes the week. i just finished recompiling my POPFile History to the lastest version...oh, thats right, this isn't kde. its already done...

Re:Now /. covers maintenance releases?

[RoLi]

For Linux, a KDE point release is the equivalent to a Windows-service pack. And those get stories on slashdot, too.

Re:Now /. covers maintenance releases?

[Anonymous Coward]

[sarcasm]
I'm sure both your users will be pleased to hear that.
[/sarcasm]
Sour grapes anyone?

Re:Now /. covers maintenance releases?

[Anonymous Coward]

There was evidence to prove that Overly Critical Guy is a lying cocksucker, but he deleted it. Think independently.

Re:Now /. covers maintenance releases?

[cubic6]

...break KDE, cutting off the right side of the K menu.

My fresh install of 3.2.0 is doing that, and it bugged the hell out of me... thanks for the info!

Re:Now /. covers maintenance releases?

[cgranade]

Well, seeing as how I use POPFile on a daily basis, and how it is a wonderful tool, I think you should submit a story.

Debian has it already

[Gandalfar]

And most of it is already in unstable branch. Great work KDE and Debian KDE team! :)

Re:Debian has it already

[dzym]

go debian kde team!

you guy(s) rock!

Re:Debian has it already

[Joe Tie.]

I thought that was pretty neat. On seeing the story I imediatly thought "Wonder when this will make it into Debian", then checked Konqueror's about. Turns out I'd allready upgraded to it without noticing.

Re:Debian has it already

[debian4life]

That is probably only because Debian just put 3.2 into Unstable Saturday after it being out for a month to the rest of the distro world. They probably just went ahead got the advanced copy of 3.2.1 since it was so near completion so they could be the first distro to have it.

In related news, Hell finally froze over.

Re:Debian has it already

[Anonymous Coward]

If you use knoppix and want to upgrade to kde/unstable, remove knopix home-brew open-office-de-en first. Otherwise you will get silly errors. Debian's openoffice is better anyway, so install that one.

Re:Debian has it already

[calc]

Yes, I was waiting to upload KDE until 3.2.1 came out. The reason KDE 3.2.0 was never uploaded to sid was that it was far too buggy in important areas such as kmail eating email. Even with KDE 3.2.1 several major bugs have already been found since its release to packagers last week. But users who always complain that KDE in Debian is outdated will have their shiny full of bugs release.

Re:Debian has it already

[debian4life]

That is good enough for me. I kid because I love. That is why I use Debian.

Re:Debian has it already

[Jagasian]

Will KDE 3.2.x make it into Sarge? I am thinking about converting to Debian, from Fedora, this summer, and if KDE 3.2 makes it into Sarge I will definitely convert!

Re:Debian has it already

[Anonymous Coward]

If you are this interested in the latest KDE, then you probably want to be using testing even after Sarge is released. But then again it is fairly easy to upgrade.

Re:Debian has it already

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes KDE 3.2.1 just came down, but now my control center is hosed, all I can see is the digicam entry.

Re:Debian has it already

[Anonymous Coward]

you've bad conf files. check the debian-kde archive.

(purge kdebase-data)

Re:Debian has it already

[Jagasian]

I want a stable system, yet have a few cut-off restrictions where I need certain things to be at least version X... having a later version is nice, but not a necessity - as stability is a necessity.

Re:Debian has it already

[Anonymous Coward]

I installed from Debian the other day, and KDE 3.2.1 is sweeeeeeet!

Well then!

[Loki_1929]

You know, I always thought KDE was a bloated, ugly, slow GUI, but now that it's available in Icelandic; well I guess it's alright!

(relax, it's called a joke)

Re:Well then!

[Anonymous Coward]

When Aramaic and Sumerian are supported, THEN I'll switch.

Re:Well then!

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, you can install in on a BSD. That way you could use a dead OS with a dead language.

Re:Well then!

[Anonymous Coward]

Stop beating a dead 'OS

Most advanced and powerful?

[Anonymous Coward]

If by powerful you mean all those menus, configuration panes and super-loaded toolbars, then yes, KDE is very powerful. But it's very very bad. I find using KDE actually more complicated than the shell! Gnome is much nicer to use because it's simple. KDE should stick to the KISS moto: Keep It Simple, Stupid!

I think Gnome is better. But even better than Gnome is MacOS X. Some will say it's not free, but when you buy any machine from Apple, you get it for free. Sounds free enough to me!

That being said, congratulations to the KDE team anyways, even though I prefer Gnome to it and that Gnome is much better for most users, some users prefer KDE and it's still a nice alternative to Windows. Without Gnome, I guess I'd use KDE without swearing, but I've been spoiled enough by user-friendly interfaces that it's not the case.

Re:Most advanced and powerful?

[SmilingBoy]

I think Gnome is better. But even better than Gnome is MacOS X.

What is it with OS/X?

I used Windows for a long time, but then switched to Linux (Mandrake with KDE). I had no major problems whatsoever regarding usability - everything worked more or less like in Windows, but there were more nice things you could tweak and adjust. That's why I love KDE.

Now (for the first time, I admit) I had to use a Mac, with OS/X. I had a hard time. Everything was different - hell, there wasn't even a freaking right mouse button!

I didn't have to spend much time with it, and maybe, if you grow up with a Mac, it's great, but for someone used to Windows or KDE, it's a nightmare.

Don't mod me Flamebait, I am dead serious. What is it with Mac OS/X?

Re:Most advanced and powerful?

[Anonymous Coward]

"What is it with OS/X?"

If it's anything like algebra, I think you are supposed to change the X to a number. Like say, maybe the number 2. And if you're a techie geek, you add some sort of Trek reference...like the word "Warp" at the end. Then you'll REALLY have an uber-cool awesomely named operating system.

Re:Most advanced and powerful?

[joshsnow]

Don't mod me Flamebait, I am dead serious. What is it with Mac OS/X?
It's, well....better than anything else...

Re:Most advanced and powerful?

[SmilingBoy]

Oh well, I said I just used it once.

Re:Most advanced and powerful?

[SmilingBoy]

OK - but what about the right mouse button? How do you get context menus? I wasn't able to.

And I know for sure that everything is entirely possible with OS X.

But everybody was touting how easy it is to use compared to Linux, so I was very disappointed having to use it for the first time.

As a previous Windows user, KDE was much more intuitive.

Re:Most advanced and powerful?

[Anonymous Coward]

I guess I'm still growing up then !

I used OSX for the first time two years ago. Now I own a G4 desktop, and an ibook.

It's, without a doubt, the easiest OS I've ever used.

Re:Most advanced and powerful?

[Weird_Hock]

Hold the control key down and click, or do as i did. Get a USB wheel mouse. Works like a champ!

Re:Most advanced and powerful?

[SmilingBoy]

Of course, after two years, it is easy to use any OS. Did you use Windows before using OS X for the first time? And you weren't looking for the context menu? Found the menu at the top a bit strange? The OK and Cancel was the wrong way round as well if I remember correctly (could have been GNOME though).

OS X might be great if you spend time with it. It might also be great if you have never used a computer before. But I think that it is much easier to switch from Windows to KDE than to OS X.

Re:Most advanced and powerful?

[SmilingBoy]

Ah! Good to know for next time I'm in front of an iMac of a friend with a one button mouse. (No point really buying a mouse just to use a friend's computer!)

Re:Most advanced and powerful?

[gypsyx]

what about the right mouse button

Oh please! The single mouse button question comes up in every Mac flame. PC people just don't understand... The Macintosh GUIs have been advanced enough to not need two mouse buttons since 1984. You can use multi-button mice and mice with scroll wheels on the Macintosh if you so desire. Give it a rest already!

Simplicity is simply one of the many things that makes the Mac beautiful. I personally believe that is why Macs come with a one-button mouse by default.

Re:Most advanced and powerful?

[narfbot]

What is it with Mac OS/X?
I agree in questioning. And this is coming from someone who learned the "high res GUI" first on Mac OS. At the time I got my first Mac, Windows was also available (well was out the same time the first Mac model anyways), but I just happened to get a Mac first. I was also already experienced in the CLI.

I didn't find the GUI anything revolutionary. But I did and still do accept the abilities a high resolution GUI does give and it was nice when you needed that sort of thing. I'm sure windows worked the same way, it's just the Mac did it differently.

Then come a few years later, I got windows. No big deal, just a PC GUI, which it was perfectly capable of. Then many years later I try linux. I try the Linux gui's they're OK. The linux CLI is great. But when I want to use a high res mode, I use TWM, because I find that the best suited for my tastes. Now when I use Mac OS, and now Mac OS X, I find it rather cumbersome to use, this coming from someone who learned first on this OS! When I see people say that Mac OS X is the best, I cringe. Sure you may like Mac OS X, but there is no best UI.

Since I use TWM, I do like it alot and it works for me, but I'd rather not advocate it because people may not like it. In fact, when people see my linux machine, they think linux IS TWM. Hopefully I would point out there is KDE, and GNOME, so they don't think linux is so archaic (heh-heh). Now in light of the recent KDE release, 3.2, and now 3.2.1, I find KDE a very usuable UI. I'm sure many people like it more than Mac OS X, so there is certainly no best UI.

Re:Most advanced and powerful?

[joshsnow]

OK - but what about the right mouse button? How do you get context menus? I wasn't able to.
Control key and click (I think) kinda like the windows key - or rather the windows key is like the Macs control/apple key.
I don't actually have/use macs - I just drool over OS X whenever I'm in a computer hardware shop. It seems so much more powerful, intuitive and easier to use than windows or linux. The GUI is everything that KDE or Gnome ought, by now, to have become - revolutionary rather than evolutionary. Plus there's always the command line if you can dig it up!
Take an application like ical. A run of the mill calendar tool. Yet on OS X it just looks and feels great ans is super easy to use to boot. If I could afford a mac, I'd own one.

Re:Most advanced and powerful?

[gold23]

Okay, I'll bite. What does it mean that the GUI is advanced enough not to need 2 mouse buttons?

How is it simpler to need two hands to bring up a context menu?

Please note that I am not religious regarding OS choice -- I use many OSes in the course of my work and play, but when the Mac was my daily workhorse, I could not get by without my 5 button trackball.

Re:Most advanced and powerful?

[minus_273]

Having switched from linux over the summer i can say these are a small sample of things the things that make it great:
1. its a Unix clone.. comes with all the strengths
2. It has a very well designed, clean and consistent UI
3. Its so intuitive that your ganma can use it (try it..)
4. It allows you to run MS office, Photoshop , dreamweaver and tons of other commercial apps alongside your Unix apps like apache, smb, namp etc.
5. You can run X windows apps but turn it off when your dont need it and can run pretty much any (non hardware dependent)app linux can.
6. OSX boxes can emulate i386 very fast the reverse does not exist yet
7. All development tools are free (gcc) and very easy to use GUIs(Xcode)
8. The development API (cocoa) is open and cross platform (GNUstep, openstep)
9. Very good 3rd party hardware support.
10. Fantastic applications like ilife apps, itunes etc that make windows users gawk.

For an example of the last point, have granma install a digital camera and import pics on a PC (drivers, reboot, 3rd party apps etc) then do it on a mac (plug it in) or granma rip a cd, burn a cd burn picture cds etc. (get the point)

in the end my mac is rock solid, fast and i dont have to think about anything other than the task at hand when i am using it (saves lots of time)

in the end, calling it "the best of both worlds" (linux+win) is an understatement but close to what it is.

Re:Most advanced and powerful?

[mst76]

In a recent interview, Jef Raskin remarked that he thinks the one-button designe of the original Mac was a mistake.

As for the one-button mouse, I'd observed at Xerox Parc which had a 3-button mouse, that people were very confused as to its use and when I was designing the software for the Macintosh, in designing the interface, I figured that if there was only one button, there would never be any question on what you have to press the number of ways of using a one-button mouse. I think this was probably a mistake, in fact there is an appendix in my book which discusses why I think this was a mistake and what I think I should have done. One of the reasons I made the mistake is that there is a certain school of industrial design dating back to the Bauhaus which says that designs have to be simple, uncluttered, and clean. In particular, don't put writing on it except for brand names or logos. If we had had a multiple-button mouse with two keys, labeled something like "select" and "activate," it would have been much easier to use, but the idea of putting writing on keys did not occur to anybody, including me. So if I was designing one today, it would have two buttons and they would be labeled.

Re:Most advanced and powerful?

[Anonymous Coward]

What is it with OS/X?

I was running my PC on Linux and/or FreeBSD for at least 5 years, starting around '94-'95. Then I got contracts where I had to develop software for Windows. So I was dual-booting between freebsd/linux and Windows 98. As I spent lots of time in Windows, I got used to it and it was just more convenient to stick to Windows than reboot all the time. But 98 was crashing too often to my liking (still not so bad, but it made me swear a couple times). I also missed the Unix tools.

Then came XP. It was stabler than Linux and FreeBSD. Plus it was easy to use, had more software for it, was faster and looked better (especially fonts! I get headaches nowadays from Linux' bad fonts). It didn't take me long to take my Unix hard drive out of my machine. But I was still missing my Unix stuff. Sure, I had cygwin, but it doesn't feel the same.

Now I switched to Mac and I'm quite happy. You get the nice UI and software for everything all integrated together and you still get your unix shell and tools.

Re:Most advanced and powerful?

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't know. How about you tell me? If you have any serious complaints (besides the right-mouse thing which people seem to split 50/50 over), then would you care to elaborate them?

I've used Windows since the days of 3.1. I went up to 2000, skipping ME of course, before I finally really seriously dropped it for the last time ever...not counting work. I've used Linux since '97. The window managers I've used since then are WindowMaker, FLWM, Blackbox and Fluxbox, and KDE. Those are the ones I can remember off the top of my head anyways.

I went to a Mac early last year. None of the UIs I've used before are like OS X, although WindowMaker is a distant cousin. I seriously had no issues with using it at all. I rarely use context menus, but ctrl-click isn't hard to do when I do need them. My five-button, two-scroll wheel mouse that I used to use with my PC works fine too. Having the menu at the top isn't a big deal. I don't need it attached to my applications, since I can go days without using it. It saves a little screen space. The dock is intuitive enough for me. Sure the icons can get a little small if I have lots of applications open, but the zoom feature brings them back to full size when I need them.

So, I didn't have any problems. One anecdote versus another; You tell me, what is it with Mac OS X?

Re:Most advanced and powerful?

[chill]

OS/X suffers from the same fatal flaw as WinXP -- it is a lot easier to learn if you have no prior experience. It is really good for people with no computer skills.

However, if you've been using computers for a while and are familiar with something else, both seem like a royal pain and are confusing because everything isn't where it was.

But, again, for people with no prior computing experience it wins hands down.

-Charles

Re:Most advanced and powerful?

[Anonymous Coward]

If I could afford a mac, I'd own one.

If you compare an eMac with a new PC (with equivalent options, so you have to include the monitor), you'll find both to be around the same price. The CPU speed will be lower, but Macs can do more with less cycles. So the Macs do come out a bit more expensive. If however you count the free software included, the Mac is cheaper. All development tools are free on the Mac. And they give you AppleWorks, which is sort of like Microsoft Works. It's not as complete as Microsoft Office, but if it's enough for you needs, then you don't need to buy Office. Visual Studio by itself costs more than an eMac...

Re:Most advanced and powerful?

[grumpygrodyguy]

But, again, for people with no prior computing experience it wins hands down.

Which is also why for our parents, friends, and children Linux still sucks.

Re:Most advanced and powerful?

[kryocore]

hell, there wasn't even a freaking right mouse button!

Dang, I've been considering OS X for a while, but now my dreams are over...

Re:Most advanced and powerful?

[Anonymous Coward]

No! Bulshit, bullshit, bullshit. A Mac can NOT do more things with less cycles any more than a PC can - it all depends on which test case you pick. And the fact that you can't have enough cycles on the Mac no matter what you buy means the Mac is always behind.

The Mac is NOT cheaper. If you have a clue you can configure your own for way less than that and get exactly what you want. But hey, if a screwdriver is too much for you to figure out by all means buy a Dell - they're still cheaper, faster, and they include the monitor.

We all know how much a dual G5 costs - but Mac fanatics won't have bothered to find out (or will be in denial over) the fact that a dual-G5-crushing dual Opteron costs less - and can be configured any way you like. Want an 8-drive RAID 5 array in your system? Can't do it with the dual G5 but with the dual Opteron it's only a matter of picking the right case and controller. Hell, want any kind of hardware RAID in your Mac? Sorry, you have to buy an XServe, and the G5 XServe isn't available - "delayed" in typical Apple fashion.

Your software arguments are just a joke, as any reader of slashdot will know. The Mac software costs money - do you deny that the machines could be cheaper if the cost of developing and maintaining that software wasn't built in? Consider Linux, GCC, Gimp, Open Office - that's FREE. You just don't understand the concept, or else you're willingly swallowing the marketing and lack the intellectual honesty not to try and mislead others the same way.

(and Visual Studio does NOT cost more than an eMac - unless you pick the most expensive package. You want a C compiler? It's cheaper. MacLies, all of them.)

Re:Most advanced and powerful?

[asdfghjklqwertyuiop]

The Macintosh GUIs have been advanced enough to not need two mouse buttons since 1984

You have a funny definition of the word 'advanced'. I mean, windows 3.1 was 'advanced' enough not to need a right mouse button in 1993...

Re:Most advanced and powerful?

[numpins]

The top menu bar has a bunch of items in it and one of them is labeled "Help." Inside there, you'll find tutorials for people who are: new to computers, Windows users, or OS 9 users.

(This is in Panther.) Mouse differences, key Windows application equivalents, and different paradigms are described.

You may not know everything about the Mac so ask your buddy and use their knowledge to get a feel for it. Maybe they could have told you about the Finder and the Help system it has.

Re:Most advanced and powerful?

[Anonymous Coward]

I custom built my machines for over 10 years. Then I got sick and tired of cheap-ass brand components that make your system crash. If you're gonna compare an Apple to a PC, you gotta pick a *good* PC.

Then no shit the G5 is more expensive. The price tag for those is way too high. But some people will buy it anyways at that price, that's why they leave it there. It's gonna go down eventually. But I was talking about eMacs. eMacs are cheap.

Yeah, indeed, if you use Linux, you get the software for free. I was comparing with the Windows platform, which would be usable for a newbie. If you see it that way, then yeah I could get myself a PC cheaper than a Mac, but it then feels broken to use. Might as well get the cheap brand components for that... I guess it's my fault if I assumed someone would use Windows on a branded computer, but I don't think you can compare Linux to MacOS or Windows.

Visual C is cheaper than an eMac, but I said Visual Studio.

I say eMac and you say G5, I say Visual Studio you say Visual C... How do you call that, delusional reading?!

Re:Most advanced and powerful?

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh, so what you said about a cost advantage was bullshit - you admit it's a touchy feely thing on your part. Thanks. And if you knew more about Visual Studio you would know there are many products called "Visual Studio" - and Visual C is one of them. You probably priced "Visual Studio Enterprise Developer", somewhere north of $1500, including EVERYTHING. Now that's delusional - but I suppose it makes you feel good about having settled for an $800 toy Macintosh.

but I don't think you can compare Linux to MacOS or Windows.

Because when you do, it exposes what you said as bullshit! Thanks again.

Re:Most advanced and powerful?

[Anonymous Coward]

What I want to know is whether your ganma will be ready to pay through her nose to buy it?

Re:Most advanced and powerful?

[W2k]

1. its a Unix clone.. comes with all the strengths
This might be an advantage over Windows, but not over Linux (also a Unix clone). Also, there's a lot of baggage that comes with being a Unix clone, not just advantages.

2. It has a very well designed, clean and consistent UI
Matter of taste. Most Linux users I know customize their desktop environments to suit their personal tastes, I've done the same with Windows XP. It certainly fits my idea of what is "well designed, clean and consistent" now. So this is not an OSX-specific advantage, either.

3. Its so intuitive that your ganma can use it (try it..)
It might be good for first-time users, but I always feel very disoriented when I have to try and configure something on a Mac. So what is "inituitive" is mostly a matter of what you're used to...

4. It allows you to run MS office, Photoshop , dreamweaver and tons of other commercial apps alongside your Unix apps like apache, smb, namp etc.
I'm running commercial apps alongside "Unix" and other open-source apps on Windows just fine. Just like there are Unix/Linux alternatives to most Windows apps, the reverse is true for pretty much all useful Unix/Linux apps. That said, if Mozilla didn't exist for Windows I'd probably switch. :)

5. You can run X windows apps but turn it off when your dont need it and can run pretty much any (non hardware dependent)app linux can.
Useful for people migrating from Linux, but not for Windows users, who will have very few if any X-windows apps they feel the need to bring over to OSX.

6. OSX boxes can emulate i386 very fast the reverse does not exist yet
I can't think of a time when I've actually felt the need or desire to emulate a Macintosh on my x86. Why would I need to do this, exactly?

7. All development tools are free (gcc) and very easy to use GUIs(Xcode)
There's GCC for both Linux and Windows, and very good development environments for both. So this is not an OSX-specific advantage, either.

8. The development API (cocoa) is open and cross platform (GNUstep, openstep)
Don't know about this one (mostly because I've never used cocoa) but there are plenty of (reasonably) open and cross-platform API's out there.

9. Very good 3rd party hardware support.
Windows has this. Next, please.

10. Fantastic applications like ilife apps, itunes etc that make windows users gawk.
Not this Windows user, they don't. At the university where I work and study, I very rarely hear any mac apps mentioned in a favourable manner, so I'm fairly certain I'm not alone in having this opinion.

Re:Most advanced and powerful?

[polyp2000]

Im planning on getting a Powerbook at some stage.

My desire to get one has nothing to do with the lovely eye-candy. The main reason is stuff like iMovie (and ease of use of my DV Camera) and also music applications like cubase etc. I wont do Windows, havent for a long time. Its the Unix underpinnings of OSX, and some of the apps that just dont have Linux counterparts such as iMovie.

Even so, im preparing myself for OSX by using KDE...

Stylisation...

All in all though Eye-Candy like that is just an added bonus ;)

nick ...

Latin Serbian!?!?!

[LenE]

That should read Croatian. Serbian is Cyrillic. Unless, Croatian is already a supported language, then this would be more like a redneck dialect.

-- Len

Re:Latin Serbian!?!?!

[Anonymous Coward]

Serbo-Croatian with a Latin alphabet is also called Bosnian in some parts of the world. I'll let you guess where.

Re:Latin Serbian!?!?!

[198348726583297634]

Related to a serb by marriage...the language indeed is written using cyrillic letters, but is also commonly written using the roman alphabet. I see a lot of hand-written things around my sister's house that use my native alphabet but that I can't read--and I can read russian. the cyrillic alphabet the serbs use indeed has a few characters different from the russian alphabet.

probably too much useless info, though...

Re:Latin Serbian!?!?!

[vvico]

Serbian and Croatian languages are similar. Until a couple of years ago, these languages were one, "serbocroatian" language. But, there are many annoying differences. For example, month names in Serbian are similar to English (Januar, Februar, etc.), but in Croatian months have totaly different names.

Serbian language has two "scripts", or as we call them, alphabets. Primary is the cyrillic alphabet and secondary, latin alphabet. I would like to see KDE in both of these alphabets, but, latin is better then nothin' :)

Re:Latin Serbian!?!?!

[cozziewozzie]

This is very wrong. Serbian language uses both Cyrillic and the Latin alphabets. In fact, many daily newspapers appear in both Cyrillic and Latin editions. Croatian is also a supported language, and they organise translation marathons regularly.

Serbian, Croatian and Bosnian are considered separate languages for many reasons, including political ones. You are probably confused by the fact that all three were grouped together during Yugoslavia and called 'Serbo-Croatian' (in Serbia) and 'Croato-Serbian' (in Croatia). In fact, the speakers of either language can understand each others very easily, despite the differences in pronunciation, grammar and vocabulary. Originally, though, those languages had separate development through history.

The reason why Standard Croatian and Standard Serbian are so similar has a lot to do with the Illiryan pan-slavic movement during early 20th century and the push to bring the languages closer together for easier communication, led by the leading authors of the time, as well as politicians. The many Croatian and Serbian dialects, on the other hand, are comprehensible only to Croats and Serbs, respectively. A good parallel elsewhere in the world would be the Scandinavian languages (Swedish, Danish and Norwegian) or Czech and Slovak. They are still sufficiently distinct to cause serious annoyance for users who are forced to use a language which is only similar to their own.

Re:Latin Serbian!?!?!

[cozziewozzie]

I am not sure if there is a Cyrillic version of Serbian out there, but I would assume that Latin would be preferred for a high-tech application such as computers - especially for a nation which uses both.

If there were two, however, it would be smarter to first make the Cyrillic translations, and then write a script to generate Latin version of them. The opposite doesn't work, because some Slavic sounds are represented by more then one Latin character (lj and nj spring to mind) so there is some ambiguity. Cyrillic alphabet has exactly one character per audible sound and such a script would be trivial.

Re:Latin Serbian!?!?!

[emir]

Nah you are the one that is wrong :)

It is latin serbian. Once long time ago (before 1991) there was a language called Serbo-Croatian. It was one of three official languages (beside slovenian and macedonian) in Yugoslavia. When Yugoslavia vanished in 1991 so did the serbo-croatian. In Croatian it is croatian, in Serbia it is serbian, in Bosnia it is bosnian. It could be argued that all these languages are still one same language but as people prefer to have "seperate" languages they should be allowed to do so. Differences are not that great but generally differences are following: prefered way of writing:

Bosnia: latin
Croatia: latin
Serbia: cyrillic

(note that you can write serbian in latin if you want and croatian and bosnian in cyrillic if you want)


amount of foreign words (notably of turkish origin) in serbia and bosnia are much greater than in croatia. thus neighbour would be spellt as.
Bosnia:komsija
Croatia: susjed
Serbia: komsija

susjed is proper word of south slavic origin. (note that there are people in serbia that say susjed, but majority use komsija. and vice versa for croatia)


other big difference is that people in croatia and bosnia use so called "ijekavski" dialect while people in serbia use "ekavski" dialect. Difference is that some 1000-2000 words in serbia are spellt and pronounced with only e while in croatia and bosnia they are spellt with ije. Kinda like color and colour in american and brittish english. Example:

English: flower | milk
Bosnia: cvijet | mlijeko
Croatia: cvijet | mlijeko
Serbia: cvet | mleko
(note there is even third dialect that is spoken in some part of croatia which is called "ikavski". where cvijet would be pronounced and spellt as "cvit" and milk as "mliko")


Third difference is heavy use of h in bosnia.

English: rotten | coffe
Bosnian: truhlo | kahva
Croatian: trulo | kava
Serbian: trulo | kafa



There are other small differences but they are too small to be mentioned here. Thus it should be called latin Serbian, if you use all words and spellings that people in serbia usually use but spell it with latin.....

Fixed?!

[contrasutra]

KHTML: fix animated GIFs not looping (#72953)

Oh c'mon, that was my FAVORITE bug! Who was the dork who filed this bug report? ;-)

KMix: Properly save volumes on exit so volumes are correctly restored on next login.

Wow, that seems like a pretty big bug. I wonder how people lived with their volume not staying the same.

Re:Fixed?!

[GweeDo]

Personally I just had alsacntl set it for me once and called it good.

But if you liked changing you volume settings via the kpanel applet a lot that would be annoying.

Re:Fixed?!

[imr]

KHTML: fix animated GIFs not looping (#72953)
Oh c'mon, that was my FAVORITE bug! Who was the dork who filed this bug report? ;-)
Damn! I have been specifically unable them for months and it didnt work!!??
Wow, that seems like a pretty big bug. I wonder how people lived with their volume not staying the same.
Well, they thought it was an alsa bug, so they tried to learn how to use alsa, then they tried to put all those obscure options in obscure alsa proc entries they found on "users" forums, then they got mad.

Re:Fixed?!

[chmouel]

Most distributions have scripts that save the states on boot/reboot (but doen't fix the problem on multi-users environement)

Re:Fixed?!

[KingJoshi]

KMix: Properly save volumes on exit so volumes are correctly restored on next login.

Wow, that seems like a pretty big bug. I wonder how people lived with their volume not staying the same.

Can you imagine, logged into KDE on your laptop in a lab or library somewhere in the back, taking a break, watching some porn with the volume off. So, next day, you think the volume is still off and when you start the video, the whole room hears some girl screaming, "Yeah, fuck me harder!" again and again.

And you think this isn't an important bug to fix? :)

Re:Fixed?!

[Patik]

That's why you use headphones.

Re:Fixed?!

[sn0wman3030]

Wow, that seems like a pretty big bug. I wonder how people lived with their volume not staying the same.>

Yeah, that was seriously annoying as all hell. I had to reset all my settings in alsa evertime i logged in. Whatever, GNOME doesn't have that type of problem.

Re:Fixed?!

[foonf]

KMix: Properly save volumes on exit so volumes are correctly restored on next login.

Wow, that seems like a pretty big bug. I wonder how people lived with their volume not staying the same.

Standard behavior for most distributions is to save/restore sound settings at system halt/startup in the init scripts. So it is not exactly normal for the desktop or any other program to handle this itself, and I would guess that only a small minority of KDE users actually require KMix to work in this way. Which is probably why nobody caught the bug in the first place. Personally I use KDE and don't even have the mixer app installed.

Re:Fixed?!

[Lord Ender]

Actually, it resets the volume to 0 every time you start KDE. A pretty shitty bug, if you ask me.

Re:Fixed?!

[Just Some Guy]

So, you're still using an old soundcard, huh? Well, I recently bought an SB Live! and was a little surprised to find that KMix suddenly had, like 83 volume sliders for MIDI 1-23, rear-left-bottom, MIC 7, etc, and another 18 or so for tone, balance, 3d-ness, reverb, and a bunch of other effects.

KMix forgetting my volume settings was incredibly annoying. Whenever I'd log in, sound would come from the subwoofer and right super-tweeter, but the left channel was out altogether. Whenever I brought the left speaker and right midrange online, then I had to figure which of the scrolled-off-the-screen controls was making it sound like I was in a perfectly reflective gymnasium when I was listening to Henry Rollins spoken-word stuff.

You BET I want KMix to remember my settings. It took me about 5 minutes to convince myself that I hadn't blown a sound card each and every time I rebooted ("Ooh, shiny! 2.6.0-pre8 is out now, better upgrade!").

Re:Fixed?!

[Fenris Ulf]

Oh c'mon, that was my FAVORITE bug! Who was the dork who filed this bug report? ;-)

Well, you can still configure konqueror to prevent animated gifs from looping if you prefer it that way.

Or are you just kidding? :-)

Re:Fixed?!

[toddestan]

I recently installed Mandrake 9.2, with KDE 3.1.something, and that was like one of the first things I noticed. My solution so far to been to just leave KMix open, and when I boot into KDE I just set the volume back up. And I thought it was just me!

True that

[Anonymous Coward]

I was running it last night -- Upgrade went flawlessly from 3.1.5.

Thanks Debian KDE QT Mainters Group!

KDE 3.2 well worth the upgrade!

[Anonymous Coward]

I am running KDE 3.2 right now on my Gentoo Linux box. A really good upgrade from KDE 3.1. Its like switching from Jaguar to Panther in Mac terms, or Windows 95 to 98 in Windows terms. It looks mostly like KDE 3.1, but its so much faster and the GUI has been cleaned up a bit (no more bloated interfaces, but still with all the features, what do you gnomers say now?)

Fluxbox fans will like that you can now configure kde to switch virtual desktops in kde by using the scroll wheel, and the new Plastik theme looks good. I use it for my Window Border, but I still like the kermick style better. So if you are stuck using KDE 3.1 or less, then get your distro to upgrade. I will probably be emerging this release tomorrow.

Re:KDE 3.2 well worth the upgrade!

[trtmrt]

I use kde and really like it but the speed issue is not fixed yet. I was hoping to see this great speedup in 3.2 but to be honest for me it runs the same as 3.1. Startup on login takes the same time. There is some noticable improvement in startup times for some applications but nothing spectacular. Everything else though is great. The menus are cleaned up and there are many small usability improvements.

Re:KDE 3.2 well worth the upgrade!

[BrookHarty]

Here I am trying to compiled 3.2, and it stopped, I was using -j2 makeopts, and there was a race condition. Now I have to sync, and recompile for 3.2.1. (This is on Sparc too)

Re:KDE 3.2 well worth the upgrade!

[Anonymous Coward]

It depends on the distro you're using (as well as the underlying OS).

Slackware users (and BSD ones too) probably won't see much of a speed improvement between 3.1x and 3.2x (I didn't).

Mandrake users may see some improvement - but to be honest the problem with Mandrake et. al. isn't with KDE or Gnome but with the amount of stuff happening in the background which really slows things down (such as syncing menus between Gnome, KDE, IceWM and every other window manager on the fly).

Ask yourself this - how come KDE works "out of the box" on Slackware, Gentoo and others but needs a whole host of patches to fix bugs that only show up when using Mandrake?

Sorry, this turned into an Anti-Mandrake rant (and is one of the main reasons I ditched Mandrake and changed to Slackware - software tends to work when I install it, rather than when some bugger's applied X number of patches to fix problems caused by patching other applications).

Sheesh.

Re:KDE 3.2 well worth the upgrade!

[trtmrt]

I don't think the speed is a distribution issue. I compared speeds of KDE 3.1 and 3.2 on the *same* SuSE 8.2 installation I run at home. I am also comparing it to the dual boot windows I have which is much faster. I don't mind the speed of KDE since it offers so much other stuff but it would be nice if it was faster.

Re:KDE 3.2 well worth the upgrade!

[Anonymous Coward]

I compared 3.1 and 3.2 on Mandrake 9.1 and Slackware 9.1 - both on a P2-400 and on a Athlon XP 2200 - There was some difference when upgrading KDE on Mandrake - but Slackware was much faster in KDE to begin with. Any increase in speed between KDE versions on Slackware really isn't that noticable.
Can't comment on SuSE as I don't use it.

Re:KDE 3.2 well worth the upgrade!

[RedBear]

I am running KDE 3.2 right now on my [expletive deleted] Linux box. A really good upgrade from KDE 3.1. Its like switching from Jaguar to Panther in Mac terms, or Windows 95 to 98 in Windows terms. It looks mostly like KDE 3.1, but its so much faster and the GUI has been cleaned up a bit

One of these is not like the other...

KDE 3.1 to KDE 3.2
Jaguar to Panther
Windows 95 to Windows 98--Hnuhh??

Don't you mean "it's like switching from Windows 98 to Windows 95?" Heh.

This is old news

[Anonymous Coward]

3.2.1 has been out since 29 February. Check here. And yes, there have been no changes to KDE_3_2_1_RELEASE since then. What ? You don't know how to use CVS or CVSup ? hahaha.

Speaking of which

[MAXOMENOS]

Where is there a list of all the languages KDE supports?

Re:Speaking of which

[chowells]

i18n.kde.org

I noticed this in the changelog

[Anonymous Coward]

KNewsTicker: Removed BSDtoday from list, fixed addresses of SecurityFocus and Freshports

It seems the KDE team is getting prepared for *BSD's impending demise.

Re:I noticed this in the changelog

[BSDKaffee]

yes it would really seem that way considering Freshports is still on the list you just posted

Re:I noticed this in the changelog

[Anonymous Coward]

BSD nazi.

Re:Now I just need...

[Chalybeous]

I think his karma just ran over my dogma ;-)

Re:They'll never get into the schools though, unti

[nacturation]

Yeah, but what about Silbo Gomero? Will KDE ever whistle at me from 2 miles away that I have new mail?

No

[Anonymous Coward]

Because nobody besides you use POPFile.

Re:They'll never get into the schools though, unti

[shystershep]

You have apparently not heard of the KDE Klingon Translation Team. According to them, the K in KDE actually stands for Klingon.


Gee, I wish I had that much time on my hands.

Vapourware and the impact on advertisement

[MavEtJu]

announced the immediate availability of

What is the difference between the "availablility" and the "immediate availability" of a product?

Is it like the "closing down sale" and the "genuine closing down sale"? Or like the "additional 20% discount on top of our normal 30% discount"?

If it's available, it's immediatly available. If it is not immediatly available, it's not available.

Re:Vapourware and the impact on advertisement

[ElGuapoGolf]

Availability can be taken to mean either immediate or pending availability. For example, Unreal Tournament 2004 will be available in stores March 15th. KDE 3.2.1 is available immediately from your preferred mirror.

Re:Vapourware and the impact on advertisement

[Anonymous Coward]

It has been fully mirrored for about a week now so that it could be mirrored and packaged by the various dists. So at least theoretically it won't get /.'d as opposed to announcing it before the mirrors or packagers have gotten access to it.

Re:Vapourware and the impact on advertisement

[asdfghjklqwertyuiop]

Availability can be taken to mean either immediate or pending availability. For example, Unreal Tournament 2004 will be available in stores March 15th

Then ureal tournament 2004 is not available. If today were march 15th, then it would be available. But today isn't march 15th, its march 9th, so it is not availble. Something is either available or it isn't.

Re:Vapourware and the impact on advertisement

[Anonymous Coward]

Notice how he said "will be available," not "is available?" Ignorant, nitpicking asswipe.

Re:Vapourware and the impact on advertisement

[Wolfier]

Man: Will you be available tomorrow evening?

Woman: Sorry, if today were tomorrow, then I would be availble, but today is not tomorrow, so I'm not available.

Man: Fuck that. Speak English.

Re:Vapourware and the impact on advertisement

[asdfghjklqwertyuiop]

Notice how he said "Availability can be taken to mean either immediate or pending availability" in response to 'What is the difference between the "availablility" and the "immediate availability" of a product?'? 'will be available' is totally irrelevant.

Ignorant, nitpicking asswipe.

Re:Vapourware and the impact on advertisement

[asdfghjklqwertyuiop]

'will be available' is not what is being talked about. That has nothing to do with the difference between 'immediately available' and 'available'.

Man: Are you immediately available or available?

Woman: Huh?

Re:Vapourware and the impact on advertisement

[Anonymous Coward]

Problem: The variable "available" is temporally overloaded due to the common use of modifiers such as "past," "present" and "future." The code compiles fine, but causes memory leaks when executed on non-native systems.

Solution: Purge all the unbelievers and take back the logical purity of the Queen's English.

Reasonable Cludge: Add a moderate amount of redundancy to your speech patterns to assure clarity.

Re:Vapourware and the impact on advertisement

[imbaczek]

The KDE team is unavailable for comment.

ugh...more compiling!

[GirTheRobot]

I just finished updating my Gentoo box to the current release....now another 2 days of compiling!!! oh well, i love watching the text scroll by anyway...

Re:ugh...more compiling!

[Micah]

For the record, it takes my Gentoo box about 18 hours to compile it. I have a dual P3-850.

But, you can start mourning for my 64kbps cable modem (I'm in Ecuador).

Re:ugh...more compiling!

[ChazeFroy]

distcc

Re:ugh...more compiling!

[SQLz]

You know Linux is a multi-tasking OS right? You CAN still use the machine to make idiot Slashdot posts when its compiling. Just thought you should know.

Law Saxon?

[Anonymous Coward]

Is that some dead language used by dead Saxon lawyers?

But hey, anything that increases the number of dead lawyers is just fine with me. :-D

Re: Fixed? I need auto-save each 10 minutes

[Erik_]

Can KMix also auto-save the volume settings every 10 minutes ? and we want the saved file to be in a xml compatible file, in case I want to open it in OpenOfficeMix ;-)

KDE (fake) Changelog

[Anonymous Coward]

1) Now free of SCO-patented /* Komment Tags */

2) For additional speed, Kuickshow now opens images you thought you wanted to preview.

3) Konqueror now has strings-searchable "Internet Explorer coders are weenies" easter egg.

4) KDevelop now Kompiles with the option to make klean instead of clean.

5) Renamed the "Local Area Network Manager" to KLAN

6) GUI Konstruct-Icons now replaced by Dinobots

Re:KDE (fake) Changelog

[IntergalacticWalrus]

6) GUI Konstruct-Icons now replaced by Dinobots

Finally, I was really looking forward to that one.

Re:KDE (fake) Changelog

[Anonymous Coward]

aaand the implementation of PGP uses new and improved large Optimus Prime Numbers.

Isthay issespay emay offay

[ColonelPanic]

Erewhay isay Igpay Atinlay?

Re:Isthay issespay emay offay

[Anonymous Coward]

Rarjight narjext to arjy-parjy.

Re:Big Fucking Deal

[Anonymous Coward]

Windows isn't that bad of an OS, i get alot done with my XBox. just last week i drove all around town picking up hookers and drugs, all from home!

next week i plan on blasting aliens, after i finish this 'speling tutor - by /.'

Re:They'll never get into the schools though, unti

[kfg]

Quite the contrary, I was quite aware of the translation team and the obvious "K" joke involved.

In fact, it was my awareness of the the team that lead me to use the word "silly," as I took it from the official KDE development team's response to the project.

Not that I feel there's no room in the world for such silliness, mind you. More power to them if that's what makes them happy.

KFG

Re:They'll never get into the schools though, unti

[ImTwoSlick]

They'll never get into the schools though, until it supports Elvish."

That's OK. I can write a patch that changes all system text to "Fa La La Lally" for them.

Immdediate availability

[dj245]

"The KDE project today announced the immediate availability of KDE 3.2.1"

Glad to see immediate availability. I really hate those fake delayed availabilities and paper launches those other software companies put out. Now I've gotta go watch Matrix: Reloaded while I contemplate whether or not the next XP release is worth pirating.

Noo!

[Anonymous Coward]

I just did an 'emerge -Du world ' YESTERDAY!

Re:Noo!

[gilesjuk]

Tell me what it's like in a months time :)

Insensitive clod (Re:Low Saxon)

[mi]

Tajikistan is a populous -- if poor at the moment -- nation.

Hopefully, the horrible legacy of the USSR will diminish with years and the country will prosper. If someone from there found the time and translated parts of KDE to Tajik -- they should be applauded, rather than mocked.

Re:Insensitive clod (Re:Low Saxon)

[tanguyr]

no, they should all be mocked.
mock mock mock.
aaaaaaaaaaaah, better.

Good thing NetBSD-current C++ compiler not work

[Anonymous Coward]

Otherwise, I'd be complaining I spent the last two weeks
compiling 3.2 only to have this come out. Fortunately,
that is not a problem.

Not a problem on my Sun box either since I'm still
trying to compile qt.

Yay for me! KDE Rules!

Compile time!

[athorshak]

I guess I know what my Gentoo box is going to be doing for the next two weeks. ;)

Gentoo Ebuilds Availible!

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, they are here! Its the KDE ebuilds. Now updated to KDE 3.2.1.

Did Konquerer change the "Location" menu yet?

[Anonymous Coward]

Or perhaps Thunderbird Fire**** browser will use some arbitrary word to replace label for the "File" menu.

Re:New languages

[Anonymous Coward]

Short Saxons perhaps?

Re:They'll never get into the schools though, unti

[91degrees]

But how are they handling error messages? Are they doing a literal translation, or will it be more along the lines of "This application has shamed itself with a segmentation fault!"?

Re:New languages

[Anonymous Coward]

The translator. He wanted it in, now it's in. KDE is mostly "work for what you want".

Finally ...

[JoMre]

they fixed the clock config dialog :-)

Re:Finally ...

[Anonymous Coward]

Quick fix - rename the link to the clock screensaver . . . . . . .

Re:Finally ...

[JoMre]

Took quite a while since this was raised for the first time - not exactly what I'd call a "quick fix" ;-P

bug flood

[Marco Krohn]

And with this new release a new flood of bugs coming in

KDE weekly bug report summary

Please double check when reporting a bug that it really isn't a duplicate. Also be sure to send in backtraces only if you have compiled with debug information. Every bad bug report just costs the developers valueable time which is badly needed for all the features coming with 3.3:

KDE 3.3 features
KDEPIM 3.3 features

If you want to help with an even better 3.3 your help in the KDE Quality team is welcome!

KDE, rock on :-)

Re:bug flood

[Anonymous Coward]

Glad this one is being done for 3.3

Make fuzzy clock fuzzier, funnier. Bryce Nesbitt

Good work Bryce!! Keep em coming.

Re:bug flood

[pointwood]

"Also be sure to send in backtraces only if you have compiled with debug information."

Then maybe it should only be possible to send backtraces if it was compiled with debug information?

Re:bug flood

[kundor]

Restricting what users can do based on what developers think would be convenient is a Microsoft practice, not a linux one.

besides, the KDE developers don't make gdb. ;-)

Re:bug flood

[pointwood]

I'm not a KDE developer, it just sounded like an obvious thing to do :)

Re:No right mouse button!

[SmilingBoy]

You were unable to PLUG IN A GENERIC STANDARD TWO-BUTTON MOUSE AVAILABLE FOR, AT MOST, $7 AT THE LOCAL RADIO SHACK.

Correct, because it was in the late evening at a friend's place in Madrid who only had an iMac.

Re:No right mouse button!

[TwinkieStix]

Or maybe that opt-click or ctrl-click (or whatever it is) to too much trouble. Right, I am a PC/Linux user, but still I know this.

More to the point, the grandparent noted that he came from windows to Linux. Most distributions ship with a theme more similar to the windows theme, so it makes sense that that transition was easier.

What we "gnomers" say

[Overly Critical Guy]

(no more bloated interfaces, but still with all the features, what do you gnomers say now?)

No more bloated interfaces? Tell me, what's been removed? Same interface that 3.1 had.

3.2 added more sidebar buttons, more of what GUI designers like to call "cruft." Load up Control Center some time--you've got like a hundred items in there, grouped within groups.

Also, you have a single "K" menu. This is goofy and amateur. Gnome has a seperate Applications pull down menu for programs, and an Actions menu for logging out, restarting, and so forth. The K menu has at least three redundancies, Preferences, Control Center, System, etc. And most application groups have a "More Programs" group for some reason. This is extremely confusing, and also a hindrance to power users who just want to find what app they need to run.

Also, I have to click once on hyperlink desktop items and wait three seconds as a Home folder loads. Gnome requires that you double-click like every other sane GUI, and I get the window *instantly*.

There is simply no good reason to have your web browser be your filesystem browser. One program is designed to retrieve graphical content via an HTTP protocol and display it, while the other is designed to display folders and manipulate files through moving, copying, and so forth.

I find it hilarious that people bitch when Microsoft integrates Internet Explorer but find it perfectly acceptable that Konquerer be integrated into KDE. What happened to the whole "but newbies will use what's already there by default, and that flies in the face of choice" argument that we always hear against Windows?

I'm not even going to get into the spacing issues (try telling an application menu to remain at the top like MacOS--then shoot the cursor up and click--there is a space of a pixel up there that doesn't register as a click, defeating the whole purpose, because Mac users are used to slamming the mouse up and hitting a menu which is faster than pinpointing a menu attached to a floating window), the spacing between menu items, the layout of buttons (OK, Cancel is evil...not to mention that things like Cancel should be on the left, Save and Quit in the middle, Exit on the right, and the buttons should not be equally spaced...Cancel should be moved to the very left while the other two should be grouped together), and so on and so forth.

You asked what we gnomers say to it...I responded how this gnomer feels about KDE 3.2. Other opinions may vary. Gnome 2.6 is due out later this month. Look to it for a CLEAN, elegant desktop designed not to get in your way but to let you actually operate your computer, instead of giving you a thousand-and-one ways to create pretty screenshots for kde-look.org that aren't even usable as daily interfaces. Gnome isn't perfect, but you can tell it's focus it to be a clean and elegant interface, not a huge massive sidebar-button-filled convoluted interface with a name like "KDE" and apps like "Kouger," "Kroupware," and "Kallery."

Re:What we "gnomers" say

[Anonymous Coward]

not a huge massive sidebar-button-filled convoluted interface with a name like "KDE" and apps like "Kouger," "Kroupware," and "Kallery"

Sure, they have nice sensible names like "Gimp", "Eye of Gnome", "GQView", "Pan".

Re:What we "gnomers" say

[Brandybuck]

Load up Control Center some time--you've got like a hundred items in there, grouped within groups.

Awesome! Nothing like keeping all of these configuration options all in one place and out of the way. That's real usability IMHO. If you want a "dumbed down" configuration, may I suggest you use the Desktop Settings Wizard, and pretend the Control Center doesn't exist?

Gnome has a seperate Applications pull down menu for programs, and an Actions menu for logging out, restarting, and so forth.

The default 'K' menu contains four "actions". FOUR. If that's too many options for you to handle, make sure you never take a look at the Windows XP menu, or your brain might explode.

Actually, one of those actions is "Run Command...", and I'm not sure if this counts as an action in the sense you mean.

This is a non-issue. In fact, most of the Gnome-HIG-Advocacy talking points are non-issues.

I find it hilarious that people bitch when Microsoft integrates Internet Explorer but find it perfectly acceptable that Konquerer be integrated into KDE. What happened to the whole "but newbies will use what's already there by default, and that flies in the face of choice" argument that we always hear against Windows?

From day one I always considered that argument against Internet Explorer to be silly and ill-thought. Of course, most arguments against Windows are silly and ill-thought. Integrating the browser, file manager and desktop together is a really good idea, and KDE shows to what heights one can take a good idea. What made it bad in Microsoft's case was: their monopoly status; unfinished integration; and using a crappy browser.

If you don't want to use Konqueror as a browser, you don't have to use Konqueror as a browser. And if you don't want to use it as a file manager, you don't have to use it as a file manager. Heck, you don't even have to use it at all! No one's going to sue you.

not to mention that things like Cancel should be on the left, Save and Quit in the middle, Exit on the right, and the buttons should not be equally spaced

To reiterate: non-issues. Get a life.

Gnome isn't perfect

I'm shocked! Shocked I tell you!

Re:What we "gnomers" say

[Anonymous Coward]

There was evidence to prove that Overly Critical Guy is a lying cocksucker, but he deleted it. Think independently.

Re:What we "gnomers" say

[Anonymous Coward]

There is simply no good reason to have your web browser be your filesystem browser. One program is designed to retrieve graphical content via an HTTP protocol and display it, while the other is designed to display folders and manipulate files through moving, copying, and so forth.

Well, uhm, it isn't actually. Konqueror is just a shell to host Kparts/KIO-slaves. The KHTML Kpart has nothing to do with the filemanager KPart. There is no security problem whatsoever.

Actually, konqueror is far more than a file manager + web browser. It is also an ftp-client, a samba-client, an unzipping program, ...

I find it hilarious that people bitch when Microsoft integrates Internet Explorer but find it perfectly acceptable that Konquerer be integrated into KDE. What happened to the whole "but newbies will use what's already there by default, and that flies in the face of choice" argument that we always hear against Windows?

If you don't like konqueror, just remove it. Try doing that with IE...

OK, Cancel is evil...not to mention that things like Cancel should be on the left, Save and Quit in the middle, Exit on the right, and the buttons should not be equally spaced...Cancel should be moved to the very left while the other two should be grouped together), and so on and so forth.

I personally HATE that "cancel should be on the left"-policy. I really don't see the benefit from it. I read from left to right, so the first button I see should be the most logical choice. And they SHOULD be equally spaced so the user can see the avalaible buttons with a quick glimpse instead of searching for it all over the dialog!

You are right about the fact that buttons should have verbs on them, imo that's the only thing the Gnome folks gets right on that issue. But that isn't their idea...

I really don't understand all the flaming between KDE and Gnome. If I read /., I get the feeling most Gnome users are elitist bastards which probably isn't true, but it really gets to me sometimes. We should a) respect eachother's choice of DE and b) work together to provide more integration between the projects (so a Gnome app looks and acts the same when ran under KDE and vice versa). But comments like yours make the struggle for linux to get to the desktop even harder.

Overly Critical Guy is a troll

[Anonymous Coward]

Responding to somebody who stated that they had trouble when they first used Mac OS X:

maybe, if you grow up with a Mac, it's great, but for someone used to Windows or KDE, it's a nightmare.

...Overly Critical Guy decided that they were obviously cretinous and completely misinterpreted what they were saying in order to get some attention:

That means OS X must suck and Linux rules.

As you can see if you read the post he was replying to, this was obviously not what the other person was saying.

Overly Critical Guy karma whores so he can troll the people browsing at threshold: 2. Remember that the next time you are thinking of modding him up.

OMG - - consiracy!!

[msimm]

KDE fanboi's have obviously infiltrated some of the higher ranks of Slashdot editors *probably the same one's who have been double posting stories*.

We HAVE TO STOP THEM!

^
..
.

Re:OMG - - consiracy!!

[Fenris Ulf]

This board has been hijacked by trolls!

Are you a bad enough dude to save it?

Excellent - My Bug is Fixed

[Random BedHead Ed]

Woo-hoo! One bug I've had with KDE 3.2, which I installed in both the Beta and final versions using the KDE-supplied Fedora RPMs, has been driving me nuts. I'm not sure if it was RPM-specific, but there were real problems with switching applications, navigating menus, and other things you expect to "just work." I lived with it because I really liked KDE 3.2 and discovered some tricks, but now it's working perfectly. Anyone else noticed these issues? If so, rpm -Fvh --nodeps *.rpm yours today.

Re:Excellent - My Bug is Fixed

[aleonard]

Oh, awesome, I thought it was just my high-impact setup (if there's anything in KDE that can be transparent, I've got it on :P) that was causing those problems with my, drum roll, Fedora system. :D That makes this "maintenance release" a required download. Thanks, KDE team. :)

To whomever modded parent down - Boo!

Overly Critical Guy is a troll

[Anonymous Coward]

consider it a troll if you want...I'm extremely disappointed in the state of the Linux desktop right now...Y-Windows is the obvious future

Yes, I do consider it a troll. You flame a well-respected project and say that something is "the obvious future" with absolutely squat to back it up, in the full knowledge that it will raise the hackles of many people.

Overly Critical Guy is a troll who karma-whores so he can annoy people reading at threshold: 2. Read his posting history the next time you are thinking of modding him up.

Re:KDE vs. GNOME in a nutshell

[Anonymous Coward]

A big giant "K" button

The K button is the same size as all the other buttons. If you think it is a different size to others, then you have misinterpreted a screenshot of somebody who has icon-zooming switched on, and given away the fact that you haven't used KDE.

with approximatly 2,000 groups

That's not the truth. A default install has about a dozen groups, separated into different categories like "Games" and "KOffice".

Stop trolling.

Re:They'll never get into the schools though, unti

[Anonymous Coward]

[23:37] Graham: :wtf: One of KDE's supported languages is "Low Saxon"
[23:37] Jon: LOL
[23:37] Graham: what next? Klingon?
[23:37] Jon: "today is a good day to compile the kernel"
[23:38] Graham: "oops, I just chopped the keyboard in two with this ceremonial deathblade"
[23:38] Jon: lol
[23:41] Graham: OH SHOOT ME http://www.unixcode.org/kde-i18n-klingon/
[23:41] Jon: HAHAHAHA

Now I'm Pleased =)

[solic]

I thought 3.2 had some rough edges and needed better polish, but with 3.2.1 it is rock solid and quite polished. Funny that they only mention half of the changes in the changelog. I wish they would finish the changelog from the beginning instead of adding 50 more bug fixes 2 days later. Way to go KDE team! BTW: Kdevelop 3.0.2 is now the undisputed king of IDEs on Linux and among the best I've seen for any platform.

Overly Critical Guy is a troll

[Anonymous Coward]

There is simply no good reason to have your web browser be your filesystem browser. One program is designed to retrieve graphical content via an HTTP protocol and display it, while the other is designed to display folders and manipulate files through moving, copying, and so forth.

Please don't talk about something you know nothing about. A web browser isn't designed to retrieve "graphical content". A file manager has many of the same characteristics as a web browser, especially when you consider WebDAV and the like.

try telling an application menu to remain at the top like MacOS--then shoot the cursor up and click--there is a space of a pixel up there that doesn't register as a click, defeating the whole purpose, because Mac users are used to slamming the mouse up and hitting a menu which is faster than pinpointing a menu attached to a floating window

The term you are looking for is Fitt's Law: since the edges of the screen are essentially infinite in depth, items placed on the edges are much larger and therefore easier to click.

I've just switched the feature you are talking about on: the bug you describe does not exist in 3.2. This just lends more credibility to the theory that you haven't used KDE .

Motivate KDE developers!

[Marco Krohn]

Except helping in KDE Quality Team or supporting it in various other ways there is a simple thing you can do within a couple of minuts which really help: write an email!

Start one of the many good KDE applications, go to the "help menu" and click on the "about box"->"authors". Pick one or two of them and write them a short email telling them how much you like their application and that you really appreciate what they are doing for us, the open source community.

It's easy and makes them very happy to hear from satisfied users--normally they just hear about it when something is wrong and sending some nice words really keeps them motivated. Thanks.

Re:No right mouse button!

[Anonymous Coward]

There was evidence to prove that Overly Critical Guy is a lying cocksucker, but he deleted it. Think independently.

Re:there goeas another weekend...

[Anonymous Coward]

What, non-Gentoo compilers are faster now? Your version of GCC is different than others?

And I don't understand peoples' problems with Gentoo. It's not as if you have to sit in front of your computer as things compile...

Countdown

[Anonymous Coward]

KDE 3...2...1... Bug!

uhh

[Anonymous Coward]

the latest generation of the most advanced and powerful free desktop for GNU/Linux and other UNIXes.

So now Slashdot editors are trolling?

Re:uhh

[Anonymous Coward]

Gee, I thought people would be happy that the editors are getting their facts straight for a change.

Re:They'll never get into the schools though, unti

[Anonymous Coward]

the inner city schools would make better use of the KDEbonics version

Re:No right mouse button!

[sneakers563]

Granted, it says great things about Apple that the most anyone can come up with is the lack of a 2nd mouse button. However, given that EVERYONE IN THE FREAKING UNIVERSE thinks that multiple mouse buttons are more usable, and has thought that way for, oh, the last 15 years or so, why doesn't Apple just swallow their pride and provide a mouse with a 2nd (or 3rd, this *is* UNIX after all) button? Why should someone have to spend $7 for a new mouse at Radio Shack when Apple could just include one from the get go? Apple users are like Porsche owners. It's only when the new model comes out that they can admit the glaring flaws in the old. For years Mac users talked about how stable the OS was. Then when OSX came out everyone was saying, "Finally, it doesn't crash anymore. OS9 had real stability problems." Admit it, the day Apple includes a 2 button mouse everyone will be talking about how the old mouse was dated and how Apple's pushed the Mac to new levels of productivity.

Re:They'll never get into the schools though, unti

[taniwha]

I think they were just being culturaly sensitive ... there is of course NO room in the Klingon world for sillyness ....

Re:They'll never get into the schools though, unti

[void warranty()]

They'll probably kill the application's parent and siblings too.

Imagine a Beowulf...

[serutan]

oh never mind.

Re:New languages

[Anonymous Coward]

They speak it around the lowlands of northern Netherlands and northwestern Germany.

Re:They'll never get into the schools though, unti

[kfg]

Ah, yes. Point taken. :)

KFG

And in other news...

[Anonymous Coward]

...Debian announces that KDE 2.0 will be available "when its ready" in the apt-get packages.

Re:They'll never get into the schools though, unti

[AvantLegion]

You have not truly experienced a KDE SIGFAULT until you read it in the original Klingon.

flamewar

[Anonymous Coward]

KDE 3.2.1, a maintenance release for the latest generation of the most advanced and powerful free desktop for GNU/Linux and other UNIXes

Now that is just begging for a flamewar.

crap!

[Anonymous Coward]

I just upgraded to 3.2 last week!

Re:New languages

[aastanna]

No no no, Saxons with deep voices.

XFCE 4.0.4 released

[vzzzbx]

Or grab XFCE 4.0.4 if you can live without the bloat.

Re:XFCE 4.0.4 released

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow, it comes with one whole app. Whoop-dee-shit.

That's strange...

[raindown]

I swear that I just downloaded KDE 3.2.1 packages into Debian Unstable on Sunday. Maybe they were just beta? Either way, KDE 3.2 is pretty awesome. I am growing anxious for Gnome 2.6 as well. The 2.5.5 release wasn't half bad.

Re:That's strange...

[raindown]

I knew as soon as I posted this that I would read the comment where my previous post was mentioned. Oops!

For you Debian users

[LittleLebowskiUrbanA]

This worked for me.

apt-get -t unstable install kdebase

KMAIL Still Lacks Filtering on IMAP Folders

[tyrione]

This one feature needs to be added before the much anticipated HTML Mode.

Re:KMAIL Still Lacks Filtering on IMAP Folders

[Anonymous Coward]

Did you vote for bug:50997 ? Bug:4202 has a higher vote count which is one of the reasons why I decided to work on if before 50997.

Don.

Re:They'll never get into the schools though, unti

[aled]

At least not if you like to keep your head.

Re:Those who have modded me down are censoring

[Anonymous Coward]

No, a web browser and a file manager have nothing to do with each other. Zero, nada. One retrieves visual content via the HTTP protocol, the other scans your filesystem and displays folders and files.

You're repeating yourself without offering a shred of evidence to back your claim. I'll give you a clue: It's called a circular argument.

I am running 3.2 as I type this. Clicking on the top does not register the click.

Again, all we have is your say so. I happen to be using 3.2 as well, and it does register the click.

I don't know why you link to a post describing that the K button is not larger than other buttons--I never said it was larger. I said the button has a giant "K" on it, which makes no sense. Gnome has an Applications and Actions menu, which makes sense.

Yeah, I guess it makes about as much sense as the "Start" button in Windows.

Disagree with me if you want--but don't call me a troll just because you like KDE. Those who are modding me down are censoring me because I go against the KDE groupthink.

I think you need to take that tinfoil hat in for an inspection. You're not being modded as a troll for holding a dissenting view, you're being modded a troll because you only post to provoke a strong reaction without adding anything of value to the conversation in progress. Every time you post something about Linux/GNOME/KDE it's obvious what you're going to say: It sucks, you're all outdated, MS does it better, etc. In other words, you were modded as a troll because you are a troll.

I believe the Linux desktop is in horrible shambles, and only Linux geeks really use it and think it's powerful.

According to you (of course) and who else? Which Linux desktop are you talking about? The major ones (GNOME and KDE) both seem to be doing quite all right, regardless of the evil wishes that you send their way. Would you care to back that belief up with hard facts? What's that? You can't? Thought so.

Few newbies can use it unless a geek sets it up perfectly for them in a precarious balance, but once those newbies actually keep using it and break the system, all hell breaks loose.

This is where you give yourself away. Again, do you have even the tiniest fragment of evidence to support this specious claim? Oh, it certainly has the fashionable marks of classic Linux bashing, but is there any truth to it at all? The last time I set up KDE I had no problems whatsoever. No "precarious balancing", no "hell breaking loose", nothing. Again, anecdotal, but I'm sure that I'm not alone.

That's enough feeding the troll for now. Bye bye, and have a nice life. Seriously. You need to get one.

3.2.1..

[Anonymous Coward]

Kontact

Re:Those who have modded me down are censoring

[Urine1diot]

No, a web browser and a file manager have nothing to do with each other. Zero, nada. One retrieves visual content via the HTTP protocol, the other scans your filesystem and displays folders and files.

So let's see, according you a browser's only function is to retrieve visual content via the HTTP protocol. So if I go to my address bar and type, oh, I don't know, say, ftp://ftp.corel.com/ what is this visual content in my browser? Oh, it looks like a file listing, complete with cute little icons. Hmm.

Yeah, so I guess you're right--file managers and web browsers have nothing in common.

Low Saxon?

[MILLIBIT.com]

What, are there like two Linux users that only speak Low Saxon?

kde3.2

[Anonymous Coward]

Pez warrior sez-
I for one welcome our beowulf overlords, flamewars are not always bad, even a old hack like myself thinks that the fires always need to be stoked a bit approves/ mod me up you troll hungry bofh!!

sponsored by bioflex monkeys training systems (md4)

can i have my 3d pron now?

Re:Those who have modded me down are censoring

[kragaroth]

And you call that browsing the web? I think web browsing and filemanaging is very different and tend to agree with the critic.

Re:No right mouse button!

[10Ghz]

OMFG!! No right mouse button! Holy shit! OMG! You were unable to PLUG IN A GENERIC STANDARD TWO-BUTTON MOUSE AVAILABLE FOR, AT MOST, $7 AT THE LOCAL RADIO SHACK.

I used KDE3.2 on my old Compaq Laptop on my way to work (I commute by train). All I had to do was to turn it on and start using it. Had I had a Mac, I would have had to plug in the external mouse (since the built-in mouse is no good) and then try to find a suitable place to use it on my lap (have you tried using an extrenal mouse on your lap in a croweded train/bus?). In short: It's a inconvenience and a hassle. But it doesn't have to be that way!

Of course I could havew used the keyboard-keys to emulate the second mouse-button, but that's inconvenient as well.

What Apple should do is to equip their system with two-button mouse (three-buttons are preferrable, but I think that's pushing it), but make both buttons do the same thing. That way the default behavior of the system does not change. Of course user could then map the second button to do something else (Expose for example) and users of other OS'es could finally use Apple-hardware with zero extra hassle! That might actually increase the sales of Apple-hardware a bit. I would LOVE to get a Powerbook or iBook and run Linux on it. But the one-button mouse is a big no-go for me!

Window Manager? Pah!

[hauntedunix]

Window Managers are for n00bs, we should all abandon them, and use the default linux shell!

Re:Window Manager? Pah!

[Anonymous Coward]

bash is too bloated. Use COMMAND.COM instead!

Now all they need is a CPU upgrade.

[Anonymous Coward]

And no matter who wins, there will be no difference.

Anonymous Coward is a troll

[Anonymous Coward]

ummm "most advanced"?

[Anonymous Coward]

"the most advanced and powerful free desktop" is really a bit strong, and while i have always made strong anti-kde statements here, i have givent 3.2 a test run the past few days. Its come aways since i used it before, but its still got a ways to go before ANYONE can say its the most advanced.
why isnt my system bar keeping things only on it per what desktop i am on? it keeps EVERYTHING on the damn thing, part of keeping desktops seperate is also keeping the damn clutter off my task bar!!!

Re:ummm "most advanced"?

[Tukla]

why isnt my system bar keeping things only on it per what desktop i am on?

Because you didn't tell it to? That's configurable. In fact, the way you want it to behave is the default.

Re:Those who have modded me down are censoring

[Anonymous Coward]

He was talking about a web browser. Go ahead and try putting an FTP address into one sometime - most will act as he describes.

The fact that you confused the file management and the web browsing is proof enough that they aren't "very different".

Re:They'll never get into the schools though, unti

[Moraelin]

Probably "This application has no HONOUR! It shall taste my bat'leth!" ;)

srbski?

[Cally]

Sta pricec?

Those who mod you down improve signal:noise

[Anonymous Coward]

a web browser and a file manager have nothing to do with each other. Zero, nada. One retrieves visual content via the HTTP protocol, the other scans your filesystem and displays folders and files.

Repeating your argument doesn't make it any more convincing. Once more, a web browser doesn't retrieve visual content. The web is media-independent. Furthermore, you describe a file manager as something that "displays folders and files". That sounds pretty much like what a web browser does.

The only distinction to be drawn is the method of accessing the files - file://, http://, ftp://, webdav://, etc. Care to tell me which should be present in a web browser and which should be present in a file manager? You see, most browsers, including Internet Explorer, Mozilla, Opera, Konqueror and Safari implement at least three of those access methods.

In short, a) give some reason why a web browser should be considered to be fundamentally different to a file manager instead of simply saying it over and over again, and b) explain how it's a crime when Konqueror does it but not when all the other browsers do it.

I am running 3.2 as I type this. Clicking on the top does not register the click.

Both another poster and I are running 3.2 and do not experience this. I haven't even heard about this. Care to link to the bug report you made?

I don't know why you link to a post describing that the K button is not larger than other buttons--I never said it was larger.

Your exact words were "a big giant "K" button". There are half a dozen other buttons alongside it, which are the exact same size, and the button is not substantially bigger than GNOME's counterpart (and can be configured to be smaller if you so choose).

Given that you are claiming things that don't ring true to anybody who has used KDE, I can only conclude that you haven't used KDE 3.2.

Disagree with me if you want--but don't call me a troll just because you like KDE.

I call you a troll because you say things that aren't true that will evoke a strong reaction. I do like KDE, but I also criticise it a lot and listen to criticism when it's truthful and not a blatant attempt at trolling.

Those who are modding me down are censoring me because I go against the KDE groupthink.

You claim this in half the posts you make. As I explained elsewhere, you take an unpopular viewpoint and litter your post with misinformation, and when you get called on the misinformation, you point to the unpopular viewpoint and whine about "groupthink". You are nothing but a blatant troll.

I believe the Linux desktop is in horrible shambles, and only Linux geeks really use it and think it's powerful.

Once more, there are plenty of organisations using KDE and they aren't all made up of "Linux geeks". So, when you get modded down for this blatant lie, you'll complain about censorship and "groupthink".

once those newbies actually keep using it and break the system, all hell breaks loose.

Do you use Linux at all? Users can't break the system in properly constructed operating systems. Perhaps you have spent too long on Windows.

kwallet

[szo]

Is it usable? How can I get kmail to use it?

thx

Szo

Re:No right mouse button!

[sad_]

For years Mac users talked about how stable the OS was. Then when OSX came out everyone was saying, "Finally, it doesn't crash anymore. OS9 had real stability problems."

and how is this any different from windows users?

Re:there goeas another weekend...

[Anonymous Coward]

At least some of us don't have to compile all our software.

I used to be a compile-everything kinda guy, then I started using Debian. Nice stuff. It's a shame that certain software packages I like much better than Linux (e.g. BSD) require me to recompile the entire OS whenever I upgrade.

Immediately Available is Double-plus good!

[FreeUser]

What is the difference between the "availablility" and the "immediate availability" of a product?

Other than your unwarrented use of the unword "difference" (c.f. Newspeak dictionary Edition 10, that should read "commonality"), nothing. Immediately available is doubleplus good, while available is double-plus good.

Remember, you are required to think in Newspeak. Failure to do so constitutes a thought-crime, and could be treasonously detrimental to the economic prosperity in your area.

To The Person That Modded Me Down

[Anonymous Coward]

I hope you die.

More like third...

[Doches]

...You forgot to list Emacs as an advanced and powerful...nevermind.