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

[Billly Gates]

YOu mean they run emacs?

another link

[Anonymous Coward]

another lews link with coverage here

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

[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

[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

[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

[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

[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

[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.

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?

[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?

[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

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

[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.

Woohoo a maintainance release!!!

[stratjakt]

Hail from every rooftop!

Some bugs are fixed!

Hmmmm

[Anonymous Coward]

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

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?

[RoLi]

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

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

[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.

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]

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

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!?!?!

[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?!

[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? :)

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:But wait!

[Anonymous Coward]

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

Re:Speaking of which

[chowells]

i18n.kde.org

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.

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: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?

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

Isthay issespay emay offay

[ColonelPanic]

Erewhay isay Igpay Atinlay?

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.

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: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!"?

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: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.

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:Most advanced and powerful? -1, Biased.

[Enahs]

GNOME is for furries.

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

[void warranty()]

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