KDE 3.3 Beta "Klassroom" Released

twener writes "The KDE team has announced the Beta 1 development version of the upcoming KDE 3.3 release. This release is named 'Klassroom' following the 'Kindergarten' Alpha; the goal is to make this child visit the "aKademy" KDE World Summit in August. Most planned features are there, next week starts the feature freeze. Source and provided binary packages are listed on the KDE 3.3 Beta 1 Info Page next to the KDE 3.3 Requirements List."

Comments

Re:Ha

[jomegat]

Seriously though, Linux used to be known to run on anything, and now i dont think it will run on these old Dell 266's we got at school. We have about 20 of them and they were donated. I want to shoot the idiot who accepted them.

They'd be perfect as thin clients for a K12LTSP server. For that you need one decent machine to use as a server. It's a LOT easier than administering 20 stand-alone boxes.

New features

[NamShubCMX]

Kopete is now usable

Major Kontact improvements all-around

Amarok, a new audio player that will hopefulyl replace the awful Noatun/Kaboodle

KolourPaint - which was needed

My wish: integrate Konversation, and get rid of Keramik :)

Re:K ad nauseum

[gl4ss]

it just depends where you live.. in many languages things like ceramics, class, academy and other words are written with a 'k'.

besides, it's a handy way to differentiate..

Re:Composing html mail is a good thing?

[NamShubCMX]

From what I could gather, the developers were very reticent about implementing this feature. Many dev were actually *against* the idea of HTML email.

It was, however, the wish with most votes on bugs.kde.org. So I guess implementing this wish was a case of dev listening to users.

I believe it finally got implemented because of the work on Kafka (Quanta WYSIWYG component) made it not-so-hard.
In any case, it will be OFF by default, obviously.

Re:KDE Methods

[mini me]

Konqueror is not a web browser and file viewer. It's a framework for applications to embed themselves into. It just so happens the file viewer and KHTML are the most commonly used applications in it, but it doesn't have to stop there.

KDE is really the only GUI system I'm familiar with that does try to follow the UNIX philosophy. It's a shame that the underlying system of KDE isn't better understood because the misinformation about it gives KDE a bad name.

Re:This K stuff has gotta stop

[aonifer]

The default system menu that ships with Fedora Core 2 is a more ideal way to set up a menu, where the name of each program explains WHAT IT DOES, rather than trying to shoehorn some cute name into something that starts with K (or G for you Gnome fans). For example:

Instead of saying GAIM it says "Internet Messenger"

That's exactly what KDE's menu does. My multimedia menu is:
CD & DVD Burning (K3b)
Media Player (Kaboodle)
Music Player (JuK)
Sound Mixer (KMix)

Re:This K stuff has gotta stop

[int2str]

I dont know why this rant still gets modded insightful...

First off, have you checked the KDE menu recently? Applications are groupped ("Editors", "Internet" etc) and then also have verbose names ("Web-Browser (Konqueror)", "Mail-Program (KMaiL)" etc...). So that issue is totally moot.

Otherwise, to me the "k" indicates it's a program written for KDE using KDE API's. As such, it wont use GTK, Gnome etc. and will integrate well into my desktop. As opposite to "gaim" or "gdesklets" etc. which are written for Gnome.

So to me the k/g/x/other naming conventions are very helpful in determening whether I want the program or not. And for less experienced users, they got the verbose names to go by and dont have to worry about it.

Cheers,
André

Re:Popularity and Entanglement

[JabberWokky]

I like my file manager as a file manger, my browser as a browser.

Then use Konqueror. That's what it is.

If you do a 'ps |grep konq', you can see that it is actually totally different processes and programs running when you're using it as a file manager and as a browser. KDE uses the Unix philosophy of "small applications that can be chained". Konqueror is like the tty - it provides a framework for output. That's why you can run KOffice apps directly inside Konqueror or view images, or edit using kvim, etc.

FTP support ina file manager isn't a bad idea though, as long as you use your file manager for managing files

Konqueror doesn't have FTP support - KDE does. Again, "small applications that are chained". kio slaves such as kio_file, kio_ftp, and others that access digital cameras, printers, audio cds (presenting virtual wav, ogg and mp3 directories named from freedb), and many others allow every application to treat any protocol as a local disk. You can fire up ANY app and open a file on a remote system, hit save and it saves out to that system. There is no need for an 'ftp' program, because every KDE app supports ftp (and sftp and digital cameras and...) natively.

Small applications, easy chaining.

Run KDE, and then, from the commandline, run 'dcop'. You can even bash script KDE apps. Or use perl... or python... or anything else you want.

--
Evan

Re:Well I'll start an actual discussion...

[chill]

Where to begin...

Unlike Microsoft, you have the option of which parts to install. You also have the option to compile each component for yourself, using optimizations and "--disable-feature" as you see fit.

KDE's patch releases (i.e., 3.2.1, 3.2.2, 3.2.3) are almost exclusively focused on increasing stability and swatting bugs. There has been major efforts by the KDE team towards speed and stability with every release.

Check out http://valgrind.kde.org/ for a good GPLed debugger & profiler. Also look at KCachegrind while you're at it.

If the bloat of binary packages bothers you, then either Konstruct it yourself or buy a faster machine. Don't blame KDE, blame the distro you're using for choosing everything-but-the-kitchen-sink , compiled for the lowest common denominator, in their packages.

-chill