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KDE 3.3: A Milestone For Linux On The Desktop
comforteagle writes "O'Reilly's OSDir has published the first of a new bi-weekly column called "KDE: From the Source" from which KDE developer and unofficial North American spokesperson George Staikos will be regularly writing on issues and happenings from the KDE camp. Naturally, his first piece focuses on KDE 3.3 and its implications for Linux on the desktop."
Don't get me wrong, I love KDE. But 3.3 has been pretty much a buggy experience for me. I realize it's bound to be unstable, but as far as I can see KDE is focusing more on releasing new releases, rather than fixing boring old bugs!
Have a look at ftp://apt.kde-redhat.org
It works with yum and also covers a range of redhat/fedora versions. You'll find KDE 3.3 in testing. You will also likely have to remove a number of packages to get it all working though.
"I have the attention span of a strobe lit goldfish, please get to the point quickly!"
I must admit, I'm pretty excited about KDE at this point. I've been a longtime Gnome user, and, after trying out Qingy (a GUI replacement for getty that let's you run different sessions on different virtual teminals, like Gnome on VT1, KDE on VT2, text console on VT3, all chosen at login time.), I decided to give some of the other desktop environments a shot, since it was so easy. I've always had KDE installed, just because I wanted the flexibility (slightly longer compile times, but I just left it running overnight on my Gentoo system.), so it made it simple to try.
I must say, I'm pretty impressed. The straight out of the box configuration sucks balls. (I had to add a bunch of keyboard shortcuts to Konsole before it was usable, but it was all centrally located and easy to do. In addition, I can't stand the default menu configuration.) The only thing I'm missing at this point is the lovely font unification that Gnome has. (At least under 2.6.0-2 and XOrg, I didn't have to do any configuration to get pretty, aliased, unified fonts.) At this point, I'm not sure if that's a deal breaker, so I'm giving it a shot.
The real test will be when I want to make sure that Firefox is the default URL handler so I don't have to deal with that damn Konqueror opening if I don't want to (Because doing the same in Gnome was a bitch.)
Anyway, sorry to rant, but I guess I just wanted to let all you Gnome diehards know that KDE can work. And it can be snappy, too... (Though I just started using it with 2.4.26 and low-latency scheduling, so Gnome might be snappier on this machine as well, a PIII 500 with 384MB RAM.)
It does the same thing.
.desktop file to indiciate that the program implements this interface, (called kimiface - kde IM interface).
:)
It works by IM programs (like kopete) implement a dcop interface (sorta like how you implement java interfaces).
This interface does stuff like emit a signal when presence status changes, lets you send a message or file to the contact, get an icon for the contact, and so on.
Then you modify the IM's
Then kaddressbook and kmail etc just look for processes that have done this, query them for details, and hook into the changedPresence signal.
At the last moment of the kde3.3 release, supported was for applications that aren't unique-instances. Like kopete can only run once per user, but now other applications, like konversation, will be able to show presence.
Konversation support should be there in the next release, whenever that is. (it doesn't follow the kde release schedule.) It's mostly there in cvs, but I keep running into delays
OK, that's all fine. But what I want to know is:
.bashrc, if I open a terminal (or even a non-KDE editor!) I have 10.9 cps. again.
Will KDE still clobber any keyboard repeat rate higher than 10.9 per second, like other KDEs I have used (1.x, 2.x, 3.1 on Caldera, TurboLinux, RedHat and Knoppix) do?
Even if I put a faster rate in
It makes the whole OS seem slow.
It p*sses me off so much I have de-installed KDE on all but Knoppix (!) to get my fast keyboard response back -- and Knoppix' KDE survives only because one cannot uninstall KDE in Knoppix.