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Preview of KDE 3.4
comforteagle writes "In this month's KDE: From the Source George Staikos details what is to be expected from the upcoming 3.4 version of KDE. An Alpha release is due any minute so you might as well know what you're in for if you're a loyal K head. Some changes include major rework within KHTML & Konqueror, Subversion support, and Apple's Rendezvous."
Incase of slashdotting:
KDE 3.3.2 was tagged today, so we should see a new bug fix release of KDE in the first or second week of December. Earlier this past week, the plans for a KDE 3.4 release were also finalized. This will be the last major KDE 3 release before KDE 4. KDE 4 will make use of the Qt 4 library which promises to be quite a revolution for KDE and all Qt applications, but will break binary compatibility with previous releases.
The release schedule for KDE 3.4 plans for an alpha release December 3, a beta release January 7, and a final release March 16 2005. The 3.4 release will bring a large number of features and functionality enhancements over previous KDE 3 releases. Here are some of the features already implemented:
Hardware Support
- Support for special keyboard keys on Dell Inspiron and ASUS laptops.
- A new battery monitor (under development).
- media:/ addition to the KDE I/O subsystem to list devices on the system.
KHTML and Konqueror
Konqueror
- KHTML has undergone major work lately, though much of it will appear in KDE 3.3.2. Merging with Safari fixes continues, alone with new work and fixes by KDE developers. Site compatibility continues to improve, stability is very much improved, and KWallet no longer blocks Konqueror while waiting for a password.
- Support for multiple site logins with KWallet (for all protocols, but not HTML form completions yet) added.
- A notifier was added to visually indicate when user-agent spoofing is active.
- KHTML plug-ins are now configurable, so the user can selectively disable ones that are not used. This does not include Netscape-style plug-ins.
- Netscape plug-in in CPU usage can be manually lowered, and plug-ins are more stable.
- Over the past couple of months, confirmed KHTML and Konqueror bug reports have been on a significant decline as bugs are fixed more rapidly and fewer are reported.
E-Mail and Personal Information Management
- Major improvements in synchronization, including support for synchronizing between two PCs.
- Enhanced support for groupware servers, including Exchange 2000, OpenGroupware, Kolab 1 and 2, SLOX, Groupwise, and eGroupware.
SLOX
- XFace support for associating faces with mail and news articles.
- Blogging and journal support.
- KMail supports KWallet.
- Client-side IMAP search support.
- Improved drag and drop in KMail.
- Improved anti-spam support in KMail.
- Uncountable other e-mail, organizer and address-book enhancements.
Kopete
- Novell Groupwise and Lotus Sametime protocol support added.
- Support for adding URLs to bookmarks.
- Drag and drop of files and contacts.
- The NetMeeting plug-in now allows the use of arbitrary applications to start a chat.
- Support for incoming MSN messages that are handwritten.
- An adium look-alike chat window style.
KPDF
- KPDF includes new numerous new features including:
- New rendering engine.
- Optimizations and enhancements for zoom, search, and thumbnails.
- Better printing (using Postscript directly).
- Support for password protected PDFs.
- Image extraction support.
- Nicer user interface in general.
Libraries
- QCA - A complete cryptography architecture.
- Usage of GCC 3.4 symbol visibility functionality for much improved application startup time.
- Optimizations of various styles and other components.
- Cleanup and reworking of KJSEmbed to make it much more functional.
- Password dialog gives feedback on the relative strength of new passwords.
Desktop / General
- KDM theme support.
- Numerous window manager enhancements, including indicators for remote applications.
- Major Kicker panel reworking, with support for hiding tray icons.
- Empty password support (password-less wallets) in KWallet.
KWallett
- Support for setting the clock with NTP.
- Completely redesigned, more flexible trash system.
Other Cool Things We Might See
All of these feature
"The price good men pay for indifference to public affairs is to be ruled by evil men." ~Plato (427-347 BC)
A more complete feature plan can be found here
Though it's not always up-to-date (some devs prefer pushing their code first, and *then* update the page).
HTH,
Kig.
-- don't discount flying pigs until you have good air defense
Rendezvous is apple's version of ZeroConf.
More info on ZeroConf
More inof on Rendezvous
Free Mac Mini
Put identity in the browser.
Bleh.
1) KDE != WM. Repeat after me: "KDE IS NOT A WINDOW MANAGER." It's a desktop environment and it does way, WAY more than a simple WM. God it's 2004 people, HAVE YOU NOT LEARNED THIS YET?
2) The IMMENSE proliferation of small, lightweight WMs has ALWAYS been active in the Linux community. EvilWM, IceWM, TWM, BlackBox, FluxBox, Waimea, Kahaki, etc. etc. etc. There is really NO NEED for any more WMs to "get back to basics" THEY'RE ALREADY OUT THERE. Most of them are damned good as they are. Real users want MORE features at this point, these kind of posts are just counter productive. It's 2004. People want to USE the 2.4Ghz 64 bit Athlon they just bought (for cheap). Mom doesn't want fluxbox, she wants her computer to put up a little CDROM icon when she inserts one into her computer. Congrats KDE team on making an efficient, fun, functional DE.
I'd much rather see a truly modular system, so the the user is free to pick and choose a window manager, a file manager, a browser, a messenger etc. and have them all play nice together, regardless of whether they are part of KDE or GNOME or standalone projects.
You can use a different window manager in KDE than kwin, as long as it's standards compliant.
You don't HAVE to use Konqueror in KDE.
You don't HAVE to use Kopete. You don't even have to install it.
MS bundles tend to be UNREMOVABLE from the system. That's the difference. KDE is just a collection of libraries. Some applications don't work all that well without certain other applications, but you're not FORCED to use/install most of them. And there must be SOME interoperability between the applications to get a smooth, polished DE. But really it's not as bad as you make out.
Put identity in the browser.
Zack's blog doesn't say anything about KDE 3.4, but QT Mozilla is available now for testing. Yay! http://www.kdedevelopers.org/blog/14?PHPSESSID=e5d d84569f3907829c4a09159b7901f4/
Just to clarify the preceding correction:
Rendezvous and Zeroconf are the same thing, the latter being the Open Source release of the Rendezvous technology.
The ZeroConf page is maintained by Stuart Cheshire, who is the engineer at Apple responsible for Rendezvous.
Using kdebindings you can easily tell konqueror to use gecko instead of khtml
Put identity in the browser.
If it makes you feel any better, I see it too :-)
The flickering is due to the fact that QT is not double-buffered. There are, AFAIK, tricks to make applications/widgets double-buffered, but it's not toolkit-wide. Gtk is, however.
There is a speed vs. eyecandy/usability tradeoff involved.
Hello, my name is Robert Lerner, and I pronounce Lernux as "99% cpu"
KDE and GNOME are ugly, hard to use, and don't come close to the user-friendliness of windows or mac os x.
You obviously never had to reconfigure your Windows in any way. I have been power-using Windows since 3.11 and after switching to Linux about one year ago I was immediately surprised at how intuitive everything configuration-related was compared to Windows.
Properly configuring your system is pretty hard with Windows - most of the interesting settings are hidden in obscure places where no one in their right mind would ever look for them; some settings even require you to fiddle with undocumented hex strings somewhere in the registry or use third-party software to do the dirty work for you.
With KDE you can access pretty much everything you should ever want to configure using a very clean and intuitive control panel (compared to Windows'). The Gnome panel seems to be rather usable too, although I haven't seen it too often.
Sure, the UI needs improvement, especially in comparison to OS X. But I think that in terms of usability, KDE and Gnome have both already surpassed Windows.
It's big things like the more intuitive design and small things like X's select-and-middle-click-paste or KDEs multiple kicker bars that - in my personal opinion, of course - make Linux/KDE a lot more usable than Windows.
USE HOT GRITS WITH STATUE OF NATALIE PORTMAN (NAKED AND PETRIFIED)