KDE 3.4 goes Beta

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Posted by CowboyNeal on Thursday January 13, 2005 @12:17PM from the new-and-improved dept.

wikinerd writes "KDE 3.4 has reached its beta testing phase. The KDE 3.4beta1 is codenamed 'Krokodile' and pre-compiled packages are already available for Slackware, but if you need to compile it by yourself first check its compilation requirements."

21 of 242 comments (clear)

Anti-aliased fonts by Lindsay+Lohan · 2005-01-13 12:18 · Score: 5, Insightful

Re: the KDE 3.4 Compilation Requirements...

I would categorize the X Render Extension as recommended as opposed to optional. Aren't anti-aliased fonts a basic feature of any modern desktop environment?
1. Re:Anti-aliased fonts by green+pizza · 2005-01-13 12:21 · Score: 4, Insightful
  
  Aren't anti-aliased fonts a basic feature of any modern desktop environment?
  If you have the CPU power, sure. But there are those of us that want to run the latest software on older existing hardware. I generally forgo AA on everything except for my semi-modern main PC at home. The machines at work, at the church, and my older PCs suffer too much of a hit when I use AA.
2. Re:Anti-aliased fonts by MrHanky · 2005-01-13 12:57 · Score: 3, Interesting
  
  Are you sure this has much to do with CPU power? I use xrender AA on my Powerbook G3 266 MHz (running Debian Sid), and it's far from shockingly slow. If I have to guess, I'd say it's because the ATI graphics chipset (Mach64, i think) is moderately well supported.
  
  And of course, if you haven't tried xrender on the machines lately, you could test it again. Xrender has improved a bit since it was introdused some years ago.
Meh by Anonymous Coward · 2005-01-13 12:18 · Score: 4, Funny

Kall me when there's a release kandidate.
1. Re:Meh by Photon+Ghoul · 2005-01-13 13:31 · Score: 3, Funny
  
  You forgot to leave your gnumber!
Excited about KDE 3.4 by green+pizza · 2005-01-13 12:19 · Score: 5, Interesting

I'm looking forward to giving 3.4 a try. Why? Because on my modest hardware it seems like Qt has gotten faster over the past 2 years while GTK2 has gotten slower.
1. Re:Excited about KDE 3.4 by Anonymous Coward · 2005-01-13 13:26 · Score: 3, Insightful
  
  Sorry, no. If every GTK+ application on my system has a noticable delay even opening a menu, yet all the Qt applications are fine, that's a problem with the toolkit.
  
  I think it's pretty arrogant for you to call somebody "confused" for observing that GTK+ 2.0 is quite slow. Even fans of that toolkit admit that 2.0 is quite a bit slower than 1.x.
2. Re:Excited about KDE 3.4 by tpgp · 2005-01-13 14:10 · Score: 4, Insightful
  
  I'm looking forward to giving 3.4 a try. Why? Because on my modest hardware it seems like Qt has gotten faster over the past 2 years while GTK2 has gotten slower.
  
  Why has this piece of flamebait been modded informative?
  
  Try and say something about KDE 3.4, the story, or KDE's speed in general.
  
  A post comparing old versions of KDE to old versions of GTK is a troll. A pathetic one at that.
  
  --
  My pics.
oh crap... by myowntrueself · 2005-01-13 12:26 · Score: 4, Funny

just when you thought debian sarge was going to go stable some time this year...

--
In the free world the media isn't government run; the government is media run.
KDE 4.0... by Jameth · 2005-01-13 12:29 · Score: 4, Interesting

I'm actually most excited because this means that, in not too long, people will start really working on KDE 4.0. That's the release I want. 3.4 is a finalization of the 3's, really. It's got some nice cleanup of what's there and will run a little better, but almost all the features that were ever going into the 3's are already there.

But 4.0...oh, I can hardly wait...
1. Re:KDE 4.0... by Galahad2 · 2005-01-13 13:19 · Score: 5, Informative
  
  If you're wondering, here is a feature plan for 4.0.
2. Re:KDE 4.0... by chill · 2005-01-13 13:38 · Score: 4, Informative
  
  KDE changes major number when they break binary backwards compatibility.
  
  The major change will be the move to QT4. KDE major release numbers match QT major release numbers.
  
  --
  Learning HOW to think is more important than learning WHAT to think.
Masive i18n by Forge · 2005-01-13 12:36 · Score: 4, Interesting

Notice how the translations are larger than everything else combined ?

That I partially reflects the share number of languages available. It also shows how modular KDE's design is. I.e. You can strip out everything language dependent into a separate package without breaking the rest. (Yes, it compiles in English without the i18n package).

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--= Isn't it surprising how badly I spell ?
Re:Screenshots? by Anonymous Coward · 2005-01-13 12:39 · Score: 5, Informative

plastik as the default style
SVG wallpapers now possible
kicker refactored and with a new cool animation
kdm now themeable
experimental traslucency windows
HAL support
little polishing on the menus
ability to download and install new themes directly from the desktop
trash applet in kicker and trash, media, settings kioslaves
kpdf almost completely rewritten
emoticons in kmail
systemtray icon hiding in kicker

still, too many icons on the konqueror toolbar. luckily it doesn't take too much time to remove them. but it should be the default..
anyway, 3.4 is gonna be one of the best kde releases ever.
KDE by TechnologyX · 2005-01-13 12:42 · Score: 4, Insightful

Say what you want about KDE, but after playing with 3.3, I finally made the switch from GNOME to KDE. I especially like the level of integration in between apps, the transparency settings for menus and applications, and KDevelop. Gnome is awesome too, especially 2.8, but KDE just seems to have more polish to it.

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Slashdot sucks
You hadn't heard? by jd · 2005-01-13 12:44 · Score: 4, Funny

Debian's auto-release script is hard-wired to a Brownian Motion Vector Plotter and a realy hot cup of tea. The release after next will be out sometime last year.

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It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
Re:Obligatory "K" thread. by Bingo+Foo · 2005-01-13 12:50 · Score: 4, Funny

The next 17000 versions will be named:

perl -ne "print if s/^c(.*)/k\1/;" < /usr/share/dict/words

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taken! (by Davidleeroth) Thanks Bingo Foo!
Just remember... by jd · 2005-01-13 12:52 · Score: 3, Funny

Don't download the pre-release marked "krakatoa"

--
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
Ich bin Schnappi das kleine Krokodil by Brandybuck · 2005-01-13 13:41 · Score: 3, Funny

If this release is named "Krokodile", I think the default startup music should be "Schnappi!"

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Don't blame me, I didn't vote for either of them!
Re:DBUS ? by Brandybuck · 2005-01-13 15:45 · Score: 3, Informative

Huh? I use KDE on FreeBSD, and I can unmount a USB drive in about a tenth of a second with one mouse click. Under Windows (XP) it usually takes me ten or more seconds and four mouse clicks. Sometimes, maybe one in twenty, it takes up to a couple of minutes to unmount with the entire system frozen in the meantime. And this is the system everyone says Unix should emulate? No fscking way!

p.s. DBUS may or may not be a good idea, I haven't looked into it closely. But I'm not expecting any performance increases from it, because that's not what it is. If you have problem with DCOP, then blame your distro for shoddy integration.

--
Don't blame me, I didn't vote for either of them!
Qt4 by Craig+Ringer · 2005-01-13 17:00 · Score: 3, Interesting

Qt4 is a really major change. It is most definitely non-trivial to port code to Qt4, even with the Qt3 compatiblity libraries.

As someone facing the need to port their code to Qt4 sometime in the coming year, I'm all too aware of this.

I wouldn't expect a Qt4 based KDE in any hurry. Even if they're already porting to the Qt4 beta, I expect it'll take them a fair darn while even after Qt4 stable comes out before they can put together a Qt4 desktop. Even then, I'll be surprised if some apps don't continue to use Qt3 for a while after that.