KDE 3.4 Beta 2 ('Keinstein') Released

Carewolf writes "Finally the KDE 3.4 beta 2 has been released (codename "Keinstein"). Besides being the latest and greatest, it also marks the KDE 3.4 feature freeze and will provide a good demonstration of the splendors that will be KDE 3.4. Feature and release plans can be found here, and the news is also covered on the dot. Download now and help hunt the last bugs for the next major release of KDE."

Comments

What on earth does this have to do with BSD?

[IBeatUpNerds]

Doesn't this belong under Linux, or a new section called Apps or something... I remember this happening a few months ago with a GNOME release. I subscribe to the BSD stuff because I care about BSD.

Re:What on earth does this have to do with BSD?

[molnarcs]

And it isn't even on fruitsalad, though it doesn't belong to linux either.

Re:What on earth does this have to do with BSD?

[mobby_6kl]

I guess that's because KDE is closer related to BSD than to Linux which, after all, is only a kernel.

Re:What on earth does this have to do with BSD?

[Brandybuck]

It IS unser Linux. It's also under BSD (Free, Open, Net, et al). Why? Because KDE is a OS neutral desktop. Which means it runs just fine under BSD. Ditto for GNOME. Ditto for XFCE. Ditto for every other desktop and window manager.

Nothing is forcing you to click on the story if you're not interested in it, even it if happens to be incuded in the BSD section.

Re:What on earth does this have to do with BSD?

[IBeatUpNerds]

Hey, look at that, you're right. But, did you notice how, under the _Linux_ page, the title of the article is prefixed with "BSD:"? My point grows stronger. Thanks for giving me something with which to fire back.

Re:What on earth does this have to do with BSD?

[Brandybuck]

Hee hee. You'll never catch me proclaiming the infallibility of Slashdot posters or editors! But despite the title, where else would you put this story than under BSD and Linux? KDE is *not* a Linux-only desktop, so to consign it there is not correct.

Thanks for giving me something with which to fire back.

Glad to be of service!

Re:What on earth does this have to do with BSD?

[Homology]

Doesn't this belong under Linux, or a new section called Apps or something... I remember this happening a few months ago with a GNOME release. I subscribe to the BSD stuff because I care about BSD.

Now you can go to bitch in the Linux section that X.org 6.8.2 runs very fine on *BSD, and thus should be included in the BSD section. And while you are there, add some comments that X.org license is much more BSD than GPL, so putting the X.org in the Linux section is plainly wrong.

While you read the comments to your post, you may wonder about Slashdotters that extolls the virtues of GPL versus the BSD license, while at the same time demanding more updated binary drivers from NVidia.

Re:What on earth does this have to do with BSD?

[WindBourne]

KDE does run on MacOS via X11.

Keinstein?

[kentyman]

Do they know that translates to "No Stone" in German?

Re:Keinstein?

[Murphy Murph]

Keinstein?
Do they know that translates to "No Stone" in German?

As in "No Stone Left Unturned" I assume.

Re:Keinstein?

[polyp2000]

"No Stone Left Unturned"

I prefer the term no turn left unstoned

Re:Keinstein?

[Nasarius]

Do they know that translates to "No Stone" in German?

Given that many of the developers are German, I think that's a safe bet.

change log...

[jungd]

anyone?
(I wasted enough time trying to find what was different already)

Re:change log...

[spencerogden]

Release Schedule in the KDE Developer's corner link to the Feature Plan, which give you a good idea at what is a planned feature, and what's alreay working. Its a long list, but worth a skim.

http://developer.kde.org/development-versions/kde- 3.4-features.html

Re:change log...

[TuringTest]

It's nice to have an exhaustive list of changes, but i'd prefer having one list reporting the usability improvements, as those provided with GNOME new releases.

A simple list of new features doesn't give as much information as a report of the key changes that will affect the whole desktop "experience".

Re:Why KDE?

[Anonymous Coward]

I developer cross platform *GPL* applications with QT. How exactly does QT prevent me from doing anything I want to do?

IT IS UNDER THE GPL!

Make KDE faster?

[WMD_88]

Perhaps 4.0 is a better target for this...but how about making the thing faster and/or less of a memory hog? Starting with the 3 series (especially 3.1), KDE is even slower than Windows XP!

I miss the old days, where KDE 1.1 ran fast on a P133. :(

There's still a chance for 3.4...no new features. I'm sure they could crunch the code at least a little bit!

Re:Make KDE faster?

[agent dero]

1) Turn off eye-candy
2) Profit?

Seriously, it's not that shabby once you turn off the eye-candy; it's not like OS X with Quartz (as in, does a lot of GPU offloading)

KDE can really be as fast or as slow as you want it to be....

Re:Make KDE faster?

[WMD_88]

I know KDE *can* be fast - it's not like OS X 10.0, which was slow on everything. BUT...the specs necessary to make KDE run well are far too high. Try running it on 128MB RAM? Ha, it'll fill that up and then some. 256MB is enough to run KDE and maybe two other programs. It launches a dozen/more processes by itself! :O

Considering Linux is supposed to run well on older machines, I figure KDE could be slightly more than a dog on 128MB. (Yes, I know...run XFce/Fluxbox/etc. I run XFce even on 512MB, so rest assured, I know.)

Re:Make KDE faster?

[Anonymous Coward]

*Linux* does run well on older machines. But KDE and Gnome aren't Linux, they're programs that run on Linux systems :)

Re:Make KDE faster?

[bluGill]

KDE is getting faster all the time. The core of KDE is generally faster now than in the 1.x timeframe. A few things are slower because they do more. Overall though KDE is fast. Effort is being made all the time to make things faster.

I use KDE 3.3 on a ppro-200 with 128Meg of ram and it works just fine.

That said, there are some things that will be much faster in KDE 4.x because qt4 is better in those areas.

Re:Make KDE faster?

[WMD_88]

Well, yeah, I know that...but, it certainly helps if there's a whole desktop that can run well along with. After all, you could just use Windows 95 otherwise.

Re:Make KDE faster?

[WMD_88]

Cut it out. :p

I ran 3.1 on a P/166 with 32MB ram. Typical program load times (that is, with included KDE/Qt apps) was around 20-30 seconds. More recently I used 1.1 on a P/133 with 40MB ram. Load times? About a third of that.

Not to sound mean...but faster now than then? Bullocks.

Re:Make KDE faster?

[Brandybuck]

I miss the old days, where Windows 95 ran fast on a P133 with 4Mb :-)

Re:Make KDE faster?

[WMD_88]

Silly you. ;) 95 was never fast on 4mb. I've seen it used with 8mb, and it was still slow.

Re:Make KDE faster?

[Carewolf]

3.2 and 3.3 were both optimized heavily from the 3.1 release.

By amazing coincidence valgrind/cachegrind had just been released, and KDE made to run in it :)

Re:Make KDE faster?

[be-fan]

Just a couple of points. First, KDE cares way more about RAM than CPU. 256MB is a must, after that, it's diminishing returns. Second, every point release in the 3.x series has been faster than the previous one. 3.3 is a lot faster than 3.0 was.

Re:Make KDE faster?

[WMD_88]

256MB a must? See, this is what I'm talking about. Why do we need that much RAM to run a desktop?

Re:Make KDE faster?

[be-fan]

Yes, KDE uses a lot of RAM. But being a memory hog and a processor hog are two different things :)

Re:Make KDE faster?

[sewagemaster]

unfortunately like gnome, they tend to love the idea of integrating a file manager with a web browser.

Takes quite a while to even get it started on my P4 3.0GHz

Re:Make KDE faster?

[KermitJunior]

Um, WinXP need 256 more than KDE does. What will LongHorn require? "Only 1GB"

Re:Make KDE faster?

[damicatz]

KDE runs fine for me, with all eye-candy turned on, though I run it on a 64-bit system.

Re:Make KDE faster?

[10Ghz]

Weird, Konqueror loads in about 1 second on my A64 3200+. The whole desktop loads in about 8 seconds (IIRC), but that is not that important, since I don't spend my time loading and then re-loading the desktop. I load it once, and then I just use it.

Re:Make KDE faster?

[10Ghz]

256MB is enough to run KDE and maybe two other programs.

My machine has 1GB of RAM. But still: I have studied how much RAM KDE eats (I have 64bit AMD64-machine, so the mem-consumption is a bit higher than on a 32bit machine). With full-blown desktop (including services like Klipper, Kopete, Kwallet and the like) plus few apps (Konqueror, Amarok, Kontact, Konsole), the whole system eats about... 150MB of RAM. If I start a brand-new KDE-session in the background with a host of yet another apps, the RAM-consumption goes to about 200-270MB.

So, your claim that "256MB of RAM is enough for KDE and two programs!", is quite simply false. It seems to me that it's enough for TWO simultaneous KDE-sessions with severalapps and services running.

Re:Make KDE faster?

[Jason Hood]

I think we just have to face the fact that there are people out there, mainly gnomer's and fluxbox users that have too many false claims about KDE. I have gotten tired of correcting them.

I have come to the conclusion that if they say that KDE is bloated, let them be. If they were to use KDE and become a developer they would have a chance of convincing people that technology points such as kparts and ioslaves are useless and KDE should just be a WM. Think of where they could potentially direct KDE development.

or ...

[vlad_petric]

K Einstein :)

Pretty Please

[Jicksta]

Someone hook us up with some screenies :)

Re:Pretty Please

[archen]

Look at the 3.3 screenshots and ad .1

Not to troll, but this is an incramental upgrade - you're not going to see a night and day difference. Although I'm always quite happy with the usability changes and added features, they aren't the sort of things you see from screenshots of someones desktop with a different wallpaper (usually). Seems sort of silly to slashdot KDE.org for each beta over screens that are more or less the same

Re:Pretty Please

[Anonymous Coward]

> Look at the 3.3 screenshots and ad .1

It will have a different default style, window decoration and color scheme. For some people that are visible differences, other will perhaps not notice.

Re:No stones?

[MikeCapone]

Maybe it's about kidneys...

Why BSD?

[menace3society]

Is this posted with the BSD daemon because KDE is so hellish to use?

Quartz anyone?

[NEOtaku17]

My only question is when is it going to have the ability to offload some of its graphical heavy lifting to the GPU so we can get a good speed increase. That is one area OSX really does very strongly in, that KDE is extremely weak.

Re:Quartz anyone?

[Anonymous Coward]

All OSX offloads to the GPU is compositing, which is why resizing windows is so choppy. X is getting that ability Real Soon Now(tm). (GPU-based compositing, I mean. It already has choppy window resizing.)

Re:Quartz anyone?

[Illissius]

KDE 3.4 already has preliminary support for X.org's Composite extension, meaning compositing can be handed off to hardware, true transparency, drop shadows, and all that. Unfortunately it's still rather buggy, which is only partly KDE's fault, and partly X.org's (it's still a fairly new development). I'd say it's pretty safe to say 4.0 will have full support for hardware acceleration and all kinds of iCandy... especially considering Qt4's Arthur.

Re:Why KDE?

[arkanes]

You can't (now, but soon) develop Windows applications under the GPL with Qt. No doubt this is not what you want to do, but it is almost certainly what the parent was referring to.

Re:No stones?

[KiloByte]

Einstein = (german) "one stone"
Keinstein = (german) "no stones"

By the way, for a few years, the soviets teached their children that the Theory of Relativity was the work of a brilliant russian scientist Odnokamyencev, a name which "purely" accidentally translates to "Einstein". Go figure.