KDE 3.5 RC 1 Released

HatofPig writes "The KDE Project has released the first release candidate for KDE 3.5, the last of the 3.x versions. There are many added features and bugfixes such as easier Kicker configuration and many UI tweaks. Get the source, Suse packages, or packages for Kubuntu and start filing bug reports today!"

Comments

w00t

[alexwcovington]

I've been looking for an excuse to boot into Linux!

What use...

[markild]

...is this without a screenshot of some sort!!

Re:What use...

[Homology]

...is this without a screenshot of some sort!!

Why don't you read about the added features and bugfixes ? There is much more to KDE than just eye candy.

For me, it's very useful to read that client side IMAP filtering is at last beeing added (but still in progress, though), and thus I can use KMail and ditch Thunderbird. However, I've no need to see a screenshot of a dialog box for IMAP filtering rules.

Time to get sued.

[Seumas]

How long until SCO sues them and demands that they hand over all data regarding KDE 3.6?

Try without installing..

[Anonymous Coward]

Here ya go, for your pleasure.

Klax

Here's a LiveCD with the new KDE RC on it. Please follow the instructions at the bottom of this page to get the best resolution/quality display of X & KDE.

At last KMail gets client side IMAP filtering...

[Homology]

The only reason I don't use KMail is that it lacks client side IMAP filtering into folders, but now it's in progress (from changelist):

Client side IMAP filtering. Till Adam , Don Sanders

Perhaps this will be completed before release, or to the next minor release. Looking forward to ditching Thunderbird.

Links for source, Suse, a screenshot

[HatofPig]

Submitter here (w00t!).

The link for the source and Suse packages didn't get through for some reason.

Also, since I can't find any screenshots anywhere, here is a (highly compressed -- don't kill my server!) screenshot of my own desktop with some of the cool features. You can see that they changed the Plastik window decoration a bit, and added a nifty "Lock/Unlock Panels" menu option to quickly hide and unhide the handles beside each applet. The new pager applet is really cool, with the ability to go transparent and show different program windows (desktop 2 has KPilot running) that you can drag around from desktop to desktop inside the applet!

So far no bugs have cropped up either, which is good. I really suggest you check it out.

Re:Links for source, Suse, a screenshot

[molnarcs]

I like the binary clock icon on your screenshot... At first I thought it doesn't have an icon at all (and almost switched to rant mode to complain about it) when I realized that it is just perfect for the kind of app it represents.

Here is mirror for your jpeg. Send me (email) more (preferably less compressed ones, or even png) if you wish, and I'll put them up there :)

Re:Links for source, Suse, a screenshot

[John Nowak]

I guess this is why I prefer Gnome. No offense, but that is the most hideous trainwreck I've ever seen.

Mine is this:
http://johnnowak.com/temp/screenshot.png

Re:Links for source, Suse, a screenshot

[HatofPig]

Hahahaha, no offense taken.

I like having everything available just like that. To anybody else it looks like a convoluted mess, but since I set it up I know where everything is and why it's there. I can check my mail status, change the volume, control my media player, open any program that I use regularly, change all my KDE settings, and loads more without minimizing my open window. I also have a rather interesting colour scheme set up too. ;)

To me your desktop seems bland and empty, although I'm sure that everything you do is only a few clicks away as well. I don't mind sacrificing some of my screenspace though.

Re:Links for source, Suse, a screenshot

[molnarcs]

That is just silly. His screenshot is awful, but not because that is how KDE looks like. It is awful because you (or me for that matter) would not feel confortable using it. But that is how he configured it, that is what probably fits his way of doing things.

Essentially, you compared your preferred way of organizing the desktop with his preferred way of organizing the desktop, and concluded that GNOME is better. Congrats.

You can pretty much configure anything in KDE. You can make it plain and simple (by default, it is pretty plain and simple) - you can even lock it down with kiosk and associated tools (read why the Dutch Record Shop Chain Migrated 1000 desktops to KDE to limit it's functionality to accessing one page on the internet and 4 apps if you wish to. And configuring it is rather easy via kcontrol. When I switched to linux 5 years ago, the first thing I really felt comfortable with was kcontrol. I knew that I can't screw up anything with a desktop config utility, and playing with it for a week or so got me accustomed to using it (of course I tried a few apps as well, but the inevitable "now what" question that comes up after installing a new and different operating system is best answered by providing harmless customization tools. At least, that's a good way for noobs to get confortable. Since than, I spend ~10-30 minutes (depending on the amount of new features) with configuration when a major release happens, and I am really glad that I can customize the hell out of it. I won't use something like parent's desktop, but I'm also glad for his ability to use KDE the way he wants without the need to edit obscure values in the registry or download 3rd party apps to do that more easily ;)

Re:Links for source, Suse, a screenshot

[molnarcs]

PNG screenshots of parent poster (HatofPig).

First.
Second.

Thanks :)

Re:Links for source, Suse, a screenshot

[John Nowak]

I use Quicksilver (quicksilver.blacktree.com) which is absolutely amazing. I haven't seen anything like it for Gnome or KDE or anything else. Everything from adjusting the volume to uploading files via ftp to selecting songs from iTunes can be done with simple predictive key commands. This is what allows me to keep everything so nice and clean otherwise. :-)

Re:Links for source, Suse, a screenshot

[John Nowak]

I suppose you are right. I guess for me, Gnome is very close to what I'd want out of the box (save for Quicksilver (quicksilver.blacktree.com)). I guess I don't understand why anyone would want so much of what KDE offers, but I guess it is good that it is there for people that aren't like me. :-)

Re:Links for source, Suse, a screenshot

[pomo monster]

"me too!"--It's like a command line for the GUI, except better, and with automatic tab completion. Just brilliant.

Re:Links for source, Suse, a screenshot

[molnarcs]

Aha, I understand it now. GNOME might seem more confortable out of the box if you are coming from a Mac. On the other hand, KDE can look and behave just the way you want, and a big plus here is that configuration is easy. And when it comes to the application stack, you'll find more many many great tools that don't have free software equivalents.

Give KDE a try sometime (when 3.5 comes out?) if you have the means ... you might be pleasently surprised. Consider the time you spend configuring it to your liking as an investment in productivity. It might take ours if you are absolutely new, but that is time well spent (and a one time job only - once you find out what suits your needs best, you don't have to do it again). I read a review of KDE from an MacOS X user (or more a like a comparison) some time ago. It is a two year old review, and if you know the pace of development of KDE, you must know that it has improved tremendously in that time, but it is still an interesting read I guess. You'll find it here.

Re:Links for source, Suse, a screenshot

[jZnat]

Ever heard of PNG? Compresses images of your desktop to GIF-like file sizes, but it's lossless. JPEG is only good for really detailed images (like your cluttered desktop almost). That discrete cosine transform compression technique really looks like ass when you have a non-textured block of image.

Re:Links for source, Suse, a screenshot

[jZnat]

I think the best part about KDE, being a former GNOME user, is that Debian actually has the latest KDE 3.4.x programs. Debian has GNOME 2.10, which kinda fucked over some basic functionality like menu editting and other basic customisations. That, and there's no way I'm going to upgrade half my packages via Ubuntu just to get some updated GNOME applications. For now, I'll just deal with the fact that Firefox and Thunderbird will look quite like ass in KDE.

Re:Links for source, Suse, a screenshot

[John Nowak]

Thanks for the link.

"One specific commonality worth mentioning may surprise Quartz-proud OS X users: Both allow the creation of PDFs from any application's print dialog. KDE's implementation is arguably better, since it gives much more fine-grained control over PDF output."

Does this apply to Gnome as well, or is it KDE only? This is one feature I just love about OS X, and I find myself using it a few times every month for some odd thing.

Re:Links for source, Suse, a screenshot

[JabberWokky]

Katapult is a Kubuntu app, not part of KDE, but rather a part of the Kubuntu desktop. It's brand spanking new with the latest release so it's fairly primitive, but it has the basic framework in place and supports a few basic tools. I know there's a list of planned extentions, but I have no idea what state they are in: I don't really use it that much. It's launched via Alt-Space.

Personally, I just use Alt-F2, which brings up a KDE command field... launch any kind of KDE url (locate:2005 report, imdb:Seven Samurai, sftp://myserver ~/doc), execute unix command lines, evaluate mathematical expressions or a few other nice little tools with a typeahead history. I have one on my menubar as well, right next to the clock, but alt-F2 allows me to keep my hands on the keyboard and launch searches.

--
Evan

Re:Links for source, Suse, a screenshot

[John Nowak]

Can it do more complex things though? With quicksilver I can do this (with my current set of predictive commands):

D st

That'll let me browse my desktop, select a file, and email it to someone all at once. Sexy, eh?

Re:Links for source, Suse, a screenshot

[potHead42]

There's a driver for CUPS which will enable this in all GNOME & KDE apps, and possibly others, too.

Re:Links for source, Suse, a screenshot

[JabberWokky]

Yes. As I said, that is what Katapult is for. Predictive and it can theoretically access all of your desktop and running apps via dcop, although only a few capabilities are currently configured since it just squeezed in before Kubuntu shipped. As I say, the framework is there, the apps already have the hooks, but there's not much yet in the default config tying the two together. Right now it's a quick predictive launcher, file browser and bookmark access tool, as the only three verbs (that I could find) were "Run Program", "Open" (as in Open Folder) and "Open Bookmark".

It works fine and is similarly pretty like Quicksilver (translucent big icons in the center of the screen), but just like the early revisions of Quicksilver, there aren't many verbs to link into sequences of actions. Presumably it will support more in the next release.

--
Evan

Re:Links for source, Suse, a screenshot

[molnarcs]

This is how it looks like (I don't have a printer installed, so printer entry is missing). I don't see the same in gtk/gnome apps currently installed on my system (only the postscript option). I think print to pdf support might be available system wide via either cups or (more likely) ghostscript, but whether or not GNOME chose to implement it the same way across all print dialogs like KDE - I have no idea.

This is how the advanced settings look like (if you click properties in the print dialogue - normally you don't need that, for the defaults are sane, in fact, I never changed anything in those settings).

Re:Links for source, Suse, a screenshot

[John Nowak]

Let's hope... my Quicksilver has 171 as of now, and I have only installed one plugin. :-)

Is there a way to REPLACE my default KDE in Sarge

[Orrin Bloquy]

...rather than just eat another user-specific portion of my drive? If I'm a total retard in how I read teh Konstruct instructions with 3.4.3, plz correct this n00b.

How much harder would it be to just make a package for Debian Sarge than it was for Ubuntu?

Halp?

Re:People are still using KDE?

[Anonymous Coward]

It's true - there will always be a huge number of unix users who reject kde's windows-look-alike approach. Yeh, yeh, themes, skins, whatever - toss out anything that looks like doze and we'll talk. Gnome is bad enough, but kde is unforgivable, the default theme makes me nauseous. Why these people don't merge with gnome is just beyond me, there is no technical reason that would not make it worthwhile. That's right - none, and don't bother with the excuses, it's just lame moaning.

Acid2 here I come

[molnarcs]

Acid2 Test here I come :)))

Seriously - KDE has become soo good, that I couldn't work without it. I became so accustomed to its excellent apps, both for my admin work and my desktop usage.

• Scribus for newsletters from one of my sites, (is there any other Desktop Publishing software with similar quality and standards support?)
• Krita (part of Koffice) - in scribus, the edit image default app was gimp until koffice 1.4.1 - now krita begins to become a viable replacement for gimp.
• Quanta - YES!
• kdissert for my dissertation (yeah, a week ago I began using it, and I found it really helpful).
• Kmail - I didn't know it was missing imap support, I use pop access with my gmail accounts. But it is stable, fast, easy to use, feature rich.
• And the whole integration thing: kaddressbook with kmail with korganizer with kalarm with the rest of the desktop. It is simply amazing.
• Lisa to browse network shares in konqi sidebar - no more mounting/unmounting of samba shares, it works much much better than winxp's network neighborhood...
• Amarok for my music needs: is there such a feature complete player out there? Not just providing one or two features of amarok, but all - wikipedia, lyrics, easy tag editing, ipod support, dynamic playlists, visuals, and first and formost easy to use. I think amarok is the prime example against the "an app must be simple and dumbed down to be easy to use" philosophy. kmplayer
• KONSOLE! I tried replacements like mrxvt for puters where kde is not installed, and they don't come even close.
• Konqueror. And I miss the up button from every other browser :))). What I like about Konqi is its stability - there are some pages where firefox simply bails out (some flash pages) - and I don't see a separate process to kill. With konqi on the same pages (to tell the truth, there aren't that many) I can kill the offending process (usually nspluginviewer) without taking out the entire browser (and all my opened tabs).
• Lots and lots of other apps I couldn't live without - the list goes on.

I'm really really thankful for the work these people do.

Re:Acid2 here I come

[Hoplite3]

I'll go on and on:

* kdvi -- xdvi is a joke. It crashes all the time and the interface is unintuitive. kdvi is bulletproof, has inverse search (click in dvi to have it scroll emacs/kate/vim to that spot in the .tex file). Plus it has the sweet kde file picker.
* kpdf and kghostview -- while I'm here, it's worth mentioning that the whole suite of "kviewshell" programs are awesome. They embed in konqueror or run by themselves. kpdf may not render as well as acroread, but it doesn't phone home and the file picker doesn't suck.
* kile -- If you want a gentle introduction to LaTeX, look no further. This editor will set you straight.
* kio -- Not so much an application as glue. Kio allows me to save files downloaded at one computer on another via ssh. I mean, I can put a graphic I found on the net at school on my home computer securely with one click.
* k3b -- The only CD burner program worth mentioning.

KDE has some awesome apps. If you've ever tried qt/kde programming, it's clear why. Things are (mostly) simple and the API's are well laid out. It's just ... cool.

There are some problems, namely the default configuration does a poor job of selling KDE to new-comers. Memory use is a bit out of hand. I tried to start 3.4 on a laptop with 192 MB, but gave up after 30 minutes of watching it load. Resource use has fallen slightly, though. And no one ever said KDE was "lightweight". However, 3.5 is moving in the right direction and fixing some of these problems.

When the transition from 3.3 to 3.4 happened, the changes were small and subtle, but the quality of the desktop really improved. It was like they crossed an important line of usability. 3.5 promises to be better yet.

Even if you don't run KDE, run some of it's applications. You'll like what you find.

Re:Acid2 here I come

[darkwhite]

And on and on...

Here's another testimonial to how much KDE rocks. When I started exploring the desktop options on Linux, I was very unhappy with Gnome's suite of apps and design methodology. I was just as unimpressed by XFCE's minimalism and other WMs' total lack of desktop component integration. Then I saw KDE 3.3 and was somewhat interested. By the time 3.4 came out (with lots of polish upon 3.3), I was hooked. At 3.5, I'm a fan, and KDE 4 will rock the world of desktop environments.

But as I found out very soon, KDE's strength is not just in the desktop itself but also in the apps: as the parent posters say, development is easy and integration of standard components is thorough. For instance, every app that needs to do text editing uses the same text editing library component (Kate KPart) and so the awesome power of the Kate editor is available in all text editing apps.

The KDE apps I've come to love and use every day:

* AmaroK, Konqueror, Konsole, Kile, Quanta, K3B, KPDF (bring on the kviewshell integration though!) were mentioned before.

* Kdevelop offers an awesome C++ development environment, not to mention powerful development for KDE.

* Kopete and Korganizer very nearly match the functionality of Trillian and Outlook, respectively, with the obvious advantages. Step aside, Gaim and Evolution.

* Kate is, once again, an awesome text editor. I used to like UltraEdit and grudgingly learn Emacs. Then I saw Kate.

* Kaffeine is the most polished video playing front-end in all of Linux. Using MPlayer and Xine directly? What a joke. (I do of course respect the MPlayer and Xine teams' back-end development efforts)

And on and on...

There is a massive number of useful applications for KDE. I, too, am truly thankful for the work of all the developers who made this desktop possible.

Re:Acid2 here I come

[MrHanky]

There are some problems, namely the default configuration does a poor job of selling KDE to new-comers. Memory use is a bit out of hand. I tried to start 3.4 on a laptop with 192 MB, but gave up after 30 minutes of watching it load.

Which distro's KDE was that? I've started KDE on a slow laptop (266 Mhz) with only 64 MB RAM (but with quite a bit of swap), and although it was too slow to be usable, it certainly didn't take 30 minutes to start. (Gnome on the same computer was nearly usable, though a bit painful, but a light WindowMaker desktop was best for my use.) This was Debian's KDE 3.2.x last year, BTW.

Although I agree KDE uses far too much RAM, it's still a bit better than OS X, and a bit worse than Windows XP.

Re:Acid2 here I come

[Hoplite3]

This was Fedora Core something. Living in Redhat town, when I get a computer from schools, it's all Redhatted up. Not my favorite distro, but at least it's linux. I believe this was 3.4, but I didn't do careful checking. I tried to load it from KDM and didn't get anywhere.

I am heartened that resource use went down with 3.4 compared to 3.3. I hope that's a trend that can continue. As for comparison though, I can't speak about osx or winxp, but kde is a bit nicer than gnome on small systems I've run it on. The interface doesn't lock up when there's a lot of processing going on. Plus, it's not gnome :)

Re:Acid2 here I come

[molnarcs]

That's a distro problem, not a KDE problem. For years, I ran kde (till 3.4.x series) on a 700Mhz Duron with 256SDRAM and it was snappy. Start up time was reasonalbe as well (less than 20 secs).

I saw comments complaining about RAM hungryness of KDE. This is quite ironic, since at that time (Konqueror failing on some important sites I used) I used Firefox, and only when starting FF up did the OS begin swapping, especially with multiple tabs open. Now I wouldn't run KDE with 128, but 256 is enough if you don't use many GTK apps.

I maintain a small lab of computers. New ones run WinXP, old ones (old celerons and pIIs with ~64 Mb RAM) are used solely for browsing the net: gaim (also the only IM app on the XP machines), gftp, and webbrowsing. They run FreeBSD with blackbox and a simplified menu (only 5 apps, and a short description of how to operate them sticked on the wall above them). I installed Firefox - and it simply didn't work. Start up time was horrible (~minute), rendering time also, and the entire system came to a crawl if you opened up a couple of tabs. Same with epiphany and galeon. I tried konqueror as well, and it was actually faster, start up time included (which considering that it had to load all supporting libs at start time, is pretty impressive) and it used less ram than any of the above. But of course, the final solution was to use Opera.

I think KDE is pretty usable if you have >192 RAM. Now I have 512, which is better of course, for you can preload 4 instances of konqi for instant startup, and have all sorts of useful and useless apps loaded by default when KDE loads (amarok, kweather, kmail, kgpg, korganizer + kalarm, kcpuload, a fullscreen console instance, antialias for fonts, etc.) + lots of eyecandies. But if you switch off parts of the eyecandies (transparent menus, konqi background, content in moving windows, etc.) KDE is usable on a low-end computer as well (I seen it work pretty well on a 450Mhz celeron with 192 RAM and a TNT2 card).

I have to emphasize that in all these cases, I used vanilla kde (kde on slackware or kde on FreeBSD) - so you can be pretty sure that when you encounter 30 minutes startup (or even 1 minute startup - it didn't take that long on the 450Mhz machine) it is the distribution's fault: lack of proper Quality Control. They don't check if the supporting libraries are configured correctly, they don't test, don't integrate, well, don't do anything except for creating an .rpm once it finished building it seems.

Re:People are still using KDE?

[GenKreton]

KDE is about as dead as BSD :)>

Seriously, I know I am replying to a troll, but Linux is about choice. If you dislike KDE, just ignore it. Nobody asked you to care about this article.

Re:People are still using KDE?

[oneeyedelf1]

right click the K icon and choose menu editor oh ignorant one

Re:People are still using KDE?

[Ojuice]

I was obviously referring to Gnome. I guess reading comprehension can be a bitch.

Re:People are still using KDE?

[Miffe]

If you are refering to GNOME, it has a perfectly usabe menu editor.

Screenshot as proof.

Re:People are still using KDE?

[Anonymous Coward]

I was obviously referring to Gnome.

Not obvious, considering the context, number one, and secondly this is ./ and many are clueless. That's why were here to help ;)

I guess reading comprehension can be a bitch.

It is for you apparently, you are replying to an e-mail about KDE, GNOME wasn't mentioned. Context matters. I'll bet you're a Linux user, but not a coder, otherwise that stuff would be plain.

I'm glad

[vga_init]

It makes me a bit happy to see KDE growing strong.

Throughout the time that I used open source on the desktop, there were often various times where I felt one of the desktops was lacking (sometimes KDE, sometimes GNOME). At times I would clearly prefer one, and sometimes I would prefer neither.

Lately, however, I have found both desktops only getting stronger and more pleasurable to use. Right now I am using KDE, but I will continue to switch back and forth between the two simply because I honestly can't tell which is better.

Everyone has their favorites, and these two are pet projects for a lot of people, but I definitely take it as a good sign that I can no longer have a definite favorite (especially after I was once so sure that I could never prefer one to the other).

Bravo, KDE team, and cheers for all lovers of Free software.

/warmfuzzies

Sexing it up

[Stachel]

From the release note:

Sex up the user switching ui.

Whom are they targeting with this release? Geeks?
Sheesh.

Released?

[Anonymous Coward]

Why was it jailed?

Re:People are still using KDE?

[Slashcrap]

If you are refering to GNOME, it has a perfectly usabe menu editor.

It's nice to hear that they finally got around to that. Now when are they going to get the rest of the desktop working?