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

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

[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. :-)

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.