Slashdot Mirror
KDE 3.5 Released
WhiteFoxBR writes ""The KDE Project is happy to announce a new major release of the award-winning K Desktop Environment. Many features have been added or refined, making KDE the most complete, stable and integrated free desktop environment available." Here a Visual Guide to new features, including build-in ad-block for Konqueror and support for MSN and Yahoo! webcams in Kopete. "
Way to go KDE folks and supporters. Even though I'm a Gnome user (actually, I'm a closet FVWM user), KDE never ceases to impress me and I do try it for periods of time. The last 8 years I've been using Open Source Software and Linux have been amazing. The amount of progress that all of us have made. There is still more to go, but its not hard to see that the gap is really closing in now. All the hard work and patience has paid off. Everyone give yourself a pat on the back.
The missing ability to use a webcam easily under KDE, is actually an argument for some people I know to stick with Windows. So this is great news - now I might convince them into actually trying this "Linux-thing", so I can stop supporting their infected Windows XP Home machines (yes, then I would have to support them with Linux, but with a little help from CrossOver they can keep using most of the software they are dependant upon).
I haven't got a webcam myself at the moment, so I have no idea how it works in Kopete. If you have tested it, and can recommend a webcam that is working nicely under Linux, I would like to hear about it. Are there webcams out for Linux that actually support face-tracking?
The features seem to be pretty impressive. Now, not only do we have a two good browsers for Linux desktop, the healthy competition between FF and Konqueror will only make them richer. The ACL GUI feature is certainly a good enhancement.
Way to go KDE!!
Anyone here using KOffice in a "real world" environment? The last time I attempted using it, I found it had tonnes of bugs!
Trolltech licensing.
Is it really? I was under the impression that it was Open Source. But then I'm not a lawyer and haven't been paying that much attention to it. They seem to mention GPL on that page though. But perhaps that's just the program that you write yourself with the Qt library, not the library itself.
You are not entitled to your opinion. You are entitled to your informed opinion. -- Harlan Ellison
I wonder if the adblocker from Konqueror is compatibile with firefox Adblock.
(...As you've certainly noticed...) Adblock by itself is worthless. Its empty filter base makes it inactive and only weeks of careful building it would make the extension normally useful. Only combined with a good killfile like Filterset.G it really kicks ass, at once. Same applies to any other adblocker - what filters are available for Konqueror?
Anagram("United States of America") == "Dine out, taste a Mac, fries"
"Now email google to fix both of them so we don't have to do these silly workarounds."
w er=16532&topic=1499
:(
I did email Google about that issue (I emailed Google Local because that's where I was at the time. Same problem there). I simply asked that they add Konqueror's user agent to the supported browsers after stating that the browser did work when I switched the user agent. This is their response.
--------------
local-help@google.com to me
Nov 17
Thank you for your note. It appears that you're having trouble using
Google Local because you're using a browser that is not fully supported.
In order to obtain full functionality of Google Local, please use one of
the supported browsers listed in our Help Center at
http://local.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?ans
We appreciate your taking the time to send us your feedback regarding the
use of Konqueror with Google Local. We'll keep your comments in mind as we
continue to make improvements to this service.
Regards,
The Google Team
---------------------
Utterly frustrating. Sounds like a bot may have wrote that
The global economy is a great thing until you feel it locally.
Free software products work like species. Their environment is the users and developers and they mutate to gain favour of the users. Their "random" mutation is the development cycle, including possibly many branches and forks with cross pollenation of both ideas and code. This is just the same as evolution in real species. Without enough variation and competition, species stagnate. Closed source software is mostly the same except the oppurtunity for random mutation is massively decreased.
Consider the web browser as an example. After Microsoft illegally crushed all the competition with IE, the browser stagnated for years while competition recovered. Once other had caught up, suddenly they start developmemt again. No cross pollenation of code because of incompatible licenses. (the offspring would be a mule) but ideas have spread. (tabbed browsing etc)
We need multiple competing desktops. That we have two that can (to some degree at least) cross pollenate code as well as ideas is part of what puts us at a potential advantage against commercial offerings. If we had only one, no code cross pollenation could occur and in that sense we would be on a more level playing field in terms of future potential.
-- MartinG To mail me: echo kewyjlcxyzvjfxbqwh | tr bcefhjklqvwxyz
...one of the major distributions to get behind KDE and push it a bit. Debian is about the closest I can think of (yes, I know I'm going to get flamed for that) and that is desktop neutral. There's kubuntu but that could hardn't be called major (although I think it will do pretty well).
It's a real shame because IMVVHO I think KDE is the better Desktop system. I know under the hood Gnome is supposed to be better but quite frankly as long as it works I don't really care. I want different things from my desktop than from my API. I want my desktop to be inviting and fun to use I want the APIs I use to be like my bank manager (boring and predictable). Gnome seems to have the API right but the desktop wrong and KDE has the desktop but not the API. I might be totally wrong here because I have never used the API of either (roll on (a fast) swing) but that's the impression I get from the advocates for each side.
The other main argument against KDE is that it is too much of a Windows clone. Perhaps I'm the only one that thinks this but I think that's a good thing. I can switch quickly between windows and KDE without too much thought. Like it or not, M$ have spent millions designing an easy to use desktop system. Perhaps it's not perfect but I can't help feeling that the Gnome people are being different simply because they don't want look like windows.
I used to have a better sig but it broke.
Placing task bar items along the edge of the screen provides the benefit of "infinite height". With the stacked display of items on the KDE task bar the top row of items do not benefit from this.
Why have many Linux Desktop Environments chosen to implement the dual layer task bar?
Now I understand that by providing more rows the width of the items can be greater than if they were all forced onto a single row. While the size of the target benefits from the greater width does it outweigh the benefits of the infiite height?
As far as I know, it does some black voodoo magic and combines all the C++ source files into one file before compiling for a rather large speedup, or something. The downside is it uses a LOT of RAM (apparently) but I haven't noticed a problem on my laptop (2.6GHz, 512MB RAM, 1GB Swap). Compiled kdelibs, libkdeedu (or something), kstars and arts in about an hour yesterday using kdeenablefinal.
I'd say, if you've got 512MB RAM or more, enable it.
... download trojaned binaries from novell.
KDE -> first linux desktop
GNOME -> spoiled the attempt for ONE desktop
GNOME -> took tons of bloatware (pango) libraries and made the super bloat toolchain. (corba? bonobo? mono?)
GNOME -> miguel de icaza
NOVELL -> Got $500M from ms for "some trademark"
NOVELL -> Funds Mono (a bunch of migule's friends)
NOVELL -> Standarizes on GNOME a, drops KDE. SuSE founder quits with a polite explanation.
Need more proof?
Xorg 7 is almost here. With Xorg 7 comes EXA. With EXA comes a way to have stable, accerated eye candy. KDE 3.4 was ahead of its time for putting a compsite manager in Kwin, but it was so buggy that I had to stick to my old Xcompmgr+ Gnome/Metacity combination because I could turn off the composite for times when I need a stable desktop with the click of an icon with my old setup(I need stability for a few things). I plan to switch to whatever DE has a stable composite manager first.
Luminocity seems to be at least a year off, XFCE's composite manager is the most buggy I have dealt with, so all my hope is in KDE.
Does 3.5 have what I want? Or am I yet again left to wait a year for KDE 4 to come out? Will I be liberated from "the toy" Xcompmgr? Can I have a stable and modern Linux desktop before 2005 ends? Or do I wait another year (well.....I won't wait another year....if its like this in mid 2006 an Intel Macmini will sit on my desktop)?
Open Source Sushi