KDE 3.5.4 Released
Carewolf writes "While KDE4 is pushing ahead the stable KDE 3.5 branch is also seeing quite some development and new features. Today KDE 3.5.4 was released, with improved removable device support, speed optimization and many bug fixes. Among the bug fixes is of course a fix to layout the new slashdot sidebar properly in Konqueror. The story is also carried on The Dot."
> KDE will be the perfect desktop for me when I don't have to include all the extra cruft.
> I love the UI and basic apps, and I like select apps from each package, but the vast
> majority of it is a waste of space for me.
With todays large harddisks this is hardly any problem, and not worth the package maintainers
time to split the packages into even more packages.
> That said, I'm still emerging it today.
If you are so concerned with waste of space, why do you build KDE
and dependant libraries by yourself?
Hey man, you know the rules... it has to be on digg for at least a day or two before it is acceptable for slashdot.
If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be.-TJ
Compared to Firefox where users have to wait until next year or put up with half-working CVS builds if they want rendering bugs fixed. If KHTML had better user CSS support I'd switch right now.
Seeing as you say you will be "emerging it today" I will presume you are using Gentoo, in which case you can use the modular packages instead of the monolithic ones. Just chose the select apps you want to install and leave the rest. Of course, the hard part is knowing which apps to install but going with basic desktop + what you can think of and then adding things as you realise you need/want them. See here for more information, it is a little old but probably still accurate.
For years I had been a GNOME user. And for most of that time, I was quite proud and quite happy. But I was also quite ignorant. It was about a week ago that I switched from Fedora Core to Kubuntu. In retrospect, it is a change I wish I had made much sooner.
Besides the fact that Kubuntu as a whole is far more stable than Fedora Core, it should also be noted that Kubuntu includes a highly-integrated distribution of KDE. I was somewhat skeptical at first about the change. After all, GNOME had been working for for me (or so I thought) for years. It allowed me to get my work done in a timely manner. But for the sake of exploration, I decided to make use of KDE. And what a grand decision that was!
It soon became apparent to me that KDE is of a higher quality design and implementation than GNOME. I'm not suggesting that the GNOME developers are incompetent or lousy programmers. It seems to be more a case of KDE using the right tools for the right job: they use C++ directly, rather than trying to craft their own unnatural OO subsystem and framework in pure C as is done by GNOME. Second, I found that Qt was a far faster, more responsive toolkit than GTK+. Windows would redraw faster, and in general the GUI felt far more responsive.
I also find the KDE applications to be superior to their GNOME equivalents. The Kate text editor offers more functionality than that of gedit, while also feeling far more responsive on the same hardware, and consuming far fewer resources. Konqueror is another major success story. It renders much quicker than Gecko, and thus is a much more enjoyable browser to use than Firefox, Galeon2, or Epiphany.
While I have no regrets over the years I spent with GNOME, I am glad I have switched to KDE. What was a very enjoyable experience with desktop Linux using GNOME has become a completely fantastic one now that I'm using KDE. My productivity has skyrocketed, too. What would take me an hour to do with GNOME tools, I can often get done in 45 minutes while using KDE. Overall, it's been a very remarkable experience switching to KDE. It's something I recommend for all Linux and UNIX users to do.
Whatever you do, don't upgrade yet! Not only is there a severe bug in k-d-s, but several other programs are unstable and cranky. Stick with 3.5.2 or 3.5.3. Check #kubuntu for updates on the matter. Seriously though, don't do what I did and have to deal with the pain of downgrading packages via apt. :(
'Yes, firefox is indeed greater than women. Can women block pops up for you? No. Can Firefox show you naked women? Yes.'