New KDE 3.5.5 Features 1,200 Changes

lisah writes "Just two months after its last update, KDE has released a new maintenance and bugfix update. KDE 3.5.5 boasts over 1,200 changes including speed improvements to KHTML, an update of Kopete 0.12.3, support for Adium themes, and improved support for Yahoo! and Jabber IM protocols. KDE 3.5.5 also now offers extensive support for over 65 languages. Just a day after the release of 3.5.5, developers say they are already looking toward the release of KDE4, which will include improvements in multimedia, hardware integration, and more." (Linux.com and Slashdot are both part of OSTG.)

Comments

BSD?

[debest]

Is this really the right catagory to post KDE news in?

Re:BSD?

[Brandybuck]

Please explain why BSD is not one of the appropriate categories to post this story.

Re:BSD?

[Yosho]

Because there is nothing BSD-specific about KDE. It also runs on Linux, OS X, and probably some other operating systems as well. It makes as much sense to post a KDE article in BSD as it would to post an article about Firefox.

Re:BSD?

[harrypelles]

Hey! That was actually pretty funny (and related)... why the offtopic??

Re:BSD?

[Homology]

Perhaps "most people" needs to broaden their horizons?

Kopete

[Kadin2048]

The fix to Kopete that lets it use Adium skins is definitely welcome, as there are a ton of Adium skins.

However, I wish they had spent their time making Kopete compatible with Gaim's plugin architecture rather than a basically glitzy UI improvement. At least last time I checked, Kopete was completely incompatible with OTR encryption, and it looked like it was going to stay that way. (The reason I heard was that something about the existing Kopete plugin structure doesn't allow plugins to actually orginate messages, just modify them as they pass through, and OTR uses specially crafted messages to initiate connections and resend data. Or something like that; don't quote me on it directly.)

Seems like the request is still open on Bugzilla, I encourage people to vote, as IMO this is a major limitation of Kopete versus Gaim. Kopete definitely looks nicer than Gaim, but it's not as functional because of that.

Actually, I'm not sure why they don't just rebuild Kopete to use the libgaim backend, like Adium does (and Proteus, and Fire...). Maybe there are good reasons for not using it, but it strikes me as serious wheel-reinvention.

Re:Kopete

[archen]

It may be wheel reinvention but so is 99% of all Linux software... or all software period for that matter. I've never used kopete myself, but judging by how well kde apps integrate I would guess that kopete is reinvented not just for the sake of doing it, but for having the engine available to all other kde apps. I'm sure they could make some sort of dcop wrapper for libgaim, but I'm sure that if they really wanted to, they could have made a wrapper for gimp as well.

The open source desktop already has enough of applications that have nothing to do with each other cobbled together for a distro. Trying to keep a consistent desktop is a good goal for the KDE project, and I think that's what they're really trying to accomplish with all of their apps that already have equivalents available.

Re:Is that gross changes or net changes?

[SoapDish]

well, it should be "colour" I'm sick of having to addopt the US spelling when doing anything computer related.

Re:how did they count?

[Homology]

A useful changelog is not just a list of each and every commit, for that you just use the history log of the repository. A changelog is a compact and informative overview of changes without going into the nitty gritty details.

Re:KDE == explorer.exe?

[smash]

Thing is, with KDE you have the option to install/deinstall individual components. You don't *need* to run konqueror, kwm or any particular K app. The KDE apps are "tightly integrated" where that means "work well together". Not "integrated" in the microsoft sense, where they're non-optional...