KDE 4.0 Beta 1 Released

dbhost writes "Along with this morning's cup of coffee and log reviews, I discovered that the KDE team is moving forward with a long awaited beta release of KDE 4.0 beta release of KDE 4.0. The most interesting item I found in the notes is that the file manager in KDE is being separated from Konqueror into a component called Dolphin. Also, according to the announcement, konsole has been treated to a number of improvements such as split view, and history highlighting."

Comments

KDE4 != KDE 4.0

[rg3]

The KDE developers have been reminding people that KDE4 is not KDE 4.0. KDE 4.0 will be the first release in the KDE4 series. All the promised features won't be there in the initial version, and some of them will have to wait until KDE 4.1 or KDE 4.2. It never hurts to remind this, for all the people who have very high expectations.

Re:KDE4 != KDE 4.0

[mcrbids]

The KDE developers have been reminding people that KDE4 is not KDE 4.0. KDE 4.0 will be the first release in the KDE4 series. All the promised features won't be there in the initial version, and some of them will have to wait until KDE 4.1 or KDE 4.2. It never hurts to remind this, for all the people who have very high expectations.

Yes folks! Brought to you by the same guys who brought us USB "High Speed" and USB "Full Speed", as well as the single-core "Core2" chip, not to be confused with the "Core2 Duo" chip, which actually is dual-core. (It's obvious - you have to look for TWO words that mean two before you actually get TWO. Sort of a "2+2=2, for extremely low values of 2" kinda thang)

Given this scenario, most people would call it "KDE 4.0 Pre" or "KDE 4.0 alpha" or something like that... but that would make SENSE so let's not confuse the issue, shall we? This is KDE4, but it's NOT KDE 4.

Or something.

Re:KDE4 != KDE 4.0

[BabyDave]

Would you prefer it if we call this one Expanded KDE, and the 4.1 release Extended KDE?

Re:KDE4 != KDE 4.0

[MightyMartian]

I would personally prefer it if you the KDE development team didn't try to sell vaporware. I'm trying to think of a generous reason for this deliberate piece of confusion, but all I'm coming up with are negative explanations.

Re:KDE4 != KDE 4.0

[Karellen]

No, these are going to be polished releases, so are definitely deserving of the full "4.0" number. You missed the 2 Alphas, that was a while ago. This is the Beta, which is ready for some slightly more widespread testing, but not guaranteed to be completely stable. The "pre" releases, or release candidates, which should be around next month, should be almost there with only minor bugfixes in place.

All they mean is that KDE 4.0 will not have all the features that later releases of KDE 4 will have.

The point is that this is *not* commercial software, where version x.0 contains all the features you're ever going to get, and x.1, x.2, etc... just contain bug fixes and possibly a bit more shiny clip-art. I don't know if "release early, release often" can be applied to a project that's been 2 years in the making already, but if they waited until they'd written everything they could possibly think of into KDE4 before they released it, they'd probably *never* release it!

Yes, they've got a whole load more interesting ideas that will get added to future KDE 4 releases. New minor versions will have cool new functionality. They just haven't had time to do it all at once.

KDE 3.5 has a hell of a lot more stuff that KDE 3.0. But I'm glad they released KDE 3.0 in April 2002 instead of waiting until November 2005 to push it all out at once.

Re:KDE4 != KDE 4.0

[Shadowlore]

Yet the download link on the KDE page calls it "KDE 4.0 beta"

Re:KDE4 != KDE 4.0

[ljaguar]

are you absolutely sure there was such a thing as core 2 solo?

Re:KDE4 != KDE 4.0

[Indecision Bob]

The operative word being "sell"...

Re:KDE4 != KDE 4.0

[Anonymous Coward]

This is exactly the problem with Linux. Finish something before you release it, for God's sake. The openSuSE KDE 4 Live CD is fucking horrible. Almost nothing works. It is an alpha release, but who even wants to see it when it's this fooked? (Me of course...but anyway)

Re:KDE4 != KDE 4.0

[Propaganda13]

AFAIK, Core 2 Solo was originally thought to be the step between between Core Solo and Core 2 Duo for desktop processors, but I don't believe Intel made these. Next month, Intel is supposed to be releasing ULV processors U2100 and U2200 which are supposed to be Core 2 Solo processors.

Re:KDE4 != KDE 4.0

[El Icaro]

How about KDE Home Basic? Then Home Premium... then Business Basic...

A tried and true system that makes sense to everyone!

Re:KDE4 != KDE 4.0

[AvitarX]

Or it could be said to be like OSX where 10.x chanfges are major, but the underpinnings are similar.

Re:KDE4 != KDE 4.0

[RobertLTux]

okay given the habit of linux folks to do releases with NN.MM.OOOO* it would figure that KDE 4 is a series not a single product (way too few digits in that number)
and yes i would expect that KDE 4.45.76fred would have more features than KDE 4.0

Big Question ADAM when is KDE 4 going to make it into Mandriva 2007.1 backports??

Re:KDE4 != KDE 4.0

[mrmeval]

I'd be happy if they'd fix the problems with libart that crash Konqueror in the current KDE.

Re:KDE4 != KDE 4.0

[Kjella]

No, these are going to be polished releases, so are definitely deserving of the full "4.0" number. You missed the 2 Alphas, that was a while ago. This is the Beta, which is ready for some slightly more widespread testing, but not guaranteed to be completely stable. The "pre" releases, or release candidates, which should be around next month, should be almost there with only minor bugfixes in place.

We'll see - Qt 4.0 wasn't exactly a good example to follow, it was really buggy at first. They've rewritten a lot for KDE4 - it's the big "break what you've been waiting to break" release, and I wouldn't exactly put it on a corporations desktop, to put it that way. But, to make an omelet you got to break some eggs, and most people won't use it until it's a proper release. I think it's going to be a really great desktop, so around 4.1...

Re:KDE4 != KDE 4.0

[aichpvee]

Being able to ditch the Qt3.5/Qt4 dual install is a good enough reason to bump the version number as far as I'm concerned. I just hope we're not waiting two years to see some of the really cool stuff they have planned.

Re:KDE4 != KDE 4.0

[niiler]

Right, and that is why on their announcements page it is called KDE 4.0 Beta 1. Those of us who have been following the alphas are well aware of the build process. The developers have been very up front with everything: what's included now, what's in the roadmap, etc.

• Visual Guide to 4.0 alpha-1
• KDE 4.0 alpha-2 announcement
• KDE 4.0 beta-1 announcement

Many of us in the open source community have expected that beta releases are damn-near finished. The KDE developers are using the terms alpha and beta much more conservatively.

Re:KDE4 != KDE 4.0

[noewun]

Would you prefer it if we call this one Expanded KDE, and the 4.1 release Extended KDE?

KDE Super Professional Home Edition Supreme Service Pack Sqrt(-1) will do nicely.

Re:KDE4 != KDE 4.0

[macro187]

Because you're a whinging cunt and you talk too much.

Re:KDE4 != KDE 4.0

[WinchesterPC.Com]

We'll call the first alpha release the Millennium edition

Re:KDE4 != KDE 4.0

[Library Spoff]

Are they the same guys who gave us DVD-R discs with RW on the packaging?
oh it's a rewritable disc, err no - but you can read it AND write to it...

Re:KDE4 != KDE 4.0

[makomk]

The thing is that, as several people have pointed out, KDE 4.0 will not be a complete, finished version of KDE4 - some features and programs have been delayed to KDE 4.1, including a lot of the development-related software that was in KDE3.

Re:KDE4 != KDE 4.0

[silent_artichoke]

Add the words "Ultimate" and "Mecha-Zord" and you have the kick-assiest Power Ranger ever!! I hate myself...

Re:KDE4 != KDE 4.0

[Keeper Of Keys]

The problem with all computer software is that it's *never* finished. Microsoft has the exact attitue you just expressed. They can't afford to do incremental releases, of course, because they have to offer enough goodies in one hit to get paid. And of course after 5 years in development Vista still has major functionality holes (IME multi-monitor support is abominable; far worse than XP's; networking is ropey). OSS on the other hand can drip feed us a continuous stream of 'good enough' releases.

Anyways, I can't believe you're complaining about the quality of an *alpha* release. I hope you're submitting bug reports, rather than just bitching about it on /.

Re:KDE4 != KDE 4.0

[Anonymous Coward]

Man, that is double-plus ungood!

Re:KDE4 != KDE 4.0

[MightyMartian]

I was hoping for the moderator to respond, not the guy standing in the corner trying to suck his own dick.

Re:KDE4 != KDE 4.0

[Trogre]

I don't know, that sounds a bit complex.

ambitious

[SolusSD]

The KDE project is *very* ambitious, especially the feature set for KDE4. Hopefully this turns some heads over in the gnome camp. IMHO they have a LOT of catching up to do in everything from infrustructure to performance.

Re:ambitious

[Anonymous Coward]

Who needs to catch up... KDE or Gnome?

Re:ambitious

[SolusSD]

obviously you don't use open source software as you've shown a complete misunderstanding of how the development process works.. also-- KDE 4.0 is in beta, most of the *ambitious* features HAVE been implemented... msfanboi? is that you?

Re:ambitious

[SolusSD]

Who needs to catch up... KDE or Gnome?

sorry, i was suggesting Gnome needs to catch up.

Re:ambitious

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't know what you're talking about.

Re:ambitious

[moosesocks]

Really?

I sort of thought that Gnome was beginning to edge KDE out after a few years of KDE being somewhat superior.

Right now, Gnome is lean, mature, and stable, even on relatively old hardware. As an added bonus, Gnome's GUI is clean and consistent compared to KDE's (not to mention that they've resisted the temptation to add 80 million configuration options to the menus and toolbars of every single one of their apps).

My other usability pet peeve with KDE is its heavy reliance on toolbars with dozens of nondescript blue icons. Even for experienced users, it's a bit daunting.

If you really want to take the minimalism to the next level, try out XFCE. It's more or less a very lightweight Gnome (sort of analogous to the early versions of Firefox versus SeaMonkey) that also uses GTK2. It's incredibly snappy even on old hardware, and the UI is fantastic (and pretty good-looking if I might add). I'd compare the UI to a vastly improved Windows 95 (or 2000), with a few mac-like touches thrown in. It does everything I need it to, reacts in ways that you'd expect it to, and just plain works.

The other guy in my cubible has a brand-new PC with Vista on it, and comments on how much faster my 6-year old PC appears than his.

Re:ambitious

[Kjella]

First they have to deliver on those promises though, in any case I've always felt that KDE has a bit broader scope than Gnome. Maybe it's just perception but I get the impression KDE is trying to be so much more than a GUI library, a honking big framework for all sorts of backend stuff. Almost so that every KDE program interfaces with KDElibs, KDElibs interfaces with everything else. It doesn't really make any extra cool features, but I think it will win out in the end for consistncy, interoperability and better cross-application settings.

Re:ambitious

[MemoryDragon]

I have yet to meet a single person who really likes the user interface of Gnome, sorry, but it is like that, everyone I know switches to kde as soon as ubuntu is installed. Anyway, as for lean, kde has done a lot of improvement in the past, compare both desktops and kde feels snappy why gnome, while not being the useless bloated pig it used to be feels still sluggish compared to it. As for the rest, the kparts, kobject infrastructure is consistent, well defined one of the cleanest apis I have seen. Gnome started as a Win32 wannabe project, and it still suffers from that syndrome, it has become better, but still. As for the usability, kde is improving, it still has some areas to catch up, but fortunately it does not follow gnomes approach of taking everything away, but trying to get to saner defaults, and then let the users decide what to add. Even the move to a new file manager in kde4 is not the ultimat we shove it down the users throat thing, lots of users are very happy with the flexibility of konquerer, and it still will be there.

Re:ambitious

[Anonymous Coward]

The KDE project is *very* ambitious, especially the feature set for KDE4. Hopefully this turns some heads over in the gnome camp. IMHO they have a LOT of catching up to do in everything from infrustructure to performance. Gnome has to make a clear statement that "Mono" or "Silverlight" (whatever its port is called) will NEVER be part of it. It won't be required by ANY of system components and it won't do anything as "If you get Silverlight, your desktop will be prettier".

It is not about performance, it is about a person in development team doing everything to be called trojan of Microsoft in OSS community.

He also happens to be founder so.. that is the problem.

Re:ambitious

[eldepeche]

u cant spel

Re:ambitious

[__aaltii7299]

I've been using Kubuntu (used to be a SUSE man) and Dolphin for a month now and it makes life a hell of a lot easier. If you want to convert someone from Windows, put in the KDE XP theme and KBFX, and then show them Dolphin, Krita (fuck Gimp), Liferea, Amarok, and Pan. Setup the Media folder as your default in Dolphin and it is basically My Computer. You'll have to put the Home folder and Trash folder on the desktop for them as well (I hate that Ubuntu puts the trash icon on the taskbar, or that it can't do something as simple as mount a second hard drive without editing fstabs).

If you want people to be comfortable using Linux, then never ever fucking mention "su", "make", "command line", "fstab" or "config file". Everytime someone mentioned to me that if I wanted a certain application or driver I'd have to compile it myself, I immediately deleted that flavor of Linux from that lab computer and installed Windows. I started doing this back with Red Hat 7, and seeing as I am never planning on migrating from Windows, I have the luxury of experimenting with Linux. I will not compile anything. Ever. Nor will I edit config files of any stripe. It doesn not matter that I know how to do this, i should not have to. And if I have to do that then you are not ready.

I'm not interested in spending ten hours configuring an operating system for every one hour of usability. And Gimp guys I will not use a shitty interface just because you feel that it is "intuitive".

Re:ambitious

[cheater512]

For productivity, I'll stick with KDE.

Re:ambitious

[dyefade]

have yet to meet a single person who really likes the user interface of Gnome

I like it. Didn't read the rest of your post as the writing style and lack of formatting really grates.

Re:ambitious

[JackieBrown]

You need a different distro if it takes 10 hours to config it for you.

I installed windows the other day (trying to fill up my hard disk.) I had to reboot after installing the drivers for internet, then my display card, then my harddrive (no my fucking sata harddrive is not a removable device,) and even my usb ports. Then after the 4th reboot for updating windows I gave up and booted back to linux and free up that space again.

Now, if I wasn't used to the "Linux" way, the windows way would have seemed normal and I probably would have just clicking reboot until dawn.

So after all is said and done I guess I am like you as far as giving a strange OS a shot. But unlike you, I cannot (legally) just try different versions of windows until I find the perfect fit.

Re:ambitious

[Anonymous Coward]

Gnome's performance is fine. On the other hand, its performance is crap on nvidia cards right now -- something to do with the nvidia proprietary drivers. Try switching to the nv driver for a while and you'll see what I mean.

Re:ambitious

[diegocgteleline.es]

Who needs to catch up... KDE or Gnome?

Both.

Re:ambitious

[lilomar]

Seconded.

Gnome just feels cleaner than KDE to me.

Re:ambitious

[Anonymous Coward]

You have no idea what you're talking about. KDElibs is released under the LGPL, exactly the same as GTK; the only difference is that if you want to write closed-source software with it, you have to buy a (gasp!) commercial Qt license.

And then you go on a rant about changing font size. Gee, you mean just like KDE has been able to do for the past half a decade or so, in KControl -> Appearance & Themes -> Fonts? Sorry, that entire paragraph of yours is a baseless accusation.

As for KDE's preferences system, it works just fine. I personally prefer to see my preferences in a well-organised dialog, than having to hunt around in GConf for basic settings (such as, say, changing the 'battery low' warning to come up based on battery charge rather than the 'time left' estimation. Or setting Nautilus to not use the horrible 'spatial' mode which is now the default) because, goodness forbid, they'd 'confuse' the user. There are unfortunately some dialogs which are a horrible mess (KDE3's Konsole, for example), but they are being fixed (KDE4's Konsole).

Re:ambitious

[MemoryDragon]

Sorry for the formatting, I forgot to change from html to text formatting.

Anyway, to what I wanted to say. Gnome between 1 and 2 took a steep dive to the worse.
The main problem I have with gnome is simply twofold.

The project started as a Win32 wannabe (typical Icszaza Project) and you still can see that left and right. The apis are 10 times harder to utilize and feel more like hodge podge as Windows does.
The concepts in 1.0 were windows alike, in 2.0 they started to move towards MacOS8 usabilitywise, but didnt make it, it actually felt way worse.

The approach the gnome project follows, if a user cannot understand something, then lets remove it without any possibility to get it back is simply wrong. Torvalds called this approach User Interface nazis.

Ok the mileage may vary, but I personally feel locked in if I use gnome, and many people, whom I know do the same, solution kick gnome switch to kde. While KDE is not perfect, they are in a way better direction from a long term usability standpoint. They are somewhat hodge podge in the user interface, but, they are in the long term process of cleaning everything up without reducing the functionalities loved by so many users.

Here is an example:
The old configuration view was a mess, they moved to a layered system which gave sane macro settings and then once you klicked onto the macro settings you got into the micro areas (which also were cleaned up) web like. Everthing was cleaned up but yet no functionality was cut down, they even left the option to switch to the old system.

The same happens now with Dolphin and konqueror, Konqueror still is there, but it is not the sane default anymore. I personally would miss konqueror to a huge degree, no other file manager on any system has its flexibility, its own fault simply was you had to learn to use it, because its user interface was not slick. But on the other hand, compared to Finder or Nautilus, Explorer or whatever you name it, the thing really deserved the title file manager.
On the other hand Nautilus while becoming faster took a huge nosedive in its usefulness when being moved from the old 1.0 naultilus (which was not more usable than the windows explorer and dreadfully slow) to the spatial 2.0, without any possibility to fall back at least on the 1.0 user interface!

Btw. besides konqueror I only know one filemanager which comes close to its usefulness, Total Commander on windows, all others fall flat on their faces. But both have the problem, you really have to learn to use them :-)

The same goes down on the API level, the KDE api is one of the cleanest I have ever seen, second to none, everything purely oo, everything purely component oriented highly flexible. Gnome on the other hand started as an approach to build a system on a win32 lookalike which is broken in itself, then they started to clone ole with bonobo, while ole never really was working bonobo also wasnt and it inherited the problems of ole, being way too complicated being not adopted out of exactly those reasons, trying to push corba down as a transport layer. 2-3 years before KDE kicked corba out of usability and performance reasons, well gnome repeated history, they than finally took the concepts kde implemented pushed it down on freedesktop and let kde reimplement them again so that both communication object layers become somewhat compatible, see the entire problem.

Anyway kudos to the KDE people for their hard work, they really push technology forward!

Re:ambitious

[CarpetShark]

Liferea? Over Akregator? That's no way to convert people.

Re:ambitious

[Anonymous Coward]

I like it. Didn't read the rest of your post as the writing style and lack of formatting really grates

Translation: "I have my opinion. No matter how well-founded yours is, no matter what evidence you may wish to present, I refuse to pay attention because of writing style and lack of formatting."

Typical GNOME: form before function.

Now, I agree that making that presentation is important, but it is secondary. Would you rather read:

1. a very nicely formatted document that conveys no information
2. a poorly formatted document that says something useful or interesting

Me, I'd prefer something that isn't a waste of time.

Oh, wait... I'm posting on Slashdot.

Re:ambitious

[MBGMorden]

Hi, I'm Mike, and I really like Gnome's interface. It's less cluttered, cleaner, and more responsive than KDE IMHO. At least as of about 2-3 years ago - once upon a time I would have never switched to Gnome from KDE. I actually remember feeling a distinct sadness was back in the day when some company (can't remember which - maybe Redhat) announced that Gnome was the "official" desktop environment of Linux (don't know how anyone has such power, or realistically how such a thing as an "official" Linux desktop could even exist, but I remember the announcement). Thought they were off their rockers, but over time Gnome has gotten better and better and KDE just hasn't made the same progress for me (not saying it's made NO progress, just that it hasn't been as significant, and hasn't been in the right areas).

Re:ambitious

[jlowe]

The gnome-kde debate is of no real importance; people use what they prefer. But I did want to address a few points that I feel you are not completely accurate on.

The project started as a Win32 wannabe (typical Icszaza Project) and you still can see that left and right. The apis are 10 times harder to utilize and feel more like hodge podge as Windows does.

Everything starts somewhere, gnome not being an exception to that. But I believe kde's interface started much much more as a windows look-a-like. I don't know that I can swallow the idea that the underlying api's of gnome were designed to reflect windows.

The approach the gnome project follows, if a user cannot understand something, then lets remove it without any possibility to get it back is simply wrong. Torvalds called this approach User Interface nazis. Ok the mileage may vary, but I personally feel locked in if I use gnome, and many people, whom I know do the same, solution kick gnome switch to kde.

I think this is a matter of opinion. I prefer the cleaner interface and do not feel locked in. For others, they hate it. But this is opinion only and does not really further the argument of kde's superiority.

While KDE is not perfect, they are in a way better direction from a long term usability standpoint. They are somewhat hodge podge in the user interface, but, they are in the long term process of cleaning everything up without reducing the functionalities loved by so many users.

I think it's great that kde developers are spending some time rethinking the UI. I find that to be a huge flaw for me (but again, merely opinion).

The same happens now with Dolphin and konqueror, Konqueror still is there, but it is not the sane default anymore. I personally would miss konqueror to a huge degree, no other file manager on any system has its flexibility, its own fault simply was you had to learn to use it, because its user interface was not slick. But on the other hand, compared to Finder or Nautilus, Explorer or whatever you name it, the thing really deserved the title file manager.
On the other hand Nautilus while becoming faster took a huge nosedive in its usefulness when being moved from the old 1.0 naultilus (which was not more usable than the windows explorer and dreadfully slow) to the spatial 2.0, without any possibility to fall back at least on the 1.0 user interface!

I am excited about Dolphin; I would argue that kde is recognizing that there is some benefit from a slimmed down application. It looks similar to xfce's Thunar, which I think is the best file manager currently. Although konqueror is amazing, it is a little too "be all, end all" for me.

Just so you know, there is an ability to run nautilus with the old interface "nautilus --no-desktop --browser" from the command line. So, you can update the Nautilus entry in a menu to reflect that line. Just wanted to clarify on that.

The same goes down on the API level, the KDE api is one of the cleanest I have ever seen, second to none, everything purely oo, everything purely component oriented highly flexible.

Agreed.

Re:ambitious

[MemoryDragon]

Just so you know, there is an ability to run nautilus with the old interface "nautilus --no-desktop --browser" from the command line. So, you can update the Nautilus entry in a menu to reflect that line. Just wanted to clarify on that. Actually that does not really solve the issues which I had with the trimming down of nautilus, nautilus lost its splitting and tabbing capabilities between version 1 and 2, which is basically the most useful feature I think a filemanager who has to do serious work can do. I havent had a look at it in a long time, but I think it had bookmarking as well and it also was removed.

The main problem I have with this is, that those three functions are the main reasons why I use windows commander and why I use konqueror (well add to that the easy protocol handling into ssh, ftp, etc... you name it as vfs)

Re:ambitious

[Anonymous Coward]

I realise you're talking about Qt, but KDElibs (which contains the GUI toolkit KDE 'really' uses, which is basicallty an extended Qt) is LGPL and doesn't 'discriminate against developers who can't use the GPL'. It can be used with most open-source licenses, not just the GPL; the problem is when the program is closed-source. So at best it could be said to 'discriminate against closed-source developers'. Of course, developing with just plain Qt does act as you described, requiring the program to use GPLv2. You see this a as a hindrance, but I find it furthers my agenda, so each to their own.

As for your description of changing font size, I have no idea how the behaviour you mentioned is even possible. In KControl (you are using KControl, not some distro-specific configuration tool?) the 'Apply' and 'Reset' buttons are setup in such a way that they won't be hidden regardless of what size the window is made (the exception being if it goes out of the screen). No matter how much I try, the apply button is still quite visible when the fonts are changed and I don't have to resize the window; I simply can't replicate the behaviour you describe.

As for how Qt functions... I think you misunderstand. The default behvaiour in Designer is to set things on fixed positions, true; that's because it's faster and easier for small dialog-based RAD apps. There is one slight problem, though; a window designed like this simply can't be resized (if you try, your widgets will just remain at their fixed-place positions). So everything outside of s single small dialog app (and even most of those...) does, in fact, use containers just as you described. I have never, ever seen an overlapping button or cut-off label in a KDE application. And for the record, I find GTK far from 'doing it for you' when it comes to using containers; it is at least just as difficult as it is to do in Qt, and in my personal opinion and experience, moreso.

And yes, very reliigous :-)

Re:ambitious

[Anonymous Coward]

The one that doesn't make my eyes bleed, please.

Re:ambitious

[drew]

I won't argue that KDE is definitely a very impressive project from a technical standpoint. If they could make it at all attractive, I might even use it. I will admit that the steady removal of interface options from Gnome has been a bit irritating, but overall, I don't think that it's any worse than KDE, which suffers the opposite problem of having a million plus one configuration options, 3/4ths of which don't actually affect anything obvious.

As for Gnome starting life as a Windows wanna be, I take it you've never used any of the previous versions of KDE?

KDE Four Live CD

[dotpavan]

For those who dont want to install and test, here is an OpenSuse based KDE Live CD

Re:KDE Four Live CD

[Spudtrooper]

I'll wait until it's been integrated with Kubuntu 12.04 (Octagonal Ocelot), thankyouverymuch.

Re:KDE Four Live CD

[derrida]

And for those who are too bored to burn cds, here are some screenshots:
http://img254.imageshack.us/my.php?image=capture31 ws4.png
http://img254.imageshack.us/my.php?image=capture35 ez0.png
http://img254.imageshack.us/my.php?image=capture32 hf5.png
http://img294.imageshack.us/my.php?image=capture30 pf3.png
http://img295.imageshack.us/my.php?image=capture36 pu6.png
http://img261.imageshack.us/my.php?image=capture37 fs2.png
http://img261.imageshack.us/my.php?image=capture38 ga0.png
http://img403.imageshack.us/my.php?image=capture25 ei7.png
http://img504.imageshack.us/my.php?image=capture29 np8.png
http://img504.imageshack.us/my.php?image=capture26 hd6.png
http://img504.imageshack.us/my.php?image=capture33 bs6.png
http://img504.imageshack.us/my.php?image=capture34 hz3.png
http://img404.imageshack.us/my.php?image=capture39 tf0.png
http://img521.imageshack.us/my.php?image=capture27 fj0.png
http://img521.imageshack.us/my.php?image=capture28 th6.png
Have fun!

Re:KDE Four Live CD

[Anonymous Coward]

No, it'll be stable by "Lefthand Lubricant" for sure.

Re:KDE Four Live CD

[Com2Kid]

Wow, it almost looks as good as Enlightenment!

I bet it is a lot slower though! :-D

I seriously wish that E17 had more devs on it.

Re:KDE Four Live CD

[Burz]

I know that was just a joke, but KDE4 prereleases are already being made available by the Kubuntu team for 7.04 and 7.10.

Re:KDE Four Live CD

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow! looks a lot like a cross between MacOSX and Vista.

No thanks. I prefer KDE 3.x as-is. Unless I can make it LOOK the same.

Re:KDE Four Live CD

[brunascle]

I prefer KDE 3.x as-is. Unless I can make it LOOK the same.

those screenshots look pretty customized. these ones, which i assume are the default, look much more like KDE3.

Re:KDE Four Live CD

[Anarke_Incarnate]

My gripe, albeit a small one, is that they chose a generic drive (a hard drive, too) to be used as any drive. In this case, the floppy drive is represented by a hard disk drive. That just looks.....amateurish. If it can tell it is an fd device instead of an hd or sd device, they should treat it as such and have a 2nd icon.

Re:KDE Four Live CD

[Anonymous Coward]

This is an early beta. I'm sure that the icons will be more polished by the time the actual release hits the internet. There are certainly different HD and floppy icons for the 3.x branch of KDE.

Re:KDE Four Live CD

[Khashishi]

I was thinking almost the same thing after I saw those screenshots. I thought, wow it's starting to look like Enlightenment.

I can't wait for E17 to be finished.

Re:KDE Four Live CD

[aichpvee]

Also, it's missing most of the icons in the control center which I would have thought the GP would nitpick before something as stupid as the device icons which you shouldn't be seeing anyway since you should be using the command line!

Re:KDE Four Live CD

[The Master Control P]

A lot of those scare me - I need the gradients/contrast to know where one window or button ends and the next begins.

Keramic widgets/style + Desert Red color scheme + Crystal SVG icons + "contrast" bar at 1/3 is what I use.

Re:KDE Four Live CD

[diegocgteleline.es]

E17 doesn't needs "more devs". E17 needs to:

- Release SOMETHING, even if it's incomplete, because if you try to be perfect you won't never have a product. Releasing "incomplete" products allows you to attract people and then have more programming resources. The KDE guys are not going to include some of the promises of KDE 4.0 until 4.1 which means that KDE 4.0 will be incomplete.....AND WHO CARES? E17 did beat Mac OS X and Vista in some fields before Vista was released, but since they don't release anything, now vista and mac os x have released infrastructure to do what E did before them, now E looks like they're catching up, and in some sense it's true.

- Realize that enlightenment only has sense if you aim to be a full desktop, not just a "desktop shell". I like enlightenment, but then those guys say that E17 "will not compete with GNOME or KD"E....so I keep using GNOME/KDE. They aren't so good in the graphic field as E, but since they are the ones that are desktops, it only has sense to improve and support those, not the one that is not aiming to bring good linux desktops to the masses. Technology itself is cool, but if you don't make it have real-world applications then I don't care.

Re:KDE Four Live CD

[Braino420]

Instructions are available here. 3.92.0 is not available as of this moment.

Re:KDE Four Live CD

[caluml]

You know, if you'd slipped a Goatse in the middle of that, there'd be a lot of bleached eyeballs.
Hands up - who just went middle mouse, middle mouse, middle mouse, etc...

Re:KDE Four Live CD

[Com2Kid]

- Release SOMETHING, even if it's incomplete,

E17 has been making regular releases for the last 2 years.

Try it today.

Looks pretty, has all you need to run a desktop Media players, etc.

Re:KDE Four Live CD

[Warbothong]

I am a very eyecandy/look 'n' feel/theming type nut, so I was very interested in E17. The major problem with it, in my opinion, is that it makes so much POSSIBLE, but doesn't actually have enough themes to make use of this possibility at the moment. The main reason for this is that the weird binary formats used by E17 keep changing, and every time new widget-things are added (volume control, battery monitor, etc.) the theme creators are expected to make the graphics for them in their themes (rather than making a wide set of controls like QT or GTK which can be reused again and again for any app). This has put me off making any E17 themes, since the maintainance and reworking involved is ridiculous, and without a theme I like (or me making one) I just don't want to use it.

My favourite WM is actually E16, which I have been using instead of Metacity in GNOME for years. I finally got Compiz-Fusion running on my laptop and I admit it is nice, but I will not be happy until I port some nice E16 themes to it (which I am willing to do because they will still work in a month)

Fuck yeah

[Anonymous Coward]

the file manager in KDE is being separated from Konqueror

This had always pissed me off with KDE. Mixing a file manager with a web browser? Not very UNIX-like.

Now I am a happy nerd.

Re:Fuck yeah

[Just Some Guy]

Mixing a file manager with a web browser? Not very UNIX-like.

I don't know - I thought it was pretty unixy. After all, it had one basic job description: asking one backend to fetch some information from various and sundry sources, then asking another to render it appropriately. It wrapped a whole lot of functionality, but Konqueror itself didn't do much more than pass data from one KPart to another and provide bookmarks.

Re:Fuck yeah

[Com2Kid]

I disagree.

I think that one of the most revolutionary end-user paradigm shifts that Microsoft ever did was to compiler Internet Explorer and Windows Explorer into one.

Think about it. The Internet, a seamless extension of your desktop. Why shift between the two? When broadband first came out, everything clicked into place, and I understood the eloquence of having IE and Explorer as one. Pick a window, type a website, get my data. Hit back. On my hard drive again.

Konqueror accomplishes this to even a greater extent. KDE has horrible UI in so many places, but they got one thing (more or less) right. Konqueror goes out of its way to integrate all the various file management techniques into one.

SFTP, ick, under Windows, have to load up some separate program to manage it.[1] In KDE, nope. It is just an extension of my computer. Not even an extension, except for the latency, it IS my computer. Files and web sites sharing tabs, why not?

I also loved having tabbed file browsing. I (just) missed out on the Dual Pane file manager craze, but tabbed file managers are a good substitute.

KDE sucks in a thousand other small (medium sized, and large) ways. Heck in of itself Konqueror has at least half a dozen UI issues that can be spotted within the first 5 minutes of using it. But do not claim that it is not very "Unix" like.

It is very Unix like. Files are files, a file is a file is a file. Does it really matter where it resides?

[1]Actually 2 commerical programs exist that allow the user to mount SFTP and SCP connections as drives. They still suck compared to FISH though.

Re:Fuck yeah

[somersault]

It's a kind of cool "paradigm-shift", but when IE gets f*cked up by malware, and you end up not being able to view your files properly, it rather bites (not happened to me personally, but has to one of my more, shall we say 'adventurous', as well as computer illiterate users..). So while it's a cool idea, Microsofts implementation sucked.. as usual! Interesting that they have decided to split the 2 apart here, I wonder how much backend stuff they share..

Re:Fuck yeah

[MightyMartian]

I think that one of the most revolutionary end-user paradigm shifts that Microsoft ever did was to compiler Internet Explorer and Windows Explorer into one.

I'd just like to open up the floor to the idea of beating anyone who uses the word "paradigm" and "Microsoft" in the same sentence to death.

On a more serious note, that big "paradigm shift" ended up giving the world one of the most insecure systems in the computer age.

Re:Fuck yeah

[niXcamiC]

Combining functions not very unixy? Obviously you've never heard of emacs....

Re:Fuck yeah

[Anonymous Coward]

The Internet, a seamless extension of your desktop. Why shift between the two?

Hmm.. if that's what you think, then it might as well be your root window. Why have any other windows at all? Why isn't every single application just a widget inside of konqueror?

Re:Fuck yeah

[Ambidisastrous]

Emacs wasn't originally written for Unix.

Treating everything as a file (directories, links, devices, services) is Unixy. Having lots of small programs that each do one thing well is also Unixy. However, for the sake of security, it's better for the operating system to treat the web browser like a kleptomaniac leper. The local machine is a safe environment, and the web is not, so it's generally bad if there's no clear (visible) distinction between safe and unsafe places for the user to be.

On the other hand, the browser feels like a very natural environment now, so it also makes sense to let users "browse" the local machine the same way. You can put anything in an emacs buffer, so sure, make it possible to put anything into a browser tab. But I think it's weird to put everything in the browser by default.

(Yes, I use Xfce and Vim.)

Re:Fuck yeah

[Bertie]

And then KDE did it properly. As is so often the case with Microsoft, it was all about adding features without really giving that much thought to their implementation. Just because they did it badly doesn't mean it was a bad idea.

Re:Fuck yeah

[TALlama]

I used to think that this was a natural way to do things; "I have this window open already, why didn't it just put my webpage inside it? Or this text file? Or this PDF?" This is an idea I pined for back in the Mac OS 8-9 days. Instead, I just taught myself to hold down Option as I opened things, which would close the Finder window as the open happened.

Then I used KDE and it does this. "Neat!" says I, "It reduced window clutter and makes everything simpler!" This was all well and good for a few minutes, then I realized where this idea goes horribly off the tracks: I don't want it to reuse windows, because a window is customized to its contents: its size and location matter: I want my web browser to be tall and skinny, my files to be short and squat, and single-task items to be tiny (if they're simple and only open for a short time) or huge (if there's lots of sub-views). I spent the next few minutes finding out how to turn this feature off.

Re:Fuck yeah

[Com2Kid]

Hey, wait, that is a great idea! Lets call the Widgets applications, and rename Konqueror->"The Desktop" and... ah, damnit. Back to square 1. :-D

(1)

[Anonymous Coward]

n/t

Dolphin

[gardyloo]

It's a pretty nice file manager. I've used it for about a year, and tended to prefer it over Konqueror, at least until I found Krusader. But it's not as though Konqueror will lose its capabilities to be a file manager; it just won't be the default choice in KDE 4.0.

Re:Dolphin

[HappySmileMan]

It's a pretty nice file manager. I've used it for about a year, and tended to prefer it over Konqueror, at least until I found Krusader. But it's not as though Konqueror will lose its capabilities to be a file manager; it just won't be the default choice in KDE 4.0. Actually I think they are planning to remove the file manager capabilities if I understand correctly, maybe not, but I thought I heard it said that konqueror would be faster if they removed the file manager, not sure, maybe I heard form an unreliable source?

Re:Dolphin

[PeterBrett]

It's a pretty nice file manager. I've used it for about a year, and tended to prefer it over Konqueror, at least until I found Krusader. But it's not as though Konqueror will lose its capabilities to be a file manager; it just won't be the default choice in KDE 4.0. Actually I think they are planning to remove the file manager capabilities if I understand correctly, maybe not, but I thought I heard it said that konqueror would be faster if they removed the file manager, not sure, maybe I heard form an unreliable source?

You misunderstand. The file manager capabilities in Konqueror aren't going away: it would be vandalism to do that!

I personally hate Dolphin: it's too GNOME-ey and dumbed down. I like the fact that I use Konqueror for everything from ripping CDs (audiocd:/) through managing my files and browsing the internet to reading documentation (man:/ and info:/).

Re:Dolphin

[Anonymous Coward]

As far as I've heard the file manager will still be there, but not the default. The file manager is a plug in component, not a part of konquerer itself - same as konquerer's ability to do sftp, show pdfs and other things.

Re:Dolphin

[PenGun]

You need a thing to rip CDs?

cdparanoia -B

  Open terminal rxvt hopefully and type cdpa hit TAB and add the -B

  Oh I hate stupid GUIs. Smart ones I have some time for.

Re:Dolphin

[Anonymous Coward]

then return to your featureless desktop GENOME
burn a DVD must be a simple operation not an haxor skill
k3b forever

Re:Dolphin

[PeterBrett]

Oh I hate stupid GUIs. Smart ones I have some time for.

Because browsing to audiocd:/ and dragging the contents of the "MP3" virtual directory to your ~/Music is such a stupid GUI. You really have no clue about the power of ioslaves, do you?

Re:Dolphin

[DeepHurtn!]

Phew! I loves me my Konq web/file browsing power too! Glad to hear we're just getting more choice.

Re:Dolphin

[X0563511]

I love konqueror too, but I hate how it mangles a lot of web pages. Slashdot in particular looks like shit (misrenders)

I'm not sure if its the web pages, or KHTML at fault, but I wish it would be fixed. I'm fairly certain it's the web pages, as a lot of pages look perfect.

Re:Dolphin

[hotfireball]

Yeah, Dolphin looks nice. A good copy of Mac's Finder... :-)

Re:Dolphin

[GenP]

Give me real filesystem extensions that work in *all* applications, not just KDE apps.

Re:Dolphin

[PenGun]

I have no idea what you are talking about. Whats a audiocd:/. What does mp3 have to do with it? Why should I care about KDE's ioslave deal?

  I just rip CDs once in a while. Boy it's a hive of KDEness in here.

  If you have a rational file system most of your problems with your data of various kinds goes away. I have a tunes directory on a big drive and it's aliased in mc. I can hit Ctrl \ and be there almost instantly. F7 asks for a dir name, I type in the CD name. Step into it. Ctrl o gives me a console, cdparanoia -B rips the CD.

  It takes a very few seconds. Everything in tunes is displayed in my browser on a php page that uses mpd. Mpd plays any damn thing you got libs for and clicking update brings the new dir online.

  It works for me. I only have a few very old mp3s I can't replace, everything else is flac or wav. I have sensitive ears and a nice stereo.

Re:Dolphin

[Enahs]

Basically all an ioslave: is is a virtual filesystem. For example, the audiocd ioslave generally allows for straight CDDB (iirc, don't have Konq and friends installed on this machine), Wav, Ogg Vorbis, and MP3. Navigate to the proper directory, and with a bit of luck, the subsystem has automatically retrieved the FreeDB information and named virtual "files" for you. Select those files, drag them to the location you want them, and you are, in theory, done.

Personally I like a bit more control, which is why I use abcde.

Re:Dolphin

[Creepy Crawler]

Get Reiser out of the slammer!

Then you'll have an extensibleFS.

Re:Dolphin

[robin.com.au]

In detailed view, why doesn't dolphin have a way to sort by type? Isn't it neater that way?

Why does konqueror have a way to do it, but when I want to jump to a file named 'color.gif', I type on the keyboard, say 'col', and it jumps to files with the file type starting with 'col' instead of the name. Isn't it more useful, if it always matches the name rather than anything else? Imagine if I sort by modified or permissions instead. These little things kinda annoys me.

Think about how 'thunar' or 'nautilus' works. Makes more sense I think.

Anyway, can't wait for stable KDE4.

Re:Dolphin

[PeterBrett]

I love konqueror too, but I hate how it mangles a lot of web pages. Slashdot in particular looks like shit (misrenders)

Works For Me (tm).

The reason it "mangles" webpages is because, unlike many browsers, it's actually standards-compliant. It passes ACID2 completely. Ergo, the problem is that the webpages suck, not that Konqueror is broken.

There are some known issues with Javascript, of course. *rolls eyes* But Slashdot works almost perfectly in Konqueror on my system (KDE 3.5.7).

Of course, once Webkit is fully merged back into KHTML, Konqueror will be using the same HTML rendering engine as every OS X box out there, which will considerably increase the extent of website support!

Re:Dolphin

[JesseMcDonald]

Give me real filesystem extensions that work in *all* applications, not just KDE apps.

There's a KIO-FUSE module that does exactly that. It allows you to mount the KDE ioslave hierarchy on a local directory, where it becomes accessible to non-KDE applications.

Minor clarification

[MaelstromX]

I was told in the KDE channel on Freenode that Dolphin will be an alternative (and default) file browser, but that Konqueror will still retain that functionality. Nitpicking the submission, but I thought it was worth pointing out.

Re:Minor clarification

[Saeger]

Good - because the last time I tried dolphin it didn't support tabs, and it pooped little ".dolphin" files into every single dir you viewed to keep the view state. konqueror++

Re:Minor clarification

[Hooded One]

They fixed dolphin so it uses the more standard .directory (or whatever) files instead of .dolphin, and there is a pref to use the same view settings for all folders, after which it won't make any new files.

I'll switch...

[HotBBQ]

to KDE from Gnome if the default media player can play DVD videos with menu support. A browser plugin that allows me to seek streaming movies would be great too. Stupid Totem + gstreamer.

Re:I'll switch...

[Tyr_7BE]

Yeah totem+gstreamer is lame. It's getting better, but VERY VERY VERY slowly. Just remove totem-gstreamer and install totem-xine with the proper dvd decryption libraries and you'll be good to go. Totem's a _decent_ player once you do that. I still go for VLC, though, if only for its ability to handle subtitle files.

Re:I'll switch...

[Anonymous Coward]

SimplyMepis. Try the LiveCD.

Re:I'll switch...

[Anonymous Coward]

to KDE from Gnome if the default media player can play DVD videos with menu support. Kaffeine using the Xine engine has menu support for DVDs. As a bonus you can load external subtitles for a DVD (ie. a real DVD and download a .srt file for the desired language). At least 0.8.4 can do that. Couldn't find any other player that would let me do that. Not even VLC when I tried.

Re:I'll switch...

[Just Some Guy]

to KDE from Gnome if the default media player can play DVD videos with menu support.

For the record, you know you can run software from either environment on the other, right? Switch to KDE and use your favorite Gnome DVD player, or stay where you are and start using Kaffeine. You'll miss a little bit of integration slickness by mixing and matching, but they'll still run well.

Re:I'll switch...

[neminem]

Amusingly enough, I just switched back from Mepis yesterday. I'd tried Ubuntu a couple years ago, but it didn't work very well on my laptop. The only distro that I found played reasonably nicely at the time was Mepis, plus I like KDE way better than Gnome. Well, Ubuntu works way better now than it did back then - I just swapped Mepis out in favor of Kubuntu. Ironically, Kubuntu figured out a few things automatically that even Mepis didn't, like that I have extra buttons on my keyboard.

Mepis was decent, but Kubuntu is (now) better.

Re:I'll switch...

[catscan2000]

Well, you're in luck, because Kaffeine can do exactly that. When combined with w32codecs, you can play just about anything. It's very nifty, and I'm very satisfied with it.

I'm using openSUSE 10.2, and I had to recompile Kaffeine and install DeCSS to watch encrypted DVDs. Unfortunately, Novell compiles Kaffeine and libxine with encrypted DVD support disabled by default, but it's straightforward to recompile it using rpmbuild to include DVD support. 3rd party repositories out there, such as PackMan, also have precompiled Kaffeine packages available if you don't want to recompile Kaffeine and libxine.

Re:I'll switch...

[managementboy]

recompile Kaffeine to use encrypted CDs? Not necesary... there are many repositories that provide rpms that do this for you.

Re:I'll switch...

[FooBarWidget]

News at eleven! You can use any of KDE's media players inside GNOME! Ain't Linux great?

Re:I'll switch...

[catscan2000]

True, but it depends on how much you trust those 3rd party repositories. I presently don't trust PackMan and the others, but I do trust Novell, KDE, and the authors of Kaffeine. I don't have any specific reason to not trust the 3rd party repositories, but I also don't have any reason or relationship in place to trust them. It's mostly about how much trust and risk each person is willing to have.

Re:I'll switch...

[Anonymous Coward]

re read the last part of his post. he said there are 3rd party repos out there that have it. he also named one too.

Re:I'll switch...

[pherthyl]

It probably won't be the default, but try Codeine. It's an amazingly simple video player, can handle DVDs just fine, and has one button, yet does everything you need from a video player 99% of the time (VLC for the other 1%).

Cool!

[3p1ph4ny]

I don't really have anything to say other than KDE kicks ass, and it's great to see active development. It's certainly the most mature WM out there (IMO, of course), and it's cool that they're even planning to add some of the UI toys that the beryl/compcomm/compiz people have too =)

Question from huge fan

[Wylfing]

I am a huge fan of KDE, so please do not consider this a troll, flamebait, etc. I appreciate all of the componentization of KDE4, and frankly KDE3 does some things that are remarkable, like the way it handles file access to FTP volumes. But what I want to know is this: Why does it seem like the KDE screen widgets are "flimsy"? For some reason, everything seems thin and breakable. This seems to have perpetuated into KDE4. Am I the only one that notices this?

Re:Question from huge fan

[webax]

My belief after working on KDE based applications in QT for some time that the "flimsy" aspect you describe is the fault of the underlying language of QT from Trolltech, especially QT4 and its continuous state of development even after being in "release" status for nearly two years now.

Some graphical things are very difficult to implement and get broken too easily imo between even minor releases of QT.

But again, I'm a huge fan, and I'm not going to stop programming in QT ;) There are just a lot of challenges that I can understand from the development standpoint the difficulties KDE developers are facing and believe that the ongoing QT4 development is the biggest factor that keeps pushing KDE4 deadlines back.

Re:Question from huge fan

[Anonymous Coward]

Until KDE4 4.2 is out consider all the KDE graphics to be a placeholder. They are building walls now -
decoration will be started later.

Re:Question from huge fan

[Tack]

Why does it seem like the KDE screen widgets are "flimsy"? For some reason, everything seems thin and breakable. This seems to have perpetuated into KDE4. Am I the only one that notices this?

It's not just you. I've felt this since the beginning as well. It's an interesting perception. KDE is clearly quite powerful and flexible, and I've certainly not experienced any significant instability (not at least relative to other software), but yet I definitely do get the impression that it is toyish. I can't quite put my finger on where the sense comes from.

Re:Question from huge fan

[Anonymous Coward]

It's because they don't double-buffer everything, so you see a lot of partially complete widgets redrawing themselves piece by piece. With double buffering the whole widget would be drawn offscreen then instantly updated onscreen when complete.

Re:Question from huge fan

[Anonymous Coward]

Why does it seem like the KDE screen widgets are "flimsy"? For some reason, everything seems thin and breakable. This seems to have perpetuated into KDE4. Am I the only one that notices this?

No, you are not. Still, the default icon set is fine with me. I don't like it, but that's a matter of taste. What I would love is a richer set of themes and icons included in the default install. To pick from during the many installs I polished for Windows users that finally decided to give Linux/KDE a go. A list to select from until they seem to see something they like, something they think is beautiful enough to try to understand, to work with. Good artists are difficult to find, and at the same time, good artwork is as important as good code. If you want to convince potential users.

Re:Question from huge fan

[Fallingcow]

I'm glad I'm not the only one.

It's the main reason that I've stayed away from KDE. That, and the braindead menus, and the fact that I've never seen a theme for it that wasn't fugly, and its tendency to re-invent the wheel and/or put 500 functions in one app when I'd rather have 5 apps with 100 functions... OK, so the weird "feel" maybe isn't the main reason, but it is a reason.

It feels a bit like Enlightenment, in a way that I can't really describe. Also kind of like the QNX Neutrino GUI, oddly enough, though the two look nothing alike. I was bothered by the same odd feeling when using those, too (of the three, though, Neutrino seemed the least odd in this way)

Gnome and XFCE just feel more "solid", if that makes any sense.

Re:Question from huge fan

[Anonymous Coward]

But what I want to know is this: Why does it seem like the KDE screen widgets are "flimsy"? For some reason, everything seems thin and breakable. This seems to have perpetuated into KDE4. Am I the only one that notices this?

It's not you and it's not KDE; it's the monitor. They're cutting corners and scrimping on everything these days, including making the monitor glass thinner -- which, naturally, makes your KDE icons appear thin and breakable ...

Re:Question from huge fan

[AndyCR]

I get the same exact feeling! It feels a little like "this is odd, I know these programs accomplish useful tasks, but it feels as if it's a big toy, like it isn't actually doing anything..." If I had to describe it, I would say the programs felt like web pages.

Re:Question from huge fan

[TeacherOfHeroes]

I think that it has something to do with their use of gradients, although I can't put my finger on it either. The edges of widgets also seem to grate with me a little bit.

I've tried to introduce myself to KDE several times over the past year (it seems nice, really). I want to like it, I want to be able to use it (or atleast Qt based apps alongsize GNOME), but every time I try, no matter what theme engine/colour scheme I try, I find myself constantly cringing at the appearance of the widgets. The closest I ever got to getting rid of that feeling was with the 'Domino' engine, but even that was just somehow...jarring.

Re:Question from huge fan

[TeacherOfHeroes]

No, that's not it - at least, not for me anyways.

Even when looking at screenshots, there's just something...jarring, i suppose, about the widgets

Re:Question from huge fan

[AndyCR]

But it doesn't feel the same way with GNOME, and it only feels slightly similar in Windows.

Re:Question from huge fan

[Anonymous Coward]

Gosh. You read my mind. That could have been me saying that, even down to what you
said about QNX. And QNX is kinda like Kickstart 2-3 too... which also looked kinda flimsy.

Re:Question from huge fan

[chemaja]

I too can confirm this "feeling". I frequently (ie. every 3-6 months) switch to KDE for a while to see if I like it yet. At first I love the extra control and integration that KDE seems to provide, then it's back to Gnome for some "sanity" and "beauty" and "standardness".

KDE is great, don't get me wrong -- it's just that Gnome looks and feels more solid. It really does feel like the "default linux desktop".

Distro note: I tend to run Debian. My most recent "long-term" experience of these two desktops is on Debian Etch. When I run KDE, I like to minimise use of non-Qt applications. Likewise, when in Gnome, I minimse use of non-GTK+ applications.

Re:Question from huge fan

[Fallingcow]

I do the same thing, though it's more like every year. My last couple of tries have been on (K)Ubuntu.

My trials usual only last long enough for me to say, "huh, this feels about as flakey as pre-OSX MacOS or WinME, even though I know it's not. Better change the theme to see if that helps", then to become flabbergasted and disgusted by the user-hostile configuration menu, at which point I usually quit and go back to Gnome. Sometimes I'll fire up Konqueror or Koffice to see if they still annoy me as much as they always do (not that I could use them anyway; the wife would freak out about Linux more than she already does if the default programs on it didn't match Windows whenever possible, with Firefox and OpenOffice and the like).

Then, in few months or a year, I'll see a /. story about a new KDE release and think, "hey, I didn't try it for too long last time, maybe I haven't given it a fair shake. KDE users are always calling Gnome a 'toy' and 'backward', so maybe there's something to all of this", at which point the whole process starts over.

Truth be told, my favorite DE is XFCE, but I can't live without some of Gnome's features and can't be bothered to find 3rd party replacements for them in XFCE, so Gnome it is.

screenshot

[Anonymous Coward]

The entire infrastructure of KDE4 is fantastic
http://img247.imageshack.us/my.php?image=kde4fc1.p ng

Already I'm conused.

[nobodyman]

Sorry, you lost me. Sun did something similar, by naming the framework "Java5" while the JVM/JDK was v1.5. Is it the same thing going on here? is KDE4 the "suite" and KDE 4.0 the API?

Re:Already I'm conused.

[Anonymous Coward]

KDE 4 is the entire 4.y.z series. KDE 4.0 refers to just the 4.0.z versions.

Re:Already I'm conused.

[JesseMcDonald]

Sorry, you lost me. Sun did something similar, by naming the framework "Java5" while the JVM/JDK was v1.5. Is it the same thing going on here? is KDE4 the "suite" and KDE 4.0 the API?

I don't think it's quite that bad. It looks as though KDE 4.x basically approaches KDE4 for increasing values of x; in other words, KDE4 is the end goal for the entire KDE 4.x release series.

Re:Already I'm conused.

[rg3]

No, sorry if that was confusing. I meant to say that KDE4 is a generic name for KDE 4.x, the whole release series (or branch, if you prefer). When the KDE developers talked about everything KDE4 will have, some people were left thinking that all the promised features will be in the KDE 4.0 release, and this is not the case. They should not think the KDE4 developers have lied and in the end left out all those features. KDE 4.0 will have all (or most) the underlying technologies needed to deliver the promised features, but some features will not appear inmediately. Instead, you may have to wait until KDE 4.1 (or 4.2, or ...) to enjoy them.

Re:Already I'm conused.

[Mulielo]

As long as it's less bloated, it's still an improvement, and I still want it. We all know quality work takes time...Just look at Windows Vista I can wait a bit for features as long as I get the increased responsiveness that's supposed to come...

KDE4

[thatskinnyguy]

On OpenSuse 10.3... love it.

c++ superiority

[Anonymous Coward]

i don't understand gnome zealots who thinks that c programming with GObject is better
the entire framework of gnome is collapsing into a big black hole.
KDE + QT 4.0 shine a lot.

Screenshots?

[HappySmileMan]

Anyone know where I can see some good screenshots, slow-ish connection so I don't really want to download it until 4.0... But would be nice to see some progress, probably a bit early though

Re:Screenshots?

[logixoul]

http://dot.kde.org/1185753836/1185821309/118584231 4/ - keep in mind it's beta though. Which in KDE speak doesn't mean "finished except buggy", but rather "something kinda stabilized for devs to work with, also we worked on the UI some. oh and our jewels (plasma) are starting to look like something".

Torrent please?

[Anonymous Coward]

Isn't there a kind soul that is able to supply a torrent to the live CD?

How do I patch KDE4 under FreeBSD?

[larry bagina]

How do I patch KDE4 under FreeBSD?

Re:New to Linux

[benjcurry]

Short answer: Yes.

Re:What are they for?

[lbbros]

I can run KDE or GNOME on a normal PC, unlike the over-priced Apple offerings. That is enough for me to avoid considering a Mac.

Re:What are they for?

[cromar]

KDE's not bad. Personally, I don't like Gnome as much, but it's just a look-and-feel thing rather than it being inferior technically (worked OK for me anyway).

Really, I just wanted an opportunity to say that I run KDE using XDarwin on my Mac every once in a while, for the novelty. OS X is still the best in the look-and-feel dept, but KDE is making giant leaps forward and is not much behind.

Re:What are they for?

[Anonymous Coward]

Your website is "Copyright C. Carson". Are you the infamous kook "ccarson" that used to post on Slashdot under a variety of names? No wonder you come off like a nutcase.

Re:What are they for?

[flydpnkrtn]

yes but many of the themes and goodies actually increase productivity
making something pretty is ok.. making something that looks pretty and actually increases my productivity is priceless
if you prefer slimmed down run a really light WM like blackbox or xfce
the revolution is all about choice
;-)

Re:What are they for?

[cromar]

KDE, Gnome, and any other window manager that will compile on OS X can be run under XDarwin. You can also dual boot OS X and Linux with the free utility Boot Camp.

So there :P

Re:1992 Called

[Anonymous Coward]

You do realize that by invoking your "[previous year] called" joke, you're saying that they want what we have today -- implying that today's USA is both functioning and non-corrupt. So... either you don't understand your "1992 called" joke, or you haven't been paying attention.

Plasma?

[marcushnk]

I thought KDE4 was meant to include "Plasma" effects... what happened to that?!

Re:Plasma?

[jZnat]

Disabled by default in the beta 1 build perhaps? It's in SVN and making lots of progress lately.

Re:Plasma?

[SoapDish]

Plasma is the new desktop. It handles the desktop, panels, widgets, etc. It's not an "effect" nor is it the window manager.

As was mentioned on dot.kde.org, plasma is enabled, but the panel replacement isn't finished. The widgets are also seperate from the standard beta release, but most should be included in the LiveCD.

If you want to see it in action, there are a lot of screencasts on youtube that have been made throught recent development. http://www.youtube.com/user/commitdigest

I'm really impressed with what Aaron is doing.

Re:Plasma?

[Hooded One]

Plasma is indeed there. They haven't replaced kicker with a Plasma-based panel yet, but that part's being worked on; getting the API and libs more or less in shape was the first priority. You can see Plasma in action as it currently stands in the new Run dialog, as well as a small sample of widgets like the dictionary applet. You can also see demos of some of the upcoming stuff in Aaron Seigo's blog.

konsole improved?

[dghcasp]

I didn't see the simplest improvement in konsole listed:

rm konsole && cp xterm konsole

Re:konsole improved?

[Doug Neal]

I didn't see the simplest improvement in konsole listed:

rm konsole && cp xterm konsole

Argh, we always have to hear from the elitist Unix purists whenever KDE or GNOME comes up. Name 3 things that are better about xterm than Konsole? Or even just one thing? Get with the times, Unix desktops have moved on.

Re:konsole improved?

[Shados]

You missed the memo? Here, if we look at the memory usage of our 4 gig ram Core 2 Quad go higher than 250 megs of ram (half of which is taken by Apache and Firefox), then we need to trim on something. Memory is meant to show off in your sig on hardware forums, NOT to be used, as it might make the hardware age faster! Caching is also the root of all evil, duh.

Re:konsole improved?

[abigor]

For those of us that actually have to, you know, do work and be productive, konsole is a godsend. Feel free to sit at home with an xterm open and be cool, though.

Re:konsole improved?

[Ash-Fox]

I didn't see the simplest improvement in konsole listed:

rm konsole && cp xterm konsole

I've noticed my very verbose backup operations are much slower when I use xterm over Konsole.

I have a theory the reason for this is that xterm is a lot slower at rendering the text on screen than Konsole is.

Combine the fact that Konsole supports tabs, I don't really find myself wanting to use xterm in my desktop environment.

Re:konsole improved?

[dghcasp]

Reasons why xterm is superior to konsole

1. Cut and paste works without using the keyboard
2. I can use the same .Xdefaults file I've been using for 15 years
3. Screen real estate not wasted by using menu bars
4. xterm is descriptive: it's an X Terminal; konsole is just a wierd mispelling of 'console.' And technically it's not even a console, because you can have multiple ones running and they don't all get console output from syslog.

I'd like to be an elitist Unix Purist, but in reality I'm just a Unix Luddite. But because I'm been perceived a Purist, I guess I should act the part for the rest of this message...

C'mon, XWindows was developed to run exactly two applications: xterm and xclock. Everything else is feature bloat. And how come I got modded flamebait? Isn't it still cool to have the "If you're not smart enough to rebuild your kernel with 'cat > vmlinuz' then you dont deserve to use Linux" mindset anymore?

What has /. come to these days, when "bloat for the sake of usability to non-technical people" is praised? I bet you're all eagerly anticipating the release of Microsoft Word 2009!

Re:konsole improved?

[FunWithKnives]

Your reason list sucks. Cut and paste works perfectly fine without a keyboard in Konsole. The other items on your list are simply personal preferences. XTerm may be better for you than Konsole or whatever else, but that certainly doesn't mean that it is better for me, or anyone else for that matter. Use what you want to. The point is that there is no reason to be "holier-than-thou" about it. Hell, I use Eterm for the most part, simply because I can customize it easily. However, I realize that other people might prefer another console. And it is just a console.

Re:konsole improved?

[Anonymous Coward]

Screen real estate not wasted by using menu bars

You can disable the menubars, the scrollbars, and the tabbar in konsole ...

Re:konsole improved?

[Ash-Fox]

1. Cut and paste works without using the keyboard

As it does under Konsole.

. I can use the same .Xdefaults file I've been using for 15 years

THE HORROR, you might need to configure something!?

3. Screen real estate not wasted by using menu bars

You can hide the menubars.

4. xterm is descriptive: it's an X Terminal; konsole is just a wierd mispelling of 'console.' And technically it's not even a console, because you can have multiple ones running and they don't all get console output from syslog.

You really don't have any reasonable points at all... Give it up.

Re:What are they for?

[PenGun]

He gets a 0 and I get a -1 Flamebait ... priceless.

integrated but not logical

[narfbot]

If the integration of Internet Explorer and Explorer were so seamless, then why do they still have separate icons for My Computer, My Network Places, and Internet Explorer? The reality is that these services are not the same.

Re:integrated but not logical

[MrNiceguy_KS]

I agree with that as well. I like my File Manager and Web Browser separate, whether in Windows or Linux. I've never understood why the two should be integrated - they are used in completely different ways and for different purposes. File Managers are for viewing and manipulating the contents of directories, regardless of what those directories contain. Web Browsers are for viewing content.

I can understand integrating File Manager and FTP - that makes perfect sense. But why the web browser should be a part of that, I don't understand. The other problem with the integrated web browser/file manager is that it encourages the use of "single click to open". I almost never swear, but GODDAMN I hate that behavior! Come on, KDE, even Microsoft figured out to do away with that!

Re:New to Linux

[Anonymous Coward]

It's really lousy for downloading Gnome Porn, but other types of porn it's OK for.

kdolphin?

[serviscope_minor]

kthey hkave kbroken kfrom ktradition kby kalling ka kprogram ka kname kwhich kdoesn't kstart kwith ka k. Kis kthis kthe kend kof KDE kas kwe kknow kit?

guess GI'll ghave gto gswitch gto gnome gnow.

Re:kdolphin?

[Anonymous Coward]

you desperately tried to be funny, but failed miserably

Re:kdolphin?

[Anonymous Coward]

Too bad Gnome uses nautilus for file management, huh?

Good job at failing.

Re:kdolphin?

[Anonymous Coward]

looks like he did succeed to me and the others that gave him a +5 funny.

Why list an Awards page?

[SocietyoftheFist]

The last time it was updated was 2005?

http://www.kde.org/history/awards.php

I would think that would be embarrassing if you had a 2 year award drought.

Re:K is for Krap

[Anonymous Coward]

Wake me up when the GNOME team drops the stupid "user friendly" view of hiding every possible configuration setting from the user, and making it a pain in the ass to change anything.

I don't want to be treated like a windows user. Let me configure my fucking computer without the piece of trash that is gconf.

Re:What are they for?

[PenGun]

Even better .....

WHHHHHHHHAAAATTT?! KDE 4 + or 4 - ?

[HOTTILA.COM]

Why not make a beta up to 40++ so the final release 4.0.0 will have all the features people want...hehehe

KDE Integration

[Anonymous Coward]

I have always preferred KDE over other options, and am very excited by this. However I do wonder if there is a fundamental problem with the design of the desktop environments for Linux.

Things like 'Solid', 'Plasma', and 'Phonon' sound great, and the idea of unifying for example sound and multimedia in Phonon is very nice - it will be wonderful for those developing KDE apps, and great for the user to have centralised control over multimedia settings. But then I thought about what KDE apps I actually use. Firefox, Thunderbird, Mplayer, Gimp, OpenOffice are probably the most commonly used, and they aren't KDE apps! So I find it a little annoying that most of the programs I use won't use these nice KDE features. It's for this reason I've switched to fluxbox recently - it seemed as though I was using KDE for the nice layout and desktop management, but not much else - and to be honest I can do without a Matrix screensaver and fancy titlebars when I can reclaim a load of space and performace (or course installing Amarok and k3b then pulls in a load of KDE libraries...). Don't get me wrong - I like eyecandy and so on, but I just don't seem to be using much else. The most useful part of KDE for me was Konqueror - there the tight integration really did shine, but it would be insulting to KDE to claim that's all it's useful for. This is of course the same for Gnome. Generally the idea of diversity is what makes Linux so strong, but I do sometimes wonder if a nice unified desktop that all works together (read: OS X) without seeming like lots of separate applications all using different libraries, all looking completely different, with some using OSS others ALSA (although admittedly this is no longer really an issue with current versions of ALSA) and only being able to use IO slaves and so on in the small number of KDE programs that I actually use, is just never going to be possible.

Of course this all comes down to the fact that Linux is about choice, which is great. But perhaps KDE and others are stretching themselves too wide - for example KOffice is nice, but OpenOffice has a great deal more functionality, so perhaps working to integrate existing solutions might be a better way to spend time. It's things like this that make you appreciate why standards exist... (you can have standards but still have choice)

I'm not really sure if what I've said is actually the case and maybe others have different experiences. I will definitely try out KDE4 when the final release is made. I've used it for years and I just hope that all the work to create a nice integrated environment will actually be something that will be used!

Re:KDE Integration

[Enahs]

If you run XScreensaver, you can have your Matrix screen saver.

I know what you mean, though. I'm finding myself migrating back to a large collection of (gasp) console apps. Last night I caught myself using Screen to switch between irssi, mutt, wyrd, vim, and ncmpc. After spending a few years working with Macs and being a KDE zealot, I feel a little dirty :-}

Re:KDE Integration

[MadAhab]

I get your point, but you're overselling it a bit.

I don't know what you use for IM, but I'm quite happy with Kopete. I'm a FreeBSD user so maybe I miss out on some voice chat integration that's totally awesome on one distro somewhere, but I don't really care.

I used XFCE4 for a while, but at the time the taskbar apps were single threaded and just being offline made the weather applet, which was otherwise excellent, unusable.

I've used Windowmaker and Gnome.

KDE just feels less patchy for me.

But I have to say the kdewallet was a killer app for me. I have hundreds of passwords, and it allows me to manage them securely. Gnome had an imitator after a while. It didn't work when I needed it to. Went back.

Basically, Gnome usually looks prettier and acts nicely, but IMO that's due to excellent packagers and distro management. KDE is more broadly a "project" than Gnome has ever been. This does allow individual Gnome apps to be more excellent, in some examples.

KDE's bonus has been, vs Gnome, infrastructure (just look closely at how software configs have been managed for the last few years and you'll see what I mean). KDE4 shows promise for bringing all that hard work together and producing immediately appreciable results.

Re:KDE Integration

[pherthyl]

Of course, if you don't use KDE apps you can't benefit from their integration. For me it's the opposite. I try to use as many KDE apps as possible. Sure, konqueror-the-web-browser is not quite as compatible or full featured as Firefox, but it integrates much nicer with the rest of KDE (spell check, password saving, file downloading, mimetype handling, keyboard shortcuts, file dialogs, configuration, widgets) that I use it 95% of the time over Firefox. Instead of Thunderbird I use Kontact and webmail, instead of Mplayer there is Codeine, and for most simple image editing tasks Krita and Kolourpaint are good enough so I rarely have to reach for the Gimp. The only app that really has no replacement is Openoffice, and with the KDE integration module it more or less fits into the desktop.

I would much rather see Konqueror and KOffice improve to surpass Firefox/Openoffice than have those projects given up. If you've ever seen the Mozilla codebase (or even worse, the Openoffice one) you wouldn't want anyone to be forced to work on that mess. Open source projects need to place the utmost importance on code quality to attract new developers. There aren't a lot of people willing to contribute to an open source project purely in their free time in the first place, and making the codebase hostile is a great way of scaring off those precious few. Without the commercial backing of Sun and the Mozilla foundation, neither Openoffice or Firefox would be even remotely close to where they are today. While all the grunt work has made them both into nice products, I don't like betting the farm on something that is essentially reliant on a constant influx of cash to keep going.

Re:What are they for?

[Anonymous Coward]

Spend money on expensive, cruddy hardware so I can dual boot into Linux?

No thanks.

Have they fixed the memory leaks?

[The Master Control P]

I've run on KDE ever since I switched to Linux with Mandrake 8.2. One thing I've noticed of late is that Konqueror seems to freaking hemmorage memory over time. My machine has 1GB of ram, and eventually it reaches the point where Konqueror and X combine to use up 2/3 of my physical memory. Throw in Amarok and a few other low-level hogs (like mysqld) and it's page swapping time. At this point, I just have to restart my desktop (luckily KDE [mostly] saves it's state before doing this) and poof, back to being snappy.

It usually takes about two weeks to a month of nominal use, but still. I run my desktop continually, and it's an annoyance. I lose time-dependent web pages, SSL web pages, and all my SSH terminals.

IMO, something shouldn't be released out of alpha until "valgrind --leak-check=full --show-reachable=yes [app]" doesn't show any lost blocks more than a few hundred bytes.

Re:Have they fixed the memory leaks?

[Anonymous Coward]

I am not seeing the same thing.

11:18:54 up 27 days, 23:45, 2 users, load average: 0.41, 0.43, 0.47

Are you sure it's konqueror specifically that leaks? Not, for example, the X display driver?

Note that I'm not saying it isn't possible for you to see that behaviour, what I am saying is that I have not seen it personally, and I am a fairly heavy user.

Re:Have they fixed the memory leaks?

[The Master Control P]

Honestly, I'm not sure.

I know from having tested Konqueror in valgrind that it leaks some memory, but I'm not sure if it's a continual leak (rather than in init) or if it would account for what I've observed. And it's true that X ends up taking more and more memory as well. I've been thinking that Konqueror keeps rendering images (maybe web pages) through X without releasing them when done, but it may very well be the X disp driver.

The definite answer would come from running Konqueror (and God forbid, X) under Valgrind. I'm preparing to try...

Re:Have they fixed the memory leaks?

[Anonymous Coward]

I've actually encountered the same problem. top shows Konqueror using lots of RAM, and killing that instance reclaims all/most of it, so I had suspected Konq/KHTML/images/flash/something. With KDE4 on the horizon and possibly a switch to WebKit I've procrastinated digging deeper. But perhaps it is the video driver. I'm using the reverse engineered r300 driver here.

Re:Have they fixed the memory leaks?

[Anonymous Coward]

I can also confirm this since I use Konqueror daily and tend to leave it open. Konqueror does not free (all) memory allocated for images. If you browse some image galleries for a while, it's pretty easy to fill 1-2 gigs of memory. After closing all kde apps the X server still holds some of the allocated memory. Restarting X helps.

Konqueror can go two (or three or four) pane

[domatic]

Under the Window menu you can "Split View Right/Left" and "Split View Top/Bottom". A single Split Right/Left gives you a two pane filemanager although you can go more panes than that if you want. Split views with particular directories loaded up can also be saved as "View Profiles". When I plug in my music player, I have a "View Profile" with my hard drive directory of music on the left pane and the player on the right pane. Just delete, drag and drop.

The one catch is that some distros disable this in the name of "usability". I'd use Gnome if I wanted that sort of "usability". It can be re-enabled (not obvious how though) and used to be a major peeve of mine with Kubuntu.

"Active Views" can be created and destroyed at will. I find it insanely handy and the combination of that with kioslaves is a level of convenience I haven't seen duplicated (well) elsewhere.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:OK, someone needs to say it...

[Mazin07]

Eh. Oh. El. Troll.

You forgot that it was about choice, and you forgot the basic idea of a toolkit like Qt.

#1. Choose a freakin' different theme! I happen to like the default Kubuntu theme (and Keramik) more or less. Just... pick a different one that doesn't look so blocky then. It's not like Windows, where MSFT forces you to either use 9x style or XP style. You have choices. Try KDE-Look.

#2. Man don't you hate how BLOCKY programs like SKYPE and GOOGLE EARTH look on WINDOWS? Wait, you don't? Well they use Qt. Or did you not notice? Qt is made to mimick the style of the operating system it runs in. If you use Qt on Windows, it will (should) look like any native Windows app. If you use it with KDE, it should look like whatever "blocky" theme KDE is using at the moment.

Anyway, I went to OS X since I didn't want to look at an ugly GUI desktop at home. Wow. Perhaps somebody could've pointed you to Baghira if you were really that desperate.

Cool Stuff Planned

[Enderandrew]

QT4 is supposed to bring speed increases all over the place, help with parallel processing, it brings SVG rendering, and lessens the memory footprint all at the same time. That is pretty much a reality today even with the beta.

Right now Konqueror still exists as the super-app for those who love it, but there is a better dedicated file viewer called Okular that renders all kinds of documents including PDFs, and does so amazingly fast. There is a dedicated new file manager that I believe both KDE and Gnome fanatics will love. Now if only they have a KHTML/QT fork of Firefox, I'd be happy as pie, but that isn't happening anytime soon.

You get a new series of icons, which some I really love, and others I don't care for. Honestly, I'm just going to replace them with another icon set anyway, but the default icons on the whole are much nicer. There was a new default widget/theme set called Oxygen as well that I thought looked incredible, but the code was poor and so was performance so it went out the window. The new Oxygen widget/theme looks a little to plain for my taste. And it doesn't look like an OS X clone, but it certainly seems to follow the same design philosophy. Given that many worship at the altar of OS X, I'm sure it will be popular, but right now I'm particular to the Domino widgets and a nice dark theme.

The new kwin today has composite technology, which is good and bad. It is good in that we get 3D eye-candy in the desktop without too much fuss since it is built right into KDE. It is bad in that with all the peace and love of Compiz and Beryl getting back together, we just split into two camps again, and the truly brilliant compiz-fusion project is no basically delegated to Gnome users for the most part. I was very disappointed that the KDE team decided to invent the wheel from scratch (and as far as I know they don't really have many effects or plugins right now, where as Compiz-Fusion has tons) rather than just extend support for what already exists.

KDE 4 already has some other great technologies like the semantic desktop project, and Sonnet is very promising, though unfinished. Solid, Phonon and Decibel might not be obvious to the end-user, but apparently are very important back-end technologies. I'm also a fan of Strigi, which is very much a reality today, but I'm not sure if it is being included by default in KDE 4 or not.

There are tons, and I mean tons of little new things, like "Get New Hot Stuff" which is a terrible name, but a neat concept. It is a simple seamless way to download new content into applications. It can already been seen in Amarok if you want to download plug-ins and such.

Plasma does exist, but it is just basically a new (easier) way to make widgets largely. The API and libraries are supposed to very useful, but the revolution in how we use our desktops doesn't exist, and I'm not sure anyone is working on it.

So on one hand, we do have plenty of new toys and great technology that is part of KDE 4. And at the same time it is fair to say that with the most visible project (Plasma) there were huge promises and little delivered. Take that as you will.

It should also be noted that Amarok and KOffice aren't tired directly into the KDE release schedule, but Amarok 2 and KOffice 2 are planned to be major versions and coincide with KDE 4, though they will likely release slightly later than KDE 4.

Re:Cool Stuff Planned

[Anonymous Coward]

The new kwin today has composite technology, which is good and bad. It is good in that we get 3D eye-candy in the desktop without too much fuss since it is built right into KDE. It is bad in that with all the peace and love of Compiz and Beryl getting back together, we just split into two camps again, and the truly brilliant compiz-fusion project is no basically delegated to Gnome users for the most part. I was very disappointed that the KDE team decided to invent the wheel from scratch (and as far as I know they don't really have many effects or plugins right now, where as Compiz-Fusion has tons) rather than just extend support for what already exists. That is NOT true, you're absolutely free to use something else than Kwin for your window manager, including Compiz. It's been working for a long time and will continue to work, compiz theme engine is already adapted to display kde themes. I see no problem...

Re:Cool Stuff Planned

[Anonymous Coward]

Christ, no wonder people hate on OSS naming. "Sonnet, solid, phonon, decibel, plasma, amarok".. WHAT?
At least apple and microsoft get _something_ right.. Don't use completely unrelated and/or made-up names for products and technologies.. It's not called microsoft "glbalf", it's microsoft "office".. hmm wonder what that does.

Re:Cool Stuff Planned

[EsbenMoseHansen]

Plasma does exist, but it is just basically a new (easier) way to make widgets largely. The API and libraries are supposed to very useful, but the revolution in how we use our desktops doesn't exist, and I'm not sure anyone is working on it.

The plasma development is one of the most active, at the moment, but it is not a widget thing. It's a replacement for applets and superkaramba. Think Applets that integrates directly with the desktop.

Re:Cool Stuff Planned

[JohnFluxx]

Hi Enderandrew,

I can see how people can think that kwin is basically reinventing the wheel. However the compiz-style stuff is actually a tiny fraction of the code. Kwin is a very mature window manager with support for a lot of corner cases. (You would not believe how many corner cases there are, if you want it to properly support all X11 apps).

KWin also copes gracefully if there is no 3D support for your graphics card. Compiz/beryl do not, and will just simply refuse to run. Distros are trying to hack around this with a fallback window manager etc, but this means that you then have to maintain two window managers and make sure they have exactly the same look, feel, etc, for consistency. It also means that any window themes have to target two window managers and so on.

Re:Cool Stuff Planned

[Enderandrew]

It replaces SuperKaramba, which is a widget app. Calling a widget a widget or an applet is a matter of semantics.

I love KDE and I'm excited for KDE 4.x however let's be clear here. The Plasma website talked about revolutionizing how we use our computers and rethinking the entire concept of the desktop. Widgets have been around for ages. So far none of the widgets are means to increase work-flow or productivity. They are means to clutter up my desktop.

They aren't reshaping how I might work, and so far all the widgets I've seen replicate information or tasks that I pretty much do in my web browser.

Re:Cool Stuff Planned

[Enderandrew]

Why not approach the compiz/beryl team however to ensure compatibility and use their plug-ins within kwin?

Honestly, this seems like a win-win. The compiz team should be focused on the effects/plugins and not on replacing the window managers. The Gnome and KDE teams should have been focused on how to plug these effects into their existing window managers.

Re:Cool Stuff Planned

[quintesse]

Dunno, it's a 3D drawing application for decorating your office?

Re:Cool Stuff Planned

[pointwood]

Do you think the kwin developers just said "fuck compiz/beryl - we want to do it all by ourselves"? No, of course they didn't, they actually hoped they work together with the compiz/beryl team, but it proved to be too much trouble. From what I have read, compiz/beryl doesn't have a plugin api to follow. Also, don't forget that it is compiz/beryl that's the new ones and no one prevents you from using compiz with kde...

Re:Cool Stuff Planned

[JohnFluxx]

That's a possibility, and it is being discussed. However the beryl team at the moment don't want to restrict themselves to having any form of stable api. They just expose all the internals. It is not possible for kwin to support beryl plugins without being line-for-line a copy of beryl.

Re:Cool Stuff Planned

[EsbenMoseHansen]

It replaces SuperKaramba, which is a widget app. Calling a widget a widget or an applet is a matter of semantics.

I love KDE and I'm excited for KDE 4.x however let's be clear here. The Plasma website talked about revolutionizing how we use our computers and rethinking the entire concept of the desktop. Widgets have been around for ages. So far none of the widgets are means to increase work-flow or productivity. They are means to clutter up my desktop.

Whoa, I'm sorry that you are disappointed, but I wasn't trying to promote anything. I was merely trying to explain what plasma is. And plasma is a replacement for KApplet and friends, and for superkaramba. Of course, all of these use widgets... all GUI programs does, but that is hardly the point. It is true that plasma will contain widgets, but that is a technical detail, as is the reason for these widgets. Really, plasma programs or plasmoids are merely replacing the good,old applets with something more modern. Don't get too excited :)

They aren't reshaping how I might work, and so far all the widgets I've seen replicate information or tasks that I pretty much do in my web browser.

Correct. E.g, the clock applet can reside in your task bar, your desktop or maybe other places, and might look nicer, be SVG graphics, and might be animated in interesting ways, but I doubt that would reshape how you work. At best, you might have an easier time going without having the taskbar visible all the time, and thus save a bit of screen estate.

Re:Cool Stuff Planned

[Enderandrew]

When the question was posted on "the dot" the kwin developers said they thought it was just better to start from scratch. They made no mention of even attempting to work with the compiz team. So I'm not basing this off assumptions, but rather the statements of the devs. If there is no plugin api, then why is that plenty of people are able to write plugins?

And frankly, an api must exist, it just is a matter of how well it is documented. If the KDE team wanted to better understand it, and they felt the code wasn't documented well enough, that is when you ask questions. However I am willing to bet that if I ask the compiz team right now, they'd say the KDE devs never contacted them.

Re:Cool Stuff Planned

[Enderandrew]

There is no Beryl team anymore. They merged back into Compiz, and the new project is called Compiz-Fusion, or just Compiz again.

I know the project is still changing, however, that hasn't stopped old plugins from working, nor has it stopped outside developers from making plugins or Emerald themes. It is pretty simple.

For kwin version 4.x, you base it off what plugin api is available at that moment, and only plugins written for that are supported. When you update kwin for new releases, you update the plugin api if necessary.

Re:Cool Stuff Planned

[JohnFluxx]

But there isn't a plugin api - there is just their internals. We'd need to copy beryl completely, line for line. Every data structure would have to be the same, and so on.

Re:Cool Stuff Planned

[pointwood]

I'll just refer to this comment by Troy Unrau: http://episteme.arstechnica.com/eve/forums/a/tpc/f /174096756/m/261009765831?r=291001865831#291001865 831

Re:Cool Stuff Planned

[Phisbut]

Don't use completely unrelated and/or made-up names for products and technologies.. It's not called microsoft "glbalf", it's microsoft "office".. hmm wonder what that does.

Yeah, "Office" is such an obvious and related name for what it does. Too bad I want a software to use at home. Guess I'll get "Microsoft Home" for that. Oh, and I play videogames too, and I would like to excel, so I better get that "Microsoft Excel" thing. I mean, the name says it all, it makes you excel. And when I want to access my email, should I use "Microsoft Access" or "Microsoft EMail" (ok, so they fixed that one with Vista's MS-Mail, but I don't have Vista...)?

Product naming, no matter the domain (be it software, cars, etc.) is more marketing-speak than logic. Get over it.

Re:Cool Stuff Planned

[Anonymous Coward]

I wouldn't be too sure about both KDE and GNOME fanatics loving the new filemanager. I tried the latest version of Dolphin built for KDE3 (0.8.2), and I didn't like it. Although I wouldn't consider myself as a KDE fanatic, even though it is my preferred DE. But if it means Konqueror becomes a better web browser, then it might still be a good thing.

Re:Cool Stuff Planned

[Seli]

However I am willing to bet that if I ask the compiz team right now, they'd say the KDE devs never contacted them.

Ok. You lose (assuming that beryl now counts as part of the compiz team).

Re:Cool Stuff Planned

[gowen]

Yeah. Office = good name.

Now, what are the components part of Office: Word, does exactly what it say on the tin; Excel, hmmm, not getting much from this, but I guess it'll make be better at something; Powerpoint -- that's to do with home electrical circuits, right. Outlook -- Weather forecasting?; Access -- I'd guess that's a password manager...

Sorry, what was you point again?

re: expanded vs extended

[Anonymous Coward]

Dunno.. Did Lotus-Intel-Microsoft make it? Thats how I'd decide on extended vs expanded.... Damn_I_am_OLD!!!

Re:1992 Called

[Eideewt]

'something that is happening now'
'the "current" situation'

Riiight. These are completely different.

Re:OK, someone needs to say it...

[The Master Control P]

Try Keramik - that rounds the edges off nicely.

For fonts - KDE Control Center : Appearances : Fonts : Antialiasing

Re:New to Linux

[Anonymous Coward]

You really need to be looking for Kroupsex or Kay porn to make KDE worthwhile.

Re:OK, someone needs to say it...

[pherthyl]

I have used Linux for many years. I have tried out KDE from the very early versions of KDE/QT. However, the only thing that has always sent me back to Gnome in a day or two has been how farking ugly/blocky the QT widgets and toolkit, etc can be!

Oh dear. The look is dependant on the theme being used. Don't like it blocky? Choose a different theme! Just like GTK isn't ugly even though it appears so in these screenshots. There are obviously good and bad themes for both toolkits.

Oh, and why do the fonts in KDE look like blocky crap, however look so much smoother in Gnome on the same system with the same fonts?

Because Gnome uses 96DPI for all fonts, while KDE uses whatever value X11 gives it for the DPI. Due to lots of broken systems, this value is sometimes wrong. If you think it is wrong, go into the Control Center, click on Appearance -> Fonts, and choose 96DPI from the combo box and restart KDE.

App icons in KDE4

[orzetto]

My other usability pet peeve with KDE is its heavy reliance on toolbars with dozens of nondescript blue icons. Even for experienced users, it's a bit daunting.

Aside from the fact that I've never been "daunted" by a KDE app even when I was a newbie, you may like the way KDE4 is actually dealing with the issue. If you look for example at this screeshot of Okular, you will notice that now icons will be presented by default with text. This means a much bigger overall icon area, which makes the icon much easier to hit and forces the developer to separate wheat from chaff when creating toolbars.

Re:App icons in KDE4

[alexhs]

And your exemple exhibits the same problem (dozens of ...) the OP was complaining about:

• Back - Forward : does it mean previous page next page or does it work like in the browser, that is if you're page 15 and you're jumping page 80, back will get you page 15. Page navigation is already present in the bottom left corner anyway.
  
• Fit to... : why a separator from other zoom options here ? Also these are already present in the drop-down. You might like it as a shortcut, the bar can be customizable, but this shouldn't be here in the default setup
  
• Zoom tool : Yet another zoom thing ? You don't have anything other to do when reading docs than zooming in and out ?
  

Now compare to Evince

Navigation and zooming are here, with much less place taken.

Now what's missing in Evince :

• Open Recent : Who use that anyway ? People use the browser to do that. It's in the file menu, and if you want a shortcut there's Ctrl-O like in all applications.
  
• Select tool : I think you're always in select mode. Like with most other apps. So you might like the hand to grab the page but this is not consistent with file/web browser, office suites...
  
• Ghost Script messages : This one is ridiculous, it's not like people are reading this. As a developer,
  starting from the console and watching stderr is good enough.
  
• Reviews : Apparently, that's the only useful feature in Okular that's missing in Evince
  

The more things change, the more they stay the same...

Re:App icons in KDE4

[marcosdumay]

"Back - Forward : does it mean previous page next page or does it work like in the browser, that is if you're page 15 and you're jumping page 80, back will get you page 15. Page navigation is already present in the bottom left corner anyway."

That is funny, because your screenshot has the buttons "Previous" and "Next"... So, you have the same situation.

But, to answer your question, "Back" and "Foward" do the same thing they do on any other app that runs inside konqueror, they navigate through documments. It may be confusing at first, but is consistent.

"Fit to... : why a separator from other zoom options here ? Also these are already present in the drop-down. You might like it as a shortcut, the bar can be customizable, but this shouldn't be here in the default setup

Who would think about putting often used options at the menu?!?! How ostrageous!

Zoom tool : Yet another zoom thing ? You don't have anything other to do when reading docs than zooming in and out ?"

Zooming, browsing and selecting. Can you think about something else?

Anyone having it running in Qemu?

[Anonymous Coward]

Subject says it all.

Re:Anyone having it running in Qemu?

[Anonymous Coward]

Subject says it all.

Yes.

Themes

[krischik]

http://www.kde-look.org/content/preview.php?previe w=1&id=8692&file1=8692-1.jpg&file2=&file3=&name=Ba ghira&PHPSESSID=190e13d46625270a07281973752ad665

Both KDE and GNOME are fully theame-able so looks should be no problem at all.

Martin

PS: I like Mac style themes as they are available for KDE, GNOME, Firefox, Opera etc. pp creating an almost unified look.

Naming conventions

[Anonymous Coward]

EOh ENo, EThat's ETerrible

iBut iAs iNaming iConventions iGo, iIt

Microsoft Windows MSN Live could .NET Microsoft Windows MSN Live be .NET Microsoft Windows MSN Live worse .NET

Re:Naming conventions

[drew]

GNU/Good GNU/Grief!

KDE is great

[12357bd]

I've read the posts, it's just me (and my preferences, as I only use KDE) or there are a LOT of posts pushing the Gnome agenda?

flickering and double-buffering

[CarpetShark]

If we're referring to the same thing, then I hear it's mainly due to lack of double-buffering for drawing. Qt4 (and thus, KDE4) actually has this, and still flickers when resizing windows etc., though. It may also require enabling double-buffering in X; not sure. GNOME doesn't, so it does seem like a Qt (rather than KDE) issue still.

Another issue is surely the GUI styling. Part of the problem there was perhaps that KDE 3 drew an extra set of frames that made things look cluttered. This is no longer done in KDE4, afaik. I know for certain that it was removed from one or two pieces of software, at least, and probably them all. Finally, I don't think the styles have enough contrast to their edges.

Anyway... I agree, KDE is a GREAT desktop despite this. GUI appearance "solidity" is one of the one of the few things GNOME gets right, imho (others are Pango, accessibility, and (at least getting behind a project LIKE) GStreamer). However, KDE wins hands-down for me, for many other, less superficial reasons. I always liked KDE's old motto, "a desktop for grown-ups". And it is.

Re:flickering and double-buffering

[drew]

Finally, I don't think the styles have enough contrast to their edges.

Surely, you mean "kontrast"?

Cool features in KDE

[CarpetShark]

If you think that KDE's framework doesn't provide cool features, you haven't given it a thorough try yet. KDE constantly surprises me with nice touches, that I discover just by thinking, "I've never seen a desktop do it before, but it would be great if I could click here and do..." and it works!

DAMN! Just upgraded to Slackware 12.0

[zukinux]

arghh now I will have to install it by my own :) (arrggh I'm so tired to install 1 package with installpkg update kde.tgz)

KDE/GNOME Desktops???

[Anonymous Coward]

No, they are windowing user nevironments (about as close as I can get to it in english). Enlightenment (or Windowmaker, etc) are desktop environments. They allow you to populate your clean desk top with the applications you use. They ensure that paraphenalia on GUIs operate logically consistent. They don't give you a taskbar (where's your taskbar on your desk?) You can build up an application bar and populate that or you can use the paradigm of right-click on the desktop to get a picklist of applications to run. Your desktop here is left for the applications you are running and some space for quick access to applications you will use soon (more of a library shelf than a desktop).

KDE4 is just oozing with cool

[Skeith]

From what I hear the big components of KDE 4 and the smaller ones that you don't hear about are coming along very nicely. Things like Solid and Phonon will make my life easier, Plasma will make the desktop much more interesting, along with the spell checking and semantic (strigi+nepomuk) search sounds too good to be true. I'm glad KDE took lessons learned from 3.x.y and put them to such good use with the KDE4 tech.

Gnome is too depending

[Anonymous Coward]

Really, KDE is in some options superior because its not as depending on certain processes than Gnome is. Take for example the HAL daemon. Sometimes it fails to boot on my Ubuntu 6.06LTS after which I'm being warned by KDE with an error message. Everything still operates, but some specific features don't work.

With Gnome on the other hand I can't even get into the GUI at all, probably because it fully relies on HAL. So yes; in my opinion Gnome isn't as mature as KDE.

Does it alread run on Windows?

[marcosdumay]

Or I'll have to wait more to use it at work?

Re:Does it alread run on Windows?

[pxc]

I installed an Alpha build on Windows a while ago and the answer is... yes and no. Many of the applications run, but setup is a pain and some weird dependency issues are there. The basic backend for browsing files isn't implemented yet, so you can't use Konqueror, Dolphin, or select a file with anything. The only app that I tried that worked fine already was Kate, but I'm sure there are more. By the time the final KDE 4.0 comes out for Linux, the Windows version should be at least usable, and maybe even as stable and the same as the Linux release.

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What is this ugly shit?

[Anonymous Coward]

Just get a Mac and be done with it. Stylish design is just never going to happen in the Linux world.

Mac OS X Binaries

[hritcu]

Does anyone know where can I get Mac OS X Binaries of this? (this source seems to be obsolete)

Qt4: KDE4's biggest obstacle

[Anonymous Coward]

Enderandrew wrote:

QT4 is supposed to bring speed increases all over the place, help with parallel processing, it brings SVG rendering, and lessens the memory footprint all at the same time. That is pretty much a reality today even with the beta.

If KDE4 is showing speed improvements, this is in spite of Qt4, not because of it. Consider the following program, which compiles with both Qt3 and Qt4 via different Makefiles:

http://dot.kde.org/1118312471/1187282309/qtprog.ta r.bz2

All this program does is make two rectangles bounce around the screen on a black background, attempting to acheive 49 frames per second via a timer (provided by Qt's API). The qt3-demo program achieves this frame rate easily, but the qt4-demo program can only do it if you keep the window small enough. (I saw it drop to 33 FPS when I sized the window to 850x630. It dropped more when I grew the window more.)

It appears that the more pixels Qt has to draw, the slower it runs. This will affect every single widget in the library, and Qt 4 passes its new performance flaws on to KDE.