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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."
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.
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.
For those who dont want to install and test, here is an OpenSuse based KDE Live CD
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.
audioLibre - freedom of music
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.
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?
Our intelligent designer has never created an animal that we couldn't improve by strapping a bomb to it.
KDE 4 is the entire 4.y.z series. KDE 4.0 refers to just the 4.0.z versions.
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:/).
Pirate Party UK
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.
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?
Pirate Party UK
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.
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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.
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.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
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!
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.
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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.
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