KDE 4.0 RC 1 Released

Yes but... by Anonymous Coward · 2007-11-21 05:14 · Score: 5, Funny

does it run on Vista?

Re:Yes but... by Surye · 2007-11-21 05:25 · Score: 5, Informative

It's built on QT4, so after they iron out a few details, yes.
Re:Yes but... by cgenman · 2007-11-21 09:14 · Score: 2, Informative

Can someone quickly update us on the state of getting Koffice running on Windows? I vaguely remember it was KDE 3.5 that was supposed to precipitate the QT switcheroo which would facilitate compatibility.

I miss KMail, like the desert misses the rain.

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Slashdotted. by Valdrax · 2007-11-21 05:15 · Score: 5, Informative

Looks like plasma.kde.org is Slashdotted right now, so hey -- Wikipedia to the rescue.

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If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").

Re:Slashdotted. by recoiledsnake · 2007-11-21 07:14 · Score: 4, Funny

From the wiki:
Kross scripting framework will be used to allow developers to write widgets in JavaScript, Ruby, and Python in addition to C++ [1]. No prizes for guessing what the gnome version will be called.

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Slashdotted by JBHarris · 2007-11-21 05:16 · Score: 5, Informative

The main site is already bogged down. However, the major change is the completion & inclusion of Plasma. I like candy.

Screenshots by arevos · 2007-11-21 05:16 · Score: 5, Informative

Screenshots are important for superficial people like me :)

I like the widget and window theme, but the kicker replacement at the bottom looks pretty tacky. It was the same in beta, and I'd hoped they'd change it for release, but it seems like they're sticking with it.

Re:Screenshots by Mistshadow2k4 · 2007-11-21 05:33 · Score: 4, Insightful

I wouldn't say it makes you superficial. Good screenshots can be very informative when deciding whether or not you might like a program (or desktop environment), especially if you can see effects and/or menus.

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Re:Screenshots by nutshell42 · 2007-11-21 05:43 · Score: 4, Informative

I like the widget and window theme, but the kicker replacement at the bottom looks pretty tacky. It was the same in beta, and I'd hoped they'd change it for release, but it seems like they're sticking with it.
No, it's gonna look like this. In fact, it already does in CVS apparently.

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Don't think of it as a flame---it's more like an argument that does 3d6 fire damage
Re:Screenshots by nutshell42 · 2007-11-21 06:07 · Score: 2, Insightful

Why are the icons all ridiculously huge and ridiculously tiny?
Why did they put 3 battery applets on the desktop? Why is the clock huge and in the middle of the panel? Because it's not final. You can't honestly think that those buttons will stay that way?!
Why are the sides of the taskbar chopped off? What's the point in rounding off the corners?
Because it's not full size? You can have it run all the way across the bottom and it won't have the corners and sides but if you have a panel that's less then the full width of the desktop you're probably interested in what the sides are gonna look like.
I was going to say I'm not usually the sort of person who runs lots of eye-candy applets but it seems under KDE4 users aren't given much choice :/
And you got that insight from what exactly?

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Don't think of it as a flame---it's more like an argument that does 3d6 fire damage

Screenshots and previews of slightly olderreleases by Rudd-O · 2007-11-21 05:17 · Score: 4, Informative

I have reviews of the general KDE desktop and Dolphin 4 on my page. I will review RC1 as soon as I can get Kubuntu packages.

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Rudd-O - http://rudd-o.com/

Graphics suck by Anonymous Coward · 2007-11-21 05:17 · Score: 2, Interesting

Seems like a step backwards to me. I really feel that GNOME is much more refined and this looks more like alpha quality than a release candidate. I used to be a heavy KDE user but stopped using it once the developers started paying less attention to detail. Sorry about my rant but this is just my feeling on the issue.

Coming together by eean · 2007-11-21 05:18 · Score: 4, Informative

I finally tried out a full KDE4 session last week and it is really coming together. I really look forward to the creative stuff people make with Plasma. Its not just a tool for having fun widgets on the desktop (which it is), but its designed so folks can easily develop their own taskbar, interactive wallpaper whatever.

So KDE 4.0 will be cool, KDE 4.0 + 6 months of people creating fun plasmoids, even cooler.

KDE 4 Live CD by Rich · 2007-11-21 05:22 · Score: 5, Informative

For people who want to check out the RC without reinstalling KDE (and without risking breaking your existing setup) there's a live CD available at:
http://home.kde.org/~binner/kde-four-live/
Have a lot of fun!

Fat or muscle? by Valdrax · 2007-11-21 05:22 · Score: 4, Interesting

And yet I find myself installing more and more KDE apps on my GNOME system because of how slow or boneheadedly featureless their GNOME equivalents are. (Evince, I stab at thee! So much hatred for its sluggish rendering and inability to change its default view.)

And when is GNOME ever going to get a good burning app like K3b?

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If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").

Re:Fat or muscle? by Anonymous Coward · 2007-11-21 05:39 · Score: 2, Insightful

It is clear that KDE is more resources demanding than Gnome.

No it isn't, or if it does use more, it's only a tiny amount:
http://linux.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=367443&cid=21437045

Eye-candy features are always more demanding in terms of RAM / CPU power.
Depends on how efficiently they are implemented. See e.g. e17. I can't help but notice that whenever e17 gets some new eye-candy people don't immediately scream "bloooat!".
Re:Fat or muscle? by passthecrackpipe · 2007-11-21 05:53 · Score: 3, Funny

Also, precompiled binaries as RPMs for KDE (Debian RPMs for example) are always running a little bit slower
where can I find these RPM's for Debian? And do I need to run them through alien first?

--
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Re:Fat or muscle? by Anonymous Coward · 2007-11-21 06:00 · Score: 2, Insightful

If it would be only a *tiny* amount of performance difference, there would not be alot of people in the forum mentioning that they prefer Gnome over KDE cuz Gnome runs faster

There are also a lot of people claiming the exact opposite, which lends support to my "tiny difference" theory. It's so tiny, the placebo effect completely overrides it.

KDE stills eats more RAM than Gnome. Bigtime.

Read the link, please - it actually doesn't. Here they are again:
http://ktown.kde.org/~seli/memory/desktop_benchmark.html

http://spooky-possum.org/cgi-bin/pyblosxom.cgi/kdevsgnome.html

Note in particular the second link, by a GNOME developer (not that it matters when hard numbers and methodology are presented). Here's a quote:
KDE and GNOME identical to within a few MB!? How can we start a flame war with that? A very big congratulations to everyone working on the optimisation of GNOME! Now you just have to worry about what surprises KDE 4 will pull.
This is only to be expected since KDE adheres strongly to the Once and Once Only principle and is built with a toolkit whose makers derive a significant portion of their revenue from having it well on embedded devices.
Re:Fat or muscle? by DoofusOfDeath · 2007-11-21 06:20 · Score: 5, Insightful

And yet I find myself installing more and more KDE apps on my GNOME system because of how slow or boneheadedly featureless their GNOME equivalents are.

I find that the KDE apps (k3b, kate, etc.) are more full-featured, but the Gnome desktop seems much cleaner to me. So I'm just glad they can peacefully coexist.
Re:Fat or muscle? by Just+Some+Guy · 2007-11-21 07:36 · Score: 2, Funny

If it would be only a *tiny* amount of performance difference, there would not be alot of people in the forum mentioning that they prefer Gnome over KDE cuz Gnome runs faster.
And if Mustangs were really faster than Accents, you'd never see whale tails on a neonned Hyundai.

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Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
Re:Fat or muscle? by Enderandrew · 2007-11-21 08:42 · Score: 3, Interesting

Please mod parent down. Every benchmark and testcase shows the same apps run faster, and use less memory on KDE than Gnome, and the default desktop on KDE runs faster and uses less memory on KDE than Gnome.

That may change in KDE 4, even though QT 4 is supposed to use less memory and run faster, but between the new kdelibs and Plasma, you have enough new features that is taking up more system resources than KDE 3. This is also still an early RC of the first release of the KDE 4 cycle. Given that KDE 3 got more efficient over time, I can hope KDE 4 will also get more efficient over time.

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kde 4 apps will run on Windows by eean · 2007-11-21 05:26 · Score: 5, Interesting

Plasma isn't planning too, but most KDE apps will be able to run on Windows. If not at the KDE 4.0, then in the near future.

Re:Did they de-fat KDE by Anonymous Coward · 2007-11-21 05:28 · Score: 5, Informative

And yet, despite all the extra features and configurability, KDE still manages to use about the same resources as GNOME:

http://ktown.kde.org/~seli/memory/desktop_benchmark.html

http://spooky-possum.org/cgi-bin/pyblosxom.cgi/kdevsgnome.html

KDE doesn't have much fat; it has muscle.

Re:Did they de-fat KDE by DrXym · 2007-11-21 05:47 · Score: 2, Insightful

Extra features and configurability aren't always a good thing at all. The KDE control center is atrocious with far too many panels, tabs, dialogs arranged illogically with common settings mixed in amongst obscure settings.

It seems KDE devs may have realised this since KDE 4 appears to have something more comparable to the OS X prefs (and GNOME's).

Release Candidate or Beta --what's the diff? by KWTm · 2007-11-21 05:58 · Score: 5, Insightful

Am I alone in thinking that people are abusing the term "Release Candidate"? Since there already is a term, "beta", that means "functional, with minor bugs to be ironed out", I would consider "Release Candidate" to refer to a true candidate --that is, it might really be released! KDE (or whoever the responsible author is) might say: "Okay, all those of you who downloaded Release Candidate x (where x=1,2,...), you can just go ahead and keep using it, because the RC has turned into the real thing."

Software or distros that are "coming together" are not Release Candidates. They have no possibility of being released. Suppose everyone who tried this KDE4 RC1 said, "Yup, everything works fine! No changes need to be made," would KDE release it? No, because they're NOT DONE YET --Plasma still has to be put together. Since they won't be releasing this version at all, it shouldn't be called a Release Candidate. It's another beta.

There's no shame in calling it beta (heck, half of Google's services are labeled beta); I don't see the need to keep advancing the terms. What's next? If "Release Candidate" comes to mean "beta", should we start using the term "Release Candidate with Potential For Use Unchanged"?

Maybe someone can correct on this if I'm wrong. What makes this a Release Candidate and not a Beta?

(Btw, diehard KDE fan here --I'm not even considering GNOME until they start having user-configurable key shortcuts. Waiting for KDE4 final release in December to be worked into Gutsy so I can put it on my Came-With-Ubuntu laptop.)

--
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[GPG key in journal]

Re:Release Candidate or Beta --what's the diff? by Anonymous Coward · 2007-11-21 07:00 · Score: 5, Interesting

Am I alone in thinking that people are abusing the term "Release Candidate"?

No, you aren't alone, but according to KDE fanboys, beta means that it compiles and release candidate means they've decided what features are going in. And if you disagree, then you're an idiot who doesn't understand open-source.

Whether 4.0 will actually be usable depends on the way in which you ask. If you read the press releases or praise the developers, then 4.0 will be the best thing since sliced bread. But if you are worried about the quality and wondering why they are dropping features that were in KDE 3, then 4.0 is merely a preview release and 4.1 is going to be the real, finished thing. That way, they can get all the praise, but write off any criticism as "it's not ready yet", regardless of how finished the final release is.

For example, the much exalted Plasma has been hyped since long before it ever existed. It had its own website when it was nothing more than mocked up screenshots and vague descriptions of how awesome it was going to be. And it was hyped right up until the alphas, when people were wondering where it was. It seems to be a last-minute job, and when people on dot.kde.org complain that "basically nothing works" in response to the third beta, one of the core developers responds with "i'm not particularly taken by the heartstrings people are plucking here. there are lots of things to test and bump around with in these betas. stop fixating on plasma for the moment; you'll get to play with more of its features as more releases come. [...] there is exactly one release that counts for plasma, and that'll be 4.0, though the rc's leading up to it will be important as well. there is also exactly one canonical place to gauge the "workingness" (hm. neat word.) of things right now and that's svn.". The KDE project is not interested in using the release cycle as a method of quality assurance, they release betas in order to show off how far they have gotten with features for the people who can't compile it themselves. As somebody else put it: " I know Plasma is barely more than a fetus at this point, and it doesn't even fully replicate all the features of the old desktop." - that's in response to the third beta, and still people tell him to wait. Shouldn't a core part of the desktop be relatively finished by the third beta?

Disclaimer: I've used KDE since the 1.0 betas. I'm no GNOME troll. I just think the attitude the project is taking towards 4.0 seems to be all about ego and has dropped the transparency or quality that I've become used to with open-source projects.

PS: I think it utterly sucks that I have to add disclaimers like that because otherwise I get called a troll (which is apparently the term for people who do something other than emit unadulterated praise for the developers on dot.kde.org). Christ, look at the fawning that is normal on the dot: many people says that kde3.0 was untable, full of bug and that kde will be the same, but kde4 look really stable, some parts crash, but the are apps like juk, kwin4 like composite works without problems, dolphin stable, i have hope that when kde4.0 is released can be used like kde3.5.x." That's right, it's not unstable or full of bugs if some of the apps work, and it's considered praiseworthy to hope that KDE 4 is as good as KDE 3.5. This is ridiculous.
Re:Release Candidate or Beta --what's the diff? by Anonymous Coward · 2007-11-21 07:46 · Score: 5, Funny

Took the words out of my mouth. Yes, IP theft is rampart in Slashdot nowadays.
Re:Release Candidate or Beta --what's the diff? by Anonymous Coward · 2007-11-21 10:40 · Score: 2, Insightful

All that because you don't like the release system KDE uses?

No, it's not the release system itself, it's the attitude behind it. Talk about how great non-existent features are. Can't meet the release date because you over-promised? Cut features. Can't even get the old system working with the new libraries? Cut even more features so it's less functional than the old version. Get flattered? Tell them how great 4.0 will be. Get criticised? Tell them the criticism doesn't count because it's not supposed to work right until 4.1.

They want all the praise that goes along with a shiny new finished 4.0, but they can't actually achieve anything more than a 3.9 tech preview in the timeframe they set themselves. Yet rather than actually put it off for a few months, they are steaming ahead telling everybody how great it is out of one side of their mouth while deflecting criticism with excuses with the other side of their mouth.

This attitude is antithetical to everything the open-source culture holds dear - marketing over quality, release dates over features, bullshit over honesty and transparency. That is what I abhor, and the release system is merely one symptom of it.

So what's the worst case scenario? You have to wait a few months until you get a 4.0.1?

No, the worst case scenario is that open-source gets a reputation for pulling shit like this, the same shit everybody here rags on companies like Microsoft for.

How about you starting to have some respect for the developers and all the people that put hard work into this release?

I had respect for the developers. From the 1.0 betas right up until the 3.x releases. The change in their attitudes lost them that respect.

How about you showing some understanding for the fact that only a tiny fraction of their intended target audience is going to install a beta or RC

So they call what by all rights is a beta "4.0" in order to trick their target audience into testing it? What integrity!

and that it's practically impossible for them to test each and every possible situation without your help.

I've contributes bugs, testcases, the occasional patch for previous versions. I haven't bothered with 4.0 because it's quite plain all they care about is reaching the finish line.

And you are being really dishonest by characterising my argument as a demand that they "test each and every possible situation". I'm not asking for the moon. I'm asking that they take the same attitude towards quality that they used to take before. Cut out the bullshit and stop letting the fawning go to their heads.

P.S. With or without disclaimers, shooting half-truths and BS around in the dark, you're still a troll.

You haven't mentioned anything you consider to be a half-truth or BS, you just complained about my attitude.

If you have a problem, file a fracking bug report.

The word is "fucking". And there is absolutely no way a bug report can fix this.

...where's the meat? by 99BottlesOfBeerInMyF · 2007-11-21 05:58 · Score: 4, Interesting

Well, I can't say I object to any of these improvements, but most of them seem pretty minor and incremental. Cleaner APIs and more efficient libraries are nice. For the end user, where's the meat of this release? Okay now it supports Widgets. Well, that can be sort of useful if there is a good selection of them. I've heard claims they added support for OS X native widgets and that could help a lot to make this actually useful. Anyone actually tried using them yet?

When a new full version comes out and I find myself looking forward to the improved spellchecker, because it is still worse architecturally than on other platforms I use, but at least it is better... well I start to wonder what happened. I'm not trying to put down the developers or anything, this is obviously a lot of work, especially Dolphin, but I guess I was hoping for more. When will KParts be upgraded to work like OS X system services? Where's grammar checking? Where's anything we haven't seen on another OS/Window manager already? As a Kubuntu user, I guess I'm just not really as excited by this as I'd like to be.

Re:...where's the meat? by logixoul · 2007-11-21 12:11 · Score: 3, Insightful

Okay now it supports Widgets. KDE has supported widgets for years, via SuperKaramba (which is bundled from 3.5 onwards). Plasma brings some innovation into the area.
I've heard claims they added support for OS X native widgets Not in the main branch, no. A showstopper for this is that it would require using the WebKit renderer, which still doesn't come with Qt (but it will next year).
When will KParts be upgraded to work like OS X system services? What do those have that KParts don't? Never used OS X myself...
Well, I can't say I object to any of these improvements, but most of them seem pretty minor and incremental. Sure, the single biggest change in KDE4 vs KDE3 is the porting to Qt4.
Where's anything we haven't seen on another OS/Window manager already? I won't compare to non-free platforms... from what I've heard, OS X's desktop environment kicks our ass in every way other than freedom.
So, off the top of my head...
KWin got compositing support, meaning you get eye candy ala Compiz, except with a more mature codebase.
Plasma is technologically superior to others' applet solutions.
Marble is the fastest and leanest desktop globe.
KRunner is (will be) similar to OS X's Spotlight.
Lancelot is unique as a zero-click start menu. The utility of this remains to be seen.

About the spellchecker, Sonnet, its main developer mysteriously disappeared an year ago, and development has been slow since. No grammar checking in 4.0, no. It does have improvements over the KDE3 spellchecker (KSpell2) -- like the ability to recognize separate languages in separate paragraphs and use the right dictionaries.

KDE4 is not just this RC. There's 2 years of development behind it, starting from the 3.5 branch. And there's lots of years ahead of it, to make the most out of a really solid foundation... IOW if you want "meat", come back for 4.1.

4.0 is for early adopters.

Re:KDE4 Graphics by ssj_195 · 2007-11-21 06:07 · Score: 2, Informative

Will there be full hardware-acceleration of the graphical effects, like Compiz provides,

Yes. There already is, in fact. Aaron Seigo has prepared a screencast which will be linked with this week's Commit Digest. Among other things, it shows the true transparency of Plasma applets and the panel. Also, you can check out these old (non-Plasma related) kwin_composite videos: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4WBLlc6xCQ4

or will KDE 4 continue to have ugly faux transparency?

Eavesdropping on IRC, I get the feeling that aseigo hates this hack more than you do ;)

Re:Screenshots and previews of slightly olderrelea by Dulcise · 2007-11-21 06:10 · Score: 2, Interesting

Actually, Dolphin (from my experiences) can be set up a lot like Krusader, in a nice split screen with hotkey short cuts, I was much a grieved to find there isn't anything like it when I tried to switch to gnome yesterday (to check out Fusion).

do not stop progress by not wanting 'bloat'... by phsdv · 2007-11-21 06:10 · Score: 2, Insightful

Yes, I agree with you, xfce is a better choice. I am actually running xfce4.4.1 on my systems. Occasionally I do use twm, mostly by accident ;-) It is always a pain to use, but it does work...

But the whole "discussion" between gnome and kde is so useless. And also the bloated thing. Who cares? More and more people (will) have multiple cores and a few Giga bytes of memory. If the window manager uses some of these resources and it makes your job easier, please do!!! In case you have a smaller computer, then go and use a smaller desktop system. And do not 'force' your limitations on everyone else by wanting to have kde/gnome to run on every computer you own.

Re:do not stop progress by not wanting 'bloat'... by orclevegam · 2007-11-21 06:20 · Score: 4, Insightful

Well, there's two kinds of "bloated" and people often don't differentiate between the two. There's bloated in the sense of being written poorly and wasting a lot of resources for no reason, and then there's bloated in the sense of having a whole bunch of features that various people may or may not want (which usually determines if they consider it bloated or not). The first kind of bloated of course is clearly a valid criticism that needs to be addressed, the second kind however is mostly a matter of taste. Myself, I like a bit of eye candy, but at the same time I don't like to waste a lot of space, so I tend to lean towards either Enlightenment, or Blackbox for my WM. Both can be configured to be relatively minimalist in terms of screen real estate used by the various pieces of the WM, but in the case of enlightenment it tends to use some resources because of all the eye candy options. Does that make it bloated? Maybe, but that really depends on if you like eye candy or not.

--
Curiosity was framed, Ignorance killed the cat.
Re:do not stop progress by not wanting 'bloat'... by smellotron · 2007-11-21 06:41 · Score: 2, Interesting

But the whole "discussion" between gnome and kde is so useless. And also the bloated thing. Who cares? More and more people (will) have multiple cores and a few Giga bytes of memory. If the window manager uses some of these resources and it makes your job easier, please do!!! In case you have a smaller computer, then go and use a smaller desktop system.

I ran into this issue at work, where my computer was an 800MHz Celeron, I believe. I was originally running Gnome, but switched to fluxbox + aterm and it made a world of a difference in terms of overall desktop responsiveness. There are plenty of people who aren't running multicore boxes and don't have a few GB of memory lying around. If KDE/Gnome can be developed to run on low-end machines and still feel "good enough", then they should be blazingly fast on the ungodly-overpowered desktop machines that are the high end of today's desktop market.

The biggest issue, IMO, is that running Konsole outside of KDE costs nearly as much system resources as running KDE all-out. If that extends to other KDE-based applications, that basically rules any KDE app from being used on a machine like I described without performance penalties. The machine shouldn't have to be powerful enough just to run a desktop environment. That's the same path that Vista is going down, where you need a supercomputer just to log in.

In fairness to the KDE folks, despite my complaints about the bloat, it still takes up less memory than Firefox (I was a web developer... working in Opera... because 800MHz isn't always enough for Firefox).
Re:do not stop progress by not wanting 'bloat'... by Enderandrew · 2007-11-21 08:09 · Score: 2, Interesting

For all the "bloat" KDE uses less memory and runs faster than Gnome, and we're in the 21st century, so I do expect a fairly fully-featured desktop.

Xfce and others are great for older hardware, but even older computers can run KDE fairly well.

--
http://blindscribblings.com - Tasty pop-culture in conceptual fashion.
Re:do not stop progress by not wanting 'bloat'... by Seli · 2007-11-22 08:29 · Score: 2, Informative

You can verify the numbers yourself, there are instructions included. Or rather you can find out the current state, since the article is more than a year old. As for something done by somebody from GNOME, there is http://spooky-possum.org/cgi-bin/pyblosxom.cgi/kdevsgnome.html, written later, that says the usage is roughly the same. Note however that despite being some kind of a response to the first comparison this one measures the numbers in a way that is not recommended by it, and it even admits so in the 3rd paragraph (go figure). Not that I have any real reason to disprove the numbers though, it may very well be that in that specific configuration the usage was roughly the same, within the noise caused by the measurement method.

So yes, to sum it up, just generally claiming that KDE is more bloated than GNOME is a nonsense and has been for a long time (and maybe even that's never been true, for fair comparisons, but I don't remember anybody doing one in the long past, at most various flawed comparisons).

PS: And, just in case you find some similarity between my nick and the URL of the first comparison, it is not incidental.

Re:Why do I want a giant clock or battery widget by Anonymous Coward · 2007-11-21 06:32 · Score: 5, Funny

Kand Kwhy Kmust Kevery Kapp Kbe Knamed Klike Kthis?

Gexactly. GGNOME Gdoesn't Ghave Gthese Gissues.

Re:KDE vs Gnome by _Sprocket_ · 2007-11-21 06:33 · Score: 4, Informative

KDE or Gnome?

I recently had a very busy weekend trying edubutu, ubunutu, xubuntu, and gOS on an IBM T40, with mixed results.
I did not get around to kubuntu, perhaps I should have. Ubuntu is (for the most part) a Gnome environment. Kubuntu is the KDE oriented version of Ubuntu. At this point, Kubuntu lacks the polish seen in Ubuntu. As you seem to be getting your feet wet, you probably would want to stick with Ubuntu and its polished Gnome environment.

Me, myself... I'm using Kubuntu. I just like KDE better and am familiar enough with it to deal with Kubuntu's occasional rough edge. You might feel inclined to test those waters once you're feeling like you've got a good footing.

It should be stressed that the issue of Gnome vs. KDE (vs. Blackbox, Enlightenment, etc., etc.) is mostly a matter of interface and taste. The applications you run aren't necessarily restricted by your desktop... even if they are often bundled with one project or another.

Decent Software - But the Marketing? by jdeisenberg · 2007-11-21 06:34 · Score: 2, Informative

I did a quick test with a KDE 4.0 LiveCD a couple of days ago; it worked well, and I like the way it looks. But who decided on the code name?(from the press release):

KDE Project Ships First Release Candidate for Leading Free Software Desktop, Codename "Calamity"

Re:Decent Software - But the Marketing? by Wylfing · 2007-11-21 07:02 · Score: 2, Funny

Klearly it should have been named Kalamity.

--
Our intelligent designer has never created an animal that we couldn't improve by strapping a bomb to it.

Re:That's nice by crazybilly · 2007-11-21 07:02 · Score: 3, Funny

He's just venting the frustration natural to any new Gnome user. It's a result of wanting to change things and realizing the devs didn't think you needed to be able to change that w/o an hour of googling for which text file to edit, another half an hour of which setting to change and two more hours of figuring out how you did it wrong, how to fix it and then how to do it right. Venting like this healthy. Let the man be, hehehe.

Re:That's nice by orclevegam · 2007-11-21 07:06 · Score: 2, Insightful

WHAT THE HELL FOR? Thanks to vista most off the shelf computers have at least 2 GB of ram. Let the desktop rock. If I want moving background of poledancer going off behind my transparent windows, why not? I got the memory and CPU to let it run.

And there's nothing wrong with that if it's what you want, but some of us would like to use those resources on our applications instead of our window manager. It's always a good idea to be able to scale those sorts of things back so that when you really want to get some serious work done you don't have to fight with the eye candy over cpu cycles.

--
Curiosity was framed, Ignorance killed the cat.

Before we get into a GNOME vs KDE flamewar... by KWTm · 2007-11-21 07:09 · Score: 2, Insightful

It's already starting. People are volunteering to post messages of the format:
"(x) sucks! Real people like me use (1-x) instead!"
where x = KDE or GNOME, and KDE+GNOME=1.

Anyway, let me step outside all this and say what *I* wish. I wish that KDE and GNOME apps would let the user choose what widget set to use. I think each of KDE and GNOME have applications that simply have no counterpart with the same quality. KDE has Amarok and K3b, while GNOME has Firefox and GIMP, not to mention non-KDE/non-GNOME apps like OpenOffice and FontForge. I'm glad that it's possible to run all of these under any desktop environment we choose --I myself happen to use the KDE desktop even for GNOME apps.

But those file dialogs and other GNOME widgets are just different enough from KDE to be irritating. In addition to the old debate about whether the "OK" or the "Cancel" button should be on the left, the file dialog shortcuts are inconsistent. Bookmarks for KDE file dialogs don't show up in GNOME apps, and the tree navigation in GNOME is different from KDE. I can never remember whether I click once or twice to get to that part of the directory tree.

Wouldn't it be nice to be able to set apps to use a certain type of widget, the way KDE has modified OpenOffice so that it's only partially inconsistent with KDE, and maybe even make it user-customizable on the spot? (Yes, I know I'm dreaming, but still ...) Then all the volunteer recruits in the KDE/GNOME flamewar to go bash things out somewhere else, and the rest of us could get on with just plain using the various applications.

Yes, choice is good. GNOME is good, KDE is good, and Xfce, Enlightenment and twm are good. But we've come a long way, so let's set our sights a bit higher now.

--
404555974007725459910684486621289147856453481154 in hex is "You sank my Battleship?"
[GPG key in journal]

Re:Before we get into a GNOME vs KDE flamewar... by pherthyl · 2007-11-21 11:20 · Score: 2, Informative

while GNOME has Firefox and GIMP

Neither Firefox or the GIMP are gnome apps. They use GTK, but the gnome libraries are entirely optional.

And things like the portland project aim to allow apps to use native file dialogs for the environment they're running in.

Gnome developer's review by jdclucidly · 2007-11-21 07:37 · Score: 2, Interesting

I co-maintain Gnome Games and decided to do a review of KDE 4 RC 1 yesterday. I posted it on my blog.

Re:FreeDesktop.org? by eean · 2007-11-21 07:42 · Score: 2, Informative

KDE wrote a lot of specs at FD.org, its not like they have to play catch-up.

KDE has dropped DCOP and uses DBus now, I suppose thats the biggest news on the fd.o front.

Re:That's nice by Anonymous Coward · 2007-11-21 08:00 · Score: 2, Interesting

It's even worse for the old Gnome users. One day, everything is working the way you want it and the next day, you install an "upgrade" only to find 10 features you were using yesterday are completely gone because "there are other ways of doing it and people will just have to adjust to the one way we picked." It took years for Gnome 2 to get back some of the functionality in Gnome 1.x. Even now, it's still not the same.

Sincerely,
NOTABUG WONTFIX

Re:That's nice by Haeleth · 2007-11-21 08:25 · Score: 3, Interesting

You can use GNOME if you want to. People who want more flexibility (and to be treated like adults) can use KDE.

I used to think this mattered, but in practice for any moderately advanced user there's very little difference between them; the desktop environment provides launch menus and virtual desktops, and that's about it, because you'll be doing most of your file management from a shell prompt or a dired buffer, and the rest is just applications.

And really, the only thing in GNOME that ever annoyed me was the brain-dead unconfigurable window placement in Metacity that kept thinking I wanted my new window to appear on my second monitor, and that's become irrelevant now that the infinitely-configurable compiz is mature.

Re:Redunant by Mistshadow2k4 · 2007-11-21 09:02 · Score: 3, Interesting

Ah, one of my foes/freak/whatever didn't have the guts to post as himself. I've posted AC myself many a-time, but I've never done so just to troll somebody. Y'know, if you hate someone enough to do this that you've never actually met, maybe you're taking your online life a bit too seriously.

--
I dream of a better world... one in which chickens can cross roads without their motives being questioned.

Re:That's nice by kwark · 2007-11-21 09:18 · Score: 2

You forgot the horrible gtk filedialog, it is braindead (IMHO) and can be found in many applications.

Re:Why do I want a giant clock or battery widget by Ash-Fox · 2007-11-21 09:31 · Score: 2, Interesting

Why do I want a giant clock or battery widget on my desktop?

I don't know why, but if you don't like it, you can turn it off.

That's the best they can come up with to show off their spankin' new window manager?

I didn't think KDE was into showing off as much as working right.

Why is it that everything KDE has to be GIANT and UGLY?

If you don't like it, you can change it.

Kand Kwhy Kmust Kevery Kapp Kbe Knamed Klike Kthis?

While many applications to begin with a K, there are many that don't. I also don't see it being any worse than Apple naming a bunch of applications that begin with 'i', or companies sticking their company name in front of every software product name (Microsoft, Adobe do this a lot).

--
Change is certain; progress is not obligatory.

iSee... by newr00tic · 2007-11-21 09:35 · Score: 2, Insightful

iThere iAre iMore iCamps iDoing iThe iSame iThing.. ;)

--
A horse can't be sick, you know, even if he wants to.

Re:iSee... by De+Lemming · 2007-11-22 05:50 · Score: 2, Funny

WinThe WinWindows WinWorld WinLuckily WinDoesn't WinHave WinThis WinIssue.

Release Candidate? by Columcille · 2007-11-21 10:05 · Score: 5, Interesting

Release candidate? Come on, I know people are pretty lax about terms to use - alpha, beta, RC, what do they even mean anymore? But come on, this is going a bit far:

This release candidate marks that the majority of the components of KDE 4.0 are now approaching release quality...

And so on. Now, unless I missed something, a release candidate is when you think your product is about ready for public release but you want to have people test its "final form" first. You think it is ready, but you want to real-world test it to iron out bugs that have escaped you. Release candidates are not packages that are known to be incomplete. Is KDE doing this just to show some progress since the year is stretching on without a release of KDE 4? Just call it another beta. Heck, it sounds like it might should be alpha still. They are not yet to the final bugging stage, it is not feature complete, they are still adding new code. I can forgive them for calling an alpha a beta, but calling an alpha a release candidate? Come on!

(P.S., I know I'm hijacking a thread to get higher position with my post. Please forgive me. This post is in release-candidate status and the final form of this post is expected to be relevant to the current discussion thread.)

--
I love my sig.

Re: gnome burning app by ThinkOfaNumber · 2007-11-21 11:25 · Score: 3, Insightful

And when is GNOME ever going to get a good burning app like K3b? Gnome has one. It's called K3b.

Re: gnome burning app by jaxtherat · 2007-11-21 11:58 · Score: 3, Insightful

Please mod parent up. I agree, this whole discussion is silly. You can run any KDE app in Gnome if you have the libraries installed, and vice-versa.

All this psycho right wing DE advocacy is nothing but a childish pissing contest, and is symptomatic of the fact that people need to feel like they belong to something special, and that everyone who disagrees with them needs to have their brains bashed out with a rock.

Sheesh, we're no better than fricking cavemen with cool gadgets and nukes...

--
http://www.zombieapocalypse.tv/

Re:That's nice by sortius_nod · 2007-11-21 14:29 · Score: 2, Informative

If you want lightweight - ratpoison is about as lightweight as you can get.

You forgot how FS release schedules work by Qwaniton · 2007-11-21 16:34 · Score: 3, Insightful

Oh come on, remember how this works. In today's Free Software projects, we've learned how to develop as professionals and deliver product on time instead of when it's donewhen we feel like it. How do we accomplish this? Simple. We pick a date and when that date hits we freeze the code, bugs and all! We pick what bugs we really want to fix, even though it's obvious from the Bugzilla it's riddled with bugs of all kinds. The bugs we pick are deemed "crucial" after careful deliberation via a mailinglist flamewar full of nerds. After we fix, say, half of these, we ship the release and let the distributions break it with all sorts of patches. We continue pushing out new features disguised as bugfixes, which take approximately an eternity to trickle down to the end-users (we write for the distributors, God forbid we make it easy for end users, they might hurt themselves). Debian especially, never content to just let shit be, applies ten thousand patches that turn KDE into a desktop environment almost but not entirely unlike a regular KDE install. Eventually it approaches stability and polish, but somehow it always manages to pull back when someone decides to add new glitz. Notice to Free Software developers: Why not code in mind for the UNIX nerd in the Terminal content to ./configure && make && make install shit? The distributors will patch the piss out of your code anyway. See this [kde-buildsystem] mailing list post if you want to know what I'm talking about. Thank Christ the reply I linked to was written by someone with a grasp of reality. As for me, right now, I'm on Windows 2000 and loving it. My ThinkPad T21 has a no-Linux policy mainly because the kernel pukes when it talks to the hardware, but even after I fix that (in a no-GUI boot which you Ubuntards wouldn't understand), I find myself using an OS exactly as this comment describes. I'll come back to GNU/Linux when GNU gets its shit together and glues its compnents together into an actual GNU system; Linux developers write competent, consistent and standardized userland tools and APIs; and distributors/GNOME developers (they're the same thing at this point) stop writing castrated crucial components like safety scissors a la NetworkManager. Modern GNU/Linux distributions are like houses of cards. Despite all of this, I love KDE with all my heart and I wish I could try KDE 4. I miss Unix. However, I don't miss the current state of affairs in userland 'N*X, especially Ubuntu. Until I find a solid distribution I can actually use to its full potential (besides Slackware), I'll resist temptation and stay far away.

Dont like it... by comm2k · 2007-11-21 21:29 · Score: 2, Insightful

They seriously need to stop wasting so much pixels... I agree with the poster somewhere above that why are most of the things by default so gigantic?! The taskbar is way too fat. The new 'start'-menu is horrible. Did anyone there use the iPhone too much or just wanted to annoy people? There is a reason why they do it that way on the iPhone - it has a limited resolution. Having this thin "go back" button is like adding insult to injury.

I also cant understand why the default view of dolphin includes 3 BIG BUTTONS to change the view layout but not one for standard copy/paste/cut stuff.. this is a file browser?

At least this is KDE and not Gnome so all of this can be 'konfigured'. But that will be another 2 hour klick-fest.

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