KDE 4.0 RC 1 Released

angryfirelord writes "The KDE Community is happy to announce the immediate availability of the first release candidate for KDE 4.0. This release candidate marks that the majority of the components of KDE 4.0 are now approaching release quality. While the final bits of Plasma, the brand new desktop shell and panel in KDE 4, are falling into place, the KDE community decided to publish a first release candidate for the KDE 4.0 Desktop. Release Candidate 1 is the first preview of KDE 4.0 which is suitable for general use and discovering the improvements that have taken place all over the KDE codebase."

Comments

Yes but...

[Anonymous Coward]

does it run on Vista?

Re:Yes but...

[Surye]

It's built on QT4, so after they iron out a few details, yes.

Slashdotted.

[Valdrax]

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

Slashdotted

[JBHarris]

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

Screenshots

[arevos]

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.

KDE 4 Live CD

[Rich]

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!

kde 4 apps will run on Windows

[eean]

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

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Release Candidate or Beta --what's the diff?

[KWTm]

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.)

Re:Release Candidate or Beta --what's the diff?

[Anonymous Coward]

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?

[Anonymous Coward]

Took the words out of my mouth. Yes, IP theft is rampart in Slashdot nowadays.

Re:Fat or muscle?

[DoofusOfDeath]

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:Why do I want a giant clock or battery widget

[Anonymous Coward]

Kand Kwhy Kmust Kevery Kapp Kbe Knamed Klike Kthis?

Gexactly. GGNOME Gdoesn't Ghave Gthese Gissues.

Release Candidate?

[Columcille]

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.)