KDE 4 to Be Released on January 11th

VincenzoRomano writes "It's official! KDE 4.0 will be released on January 11th of next year. The release itself doesn't sound very firm, as 'the developers are confident to be able to release a more polished and better working KDE' and not the long awaited prime-time release. At the very first Alpha release on march 11th, the release date had been forecasted to October 2007, and then shifted to the end of the year with the second Beta. Despite this, the promises for the fourth version are quite interesting and maybe deserve a 'stay tuned'."

Comments

Sounds familiar

[TBerben]

Sounds like the Vista launch, pushed back a little further with each test version. Maybe its better for the KDE team to set a date like July 2008 and surprise everybody when they are ready to release it in January?

Re:Sounds familiar

[Anonymous Coward]

Close. KDE 4 was set to be the next Vista. What happened was that right when KDE 4 was first being planned, they hyped one particular aspect, Plasma, as being as revolutionary as icons were when they were first introduced, before any code was written. Unfortunately, this technology was MIA for a long time, and it was introduced at a very late stage. The real problem is that it replaced lots of stable code that is absolutely critical to the user experience - the panel, desktop, etc. This really shouldn't have happened, but it was a core developer's pet project. The result is that it's still unfinished, despite them already having released a "release candidate" (which everybody else expected to be basically finished). And anybody pointing out how screwed up the release schedule was got attacked by fanboys.

So it was set to be the next Vista. But thankfully they actually managed to keep their egos in check and put off the release until the code is in a better state. This is a positive thing. I was seriously considering switching to GNOME until I heard about this.

Re:Sounds familiar

[lbbros]

For heaven's sake, don't spread FUD! That "stable code base" you talk about was a mess to mantain (note that Aaron J. Seigo, the Plasma lead developer, was also kicker's mantainer) and to add new features you broke others etc. Plasma it is not by any means aseigo's pet project: there are quite a number of developers involved in developing and polishing it. It matures at an amazingly fast pace, even.

The "fanboys" you talked about were people rightfully ticked off by the constant, uncostructive and negative attitude on the part of the complainers, which did not bring any improvement and only demotivated the developers. Those people did not even bother testing later revisions (right now there's a daily VM image floating around), report bugs or even offer *constructive* criticism.

Re:So what makes this better than 3?

[JamesTRexx]

Here's a list of the major changes and the reasons behind them.

Re:But does it run Windows?

[lord_rob the only on]

Yes, just google for kde 4 windows. You'll see that a Windows port of KDE 4 is ongoing. See this Wiki.

But for the moment it's just a project so if you are really interested in seeing KDE 4 ported to Windows, jump on the boat and help !

Re:Birthday for me?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm a GNOME user, so I didn't know much about KDE4. Here are some interesting links I just found while researching what KDE4 is going to include:

KDE 4 promises radical changes to the free desktop

KDE 4.0: Well worth the wait!

KDE 4 is almost ready to go

KDE 4.0 Alpha 2 features new shell

KDE 4: some reasons for design decisions

I don't think I'll switch from GNOME, but KDE4 sounds like it will have some cool features.

Re:What are the main differences between KDE &

[gardyloo]

KDE aims for a Windows-ish philosophy of "everything should be configurable". There are options for just about everything, so you can tweak your desktop to be just the way you want it. I realize that you needed a good Windows/OS X dichotomy with which to compare KDE and Gnome, but you call Windows configurable?!? I've worked extensively on KDE, XFCE, and Enlightenment, and some with Gnome, and you're right: KDE is exremely configurable, far moreso than Gnome. But Gnome is on par with, if not considerably MORE configurable than Windows. Windows is essentially locked as it is, even with those "power users'" tools.

      I'm highly looking forward to being able to use KDE as a WM for Windows systems, without the added cruft of a Cygwin environment.

Re:What are the main differences between KDE &

[stew77]

I still wonder who or what that mythical power-user is, because I don't think I ever met one in person. The skript kiddie that spends 6 hours per day hunting themes and posting screen shots to forums? Some of the most knowledgeable and experienced developers I know barely change anything in their computer's configuration, even keeping the default OS X desktop image.

It gets worse

[Anonymous Coward]

There's been a particularly heated exchange going on in the developer's blogs which started with someone describing the new desktop/plasma as "useless crap." Aaron Seigo (the above mentioned core developer) then replies in the comments "i'm tired of this shit".

Now, one of the complaints leveraged was the lack of familiarity a KDE3 user would have with the alien and unfinished Plasma desktop due to a lack of migration path from the familiar kicker/kdesktop/kmenu. After a few more exchanges (which are displayed in all their sordid glory on Planet KDE, Mr. Seigo then announces that he already had some code written to implement a more traditional menu system, but in light of being pissed off by people pointing out some pretty glaring flaws, he will not work on it anymore. Classy.

The whole thing is just childish and immature on both parts and doesn't really fill me with confidence, especially in light of the unfinished and buggy RC.

But again, the only problem with the KDE4 platform so far seems to be Plasma, and it's unfortunate since the project as a whole really seems ready to shake up the Linux desktop. Unfortunately the most visible part of it isn't up to snuff.

Re:KDE File Manager

[Anonymous Coward]

"A click away"? That doesn't sound like the KDE I know and love.

It should be exactly 17 clicks away: menubar -> Preferences -> Options -> Settings -> File Manager Settings -> ... something about a platypus ... scrolling list of Latvian surnames ... -> ah, the Dolphin/Konq switch.

Usually we don't get the tiniest little feature without 49 new checkboxes to control every last aspect of it. If they manage to add a whole new file manager, but allow you to switch back with *one* click, they've already lost. I might as well use GNOME.

Re:So what makes this better than 3?

[Almahtar]

The most noticeable difference to me is that it's built on Qt 4, which is much faster, uses less RAM, and has stellar Windows, OSX, and X11 compatibility.

Most Qt4 programs (all that I've written for that matter) don't need a line of code changed to work on OSX or Windows.

Re:Birthday for me?

[ATMD]

My friend, you are misinformed! Thanks to SVG support, you can make GNOME's footprint as big or small as you like, with no loss of quality whatsoever!

Re:What are the main differences between KDE &

[yanyan]

o My wife spilled water in my keyboard (which I love, so I don't want to replace).

Which, the keyboard or the wife?