KDE 4.0 Is Out

Many users wrote to alert us that KDE 4.0 has been released. Here's Computerworld Australia's take on the release KDE 4.0 is based on the Qt4 toolkit, which brings significant enhancements in the way memory is used. "So it ends up making KDE less resource intensive than KDE 3, which is quite an improvement," according to Australian KDE developer Hamish Rodda, who calls the new architecture "future-proof." Computerworld notes that developers are already at work porting the new environment to Windows and the Mac.

Comments

woo-hoo

[ByOhTek]

I've been looking forward to this showing up. It looks like they are having a bit of a challange porting it though :-(.

Oh well. It will probably show up with 4.1, which is fine, the bugfixes for missed critters will be done by then.

Re:woo-hoo

[CastrTroy]

I hope that they get Amarok working on Windows. That's one app that I think it miles ahead of the windows counter-part (iTunes or WMP). It has all the things that the other ones are afraid to offer. Like Automatic lyric downloads, and links to the band's Wikipedia page, that are viewable right in Amarok. Those two features make Amarok a lot better. I also like how they manage the playlists, and how they make it easier to have a temporary playlist of the current music you are listening to.

Re:woo-hoo

[kyofunikushimi]

"That's one app that I think it miles ahead of the windows counter-part" Not just the Windows counterparts. [IMHO] There isn't a library-based media player on ANY platform that Amarok doesn't put to shame.

Re:woo-hoo

[ByOhTek]

*shrug*, I've always been an xmms/winamp fan.

I'm looking forward to multiple desktop support in windows that is better than the MSVDM, and free as in beer.

Re:woo-hoo

[MrNemesis]

Hmm, I sense you might not be so pleased with amarok 2; its interface is a huge step backwards IMHO, and too much like iTunes for my liking. Apparently they've also done away with support for having a massive current playlist, which completely ruins the way I've grown accustomed to listening to music. Nice to have the developers call you "stupid"...

Re:woo-hoo

[lbbros]

Do you realize you're talking about something that hasn't even had an alpha release? A lot may change, or may not, but there's no guarantee at this point.

Re:woo-hoo

[aetherspoon]

http://www.foobar2000.org/ for the win.
While I do use Amarok on my Linux boxes, I'd REALLY prefer running foobar2000, and even investigated how well it ran with Wine.

Re:woo-hoo

[MrNemesis]

Yes, and I'm also aware that "don't bitch about the way the interface has looked for the last six months, it may well change completely even though the devs show absolutely no sign of doing so" has been the default excuse to anyone who expresses concern that their beloved music player is about to turn into the bastard offspring of iTunes and WMP, rather than maintaining its own identity.

All I'm doing is expressing concern about it now, before it's released. Should I wait until it's complete before I bitch about it so I can get the "...but it's finished now, why didn't you say anything when we were still developing it?" excuse? What about the functionality that I know has already been dropped?

Re:woo-hoo

[lbbros]

No, you should wait at least until there is at least one release such as an alpha. Amarok is changing quite constantly.

Re:woo-hoo

[MrNemesis]

And then answer when it's at alpha will be the same as it's ever been. If I'm wrong, I'll even go so far as to buy a hat in order to eat it.

Re:woo-hoo

[zootm]

I prefer Banshee on Linux, and foobar2000 on Windows. Banshee doesn't have quite the myriad of functions that Amarok does, but I find it a good deal more pleasant to use, and never used the advanced functionality anyway.

Re:woo-hoo

[Anonymous Coward]

Sounds like it's time to fork.

I'd love to see the entire KDE3 codebase forked off by a group of people with no connection to KDE eV.

Re:woo-hoo

[narrowhouse]

Sorry for the off topic, but http://virtuawin.sourceforge.net/ does a good job on my work machine. Free as in beer AND free as in speech, what a deal!

Re:woo-hoo

[ByOhTek]

hmm, more than 4. That's nice.

Eh, I've never considered GNU free as in speach - Althought the fifth amendment isn't technically part of "free speach", it is however a very important implicit part of it. But that's a whole 'nother can of worms based on which group you look at when considering the free speach aspect.

Re:woo-hoo

[Risen888]

I vastly prefer gmusicbrowser, it has pretty much all Amarok's features in a gtk based application. I also find it to be more stable, but am willing to chalk that up to the fact that I use Kubuntu, and seem to get KDE bugs that people who use other distros don't.

Re:woo-hoo

[Risen888]

I don't understand what the Fifth has to do with GNU or free speech or free beer.

No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a Grand Jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the Militia, when in actual service in time of War or public danger; nor shall any person be subject for the same offence to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb; nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.

I don't get it, please explain... ??

Re:woo-hoo

[ByOhTek]

The right to remain silent. In free; it's just as important to be able to keep your trap shut as it is to be able to open it when it is right.

Re:woo-hoo

[Risen888]

I still don't get your analogy. I understand what the Fifth means, but what does that have to do with the GPL?

I'm gonna take a shot in the dark, and I may be wildly off base about what you meant in the first place, but here goes. Under the GPL, if you do not distribute the code, you have no responsibilities to anyone at all, you can do whatever you want with it. Isn't that analogous to a "right to remain silent?" However, once you distribute said code, you are in effect giving up your right to remain silent.

Are we even talking about the same thing here?

Re:woo-hoo

[ByOhTek]

Not quite: With the GPL, if you distribute the work or any derivative work, you must distribute the source code (not necessarily at the same time, but it must be made available).

Guy to Gal, in the freedom of speech context -w- 5th:
"Hey, wanna go and get some coffee?"

Without the 5th:
"Hey, wanna go and get some coffee? I'm using this as an attempt in a standard recipe for me to eventually get into your pants, sooner preferably to later, but the schedule can vary."

In this case the source is the motive. Although, unlike the case of code, pretty much everyone knows the source to this.

Re:woo-hoo

[Risen888]

Okay, I get it now. You're attempting to connect two completely unrelated things to make a false analogy.

I've been served

[minginqunt]

Australian KDE developer Hamish Rodda, who calls the new architecture "future-proof."

That sounds like a challenge to me.
Oh, it's on.

Love,

The Future.

Re:I've been served

[kellyb9]

Future-proof sounds like a bad thing.

Re:I've been served

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah. It sounds like downloading KDE 4 will turn you into Bill Murray in Groundhog Day.

Re:I've been served

[Bandman]

That would be so sweet.

Re:I've been served

[gambolt]

They use scotchguard

Re:I've been served

[Drooling Iguana]

You may talk big, Future, but we all know you're just yesterday's news.

Re:I've been served

[Anonymous Coward]

And just to prove the point, the Future plays the flying cars card it had been holding back all this time. You hear that, KDE? Flying cars. How are you going to deal with that?

Re:I've been served

[Anonymous Coward]

Someone'll talk KDE into chopping its own foot off for the luxury of owning one? :-)

Re:I've been served

[stinerman]

Too early in the morning for flapjacks?

Why only 4 words on the main page?

[donscarletti]

I'm a keen and loyal Gnome user and a former Gnome developer.

I think the 4.0 release of KDE deserves an un-abbreviated summary on the front page.

Congratulations on this milestone guys, keep up your work.

Re:Why only 4 words on the main page?

[debilo]

Yeah, I think so too, but at the moment KDE4 is nothing to show off, really. Most changes seem to have happened under the hood, and from a user perspective there is not much else to mention. It feels like KDE4 = KDE3 + new theme - functionality. I don't want to sound too negative, though, we were told to expect maturity with later point releases.

I hope then it'll be worth a full summary on the front page.

Re:Why only 4 words on the main page?

[Anonymous Coward]

KDE 4.0 Is Out Now! would have suited you better, maybe?

I mean really, what kind of a stupid thing to bitch about is that? A Slashdot editor was actually to the point and correct at the same time, you should be buying lottery tickets right about now.

Re:Why only 4 words on the main page?

[apathy maybe]

Probably because everyone who has been keeping up with the whole affair knows that this is going to be a buggy release, and that the next version (4.1) is going to be the actual version to use.

Personally I'm a GMONE user, so this isn't going to affect me at all. But it is still good to know that there are alternatives, especially for people who prefer there X/GNU/Linux desktop to be slightly more Windoze like.

*Insert joke about MS Windows versioning (point zero releases and all that) here.

Re:Why only 4 words on the main page?

[jeffmeden]

So reducing resource usage, thereby allowing it to run smoother on a given platform, is 'nothing to show off'? The only good OS is a new, feature-bloated one you say? Well you enjoy your Aero and Vista, we will keep our KDE and Linux thank-you-very-much.

Re:Why only 4 words on the main page?

[Nossie]

you actually tried it yet?

from my own toying it really does seem to be quite feature incomplete ... no disrespect to KDE, they said it was incomplete and it IS incomplete ... looks like an interesting option but in its current state I'd have to say gnome had more 'options' and that's saying something!

BTW just to emphasize, I've never been a KDE fan, I'm not really a huge fan of gnome either these days ... but feature wise KDE3.x IS much more complete, they have made some great advances but I'm not sure I'd have called this a .0 release

Re:Why only 4 words on the main page?

[xtracto]

I think the summary at OSNews had it right. KDE 4.0 is not KDE 4 per-se, this release represents the technology backend release (the middleware) to developers all over the world. It is from now on that developers should get attention to KDE 4.0 and start porting or writing applications for it.

Re:Why only 4 words on the main page?

[Bogtha]

So reducing resource usage, thereby allowing it to run smoother on a given platform, is 'nothing to show off'?

This was mentioned in the summary. What do you want them to do, mention it twice in the summary?

Re:Why only 4 words on the main page?

[Anonymous Coward]

KDE4 runs slower than KDE3 on my system.

Core 2 Quad Q6600, 4GB DDR2-800, GeForce 8500GT. KDE3 runs like a dream with all composite effects turned on. KDE4 runs horribly sluggish and it's so slow that just using it frustrates me.

KDE3 is better and more usable than KDE4 in every possible way.

Re:Why only 4 words on the main page?

[oever]

You can consider the state of KDE 4.0 comparable to that of Linux 2.6.0.

It's the first release in a long line of new releases. The number of changes is really very huge, so it's no wonder that it is not perfect.

That being said, I think it is amazing how well it turned out considering the enormous scale of the project.

Re:Why only 4 words on the main page?

[Anonymous Coward]

You kind of skimped out on the video card for that system, IMHO. The idea with the new version of KDE is to reduce overhead and improve performance on low end systems, your system does not yet earn that designation.

Re:Why only 4 words on the main page?

[Anonymous Coward]

Someone posted a blog entry saying that "KDE 4.0 uses less memory than KDE 3.0 and is faster"... along with his idiotic and transparently incorrect testing methods. This was hyped worldwide (not kidding).

Subsequently, it was shown by someone who, you know, can program more than "hello world" that KDE 4.0 is a lot slower, and uses a lot more memory than KDE 3.0. The "damage" was done however, and the KDE fanboys still run around saying that it is faster.. some of them even do an "emperor's new clothes" when they actually run it, and swear blind that it is faster. It's all quite pathetic.

Re:Why only 4 words on the main page?

[pallmall1]

from my own toying it really does seem to be quite feature incomplete

Yes, it still suffers from the main problems in RC2, which are summarized here.

Re:Why only 4 words on the main page?

[nutshell42]

Just think back to Gnome 2.0. At least the KDE guys clearly told us that the barebones KDE 4.0 is due to necessity and not choice.

I'm back to using Gnome sometimes (first time since the glorious 1.4 times =) and I have to say it works quite well. It's just that with all the "We know what's good for you" and "You are too dumb for options" talk around 2.0 they managed to drive me off quite thoroughly. Had they just told us that there was a lack of features because 2.0 was a rewrite and they didn't have time for them I'd have had much less of a problem with that. Release early, release often is the OSS mantra and KDE 4.0 is kinda scratching at the upper limit you can go without release anyway.

Oh and it's not just OSS. OSX 10.0 was a buggy slow beta-quality release (here come the rabid fanboys =P) and Vista's one steaming pile of sh*t.

Re:Why only 4 words on the main page?

[lems1]

And that's not confusing... I like Gnome releases. 2.2 is 2.2. 2.20 is 2.20. No ifs or buts.

Configurable?

[debilo]

Not having tested any of the betas or release candidates, but having seen countless stunning screenshots, I was anxious to try it out. Just installed it on Kubuntu, and to my dismay I found it to be a bit of a letdown. There's hardly any options to customise the desktop/menu/taskbar or general behavior, it seems to lack most widgets found in KDE3, and I have seen no option to add your own non-officially packaged apps as an icon to the desktop/taskbar.

The menu is a bit awkward to navigate, and again there are hardly any options to change the default behavior or look. I know they promised more features for 4.1 or 4.2/3, but I was still a little shocked as to how completely barebone it felt compared to KDE3, which I will continue to use for the time being.

Anyways, I'd still like to thank the KDE team for their effort, and I'm looking forward to using KDE4 once it has been optimised.

Re:Configurable?

[PrescriptionWarning]

I really liked the presentation and the way things looked in general when i tried the Kubuntu with KDE 4 RC1, however when I tried it there were some serious graphics issues especially with the widgets on my laptop (which has an intel graphics set). So hopefully they've fixed that in the last couple months because I definitely plan to try it out again! Who knows, maybe this would even be perfect for the eeePC :)

Re:Configurable?

[debilo]

Maybe you should get work done instead of masturbating with your desktop environment. Other than changing the background image and window color scheme, how much more diddling do you need ?

Ah, a GNOME user!

Re:Configurable?

[Bralkein]

Yeah, KDE4 is definitely being developed according to the "release early, release often" philosophy here. For months now the word has been that KDE 4.0 will not completely realise all of the hopes for KDE4 as a long-term project, rather it is targeted towards enthusiasts and developers. I think it's a fairly good idea, because the ball needs to get rolling in order to build activity and interest around the new platform. Aaron Seigo, a high-profile KDE developer made this blog post which clears up a lot of the confusion around this 4.0 release.

As I've mentioned elsewhere, KDE4 is still making rapid progress, and in the mean time KDE3 is still a great desktop. When KDE4 is ready for mass consumption (hopefully 4.1 will be better in this regard, scheduled for 6 months or so), the Linux distributors will pick it up and start delivering it as a supported option. Until then, this first release still shows a great deal of progress, and I think the developers can definitely justify a bit of self-satisfaction!

Re:Configurable?

[teslar]

Well, I've been running KDE4 for about 10 Minutes now (writing this in it, in fact) and things I am missing so far (note that I may simply not have found yet) - and yes, I need them to work efficiently:

• The ability to bind keyboard shortcuts to 'Desktop to the left/right/up/down' as well as 'move windows to the desktop to the left/right7up/down as I could under KDE3
• The ability to get a list of all windows on all Desktops
• The ability to resize the bottom panel to something smaller
• The abillty to reorder the widgets in the bottom panel in a way other than removing them and then readding them where I want

Other things that I found insta-annoying:

• My Desktop icons have become a jumbled mess on the left side of the screen
• Moving them around somehow also MOVES the entire background (albeit in the opposite direction and to a lesser degree) - and I mean everything, icons, wallpaper and that plama thingy in the top right corner. WTF?
• Font size for non-QT apps has somehow reduced to barely-readable

Things I insta-like:

• Well... I do like the black taskbar, but I'd still rather set it to translucent.

Bottom line... yeah, nice work but it's simply not ready for proper usage. It feels and handles like a beta. I can't configure it so I can work efficiently in it and it's broken in places (I don't think I'm supposed to be able to shift my entire background out of the screen). Right, back to KDE3 for me now.

Re:Configurable?

[lbbros]

Let's quote the Plasma FAQ (disclaimer: I'm no KDE dev, but I wrote it):

Q. I can't my favorite [ insert feature here ]!

Don't forget that Plasma is still in its infancy (it's brand new, after all) and that KDE 3 was an extremely polished codebase: it took seven years to get to that, while Plasma had about 18 months to get to its current status. With time, the Plasma developers plan on reintroducing features that have been missing and fix regressions. As KDE progresses through the KDE4 cycle, Plasma will improve with it.

Re:Configurable?

[gambolt]

I want the panel at the top. It makes much more sense to have the application menu bars and the panel all at the top so I don't have to move the mouse all over the screen.

Re:Configurable?

[MrNemesis]

KDE without configuration options? What's to differentiate it from GNOME?!

Yes, I am only joking. But there's no way I'm shifting to KDE4 until it has at least the level of beautiful tweakery that by beloved KDE3 has. When I tried out one of the RC's (more deserving of the "alpha" moniker if you ask me), I too was similarly astounded at the lack of options for even changing basic things like the colour of the panel (I tend to keep my desktop in neutral, low-contrast colours and the big'n'shiny'n'curvy look of the default KDE4 is about as appealing to me as regurgitating a whole lobster).

I'll also reiterate my stance on widgets - No. Fucking. Way. Why should I minimise every app I have just to be able to see an OpenGL clock or something useless? If it deserves to be treated as an app, then treat it as an app rather than desktop eye candy and give it a taskbar slot or a system tray icon. My desktop is visible for all of every three seconds every time I log in, otherwise it's covered with whatever app(s) I'm using at the time - I don't see the point in using your desktop as anything other than a workspace, your filesystem is where the eye candy (applications and files) lives.

I find Kickoff awkward; Lancelot IMHO is a much nicer K-menu replacement. I'd still like there to be an option for there to be a simple ye olde style menu as well.

I must be a bit of a luddite or something...

Re:Configurable?

[Bogtha]

I'd still like there to be an option for there to be a simple ye olde style menu as well.

Lots of people do. Aaron Seigo had code for it but refused to commit it because he thought people were being mean. Quote:

i have two directories on my devel system here, one containing the start of a menu oriented display of the data models in kickoff, another which is a straight port of the kicker kmenu code.

however, in line with my recently adopted "i don't reward negative behaviour" position, due to the completely out of line missives i've received on this issue, capped by yours, it is now officially off my table. so if you want a "traditional" menu, then you make one.

Re:Configurable?

[lbbros]

However there is a traditional menu available. Look under the Add Widgets dialog.

Re:Configurable?

[Anonymous Coward]

I resent the implcation! My penis is NOT small!

Re:Configurable?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm using the opensuse packages and I have none of those desktop icon issues.. maybe an old package on your end? The panel is exactly as you describe though.

Re:Configurable?

[BrianGKUAC]

Ah, a Windows user!
Fixed that for you.

Re:Configurable?

[Anonymous Coward]

In related news, Aaron Seigo is a filthy cunt.

Re:Configurable?

[JohnFluxx]

> I'll also reiterate my stance on widgets - No. Fucking. Way. Why should I minimise every app I have just to be able to see an OpenGL clock or something useless?

There's a shortcut you can hold to see the desktop widgets so that you can quickly see them.

Re:Configurable?

[MrNemesis]

Why not just treat them like a typical app and give them a taskbar entry so I don't need to hold down a special shortcut? I really don't think reinventing the "every interactive GUI program has an entry in the taskbar" paradigm for the sake of having some shiny eye candy on the desktop is really worth it, and KDE3 already has support for hiding taskbar entries for arbitrary apps if that's what floats your boat (not tested to see if KDE4 has the same functionality).

Re:Configurable?

[agent_no.82]

I do exactly that with the Amarok Player window.
No taskbar entry, no border, all desktops, below all. I dropped beryl because it wouldn't do that.
My point is that just because you don't use any desktop widgets in your UI paradigm, does not mean others don't find them useful. Do you not have icons on your desktop either?

Re:Configurable?

[Anonymous Coward]

> ...I've been running KDE4 for about 10 Minutes now...

Actually, you've really been running KDE-Of-The-Future v1.0. Get it? Version one-point-oh.

Re:Configurable?

[MrNemesis]

No, no icons on the desktop, what'd be the point in that? Icons live in the panel where they're easy and quick to get at. To me, icons on the desktop is like putting your phone underneath your typewriter.

I'm not against the implementation of widgets at all (indeed, with plasma they're pretty much a side effect), I'm aware that alot of people think they find them useful ;) it's just that there's bound to be loads of useful stuff implemented as "widget only", meaning awkward people like me who like an uncluttered (unused) desktop get left out for the sake of... well, I'm not exactly sure why. Perhaps there's already a mechanism for "put this widget in the systray instead of on the desktop" or something like that but I haven't found it yet.

Re:Configurable?

[adrianbaugh]

Right, back to KDE3 for me now.

After you've submitted bug reports, I hope.

Re:Configurable?

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe I'm a luddite as well, Kickoff seems too dumb and plasticky for me; but I also have a biggish screen and the menu annoys the progressive part of me also because it only uses a small corner of it and forces me to navigate the options in that box.

Re:Configurable?

[MrNemesis]

Same problem here. What's especially frustrating is actually having to *click* each submenu in order to and see what programs are available - if you're just browsing about looking at apps it's unusably annoying, if you know what you're looking for it's just slower than the old kicker K-menu.

At the moment I'd like to call Plasma the most overrated piece of shit that ever made it into something masquerading as a release. At the moment it offers me nothing but took away everything I loved about KDE 3.5, to the extent that GNOME is more configurable and has a saner interface. Thanks a bunch, Siego!

Re:Configurable?

[agent_no.82]

I hybridize. Places go on the desktop and applications on an auto-hiding panel. Kind of a psychological issue rather than a usability though. I should also mention that I a have a rather large monitor, so the whole thing is rarely covered. Meh. It's been my experience that few widgets are actually useful to begin with.

More than Memory

[Assembler]

The KDE4.0 release is about so much more than memory usage!

o. Complete library overhaul
o. Complete graphical overhaul
o. Simplification (see Dolphin)
o. New desktop, taskbar, dashboard

The changes to a desktop environment don't get any bigger than that. I'm very surprised that the article summary only seems to mention memory usage.

Re:More than Memory

[pizzach]

KDE4 sounds basically like a total rewrite. They somehow did it much faster than e17. Is it because of developer/user base size?

I have been a gnome user for the longest time as I have waited for e17 to mature. But kde4 is the first version that seems to be the version to interest me the most in a long time.

Re:More than Memory

[je ne sais quoi]

Does anybody else here completely dislike the idea of Dolphin? For one thing, I always thought that whoever decided that it was a good idea to make the file manager and the web-browser one and the same must have been smoking crack or similar but it doesn't look nearly as customizable as konqueror (the file manager) has in Dolphin. Is there anybody here who uses it that can enlighten me?

Re:More than Memory

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe it's easier to use and less "confusing" for some people. The good thing is, it's still very easy to make Konqueror the default file manager if you prefer it - that's what I did. And from what I've understood, Konqueror as a file manager won't be deprecated in any way even though Dolphin exists.

Re:More than Memory

[Anonymous Coward]

They did it much faster than E17, and with a lot more of library-wise functionnality. While it lacks a little for now on the desktop, it's a very good development platform. E17 libs can't compare.

Re:More than Memory

[Anonymous Coward]

o. Complete library overhaul

A good thing, but a right pain for developers in the short term.

o. Complete graphical overhaul

Shame it's butt-ugly.

o. Simplification (see Dolphin)

If I want Gnome, I know where to get it.

o. New desktop, taskbar, dashboard

Will be lovely when they're finished. Which they blatantly aren't.

Oh well, maybe 4.1 will be something to shout about.

Re:More than Memory

[Risen888]

I second that emotion. If I wanted Nautilus, I'd fucking use Gnome.

To avoid Slashmeat accusation

[tepples]

I think the 4.0 release of KDE deserves an un-abbreviated summary on the front page. Since Andover.net brought Slashdot and Freshmeat under one corporate umbrella in about 1999, a lot of Slashdot users suggested that too-frequent reports of software releases made Slashdot look like "Slashmeat". Now, release stories often get posted to section and, once they have enough comments, automatically promoted to front page.

Re:To avoid Slashmeat accusation

[Anonymous Coward]

Slashmeat...that's a surprisingly appropriate word for the kind of stuff that does make the front page.

Distribution support

[tonan]

Looks like Kubuntu already released a CD to install KDE 4.0 alongside your KDE 3.0. There are releases for openSUSE and Debian also, but it looks like other distributions are still working on it (including Fedora/Red Hat and Madriva).

Re:Distribution support

[Doctor Crumb]

http://www.kubuntu.org/ also has instructions for installing kde4 alongside your kde3 packages by adding a repository. You can either run the kde4 apps from within your regular kde session, or you can choose kde4 as an option from the login screen.

I just spent 20 minutes playing around with it via this method, and have seamlessly switched between kde3 and kde4 and back again.

Congratulations!

[andrewd18]

My congratulations go out to the KDE 4 development team. While this release may be a little rough around the edges, it's an excellent base and framework for some seriously good releases to come. Thank you!

5 out of 4 dentists agree...

[Raineer]

IT: KDE 4.0 Is Out 9 of 3 comments Does this have anything to do with the quality of KDE?

This Could Be The Worst Thing For KDE

[Anonymous Coward]

This release could well be the worst thing for the KDE project. This release is BUGGY to say the least. This release lacks feature and application support, due "real soon". This release is is a dot oh(x.0) release which is supposed to mean completed and ready but, is instead described by the countless and confusing explanations from KDE insiders as more of a beta or preview release. Stupid statements are made like; This is KDE 4.0 not KDE4. What the hell is that supposed to mean? Does that not seem slightly ambiguous to the developers? For some stupid reason, we are supposed to ignore all the short comings of this release and treat it as a beta, despite it being an x.0. This is a giant cockup!

This should have been a KDE 3.9 release. With all of its shortcomings, calling this release KDE 4.0 is going to damage KDE's reputation. It's sad really.

I won't even start about all the screen real estate that is wasted on crap borders and drop shadows...

Re:This Could Be The Worst Thing For KDE

[Anonymous Coward]

parent post is a troll

Re:This Could Be The Worst Thing For KDE

[teslar]

This should have been a KDE 3.9 release.

Absolutely not - KDE4.0 is a completely new thing and therefore by definition not part of the KDE 3.x family. It coexists for now in parallel with KDE3, it is not sequential improvement.

No, the sad truth is, this should have been KDE4 Beta 1. It's not finished, it's been rushed out. I like KDE and I appreciate that KDE4 is going to be very cool eventually, but this is not the time. And rushing products out before they are finished, saying that the real stuff will turn up in the .1 release, well that kinda reminds me of another company, except they call the .1 release 'Service Pack 1'.

Again, let's be clear about this - KDE4 is gonna kick some ass eventually, but releasing it in its current state has been a big mistake.

Re:This Could Be The Worst Thing For KDE

[Bralkein]

I used to think that, but then I changed my mind when I realised that there's a big difference between releasing something like KDE4 and something like Windows Vista or the latest version of OSX or whatever.

When Vista (just an example, I'm not bashing MS) was released, then Microsoft was having it put on store shelves, pre-installed on new computers and were generally selling it and distributing it for everybody to use. When you receive a piece of software in this way, you generally expect it to be in a complete and serviceable state, which is fair enough.

Something like KDE is different. Yes, the KDE community is very pleased with this milestone event and they are all having a party etc., but at the same time they are clearly advertising that the KDE 4.0 desktop is probably not ready for general use on most people's desktops. When your say that KDE 4.0 is released, it doesn't really mean the same sort of thing as the release of Vista, because all that's really happened is someone's created some source archives and put them on a website to download. I don't think any mainstream distribution is going to put KDE 4.0 into its repositories for general use, and as such the only people who are running KDE4 at this point are either developers or people who have gone to the effort of seeking out unsupported, community-provided packages out of their own curiosity. Most of the reactions I've seen from enthusiasts of this type have indeed confirmed that they do not believe KDE 4.0 to be ready for day-to-day use, but they're not disillusioned or upset or dissatisfied because they know that they deliberately sought out an unfinished product -- they just wanted to have a preview, really.

There is another point concerning this whole "maybe it should still be a beta" situation, which involves the distinction between KDE4 as a platform and KDE4 as a desktop environment. According to what I've read, a large part of the decision to release KDE 4.0 in the state it's in was to do with the fact that in order to end up with a complete desktop environment, there needs to be a community of developers working with the new platform. The concern was that people wouldn't want to start developing for a "beta" platform, only to have the rug pulled out from under their feet when the APIs were changed. This 4.0 release marks a stable target platform which people can start building on with confidence. It's important to realise that this isn't some sort of trick -- the libraries and frameworks underpinning KDE4 are apparently pretty complete and stable and it's mainly the applications which need the work.

Re:This Could Be The Worst Thing For KDE

[teslar]

at the same time they are clearly advertising that the KDE 4.0 desktop is probably not ready for general use on most people's desktops.

No, they're not. The /. crowd knows about it because enough of us read kde-devel and all the flaming between devs on whether or not to release has come up in every KDE4-related story here.

But consider Joe Average, the non-technical guy who decides to ditch Windows in favour of Linux, since he's read a few good things about it and all that. Exactly the kind of user everyone feels Linux should be targetting if it is ever to achieve critical mass. Assume for the sake of the argument, that he installs Kubuntu. His current KDE version - and he is probably aware of it, or will find out very soon - is 3.5.8. Now he visits kubuntu.com. The site tells it in no uncertain terms that "KDE4 is the start of something amazing" and to "be free with KDE4".

If that's not enough to make him install KDE4 without second thought, he can visit kde.org and learn, again, to be free and that the " KDE Project Ships Fourth Major Version of cutting edge Free Software Desktop". He also learns that The KDE 4 Libraries have seen major improvements in almost all areas. and that the KDE 4 Desktop has gained some major new capabilities. and so on. Nowhere immediately obvious does it say that it is not, in fact, ready, feature complete or stable.

So, what happens to Joe Average? He installs KDE4, tries out a few things, finds it broken in several places, not working as expected in others and not configurable where he may want it to be configurable. Compared to WinXP, it will feel to him as a significant step backwards (probably more because of the brokenness than the lack of features compared to KDE3). In the end, he'll just go back to Windows because, clearly Linux isn't there yet.

Bottom line, this should have been a Beta and it should have clearly been advertised as such, not via comments on some mailing list but clearly visible within the main announcement.

Re:This Could Be The Worst Thing For KDE

[dc29A]

So, what happens to Joe Average? He installs KDE4, tries out a few things, finds it broken in several places, not working as expected in others and not configurable where he may want it to be configurable. Yeah, because Joe Average spends time configuring desktops. Have you seen the Average Joe's XP desktop? Factory default settings with the Fisher Price interface.

Re:This Could Be The Worst Thing For KDE

[andrewd18]

If only I had mod points...

Re:This Could Be The Worst Thing For KDE

[Bralkein]

No, they're not. The /. crowd knows about it because enough of us read kde-devel and all the flaming between devs on whether or not to release has come up in every KDE4-related story here.

Alright, I'll give you that one. I suppose I have been paying rather close attention to the whole thing, and it's easy to forget what the general level of awareness is.

However, I don't buy this rather ridiculous picture of "Joe Average" you're painting. So this guy, completely new to Linux, downloads Kubuntu, manages to get it working and then straight away cracks open his /etc/apt/sources.list file and starts adding new repositories? I hardly think someone who's completely new to Linux is going to start going through the process of installing experimental DE packages all over the place. I admit that putting an announcement like that on a supposedly newbie-friendly distro's front page was a bad idea, but I think the sequence of events you just described is pure fantasy. It's more likely that a new user would be confused and would try to seek out further information, and given the concord of reviewers and the community in general it seems unlikely that he would receive any advice other than to stick with KDE3.

As I said before, I think there would be a problem if the KDE 4.0 desktop was the first thing that greeted a new user, but it isn't, and furthermore it seems very unlikely that it will be.

Re:This Could Be The Worst Thing For KDE

[thegnu]

Bottom line, this should have been a Beta and it should have clearly been advertised as such, not via comments on some mailing list but clearly visible within the main announcement.

That's true, but I'm installing it on Ubuntu right now, and it's not part of the kubuntu-desktop package. More than that, the kde4 packages specifically state they're not the finished product. So Joe Average will probably use his package manager, and his package manager shouldn't upgrade the kde package tree to version 4 until it's ready. Unless he's running Arch. In which case, he's not Joe Average.

Anyway, I didn't know Joe Average could read in this country. :-)

Re:This Could Be The Worst Thing For KDE

[Henkc]

No, the sad truth is, this should have been KDE4 Beta 1. It's not finished, it's been rushed out. I like KDE and I appreciate that KDE4 is going to be very cool eventually, but this is not the time. And rushing products out before they are finished, saying that the real stuff will turn up in the .1 release, well that kinda reminds me of another company, except they call the .1 release 'Service Pack 1'. Oh please don't be dense. They are adhering to the very important OSS philosophy of release early, release often. If you don't know what that's about, then don't comment on things you vaguely comprehend. Comparing their excellent (unpaid) work and achievements to MS' is not only stupid, but insulting.

Re:This Could Be The Worst Thing For KDE

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh come off it, the purpose of the 4.0.0 release is not to tempt joe average away from win XP in an even more tempting way than 3.5.x

They said its the START of something amazing. Its a bit of PR, you don't say oh by the way use our old stuff for the time being.

Joe average will use the desktop installed by the distro, is any joe average type distro using kde 4.0.0 by default? No. Does the Eee PC or a dell notebook ship with KDE 4.0.0? No. Do you think they plan to? No. Do you think joe average can work out how to go back to 3.5.x if by some miracle they manage to install 4.0.0 and deliberately log into this new DE? Yes.

Bottom line, you don't call something a beta just because it might scare away Joe average when you are writing open source. Their goal is to get KDE4.X into shape as quickly as possible to supercede KDE3.x and this is the right way to do it. Ultimately it will be the distro that decides the time by providing the 4.X by default.

Re:This Could Be The Worst Thing For KDE

[Bent Mind]

But consider Joe Average, the non-technical guy who decides to ditch Windows in favour of Linux, since he's read a few good things about it and all that. Assume for the sake of the argument, that he installs Kubuntu. His current KDE version - and he is probably aware of it, or will find out very soon - is 3.5.8. Now he visits kubuntu.com. The site tells it in no uncertain terms that "KDE4 is the start of something amazing" and to "be free with KDE4".

I'm curious about your definition of "Joe Average, the non-technical guy". Is this the Joe Average that has never visited Microsoft's main website, just clicks "Yes" to software updates provided by Windows Update, and at most changes the wallpaper and screen saver? Or is this the Joe Average that installs every virus that claims to remove viruses and surfs Warez sites? I can see where the second Joe Average might be a problem, on any platform.

So, what happens to Joe Average? He installs KDE4, tries out a few things, finds it broken in several places, not working as expected in others and not configurable where he may want it to be configurable. Compared to WinXP, it will feel to him as a significant step backwards (probably more because of the brokenness than the lack of features compared to KDE3). In the end, he'll just go back to Windows because, clearly Linux isn't there yet.

That's a bit of a stretch. Joe started with a stable copy of KDE3. He played with it enough to figure out how to upgrade to KDE4 all on his own. In the end, if he is unhappy with KDE4, he will undo his upgrades and go back to KDE3. If Joe does react the way you predict, let's hope he doesn't come across a blog praising TWM.

Re:This Could Be The Worst Thing For KDE

[Anonymous Coward]

This "Joe Average" seems a bit unlikely.

Why would someone who goes from Windows to Linux even think that upgrading their GUI is possible (outside of the security updates which come from their vendor, that is)? Why would they seek it out? Could someone new to Linux possibly _succeed_ at upgrading KDE? Even when packages were available there tend to be weird library conflicts and so on.

My point being that most Linux users get their core software (things like the kernel, X, and KDE) from their distro. They may install and upgrade applications, but not their windowing environment! As others have pointed out, until distros start including KDE4 very few people are going to bother to use it.

Re:This Could Be The Worst Thing For KDE

[Risen888]

What a bunch of bullshit. Your mythical "Joe Average" will go to the Ubuntu website and download the Ubuntu or Kubuntu iso. U7.10 comes with Gnome 2.20.0. Stable. K7.10 (once updated) comes with KDE 3.5.8. Stable. "Joe Average" (a nonsense made-up concept, btw) isn't going to out looking for a new desktop to install in the first place.

Second, even taking your unlikely scenario, so "Joe Average" does go to kubuntu.org and follows the instructions to download KDE4, he's still going to have KDE 3.5.8 to fall back on. The only way you can download a version of Kubuntu with only KDE4 is if you get the Hardy alpha (and I'm not even sure about that, can anyone verify?)

Condensed version of above: You are talking out of your ass.

Re:This Could Be The Worst Thing For KDE

[ellisbright]

That said, people are still generally more than willing to trade stability for more / better features. Once can say Linux's problems lie in lack of hardware support, lack of 3rd party software, etc. But look at Apple. Apple has been gaining ground - even in businesses. I hate to say it because I'm definitely a function over form guy, but let's face it, it's the oooh ahhh factor of the hardware and OS that has made them as popular as they are today. Make no mistake, this is a giant leap for linux because never before has linux had a generally available ooh ahh desktop that (in time) the average joe can have without going through a lot of trouble.

Duke Nukem Quote

[Anonymous Coward]

"Damn.... KDE4 is ugly!!"
"Your face or your ass, what's the differnce."
"I'm ready to lay some bricks in some KDE 4 toilet. Who's first?"

As a happy Kubuntu 7.10 user

[MonsterTrimble]

I'm sticking to KDE 3.5.8. I'm surprised that they released it this early considering the reported huge amount of bugs. I mean, Canonical wouldn't release Kubuntu 8.04 as a long term release because they knew that KDE 4 wouldn't be ready for prime time and nobody will support it in 2011. On the flip side, I'm glad (to quote Meatloaf) the Monster is loose. This means that KDE can go from (IMHO) XP look to something much closer to OSX. It also means that Amarok 2.0 is one step closer to reality for my Windows box at work. I look forward to Kubuntu 8.10 (or maybe earlier) with KDE 4.x in it. And let the visual sexiness begin.

This is what, Beta 1?

[gambolt]

Wake me up when 4.1 is out. I'm going back to bed.

Re:This is what, Beta 1?

[Anonymous Coward]

sounds like a cron job. script it yerself.

Color me doubtful

[renoX]

While I use KDE and like it, I doubt very much that the sentence [[KDE 4.0 is based on the Qt4 toolkit, which brings significant enhancements in the way memory is used. "So it ends up making KDE less resource intensive than KDE 3, which is quite an improvement,"]] is true: Qt4 use double buffering to provide smoother scrolling so I doubt that it's using less memory that KDE3..

I remember a blog (linked by /.) which tried to measure the memory consumption of KDE but the author failed to measure accurately the memory used (which is quite hard).

So does anyone have realistic numbers on the memory used by KDE3 and KDE4?

Re:Color me doubtful

[pembo13]

People have been reporting better memory usage by Qt4 since it came out, independent of KDE4

Bring It.

[AndGodSed]

Yours.

KDE.

KDE 4.0 is still alpha!

[botik32]

Well, the developers say that KDE 4.0 is far from finished:
"KDE 4.0.0 is our "will eat your children" release of KDE4, not the next release of KDE 3.5."

Speaking of which... I've been using e17 for a while. It is not feature-complete but it is use-able. And it does not crash on me like XFCE does (I'll probably get modded down for saying this...)

Anyway, I am not here to bash anyone, just wanted to put things in perspective. Enjoy your WM, whatever it is :)

Re:KDE 4.0 is still alpha!

[CnlPepper]

What do you do that ends up killing XFCE out of interest? I've always found it to be fairly solid in both xubuntu 7.04 and xubuntu 7.10.

Re:KDE 4.0 is still alpha!

[botik32]

Well, it is not like it is crashing. But after running for a while (it may be minutes, it may be hours), moving the mouse would update the cursor, but apps would not respond to mouse and keyboard events. At this point even Ctrl+Alt+Bsp would not work, which is rather weird.

After changing to enlightenment, I no longer get these weird lock-ups.

PCLOS forum said:

[AndGodSed]

From a A google search of the forums and a thread on the PCLOS forum it would seem that they are also waiting out the storm before getting their toes wet...

Old news?

[charlesbakerharris]

k.d. lang 4.0 has been out for, like, a decade and a half.

Underwhelming

[malevolentjelly]

I downloaded a KDE4 livecd and found a slightly shinier, glossier kde3- i really wanted to be wowed. This is nothing like a gnome upgrade. :p Hell, it even felt klunky like kde usually does. The main problems with kde's seemingly accidental interface still exist: awkward menus and button placement and unnatural organization.

I am glad they got all these great new features, but it will be news when they catch up with gnome. You can make any computer (with 512 mb of ram or more) feel like a mac with gnome.

Re:Underwhelming

[kyofunikushimi]

You can make any computer (with 512 mb of ram or more) feel like a mac with gnome

But I don't want my computer to feel like a Mac. That's why I use KDE (3.x; 4.0 IS a bit awkward ATM). Don't get me wrong, I don't hate on OSX. In respect to Usability (and UI design in general) they're (IMHO) killing every other DEBut when I bother booting up my Mac at home, I can only spend about fifteen minutes on it before I get irritated by the lack of options to customize any number of things. And Finder... oh wow I loathe that thing.

It should be noted that I definitely have issues with KDE as well, but none of those issues are in any way related to "awkward menus" or "button placement" or "unnatural organization". I'd be curious to know what you find so awkward about them?

Re:Underwhelming

[Anonymous Coward]

You can make any computer (with 512 mb of ram or more) feel like a mac with gnome.

How? Every time I've tried gnome, I've been amazed at how restrictive and unpolished compared to my Mac. Can I hotplug monitors and dynamically rearrange my screen layout yet, or am I still going to have to hack the xorg.conf and restart every time? How much work is it going to take to set up my 10-button Bluetooth mouse and map its buttons to various actions? Is there even a GUI for that yet?

Re:Underwhelming

[g0dsp33d]

You can make any computer (with 512 mb of ram or more) feel like a mac with gnome.

Wow, thanks for the warning. I was almost considering using gnome.

Re:Underwhelming

[malevolentjelly]

How? Every time I've tried gnome, I've been amazed at how restrictive and unpolished compared to my Mac. Can I hotplug monitors and dynamically rearrange my screen layout yet, or am I still going to have to hack the xorg.conf and restart every time? How much work is it going to take to set up my 10-button Bluetooth mouse and map its buttons to various actions? Is there even a GUI for that yet? I am talking about squares here and you are talking about cubes. I can't think of an X environment that actually competes with Windows or OS X. I'm presenting this as a comparison to KDE. As long as these environments are running in X11, they will always lag behind modern operating systems.

Re:Underwhelming

[malevolentjelly]

I just don't think customizability is chief to usability. Unifying concepts and designs and out-of-the-box functionality are much more important- if the customizability is wide open enough that a clueless user can accidentally customize away something useful, then the design fails.

I wish I could go more into what exactly bothers me about KDE, but it's difficult. I just feel uncomfortable when I use it- something about the over-use of organizing devices (like lists pointers, font color cases, connecting lines, separating bars...) bubbliness of letters and buttons, and overall drab in the design scheme. It feels like I am seeing too many small icons at any given time, or too many options and not enough clear usage paths across my desktop. What I am NOT doing is not hidden well enough-- i.e., the functionality is not smooth enough for my usage to be visually isolated from the rest of the desktop.

I think gnome's exacting HIG is probably tantamount to its functionality.

Re:Underwhelming

[marsu_k]

This is nothing like a gnome upgrade. I know - they actually implemented new features instead of removing existing ones!

Re:Underwhelming

[kyofunikushimi]

Valid points. I spend a lot of time customizing my KDE environment to meet my usability needs, so perhaps that's why I don't see the same issuesor at least don't see them AS issues. Gnome's (and OS X's) strength is their usability right out of the 'box'. In KDE (and Windows, to a lesser degree) you need to take advantage of the options to edit the environment in order to improve the usability of the product.

This is precisely the reason I'm not upgrading to KDE 4 yet. The options to customize the DE to make it a little more usable just aren't there yet.

Re:Underwhelming

[fwarren]

just feel uncomfortable when I use it...

Which is strange enough how I feel about gnome. Now mind you. I am more comfortable with Fluxbox, Enlightenment and Afterstep than gnome. All of which are NOT at all like Windows. So it is not that KDE is striving to be like Micorsoft Windows which makes it comfortable.

Gnome has that "itch" that you can not scratch syndrome going for it. If something is almost what you want but not quite...well to bad you are stuck with it. In KDE there is enough room for customization you can often get exactly what you want.

In addition to that the KIO slaves are so sweet. It does not matter where a file is stored at, on a local share, NFS, SMB, FPT or SFTP, you can just give a URI. Then Boom! Away you go with using it.

With DKOP going away with the move to HAL for interprogram communications. I wish all systems had the KDE base libs and evyerone would build GTK2 apps on top of HAL and KIO.

Re:Underwhelming

[malevolentjelly]

I see where you are coming from- I don't really like either in all cases. My primary concern is that gnome is better from a design and usability standpoint- more researched, more well thought out and planned- but KDE is superior technically. It's faster, smoother, uses less ram. It's just generally a more logical way to build a desktop environment. I want so badly for KDE to be a *beautiful* system, but too often I am disappointed by its default options and don't have the energy to swim upstream and change everything to the point where it's almost-gnome.

I can't get into AfterStep because I grew up on Microsoft systems- I've never used NeXT, but I've used Mac OS X. NeXT feels dead to me- and fluxbox and enlightenment are too minimal. I like a lush environment where all functionality is immediately apparent and somewhat easy.

That aside, I really like QT.

The only solution is for me to become a KDE dev, I guess. If I like what KDE does but I don't like how it does it- it's truly the only way.

Re:Underwhelming

[fwarren]

Ah, Fluxbox is bliss. Even with all the stuff I have running in startup scripts, it takes about 3 seconds to come up. It stays out of my way. You can see my desktop at p:bayimgcomoaIdfaABo

I use xtdesk for icon support. What is cool about, as seen in the picture, is that instead of getting a context menu for the icons, I get a menu of more apps to launch. Since I do desktop support. I have an icon for each location, left click and I remote into the server for that location. Right click and I can pick any desktop at that location to remote into.

It makes me the envy of the windows guy doing support. He can often be heard cursing as he is looking up a computer to find out where to remote to. Whereas I am always on right click then one left click away.

I would have to give up that goodness to go back to KDE.

I find I like all of the goodies in KDE, but the light and quick feel of gtk2 apps.

Re:Underwhelming

[ilikepi314]

The problem with that is not everyone likes GNOME. I used it for several months on Fedora 3 or 4, and it was ok, but I was much more impressed with KDE. I thought KDE was very usable and well-thought-out; I could power my way through Konqueror, etc., and do all sorts of nifty things that wasn't possible in Nautilus, for instance. Some other post somewhere said you could use GNOME "with 512 MB", and that would certainly explain another factor; I had an older Pent 3 with 128 MB of RAM, and KDE still ran smoothly. And don't even get me started on how much more I love the configurability of KDE compared to GNOME. However, I can definitely appreciate GNOME's appeal, even if I'm not as enthusiastic as you or others. I like KDE better, but it was certainly still a joy to use GNOME. It's simply people with different preferences making what they think are the best decisions based on their preferences. GNOME has one philosophy, KDE another. Anyway, this was a long post to say: please don't ever join the KDE devel team just to make it look more like GNOME. If I wanted GNOME, I would use it; I like KDE because of the very fact it is KDE. Likewise, I'll develop for KDE, won't complain about the parts of GNOME I don't enjoy, and leave GNOME the way you like it. Deal?

Re:Underwhelming

[JohnFluxx]

Or report bugs/wishes on bugs.kde.org

There's always a need for people with a good eye for UI. I'm a KDE developer and I know that I personally do not have a good eye for such things. There is a usuability team, but they are completely swamped with work.

I'm always happy for people to make suggestions on improving the interface.

Re:The K in KDE

[Wdomburg]

Originally it was Kool Desktop Environment.

totally 1337*2

[neersign]

i got a kick out of this and I figured it was worth pointing out since it's common place to not RTFA. I took the "visual guided tour" and where they talk about KRunner on the Desktop page, they give an example of using KRunner as a calculator:

KRunner also acts as a simple pocket calculator. Just type a mathematical equation in the form of "=1337*2" and KRunner instantly shows the result.

thus proving that KDE 4.0 is, without a doubt, t0t411y 1337.... *2.

Re:totally 1337*2

[Anonymous Coward]

The KDE3 equivalent of KRunner, KMenu -> "Run Command" (or Alt+F2) does the same thing, except that it doesn't require = in front of the equation. Not sure how long this functionality has been in KDE since I only found it several months ago myself, but it's certainly not exclusive to KDE4. Doesn't make it any less great feature though :)

Very KInteresting

[Anonymous Coward]

While I am Kwight pleased with the work on the UI, I Kan't help but think some of the KNames of the applications are a bit, oh, Kontrived? Instead of naming a picture viewer something sensible and logiKal like "Image Viewer" they instead call it "GwenView" (which must be a typo, because there's no K in there at all! KBlasphemy!)

OSS needs to stop letting engineers work on the external aspects of the program. MS software is just about as bad, but at least they aren't prefixing every application with "K" on the front as a weak form of branding. It reminds me a lot of Hungarian notation, actually. And Hungarian notation largely died off among programmers because it usually fails to convey genuinely useful information. What does the K in names tell us? That it runs on KDE? Woop-de-doo...why don't we suffix the name with "Application" just to let everyone know that this program is indeed an application? Why stop there...we could split them into ConsoleApplication and GraphicalApplication.

Re:Very KInteresting

[Vexorian]

I think your post is quite an overreaction, I don't think any serious person cares about the name of a program, and the deal is that the K itself is not a big deal. Enterprise has been using things names as retardedly as "Java" or ".net" I mean, seriously...

Re:Very KInteresting

[rastos1]

MS software is just about as bad, but at least they aren't prefixing every application with "K" on the front as a weak form of branding

Exactly. There is no Microsoft Office, Microsoft .Net, Microsoft Windows, Microsoft Exchange, Microsoft Outlook, Microsoft SQL Server, Microsoft DirectX, ...

Re:Very KInteresting

[Anonymous Coward]

I think your post is quite an overreaction, I don't think any serious person cares about the name of a program, and the deal is that the K itself is not a big deal. Enterprise has been using things names as retardedly as "Java" or ".net" I mean, seriously... How is the implementation technology in any way comparable with the name of the program? The user may be presented with the implementation technology if they don't have prerequisite components installed. The name of the program, however, is in the caption of the main window, scattered throughout the program, and in every shortcut to the program.

And if the name of the program isn't a big deal, then how come many Linux distributions opt for generic names for programs in the launch menu? And how does a name like "GwenView" not violate the principle of least surprise?

Re:Very KInteresting

[SanityInAnarchy]

And if the name of the program isn't a big deal, then how come many Linux distributions opt for generic names for programs in the launch menu?

Because unless your name is "Internet Explorer", people won't know, just from the name, what kind of program it is. I think most of us have generally accepted names like Firefox, but unless someone already knows what it is, how would you know Firefox is a web browser? Should we just be naming the first project "Web Browser", and subsequent projects like Konqueror, iCab, etc can fade into obscurity?

And how does a name like "GwenView" not violate the principle of least surprise?

I suspect GwenView is a response to a Windows image viewer, IrfanView.

Re:Very KInteresting

[Dr.Dubious DDQ]

And don't get me started on the whole "IntelliActiveDirectCrapX.NET" stuff...

Re:Very KInteresting

[kc2keo]

Good point. However it does not bother me that they use "K" in front of many of the applications that are available on KDE. I like it. But thats just me. Now that I think of it they do go a bit too far.

Now if you excuse me I will have some Koffee. But right after I finish editing my Conf files in Kwrite.

Re:Very KInteresting

[Risen888]

Great idea. After all, iPod, Mac, or Excel are much more easily recognizable terms and oh-so-relevant to what they do. Marketing sure knows best.

Re:Very KInteresting

[Vexorian]

How did you imply I was complaining about they using those technologies? I was complaining about the names... Java and .net are very silly names, then we got to talk about firefox, silverlight , tomcat, really, names in the technology world are always very lame, and you got to accept suffixing .net to application names is not much better than the K-obsession ...

Design looks tacky - unlike other releases.

[Qbertino]

Can't help it but the GUI design looks shoddy. Icons to big, bad alignments across the board. The design team needs another month or two. Visually this is a beta.

Re:Design looks tacky - unlike other releases.

[T-Bone-T]

I agree. I find it strange that the menu in the second screenshot doesn't match the rest of the bar.

Luxury.

[Deagol]

I'm a fan of mpg123 and shell scripts myself. It needs so few system resources it's silly. But Amarok, which I used when I ran KDE, is quite an excellent piece of software.

KDE 4.0 is out?

[Anonymous Coward]

So in Gnome in now?

Should be Beta

[Anonymous Coward]

KDE4 RC should have been called KDE4 Alpha.

KDE4 final should be called KDE4 Beta.

Calling this a final version is a disgrace. As a loyal KDE3 user, I can safely say I have no desire to corrupgrade to KDE4 (hey, the captcha is "corrupts").

Kubuntu.

[SanityInAnarchy]

My guess is that the whole reason for releasing now is the desperate hope that they'll have something decent ready for Kubuntu.

And I imagine that in another few months, it's going to be better than KDE3. By that I mean functionality; KDE3 just hasn't been particularly stable for me. (The ACID3 test crashed Konqueror, and Konqueror quite frequently crashes while I'm typing comments on Slashdot...)

Yay, KDE4

[z0M6]

Unlike the bunch here that cries "It should be called KDE 4.0 Beta 1", I believe that it should be called KDE 4.0. It signals that the base technology is ready and it is time for adoption by a larger mass than what the release candidates had. Remember that KDE 3.5.8 is a matured product, KDE 4.0 is not. It doesn't happen over night.

Whiners aside, yay, KDE 4.0 is here. Congratulations everyone!

Re:Yay, KDE4

[hemna]

Congrats indeed. I like KDE4, but it's not really ready for prime time yet. I'm running KDE4 on gutsy with an ATI chipset, and I get apps crashing on me left and right for no reason. Xchat bails on me every time I select a menu. I was running Eclipse for a while as well and it just bails without warning at all. Back in Kde3 land...all is stable. I'd say this is a Beta at best if stuff like this is crashing this easily.

A bit iBiased?

[SanityInAnarchy]

iThink you may be just a bit iPredisposed to think of iLinux apps as having weird iNames.

Honestly, why is iCrap better than Krap?

Woop-de-doo...why don't we suffix the name with "Application" just to let everyone know that this program is indeed an application?

What program isn't an application?

Or at least, it's generally possible to know it's an Application from context; by knowing what it does. It's generally not possible to know, without the naming scheme, which desktop environment (or graphics library) a given application uses.

It gdoes make it a bit geasier to Kfigure out gwhich iApps go to Kwhich iDesktop Kenvironment.

Re:A bit iBiased?

[Anonymous Coward]

What program isn't an application? Exactly my point. It is useless. And what does a K prefix tell us? That it needs KDE? Who cares about that?

I, as an imaginary user, want to get my work done. I don't care whether your program uses magic rocks or KDE in order to do what it needs to do. Actually, I don't want to know how it does what it does if it works properly. And iCrap is arguably worse than Krap. :)

Most of my disappointment comes from how OSS ends up with the same sort of factions/side-taking/branding crap. How come the classic UNIX commands didn't have prefixes like that on the front of them? And why didn't they feel a need for it?

Re:A bit iBiased?

[SanityInAnarchy]

Exactly my point. It is useless. And what does a K prefix tell us? That it needs KDE? Who cares about that?

Tell that to SteveJobs. Maybe next year Apple will put out the Phone, the Pod, Tunes, Photo, and so on.

My point is that whether it has a point or not, you only ever hear people bitching about the K nowdays. No one says a word about the iStuff anymore.

As for "who cares" that it needs KDE? Well, KDE pulls in a ton of libraries. So does GNOME, by the way. Qt and GTK+ themselves aren't as bad, but if something is prefixed with K, or is explicitly a GNOME app (not just a GTK+ app), I'd think twice about installing it if I didn't have all those libraries already.

Specifically: If I had GNOME installed, but not KDE, I'd probably want gedit. If I had KDE installed, and not GNOME, I'd probably want Kate. They're both just text editors, although I am a bit partial to Kate, but generally, you don't want to install the dependencies of an entire desktop environment if you just want the one app.

Think of it this way: If you're on a Mac, you probably want to know ahead of time if the app you're downloading requires X11, for two reasons: If you don't already have it, you're going to have to find your install DVD, and it'll eat up a chunk of your disk space; and X11 takes awhile to start up (can be as long as Classic) just for one app.

How come the classic UNIX commands didn't have prefixes like that on the front of them?

Because there were no alternatives. The very second there started to be alternatives, you started to see prefixes. Example: gcc is an alternative to cc. Before gcc, there was THE C Compiler, no choice. You ran cc or nothing at all. After gcc, you could run 'cc' or 'gcc'.

Of course, most of the time, especially on Linux (as opposed to BSD) the g-stuff is the default, and the g prefix isn't needed. I type make, not gmake. But it's still there, and you can even create a file called "GNUMakefile" instead of a Makefile.

Re:but it will kick ASS

[brinkdale]

I think one of the main points to rush out... the release is that it gives programmers time to start porting there software for it.. thus when 4.1 or the real release, Is availible it will be leaps and bounds ahead on development .

Hear! Hear!

[Per Abrahamsen]

I use neither Gnome nor KDE, and still believe that a major release of either warrants a full article on the front page.

And I don't care that most of the changes are under the hood, this is supposed to be a nerd site after all.

Re:I came!

[Anonymous Coward]

WTF!

I came!

[Anonymous Coward]

this news made me ejaculate a pine scented semen dragon which crept down my monitor until I licked it off and howled like a wolf!!

Does it require HAL?

[Anonymous Coward]

I had read somewhere that KDE4 would require that bloatastic XML-hell that is HAL, but I can't find any reference to it in the developer's FAQ or via a search on the TechBase site.

Does anyone know if it's true?

Re:The K in KDE

[damn_registrars]

Originally it was Kool Desktop Environment.
There's a splash screen (one of the "tip of the day" screens) for KDE startup that claims the K doesn't stand for anything at all. That said, I don't think it said anything about it never having stood for anything, just that it no longer stands for anything.

Re:woo-hoo [offtopic]

[Anonymous Coward]

Both of those look outstanding! Next time I need an audio app for Gnome or Windows I'll give 'em a shot. Thanks!

Doesn't compare

[ToasterMonkey]

My system has iCal, iChat, iDVD, iMovie, iPhoto, iSync, and iTunes. I don't type notes in iTextEdit, or keep contacts in iAddress Book. Well, I do keep track of events with iCal, and that is a stupid name for it. I type this on an iMac though...

Linux applications have taken the whole single letter prefix thing a bit too far. Let's see a package listing of all the KDE apps on your system, then compare =)
It was a way to differentiate GNU software from the native software it replaced, but then continued on to crap that only runs on Linux anyway. Also, X Windows programs mostly had x's so you knew an X environment was required. This continued on to modern Gnome/KDE systems where X is almost always running, X apps rarely need to be in your path anymore, and most GUI apps are not started by typing in the actually program filename. Gnome and KDE are even largely compatible with each other now.

I'm not suggesting renaming gcc to cc. Going forward though, remember (or FIND OUT) what the conventions actually mean before putting another f'ing k... or g... titled application in a GUI shell. In some places it may actually be appropriate, like a gfoobar/kfoobar that perform the same function. If you don't need both though, drop the damned prefix in the GUI. The NEED for the prefixes in modern Linux GUIs is long gone. It's just a branding now, and it's extremely overdone.

It gdoes make it a bit geasier to Kfigure out gwhich iApps go to Kwhich iDesktop Kenvironment. Apple software isn't branded with an i to tell us it runs on iMacs.

How about this.
If it's in the KDE menu, it's a KDE APPLICATION!
If it's in the Gnome menu, it's a GNOME APPLICATION!

What if you want KDE apps in your Gnome menu or Gnome apps in your KDE menu?
THEN WHY THE F*** DO THEY STILL NEED TO BE DIFFERENTIATED?

At least rename the shortcuts the GUI launches.

Re:Doesn't compare

[LiquidFire_HK]

KDE partially addresses the issue you complain about. See this screenshot of Kickoff, for instance. The apps all have generic names, and the actual application name is displayed in a paler font.

Re:Doesn't compare

[Bent Mind]

If an application comes with KDE (KWrite for example), I can see adding the K. It signifies that the application is actually part of the KDE project. Developers outside the KDE project sometimes use the K to signify that the application depends on kdelibs. I think this is what started the problem. Gnome's use of G is a little more confusing to me. The G in Gnome stands for GNU. However, it's sometimes used by developers to signify that the application was designed for Gnome. Does that application use G to signify that it requires Gnome, or that the copyright is owned by the GNU foundation, or both? I would rather the G just signify that GNU owns the copyright.

Avidemux2 has an interesting scheme. They have an executionable that checks the name it was called by. It has soft links called avidemux_cli, avidemux_qt4, and avidemux_gtk. This makes much more sense. If your application depends on kdelibs, and it's not part of the KDE project, call it application_kde.

How about this. If it's in the KDE menu, it's a KDE APPLICATION! If it's in the Gnome menu, it's a GNOME APPLICATION!

Gnome and KDE use the same configuration files for the menu ( /usr/share/applications/*.desktop ). You can edit the .desktop file to prevent it from appearing in one menu or the other. That way you can start gedit when in Gnome and kwrite when in KDE if that is what you want.

...most GUI apps are not started by typing in the actually program filename

At least rename the shortcuts the GUI launches.

On my K-Menu, under Graphics, is an icon labeled "GNU Image Manipulation Program". It starts the gimp-2.4 application. For the menu, it's fine that it's labeled "GNU Image Manipulation Program". However, I'd rather type gimp (or gimp-2.4) if I choose to start it from the command line. If most GUI apps are not started by typing in the actual program filename, then why would you need to rename the shortcuts the GUI launches? Just set the icon name to the longer name.

Re:Doesn't compare

[ToasterMonkey]

If an application comes with KDE (KWrite for example), I can see adding the K. I think it's tacky. ;)

If most GUI apps are not started by typing in the actual program filename, then why would you need to rename the shortcuts the GUI launches? Just set the icon name to the longer name. That's what I mean by shortcut, the icon name, not stuff like symlinks or launch scripts.

With Gnome and KDE both giving sensible names to most applications, the actual command names are getting more and more irrelevant. My point is that the prefixes don't serve a purpose anymore, other than some brand association, and in the case of the 'G', you're right, it's confusing. As far as the 'K' branding, I think it's already been overdone.

I'm glad it's being fixed in the GUI, but that brand association is still prevalent in project websites, about screens, package names, etc. It's just tacky!

Re:Doesn't compare

[SanityInAnarchy]

Also, X Windows programs mostly had x's so you knew an X environment was required.

Nowdays, that helps when installing a package. If it has a K prefix, I run KDE, so I know it's going to have most of the libraries it needs already installed, already in RAM, in fact. If it has an X prefix, I know it's going to have an ass-ugly interface, and probably won't be incredibly intuitive. If it has a g prefix, or if it contains the word "gnome", I know it's going to require a ton of libraries I probably don't have already, and is going to take twice as long to start the first time as any KDE app.

What if you want KDE apps in your Gnome menu or Gnome apps in your KDE menu?
THEN WHY THE F*** DO THEY STILL NEED TO BE DIFFERENTIATED?

Well, I can put Wine apps in my KDE menu, too. But I would hope I care about the difference between a native Linux app and a Windows app under Wine.

terminology

[HeroreV]

I think part of the problem is that we don't have a good term for this kind of release. It's not just a beta, because this release will be receiving security updates and other fixes, which a beta wouldn't receive. So instead of trying to come up with a new term, which would then have to be explained over and over again, they just decided to call it 4.0.

Although personally, I don't see why they didn't just follow the progression of Greek letters and call it something like "KDE4 Gamma 1.0" (with small fixes producing e.g. "KDE4 Gamma 1.1", "KDE4 Gamma 1.2", etc).

Re:The K in KDE

[Wdomburg]

Yeah, they silently lost their kool pretty early on. :)

Waiting for Godot^H^H^H^Hentoo

[Dr.Dubious DDQ]

As soon as this shows up in Gentoo Portage (the main branch, not an SVN overlay) I intend to backup my configuration and switch to KDE4. Yes, I know I'll run into things that don't work the way I expect and a few missing features. I figure if I want to see KDE 4.1 sooner, I can at least put in some effort to test and report problems. Now that the feature-freeze is over, developers ought to be able to deal with the "but the icons are icky" complaints that everyone seems to make, too.

Re:Waiting for Godot^H^H^H^Hentoo

[Bent Mind]

As soon as this shows up in Gentoo Portage (the main branch, not an SVN overlay) I intend to backup my configuration and switch to KDE4 Why switch? If it's done like previous KDE upgrades, it will be slotted. Just pick your preferred environment from KDM and use both effortlessly.

Re:I came!

[PenGun]

Xavier .... is that you??? You renegade!

Re:woo-hoo [offtopic]

[zootm]

Glad to be of help. I hear Banshee's getting some kind of UI overhaul soon so maybe it'll look even better by the time you check them out. :)

the effects are very slow and drop frames

[thisispurefud]

"the effects are very slow and drop frames, there are remnants everywhere, you name it. This is annoying, but acceptable, seeing this is the first official release of the new KWin, and you cannot expect the developers to reach the same level of stability and performance of OS X' Quartz Extreme, Vista's Desktop Window Manager" http://osnews.com/story/19159/KDE_4.0.0:_Sweet_Follows_Sour