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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.
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.
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.
When Argumentum ad Hominem falls short, try Argumentum ad Matrem
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.
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.
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).
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.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
sounds like a cron job. script it yerself.
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
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.
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.
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.
A CC-licensed illustrated horror novel
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.
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!
iThink you may be just a bit iPredisposed to think of iLinux apps as having weird iNames.
Honestly, why is iCrap better than Krap?
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.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
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.
Hacker Public Radio is our Friend
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.
Request a Linux Shockwave player here: http://www.macromedia.com/support/email/wishform/
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?