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KDE 4.1 Alpha 1 Released
Crobain writes "The first alpha release for KDE 4.1 is out, and bugs aside, it looks promising. The KDE Plasma desktop shell now has preliminary support for Mac OS X dashboard widgets and SuperKaramba, and panels can be added and removed via contextual menu items. 'This alpha release marks the start of the 4.1 feature freeze, so virtually all of the remaining developer effort between now and the official 4.1 release in July will focus on bug-fixing, polish, and stability. Despite the current breakage, the actual feature set that has been stubbed out for this release is pretty darn good. If the developers can deliver on all of this functionality and make it stable and robust, version 4.1 will offer a much better overall user experience than 4.0, and Plasma will come close to achieving functional parity with the KDE 3.5.x panel system.' The KDE Techbase wiki has a full list of the features planned for the 4.1 release."
I am a very long time KDE user, and I expected 4.0 to be a great desktop, but it turned out to be a alpha so I kept using the old 3.x series.
The scope of 4.0 was quite big, so understood the problems and I hoped for 4.1 to be a stable release.
Reading the dot news on kde.org I found that the have gone back and rewritten a lot of plasma again. This means that it will need a new period of stabilization again.
I just hope that this time they don't release before it is ready. It would be a huge blow to the project's reputation. 3.5 is excellent, so we can keep using it until they are really ready with the new version. No hurry.
When his defense asked, "Which computer has Jon Johansen trespassed upon?" the answer was: "His own."
I am using KDE 4.0, yeah its rough, yeah some basic functionality isn't there. And I think it is a poor setup not to be able to do things like drag and drop and make things smaller than default. Everything can be made larger, but never smaller.
However, despite all the failures, which I believe will come around, KDE is really moving to the next step and once the polish is applied it will outshine the rest. A desktop were apps of every shape and color can be integrated. Where the best ideas don't have to be accepted by the head developers, customization, and opening the doors to open source even further. It is a place were truly original ways to organize data and display information will come. It is were we will begin to move beyond just making a windows 3.1 gui more fancy and with more features. I think these are worthy goals. I put up with the annoyances now because I want to be part of it. I think it will be big.
But seriously, developers, start getting functionality working. You have to get people to use it. The widgets will come but you need functionality to get people to use it. No drag and drop for icons on the desktop, can't move around widgets in the bottom bar, right clicking doesn't give you widget specific options. And when they do, it is very limited, like the digitial clock being set to 12 hour time. I know these aren't sexy to work on, but nothing else matters if this isn't done.
Lastly, what I think will make the biggest appeal is making kde install easy on vista. People hate the vista interface, but have to have it for the new stuff underneath like directx 10. If you can make kde4 stable and install smooth on vista, you will have a firefox style pickup of it.
Here is a related (p)review of latest revision of KDe 4.1 (not the exact alpha just released): http://polishlinux.org/kde/kde-4-rev-802150-work-in-progress/ "Plasma has gone under major API changes and is still a bit wonky, Dolphin gets tabs (hell yeah!), Phonon gets a Gstreamer backend, KWin gets wobbly windows (hell yeah!), and KInfoCenter and K3b get KDE4 ports. KDE 4.1 will be sure to blow your mind." A bit more comprehensive and screenshot-rich than the ArsTechnica article.
Polish your GNU/Linux! http://polishlinux.org
I am using KDE 4 (latest builds) at home on my laptop and desktop. Yeah, production environment.
:).
Q. But it's an unstable alpha right?
A. Right, a lot of the KDE4 applications crash. Never fear, for any buggy KDE4 app I simply run the equivalent KDE3 version instead.
Q. But this uses a lot of memory to have kde3,qt3,kde4 and qt4 loaded at same time right?
A. Right, but it still manages to use under 500MB and run smoothly with compositing enabled thanks to the new code and efficient toolkits (qt3 and qt4).
Q. So sure, they keep rewriting stuff and a lot of the applications are unstable. However, this doesn't mean you can't start using it now. It's a really nice desktop environment. Enjoy it now
A. This must be hard to setup though right? Having KDE3 one run instead if KDE4 one is buggy.
Right again but most distros shipping a KDE4 version (Opensuse, Ubuntu) do all that hard work for you. They still use the KDE3 version for anything remotely unstable. So you shouldn't get any crashes using it. If you do though, it's not hard to install the earlier version.
I recently upgraded to Kubuntu Hardy. After much agonizing, I eventually decided reluctantly to stick with KDE3.5 - for me it's just not ready yet in Kubuntu. But since Intrepid Ibex will include KDE4.1, I'll be very glad to switch to that. KDE4 is brilliant - just not yet.
You're making a simple math equation, but 1 + 1 is not always 2.
If you combine the developers working on GNOME and KDE you won't end up with one project that's twice as productive. In fact, it will be very unproductive because each set of developers have vastly different vision.
Two parallel projects keep each other motivated to become the best one. It also creates playground to implement new features. Sometimes GNOME might not like an idea because it's to controversial. When the developer can implement it in KDE and get successful with it, GNOME may copy the feature. -- and visa versa. So no productivity is really lost here.
Merging two two commercial companies gives a similar problem. Sometimes managers refrain from merging two companies after all when it becomes clear the cultures are too different. It would cut the productivity making the merger useless; the added value of merging the companies would be lost by the lower productivity.
The best way to accelerate a windows server is by 9.81 m/s2