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KDE 4.1 Beta 1 Released
appelza contributed a link to Tuesday's announcement of the next step toward KDE 4.1: "The KDE Project is proud to announce the first beta release of KDE 4.1. Beta 1 is aimed at testers, community members and enthusiasts in order to identify bugs and regressions, so that 4.1 can fully replace KDE 3 for end users. KDE 4.1 beta 1 is available as binary packages for a wide range of platforms, and as source packages. KDE 4.1 is due for final release in July 2008." I haven't used KDE much for the past few years, but the screenshots of a "grown-up" plasma are enough to make me correct that.
any political / license i dont know about?
The GNOME guys idea of user friendly is strip features and configurability rather than refining features, picking good defaults, and laying out dialogs for ease of use by normal users and having tastefully accessible extra options for the particular and demanding power user. And no guys, clicking around in gconf which may not even respect those customizations on the next login doesn't cut it.
Historically KDE has fallen down by making configurability difficult for casual users and a pain for power users but at least power users could eventually get things the way they want them. I read good things about how KDE4 is going with that but have yet to see it for myself as it was a mass of regressions from KDE 3.5 the last time I tried it. Once it acquires polish and forward ported features and apps from 3.5, I'll be switching too.
That would be the best thing ever. Desktop icons are an abomination. I find myself unable to use them with proper discipline, and my desktop becomes a complete and utter mess. All I can do is use a WM that doesn't support them (fluxbox). I might actually have to check out kde4 now.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
Feel free to mod this redundant or OT but I just ordered a Dell Inspiron 1420N with Ubuntu and I feel really good about it :)
/. posts a story about Dell being hammered in court for false advertising but I really don't care. I've been using Linux since '97/'98 and this is the first time I've bought a computer that's had Linux pre-installed and I can't even begin to tell you how good that feels.
My wife and I have been talking about me getting a laptop for the last 4 years since I work from home, so this is going to give me a lot more mobility. I may finally be able to take a vacation. Anyway I really didn't want to pay the MS Tax and at the same time I wanted to send the message that I want Linux. It's a little ironic that this comes the same day
This really IS the year of Linux on the desktop even if most people still don't give a flying fsck.
Although many will think you might be joking, this might in fact be true. When Wine hits 1.0 (within a month?) major apps will work (Photoshop, MS Office, etc.) and Wine will have two series of releases: stable (regressions are a thing in the past!) and unstable (major changes). In my county (The Netherlands) Linux laptops are now the 'must-haves' on the 'front page' in folders of the giant PC retailers. MS is going to release the new SP for Office 2007 with out-of-the-box ODF support. Support for hardware is about to hit the same height where Windows is today. OGG files are now on every CD I have bought for the last year or so and my Samsung MP3 player supports it... and the list goes on and on...
So... is this it? Is 2008 going to be the year of the Linux desktop? It probably will, because all signs are pointing at that direction...
Here be signatures
Desktop icons were deprecated in favor of a folder view applet, that you can have on your desktop, so you can still have desktop icons on your desktop via the applet.
;) So what was a mumbling about earlier then when I said the icons were gone?
From Aaron Seigo's blog:
"Hey!" I hear you say, "I see icons on that desktop!" That's quite right. (And, I must say, you are quite observant today.
Well, we now have a folder view applet courtesy of Frederik Höglund. It can view any folder you want, including the desktop folder. You can also set a filter, making it possible to, for instance, view just images or whatever. It uses KIO so you can view remote folders as well. You can drag items to and from it, delete files, scroll, etc. It lines everything up in a nice grid and uses the same drawing routines that Dolphin, Konqueror, KRunner and others use from kdelibs for the icons.
As you can see they didn't get rid of desktop icons, they made having desktop icons BETTER.
Image of icons on the desktop via the applet Original Blog Post
I think the invisible hand of the market has its middle finger extended
--A wise old fart named SC0RN
I dunno ... I'm running kde 4.0.4 right now, and I have to say that while there are apps that are prone to crashing (darned open-source imperative to release early and release often, but, hey, I knew that before electing to install it), I do love what they've done with many things. A few things stick out in my mind: konqueror - VASTLY improved, okular - replaces kpdf and can read MS's "compiled html" (.chm) format (which is helpful for me), the composite effects are not all just eye candy - things like dimming background windows help me focus on the foreground application and pushing my mouse into a corner of the screen (default: top-left) to show all the windows on the desktop (or on all desktops) is HUGELY helpful.
That's just some of the KDE3 apps that are already ported to KDE4. Even extras like ktorrent have already been ported to KDE4, which is nice.
I really miss the PIM stuff (kmail, knode, kalarm, kaddressbook, etc), so I'm really looking forward to seeing KDE 4.1 in the main Gentoo portage tree, even masked, as soon as possible.
I expect to see MANY kde3 apps moved to KDE4 this year.
Heck, I was running the KDE4 version of ktorrent on KDE 3.5.8 earlier this year (yes, I know, 3.5.9 is out), so it's not like it's entirely a problem to have these apps coexist. This provides apps the opportunity to port to KDE4 without needing their users to actually use KDE4 as their desktop.
I thought KDE was dropping the entire 'K-thing'.
Here be signatures
It does that? Nifty, that'll make groupings of icons much easier.
No tyrant thrives when every subject says no.
But does it run on Windows?
Seriously, if there was a Windows version, I could replace the crappy Windows shell with it. I still need Windows for certain critical applications like Rollercoaster Tycoon and Battlezone. Losing the Windows shell (and I.E of course) would reduce the attack surface area somewhat and maybe allow me to connect to the Internet occasionally with it.
By slowly replacing Windows components with Linux ones (OOO, Firefox, KDE), it makes it much easier to convert someone to Linux later.
"Be grateful for what you have. You may never know when you may lose it."
IranAir Flight 655 never forget!
because 95% of users won't want to change this behavior, and those who do won't have any trouble figuring out defaults write anyway.
Well when I was using GNOME there were many things I wanted to change, and I had trouble figuring out how to change them, eventually I managed to change half of them and was told the other half were impossible to change "because people generally don't want to change that" or some shit like that.I'm sorry for not figuring out GNOME, but somehow on KDE I can change anything I want (to be fair, 4.0 is missing a lot of configuration dialogs for plasma, but that's temporary, they'll be back in 4.1 or 4.2, which I can't say for the GNOME ones)
- Finder
- Address Book
- Automater
- Calculator
- Dashboard
- Chess
- Dvd Player
- Image Capture
- Mail
- Preview
- Quicktime
- Sherlock
- Stickies
- Spot Light
- Final Cut Pro
- Aperture
- Dock
- expose
Gnome apps without a prefixed "g" included with Gnome:- Tomboy
- Beagle
- File-roller
- AisleRiot Solitaire
- glchess
- Totem
- Nautilus
- Evince
- Rhythmbox
- Pidgin
- Epiphany
- Ekiga
- Firefox
- Thunderbird
- Banshee
- vinagre
- empathy
- Evolution
Remember, I want at least 10 different KDE programs. They should be notable because they are included or many people use it, and it is preferable that the executable itself does not have the k in it. Go!Once you start despising the jerks, you become one.
My girlfriend (proud owner of an Eee PC) was in the Royal Bank today and discovered that they currently have a promotion where if you change your non-RBC chequing account over to them on some $13 a month plan, they give you a free Eee PC. Just like that. The freaking bank.
It really is the year of Linux on the desktop.