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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.
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.
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
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--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.
It does that? Nifty, that'll make groupings of icons much easier.
No tyrant thrives when every subject says no.
Agreed, I think a lot of people tend to forget that its been some 3 years since KDE 3.5x and basically everything with KDE 4 is still rather beta, whereas Gnome, has for the most part continued its path since 2.0 (6-ish years ago) and thus appears more stable because its more consistent, which arguably could be said is more stable, but I have yet to crash KDE 3.5x...
Disclaimer: I havent used Gnome since about 2001 except for brief periods in Live CD's before installing and switching to KDE... so it may indeed actually be more "stable" however, its layout and style is "incompatible" with my preferences, and reminds me too much of (leaves before the tomatoes hit)...
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.
All Linux distributions have the option of using KDE or Gnome or any other GUI if you wish, it really is up to your preferences and what is installed on your system. Personally I always install both KDE and Gnome since it gives everyone in my family a choice.
I use Fedora 9 which has KDE 4.0.4-2 (latest update) however I was disappointed when I compare it to KDE 3.5 which seemed to scale its fonts on the task bar correctly. Try putting the KDE 4 task bar to your right or left on the screen, KDE 4 now has a widget to do this instead of drag and drop. I would not mind this since it is easy to do but the fonts don't scale accordingly. In fact not only did I find KDE 4.0 annoying my wife was not impressed either until I showed her how to switch to Gnome by selecting Gnome just before you login (you have been able to do this for years). I did some minor customisation for her (hide the task bars) and she is very happy. I also made the switch as well.
Before anyone makes a comment on saying "we have another convert to Gnome" I have also found some annoyances with Gnome as well and from my perspective it is just that the current Gnome IMHO is much better than 4.0 (I found KDE 3.5 much better) but I do realise that KDE 4.0 is what I would call a Beta and definately needs some fixing.
To the KDE developers "Bring back the old 3.5 configuration widget although do enhance it for 4.1 but please don't have lots of little widgets, that is so annoying". Also bring back the drag and drop menu bar and make sure your fonts scale accordingly when changing the position of your task bar.
When KDE 4.1 comes out I will make the switch back from Gnome because I personally like KDE over Gnome but again like I said it is a personal preference. Of course I will switch back if KDE 4.1 is not what I consider better. If they are equal I may have KDE and Gnome days depending on what I want to do.
There ain't no such thing as proprietary standards only proprietary formats. Standards are by definition open.