What To Expect In KDE 4.1

andrewmin writes "Recently, Gnome's been gaining a lot of ground on its KDE counterpart in the desktop environment wars. The KDE developers were hoping to change this with KDE 4, the new radical release of KDE, but it was not to be. KDE 4.0 was buggy and unstable, leaving everyone except the hard-core KDE lovers. Mainly, this was because it just didn't work most of the time. However, the developers were not without hope. They promised that KDE 4.1 would be more stable and fix all the holes and problems with KDE 4.0. That time is coming soon: in just four days, K Desktop Environment 4.1 will be released to the Linux masses." A release candidate for 4.1 came out just over a week ago, with binaries available "for some Linux distributions, and Mac OS X and Windows."

Comments

first post

[Anonymous Coward]

3 in a row

Re:first post

[Anonymous Coward]

3 in a row

Congrats. You have no life.

Re:first post

[Anonymous Coward]

I actually used KDE4.0 Beta as my main desktop, imagine that. It really wasn't as bad as people make out, I could see it wasn't ready, but the potential is there.

The ideas behind KDE4 are great, all it needs is polish (albeit a lot of polish). This is the point: if it were a turd, no amount of polish would make it good, but KDE4 does not fall into this category. It's just a knob that needs some Brasso. :D

Re:first post

[Columcille]

When I read about KDE 4 during development stages I was excited. Everything sounded great. As it rolled out excitement turned into astonishment. I can't believe they ever released it. Polish doesn't begin to describe what it needs. Had Microsoft released KDE there would have been a much, much bigger uproar than Vista ever received. I love KDE. They have released a lot of great work over the years. But KDE 4 has been a mistake through and through. It will take a few releases before they begin to show something solid.

Re:first post

[denmarkw00t]

I'll agree, 4.0 was terrible. I've been using 4.1 since beta (just got RC1 today) and I'm much more pleased, however the inconsistencies across versions have made me feel like the team was, and may be, quite disconnected. The "dashboard" has taken several major facelifts in terms of both usability and appearance. Same goes for the taskbar (though its much snazzier than any previous release I've used). The jump from 4.0 to 4.1 has just been wonderful - I certainly can't say that 4.0 was "good" by any stretch of the imagination.

Re:first post

[odiroot]

Now he also has cancer.

Re:first post

[Jorophose]

Agreed.

KDE 4.0 is a horribly mangled release, and KDE 4.1 can only do so much better...

But KDE4 is the foundation for probably "the best" DE. (as long as you have the ressources to run it ;P)

I wonder how many people remember the inital KDE3 releases? Remember KDE3 only got "good" and then barely after 3.5. If you never take risks you'll be like Gnome, same non-existant architechture, no real initiative, with the sole goal of making sure your platform is stable and usable. That's not KDE. KDE is release now, release tomorrow, and never stop hacking even if the sun goes down and the cows come home.

Re:first post

[Maxime]

I'm still going to wait for a little while before using the 4.* releases. I remember people complaining about early 3.*, and I did the same back then (waiting, not complaining). It got OK around 3.2, and i expect it to be similar with 4.*

How surprising is it that a big release takes time to stabilize ?

Re:first post

[Dr.Dubious DDQ]

Oddly (apparently), I found KDE 4.0.x to be quite stable. For me, its problem was that there wasn't anything implemented other than some "shiny bubble icon" eye-candy. It's not really "polish" that KDE4 needs - it's had THAT from the start. It's actual functionality that it has really been needing.

I've been using the current SVN builds for the 4.1 series, and it's looking much better in terms of actual functionality than the 4.0 series was. There are still a few irritating missing bits (like metadata display [duration/bitrate/etc. for mp3 and ogg-vorbis files, for example] and a fully working version of K3B for KDE4, etc.) but from my perspective they've done a very credible job of addressing many of the major shortcomings from the original KDE4(.0) releases.

I think the whole "plasmoids" thing that they've been frantically laying the groundwork for will probably make dealing with the remaining missing functionality pretty quick.

Re:first post

[cheater512]

What do you mean 'if you have the resources to run it'? /me pats his Pentium 3 laptop running it just fine. :)

It can even get a frame per second if I turn a bunch of effects on.
Damn Intel 815 graphics.

Re:first post

[lord_sarpedon]

Polishing the knob huh?
No wonder the developers didn't finish everything in time for 4.0!

(Sorry - that one got me. Google it if needed)

Re:first post

[Anonymous Coward]

No, has IS cancer. He's the cancer that's killing /.

Re:first post

[Barsteward]

4 F**ks sake...... 4.0 was a developers release for application developers to sart porting their own apps - it was slated as such and not a release for users It just seems there are load of people who couldn't read or understand what was said. I'm not a KDE developer, I'm just a user and i managed to understand what 4.0 was all about. I'm sick to death about still reading people's mis-conceptionsabout 4.0 due to their own mis-intepretation for 4.0, I hate to think what the actual developers feel.

Re:first post

[Haeleth]

Hell, stop talking even about KDE3. What about OS X?

Remember 10.0? The one that was so slow, so unstable, and so lacking in features that Apple eventually had to give a free 10.1 upgrade to everyone who got suckered into buying it?

Yet despite that disastrous start, OS X is now recognised as a mature and stable OS, even among those of us who don't particularly like using it. KDE4 will almost certainly go the same way. At least you didn't have to pay over $100 for your copy of KDE 4.0, like those poor suckers did for OS X 10.0!

(And don't mistake me for a KDE fanboy, either. I use Xfce, and look on the KDE/GNOME flamewars as a disinterested observer.)

Re:first post

[Anonymous Coward]

First you polish it really well.

Then you add functionality (porting 3.x applications).

Re:first post

[skynexus]

It's actual functionality that it has really been needing. [...] they've done a very credible job of addressing many of the major shortcomings from the original KDE4(.0) releases.

It is one thing to call a set of libraries a "4.0 release", and another thing altogether calling a Desktop the same thing. Why anyone would label a major and respected Desktop environment as a technology preview and at the same time slap the 4.0 tag on it is beyond me...

The decision to go with 4.0 rather than 4.0 beta 5 was a mistake, in my opinion. Have a look at the release announcement and tell me where it does not describe KDE 4.0 as the immediate successor to KDE 3.5.x? Despite the obvious PR blunder, all this nonsense could have been easily avoided by continuing with the beta series until a product had been ready (rather than a technology). I personally fault KDE for the negative perception that followed their last release.

Re:first post

[pbhj]

I actually used KDE4.0 Beta as my main desktop

You mean except for the fact there was no desktop, you couldn't put icons on it or anything.

Re:first post

[neomunk]

That's right, when building a house, first you paint it and put in the carpet THEN you install the walls, insulation and floors... Then you paint it again and put down carpet again, because all the changes you just made covered up every bit of "polish" you put on it.
 

Re:first post

[tristian_was_here]

An so r ur spellin errorz lolz

Re:first post

[tuxgeek]

The ideas behind KDE4 are great, all it needs is polish (albeit a lot of polish). This is the point: if it were a turd, no amount of polish would make it good, but KDE4 does not fall into this category. It's just a knob that needs some Brasso.

I concur. A while back when I was checking out Debian Lenny, there was an option to upgrade to KDE4. I found it quite usable with exception that not all the apps were present that are there in 3.5.x

KDE4 has great potential to be a kickass desktop, and it will get there. Everyone just needs to be patient and let the developers do their work getting the other apps ported to the new framework.

The KDE developers were very forthcoming with the community that KDE4.0 was not complete and don't expect too much from it just yet. It was released when it was so that app developers could begin porting their software to the new framework. Nothing more was promised.

Nothing to see here, move along

--------

Beer, now cheaper than gas

Re:first post

[tolan-b]

Calling a major revision a developer release is stupid. They shouldn't have done it. No one does it. Major revision releases are meant to be usable by the target audience of the application. Developer releases are usually called alphas and betas.

Re:first post

[jsebrech]

I remember people complaining about early 3.*, and I did the same back then (waiting, not complaining). It got OK around 3.2, and i expect it to be similar with 4.*

And I remember them doing the same for KDE 2.x. KDE 4 was probably on the same scale rewrite-wise as KDE 2, only on a much larger code-base for a much larger user-base. Frankly, I think they managed to do a pretty amazing job to get it out of the door halfway usable.

What To Expect In KDE 4.1

[Anonymous Coward]

4.1 times the Krap!

KDE 4.1

[Anonymous Coward]

Hopefuly its KDE 4.Done this time. Las time out KDE stunk worse than a meatloaf fart.

Re:KDE 4.1

[HappySmileMan]

They promised that KDE 4.1 would be more stable and fix all the holes and problems with KDE 4.0.

The KDE developers never promised that all the holes and problems would be fixed in 4.1...

Reminds me of 4.0 when /. was saying it would be a finished DE, despite the KDE developers themselves saying this wasn't the case. People will be happy with KDE when /. stop exaggerating and lying about what it will be like

Re:KDE 4.1

[neumayr]

Oh please.
They made a release, people of course have certain expectation when software gets released (certain OSes and PC games notwithstanding) - and KDE4 didn't even come close to meeting those.
Yes, they said it's supposed to be kind of a tech demo, a preview to what they're up to in order to increase public interest, i.e. marketing.
But that's just not what releases are supposed to be.

Re:KDE 4.1

[Jorophose]

Well, would you rather they wait for now to release 4.0?

They said it clearly. If they were to delay the release the release would be late, worse, and have less chances of getting fixed. Now we have KDE4, now you can file ALL of those complaints at the KDE team, and they have the chance to fix 'em.

If you don't want to participate in their "beta test", use KDE3. It'll still be supported by the KDE teams for quite a while, and even further if you want that. But KDE3 is old tech and it's starting to show its age IMHO.

Re:KDE 4.1

[malefic]

And so I don't blame the developers, but I DO blame the maintainers of Kubuntu for making it the default for 8.04. Why include something so buggy in what is supposed to be a user friendly KDE based OS.

Re:KDE 4.1

[Lysdestic]

Have your mother check her recipe... I'm pretty sure flatulence after meatloaf shouldn't be that bad.

Re:KDE 4.1

[HappySmileMan]

It's not the default for 8.04, there's a KDE3 CD which is the default, and a "KDE4 Remix" CD, which is clearly marked as such, and was never intended to be default.

Re:KDE 4.1

[SanityInAnarchy]

Well, would you rather they wait for now to release 4.0?

Well, yes. Even this might qualify as 3.95 or somesuch.

In the gaming industry, and with Microsoft, people often release a dot-oh package which requires extensive patching later on to bring it up to a reasonable standard. The rest of the software world, particularly open source, is usually more reliable -- Wine released 1.0 after 15 years of development, and Google keeps things in Beta indefinitely.

If you think the confusion is something Slashdot manufactured, think again -- I've got a reasonably tech-savvy friend using Kubuntu, and he saw various kde4 packages start to pop up in the repositories. He figured, 4.0 is higher than 3.5, and it was a stable release, so it must be an upgrade.

He uninstalled it right away, and now he hates kde4. Given time, that hate might well extend to KDE as a whole.

KDE had no credible reason for releasing it as 4.0, and every reason for releasing it as something else, like 3.9, or 4.0 Alpha. They've instead chosen a release pattern very similar to Vista -- first release is unusable, and even after a service pack, it's still not going to be an upgrade to the old version (XP or KDE3).

But KDE3 is old tech and it's starting to show its age IMHO.

Yes, which is why I'm seriously considering using GNOME, or going back to FluxBox or raw Beryl (without a DE). I'm stuck between something which really is showing its age (why, exactly, doesn't pagedown in KPDF flip an entire page? Why does it, instead, flip like 98% of a page? And why can't I fill out a PDF form?)...

Stuck between that and a downgrade. (Where's Katapult? Where's Kmail/Kontact? Where's Amarok? Why is Konsole huge? Why's everything huge, including the panel, with no way to reduce it? Why is the menu so weird -- and if this is a replacement for Katapult, why can't I open it with a keystroke?)

And worse, both still have major apps like Konqueror, Kopete, and Amarok simply crash, and frequently.

Re:KDE 4.1

[SanityInAnarchy]

I DO blame the maintainers of Kubuntu for making it the default for 8.04.

They didn't, unless you went out of your way to download the "KDE4 Remix", which pretty clearly states it's experimental.

They might use it for 8.10, if it's ready by then. But at the current rate, by then, we'll have KDE 4.5, or even KDE 5.0, and 3.5 will still be better.

Re:KDE 4.1

[Jorophose]

I'm sure KDE3.0 and 3.1 were perfect, weren't they?

I'm sure they were so perfect everyone immediately dropped KDE2 and jumped right on, right?

It takes time. Help them out or stick with KDE3. Plasma is implemented. The next releases will hopefully bring in more customisability, if they can manage to boot Sergei out of an important position. (Now now, he's a master with code, but he's a moron in decision making; KDE should be less configurable?!?) It's going to take a while, just like all good things.

There's no comparing KDE4 to Vista. Everything in KDE4 is unique for a DE. Everything in Vista was a half-assed attempt at progress, that failed miserably when the higher-ups told everyone DRM was compulsory and that their dreams are going to hell. (and by that I mean no "winFS", even though it wasn't even a FS, no "powershell", no anything, just a glossy Server 2003 with bloat)

Re:KDE 4.1

[master5o1]

But KDE3.x and KDE4 versions were released. It's not the default, there were two versions.

Re:KDE 4.1

[Risen888]

I typically enjoy reading your comments and I'm not trying to start a flamewar here, but I've just seen so much piss poured on KDE4 here on Slashdot that I've got to reply to someone or I'll blow my damn stack. So bear that in mind, because I'm gonna go off a little here. Nothing personal.

KDE had no credible reason for releasing it as 4.0

The KDE development team elaborated very well their reasons for releasing 4.0.0 on the schedule and in the manner that they did. This topic has been covered at least 5409 times in the last two weeks on Slashdot. Can we please move on now?

Where's Katapult? Where's Kmail/Kontact? Where's Amarok? Why is Konsole huge? Why's everything huge, including the panel, with no way to reduce it? Why is the menu so weird -- and if this is a replacement for Katapult, why can't I open it with a keystroke?

In order:

Katapult's not there anymore.

Kontact is there. I have it open on another desktop right now.

Amarok is also in the middle of a development cycle. The development version is there, the stable version hasn't magically disappeared either. It's not easy to rewrite an application to not only a new version of the DE, but a new version of the underlying frameworks and a new version of the widget set. It's hard hard hard hard work. You could help. Or at least shut up and let them work.

Konsole looks pretty much the same to me as it always has. Yakuake, btw, has improved dramatically.

You can change the panel size, this functionality has been there now for months.

If you don't like the new menu, use the old one. It's still there.

The new menu is not a replacement for Katapult. Alt-F2 is the replacement for Katapult. Which is good. Katapult had more bugs than a badger's asshole.

major apps like Konqueror, Kopete, and Amarok simply crash, and frequently.

I don't use Konqueror, so I can't speak to that. I have had Kopete open on this machine for weeks on end, it has not once crashed out on me. Not once. The development version of Amarok is just that, a development version. Expect it to crash. On the flip side, Kontact puked all over the place on a daily basis for me on KDE 3.5, and it's much more stable now. The crashes I do get regularly are KTorrent (when exiting the program, and also when trying to remove >3 torrents from the list), and sometimes Plasma when I log out. Bugs have been filed. I have no doubt that they will be fixed. Have you filed bugs on your crashes?

Listen, I'm not trying to get bitchy here, but seriously, can we all tone down the vitriol here? Considering that KDE4 is a complete break on all levels from KDE3 (both in the sense of "a break from the paradigm" and "compatibility break"), I'm thrilled with how quickly problems have been spotted and fixed (sometimes to the point where the problem I noticed in the morning has been fixed by dusk).

Re:KDE 4.1

[galaxia26]

I would also like to point out that Konqueror was "replaced" by Dolphin, which in my opinion was a bad decision. I enjoyed all the things in Konqueror's filemanagement profile like tabbed browsing, and the ability to open Konsole pointed to the current location in an easily accessible logical place. The switch to Dolphin has utterly dumbfounded me. And it's likely I just have issues with it because I don't recognize it, as is expected with something new, but I still have yet to see the logic in the switch to Dolphin in it's current form. KDE 4.0 seems all pretty, little function. Though I gripe, I do admit it does look very nice, and it has potential for greatness.

Re:KDE 4.1

[Mista2]

Ive given up on KDE, and gone to Gnome. I like some of the new KDE 4 based apps though, KRDC is brilliant, but I need to be able to use a proxy, and have mail apps that dont crash, so I'm still using KMail and aggregator from 3.5

Re:KDE 4.1

[SanityInAnarchy]

The KDE development team elaborated very well their reasons for releasing 4.0.0 on the schedule and in the manner that they did.

I said "no credible reason", not "no reason". Perhaps I should've simply said "no good reason".

The simplest answer I have heard is, they released it as 4.0 to get developers to start using it.

In other words, it was a simple publicity stunt, and they did, in fact, want to trick users into trying it, even though it wasn't ready. And it's kind of imploded on them -- many users (myself included) reacted badly, so not that great of a publicity stunt.

Regarding the following: Bear in mind that these are based on impressions from very close after the 4.0.0 release. Some things may have improved.

Katapult's not there anymore.

Was the idea to replace it with alt+f2?

Kontact is there. I have it open on another desktop right now.

Wasn't there for 4.0. Good to hear it is now.

Konsole looks pretty much the same to me as it always has.

The character spacing has changed, to make it more readable. So I have to choose between shrinking the font a bunch, or enlarging the window, to get a konsole of the same size. I like to fit a lot of konsoles on the screen at once, so this really sucks for me.

And, as usual, no way to revert to the old behavior, or at least none that I could find from the GUI.

You can change the panel size, this functionality has been there now for months.

Now that I remember, I was plain wrong here, sorry.

The problem is that changing the panel size to "tiny" introduced a brand-new bug, at least on Kubuntu-KDE4: The menu now wrapped around to the top of the screen. Meaning that if I click the lower-left (no keyboard-shortcut, because that would make too much sense), the menu appears in the upper left.

If you don't like the new menu, use the old one. It's still there.

I like the new menu well enough, I just think it's not a satisfactory replacement for the old menu -- and I don't think either will open with a keyboard shortcut.

That would be a killer feature -- because the new menu could actually function very well as a Katapult replacement.

Alt-F2 is the replacement for Katapult.

Alt+F2 does more and less than Katapult did. I think typing into the new menu is actually closer, last I looked.

Thing about Alt+F2 -- I use that in KDE when I have a specific command I want to run without opening a konsole for it. I use Katapult for running common apps, which I really should be building custom shortcuts for.

Which is good. Katapult had more bugs than a badger's asshole.

Except that, in typical KDE4 fashion, there's no KDE4-compatible Katapult clone, or Katapult rewrite. There's a Katapult re-imagining, and not all of us prefer it to Katapult itself.

I have had Kopete open on this machine for weeks on end, it has not once crashed out on me.

I don't remember whether it crashed on KDE4. I do know that it crashes on KDE3.

It's not entirely frequent, and it seems somewhat behavior-driven, like the Konqueror crashes. In fact, I would guess it's something to do with the text editing widget. It seems to happen the most when editing, which really sucks for Slashdot comments.

It doesn't make it unusable, and I still use Kopete instead of Pidgin. Point is, IM is not performance-intensive, which means we don't need to be writing it in C++. I tend to get cranky when apps like that crash on me, because it seems like segfaults, at least, could be prevented by simply using a mature scripting language.

On the flip side, Kontact puked all over the place on a daily basis for me on KDE 3.5, and it's much more stable now.

How's Kmail? Especially on large IMAP folders?

Re:KDE 4.1

[SanityInAnarchy]

I would also like to point out that Konqueror was "replaced" by Dolphin, which in my opinion was a bad decision.

Given that the file management capabilities of Dolphin are exactly duplicated in Konqueror, you aren't forced to use Dolphin.

The point of Dolphin, I think, was to make things easier for newbies, and to provide a lighter-weight option for people who don't use Konqueror as a web browser.

Re:KDE 4.1

[Barsteward]

"people of course have certain expectation when software gets released" - yes but if they were able to read and comprehend then there would not be all this cr*p written about 4.0

Re:KDE 4.1

[Barsteward]

"KDE had no credible reason for releasing it as 4.0" Yes they did. it was for the owners of KDE3 apps to start porting to KDE4. The only time you get any real traction/motivation is to release something - even Linus has stated that in similar words regarding the kernel.

Re:KDE 4.1

[Barsteward]

"The simplest answer I have heard is, they released it as 4.0 to get developers to start using it." That is a credible reason - whats the point of having the desktop ready with no apps for it? Perhaps detractors/trolls have a different understanding of credible.

Re:KDE 4.1

[Haeleth]

I think the point is that they could have chosen a name that made this clearer. "KDE 4 For Application Developers", for example.

Re:KDE 4.1

[pbhj]

I would also like to point out that Konqueror was "replaced" by Dolphin, which in my opinion was a bad decision.

Given that the file management capabilities of Dolphin are exactly duplicated in Konqueror, you aren't forced to use Dolphin.

The point of Dolphin, I think, was to make things easier for newbies, and to provide a lighter-weight option for people who don't use Konqueror as a web browser.

I think the point was that the new Konq (KDE4) is arranged only for web browsing (though it still works as a file browser it's been deprecated and the features obfuscated) and that whilst Konq includes all the features of Dolphin at present the reverse is not true. In fact Dolphin is like a toy compared to Konq in KDE3. That appears to have been the aim, but Dolphin is so like Nautilus in it's [lack of features] that they might have just ported and reskinned Nautilus (they'd have had emblems too then, which I think are quite cool).

Re:KDE 4.1

[neumayr]

Why not?
Those people's expectations were not met, so they complained. If your expectations are not met, do you always make the effort to find out why before complaining?
I know I don't, I rather save the time, complain a bit and go on to other things.

Re:KDE 4.1

[SanityInAnarchy]

That is a credible reason - whats the point of having the desktop ready with no apps for it?

There are many ways that could have been accomplished other than calling it 4.0 -- and developers, in general, are more likely to be sensitive to such subtleties than end-users, who would simply blindly upgrade, if they're going to upgrade at all.

Simple example: Call it KDE 3.9, and KDELibs 4.0.

Re:KDE 4.1

[Anonymous Coward]

You had me going until the 'shut up'...

The complaints are very easy to counter, but telling somebody to shut up is not the way to do it.

If something is mentioned thousands of times by thousands of people, it means that for each of them it is important. Don't patronize them but appreciate them for what they are: Users.

Without users, software is useless (get it??)

Fixing a problem in a day is cool, but users making sure that the devs are fixing it in a day and bitching if it isn't done is much cooler!

I hope there will be a day thousands of people will be bitching about a bug I put in software I wrote...

Re:KDE 4.1

[Risen888]

I would also like to point out that Konqueror was "replaced" by Dolphin, which in my opinion was a bad decision. I enjoyed all the things in Konqueror's filemanagement profile like tabbed browsing, and the ability to open Konsole pointed to the current location in an easily accessible logical place. The switch to Dolphin has utterly dumbfounded me. And it's likely I just have issues with it because I don't recognize it, as is expected with something new, but I still have yet to see the logic in the switch to Dolphin in it's current form.

I completely agree, I can't stand Dolphin and don't know what was wrong with Konqueror that it needed replacement in the first place. But I'm a Krusader man myself, so I'm not exactly Dolphin's "target market."

KDE 4.0 seems all pretty, little function.

This I couldn't disagree with more. In its current (4.1 RC) form, I find the pretty to be kinda lacking, expecially for users who are used to all the bells and whistles of Compiz. It's the new backends that really have me excited for the future of KDE. Not just Plasma, although that's what you read about most, but Nepomuk, Solid, Phonon... I meant it when I said this was a total break from the past. Exciting things are happening here, we're watching the future of the free desktop being born.

Re:KDE 4.1

[Risen888]

I said "no credible reason", not "no reason". Perhaps I should've simply said "no good reason".

The simplest answer I have heard is, they released it as 4.0 to get developers to start using it.

In other words, it was a simple publicity stunt, and they did, in fact, want to trick users into trying it, even though it wasn't ready. And it's kind of imploded on them -- many users (myself included) reacted badly, so not that great of a publicity stunt.

I just disagree, and that's all there is to it. I think there was a hype problem, I don't think it really came from the KDE camp so much as from the general free software noise machine (yes, Slashdot, I do mean you). There was a lot of talk about it, but through it all the message I got for 4.0.0 was "Here it is, it's rough, we're gonna be doing rolling bux-fixes on it in the midst of working on 4.1 (hence the rapid progression through 4.0.x releases), it might eat your children but we hope not. Have fun." In fact, that is almost exactly what Aaron Seigo said the moment 4.0.0 got out the door.

Regarding the following: Bear in mind that these are based on impressions from very close after the 4.0.0 release. Some things may have improved.

As stated, I'm on Kubuntu8.04-KDE4.1 RC, so I'll try to fill the following in with up-to-date information as I have it...

The problem is that changing the panel size to "tiny" introduced a brand-new bug, at least on Kubuntu-KDE4: The menu now wrapped around to the top of the screen.

I had that once on a Saturday afternoon as well, I think. The problem was fixed almost instantly, but unfortunately a lot of these critical buxfixes haven't moved out of the ppa repository into main yet for Kubuntu, and some may not be fixed in Kubuntu until 8.10. If you weren't aware, you can get very up-to-date packages for KDE4 here (thanks to the unceasing work of people who love you).

Regarding Katapult, the menus, and so forth: You can manually bind a shortcut for the menu now, but I don't remember how to do so (because I haven't done so, that's why). There is no option for it in preferences yet. This is "coming soon to a theatre near you." I agree that it's a major lack. Alt-F2 right now has most of the Katapult functionality (search menu entries, address book contacts, web bookmarks, run one-liners, all that happy crap). One thing I really like about it over Katapult is it shows all your options as you type instead one at a time, and you can arrow through them. Really and truly, Alt-F2 is the Katapult replacement. And last but certainly not least, the menu editor is there now and you can assign shortcuts to menu items (but not the menu itself, grrrr).

How's Kmail? Especially on large IMAP folders?

[sarcasm] Every bit as wonderful as it always was. [/sarcasm] Not especially great. Evolution and Thunderbird still beat the pants off it, at least for me (although I credit a lot of my problems to Gmail's pisspoor IMAP service).

best regards
-p.

Re:KDE 4.1

[Risen888]

You had me going until the 'shut up'...

You're right, reading that today I realize that was a little over the top. Hey, I said in the first line there would be a little of that, didn't I? :)

-p.

Re:KDE 4.1

[SanityInAnarchy]

Really and truly, Alt-F2 is the Katapult replacement.

I'll have to map it to Alt+Space, then. Or something.

I suppose half my dislike for Alt+F2 is the awkwardness of typing it, especially on this keyboard.

[sarcasm] Every bit as wonderful as it always was. [/sarcasm] Not especially great.

I can sort of live with it being a little slow -- I started archiving things, because I decided that was less of a nuisance than switching to Thunderbird.

What bugs me are the occasional crashes, and the corruption of the local cache, to where I often (several times a week, it seems) have to "rm -rf ~/.kde/share/apps/kmail/imap" -- which, of course, means it has to fetch all the messages again.

That's not horrible, given that the IMAP server is reached via gigabit crossover. But it's still annoying.

Re:KDE 4.1

[Risen888]

Sorry, I missed a link. The end of the first paragraph should be: "In fact, that's almost exactly what Aaron Seigo said..."

Like BSD

[ArsonSmith]

KDE is dead.

NVidia issues?

[Anonymous Coward]

I've been hearing issues about the performance of KDE 4.1 being rather terrible due to nVidia's hopeless support of XRender.

I've run it myself, and I did notice that as soon as you got a few applications running you could visibly see the widgets and windows redrawing themselves, making it a very painful experience. GNOME, on the other hand, remains snappy (though I love KDE 4.1, even just because the picture frame allows pin-ups on my desktop!).

Is this just subjective? Are there any fixes?

For reference, the card I'm using is a 7800GT, and the driver version 177.13 on x86.

Re:NVidia issues?

[Sir_Lewk]

That sounds like more of an issue with your shitty driver than with KDE. Why should FOSS projects have to be restricted in what they can do because some people insist on hardware with poor support?

Re:NVidia issues?

[AngryLlama]

NVidia = poor Linux support? Would you mind telling me what card _you_ use??

Re:NVidia issues?

[Anonymous Coward]

He's right you know.

8xxx and 9xxx cards with the closed nvidia driver will have slower 2d than with the vesa driver.

7xxx and before work fine though.

Re:NVidia issues?

[Anonymous Coward]

They don't. No-one is forcing them.
Of course if KDE takes the high ground then everyone with an nVidia card will not use KDE.

Re:NVidia issues?

[BigDXLT]

That sounds like more of an issue with your shitty driver than with KDE. Why should FOSS projects have to be restricted in what they can do because some people insist on hardware with poor support?

Sorry, my crystal ball was broken when I bought my 8800GT (that worked just fine elsewhere, including with KDE 4.0...)

Re:NVidia issues?

[Jorophose]

So just out curiosity, who has the best XRender support? Intel? I was hoping ATI would, but that's ATI...

Re:NVidia issues?

[Enderandrew]

I have a 7600GT and I can see the screen drawing on KDE 4.

Re:NVidia issues?

[Enderandrew]

I've been told by Xorg guys that Intel does, but they just really seem to love that the Intel driver is fully open. Intel is on-board, so really the choice is ATI I guess if you want serious 3D performance.

And ATI is moving to a mostly open driver.

Re:NVidia issues?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm not the parent poster but I upgraded my old X800XL to a 8800GT a few months ago. Based on what everyone was saying about ATI and NVidia, I expected a good experience... and I was utterly disappointed. The Linux drivers are painfully slow. I'll live with it for now because I can't justify changing my card again (I don't use Linux enough for that), but I certainly regret switching to NVidia.

Re:NVidia issues?

[c-reus]

I have a 7600GT and I can see the screen drawing on KDE 4.

I have 6600GT and it works like a charm. Perhaps there's something wrong with your display driver settings?

Re:NVidia issues?

[testerus]

Are there any fixes? You could try to tweak your GPU-driver settings.

Re:NVidia issues?

[Haeleth]

Why should FOSS projects have to be restricted in what they can do because some people insist on hardware with poor support?

Who said they had to do anything? Obviously they're free to do whatever they like -- that's why it's called Free Software.

However, they do have to interact with a real world in which a very large number of people use NVidia hardware, in part because (until recently) it was actually the best-supported on Linux. If they want those people to use their software, then they need to write software that works well with that hardware. If they don't care about user figures, then they are of course welcome to write whatever they like and then sit back as NVidia users ditch their software in favour of something that performs well.

How's Nouveau getting along? Maybe that will become a viable choice for NVidia users who want to use KDE4.

Re:NVidia issues?

[pbhj]

ditto

Re:NVidia issues?

[Jorophose]

And ATI is moving to a mostly open driver.

One of the reasons why I changed my plans to buy anything nVidia actually.

Now it's AMD CPU (mostly because I don't have enough money for a good intel one :(), AMD chipset (690V or 780G), AMD GPU (HD3850 or HD4850)... I'm just waiting for the radeonhd and ati drivers to either merge or explain to me what each one is useful for. Oh, and for Wine to perform better with ATI hardware. =/

ATI has been improving leaps and bounds. And I'm very much impressed by AMD because of that. One AMD employee on Phoronix.com has been working with the linux community for a while, in terms of informing them on what can and can't be done. The good news is there's a high chance of UVD for flgrx.

Re:NVidia issues?

[Enderandrew]

Does the 6600GT use the legacy driver, or the new driver? I can't remember. I thought that was around the cut-off.

Re:NVidia issues?

[c-reus]

Does the 6600GT use the legacy driver, or the new driver? I can't remember. I thought that was around the cut-off.

I use the legacy driver. Although the new driver works as well, 3d performance is downright crappy with it.

Re:NVidia issues?

[the_bee]

God damn it, i just don't get it. I have a radeon 1900xt and i thought that *I* have problems with graphics. Like, i can't run any 3d game with Wine or Crossover. Or an occasional glitch with movie subtitles. Or, a highly non-intuitive process of setting up dual-screen configuration. Also, i was sure that buying a geforce would be an ultimate soltion. Now it turns out nvidia people are going for ATI! So what the hell should i do? Buy an xbox and just drop it with gaming on linux? Hmm, maybe it's a good idea. And the subtitles bug is not that bad. BTW, today at work i've set up dual screen at work with intel 3100. And maybe intel drivers are open, but they suck ass. You want to flip one of your screens to portrait? NP! What, you get 2d lag? Now that's your problem! Also, aticonfig and ati-ccc-whats-its-name rock, too, compared to _nothing_ supplied by intel.

Choices

[Anonymous Coward]

KDE 4.1 candidate version is quite good. And by the time it is adopted by "mainstream" linux users it should be excellent. The nice thing about the KDE project right now is that both the 3.5.x and 4.x lines are usable, so people have a choice for when they want to adopt 4.x.

Re:Choices

[jo42]

Still no KDE User Network Tool...

Re:Choices

[tenco]

The nice thing about the KDE project right now is that both the 3.5.x and 4.x lines are usable

That made my day. Thanks for a good laugh :)

Re:Choices

[Anonymous Coward]

Did they finally fix that annoying bug when you changed the size of the taskbar to "tiny" it wraps around to the top of the screen? It made me go back to GNOME.

Special Memo To John McCain: +1, Fight Alzheimer's

[Anonymous Coward]

To: John McCain
From: President Dmitry Medvedev

As Medvedev advises, learn about
computers
or find a shuffleboard court in Arizona.

Sincerely,
K. Trout

TFS is a lie?

[Gewalt]

That's not how I remember it. KDE 4.0 was stable libraries for people to learn with, and very new/unstable implementation of the libraries. KDE 4.1 was supposed to be a stable implementation of the already stable libraries. AFAIR, noone, except hardcore testers was every supposed to actually USE kde 4.

Re:TFS is a lie?

[Actually, I do RTFA]

KDE 4.0 was stable libraries for people to learn with, and very new/unstable implementation of the libraries. KDE 4.1 was supposed to be a stable implementation of the already stable libraries.

Ummm... okay, so you can rewrite the article: KDE developers don't understand release version concept, confuse users with improper 4.0 version number, and gain a reputation for a buggy major release.

Re:TFS is a lie?

[ospirata]

That's true, KDE 4.0 was supposed to have stable core libraries, so major applications such as Amarok, Koffice and Kontact could be ported at KDE 4.1. The big issue was this numbering schema. If KDE staff have numbered in the classic way people wouldn't have created so many expectations, and thus there wouldn't have dissapointments.

Re:TFS is a lie?

[SiChemist]

On the KDE website, there was no mention of KDE 4.0 being a developer release. It hinted strongly, in fact, that KDE 4.0 was a general release.

It was only after all the problems and complaints that the KDE devs said that the release wasn't for mainstream users.

Re:TFS is a lie?

[Uberdog]

The main problem is the dichotomy between the KDE platform and KDE environment. It was a stable release of the platform, but not of the environment, because the tools which use that platform and create the environment (all the applications) hadn't been ported yet. They should really be two separate releases.

Re:TFS is a lie?

[Anonymous Coward]

I find the best way to inform people that a release is actually an alpha release is to tell them that it's an alpha release. It seems to me that the KDE developers did not do that.

Re:TFS is a lie?

[Anonymous Coward]

No, only the cake is a lie.

Re:TFS is a lie?

[Anonymous Coward]

what classic way? I'm no hardcore linux geek - I've been just toying with linux (and KDE) for about 3 years - and even *I* know that any x.0 release, of anything, will be buggy, unstable, and generally not for production use. x.0 means "it runs more than it crashes; but don't expect any sort of solid stability, to get any work done, or for anything to be exactly the same in the x.1 release"

The blame lies squarely with distributors. I wanted to install KDE4 for tinkering purposes, it took me a whole hour just to find the packages - KDE themselves are not trying to push 4.0 onto everyone's desktop because they know that it isn't production quality yet, but still everyone blames them because distributors are sending it out with the latest releases anyway.

Re:TFS is a lie?

[jc42]

... KDE developers don't understand release version concept, confuse users with improper 4.0 version number, and gain a reputation for a buggy major release.

But doesn't everyone know that you don't buy a release that ends with ".0"?

More generally, one of the standard rules is that you avoid releases whose bottom digit is even. Those are the releases that contain new stuff. The next release, with the last digit odd, is the one that contains the bug fixes for all the new stuff.

That's why I didn't get KDE 4.0 on my new machine a few weeks ago. In fact, I decided to give Gnome another try, since it's been a few years since I last rejected it in favor of KDE. It seems to work OK now (though I do sorta miss Konqueror).

OTOH, I did install Ubunto 8.0. The Ubuntu crowd seems to have developed a reputation for violating the usual rule that .0 releases are buggy. Still, I held off for a while, to see the first reports. They were almost universally "thumbs up", so I decided to give it a try. It seems to work pretty well.

(Except that, as usual, I gave up after about two hours of trying to get their apache2 configured like I wanted it. I uninstalled it, downloaded the latest apache2,and in about 20 minutes had it compiled and configged. It ran correctly the first try. Why do the linux vendors insist on fscking this up so badly? ;-)

Re:TFS is a lie?

[Kjella]

Ummm... okay, so you can rewrite the article: KDE developers don't understand release version concept, confuse users with improper 4.0 version number, and gain a reputation for a buggy major release.

I think they completely failed to understand that when you make a release of KDE, people expect it to be a release of the K Desktop Environment, not some libraries that might be used to build the DE. "KDElibs 4.0" "KDE4 Developer Release" "KDE4 Framework" take your pick but don't call it a KDE release if the DE isn't ready for release.

Re:TFS is a lie?

[xtracto]

I think what they should have done to name what they released as KDE 4.0 something like Klibs 4. In order to make very clear that what they were releasing was just the underlying stuff.

Maybe they could have even released the K Desktop Envionment 4 as a "public Alpha".

That way media and people would not be confused about WTF to expect from "KDE 4"

Re:TFS is a lie?

[xtracto]

know that any x.0 release, of anything, will be buggy, unstable, and generally not for production use. x.0 means "it runs more than it crashes; but don't expect any sort of solid stability, to get any work done, or for anything to be exactly the same in the x.1 release"

Is that the standard for Open Source projects? if that is, then it is sad. Usually a x.0 release starts with 1.0, marking the first feature complete, tested and QA-ed and out of alpha and beta test software.

Version minor version revisions were usually caused by minor modifications (i.e., minor feature enhancements). Whereas mayor versions implied a major rewrite, major feature additions or whatnot.

Re:TFS is a lie?

[leenks]

Ubuntu 8.0? Ubuntu doesn't have version numbers, they just have dated releases - perhaps you meant 8.04 (April 2008) - followed by lots of patches as they appear to the various packages.

The Apache setup in Debian and Ubuntu is one of the best around, and I've not had any problems with it - what exactly could you not do with it?

Re:TFS is a lie?

[amRadioHed]

That's not true. I remember when KDE4 was released and the expectation from before day one was that it was not ready for mainstream usage.

Re:TFS is a lie?

[devman]

Ubuntu versioning is timetable based not feature based. Hardy Heron 8.04 is 2008 April. So the even/odd rule doesn't apply. Seems like more people are moving over to time based releases these days (including the linux kernel itself), I rather like it myself.

Re:TFS is a lie?

[Anonymous Coward]

Uhh...

But doesn't everyone know that you don't buy a release that ends with ".0"?

I don't know, Firefox 3.0 seemed pretty good.

More generally, one of the standard rules is that you avoid releases whose bottom digit is even. Those are the releases that contain new stuff. The next release, with the last digit odd, is the one that contains the bug fixes for all the new stuff.

There is no "International Versioning Standard". On many projects, your "rule" is reversed: the odd-numbered releases contain new features and are intended for developers; whereas the even-numbered releases contain bugfixes for those features.

That's why I didn't get KDE 4.0 on my new machine a few weeks ago. In fact, I decided to give Gnome another try, since it's been a few years since I last rejected it in favor of KDE. It seems to work OK now (though I do sorta miss Konqueror).

KDE 4.0 was unstable because it was meant only for developers. That said, it should've been called "KDE 4.0 RC1" or perhaps even "KDE 3.9".

OTOH, I did install Ubunto 8.0. The Ubuntu crowd seems to have developed a reputation for violating the usual rule that .0 releases are buggy.

Ubuntu's releases are based on the year and month in which they are released: Ubuntu 8.04 was released on 2008 in April, or 8.04.

Re:TFS is a lie?

[snoyberg]

Thanks! I've learned so much from your post! I'll avoid even-number-ended releases like Ubuntu 8.04. Can you point me where to download 8.0?

Re:TFS is a lie?

[JoeSixpack00]

Yeah, as if the vast majority of it's users actually compile it from source...

Most people use whatever version their distro decides to ship. It wouldn't be that big of a strech to assume that distros know when Desktop Environments are stable. They just shipped KDE 4.0 anyways, because it enhanced their coolness factor.

Re:TFS is a lie?

[neumayr]

OTOH, people that configure their Apache usually don't use Ubuntu. You don't belong their target market.
Disclaimer: I never really used Ubuntu, except on a LiveCD, but that's the impression I got from interacting with Ubuntu users.

Re:TFS is a lie?

[segedunum]

Ummm... okay, so you can rewrite the article: KDE developers don't understand release version concept, confuse users with improper 4.0 version number

Hmmmm. OK. So there's another one who doesn't understand how open source development works.

Re:TFS is a lie?

[segedunum]

OTOH, people that configure their Apache usually don't use Ubuntu. You don't belong their target market.

You are fucking joking, of course right? I mean, your post will be modded funny, right?

Re:TFS is a lie?

[Anonymous Coward]

so you are the kind of user that started XP without waiting for SP1? and the same with Vista? ok sorry this is not OSS but still the concepts hold if you opt for stability you go for the first service release ea xp.1 vista.1 KDE 4.1 etc. etc...
You probably haven't tried it out yet.

Re:TFS is a lie?

[toga98]

On the KDE website, there was no mention of KDE 4.0 being a developer release. It hinted strongly, in fact, that KDE 4.0 was a general release.

It was only after all the problems and complaints that the KDE devs said that the release wasn't for mainstream users.

KDE 4.0 wasn't a developer release. What it was, was the first release with major architectual changes for public consumption. This was the first release with a stable library and without this release, a large number of KDE application developers wouldn't have a platform for porting and polishing their applications for KDE 4. Ultimately it is the decision of the distributions on what to include in their releases. I wouldn't consider KDE 4.0 a proper replacement for KDE 3.5.x, but I would make it available for use by application developers.

All this was well known and openly discussed during the planning and development of the KDE 4 platform including 4.0, 4.1, 4.x. To state otherwise is disengenious at best.

See http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20080710131440951 for more information.

Re:TFS is a lie?

[neumayr]

At this time, the mods are as confused as you seem to be.
I'll just wait and see.

Actually, I probably should have said "configure their Apache manually, editing httpd.conf, knowing exactly what they're doing". But then, there wouldn't be as big a chance for a funny mod...

Re:TFS is a lie?

[nxtw]

OTOH, people that configure their Apache usually don't use Ubuntu. You don't belong their target market.

Do they? People certainly use Debian, and the Apache configuration is the same.
I wouldn't be surprised if more and more people are using Ubuntu on servers instead of Debian; Ubuntu LTS server releases get support for much longer (5 years from release.) The current 8.04.1 LTS server release will receive security updates until 2013. The Debian policy is support for one year after the release of the next version (so if 5.0 is released on time, 4.0 will be unsupported in September 2009.) The last few Linux servers I've set up have been Ubuntu LTS Server instead of Debian stable.

Considering today's free Linux distributions (as in free to download & updates), I'd pick CentOS or Ubuntu LTS for a Linux server because of their long security update periods.

Re:TFS is a lie?

[BigDXLT]

See, the biggest problem I see is the website(s) didn't know what was going on. Everyone who paid attention to the details and follow these kinds of things knew this. But then you have people who see "released" and look at the shiny screenshots and download it thinking it's the next best thing.

KDE needs a marketing team. I'm talking about someone who can think on the same level as Joe Public. People that can get shiny pages like plasma.kde.org up-to-date.

Nonetheless, having used KDE 4.0 off and on and now the RC for 4.1, there is a huge amount of potential here and I can't wait to see where they go with this.

Re:TFS is a lie?

[Anonymous Coward]

>confuse users with improper 4.0 version number

Except KDE 4 is a complete rewrite, so 4.0 makes complete sense. What would you suggest? 4.-1? Aside from the fact that it was clearly released as _beta_ in bold everywhere. But naah, you're just being a little nitpicking troll, that's your only motive, mr insightful :P

Re:TFS is a lie?

[Anonymous Coward]

so if 5.0 is released on time, 4.0 will be unsupported in September 2009.

Thee hee hee... Thanks for the laugh.

As the saying goes: "Debian, yesterday's technology, delivered tomorrow"

"if 5.0 is released on time" hee hee, good one.

Re:TFS is a lie?

[teprrr]

Uhh, right? So what happens if people say that the environment is not ready if Amarok, KNetworkManager or some other 3rd party (3rd party as-in not included in KDE release cycle) has not been ported? And what if some beloved application has no maintainer and no-one to make a port? Should KDE as a project stay and not to release until everything has been ported to use the new libraries? I'm sorry to say, but I doubt that would work in the long run...

Re:TFS is a lie?

[SanityInAnarchy]

so you are the kind of user that started XP without waiting for SP1?

Well, you see, most open source projects don't have this problem. Most Ubuntu releases are at least better than the previous version, and the major issues are usually fixed within a few weeks of release.

The only issues are with large, well-established projects -- and then, only with porting third-party development to the new version. That is: Apache2 was rock-solid at release, but mod_perl was only stable on Apache1 for a very long time.

I could forgive KDE4 if it was just that apps hadn't been ported -- which many haven't (Kmail? Amarok? You know, some of the main reasons I use KDE at all??) -- I could probably even forgive them if it was somewhat unstable. But the core desktop environment not only isn't stable, it isn't even half as functional. Example: The panel is HUGE, and no way to fix it, until 4.1.

ok sorry this is not OSS but still the concepts hold

Only in poorly-managed projects -- which we all should realize that KDE is.

And while we're at it -- in pre-SP1 XP, couldn't you still put the GUI in Classic Mode, including the Control Panel? It might not have been as stable as 2K, but it was certainly as usable.

Re:TFS is a lie?

[GeneralTao]

KDE 4.0 wasn't a developer release.

...

This was the first release with a stable library and without this release, a large number of KDE application developers wouldn't have a platform for porting and polishing their applications for KDE 4.

...

I wouldn't consider KDE 4.0 a proper replacement for KDE 3.5.x, but I would make it available for use by application developers.

So what you're saying is... it wasn't a developer release. It was a release for developers. Gotcha.

Re:TFS is a lie?

[jc42]

Hardy Heron 8.04 is 2008 April. So the even/odd rule doesn't apply. Seems like more people are moving over to time based releases these days ...

Hmmm ... I hadn't noticed that. Funny thing is that I use dates for version numbers myself. If I had released something today (but I didn't), its version number would have been 20080725. But given the context of an OS release, I didn't recognize 8.04 as a date.

This is probably because I don't think I've ever seen a date in that format. But now it doesn't surprise me. One of the funniest stories I read back in the 1990s, as Y2K approached, was from a guy who wrote about examining several corporations' COBOL code and looking for date formats. When his count reached 185, he decided that he understood why there was a problem. (And apparently it did turn out that around 99% of the actual Y2K problems were in old COBOL code.)

I'd bet that his 185 date formats didn't include "8.04". But I'd only bet a small amount of money, because I've worked with COBOL programmers in the dim, distant past, and I have some idea of the deviousness of their minds. ;-)

Re:TFS is a lie?

[jc42]

Oh, yeah; I forgot about that funny '4'. I do recall wondering why the first release starting with '8' was '8.04'. I surmised that they'd actually had three "internal releases" that weren't ready for prime time. But I guess I was wrong.

Computer people often count funny.

Re:TFS is a lie?

[miro f]

if Mozilla had have released Firefox 3.0 this way, you'd bet people would be complaining.

If the regular theory is that "x.0 releases are buggy, and you should wait until x.2" then there's a serious issue with your versioning system. A release should stable enough for everyone to use, not a bloody minefield

Re:TFS is a lie?

[Anonymous Cowpat]

the 1.0 release is often the exception (and firefox, where 3.0 was seemingly very well tested with 5 betas and 2 RCs), but, for instance SuSE 10.0 was a complete mess. All the whizz-bang new stuff that's made this a new major version is in, but it's not really all working together yet.

You up your project to 1.0 once it's stable, but after that any x.0 release exists because you've changed something important.

Re:TFS is a lie?

[JackieBrown]

Yes you could.

Hopefully KDE will never do that.

We don't need more bloat.

Re:TFS is a lie?

[jc42]

The Apache setup in Debian and Ubuntu is one of the best around, and I've not had any problems with it - what exactly could you not do with it?

The problems I saw were probably all related to the way that the pieces of apache were spread around the disk. Some things I just couldn't find in a couple of hours.

The most bizarre was that I discovered right off that apache didn't deliver my public_html directory as usual. OK; that's often turned off by default. So where is it? I couldn't find "public_html" in any file associated with apache. I looked at all the matches for "User", but none of them dealt with the problem. Of course, I could have just copied that block from my old machine, but it was sorta unnerving. Sometimes it matters where you put things, and I didn't just want to copy a chunk from a previous version when it was obvious that a number of things had changed.

When I downloaded a fresh apache2 and did a default install into /usr/local/apache, the usual conf/httpd.conf contained the rather obvious line:
      Include conf/extra/httpd-userdir.conf
So I looked there, and sure enough, it had the code to enable public_html. I removed a few '#' chars, did an "apachectl restart", and it worked. This took me probably between 2 and 3 minutes, a big improvement over the time I'd wasted not finding it in the ubuntu version of apache2.

In my experience, this isn't anything unusual with ubuntu. Most distros do something like this. Rather than install the apache package in one directory, they spread the pieces around. And they don't explain where they put things or why, at least not anywhere that a dummy like me can find the explanation easily. And no two distros seem to put the pieces in the same places. So I've learned to not waste my time; if I run into problems, I just do a full install from the sources. That's simple enough that a dummy like me can do it and get it working in 15 or 20 minutes.

I'm not sure why I wasted 2 hours on the ubuntu apache; at 30 minutes I should have thrown up my hands, done an "apt-get remove apache2", and done a fresh install. I'd have saved 1.5 hours if I'd done that.

I think my mistake was following my usual practice with something totally new, and wanting to give them the benefit of the doubt. Ubuntu seems to have got a lot of things right. Maybe they got apache right, too, and I'd learn something better than what I already knew if I went with their apache config setup. But I finally faced the fact that I was beating my head against a brick wall. So I reverted to my standard fast way.

Now I just have to see if there's a way to get other updates to stop complaining that apache isn't installed. Why, for example, did I get this complaint when I installed Chinese fonts and a midi player? Why would a font package or a midi player have a dependency on apache? Something's screwy here ...

Re:TFS is a lie?

[WithLove]

There were actual Y2K problems?

Re:TFS is a lie?

[Anonymous Coward]

Please see The Linux Hater's response to your argument.

Re:TFS is a lie?

[leenks]

Maybe Apache was a dependency because they rely on the APR or some other component in Apache. If you don't state the packages nobody is in a position to comment.

Re: Apache from scratch - that's generally a bad idea, both from a security and a performance point of view, as well as convenience (it can be a nightmare building modules after the initial install / ./configure especially if you get something wrong!).

It seems your irk with Apache on Ubuntu is that it works differently to other distributions and the source install?

Re:TFS is a lie?

[SomeKDEUser]

No, this comes from the fact that people will always find many more ways to break your soft than you could possibly imagine.

With Free Software, releasing early means you will know how your soft gets broken early. And so you can correct/enhance fast.

However, this only works if your soft is actually released. Even if incomplete/buggy. This is what KDE did, and this is why there is such improvement in 4.1 over 4.0. And this is how 4.2 will be even more amazing.

Alternatively, they might have done a release in 2012. It would have been only okay, because it would never have been in wide use. And it would have interested no one. Like enlightenment.

So releasing 4.0 was brave, but it was also intelligent. And the Right Thing To Doâ, even if it hurts.

Re:TFS is a lie?

[FromellaSlob]

Indeed, there was in fact plenty of warning of the shape it would be in. As an added warning, there were much publicised release candidates in November and December 2007 that were available as live CDs from several distros. These led to many reactions of "this doesn't look ready for release" and corresponding reminders from the KDE devs that it was more of a developers release.

The version numbering may be a bit odd, but anyone who was shocked by the state of KDE 4.0 just hadn't paid attention.

Re:TFS is a lie?

[tkinnun0]

Except KDE 4 is a complete rewrite, so 4.0 makes complete sense. What would you suggest? 4.-1?

KDE 4.0alpha-2008xxxx-yyyy would get the point across, I would think.

Re:TFS is a lie?

[Mekanix]

Ok, I'm curious. What news-sites are you and all those massively disappointed users of KDE 4.0 reading?

I'm no die-hard techie, so I just read slashdot (obvious), KDE Dot News and OS News. Ie. just some general tech/software news.

But I *KNEW* that KDE 4.0 wasn't meant for the general population, but a "stable" release geared toward those developers who wants to program and port to the 4.x-series and geeks who wants to help make the 4.x-series as great as the 3.5-series.

Hey, even Kontact and other core KDE apps wasn't even ready/released.

If I knew all this without being supscribed to some "secret" core KDE-list, how come so many technical skilled people didn't?

Re:TFS is a lie?

[Anonymous Coward]

No because we went to the trouble of ensuring politicians lives or employment were on the line and suddenly there was money to fix it. You are right in your implication though, most devices would have just continued to function but at the wrong date.

Re:TFS is a lie?

[XnavxeMiyyep]

8.0 ends in an even number. ZERO IS EVEN! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evenness_of_zero GAHHAGAHGH!

Re:TFS is a lie?

[Anonymous Coward]

Are you seriously suggesting someone is running Ubuntu in production ?

Re:TFS is a lie?

[jisatsusha]

Look at the a2enmod command, it does what you're asking for. Specifically the userdir module.

Re:TFS is a lie?

[Actually, I do RTFA]

so you are the kind of user that started XP without waiting for SP1? and the same with Vista?

OSS - as annoying as MS products, but without the catharsis of hating a corporation.

KDE 3

[Enderandrew]

I love KDE 3 and I'm quite content to use it. I spent about two years sitting very eagerly getting all excited about KDE 4, and now I'm a little apathetic about it. I'm not sure when and if I'll switch.

KDE 4 has a lot of great things going for it like Phonon, Solid, Akondi, Sonnet, SVG rendering, Decibel, multi-platform, etc.

I'm just not crazy about the desktop experience with it.

Re:KDE 3

[Anonymous Coward]

I too loved KDE three, and KDE 3.1 in particular under kernel 2.4. All later KDE's do not have the shred function implemented in Konqueror and are therefore unusable in a business environment for reason of security. All rationalizations away of this omission are flawed and irrelevant. Shred is a necessary function in linux, and its absence is a deal breaker for the entire OS. Windows for all its faults retains shredding. Linux value effectively stopped at KDE 3.1 under kernel 2.4 and did not progress

Re:KDE 3

[Anonymous Coward]

Am I the only one who sees a pattern here?

KDE 3 = XP
KDE 4 = Vista

KickOff

[Ted Freeman]

I hope they have done something about KickOff. Last time, v 4.0, visually everthing looked slick and modern ... except for KickOff. It looked like it was part of another project altogether. I didn't like the look or the layout, although the functionality it offered was a big improvement.

Re:KickOff

[metamatic]

KickOff's functionality may have been a big improvement for you, but for some of us it is a huge leap backwards.

Re:KickOff

[BigDXLT]

Then right click and switch it back to the old style. It's not like they hid it off in some hard to find setting box deep in the bowels of your computer.

Shouldn't that read...

[jasidwa]

"K Desktop Environment 4.1 will be released onto the Linux masses"

Calling Capt. Logic

[Anonymous Coward]

Has Gnome really "gained a lot of ground"?
A lot?
Because of KDE 4.0?

Something about that just doesn't add up. My suspicion is that the vast majority of KDE users are still on 3.5x and jumping ship to gnome doesn't make sense either way.

Re:Calling Capt. Logic

[budgenator]

Anybody that has used KDE for a while isn't likely to switch. Going from KDE to Gnome feels almost a foreign as going from KDE to Windows.

Re:Calling Capt. Logic

[piquadratCH]

I think you misunderstood the excerpt. What it says is that KDE lost ground in the last few years, which it did. Even SuSE, once a cornerstone of KDE's market share, defaults to Gnome now. Kubuntu is not on par with Ubuntu, and Red Hat/Fedora always was a Gnome shop. Today, no major distro has KDE as its default desktop environment. I'd call that "losing ground".

I hope KDE 4 is able to stop or even reverse this trend. I use 4.1 on a daily basis since Beta 1. It's mostly stable and shows big improvements compared to 4.0.

Re:Calling Capt. Logic

[Anonymous Coward]

Perhaps the long delays for KDE4 caused ship jumping?

Re:Calling Capt. Logic

[visualight]

I hope KDE 4 is able to stop or even reverse this trend.

Not ever gonna happen. Companies like RH and Novell have a lot of influence of Gnome and none over KDE, and that is the main driver of which desktop is the default. Stability, features, user base (-Novell!), etc., will not help.

Re:Calling Capt. Logic

[Kjella]

I hear you say it, but if said companies were bleeding a lot of users to KDE distros it would change. With OSS they can't just say "You must use this DE" like Microsoft can say "With the Vista kernel you'll use the Vista DE". KDE4 has a lot of unfulfilled potential that I hope will come to shine in the next couple of years, and if it gets as good as I hope they'll come willing or kicking and screaming. Of course, I'm something of a KDE fanboi though I'm still on 3.5.x series...

Re:Calling Capt. Logic

[teprrr]

Losing ground like this? And I think someone said that ASUS' EeePC also runs KDE, perhaps other UPMCs do that also? I wouldn't call that "losing ground" at least...

Re:Calling Capt. Logic

[AceofSpades19]

You are wrong about no major distros using kde. I would consider mandriva a major distro and it uses kde by default. Slackware is another major distro and it has used kde by default for years

Re:Calling Capt. Logic

[the_womble]

Mandriva has both Gnome and KDE versions. The installer either offers you a choice (Powerpack multi CD version) or comes in KDE and Gnome flavours (single CD version).

It is a pity that Kubuntu sucks. At least Suse offers a reasonable choice.

There are also a lot of smaller distros default to KDE: Mepis, PCLinuxOS, Knoppix, Slax, Slackware, Arch, TurboLinux, Vector, Linspire, Ark, Xandros, Pardus, Red Flag, ALT and probably a lot more I have not heard of.

I think that big business is more comfortable with the LGPL licensing of Gnome, so KDE probably does have a disadvantage that will not go away.

Re:Calling Capt. Logic

[Anonymous Coward]

My favorite distro Mandriva - which I would argue is "major" but I'm not sure of the numbers - still uses KDE as the default desktop. I'm betting the only one that has switched away from KDE is SuSE and you're just very, very confused.

Re:Calling Capt. Logic

[sultanoslack]

Novell employees around a dozen core KDE developers.

Re:Calling Capt. Logic

[logixoul]

Even SuSE, once a cornerstone of KDE's market share, defaults to Gnome now.

Errrrm. It defaults to nothing. Check your facts, will ya??

Re:Calling Capt. Logic

[Anonymous Coward]

I think you misunderstood the excerpt. What it says is that KDE lost ground in the last few years, which it did. Even SuSE, once a cornerstone of KDE's market share, defaults to Gnome now. Kubuntu is not on par with Ubuntu, and Red Hat/Fedora always was a Gnome shop. Today, no major distro has KDE as its default desktop environment. I'd call that "losing ground".

I hope KDE 4 is able to stop or even reverse this trend. I use 4.1 on a daily basis since Beta 1. It's mostly stable and shows big improvements compared to 4.0.

ermmm. Suse do not Default to Gnome. They have actually Stated that they do not have a default gui of choice...They supply Kde, Gnome and Xfce. But don't have a preference... They say its up to the user to decide.

hey

[Anonymous Coward]

Shouldn't it be like "in just four point one days"?

kubuntu uses kde 3.x right now

[kesuki]

i've had issues (possibly hardware related) with gnome, but only on one computer...

hopefully kde 4.1 doesn't break on my hardware like gnome did, otherwise i'd have to force 3.x version.

the only part of kde i dislike is dolphin, i like nautilus better. oh yeah, and i still use firefox even with kde.

Re:kubuntu uses kde 3.x right now

[Anonymous Coward]

The only part of KDE I dislike is also Dolphin, which I loathe and detest with the fire of a thousand suns. I was bothered when it was made the default, but it was easy to remove and get back to Konqueror.

Not that I actually use that much of KDE on a daily basis. If Konqueror, Amarok, and Kate work seamlessly, I might not even notice any changes.

Re:kubuntu uses kde 3.x right now

[kesuki]

oh neat, i switched to nautilus.

"Alt-F2, run "kcontrol". Go to KDE Components -> File Associations, select inode/directory," in application preference order click 'add' then type 'nautilus'. that easy. newly added default to the top. then apply settings and close it.

nautilus needs to be installed of course, it was on mine because i used the meta package to switch to kde.

Re:kubuntu uses kde 3.x right now

[drinkypoo]

How did GNOME break on your hardware? It doesn't do much, if anything, which is hardware-dependent. Methinks something else was broken, or it wasn't a hardware problem.

Netcraft confirms it: KDE is dying

[wiIIyhiII]

I for one blame twitter. He is single-handedly responsible for the failures of Free Software, not to mention AIDS and the Holocaust.

Re:Netcraft confirms it: KDE is dying

[chunk08]

Trolling a troll. LOL! So, which sockpuppet will show up to berate you? Bets anyone?

Re:Netcraft confirms it: KDE is dying

[Eco-Mono]

That's interesting, considering that you are twitter.

P.S. Capital I's look good on you. You should do that more.

Re:Netcraft confirms it: KDE is dying

[trimmer]

Shut the fuck up, twitter.

I switched from KDE...

[neoprog]

to FVWM. I'm so much happier now. So, thank you to the KDE devs for showing me something better.

Re:I switched from KDE...

[armanox]

FVWM, FVWM2, or FVWM95? FVWM2 is much better then 1 IMHO.

Re:I switched from KDE...

[neoprog]

Aha. Good point, FVWM2. On Arch, btw.

Re:I switched from KDE...

[armanox]

FVWM2 under RH6 on a Pentium 120MHz w/ 49MB RAM from where I am right now =)

Wow.

[LWATCDR]

I know that my writing sucks but this article was bad even by my standards.
Just from the burb.
"The KDE developers were hoping to change this with KDE 4, the new radical release of KDE, but it was not to be. KDE 4.0 was buggy and unstable, leaving everyone except the hard-core KDE lovers."
Leaving everyone except the hard-core KDE lovers what????

Re:Wow.

[Anonymous Coward]

Leaving everyone except the hard-core KDE lovers what????

Nononono..

That sentence makes perfect sense.

Obviously, it means that KDE4 gained sentience, and decided that KDE lovers made it uncomfortable, and so it left them.

Re:Wow.

[WaroDaBeast]

Leaving everyone except the hard-core KDE lovers what????

That is called an impersonal structure. It means that of all the people who were using KDE, only the hard-core lovers did not switch to another distro.

Re:Wow.

[Hucko]

err having not read the article can't comment on its quality, however the sentences you pointed out were passable and parse-able. The answer is the object of the sentence, KDE 4.0.

Re:Wow.

[nfk]

That's poetry. It means that when you mention KDE 4.0 everyone leaves except the hard-core KDE lovers. Come to think of it, I use KDE and I'd rather leave than witness hard-core KDE love.

Re:Wow.

[Nahor]

It's the first version of the article. It's only a for developers. You need to wait for the version 1.1 release to get the fully functional one.

Re:Wow.

[Eil]

Leaving everyone except the hard-core KDE lovers what????

Gnome. :/

Re:Wow.

[seyyah]

"The KDE developers were hoping to change this with KDE 4, the new radical release of KDE, but it was not to be. KDE 4.0 was buggy and unstable, leaving everyone except the hard-core KDE lovers ..."

RTF for the exciting conclusion to that sentence: "... unsatisfied."

Re:Wow.

[manwal]

With commas:

...leaving everyone, except the hard-core, KDE lovers.

FriSst p5ot

[Anonymous Coward]

We all knOw, are there? Oh,

KDE Release X.X In A Nutshell

[Anonymous Coward]

* Some things are fixed/added
* An equal number of things are broken to keep a perfect balance
* KD devs will hang out as ACs flaming everyone and be in general a bunch of miserable pricks
* Sites like http://linuxhaters.blogspot.com/ will continue to mock the sorry state of desktop Linux
* A variety of completely pointless Gnome vs KDE threads will pop up
* Desktop Linux continues to flounder
* Some poor sod has to go inc the 'XXXX is the year of desktop Linux' counter

What is in it for me ( a user )

[nurb432]

No, I'm serious. Other then some questionable eye candy, what can i as a user get out of 4.1 that would make me want to switch from 3.5.x?

I dont have time to be a developer, so all the 'under the hood coder stuff' isn't directly important to me.

Dont get me wrong, ive always preferred kde, but after 4.0 giving me nothing but grief i need good reasons to switch again.

Re:What is in it for me ( a user )

[xtracto]

For what is worth, is it possible to format an SD or USB thumb drive in any way using the GUI?? I could not find how to do such a thing in Ubuntu (Gnome), Fedora or KDE, the last time I tried (about a month ago), so I had to reboot to windows to do it with a simple right-click format.

Re:What is in it for me ( a user )

[Kjella]

1) All KDE applications using Phonon and thus the same sound server, no more "oh I can't play audio here because I'm playing it over there". Or maybe that's pulseaudio's job to really fix, but I'd be happy either way.
2) The Phonon framework hopefully means I can use one media player (Dragon Player?) for all my needs, with a codec backend like on other operating systems. Right now mplayer/xine/vlc work on different media.
3) Once the KDE4 applications are up and running, you can use the same applications on Windows. No need for learning a separate application when you have to use Windows.

That's at least my top three...

Re:What is in it for me ( a user )

[wuulfgar]

In Kubuntu (KDE of course), I just use: GParted It appears in the K menu as Partition Editor. You select a partition, then click Partition (menu) > Format to > (selection). That's GUI and pretty easy.

Re:What is in it for me ( a user )

[Anonymous Coward]

oh joy.. so I can use buggy players (that don't "just play" the content I want), listen to music in application that loads my 5000+ files playlist in stunning 120 seconds (yes, you, amarok), AND have the kicker replacement (don't even remember it's name) that I can't resize because, like, why would I wan't to do that?

Re:What is in it for me ( a user )

[xtracto]

Thanks, I will keep that in mind. I was really very frustrated after not being able to do a simple partition... I think I did not have GParted installed. IIRC (why is that btw?) although the Ubuntu live CD has GParted installed, it does not get included in the default installation!

Re:What is in it for me ( a user )

[Anonymous Coward]

Just for argument's sake, lets apply these points to GNOME:

1) All KDE applications using Phonon and thus the same sound server, no more "oh I can't play audio here because I'm playing it over there". Or maybe that's pulseaudio's job to really fix, but I'd be happy either way.

Alsa's had this for ages - I'm not sure what the big deal with phonon/pulseaudio/esd is.

2) The Phonon framework hopefully means I can use one media player (Dragon Player?) for all my needs, with a codec backend like on other operating systems. Right now mplayer/xine/vlc work on different media.

Well, obviously you have different experiences, but I haven't found anything so far that vlc and mplayer (both) won't play

3) Once the KDE4 applications are up and running, you can use the same applications on Windows. No need for learning a separate application when you have to use Windows.

That's at least my top three...

Same's true for GTK.

Re:What is in it for me ( a user )

[Anonymous Coward]

Why not just build a software mixer into ALSA?

Re:What is in it for me ( a user )

[teprrr]

1) All KDE applications using Phonon and thus the same sound server, no more "oh I can't play audio here because I'm playing it over there". Or maybe that's pulseaudio's job to really fix, but I'd be happy either way.

Alsa's had this for ages - I'm not sure what the big deal with phonon/pulseaudio/esd is.

And how well does ALSA work in Solaris? *BSD? Windows? Mac OS X? Yes, that's what I mean...

2) The Phonon framework hopefully means I can use one media player (Dragon Player?) for all my needs, with a codec backend like on other operating systems. Right now mplayer/xine/vlc work on different media.

Well, obviously you have different experiences, but I haven't found anything so far that vlc and mplayer (both) won't play

The Phonon provides a cross-platform framework for developers to use multimedia in their applications easily. I doubt vlc or mplayer do that so easily...

3) Once the KDE4 applications are up and running, you can use the same applications on Windows. No need for learning a separate application when you have to use Windows. That's at least my top three...

Same's true for GTK.

Oh, does all of Gnome apps also do? Like Nautilus and so on? That's something new to me.. Does it also happen with no major porting work?

Re:What is in it for me ( a user )

[Tom9729]

I don't mean to troll, but I've been able to use one media player for all of my needs for years. :-)

Re:What is in it for me ( a user )

[Anonymous Coward]

> Right now mplayer/xine/vlc work on different media.

Mplayer for keyboard, vlc for mouse. That is what you meant, right? I do have some trouble fitting xine in this scheme, but these two seem to play whatever i throw at them. Although I sometimes use mp3blaster for the glitzy gui.

Re:What is in it for me ( a user )

[renoX]

>Alsa's had this for ages - I'm not sure what the big deal with phonon/pulseaudio/esd is.

Except that when KDE selected an audio API the last time, Alsa didn't exist and the one they selected is dead.
Learning from experience (Audio under Linux is a mess) they abstracted it: anyway they would have to do it for portability.

Re:What is in it for me ( a user )

[Anonymous Coward]

Devices. As previously mentioned, phonon provides one single backend. However it also interacts with solid, the hardware manager, so you can automatically use your headset for comms, speakers for music and usb sound device for system warnings (should you so desire...)

Nepomuk. Weird name, nothing much visible, but suddenly all your PIM programs (email, IM, etc.) become much better integrated, sharing contacts etc.

Akonadi. Another weird name, but this one gives all your files the ability to have metadata attached and to search based on that metadata. It gets us to the point where you can search for pictures of your gran taken in the last month, rather than trawling through the output of "locate .jpg"

The eye candy is nice, but the real win with kde4 is the frameworks that make the desktop so well integrated. Everything feels much more seamless, redundancy of configuration options finally seems to be disappearing and the applications just feel like less effort. And that is something that, architecturally at least, gnome struggles with.

And (OT I know, but anyway...) KDE4.0 was never supposed to have been usable for the masses. Perhaps they should have named it more explicitly as "Developer Preview" or something, but there can be no sympathy for people who used a desktop they were clearly told wasn't ready for prime time, and then complained that it wasn't ready for prime time. Well... duh!

Re:What is in it for me ( a user )

[XchristX]

You could use Gparted, as another poster said. Also, since you're already running KDE/Qt, you could just as well save memory and run qtparted (same backend as Gparted)

http://qtparted.sourceforge.net/

Works pretty well.

Re:What is in it for me ( a user )

[Anonymous Coward]

1) All KDE applications using Phonon and thus the same sound server, no more "oh I can't play audio here because I'm playing it over there". Or maybe that's pulseaudio's job to really fix, but I'd be happy either way.

What about ARTS? Work great. And even with that, using digital audio with pass through, you can only use one audio application at time.

2) The Phonon framework hopefully means I can use one media player (Dragon Player?) for all my needs, with a codec backend like on other operating systems. Right now mplayer/xine/vlc work on different media.

Mplayer (no-gui) for videos and Amarok for music. Can't get any better than that.

3) Once the KDE4 applications are up and running, you can use the same applications on Windows. No need for learning a separate application when you have to use Windows.

That's at least my top three...

This is nice, except whole windows desktop experience is horrible. Even with good applications, i would not do it.

BTW. Is there still dcop in KDE 4.x ? It's very powerful, and i've been using it a lot (for example, when i come home, kbluetooth detects my mobile phone and sets my status "Online" in Kopete and unpauses Amarok. When i leave, it pauses Amarok and set's my status "Away" in Kopete.)

Re:What is in it for me ( a user )

[nurb432]

When i tried 4.0 I didnt expect it to be primetime and expected rough edges, but i also didnt expect it to be a dismal unstable failure.

Seemless apps is a nice thing to look forward to, as a user.

Re:What is in it for me ( a user )

[logixoul]

o_O
mplayer doesn't play everything?

Re:What is in it for me ( a user )

[Anonymous Coward]

Huh?

GSTreamer is already the metaplayer library.

You think that phonon is going to make everything magically better because: .. ?

I hope

[Anonymous Coward]

They fixed the menu (is it so hard to add a option to have a normal menu?)

KDE 4 has been very underwhelming

[slashdotlurker]

I have used KDE for almost 10 years now. Tried Gnome many times, but always go back to KDE. In looks there is no comparison, gnome is and always has been plug ugly.

Until KDE 4, KDE was superior in functionality as well. However, KDE4 suffered from multiple problems :

1. It was never meant for everyday users. For instance, a lot of indispensible KDE applets/widgets never made it on release date and some of the simplest tasks (plugging in a USB key) became needlessly complicated. It became good at obfuscating the essential and hyping the beautiful. It should never have been released - or perhaps released as KDE4-CODE which targeted developers alone. I understand that the open source development process depends on people trying out new software and reporting bugs, but this was too big a leap.

2. The developers paid too much attention to the looks of the interface and not much to the interface itself. I have used windows 95/98/NT/2000/XP over the years as well OSX in its many reincarnations, but KDE was always a relief to return to. With KDE4, that is no longer true.

I am not dissing the ideas behind KDE4. Perhaps many of them are overdue improvements if linux is to make it to the average desktop user (an outcome in which I haven't the slightest interest), but it was released too early. It gave an impression of being pre-alphaware and has ruined many people's opinion of the project.

Hopefully 4.1 will win people like me over and give us a compelling reason to upgrade from KDE 3.5.7.

Re:KDE 4 has been very underwhelming

[Anonymous Coward]

Um... KDE 3.5.9 isn't a compelling enough reason to upgrade from KDE 3.5.7? :-)

Re:KDE 4 has been very underwhelming

[Anonymous Coward]

Hopefully 4.1 will win people like me over and give us a compelling reason to upgrade from KDE 3.5.7.

3.5.9 is current, I hope you know that.

Re:KDE 4 has been very underwhelming

[AndyCR]

In looks there is no comparison, gnome is and always has been plug ugly.

Personally, I find KDE to be much uglier than Gnome. KDE 3 comes with the ugly oil-shine plastic theme as the default, and it's not easy to find something better (trust me, after scouring kde-look for hours.) Gnome, with a proper theme (for me "proper theme" is ClearLooks-Classic with Tango-Generator icons - perfect looking, in my opinion, and very consistent) is better looking than KDE 3 in my opinion.

Then again, I run Vista in Classic Mode because I hate the inconsistency of the Aero interface, so perhaps I'm not representative of most visual preferences. I favor visual consistency over appearance, and Gnome is nothing if not consistent with a well-rounded icon theme (like said humongous Tango-Generator themes which pull in hundreds of official and unofficial Tango icons from everywhere and use them in the perfect spots).

Re:KDE 4 has been very underwhelming

[Plug]

I have used KDE for almost 10 years now. Tried Gnome many times, but always go back to KDE. In looks there is no comparison, gnome is and always has been plug ugly.

I both resent and resemble that remark!

Still not a complete transition

[proxima]

I'm a big KDE fan, and I've been looking forward to KDE 4 for some time. The volume of complaints about KDE 4.0 surprised me; it seemed fairly clear that 4.0 was about getting a usable but not feature-complete release out so that application developers could target the new platform. By feature complete, I mean supporting all the options that KDE 3.5 has, which blows away every other desktop environment I've ever used. This is, of course, by design, as Mac OS X and GNOME are designed with sensible defaults and a fairly limited set of options.

I think Fedora may have made a mistake in defaulting to KDE 4.0 in the latest release; the KDE folks could perhaps have made the release more explicitly a "technology preview" release. Kubuntu had the right idea - offer it in the repository, but leave the default at 3.5. This allowed me to try out okular, the new document reader (which rocks, btw - finally a decent non-Adobe PDF reader which supports annotations, though they could still use a little work). But having read the early release info, I knew that KDE 4.0 wasn't for me, so I haven't tried it.

The new release brings the kdepim apps to the new KDE libs. Unfortunately, Amarok is on a separate release schedule, so we still have to wait there. For those that use KOffice, that too will be released later in the year, IIRC.

Re:Still not a complete transition

[DataTracer]

The developers were very clear that 4.0 was meant to be a dirty release in order to get the development ball rolling on applications. I have been following the dev closely and for each new milestone, I have tried the live cds. I wouldnt dare use it as my main desktop yet. If you thought 4.0 was supposed to be stable, you obviously dont read or pay attention to what the devs have been saying all along! I really liked the new direction the 4.x is headed in. It will take some getting used to for those who naturally fear change, but by 4.2 or later, I am sure we will look back and praise the devs brave steps... or curse them, ha! We will have to wait and see how Kde shapes. I think the growing pains will be worth it.

Re:Still not a complete transition

[slashdotlurker]

As a person who uses annotation heavily (I use xournal), I have never figured out a way to *save* the annotations one makes in okular.

Re:Still not a complete transition

[proxima]

As a person who uses annotation heavily (I use xournal), I have never figured out a way to *save* the annotations one makes in okular.

okular saves its annotations based on the filename in your ~/.kde (or ~/.kde4) directory in XML files. This has limitations - you must label your files uniquely, and since the annotations are not embedded in the PDF it's messier to share annotations between people or computers. Still, it's a start. My problems with it have been some rendering glitches and the inability to recognize two-column formats when highlighting more than one line.

Re:Still not a complete transition

[Cronq]

"that 4.0 was about getting a usable but not feature-complete release"

So which one will be about getting release that can replace 3.5? 4.5, too?

Re:Still not a complete transition

[Anonymous Coward]

I agree with most of what you wrote, but not that about Fedora.

Fedora is a experimental distro. They always done things like that. Look at the way they added Java erlier. And they added openoffice 2 when it was i beta. People using lates Fedora (with KDE) expect to get KDE 4. Those who dont want problems like this use Fedora 8, or some other distro.

Re:Still not a complete transition

[slashdotlurker]

okular saves its annotations based on the filename in your ~/.kde (or ~/.kde4) directory in XML files.

Very poor design choice IMO. I often take my work home, and if I want to transfer my annotations, I would rather deal with one .xoj file that lives in the same directory as the PDF I am annotating rather than hunt for it in some obscure . folder. Copying the .kde/4 folder over is obviously not an option.

wow, didnt know it was a war

[Anonymous Coward]

how many people have died?
ho many combat deaths? how many injuries?
how are the civilians doing? millions homeless? millions displaced or refugees?

ho many reporters dead? alot of ptsd?

oh? whats that?

its a bunch of people arguing on the internet?

ok.

thats not a war.

KDE 4.1, 4.x release dates are immaterial to me

[pxc]

For me, KDE 4 is ready when Amarok 2 is out.

Generally, this should be true. We'll know that KDE is really ready when the next generations of Kopete (IM), Amarok (music), K3B (CD/DVD burning), K9copy (video DVD backup/authoring), and the other end-user applications are ready and integrated. Otherwise, to use KDE apps I'd still need to have the KDE 3.x libs, and if that's the case, why rush to switch?

Re:KDE 4.1, 4.x release dates are immaterial to me

[DarrenBaker]

All these Ks are giving me a HeadaKe (it's not a tumour).

Re:KDE 4.1, 4.x release dates are immaterial to me

[Tom9729]

I've never really been a KDE user, but Amarok 2 does look pretty nice.

I can't say I'll actually use it, but I think it's one more thing I can recommend to people giving Linux a spin.

Re:KDE 4.1, 4.x release dates are immaterial to me

[Anonymous Coward]

Thats exactly why KDE released 4.0 in that time! to Motivate and push third party developers to port their apps!

using KDE 4.1

[lukrop]

Since Archlinux is providing packages for of the KDE 4.1 tag from svn in it's testing repos I've merged to 4.1 and I'm amazed how everything works. I only had to find a new irc client since konversation isn't ported yet but I found Quassel and compiled the second alpha of amarok2 and now I'm happy :)

Re:using KDE 4.1

[Onwards]

I am using kde 4.0.99 pkgs for Arch64. And I infact, have decided to completely switch from kdemod (kde on cholestrol :P) to kde 4. It's sufficiently stable for me. Arch pkgs are quite clean !!

Re:using KDE 4.1

[Onwards]

I must say that after using it for a few hours now, I am BLOWN AWAY by its beauty, elegance and plain GOODNESS !!

Just keep using KDE 3.5.x until you want to switch

[Pooh22]

From what I've been reading KDE 4.1 still will be a little on the rough side and there are issues with the closed source nvidia driver (get other hardware!).

There's no obligation to use KDE 4.1, since KDE 3.5 will still be there and supported as well. I don't understand the whining from users feeling let down or dissapointed, you always have a choice.

I try using KDE 4.x.x every now and then, I suggest you try the same without a feeling of being forced to use it, just curiosity!

In the long run, I believe KDE 4 will be a very solid platform for desktops for a very long time (until the next big change of course ;-)

Cheers (and no worries!)

Simon

Less features

[VincenzoRomano]

and more bugs, accordingly to bugs.kde.org.
As it has less feature and stability than KDE3, fewer people will use it, thus degrading the use-report-fix cycle.

RC1 on windows?

[Anonymous Coward]

Where's the binary for windows?

Re:RC1 on windows?

[andreasg]

I was about to ask the same. I Really wanted to try out Konqueror on Windows, the current 4.0 version seems buggy, was hoping this would be better.

Re:RC1 on windows?

[paugq]

Check http://windows.kde.org/ and use the WinKDE installer to install it: http://winkde.org/pub/kde/ports/win32/installer/kdewin-installer-gui-latest.exe Amarok is available on Windows, too. I think it's not included in the installer yet but you can certainly donwnload it from http://winkde.org/pub/kde/ports/win32/releases/unstable/latest/ and extract the ZIP files yourself. This is what it looks like: http://www.elpauer.org/?p=259

Re:RC1 on windows?

[andreasg]

AFAIK that is only the 4.0 Windows binaries.

Re:RC1 on windows?

[paugq]

You are wrong. KDE 4.0 was not released for Windows. The WinKDE installer installs binaries compiled from trunk (the soon-to-be KDE 4.1)

Re:failure?

[Anonymous Coward]

twitter is responsible for the failure of AIDS and the holocaust?

Linux Haters Blog

[Anonymous Coward]

http://linuxhaters.blogspot.com/

Slashdot is completely useless for KDE news. LHB is the place everyone is going to now to keep up on the latest open source/Linux news and developments.

Slashdot Effect Channeled

[Enderandrew]

QT 4 and thusly KDE 4 use XRender quite a bit, and Nvidia's driver has horrible XRender support. You could go to the OSS Nvidia driver, and lose 3D acceleration, or stick with KDE 3.

Ideally, I'd like to see the Slashdot effect channeled. This site has tons of users. We bring down sites accidentally with our massive numbers, but I've never seen the Slashdot Effect channeled for good.

Can you imagine CmdTaco posting a story tomorrow asking every to pepper Nvidia with petitions all on the same day, demanding an improved driver?

Re:Slashdot Effect Channeled

[Anonymous Coward]

Or is it just XRender junk that doesn't work with nvidia driver?
Write a piece-of-crap software and DEMAND everybody to adapt to it. Way to go genius...

Re:Slashdot Effect Channeled

[Enderandrew]

The ATI drivers work fine with XRender. The Intel drivers work fine with XRender. There are people with low end systems, and basic on-board Intel video reporting great performance with KDE 4, where as there are people with high-end systems with top-notch Nvidia cards reporting unbearable performance.

I think you have a reasonable question, as to whether or not XRender is just bad, but every one seems to utilize it without a problem.

Re:Slashdot Effect Channeled

[master5o1]

Write a piece-of-crap software and DEMAND everybody to adapt to it. Way to go genius...

Sounds like Microsoft.

Re:Slashdot Effect Channeled

[Anonymous Coward]

why would you say that? it seems pretty much a driver issue on chlamydia's part, they do the same thing driver support wise to 3d software (ie Autodesk Maya) then have the cheek to sell almost clones of this hardware (with better drivers) as their "quadro" series. some of the older geforce hardware can even be "softmodded" (forcing the geforce to accept quadro drivers) into a quadro. although to be fair sometimes, even with a quadro, just updating your hardware can cause viewport issues in maya.

Re:Slashdot Effect Channeled

[carlmenezes]

I have an 8800GT card. Honestly, my video card is keeping me from moving to Linux totally. Now that ATI's drivers are good, my next card will be ATI. Yes NVIDIA, I have no loyalty. I am a customer who will buy from a company that caters to my needs. Linux support forms a big part of that. If you cannot deliver, I will buy ATI. For christmas. So long and thanks for all the fish. As for KDE, give the poor guys a break. KDE 4.0 was definitely a messed up release. I'm using KDE 4.1 RC1 and while there are still rough edges to be ironed out, it is definitely usable. I must admit though, that Gnome has definitely impressed me with its snappiness. I will not be moving to Gnome, however, because I like the way KDE 4 is turning out. Even my wife is totally comfortable using it and she has never used Linux before.

Re:Slashdot Effect Channeled

[Anonymous Coward]

Please realize that nvidia SHOULDN'T release a fixed driver for months -- they first need to figure out what doesn;t work and how to fix it, THEN it can be tested AFTER kde 4.1 is released (probably 4.1.1 time would be best)
Also Test some more...

Drivers (especially popular ones) need tons of testing too so don't slam nvidia for spending the time to do it right (which nvidia has ALWAYS been much better about Linux drivers then ATI (until recently)).

Re:Slashdot Effect Channeled

[Enderandrew]

It isn't just KDE 4 or 4.1, but any XRender effects are horribly slow, and other QT 4 apps have the same issue with Nvidia drivers. And apparently the QT devs have been reporting it to Nvidia for ages.

I like it

[xrayspx]

I've been using every weekly build for SuSE 10.3 since 4.0 came out and have seen it get more and more stable. I have some issues, some are KDE's fault, some aren't.

• No OTR for Kopete yet, which is in Kopete 3.5
• In Kopete, if you're logged in, and log in from another computer, rather than saying "there are now two of you logged in", it crashes
• Okular (Awesome!) keeps losing the ability to show me PDFs. I figured this out and fixed it once, then it broke a couple of builds ago and I can't remember what I did.
• I've never successfully burned a CD with k3b 4.x
• There is a checkbox that is basically the "make KDE go fast now" option, if I wasn't on a Mac right now, I'd say where it is exactly. The box is set to "slow" by default
• I can't figure out how to move plasmoid applets around the desktop. So if I have a weather applet, it goes in the top left corner and can't be moved. Luckily, if I make a Folder Browser plasmoid, it goes right over the weather one, and also can't be moved, so...problem solved?

Those are the ones that I've had problems with that are KDEs fault. This one probably isn't, but it makes 4.0 worthless to me:

• Horrible graphic tearing, mostly in KDE 3.5 apps or GTK apps (kpdf, Thunderbird, Firefox, also any rdesktop session). This seems to be due to be due to using a compositing desktop. I notice it in Compiz too under 3.5. I believe the issue might be that for anything to work, you should sync on vblank, however if you have multiple monitors, sync on vblank freaks out and makes things worse?

Overall though, I really like it, especially since someone clued me in to the Make It Fast setting. This is coming from a KDE user since 1.x. I loved 2.0 when it came. Hated 3.0 (which grew into my favorite GUI of all time including OSX), hated 4.0, like 4.1 OK so far.

Re:I like it

[xrayspx]

I forgot one more thing that sucks:

Try to make a bookmark in Konsole for "ssh -l ASA 10.250.1.254". First, just typing it in the Bookmark manager is a bitch, but you can't have capital letters, at all, even if you change the bookmarks.xml, it changes them to lower and rewrites the file.

I'm obviously trolling for some answers with these posts, so hopefully someone knows some workarounds, and especially what we found that sped up the GUI by tons, which I just can't remember at all.

Re:I like it

[marsu_k]

I can't figure out how to move plasmoid applets around the desktop. So if I have a weather applet, it goes in the top left corner and can't be moved. Luckily, if I make a Folder Browser plasmoid, it goes right over the weather one, and also can't be moved, so...problem solved?

When the widgets are "unlocked", hover above a widget. On the right / left side of the widget (depending on the position of the widget) you should see a vertical bar, with icons at least for resizing, rotating and removing the widget (sometimes there's an icon for settings as well, depending on the widget). Click on the bar (not on the icons) and drag to desired location. Granted, it's not very intuitive, and I'd prefer something like alt+drag, but one can certainly move them. And rotating widgets is kind of cool, although not very useful.

Re:I like it

[xrayspx]

Yeah, that used to work, well, it used to outline the whole thing. In any case, I've locked and then unlocked the widgets, no avail. I've deleted ~/.kde4 and restarted X, no avail. It's probably still my machine though somehow.

Re:I like it

[pbhj]

There is a checkbox that is basically the "make KDE go fast now" option, if I wasn't on a Mac right now, I'd say where it is exactly.

I have a suitcase of cash stashed only yards from your location, if I wasn't trying to be infuriating I'd tell you exactly where it is. ;0)>

The .0 releases.

[haeger]

If you've been in the IT industry for a little while you learn to avoid any and all .0 releases. They are more trouble than they're worth. Always.
Windows NT wasn't usable until SP4 I think. XP started behaving semi-resonable after SP2. Vista? I've heard that the latest SP fixes a few of the more critical things (from a users perspective).

OpenOffice 1.0? Not all that great. Firefox1.0? Better than the competition, but good? FF2.0 wasn't without errors.
Actually the first .0 release that I've seen that's been fair is Firefox3.0.

"Avoid .0 releases for they are crappy and full of bugs". You can call that haegers law if someone hasn't named it before.

.haeger

Re:The .0 releases.

[eclectro]

"If you've been in the IT industry for a little while you learn to avoid any and all .0 releases.

What, you have a problem with being at ground zero?

Re:The .0 releases.

[GleeBot]

People are used to .0 releases being not quite there yet. The problem with KDE 4.0 is that it was more like an alpha than a release candidate.

Re:The .0 releases.

[Anonymous Coward]

HAha! XP SP2 usable? It is a fucking joke in my experience, all the machines that I have upgraded to SP2 have degenerated to the point of needing a re-install in the space of about 2 weeks, usually problems with outlook. everytime someone mentions XP SP2 as being an improvement, I wanna go postal. Graaah!!!!

Re:The .0 releases.

[zsau]

Back in ancient history, the law was to avoid any of Microsoft's version 4.0 products; MS-DOS 4.0 especially was particularly bad, Windows 95 was suspect etc. From my limited experience with it, KDE seems to be more strongly influenced than Microsoft's systems than other systems, or than Gnome is. Perhaps the developers thought they'd emulate Microsoft especially well here?

Re:The .0 releases.

[Tom9729]

I don't think users should necessarily avoid point-O releases as much as they should avoid becoming early adopters. Sometimes those are the same thing, but not always. :-)

Um.. Come Again?

[JoeSixpack00]

Recently, Gnome's been gaining a lot of ground on its KDE counterpart in the desktop environment wars.

According to who? At best, this is purely a matter of opinion. From a technological standpoint KDE 3.5.9 is better than Gnome 2.2, and I say that as someone who rather enjoys using Gnome.

Exactly what proof do you have to substanciate this seemingly erroneous claim?

Re:Um.. Come Again?

[Anonymous Coward]

you can ask linus for proof the next time he's pounding you in the ass with his faggot os. you've been fooled you moron. fucking shitballs fucks.

Short Memory Huh?

[JoeSixpack00]

Ummm... okay, so you can rewrite the article: KDE developers don't understand release version concept, confuse users with improper 4.0 version number, and gain a reputation for a buggy major release.

Really? And was the same said of GCC 3.0 & 4.0? I suppose the same was also said of Kernel 2.6?

The bottom line is this: OSS projects are ready when the maintainers tell you they're ready. It's always been like this, and it'll probably always be like this.

ps. I should also point out for those with short memories that GNOME 2.0 wasn't exactly a great release. It was buggy, it lacked features AND applications, and it didn't even have a decent file manager. Nautilus was buggy and dog slow until version 2.4

Re:Short Memory Huh?

[SanityInAnarchy]

I suppose the same was also said of Kernel 2.6?

Well, let me put it this way: 2.6 underwent quite a lot of development as 2.5, before it was released as a stable 2.6.

More relevantly: If Linux 2.6 had been released without, say, support for proper Unix permissions -- if all files were mode 0777 -- people would complain. That's the kind of basic functionality that's utterly missing from KDE 4.0, which was trivially found in a GUI in 3.5.

Re:Short Memory Huh?

[SomeKDEUser]

2.6.0 was basically unusable, as in "lots of hardware did not work".

Because the foundation underwent much, much rethinking/update. And yet, the scheduler and the VM were still to undergo rewrites (remember the VM fiasco ?)

Exactly like KDE 4.0, actually. And as for KDE they were right to release it. Because it is only when your software is actually in wide (-ish) use that you can start polishing.

And in fact this release early thing, it _does_ accelerate your development. For example, KDE never had so many devs looking at the desktop part. So be glad they released KDE 4.0 when they did, because otherwise, the current status would have been reached by Christmas. Or never, because of waning interest (remember e17?)

Most of the comments are about 4.0

[Filip22012005]

Too bad we don't have a good discussion about 4.1. Most of the criticism I read is about 4.0 or the way it was marketed. When 4.1RC1 was available I finally uninstalled 3.5.9. KDE4.1 is really great (except for the nvidia thing, obviously).

I love the plasmoids. It's another dimension of configurability, which is why we loved KDE in the first place. I don't get the ZUI, and it's completely useless to me. KDE4.1 is incredibly stable for me. The looks and responsiveness rival OSX on my system (which is a quad-core with 3GB). Except I decide what colors I want to use.

Better, but Core System Apps not there yet

[dlevitan]

I've used KDE 4.1 RC1, but its just not there yet. First, it's still not as stable or bug-free as KDE 3.5. This is partially due to packaging (since Ubuntu hasn't quite figured out all the dependencies yet) and partially due to the code itself. An even bigger problem, however, is the lack of core system applications that just aren't there yet. For example, KPowerSave and KNetworkManager are essentially requirements for any laptop. Neither of these is present nor, for example, does 4.1 let me suspend the system. The backend (Solid) for a lot of these things is present, but now someone has to write the front end that someone can actually control.

And, as others have commented, amarok, digikam, and koffice aren't ready yet either. I think it's going to take until at least 4.2 or 4.3 for it to be really usable and 4.5 until its actually fully polished.

Re:Better, but Core System Apps not there yet

[teprrr]

I've used KDE 4.1 RC1, but its just not there yet. First, it's still not as stable or bug-free as KDE 3.5. This is partially due to packaging (since Ubuntu hasn't quite figured out all the dependencies yet) and partially due to the code itself. An even bigger problem, however, is the lack of core system applications that just aren't there yet. For example, KPowerSave and KNetworkManager are essentially requirements for any laptop. Neither of these is present nor, for example, does 4.1 let me suspend the system. The backend (Solid) for a lot of these things is present, but now someone has to write the front end that someone can actually control. And, as others have commented, amarok, digikam, and koffice aren't ready yet either. I think it's going to take until at least 4.2 or 4.3 for it to be really usable and 4.5 until its actually fully polished.

First, do you think that something as big as KDE would be as feature complete, stable and bug-free as KDE 3.5 is, even though new applications have been introduced, a lot of under-pinnings have been changed and so on? I wouldn't bet on that...

Second, neither KPowerSave or KNetworkManager are included in base packages of KDE, meaning that they are not part of the base release. Nevertheless, I'm sure people will accept someone to step-up and help to make the port and inclusion to core packages happen.. If the release of 4.0 would be suspended until every application people use would've been ported and made perfect, the release would not have been done perhaps ever.. Release early, release often, as someone would say.

Third, Amarok, Digikam and KOffice are not part of the base of KDE. Amarok and Digikam are located in Extragear and they have their own release schedule, and KOffice has its own module and release cycle also.

About your last sentence, someone could say that KDE won't be really usable until 5.5 or 7.8 has been released.. And that's something I would call b*shit. But please, come on and help the developers to make software better; at least KDE developers are very kind with helping new people to get in to the project.

Who started with KDE3.0?

[Anonymous Coward]

I seriously got a question who of you all started using KDE3.0 directly when it came out?
At first i prefered the 2.x version because it gave me much more usability but after a few weeks i slowly started using KDE3.0 more and more and with 3.1 was totally hooked on the new interface and desktop it gave me so much more pleasure then the 2.x version. it still missed out on features but slowly but surely most of them were reitergrated into KDE3
so all in all this is just the evolution of KDE4 into a replacement of KDE3. you will not be forced into the new KDE4 right away.
you can wait and make the switch when you think it is ready

Re:Who started with KDE3.0?

[Anonymous Coward]

I seriously got a question who of you all started using KDE3.0 directly when it came out?

And in which version did you start feeling productive instead of just another hobbyist?

Once again the error has been made too give the world a DE without all it's functionality.

Why wait? there are plenty of other options available and you can be productive immediately!

What a wierd, inflammatory summary

[Anonymous Coward]

As my sibling posts point out, the summary includes opinionated unsubstantiated claims about Gnome, sensationalism regarding how fast KDE is catching up, high claims about the KDE that the devs didn't even make, a false dichotomy, and bad grammar to boot. This summary, in short, was deliberately designed to rile up both the KDE and the Gnome fans. Disappointing, Slashdot.

i know what you expect...

[Anonymous Coward]

expect a lot of dick sucking you dumb fucking faggots.

Developers vs. Marketers

[overshoot]

I think you misunderstood the excerpt. What it says is that KDE lost ground in the last few years, which it did. Even SuSE, once a cornerstone of KDE's market share, defaults to Gnome now. Kubuntu is not on par with Ubuntu, and Red Hat/Fedora always was a Gnome shop. Today, no major distro has KDE as its default desktop environment. I'd call that "losing ground".

And how much of that loss was due to any technical deficits in KDE? How many places to the right of the decimal point will you need for your answer?

Bottom line: GNOME has better marketing. It started with the "we don't use the eeeeeevil proprietary QT library" thing and hasn't let up. SuSE switched to GNOME after Novell bought SuSE, for instance, and Miguel de Icaza took over. Nothing that KDE can do about that.

For those who don't like the GNOME environment (count me in, but that's taste) this isn't going to change. GNOME has won the marketing war, and due to its total lock on default distro desktops it's impossible to avoid installing GNOME libraries -- but all too easy to skip installing KDE libraries. Which means that developers can count on having the GNOME libraries present, and can't count on the KDE enviroment. Which means that they're going to develop for GNOME, not KDE.

It's not quite over yet, but it's getting there. I'm seeing a fair number of complaints about Amarok requiring KDE libs; some traffic asking when a native GNOME version will be available. KDE 4.x may or may not achieve technical maturity, but right now I'm pretty sure that there won't be a 5.x series.

Re:Developers vs. Marketers

[teprrr]

Which means that developers can count on having the GNOME libraries present, and can't count on the KDE enviroment. Which means that they're going to develop for GNOME, not KDE.

Eww, I doubt developers are using some toolkit instead of another because that they can count it's available and the other is not. And by the way, I doubt Gnome libraries are used in every base installation of every distribution, even though the distro may be a LSB-compliant. AFAIK LSB Core includes nowadays both GTK+ and Qt, but not Gnome or KDE libraries.

I for myself think that the licensing of Qt may affect more for the developers than the availability, as Qt (and KDE) libs are available to every major distribution nowadays.

It's not quite over yet, but it's getting there. I'm seeing a fair number of complaints about Amarok requiring KDE libs; some traffic asking when a native GNOME version will be available. KDE 4.x may or may not achieve technical maturity, but right now I'm pretty sure that there won't be a 5.x series.

And since when Amarok has been equal to KDE? And even though people are asking for a native GNOME version of Amarok, I doubt it will happen. Or at least it wouldn't be done by the same developers. And nevertheless that Amarok is using KDE and Qt libraries, I've seen that the userbase of it is growing all the time.

About your statement that there won't be a 5.x series of KDE, do you have any sources for that? KDE has been gaining more contributors, more applications etc. and for me this doesn't mean that KDE is dieing, but in fact opposite.

So please, give us something to back up your claims or please stop spreading FUD.

Re:failure?

[Anonymous Coward]

Fact: Hitler didn't really exist, he was actually a twitter sockpuppet.

Re:Just keep using KDE 3.5.x until you want to swi

[Anonymous Coward]

Look Simon, just take your sensible, rational postings somewhere else..this is /. and KDE4.. either love it or hate it! ;o)

PS I quite liked KDE4.0 too and thinking the whiners need to relax, unless they want a refund ;o)

What about a KDE 3 stable release?

[CrunchyPCB]

They say "use KDE 3 if you want stability".
Stable MY ASS. I've submitted recently several bugs and which are marked as "fixed in KDE 4". Most of the annoying bugs I currently run won't be fixed for KDE 3.

P.S: I've just sumbled upon a konqueror bug which made me to write this message again!! AARGH

I'll begin to make plasmoids in python as soon as kde 4.1 final is released. I already started to use KDE 4 apps. KGet 4 is sooo much better than kget 3. I'll start to use konqueror 4 also.

Can you read before you write?

[Anonymous Coward]

>As it has less feature and stability than KDE3,

Even had you never heard of 3.5 and 4.0, you could have picked up here what the difference was.

I dont mind joe user not knowing the difference but when Gino Guido does it on /., I dont mind calling him a wanker.

busy times

[fedxone-v86]

in the desktop environment wars

Umm, so there's yet another war going on now?
Isn't terrism, drugs, pedos and emacs/vi enough?

I always thought desktop environments were just a matter of choice.

Stay on topic

[Anonymous Coward]

The Kake is a lie

Disastrous.

[aussersterne]

I have been using KDE 4.0 with Fedora 9 for some time now. Functionality has been minimal, but useful and it was relatively stable.

I had one issue: file previews in Konqueror/Dolphin were so slow as to be unusable (on the order of 5-10 seconds per image or file). I was told this was fixed in the 4.1 tree, so today I installed the rawhide 4.1 packages.

Now previews are very fast. Unfortunately, it now appears that you cannot fully disable the compositing desktop, meaning that on my minimal-hardware laptop the desktop is now SLOW AS MOLASSES, including this like scrolling in FireFox. In 4.0 these slowdowns only existed when "desktop effects" were enabled. Now it's like I'm using a 386 with a Trident card even when "desktop effects" are disabled. It has been a long time since I could watch . every . widget . being . redrawn . with . two . second . pauses . between . them .

I am officially giving up and going to GNOME. :-( Not cool, because I can't stand GNOME. Maybe it's time to go back to Windowmaker...

Re:Disastrous.

[Shados]

Only one choice left. Vista.

Re:Disastrous.

[Anonymous Coward]

Funny thing... I've been a Linux user since the beginning, early '90s, kernel versions in the 0.x range, later downloading early versions of Slackware one floppy at a time at 1200 baud and installing it from floppy sets.

For the first time in my life, I'm tempted to go to Windows (XP, to be specific). You want to use the latest web browser(s) or other fundamental applications, you need the latest distros. The latest distros (Fedora 9 in my case) ship the latest desktop.s And for the first time in many years in Linux, I feel very frustrated by the current desktops.

The Unix way was "everything is predictable," "everything is modular," and "everything is configurable." None of these things appear to remain... Windows XP is, at the very least, very predictable and will support all the latest versions of fundamental applications.

In Linux, more and more, the structure of the system is changing so fast it doesn't resemble any of the Unices; the desktops have taken strange directions; half of the commands for which I almost remember the man pages by heart seem to have been depricated and/or replaced.

I'm just not productive in Linux these days, and here I sit spending hours trying to get previews to work and/or a desktop that moves at a reasonable speed.

Did anyone ever fix the un-easily-editable menus in GNOME, or the "I open a new window every time you visit a new folder and I don't have a URL bar" file manager? I suspect there are GConf fixes for these things, but there's no reason I can see why I should waste two or three hours tracking those down instead of just booting into Windows.

I'll go to bed. (sigh) Maybe things will look nicer for this longtime Linux user in the morning.

Re:Disastrous.

[X0563511]

There are desktops that ship with lightweight desktops, such as xfce, enlightenment, fluxbox, etc.

Give xubuntu a try, it's got a lightweight non-compositing window manager that works wonderfully, and you get all the new packages. Remeber that you can install as many window managers as you want, and choose which one to use when you log in (it's under 'sessions').

Don't give up after trying Gnome and KDE.

Re:Disastrous.

[Vexorian]

Don't reply to cnp trolls. (Although that's much better than giving them +1 insightful...)

Re:Disastrous.

[Danzigism]

hehe Windowmaker is always a good choice and incredibly easy to modify menus and such. it was way ahead of its time back in the day. but i still use it practically and I never really run in to problems. there's so many wm's to choose from nowadays so i can understand the choice being a hard one. but i have had a lot of good luck with fluxbox and windowmaker. fluxbox in particular has some interesting themes out there that seem very unique to me.

Re:Disastrous.

[X0563511]

What's a 'cnp' troll, specifically? This is new to me...

Re:Disastrous.

[Anonymous Coward]

It problay means something along the lines of "it says windows is better in something than linux, so it cannot be a good comment and is therefore a troll"

I have been using a Debian version since Sarge and don't like the way things are going either.

The fact that GUI-stuff acts differently from their CLI-versions and overwrite all kinds of things assuming 'That's what I want (C)' has been a big pain in the a..

There is no more consistency across all fields.

The beste example i can think of right now is Gnome network manager (in Ubuntu). WTF is wrong with writing it in /etc/ instead of God knows where?? At this point, no GUI means no ff-ing wireless. Now that's an improvement for y'all...

The comment of deprecation of CLI-commands is not worrying as is, but it is worrying that the GUI-counterparts don't work according a standard

The comments given by this man about the usage of filemanagers and all, well, I believe he needs to look around, just as you suggest.

In my limited way of using Debian, I feel Gnome at this point exceeds the enabling of my productivity far better than KDE (be it 3.5.x or 4.x). This has cost me points at work, for I have been a KDE-advocate for years and to switch like this... :( ;)

the thing he is looking for in Gnome is gtweakui (at least, that's what the package is called in Debian)

As for the original poster, try Fluxbox, it rocks!

Mod Parent Informative

[mpapet]

I've got a Thinkpad t21 running kde4.1 just fine.

In fact the damn opengl is so buggy on the laptop-only graphics chip, it uses software rendering and works great.

KDE 4.1 is a huge step forward. The idiots that whined about 4.0 not being up to par do not comprehend the scale of the work involved for 4.x. They may have also gotten used to 3.5+ stability, applications, etc.

I'll might be the first to tell you once you get beyond the eye candy changes, the next layer down appears radically simpler. That's **very** hard to do.

The test is not 4.0, 4.1, 4.x as much as getting the older 3.x apps into the new desktop.

then dont release it as "KDE"4.0...

[EdelFactor19]

you make a lot of good points but you show the same lack of intelligence that the devs displayed. It doesn't matter what your/their "rationale" or "explanation" is. Those are excuses. nothing more nothing less. I'm a huge kde fan dont get me wrong... but that's very amature and a good way to piss off your user base and new comers.

If its not a stable usable release which is a functional upgrade from your prior version then DONT put it in STABLE REPO's, dont release it out as a 'finished' product.

KDE is an open source project. Any sense of a timeline for a release is a purely abstract thing. The only 'project deadline' was self imposed. There are no money paying customers who are going to complain that your product is late.

Furthermore as ubuntu demonstrates time and time again the fact that something is a RC or alpha/beta doesnt mean people wont use it and submit patches; it means those who have NO ABILITY TO USE IT OR SUBMIT PATCHES won't use it.

It doesnt matter how much of a complete break on all levels it is, if anything thats just even more of a reason of how obvious it should be that you need to do more testing.

Do you think a consumer cares if version 2.x is written entirely different than 1.x; they dont care if its compiled in different languages, written backwards, upside down on typewriters by monkeys and midgets. They care about one thing only, that it works BETTER; and that if it is not complete and ready for stable use that it wont be presented in anyway to allow them to believe as such.

They take a lot of effort to say that "4.0" is not ready and not a full desktop and not for real use... then don't release it and allow it to run around as a real release.

A lot of people are starting to nail this, clearly a release of some sort was needed; but not as KDE . expecting your user to be "know" that .0 means crap is stupidity. It's also something that most companies are trying to get away from... because in the money world if every one DID listen to that no one would buy version .0 and you'd never make enough to money to produce whatever comes next or you'd screw up your reputation so bad no one would come back.

so what if vista was a failure in that same regard; don't you think that's at least a part of the reason of the surge in linux's popularity, or microsofts reputatation of that in general? maybe if more projects put a little bit more emphasis on QC before releasing as a stable it would go a long way towards converting the masses; oh well..

Re:then dont release it as "KDE"4.0...

[Filip22012005]

If its not a stable usable release which is a functional upgrade from your prior version then DONT put it in STABLE REPO's, dont release it out as a 'finished' product.

You seem to think the folks of the KDE project put it in your distro's repository. They didn't. What to package is a distro's choice. Fedora and Kubuntu both packaged a sucky KDE4 (Kubuntu is better now, since the RC1), Suse did very well.

Really, complain to your distro's packagers. Especially if it isn't possible to combine KDE3 and KDE4.

Re:then dont release it as "KDE"4.0...

[Rob Kaper]

There are no money paying customers who are going to complain that your product is late.

Some core developers of KDE are employed by distributions. Because of their full-time contributions they carry a lot of weight in the project. This is not specific to KDE, but it does put some external pressure on project features and deadlines.

Still, you would expect that they would have made sure a usable product exists for whatever company they represent. I'm so glad Slackware is still on 3.5.x and I trust that Patrick will not switch until KDE 4.x is actually useful. Don't even see it in -current yet.

Re:then dont release it as "KDE"4.0...

[Risen888]

See this blog post. You can call them excuses or rationalizations or whatever you want, you're not breaking anybody's heart. You disagree with their decision, that's all. Don't make it out to be some kind of personal betrayal or something.

Re:then dont release it as "KDE"4.0...

[EdelFactor19]

good post risen, just started reading it and that looks like some excellent reading for me for tomorrow. i read several similar to it and had done most of my reading on kde.org; I dont think they broke my heart. I can understand it and disagree with it at the same time. I do disagree with their decision I'm glad you caught that much. They are the one calling them rationalizations or excuses what have you (and making them).

but it makes it a hard sell to people im trying to get into linux and kde.. "oh man i saw a new kde version in my update manager today and i installed it and it crapped out my system. what gives"

I know and understand what the point is, and I know where and TO read and understand it. But the problem is lots of people don't, won't and won't be bothered to do so.

i wont lose any sleep over it myself and im sure they will do fine regardless. I just think they could have done better; as equally sure as I am that whenever I release something there will be someone there to tell me what I could/should have done better/differently. Whether or not any dialogue about it will occur on slashdot is another story and probably unlikely :-)

Does it mean I'm going to stop using kde? heck no. it just means im concerned over who will.

Re:then dont release it as "KDE"4.0...

[EdelFactor19]

While I can't name the distro, I assure you that you would laugh, cry and possibly implode simultaneously if I did. But they did wise up after 3 weeks and yank it.

Re:then dont release it as "KDE"4.0...

[Risen888]

"oh man i saw a new kde version in my update manager today and i installed it and it crapped out my system. what gives"

Just out of curiosity, are there distros that actually updated KDE 3.5.x to KDE 4? The only distros I'm really familiar with are Debian and Ubuntu. Debian still has KDE 4 in Experimental as far as I know. Ubuntu has it in Main, but the packages are named differently.

GUI predictability

[KlaymenDK]

As a user, I really don't care about development or marketing. I care about usability, specifically the parts that say "be consistent" and "do not surprise the user".

See, my #1 problem with apps written with this or that library is not the name, or the look -- it's the order of the friggin' dialog buttons.

If only they [Gnome & KDE, or even better freedesktop.org] could agree on a system to let the *desktop* (not the library) decide if it's to be "OK,Cancel" or "Cancel,OK" then I'd be much more confident, not to mention faster.

Re:GUI predictability

[nutshell42]

KDE (3.x at least) had a config file option to reverse the button order (unfortunately I can't remember where, you'll have to google for it), afaik Gnome doesn't.

What did you expect?

[mirshafie]

I don't agree with the summary description of KDE developers promising this and that. In fact I'm quite tired of people making claims that KDE developers said 4.1 would be usable for others than testers.

Maybe I missed something on the Dot, but I saw may articles that explicitly told people what to expect of KDE 4 (long before it was released). So I don't see any reason to be disappointed.

KDE 3.5.8 is perfectly usable, stable and in my opinion the sharpest desktop out there. So the KDE devs don't owe it to anyone to come up with a second stable desktop in one years time. (In fact anybody that expected that they would is a freakin moron. It's impossible, see.)

Instead I'm very excited about the innovation that is taking form. You have to give the development time, and the developers a lot of credit, because the work that they've done so far is very impressive. I'm sure that as the technology matures, the configuration options will increase dramatically, and it will be stable. Until then, use KDE 3.5.8.

And a quick note about giving an unstable version a new number - it's because af the massive rewrite of the tehcnology. It would be much more confusing to call the new software KDE 3.6, because many of the libraries and apps would be incompatible.

Re:What did you expect?

[turbidostato]

"KDE 3.5.8 is perfectly usable, stable and in my opinion the sharpest desktop out there. So the KDE devs don't owe it to anyone to come up with a second stable desktop in one years time."

That's a matter of opinion. On one hand, KDE is both free as in speech and free as in beer, so certainly no developer owes absolutly nothing to anyone (hey, you can ask your money returned!). On the other hand, KDE developers have by all practical means stopped accepting bugs against 3.5 (at least those that are said to be resolved on 4 branch), so they "owe" people branch 4 going "end-user-usable" ASAP.

"And a quick note about giving an unstable version a new number - it's because af the massive rewrite of the tehcnology. It would be much more confusing to call the new software KDE 3.6, because many of the libraries and apps would be incompatible."

I know what KDE 4.0 meant as I think know by now everybody interested (on the other hand, why on hell is an end user that doesn't take the time to understand what is he doing using anything but what comes properly packed and tested with his distribution of choice?). But the point still exists that as results clearly shows, KDE 4.0 wasn't properly "marketeed". It could have been "kdelibs 4.0 (KDE 4 edition)" for instance, or the KDE team could put more brainpower to their numbering scheme (using a variant of the "odd numbering scheme", for instance which would have made clear that x.0 was not for public consumption -but then make sure that 4.1 was a complete substitution for 3.5, no matter how long into 4.0.x would it take), or... whatever it takes so that bad "press coverage" is not repeated again in the future.

Plasma

[Vexorian]

Plasma is soo revolutionary. For example, KDE will never be able to actually have desktop icons, instead they will have to live with windows attached to the desktop that show some folder's contents instead. But that's revolutionary!
<p>Plasma: The desktop revolution nobody wanted. KDE4: Platform to run plasma, which is the desktop revolution.</p>

KNetworkManager is present ...

[pbhj]

KNetworkManager is present ... it arsed up my network so that FF now always starts in off-line mode! I just uninstalled it last night.

FWIW.

Gnome gaining ground?

[Anonymous Coward]

Why would Gnome be gaining ground when it sucks on Red Hat?

Re:Just keep using KDE 3.5.x until you want to swi

[Anonymous Coward]

KDE 3.5.x is NOT an option with most distributions. In Fedora 9, you cannot use KDE 3.5.x. Its KDE4 or nothing. When I upgraded to Fedora 9, I though KDE 3.5.x would be an option. I didn't find out it wasn't until it was too late.

I've been running F9/KDE4 since it came out. KDE4 is terrible. It wasn't anywhere near release ready.

I don't know if anyone else cares.

[Sticky Wicker Man]

To me, what seems to have been lost with KDE4 is the beautiful way KDE integrated with a Window manager. I created an awesome power desktop for myself by customizing fluxbox to run with Konqueror at the center. Konqueror used to contain all the elements of KDE in a single desktop application, including graphical application menus which I could further manipulate by editing my fluxbox files, and a functioning graphical recreation of the desktop in ~/Desktop. But that's largely gone now. Konqueror has been weakened as a file manager, and those widgets don't show up in Konqueror ~/Desktop. In the end, these capabilitiles may be brought back, and there have been some nice improvements to some of the individual features, like the fact that konsole now says what it's running in the panel. I have no idea what plasma is supposed to be. So no comment. Basically, I hate KDE 4.1, more than KDE 4.0, but there are still a lot of ways that this could turn out all right for me.

Re:I don't know if anyone else cares.

[Sticky Wicker Man]

Wow, check out my scores! I suck!

4.1 still worse than 3.5 in daily usage

[Cronq]

I've tried KDE 4.1 today (from tarballs provided to distro packagers). This was switch from 3.5.9. Note: I didn't play with 4.0, so no idea what changed between 4.0 and 4.1.

I can say what's problematic after switch from 3.5.9 to 4.1:

- 4.1 cannot be installed with 3.5 at the same time without violating FHS standard. Distros are violating this and don't care. Unfortunately I care.

- switching between tabs in konsole is much slower than in kde 3.5 konsole. Enabling composite in xorg.conf makes things go a little faster (not that I don't use any fancy graphic desktop features - I don't need these, so no idea why composite added some speed)

- kmilo is gone which means that with kde 4.1 support for additional thinkpad keys, audio setup etc is also gone

- panels can be only horizontal. I had small vertical panel with apps buttons on it in 3.5. Doing this is no longer possible with kde 4.1.

- changing order of icons on the panel is not possible or requires some black magic. If it is possible then its hidden deeply.

Now I'm back on 3.5.9. These little annoyances makes you want go back to kde 3.5. I hope kde 4.2 or 4.3 will have these features again.

Re:4.1 still worse than 3.5 in daily usage

[angrykeyboarder]

Agreed.

4.1 is a definite improvement over 4.0, but they still have a long way to go to make KDE 4 as usable as KDE 3.5 is.

I just hope it gets there before KDE 3.5 is completely abandoned (security updates are a good example of why).

But for the time being, GNOME has the definite advantage over the latest release of KDE.

I've always been a KDE fan. I like GNOME too (but there are a number of aspects of it that irritate the heck out of me and KDE is now much annoying with KDE 4).

Frankly KDE 4.1 to me is more like KDE 4.0 Alpha 96.

The KDE 4 interface is more attractive than KDE 3.5. But it must be usable as well. Just being pretty won't cut it.

Frankly I find Windows Vista 10X more usable than KDE 4.

Re:4.1 still worse than 3.5 in daily usage

[lbbros]

- panels can be only horizontal. I had small vertical panel with apps buttons on it in 3.5. Doing this is no longer possible with kde 4.1.

- changing order of icons on the panel is not possible or requires some black magic. If it is possible then its hidden deeply.

Nice FUD you got here, mate. For the first question here is a video (made by yours truly) that shows that it can be done. As for the second, the Plasma FAQ gives an answer:

Can I move the applets on the panel?

Just before KDE 4.1 RC1, a change has been introduced in Plasma to allow movement of the applets on the panel. To do so, open up the panel controller (by clicking on the cashew or by right clicking on the panel and selecting "Panel Settings") and hover the mouse cursor over the applets. Its shape will turn into four arrows, and you'll be able to rearrange the applets as you wish.

Re:Just keep using KDE 3.5.x until you want to swi

[Anonymous Coward]

OK, this time I'm triggered, although it's completely offtopic (and yet... it isn't)

WHAT other hardware should I get and WHERE?
I am getting a bit sick of everybody dissing Nvidia and Ati and for not 'opening the source'.

There is a little place I like to call the real world and I DON'T HAVE THAT OPTION. (enlighten me if I am wrong, PLEASE!)

I can't imagine the KDE-devs having access to completely opensource hardware that is generally available, so it means one of two things:
- They don't care that it doesn't work with closed source drivers
- They keep saying the mantra "This is not my problem because there's nothing I can do about it"

You might be able to understand why users (like me) are disappointed: the situation of having closed source drivers is NOT a new one, the devs should be aware of it (putting it mildly...) and have a solution in place or else disable the combination until they do. The fact that they didn't anticipate this, dissappoints me.

My conclusion is:
a. 4.1 is still a beta-version
b. Maybe >=4.5 will be the version where a realworld situation will be anticipated before they kick it out into the world.

KDE 3.5.x was good enough for me, until I tried Gnome 2.22. Maybe you haven't used it, but the brilliant way in which all programs interact without disturbing the user experience is something KDE has never had. I have been using a Debian machine for quite some time now, but since I switched to Gnome I find I have missed the (I dare say MS Windows-like) integration of software and the ease of interacting software in KDE. I want to use Firefox/Iceweasel and not Konqueror, so don't shove that down my throat, thank u very much... Same goes with using other non-KDE software in KDE . Gnome has it's own versions of browsers and the like, but at least respects MY choices in programs to use. It could be a Debian way of configuring things that makes this happen, but I dare say that is not the case. (once again, if anybody can enlighten me...)

For the reasons and experiences mentioned above I am not only allowed to feel let down, but also obligated to be disappointed about what 4.0 is. The fact that I still cannot let MY programs do the things I want has NOTHING to do with the absence of plasmoids, widgets or Amarok 2. It just means one simple little thing: it's useless for me and therefore a waste of diskspace and time.

When I read through the comments posted here it occurs to me: people still miss a lot of software to get a useful DE (for them).

I am very sorry, but the time I was a KDE-user has past and it will take at least 3 more point releases and a lot of good reviews to make me check it out again.

Yes, it should NOT have been called "4.0"

[Dr.Dubious DDQ]

I should note that I agree completely with this, by the way - the KDE team obviously knew that they wouldn't get many people to jump in and test "Tech Preview 3.99", so they decided to label it 4.0 in hopes of getting distributions to include it and people to try it out.

Despite the fact that they were pretty clear in interviews and such that this was an incomplete tech preview that they just wanted lots of people to test, they didn't seem too worried about the fact that a majority of people who ended up trying out "KDE 4.0" weren't reading interviews with the KDE team and just got it because their distribution included it. Those people all expected something at least mostly finished and were understandably disappointed. (Heck, I KNEW it was a "tech preview" and I was still disappointed at the lack of functionality.)

The point of my previous post still stands, though: the 4.1 release so far appears to be making very good progress towards re-implementing the missing functionality. The 4.1.0 release looks like it will still lack a few features, but should still be pretty much what many people seem to have expected 4.0 to be and perhaps more. Or so I am currently predicting.

Thinking about KDE 4 much too much!

[Sticky Wicker Man]

I've installed every fucked-up beta release, and participated in every fucked-up forum discussion, I've obsessed about it, railed against it, and practiced compiling KDE3 in case I am forced to rely on my own devices. I hate and fear it, yet I really don't understand it, or know that much about where it is going. Thinking and complaining about KDE4 is making me sound like an annoying bitch, even to myself. I hereby renounce all previous opinions on KDE4, and banish the words "KDE4" from my consciousness, until such time as "SID", the unstable version of Debian adopts it as the default KDE desktop.