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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."
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.
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.
http://blindscribblings.com - Tasty pop-culture in conceptual fashion.
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.
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????
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
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.
Your ad here. Ask me how!
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.
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.
God is imaginary
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
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.
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.
"The universe seems neither benign nor hostile, merely indifferent." --Carl Sagan
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.
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?
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 :)
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
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...
/. 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
Reminds me of 4.0 when
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?
http://blindscribblings.com - Tasty pop-culture in conceptual fashion.
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:
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.
I like music
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...
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
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. .0 release that I've seen that's been fair is Firefox3.0.
Actually the first
"Avoid .0 releases for they are crappy and full of bugs". You can call that haegers law if someone hasn't named it before.
You are not entitled to your opinion. You are entitled to your informed opinion. -- Harlan Ellison
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?
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.
We hope your rules and wisdom choke you / Now we are one in everlasting peace
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.
When the policeman of the tie, rule you violate, hello punishment of the kitty?
Hmmmm. OK. So there's another one who doesn't understand how open source development works.
You are fucking joking, of course right? I mean, your post will be modded funny, right?
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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 ?
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.
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.
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).
Hey, I finally got my first freak! Took you long enough!
And how well does ALSA work in Solaris? *BSD? Windows? Mac OS X? Yes, that's what I mean...
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...
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?
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.
Hacker Public Radio is our Friend
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.
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..
"Jazz isn't dead, it just smells funny" ~Frank Zappa
EdelFactor
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.
"The hands that help are better far than lips that pray." - Robert Ingersoll (1833-1899)
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.
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...
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).
[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.
Hey, I finally got my first freak! Took you long enough!