KDE 4.2.4 Released

An anonymous reader writes "KDE 4.2.4 has been released. See the release announcement for details." Barring a "security issue or another grave bug," this is the end of the KDE 4.2 line, which means for distros based on long-term support, it might be the thing to get used to for a while.

Comments

Ouch my butt!

[Anonymous Coward]

I just got out of the shower a few minutes ago and my anus hurts after Hans Reiser fucked me in the butt after I dropped the soap!

Re:Ouch my butt!

[Anonymous Coward]

I have mod points but...

Really?

You let a guy who killed his mail-order, Russian bride, ass rape you?

I can only say this:

Can I come to the wedding? And will you be wearing white? (thought not :-( )

Never been to a Troll wedding.

BSD?

[hackel]

I didn't know KDE was a BSD project now.

Re:BSD?

[harryandthehenderson]

KDE is a powerful Open Source graphical desktop environment for Unix and Unix-like workstations.

http://freebsd.kde.org/

Re:BSD?

[hackel]

lol, I wasn't questioning whether KDE could *run* on *BSD! I was referring to putting this story in the BSD category on Slashdot.

Re:BSD?

[harryandthehenderson]

Because it's widely used on BSDs as the DE?

Re:BSD?

[dacut]

And gcc is widely used as the compiler for BSD, but I doubt it'll be filed there. :-)

Re:BSD?

[hackel]

Well that really makes no sense. Countless other software is also widely used on BSDs... I don't see any reason to tie the two together.

Re:BSD?

[harryandthehenderson]

Probably not. It really doesn't make any sense that it was marked the way it is, but I figured I'd try to guess why it might have.

Re:BSD?

[chill]

This is Slashdot. Always go with the default reason. The editors fucked up. It explains almost everything.

Dupes. The editors fucked up.
Miscategorized. The editors fucked up.
Everything that says "iPhone" promoted to front page. The editors fucked up.
Cowboy Neal. The editors fucked up.

See?

Re:BSD?

[Anonymous Coward]

You being allowed to post?

Re:BSD?

[Anonymous Coward]

Going by that logic, the "Linux" category should be removed as well.

Re:BSD?

[dacut]

Understood. I was just amused at the thought of a GNU project being filed under BSD. Not quite like bringing antimatter and matter together (or emacs/vi), but the fallout would be amusing nonetheless.

Re:BSD?

[BitZtream]

Why is this marked as troll, its a true statement with no malice intended as I can see it. His statement is 100% factually correct, even though I believe he is incorrect in that being the reason why its filed under BSD. Its just what happens when timmy blindly clicks the promote to front page button IMO, but this guy isn't exactly trolling or even trying in the least.

Remember kiddies, Troll is not an alias to 'disagree' or 'wrong' no matter how much you think it is.

Re:BSD?

[cbhacking]

Regardless of what section it is filed under, it's also worth noting that KDE 4.x runs on Windows too. I'm not quite ready to suggest replacing WIndows Explorer entirely, but the apps and even the desktop work pretty well. That said, I would never have heard of KDE without trying Linux...

Re:BSD?

[timothy]

a) You might not agree with the reasoning in b), but I'm probably not going to spend any more time responding ;)

b) Slashdot has sectional stories for stories we'd like to post but (as with this, a point-release of software other than, say, the Linux kernel), and there's a slightly messy overlap between sections, topics and tags, in that a given story can be assigned to multiple sections, tagged with various terms including ones that are covered by topics or section names, and labeled with any of the 100+ topics (some of which are also named sections).

There's not a perfect single section for "cross-platform desktop environment," so this one I set to both Linux and BSD sections, because KDE is frequently used in OSes of both varieties. It's also set to the topics KDE and GUI. In a parallel universe, it might be set to the KDE *section* (Slashdot just isn't set up to have one), and tagged workswithbsd, or something like that. Or given a list of "reasons" / topics in descending order, and set to an "intensity" level lower than that of stories that appear on the front page.

As David Weinberger says, Everything is Miscellaneous; indexing's a pain.

timothy

Re:BSD?

[Khashishi]

Well, the users fucked up and the editors fucked up by not catching it.

Re:BSD?

[Praeluceo]

Well, it isn't really a "GNU" project, it is GPLed, but I think Gnome would be better called a GNU project. Afterall, Gnome exists because of KDE's non-GNU-friendly license.

So if any of the DEs were to be labeled as BSD, I'd say it's KDE.

Just sayin', there's a fun history here, and thinking of KDE as a GNU project is a funny thought.

Re:BSD?

[JackieBrown]

That was true almost 8 years ago.

Not anymore.

Re:BSD?

[JackieBrown]

I assume that he pissed someone off that has mod points.

Any statement he makes is being marked as troll

Re:BSD?

[JackieBrown]

What's that symbol next to your name? I can recall seeing that before.

Re:BSD?

[gigabites2]

It seems to indicate Slashdot staff status. I've seen it on other members of the staff as well. It appears to only link to slashdot.org though.

Re:BSD?

[Anonymous Coward]

What a noob! LOL

Re:BSD?

[pseudonomous]

The way I see it:

1) There's no intrinsic tie between KDE and linux either, so if you want to tag the story with a penguin then you may as well add a daemon as well.

2) KDE is the desktop of choice for both Desktop BSD and PC BSD, as far as I know these are the only 2 desktop oriented BSD distributions out there, so actually BSD is linked in more to KDE than GNOME.

3) KDE in theory (and practice) ports to other platforms as well: WIndows/OS X/Other unix, but in practice, I don't think you see anything like the same usage rates of KDE users vs. total OS users anywhere but in BSD and Linux -land.  Just out of curiosity:

Does anyone use KDE on "esoteric Unixes" (AIX, HP-UX, Irix, etc)?

Re:BSD?

[cbhacking]

It means that he's a Slashdot admin or employee or something of that nature. Note the text at the top of the page:

Posted by timothy on Wednesday June 03, @01:43PM
from the smoothing-a-smoothie dept.

CmdrTaco and all the rest have it too.

Re:BSD?

[Saint Fnordius]

Point 2 could be considered debatable, as Darwin (the Unix core of Mac OS X) is considered a BSD-derivative. The mascot for Darwin even reflects this as a platypus wearing a devil hat and wielding a trident. So Darwin is technically the third desktop-oriented BSD distro.

This doesn't lessen your argument, though. It's just a footnote you should be aware of, since Darwin is rarely seen without the Aqua desktop environment and is well hidden from the average user.

Oh, and yes, I personally have tried out KDE on a Mac. Though it didn't wow me enough to abandon the default Mac OS X setup, I did like what I saw.

Re:BSD?

[arndawg]

CmdrTaco. God fucked up

Re:BSD?

[Yfrwlf]

I was going to mark your statement as troll just for fun, but that'd be just wrong of me. ^^

Re:BSD?

[Brandybuck]

Slashdot does not render in Konqueror: The editors fucked up.

Re:BSD?

[timothy]

Yes, that's right :) Sorry for the slow response, just noticed this.

Alternate, better explan: You see that symbol whenever you want to send money to the person whose name it's next to.

timothy

Re:BSD?

[Brandybuck]

I'm not joking. It's been at least three weeks now without Slashdot rendering in Konqueror.

Re:BSD?

[JackieBrown]

But funny

KDE 4 looks promising

[overshoot]

But the wait for it to be sufficiently feature-complete to be usable is a strain.

My Kubuntu 8.04 is getting kinda long in the tooth, but the newer ones don't work at all, unless someone knows of a KDE 3.59 or 3.60 backport -- that'd be sweet.

Re:KDE 4 looks promising

[Anonymous Coward]

What exactly do you miss in KDE 4.2? My only problem is the poor Bluetooth support (lack of file browsing on my phone, mainly).

Re:KDE 4 looks promising

[yet-another-lobbyist]

Apparently, there is a backport to KDE3:
https://wiki.kubuntu.org/Kubuntu/Kde3/Jaunty
I haven't tried it, though.
I was VERY frustrated with KDE 4.0 and KDE 4.1, and I was very much in need for a kubuntu KDE3 backport, especially as my new Dell E6400 needed a kernel > 2.6.26 to have all the hardware supported, so going with kubuntu 8.04 (the last with an official KDE3 support) was not an option for me. However, I am now a very happy KDE4 user. For my needs, it has already surpassed KDE 3 in terms of feature richness by a significant margin. And it runs extremely well and stable for me. Therefore this backport came too late for me.

Re:KDE 4 looks promising

[oracleguy01]

https://wiki.kubuntu.org/Kubuntu/Kde3/Jaunty

This looks like it has what you are looking for. There are even instructions on how to upgrade from 8.04 to 9.04 and keep KDE 3.

Re:KDE 4 looks promising

[Tadu]

Actually, why not go with the KDE 3 beta 1 port for jaunty?

deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/kubuntu-ppa/experimental/ubuntu jaunty main

Essentially, it shows progress on all itches I had with 4.2 -- the weather applet, kdelirc being ported, the CPU/mem/swap applet being readded. Now only the device notifier needs to be revamped, and konqi should learn that double click means to mark words and not some random part of the line... (Yes, there are some crashes. Sometimes. So? At least it provides the functionality I need.)

Re:KDE 4 looks promising

[cbhacking]

KDE 4.2 is perfectly usable. It's what 4 (in general) should ahve been from the start. Don't even bother looking at 4.1 or 4.0, and if you do, don't expect 4.2 to be the same. It's not. The older ones are broken, yes, but don't assume taht means that 4.x is *ALL* broken.

Re:KDE 4 looks promising

[Khashishi]

It's what 4 (in general) should ahve been from the start.

That's what people said about 4.1.

Re:KDE 4 looks promising

[BatsShadow2]

My Kubuntu 8.04 is getting kinda long in the tooth, but the newer ones don't work at all, unless someone knows of a KDE 3.59 or 3.60 backport -- that'd be sweet.

I can't claim that KDE 4.2 actually works, but I do know that Kubuntu is an atrocious implementation of KDE. I've been considering giving another distro a chance to try out KDE4, maybe SUSE or Mandriva.

Re:KDE 4 looks promising

[gigabites2]

That's because of the immense contrast between the two versions. Say you had had to use 4.0 for months and then suddenly switched to 4.1. Big contrast. Say you've used 3.5 for more than a year and suddenly switch to 4.1. Features and stability are still not up to par with the rock-solid 3.5 builds. It's all about perspective I suppose. It is worth mentioning that cbhacking is correct, though. In terms of features and usability, 4.2 is a huge step forward with 4.3 hopefully surpassing it and coming closer to 3.5.

Re:KDE 4 looks promising

[QCompson]

No. When people were complaining about what a trainwreck 4.0 was, the KDE team claimed that 4.1 would be the release that is ready for users. Then, when 4.1 was released, the KDE team claimed that 4.2 would be the release that is ready for users.

Re:KDE 4 looks promising

[PvtVoid]

I can't claim that KDE 4.2 actually works, but I do know that Kubuntu is an atrocious implementation of KDE. I've been considering giving another distro a chance to try out KDE4, maybe SUSE or Mandriva. quote. Good point. I understand the Gentoo devs are rumored to be planning release a 4.2 overlay in early 2011.

Re:KDE 4 looks promising

[RicardoGCE]

What exactly do you miss in KDE 4.2? My only problem is the poor Bluetooth support (lack of file browsing on my phone, mainly).

A working network manager would be lovely.

Re:KDE 4 looks promising

[PouletFou]

Can you specify what in KDE 4.2 doesn't work at all? I've been a KDE user for years, kept KDE 3.5 on my laptop while switching to gnome on the desktop until kubuntu 9.04 and I honestly find KDE 4.2.2 very impressive and efficient.

Re:KDE 4 looks promising

[pseudonomous]

I would have to say the best KDE experiance I had was with the old kde3 based kdemod on Arch Linux.  But the KDE4 based kdemod was pretty nice too.

Unfortunately, thanks to how much ATI graphics drivers suck, I'm on Kubuntu right now, and 9.04 seems to actually be fairly good.

I must say, I really like the "screen-profiles" package they shipped (of course this wasn't kde specific),  on the other hand, memory usage is through the roof, like 2500 M with firefox (4 tabs) + kmail + Amarok + Whatever automatically starts up after KDE login.  Luckily, on my desktop I've gone tons of memory, but there's no way I could use Kubuntu on the netbook which I ordered from Dell a while ago (it's taking a ridulous amount of time to ship .. oh well) ... so actually:

- Does anybody know of a good netbook-oriented distro that is KDE-centric?
- How about XFCE-centric? (XFCE is my fallback for systems that can't handle KDE, I actually like the new 4.6 quite a bit)

If not I guess I can get used to GNOME again.

Re:KDE 4 looks promising

[erayd]

KDE-4.2 has been in the gentoo tree for ages - if you want it, just make sure you're running ~arch, or unmask it.

Re:KDE 4 looks promising

[FromellaSlob]

It's there. Knetworkmanager was replaced by the network manager plasmoid.

Re:KDE 4 looks promising

[SomeKDEUser]

See, "ready for users" is undefined. For me, KDE trunk is ready for me, and Vista is not.

For many people it is the reverse.

For me OSX is not ready: the dev tools it bundles are basically a joke, and the WM sucks. But many people find it the ultimate user experience.

4.0 was not a user release, but 4.1 was. Imperfect, yes, but better than 3.5 in some aspects, and worse in others. 4.2 was pretty much on par, with some things much better, and some missing pieces -- which you might miss and I don't, or the reverse.

4.3 is basically better than 3.5 in almost all respects. Surely a couple things are missing that I have not noticed. And no doubts there will be trolls arguing that "OMG I cannot independently configure the transparency gradient of all plasma widgets! This is a deal breaker for me, I go back to gnome" -- incidentally, you can, but you need to draw you own theme ;)

And the apps are almost all there, I am still missing the tellico port, but it is advancing fast.

Re:KDE 4 looks promising

[Anonymous Coward]

I gave KDE4.1 a try out and like you I found it not ready for serious use.

However I am presently running Debian Testing and they went to KDE4.2 a couple of weeks ago, and it is very smooth. In fact I am delighted and I am finding it much better.

I am in the midst of completing my hons. degree project and KDE4.2 is helping me a lot especially using Okular to work with pdf files.

Sig version 4.2

Re:KDE 4 looks promising

[SanityInAnarchy]

Knetworkmanager, in Intrepid, was KDE3-based, and for some reason, KDE3 apps can't talk to a KDE4 kwallet. Ubuntu solved this by having them not even try, meaning it forgot all my saved passwords, and saved any new ones in the clear.

The network manager plasmoid looks potentially awesome, except:

  - Add two of them, and you get two notifications for network events. WTF?
  - The fonts don't fit. At all. This is a common KDE4 problem for me -- it's always fucking up and chopping off part of a chunk of text for no reason -- but this is especially bad in the NetworkManager plasmoid.
  - No WPA support. WTF?! Does nobody test this shit?

Going back to Intrepid is not an option, as Intrepid broke Bluetooth, and had dozens of very ugly graphical glitches and performance issues that are fixed in Jaunty. And Jaunty broke WPA.

When is Kubuntu going to be good again?

Re:KDE 4 looks promising

[SanityInAnarchy]

See, "ready for users" is undefined.

I would define it pretty clearly:

If it worked in KDE3, it must work in KDE4. It must either be obvious how to do this, or it must be in a FAQ somewhere.

better than 3.5 in some aspects, and worse in others.

Like having no bluetooth. The ways in which it was better are irrelevant when you're missing basic functionality like my fucking mouse.

4.2 was pretty much on par, with some things much better, and some missing pieces

Missing pieces like WPA support.

The things that are much better are, honestly, things I can live without. They're cool, they make me more productive, but I can live without them.

I cannot live without such obscure things as working wireless.

The things that keep getting dropped on the floor are not obscure, they are major pieces of functionality that you could not sell a computer, regardless of OS, without some support for.

4.3 is basically better than 3.5 in almost all respects.

It damn well better be.

Because frankly, this is like XP vs Vista. When Vista was in beta testing, the apologists said, "It's a beta! Expect it to be broken!" When it was released, they said, "Everyone knows you don't buy MS software until SP1!" Well, Vista SP2 is out, and many people seem convinced it's on par with XP in most ways.

The fact that KDE4 is behind Vista is just really fucking sad, and I want to like KDE.

Giant disclaimer: I run Kubuntu, which is widely acknowledged by the KDE people as being the worst KDE-based distro ever. It's served me well in the 3.x line, but for some reason, the 4.x releases have just pulled random experimental nightly builds, incorporated them into the release...

I mean, the bluetooth issue was known about, and they put it as a "known issue", and went ahead and released, and didn't fix it for at least, oh, two months. WTF?

To anyone who hasn't tried KDE4: Don't. Wait for 4.3, maybe it'll be ready then. Or use a distro other than Ubuntu, but expect large things to break.

Re:KDE 4 looks promising

[KozmoStevnNaut]

For XFCE-centric distros, Xubuntu is quite nice and well-integrated. I used to run it on my Eee 701 and it did pretty well with the Eee kernel repository I found through Eeeuser.com.

But I have to say that compared to the Arch Linux I put on it last week, Xubuntu is really rather slow in comparison. Arch has an Eee kernel repository, too, but even without it most things work pretty much out of the box on Arch.

Re:KDE 4 looks promising

[Ruie]

KDE 4.2 is usable, but not perfectly.

No kprinter, does not see my shared cups printer (previous version worked ok), dolphin instead of konqueror, middle click is broken in konqueror when browsing files (used to open in a standlane application), no kasbar, start menu does not add newly installed programs without restart.

This is on a system that I only use occasionally.

Good work, but it is not 3.5 yet.

Re:KDE 4 looks promising

[Anonymous Coward]

I must say, I really like the "screen-profiles" package they shipped (of course this wasn't kde specific), on the other hand, memory usage is through the roof, like 2500 M with firefox (4 tabs) + kmail + Amarok + Whatever automatically starts up after KDE login. Luckily, on my desktop I've gone tons of memory, but there's no way I could use Kubuntu on the netbook which I ordered from Dell a while ago (it's taking a ridulous amount of time to ship .. oh well) ... so actually:

Surprise, you have tons of memory thats why KDE uses 2500M! It tries to make use of the free memory.

And with same applications , on my machine with 1GB RAM, it uses only around 500-600 MB.

Re:KDE 4 looks promising

[quantumphaze]

NetworkManager plasmoid worked fine with my home WPA network (Using Arch with KDEmod, not Ubuntu so the package should be more up to date). However, NM failed when trying to connect to my university's WPA Enterprise network. They are aware of the problem and will one day fix it, in the mean time I am using Wicd.

Wicd is great if you can get the network to run with wpa_supplicant but not in NM. You can create a wpa_supplicant.conf template for it customised to whatever your specific network needs in /etc/wicd/encryption/templates

The only downside it that it is GTK and looks ugly on KDE 4.

Re:KDE 4 looks promising

[smash]

uh... xcode and interface builder are a joke? gcc is a joke?

Have you actually used os/x for more than 10 minutes?

Re:KDE 4 looks promising

[SomeKDEUser]

gcc is not a joke, xcode is. I hate it. I always go back to vi after 5 mins of intense frustration. When using OSX, that is.

Under linux I use kate/kdevelop, so I'm not much of a pure-command-line guy.

And then there is the dismal WM...

Re:KDE 4 looks promising

[SomeKDEUser]

See, "ready for users" is undefined.

I would define it pretty clearly:

If it worked in KDE3, it must work in KDE4. It must either be obvious how to do this, or it must be in a FAQ somewhere.

This is idiotic: it is different code. Eventually, if a given feature is needed, it'll be "back", in the sense that it will have been added again, with the experience and knowledge of the previous system.

better than 3.5 in some aspects, and worse in others.

Like having no bluetooth. The ways in which it was better are irrelevant when you're missing basic functionality like my fucking mouse.

See, this has nothing to do with KDE. This is a low(er)-level hardware issue, and if you expect your DE to tackle it, I sure hope you are not architecturing software. Desktop integration is all fine and good for, say bluetooth phones, but your mouse should Just Workâ and no GUI should be required.

4.2 was pretty much on par, with some things much better, and some missing pieces

Missing pieces like WPA support.

The things that are much better are, honestly, things I can live without. They're cool, they make me more productive, but I can live without them.

I cannot live without such obscure things as working wireless.

The things that keep getting dropped on the floor are not obscure, they are major pieces of functionality that you could not sell a computer, regardless of OS, without some support for.

Uhh, sorry, but that is a distro issue. Nothing prevents you from launching any of the other NM frontends which work... Don't blame KDE for shoddy integration on the distro's part.

4.3 is basically better than 3.5 in almost all respects.

It damn well better be.

Because frankly, this is like XP vs Vista. When Vista was in beta testing, the apologists said, "It's a beta! Expect it to be broken!" When it was released, they said, "Everyone knows you don't buy MS software until SP1!" Well, Vista SP2 is out, and many people seem convinced it's on par with XP in most ways.

The fact that KDE4 is behind Vista is just really fucking sad, and I want to like KDE.

Giant disclaimer: I run Kubuntu, which is widely acknowledged by the KDE people as being the worst KDE-based distro ever. It's served me well in the 3.x line, but for some reason, the 4.x releases have just pulled random experimental nightly builds, incorporated them into the release...

I mean, the bluetooth issue was known about, and they put it as a "known issue", and went ahead and released, and didn't fix it for at least, oh, two months. WTF?

To anyone who hasn't tried KDE4: Don't. Wait for 4.3, maybe it'll be ready then. Or use a distro other than Ubuntu, but expect large things to break.

Kubuntu was always broken, not due to lack of dedication, but from lack of manpower. On the other hand, they have gone out of their way to actually break KDE at times... It just happens that the previous kind of brokenness did not affect you and the new does.

Much of your comment basically boils down to "my distro did not do the basic minimum amount of QA one would expect from even free software hobbyists. I blame the upstream"

You have cognitive dissonance, and I cannot help you with that.

As for KDE being behind Vista, you are right. If the race is towards higher levels of suckiness. But KDE4 is not broken. It is in fact nicer to use than KDE3, and smoother, and more beautiful, and more powerful. Free software, fortunately or unfortunately is more used, by people who think that it is some product in finished form. It is not. It is a process, and at some point along the way, a given project reaches a stage where it is also as good as a finished product. But to reach that stage, it must be tested, and that means pain for the early adopters, but also the satisfaction of participating in the creation of the tools you use.

Re:KDE 4 looks promising

[bain_online]

Well actually the nm-applet from gnome worked fine for me until i discovered the plasmoid.

Re:KDE 4 looks promising

[andr386]

KDE 4.2 in Manrdriva can work really well. It's a very enjoyable DE and it's a world appart from KDE 4.2 in Kubuntu. Kubuntu 8.04 was something coming from hell, I felt like s.b. did a bad joke to me. Windows 98 was a monument of stability compared to it. ON MY HARDWARE, it failed completely. But, since I used to love KDE, I decided to try it in a distro that implements it correctly "Mandriva" or "Suse". Since Mandriva was the most recent released distro I picked that one and I was amazed. I learned to love KDE 3.5 and got really used to it. And of course it's not yet the perfect. But really I have no issue working with KDE 4.2, everything works for me. I think the community needs give a fresh look at KDE in distro where it works well.

Re:KDE 4 looks promising

[impaledsunset]

Also, unlike 3.5.x, there is no sync in PIM. So it's a few features that are missing in 4.2.x. And there is no list of them somewhere, so you'll discover them after you've switched.

Re:KDE 4 looks promising

[Anonymous Coward]

- No WPA support.

Strange, works for me!

Re:KDE 4 looks promising

[Dr.Dubious DDQ]

1. Remove NetworkManager
2. Install WICD
3. Profit!

(Working great for me on kde 4.2...)

Re:KDE 4 looks promising

[SanityInAnarchy]

This is idiotic: it is different code. Eventually, if a given feature is needed, it'll be "back", in the sense that it will have been added again, with the experience and knowledge of the previous system.

However, many basic features were not "back" on release. That is broken.

I realize it's a full rewrite, but you don't want to make people miss the old system. There are very, very few things OS 9 did that OS X cannot, for example.

See, this has nothing to do with KDE. This is a low(er)-level hardware issue,

Actually, no, it was a temporary (if you call two months "temporary") compatibility issue between KDE4's bluetooth interface and the bluez system on Linux. But yeah, probably a distro issue.

Kubuntu was always broken, not due to lack of dedication, but from lack of manpower.

Lack of manpower really isn't an excuse for this kind of stuff. I can understand some minor known bugs (with workarounds) making it to a released project, but you know what? If your OS won't talk to my mouse, you delay the release until it will. To do otherwise is an embarrassment.

As for KDE being behind Vista, you are right. If the race is towards higher levels of suckiness.

No, I'm talking about the fact that Vista actually seems decent after one service pack, and at launch, it just didn't have anywhere near the issues KDE 4.0 did, or even 4.1. And not all of these are packaging-related.

Free software, fortunately or unfortunately is more used, by people who think that it is some product in finished form. It is not.

Ubuntu is trying to promote the idea that it can compete with actual products in finished form.

to reach that stage, it must be tested, and that means pain for the early adopters,

Traditionally, this "early adopter" stage has been in the so-called development releases.

What's more, KDE 3 development seems to have pretty much stopped. This is certainly the case for the KDE3 version of Amarok -- all their work is going into the new KDE4 version. An example: The ability to choose a preferred format for a device (I want to transcode to AAC, not MP3, for an iPod) was dropped from a recent KDE3 version of Amarok, but development has stopped, so they refuse to fix it. The KDE4 version of Amarok either has this, or will fix it, but did not support transcoding at all, last I checked.

So, I'd have to manually download some random older version of KDE3's Amarok to get that very basic -- seriously, a shell script could do this -- level of functionality.

It basically means, I'm damned if I upgrade, and I'm damned if I don't. If I'm an early adopter, you tell me it's at my own risk -- but if I don't upgrade, you shrug and mark things "wontfix, this will all work in kde4". And yes, I have actually seen this happen, multiple times, in multiple KDE apps -- another example was KPDF, which lacked the ability to rotate its view sideways.

See, I didn't blame Compiz (or the Beryl fork) when I had issues with it. I hacked around them any way I could, and I was generally a decent citizen, I think.

But Compiz never declared itself to be a dot-oh release -- it's still 0.8.2. And it certainly wasn't calling itself "stable" when I was having those issues -- KDE 4.1 kind of did, even if 4.0 didn't. KDE 4.2 is what everyone is saying is when they finally got it right -- yet it even has a few basic UI issues that seem unrelated to the distro (how can I suspend-to-ram using only the keyboard?)

And, what's more, if Compiz didn't work, there were other window managers that did most of what was needed -- and these were under active development. No one said, "Oh, we're not adding the ability to shade a window, because Compiz will have that."

Re:KDE 4 looks promising

[SanityInAnarchy]

Yeah, in Kubuntu, it fails on my home WPA network.

Re:KDE 4 looks promising

[tirnacopu]

I miss the very good Bluetooth support of KDE 3.5

Re:KDE 4 looks promising

[cbhacking]

Hmm... my only printer is local, but it was found easily.

Dolphin is not my preferred application. Two recommended options: either change the default file browsing application in the KDE configuration, or just put a link to Konqueror (in Filemanager mode) on your desktop or pinned to the K menu or similar.

Middle-click opens links in a new tab for me, the way it has done for years. I'm pretty sure this is optional. What I really like is that I can now tell Konqueror to *close* a tab when I middle-click on it (in the tab bar) which is the behavior of all other browsers, and which I find intuitive and convenient.

For me, the new features more than outweigh the occasionally incompletely ported application. If you don't mind the disk space, you can keep the KDE3 apps and libraries around if you really want to, but frankly my experience is that KDE4.2 is frankly just superior to 3.5 now. If you don't feel that way, that's fine, the choice is yours. Personally, I love it.

Re:KDE 4 looks promising

[Ruie]

Hmm... my only printer is local, but it was found easily.
Cups has the ability to identify remote printers by network broadcasts and make them available automatically when you connect to the network. This is very convenient and is the preferred way to configure remote printers. For some reason this does not work properly.

Dolphin is not my preferred application. Two recommended options: either change the default file browsing application in the KDE configuration, or just put a link to Konqueror (in Filemanager mode) on your desktop or pinned to the K menu or similar.
This is exactly what I done. However, desktop and panel still call up Dolphin, which is inconvenient.

Middle-click opens links in a new tab for me, the way it has done for years. I'm pretty sure this is optional. What I really like is that I can now tell Konqueror to *close* a tab when I middle-click on it (in the tab bar) which is the behavior of all other browsers, and which I find intuitive and convenient.
Yes, except in the old Konqueror in file manager mode middle click opened files in an external application instead of in the same tab. In the new konqueror if you middle click a file konqueror does not know about it makes a new tab and complains that it does not know how to display contents.

A bad copy...

[siyavash]

Is it just me or is this a bad copy of many different GUIs? I see these in there : iTunes, OSX, Windows Vista, Windows 7, a little Amiga OS. I don't like it, I don't like it at all. There is a reason Lunix ( I know, I say Lunix to make fanboys angry ) kept its HUGE marketshare ( below 1% ) for the past 15 years and the reason is simple : Copying instead of originality. Call me crazy, people who support this way are all morons.

You will flame me for this. You will mod me down for sure to shut me up but the facts remains and the history speaks for itself. Not even could Lunix take a good share of "Netbooks"' marketshare. The Lunix world is so messy, so unorganized, so unoriginal, so "super elitist" that even when it's free, customers want Windows.

Say what you want, but Windows 7 is an absolute great OS with a really developed and mature GUI. With Windows gettings stable and super secure since the past 2-3 years, what argument ( other than price ) has Lunix left? Not a damn thing!

And price isn't an issue for 90% of the customers, I mean say you upgrade each 3 years ( Windows "normal" cycle ), OEM copy costs around say $100, devide $100 into 3 years and you got the cost of Windows down to what, $3 a month. The question is, ARE YOU COMPLETELY INSANE? IS THAT THE BEST ARGUMENT THIS COMMUNITY HAVE TO FORCE LUNIX DOWN PEOPLES' THROATS? Oh yeah, very good, you'll save $3 a month! AND most of your hardware won't work, you can't do much gaming either, and forget simplicity. You will have to bow down and litterally beg to the "RTFM noob" community for some small help which usually gets you banned. ( I personally got banned from a #Linux room because I said I work with "closed source" software, go figure. ) and you get to waste hours and hours of your life trying to figure out how to get your printer, webcam work.

On top of that, you get to use old looking poor man's CRAP like Open Office, bloody hell, give me a break. Open your eyes and take a look at that beautiful GUI of Office 2007.

If you can not cough up $3 a month, the cost of Windows is most likely not your biggest issue.

The cost argument is ofcourse just one of them but a valid void one.

Bottom line is, Windows might be a closed source OS but is actually VERY open. VERY organized. GREAT support and GREAT community. 1000000000000s of applications, 100000000000s of games. Secure, Fast, Stable, SIMPLE, Click click click and you are done! You have had your head in the sand for too long, Microsoft DOES actually listen to its customers instead of telling them "RTFM noob". Surely they copy too from time to time but they alter it until it is actually GOOD, they also PAY for it.

You are all fools but don't get me wrong! I love it. I love the way you are and I hope you keep it that way, it'll make sure that Windows dominate the OS market for another 20-30 years to come. By that time, if I am still alive, I'll be retired and won't give a flying fuck about any OS. :)

Re:A bad copy...

[Anonymous Coward]

Nice troll.

Re:A bad copy...

[kimvette]

$3.00 per month for Windows + $3.00 per month for antivirus + $6.00 per month for office suite + $18.00 per month for enterprise-quality image/illustration editing suite adds up quickly. Linux gives you all that and more for free - or for $3.00 per month (by your metric) if you buy the distro to support its continued development/maintenance.

Re:A bad copy...

[JackieBrown]

I say Lunix to make fanboys angry

Why would misspelling a word make anyone but grammar fanboys angry?

Re:A bad copy...

[pseudonomous]

Becuase real linux fanboys know it's a minix clone, not a unix clone?

Re:A bad copy...

[Anonymous Coward]

No it's not. Minix is a micro kernel system. Linux is much more of a general Unix clone.

Re:A bad copy...

[csartanis]

Actually, saying Lunix makes you sound childish and speaks more about your personality than anything else in your post.

Is it just me...

[Anonymous Coward]

...or do both KDE and Gnome seem to be headed in the wrong direction so far as features go? KDE threw out a ton of useful features with the 4.x series and managed to screw up the file manager to boot (even Konquerer 4 isn't good compared to its predecessor). And now it seems Gnome's decided to throw its current GUI paradigm out the window for 3.x and replace it with this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kcpndKUx4pc . At this rate, XFCE may end up being the only sane major DE left... then again, there's always LXDE, with a bit of polish, it'd do pretty well.

Re:Is it just me...

[piojo]

AmaroK (a KDE audio player) made some questionable UI design decisions in the recent versions. I sometimes worry that with the goal of making Linux "easy for my grandmother to use", the actual users are left behind.

There will always be good software available. If Ubuntu swallows the Linux world, people that want something different can install BSD or opensolaris.

Re:Is it just me...

[Homburg]

GNOME isn't "throwing it's current GUI paradigm out of the window for 3.x"; the slogan is "GNOME 3.0 = GNOME 2.30"; that is, more of an incremental improvement than a radical change. Indeed, the big target for GNOME 3.0 seems to be cleaning up the use of various deprecated parts of the API (like the bonobo component system). GNOME Shell, from your youtube link, is an interesting integration of the window manager and the window switcher, but I don't know that it counts as a completely new GUI paradigm.

Re:Is it just me...

[fwarren]

Also there is currently no support for visualizations. So good-bye milkdrop. As near as i can tell. The only way to get anything to that can run Milkdrop on Jaunty is to load xbmc.

Re:Is it just me...

[SanityInAnarchy]

Also, no support for transcoding in the latest version.

They basically adopted KDE4's philosophy: "Let's break everything, release it as a dot-oh release, add some sexy new features (without fixing the old ones), and blame users for upgrading when stuff doesn't work!" ...only, more so.

There is currently no one version of AmaroK which does everything I want. There are two versions, each of which does a different thing that I want. And they refuse to fix the old version, because they're too busy on the new one...

Re:Is it just me...

[SomeKDEUser]

So basically, the old version needs fixing, but the new ones too.

So you cannot use either the old or the new. So what is it you are complaining about? That you find a program which you considered broken to be still broken?

Re:Is it just me...

[pak9rabid]

I wasn't aware Milkdrop was avaialble on Linux (it's a Direc3D plugin). Might you be referring to ProjectM instead?

Re:Is it just me...

[SanityInAnarchy]

What I'm complaining about is the fact that it's different parts of this that were broken in each version, and that if they spent just a little bit of effort maintaining the stable version while they went galavanting off to the bold new kde4 future.

And yeah, it is frustrating -- somewhere along the line, this used to work in the old version. So what's even more annoying is it's a regression, and a stupid one at that. But they couldn't be bothered to fix it.

The whole point of having an exciting, new, development version is that your stable version is supposed to not break while you work on the new one, and while you bring it up to feature parity with the old one, so it's actually a drop-in replacement.

Amarok fails this epicly.

I just tried KDE 4.1

[caluml]

This is quite interesting, as I just 2 days ago install kubuntu-desktop from my 8.10 Ubuntu laptop (Acer 5720).

It looks fine, after you've removed the stupid Postit notes on the screen, and Konqueror as the browser, etc, etc. But it runs like a dog. I can't even play a vid in mplayer without the sound and video skipping, whereas it's fine in Gnome. xorg process runs at 40-60% in KDE 4.1. Apparently, other people have problems with the Intel graphics card that I've got and KDE.

Verdict: Looks nice, but runs too slowly. Shame cos I have always liked KDE < 4. Aah well, I'll try it again in a year.

Re:I just tried KDE 4.1

[yet-another-lobbyist]

I had HUGE issues with KDE 4.1 myself. It might be worth trying to switch off desktop effects. In my case, however, even that did not solve all the performance issues.
The big change came with KDE 4.2. Things really became very smooth and fast and rock solid. If you are planning to upgrade to jaunty, I would definitely recommend trying it. (If I remember correctly, there is also a way to run 4.2 on kubuntu 8.10 -- I think I did this for a while.)

Re:I just tried KDE 4.1

[cbhacking]

4.1 isn't even close to 4.2. You might as well compare a beta to a release version (think of it this way - 4.0 was the tech preview, incomplete and buggy but with APIs in place. 4.1 is the beta - many of the features but not all, and still buggy. 4.2 is release, with bugs fixed and features in place).

You'd think that talking about 4.1 in an article about 4.2.4 would be obviously absurd, but apparently not...

Re:I just tried KDE 4.1

[PvtVoid]

I speak as a long-time KDE fan. Simply based on my own experience, I would not recommend upgrading to Kubuntu Jaunty. Kubuntu Intrepid sucked. It looked great, but was buggy as hell, not to mention insanely slow on Nvidia cards. It sucked on every box I put it on. Jaunty didn't work at all for me. That was the last straw. If KDE 4.2.4 is the ultimate, then I'm glad I decided to migrate to Gnome. They really screwed the pooch with KDE 4.

Re:I just tried KDE 4.1

[Anonymous Coward]

Rock solid as in tossing up kdeinit errors whenever I try to launch more than one instance of konsole? Smooth as in still not having simple video thumbnails in dolphin/konqueror?

The KDE team is too busy trying to dream up new ways to make their desktop annoying (more eyecandy, more, more!) to fix longstanding bugs. And yes yes, I know that in opensource people work on what they want to work on, etc, but it doesn't change the fact that the KDE4 series is a slow buggy piece of garbage.

Aaron Siego ran KDE into the ground.

Re:I just tried KDE 4.1

[QCompson]

4.1 isn't even close to 4.2. You might as well compare a beta to a release version (think of it this way - 4.0 was the tech preview, incomplete and buggy but with APIs in place. 4.1 is the beta - many of the features but not all, and still buggy. 4.2 is release, with bugs fixed and features in place). You'd think that talking about 4.1 in an article about 4.2.4 would be obviously absurd, but apparently not...

It's a real shame there is no way to label software releases as "tech previews", "release candidates", or "betas". Oh well, I guess we'll just have to stick with generic number releases and let users find out what they've installed after the fact.

Re:I just tried KDE 4.1

[Anonymous Coward]

That is just plain bullocks. The developers have come out practically every occasion and said it will not be everyday usable at least until 4.2. This ha been stated in practically every article posted on slashdot and as been pointed out numerous times in the discussion forums. It is also why it has never been the default desktop on any Distro and is only now starting to gain traction. This is a nonissue.

Re:I just tried KDE 4.1

[cbhacking]

Yeah, the KDE developers (rightfully) caught a lot of crap for this. I can see their point of view leaving KDE4 as a pre-release until 4.2's release would have been a LONG development cycle - but it cost them (the devs) a lot of reputation. Personally, I don't really care about their rep, but then, I don't write KDE, I just use it. What really bothers me is that it cost KDE, as a desktop environment, a lot of its reputation too. KDE 4.0 / 4.1 made Vista look snappy and bug-free by comparison, and now KDE has to win back a lot of its old users. A shame, really.

Re:I just tried KDE 4.1

[SanityInAnarchy]

Um, no, they said it'd be usable on 4.1. They only started saying this about 4.2 when it became obvious how much 4.1 sucks.

And would it have been so hard to just label it 4.0 beta?

Re:I just tried KDE 4.1

[SanityInAnarchy]

You're right, 4.0 was the tech preview -- the alpha.

4.1 was maybe beta quality

4.2 might count as a release candidate, but with no WPA, it sure as hell wasn't a release.

4.3 looks promising. But so did 4.0, 4.1, and 4.2.

These people really need to grow up and start calling them betas -- or take a clue from Linux, establish an obvious convention (odd numbers are unstable; don't use 2.5 until we release it as 2.6), stick to it, and clearly label it a Developer Preview.

I'm really starting to wonder if they'll make it to the level of functionality 3.5 had by the time they hit 4.5.

Re:I just tried KDE 4.1

[SomeKDEUser]

What is release quality depends on what you are using.

If you are a free software dev, then to know what your users are using, you _need_ to release.

And not betas, because don't attract nearly as much users.

That way, there is pain in the beginning, but in the end, it works much, much better.

Re:I just tried KDE 4.1

[rubycodez]

but 4.2 still has a long list of problems, it's a second beta release and I'll hold off until 4.3 or later, thanks much. In the meantime, sticking with the GNOME after ditching that 4.1 shit, KDE went from polished to unstable crap

Re:I just tried KDE 4.1

[SanityInAnarchy]

What is release quality depends on what you are using.

Assume I'm using all the features that were in KDE3, and everything that is currently in KDE4. There really isn't an excuse to have a feature missing from KDE4 that was in KDE3, or to have a feature available-but-broken in KDE4.

If you are a free software dev, then to know what your users are using, you _need_ to release.

Or, y'know, ask them.

not betas, because don't attract nearly as much users.

See, I've heard this before, and it really pisses me off every time I see it.

You guys are trying to have your cake and eat it. You're trying to fool users into thinking the release is ready, to get them to beta-test for you, when they don't want to beta-test, they want a solid product.

And then you're scolding those exact same users for reading the fine print: "Not ready for users."

The 4.0 release, I can't believe even KDE developers used it. Kdevelop on KDE4 was only released, what, yesterday? Eat your own dogfood, assholes.

Once you can't break it anymore, and you show it to your family, and they can't break it anymore, and you've released a dozen betas and a half dozen release candidates, and no one who wants those can break them anymore...

Then you get to release.

To do otherwise is just irresponsible, and if this is really the official position of KDE, I'll make a note never to touch anything with a K in it again. I need my stuff to work -- I do not need to be tricked into being a beta tester.

That way, there is pain in the beginning, but in the end, it works much, much better.

Yes, for the users that ditch KDE and go back to Windows. Vista's release was bad, but not nearly as bad as KDE4.

In fact, the Linux Kernel did a hell of a lot better than both of them with the 2.6.0 release. So did distros, for that matter -- and everything was backported to 2.4 for long enough to resolve any issues anyone had with upgrading.

So it's not an issue with being a free software dev, it's an issue with being a dishonest fuck.

The Fundamental Fatal Flaw Of Desktop Linux

[Anonymous Coward]

Disparate people/teams all working in isolation with no single controlling authority to enforce a consistent UI over the entire system.

So you have Idea/Concept 1 and 2 that are both great in isolation but when thrown together they make no sense. Everyone dumps their own pet favorite UI ideas into the mix and you get one big mess.

And anyone who dares to question the fatal flaw gets modded as a -1 Troll and a heretic and unbeliever to the 'wonder that is Linux on the desktop'

And that is why Android is exploding onto Cellphones and Netbooks while standard Linux has gotten whipped right out of the market by Microsoft.

Re:The Fundamental Fatal Flaw Of Desktop Linux

[BitZtream]

DING DING DING DING, give this guy a cookie for hitting the nail on the head.

Re:The Fundamental Fatal Flaw Of Desktop Linux

[Anonymous Coward]

And that is why Android is exploding onto Cellphones and Netbooks while standard Linux has gotten whipped right out of the market by Microsoft.

Ah... you do not know that Android is powered by that same "standard Linux" OS than desktop systems. It just includes few modifications so it would not run straight all linux binaries.

It is just stupid to say that Android ain't Linux.

Re:The Fundamental Fatal Flaw Of Desktop Linux

[dmbasso]

Well, I'm pretty happy with my netbook with Ubuntu Netbook Remix. I couldn't care less for Microsoft and whatever.

Re:The Fundamental Fatal Flaw Of Desktop Linux

[Anonymous Coward]

Nobody said android ain't linux. Just that Android does have consistancy.

Re:The Fundamental Fatal Flaw Of Desktop Linux

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd put it this way (and read this carefully)

Desktop Linux's problems are:
* Audio APIs and drivers.
* Graphics card drivers, and X11.

The theme here is is obscure 80's style C APIs. This leads to uncertainties and inconsistencies in stuff build on top of them and ultimately in a sort of wonky user experience. Most users have no idea what the problem is, and so can not complain about it, but they feel it.
To make matters worse, the general confusion about the low level APIs makes people want to make wrappers for them, but they only inherit the problems although they might obscure them.

People keep reinventing the "UI wheel" because they feel that something is wrong and want to fix it, but what they really need to fix is X11.

We get new audio wrapper APIs every year, but what they all really want to fix is ALSA.

This is a danger in the open development model. While it mostly fosters the gradual improvment of code quality, it can sometimes also encourage the wrapping of turds over and over.

Re:The Fundamental Fatal Flaw Of Desktop Linux

[Skylinux]

please mod parent down -1 heretic :)

But seriously he is somewhat correct BUT I don't want to see every Desktop app to turn into some MS Windows copy.
I want my "advanced computer user OS" and not grandma's OS and this is why I use Linux. Linux is advanced software, it allows me to do things Windows users don't even understand or don't know it can be done.
I choose my Linux distribution because it is not the "I'll hold your hand all the way" software and the less computer savvy individual can use something like *buntu.

We do need a basic plan to allow manufactures to write software for our OS without writing separate version for every distro out there but let's not turn Linux into Windows, PLEASE!

Re:The Fundamental Fatal Flaw Of Desktop Linux

[Anonymous Coward]

You must still be in school to think the real corporate world is comprised of teams pulling for the same goal. Managers have opinions, agendas, budgets to grow, personal aspirations and animosities. It's hardly an atmosphere guaranteeing the best possible solution to a problem. Can you say 'Vista'? Or 'GM'? I find the XP desktop almost intolerable, though great perhaps for the lowest common denominator user it targets. Lucky you.

Re:The Fundamental Fatal Flaw Of Desktop Linux

[Kjella]

But seriously he is somewhat correct BUT I don't want to see every Desktop app to turn into some MS Windows copy. I want my "advanced computer user OS" and not grandma's OS and this is why I use Linux. Linux is advanced software, it allows me to do things Windows users don't even understand or don't know it can be done. I choose my Linux distribution because it is not the "I'll hold your hand all the way" software and the less computer savvy individual can use something like *buntu.

This statement is just fucked up on so many levels, why on earth do you need a different distro to run different software? On Windows everything from MS Paint to Adobe Photoshop CS4 runs fine on the same machine, both individually and in parallel. Is that not true on Linux? Ok, so you can have some special needs for some special app, that's what /usr/local is for. But like "I'm so special on everything that my computer isn't usable withoue USE flags" attitude is just bullshit. I bet there's people on *buntu that run circles around your self-claimed geek skillz. Nobody's killed if wifi and wep/wpa, bluetooth, sleep/resume and whatever else is bothering users these days "Just work(tm)" without fiddling with arcane incantations, and *buntu tends to suck less than the others if not by a large margin. Even if people managed to agree on what should be in a dumbed down interface, you can bet they'll leave the full one in there or be flamed for all eternity. Well, except maybe the Gnome developers that seem to enjoy the gconf flames. I've been with *buntu now for a while, been testing it even longer and I can assure you there's no reason to believe it'll ever be reduced to a playtoy.

Re:The Fundamental Fatal Flaw Of Desktop Linux

[Alex Belits]

Desktop Linux's problems are:
* Audio APIs and drivers.
* Graphics card drivers, and X11.

Microsoft marketdroids' standard talking points detected.

The theme here is is obscure 80's style C APIs

Do you, by any chance, know, where FindFirstFile() and FindNextFile() in your beloved Windows come from?

CP/M. And it was a stupid design in 80's just like it's a stupid design now.

Re:The Fundamental Fatal Flaw Of Desktop Linux

[SanityInAnarchy]

Disparate people/teams all working in isolation with no single controlling authority to enforce a consistent UI over the entire system.

No such single controlling entity exists which enforces a consistent UI over any desktop system.

Play with Windows for a bit. There's the standard way you're supposed to do things, and then there's the IE7/8 way, and then there's the Office "Ribbon" way (which is implemented several ways in several different apps), and then there's the iTunes "let's make it look OSX-y" way...

Or OS X. Mac users seem to be under some really weird illusion that X programs make the system inconsistent, when even among recent apps, you have one aqua-ish look, and one chrome/steel-ish look.

I could go on...

So you have Idea/Concept 1 and 2 that are both great in isolation but when thrown together they make no sense. Everyone dumps their own pet favorite UI ideas into the mix and you get one big mess.

A mess which somehow works everywhere else, but when it comes to Desktop Linux, this is the reason people ditch it.

Not lack of drivers. Not lack of application support. Not lack of vendor support, or of preinstalled options. Not sheer FUD about new things.

No, it's the lack of a consistent UI that's the problem.

And anyone who dares to question the fatal flaw gets modded as a -1 Troll and a heretic and unbeliever

Or as someone who brings up a tired old troll which has been discounted time and time again.

And that is why Android is exploding onto Cellphones and Netbooks

"Exploding"? Really?

How's it doing compared to the iPhone?

No, Android has exactly the same "controlling authority" as everything else. That is, it doesn't -- as soon as you install a third-party app, you get whatever you get.

while standard Linux has gotten whipped right out of the market by Microsoft.

Desktop Linux was ever in a position to be "whipped out of the market" by Microsoft? News to me.

No, Microsoft has always dominated the desktop market. Linux and OS X both seem to be growing lately, but not fast enough to make a real dent.

But at the moment, Microsoft dominates the market mostly because Microsoft dominates the market.

Re:The Fundamental Fatal Flaw Of Desktop Linux

[Anonymous Coward]

It's OK. ATI are bringing out a card that can do X11.

Re:The Fundamental Fatal Flaw Of Desktop Linux

[serviscope_minor]

This statement is just fucked up on so many levels,

Touche.

On Windows everything from MS Paint to Adobe Photoshop CS4 runs fine on the same machine, both individually and in parallel. Is that not true on Linux?

Since those are windows specific apps, I suspect not. Not that I care, since I don't want either of them.

Ok, so you can have some special needs for some special app, that's what /usr/local is for. But like "I'm so special on everything that my computer isn't usable withoue USE flags" attitude is just bullshit. I bet there's people on *buntu that run circles around your self-claimed geek skillz. Nobody's killed if wifi and wep/wpa, bluetooth, sleep/resume and whatever else is bothering users these days "Just work(tm)" without fiddling with arcane incantations, and *buntu tends to suck less than the others if not by a large margin.

That's a kind of incoherent rant. In your words: But like "a computer is just a tool, don't try to understand it" attitude is just bullshit. What on earth is wrong with running a distro that makes its operation more understandable. Ububtu is huge, complex and in some cases rather poorly bodged together. That can make it hard to work with.

And you know what, nobody is killed by me understanding how wifi works on my computer.

I've been with *buntu now for a while, been testing it even longer and I can assure you there's no reason to believe it'll ever be reduced to a playtoy.

It's generally OK, except for all the nastyness of GNOME, all the OS integration that requires, the assumption that if you're not running gnome or KDE, you don't want anything to work properly, the bizarre obsession with micro-packaging and a few other oddments. But it is quite useable, certainly more so than operating systems from some other notable vendors.

I anfd apparently others have other tastes. Why do you find that hard to accept.

Re:The Fundamental Fatal Flaw Of Desktop Linux

[Anonymous Coward]

Dude, you are so off track.
I am a 9 year Linux user, and developer, which is why I feel like I do about those APIs.

I these things are "standard talking points" in any way, it's because they are true.

Seriously, why the hell do you think people are wrapping the same crap over and over? The work is being re-done because the problem re-surfaces.

Re:The Fundamental Fatal Flaw Of Desktop Linux

[Insanity Defense]

Disparate people/teams all working in isolation with no single controlling authority to enforce a consistent UI over the entire system.

All things that come as part of the OS should work the same right? Like when I choose to close IE and I use Alt-F followed by C to close it and Wordpad I use Alt-F followed by X? Exactly the same right? A truly consistent user interface from the "Masters" of interface design.

Re:The Fundamental Fatal Flaw Of Desktop Linux

[Alex Belits]

I am a 9 year Linux user, and developer, which is why I feel like I do about those APIs.

Yeah, right.

I these things are "standard talking points" in any way, it's because they are true.

They would be -- if nothing changed in Linux over the last 15 years.

Seriously, why the hell do you think people are wrapping the same crap over and over? The work is being re-done because the problem re-surfaces.

What problem? The fact that original ideas behind X11 were demonstrated to be absolutely right, and all attempts to squeeze a little more performance at the cost of poorly designed infrastructure ended up more resource-consuming and still less flexible? The fact that ALSA provides a nice, flexible interface to audio devices without stuffing massive amounts of code into kernel drivers?

Re:The Fundamental Fatal Flaw Of Desktop Linux

[Anonymous Coward]

You have an audio card with two(stereo) outputs. Ask the ALSA driver for two channels and it fails.

Ask for the default, and it gives you... 10 channels. Yes ten output channels.

Because the driver is written for a chip that the card uses, not the card it self. And the driver isn't smart enough to handle zeroing the dead channels.

If you use an app that (quite understandably) tries to allocate two channels since it uses two channels, you have to write a script that maps two channels to the two channels you actually have in your two channel audio card!

And this is something every user is expected to do?

Also, in general terms the API is obscure.

X.. well, for starters, run a minimal X app in valgrind. There's an hour of entrainment right there.
The architecture is already broken in spirit because of the frequent use of shared memory access extensions and OpenGL which essentially sidesteps the original command buffer oriented design of X.
So, while you think it's flexible, in practice it's just a very awkward frame-buffer.

And again, the API is a heart breaker. It starts out easy enough until you get to the fonts and the colors and so on.
Fonts by the way is one of those problems that keep getting "fixed" over and over.

Trying to write multi-media apps for Linux is disheartening. It's not necessarily easy on the other platforms, but I have completed several audio/video processing applications on windows (what I used to do for a living).
In trying to do similar things for Linux, I always find myself in the X11/ALSA quagmire. I am very impressed with apps like Renoise that seem to actually make it work.

Re:The Fundamental Fatal Flaw Of Desktop Linux

[Alex Belits]

If you use an app that (quite understandably) tries to allocate two channels since it uses two channels, you have to write a script that maps two channels to the two channels you actually have in your two channel audio card!

Or you can read documentation and discover that channels are configurable in userspace. ALSA kernel interface is specifically designed to be close to hardware, so there will be more flexibility in userspace.

X.. well, for starters, run a minimal X app in valgrind. There's an hour of entrainment right there.

X libraries are not designed to work around false positives in Valgrind.
Valgrind also does not notice X resources leakage, so it's not like it is supposed to be used to analyze X clients in the first place.

The architecture is already broken in spirit because of the frequent use of shared memory access extensions and OpenGL which essentially sidesteps the original command buffer oriented design of X.

Except, of course, shared memory access is an optional low-level protocol implementation feature. OpenGL works just fine without it, just like each and every other X component and extension. This can be seen when OpenGL application is running on a remote host.

So, while you think it's flexible, in practice it's just a very awkward frame-buffer.

And if you treat it as a "frame buffer" only, you obviously know nothing about X.

And again, the API is a heart breaker. It starts out easy enough until you get to the fonts and the colors and so on.
Fonts by the way is one of those problems that keep getting "fixed" over and over.

Except, of course, font handling in X server is now a fallback mechanism, replaced with client-side rendering. You would have some kind of a point if you mentioned that some application (written by Windows programmers) make idiotic assumptions about screen resolution and availability of particular, usually proprietary, fonts, causing unexpected results on any computer other than developer's desktop. And I would have a long and precise refutation of your claim that it is a flaw of the system. However knowing nothing about this, you can only spew bullshit picked up in a few Google queries.

Trying to write multi-media apps for Linux is disheartening. It's not necessarily easy on the other platforms, but I have completed several audio/video processing applications on windows (what I used to do for a living).
In trying to do similar things for Linux, I always find myself in the X11/ALSA quagmire. I am very impressed with apps like Renoise that seem to actually make it work.

So in reality your only "problem" is that you can't write Linux multimedia application using the same broken and idiotic model you are accustomed to on Windows. Assuming that you tried at all.

How about KDE 4.3?

[yet-another-lobbyist]

" ... this is the end of the KDE 4.2 line, which means for distros based on long-term support, it might be the thing to get used to for a while. "

Are you expecting KDE 4.3 to be so buggy that it is going to be uninteresting for long term support projects? In the past, there were huge leaps of progress from KDE 4.0 to KDE 4.1 to KDE 4.2!

Re:How about KDE 4.3?

[compro01]

I think the "get used to it" is referring any LTS releases between now and whenever 4.3 is released, as IIRC, the next release of Ubuntu in October will be an LTS.

Re:How about KDE 4.3?

[mfraz74]

I think the next LTS release will be in April next year with 10.04.

I'll switch to KDE 4.x when Debian stable has it.

[pecosdave]

Yes, I know I can use the backport, but forget it, last time I messed with KDE 4 (on Kubuntu) I found it was still lacking in a lot of really cool utilities KDE 3.x had and I'm just to lazy to recompile all the 3.x versions onto 4 myself. I guess I really have lost some drive as I've gotten older, I'll let someone else do it for me, and when they do I'll use it, and until the 3.5x is good enough.

BTW - kaudiocreator was near the top of that list, that was a stupid easy and useful program. Yes, I can do it other ways, and did for a while, but I kind of liked that one. Oddly, the change in interface was fine, I liked it, KDE4.x and I can get along fine, as soon as the utilities catch up.

4.2 is a grea release: its a good upgrade from 3.5

[jaymz2k4]

As a long term KDE user (since the very first version) I have found 3.5 to be a great release. It's still what I'm running on my work desktop. I have to say, installing 4.0 at home was a mistake. It definitly put me off upgrading my work machine. The 4.0 release basically rendered my home environment as almost unusable. On top of that the semi-upgrade made the 3.5 install messed up, so I was pretty pissed.

When 4.1 came out I was fairly happy with the stability, a lot of little issues (things like the taskbar resizing) had been worked out but it still felt somewhat unfinished. Now, having upgraded to 4.2 I have to say I'm really impressed. I wasn't expecting the change to be as full as it was, 4.2 feels much more complete and definitely is the upgrade path you want to follow from 3.5 if your a KDE user. Things like the windowing effects work much better, the plasma desktop has reached a level that is usable all the time and the level of integration has improved a lot (checkboxes finally render properly when clicked in firefox for one, dolphin is getting pretty damn good and okular is great). KDE is at the point where I'm now planning on an upgrade at work.

I have to agree a bit with some of the UI criticism of amarok, I found the jump to version 2 pretty dramatic. It's almost like a whole new app but I'm giving it a good go for a while. The last media player I really used before amarok was xmms. But yeah, bottom line, two thumbs up for 4.2

KDE4: still beta after all these years

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm also a long term KDE user since the day I first switched to KDE from fvwm2 WAAAY back in the day.

And oddly enough I've had pretty much the dead opposite experiences with KDE4. The whole series, starting with the 4.0 release and right up to present, has been rock solid and reasonably responsive. My guess is that I must have lucked out with my video card, as much as people were complaining about driver compatibility issues.

But the thing is just terribly, terribly unfinished. Missing features here, blatant oversights there. The flash-to-polish ratio is still very high, which means I like it for the first few days and then by the end of the week I've already switched back to 3.x.

I have high hopes for 4.3. But then I also had high hopes for 4.0, then 4.1, then 4.2...

Is Konsole fixed or forever broken?

[Anonymous Coward]

Is Konsole finally able to remember custom profile menu visibility settings again? It's not fun checking the 'Show in Menu' checkbox for all of my profiles every time I boot.

Re:Is Konsole fixed or forever broken?

[Saija]

my problem with konsole is that every time i run it, it freezes to death, almost 2-3 minutes being unresponsive, thats why i use the xfce console application in kde4 when i logon in that DE, btw i run xfce/fluxbox 90% now thanks to a broken kde4.1-4.2 past experience.

Re:4.2 is a grea release: its a good upgrade from

[Anonymous Coward]

Take into account that there are only a couple of distros that still ship kde 3.5. It's about time for kde 4 to become a decent upgrade, but it's just too late. The old argument, why upgrade when you can still use kde 3.x just doesn't hold water.

Bad idea!

[Anonymous Coward]

I tried KDE4.1 and it gave me AIDS. Luckily I bought this wolf t-shirt, which cured me, and KDE4.2 doesn't contain any sexually transmitted diseases. Which is nice.

Re:4.2 is a grea release: its a good upgrade from

[Anonymous Coward]

The old argument, why upgrade when you can still use kde 3.x just doesn't hold water

Sure it does. If the distro only has KDE4, and KDE4 is still not usable, don't use the distro. Simple.

Looks like I'm sticking with openSUSE 11.1 until then.

The same old question applies ...

[VincenzoRomano]

... as versions go by ...
How does this version compares to v3.5.10 as far as features and stability?
I'm still waiting to replace my ol' KDE v3 without harming my everyday work!

Re:The same old question applies ...

[cbhacking]

I would say stability is a step up; KDE itself I've never had crash, but I get fewer application crashes in 4.2.x (4.2.3 on my current system, I'll upgrade shortly) than I did in 3.5.9 (didn't try .10).
Features are a little harder, but I'd call that an improvement too. The desktop is nicer but... different. Tinker with it a little and I think you'll like it better, but it has changed. Most applicaitons have been ported across pretty straight, with the same features as before, but a few have had significant changes (Amarok), a few have only been developed on 4.x for a while now and have significantly newer versions there (though only incremental changes), and a few might not be fully ported yet.

Mostly trivial, but my favorite new 4.2 feature, small though it is: Konqueror now has an option to close a tab when you middle-click it (like EVER OTHER TABBED BROWSER IN EXISTENCE) which fixes one of what I found to be its biggest usablity quirks.

Re:The same old question applies ...

[VincenzoRomano]

I got disappointed by things like NetworkManager applet not working at all, KDEBluetooth not working at all and so on.
As I used to use my Linux PC for everyday usage, I cannot afford a test-and-try approach (with expensive rollacks)!
Now I run GNOME, with fewer features but more stability as my Ubuntu distribution progresses ...
Again, my fear is that these KDE v4 releases are more like "interim releases" or betas than actual releases!

Re:The same old question applies ...

[Anonymous Coward]

KNetworkManager4 works FAR better than 3, for me. It will properly recover from attempting and failing to connect (on 3, I would need tor estart the applet after trying this more than once or twice). It is easier to manage more than one network card. Some features, like hosting an Ad-Hoc network, were easier [for me] to find.

In short, at least on 4.2.x, NetworkManager was a reason *to* switch, not to avoid doing so.

Re:I'll switch to KDE 4.x when Debian stable has i

[cbhacking]

By 4.2, nearly all KDE utilities and applications have been ported, and as of 4.2.3 nearly all the noticeable bugs were worked out (it worked better than 3.5.9, the last 3.x I used). Don't assume anything about 4.2 based on 4.1 or 4.0; both of those were released before they should have been,a dn should have been considered more like a tech/API preview (4.0) and early beta of a finished version (4.1). Frankly, they both sucked, and it has cost KDE a lot of reputation, but 4.2 is solid. It's what 4.x should have been from the beginning.

In other words, give 4.2 (or later) a try; they finally lived up to the promise of the earlier versions, plus the apps you're used to have all been ported now.

Still f*cked Up

[Delifisek]

Sorry KDE Guys.

After 3 try (4.0. 4.1 4.2) I still not be able to work with dual monitors.

Re:Still f*cked Up

[serviscope_minor]

Sorry KDE Guys.

After 3 try (4.0. 4.1 4.2) I still not be able to work with dual monitors.

How is that KDE's fault? Try getting a better supported (ie intel, sadly) graphics card. Then multi monitor setups work beautifully.

Re:Still f*cked Up

[Delifisek]

Really ?

It was 1998 to chose supporter things to get working Linux on PC.

After 11 f*cking years are we still there ?

Also I can't play games with INTEL Graphics. Your solution was f*cked too.

AND

Getting better supported driver is not my business. I'm not who bedding with big companys. Even I can't speak proper English to bash that Driver Tech to do something better. And That KDE, Troll Tech, Nokia or who wrote fancy words about KDE was have to f*ck with ATI or NVIDIA.

AND

I got an ATI 3450. IT's work with Older KDE's. Work with Ubuntu, Work with KUBUNTU 8.04 (with kde 3.5) Work with Windows. Even older KDE versions I can fire 2 different KDE sessions.

So ?

After 12 f*ckin years of Die Hard Linux on Desktop fight. I getting sick of it.

We have still an issues with basic things. Damn this thing almost work with days of WIndows 98 BETA

With default Driver. (non ATI). It detects 2 different monitors and displays them same z-index (both displays stacks up).

And with Proptary driver Detects tons of things and after login KDESKTOP does not show nothing was appeared in screen.

Anyway With any Microsoft Windows system it works flawlessly.

I do not f*cking care any thing other than that.

Re:Still f*cked Up

[0racle]

Because it works in KDE 3? Because the retarded idea of plasma containers inside a virtual desktop adds a useless layer of crap that does nothing except make it a pain configuring your environment the way you want it?

Re:Still f*cked Up

[pz]

Because it works in KDE 3? Because the retarded idea of plasma containers inside a virtual desktop adds a useless layer of crap that does nothing except make it a pain configuring your environment the way you want it?

OHMYGOD yes, exactly. I use KDE 4.2, with tremendous reluctance and pain. All that KDE4 did was to introduce a COMPLETELY USELESS ADDITIONAL LAYER OF WINDOWING THAT HAS A SEPARATE, IMMATURE, AND INCOMPATIBLE CONFIGURATION SYSTEM. Frelling stupid idea. Huge, huge step backwards. Now instead of having a nice, unified way of making all of my desktop things (widgets and applications) look and act the same, I have to adjust one set of parameters for my applications, and there's AN ENTIRELY DIFFERENT set of controls, themes, etc., for this one special class of applications called Plasma widgets that, as far as I can tell, ARE JUST APPLICATIONS. And, for whatever misguided reason, THE TWO SETS OF CONTROLS ARE ENTIRELY DIFFERENT. Ease of use means FEWER things to learn, not more. There is no reason to have TWO windowing systems that run concurrently.

And the KDE4 architecture's idea of virtual desktops (the Plasma desktops) just does not play well with the much more highly useful and easy-to-learn traditional idea of desktop. Why do I have to have a special widget TO SHOW MY FRELLING DESKTOP ICONS (and one that performs that task badly at that)? It's a new, unnecessary, layer of STUFF of which Linux needs LESS not more. KDE4 is a total, utter intellectual failure at the very core no matter how many bugs are fixed: The basic architectural ideas are bad ones.

Hucking fell, It was if KDE fired all of the experienced developers and hired teenagers.

Re:Still f*cked Up

[Ant P.]

Why don't you take that free time you spent whining and do something useful, like fix it, then.

Re:Still f*cked Up

[sumdumass]

Why should he have to fix it when it is already being touted as working? I'm sure some of his issues might be User setup in which something isn't configured "just right" and with his broken English, I can also assume that expressing the actual problem in ways someone might be able to help might hinder some of his issues being corrected too. If he is bitching about purposed solutions, he has already submitted the bug reports and gotten responses.

But none of that is the point. People are saying "It works" when sometimes it doesn't. The answer isn't telling someone to do something when he may not even possess the skills to fix it, the answer is to not brag it up with blanket statements that end up leaving someone disgruntled. The idea of telling someone to fix it themselves just to shut them up does not make the problem go away, it only makes acknowledging the problem disappear. Do you actually think that if he could fix the problems, he would still be whining about them instead of fixing them? Hell no, he isn't stupid, he would have already fixed the problems then either kept his mouth shut or bragged about how he did it because he isn't the only person with those problems.

Here is a hint, if any other service/industry/company in the world took a default position of read the fucking manual when someone has an issue or tells them to fix it themselves, they wouldn't be in business. In fact, if they promoted their products like Linux is promoted, they would have been shut down by the government regulatory agencies of the world for deception when they defaulted to those positions.

You know, the issue is mostly how _you_said_ it too. If you would have said people are working on it but need help if you can, it would have been acceptable. If you would have said, "it's in the supported hardware list as a known problem that we need a fix for", that would have been acceptable. But to sit there and say "quite crying and fix it yourself" is moronic, asinine and the reason why Linux will never be ready for the desktop. Any idiot can point the blame and shift it to someone else, it takes someone special to offer something constructive that working solutions can be explored and/or built from. I suggest you try to be more of the later and less of the former.

Re:Still f*cked Up

[Delifisek]

Oh yea,
After so many years, same argument (when we defend Linux) against me.

Now I'm 35 years old. And I have things to do. Which depends on My Desktop machine. I haven't got so much time to track unfixed bugs.

Also

I spend tons of time to get done. But I can't. In 3 time I have to go back old kde.

After 12 years of Linux Desktop usage. I can't fix KDE 4.x multi monitor setup problem. With or without vendor driver.

And now I'm using KDE 4.2.whatever and one of my monitor was shut down.

Latest things wont help.

And lets face it.

This is incompetence. Nothing more, nothing less

I think, I have to move from kde to someting else...

Re:Still f*cked Up

[djseomun]

I run KDE 4.2.3 with Intel 965GM integrated graphics. arandr allows me to easily configure a dual monitor setup: 14.1" laptop LCD @ 1280x800 + 23.6" TN LCD @ 1920x1080. It works (almost) perfectly.

Re:Still f*cked Up

[Brandybuck]

If it worked for KDE3, but not for KDE4, with exactly the same driver, then how can you blame the driver? Hmmm, you must be a Plasma developer...

Re:Still f*cked Up

[Brandybuck]

Hucking fell, It was if KDE fired all of the experienced developers and hired teenagers.

You're right. If you look at the names of the active developers of 1.0 and 2.0, there's not much overlap with the active developers of 4.0. It really is a brand new crew. Not only that, but I suspect that the new crew is 15 years younger on average than the old crew.

Re:Still f*cked Up

[bill_mcgonigle]

After 3 try (4.0. 4.1 4.2) I still not be able to work with dual monitors.

I'm using these under Fedora 10:

    xrandr --output DVI-0 --left-of LVDS --auto --output LVDS --auto

and Fedora 11:

    xrandr --output DVI-I_1/digital --left-of PANEL --auto --output PANEL --auto

I put a link under ~/.kde/Autostart so it fires off on login.

My xorg.conf requires a virtual super-display definition to stack the displays next to each other:

Section "Screen"
                Identifier "Screen0"
                Device "Videocard0"
                Monitor "Monitor0"
                DefaultDepth 24
                SubSection "Display"
                                Viewport 0 0
                                Depth 24
                                Virtual 3360 1200
                EndSubSection
EndSection

Re:Still f*cked Up

[Delifisek]

As I say,

still f*cked Up.

It seems any those kde developers haven't got multi head setup...

Promising? Yes. Usable? not really

[an.echte.trilingue]

KDE 4.2 is perfectly usable.

You seem to have a different definition of usable than I do.

1. (s)ftp is broken in kde file browsers (dolphin, konqueror). I can load the root directory listing, but not download any files or change directories. Have to use filezilla or something.
2. Similarly, the integrated text editors will not save over an ftp connection. Very annoying.
3. SMB shares: when you refresh on a passwordless windows share in Konqueror or Dolphin, you get an authentication failure that lasts for the session.
4. The fish plugin for ssh in konqueror seems broken, although I did not take the time to investigate so it might be a simple config error.
5. Network configuration does not work for wifi connections secured with WPA-EAP/TTLS encryption. You have to edit the config by hand.
6. This is more of a gripe: klipper is truly black magic that I cannot for the life of me figure out. Copy-Paste should not be this complicated.

Except for number 3, this all works fine in KDE 3.5. It all works fine in Gnome (same machine).

I like KDE4.2, it has a lot of really promising concepts. I am a big fan of the plasma widget desktop. I use it whenever possible, which is why I can actually tell you some of the bugs. But interesting concepts are not enough. For a lot of my work, I simply have to log out and log into KDE 3.5 or Gnome. I am using KDE on two machines, one is debian and the other is kubuntu, so the problem might be in debian's packages.

Re:Promising? Yes. Usable? not really

[SomeKDEUser]

1. Works for me. Something broken in your setup. did you report the bug?
2. same.
3. Could not try -- but might be linked...
4. same as 1-2
5. Yeah, people complain a lot about the NM applet. this thing is obviously not finished.
6. Really? Always found it to work fine. You are aware there are 2 clipboards?

I did not know GNOME used kioslaves...

Re:Promising? Yes. Usable? not really

[Anonymous Coward]

This "works for me" stuff is the problem. This guy has a setup that works out of the box in KDE 3.5 and is broken in KDE4. I have tried to file similar bugs, but they always closed with "works for me".

Also, the remark about kioslaves is just stupid. Obviously, GNOME does not use kioslaves, but you can open an ftp connection in nautilus just fine, and edit files in place over ftp or ssh in gedit, too.

Re:Promising? Yes. Usable? not really

[cbhacking]

Hmm, interesting. I can't say I've tested all of those, but...

Ftp works fine for me. For sftp I either use the console or use fish:, which also works.

Didn't try editing over a standard ftp, but fish works.

Don't use Samba, sorry. Even my Windows boxes have NFS (it's an optional feature built into in the higher Windows editions, believe it or not).

Fish works for me.

None of my networks use EAP. WPA-PSK works fantastically, much better than in 3.5.x.

I just turn off the Klipper applet and use it like copy-paste on any other platform. The only time I would even attempt to use Klipper is if I needed to transfer a large number of things from one window to another, but separately. In that case, I would usually use a sticky note widget or similar.

What's wrong with that?

[backwardMechanic]

If you're running Deb stable, and want to use your computer rather than mess with it, that's exactly the right thing to do. Kinda why Debian stable was invented really.

KDE GOT IT RIGHT

[cyclomedia]

I think KDE nailed it with their 4.0 release, but let's explore the other options:

1. have 3.9,3.99, 3.999,3.9999,3.9999b,3.9999c,4.0, then 4.1 anyway because the avalanche of new users inevitably found new bugs
2. have 4.0 alpha1 to alpha 12, beta 1 to beta 18, rc1 to rc 9, then 4.0. Then 4.1 anyway (see above)
3. keep it at 4.0 but have a zillion internal minor mini version numbers for 2 years until they though it was finished before releasing it to the public. Then have 4.1 anyway (see above again)

Chaning the major version number at the same time as the major change in architecture was absolutely the sensible and mature thing to do, it was never going to stay 4.0 long anyway (see above again again). So it was buggy as hell but you still had the choice of using 3.x stable, it still had "new development architecture it's buggy as hell" plastered all over it, it's not like civilization started to crumble because some "point zero" piece of software somewhere wasnt perfect. People need to chill out, man.

I have KDE4.2.2

[Anonymous Coward]

as part of Kubuntu Jaunty running on my 900MHz netbook right now. No serious issues. I'm looking forward to running it on my Debian desktop machine.

The problem versions of KDE4 are pre-KDE4.2. 4.2+ is ready for prime-time.

...And Gnome goes to version 2.26!

[dsavi]

I pray that one day, the GNOME developers will realize that incremental change is extremely boring. I use GNOME, but seriously, I don't remember feeling much different about it two years ago. Two years ago KDE still had its plastic look, and now it's all glass and shiny stuff, what looks to the end user like they scrapped the entire code base and admitted "Ok that sucked, let's do something actually appealing this time". And it worked. And GNOME released another version, 2.2whatever, and nobody cared beyond the developers because nobody noticed a thing.

new features

[t3chn0n3rd]

were there many new features to 4.2?