KDE 4.3 Released

Jos Poortvliet writes "After another 6 months of hard work by over 700 people, after fixing over 10,000 bugs and granting 2,000 wishes, KDE 4.3, or 'Caizen,' is here (the release takes its nickname from the Japanese philosophy of continuous improvement). The KDE Desktop Workspace introduces, besides the usual stability and speed improvements, new widgets, the ability to 'peek' in a folder with folderview, and activities tied to virtual desktops. The KDE Application Suites feature improvements in the utilities like a more formats supported in Ark and the return of the Linux Infrared Remote Control system. Instant messenger Kopete introduces an improved contact list and KOrganizer can sync with Google Calendar. Kmail supports inserting inline images into email and the Alarm notifier has gained export functionality, drag and drop, and has an improved configuration. The KDE Application Development platform has seen work on integrating the Social Desktop and the new system tray protocol from Freedesktop.org. You can watch a screencast of the Desktop Workspace here."

Comments

Re:Is this the KDE 4.0 we've all been waiting for?

[WaywardGeek]

I'm afraid I wont get personally excited about any KDE release until they get it working with the Orca screen reader, which works very well with Gnome.

I only read at 250 words per minute, but my listening speed is now at 460wpm for reading fiction, and over 500wpm for Orca reading web pages. I have a blind friend who listens to his computer at 860wpm. This is very cool stuff, so it's a shame KDE is late to the game.

Re:Is this the KDE 4.0 we've all been waiting for?

[WaywardGeek]

Well, "words" are a bit fuzzy. Openoffice reports this text as 925 words. This is an mp3 of Orca reading it, which lasts 120 seconds. It's fun to listen to. I'm on my 7th novel in 4 weeks, which I play in the car, at the doctor's office, or anywhere else that's normally down time.

Re:making progress

[StormReaver]

It's a matter of opinion, as I see GTK and Windows looking ugly and clunky, and Qt/KDE looking beautiful and polished.

Re:making progress

[Enderandrew]

What gets me is that while there as some Plasma devs working on a Netbook containment for small screens, we haven't seen a widget theme/overall theme designed for small screens.

Between mobile phones, netbooks and smartbooks, you think Nokia/Qt would be all over this. If not, then perhaps the KDE devs themselves would come up with a good solution here.

Re:Karma burning for fun and profit

[moonbender]

And it sure seems like everytime I hear a complaint about KDE 4.x, it is from someone who had a bad experience trying KDE 4.x in *buntu land.

That could also be due to the fact that *buntu is the most popular distribution (I'd guess by a fair margin these days), particularly among newbies who tend to get stuck (and, sometimes, give up) easily.

Re:Karma burning for fun and profit

[Kalinda]

The problem, as ever, is that Kubuntu gets the seriously short end of the stick. I used to use it (before I switched to Arch with KDEmod/Chakra) and it worked alright before KDE 4 came out. However, since KDE 4 it's been generally slow and the developers have taken longer than other distros to get new KDE releases or beta/RCs out. And then there was the idea of forcing KDE 4 on all their users in version 4.1 when it wasn't ready for regular use. I see they've since realized the error and are offering both KDE3 and 4, although KDE4 has is now pretty damn good.

I'd put this down to the vast majority of *buntu users using Ubuntu/Gnome. It also gets more press than the other variants.

That's not to say the developers haven't made good contributions to the KDE community. Like making OpenOffice 3 work with KDE file dialogues.

Re:making progress

[david_thornley]

You know, bigger margins and padding are why I ditched the Aero look on Vista, and selected an earlier, uglier, but denser style. Criticize my aesthetics if you will, but I like displays that give me more information in a given screen area.

(Reminds me of a woman I knew in college, taking a "Physics for Poets" class and complaining about the two-sheet limit on exam notes, which really didn't allow all that much with beautiful handwriting and large amounts of whitespace. I compared it to a 3"x5" card I'd been allowed for a serious science course.)

Too little, too late; I'm with Linus

[RogueSeven]

As a windows user for my entire life making the switch to Linux over the summer of 2007, I was nothing but thrilled with the looks, functionality, and personalization (through customization) KDE 3.5 had to offer. At the time, I wrote off Gnome as too different from what I was used to. After several months of falling completely in love with my OS/KDE, I began to strongly evangelize the use of Linux on the desktop, convincing a small handful of friends (doing my part for the whole "Year Of.." thing).

I went with the flow when KDE 4 took over. Although I was pretty disappointed with a lot of things (removal of a ton of Konqueror functionality that Dolphin sure as heck didn't replace/replace well, plasma crashing all the time, list could go on but I'm not trying to bash KDE or anything here), I kept patiently waiting for the promise of a stable, beautiful, better-than-3.5 desktop. When even 4.2 didn't fix a lot of the things wrong with my system, I finally decided to switch desktops until they got their act together.

KDE's problem is that my original plan has changed. I've gotten so acquainted to my new environment, that I can't see myself switching back to KDE anymore. It's not just inertial that's a factor here, I genuinely like my current setup. I used the word problem there not because I believe a single user matters to KDE, or any other F/OSS project for that matter, but because I wonder how many people are just like me: Hopped off the KDE bus, originally planning to get back on a few stops down the road, but have now opted for a different mode of transportation altogether (do I get points for bad car analogy here??). To boot, I am relatively young, and a sworn lifelong Linux user; there are many years of my life of Desktop Environment usage left.

At any rate, when Linus slammed KDE months ago, I was still on the fence. Now I'm pretty much in full agreement with him, minus the whole flamewar thing.

Here's the part where I'm pouring out champagne on my floor. "Thanks for the memories, KDE". I loved you, and I'll miss you.

Re:Too little, too late; I'm with Linus

[atomic-penguin]

I cannot believe the parent was modded troll. I have been a desktop Linux user, going on 12 years now. I've used many other window managers, Fvwm, twm, WindowMaker, Blackbox, Fluxbox, CDE, xfce, and even Gnome. So I have tried many different window managers, and have been able to easily adapt to different GUIs with relatively little pain. KDE has been my primary desktop for the last 5-6 years, that is until KDE 4.x came along.

I gave KDE 4 an honest test drive, that lasted less than a week. Much of the KDE 3 functionality you would expect to be included in KDE 4 is gone. A good example is the KDE regular expression editor which comes as a standard KDE utility in KDE 3. The desktop wasn't really a traditional desktop interface at all. The desktop somehow became this ill-behaved widget container. My right mouse button wouldn't do anything, at least not what I wanted it to do. The worst part was the customization which has been part of every window manager I have ever used; customization was gone. There was no way to make KDE 4 work in a way which I want to use. Those are a few examples off the top of my head. I used KDE 3.5 until April, it was still available in the main repository of Hardy, as well as having KDE 4 available as a choice from the same repository.

I upgraded to Ibex in April, and tried out KDE 4.1; it is still not what I expect. I switched to Gnome for maybe a day, and couldn't get it to handle multiple desktops with Xinerama the way I want. Finally, I switched to xfce. It works the way I want, I can change the behavior if I don't like it. I have been using xfce all summer. I will undoubtedly give KDE another try. I have to wonder how many hours of productivity has been lost on frustrated KDE users not able to adapt to the radical changes presented in KDE 4.

Why is it that the two most divisive window managers, KDE and Gnome, seem to be immune from forking especially when their most loyal users are dissatisfied? Why is it that the KDE developers insist on radical changes, even when critics and loyal users claim KDE 4 is on the wrong track? I, for one, would much rather have ugly 2-D widgets in a useful environment and fully functional interface. As opposed to 3-D compositing and widgets that are pretty, lack any practical use, and result in a half-working interface.

I speak Japanese, but thought "Caizen" = Chinese

[zooblethorpe]

I'm fluent in Japanese; I earn my bread and butter by translating Japanese documents into English. But this "Caizen" silliness had me scratching my head wondering what Chinese word it was supposed to be. "C" followed by a vowel is the usual romanization from Chinese for a "ts" sound plus a vowel. Meanwhile, unless someone's trying to get cute, the hard "K" sound in Japanese words is always romanized as a "K". Given too the KDE project's tendency to use "K"s in software titles, the deliberate non-"K"-ness of "Caizen" made me think they must be trying to spell something pronounced without a hard "K" sound.

Silly me; silly them.

Cheers,

Re:Is this the KDE 4.0 we've all been waiting for?

[Trogre]

I looked at your post for some time before deciding to reply, but I'm curious as to exactly what your point is.

Are you suggesting that the very act of picking up a book, smelling the paper, pausing at the turn of each page, and finishing each chapter with a brandy is the only way one can properly assimilate a literary work?

Some people might really want to read novels but might lack the time for dedicating a day and a half to staring at nothing but inky markings between meals and cigars. I'm all for taking time to smell the flowers, but prefer taking the time myself rather than having it forced upon me by artificial limitations.

Personally I have no problem with listening to audio-books, once I've gotten used to the voice as the OP mentioned. Then again I also don't mind listening to pre-recorded music *without* being in the presence of the original band, so what do I know?