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

Caizen is actually spelt with a K

[bheer]

...interesting to see the KDE team drop the K from a word where it'd actually be appropriate.

Re:Caizen is actually spelt with a K

[Anonymous Coward]

"Spelled" and "Spelt" are used by entire countries. "Caizen" is a non-standard Romanization of a foreign language purportedly used by KDE developers. A bit different.

Re:Caizen is actually spelt with a K

[davejenkins]

Okay, you want to split hairs? Japanese words are not "spelled", they are written using a mix of Chinese and phonetic symbols. As noted above æ"å- is how one should write the Japanese word for "improvement". Unfortunately, many people outside East Asia has no idea how to read or pronounce that, so we "romanize" words based on a commonly accepted latin alphabet equivalent. The usual Latin alphabet equivalent is kaizen with a k. Lately, a lot of bars and brands in Japan are trying to use the 'c' instead of the 'k'-- the most common example is the NTT wireless provider Docomo (meaning "anywhere"). Here endeth the lesson.

Re:Caizen is actually spelt with a K

[Grishnakh]

Lately, a lot of bars and brands in Japan are trying to use the 'c' instead of the 'k'-

Why is that? What's wrong with 'k'? In languages using latin-based alphabets, 'k' is usually better because it's always a hard consonant, unlike 'c' which varies a lot depending on the language and the word. In English, 'c' is sometime a hard consonant that sounds like 'k' (like in "crap"), and other times is a soft consonant that sounds like 's' (like in "celestial"), and sometimes is combined with other letters for something else (like in "cheese").

If you want to use a Latin alphabet to show non-native speakers how a word is pronounced, and the word has a hard 'k' sound, why not just use a 'k'?

Re:Caizen is actually spelt with a K

[R.Mo_Robert]

Lately, a lot of bars and brands in Japan are trying to use the 'c' instead of the 'k'-

Why is that? What's wrong with 'k'? In languages using latin-based alphabets, 'k' is usually better because it's always a hard consonant, unlike 'c' which varies a lot depending on the language and the word. ... If you want to use a Latin alphabet to show non-native speakers how a word is pronounced, and the word has a hard 'k' sound, why not just use a 'k'?

The biggest reason is probably that it looks less "foreign." Docomo looks at least a bit more Anglicized than Dokomo, which for whatever reason may be more appealing to some people.

Plus, it's usually not that hard to figure out. A handful of exceptions aside, c (and g, for that matter) is generally hard except when proceeded by e or i (formerly the non-low front consonants of English, which they still were when this phonological change took place and which they still are in other languages that also do this, such as Spanish). The combination ch is usually a digraph representing /tS/ (XSAMPA, not IPA--apparently Slashdot doesn't play well with Unicode), sometimes /k/, but rarely, if ever (in English) /kh/. Plus, if you know that the word is Japanese...

But basically, I would guess that the use of c appeals to more people because it looks more like an English(-ish) word.

Re:Caizen is actually spelt with a K

[Darinbob]

Why? Because it's Japan. They aren't using English and Roman letters because of accuracy or a desire to communicate, they use them because they're considered cool.

Re:Caizen is actually spelt with a K

[vivin]

"Spelt" is also the past-participle simple-past form of "to spell". It's a little more common in countries that use British English. "spelt" and "spelled" are equally correct.

Re:Caizen is actually spelt with a K

[orzetto]

Lately, a lot of bars and brands in Japan are trying to use the 'c' instead of the 'k'-

Why is that?

Xenophilia. I have seen it happening in various countries: in Italy, nicknames often end in "y", like giusy, francy, etc. where using "i" would be correct with respect to Italian orthography; in Norway, there are more and more Jacob's and fewer and fewer Jakob's; in the US, Staci instead of Stacey.

This also comes into advertisement, as using a foreign language seems exotic and acculturated. It is however quite comical to see how many spelling mistakes end up in such advertisement: as an Italian I could write an encyclopaedia of misspellings of Italian food ("Spaghetti carbonara", "Pizza casa di Mama", "Cambozola", ...); similarly, good look to you English speakers figuring out what a "No Stir" shirt is supposed to be in Italy.

So, what's wrong with K you ask? There are already too many of them and it does not attract enough attention, that's what is wrong.

Re:Caizen is actually spelt with a K

[dakameleon]

In languages using latin-based alphabets, the pronunciation of every letter can change completely from country to country, so there is no point in preferring a letter over another one in order to achieve an "international" transliteration.

If you want that, you'll have to either use IPA, or define a different transliteration scheme from Japanese to each language with a latin-based alphabet.

That quite ignores the fact that there's an official ISO standard, an addendum to the ISO standard endorsed by the Japanese government and taught in Japanese schools, and a widely used defacto standard system for transliteration used outside of Japan, and even inside.

All of which specify the transliteration of the word in dispute as 'kaizen'.

It's all the more ridiculous for being inconsistent with years of C-to-K swaps used throughout KDE.

Re:Caizen is actually spelt with a K

[Anonymous Coward]

Several developers of the KDE team have acknowledged this to be a deliberate, ironic move.

Re:Caizen is actually spelt with a K

[aaaantoine]

The KDE team has been code-naming its releases with words starting with C for at least a little while, and this isn't the first time they forced a word's spelling to fit. For example: KDE 4.2.3 was called "Cuagmire" instead of Quagmire.

It's strange, but that's how they roll, apparently.

making progress

[hannson]

I'm not trying to troll here. It certainly looks more polished than the train wreck that 4.1 and 4.2 was, but is it just me or do QT4 and GTK applications just look ... bigger/clunky/unpolished when compared to Windows / KDE3.5 applications?
 
That said, I like that it's making progress!

Re:making progress

[ammorais]

No. If you are referring to the looks it's a matter of taste.
If you are referring to Qt, I can tell you that the Qt toolkit is at this point nothing less than Windows Libraries. If you are referring to polishment you should talk about specific applications and not the whole toolkits. Take Smplayer for example. It's an app that is exactly he same on windows an Linux(and I actually like it better on Linux).
Qt 4 is relatively new, and it was from my point of view a necessary break from Qt3. The great modifications are at the programming level, and I find it one of the best toolkits I ever programed.

Re:making progress

[Anonymous Coward]

I really liked 4.2 already and have been using it for a while now. As for the looks: I think it's just a matter of getting used to it. Now that I worked with 4.2 a while I find KDE 3 applications to look bigger / clunky / unpolished.
When I first switched from Windows to Linux I also found KDE 3 applications to look unpolished. After using it for a while and after getting used to the style I suddenly found Windows to look unpolished.

But I'd say it took me way less time to get used to the KDE 4 looks then it did with KDE 3 so I guess they are in fact more polished ;)

Re:making progress

[Narishma]

Your problem is not KDE, it's Kubuntu. One of the worst KDE distros I've every tried.

Re:making progress

[Draek]

is it just me or do QT4 and GTK applications just look ... bigger/clunky/unpolished when compared to Windows / KDE3.5 applications?

It's just you.

Also, if you honestly didn't want to troll you should've left out the "train wreck" comment from your post, it wouldn't have changed its meaning while being much less inflammatory.

Re:making progress

[Grishnakh]

You have to be careful when using too many colors, or else you might wind up with something like Windows XP which looks like it was designed by Fisher-Price.

Seriously, it's easier to be minimalist, as you won't offend or annoy people as much. If you try to do more bold things, aesthetically, you might find some people who love it, but a lot of people will absolutely hate it. GM just had to shed an entire car company that tried "bold styling" too much, called Pontiac. Here's an example of one of their more famous forays into non-conservative styling:
http://www.edmunds.com/media/reviews/top10/05.trucks.worst.residual.value/05.pontiac.aztek.500.jpg
I found this image in an article about "worst residual value". With something that ugly (though I'm sure the designers didn't think so), it's hard to find people to buy it from you. I recall this vehicle being an outright disaster in sales.

Of course, that's the beauty of themes. Unlike a car, where once it rolls out of the factory you can't easily change the way it looks or its color, changing a theme on your desktop environment is pretty trivial, taking only a few mouse clicks. So it's better if the DE uses a minimalist theme for the default, and then offers some more exciting themes as options which users can select if they want.

Re:making progress

[pyrico]

Actually, it's probably not just him.

Qt4 has larger spacing margins and padding on widgets by default in there layout system than Qt3. Also, I believe KDE4 uses larger fonts and more anti-aliasing than KDE3 systems, so the same dialog with the same set of widgets and text most likely is larger in KDE4 on a pixel basis.

That said, you can probably control this to some extent with font settings etc, but the widget padding and margins are up to the application developer.

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:making progress

[Svenne]

Agreed, ever since Kubuntu switched from KDE 3 to 4 it's been crap. After years with KDE, not wanting to give up the goodness that is Ubuntu (apt, mostly) I had to switch to GNOME. I've tried KDE 4.1 and 4.2 occasionally, but it's still unusable. Just something as stupid as the "search field" in the "K-menu" (or whatever it's called nowdays); sometimes it registers presing enter, and sometimes it doesn't. Maybe I'll want to start "konsole" and I'll just type "konsole" and press enter. Sometimes it starts, other times nothing happens. I'll wait, wondering if it's just a delay, "is the harddrive bogged down?," "did I miss enter?". Nope. It just didn't register. It completely kills the flow of working with the desktop. Utter crap.

At first I thought it was a bug in 4.0, but it's still there in KDE 4.3pre (whatever's in Kubuntu 9.10 Alpha 3).

Please name me a polished KDE 4-based distribution. Or two, because if you were going to say openSuSE I'll want to skip that one.

Re:making progress

[Sir_Lewk]

Semi related to this, people using Fedora (which is probably packages and integrates KDE the best of any distro I've tried) can get 4.3 by enabling the Redhat KDE testing repos from http://kde-redhat.sourceforge.net/

I just installed it about an hour ago and have been pretty impressed with the improvement from 4.2. In particular, the notifications are very improved and kopete is actually verging on usable again. General polish all around is certainly helping too.

Re:making progress

[Anonymous Coward]

Lots of people swear by Mandriva, others by Sidoux or something else. In the end it probably doesn't matter that much, since it can't possibly get any worse than Kubuntu. For me, opensuse with the kde factory repos (to get the 4.3 release that will be released in with 11.2 on 11.1) works just perfectly.

Re:making progress

[Anonymous Coward]

Decent KDE distros

http://www.pardus.org.tr/eng/
http://www2.mandriva.com/
http://chakra-project.org/

Re:making progress

[Narishma]

I'd recommend Pardus, Mandriva or Arch Linux.

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.)

Re:making progress

[TemporalBeing]

Honestly I must agree with the AC/GP on this one.

I've been using Qt4.4/4.5 for a few months now - programming both for Windows and Linux; I don't have the KDE wrappers around it, but Qt4 is a god-send compared to any Windows API, for which I've been programming for nearly 5 years using MFC and Win32. (Win32 is a blessing compared to MFC, which is just horrid but partly necessary to make Windows programs faster to write at the cost of performance and programmability - e.g. CStrings are an absolute bastard from hell, but were necessary at a time.)

I'll never go back to MFC/Win32 if I can help it - though I will certainly have to from time to time for the Windows-only apps that I currently maintain for a living; even after they get replaced by Qt apps. Legacy support is a pain, but worthwhile for income.

Re:making progress

[marcello_dl]

sidux has a nice 4.2 release

Re:making progress

[Mad Merlin]

what IS a good kde distro? they don't seem to exist (aside from maybe fedora)

Gentoo.

Re:making progress

[Tubal-Cain]

So do I, but what I don't see KDE as is functional. The 'Start' menu is just downright painful to use.

Re:making progress

[bcmm]

This is actually true. A basically unpatched KDE; no fancy branding breaking things or integration of custom system configuration tools (systemsettings already does pretty much everything other distros might want to add as extra configuration tools). KDE doesn't really require a "KDE distro" which goes to lengths to integrate it (unless you desperately require a bootsplash theme which matches your login manager or something); give it hal, dbus and networkmanager* and it integrates itself very well indeed.

There are probably binary packages for people who don't like compiling. And there are sets and metapackages for installing all of kde, or just kdebase and kdepim, or just base and koffice, or whatever, without having to go down a long list of packages.

Also, while I haven't tried it other than using the rescue CD to install Gentoo, Sabayon looks interesting as an easy way to install a polished KDE distro based on Gentoo.

* That said, I don't actually use networkmanager because my computer doesn't move about and I like the network to come up before login.

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.

Per-desktop activities assignments

[davidsyes]

"Activities can now be tied to virtual desktops, allowing users to have different widgets on each of their desktops."

THIS is what i've been waiting for. I don't know why it was not there to begin with. Glad it's here. I wonder if it'll break my Mandriva One-modified KDE4.x, however. It would be nice to get back the ability to change the backgrounds on the login widget as well as the background when the desktop is locked. Mandriva seems to cripple that feature for the non-paid installs, and none of my sleuthing has let me to how to undo that cripple. It was one reason i paid $50 contribution to PCLOS 2007/8.

Re:Per-desktop activities assignments

[0racle]

It went away when Plasma became another layer above the window managers virtual desktops. Had plasma simply been a library and a method for displaying desktop widgets this wouldn't have happened but some retard had to have it this way, so away went different wallpapers for different virtual desktops, along with a lot of other features KDE3 had though most regressions were not because of plasma.

I still don't know what the hell plasma activities are supposed to do, except break things. They don't do anything that virtual desktops don't.

Anyway, now with KDE 4.3 you can have one activity for all your virtual desktops or have one activity per virtual desktop. If you do the former, you can have all your desktop widgets on all desktops (handy so you don't have to switch around to use that folder you put on your desktop or to check the weather) but loose the ability to have different wallpapers for those desks OR you can have different wallpapers by having a different activity on each virtual desktop and loose the ability to share widgets across all desktops. So if you want that folder or your weather widget on every desktop, you're going to launch a separate instance for each activity.

Re:Per-desktop activities assignments

[davidsyes]

I want to mod funny... But, i want to respond, too.

It's really nice to be able to show off the KDE (compiz/KDE/Mandriva/et al) desktop rotting the cubes and polygon desktops around, in ONLY 256 MB of SHARED VIDEO RAM,not the umpteen .75 GB or 2GB vista demanded before even turning on Aero. It's a nice, good feeling to have people looking over my shoulder or asking about that desktop, and being able to say, "No, this is not Vista. It's KDE, in Linux. And, this has been possible about or more than a year prior to Vista's release, and i had some of these features working on a 128 MB graphics card from CompUSA, and even wowed the Comcast guy who was restoring my service back in late 2006..."

Makes people wonder who the hell decided vista needed all that graphics power to do what Linux (and Mac) have been on lesser resources. Conjures up thoughts of collusion/screwing the consumer --- depending on one's perspective, that is...

Re:Per-desktop activities assignments

[PeterBrett]

Had plasma simply been a library and a method for displaying desktop widgets...

...then it would have been an entirely pointless exercise that completely failed to complete its objectives.

I still don't know what the hell plasma activities are supposed to do, except break things. They don't do anything that virtual desktops don't.

I see that ignorance is still bliss.

Re:Per-desktop activities assignments

[kayoshiii]

KWin seems to run fine with compositing switched on and opengl games.... I know that because I work on a game engine all day (it's my day job) and I am running KDE 4.3 desktop. Furthermore compositing can be switched on and off with using SHIFT + ALT + F12 (compositing does cause a modest loss in FPS). Furthermore compositing is automatically disabled in any fullscreen app.

Also note that I am running a reasonably recent and highend nVidia card on this machine.

"granting 2,000 wishes"

[FooAtWFU]

I wish for a hundred million dollars.

And world peace. And a pony. And the year of Linux on the desktop.

Re:"granting 2,000 wishes"

[evanbd]

What? No blessed +2 silver dragon scale mail?

Re:"granting 2,000 wishes"

[orzetto]

I wish for a hundred million dollars.

INVALID

And world peace.

LATER

And a pony.

WONTFIX

And the year of Linux on the desktop.

WORKSFORME

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

[Edmund Blackadder]

Wow, so you listen to 7.6 words per second when "reading" fiction. Let me guess, your favorite is steven king? (I heard he writes it at a slightly slower 6 words per second).

But all joking aside, KDE should be compatible with audio readers for the benefit of blind people.

Re:What's the point?

[TheCowSaysMooNotBoo]

What, not everyone uses a computer the same way? I'm shocked & appalled I tell you!

beauty is in the eye of the beholder...

[Anne Honime]

kde 3.5 (and windows, last I looked at it) had much more tiny graphics because the screens they were intended to be displayed on were much smaller. Nowdays, 1280x1024 19" lcd is pretty much low end whereas it was top of the line 5 years ago. So qt & kde evolves, and that's fine by me. I run 4.2 ATM, and while I'm eagerly waiting for 4.3, to iron out some quirks, I don't consider it a train wreck. 4.0 was rushed out and 4.1 made it somewhat barely usable, but 4.2 is really what 4.0 should have been in the 1st place. Not perfect, but sort of okay for everyday use.

fixing 10,000 bugs

[Anonymous Coward]

No, they did not fix 10,000 bugs. They closed 10,000 bug reports, which is a completely different thing.

Many of the bug reports were dupes. And many more were closed for one reason or another without actually fixing the reported problem.

Re:fixing 10,000 bugs

[JohnFluxx]

Many bugs, presumably, were fixed without having bug reports.

KDevelop4?

[DoofusOfDeath]

While we're on the topic, does anyone know if/when KDevelop4 will be released?

Re:KDevelop4?

[Vectronic]

It's currently in Beta 4, and judging by the release times of the previous Betas, and assuming Beta 4 is the last before the final release, I would guess the somewhere between the end of this month, and the end of September.

I know that doesn't really help, but if you are really that interested, start playing with the beta.

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

[TheGothicGuardian]

They're working on supporting the deaf people first.

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

[bcmm]

You posted a link to an ADSL line on Slashdot?

Good luck!

I Ran KDE4.2

[mpapet]

Whew. The snarky comments about KDE are pretty crazy.

I still have it on my Debian testing/unstable laptop. It's not a very new laptop and KDE4.2 ran very quickly on it. The desktop itself did not have glaring issues. None of the eye candy is enabled by default, so it doesn't look immediately fabulous on Debian. But turn stuff on and there's plenty of prettiness available. There were issues with Korganizer, so it sounds like they cleaned it up quite a bit. For the most part, I don't use konqueror any more since I found bojourfoxy. http://andrew.tj.id.au/projects/bonjourfoxy/

It's clear there is a huge amount of activity going into these releases because whole features have been rewritten since kde4.0. Over time, it looks like most of the common KDE applications have been ported to kde4 too, so there's still solid interest in the desktop.

It looks like they are continuing their efforts to simplify working with KDE as a programmer. So, maybe the bigger KDE4 story that isn't covered as much on slashdot is the programming side?

I'm actually using XFCE4 at the moment for no good reason other than change is good. It's leaner, with enough eye candy for me.

Re:I Ran KDE4.2

[c0d3g33k]

The thing is ...

Nobody really cares about the bigger KDE4 story. It's kind of like the "bigger hammer redesign story". It's nice to make things easy for the hammer designers, but if it can't pound in nails like it used to, it's not really a very good hammer, is it? But hey, it does wrench-stuff too now, so that old-fashioned hammer stuff that used to work perfectly isn't that important, right? You really want a wrench to pound in those nails. Yeah, we know it's not a great wrench/hammer yet, but we're working on it.

KDE4 is kind of like that. Things that used to work before suddenly were broken or "coming soon". Different ways of "striking the nail" were introduced when the old ways seemed to work just fine. Not a problem, aside from the fact that the new ways didn't always work as well.

A desktop environment is a tool as is everything else on a computer. People use a computer as a tool to *do* things, and most of those things (almost all of them) don't involve futzing around with the tool itself. If a development team doesn't understand that basic fact, they run the risk of redesigning the tool without full awareness of what needs to absolutely work and what is optional.

KDE4 is shaping up to be a fine desktop environment. It just got there in a roundabout way that could have been a lot less painful had the developers connected with the community better so that the important stuff was working first.

My biggest fear is now that things are working well, people are going to get bored, throw everything out the window and start hacking on KDE5 rather than making KDE4 realize its ful potential.

KDE vs Vista vs 7

[Enderandrew]

It really bothers me when I hear people make uninformed silly comparisons saying that KDE 4 just copies Vista or 7. Honestly, I think there are some great "pillars" that have great potential, but sadly are still under developed, such as Sonnet and Nepomuk I think KDE 4 is just starting to really come into its own and can become a truly great desktop. I just don't think it has delivered on its potential yet.

Conversely, in the areas that perhaps KDE should consider taking a page from Microsoft, they refuse to do so. When I've suggested to Aaron Seigo that he solve the "no-right-click" problem when designing Plasma to also be fully usable on a touch-screen, I suggested he take a page from 7 and use a multi-touch gesture such as 7's for a right-click. In 7, you hold one finger down and then tap with a second finger for a right-click. Aaron deleted my suggestion. I made it a second time thinking maybe I didn't post it, and he deleted it a second time. I've made suggestions to maybe take a few cues from 7's taskbar, and those are always deleted as well.

Is it honestly some great sin to emulate the better features of other desktops? Hasn't KDE done that from the beginning?

Karma burning for fun and profit

[Enderandrew]

From the KDE 4.0 launch and on, Kubuntu/Ubuntu has been shipping some pretty broken packages. I don't want to hate on the Kubuntu developers/packages, but it is the simple truth. 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.

If that is the case, might I suggest that you try a better KDE distro? openSUSE, Arch Linux and Sabayon would be recommendations, in that order.

Here is a weekly snapshot openSUSE/KDE 4 SVN live CD.

http://download.opensuse.org/repositories/KDE:/Medias/images/iso/KDE4-UNSTABLE-Live.i686-1.3.62-Build1.1.iso

Re:Karma burning for fun and profit

[RAMMS EIN]

I've noticed this, too. I installed Ubuntu 9.10 at some point (because the kernel has support for some of the hardware in my PC that kernels in other Ubuntu versions don't support), and about every single KDE app I used was seriously broken. I know KDE is better than that. Now, I know 9.10 is not an actual release yet, so there is time to fix things, but I find it interesting that there is nowhere near as much breakage outside KDE packages. What gives?

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:Karma burning for fun and profit

[Enderandrew]

I'm no expert, but from what I was reading on the dot near the actual 4.0 release, the problems were the switch to Cmake, and where packages were located. From what I understand, the Kubuntu team had trouble properly compiling and packaging.

Re:Karma burning for fun and profit

[rainmaestro]

I've noticed the same with Kubuntu. I was constantly struggling to get things working right. Then I tried KDE in openSUSE when setting up a box at work. It was remarkable how much better everything worked. I'm not a big SUSE fan (or Ubuntu for that matter), but I definitely saw fewer issues on the openSUSE box.

I see lots of odd quirks like that in Ubuntu. One of my annoyances is how the VLC package displays. The video displays in a separate window, whereas in openSUSE it is one window with an autohide mini-panel in fullscreen mode. I've never been able to get that in Ubuntu, and I'm not sure *why*.

Re:Karma burning for fun and profit

[Enderandrew]

Amarok 2 now uses Plasma to display plugins in the middle portion of the window. If your graphics driver doesn't like Plasma, then you're likely to have issues here.

Sadly it seems Plasma, and other Qt 4 apps/libraries don't really like the proprietary ATI or Nvidia drivers.

Folder Sneek??

[B5_geek]

I'd like to give all these dev's that pushed/forced us away from tree/folder view a boot to the head. X-Tree Gold in the DOS days had more functionality then a modern file-manager does.

Here is a hint that you are doing something wrong:

If you have to spend time adding functionality to a program that worked before you removed another function, YOU ARE DOING IT WRONG!

I have recently moved to OSX for a big project I am working on, and I curse Steve Jobs mother every time I need to use Finder and open a dozen different windows/work my way through several nested folders that 3 mouse clicks would do in Windows Explorer/Konq. (from v3.5)

Re:Folder Sneek??

[stilborne]

> I thought Dolphin was getting a tree view.

it did. system settings did too. just turn them on in the view options.

Insert Happiness Here

[MonsterTrimble]

Disclaimer: I have not installed KDE 4.3 - yet - and I run Kubuntu 9.04.

First off, I would like to applaud the team for the work they did and continue to do for KDE. I have really pleased with how far they have come from 4.0 - which made Enlightement look full featured and bug free. I'm looking forward to improvements to Amarok and Kopete - especially with respect to the new Kopete Facebook chat plug-in. (I currently use Pidgin because it has facebook chat and it has killer-apps status - soon I'll kill someone because of it).

That being said, I'm not thrilled with their Akonadi PIM database. I have found it to be a serious resource hog and that many applications simply do not play nice with it. And the insistance that it must scan EVERYTHING again at start up is a serious WTF. I'm also not sold on the social desktop concept either - but I haven't played with it yet and I prefer for my desktop background to be more of a ever changing photo album, so I like it empty. Taskbar, thank you!

Again though, I want to thank the people at KDE and the volunteers who support the project. Good job!

Save me from the polish

[Burz]

I like GUIs as much as anyone (and its the reason why the last system I bought is a Mac) but as a 10-year Linux user I already know this new package of FOSS loveliness is not going to save Kubuntu from being truly awful. It doesn't change the fact that so much in the Kubuntu GUI is broken (like not being able to set a static IP).

And I suspect this release will not suddenly display some inspiration or direction for either of those projects. What I will have, yet again, is a pile of (sometimes brilliantly coded) pieces that don't quite fit together or come together to make end users say, "Oh, I get it!"

There is a heap of stuff that KDE (and Gnome, and the distros) won't do because no one (not a single soul) will ever take responsibility for facilitating critical use cases across these projects. And that is why after all these years, the Linux desktop still "feels wrong" to most techies (and more confounding to average users than other OSes).

Some weeks back I was considering a switch to Gnome, but then a story popped up on Slashdot (with impeccable timing) announcing that Gnome will be put through the same whole-integer re-write process that KDE just went through.

No thanks.

Re:Save me from the polish

[dotancohen]

There is a heap of stuff that KDE (and Gnome, and the distros) won't do because no one (not a single soul) will ever take responsibility for facilitating critical use cases across these projects.

Such as what? State some examples so that the ball can get rolling. If it is a ball that KDE needs to get rolling, I'll file the bugs but I need you to tell me what is missing. Thanks!

Re:That's cool and all.

[pseudonomous]

Me, too, but now that Arch is splitting the [extra] repo packages, I'm wondering if I should switch to vanilla kde, since the only reason I used the KdeMod packages was because I liked my packages split. The KdeMod forums seem to suggest that the packages won't be in [kdemod-core] until the end of the week.

App Geometry

[kmahan]

Did they fix the ability to specify a geometry when starting an app (like Konsole) AND have it honored?

In 4.2 you could specify it, but it was ignored.

Of course they are spelled (or spelt).

[PeanutButterBreath]

Okay, you want to split hairs? Japanese words are not "spelled", they are written using a mix of Chinese and phonetic symbols.

Japanese has three phonetic writing systems, Hiragana, Katakana and "Romaji", the latter being their word for the Roman alphabet. These are traditionally reserved for separate contexts, but any can be used to spell any of the symbolic Chinese characters (Kanji), and may be at various times for a variety of reasons.

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.

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

[ion.simon.c]

*shrug*
a) You should check out 4.3. It's nice.
b) Xinerama is going away, dont'cha know? If you haven't tried xrandr, you might want to. If you have, and it doesn't work like you'd expect, see if the fixes are in the works.
c) When you try out 4.2 or 4.3, give the "Folder View" configuration a spin:
* Right-click on the desktop
* Click on "Appearance Settings"
* Change the "Desktop Activity" "Type" to "Folder View"
* Click "Okay" or "Apply"

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

[deathguppie]

I agree with you in some points.. I loved the KDE3 polish. The way I could right click on an image and change it from tga to png on the fly. The way sftp, and smb worked in all the save and open dialogs. It was a pleasure to operate. However, I'm a graphics nut and I do love the new interface. I also like the search in the menu. I can no longer get used to Gnome for that one reason.

KDE is coming together, albeit slowly but it is coming. I've been using Digikam, and Amarok, and Kdenlive lately. Watching them progress so much this last year has reminded me of what it was like to whatch kde3 progess. All of the amazing changes that happened, and we waited for almost daily.

Now with KDE4 we just expect that all of the stuff we got with KDE3 was just going to magically hop on the train, but it hasn't. It is taking time just like it did with the 3 series, and we are impatient because we have work to do and our lives to go on with. I understand how you feel, but I also understand now though that it will work out... and I am now at least OK with that and certainly willing to wait.

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

[10Ghz]

"KDE is coming together, albeit slowly but it is coming."

Slowly? Huh? 4.0 was crap. 6 months later we got 4.1 which was a lot better, but not there yet. 1 year after 4.0 we got 4.2 which was really good. And now we are getting 4.3.

KDE4 is only 18 months old. 18 months. During that 18 months KDE4 has changed A LOT. Compared to KDE3, KDE4 is progressing really, REALLY fast. In KDE3, 18 months got us from KDE 3.0 to KDE3.1.4.

Re:That's cool and all.

[cripeon]

Me, too, but now that Arch is splitting the [extra] repo packages, I'm wondering if I should switch to vanilla kde, since the only reason I used the KdeMod packages was because I liked my packages split. The KdeMod forums seem to suggest that the packages won't be in [kdemod-core] until the end of the week.

Well, there's a great discussion of it on the Arch forums (great before it got bogged down with bickering, although I didn't see Godwin's law being invoked).

Frankly, I think I'll move to offical [extra]/KDE tonight. KDEmod has served me great, but I think I can handle to live without all the extra patching and branding they do if it means I get 4.3 goodness a week early.

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

[K. S. Kyosuke]

That's great to hear, I expect KDE 4.3 to work flawlessly with my Creative X-Fi, which supports deaf people on Linux with absolutely no glitches.

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

[cheftw]

Wow, wasn't that enjoyable.

Do you put your dinner into a blender and then compress it into a tiny pellet and see how fast you can swallow it?

Watch speedruns instead of buying games?

Drive slowly?

It seems to me like you're doing it wrong, comprehension is not what I look for in a novel. Have you thought of stopping to smell the flowers and cogitate, savour?

  What is this life if, full of care,
We have no time to stand and stare?â" WH Davies

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

[von_rick]

... and I have actually read Huckleberry Finn.

I thought it was the dictation for source code to Vista's SP1, which by its very design isn't supposed to make any sense.

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

[WaywardGeek]

It's taken me about six weeks and 7 books to get here. I started at about my normal reading speed, around 250wpm, which sounded really fast. Audio books are normally around 170wpm. After each book, the words start sounding really slow, so I sped it up. There are several tricks. First, use Eloquence (Voxin on Linux), since it's easy to understand at high speed. Second, always use the same voice. You're ear is good at understanding speaker-independent speech, but it's even better at learning a specific voice. I'd bet most people here on slashdot could understand speech at this speed after a similar effort.

Unfortunately for me, learning to understand even faster than this is going to be harder. I don't have any problem understanding individual words at higher speed, but I start losing comprehension. My brain isn't wired to assemble concepts that fast. A blind friend of mine has solid comprehension at over 800wpm, which is just amazing, but he's been blind since childhood, and he's freaking brilliant. He says I could eventually get near his speed, though I'm doubtful.

Desktop environments and panning.

[ColaMan]

Does KDE/Gnome do a panning widget yet? Spent months trying to get panning working on my 800x400 eeePC, wrote a little hacked up util to watch the mouse and pan screen as necessary, eventually gave up with that kludge and went back to XP which does panning out of the box.

Fucking xorg - all they responded with after they dropped 'native' support for panning in xrandr is that it's a problem for the DE to deal with. DE's don't seem to care too much as all they're doing is working on 3D eye-candy. Forget basic functionality like a virtual panning screen, that's in the too-hard basket.

You can check it out on Windows too

[oneandoneis2]

I'm stuck with XP all day, but courtesy of the folks at KDE on Windows it's still possible to check out the release candidate for 4.3, and soon 4.3 itself should be available too. As detailed on my blog, it's as simple as:

Go to the website and grab the installer (kdewin-installer-gui-latest.exe). Should download in seconds, then you can run it to start the REAL downloading and installation process.

Stick with all the default unless you have good reason not to. Apart from anything else, most servers don't seem to have the "unstable 4.2.95" package. I got mine from ftp-stud.fht-esslingen.de

Skip all the language packs unless you really need them, install the rest. Let it get on with it. When it finishes, check the "run system settings after exit" box and finish.

It has some slightly odd choices for the defaults, so I went through and set everything to "Oxygen" to make it consistent & easy. But the main reason to run this thing is just to check that the QT apps work on your machine before you try and run the full KDE environment.

Assuming it works, try a few of the other KDE apps that will have appeared in your Start menu. It has games! :o)

To get KDE itself running, you need to run something which is, for some reason, not in the options in the KDE submenu in the Start menu. Go figure. Why would they want to make it easy to run KDE on Windows after you've downloaded KDE for Windows..?

To get the actual desktop environment, you need to run plasma-desktop.exe, which in a default install will be in C:\Program Files\KDE\bin

That should launch your KDE experience, and you can have a play from there. So far, it's a little unstable (Should be better once 4.3-proper is available) but otherwise performing fairly well.

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

[WaywardGeek]

Get any PDF, HTML, TXT, etc. Copy and paste it into gedit. Orca does a great job reading from gedit.

Creating the mp3 is trickier. Save the TXT file from gedit. Then, strip all the UTF-8 characters, like "circumflex", which is easy: just strip all the characters with the high bit set using a simple C program called stripUtf8. Then, use a customised version of the Voxin 'say' program to create the .wav, and 'lame -V2 file.wav' to create the mp3. To use the 'say' program, you'll need to pay under $10 to a non-profit in the UK. I hate to sound like a add for them, but that's the only legal way to get it cheap.

I've put the source for stripUtf8 and my customised 'say' program here.

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

[ChameleonDave]

What you've posted is just a travesty. You have an excuse only if you are actually blind, and need to consume large amounts of text aurally.

After a few seconds, one gets used to the voice, and its incomprehensible stream of sound becomes a comprehensible but ugly stream of sound. I'm currently listening to the Arabian Nights, read by Johanna Ward, with her precise, velvety voice. Each character sounds different, emphasis is where it needs to be, etc. With your way of doing things, not only is there no emphasis, no change of pace, no different intonation for dialogue, but things such as italics are deliberately stripped out even before the text reaches the synthesiser, along with all the diacritics necessary for words to be properly spelt and uttered. Résumé will become resume.

Re:Kmail just sux

[westyvw]

WTF? Why the hell would you have HTML in EMAIL? I read and send email from various devices, and the last thing I want is images and HTML because I want to read it and get to the point. Mobile devices drive home the issue: no HTML in email.

Quanta for KDE4?

[JoeCommodore]

Does that mean that Quanta web development tool will be native to KDE4 finally?

10,000 bugs?

[smash]

So, in 6 months, in going from the KDE 4.2 that was widely lauded as "the KDE4 for end users" or "what KDE4 should have been", they've squashed over 10,000 bugs?

Wait, what?

What actual advantages are there to KDE3.5 for "getting shit done"? Really, I want to know...

I've briefly checked out KDE4.0, 4.1 and 4.2, and immediately been turned off (as a long time KDE user since before 1.0). Its as if they got rid of all the developers who had a clue and replaced them with Javascript web flunkies.

It just feels "wrong", unfamiliar and awkward to use - for no good reason that I can discern (why the fuck do i need a "plasmoid" to store folders in, what the fuck is wrong with my desktop - just for starters?)... and thats coming from someone who loved KDE 2.0 through 3.5 and was looking forward to further development down the same path...

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?

 

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

[GauteL]

Could someone mod this total asshole down instead of giving him +4 insightful?

The moderators that modded him up either did it without thinking, or lack the empathy to understand what it is like to be sight-impaired.

First; most people can read much faster than what it takes to read out loud. Just try it yourself. Read a paragraph silently and time yourself, then do the same thing while reading it out loud. Reading it out loud is going to take much longer.

This also means for many people, their natural reading speed is much faster than a typical audio book, meaning the typical speed of an audio book can get quite irritating after a while if you really want to know what is happening next, but your mind is left waiting for input as the reader progresses at his/her own speed.

Slowly speeding up audio and training your comprehension seems to me to be a very sensible way of getting the speed of an audio book up to your natural reading speed.

So fuck you very much, but I'm willing to bet that I (and the original poster) know perfectly well when to read and when to "savour" something.

Your KDE 4 suggestion has been implemented by MS

[Ilgaz]

Comparison to Windows or even OS X is funny. You know why? KDE is also a gigantic suite of Windows applications which uses native Windows frameworks, controls. Same for OS X version. For example, a lot of open source developers expect ogg native playback on the host OS. What do I do? I simply install quicktime componenents from Xiph.

Best way is watching it compile on OS X, you will figure the magic.

That is a single proof you need when you talk about people -not- understanding what KDE 4 revolution is for open source. It is not "bigger, more stylish" KDE 3. As I said on my previous post, one should find a real or virtual windows and install kde 4 to it before talking about it.

For example, if Windows 7 sends a "right mouse button pressed" signal when one does that gesture, KDE 4 under Windows 7 will have it. You understand what I mean? Think beyond Linux&BSD.

In laptops, 1024x600 is low-end

[tepples]

Nowdays, 1280x1024 19" lcd is pretty much low end

In laptops, 1024x600 (9"/10") is low-end, and a few bargain-basement models have 800x480 (7").