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What's Coming In KDE 4.4
buzzboy writes "If you're wondering what the folks over at KDE have been cooking up for the next major release, KDE 4.4, well, quite a bit as it turns out. In a lengthy interview, KDE core developer and spokesperson for the project Sebastian Kugler details the myriad changes that are coming with the 4.4 release — the fifth major release since KDE 4.0 debuted to much criticism nearly two years ago. The project has closed about 18,000 bugs over the past six months and the pace of development is snowballing. The 'heavy-lifting' in libraries and frameworks for 4.0 is now starting to pay off. Perhaps the biggest change is in the development of a semantic desktop. According to Kugler, 'If you tag an image in your image viewer, the tag becomes visible in your desktop search. That's how it should be, right?' There is also a picture gallery of KDE 4.4 (svn) screenshots so you can see what it will look like."
It is a pity that KDE 4.0 wasn't really ready to be a 4.0 release, and the controversy wasn't wholly undeserved; but I've actually been pretty pleased at how KDE 4.X is shaping up.
Had prior 4.X releases been 3.9X releases, with 4.0 coming soon, I suspect that the mood would have been largely positive.
They have the trifecta of crummy website behaviour: excessive pagination, click-through ads and lazily regurgitating other people's content.
Classical Liberalism: All your base are belong to you.
I saw a preview of the semantic desktop at the Open World Forum in Paris and I think it has the same down-fall as other initiatives: you need to tag most of it yourself.
Other people may be better at this than I am, but I can't even be bothered to tag my e-mails, let alone each and every file. Granted, this system does some 'auto-tagging' but to call it a semantic desktop because of that is a bit rich. YMMV and I like to be persuaded to look again.
Karma? What's that again?
I couldn't find a version on google cache. So here's the full text:
The final release of KDE 4.4 is due in early 2010, and not since the arrival of KDE 4.0 two years ago has an open source desktop environment been so highly anticipated by the free desktop community. Unlike the anti-climax that was the first KDE 4 release, however, KDE 4.4's developers say this new version will actually deliver on many of the original promises of this next-generation desktop environment -- and then some.
If maturity is the measure of a desktop environment then KDE 4.4 will have a lot to live up to, as it represents the fourth major release of the KDE 4 series.
Many small things that make the user's life easier have been done. . . Those changes might not be significant on their own, but they add up to a system that feels really well rounded
-- Sebastian Kugler, KDE spokesperson
With the feature freeze for KDE 4.4 looming in November 2009 -- after which no new features will be added and only bugs will be fixed -- we decided to take a look at what KDE has in store to lift the free desktop to a new paradigm.
Features, updates and bug fixes
Like any major version increase, KDE 4.4 will include numerous feature enhancements, updates and bug fixes.
According to KDE's developers, 4.4 will have an immediate advantage over previous versions by leveraging the latest Qt 4.6 toolkit, which brings a new layout mechanism in QGraphicsView and improved performance, among many other additions. In fact, KDE 4.4.0 was delayed by two weeks until February 2010 to make it possible to release on top of Qt 4.6.
General enhancements include improved desktop search, better privilege escalation, remote controllable Plasma widgets and more polish to the existing code base.
KDE developer and spokesperson for the project, Sebastian Kugler, says it's difficult to determine exact numbers of features, but for 4.4 it would be a very high number.
"4.4 is a significant release that brings many new features. We have new applications, for example Blogilo, a local applications for writing blogs, allowing for offline editing of articles," Kugler says. "There's is a new network manager (living in the notification area right now, a plasmoid for it is planned for later). Also applications that are not directly shipped with KDE are maturing now. Amarok, Digikam, Konversation and all those applications that are well known from their KDE 3 version are now available in a KDE 4 version."
The desktop look-and-feel has also received a makeover. The new Air theme for the Plasma desktop shell is more polished and has added subtle animations to improve the user experience.
"Many small things that make the user's life easier have been done, sometimes something as small as giving feedback from the buttons in the quick launch area of the panel," Kugler says. "Those changes might not be significant on their own, but they add up to a system that feels really well rounded and well done."
A more visible development in Plasma is the new netbook interface, which will also debut as part of KDE 4.4. Plasma-Netbook will sport a mobile computer form-factor for desktop Plasma widgets.
Kugler says there are plenty of interesting changes behind the interface, too. KDE 4.4 will ship an authorization framework based on PolicyKit, so applications and the desktop can elevate privileges safely, and administrators can specify exactly what a specific user is allowed to do.
KDE's developers have also made the desktop more social and "connected". There is a Plasma applet that shows answers to questions from the KDE knowledge base, with the aim of making it easier for new users to find help.
KDE 4.4 will also make it possible to drag content from Web sites onto the desktop. For example, a picture can be dragged it from the Web browser onto the desktop and a Plasma applet showing this picture is added to the desktop where the file was dropped. The wallpaper can also be set this way or from any remote URL.
I
Jesus Christ, even the developers' names...
I work on the "System Activity" thing (pops up if you press ctrl-esc. Like Task Manager). It's hard to get feedback about it.
So if you're a KDE user and use this, let me know what you think, how you find it, suggest any improvements/features etc. UI designers, code documenters etc also welcome to give feedback :-)
I often see people posting about how KDE/Gnome never listen to UI designers, Usability people, etc. But I've personally never had any feedback or bug reports about that sort of thing, ever. So do feel free to file such bugs - us developers are listening.
The non-interactive elements need to blend in, so yes they have to look "boring" and grey is a neutral color. The widgets, on the other hand, should pop up a bit (not Fisher-Price, plastic toys Windows XP-style pop though), so they should have some color to it.
I can't see the screenshots, the website is already slashdotted.
Also, the semantic desktop concept is shaping up nicely. I was weary of enabling nepomuksearch with strigi, because in the early 4.x releases they were extremely buggy. Then I went ahead with 4.3.3 (on Arch), and now strigi seem to work fine. It uses minimal resources, indexing is automatically switched off when you switch to powersaving mode (useful on a laptop), otherwise CPU usage is barely noticable. It still uses a shitload of memory, but with KDE 4.x you have plenty to spare. I have 2 Gb in my laptop, and without nepomuk/strigi memory usage after startup is 15%. That includes all the daemons necessary for a modern desktop (including cups), 2 desktops with different wallpapers and widgets, wicd. After running it for days without reboot, memory usage stabilized around 30% including ktorrent running in the background. After I started using nepomuk, that number icreased by around 20% - still pretty lean considering what it does. Which reminds me, nepomuk (on my setting at least) works in dolphin (just start typing in the searchbar), not in the normal Find files option accessible from KMenu.
Oh yes, here's another one: the inability to make two rows of taskbar at the bottom.
Actually, I think this is possible now. Although, I agree that the rest of KDE4 makes me not want to use it either so I can't confirm at the moment. I do go back to it every now and again to check it out and see what's new. Unfortunately, it doesn't work well with remote desktop programs like vnc or freenx so I can't confirm that multi-row taskbar at the moment.
Wait, here we go:
When you configure your panel ( Right Click on the Panel bar-->Arrangement->Size-->"Custom" ) so that the size is less than 34 pixels, it will display as a single row.
When it is more than 34 pixels but less than 52 pixels, it will display as a double row. When it is greater than 52 pixels, it will display as a triple row.
(You can also choose "Tiny" or "Small" and it will be a single row, whereas "Normal" will display as a double row, and "Large" will display as a triple row.)
There is no "I disagree" mod for a reason. Flamebait, Troll, and Overrated are not substitutes.
Dear KDE devs,
Please rethink the vertical text that has infected KDE4 like so much ringworm. It's hard to read, hard to use, and completely unnecessary. Also, please stop aping Windows Vista and 7. Or at least stop copying their bad ideas.
Thanks.
Since KDE 4.2, they claim that "now" it is ready for general consumption, but at each new version they still claim to have fixed thousands of bugs.
If that 18000 number is to believed, doesn't that imply that 4.3 was a horribly buggy release?
I also love the windows port they're doing: http://windows.kde.org/ Works great for those who're stuck on windows boxes at work.
Yes, read at a higher threshold.
So what you're saying is you want to look in the muck for pearls, but are offended by the muck? Tough. If this post can be deleted, then those pearls you're looking for will be deleted in just the same way.
although I've recently been tending towards gnome, I really love a lot about KDE. I just wish they would forget about certain features for now and focus on stability and quality every-day features.
Specifically the "semantic desktop" I've used kde for years and never used it. Why the hell would I waste time tagging all my files? I have a sensible directory hierarchy which works just fine. I never find myself spending hours searching for stuff on my computer, because I know where all the things I need are, because I use them all the time. If I didn't know where something was that would imply I never use it, in which case, why am I spending time to tag things I never use? Just in case I might need it?
What I do need is for firefox to pick up on my application preferences (what opens up a zip, etc), for drag and drop to be snappy and accurate and always work, for ark to not suck so hard, for my folderviews on my desktop to always be up to date, look good, not pile up icons in weird ways, etc, etc.
I like that kde is very forward thinking in their features, but sometimes I'd like them to live a little more in the present. If you had an awesome super-intelligent automatic tagger that would let me search with vague queries and get exactly what I want, that'd be great, but spending your time on a dressed up database that tracks all kinds of stuff I have to put in by hand is a waste of everybody's time.
Ze Atomic Device! It iz Ztolen!