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KDE 4.4 Released Alongside Website Redesign
Cryophallion writes "KDE 4.4.0 has finally been released, along with a redesign of the KDE.org website. New features include tabbed windows, improved desktop search and social desktop features. 'Major new technologies have been introduced, including social networking and online collaboration features, a new netbook-oriented interface and infrastructural innovations such as the KAuth authentication framework. According to KDE's bug-tracking system, 7293 bugs have been fixed and 1433 new feature requests were implemented.' A feature guide is also available."
Looking forward to when this rolls out to Fedora 12.
It's hard to believe that's how Micronians are made. Why don't we see it right now by having you both kiss one another?
I used to love KDE. I turned a lot of other people onto it.
After 4.0, 4.1, 4.2... After what they did to Amarok... After the pathetic state of the last several Kubuntu releases... The question is, should we even bother to look at this release? Or are they still digging their hole deeper?
Yes, I am aware of the fascinating debate about who is responsible for these disasters. From 10,000 feet above it, it looks like the KDE leadership went to the dogs after v3. But I don't know, and what's more, I just don't care. The point is, the KDE brand is ruined right now. I know I am not alone in thinking this. Remember Linus? This Linus?
He switched to Gnome too. I held out a lot longer before I gave up. I loved KDE3 so much. And I really hated Gnome. Look at Mono for fuck's sake. But you know what? The KDE team beat all that loyalty out of me, crash by crash, regression by regression, blog post by blog post.
And you know what else? Somewhere a long the way they cleaned Gnome up, sanded down the worst rough edges, made it launch fast, and look pretty. It works. My Mom could use it. Unlike KDE4+, last time I looked. Which was months ago, because it was so bad I didn't even want to look anymore.
If I were the "KDE Team," I would lay very low, clean house, and labor until I had something amazing - something that would wow people again. Something original. Something worthy of their legacy.
Is this that release?
Or is it just another bandaid on the broken mess I've been watching unfold?
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Wow almost a meg for the front png file slide4.png ... easy to understand why site inst responding already....
KDE 4 (since 4.2) has been best desktop environment i have ever used. Kubuntu releases are not that good but they get the job done. I really did like KDE 3.5, but now i don't miss it at all. It seems that in every new KDE release, there are tons of new features that nobody really finds or notices, and still they are very important tiny things that make it faster and easier to use.
For the same reason that you do not take a buggy, unfinished mess and call it "v4.0."
When you write software for free, you cannot be held responsible for your code's quality, or your manners, or anything. No one can whine to you that you did not do enough for them for free. There is really only one thing you can do wrong.
And this is set the wrong expectations.
When you see people with their app v0.23beta (that everyone's been using in production for 4 years) - that's setting expectations conservatively. That's saying: "guys, I am not bringing a corporate QA department to test this. It may be awesome, but caveat emptor." This is How It Is Done. I mean, it's very easy. No one's saying you have to do big amounts of work and make something done. Just don't make big claims that it's done either. Or imply it. Or do things that other people could believe are implying it. In fact, if in doubt, just put a warning label. :)
When you say "New! Improved! Awesome! v4.0!!!" and then it fucking sucks, you are committing the only real sin in free software/open source: tricking people.
And even that's OK in the scheme of things. You're only ruining your own reputation. You just shouldn't expect people to keep coming back and wanting to use your code, or work with you, if you do that.
Hence, "lay low." KDE4 was a development branch. It should have been labeled as such, instead of "KDE4." With tiny fine print after you wasted your time and had a horrible experience saying "yeah we know it sucks, wait for 4.1." And with 4.1, rinse, and repeat.
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The API "documentation" is still completely unorganized and most of it is just Doxygen pages. While the Doxygen tagging is fairly good, this is not a "manual," it's a reference. And what about Plasma? I've wasted hours hacking applets without a real understanding of the APIs. The Plasma API front page is pretty much useless.
Although I suppose somebody will now yell at me for being too lazy to contribute to the docs... I'd be happy to, if I had some kind of handle I could grab to bootstrap myself and start delving into it. But seriously, no, you don't get good docs by people who are unfamiliar with the code just staring at it and trying to document their own misunderstandings. Somebody who actually designed and wrote this crap needs to step in. Please?
OK, OK! Mercy! :)
Victory to the little girls. :)
Which version do you all use? If they like it, maybe it's worth another look.
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Why, oh, why would they have removed such a basic desktop functionality. My eyes are above my nose, mot in my chin.
Gee, I was tooling around the kde.org website, seeing what they had done with the new layout, and all of a sudden I can't get to the site. I wonder what coulda happened all of a sudden...
or make any kind of meaningful, insightful comment when running down the work of others on the web I guess.
After the pathetic state of the last several Kubuntu releases...
I think that's half your problem right there.
Anybody want my mod points?
This is the kind of informative post I was hoping to get. It seems like it's time to look again.
I hope I made clear exactly how and why the KDE team ruined their own brand. No one else is responsible.
I hope I also made it clear how glad I will be to see them find their feet again and if this is the release I can finally use, then I only have one last observation:
Maybe they should call it KDE5 or something else that would draw attention to a newly working release (as opposed to the "KDE4" splash that drew attention to an unusable mess). :)
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Oh I was hardly vague or speaking out of turn - that's now proven.
I have open patches on bugs KDE4, one for many months, and part of my frustration is watching how badly issues are treated on that project - even when they have a clean fix all prepared and ready to apply, at the end of an impeccably documented bug. But you know, that wasn't even worth mentioning, because your underlying point was so stupid.
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Anyone have a link to the binary that actually works? Tried a bunch of the ones in mirrors and none seem to function.
-- Political fascism requires a Fuhrer.
Anyone else on here notice the video of Plasma Desktop on the release page? It looks awfully similar to the proposed Gnome Shell for Gnome 3.0. I don't believe in that KDE vs GNOME fanboy nonsense, but I think it's more than fair to compare them from a technological standpoint. The primary feature pushing Gnome 3.0 was Gnome Shell, but KDE has almost completely duplicated its functionality 6 months before 3.0's release date - assuming it won't be as buggy as Plasma was when it started out.
I wonder how this will affect the future of KDE and Gnome.
The decision to seriously overhaul KDE was a great decisions in the long run though it was completely unusable for several releases after the switch. I must say, it is beautiful now. With this release, I think it's time for me to switch back.
I love the new features shown in the videos.
I had used KDE3 for about 1-2 years, when KDE4 appeared. No question, 4.0 was impossible to use, and 4.1 was painful (my experience is with kubuntu). However, the breakeven for me was with KDE 4.2, when I thought this was a product at least as good as KDE3. Yes, there were features in KDE3 that KDE4 was missing, but there were also loads of new features, concepts and functionality in 4.2 that 3.5 couldn't do. I also always found 3.5 quite ugly.
I totally disagree with your notion of "digging the hole deeper". As much as things got better from 4.0 to 4.1 to 4.2 (in my opinion), they just continued on that trajectory to making 4.3 way better than 3.5. Now, I have been using KDE 4.4 betas for at least a month (in a production environment -- call me stupid, but I am just amazed about KDE4), and I am still thrilled how much better and nicer it got! Hell, I am even using the "crappy" kubuntu distro everyone is yelling at. OK, call me a fanboy. But you should know that I also seriously tried GNOME, and LXDE, and Xfce, and even IceWM -- I all didn't like them and went back to KDE4.
Maybe, it is just that you were so used to KDE3 and so good at it and so happy, that there was no way of matching your productivity with something as new and innovative as KDE4? I think KDE4 is going into a new, exciting direction, and that it will pay off that they did everything from scratch at some point. Similarly, Linux sucks for so many people who have been conditioned to using Windows, that they don't get anything accomplished in a different environment. Could that be some of the reason for your disappointment (along with your anger)?
The last time I used KDE was around the middle of 2000. 10 years on I'd like to try out 4.x and see what all the fuss is about. Can anyone recommend a distro that has a good KDE experience? I hear that some distros have screwed up KDE 4.x so I'd like to use one that will give me a decent experience.
Cory Doctorow talking about cloud computing makes as much sense as George W Bush talking about electrical engineering.
Was that thing finally rewritten, because knetworkmanager is kind of pathetic -- it doesn't even show type of encryption of available networks, and I know I could get that information from /sbin/iwlist, but the whole purpose of that program is to be convenient, and it fails at that. What happened to network manager plasmoid, where did it go in 4.2, is it coming back and why in gnome everything is working. (netbook-remix is sweet, BTW).
Yup, I am running 2.2 (I think). What is that dammed middle window that wastes space with a stupid picature of a CD. I can't close that pane (pain?) that displays lyrics etc....
I am listening to jazz...no freakin lyrics, why waste bandwidth and cpu looking that stuff up.
How can we customize this away?
I run this on Mepis 8.49 beta 4. I am getting used to KDE 4.3 and await the improved 4.4 !
-Jay
My only complaint with 4.4 is that I get an error message if I'm not running Nepomuk.
If I start it, it crashes most of the time. Even when it runs without crashing, it does nothing for me. I've noticed that every major distro has open bugs relating to Nepomuk crashes, and I'm not seeing fixes to be found anywhere.
If enough apps do a good job of making Nepomuk useful, then I might consider it in the future. But right now I have zero interest in it, and it isn't exactly optional in KDE 4.4.
It is the only ugly wart on an otherwise great release.
http://blindscribblings.com - Tasty pop-culture in conceptual fashion.
openSUSE 11.3 Milestone 1 includes KDE 4.4 RC2 (a build from two weeks ago)
http://download.opensuse.org/distribution/11.3-Milestone1/
http://blindscribblings.com - Tasty pop-culture in conceptual fashion.
So, does it now work with multiple independent X screens? I have 2 monitors and find Xinerama and Twinview to be annoying, but as much as I love KDE I just can't use it without having the 2nd monitor work.
First of all I really appreciate you sharing your perspective on this.
Who can be objective about these things? I loved KDE3, really did. I've really enjoyed may different fundamental UI frameworks, from Amiga's Workbench to nextstep to early gnome and xfce... Everyone's particular about different things. Who knows.
Obviously KDE4 was unstable for ages, but beyond that there seemed to be things that hinted at a bad underlying direction, too. Take the plasmid that showed folder contents on the desktop. Context menu items, keyboard shortcuts, and drop behaviors were broken and/or different from what konq or dolphin did. You know, I actually liked that they contained the "desktop" folder in a plasmid and let you control that. Great concept. But someone clearly was implementing file management a second time rather than generalizing what KDE already had. And that's just the first basic bit of functionality on the desktop that most everyone sees by default.
It's just one example. It was not only a bad user experience (when the DEL key deletes selected files, except on the desktop), but it betrayed a kind of architectural ineptitude.
BTW, I assuming they must have fixed that DEL key on the desktop at some point. But did they do it by laboriously getting the plasmid to copy the existing file browser code?
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This abitious release had its share of issues but did also show the great potential our products have, resulting in a large number of new contributors.
Should be ambitious, someone please let the KDE website folks, I can't because I'm at work.
Most ignorance is vincible ignorance. We don't know because we don't want to know. --Aldous Huxley
... and still we have no real Mac support.
-- I was raised on the command line, bitch
Should be ambitious, someone please let the KDE website folks know, I can't because I'm at work.
Most ignorance is vincible ignorance. We don't know because we don't want to know. --Aldous Huxley
to be the default desktop in a distro ?
waiting for ad.doubleclick.net
I agree that Amarok was ruined at 2.0, but the devs managed to get it working again for 2.2. I stuck with 1.4 for a long time but 2.2 is pretty good. The interface can be quickly configured to work almost the same way as 1.4 and some of the annoyances of 1.4 have been eliminated. It rocks again.
as for KDE:
3.5 was great
4.0 was a showstopper
4.1 worked if 3.5 was also installed (but not otherwise as in kubuntu)
4.2 worked
4.3 is great again
haven't tried 4.4 yet but Cantor should be awesome
When ever I use KDE since 3x days I can't help but feel like I am playing a badly designed computer game. You know, the games where every button feels like part of a picture that you can only find by trial an error? You know the games where you find out that some part of the display is actually part of a menu by the manual?
Back in the day Corel had done a nice implementation of a desktop with KDE, seams that was lost until Ubuntu came out. which other distros are now implementing a more simplistic GUI approach. Except KDE tries to make their GUI feel like a computer game interface or a teenager with an identity crises. With none of the base themes having buttons that look and feel like buttons. Clickable things need to stand out as something you can click on, and not everything about the OS needs to be animated.
Not to mention the whole "thats a feature not a bug" attitude. (example: disable password needed under the screen saver options)
And then reading about it's integration with "social networking" makes me cringe. But maybe I am just getting old . . . .
</rant>
So, I use gnome for most of my desktop linux needs, dispite it being behind the curve, and needing many KDE apps and libs.
The spirit of resistance to government is so valuable on certain occasions that I wish it to be always kept alive
> Context menu items, keyboard shortcuts, and drop behaviors were broken and/or different from what konq or dolphin did.
little of that was easily sharable when folderview was started. with each release, the people working on the file management components (konq, dolphin, file open/save, folderview) have been pulling this kind of code out into libkonq (in kdebase-apps) and libkfile (in kdelibs; this is actually where most of this stuff exists now).
the was pretty much the same for kdesktop in kde 3, as well. it reimplemented a lot of interaction and functionality itself, but had a number of years to get there. folderview is already more advanced at this point, which is promising.
between the modularization of these file management bits into more easily sharable libraries and the more component-centric model of plasma, i really hope we don't have to go through a similar process again for many, many years (i won't tempt fate and add "if at all" ;)
Hi.
UltraTurbo++ Linux Newbie here.
After some random pokes at Gnome Ubuntu 6.06, and hearing the rumblings of the early KDE 4, I held off for a few years. Based on some NotCited reports on the web, I went exactly for OpenSuse 11.2 KDE (I think 4.3?). Apparently I Chose Wisely.
KDE 4.3 has a few odd feeling placements compared to WinXP, but I managed to stumble my way through some Nvidia drivers and a terminal svc client, and flash mostly works by this point.
Anyone know if the difference between 4.3 and 4.4 is dramatic, or should I "sit back and wait for 3 more releases" again?
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
Maybe just me, but (XP / Google chrome) when I highlight text on the new KDE site, it has a faint aura around the letters. Very cool
if I hadn't already commented, I'd mod this up
Anybody want my mod points?
Thank you sir. +1 Insightful.
You are going to LOVE the new pink pony menu bar! And unicorns...UNICORNS!!!
Will not be happy until the unicorns fart snowflakes. Dammit! Why don't the devs ever listen to users?
"I believe in Karma. That means I can do bad things to people all day long and I assume they deserve it." : Dogbert
Why do the KDE developers insist on using uber-bizarre names for user programs? Can you get even the slightest idea what these programs do from reading their names: Neopomuk, Dolphin, Gwenview, Blogilo, KGet, Kopete, Kstars, Parley, Marble, Cantor, Rocs, Nepomuk, Akonadi, Kauth, KNewStuff3?
This is incredibly bad design, and for what? To make sure that KDE is used only by the cognoscenti on the outside chance that application program improvements might appeal to the casual user? And isn't it about time for someone to post the biannual question, is Linux ready for the desktop?
(Please tag as flamebait since ./ers don't like these kinds of challenges.)
Hah. Calling it v4.0 and then in fine-print "a developer's release" is like making a green stop sign or cherry flavored poison. It was stupid, and not admitting it or learning from it is even "stupider." LOL.
They just wanted to have a release before it was ready and pretend it was. And they mashed their reputation into the dirt as a result.
The thing that really burns is that the world needs an alternative to Novell and Gnome. And KDE should be spanking them.
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not seen anybody do a distro better than the Sabayon guys.
KDE is far more polished than any other offering i have seen.
It works for me and I wouldn't go back to KDE3. I'm on OpenSuSE, though. I'm on 11.2 now and it just works. I don't understand all this criticism. Maybe a bad distro or resistance to new concepts, I don't know. Still, I have a few problems: Kaffeine does not handle well DVB TV (the KDE3 version was perfect) and I haven't found a use for Nepomuk. I hope 4.4 fix these minor problems.
So calling it v3.9Alpha would have been asking too much?
What was it, do you think, that made them reject this alternate version number, and go with v4.0 instead?
Surely not a respect for common practices of version numbering.
They made a green stop sign. The disclaimers, IIRC, were not so prominent until after they had already sunk their own reputation with the (totally avoidable) confusion over who their audience was for that release.
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Let me guess. Most of KDE 4 nay sayers using Debian or debian based (kubuntu etc) distro... Right ?
So here my story...
After Kubuntu 8 my KDE pains was begin. No real ATI support (for dual desktop). Sucked performance, Weird Firefox problems. Some extensions never work because of that, this . I re fresh install every Kubuntu relases. Problems are same. Somewhere between 8.10 and 9.00 I try to use Debian desktop same results. And I use that desktop for my work. My anger grows and grows. Day by day I feel like I'm using Windows 95...
One day, After one maybe more years of sucking KDE 4 experience, I was nearly switching WIndows after more than 10 years of Linux Desktop usage, at that time, I search something, on a forum, somebody suggest that Sabayon Linux (gentoo based binary thingy) for some better video peformance or someting. I decide to give a try..
After first setup probably 4 months pass.
Results are interesting.
No ATI problem. Dual desktop (which I could not run ever under Kubuntu/Debian) run like snap. Decent desktop performance. It was very nice feeling to using Linux Desktop again.
Still have problem with Pulse audio and Flash videos and some times Skype gone mad.
Other than than it was fine and working...
And this bad KDE4 experience on Debian smells to bad...
No one can tell me they can't fix that sucking Video Card problem more than a year. At that time, I curse KDE guys, I curse ATI guys and I curse my self to coose ATI. I never think it was a distro problem.
So ?
Me thinks Debianistas does not like KDE.... Because of favor for GNOME or some other stupid obsession to pure GNU in their twisted mind.
Yeah, I like Debian too and use my servers all time. And I like (k)ubuntu too.
And now
I say.
Both of them SUCK ON KDE4
If you are Debian or Debian derivated distro user and have problems with KDE4 just try something else.
Results may interesting...
[My english is better than most other people's Turkish, so please point out mistakes politely. Thank you.]
KDE fan here, still hanging on to Kubuntu 8.04 KDE3 for dear life until they can get a LTS Kubuntu out (coming up with 10.04). I think KDE 4.4 should be par with KDE3 now, although it will still have been too freshly hatched for my taste at the time Kubuntu 10.04 comes out --I'm going to wait a couple of months for the patches to come out first.
Meanwhile, though, I don't think either KDE3 or KDE4 Kubuntu are stable enough for the family bigscreen computer, so I will put GNOME back. The only thing that drove me to switch from Ubuntu GNOME to Kubuntu KDE was the inability to specify a networked computer for a file name. Say I want to play a video on SMplayer, but the video's sitting on my laptop computer. I want to be able to specify that the filename is "fish://MyLaptop.MySOHOnet/videos/myvideo.avi" and then the desktop will reach into the laptop and grab the file.
Right now on Ubuntu, I have to go transfer the file from MyLaptop.MySOHOnet/videos/myvideo.avi, and then play it from the local drive temporary copy. Is there any way for GNOME to do what KDE has been doing for ages?
Any help would be appreciated. I figured with your experience of KDE-to-GNOME, you'd be the one to ask.
404555974007725459910684486621289147856453481154 in hex is "You sank my Battleship?"
[GPG key in journal]
I'm not sure why everybody seems to think Kubuntu is the place to go for a KDE system. It's really rough around the edges, and Ubuntu doesn't stand behind it at all. That said, it works okay these days.
But if you want a KDE distro that seriously cares about getting KDE to work well, pick a KDE DISTRO. Mandriva is the best IMHO. SUSE is supposed to be 'the best', but SUSE has always thrown too much at their system. Just seems bloated. Mandriva is a really nice newbie system that happens to work really well for experienced users too. And it's had KDE4 working pretty well since 4.1. My only complaint with Mandriva is that they try to steer you to Fluendo, so unless you know about easyurpmi.org, you'll have trouble getting all your multimedia set up. But once you visit easurpmi.org, the Mandriva repos are great. And the Mandriva pagkaging gui is easier to use than Ubuntu's.
It's a shame Mandriva seems to have fallen off of the radar. It's a really nice distro. Maybe they had some shaky ones in the past (I left them for PCLinuxOS for a while, which is also really nice), but they're really on their game these days.
Posted from my Android phone. Oh, I can change this? There, that's better...
Thank you - very interesting and good to know!
I wonder why the folks involved didn't unify the code up front rather than have redundant code and then refactor? Why waste so much effort doing it the wrong way first?
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Seriously. Provide a damn option to get rid of the cashew. I realize suse has put this option in, but it's a little annoying that the KDE team refuses to add that option in (at least as far as 4.3) given the overwhelming negative feedback they've received. The only person in the world who likes that stupid cashew is Aaron Seigo.
I use KDE 4.3 on my fancy new desktop computer, though only since 1-2 months now. I have already been content with 4.2, but xfce just offers all the features i need and has better response times. I switched (back) to kde because i wanted to play a round a bit and see what was new, and some stuff is really cool :). I don't use my desktop for productive stuff, i have my (significantly weaker) laptop for that (which runs xfce).
My main problem at the moment is that - probably since i mix apps from different DE - hotkeys are very different from application to application (why the heck doesn't dolphin create new folders with ctrl+n ? all other file managers i know do)
I've gotta say, the KDE team has really taken far strides since 4.1. When 4.1 first came out, I thought it was pretty interesting, but I just hated using it. But this seems like they are making it more streamlined and adding many very functional and productive features to it!
That being said, I still stick with my KDE 3.5 :D Always my favorite
Why? Links with valuable information (and often to projects) are shuffled around, frustrating many individuals and organizations who have linked to these sites and may not have the time or inkling to go back over their former blog/website/magazine/etc and correct each broken link! This happened most recently with Linux.com's site, where hundreds of articles at suchandsuch.linux.com and forexample.linux.com were moved to linux.com/whatever !
What's very unnerving is when government does this, I've noticed it quite often, they will build a new domain and months or a year later the domain vanishes and most of the content is either shuffled off to another domain (old or new) or disappears never to be found again (unless you're lucky and archive.org has indexed it but even then the information can disappear upon request!).
We all enjoy site redesigns, but please, employ an intelligent webmaster who will retain articles, documents, and project links instead of changing them every few months. Several open source projects do this, too, I believe it's just a trick to give the user the appearance of something new and fresh when little has changed underneath.
I appreciate the long standing sites which provide information and the links never break five, ten years later. Those are the sites with webmasters who get it.
I tried KDE 4.3.5 for a few months, but had to revert back because KMail/Kontact crashed constantly. If I can't use Kontact in KDE, then I've lost half the benefit of using KDE. I wonder if these problems were included in the 7000+ bugs they claimed to have fixed in 4.4.0. Now I'm back to my ol' tiling window manager - Awesome (which also crashes from time to time :/ )... Maybe I'll give xmonad a try.
When a new Gnome version is released, we can read the release notes (new features guide) in multiple languages.
How about KDE?
http://kde.org/announcements/4.4/
In the time of this writing, I see 9 languages only. Nice start, but not even close to Gnome's. Yeah, I do speak English, but some people would be more comfortable reading in their native language.
... Dolphin being faster? Last time i checked it was slow like hell. Especially deleting files and resizing it's window. And does Okular(?) now have an implementation of annotations which isn't braindead and actually usable? Is it comparable to PdfXChangeViewer?