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KDE Software Compilation 4.6.0 Released
jrepin writes "KDE is delighted to announce its latest set of releases, providing major updates to the KDE Plasma workspaces, KDE Applications and KDE Platform. These releases, versioned 4.6, provide many new features in each of KDE's three product lines. The KDE Plasma Workspaces come with a new Activities system, which should make it easier to manage different tasks."
They did come out with a netbook shell for smaller screens.
And the new defaults seem much more space oriented - smaller taskbar size at the the bottom, thinner window decorations etc.
This is a fantastic and welcome suite of upgrades, bugfixes, optimizations, and changes. Thank you KDE team!
For those who have forsworn KDE due to bad experiences with the 4.x line, let this be a formal request to reconsider your aversion. The initial KDE 4 releases were unusable, and this has greatly hurt their image and reputation. However, as of KDE SC 4.5, it is ready to replace other desktop environments. I promise you, to both GNOME users and KDE3.5 clingers: it is worth your time to try KDE SC 4.5 (or 4.6), and you will not be disappointed.
For a bit of history, even the KDE team understood that the early KDE4 releases were not suitable for most users. They urged those who wanted feature-complete desktops to avoid it. Much to their own disappointment, major distributions like Ubuntu and OpenSUSE rushed to adopt it and the result was ... well, mass disappointment. The first release recommended by the KDE team as a KDE3.5 replacement was 4.2, which was still generally lacking but worlds better than its predecessors. Every release contained more polish, and 4.5 was (in my opinion) the milestone of a release that fully eclipses KDE 3.5 and leaves no doubt about the vision of the KDE team.
Konqueror is still there, doesn't take much to make it default if you'd like.
That said, I run KDE 4, and I use Thunar (from XFCE) as the file manager, most of the time. I like it's simplicity, I guess.
Sent from my PDP-11
However ... Its not as polished under the hood. At by that I simply mean kwin is much more finicky than metacity. I can crash kwin at will sometimes. When it does work, the display is less likely to be as smooth with or without the compositing. I'm looking forward to trying 4.6 as they say kwin's been fixed up quite a bit.
I think there's a decent chance you're citing problems with your OS's packages or some other external cause rather than a bonafide KDE4 problem. I've been running KDE4 build from FreeBSD ports for a couple years now, and 4.3+ has been exceptionally stable for me on issues like compositing/windowing and such. There are still a few quirks/bugs that I run into once in awhile, but they aren't anywhere near serious enough for me to consider switching DE's. I'd run KDE4 simply for konsole and it's notifications subsystem alone it's that useful to me.
I think a lot really depends on your platform and how/where/when you get the packages. Maybe year or so ago, I tried out KDE4 on a Debian Lenny install and it was an absolutely brutal experience. If I hadn't had a previous very solid experience with KDE4 on FreeBSD, I might have been tempted to assume it was a KDE4 issue. I've also seen some really awful versions of things like kubuntu which don't do anything to help KDE4 reputation.
brandelf -t FreeBSD
For those still waiting for KDE to port things from KDE3, there's Trinity - http://trinity.pearsoncomputing.net/ Not perfect, but a great alternative.
It is nice to have OCR and Quanta fully functional again.
"Enjoy what you're doing! If it becomes drudgery, you're doing it wrong!" - Jim Butterfield
Been there a couple years now. M.
I'm not a prophet or a stone-age man,
I'm just a mortal with potential of a super man.
Clementine was inspired by amarok 1.4 but it uses QT4 instead of QT3. I started using it around 0.3 and was sold then. It is up to 0.6 and it is hands down the best music player out there IMHO.
We don't see the world as it is, we see it as we are.
-- Anais Nin