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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."
I find KDE is awesome where you have a couple of 1900x1200 monitors or better but is complete overkill on a 1366x800 laptop screen. Because of this I find I tend to end up using Gnome more. I do tend to just end up running Eclipse, etc, full screen, so perhaps this is part of it as well. I just don't have the space to appreciate the pretty widgets, etc.
Disagree. Kde is awesome in its goals and has been very ambitious in the kde 4 redesign. I love where they are going and use it every day.
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.
Plus, I have no hate for Gnome 3. I think I like where they are going. Its fast and seems to just focus on workflow improvements. KDE I feel like it still isn't quite there. Its very flexible, sure. But I have yet to see that flexibility pay off in such a dramatic way as gnome 3 does by default.
Well.. maybe. Or Maybe not. But Definitely not sort of.
I do that about once every 3 months, and then I remember why I always went back to Gnome. Gnome isn't flashy, but everything works, and it gets the job done.
Every few months I try out the 4.x line, and I always walk away disappointed. It's got so much potential, and it looks really nice, but basic things still don't function like they should. Either the plasma widgets are broken or buggy, or it can't handle basic things like auto-mounting network samba shares in Dolphin, or when it does it won't stream video over a network without downloading the files first. Just too many rough edges for my taste. The last version I tried was 4.5, and literally just ditched it a few days ago and went back to Gnome. I plan on trying it again on the 4.7 release.
Don't know anyone else who's had this problem but on the 64-bit upgrade X started throwing errors about a missing session - then you clicked "okay" and KDE started normally.
Solution was in this thread - all I had to do was select KDE as a session once.
http://forum.kde.org/viewtopic.php?f=66&t=91936
Also, my panel lost transparency although compositing was enabled. Changing the panel theme and then changing it back solved that.
On the 32-bit netbook which has just about all unnecessary stuff turned off including akonadi KDE's memory footprint went from ~180mb to ~170mb at idle. I use compiz instead of kwin on both machines, though.
we see things not as as they are, but as we are.
-- anais nin
I actually miss Linux in many ways. I used it daily from 1994 (Yggdrasil linux) until 2008 or early 2009 (various distros in between but during 2007-2009, Fedora). Then I got distracted with my photography and other tasks that basically _required_ me to use Windows (no, Photoshop under Wine did NOT work well at all, and GIMP doesn't cut it for lots of reasons). I changed my dual-boot to default to booting Windows XP and eventually the linux partition disappeared entirely. If I recall my last install of linux onto a partition was when KDE 4.something was released. I do not like Gnome at all and retrofitting the distros with KDE 3.5 was too much bother -- I had (and have) more important priorities these days. I also love KDevelop and... anyway... it's a long story. Nowadays I run Windows 7 and Ubuntu in a virtual machine and am happy with the set up. I do sometimes pine for the days when I used linux almost exclusively, but my current configuration "just works". Maybe I'll install fedora on a virtual machine and check out KDE4.6... maybe it's usable again
With KDE 4.4/5 the basic desktop (window manager, taskbar thinge, desktop, etc) became worthy (stable, mostly feature complete, etc.) Memory use is entirely reasonable. The file manager (konqureror) even survived. Yay KDE.
I did run into some 'social' subsystem (akonadi or some such) that actually launches a MySQL instance with a 50MiB (and growing) seed database to track one thing or another (or something; I haven't the faintest idea what it's trying to do.) Fortunately it can be removed with few consequences; think I've seen one program that spewed some console errors because the dbus services were missing. Now the only goofy thing left is the 'kde wallet' nag that jumps up once in a while for software you wouldn't suspect of being integrated with KDE by default (that one may actually belong in the distro's lap.)
(This isn't an appeal to have these things explained; I'm not interested and won't be developing an interest.)
Thanks for the great work on the basic desktop stuff KDE. Please consider that some folks would prefer a less integrated experience; KDE is found in places where unloading your life into various 'social' databases or configuring your personal info into single-sign-on 'helper' stuff is very inappropriate. A 'just works without all the personal info/high touch integration and corresponding configuration nags' option would be ideal. Overlooking this is entirely understandable; enthusiastic developers often have tunnel vision and fail to consider the simpler use cases while building their visions. Without those people nothing would be built at all.
Also, KDE needs a built-in (meaning no extra stuff to install, lightweight, no glitches, no elaborate tray pop-ups) no-mouse-required, minimal-keyboard-gymnastics way of entering all Unicode characters into everything that accepts text.
Thanks again.
Lurking at the bottom of the gravity well, getting old
they'd put Ksirtet back in kdegames. At one point, I was 81st in the world on its worldwide high scores board, and that was my life's peak.
MSIE: The world's most standards-complaint web browser.
Wonder if they have bluetooth audio fixed, I find KDE 3.5.* allows me to pair a BT headset (I have three models all work fine with Android) but KDE keeps trying to treat the headset as a data transfer device instead as an audio out device.