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."

Comments

Re:Wonderful - everyone should try this!

[Beelzebud]

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.

32-bit went fine, 64-bit was a bit of a pain...

[pointbeing]

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.

Thoughts on KDE

[TopSpin]

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.

Bluetooth

[EEPROMS]

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.