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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."
but no, thanks!
My KDE 3.5.10 serves me well. No stupid Windows Vista-like menus, no bling bling. I'll wait for KDE5. Hopefully, they'll come to their senses.
I don't disagree, but could you elaborate on the *why*? It's been a lot of years (like 3) since I haven't tried KDE on my desktop and it was way too unstable for me.
And then finding a worm in the seventh one ...
Lacking <sarcasm> tags,
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.
Dont get me wrong, I *love* gnome, those guys are doing a terrific job, but I'm going to install kubuntu-desktop, let's see what all the fuzz is all about. And also because I can, I've got a little time to spare, maybe I'll stick to KDE, who knows.
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.
So KDE is now a "software compilation"? What was wrong with "desktop environment"?
I am trolling
I basically use a setup where I use many GUI apps from both KDE4 and Gnome, Emerald as the WM and avant-window-navigator as a panel. I use gnome-terminal over the KDE one (Terminal). I've tried KDE4, but my machine is too slow to run it properly, and I think Gnome just has a cleaner design - but I'm a command line sort of guy, and only fire up Nautilus to access SMB shares, so it's probable that I've missed many of KDE4's usability details. Strangely enough, I can use Compiz with effects like transparency and blur just fine.
Emotions! In your brain!
From what I've seen of Gnome Shell, it's even less flexible ... I hope they keep those of us with wide screens who like side panels in mind rather than restricting them to the top.
Yea, Dolphin sucks big time. I'm running KDE 4.0 and I still have Konqueror, it's just not the default file manager out of the box.
^^vv<><>BA
I really want to love KDE 4, but it has felt so choppy for me. I'm running fairly beefy hardware, a quad core processor, mid-high end video card, plenty o' RAM, etc. I've been using 4 off-and-on since the first beta releases, and maybe I'm tainted by that, but compared side-by-side with 3.5 it's just meh.
The animated menu feels really sluggish, I usually revert to the classic menu style to feel like I can actually get to the applications I want to use.
Stop complaining and put them on the menu bar, you say? Fine. Wait -- Why the did my Menu button sitting to the left of the bar on my other monitor now? Really KDE? Really?
Where are my desktop icons? Ah, right, I'm just a Windows user. I don't get the "vision". Actually, I'll just keep my files on the desktop, thanks. You know, like GNOME, Winblowz, and OS X do. If I didn't want them there, I'd use a Tiling Window Manager.
And I am SICK OF THE GOD DAMN CASHEW! Widgets are worthless unless you have a hard-on for staring at a desktop with no applications open.
Ah, so that's why the desktop icons are gone -- more room for the useless widgets! Woohoo, a spinning globe on my desktop!
The printer manager put me in tears. It was easier just to add the damn thing from the CUPS web interface. And while I'm on the topic, the network manager blows too. I like the graph, guys, but how about making it easier to configure a wireless network? Seems like I have to do some voodoo to actually get available wireless networks to pop up. Also, a lock icon to show me the security of a wireless network is way better than the Windows-esque "Stop-light shield". Stop making me feel bad with your red shield with an X through it whenever I want to steal my neighbour's wireless connection.
Don't get me wrong, I think KDE 4 is great if you're more interested in playing with compositing and widgets than doing anything productive.
But KDE 4.6, I'll give you another chance. Please don't break my heart again
What is the big deal with printing? Install CUPS, point a browser of your choice to localhost:631 and configure away and your done.
My karma is not a Chameleon.
or are there a lot of comments that KDE & Gnome are dead? What are Penguins suppose to use?
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
I tend to agree. Even though I have been using KDE since their initial 4.0 release and in that time I have somewhat warmed up to Dolphin. I really really do miss the usefulness of the old konquerer; to date that is my biggest DISAPPOINTMENT with KDE.
My karma is not a Chameleon.
That's total baloney. I have yet to use any kde app that has "gotten in my way".
My karma is not a Chameleon.
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
The only real competition KDE has today is XFCE.
KDE has a lot of nice things, but some of us just want a taskbar, a start menu and a system tray. The fancy new desktop things in KDE don't interest me all since I don't even have a desktop turned on. Same with the fancy new graphics (I like Clearlooks) and programs (I used to like Amarok, but Banshee suddenly became more attractive with KDE 4). I think it really just comes down to what you want from from your DE.
Also, GNOME 3 doesn't look bad. Of course I'm a little worried that it'll suck (there are definitely historical reasons for not trusting the GNOME devs' ideas of what's usable), but from what I've seen it could actually be pretty cool. It looks like they took a lot of ideas from Gnome-Do (a Launchy-like program), and the "minimizing distractions" idea could definitely help me out. It's impossible to say until it actually comes out though.
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
Whoosh?
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
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
Though I greatly prefer Konqueror, I have to reluctantly agree with the present arrangement. New users get a simple, easy to use file manager, and those who know what they're doing can change the default easily.
This is actually one of the greatest things about KDE: defaults that are both sensible and not too surprising to newbies, and the ability for power-users to easily configure things pretty far from those defaults.
# cat
Damn, my RAM is full of llamas.
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
What is the big deal with printing? Install CUPS, point a browser of your choice to localhost:631 and configure away and your done.
Can you get a print preview feature using that strategy?
With KDE3, I made a point of using KDE apps to print things because they all had great print preview functionality. With KDE4, that all went away as far as I can tell. Non-KDE apps have really spotty and/or inaccurate preview support, and now I end up wasting paper on messed up printouts.
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.
Prepare to be disappointed. While KWin crashes are rare since the bad old days pre 4.3, it's performance leaves much to be desired. 4.6 is still slower than other WMs like OpenBox. For example: If you play Minecraft and use F11 to toggle fullscreen it takes a few seconds for KWin to do it, but OpenBox does it instantly. This is with compositing off.
I still use KWin because it integrates better than Compiz.
Unicode in Slashdot
I've been running Windows in a window since around 2001, and haven't booted MS software on the bare metal since. This way I get all the usability and admin goodness of whatever Linux flavor I want, while still getting to use any Windows-only software that work requires of me. And having the ability to take snapshots of the machine is quite nice -- if an install hoses something in the virtual Windows box, I just roll back to the last snapshot. Plus the VMs are portable, since they're basically files, so I can just copy the whole VM over to my laptop when I'm traveling.
Cheers,
"What in the name of Fats Waller is that?"
"A four-foot prune."
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.
Yes you can get a accurate print preview with KDE4 apps, eg okular while printing to a CUPS based printer. I started using KDE4 full-time with the 4.2.x branch and I don't recall print preview as an issue. Maybe you were using some apps that hadn't been ported to correctly?
brandelf -t FreeBSD
Gnome looks a bit more professional with the menu structures, icons and nautilus. With KDE it feels as though you have to do a lot more to get the same operations done. Couple of things I find annoying are the space utilization on the windows, they should try to maximize the window area and not shrink it with big icons and fonts, next... the file browser is not as good as nautilus.
Hmm, it looks like okular does have a print preview... but that doesn't help me much because PDFs are just about the only thing that almost always print as expected anyway.
From a quick check, none of konqueror, kate or gwenview seem to have it. That seems to rule out print previewing most non-PDF files with the primary KDE apps. (My pet peeve is printing web pages; it seems that every browser developer is in some kind of conspiracy to print the last text line of any web page alone on its own sheet of paper, no matter how short the page looks.)
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.
Then file a bug report! http://bugs.kde.org. If you have a repeatable set of actions that can make KWin crash "on command", then TELL THEM and they'll fix it.
M.
I'm not a prophet or a stone-age man,
I'm just a mortal with potential of a super man.
It's not exactly a print preview, but I just do my test prints to the virtual PDF printer. Quicker, uses less paper - and as you say, PDF's are fairly trustworthy with printing.
I have. It and several duplicates were already there. It will be fixed, as all of my issues I've found on have been. I have no doubt of that. However, I've never been able to reproducibly crash Gnome. I've found three such bugs with different causes in KDE since 4.3
Well.. maybe. Or Maybe not. But Definitely not sort of.
I don't print very much so I hadn't noticed the preview abilities absence in some of those apps. I imagine that would be an inconvenience if you are printing regularly from it. A couple other base KDE4 apps do have the ability and stuff like koffice does, and of course you can always print to a PDF/PS and open with okular and set it's format. Again, that would be an inconvenience but are you really trying to print from kate frequently? I use kate for many things, but not for printing. I can't even remember the last time I've printed code or a script on a piece of paper, but I'm sure it has to be a least several years. For documents that I do intend to print I use a word processor, and KDE4 based or not they seem to have a good print preview.
Looks like print preview is a relatively easy per-app setting in KDE4. I guess there hasn't been a lot of complaints, or it might have been fixed by now.
https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=177542
brandelf -t FreeBSD
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
Can you record sound with your installation of KDE? I'm talking about you singing or playing an instrument, and using an internal microphone. What about recording video with an internal web cam?
testing out my trending skills
They've fiddled with it so that it uses the same layout for files as Dolphin. Might as well use Dolphin.
Michael Reed, freelance tech writer.
Never mind about that whole "gnome never crashes" bit. Just found a case that crashes nautilus :)
Well.. maybe. Or Maybe not. But Definitely not sort of.
The only real competition KDE has today is XFCE.
KDE has a lot of nice things, but some of us just want a taskbar, a start menu and a system tray. The fancy new desktop things in KDE don't interest me all since I don't even have a desktop turned on. Same with the fancy new graphics (I like Clearlooks) and programs (I used to like Amarok, but Banshee suddenly became more attractive with KDE 4).
You do know that you don't have to use "fancy new desktop things" and "fancy new graphics" just because KDE provides them, right? You can, um, turn them off?
Pirate Party UK
People, it is an illusion that you just can turn stuff off everywhere. You can turn off things up to the level of how the system was designed. And KDE is now designed for over-componentisation, over-information and over-configuration. It needs a consistent narrative. Maybe it will develop one. This is needs something that would be good to turn on, not off. :)
There's Kamoso, at least for recording from your webcam. Disclaimer: I've never used it before. As for sound, IIRC there's nothing built in. You can try Audacity.
SSC
It still lack a few but major components.
- akonadi_mapi_resource (exchange real native mapi connector not using https or webdave or imap or any other MS options that are always turned off in a big company. openXchange is NOT that one, openchange one is ok but seems dead) ...
- akonadi_iphone_calendar_resource
- akonadi_iphone_contact_resource
- akonadi_iphone_notes_resource
- akonadi_iphone_bookmark_reource
-
The mapi connection is a MUST have and is a big missing... Instread of that KDE choose to create an existing wheel: dolphin. WTF....
Before kde4 I was able to split my konqueror view in 4 panels: one html, one ftp, one local file, one phpmyadmin...
Now, this functionality is still present in konqueror, but no bug fix... all development goes to Dolphin.... can't understand why tyhey choose to split the data browser in 2 browser: one for network content and one for local content... Why diferenciate? What is the value added? why ignoring browsing profiles?
Anyway, KDE is progressing... but it's SLOOOOWWWWW .waiting for MAPI since ages. Most of my collegues moved to Windows7 jsut and only because of this lack. :-(
If only I had time and C++ knowledge.
I had a look at the akonady dev tutorial it's great. really, unfortunately, my C++ is far far to weak to be able to produce something
There needs to be an install question asking if you want a plain jane, low impact, do nothing till I click, you might even say "restricted" GUI experience. No transparency, no bouncing cursor, no animation: absolutely NONE, no raise/lower (just paint it please), no grow/shrink, dump the gradients, it's not the 90s anymore, no wallpaper, definitely no animated wallpaper. No automatic submenu display, or if you must, institute an X millisecond delay, similarly for the button focus highlighting. look for the mouse pointer to come to rest. If the mouse is in motion DONT DO FOREGROUND DRAWING!!!!, better yet interrupt any drawing currently in progress because more likely than not, it is no longer of interest, if it ever was in the first place. Wanna test how painful the default settings are? connect to a server via XRDP and interact with a KDE virtual machine through the console. Yes I have searched out half of the eleventy seven different tweaks to try and get a usable desktop, including the low power graphics & low power cpu (its not, but I don't need to be choking the connection with redraws for display gimcrackery). I really don't give a rats petuti about the latest thematic innovation with swirling/twirling facebook monioring. Now if they can do it in a 16 color palette, it would really make my day. I want/like most of the KDE applications, there is just way too much frosting on the cake and too many kids on the lawn.
There is no right to feel safe thru security vaudeville at the expense of everyone's freedom, privacy and tax money.
I used to use KDE, but I switched away when I realized that none of the apps I use are Qt-based. Let me know when I can use a Qt-based Chrome or Firefox, a Qt-based Vim, and when SWT/Qt is stable (with a Qt-based Eclipse release). Until then, I'll continue using Gnome. Plus they are really pushing Akonadi hard, and I don't want to run it. And so many bugs I have voted on the KDE bugtracker that never get fixed... It's really too bad. I love Qt as a toolkit.
Yeah but if you turn them off, it's just like using GNOME ;)
I have no experience with that stuff, nor do I own some the components necessary to test. Were I to sing or preform musical compositions to my computer I believe it might cause some type of kernel panic or hardware failure. On the other hand, it would be hard for me to imagine that recording sound doesn't work. Audio support is generally very solid on FreeBSD for output at least. I know there are users doing things like skype and webcams. Webcams are a little trickier than recording audio though so I don't have a guess one way or the other on that one.
This is the most recent update on that end.
http://www.freebsd.org/news/status/report-2010-10-2010-12.html#Webcamd
brandelf -t FreeBSD
Okay, I'll check out the link, another time, because I'm falling behind schedule right now, due to time mismanagement.
That being said, I agree that recording should be easy to do, because it is such an old concept. Somehow, Kubuntu doesn't do it. I can hear the mic picking up sound, but the software doesn't record. It's unbelievable.
You would think that we could keep it rock solid after all these years.
testing out my trending skills
I am seeing a lot of hate here, and I am starting to think it's the distros that are the problem, and not KDE itself. I've never had any issues with KDE at all, and I've been using it since it was released for Slackware a good while back. No problems what so ever!
This is blinging
I'll check this out, but I'm betting the bloat is still there. Nepomuk and its family are probably still required. I don't want or need it but it insists on running a MySQL server and piles of other daemons.
I used KDE from about 2000 to the end of 2010, then tried Awesome (too minimal for me, but interesting and FAST) and LXDE (no sessions?) before settling on Gnome. I don't love Gnome (and probably never will), but it works and I have reasonably fine-grained control over its bloatedness.