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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.
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.
Well the problem was that KDE wasn't only the desktop anymore. The desktop was only one small part of software the hardworking contributers produced. So in the end KDE became the name of the people working on the software and if you only wan't to refer to the desktop part, now you say KDE Plasma desktop.
Live long and propser!
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.
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
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
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
I installed the "I hate the cashew" plasmoid from kde-look to remove that useless little nut.
^^vv<><>BA
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.
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.
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.
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
Bullshit.
KDE does not create any folder other than the .kde[4]/ hierarchy, where it stores its settings. Gnome, on the other hand thought it good to have virtual folders that seem like they are folders -- but really reflect the UNIX filesystem in no way.
Basically, you screwed up your home with the help of GNOME, and KDE just showed you the mess you have really made.
As an aside, how anyone can live with the GTK file selector is beyond me.