KDE 4.7 RC Is Here: GRUB2 Integration, KWin Mobile

dkd903 writes "KDE 4.7 is almost here and brings along with it a number of features and performance improvements such as a better Dolphin with a faster file search, ability of KWin to run on Mobile devices, Grub2 integration in KDM and offline search support in the KDE virtual globe, Marble." Here's KDE's own announcement of the release candidate; the final release is planned for July 27. Reader jrepin quotes the KDE announcement: "With API, dependency and feature freezes in place, the KDE team's focus is now on fixing last-minute showstopper bugs and finishing translation and documentation that comes along with the releases."

Comments

YES! NEW KDE!

[Anonymous Coward]

TWICE THE BLOAT WITH HALF THE USABILITY!

C'mon everybody, just use lxde and zsh and enjoy your linux experience instead of trying to ape something that was popular more than a decade ago.

Re:YES! NEW KDE!

[Anonymous Coward]

How come? The changes in this release will be invisible to most of the users. Looks more like polish to me.

Re:YES! NEW KDE!

[Beelzebud]

How about you do what you want to do, and let others do what they want to do, troll?

Re:YES! NEW KDE!

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, KDE has had Polish language support since 1.0.

Re:YES! NEW KDE!

[Ruede]

he is not trolling, kde is getting bloated more and more. f.e. kmail. worked flawless before kde-sc 4.6 with 4.6 it is unusable due the semantic desktop bullshit that made things much slower... even on an SSD drive... well that happens when you add another layer (db) between the files and the userinterface.... fuck kde i am close to switching to something else... virtuose-t is doing something right now. eating lots of cpu%. what does it do? i dont know, what is it for? i dont know. what features or advantages do i have from this process? i dont know. sounds pretty much like windows...

Re:YES! NEW KDE!

[icebraining]

well that happens when you add another layer (db) between the files and the userinterface

Uh, adding a database often speeds up data access.
Of course, whether MySQL was a wise choice is debatable. Tracker, for example, uses SQLite.

The main problem seems to be Strigi, which is the file indexer, because it scans your whole drive adding metadata to the database. If you disable that it'll probably help immensely.

Re:YES! NEW KDE!

[c6gunner]

It's worse than windows. I tried KDE for all of 3 days, on a laptop which had Windows 7 and Ubuntu (Gnome) already installed. It ran slower than Windows 7 in pretty much every task, and FAR slower than gnome.

When your GUI slows down a linux install to the point that even Windows seems speedy in comparison, you've REALLY fucked things up.

Re:YES! NEW KDE!

[Lord Kano]

The OP may have been confrontational, but he wasn't trolling.

I switched to Trinity KDE because I hated KDE4.x so much. I just can't stand it. I actually kept using an old distro because I was unwilling to "upgrade" to KDE4.x, when I discovered the Trinity KDE project, it was such a relief. I was able to go to a much new distro but keep a user experience that didn't feel like I was using a big cell phone.

LK

Re:YES! NEW KDE!

[siride]

I just haven't had this experience. My guess is that your graphics card is not well supported by the drives and KWin is thus running slowly and with lag. That'll make the whole experience suck. Indeed, that *was* my experience with KDE up until about 4.4 and especially 4.5 when numerous improvements were made to KWin. But many users are still left out in the cold.

As for the non-graphical stuff, I find it to be considerably snappier than Windows on the same machine. Apps start nearly instantly, and that's without the SuperFetch/ReadyBoost garbage that Windows loves (I very much enjoy having my computer nearly useless for 10 minutes after boot up because Windows needs to do heavy I/O on my HD for all of its caches -- and the apps don't even really start up super quick anyway!).

The one thing I've hated is the semantic desktop garbage. So I got rid of it and now it doesn't bug me anymore. You might want to consider turning that off. It can hog the CPU and HD and that would make things slow.

Re:YES! NEW KDE!

[c6gunner]

Gnome hardware-acceleration worked just fine, as did XFCE with compiz-fusion running for effects, so I doubt it was a driver issue. It was only KDE that was slow as hell.

I've gotten rid of linux entirely at the moment, because I can't figure out a way to do whole-disk encryption and have both linux and windows running on the same drive. Truecrypt works for windows, and linux has it's own solutions, but none of them work for both. Next time I install linux, I'll try getting rid of the "semantic desktop garbage" and see if it helps. Thanks!

Re:YES! NEW KDE!

[siride]

I had the same experience with KWin -- compiz was fine, but KWin was slow. KWin exercises different paths in the driver and OpenGL stacks. Furthermore, KWin developers chose to go with the right solution, versus the hacky one that worked on the drivers at the time, which was the compiz philosophy. Agree or disagree, that's what they did. I'm using the OS ATI driver and it's actually quite performant now.

Will Qt become owned by or part of KDE?

[Anonymous Coward]

As Qt is now orphaned, if KDE is the only user of it, will be owned or become part of KDE?

Personally, I moved away from KDE and Qt because of the lack of good isolation and depencies. Everything depended on everything, and Qt seemed to be a giant wrapper library for everything, not just UI.

But others like KDE.

Re:Will Qt become owned by or part of KDE?

[Talavis]

Qt is orphaned? Since when? Have any kind of link for it as I must have missed that?

Re:Will Qt become owned by or part of KDE?

[Beelzebud]

QT hasn't been orphaned.

Re:Will Qt become owned by or part of KDE?

[Anonymous Coward]

Last I checked Nokia was still supporting Qt. However it is a mildly interesting point to ponder what happens if the rumor mill is correct and they stop supporting it. More than likely the code forks at that point.

Yes it is true that Qt is not simply a UI toolkit.

Re:Will Qt become owned by or part of KDE?

[Davorama]

There are too many folks that use Qt to make large sums of money for it to go away.
It will find a good foster home and be well taken care of if it is ever actually orphaned.

Re:Will Qt become owned by or part of KDE?

[Kjella]

Nope, but with where Nokia is going it must be up for adoption. Maybe not officially, but if you waved a few million dollars in that direction I think they're very ready to divest that part of their business. Already they've sold off the commercial licensing to Digia, so if they're not selling it, not putting in their own phones (maybe they'll finish shipping a phone or two, but certainly not on the roadmap) then why should they continue pouring millions into it? Their market message is less than stellar clear, to say the least.

Re:Will Qt become owned by or part of KDE?

[Beelzebud]

Yeah well after all that gibber jabber speculation, the fact remains that right now, QT is not orphaned........

NEW NAMES FOR GREAT SOFTWARE !!

[Anonymous Coward]

Mealworm !!

Guano !!

Pondscumsucker !!

HumanExcrement for Linux !!

FecesAndPissForYou 2.0 !!

and finally,

CmdrTaco Toilet Uh-Ohs !!

Re:NEW NAMES FOR GREAT SOFTWARE !!

[Anonymous Coward]

Guano is pretty good :)

Re:NEW NAMES FOR GREAT SOFTWARE !!

[Artifakt]

But obviously a Gnome app.

Re:NEW NAMES FOR GREAT SOFTWARE !!

[Anonymous Coward]

No, that would be Gnuano

Meh

[Anonymous Coward]

Linux is *still* for fags.

Re:Meh

[Beelzebud]

Which is why you hang out at slashdot and post in articles about Linux, right?

Who knows?

[overshoot]

Maybe they even fixed some of the bugs. I can hope, anyway.

Re:Who knows?

[sconeu]

You mean like the one where they write to the root directory, even if you're not root?

See https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=249217.

Re:Who knows?

[Anonymous Coward]

Read the bug report, it occurs when configuration changes are made *as root*.

Re:Who knows?

[RoLi]

...or implemented what they promised for 4.0?

A very long time ago, when I was still young and naive, I was looking forward to KDE4 because
a) it promised to be faster than KDE3
b) it promised to implement single-sign-on for kwallet

Then it was released and it came with hundreds of completely worthless features (like being able to rotate windows, translucency that only blurs everything needlessly, etc.) and of course lots of bugs but it was not faster and 4.0 also did not provide single-sign-on, the only feature that I was interested in.

I tried KDE4 a couple of times (IIRC the last time it was 4.3 or 4.4) and still no single-sign-on. And I've read they refuse it because "you should have different passwords for the user account and kwallet" which does not make any sense and seems quite strange - why did they promise this feature in the first place? And why can Gnome do it? (at least that's what I've read)

Anyway, I keep using KDE3 (from http://www.trinitydesktop.org/), KDE4 is offering NOTHING that I'm interested in, it's the "Vista" of the Linux world: Optimized for some mysterious "average user" - basically the KDE-team wants to optimize KDE to beginners (plus alzheimer-patients and retards). Maybe somebody should tell the KDE-team that the 80's are over and by now almost everybody who needs KDE has worked with computers for many years, probably DECADES. There are practically no beginners left (except children) and those few that remain are not nearly numerous enough to be called the "average user".

Re:Who knows?

[Anonymous Coward]

It is not user who writes to root but process what is running as root what user use as service.
No security risk but just a simple bug. Haven't you heard that system programs what are ran by root or other system users what have rights to filesystem writes (in) files on system side even that user does not have root rights?

GRUB integration?

[gregbaker]

Forgive my ignorance, but can anybody explain why my window manager needs to interface with my bootloader?

Re:GRUB integration?

[Beelzebud]

You can boot in to a different distro without actually restarting the machine, with KDM.

Re:GRUB integration?

[Anonymous Coward]

It's actually somewhat useful.
It lets you restart directly into another grub menu selection from the kdm page.

Re:GRUB integration?

[Anonymous Coward]

Forgive my ignorance, but can anybody explain why my window manager needs to interface with my bootloader?

I wondered the same. Apparently, it allows you to use the KDE interface to reboot and choose which OS should be booted next.

Re:GRUB integration?

[pinkeen]

It doesn't. But the less technically inclined users, they can use a clicky interface to configure it.

Re:GRUB integration?

[ilguido]

Because KDM is not a window manager.

Re:GRUB integration?

[pinkeen]

I didn't read TFS thoroughly enough - KDM (which is the login manager) integrates with grub2. Probably it means that you can do some fancy stuff like tell it to reboot to freebsd, windows or osx (if you have multi boot).

Re:GRUB integration?

[Anonymous Coward]

Your window manager? Since when is KDM a window manager? It isn't, and it looks like both you and all those that replied to your comment before I did haven't realized this. KDM is a login interface (the kind of thing that allows you to login, select the user that you login as, and the type of session that you'll be starting). And it's useful to have it interface with your bootloader because it allows you to modify the entry selected by default for the next reboot. Not that it's a big deal, but hey, it doesn't hurt to have it and maybe some users will find it useful.

Re:GRUB integration?

[dkd903]

I didn't read TFS thoroughly enough - KDM (which is the login manager) integrates with grub2. Probably it means that you can do some fancy stuff like tell it to reboot to freebsd, windows or osx (if you have multi boot).

Yes. That is true on a Multi-Boot system :-)

Re:GRUB integration?

[MacGyver2210]

But I have GRUB...it pops up on boot, and I can pick then. Why do I need KDE to choose before restart again?

Re:GRUB integration?

[Anonymous Coward]

First of all, it's not a window manager, it's a desktop environment.

Secondly, it's so you can do this and walk away instead of sitting around while your computer thinks about how to be alive.

Re:GRUB integration?

[Anonymous Coward]

I suppose if you want to sit around while it shuts down, POSTs, and loads grub so you can catch it during that five-second window, you can go ahead. I would prefer to click a button and then walk away.

Re:GRUB integration?

[Anonymous Coward]

You don't. Others may find it useful. It doesn't cause you any problem to have this feature, while others may benefit from it. So, why are you complaining?

Re:GRUB integration?

[Narishma]

It's not a desktop environment either, it's a display manager, the thing that allows you to log in, choose your session, shutdown and reboot and other stuff.

Re:GRUB integration?

[Anonymous Coward]

You can boot in to a different distro without actually restarting the machine, with KDM.

Close, you still need to restart but you can specify the distro you want to boot into from the restart dialog.

Re:GRUB integration?

[Osgeld]

or I could just boot into what I want the first time without the overhead, but that's just me

Re:GRUB integration?

[Anonymous Coward]

You can boot in to a different distro without actually restarting the machine, with KVM.

FTFY

Re:GRUB integration?

[ChunderDownunder]

well if grub2 booted directly to kdm, it could provide an OS-independent login manager, passing authentication credentials into the selected OS.

Re:GRUB integration?

[Anonymous Coward]

Although this does suggest the question of why KDM (et al) don't support kexec reboots directly; it's a feature I'd make use of.

Re:GRUB integration?

[smash]

Given that track record with KDE bugs/broken features as of late, leave my bootloader the fuck alone, thanks.

Re:GRUB integration?

[Anonymous Coward]

Isn't that kinda dangerous? It is possible for an attack to modify the "address" of the OS to be booted, in KDE itself. I am assuming that doing this will require root permission anyway, but why would someone want this feature?

Re:GRUB integration?

[siride]

Uhh, what? Just change your default in GRUB.

Re:GRUB integration?

[Anonymous Coward]

First of all, KDM is not window manager and neither a desktop environment.
KDM is displaymanager what handles the Xorg and loading of Windowmanager, Desktop Environment or Desktop Shell.

KDE SC is not Desktop Environment like KDE3 and GNOME were. It is compilation of technologies where one main part is Plasma what draws the shell. You can use different shells what comes with KDE SC like Plasma Desktop, Plasma Netbook, Plasma Active and Plasma Mobile.
"Desktop Environment" does not apply to KDE SC as technology has been evolved.

Re:GRUB integration?

[fatp]

This is an interesting feature. The problem is that since nothing else support GRUB integration, this actually drives user away. People using this will have their GRUB booting OS not running kdm by default (unless, of course, until they modify their grub.conf)

Um, shouldn't the API freeze take place at 4.0

[Burz]

...and stay that way until 5.0?

Re:Um, shouldn't the API freeze take place at 4.0

[Anonymous Coward]

...and stay that way until 5.0?

You don't need to keep the API completely frozen to keep it compatible.

Re:Um, shouldn't the API freeze take place at 4.0

[Verunks]

if you add new functions the library stays binary compatible, so if you try to run a program compiled for 4.0 and you have 4.7 it will run without problems

Re:Um, shouldn't the API freeze take place at 4.0

[Drinking Bleach]

in the same way that Mac OS X didn't freeze the API at 10.0's state, no.

Devices/network shares listed in fstab

[Anonymous Coward]

Does it finally provide a method using the GUI to mount/unmount entries listed in fstab?

Re:Devices/network shares listed in fstab

[karoshiboy]

There's a plasmoid: http://kde-look.org/content/show.php?content=115943

Re:Devices/network shares listed in fstab

[MacGyver2210]

mount-gtk is pretty effective. Hasn't let me down yet.

http://mount-gtk.sourceforge.net/

Re:Devices/network shares listed in fstab

[Anonymous Coward]

the default device manager plasmoid does this. open the settings, and you can select which devices it displays.

Re:Devices/network shares listed in fstab

[Risen888]

The fuck are you talking about? Was there a time when it didn't?

Re:Devices/network shares listed in fstab

[Anonymous Coward]

Ok hot shit, explain where it is.

Re:Devices/network shares listed in fstab

[Risen888]

On the panel, where it has always been. It is called "Device Notifier." (There is also now an option to "dock" it in the system tray.) Also, in the the "Places" sidebar of every single fucking Open File or Save File dialog. Also, in the "Places" sidebar in Dolphin. Also, in a dropdown menu in Krusader. Also, fucking everywhere.

Re:Devices/network shares listed in fstab

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe you should re-read the initial comment. Or maybe you don't know what fstab is. Device Notifier can't be configured to show anything extra beyond local partitions. And absolutely nothing from fstab shows up in any of the other places you suggest. Got any other useless suggestions?

Re:Devices/network shares listed in fstab

[Risen888]

I am looking at Device Notifier right now. It shows all of my local partitions (even the two that aren't in my fstab file), my mp3 player, the CD that's in the drive, and my nfs share.

Now I open Krusader and click the Media button (it looks like a hard disc). It includes everything mentioned above.

Now I open Dolphin. On the left, there is a Places sidebar. It includes all of the things mentioned above, plus Home, Network, Root, and Trash (and any other directories you drag in there if you want, but I don't really use Dolphin all that much).

Got any more uninformed bullshit?

Meanwhile ...

[aliquis]

... Microsoft actually does something innovative and maybe even goes a step further than Apple when it comes to user interfaces:
http://www.osnews.com/story/24811/Microsoft_Demos_Windows_8_New_Interface

If it's good I don't know. I like how the MeeGo for surf pads looked. Guess Playbook was ok to.

I think KDE looks boring and the applications such as Amarok look so bloated with.. Well.. Everything :D

Re:Meanwhile ...

[zixxt]

To each his or her own then. Windows will always be the red headed step child of UI design in my opinion. Windows is the definition of putting lipstick on a pig.

Re:Meanwhile ...

[Cinder6]

Windows 8, to me, looks like a perfect example of change for the sake of change.

Re:Meanwhile ...

[aliquis]

Personally I haven't used either Vista or Windows 7 (or Windows 8...), but I've used DOS, AmigaOS at the time of Windows 3.11 and Windows 95 and later XP.

But even if the same company made them I'm able to comprehend that Windows 7 isn't DOS and things can change over the decades.

Back when I started using KDE it seemed to do anything it could to look like and act just like Windows 95 (KDE 2) (interface.)

Re:Meanwhile ...

[Penguinoflight]

KDE2 wasn't really in the same time period as windows 95. KDE1 and windows 2000 were more contemporaries.

Re:Meanwhile ...

[aliquis]

KDE on my installation in school around 98-99 looked like it wanted to be Windows.

Also computers in school didn't use Windows 2000 and WHO GIVES A FUCKING SHIT SINCE WINDOWS 95, 98 AND WINDOWS 2000 LOOK THE SAME?

"a better Dolphin"??

[ajparr]

What ever happened to the idea of replacing dolphin with a frickin' shark and adding a frickin' laser beam to it?!?

Re:"a better Dolphin"??

[Anonymous Coward]

"What ever happened to the idea of replacing dolphin with a frickin' shark?"

They jumped the shark.

Mobile devices

[some_guy_88]

They keep talking about mobile devices. Is this just theoretical or are people actually running kde on real phones/tablets?

Re:Mobile devices

[Windwraith]

Seems there is people using it on real mobile devices (and netbooks), but I'd rather have a good desktop environment than yet another project parasitized by the mobile trends.
I hate seeing so many signs of the desktop being abandoned in favor of mobile toys. (Let's face it, most of the mobile stuff out there is a toy you can only do so much with...unlike a real computer).

Re:Mobile devices

[some_guy_88]

I'd rather have a good desktop environment than yet another project parasitized by the mobile trends

Yeah I get that, but IMO a single framework that I can learn (Qt/kde) that allows me to build desktop and mobile apps is quite compelling. And qt is a good framework. It's some of the best competition out there for .NET so I want to see it succeed.

Also, recently, kde4 has become a good desktop environment. It has come a long way and is completely usable in it's current form.. assuming of course that you ignore the utter bullshit which is nepomuk and striggi.. :)

Re:Mobile devices

[Windwraith]

It is my DE of choice indeed, although I use few of the included apps. While I love the system management and the window manager/plasma are tremendously good for me, the apps are extremely lackluster. Moving away to design tablet-y interfaces while those apps are still an eyesore is beyond me.

Also the latest updates (considering the amount of time between each) have been quite...lackluster, not fixing certain "little and rare but crippling" bugs and not improving upon things that started somewhere between 4.0 and 4.5 . Brainstorm also seems to lose importance as version numbers rise.

Also, I don't care about Marble, and I don't think improvements to it should be "release notes". (that's another thing, try to find changelogs that aren't either extremely simple or extremely detailed...). Kate also has significant improvements this update, but no one but Kate developers mention them at all. Kate is much more of a real tool than Marble. Who is writing the release notes?

So yeah, less effort on Nepomuk/Strigi (that everyone but the main devs seem to hate, at least I haven't read or heard anything positive not coming from a KDE dev) and interfaces for toys and more visible, non-refactoring work so people can stop saying KDE sucks every time.
I might not agree but the fact that public opinion didn't change in the slightest must mean something.

Re:Mobile devices

[KugelKurt]

Moving away to design tablet-y interfaces while those apps are still an eyesore is beyond me.

Not the same people work on all apps and interfaces.
The mobile work is mostly done by people paid by Nokia, open-slx, and basysKom.

I don't care about Marble, and I don't think improvements to it should be "release notes".

Pre-release notes are not as detailed as the final notes.
KDE releases three software bundles every 6 months: Plasma Workspaces, Applications, and Frameworks.
In the final release, each bundle gets its own release announcement. Marble in one of the most active KDE Applications and when the devs work hard, they deserve to be mentioned in the (pre-)release notes, be it Marble, Kate, or even some game.

Kate also has significant improvements this update, but no one but Kate developers mention them at all.

Nobody is hindering any Kate dev to extend the release notes draft on KDE's Etherpad instance. It's open to edit for anyone. I look at the draft for the final release announcements at this moment. Heck, even the comments sidebar say that another application than Marble should get spotlight in the upcoming announcement. So far nobody stepped forward with an improved application that was not featured in the KDE Apps 4.6 announcement (even Kate was featured last time http://www.kde.org/announcements/4.6/applications.php )
Looking at http://kate-editor.org/ I see no posts mentioning new features for 4.7. There is a quite extensive one for 4.6 but not for 4.7. There are some articles about current GSoC progress but those won't show up before 4.8.

Who is writing the release notes?

The ones who volunteer to do it, like with any other community project.
Feel free to extend release notes drafts yourself.

So yeah, less effort on Nepomuk/Strigi

KDE is a community project mostly made up of volunteers. You cannot force a volunteer to work on something he doesn't want to. Though you can hire one of the firms that do business around KDE to improve the things you prefer.

that everyone but the main devs seem to hate, at least I haven't read or heard anything positive not coming from a KDE dev

I'm not a KDE developer and I like Nepomuk.
GNOME/Tracker developers also like Nepomuk which is the reason they've adopted it long ago.

more visible, non-refactoring work so people can stop saying KDE sucks every time.

Haters will hate and are the vocal group. I happen to like KDE.

Re:Mobile devices

[ChunderDownunder]

With Nokia abandoning ship to MS mobile, the foss ideal of Qt everywhere looks lost at sea.

The dumbing down of desktops to capture a netbook/tablet market is optimistic in an age where ios/android dominate.
In products that actually ship by the millions, the trend is the opposite to gnome's. Namely converting a small screen phone experience to a larger 10" display.
In that light, perhaps deskop Linux's best hope could lie with HP's webos. They plan to upscale the touchpad's UI to every HP pc thoughout 2012. Failure to monetize the platform may see HP GPL palm's assets. Unity's tepid response could see wayland-backended webos becoming the default ui for Ubuntu's Zealous Zebra release.

Re:Mobile devices

[bill_mcgonigle]

Is this just theoretical or are people actually running kde on real phones/tablets?

I tried the plasma-netbook interface for my wife's new laptop and it's a complete trainwreck. I fiddled for two hours (really hard to configure and buggy) before going back to plasma-desktop and setting up Daisy as a left dock with a minimal top-edge activity panel and pinned items in the system tray.

Re:Mobile devices

[smash]

Let's face it, most of the mobile stuff out there is a toy you can only do so much with...unlike a real computer

Actually, i've fixed one of our radius servers from Kazakhstan via remote desktop on my iPhone before.

Was it a pain in the arse to use? Sure, but it can be done, and if you don't happen to have a laptop on you, its a viable option.

Modern smartphones are useful as far more than mere toys.

Re:Mobile devices

[Risen888]

Plasma Desktop, Plasma Netbook, and Plasma Active (Plasma for mobile devices) are completely separate projects. The desktop is by no means being "abandoned in favor of mobile toys."

Re:Mobile devices

[rdnetto]

Let's give credit where it's due - KDE is the only major desktop environment to handle the tablet metaphor correctly. Unlike Gnome, who replaced the desktop metaphor with a tablet one, they retained their desktop metaphor and added a tablet one as a configurable option. They remained a good desktop environment while still adding tablet functionality.
I especially like that you can switch between the two without having to logout/reboot - this is especially desirable when you have something like the Asus Transformer.

I agree that mobiles are mostly limited to toys due to their form factor, but there's no reason a tablet can't be just as powerful as a computer.

Re:Mobile devices

[Anonymous Coward]

I happen to like KDE.

So do I. And I think KDE applications far surpass their Gnome counterparts. By meh, I am just used to gnome and will be using mostly desktop-agnostic applications in both.

Re:Mobile devices

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm not a KDE developer and I like Nepomuk.

Lies! Your name has two Ks in it, you're obviously a KDE infiltrator.

I like Nepomuk in theory, but found its tagging and rating system to be fragile and easily broken. I spent hours tagging some files for organisation only to lose it all less than a week later somehow. Still, the idea is good and I expect the kinks to be worked out of it eventually.

Strigi, on the other hand, is terrible in nearly every way imaginable. Less flexible than Beagle, uses more memory, and on my desktop it constantly kept CPU use at max because it wanted to re-check every file for changes on KDE startup. I've tried it multiple times from 4.1 to 4.6 and it's always had the same problems, it's just not handling large filesystems with many files well. The only nice thing I can say about it is it integrated nicely with Dolphin (via netpomuk), which was convenient. Just not so convenient that I was willing to live with constant 100% CPU use.

Even Strigi isn't hopeless, though; on a notebook with fewer files it's useful enough, and as I noted above, is convenient to use through Dolphin. There's potential there, but right now I find KDE works a lot better with them both disabled.

Re:Mobile devices

[KugelKurt]

Nokia is currently in the process of shaping the Qt project after WebKit in the way how the community and the rules are organized.
That said, Nokia has increased Qt investments. There are even MeeGo-releated job offers posted on nokia.com. Nokia wouldn't do that if there weren't any secret plans (maybe a future tablet).

Re:Mobile devices

[KugelKurt]

Well, it's a netbook interface, not some for full-size laptops.

Re:Mobile devices

[Anonymous Coward]

"more visible, non-refactoring work so people can stop saying KDE sucks every time."

"Haters will hate and are the vocal group. I happen to like KDE."

Your "Haters" only dislike the UI problems, and that attitude to requests to sort it out. I actually love KDE as a whole, but the attitude of developers in the 4.x series has been one of blatant, selfish, irresponsibility. If my apps had the "millions of users around the globe" that KDE claims, I'd sure as hell be listening more to their needs instead of rejecting their sincere requests as "hate".

Re:Mobile devices

[KugelKurt]

the attitude of developers in the 4.x series has been one of blatant, selfish, irresponsibility. If my apps had the "millions of users around the globe" that KDE claims, I'd sure as hell be listening more to their needs instead of rejecting their sincere requests as "hate".

KDE is a community project. As such they have no contractual obligations to any customers. So yes, they are selfish to the degree that they work on what they want -- just like any other FOSS community project.

Re:Mobile devices

[Windwraith]

Nepomuk/Strigi/Akonadi: Not saying that they must work on what I want. But you can see that even from KDE advocates, reception is lukewarm, and it's still not too useful. For most people, perhaps until Zeitgeist integration lands, it's not really changing much of anything. File tags are cool though.

Kate: Well, I just verified that indeed, recent Kate updates in planet are referring to 4.8, so my bad.

Release notes: I am in no position to extend release notes. For starters, I am not a KDE developer, nor I am fully knowledgeable of what's going on in the KDE world. You are a community, and every community has someone willing to do such jobs (aren't the commit digests just a volunteer reading the commit logs until finding something juicy?). Just find the right person.

Haters: Some haters can be proven wrong. Not all the vocal ones are trolls, some have legit reasoning to their complaints. It's like in "browser wars" posts, where people flails on Firefox's memory consumption. The moment Mozilla finally heard them, bugs were filed, and they are finally removing leaks even if at a slow pace. (Please note that while this sounds like fantasy, there are records of it both in Slashdot and in Planet Mozilla, check it out if you don't believe me)

Liking KDE: I also like KDE, and that's why I am critical of it when I think it deserves criticism. I might not be right, because after all, I am a nobody speaking on the internets. I'd really enjoy seeing it succeed, attract more developers that will make more good apps, and be able to recommend it to everyone instead of Gnome or XFCE.

KDE is neither a fisher-price desktop nor it's overwhelming in options as people say. But people keeps getting that impression even after 4.0 was a thing of the past. Maybe something is wrong in the way KDE is presented to the general public, which is preventing people from really trying it out. Give it some thought, and try to work with the community to figure it out.

"Better" Dolphin?

[UbuntuniX]

What was wrong with Konqueror? It may not be the best web browser, but it's the best file manager I've ever used. Dolphin, however, is a load of crap, in my opinion.

Re:"Better" Dolphin?

[Anonymous Coward]

You can still set Konqueror as your default file manager.

Re:"Better" Dolphin?

[Windwraith]

For me the ultimate file manager in KDE is Krusader. Give it a go if you like two-pane approaches.

Re:"Better" Dolphin?

[GnuAge]

At least when you open terminal emulator at the bottom of dolphin it stays synced with the directory you switch to with the GUI. In konqueror is stays in the folder you were in when you first opened it, you have to manually 'cd' or re-open the terminal emulator to get it to be in your current directory. I'd use dolphin almost exclusively, but there is no way to split the right file viewing area in to more than two vertical panes, konqueror allows you to create as many horizontal and vertical panes as you need. The result is that I have to use dolphin for any work that requires much use of the terminal and konqueror for heavy file management.

And for me only recently did either dolphin or konqueror begin to read meta-data for SOME files (e.g. some mp3 tags, image file dimensions, camera info, etc.)

Konqueror 3.5x is still far and away the best file manager ever, the terminal emulator worked properly, meta-data worked perfectly, you could even edit music tags from the file manager. In the meantime KDE4 has a new tags/comments functionality that I wonder if ANYONE ever uses, but I wouldn't know if it would come in handy because the first thing I do in a new install is disable the Nepomuck Semantic desktop search shit which completely lugs my machines and NEVER finishes indexing my admittedly largish file system, even when the database begins to fill entire partitions.

Re:"Better" Dolphin?

[Anonymous Coward]

Agreed. If you use KDE and you need an advanced file manager, try Krusader.

Re:"Better" Dolphin?

[KugelKurt]

Konqueror 3.5x is still far and away the best file manager ever, the terminal emulator worked properly, meta-data worked perfectly, you could even edit music tags from the file manager. In the meantime KDE4 has a new tags/comments functionality that I wonder if ANYONE ever uses, but I wouldn't know if it would come in handy because the first thing I do in a new install is disable the Nepomuck Semantic desktop search shit which completely lugs my machines and NEVER finishes indexing my admittedly largish file system, even when the database begins to fill entire partitions.

Nepomuk doesn't search anything. Strigi does. Nepomuk works without Strigi.
The Konqueror 3.5 developers became largely inactive for whatever reason. The file browsing part is now almost exclusively developed by the Dolphin guys who do not care much for Konqueror. (Such things can happen in a volunteer effort.)

Re:"Better" Dolphin?

[Anonymous Coward]

most people actually changed their minds about dolphin after trying it.

Re:"Better" Dolphin?

[UbuntuniX]

I know and I have done so, but I don't see why the default is a lesser program.

Re:"Better" Dolphin?

[JThundley]

I was a huge fan of Konqueror and have since re-configured Dolphin to be similar to Konqueror. What is it really missing that Konqueror had?

Re:"Better" Dolphin?

[thomasdn]

For me the ultimate file manager in KDE is Krusader. Give it a go if you like two-pane approaches.

Thanks for the tip. Just tried Krusader. It is really nice.

KDE vs Gnome

[rueger]

This may devolve into a vi/emacs debate, but I'll ask anyways.

I'm running Ubuntu, and and quite happy with Gnome (having quickly borfed Unity). What could KDE offer that might convince me to try it out?

Re:KDE vs Gnome

[Noughmad]

- It looks nice.
- Plasma and plasmoids (webcomics, twitter, system monitors and much more on the desktop)
- It's configurable.

Some of the apps are better than Gnome equivalents (KTorrent, Amarok, KDevelop are the main ones I use), some are worse, but that doesn't really matter since you can freely mix both. However, while KDE/Qt programs look good on Gnome, Gnome/Gtk apps still don't look quite the same on KDE. The oxygen-gtk theme helps here, but you can still notice the difference.

Re:KDE vs Gnome

[Beelzebud]

Which version of Gnome are you using? Right now, KDE4 is much more stable, and customizable than Gnome3. However if you're looking at Gnome2, I'd say it still beats out KDE4 in the "just works" department.

If I were choosing between the 3, it would look like this: Gnome 2 > KDE4 > Gnome 3

That being said, I'm using neither. When Gnome 3 replaced Gnome 2 in the Arch Linux repository, I switched to XFCE4, and haven't looked back since.

Re:KDE vs Gnome

[Jahava]

This may devolve into a vi/emacs debate, but I'll ask anyways. I'm running Ubuntu, and and quite happy with Gnome (having quickly borfed Unity). What could KDE offer that might convince me to try it out?

Well, we can argue better this and more refined that until we're blue in the face. Bottom line is that KDE offers a wholly-different perspective on what a Linux desktop user interface can do. Minimally, it's worth taking a look at, if only to broaden your horizons and solidify your preferences.

Personally, I find KDE to be a much more polished, integrated, and comprehensive suite than GNOME. It's snappy, sexy, and highly-configurable. In terms of appearance, KDE definitely has more of a stylistic Mac OSX-like approach and graphic set, though that's also highly-configurable. In fact, KDE's UI is so versatile that I could use KDE to recreate a default GNOME desktop without much effort. The applications tend to favor configurability over simplicity (which seems to be the opposite of much of GNOME's design choices). I can fine-tune most KDE applications to my personal, picky standards. Due to KDE4's kwin window manager rewrite, compositing (3D) effects are built into KDE's core, and are much more seamless than GNOME2's (although GNOME3 has followed suit).

Now, KDE has quite an advanced suite of applications that they bring to the table. However, keep in mind that almost every KDE application will run just fine under GNOME, and vice-versa. You can try almost any KDE application within GNOME should you find one you like (for example, I definitely prefer KDE's Konsole terminal over GNOME's gnome-terminal. The opposite is also true - any GNOME application will work just fine under KDE. You don't have to choose one over the other, though each is designed around and better-integrated with its native environment. Another winner is KDE's Amarok, which has long-held my personal favor as the best available audio player anywhere.

That said, I highly recommend giving it a shot. If you're using Ubuntu, you can try it with no risk by just installing the kubuntu-desktop and kde-full packages and choosing KDE as your window manager at login. It's worth a few days' trial to find out what you truly like.

Re:KDE vs Gnome

[KugelKurt]

If you need convincing to even try something out, you're too close minded anyway.

Re:KDE vs Gnome

[Anonymous Coward]

If you want to see what KDE can really do, try an OpenSUSE live CD with KDE. It's pretty well accepted that OpenSUSE has the best KDE implementation, in terms of overall integration and functionality. A live disk means no installation and no hassle to give it a try.

Re:KDE vs Gnome

[lee1]

I'm running dwm on Ubuntu and no desktop environment. What do either KDE or Gnome offer that might entice me to switch?

Re:KDE vs Gnome

[rueger]

Installing right now... like I need more ways to waste my time... :)

I'm finding that the less I use Windows, the less I use Windows, if you know what I mean...

Re:KDE vs Gnome

[Fallingcow]

Personally, I find KDE to be a much more polished, integrated, and comprehensive suite than GNOME.

I agree--and it's why every time I've tried KDE I've abandoned it and gone back to XFCE or Gnome after a few days.

"Ugh, kmail sucks, I'm gonna use Thunderbird... KOffice still blows, gotta set it to open files with (Open/Libre)Office instead. Konqueror? Fuck no, Firefox or Chromium or Opera, anything but that piece of crap. Amarok is so damn slow and bloated, need to find another player, not many QT options, guess I'll use a GTK solution..."

And so on, until I'm barely using any QT apps and almost no apps at all that integrate well with KDE, and all the while KDE seems to be mocking me for not using its integrated apps, most of which I hate.

If you like its default apps, fine. If not, all that work to make a tightly integrated DE and apps is just a bunch of useless bloat and features that only half-work if you don't do things exactly the way the devs want you to. I don't even like any of its competitors that much, and I really want to like KDE because it looks nice and has a few nice features that the others don't, but it's hard to justify using it if you don't run a single k* app.

Re:KDE vs Gnome

[rueger]

No, just have limited time for trying out new stuff when what I have is working quite well.

Re:KDE vs Gnome

[Anonymous Coward]

However, while KDE/Qt programs look good on Gnome, Gnome/Gtk apps still don't look quite the same on KDE. The oxygen-gtk theme helps here, but you can still notice the difference.

Give QtCurve a try, it's a style for Qt/KDE and theme for GTK that look identical (and can be configured from the KDE control panel).

Re:KDE vs Gnome

[NNKK]

Neither KDE nor Gnome are worth using anymore. Their ongoing decline is part of what made me a Mac user in 2005, and it just keeps getting worse. One has no clue what "stability" means, and the other is actively and proudly user-hostile.

Re:KDE vs Gnome

[KugelKurt]

No, just have limited time for trying out new stuff when what I have is working quite well.

If you have enough time to waste for Slashdot, you have enough time to try a live CD (either native or in VirtualBox).

Re:KDE vs Gnome

[_Sprocket_]

I find it to be less of a reason to try something out and more looking for insight from others. I can look at a toolbox and bang around with a few tools on my own. But I might overlook the finer points of a particular tool. If someone has a better understanding of those tools and can point out some great uses, then that will certainly give me something to look out for when poking around on my own. I may not find things to my liking. But hopefully I won't be missing something that I would have found really useful.

Re:KDE vs Gnome

[Anonymous Coward]

You missed the no, 1 reason KDE is better than Gnome, its integrated from release 0.1

--
Teun

Re:KDE vs Gnome

[Anonymous Coward]

I think XFCE is the only worthy desktop left....

Re:KDE vs Gnome

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm finding that the less I use Windows, the less I use Windows, if you know what I mean...

Now that's a signature :)

--
Teun

Re:KDE vs Gnome

[Teun]

Weird, I feel very much the same when I test Gnome, bad to no integration, hard to impossible to configure.

Yes people have different needs and views of the world...

--
Teun

Re:KDE vs Gnome

[devent]

If you are happy with Gnome, stay with Gnome.
For myself, I like Kate, Kile, Dolphin, Kaffeine, Amarok, KOrganizer, Klipper, Kmail, Yakuage, Konsole, KTorrent. I like the plasma desktop and I like the 3D effects. I like the full customization of KDE, but I'm only using maybe 5% of that, the rest are still the default settings, but it's a good feeling that if I need it I can change it. And I like the various plasma widgets, like battery, knetworkmanager, printer applet, device notifier. But I'm a really conservative desktop user, I don't have my desktop full of widgets and I don't use the activities.

Re:KDE vs Gnome

[Wheely]

This!

Did exactly the same. Was a KDE user since before 1.0. I think it was KDE Beta 2 where I started. KDE 4.0 changed things for me. Why put up with all the worst aspects of a OSX like UI without the easy hardware configuration. May as well run OSX. SO now all my machines are Macs. I dont think OSX is as good as KDE 3.5 on Linux but its UI is only about as crappy as KDE4.X but I get to plug bits of hardware in without thinking too much about it. A real shame.

Re:KDE vs Gnome

[KugelKurt]

Personally, I use LibreOffice with KDE integration and Firefox with KDE integration.
LibreOffice-KDE doesn't even use GTK because its own VCL toolkit only optionally interfaces with GTK.
That said, I'm pretty impressed with current Alphas of Calligra (KOffice's successor). Ever since Nokia invests in it for MeeGo (contributing a smartphone GUI as well as vastly improving file compatibility among other improvements) I have had only one RTF file not reading properly in mine (granted: limited) testing of Calligra Words.
Rekonq became a very good web browser, too, in recent months.

Re:KDE vs Gnome

[metamatic]

I agree--and it's why every time I've tried KDE I've abandoned it and gone back to XFCE or Gnome after a few days.

[...] If not, all that work to make a tightly integrated DE and apps is just a bunch of useless bloat and features that only half-work if you don't do things exactly the way the devs want you to.

Last time I checked, KDE 4 had lower resource usage than GNOME, so the "bloat" isn't a reason to go back to GNOME.

Re:KDE vs Gnome

[KugelKurt]

I find it to be less of a reason to try something out and more looking for insight from others. I can look at a toolbox and bang around with a few tools on my own. But I might overlook the finer points of a particular tool.

If he wanted to have that, he wouldn't have asked to be convinced to even try it. He'd try it any maybe ask here what the users' favourite features are.

Re:KDE vs Gnome

[Jahava]

Personally, I find KDE to be a much more polished, integrated, and comprehensive suite than GNOME.

I agree--and it's why every time I've tried KDE I've abandoned it and gone back to XFCE or Gnome after a few days.

"Ugh, kmail sucks, I'm gonna use Thunderbird... KOffice still blows, gotta set it to open files with (Open/Libre)Office instead. Konqueror? Fuck no, Firefox or Chromium or Opera, anything but that piece of crap. Amarok is so damn slow and bloated, need to find another player, not many QT options, guess I'll use a GTK solution..."

And so on, until I'm barely using any QT apps and almost no apps at all that integrate well with KDE, and all the while KDE seems to be mocking me for not using its integrated apps, most of which I hate.

If you like its default apps, fine. If not, all that work to make a tightly integrated DE and apps is just a bunch of useless bloat and features that only half-work if you don't do things exactly the way the devs want you to. I don't even like any of its competitors that much, and I really want to like KDE because it looks nice and has a few nice features that the others don't, but it's hard to justify using it if you don't run a single k* app.

My KDE experience usually involves a good number of GTK applications, too. For example, my core browser is Google Chrome or Firefox (both GTK), I use Thunderbird for e-mail, and I definitely use exclusively LibreOffice. KDE is not an all-or-none decision ... you can (and should) pick applications based on how they work, not whether or not they were developed by the same working group.

Now, that said, much of KDE is under active development, and this is the real deal. It's worth retrying KDE applications every now and then to see how they are doing. For example:

• rekonq, a Konqueror-like browser built on Webkit, is actually pretty damned usable. Not compatible enough to be an only browser, but adequate for most things. If browsers weren't so central, I'd probably use it a lot more.
• kmail has made significant integration and feature-set advances in the last three KDE versions. The whole KDE PIM suite has, actually. That team deserves a pat on the back; if I actually used a PIM application (instead of GMail's web interface) I would definitely use it.
• kopete, KDE's IM client, is great. It has definitely surpassed Pidgin for a while in my book.
• The koffice ... er, Calligra Suite team has been doing a tremendous job. It's one of the fastest-advancing open-source product that I know of, and each release brings it more into mainstream. I eagerly await the day they gain the full LibreOffice feature set, as I feel their design choices, UI, and approach are all superior. They just aren't there yet, last I checked.

All of these apps are more or less interchangeable though. You can use them just fine on GNOME. The core KDE experience is (in my opinion) kwin, the KDE Plasma Desktop (and associated Plasma widgets), the Dolphin File Browser, Nepomuk, and the KDE System Settings Suite. These are the core KDE features that one would choose to use. One can use primarily GNOME applications on top of these technologies and still be subscribed to the KDE user experience.

Re:KDE vs Gnome

[salesgeek]

Here is why I continue to use KDE:

* Customization is encouraged and is not hid from the end user. Don't like a key binding? change it. Don't like the default start menu? Change it. Want a new action when you right click? Write a quick bash script (or whatever your scripting language of choice is) and a desktop resource file and you can select files, right click and do what you want. You can even change how your desktop works... want files on it? OK. Want news, twitter and weather? OK. Want nothing? Fine. Want giant fisher-price looking app launch icons? OK, you can do that (it's not my thing... but hey, it's choice). It's up to you.

* File Management in KDE is vastly superior to every other desktop, Mac and Windows included. KIO allows you to open many different services (think ftp, scp, webdav, imap, your favorite vcs, pop3, and a metric ton more) as you would a local folder - just add protocol://user:pass@domain.com/some/folder and you are there. Processes like moving files are not modal, so you can tell KDE to move 500 files and continue working without waiting for the file move to complete. There are three very good file managers, Konqueror (kitchen sink - like Windows Explorer), Dolphin (modern file manager only) and Krusader (old school Norton Commander style) to choose from.

* The file open/save dialog is useful.

* Konsole, the KDE terminal app is awesome and very well integrated with the desktop and file management features. (f4 opens a terminal window in the file managers)

* KDE's notification system works very well, and allows you to do useful stuff with notifications... like running scripts when certain events happen.

KDE isn't for everyone... you really do have to spend some time getting to know KDE and reading some documentation to really get the most from it. It's definitely not for the "I want my phone to be a damn phone, not a GPS, camera, music player and video game system" or the "I want my computer to have TIG welded, permanent training wheels" crowd.

Re:KDE vs Gnome

[rueger]

First impressions - Amarok is what I wished Banshee was. Fits my tastes very well - in other words, not iTunes...

KDE is slower than Gnome - noticeably so.

The Notification widget is kinda cool.

Undecided about Dolphin. Honestly I still like Windows Explorer (and always hated OS X Finder).

All in all, it feels like KDE just has more.. "stuff"... and I'm not sure it's "stuff" that I need.

Re:KDE vs Gnome

[_Sprocket_]

Eh. Geeks and nerds; not always the best communicators.

Re:KDE vs Gnome

[smash]

Yes. Same here. Except I became a mac user in 2009 (after being a DOS/Windows user since 1989, and a Linux/BSD user since 1995).

KDE lost the plot after 3.5 (I actually preferred the 2.x series if I'm honest).

Gnome are trying to look like OS X, but thats all. They're missing what makes OS X actually work. What makes OS X pleasant to use is nothing to do with Aqua.

I still check out the Unix desktop on a regular basis, but there's still a long way for it to go.

Re:KDE vs Gnome

[smash]

Same. The OSX gui sucks in a lot of places if you ask me. But its the hardware and integration with stuff like automator that wins for me.

Re:KDE vs Gnome

[Anonymous Coward]

They could give you an excuse to upgrade your hardware so they aren't dog slow? Then you could go back to dwm and be happy.

Re:KDE vs Gnome

[Anonymous Coward]

It's pretty far from "refined" or "polished":
Panel auto-hide option has been broken since 4.6 release came out several months ago and nobody seems to care.
Mouse button application menu was broken since 4.0 till 4.6 (~2 years).
Sound card control is screwed up as never before (how do you configure microphone boost?).
What else?

Re:KDE vs Gnome

[Artifakt]

For a while, Gnome's Nautilus was the default file manager for my KDE desktop install, while I waited for Dolphin to get a true delete command on the drop down menu. That's been fixed since at least Kubuntu 10.4, but I don't remember if it was done before 9.10 or not. Still KDE ran it like it was native.
          Why KDE in more general terms? There's slightly more Gnomestuff that works properly in KDE than KDEstuff that works in Gnome (even though most apps, probably 95% or so, work with each). I use a few astronomy related apps that had problems under Gnome, and switched because they worked right in KDE, before I worried that much about looks, but I got to love the sheer customisability of KDE. You could make KDE look like a default Gnome install, or Win 7, or a lot of other things, or you could make it look like you thought different, different from just about anything else.
        There's also Debian apps and software originally developed for Enlightenment, XFCE or other environments, that you won't find in any of the default sources for most KDE distros, that I've been able to run anyway.
        KDE runs pretty fast on an old IBM Thinkpad R32 I have with only 512 Meg of ram. I was able to selectively turn on a lot of bells and whistles - some of them slowed it down a lot, but some didn't. I ended up with a laptop that could never run windows 7, running something that looked sharp and functioned about equivalently. (Remember, there were many people who advocated downgrading R32s back to Windows 2000 because they were slow running XP.). Maybe it's just my lack of understanding, but I couldn't coax that kind of performance out of the equivalent Ubuntu distro).
        KDE shines if you like little apps, like weather forecasts. stock tickers, or sticky notes. There's a lot of variety with add ons for Google Gadgets, Screenlets, Super Karamba, and the built in Widgets. If you need something such as a display with separate I/O tracking for multiple network ports, a Hebrew calender conversion or a lunar phases display, there's a good chance it exists. If you want to get into writing software, these sorts of small applets are a great place to start, where people can contribute to the Linux community with relatively simple, easy to master tools that have some real use to others. Again, maybe this is just my lack of understanding, but KDE seems to do a better job of letting you keep such applets on just the virtual desktop you want than Gnome does, reducing clutter.

Re:KDE vs Gnome

[deathguppie]

I'm writing this not so much as a /. response as a personal one to you that maybe someone my find helpful.

I don't know about the Gnome vs KDE thing. I know it happened, but I didn't decide between the two over small things it was basically a philosophical design issue that had nothing to do with QT license vs GDK's GPL, or even simplifying vs doing everything.

It was that back in 97 KDE had this idea floating around that a person should be able to access anything through anything. That everything could be treated like a file, much like the way Plan9 had been designed but from a user GUI perspective. It was the reason that Konqueror was developed as a multi-use browser. Files, movies, text.. it was all the same, and if you knew that then you should be able to access it in the same way. KDE3.5 moved in that direction in a big way. I could accomplish most simple tasks by left clicking on an icon and selecting from the drop down menu. Archive, or unpack, move, copy.. but also convert image types etc. I know that a lot of people balked that it became to inclusive and complicated, but the reality is, that many of us loved the ability to do this large aggregate of tasks without having to open a separate app for every function. It made life simpler even if it didn't seem simple to a lot of people who never needed these functions.

I'm writing this from win7, and I can tell you I just don't even understand why these people did what they did. There is a completely obfuscated filesystem that makes no sense on the surface and I can't seem to turn off. I can create my own in a way that makes sense to me, but then I have to completely work around all of the built in sidebar stuff. Often starting at the root "C:" to find one single file. I hate it. I wish the people who had created it had used KDE even once in their life where you can mold the interface to exactly what you want for whatever purpose you need. Where options are everywhere and you can turn on or off anything you want. Make the file browser answer to your needs, not force you into whatever nonsensical system some "rad" developer envisioned.

That is the beauty of KDE.. I hope they go on making it forever.

Re:KDE vs Gnome

[Anonymous Coward]

Undecided about Dolphin. Honestly I still like Windows Explorer (and always hated OS X Finder).

You can probably get Dolphin tweaked into something you find comfortable. Check out the "Settings" and "View" menu entries, and also keep in mind that the extra side panels (like Information, Places, Folders, etc.) can be moved, detached, removed, or combined into tabs. Same goes for the embedded terminal (F4 to show), which can be detached or attached to the window based on preference.

If not, try using Konqueror for file management instead. You can change the default file manager in SystemSettings (under "Default Applications"), along with changing other defaults. If you do this, it keeps most of the integration together, even with non-KDE apps. Set your default browser to FireFox and clicking links in Kmail will open Firefox instead of Konqueror (or rekonq), etc.

While I'm thinking about it, give the KIO stuff a try. In almost any place that lets you enter a path, you can give URLs (sftp://, ftp://, fish://, etc.) and browse remote locations as if they were local. For example, you can put a webpage URL in Kate's file open dialog and get the html source directly, or you can browse a system you have ssh access to by typing in fish://url/ into Dolphin. I like to keep remote systems I access frequently bookmarked in KDE's "places" list for quick access.

Re:KDE vs Gnome

[KugelKurt]

The oxygen-gtk theme helps here, but you can still notice the difference.

Well, the KDE/Qt devs can only do so much. The KDE/Qt side built in GTK theming right into the toolkit while OTOH the GTK devs are not interested in doing such deep integration work. Oxygen-gtk was (again) written by KDE but as a mere theme it can't do as much as integration right in the toolkit.

Re:KDE vs Gnome

[PenisLands]

It's the same for me. When I heard that gnome 2 would soon be obsoleted in favor of gnome 3, I switched to XFCE. I've been using it for three months now, and it's great.

Re:KDE vs Gnome

[Anonymous Coward]

Not having to recompile it if you want a different color in your title bar, for one...

It doesn't have

[Das Auge]

The nice thing about Kubuntu is that it doesn't have Unity as the default window manager.

I'm still on 10.10. When I upgrade, it's going to be to Xubuntu. If Conical continues to make poor decisions, I'll move to Mint (a distro based directly on Debian with ).

Re:It doesn't have

[KugelKurt]

The nice thing about Kubuntu is that it doesn't have Unity as the default window manager.

Unity isn't a window manager. It's a workspace that uses the Compiz window manager (and can't use anything else).

Re:It doesn't have

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm still on 10.10. When I upgrade, it's going to be to Xubuntu. If Conical continues to make poor decisions, I'll move to Mint (a distro based directly on Debian with ).

Only one of the releases is Debian based, the other is Ubuntu based.

Re:It doesn't have

[Anonymous Coward]

Why I remember that Unity did not allow Compiz Fusion and neither did GNOME 3?

Re:It doesn't have

[KugelKurt]

The first Unity release builds on Mutter but subsequent releases were ported to Compiz and no longer even work with Mutter or anything else.

Re:It doesn't have

[Anonymous Coward]

Unity is not a window manager. It's a Compiz plugin that provides a panel, a launcher and search.

Rapidly Rising Minor Version Numbers...

[UltraZelda64]

KDE 4.2 ... 4.3 ... 4.4 ... 4.5 ...4.6 ... and we're already approaching 4.7. Does this mean a major update, KDE 5, is coming sooner than might be expected? If so, I hope it's just a logical update instead of a massive overhaul like KDE4 was... it was absolutely horrible at first, but now it's just getting good. I'd hate to see the KDE3 -> KDE4 cycle all over again. Hopefully they slow down and just start incrementing the next number to the right, or they go up to and past 4.10 (though in the project's history it doesn't seem like it's gone that far before in version numbering). Oh well, could be worse--it could be like Chrome and now Firefox.

Re:Rapidly Rising Minor Version Numbers...

[Atriqus]

KDE 4.2 ... 4.3 ... 4.4 ... 4.5 ...4.6 ... and we're already approaching 4.7. Does this mean a major update, KDE 5, is coming sooner than might be expected?

I don't think one implies the other. KDE reaching 4.7 has more to do with the fact that they consistently release about every 6 months, and 4.0 was released about three and a half years ago. I wouldn't read any more into the numbers than that.

Re:Rapidly Rising Minor Version Numbers...

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, although KDE 4.8 is still planned, there is talk about a KDE 5 now. However, it's not going to be a big rewrite like last time (mostly thanks to Qt 5 not being a big rewrite, like last time), but will instead just be a cleanup of current APIs and removing some old cruft from from the early days of KDE 4.0. Most of the currently used and working code will be left alone, with perhaps a bugfix here and there.

All in all, it sounds like it'll be a much smoother transition than KDE3 to KDE4 was.

Re:Rapidly Rising Minor Version Numbers...

[KugelKurt]

There is no KDE5 and there will never be: http://vizzzion.org/blog/2011/06/there-is-no-kde5/
With Qt 5 approaching in 2012 and provided the world doesn't end that year, we'll see KDE Frameworks 5.0 relatively soon. According to current rough estimates posted on mailing lists likely the winter (January) release 2013 will make the advent of KDE Frameworks 5.0. So far I didn't read of any plans to shift away from KDE's usual 6 months release cycle and Summer 2012 should be too early.

That said, I'm not aware of any plans to dump Plasma Workspaces or KDE Applications to 5.0 as well. They don't guaranty any ABI stability and can stay with 4.x version numbers until they make an actual big transition instead of just adopting a newer Qt.

Re:Rapidly Rising Minor Version Numbers...

[UltraZelda64]

Sorry, but I don't buy into the KDE project's new branding, nor do I buy into this superstitious mumbo-jumbo that the end of the world is near. It's still KDE to me, and the world will not end according to some crazy religious beliefs or some old loon's "calculations" based on some Christian bible text selections.

Re:Rapidly Rising Minor Version Numbers...

[UltraZelda64]

Cool, I don't mind minor changes, but I'd hate to see KDE start from scratch again when they've finally got KDE4 to be so decent. IMO, as long as older hardware is not being used, KDE4 still seems to have a lot of life in it.

Re:Rapidly Rising Minor Version Numbers...

[Anonymous Coward]

No there is not. One person started rumors in his blog about KDE 5 roadmap and he were not a developer or did not take any part to KDE (community). Developers and KDE needed to one week clarify to people that KDE 5 has not been discussed and there are no plans for it now.
So stop spreading false rumors and lies!

Re:Rapidly Rising Minor Version Numbers...

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh, really?
http://aseigo.blogspot.com/2011/05/qt5-kde5.html
http://aseigo.blogspot.com/2011/05/relax.html

Though I do see the blogpost you're talking about, and this one was pure bullshit, I do agree...

All they need now is

[Anonymous Coward]

...all they need now is a real graphical designer and a usability expert to help them with the UI.

The KDE UI is way, way too busy. It's too busy for its own good. Technically it's the best, it has the best components and everything but it just unfortunately looks like 1980s.

Less text, less icons. If you need to have icons, make them BIG. Reduce the visible options. Don't put a border on something just because you can.

And make sure the color match!!! No red-blue, no red-green, no ...

Fix those things for starters.

Re:All they need now is

[Anonymous Coward]

Huh, big icons?

That's so Windows noob, people that leave the default Windows Explorer with hidden extensions, no detail and just BIG icons in a single frame.

They don't even know how to enable the split display with the directory tree on the left, only idiots can live with such a system.

I prefer the Dolphin way where I see the various devices and can do a split view by simply pressing F3.
Or pressing F4 and getting a terminal in the directory I'm at, just brilliant.

--
Teun

Re:All they need now is

[KugelKurt]

Less text, less icons. If you need to have icons, make them BIG. Reduce the visible options.

Why should the KDE community mimic GNOME? GNOME exists already. There is no point in acting like GNOME with GNOME still very active.
Plasma Desktop and KDE Apps are targeted towards a different audience.

Re:All they need now is

[UltraZelda64]

Less text, less icons. If you need to have icons, make them BIG. Reduce the visible options. Don't put a border on something just because you can.

I don't think I would want to use *your* ideal version of KDE4. Less text... fewer icons... larger icons? Nope, I'll pass. I don't want ridiculously oversized icons like so many environments are going for these days (ie. for netbooks) wasting space that could be better used with added functionality. Less text is a disaster because text can say much more at a quick glance than a little icon usually can (unless you're completely illiterate), and combined with less icons... well, you're heading down a path of destroying all functionality (see: GNOME).

That is not so say that KDE is perfect, because it's not. But if you want those things, go use GNOME 3 or Unity--or hell, even KDE4's Plasma Netbook (they're all fine for some uses, including those weak computers with little screens like netbooks). Meanwhile I'll stay with Xfce, a plain old KDE4 Plasma Desktop, GNOME 2, LXDE, or whatever else is functional and doesn't waste space on "BIG" (as you put it) icons while providing fewer accessible functions.

Did they get rid of

[Outtascope]

the akonadi/nepomuk dependency? If not, wgaff? I won't touch desktop linux again until this semantic desktop bullshit runs its course and the kde devs/designers pull their heads out their asses. I've grudgingly switched my office (5 workstations) back to MS after 8 or so years on Debian/Ubuntu. Heaven forbid Microsoft ever figures out how to create a real shell, I'll never even have to think about it again. I mean seriously, fixed width, STILL have to hit that shitty little menu to copy and paste? Powsershell is better, but the bar was pretty frickin' low to start with. That said, I'm still finding Win 7 much more productive than the last two or three releases of KDE on Ubuntu. For the same reasons that I switched to Linux in the first place. I don't have to fight with it to do what I want (well, at least not as much as I have found myself doing with Linux the last couple of years). And Gnome still sucks. I LIKE QT. A lot. I like most things about KDE. But 25 Akondi processes running for PIM that I don't even use (Thunderbird+Lightning does everything my staff needs) makes me has angry as I would get buying a big-box HP desktop and spending 2 weeks trying to get rid of all the bloatware. Seems I only post here to bitch about what has happened to KDE/Ubuntu... I guess it's kinda like watching your sister get into porn. You can say you like it all you want, I loathe it.

Re:Did they get rid of

[shutdown -p now]

Heaven forbid Microsoft ever figures out how to create a real shell, I'll never even have to think about it again. I mean seriously, fixed width, STILL have to hit that shitty little menu to copy and paste?

Why wait?

I'm about ready to give up on Ubuntu/GNOME...

[mfearby]

... and as long as KDE will allow me to have a *small* panel at the top of the screen onto which I can place launchers for all my favourite apps/locations/files, then it's a done deal :-)

Re:I'm about ready to give up on Ubuntu/GNOME...

[supersloshy]

GNOME Shell's top panel is pretty small, and you can launch apps with favorites, ALT+F2, and searching for them GNOME Do/Windows 7-style. If your desktop can run it, I don't see what the big deal is. 3.2 and onwards will only get better.

Re:I'm about ready to give up on Ubuntu/GNOME...

[jgrahn]

... and as long as KDE will allow me to have a *small* panel at the top of the screen onto which I can place launchers for all my favourite apps/locations/files, then it's a done deal :-)

Gnome and KDE aren't the only alternatives. Any window manager will have a way to start programs; mine (ctwm) uses menus.

Re:I'm about ready to give up on Ubuntu/GNOME...

[KugelKurt]

... and as long as KDE will allow me to have a *small* panel at the top of the screen onto which I can place launchers for all my favourite apps/locations/files, then it's a done deal :-)

Yes, it is possible. I just checked: The minimum panel height is 10 pixels, although icons dragged to it don't scale below 16 pixels (so they're cut off when you have a smaller panel).
Personally, I usually have a bigger panel and use the Quick Launch applet to to have two lines of smaller icons.

Have they fixed the missing 3.5 features then?

[Anonymous Coward]

So, have they:

Given us multicolumn view back in Konqueror?

Given Konsole back the new-tab button? (I dont care if this is a config item, I havent found it yet, and why remove it?)

Reintegrated file browsing back into Konqueror and got rid of the ultra-silly Naut....er Dolphin?

Made the panel and desktop right-click configurable instead of that silly modal interface?

Honestly I wouldnt call any KDE release 'done' until these corrections have been made.

Re:Have they fixed the missing 3.5 features then?

[SomeKDEUser]

for konqueror, I am not sure what you want. I don't remember a NeXT-like column view ever being available. If you mean the splitting of the interface recursively, it is still there.

new tab for konsole? just double-click on a free area of the tab bar.

Reintegrate file browsing into konqueror? Uh? type any local URL in the location bar, and you are browsing your files.

As for the desktop and panel right-click... Are you sure you are not confusing gnome and KDE. 'cause I can add any service menu to the right click. In fact the desktop and panel of KDE4 are way more configurable than the ones from KDE3.

But clearly, you must be an amazingly anal person to consider that the whole desktop is incomplete because you basically would like a button instead of a double-click. Seriously. Get some perspective.

Re:Have they fixed the missing 3.5 features then?

[Anonymous Coward]

Has there been a time when konsole didn't have the new tab button? When I go to configure the Konsole options, I can see a "Show "new tab" and "close tab" buttons in the tab bar" option, and it's been there since, like, forever. Or as already suggested, you can double click the tab bar area. Same goes for Konqueror, it's always been usable as a file browser/file manager. And I don't see any issues with panel and desktop right click. Are you sure you've used KDE 4?

Re:Have they fixed the missing 3.5 features then?

[m50d]

new tab for konsole? just double-click on a free area of the tab bar.

That hides the feature and is harder to use.

As for the desktop and panel right-click... Are you sure you are not confusing gnome and KDE. 'cause I can add any service menu to the right click. In fact the desktop and panel of KDE4 are way more configurable than the ones from KDE3.

He's complaining about the way you add new "widgets" to the panel, or move it around.

Re:Have they fixed the missing 3.5 features then?

[GnuAge]

Given Konsole back the new-tab button? (I dont care if this is a config item, I havent found it yet, and why remove it?)

Konsole -> Manage Profiles -> Edit Profile -> Tabs -> Show New Tab and Close Tab buttons in tab bar.

Not hard to find. But I agree it should be the default. What galled me was that KDE went through a rigamarole to migrate KDE3 settings to a new KDE4 profile and none of the ones I cared about seemed to actually migrate from my old .kde folder, including that one.

Porting to Windows

[Anonymous Coward]

I really hope that kdelibs splitting, which is planned, can lead to package single KDE programs for Windows. I know that they have a single installer, but I wish I could have single programs (KMess, Choqok for example) installable separately with their libs. That could really improve KDE market share... GTK applications are available in this way since ages!

Re:Porting to Windows

[KugelKurt]

GTK application yes, full-blown GNOME applications not.

please help me use Nepomuk (and Strigi)

[KWTm]

Nepomuk doesn't search anything. Strigi does. Nepomuk works without Strigi.

Ah, someone who is informed about Nepomuk and Strigi ! Could you please help me take advantage of these two features? How do I, as a semi-geek user, use it on a day-to-day basis? What do these features do? I posted a semi-humourous posting asking for help, and the responses I got were essentially "we're just as clueless as you".

What does Nepomuk do? Can I choose not to install it? What happens if it's not present? If I'm not using Kmail, for example, does that mean I don't need Nepomuk?

Strigi, I hear, is for searching, but I am also not sure how to use it. I tried it once, when I was searching for a file I desperately needed, but it wasn't as intuitive as I hoped. I remembered only 3 things about the file: it was a PDF file, the file contents contained something about my previous job, and I had some idea which directories the file was possibly in. I brought up the Strigi search interface and found nothing, spent a few minutes experimenting with the search using files which I knew about just so I could tell what Strigi did (I didn't succeed), and ended up scripting a grep to look for the file I wanted.

So ... what should I be doing? How do I use it?

(I won't even get started on Akonadi.)

Re:please help me use Nepomuk (and Strigi)

[KugelKurt]

Nepomuk is two things: A set of specifications for saving metadata and a background server.
Users don't interact with Nepomuk directly but software may use it. For example tags entered in Digikam or KMail are handled using Nepomuk.

I don't know how certain KDE Applications behave without Nepomuk. I have it enabled without any disadvantage. (Strigi is disabled for me.)

Re:please help me use Nepomuk (and Strigi)

[Anonymous Coward]

Nepomuk is the service that lets you do things like assign tags, comments, and ratings to files. It maintains its own database, so it's not dependent on the filesystem for storing the data, and it can save the information for any file type, even ones that lack a way to embed the data into the files themselves.

Strigi is an indexing search tool, similar to Beagle or locate. Like Beagle it can index the contents of files in addition to the filenames, making it possible to quickly search the contents of all your files. Think of it like a web crawler, but for local directories you specify. It only crawls directories (and their subdirs) if you tell it to, and by default I think it only crawls your $HOME. Strigi can be run standalone, or it can be run as a part of Nepomuk, making its data available to anything that knows how to communicate with nepomuk.

Programs that interact with Nepomuk can query it, letting you view, search, or assign this metadata. Dolphin uses it for ratings, tags, and the search box, for example. If you have both Strigi and Nepomuk active, this means you can type "perl" in the search box and Dolphin will display a list of files tagged "perl", that contain "perl" in the comment area, that have "perl" in the filename, or that have "perl" written somewhere inside the file. It's also possible to limit the search, for example, I think "tag:perl" will only match files tagged "perl" and none of the other options.

Nepomuk is enabled by default, Strigi may be as well. Both are optional and can be disabled separately, with no real loss, you just can't use the features they provide if they're turned off. Which is good, because Strigi, in my experience, will drag your system to a crawl if you try to index an expansive filesystem. Nepomuk doesn't seem to incur any noticeable overhead, so while you can disable it it's not as beneficial to do so

That said, I currently have both disabled because I'm not on good terms with Nepomuk right now (It ate my tag database and wasted hours of effort). I haven't had any problems with any of the KDE PIM programs (Kmail, Akregator, etc.) because of this; Digikam still maintains its own database for tags and ratings, but can't push those changes out for other programs; and Amarok still seems able to rate files, but again cannot push those changes out for other programs.

Akonadi, as I understand it, isn't something you should have to deal with much as a user. It seems to be an abstraction between data sources and the programs that want to store information, so that different programs can share the data in a consistent way. You tell Akonadi what resources you want available to apps (vcard file, icalendar file, kolab, imap, etc.) and it handles the hard part, then makes the data available to other programs as needed.

Re:please help me use Nepomuk (and Strigi)

[GnuAge]

Nepomuk is enabled by default, Strigi may be as well. Both are optional and can be disabled separately, with no real loss, you just can't use the features they provide if they're turned off. Which is good, because Strigi, in my experience, will drag your system to a crawl if you try to index an expansive filesystem. Nepomuk doesn't seem to incur any noticeable overhead, so while you can disable it it's not as beneficial to do so.

On my current system, at least (Debian testing, KDE 4.6.3) disabling nepomuk disables strigi automatically. I find if I'm using a fast system, say an Intel C2D or an Athlon X2, I can leave them both running without incurring too much of a performance penalty, but they overwhelm a single-core system, even the low-powered dual-core AMD E-350 Fusion system in my living room. Besides which, nepomuk literally filled half of my 10GB home partition on this system (it has a 40GB SSD).

The entire nepomuk model doesn't work for me because it relies on indexing files on each computer. But I have several different computers all over my sprawling Victorian house, netbook, laptops, living room/TV, bedroom TV, office, attic, etc., all accessing data that primarily resides on my low-powered attic Debian Lenny home server. So each machine would have to generate a huge database and comments/tags generated on one system would not be accessible on others. The only way the KDE desktop search stuff would work for me is if I could run nepomuk, etc. on my server and access it from my various clients. It might lug the Atom CPU on the server, but it runs 24/7 and doesn't have much to do anyway, except serve files, web pages, proxy duties, etc.

Re:please help me use Nepomuk (and Strigi)

[Anonymous Coward]

On my current system, at least (Debian testing, KDE 4.6.3) disabling nepomuk disables strigi automatically. I find if I'm using a fast system, say an Intel C2D or an Athlon X2, I can leave them both running without incurring too much of a performance penalty, but they overwhelm a single-core system, even the low-powered dual-core AMD E-350 Fusion system in my living room. Besides which, nepomuk literally filled half of my 10GB home partition on this system (it has a 40GB SSD).

I probably should have specified, but the Strigi option in SystemSettings is specifically the Nepomuk integration, it makes sense that it disables with it. However, there's a standalone client and some utils (apt-get install strigi-client strigi-utils) that can be used separately of Nepomuk and the rest of KDE. You can use the "strigiclient" binary to configure indexing options and the strigi-utils binaries such as "deepfind", "deepgrep", and "strigicmd" should be able to be used without Nepomuk and its Strigi interface enabled.

The complaint I made about heavy CPU use only seems to happen if Strigi is required to index tens (maybe hundreds) of thousands of files. I've had this filesystem a long time and my $HOME is expansive, so Strigi has to index many files. What happens to me is, after it indexes the files once, it starts checking occasionally to see if the files have changed and need indexing again. Since there are so many files, it ends up doing this scan indefinitely. The result is I end up with high CPU usage 24/7 on the system with many files. My notebook and desktop have similar specs, both dual core with Debian testing, and it only happens on the desktop with the massive home directory.

It also creates a ridiculously large database as you noted, and the more files you have the larger it gets. Strigi, for some reason, doesn't seem to scale as well as the older (and now defunct, I think) Beagle indexer. Beagle would limit itself, only re-scanning at a slow rate, which made it take longer to do the updates, but also made it a lot less noticeable when doing so.

Nepomuk's database won't get as large with Strigi disabled, though, so if you disable it and keep Nepomuk running it should be a more manageable size. You may have to wipe the database first to get rid of all the Strigi data.

The only way the KDE desktop search stuff would work for me is if I could run nepomuk, etc. on my server and access it from my various clients.

In theory you could probably rig multiple machines to use samba or nfs for the folder nepomuk stores its database in, but it would be extremely fragile. Nepomuk ties its tags to paths and will lose the association if the file is moved or the path is changed in some way. For example, if you move a tagged file using Dolphin, it works fine because Dolphin tells nepomuk what to do; but if you move a tagged file with mv instead, the tags now point to a file that no longer exists, but will still show up in nepomuk queries pointing to a nonexistent file, sort of like a broken symlink with no easy way to fix it.

That's how it ate my tag database, basically. I plugged in a USB storage device, KDE's device manager did its thing with HAL, changed some paths (those default /media/DISK NAME/ type ones), and suddenly the tagging on another part of my filesystem got borked because of a symlink on the device. It completely undermined my faith in using Nepomuk for anything I expect to keep long-term.

Related, if you're interested in the bits under the hood, check out "sopranocmd", it lets you query Nepomuk's database directly assuming it's using the soprano backend. I found it when I was trying to find a way to restore my database (which was intact, but pointing to the wrong locations at the time). It's an interesting system that has a lot of potential.

Kwallet

[Anonymous Coward]

Try setting the kwallet password to an empty value, it should stop asking you for passwords to the wallet after you do. As long as you're logged in, programs that request access to the wallet will get it, hassle-free. Works for KDE4, at least; never tried it with 3.

Seems to be a relatively unknown feature. I only found it by accident, in fact.