Slashdot Mirror
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."
QT hasn't been orphaned.
Maybe they even fixed some of the bugs. I can hope, anyway.
Lacking <sarcasm> tags,
You can boot in to a different distro without actually restarting the machine, with KDM.
There's a plasmoid: http://kde-look.org/content/show.php?content=115943
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.
Davo -- Free speech, free software, AND free beer.
They keep talking about mobile devices. Is this just theoretical or are people actually running kde on real phones/tablets?
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.
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.
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.
Dilbert RSS feed
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.
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.
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.
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
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
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.
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.