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KDE 4.7.0 Released
jrepin writes "KDE 4.7 releases provide many new features and improved stability and performance. Lots of visual polishing took place with an update to the Oxygen icons, and improved consistency between panel items such as clock and notification areas. The window manager KWin brings a new shadow system and can now run on OpenGL ES supporting hardware, making it better suited for mobile devices. Network management widget is much improved. Navigating through applications and recent files is easier with the addition of breadcrumbs to the Kickoff application launcher. Kontact groupware solution rejoins the rest of the KDE software, with increased stability, better connection to new services and sharing of communication information between more applications. Dolphin file manager has a cleaner default appearance. The menu bar is hidden, but easy to reach and restore. The file searching interface has been improved. Marble the virtual globe now has voice navigation support and a map creation wizard. Gwenview image viewer now offers the ability to compare two or more pictures side by side. Digikam photo management app brings face detection and recognition."
Not pulling a "Unity"? Right. Carry on then, and keep up the good work.
Each release takes longer before it becomes useful. KDE 1.1 was working just right for me. So was KDE 2.3. KDE 3 did not really mature until 3.3 or 3.4. KDE 4 is just now getting there, after 8 minor releases. Some things are still working better in KDE 3, or in KDE 1 for that.
Don't get me wrong, I like KDE. But we are paying a huge price for "progress".
Some people can't run wires through walls.
Grow up.
--
BMO
How's that coming?
As a Firefox user who's children love Flash games, that's a /sine qua non/.
"I don't know, therefore Aliens" Wafflebox1
You are kidding, right? Wireless connections are inherently portable and therefore transient, they are not always available. This is in fact the whole point of a wireless connection, that it is NOT always on.
No, the point is that you don't need a wire. You do realize that some people have their entire homes/offices setup with wireless as they don't need to run wires and wireless is fast enough for then, right?
Perhaps you only use laptops with wireless connections, but your use case does not describe the broader market.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
This is in fact the whole point of a wireless connection, that it is NOT always on.
You mean like cellphone, wireless keyboard and mouse and of course GPS. You really nailed it. /sarcasm
"Don't let fools fool you. They are the clever ones."
There will always be something that doesn't work as it should or as you would like it to be. KDE 4 is a stable, solid desktop environment. I used KDE as my day-to-day working dekstop since 3.x. I jumped the wagon when they ironed out showstoppers in SC4 and don't look back.
BTW I wonder why there is so much complaining about KDE when it comes to some minor features? Such scale is unseen in windows world. Maybe windows users don't complain so much because ms doesn't care about fixing and improving things anyway? Here you can discuss and have things fixed or even redesigned in a matter of weeks or months.
Short answer: yes. Longer answer: yeah, it's pretty usable, actually seems more polished and complete than KDE 3.5 was. I was a hold-out, too, lest you accuse me of being some KDE 4 fanboi.
Did they fix the disabled checkbox in Knetworkmanager for setting a wireless connection as system?
No, it appears not, as the box is grayed out, at least in 4.6.
So that's a no then? Instead of fixing the broken box (something that has just WORKED on Gnome since forever, by the way) - the KDE fix is "plug in a network cable".
I didn't say it was "No" ... I said only that wireless is intended to be a transitory connection, it dpends if you happen to be within 100-odd feet of a particular wireless router or not. It is not normally available until after a given desktop user logs on, even in Windows.
There is no penalty for this. If you need network drives to be mounted via a transitory wireless network connection, just run smb4k in the system tray after you login. Set up smb4k to see your network drives, then include it in auto-started applications. It will work exactly the same as the equivalent of network drives over wireless as in Windows.
I thought the whole point of a wireless connection was for mobility and convenience. The fact of the matter is knetworkmanager was a fail when 4.0 was released imho. I had nothing but issues with it on 3 out of the 4 machines I run. Shortly after I discovered wicd and never looked back. It may require a little more configuration depending on your needs, but I have no problems with it period!
ifup is the way to go for permanent connections at the system level. Networkmanager is crappy for multi-user systems anyway.
Now if you are a single user, well, what is wrong with "connect automatically"??
Some mfgrs will. Why? Because it's generally loads better than Windows on underperforming hardware. Sure, gaming performance might be a little less, and benchmarks might not show it, but as far as overall responsiveness, Linux beats Windows any day.
Also, if Meego takes off, there will be an opportunity to throw a KDE or Gnome front-end on your Meego tablet, either aftermarket or stock. And it just might be an improvement there.
I've got a few users running on gnome with Kwin as the window manager because the window manager that comes with gnome won't beep the PC speaker and it also very badly messes up some things with some legacy applications (eg. mouse clicks don't work!).
Personally I've had the same Enlightenment desktop theme since 1997 but have E17 at home.
So let's say I did a lot of Linux back in the day, now days, I do it rarely under vmware with OSX. I've been installing (k)Ubuntu now and then again. What's the best KDE friendly distro these days (running under vmware)?
One man's pink plane is another man's blue plane.
It may surprise you to know that the majority of the world is not yet using 1080p monitors.
That said...nobody's forcing you to view every page fullscreen. Also, with a near-1080p monitor myself, I could care less if the screen is filled entirely from left-to-right. That actually reduces readability of most text.
Ever see a newspaper print its text all the way accross the page? No, they use many smaller columns to break-up the text. Since the website is not printed on paper, it's somewhat irrelevant if there's blank space on the sides.
Aside from all that...what the heck does this have to do with the release of 4.7?
i've been on Gnome a while and have seen KDE advance. Plasma seemed particularly interesting and how they integrated apps seemed cool. today i tried KDE again and now i'm back in Gnome 2.x writing this.
complaints:
my biggest complaint is that they took away the desktop icons. it's a big deal. i have files on my desktop that are fast and easy to access and they took those away from me! i searched a good half our trying to find how to restore them but low and behold, it's not just a configuration, they removed that functionality completely. if you are about to say, "hey! you cant criticize, Gnome 3 does that too!" i would like to reiterate i'm using Gnome 2.x for that same reason.
it's graphics accelerated but not snappy. i expected since the graphic render system is offloaded that it would be super snappy but alas, it is NOT! opening a new file manager window or any thing else took a second, sitting there with a "busy" cursor. before you blame my hard drive, please know that i have a very high-speed SSD (cost me an arm but talked them down so i could keep the leg). even Gnome's file manager (Nautilus) renders faster and it's no slimline file manager.
one annoying thing is the file manager's configuration fragmentation. in the file manager, you can right click lots of different things and configure them but not everything. it's really annoying to have to open eight different configuration windows instead of just one with a well organized system for configuring everything in the file manager.
setting up widgets in the panels can be a little clumsy trying to put a widget between two others and i hope that will be addressed.
conclusion:
it's pretty but it can be frustrating to use. it's not ready for general consumption.
and please dont tell me KDE is for "advanced users and not you, noob!" or some BS because i've been on the Linux scene over a decade using everything from kernel configuration frontends to IDEs to that damn fish applet. i know what i'm talking about.
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
Try searching their bugzilla.. in this case, that would give you bug 204340, which is indeed fixed and should be part of 4.7.
Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false, and by rulers as useful.
It's a valid complain, but apparently not easy to fix. Why aren't website designs fluid, so that they scale to to the browser window? Mostly because support for the table-bit of CSS 2.1support is still broken in many modern browsers, I hear. Which makes it hard to get that holy-grail 2/3-column design-with-top-and-button that web designers love.
Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false, and by rulers as useful.
Ubuntu has more software and better support for high end hardware. OpenSuSE runs nicely on netbooks and low end hardware (is KDE deliberately broken in Ubuntu to be so slow on low end hardware?). OpenSuSE has very well polished system management interface (YaST). More stuff works out of the box in Ubuntu (with KDE-full) than in openSuSE.
There are many new features in this KDE release, but the Slashdot entry did not mention the first technical preview of KDE Telepathy that is released in parallel to this KDE release. While not fully there yet, it already offers many of the features we know from Gnome's Telepathy. Even better: I really like their vision, which is to integrate Telepathy into all applications that deal with communication (such as mail) or contact data. No matter which program you use, you will be able to contact your "friends" directly from there. This is, however, largely to-do and expected with the next KDE release. Given that KDE Telepathy is released as its own package, however, you will get updates without having to wait for official KDE releases.
And it has a very transparent GUI for configurations.
"The likes of Facebook and WhatsApp are free to those whose privacy is of zero value."
It's just a shame it took so long for it to evolve into a usable and stable desktop. After losing hope due to months of buggy, incomplete and lame releases that prevented me from using my computer in the same way(s) I could with 3.5.x, I actually switched to Windows 7 some 8/9 months ago.
I installed Kubuntu 11.04 yesterday, with KDE 4.6.2. I've not yet tried 4.7, but KDE4 is extremely good now. I just hope the devs begin to recognise that having revision numbers two-thirds of the way to the next major release is far from being an acceptable situation, and this has tarnished the reputation of KDE for quite some time to come.
Not disabled on Arch Linux with kdeplasma-applets-networkmanagement 1:git20110713-1
I'm running 4.6.95 still
Unicode in Slashdot
Such questions are better posed to bugzilla. See bug 204340, which will show you that this was fixed between 4.6 and 4.7.
Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false, and by rulers as useful.
Your link tells me that >85% have _more than_ 1024 horizontal pixels. Include all those that have 1024 (which is still 25% wider than 800), you got notreason for 800 pixel site width.
HI O WISE PRINCE. WHT TOOK U SO DAM LONG?
Lots of comments here comparing KDE to Gnome 2, 3, and Unity, and a couple of posts praising LXDE (which I also like). I'm surprised there are so few who have mentioned E17. I installed Bodhi Linux (Ubuntu with E17 desktop) on a netbook and have been extremely impressed:
1. Fast, low memory usage, but ... ...
2. Manages to be beautiful
3. Without being in your way.
Its "Run Everything" (equivalent to Alt-F2 run dialog) is exceptional, the menus are generally sensible, and it's easy on the eyes. I'd highly recommend it. It's given me much of what I like KDE4 and is conceptually easier (multiple desktops, etc.) than KDE4's confusing Workspaces/Activities/etc. metaphor.
I also use Windowmaker.
If this were Usenet, I'd killfile the lot of you.
So much gray though...
Yeah, Ubuntu brown is so much more appealing...
"The likes of Facebook and WhatsApp are free to those whose privacy is of zero value."
The human eye can best read lines between 60 and 80 characters long. Trying to read longer lines is fatiguing.
Now I agree that a fixed pixel width is not the way to achieve the desired effect, but you really don't want to be reading 200 character long lines.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
The only mistake they made with 4 was treating 4.0 as a release. If they had waited longer for an actual release, or been serious in indicating to people that it was really 4.0 tech preview, then a lot of the bad feelings towards KDE 4 would not have arisen.
As a long time user of KDE (12 years or so) I finally got sick of the bugs - especially from 4. I decided to try out Gnome a year and a half ago on one of my desktops. I've taken my time adjusting to it, and have come to appreciate it. It. Just. Works. Myriad networking issues? No more. Enabling Compiz? No sweat. I just finished converting my last machine to Gnome two nights ago. My computer is like new, seems much less bloated. I've always thought KDE was a good switch for Windows users, and Gnome for Mac. My kids, lol, get to start with Gnome. Folks who say KDE is stable and proven? Crazy. True, it doesn't bail out like Windows, and it does work...mostly. Admittedly, perhaps it is my distro's implementation of it. Who knows. However, I'm much happier with stable, functional, usable, and friendly Gnome than 'pretty' with KDE. Someday, in a few years, maybe I'll consider KDE again. If they've actually prioritized bug fixes over eye candy - especially networking. It'd be nice if they threw in audio preview too, like Nautilus - I find that handy.
Desktop Environments? In all my 4 pcs I run gentoo+openbox+fbpanel+pcmanfm+my own stuff and it replaces all that bloated crap. When I did use desktop environments, I used Gnome, since KDE just looked like crap to me (3.x times).
Have you heard about SoylentNews?
There are 256x256 icons? At what point do these start being called 'images' instead?
I guess it makes sense, but that's one of those things that makes me feel numb... like a 35mb calculator application, or a 1.2 gig file to store a 20 minute anime rip.