KDE 4.8 Released

jrepin writes "The KDE community has released version 4.8 of their Free and open source software bundle. The new version provides many new features, improved stability, and increased performance. Highlights for Plasma Workspaces include window manager optimizations, the redesign of power management, and integration with Activities. The first Qt Quick-based Plasma widgets have entered the default installation of Plasma Desktop, with more to follow in future releases. KDE applications released today include Dolphin file manager with its new display engine, ..., and KDE Telepathy reaching its first beta milestone. New features for Marble virtual globe keep arriving, among these are: Elevation Profile, satellite tracking, and Krunner integration. The KDE Platform provides the foundation for KDE software. KDE software is more stable than ever before. In addition to stability improvements and bugfixes, Platform 4.8 provides better tools for building fluid and touch-friendly user interfaces, integrates with other systems' password saving mechanisms and lays the base for more powerful interaction with other people using the new KDE Telepathy framework."

Comments

LALALALALA

[Anonymous Coward]

AND IT STILL SUCKS BALLS

Re:LALALALALA

[Anonymous Coward]

Another one who has never tried KDE since 3.x and bases his opinion on old reviews or misconceptions.

Re:LALALALALA

[justforgetme]

No, it doesn't. It actually rocks. I really have become bored of all that desktop environment hate going on
in semi knowledgeable circles (cough... /. cough....) . KDE has always been a powerhouse of a desktop
environment and a feature complete one at that. It definitely can become option heavy but this is exactly
what a user that needs a productive environment wants.

The only thing that I don't like about KDE is that whenever I touch an "out of the box" implementation of it
I feel like using an overpolished windows NT machine. But that is only the KDE aesthetics not being my
kind of soup. Software wise it still is a top notch environment.

Re:LALALALALA

[ByOhTek]

Just because someone doesn't like KDE 4.x doesn't mean they haven't tried it.

Mind you, I've tried, IIRC, 4.1, 4.2 or 4.3 and 4.4 or 4.5 and haven't liked it in any of those, over 3.5

Different people have different tastes.

Re:LALALALALA

[ByOhTek]

Really? I've tried 4.1, 4.2 or 4.3 and either 4.4 or 4.5... Can't remember which in the latter two categories. Never got the feeling of Windows NT at all. I got that feeling from KDE 3.5...

From the perspective of someone who likes it, could you tell me what changes you've notted since 4.4?

Re:LALALALALA

[Osgeld]

I have always felt that the pre 4 versions were just windows NT that for some reason just sucked up a bunch of horsepower for unneeded fluff, the kde 4 series is much departed from that, but now I cant stand using it ... dont worry I cant stand gnome 3 either.

maybe I am stuck in the 90's as some people claim (which is odd cause KDE's setup remind's me so much of the windows 3x program manager) but I just rather not mess around with the whole new flashy toy like DE's , just give me something that has a menu, a taskbar or 2, some buttons, and stays the fuck out of my way.

Re:LALALALALA

[danomac]

For me, I initially hated 4.x. However, I did grow to like some things about it.

I actually had to use 3.x last week on one of my old machines I'd forgotten to update, and everything just felt so damn backwards.

Re:LALALALALA

[Enderandrew]

Opinions are subjective?

That being said, I think it stands head and shoulder above the competition. It is the most feature-rich desktop on the planet. And if you don't like how something looks or operates, you can customize it to look and operate exactly how you want.

And honestly, given the choices of a Windows 8 (Metro) desktop, Gnome Shell, Unity, Lion, and KDE 4.8 as modern desktops, only Lion and KDE are particularly appealing to me. And sadly Lion seems to be slowly morphing OS X into iOS. I'm beginning to think that perhaps only the KDE devs understand it is about having the right interface for the right hardware.

With KDE the same stack can easily switch between a Netbook interface, a traditional desktop shell, a more modern desktop shell, and a tablet interface. They don't force one interface for every situation.

Re:LALALALALA

[Anonymous Coward]

Agreed. I've tried Gnome but have stuck with KDE for the last 10 years because it comes with everything I need. No need to hunting for DVD burning software, a music player or anything else that Gnome doesn't bother shipping with.

Re:LALALALALA

[ByOhTek]

I'll take Win XP (classic) or KDE 3 over Win 7, which I'll take over any of those.

Someone was posting the other day (or even today?), it seems almost pathological that people seem to need the "latest" and "most modern". Do the extra features actually add much? I don't feel much gain from them.

Re:LALALALALA

[Anonymous Coward]

Just because someone doesn't like KDE 4.x doesn't mean they haven't tried it.

Mind you, I've tried, IIRC, 4.1, 4.2 or 4.3 and 4.4 or 4.5 and haven't liked it in any of those, over 3.5

Different people have different tastes.

I think KDE is just the extreme opposite of Gnome 2. Its just as bad, only in a different way.
KDE and Gnome desktops are SHIT. Fortunately applications written using the QT framework haven't jumped the shark.
No stupid ribbons, no wasted spaces, although they should work on using a consistent font.
There is nothing worse than an application that uses in its GUI 20 different fonts.

Death to desktop environments and to shitty GUI designers that think that a desktop pc is a tablet or worse a smartphone..

Re:LALALALALA

[Anonymous Coward]

The great thing about KDE is that, if you're willing to mess with it for an evening, you can get it doing that (or anything else you want it to). This has been true since the earliest releases, and is still true today.

Re:LALALALALA

[Jorl17]

Agreed. That's why I roll my own desktop environments built from what I like. I tend to chose more gnome-like things, though I much, much, prefer to code GUIs with Qt.

Re:LALALALALA

[Jorl17]

I'll have to disagree, but it's obviously a matter of taste. I hate the excessive amount of point-and-click in KDE: I think it's "fat", slow (tried many distros and even different *nixes) and confusing. I don't like Gnome either and just use openbox+fbpanel+pcmanfm+nm-applet+gedit+QtCreator+gnome-term+ario+smplayer+chromium+libreoffice+my own apps.

OTOH, I'm known to be picky. However, I'd take Gnome anytime instead of KDE: I might add that my first Linux experience was with KDE 3 and, well, let's say I was very glad once I saw the likes of gnome at that time.

Re:LALALALALA

[Enderandrew]

What advantage does XP have over KDE 3?

What advantage does KDE 3 have over 4?

Re:LALALALALA

[Airline_Sickness_Bag]

Upgraded my machine from a dual core to a faster quad core processor, quadrupled the memory, and went from CentOS 4 to Mint 12 w/ KDE 4.x. KDE 3.5 felt faster.

Re:LALALALALA

[Anonymous Coward]

The only thing I don't like about KDE is the cashew. Why can't you remove the cashew?

Can you remove the cashew in 4.8?

Re:LALALALALA

[ifiwereasculptor]

I'm someone who likes it and I can tell you what changed. Stuff works properly now. That's a pretty good summary. For example, 4.4 still had Dolphin launching four instances of your media player if you launched four video files, instead of simply queueing them for play in a single window. That sorf of jerky behaviour is now gone and bugs are quite rare.

Re:LALALALALA

[Anonymous Coward]

Unless you talk to the Gnome and Ubuntu guys. Their way is the one true way, that why the actual functionality of the GUI keeps going down.

Re:LALALALALA

[dotancohen]

Just because someone doesn't like KDE 4.x doesn't mean they haven't tried it.

Mind you, I've tried, IIRC, 4.1, 4.2 or 4.3 and 4.4 or 4.5 and haven't liked it in any of those, over 3.5

Different people have different tastes.

If it is a matter of taste, then I agree that KDE 4, nor any other desktop, will satisfy everyone. If things are broken or unintuitive for you, though, I would really like to know so that the issue could be addressed. You can reply here or email me, my Gmail username is the same as my /. username. Thanks.

Re:LALALALALA

[TitusC3v5]

The hate isn't completely unfounded. I really enjoy the look of 4.x, but every single version I've tried (4.1-4.7) has had stability problems. On three different machines, all of which have didn't have nearly as many issues with KDE 3.x, Gnome 2.x/3.x, XFCE, etc.

I'll gladly make it my preferred DE once it's safe to use on a primary machine, but until then, I'll stick with the feature-lacking Gnome 3.x.

Re:LALALALALA

[pinkeen]

I always thought that is something that the media player should take care of (like smplayer, you can even turn this off) not the DE.

Re:LALALALALA

[Anonymous Coward]

fail. in fact you don't need to point and klick anything in kde, there is one krunner to rule them all.

now you're not only known to be picky, you are also known to be wrong.

Re:LALALALALA

[Jorl17]

Sure. It's not a marketing fail of them not to publicize it. No, it's always the end-user's fault, isn't it? Oh, right, you're being a bitch.

Re:LALALALALA

[Anonymous Coward]

To one fellow I know there is one little thing missing from KDE4 that he became very used to in KDE3 that's keeping him from "moving on", as it were, kpager.

A little app that puts a thumbnailed view of each desktop or workspace so that, at a glance, he can see which desktop has what on it. This isn't like the pager in KDE4 that only puts a frame and an application icon to represent the apps that are running and their size and position. kpager actually creates a thumbnail version of each desktop, background, contents of windows, everything.

If there were such a thing in KDE4, I've looked on behalf for him, I could get him to move on from Kubuntu 8.04 to something newer.

Can anyone point out an equivalent to kpager from KDE3.5 for KDE4? It would make life a lot easier dealing with my friend.
     

Re:LALALALALA

[Anonymous Coward]

looking at various posts here it's evident that several end users know about it (look for people mentioning alt-f2, although that's supposedly not needed anymore), and it was advertised - but it seems people need pictograms these days. Is that a failing on kde's part as well?

Re:LALALALALA

[Anonymous Coward]

http://hanschen.org/2008/10/23/plasma-how-to-remove-the-cashew/

Re:LALALALALA

[justforgetme]

and stays the fuck out of my way

that's why I like the xmonad window manager. Sure you have to master haskell and unix in order to make it work for you but on top of a gnome environment or a good self roll it's just plain awesome! (pun not intended)

Re:LALALALALA

[Kjella]

Someone was posting the other day (or even today?), it seems almost pathological that people seem to need the "latest" and "most modern". Do the extra features actually add much? I don't feel much gain from them.

Well, there's two significant reasons why I'd pick Win7 over WinXP.

1) SSD alignment, both for performance and lifetime, you can hack it into working on WinXP too but it's not good at it.
2) 64-bit so I can have 16GB of RAM. Now if you say PAE or XP 64-bit, I say try it.

When it comes to UI, I really can't say I care... everything since win2k is good enough for me, yes I've tried Linux and Macs but there's nothing about the ability to organize applications that gets me excited. I can do it with virtual desktops or exposé (too fancy for slashdot) or a plain old win2k style taskbar and alt-tab. It works, if you're annoyed about it you're not spending nearly enough time in the apps themselves.

Re:LALALALALA

[justforgetme]

openbox+fbpanel+pcmanfm+nm-applet+gedit+QtCreator+gnome-term+ario+smplayer+chromium+libreoffice+my own apps

When you are done with my refrigerator, would you mind giving it back please? :-P

Anyway, I think that; if you are able to roll your own it's definitely preferable. But my initial post was just to contradict the AC who trolled at the prime spot. In general I prefer gnome as a base for my systems, mostly I think because I have become good at bending it my way. Still I have to acknowledge that KDE does offer a complete desktop env that in the right hands can surpass a gnome based workstation os.

Still, just my opinion.

Re:LALALALALA

[eugene ts wong]

Can KDE record your voice?

I've had a tough time getting microphones to work.

Re:LALALALALA

[monkeyhybrid]

I'm a long time KDE user but had forgotten about the way the old KPager displayed the window contents. It is strange they don't at least have that as an option now, although personally I do find the icon display much quicker to recognise apps by. Seems such a minor thing to prevent someone from upgrading though!

Re:LALALALALA

[Anonymous Coward]

xp over kde 3? Shit just works

3 over 4? lack of forced unused graphical bloat, that devs ,who are graphics artists, decided people who do actual work required. Change for the sake of change and pretty, with no thought to getting work done.

And dev's specifically told me I didn't need icons, flat out in messages. So I trusted them and went to Openbox, it's FANTASTIC.

Re:LALALALALA

[monkeyhybrid]

I couldn't agree more. KDE 4 is solid, full featured and for me at least, very quick. It's also very pretty if you're into that sort of thing.

I understand people having their own preferences but if your view of KDE 4.x was jaded by the first few releases, please look again and give it some serious playtime. I don't miss KDE 3.x any more and Gnome feels very basic in comparison. It's great!

Re:LALALALALA

[tenco]

It's still slow here. It takes Dolphin about a second to repaint it's window after a resize. That hasn't changed since 4.0

Re:LALALALALA

[sqldr]

sorry, you distracted me from getting actual work done there. Have you tried turning off the "graphical bloat"? and by that I mean the 3D effects, which is more down to your gfx card. KDE4 is -less- bloated than KDE3 even with the effects turned on. Try running top...

Re:LALALALALA

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm aware of that, but the plasmoids seemed to stop working with an earlier version of KDE (this is discussed in the comments of that link).

I suppose I could do the patch, but to be honest I don't hate the cashew that much. It just seems like it should be easier.

Re:LALALALALA

[Anonymous Coward]

Turning it off wasn't an option at the time.

It's not about resources required(i have a gtx460), it's about not needed/wanted sidebars being forced upon you and promoted as the only way to do things or you're dumb.

Re:LALALALALA

[xluap]

How about trinitydesktop?

Trinitydesktop is KDE 3.5.x

You can install the packages in kubuntu 11.10 or an older kubuntu, or download an install cd with kubuntu 10.10 including trinitydesktop.

http://www.trinitydesktop.org/

Re:LALALALALA

[Anonymous Coward]

Suffice to say he's an older fellow, set in his ways and with some handicaps that make it easier to avoid change where possible.

Ah, what the heck, if he's read that he'll recognize that this is related to him. He's an 81 year old mathematician who labels himself and the world's oldest Ritalin kid (yes, he's a PhD in Mathematics with ADD), he still redefines the keys on the keyboard to match the function on a old keyboard he worked with 30 years ago and created a set of emacs macros for a set of editing functions that virtually all editors and word processors do today but with different keys. He keeps emacs and the macros around so he doesn't have to spend time learning the new keystrokes. All of these new things that he might spend time learning would take away from the time he has to work on the mathematics.

And, that's why he needs to find something to replace the Kpager from KDE3. The only changes he makes are to keep the newer versions of KDE as much like the older versions that he started with back before there was even Kubuntu. Kpager has been around since 2000 but disappeared when KDE moved up to KDE4 so he's still running on Kubuntu 8.04.

Re:LALALALALA

[RubberMallet]

Why? Why do you hate the cashew? I'm not asking as someone who thinks it's awesome or anything.... it's just that I simply don't even notice it. It's stuck up in the top right corner, and I never see it. If it stays there or is removed is of no consequence to me... and I've yet to see anyone be able to articulate why they hate it so much. So many people list it as the sole reason they hate KDE4.... which makes no sense to me.

But... the beauty of Linux is this: http://kde-look.org/content/show.php/Stealth+Cashew?content=108460 and this: http://kde-look.org/content/show.php/Py-Cashew?content=147892

Problem solved?

Re:LALALALALA

[monkeyhybrid]

Fair enough. :) I wish I had spare time to work on KPager now, to add the older behaviour back in!

Re:LALALALALA

[Anonymous Coward]

The cashew was annoying for a lot of folks because despite KDE's near infinite configurability, the Developers refused to provide an option to hide it. In some ways it was symbolic of the frustration people felt with the serious regressions initially found in KDE 4 after upgrading from 3.5. Even today some applications don't have feature parity with their KDE 3 counterparts.

I seem to recall them going so far as to saying it was not possible to hide it -- but then the community came up with plasmoids to do just that. Hah.

Re:LALALALALA

[Jorl17]

When I open up an unknown app and want to configure it, I click configure. In KDE, that didn't lead to anything like that -- it lead to per-app configuration point-click-reload-oh-noes-now-it's-stuck-madness. Get that fixed.

/. Trollbait

[Anonymous Coward]

GNOME 3 and Unity are the BEST!!

Re:KDE sucks

[hedwards]

No, it's because you posted it a matter of like 6 minutes after the first poster did. Unless the competition includes a time travel application, I think it's safe to say you wouldn't have ended up with first post on those either.

Fixed akonadi?

[Anonymous Coward]

Topic says it all. This has been one of the worst pieces of *expletive* that has made it into KDE and crippled kmail

So how's the Windows version coming along?

[hairyfeet]

Last time i tried it it piled on the dependencies and I couldn't uninstall it without restoring from disk image but if its gotten better i wouldn't mind giving it a go. i have a ton of off lease XP machines piling up and can't stand the XP Fisher price UI and I give the KDE guys credit for having a nice UI, so how's it coming along? Great, good, lousy? How easy is it to install and uninstall? How easy is it to switch back and forth?

Re:So how's the Windows version coming along?

[ByOhTek]

Last I heard, KDE didn't replace the XP UI, just gave it a bunch of KDE apps.

And if you don't like the Fisher Price UI of XP, do what I do, switch to the classic UI. It once again looks professional (if boring), rather than like a kids toy.

Re:So how's the Windows version coming along?

[MrHanky]

You won't get the KDE desktop UI on Windows XP. KDE for Windows is just the software collection, and since Qt uses Windows widgets on Windows, you'll get KDE applications that look like Windows applications, just not very well tested.

Re:So how's the Windows version coming along?

[Anonymous Coward]

I've installed 4.7.4 in Windows 7, primarily to use kmail and akregator. From my limited usage, I haven't had any issues with them. In fact, it seems more stable than what Kubuntu shipped on their last initial release. (Kubuntu has always seemed to work better after updating from their updates repo.) Amarok, on the other hand, has been a bit hit and miss.

As far as I can tell, everything is installed in whatever kde folder you designate to install into, and you just have to delete that folder to remove the applications (and may have to remove your kde settings directory, too, if you want to clean up everything). If someone else has found that to not be the case, I'd appreciate the enlightenment.

Re:So how's the Windows version coming along?

[Osgeld]

gees, its only been a fucking decade and you still bitching and whining about a 3 version ago UI from windows? turn it to classic, its 3 mouse clicks dink.

Re:So how's the Windows version coming along?

[udoschuermann]

Fisher Price UI of XP

I always called it the Toys-R-Us UI, but it comes down to the same thing. I am not alone! :)

(I think I like Fisher Price UI better, actually).

Re:So how's the Windows version coming along?

[AvitarX]

I'm highly concerned about "Nonrectangular Item Boundaries".

1) I want the whole space an item take up to be the item
2) I've had issues in the past (I think IE in Win95) where I would click the non-icon center of the "e", and not launch.

Actually, all of the dolphin changes look unpleasant.

Re:So how's the Windows version coming along?

[Anonymous Coward]

No one's giving you the right answer. I'm looking at KDEPIM on my Windows box and it's got the Oxygen widgets, it has had them for the last two 4.X releases, but I think I might have had to enable it manually in the KDE System Settings (it's in the Control Panel). It looks and works stellar other than the long start up time for each application.

Re:So how's the Windows version coming along?

[archen]

Yeah, non rectangular boundaries doesn't sound like an improvement. It just sounds like it's making things harder to click. You should already have a good indication if something is going to run by the icon highlighting with a mouse hover, so I'm not sure why reducing the click area is a benefit.

I've been ok with the KDE4 changes (not ecstatic but ok with them), but I haven't been happy with dolphin. For some reason I've found it very clunky. I've tried various settings, but nothing seems to work better for me either. Multi column view seemed promising but the implementation is rather bad. If you have a file with a very long name, the column can stretch all the way across your screen and you have to manually scroll back to click on the next directory. Directories aren't highlighted either, so you have no idea what directory a column is actually shown. (that seems very basic mistake that hasn't been corrected).

Considering all the different implementations and ideas floating around in file managers, I'm surprised that dolphin hasn't implemented some of the better ones... well, better.

Re:So how's the Windows version coming along?

[AvitarX]

I actually like it a good deal, it feels pretty fast to me too.

Small clickable area I don't like though, and am I crazy to want three lines of text for names, center truncated (like OSX)? I don't want extra long filenames going crazy, and I don't want things in variable sized layouts. There is a need for some whitespace to click the background (to unselect all, or copy to a folder rather than opening a file or copying to a subfolder), but not so much as they show. I am curious too, does this mean the +/- select/unselect are going to be all over the place too, but I need to try it before I assume that I suppose.

Re:So how's the Windows version coming along?

[hairyfeet]

Yeah if its one i'm actually gonna keep i get Aston and put on it, its what I run on my XP nettop and is quite nice. of course i'm not gonna blow $30 a pop on some off lease boxes i'm selling but hate dealing with that Fisher price UI (And nooooo, switching to the fugly as fuck Win98 UI isn't an improvement, thanks ever so) so it looks like I'll be hacking MSStyles.dll and putting on a nicer theme. And no you're not alone, many of use can't fricking stand the Fisher price UI, I like the Win 7 UI, Vista Black was okay (too bad the OS attached to it blew chunks) and KDE had a nice silvery look, but that blue is just fucking horrible to look at for any length of time. Whomever picked that shit out must have been color blind!

Watch me get hate for saying this next part, but fuck if I care, i just wish the Linux community would get all on the same page, quit all this damned rivalry and 50 bazillion distro crap, and actually make an OS usable by the masses, is to too much to ask? I need a rock solid OS that is as easy to use as Win 7 or OSX and gives a minumum 7 years support without dealing with that apt-dist-upgrade clusterfuck as I've yet to see a machine actually upgrade without having drivers broken. I know you will never get a stable ABI as long as Torvalds has a pulse but can't you either make a REAL LTS or find a way not to shit all over the drivers during an upgrade? Hell there isn't even a 'find drivers" or "rollback drivers" button and Windows has had that for a decade!

Look, this is your chance geeks, for the first time in history all the stars are aligning, the XP dieoff is filling shops like mine with insanely overpowered laptops and desktops, Ballmer is gonna shoot MSFT in the head trying to turn Windows into WinTab, most people only care about online stuff now, you've never had a better shot, all you have to do is accept the fact the world isn't a bunch of damned programmers and get rid of the fiddly bullshit and CLI wanking off, that's all. you wanna keep the wank fest in server fine, all well and good, but you ain't never gonna sell that Bash crap to the masses. you gotta "think different' to steal a line, think iOS and Win 7, call it dumbing down if you like, just give us something simple, easy to use, and supported 7 years. Make it so my grandma could run it with ZERO help from me,lots of big icons and pretty pictures and wizards. Hell my 71 year old clueless dad installed his own Win 7 and everything ran OOTB with ZERO input from me, that is what you need to shoot for, an OS that even the clueless can run.

You've got most of the basic parts already, KDE is VERY pretty and consistent, you've got most of the guts and drivers written, you just need to put it in a friendly package and stop updates/upgrades from tearing the thing apart, that's all. you have until Apr 2014 but the sooner the better as all us shops are scrambling for Win 7 Start CALs simply because we can't find a Linux that fits the bill. give it to us and you'll have a support network that makes the Apple stores look like a bad joke. We WANT you to succeed, we really do. But with the mess you have now literally we'd go broke trying to support you. you could use the XP dieoff to take a HUGE bite out of MSFT's ass, you just gotta want it and be willing to change, are you?

Re:So how's the Windows version coming along?

[Shoe Puppet]

Actually, the standard Qt styles and Oxygen are included as well as a native Windows one.

Re:So how's the Windows version coming along?

[The Snowman]

I tried a few distributions before settling on Kubuntu 11.10. It just works and everything is easy. The menu has the same search feature that OSX and Win7 have. Type what you want to do, and crap just pops up on the list. Click it and go. All my devices just work. Pop in a flash drive? Automatically mounted and I can drag and drop files and take them with me. Click a picture? Viewer opens up. Not GIMP, which belongs in the "shit that sounds like it might earn me the 'sex offender' badge" bin. Just a regular old picture viewer. Same with music, videos, anything else that Grandma might want to do.

So many people are ready to write-off Ubuntu because of Unity and the batshit insane rambling of Canonical, but damn, Kubuntu gets it right. Take Ubuntu, rip out the stupid half. Put a stake in its heart, douse in holy water, and throw it in the garbage disposal. Then replace the crap with KDE, add in slick installation and setup wizards that are smart enough that they Just Work, other features that OSes for the masses possess, and release.

I may be tech-savvy, but I do not have time to fiddle with idiotic kernel settings or driver incompatibilities. I write software for a living, and I want to use computers to be productive. To use a car analogy, there are gearheads out there that want to restore old cars and spend hours tinkering to get them running like new. The rest of us want to drive to work, the grocery store, the liquor store, etc. Computers need to be like cars. 99% of the time they just need to work with us, not against us, but allow the 1% the ability to screw around with filesystem cluster sizes or whatever makes them happy.

Re:So how's the Windows version coming along?

[hairyfeet]

Try my "is it safe?" test and you'll see the problem. Download the version from 3 releases ago and then upgrade to current. you see I can't plan my sales around when the next LTS release is and frankly the LTS isn't really much of an LTS at all as you get barely 3 years and that is if you sell the machines on the day of release.

Sadly what you'll find is the same thing i found, both with LTS to LTS and regular to regular, which is a broken mess. I've even had Linux guys tell me I should always install clean, which is what they used to make fun of Windows for. Which would be fine if we were talking once a decade but every 6 months? you get 10 years on Windows but I'll happily settle for 7 even though that's a little short. lets face it a Pentium d that was sold in 06 will still do the web based jobs people have no problemo and most of the off lease machines i'm getting are either pentium Ds or Athlon duals along with some of the early core series laptops. People aren't gonna be happy to just chunk those in 6 months and i doubt they'll chunk them in 3 years either and since home consumers don't buy support contracts the cost of having me reinstall and tweak the damned thing every 6 months will cost more than a copy of Windows home VERY quickly.

With the economy in the toilet there are a hell of a lot of working poor out there that appreciate $100 desktops and $150 laptops but until they come up with a Linux that don't crap on its own drivers i'm in a bit of a jam here. I can probably get away with leaving windows on them and shoving them out the door for the rest of 2012 but XP will be headed for that great OS bin in the sky and frankly i can't find a source for Win 7 Starter so that leaves Linux. And honestly while the initial install goes fine unless i want to disable all updates and just let the machines become zombies nobody has figured out yet how to do in place upgrades without them taking a big shit on the drivers. personally i blame Torvalds refusal to accept a driver ABI but then here come the fanbois having a fit, like every other OS is wrong and Linus fricking Torvalds is right, but since as long as he has a pulse Linux won't have one it don't matter anyway. But until the driver situation is fixed me and every other shop is in a catch 22, we'd like to offer your OS but the customer base simply don't have the skills to keep the damned thing running and giving away free support would break us. NOW do you see the problem?

Re:So how's the Windows version coming along?

[mister_playboy]

Try installing Krusader.

I still using Dolphin for things like picture browsing, but Krusader is great for file management.

Re:So how's the Windows version coming along?

[The Snowman]

Yeah, what works for me probably won't work for a system builder. Economy of scale is working against you with Linux. I think it would be great to have an LTS version good for 5-7 years. Maybe have fewer releases, but supported longer.

personally i blame Torvalds refusal to accept a driver ABI but then here come the fanbois having a fit, like every other OS is wrong and Linus fricking Torvalds is right, but since as long as he has a pulse Linux won't have one it don't matter anyway. But until the driver situation is fixed me and every other shop is in a catch 22, we'd like to offer your OS but the customer base simply don't have the skills to keep the damned thing running and giving away free support would break us.

I agree, I think a stable ABI is crucial to Linux gaining mainstream popularity. It has to be trivial to download and install a driver the way it works with Windows. The ABI is even stable across versions: the same drivers typically work with Vista, 7, and Server 2008. The only question is 32 bits or 64?

I think the other crucial factor is a stable desktop environment. The problem is both the Gnome and KDE folks seem hell-bent on making tons of changes all the time, and then distribution maintainers come in and make more changes. So the desktop is highly fragmented. What we need is one of them to get their heads out from their asses, figure out what features truly are necessary, and stabilize them.

Re:So how's the Windows version coming along?

[Grishnakh]

A stable ABI would turn Linux into an unstable mess, because it'd encourage hardware makers to only release their own crappy closed-source drivers instead of opening the specs and allowing high-quality drivers to be written and maintained by the community. Crappy drivers are exactly what cause the most problems for Windows and gave it such a horrible reputation for instability and crashes. MS mostly fixed the problem by instituting the WHQL program, signed drivers, etc. The Linux community, by its very nature, doesn't have the leverage or resources to force hardware makers into a quality-testing program like that; not only does it not have the money for a testing center, it's not even a single entity, but a loose collection of different entities sometimes working together, sometimes competing, and many of them non-profit or extremely small. For example, with Canonical shooting itself in the foot with Unity, a bunch of people are moving over to Linux Mint; how many developers do you think that distro has?

Re:So how's the Windows version coming along?

[RubberMallet]

If you want long term support on a stable version, and you're looking at the community distributions, then you're doing it wrong. You will never get a 7 year lifetime out of a community distro. That just ain't gonna happen.

If you are in need of long term supported and stable Linux distros then you turn to the commercial versions. You need to look into something like the full version of RedHat or SLED/SLES (SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop/SUSE Linux Enterprise Server). With SLED/SLES (the one I know/use), they do 7 year general support with service pack releases, and up to 10 year extended. http://www.suse.com/support/programs/long-term-service-pack-support.html

Of course, it is not free when you go this route, and you get what you pay for.. you want free, you take a regular update cycle and short support periods.

Re:So how's the Windows version coming along?

[hairyfeet]

And then it costs MORE than Windows so is completely pointless, see the problem? I can't sell a $150 laptop with a $99 a year OS on it, that just won't cut it, and Windows home is $89 or if i want to cheat like many of my competitors i can buy family packs for $129 for 3 CALs. of course many of the smaller shops are getting frustrated by both MSFT and Linux and are just installing "wink wink" copies of Windows which i don't care for but hopefully now you see my problem. Linux says its ready for the masses but its only real selling point, price, simply doesn't exist. Sure if you're a programmer or a geek and don't mind spending a lot of time under the hood like a 74 Nova you can keep it running, but that just removed 99.95% of my customers. Geeks don't buy retail, they DIY.

So in the end i'm back to square one. I have right now 5 off lease machines, anywhere from 2.2Ghz P4s to early Pentium Ds and i'm gonna have to shove them out the door with XP simply because the community refuses to step up to the plate. its a damned shame as the great XP dieoff could FINALLY give us a "Year of the Linux desktop" but the community won't quit messing with their bash scripts to wake up and smell the opportunity. if they would only give us a usable product we small shop owners would give them a support network that makes the Apple stores look like a bad joke, you'd literally have a Linux store in every town and city in the nation, but we simply can't support you with the situation as it is. I tried selling linux in the past and ended up taking a bath simply because it was too fiddly, updates broke drivers, and you couldn't even buy a printer without playing hardware roulette because the hardware lists were so bad out of date.

Oh and I'm so damned sick of the bullshit argument "OEMs would give us blobs herp derp" against an ABI. NEWS FLASH THEY ALREADY DO! What do yoiu think you get from Nvidia, broadcom, hell the majority of wireless? blobs, the only difference is now you're screwed because the blob works on kernel X and you have kernel Y. If a company is gonna be open to FOSS the ABI isn't gonna change their minds one way or another. sadly dogma will ensure Linux stays just where it is now, dead last. I mean when shops would rather risk jail time selling hot Windows than take your free product, doesn't that give everyone a clue?

Re:So how's the Windows version coming along?

[RubberMallet]

OK, then my next question is... why do you "need" to upgrade? If a Linux install is working fine... then leave it alone. There is no rule that states a particular Linux distro MUST be upgraded when the next latest and greatest comes out. I know lots of people that are using years old installs of Ubuntu and openSUSE... and they are fine.

Alternatives.. Arch and its rolling release?

Also... I've been using various Linux distros for a long long time.. since mid-90s, and upgrades were at one time a total disaster as you've indicated... but... with my preferred Linux distro, openSUSE you actually CAN do an upgrade and rather successfully... if you use the default repos... which for 99% of the user base is more than enough. if you've added a whack of non-standard software and repos, it's going to be messy... regardless of distro (Ubuntu for example auto-disables the foreign repos when it tries to distrro upgrade).

Re:So how's the Windows version coming along?

[hairyfeet]

Because Linux isn't a magical woobie that doesn't get infected from unpatched software? i can wallpaper this pages with links to everyone from Kernel.org on down getting infected and its ALWAYS unpatched software that bites you in the ass. for me to hand out disabled software would be no better than handing out a Windows machines with WU disabled, its leaving the machine open to infection and it WILL become a zombie, I've seen enough infected Linux servers to know NO OS is immune to unpatched software. with the speed of browser exploits coming every single day it would especially be foolhardy on a home machine, look at the FF 8 exploit that let malware load a hidden iFrame and spam people's Yahoo mail accounts. Any security expert will tell you that having old unpatched software on the net is a BIG no no and i can't in good conscience do that to people that are expecting me to deliver a functional product, I just can't.

And funny you should mention openSUSE because i have a Linux admin friend that is going openBSD because openSUSE puked on an upgrade and wiped out 2 years worth of email, be happy to give ya the link on Linux Insider where she is bitching her ass off about it. I've found that it doesn't behave any better than Fedora or Ubuntu, it'll still puke, and we're talking NO funky repos, just bog standard stuff. With my experiment on OpenSUSE it puked on the Realtek HD, the Aetheros wireless card, and the Nvidia chipset. again this isn't some rare stuff here, the Nvidia 6100 chipset is as old as dirt and isn't even being updated anymore, and the Realtek HD chipset is likewise old as the hills. i had to just shake my head at the Aetheros because it was one i had picked up expressly because the community said "Oh don't get broadcom, get Aetheros, it always works!" yeah, except when it don't. And the arch rolling release just died slowly instead of all at once, first went the sound, all i got was static (which i hear is a common problem) then network settings wouldn't stick in the GUI, only CLI (another common problem) before finally i rebooted and ended up in single user mode with a black screen o' death.

So far I've tried Arch, Vector, Fedora, PCLOS, Ubuntu/Kubuntu/Xubuntu/Mint,Mepis,Puppy,Knoppix, Xandros (that came closest to "it just works' but it costs more than windows and is now discontinued), Mandriva, OpenSUSE,Slax,ArcLinux, CentOS,Kanotix, and a few variations on the above like Macpup and Slax popcorn and kill Bill, so its not from lack of trying here, the driver situation is just royally fucked on Linux IMHO. When I can find a distro that will let it upgrade twice without puking I'll be the first to sing its praises from the highest mountain but so far the search has come up with nothing. i've probably blown through a good 100gb+ in discs and upgrades trying to find one, just one, that would survive its own upgrade cycle but all i'm finding is the same problems. it works just fine on install, but if you upgrade it'll puke and if i was gonna disable all updates i might as well do like my competitors and just put on pirated Windows 7, it'll be a zombie machine soon enough either way.

Re:So how's the Windows version coming along?

[RubberMallet]

There is a significant different between no patching and keep up with the patches. Again, with openSUSE, there is a Community driven initiative called Evergreen which maintains the older releases through security patches so that older releases can still be kept in place without upgrades yet be patched with security fixes.

You point at the very valid security issues that do definitely crop up in Linux as they do in all current OSes... yet you also say that you may as well install Windows since it'll be a zombie machine anyway. So....

Nothing wrong with openBSD if you can manage the higher level of tech knowledge required to keep it up to date.

Every Atheros card I've thrown at openSUSE "just worked" BUT... BUT, there are some Atheros cards that are unsupported/don't work. When I purchase hardware, I always make sure it fits the basic checklist, and then I usually check a bit deeper if it's a newer bit of hardware. That's what Hardware Compat Lists are for (although not the be-all-end-all).

The Nvidia 6100 should work fine... don't know why it failed. i know on openSUSE if you're using teh nVidia driver repository, it is a supported card - you do have to use the Legacy driver from Nvidia, but it works - just installed a system recently with a 6100. Also worked with the default open source driver.

I agree the driver situation can be.. problematic, but it isn't as dire as you make it out to be. I do a LOT of installs... a lot, and they occasionally fail, but it's rare with a CURRENT release of Linux (regardless of distro).

I'm still wondering.. you demand a rolling upgrade for your Linux distro, but to be honest it's not necessary.

Oh, as for your friend... what kind of *admin* does an upgrade *without* maintaining a *backup* of critical data? no admin worth their salary will EVER do anything on a working system without making sure a proper backup is in place. So... I have little sympathy there.

Re:So how's the Windows version coming along?

[visualight]

I don't understand where the idea comes from, that a stable ABI is needed on linux. It's already trivial from me to download new drivers (it's called a kernel update and it happens about once a month) and I get them all from a central repository -on Windows I have to burn my time hunting for them.

The last thing I need is to for things to change so I have to navigate various vendor websites looking for drivers.

Re:So how's the Windows version coming along?

[visualight]

Please, what driver is missing from Linux now that would suddenly be available if we (stupidly) gave you the stable ABI you won't stop demanding?

I can appreciate your perspective in some areas but this focus you have on a stable ABI is really off. You said it yourself, "If a company is gonna be open to FOSS the ABI isn't gonna change their minds one way or another" , and you are correct. Having a stable ABI isn't going to make previously non-existent drivers appear, it'll just allow the current ones to go unmaintained and rot.

Also, "the community" simply doesn't give damn whether shops are selling systems with Linux installed and this "stepping up to the plate" thing is never ever *ever* going to happen so stop asking already. If you want to sell Linux systems, start with the distro that has the best reputation regarding updates that don't break (even across major versions), Debian, and then YOU support it yourself.

This is the only option you will ever have. Really, let that sink in because your rants on this topic are so tiresome and misinformed. Only. Option. Ever.

Re:So how's the Windows version coming along?

[hairyfeet]

I'm sorry but you lost me friend...how can you be patched but not be up to date with the patches? i've always considered that to be a yes or no and not a maybe kinda question. And the problem i found with simply security patches is the frankly fucked up way that a lot of software treats the kernel. you'll need software G because version F has an exploit but G won't run on kernel X but instead demands Y which means you either have to compile from source (no small task and NOT for the home users) or you have to upgrade the whole damned thing. And if it was a choice between zombie Linux and zombie Windows (which I don't want to sell zombie anything, thanks) I'd have to choose zombie Windows simply because I have yet to find a hardware compatibility list that isn't horribly out of date. Quick can you tell me if the top 5 printers in Walmart work in distro foo? Honestly i have NO clue and that's a problem. the few that DO have linux listed as supported has a bunch of catches such as "Ubuntu version X kernel Y" which frankly you've just lost my customers, you might as well have asked them the serial number of their CPU. It needs a "yes this will work" or a "no this will not work" not a "this will work if the moon is full and you dance in a circle' kind of answer. And most of the hardware lists I've seen is for frankly stuff that is no longer being sold which really doesn't help a consumer.

As for the aetheros and the nvidia i'm sorry i can't give you the model number of the card as that was sold with a laptop a year ago, I can tell you it was the model that all the forums said "oh get that it just works" only then the latest releases came out and it didn't work anymore, leaving me with my 'old distro zombie or broken machine' problem again, and the nvidia worked on first install, the upgrade took a mighty dump on the driver and left me with black screen o' death. Of course there was this huge CLI mess of a walkthrough on how to fix it by going into single user mode and doing a bunch of junk but that wouldn't have helped a customer if that was their only box or they didn't understand what single user mode was.

But I agree a Linux INSTALL is nice, its probably nicer than it has ever been. the problem is it simply doesn't STAY nice unless you lock the box in the closet and treat it like Schrodinger's cat. Because i simply can't let a box loose on the Internet with its updates and upgrades disabled, again that wouldn't be fair or honest to customers that expect whatever i sell them to "just work" and frankly the few Linux AVs out there are just scanning for windows bugs and don't do a thing about that privilege escalation we see on the front page today. That is a perfect example of what I'm talking about why you HAVE TO have the machine update, because most don't backport and I've already tried LTS to LTS and had the same problems as regular to regular.

I hate to say this but in the end i think as long as Linus Torvalds has a pulse you can give it up. he said in 1993 he'd never allow an ABI yet here it is 2012 and Solaris, BSD, OSX, Windows, hell even OS/2 has an ABI but Torvalds is a stubborn ass and if he said it dammit he's gonna stick with it. And the way the kernel on up is constantly changing you simply aren't gonna get stable drivers with a shifting kernel, anymore than you can expect to run Win2K drivers on Win 7 X64, the guts are simply too different. that is why we really need a 7 to 10 year LTS instead of this bad joke of 3 years, because nobody chunks at 3 years anymore that was during the MHz wars that 3 years became the switchover. Now I see even many businesses having PCs 5 to 6 years simply because a mulkticore is insanely overpowered for what Suzy secretary is doing and if it ain't broke don't fix it. i have boxes out in the field going on 8 years now that the customer is perfectly happy with and sees no reason to replace, so why should I have to force him because the OS won't stay running.

in the end i want to offer FOSS, I really do, but i can't put myself out of business doing so an

Re:So how's the Windows version coming along?

[archen]

Damn, that's a great application. I've heard of it but never given it a shot before. Thanks for the suggestion!

Re:So how's the Windows version coming along?

[RubberMallet]

Your problems with patching and kernel x vs y etc sounds a LOT like the issues I have with Ubuntu in general... and one of the reasons I can't/won't use it. On openSUSE - recently.. say in the last... 2 or 3 years - I haven't had to do much of anything at all... just use it. I apply the updates once per month or so and have no issues with kernel compatibility, recompiling anything... I haven't had to recompile on my home desktop for a long long time.

Top 5 printers... easy.. HP. The USB printers from HP... deskjet, laserjet etc all work without me having to do anything at all on my openSUSE default installs. The HP printer drivers/tools are installed by default, so I just plug in and print.. no config necessary.

As always, you use what works best. Sometimes it's Linux, sometimes it's not.

Re:So how's the Windows version coming along?

[ByOhTek]

I Usually used Tycho, but yeah, they are all the same. I was just sticking to what the parent post had said.

Re:So how's the Windows version coming along?

[hairyfeet]

Well that comes down to the fact you pretty much have to use a third party browser in Linux if you want modern features like ABP and then its way too easy to end up in the "software F needs kernel Y" pit of hell, although i agree Ubuntu has that problem in spades. oh and the problem with HP printers, at least around here, is if you don't buy them with an HP PC they tend to be double the price of everyone else. Kinda hard to explain to someone why they are gonna have to pay twice as much as the rest of their family and get royally assraped on ink as the Walgreen's won't refill HP carts. I just threw out a practically new HP printer because the price of the carts made it cheaper to chunk and get a Dell since they could get Dell compatible refills for $12.

While i'm glad Linux works for you the driver and hardware situation ends up making it a money loser ATM, in retail its not like i can shove them out the door and say 'all sales are final STFU" like they can online and since it looks like nobody is gonna step up to the plate before the great XP dieoff is over that means it'll be 2020 before it gets another shot. its a damned shame though, as this could be the time to really expose Linux to the masses and help a lot of working poor folks with off lease machines but trying to keep everything functional and stable and finding compatible hardware ends up making it cost more than a copy of Windows. maybe we'll get lucky and Torvalds will be retired by 2020, but i have a feeling if they miss this shot the vast majority will be on locked down ipads and iphones by 2020 and it won't matter much for anybody but servers, damned shame.

Re:So how's the Windows version coming along?

[badkarmadayaccount]

Fedora KDE spin, Try it - the installer is much less prone to crapping itself, the installed OS as well - has everything you listed. Oh, and don't give me the RPM hell story - tell it to some sucker still running FC5.

Re:So how's the Windows version coming along?

[badkarmadayaccount]

coreboot+linux+KVM+PCI-passthrough+forked kernels means the manufacturers can do whatever perversions they want to the kernel in BIOS flash, and publish a bog standard VM API for the actual (HDD loaded, distro controled) kernel. Modern hardware ships with dependable hardware virt, or at least some of it (thanks AMD). Thing is, they don't care, neither do we about them. He who uses linux knows enough to get around the issues - he who doesn't runs something else - hardware makers are idiots - those are the facts of life. And whats linux on the desktop to you, any way? I'm an avid linux user, yet you get more worked up about its (perceived or otherwise) deficiencies, than I do, and yet you seem to hate it. Could you please explain yourself?

Re:So how's the Windows version coming along?

[badkarmadayaccount]

PC-BSD?

New in konsole

[vlm]

I'm guessing konsole will get a lot more use with this crowd, that, say, Marble. I'm not sure this feature list is worth the effort of upgrading, but here it is:

http://konsole.kde.org/changelog.php

Noteworthy:

        Before any window is opened, make sure pty device has right size before starting the terminal process.
        Allow an image to be set as the background in the terminal window.
        Close session reliably when the session process doesn't die with SIGHUP.
        Don't show the default profile in menu New Tab list when no others are listed.
        Add "Select All" action for selecting the whole history of this session.
        Add popup menu for drag-n-drop operations using KonqOperations::doDrop.
        Bidirectional text support is on by default.
        Left-To-Right direction will always be used in the terminal area even when the language is Right-To-Left.
        Add support for Unicode decomposed characters and in general better unicode displaying.

Re:New in konsole

[dargaud]

Allow an image to be set as the background in the terminal window.

Seriously, who _wants_ this shit ? Black is not good enough for you now ?

Re:New in konsole

[danomac]

Hey, I actually like that idea. I can have ssh sessions open for up to five different machines... I'd definitely find it useful to attach different backgrounds to each one so I immediately know which machine I'm currently using. It would prevent me from entering commands in the wrong session, which I've done multiple times before with somewhat disastrous results...

Re:New in konsole

[Stachybotris]

Hmmm... I like not showing the 'default' tab when there is only one session type. It always whigged me out that it wanted me to select the only option that I have configured.

Re:New in konsole

[dargaud]

I already hate the fact that aliasing is forced on us in all major OSes nowadays and really miss the sharp chars of WinXP, so I don't want readability to suffer even more. But I understand what you mean. I prefer to use a nice PS1 in .bashrc such as (warning, I doubt it's gonna pass easily through the bowels of /.): PS1='${debian_chroot:+($debian_chroot)}\[\033[01;32m\]\u@\h\[\033[00m\]:\[\033[01;34m\]\w\[\033[00m\]

Re:New in konsole

[bjwest]

Having the hostname in the prompt doesn't give you a hint as to which machine your currently using?

Re:New in konsole

[The Moof]

You might want to try a better approach, like setting your terminal's prompt variable to something useful. That way, you can see who is logged in where right on your command line. Arbitrarily setting a background image after connecting seems like it won't solve the issue of typing the wrong commands in. Whose to say you don't change server2 to a different image on a whim, and just type in the wrong command again mistaking it for server1? It'd be easier to glance to the left on me current line and see something like:

[joe@server2 /etc]$

That tells me who I'm logged on as, what server I'm on, where I'm at, and whether or not I have root privileges.

Re:New in konsole

[ilikenwf]

+1 On the AA fonts thing...any time I setup a new install of Archlinux or Debian I spend 2 hours making the fonts nice and crisp...

Re:New in konsole

[Jorl17]

I still prefer gnome-terminal. But I need to find a really good, fast, configurable, screen-like term.
Or just type screen.

Re:New in konsole

[Jorl17]

Agreed, has never failed me.

Except those times I shut-down those servers.

Re:New in konsole

[bill_mcgonigle]

I'm guessing konsole will get a lot more use with this crowd

I use konsole as an engine, but Yakuake runs my life.

Re:New in konsole

[Tadu]

Noteworthy: some non-essential, nice to have things

I just wished they'd fixed copy (and paste) from konsole - most of the time when I copy some output from the konsole to paste elsewhere (e.g. my editor of choice or my chat program), I have gobs of spaces after each line. That's the most frustrating bug ever...

Re:New in konsole

[sqldr]

OK.. here's my main gripe with KDE since version 1.0. konsole STILL has no option to select semi-condensed fonts. I'm not an anti-antialias nazi. I use AA fonts everywhere else, but that 6x13 semicondensed xterm font is still the best thing for writing in a terminal. With every release I would've thought that this still-open 10 year old bug would've been fixed by now.

Re:New in konsole

[sqldr]

actually, having the terminal open with a random subtly different background colour kind helps when you're a sysadmin with about 30 windows open and you can't remember which one you're typing in to. If you use several terminals at once, try it for a few hours. Mental association and all that. Ah yes, I was upgrading the kernel in the PINK window.

Re:New in konsole

[sqldr]

There are escape codes for changing the title of the terminal window (or tab, in konsole). Which kind of helps when the left hand side of the window is obscured.

Even so.. you can't MISS the background. If you forget to glance left, you just rm -rf'd the wrong server. Even worse, if you're logged in to KFFHHJJKF0001 when you meant to type into KFFYHJJKF0001, then apart from killing whoever made your DNS naming scheme, you could really use those images. Then again, I just make them randomly change the font/background colour, not load an image.

Re:New in konsole

[sqldr]

btw. you can set your default shell to screen. It will throw you into the configured shell when you start it, and is tty-aware when it gets run out of a terminal..

kinda helps in the.. "I just started a 3 hour job on this remote host.. I'll just... " ctrl-d, ctrl-d, ctrl-d... "OH CRAP, forgot to start screen :(" situation.

Re:New in konsole

[bsims]

I still prefer gnome-terminal. But I need to find a really good, fast, configurable, screen-like term. Or just type screen.

Here's your answer, install urxvt and set your icon to launch with the following... urxvt -bg black -fg white -sr -geometry 1024x47 -fn "xft:inconsolata" -e screen

Re:New in konsole

[dead_cthulhu]

Last time I checked, I could use any installed font in konsole and turn AA on or off without a problem.

Re:New in konsole

[fatp]

You see the prompt only when you are typing in the prompt.

For example, consider when are running vi to copy contents between config files...

Re:New in konsole

[Anonymous Coward]

I already hate the fact that we are forced to read ASCII chars. I prefer the wonderful look of rows of glowing tubes showing me the bits of the char number! And I apply a filter to my glasses, so that the whole world looks gray and blocky, cause I like it simple and slick! Also, nothing beats wax cylinders, oil lamps and horse carriages!

__________
<serious-mode>
First of all, it's anti-aliasing that would make something "blurry".
Second of all, if you had ever looked in the system settings, which you're probably too dumb for, you would have found the option to set anti-aliasing not only off, but control the amount of it, if you want subpixel or not, and even the direction of subpixel AA. (This is not Gnome or OS X after all.) So you could have it disabled and look at shitty aliased chars until you're dead!
Conclusion: You talk a load of shit only a poltician^Wlobbyist^Wcriminal could talk.
</serious-mode>

Re:New in konsole

[sqldr]

but can you turn semicondensed on and off? Try reading again.

Re:New in konsole

[balaband]

I used different text colors for different servers, maybe that can help you

Re:New in konsole

[gilboad]

... While I don't use bitmap background in konsole, I use colored background / foreground -alot-.
I use a color coding system to visually identify the machine (localhost, SSH, telnet-to-serial-on-KVM-guest, remote-serial-console, etc), user (me, root, test, etc) and site (work, home, etc).
Now it might sound overkill, but when you have 10+ tabs open, you *really* need some way to make sure you don't type 'rm -rf $PWD' in the wrong tab....
I just may use bitmapped console background to tag dangerous tabs (E.g. pirate flag in root@X tabs)

- Gilboa

Re:New in konsole

[dead_cthulhu]

And you were using a semi-condensed font?

Re:New in konsole

[sqldr]

Yes. the fixed/misc one you get when you type "xterm -font fixed". At least I was until I started using konsole. gnome-terminal gives you the option of selecting semi-condensed. fontconfig *should* select it automatically out of the box, but the problem lies deep in Qt where it doesn't even recognise the semicondensed bit or carry it through to the font layer. There is actually a couple of work arounds:

1) hack the code (which I did once)

2) delete all non-semicondensed misc:fixed fonts so it's forced to fall back on it

3) you used to be able to override it in fontconfig, but kde/qt ironically "fixed" that issue, so now it just overrides fontconfig settings.

Re:New in konsole

[danomac]

Believe it or not, after using multiple sessions on different hosts for an extended period of time the promps meld together and you don't see them anymore. It doesn't help that they all look more or less the same. The background is far more noticeable.

Re:New in konsole

[badkarmadayaccount]

time to patch the ssh client to set an env variable so the terminal emulator can pick an appropriate background based on hostname presets.

fedora rawhide

[Anonymous Coward]

is this available on fedora rawhide yet, if not, how does one make it so? thanks

Re:KDE sucks

[stms]

Gnome 2 had time travel but they removed it because the UI was too clunky.

Re:KDE sucks

[Anonymous Coward]

OSX still has it, it's called timemachine....

Pause after click fixed?

[danbuter]

I loved KDE3. I have been less than impressed with KDE4. Even though it looks nice, there was always a one or two second pause after I clicked anything on the desktop before the program would open. This got really irritating. Is it fixed? If so, I'd be much more likely to use KDE4.

Re:Pause after click fixed?

[mx b]

Probably. I am running KDE 4.7 (actually just updated to 4.8 today, so haven't much experience with the updates yet), and it goes swimmingly on my old dell laptop (about 7 years old, maxxed out the RAM at 1 GB). No real hang ups or delays. Runs just fine. I think a lot of the hangups were the older versions of Nepomuk/Akonadi and friends, but the last few releases have really dramatically improved performance and integration, to the point where you don't even notice they exist (as far as resource usage; I'm growing to appreciate the semantic tags on files more and more as time goes on).

Re:Pause after click fixed?

[incer]

Yes. I find it's much better now.

Re:Pause after click fixed?

[Anonymous Coward]

I also really liked KDE3.X, really disliked 4.X. I've since moved on, primarily because of all the interaction & association going on in the background with KDE. Once one application goes bad, it (in the past) cascades through the entire environment, and in very short order, it's all fucked. XFCE, Blackbox both do the job with aplomb and without fanfare. Thank goodness for choice.

kmail ?

[dargaud]

I hope they fixed the absolute disaster that is kmail2. Which was a forced upgrade in the last kubuntu. Never seen such a complete disaster in software, and I've tried to upgrade several systems taking all appropriate measures.

Re:kmail ?

[Dorkmaster Flek]

I don't care if they have. I've already switched to Thunderbird. The migration to the Akonadi backend in kmail2 was a complete disaster. The upgrade migration tool for your existing mailbox didn't work at all. I didn't care about losing it, so I started fresh. I still couldn't get the damn thing to stop spitting up errors when trying to apply my filters, even after recreating my entire folder structure from scratch and updating all my filters. Half the time it spat out errors when checking the mail too. Fuck kmail2.

Re:kmail ?

[dargaud]

Same here, but there's no way to export the email store from kmail and I could find no email software that could import a kmail email store, so I'm stuck. I migrated to thunderbird on my work PC as well, foregoing my entire store. But on my personal system, I'll be damn if I let go of my emails that date from 1986 and went through decades of Pine, Outlook Express and kmail. Fuck kmail2.

Re:kmail ?

[i.r.id10t]

IIRC they are "just" mbox files. Set up thunderbird, let it create a simple mbox file for like 1 throw-away message, exit thunderbird, copy over your mbox files.

Re:kmail ?

[dlenmn]

Google around. There are some scripts out there that do the job (and some that don't, so back up your email first). I successfully migrated from Kmail to Thunderbird with them.

Re:kmail ?

[dargaud]

Fantastic work of the import script, now I have 10000 folders in thunderbird with helpful names like 1277709858.8193.bHGk2:2,S. And BTW, they are all empty. I'm sure there's some kind of snappy comment to be made, but I'm not sure which.

Re:KDE sucks

[Anonymous Coward]

Gnome 2 had time travel but they removed it because the UI was too clunky.

You mean Gnome developers left a single option exposed? Oh no!

Telepathy

[MonsterTrimble]

and KDE Telepathy reaching its first beta milestone.

Is it an adequate replacement for Pidgin & Kopete yet? And do I have the ability to have it minimize to the systray? Kopete was by far my favorite client but once the improvements and bugfixes stopped I had to jump ship to the (IMHO) inferior Pidgin. The lack of facebook chat did it for me. And since it's taken like 4 years to get to beta with this, I question whether re-inventing the wheel was a good idea.

Re:Telepathy

[Anonymous Coward]

actually telepahty is not a case of reinventing any wheels, it's an implementation of erm, empathy? epifany? well never mind, some gnome-chat-technology anyway.

Re:Telepathy

[denvergeek]

Kopete and Facebook work fine for me. Google "kopete facebook", and check the first result. Facebook exposes chat via XMPP, which Kopete supports.

Re:Telepathy

[Dragonslicer]

As far as I know, Kopete can't currently send messages through XMPP for Facebook. I remember reading somewhere that Facebook changed something about how it does the XMPP connection, and I don't think Kopete hasn't fixed that yet.

Re:Telepathy

[MonsterTrimble]

I know it can now, but back then (late 2008, early 2009 as I recall) it didn't. At that point Facebook was using it's own homebrew chat backend. it took until 2010 for them to actually implement XMPP.

As Dragonslicer eluded to, there are a *LOT* of bugs still in the program as it stands now, and with it taking however long to get a *BETA* version out, I wonder why bother?

Re:Telepathy

[sqldr]

it works in telepathy, so I'm assuming that kopete now supports it.

And the Regressions?

[TheNinjaroach]

I love KDE and have used it exclusively since the 3.2 days, but damn am I getting tired of the regressions. Things that used to work beautifully are suddenly bugged beyond use. I expect that to happen with early revisions of major releases, but the trend that started in 4.1 continues through a clean install of 4.7.2 that shipped with my distro.

In any case, thanks for the best desktop environment I've ever used. KIOSlaves (if they are still called that) are awesome, and we should all be thankful for KHTML, which laid the foundation for Webkit-based browsers everywhere.

Re:And the Regressions?

[Anonymous Coward]

KDE is the best of the available desktop environments. Once you've used something like Autodesk Maya as a working environment (Everything you do is also a script command is the CLI history. Everything you see and use is modifiable. There are no "apps", windows, task bars or shit like that. There is tools and wizards and option boxes [think Lotus WordPro InfoBox] and documents.), you realize what a horrible kludge the our current "desktop environment" paradigm is.

But I fully agree on the regressions. To me, and to a whole lot of other power-users, KDE still is barely beta software. Try using the activities interface. Try changing the icon (you can't), renaming, deleting an action. Try actually working with actions in daily life. They don't offer any advantage over just using different desktops, and aren't as flexible as using compiz-triggered scripts with dbus usage to shuffle things around at will. Let alone having multiple partially overlapping activities, like programming, listening to music, communicating with people and administrating the network, which all involve partially the same programs.

And to be honest: What's the point of all those useless plasmids in the first place? Yes, the concept of a generic UI system is nice. I would have done it too. But WTF with all that shitty bling on the desktop that you won't ever see anyway since you're using *actual programs* on top of them. (No, the shelf isn't better, since it's still a (slow) context switch that stops you from having access to the programs and vice versa. And watching your system performance or the weather or some stupid shit is not remotely useful enough anyway.
IMO it's all just bling for people who toy with computers, but never actually used one (as in: did actual work (as in: automated work away)).

Re:KDE sucks

[Tarlus]

Yawn.

Is it any better?

[antdude]

I used KDE v4.4.3 in stable Debian and didn't like it. I loved v3.x and v2.x, but v4 was bleh for me. I know about Trinity fork, but I am waiting for it to be mature, popular/official, and have a lot of support.

Re:Is it any better?

[SomeKDEUser]

It'll happen at the same time the magical pink unicorn farm gets discovered on Mars...

Re:Is it any better?

[antdude]

Basically, never. :)

Re:Is it any better?

[SomeKDEUser]

Yup... But you have to be fair: there are two years between 4.4 and 4.8. And the progress has been very fast. It is to me a bit of a mystery why Debian stable does not upgrade the GUIs faster. The base components, the server bits, sure. But there is no valid reason to no update KDE and GNOME to their latest releases.

      On the contrary: bugs in interfaces are in many cases not logic bugs, but unexpected behaviour, or inconsistency. And keeping the old version won't help.

Re:Is it any better?

[antdude]

It's not the bugs. It's the usability, design, etc. in v4.3. Did KDE v4.8 get much better in those areas?

Re:Is it any better?

[SomeKDEUser]

I use it every day, because I think it works great and looks good. Objectively, it is faster, snappier and more stable. It also got features at each release.

Subjectively, I think the looks were always good, but that they improved with time. But that is, of course, subjective. There are not many styles I can say I have kept for a long time before I felt the need to change -- oxygen is the exception: it is clean, clear and, to me, beautiful.

But Your question is too vague to be answered meaningfully. What bugged you? Why? Could it not be changed? Did you report a bug (in a non-insulting, non-inflamatory way)?

Re:Is it any better?

[antdude]

I did not like the design, usability, etc. I preferred v3.5.10's. For now, I am using old Gnome v2.3.

Re:Is it any better?

[SomeKDEUser]

Which is completely meaningless. you cannot "not like the design". It can be too distracting, the icons not recognisable enough, the contrast can be too high or too low. You can dislike gradients, find the colours depressing or garish. but you cannot "not like the design".

"Usability" does not exist. There is only a collection of actions required to perform given tasks, which you could not easily find, or which you found too time consuming, or which gave you RSI.

I will guess that you are one of those guys who are somewhat sorry that DEs exist at all, but know that for sure, they should never have left their mid-nineties shape. I have bad news for you: these will disappear, and KDE4 is the only one which in the future will still do what you expect -- provided you configure it so.

Re:Is it any better?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yup... But you have to be fair: there are two years between 4.4 and 4.8. And the progress has been very fast. It is to me a bit of a mystery why Debian stable does not upgrade the GUIs faster. The base components, the server bits, sure. But there is no valid reason to no update KDE and GNOME to their latest releases.

      On the contrary: bugs in interfaces are in many cases not logic bugs, but unexpected behaviour, or inconsistency. And keeping the old version won't help.

Are you kidding ? Updating KDE on a stable release would wreak havoc for users.
Debian stable is STABLE for a reason. Damn the last thing I want is to see is DE being updated just because its the latest shiniest release. And lets not forget that with KDE new release may fix old bugs but they sure as hell introduce many many new bugs. So thanks but no thanks. People that want software continuosly updated should use a rolling release distro. Especially when we're talking software that extends its tendrils down to the core system.

Re:KDE sucks

[Jorl17]

Yeah, but they grabbed the source from emacs!

Fix some damn bugs already.

[bjwest]

All these new features are great (when they work), but they need to keep new feature additions to new versions. Minor version updates are supposed to be to fix bugs and improve performance, not add new features complete with new bugs. There are a ton of old bugs, quite a few of which are major issues, that they need to work on before adding in more to the mix.

The KDE developers are as bad as the Ubuntu dev team. They add in a new feature, then move on to the next new feature completely ignoring the cries for help from their users about the bugs they just introduced.

I'm already looking for a distro change, possibly Mint, or even going back to plain old Debian. I'm beginning to think I may need a DE change as well.

Re:Fix some damn bugs already.

[Anonymous Coward]

I think you hit the nail on the head. Adding new features is cool.
Going through list of bugs is not fun. So, let's rewrite everything and hope for the best.

Re:Fix some damn bugs already.

[kmahan]

The ability to pass geometry information to KDE apps via the command line has been broken for 3.5 years (well, a bug was filed that long ago). So the developers aren't too interested in fixing basic functionality!

https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=165355

Re:Fix some damn bugs already.

[jbolden]

It sounds like you want a much less feature rich and more debugged product. There really aren't feature rich high quality Linux desktop environments. Linux desktops are mainly just trying to keep up with mainstream products in terms of features.

Question for other KDE users

[toadlife]

I've always loved and used KDE (even the early 4.x versions were better than gnome IMO), but one thing about it annoys me. In Windows 7, if I have one window partially overlapping another window, if I click a file from the background windows, the focus will not be shifted to the background window until I release the mouse button. This allows me to click and drag a file from the background window to the foreground window without the background window becoming the foreground window. In KDE, the second you click on the background windows it becomes the foreground window. This feature in Windows 7 (and XP?) is incredibly useful and I never noticed how usefull until I started using KDE again recently. Does anyone know if KDE can be configured to emulate this behavior?

Re:Question for other KDE users

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't think KDE has exactly what you specify, but it has some other options in this area. You can play with settings like "focus follows mouse". I'm on a windows system right now, so I can't give you exact instructions, but it's worth checking out. My favorite is to set it up so that the window under the cursor is always in focus, but NEVER comes to the foreground unless explicitly told to (say, by clicking titlebar or alt-tabbing). This setup certainly solves your drag-and-drop problem, but it takes some getting used to. It's hard to tell which settings you'll like better without giving them each a lengthy trial.

Re:Question for other KDE users

[Anonymous Coward]

My KDE works that way. Also, middle click on the background window will activate it but will not put in on top.

This is configurable in System preferences -> Window behaviour -> Window behaviour. Play with the options and see what suits you best. I think your options would be in the Window Actions tab.

Re:Question for other KDE users

[toadlife]

Thanks.

While not identical, the "focus follows mouse" option seems to offer the functionality I want.

Re:Question for other KDE users

[badkarmadayaccount]

Focus follows mouse. Or set left click to activate without raising in kwin.

finally

[komrix]

I really like that KDE keeps updating...I personally think it has a better flow than GNOME and is much less clunky than Unity. The last update was a bit glitchy but still I really like the way that it looks. I have been using it on BT5 for about 6months now and I much prefer it to the GNOME counterpart.

Sadly...

[Pausanias]

I want something with the power and configurability of KDE but the non-crazy, makes me feel claustrophobic window layout of GNOME.... Sadly after many years as a Linux users I find that that environment is called Windows 7 + VMWare.

LOL

[G3ckoG33k]

"Mind you, I've tried, IIRC, 4.1, 4.2 or 4.3 and 4.4 or 4.5 and haven't liked it in any of those, over 3.5"

Mind you, I've tried, IIRC, Gnome 1.x and haven't liked it in any of those, over 1.0x

so, what or where does this matter? KDE is better, but not the main target funding for RedHat or Ubuntu. That is it.

Application Geometry settings

[kmahan]

Great -- another KDE release where they provide all sorts of new stuff but they still won't (can't?) fix bugs. I'm guessing all the developers that understand how the core of KDE works have left.

Is it too much to ask that the ability to specify a geometry (and placement) when starting an app be fixed so that it works? Not on shiny new apps but some of the core apps -- like konsole. This has been being reported since 4.0 was rolled out.

Re:Application Geometry settings

[lbbros]

System Settings > Window Behavior > Window specific overrides.

That's exactly what you're looking for, and oh, it's been there for several releases.

Re:Application Geometry settings

[kmahan]

% konsole 200x200+40+50

This doesn't work. How does one do this (so a simple script can pop up several windows in fixed locations with fixed sizes)

Re:Application Geometry settings

[Anonymous Coward]

A bug has been open against this problem since 6/29/2008. So 3.5 years for a basic bug.

https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=165355

Dump akonadi

[blackpaw]

Its a fucking disaster. I used to blame kmail2 but came to realise its a decent frontend, its the back end that drags it down.

4.8 RC2 Gmail imap account, working fine for weeks. Nothing changed, then I get that perpetual rotating wait icon, followed by the
"Unable to fetch job" error when trying to access sub folders. Reboots don't make any difference.

I know the deal - the only reliable way to fix it is to delete the virtuoso/nepomuk databases and all kmail configs and recreate the account from scratch, but you know what? I just can't be bothered any more. Tired out and fed up. I've been a good boy, I given up hoping for a search that works, I don't attempt to integrate with google calendar or contacts any more, I don't expect address expansion to work reliably. Theres bug entries ate bugs.kde.org related to this months old with no dev attention, not even to confirm or reject then.

Its just easier to use my webmail or Thunderbird. At least it always works, even if its not as integrated with the kde desktop.

So one less reason to use KDE at all.

Re:Dump akonadi

[qbast]

And let's not forget about mysql + virtuoso + maildir akonadi resource + kmail2 taking over 1GB of resident memory whenever they feel like it. When KDE 4.7 came out, I switched to Thunderbird. Later when buying a new laptop I noticed that almost all applications I run are multiplatform anyway. So now I run Windows 7 as my main OS. It needs some getting used to after using Linux/KDE for last 10 years.

Re:Dump akonadi

[Anonymous Coward]

Amen brother! Akonadi is absolutely terrible. Any mailbox with over 1000 emails slows kmail to a crawl. Random hangs. Infiinite loop loads. It's like they never even tested it before they released it.

Re:Dump akonadi

[Anonymous Coward]

You do know that the PIM development group is short staffed, right? It is free software. If you feel that it needs work, do the work. Contact the kdepim team and ask them what needs to be done, and start doing. This is not proprietary software.

Razor-qt

[MonsterTrimble]

I keep thinking that Razor might be the best thing to happen to KDE in a LONG time. I keep thinking a Razor-based distro might be good for what ails me.

Re:Razor-qt

[blackpaw]

I'm going to have to check it out, I like qt, both for its looks and its API. KDE has a huge infra structure with it I'd be reluctant to give up but they've bet the farm on nepomuk/akonadi, which are complete clusterfucks, as said in Jurassic Park - "Dennis, our lives are in your hands and you've got butterfingers?"

And nobody cared...

[Anonymous Coward]

Egales.

Try Trinity

[Sosarian Avatar]

You might try Trinity Desktop, the fork/continuation of KDE 3.5.x: TrinityDesktop.org.

Applications matter more than DE

[Anonymous Coward]

It doesn't matter that much what DE you're using. The problem is individual applications and their integration with one another. No matter if you use Unity, GShell, LXDE or KDE, applications and their backend are pretty much the same. It seems to me that these days it's all about DE competition, what DE is bes, which DE is nicer, mine is more beautiful than yours, this DE does it better...etc. In reality, there are lots of applications that are very buggy and very old feature wise compared to other platforms. Example: Thunderbird, Kmail or Evolution: the fact that a regular user can't sync his yahoo or gmail contacts properly up and down, that there isn't a native way or syncing yahoo/gmail or other calendar, is touching every DE. The fact that I can't use my mp3 player because there's a bug in the library that handles MTP devices is affecting all Amarok, Banshee, Rhythmbox. It doesn't matter what DE we're using. We have exactly the same problems because more or less they use exactly the same packages/apps. We still have to use PPA's to get the latest versions of the software we need, Skype will still be on the old 2.2.x.x version across all of them, way behind versions available for other platforms. I don't see any strong debates on feature requests of bug fixes that need to be addressed. Maybe I have used bad examples, but I think you know what I mean. I'm sure everyone has a #1bug or feature that would make a world of difference for their loved application. And I'm pretty sure that in most cases that application would run in any DE we chose. I believe we could progress better if we improve Linux applications in general and waste less time on changing menus, windows or whatever. If my laptop can't suspend or resume from suspend, my wifi doesn't work, the touchpad doesn't work properly, I can't sync my mp3 player, etc., it really doesn't matter that I use Unity or KDE. My machine won't work properly and there's no happy-clicky-funny menu or floating icons or wobbly windows that can help me have a better experience.