KDE Announces 4.9 Beta1 and Testing Initiative

jrepin writes "KDE released the first beta for its version 4.9 of Workspaces, Applications, and Development Platform. With API, dependency and feature freezes in place, the KDE team's focus is now on fixing bugs and further polishing new and old functionality. Highlights of 4.9 include, but are not limited to: Qt Quick in Plasma Workspaces, many improvements in Dolphin file manager, deeper integration of Activities, and many performance improvements. The KDE Community is committed to improving quality substantially with a new program that starts with the 4.9 releases. The 4.9 beta releases are the first phase of a testing process that involves volunteers called 'Beta Testers.' They will receive training, test the two beta releases and report issues through KDE Bugzilla." I was recently forced into installing GNOME 3 (who knew printing required removing GNOME 2); after trying for a while to get Sawfish working again in the deprecated fallback mode, I gave up and tried KDE again. I have to say that I was surprised: KDE 4.5 was unpolished and painful to use whereas 4.7 is pretty slick. With the GNOME 3 developers catering to some seemingly mythical user, it's nice to see the other major desktop using user feedback to make design decisions.

Comments

GNOME 3 uses user feedback

[Anonymous Coward]

Hey! The GNOME 3 team DOES use user feedback, you insensitive clods! After they print them out (which requires GNOME 3, as you've seen), they shred them and turn them into fine bedding for their various rodent pets! And the rodents, in turn, whisper great design ideas to the developers!

Volunteers called "beta testers"

[Chemisor]

I am so glad that KDE has finally discovered that new "beta testing" thing. It is sure to improve the quality of future releases.

Re:kubuntu?

[Razgorov Prikazka]

That is one option. There are hundreds more, including using synaptic or apt to download and install kde (assuming that you already use 'regular' ubuntu). Or on the other end of the spectrum you can also create a linux-from-scratch 'distro' and compile the whole packet. That makes for days on end filled with joy and fun, and it is very educational as well!

I dont know what the options for Amiga are btw...

Does it still have the deal-breaker?

[Maltheus]

I would love KDE if it would just stick to being a window manager. But everything related to that semantic desktop nonsense is perpetually buggy and knotify refuses to live with anything less than 100% of the CPU. These problems come and go with different releases, but they never entirely go away.

I have used KDE for many years on many computers, but I finally had to give up on it this year. Like so many open source projects, the bloat drove me away.

Re:Does it still have the deal-breaker?

[icebike]

Just turn off or uninstall what you don't need.

I find it very stable, and rather surprisingly lightweight considering all the bells and whistles it supports. The current version is one of the best versions of KDE of all time, IMHO.

Nobody I know uses the semantic desktop, its simply a developmental toy, and most people turn off the indexing functions, since they pretty well know what is on their machines and where it is. They've even been browbeaten into deep-sixing their "activities" for the vast majority of users that simply wanted multiple desktops without all the widgets. (Its still there, but mostly caged and toothless).

  It does everything I ask of it, and gets out of the way when I don't need it. Their Kmail, which use to be one of the best email MUAs has fallen to unusable status of late, in the midst of another re-write, but Thunderbird and several other are there to pick up the slack.

Re:Does it still have the deal-breaker?

[Maltheus]

You can't uninstall semantic desktop, it's integrated AFAIK. I do turn off the file indexing, but you have to remember to do that on each account you make, and I have even had it pop back on from time to time. It's mind boggling to me that this is still on by default, given that it brings every machine out there to its kness. As for knotify, that's tied to everything and seems to be the biggest culprit in thrashing the CPU.

Maybe KDE is simply not a good fit for Gentoo, but I've seen these problems for years now on quite a few completely different machines. KDE can be good for 6-8 months at a time, but eventually the kitchen sink they threw into it eventually starts to back up, requiring a hard reset and all that entails.

Re:Does it still have the deal-breaker?

[slack_justyb]

Yes you can remove the semantic desktop stuff. Gentoo has a compile option that you can include that will specifically build KDE sans the semantic desktop.

Re:Does it still have the deal-breaker?

[Anonymous Coward]

Add "tsa" into your USE flags. for full body search

Re:Does it still have the deal-breaker?

[rec9140]

I'm not sure about the full body email search, but if you wanted to do that wouldn't you want semantic desktop? I guess what you're asking is how to have such an option in KMail without having to include the entire kitchen sink that is the semantic desktop? I think you can pick and choose the services that nepomuk uses, but I would be out of my element on that since I just turn the whole thing off. If there isn't a way to filter nepomuk to only be used for KMail, then that would be a great request.

No, I don't use semantic desktop, and I don't need my entire system indexed for one program to have a search function. The search function was working quite fine in KMail till this "enahancement/improvement" with nepoturkey.

First, since I can't even import the huge existing maildirs with out success in the latest version.

Second, since I disable nepoturkey on install I loose the ability to search emails.. thats WRONG! WRONG WRONG W R O N G ! ! !

Semantic, schemantic, phooey! Some KDE dev's are just too young and isolated to understand the userbase. You want this as an OPTION GREAT have at, just don't borq up the rest of it for the REAL USERS.

Re:Does it still have the deal-breaker?

[renoX]

Turning off something to have a normally functioning desktop shouldn't be required: most users use the regular desktop without changing settings, even if they're annoyed by something..

In my opinion, KDE developers make a big mistake here, enabling by default non-ready features..

Re:kubuntu?

[V!NCENT]

If you want a pile of unstable crap then yes.

You're better of with Fedora, because it's the Red Hat backed distro that is bleeding edge, but upstream. As raw and original as it gets. It also has the latest open source drivers.

If you want to live in the world of closed and patented crap (can't blame you as it's all around us, everywhere) then you can get away with RPMFusion, which is a repository (app store thing) full of borderline illegal (as in against lobbied laws) stuff like automatic DVD 'copy protection' cracking on the fly, MPEG codecs, patented stuff and what have you? You can simply enable that with the browser.

Don't try it out on virtual setups; it runs best bare metal. In fact; its very nature is to be close to the metal.

Don't expect the bleeding edge KDE spin on the bleeding edge Fedora Linux distro to be a ccomplete polished ride, but even though the learning curve is a little steep (in OS enduser terms); the hill is very low, so to speak. Once over it, then it becomes second nature and you'll start to wonder why the hell more popular OS's are so full of crap in the way they do things. But it's not as smooth as Apple's OS from the start, so bare that in mind! ;)

uhh why is the post talking about gnome3?

[ThorGod]

When the announcement is about the new release of KDE 4.9?

Bizarre.

Re:uhh why is the post talking about gnome3?

[unixisc]

Pretty moronic, given that KDE was there first, and GNOME only exists b'cos the FSF threw a stink about Qt's licensing. Once KDE went GPL, GNOME really lost its rationale for existing, particularly since it never fulfilled its raison d'etre - that of being a GNU Network Object Model Environment! Hell, GNUSTEP is more of a GNU Network Object Model Environment than 'GNOME' is, and a far better one at that. Ironically, for a GNU project, it's funny that the 'libre-Linux' distros like Trisquel bundle GNOME3 in fallback mode b'cos of the likelihood that the drivers won't be liberated firmware. One would think that a GNU project like GNOME would factor in all this before making 3D video accelaration a part of the key features.

Re:kubuntu?

[icebike]

Not to mention Opensuse is a very good distro with full KDE support. (They do Gnome and other flavors as well).
I happen to think Opensuse does KDE better than anyone else, but that's just my opinion.

Having long ago gone the "educational" route, I'm perfectly happy to start with a well thought out distro these days, and have 4 of them on this machine, in (Virtual Machines), including some pretty old school ones running nothing graphical.

Minty Cinnamon Goodness!

[rueger]

I abandoned Ubuntu when Unity was foisted on users, moving over to Mint.

With the Maya release (aka Mint 13) they've left behind Gnome for a choice of MATE or Cinnamon. I installed the latter, and I'm liking it a LOT.

Lots of good, simple usability, and a decided lack of annoying flash and gadgetry.

Nonetheless, I'll likely give the new KDE a look.

Re:Minty Cinnamon Goodness!

[bmo]

If you're changing distros because of the default desktop, you're doing it wrong.

The Ubuntu archives have several dozen desktops, window managers, etc, in the archives all for the pointing, clicking, and installing.

It's like the people who complain that Ubuntu is bloated, when you can start from a text-only minimal install and build up from there. Linux distributions, including Ubuntu, give you the tools to bend the distro to your will. Use them instead of complaining about things.

Your post is nothing but a flame pointed at Ubuntu.

--
BMO

Volunteers...

[CannonballHead]

Volunteers called "Beta Testers." Wow. I wonder if this will catch on with other development groups? Sounds like a pretty neat idea. I'm surprised no one else has done that...

Re:kubuntu?

[Tarlus]

If I want to try KDE I just download the kubuntu distribution?

Many here will argue that Fedora or openSUSE will give you a much better KDE experience, out of the box. My personal experiences with Kubuntu's take on KDE4 have not been positive, unfortunately...

Random question - How come Ubuntu 12.04 has a 5 year support system instead of the usual 3 year cycle?

12.04 is an LTS (Long Term Support) release. This means that it will be supported and patched for a longer period of time than their regular incremental releases, and this works well for people who don't feel inclined to go through the upgrade process every six months. It tends to be the more stable route for those who just want to work and don't want to have to fiddle with their computer more than they need to. It is also possible to upgrade directly from one LTS to the next. Every two years in April, they release a new LTS.

Re:Desktop bling vs Fluxbox usability

[Anonymous Coward]

"if the desktop bling gets in the way of a smooth user experience then the deskop is not doing its job."

Agreed, which is why KDE is the only desktop I'll use. Everything else has had too many features ripped out mercilessly to be a productive environment. KDE is the only thing left for power users, it seems. It lets me, from the GUI without having to fart around with some obscure desktop-specific config tool:

* Control which desktop newly opened windows go to as a function of the app. E.g, all email windows go to desktop 2, editors and shells to desktop 1, and so on.

* Provide regex-based configurable clipping behaviors when selecting text from any app.

* Provides an extremely rich set of GUI-settable key mapping and key macro prefs, such as mapping caps lock to control (a necessity for touch typists), where this requires some xmodmap stuff in most desktops. In KDE, it's just a checkbox. Or the key bindings *I* want for changing between virtual desktops.

* Provides keyboard controls for everything.

* Is endlessly configurable, for adding new task bars, putting what I want in them, and having them where I want them to go.

And so on. Sure, somebody is bound to say, "hey, but you can do that one in this desktop!" but it's missing the point. Any time I've tried another, it's inevitable that sooner or later I look for some feature which just isn't there. KDE, what I want has always been available.

Re:kubuntu?

[shutdown -p now]

If you want "bleeding edge, but upstream", then nothing beats Arch.

This

[Tailhook]

OpenSUSE: Linux for grownups that earn a living in Linux.

I tried. I really, really tried to cope with Gnome 3 on Ubuntu. When that failed, I reverted to Gnome 2 and found it neglected; things that should work, things that worked when Gnome 2 was Ubuntu's desktop, don't.

Back to OpenSUSE. You might need to beat akanodi and nepomuk into submission and the current release installer gets NVidia wrong, but those are simple problems for competent users to overcome. Once squared away you're left with a usable, feature complete desktop. Protip: replace the distro Flash with the Adobe's RPM.

I must agree 100% with the 'mythical user' jab. As distributed by Ubuntu Gnome 3 offers only pain and frustration for power users. Maybe Mint fixes it. I don't know. Burned enough weekend time getting to where I'm happy so I'm sticking with OpenSUSE.

I'm not an Ubuntu hater. I absolutely love Ubuntu Server (which amounts to regression tested Debian) and use it for several production systems. I'll give it a few years, hope for some sort of upheaval among Gnome developers and then try again.

Dear Mark Shuttleworth,

You're product is being hurt by Gnome. Designing exclusively for novices and causal users will not work. Things that succeed emerge from the power user. Make them happy first. Then hide the things they need and love behind a simplified interface. Macs do not lack features or capabilities, they just avoid bothering lusers with complexity. That's why OS-X simultaneously pleases both grandma and Joe Programmer. Please Mark, you're smart enough to understand this. Stop suffering these Gnome guys and their tragically bad design. Linux really needs you to figure this out at some point.

I'd pay a license fee for it. I swear.

Your's sincerely,
The Grownups.