KDE Announces 4.9 Releases

jrepin writes "KDE announces 4.9 releases of Workspaces, Applications, and Development Platform. Version 4.9 provides many new features, along with improved stability and performance. Some of the highlights include, but are not limited to: more thorough integration of Activities throughout the Workspaces, ability to display metadata (ratings, tags, image and file sizes...) next to file names in Dolphin file manager, Mercurial versioning system support in Dolphin, detachable tabs in Konsole terminal emulator, support for MPRIS2 protocol in various places, ability to store and print PDF annotations from Okular document viewer, Okular can also play videos embedded in PDFs, Lokalize translation tool supports Qt's TS translation files, Kontact PIM suite gains ability to import data from Thunderbird and Evolution, Pairs is a new memory training game added to KDE Education package, and Marble desktop globe includes Open Source Routing Machine and support for bicycle and pedestrian routing. This release is dedicated to the memory of recently deceased KDE contributor Claire Lotion."

Comments

Nice

[lennier1]

Just make sure the tablet UI mode stays optional. We don't need another Gnome3/Unity.

Re:Nice

[suy]

Just make sure the tablet UI mode stays optional. We don't need another Gnome3/Unity.

KDE/Plasma doesn't have a "tablet mode". For the main interface (sometimes I've seen it mentioned as "primary user interface"), with the 4.x series a new approach was attempted. Instead of having somewhat monolithic blocks rigidly coupled (kicker, kdesktop, etc.), a general framework for creating this kind of interfaces was created: what today we know as Plasma. Plasma has shared libraries and frameworks, but the desktop experience is a program named plasma-desktop. A similar UI is plasma-netbook, and of course there are versions for tablet and even phone incarnations. Many things are shared, which is the cool thing about KDE.

This approach was probably very ambitious at the beginning, and hence the initial bad impressions, but in my experience it was worth it, since now I can have a kick-ass desktop that is configurable way beyond I could imagine in the KDE 3.x days.

Congrats!

[danbuter]

I'm glad the KDE crew is still pushing stuff out the door. While I'm not a huge fan of KDE4, it is improving.

Re:Congrats!

[G3ckoG33k]

"While I'm not a huge fan of KDE4, it is improving."

I am a huge fan of KDE4, and, it is still improving.

Go KDE!

Re:Seems like too few

[Desler]

Because they are saving 5.0 for when they throw away all the code and start from scratch again.

*ducks*

Activities?

[colin_faber]

I love KDE but I don't understand activities. Am I "doing it wrong" ? I can't seem to find a use for this feature.

Re:Activities?

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't worry, nobody can, except perhaps Siego. Activities are a solution looking for a problem.

Re:Activities?

[SomeKDEUser]

Think of it a groups of applications and desktop widgets between which you can switch.

For example, I find it convenient to have, say, an IDE, a web browser a couple consoles and relevant apps in an activity, and in another activity the word processor, another browser, perhaps a drawing programme.

I could do that on virtual desktops, but I like each group of apps spread over 3-4 virtual desktops. This is like a way of organising (in my case) 18 virtual desktops in 6 more manageable groups. Also, I don't want the twitter feed on all of them, and I want different directories on my desktop for each group.

Does it make sense?

Re:Activities?

[icebike]

Activities have always been something of a niche feature, with most people being perfectly content to use multiple desktops
which have been available since the Pleistocene. Having tools on the desktop in the form of widgets or switching the entire look and feel based on when you stop work and start relaxing were just about the whole selling point of activities, but none of these were problems to begin with.

Unfortunately, the KDE team let one small group of designers (two people, as best as I can figure out) run away with the desktop for several releases trying to foist Activities on the userbase. In later releases, the bitch level got so high that the rest of the KDE team have pretty much got those individuals under control, and sanity has returned. You can pretty much avoid activities now entirely, or at least make them sit silently in the background managing nothing but wallpaper.

Re:Activities?

[zlamma]

If you don't understand them, it means you don't have the problem they are solving - a lot of UI components open all at once.

But whenever you're overloaded with multitude of items, grouping may help you. And sometimes you can distinguish some non-overlapping groups of GUI components. These are activities.
Like: For staying up to date with life (my eMail client, my facebook page), for the project I am currently working on (my IDE, some folders of the project I am currently editing, GIThub page, various googling sessions I am doing in research), for the entertainment (my favorite offtopic sites, etc.).

Re:Activities?

[SomeKDEUser]

This is not how activities work: applications are attached to a desktop and an activity. Thus activities can be used group apps together, in a way which is orthogonal to desktops.

Changing activities is like changing virtual desktops, except you are changing groups of VDs (and also the widgets on them, but this is nice but to me secondary)

Re:Activities?

[icebike]

Well, after that devastating /lib to /usr/lib cutover last month which bricked so many Arch machines I'm more than a little suspicious of some of Arch's commitment to either vanilla or integrity.

Re:Activities?

[socceroos]

Activities haven't been picked up nearly as much as was first desired. It was (and still is in many respects) a great idea.

The idea was that you could be using your IM, email, and a host of other applications and services all set up for your work environment (or any environment you desire, for that matter) - your IM contacts were your workmates, your email was work email, your browser had your work bookmarks and started up with your work webapps open, etc - THEN, with the click of a button, you could switch to 'home' or 'personal' or whatever and suddenly you'd be seeing your setup for that environment - your personal email, your personal IM contacts, your personal browser setup, your personal folders being displayed on the desktop with a pic of your dog, etc.

The power was with the user to set this up as they wished, you could have as many (or as few) activities as you desired. Perhaps a Music Creation activity that had all your perferred apps open for music creation + any other stuff you so desired to be configured, or perhaps an activity set up for your Development environment with folders on the desktop pointing directly to your files, etc. The list goes on.

The power of the idea streched even further to 'networked Activities'. The idea was that you could walk into a hotel for instance and KDE would inform you that there was an 'Activity' that the hotel was offering you to use. This could include things like links to common items in the browser, Icons on the desktop for the menu in the hotel's restaurant, IM contacts that were the hotel's helpdesk, a document explaining the local area and local attractions, etc.

When it comes down to it, the idea was actually very cool - your desktop environment could mould itself to suit your 'Activity' making access to the things you needed far, far easier and quicker. A great idea. But, the takeup has been bad, misinformation has been rampant and there has been no clear explination of the concept for user's benefit.

Personally, I'd still like to see it get a run - I love the idea.

Re:Seems like too few

[Carewolf]

KDE 5.0 is being worked on, but it is not called KDE 5.0, it is called KDE frameworks. One of the main points of KDE frameworks is get rid of the distinctions betwen Qt and KDE applications, so many KDE features are being ported into Qt now that it is under open governance, and the rest will be made to work well at Qt components that anyone can add to their application.

Re:Another Win

[not already in use]

Any service with a commenting section is full of people projecting their anger and insecurities on others. Given the nature of slashdot, it's particularly bad here.

Ubuntu 12.04?

[dmt0]

Has anyone dared to install it through a backports PPA on Ubuntu?
Is it something worth doing?

Re:Seems like too few

[Bill_the_Engineer]

Why don't they just round up and make it 5.0 releases?

The number isn't decimal. It is major-version.minor-version. We can have 4.10 and 4.11.

A change in the major-version number usually means that changes in the API have taken place and things marked deprecated are removed completely.

Re:What about Windows 8

[SiChemist]

Pipe down Ballmer!

Re:Seems like too few

[bbecker23]

The integration is going the other direction. KDE apps transitioning to Qt.

Re:Seems like too few

[fnj]

is it doable to convert KDE to be any other toolkit?

Why? Qt is GPL, widely ported, and the best toolkit there is.

Re:Another Win

[Maltheus]

I'm a long time user who finally threw in the towel a few months ago. I like KDE as a window manager, but the "desktop" internals drive me crazy. Especially knotify4. That app has locked up more of my linux systems than any other piece of software out there. Finally got tired of flipping the power switch and now (after an adjustment period) I'm much happier with openbox/tint2. Not missing that semantic/nepomuk garbage either.

Question for the devs: nepomuk

[fritsd]

What I would like to know is, if I do the following:

ssh -X otheruser@localhost kmail

Does it Just Work(TM)? Or does it still crash because akonadi / nepomuk / strigi / mysql / kitchensink haven't all been woken up at the same time to serve the urgent e-mail indexing needs of otheruser@localhost.

It's interesting to me that akonadi has such a nice and detailed self-test, but a pity that it seems to need it :-(

Re:What about Windows 8

[cbhacking]

Actually, you really can. KDE has been available on Windows for years, basically ever since 4.x was released (yes, including the pre-release-quality "releases" for x < 2).

Additionally, Windows has long had a registry value that specifies which process it should launch as a shell. Traditionally, this was used for creating kiosk systems that ran dedicated software and neither needed nore wanted Explorer running in the background. However, it's possible to do full shell replacement using the same tweak.