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KDE Announces 4.9 Releases

Posted by Unknown on from the shinier-than-ever-before dept.

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."

10 of 159 comments (clear)

  1. Nice by lennier1 · · Score: 4, Insightful

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

    1. Re:Nice by suy · · Score: 5, Informative

      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.

  2. Re:Seems like too few by Desler · · Score: 5, Funny

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

    *ducks*

  3. Activities? by colin_faber · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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.

    1. Re:Activities? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

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

    2. Re:Activities? by SomeKDEUser · · Score: 5, Insightful

      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?

    3. Re:Activities? by icebike · · Score: 4, Interesting

      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.

      --
      Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
  4. Re:Seems like too few by Carewolf · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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.

  5. Re:Seems like too few by Bill_the_Engineer · · Score: 4, Informative

    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.

    --
    These comments are my own and do not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of my employer or colleagues...
  6. Re:Congrats! by G3ckoG33k · · Score: 4, Insightful

    "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!