KDE 4.10 Beta1 Released

sfcrazy writes "The KDE team has released the first beta for its renewed 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.' QtQuick in Plasma Workspaces has received a lot of work: 'Plasma Quick, KDE's extensions on top of QtQuick allow deeper integration with the system and more powerful apps and Plasma components. Plasma Containments can now be written in QtQuick. Various Plasma widgets have been rewritten in QtQuick, notably the system tray, pager, notifications, lock & logout, weather and weather station, comic strip and calculator plasmoids. Many performance, quality and usability improvements make Plasma Desktop and Netbook workspaces easier to use.' Here's the Feature Plan for 4.10."

Comments

KDE

[Osgeld]

Given the choices of the new DE's I have to say I could see my self actually using these last few KDE's, they have come quite a way since the early 4x days. Course I use XFCE cause I am more interested in my computer actually computing than having floaty windows and bullshit widgets all alpha blended like a hollywood production, but IF my choices were limited to GNOME3, Unity or KDE... I honestly believe KDE is the less bloaty pile of pain in the ass.

Re:KDE

[sa666_666]

Talk about damning with faint praise.

Re:KDE

[TheGoodNamesWereGone]

I use KDE4 and I like it. I will say I agree with the OP that it was a piece of crap early on, and I still miss KDE3.

Re:KDE

[Anonymous Coward]

There is a project to bring back to life KDE3:
http://www.trinitydesktop.org/

Although they kind of screwed up at the beginning by trying to do too many changes at once. But I haven't checked recently, maybe its better now.

Re:KDE

[yet-another-lobbyist]

...they also seemed to have a rough spot in the past months. For months, there was no stable version available for ubuntu Precise, which is an LTS. Last month, they finally released 3.5.13.1, with support for Precise. I also had trouble accessing their web page and repos for many days in a row. Not exactly the kind of stability I would expect for my main DE.

By the way, KDE 3.5 was my first Linux experience. It was my DE of choice; it worked well and I liked the configurability. But I always found it butt ugly. Looked way old-fashioned and outdated compared to OSs/DEs. Tried a few different themes, but that only made it worse. I still stayed with it for its functionality. But I always found it totally unsexy.

Re:KDE

[chargersfan420]

This is pretty much how I feel too. I use XFCE + compiz for the perfect blend of speed and desktop customizability. Gotta have a little bling. But the way compiz has been going, it looks like the day might come where it is no longer an option, and I hope that KDE will have their shit together by then. I've checked out KDE several times in the past, but it's just never looked "ready" yet. (to be fair it has been a while)

Re:KDE

[Anonymous Coward]

Blame Kubuntu, not KDE ;)

Re:KDE

[armanox]

They're repos were very unstable when I tried it (I had it running on Fedora 16). Running KDE 3.5 on a modern comp (FX-8120, SSD, etc) was quite wonderful. I should try to see if any of the kinks have been ironed out (and I might try to build compiz too. KDE 3.5 + Compiz was my Linux Desktop Nirvana).

Re:KDE

[ls671]

I still run kde 3.4.2 on many slackware ran machines, patched to 12.2 . I run kde4 on my ubuntu laptop after giving a fair try to unity. KDE 3 is fine if you do not need all the pnp stuff for wireless, sound etc that used to take weeks to set up on a linux laptop. I used to run fvwm on slackware 1.2.3 and back then, I had a hard time moving to kde because of the awful resource consumed. Same old, same old.

Well, even Linus says kde ain't in such a bad state. I always instinctively stayed away from gnome since it first came out and it had your workspace switching interface in a 3d cube and what not. So, fvwm, xfce, kde. On Ubuntu, install Kubuntu-Low-Fat-Settings.

Kde4 still seems like a pig to me but it ain't as bad as most people pretend. You have to know how to read how much resources your programs really use. Below, in the top output, palsma only uses 28 megs RAM for itself really. My laptop is a thinkpad T43 with one Gig RAM and the total of my workload is about 6 Gigs if you look at the first column that says 300m. Do not let this fool you !

1001 XX 20 0 300m 48m 20m S 0.7 4.9 6:13.32 plasma-desktop

Re:KDE

[ls671]

Who cares about unsexy? (for a window manager of course)

Re:KDE

[martin-boundary]

Nothing to it! He's just alpha blended the praise into the damnation background. Any /. client can do this these days. Now, if he could also make his sentences Wo0obBblyY, that would totally rock!

Re:KDE

[sahostking]

I still make KDE 3 aswell - was more simple and easier to use. But I guess everyone has their differences

Re:KDE

[jones_supa]

XFCE + Compiz sounds like an interesting combination, what are the steps required to make it work?

Re:KDE

[Tough Love]

Actually, that amounts to high praise considering that it is coming from an XFCE user. No aspersions there, just noting that XFCE users tend to be highly loyal, and they have their reasons.

Re:KDE

[Anonymous Coward]

the workspace switching was a compiz effect, staying away from gnome because of ignorance is just dumb. Gnome 3 sucks, but gnome 2 was fine. A little limited but at least it got out of the way.

Re:KDE

[Forty Two Tenfold]

They're repos

They are? For fuck's sake!

Re:KDE

[armanox]

You really expect me to write coherently and correctly at 12:16 when I'm only half awake? I haven't been able to do that since college.

Re:KDE

[Forty Two Tenfold]

You really expect me to write coherently and correctly at 12:16 when I'm only half awake? I haven't been able to do that since college.

<Jamal from="How High">Yes, I do!</Jamal>

Accessibility

[binaryhat]

Still no focus adding an onscreen keyboard with word completion. This needs to be added. KDE is now in the mainstream. Windows 7 onscreen keyboard is great...Linux alternatives, suck. https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=265452

Re:Accessibility

[ozmanjusri]

As you probably know, since you're quoting the bug report, the Mallit keyboard from Meego (which has very good word completion) is already available in KDE Plasma Active, and is being ported to KDE desktop.

The onscreen keyboard is a low priority for KDE desktop, because it's a desktop OS, not one intended for tablets. When W7 was released, Microsoft had no real tablet OS, so they've had to shoehorn the two interfaces together. Hence the predictive onscreen keyboard in their primary desktop UI. KDE is a bit more versatile.

It's wonderful that you love Windows 7 so much - perhaps you should stick with it and leave Linux to those of us who enjoy using it? Learning a new tool can be challenging for anybody. You can check back in occasionally to see if it has stopped "sucking".

Re:Accessibility

[Hatta]

The onscreen keyboard is a low priority for KDE desktop, because it's a desktop OS, not one intended for tablets.

I imagine, given the title of his post, that tablets are not his first concern.

Re:Accessibility

[binaryhat]

Actually I've been a Linux/KDE user since 2001. Yes Linux onscreen keyboards do stink. I have tried them. There is no reason why KDE desktop can't have a viable onscreen keyboard. I am pushing for one because I am disabled and cannot physically type, only operate a touchpad. Don't be so quick to judge : )

Re:Accessibility

[ozmanjusri]

Yes, but you can run Plasma Active on a desktop computer with a touchpad.

It's simple to try, just test with the USB version, then install if you like it. KUbuntu has a good remix.

http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/kubuntu-active/releases/12.10/release/

Re:Accessibility

[ozmanjusri]

Windows 7 onscreen keyboard is great...Linux alternatives, suck.

That's a fairly clear preference you've expressed.

If you genuinely want to use Linux, you can install the Plasma Active version of Kubuntu and have your predictive keyboard.

http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/kubuntu-active/releases/12.10/release/

Re:Accessibility

[Anonymous Coward]

Meego's word completion is provided by a commercial product. There is no high quality open source alternative available. Someone should ask Nokia to contribute the word prediction library they used in the latest Symbian Belle update. Symbian as a platform is going to die soon. They don't need it.

Re:Accessibility

[Tough Love]

It's wonderful that you love Windows 7 so much - perhaps you should stick with it and leave Linux to those of us who enjoy using it?

Come come, OP wasn't being critical of Linux, just noting that Windows has a better onscreen keyboard. For all I know, that may be right. If so it may be something to learn from.

As for KDE being permanently a desktop environment and not for mobile... I actually have more confidence in the KDE project to get the details right than Apple or Google. The QT/C++ foundation is really powerful in that regard, for introducing the necessary new abstractions. Recall that Nokia's prime interest in QT was for mobile. See, the big difference between the KDE foundation and Google/Apple is, the corps are primarly interested in getting you to use your device in the way that is most profitable for them, while KDE tries to make the device most useful to you. Case in point: Google pushing hard for browser-only cloud-centric usage model while any damm fool can see that local, native applications are superior in many contexts.

HOLY COW !! BETA !! ONE !!

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm so excited !! I just can't hide it !! Let's have a deep, passionate discussion on just what this BETA !! ONE !! will do for me !! For you !! And the best thing ?? IT CAN ONLY GET BETTER !! BETA !! TWO !!

Definitely fun

[Seeteufel]

KDE 4.10 gets definitely back into the fun zone. Hunting down bugs is more fun when there are few. The news test environments like Jenkins seem to be helpful, as well as reviewboard and EBN/krazy. Does KDE 4.10 compile with LLVM compiler?

Re:Definitely fun

[Anonymous Coward]

LLVM? CLANG? I hope so. Otherwise how will we get it through the FreeBSD ports for the year of the FreeBSD Desktop?

Re:Definitely fun

[Seeteufel]

The reason why I ask is that I am convinced that CLANG makes software better. Messy compilers lead to coding by messies and vice versa.

Re:Definitely fun

[Anonymous Coward]

Ports can still depend on gcc if they need it. ;)

Re:KDE + Beta = Rewriting Hell

[yahwotqa]

One has to wonder why did you add the last sentence there. It has absolutely no relevance to the topic, and running Ubuntu server does not grant you any bragging rights - anyone and their dog can do that these days.

Wallpaper DCOP

[Anonymous Coward]

Can't check myself at the moment, but I really hope they finally added a DCOP interface for changing the desktop wallpaper. Someone had a patch in KDE review that looked pretty damn good at one point.. but I lost the link and google is failing me.

It's one of those last little bits of missing functionality.

Re:Wallpaper DCOP

[Anrego]

https://git.reviewboard.kde.org/r/105319/

Looking like no.

There are two ways you can do it, one is via a javascript plasmoid type hack, and the other is by having a "current_wallpaper" file somewhere, setting it as your wallpaper, then overwriting the file to change it (KDE (should) pick up the change and set the wallpaper accordingly).

Of course, both of these options are absolutely ridiculous. It's understandable how something like this got missed in the switch from dcop to dbus, but it's annoying how long it has sat there (especially as the fix is really simple, and has already been written).

Re:Wallpaper DCOP

[vurian]

At least work is being done to implement the feature -- how much better can it get?

Only me?

[gagol]

It really bothers me that people that are SO good at math cannot figure that 4.1 and 4.10 are exactly the same thing. Please name the 1 version 4.01 and 10 version 4.10. Trailing zeros have no values and are implied. FTR I work in marketing and I am not that advanced in math...

Re:Only me?

[tywjohn]

This isn't math, it's software development. We all know exactly what it means.

Re:Only me?

[gagol]

Good for you, I will not settle for ambigous mediocrity.

Re:Only me?

[Anonymous Coward]

GP said he works in marketing, so... no, the Stef Murkys of the world don't know what it means.

Re:Only me?

[gagol]

This particual marketing guy followed an AI class and is very capable of programming systems (think of it as a hobby). Hence his presence here and right to be appaled by this simple thing.

Re:Only me?

[colinrichardday]

If that is so, would Version 4 be the sum of Versions 3 and 1?

Re:Only me?

[gagol]

The point is the following: 4.10 pounds of meat is equal to 4.1 pounds of meat. Why 4.10 ion versioning numbers are different than 4.1. considering the amount of mathematical knowledge required for proficience in software development, I am genuinely and completely "flabergasted" by the lack of rigor. This comment represent my opinion and by no means is a scientific survey. Still, it smells mediocrity to my nose.

Re:Only me?

[tywjohn]

Like I said, this isn't math. They could have just as well used a hyphen instead of a period (period, not decimal).

Re:Only me?

[SomeKDEUser]

This is because you are not thinking about it in the right way: We do not know the number of versions, subversions, subsubversion there will be. Therefore, we cannot choose a nice base. If we knew there would never be more than 16 of them, Hex would work: 1.0, 1.2, ...1.A, 1.B, ..., 1.F.

But we can interpret the digits between dots as a single symbol -- which it is, it is the number of releases at that level. Thus, x.y.z makes sense for any integers x, y, and z.

It is in fact completely rigourous: we are counting, and picked the dot as a symbol separator between counters. Like IP adresses, or classes in many programming languages. If you think of releases as reals and not integers, you think wrong. Sorry.

Re:Only me?

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe because version numbers are text labels rather than numeric values, even though they look similar? What comes to mind when you see version numbers with *two* decimals, like Linux 3.0.5? Does your head start to explode?

Re:Only me?

[JabberWokky]

4.1 and 4.10 are not the same thing, as the period in a software version is not a decimal point. Do you think US Thanksgiving falls on 0.5 this year (since 11/22 is 0.5)? For that matter, how do you explain version 4.1.1? That's not even number!

If you can comprehend dates that use slashes and not divide them out, or subtract ISO style dates (2012-11-22: US Thanksgiving falls on 1979 this year!), then what is the problem with periods as a separator for versions?

IP addresses and ISBN numbers in books must drive you bug nuts. And I imagine you have problems with entering telephone numbers, since your slavish devotion to "all numbers are math" would cause you to multiply the area code by the exchange minus the subscriber code: (202) 456-1414 goes into your contacts as 95258.

Or are you just being as silly as these examples?

Re:Only me?

[Anonymous Coward]

What comes to mind when you see version numbers with *two* decimals, like Linux 3.0.5? Does your head start to explode?

Only if SANE is being used.

Re:Only me?

[heefeneet]

Good for you, I will not settle for ambigous mediocrity.

But you are happy with meaningless pedantry?

A marketing example - It really bothers me how people SO good at English cannot figure out that "new and improved" is an oxymoron. If something is new then there is no previous version to improve upon.

Re:Only me?

[aethelrick]

if I had mod points I'd mod you up.

Re:Only me?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm not quite clear on this. Can I get a car analogy?

Re:Only me?

[tbid18]

Your method would require knowing how many updates are made before the next major release. What if you committed more than 100 updates? Looks like you should have done X.001 instead. It's far more practical to just let versions of the form X.Y be two distinct numbers, where X refers to major releases and Y refers to updates within X. X and Y are NOT supposed to be part of the same number.

Incidentally, pretty much every math textbook I've seen follows this same pattern. Sections have some form like 1.0, 1.1, 1.2, ... 1.10, 1.11, 1.12, ... 2.0, ...

Re:Only me?

[unixisc]

I've noted this in the past as well. GP suggestion is exactly what I suggested - that start everything from x.01 and go up to wherever, and only introduce (x+1).01 when the new features are thoroughly tested. For instance, in this case, they ought to retroactively rename the first 10 KDEs as 4.01 to 4.09, and continue. Whenever Wayland support is complete in KDE, introduce that as KDE 5.01.

Oh, and get rid of any .00 versions. The first release of any new version should be .01, not .0 or .00.

Re:Only me?

[unixisc]

Then call it that - 1.a, 1.b, 1.c and go all the way up to 1.z. Nobody will object. But GP is right - if they say 4.10, it makes it look like it's 4.1. The other way they could have done it is called it 4.91, 4.92... and hopefully, 5 would be ready by then. At that point, call v5 as 5.01, so that they won't run into this issue again.

Re:Only me?

[Tough Love]

It really bothers me that people that are SO good at math cannot figure that 4.1 and 4.10 are exactly the same thing.

No, they are not. The dot in a version number is not a decimal point, it is a separator. We are talking about KDE "four dot ten" here, which is nine point releases after KDE version "four dot one".

Re:Only me?

[SomeKDEUser]

Do you also complain that the IP addresses go x.x.x.1 .2 ... .9 .10 .11 ??

Different conventions for different purposes. tau is commonly used for characteristic times and for shear stresses. Deal with it.

Re:Only me?

[Anonymous Coward]

Surely you realize this guy is trolling you?

Re:KDE + Beta = Rewriting Hell

[Alex Belits]

It means that he hates Linux and only wants it to run in a crippled environment.

They could make me happy by

[Lord Kano]

abandoning the 4.x tree and revamping the 3.5 tree. I'm using Trinity KDE because I can't stand 4.x.

LK

Re:They could make me happy by

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, There is KDE, there is also Trinity, but there is no "Trinity KDE".

Re:They could make me happy by

[Lord Kano]

True. Pedantic but true.

LK

Bored and just wanted to say

[present_arms]

To those thinking that 4.10 and 4.1 are the same, I'm on 4.9.2 (Four period nine period two) now to go back to 4.1 (four period one) would be silly as the beta is 4.10 which is (Four period Ten) I hope that clears things up for some :). on a serious note I'll wait for my distro (PCLinuxOS for those interested, not a *buntu fan personally) to have the stable in before I jump in

The world must have been waiting for this

[Anonymous Coward]

Animated Wallpapers -- Thanks to a new QtQuick-based wallpaper engine, animated wallpapers are now much easier to create.

GNOME3 posts here

[gtirloni]

Let's not confuse readers. Please post GNOME3 hate posts below only.

Dual Screens?

[Anonymous Coward]

I wish they would just get these working.
Happy with everything else, but the dual screen support is shocking!

Re:Dual Screens?

[Anonymous Coward]

What do you need dual screens for when you have animated wallpapers and a python framework for kate plug-ins?

Re:Dual Screens?

[yet-another-lobbyist]

What would you like to do an cannot?

KDE's Better Than I'd Expected

[reallocate]

Running 4.9.3 on Slackware. I've always run away from KDE. But, I turned off almost all of the desktop effects, spent some time finding a theme I like and tweaking things, add the Infinality font code, and I find myself very happily surprised. It's fast, easy, reliable, etc., etc. And, yeah, tweakable. Loaded openbox expecting to see big reductions in memory use. Didn't happen. I saw marginal changes. Besides, I get a menu when I right click on this KDE desktop. Why would I use openbox that does the same thing and little else?

I'd be happy to use Gnome 3 if I could control what goes in the panel and if that pseudo-dock behaved like a real dock. But, they seem fixated on sticking to One Very Narrow True Path. Too bad.

The truth is that both early versions of KDE 4 and Gnome 3 were releasesd months before they should have been. We all get to play guinea pigs for software that should have stayed in house for more development iterations, if the resources were there. They aren't.

Sigh

[diego.viola]

Will this release fix this fucking annoying bug at least?

https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=224447

Re:Sigh

[Anonymous Coward]

With the rewrite of the Taskbar part in QML, the answer is YES.

kde runs pretty fast

[Vince6791]

I ran mint 13 kde on a crappy netbook atom 1.3ghz(pentium with hyper-threading), 2gb ram, intel gma500(i compiled and ran intel's newest version), with full effects using xrender and it ran faster than windows 7 especially when watching hulu or youtube videos. Windows 7 with full effects on ran like shit, kde smooth. I also ran mint 13 with xfce clean install on the same netbook and i just don't see the difference between this one and the kde version in performance, both run fast.

But, I'm still a fan of unity, gnome3, and metroUI(windows). In kde, I just create a third taskbar to use as a dock. I ran netflix successfully on wine, someone found a way to do and just followed their instructions, I hope they find a way to run adobe shockwave on web browsers for linux. We also need freaking games, cod4 on wine too slow using ubuntu.