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

[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 Looked way old-fashioned and outdated compared to OSs/DEs.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

[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

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/

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: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).

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?

[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?