KDE 4.10 Released, the Fastest KDE Ever
sfcrazy writes "The KDE team has announced the 4.10 releases of KDE Plasma Workspaces, Applications and Development Platform. It brings many improvements, features and polishes the UI even further, which already is one of the most polished, stable and mature desktop environments. With 4.10 KDE users can experience a much more sane global-menu like implementation without interrupting their workflow. A list of improvements is available here."
This release makes major steps toward further Qt Quick/QML integration (more plasmoids are written using QML, you can create animated desktops using QML, etc.). KWin's configuration applet also supports fetching extensions from KDE Look. Perhaps the best improvement is a new indexer for Nepomuk, with claims that the semantic desktop is finally usably fast (after suffering through a multi-week indexing on my laptop, I have to say Nepomuk is really cool, but having an unusable system for that long is not so I for one welcome our new indexing overlords).
Now that Gnome came up with Java Script AND now eveb with Sandboxing their Apps like Apple does with iOS
http://m.h-online.com/open/news/item/GNOME-developers-plan-Linux-apps-1798691.html
Kde as well as Xfce start becoming a serious option for me.
I was a big time fan of KDE2/3. The 4.0 release was far too rushed and eventually made me switch entirely to Fluxbox, which these days I've replaced with XCFE. I can't imagine switching back now but the change list and features in this 4.10 series make KDE a much more viable alternative to other WMs now. I feel a bit sorry for the KDE developers - I got the impression there was a sea-change in the project with the 4.x branch that they've had to slog uphill to overcome.
jaymz
This is actually a legit question. Mark Shuttleworth has repeatedly praised Qt. He has forked away from Gnome. The new Ubuntu phone interface is apparently written in Qt, and he is encouraging developers to write Qt/QML apps for his new phone platform.
I bet Ubuntu could recreate their Unity interface in Plasma/Qt easily enough. But the really interesting aspect of that is that they could create one device that could easily change UIs/shells based upon how it was used. A tablet could default a touch interface, but switch to a more traditional interface with paired with a keyboard. A phone interface could change to a desktop interface in a dock.
http://blindscribblings.com - Tasty pop-culture in conceptual fashion.
I just upgraded and luckily my heavily customized setup from 4.9 is intact. KDE's been snappy on this notebook anyway and completely problem-free for months (well only Firefox in conjunction with Google Docs freezes like once a day... but that's an FF bug) frankly I wouldn't use it if it was slow, so I don't see any particular change in speed.. and I was running the indexers and whatnot before. The only thing that was using a lot of resources (imo) was Amarok, but then I removed all services, plugins and stuff I don't use, and now it never goes over 70 MB after playing music all day.
I've been using KDE for less than a year but all in all I like this desktop.
I've been a KDE user from 1.x but KIO and Nepomuk have been enough to really make me consider moving to something else. I use Midnight Commander for all my big/important file moves, not because I LIKE to use it better but because I've had way too many occasions where anything that uses KIO just royally hoses up my files. I've actually lost data to how poorly that performs. It hasn't been limited to just one system either, it's been multiple computers over the years. I really want to use Konqueror, Dolphin and Krusader but for the integrity of my files I avoid it.
Akonadi seems to be rather a pain also.
Get rid of Nepomuk, Akonadi, and KIOslave hosing up your files KDE is rather nice. But is it really KDE anymore?
Just to be clear, I've been on KDE from 1.x until now, I'm not a hater, I've stuck with KDE through when I first toyed with Redhat, to SuSE, to Debian, and now Kubuntu, I'm certainly not a hater, but where there's flaws the flaws are grand.
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