KDE Applications 15.08.0 Released

jrepin writes: KDE announces the release of KDE Applications 15.08. With this release a total of 107 applications have been ported to KDE Frameworks 5. There are several new additions to the KDE Frameworks 5-based applications list, including Dolphin, the Kontact Suite, Ark, Picmi, etc. This release of Kdenlive video editor includes lots of fixes in the DVD wizard. Okular document reader now supports Fade transition in the presentation mode.

Comments

Too late

[msobkow]

I got pissed off 'cause I couldn't get KDE 5 to automount USB sticks and cameras under Ubuntu 15.04, so I switched to Gnome 3. KDE had my mindset for close to a decade, so they've had their run at it.

What a shame they fucked it up after so many years.

Re:Too late

[Gavagai80]

I didn't like Kubuntu 15.04, so I switched to 14.04 LTS. What's wrong with KDE 4 until 5 is ready?

Re:Too late

[msobkow]

15.04 comes with OpenJDK 8.

I don't choose my systems based on the desktop; I choose them based on the applications I actually use. I don't regress to old versions of software just because some bozo broke the release. I scrap the product until it's fixed, or in this case, until it's replacement gets broken.

Re:Too late

[Peter H.S.]

Yeah, interesting that people want bleeding edge and then complain about bugs and missing features. KDE 4 works fine (and is upstream LTS now).

I don't know if it is a good or bad sign that people expect FOSS DE's to be mature and finished before they are released, just like commercial DE's like MS Windows.

There used to be an understanding that FOSS software projects needs to release early and often, and that this sometimes meant releases with missing features and bugs.

Anyway, people should remember how few developers actually working full time on Linux DE's (the number is probably lower than the number of Baristas employed by Microsoft).

It never really ceases to amaze me how good the KDE desktop and its applications are compared to products from multi-billion dollar companies.

Re:Too late

[msobkow]

Ubuntu's desktop releases are hardly "bleeding edge."

Face it. The KDE team screwed up. All software teams do, sooner or later. They post a broken "release", and it gets shipped.

Unfortunately, that can be how you lose your user base.

Besides, it's not like there aren't a bazillion desktops out there waiting to replace one that's been screwed up.

Re:Too late

[LordNelsonthe2nd]

Heard of launchpad? Often got ppas for newer releases, this one would have helped: https://launchpad.net/~openjdk...

The automount problem for exfat? Had that too, but I think that was with 14.10 and KDE 4 (And not sure if it was even KDE related...).

Overall KDE 5 is running pretty smooth here, especially for a early version :)

Re:Too late

[Anonymous Coward]

Ubuntu's desktop releases are hardly "bleeding edge."

Face it. The KDE team screwed up. All software teams do, sooner or later. They post a broken "release", and it gets shipped.

Unfortunately, that can be how you lose your user base.

Besides, it's not like there aren't a bazillion desktops out there waiting to replace one that's been screwed up.

Explain your reasoning. What is wrong with KDE?

Re:Too late

[ArchieBunker]

Why should a window manager have anything to do with mounting a filesystem?

Re:Too late

[Anonymous Coward]

Because systemd. You know how everything has to do with systemd.

Seriously, that was the excuse for making systemd a huge monolithic mess that breaks, err touches, everything.

Re:Too late

[msobkow]

Aside from the USB bug, there's the annoying fact that they've *completely* stripped the customizability that I used to love about KDE, and don't even let you pin launchers to the desktop any more.

Quite frankly, KDE5 SUCKS compared to KDE4. It's as bad a "jump the shark" release as Gnome 3 initially was.

Re:Too late

[msobkow]

USB sticks and cameras mount fine for the OS and fine for Gnome 3.

Therefore the problem is KDE5.

Re:Too late

[Anonymous Coward]

It's nothing wrong with KDE, but someone with that low of a user ID should already know by now that Ubuntu DO NOT like KDE and should have instead used a KDE friendly distro like OpenSUSE or Arch where automounts DO work.

Re:Too late

[Anonymous Coward]

Please go clean the sand out of your vagina.

Re:Too late

[Anonymous Coward]

It was Gnome, not KDE, that pushed for systemd to become so bloated. That makes troubleshooting a lot of Gnome problems very hard since systemd swallows stderr and many syslog messages.

Re:Too late

[JoeMerchant]

I tried KDE4 on a 4K display, the results varied from disappointing to frustrating.

KDE5 may be "bleeding edge," but it's already a couple of years behind the times for mainstream hardware (high resolution displays).

Re:Too late

[JoeMerchant]

KDE has a history of this - KDE4 was also let out of the bag long before it was ready.

Re:Too late

[Peter H.S.]

I don't any FOSS DE have fully working HiDPI /high resolution display support yet.
They are getting better for each release however.

Again the point is that few people are working on Linux DE's since nobody earns money on desktop Linux and desktop Linux users generally are misers when it comes to donate money to DE work. I think many board games or small computer games raises more capital on Kickstarter than all Linux DE's together gets in user donations.

Re:Too late

[Peter H.S.]

Ubuntu's desktop releases are hardly "bleeding edge."

Well, if they wanted a stable KDE release they should have chosen KDE 4. KDE 5 (KF, Apps etc) are still a work in progress.

But people (including me) wants new and shiny, so most distros tend to ship the newest Linux DE instead of the old boring stable one.

Face it. The KDE team screwed up. All software teams do, sooner or later. They post a broken "release", and it gets shipped.

I disagree and I don't think you really understand how FOSS DE and software development work; all the major DE versions starts with feature regression, rough edges and lots of bugs, and then later start to stabilize as users report bugs and developers catch up. Gnome 3 happens to be further into the stabilizing phase since it is older, but it certainly was released with both bugs and features missing.
Both Gnome 1, 2, 3, and KDE 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 followed the above pattern without exception.

This is not because KDE or Gnome developers "screws up", but because this is how FOSS DE software with basically no funding has to be developed; release early and release often, have the users report bugs and supply RFE's and general feedback for what is important to fix.

If people rage-quit instead of reporting bugs Linux development will suffer.

Besides, it's not like there aren't a bazillion desktops out there waiting to replace one that's been screwed up.

Really? As I see it there are only two DE's out there with any kind of application development going on and that is Gnome and KDE (and a few Qt apps).

If KDE disappeared then there would only be Gnome and GTK apps left for Linux. (Qt would probably disappear too since they would no longer have any economic incentive to support Linux anymore).

But hey, there is always CDE.

Re: Too late

[Anonymous Coward]

Good thing I run windows 10 which doesn't have problems. My upgrade worked right away and my laptop runs better now then on Win7. Switch to Microsoft because it's superior to Linux based OSs or run a Mac.

Re:Too late

[Anonymous Coward]

fucKed up, broKen, half-baKed, gsucKs like gnome.

Re:Too late

[armanox]

Somehow I don't think that 4K and 8K counts yet as mainstream resolutions, though I might just be behind the times.

Re:Too late

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe because it is not a window manager, but a desktop environment?

Re:Too late

[techno-vampire]

...all the major DE versions starts with feature regression, rough edges and lots of bugs...

Maybe the problem is that they need to spend more time on beta testing, or go the Release Candidate route. It's not unreasonable for users, especially users who don't understand how programming and program development work to be upset when the newest release isn't as complete as they expect. Telling them it's still in beta, or only an RC release might help them have more reasonable expectations.

Re:Too late

[Anonymous Coward]

The fact that Windows has poor support for run-of-the-mill high-dpi even without the 2K and 4K monikers means this will not be a solved problem for another half decade. Part of the problem with new tech is
- developers with little-to-no reference hardware (a little like DD-WRT needing to be re-built for each major chip maker and users relying on the official hardware list before risking non-support)
- developers in a vacuum if they do have the hardware, while their users do not.

If anyone needs more convincing that support lags even outside of corner case environments, re-call back in 2005 how hit or miss your distro was in terms of out-of-the-box Wifi support... or even writable NTFS from Linux. Heck, you can have implementations all you want, and sometimes the CONTENT doesn't come. I'm looking at you, Verizon and other ISPs who set IPv6 delivery date to forever+1day despite all OS's supporting it for around a decade. Worse yet, you lose support sometimes... FAT32 on Android or MIDI on iPhones.

Re:Too late

[Anonymous Coward]

KDE is awesome right now. I updated PC-BSD a couple days ago and got the latest 4.x. Best desktop I've ever used going all the way back to 8 bit. It's frigging awesome. It totally blows Windows and Mac OS X away. I use them all. I've used all desktop environments for the past few decades. Gnome is weak. Even Linus Torvalds came out and said it years back. PC speeds being as fast as they are these days, KDE should run perfectly with all settings maxed in most cases. If you have some slow ass laptop or whatever... you can pick whichever lightweight desktop(s) you want like Xfce, Fluxbox, Blackbox, etc. KDE is the best on Linux and BSD.

http://news.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=7873675&cid=50351407

As that AC said (not me) .. openSUSE with KDE is cream of the crop. Keep your old Windows for games don't mess yourself up with "the Free Update". Windows 10 is just Pwned Edition. Installing Linux doesn't cost you a cent and it'll be a lesson that sometimes For Free is better than For Sale.

Cyberspace is already Linux along with supercomputers, your routers, Smart TV's, Android phones/tablets, all big retailers and websites, fortune 500's, governments, the space station, etc. Windows is death knell.

distrowatch.com and oracle virtual box and you are good to go. There are manuals and video how-to's in the millions on the Internet for sure for how to install Linux in a virtual machine or bare metal.

Re:Too late

[Anonymous Coward]

> Ubuntu's desktop releases are hardly "bleeding edge."

Maybe not in terms of how new it is but certainly in terms of how broken it is.

Re:Too late

[msobkow]

I've been using KDE on Ubuntu for about 7 years, so I call "bullshit".

Re:Too late

[Anonymous Coward]

KDE is awesome. I installed Kubuntu 15.04 yesterday and creamed my pants.

Re:Too late

[turbidostato]

"There used to be an understanding that FOSS software projects needs to release early and often, and that this sometimes meant releases with missing features and bugs."

There used to be the understanding that releasing soon made for pending features. Bugs, on the other hand, have always been a matter of the quality and seriousness of the developers involved.

Re:Too late

[Anonymous Coward]

> It was shiny I can fix everything by rewriting it and ignoring 30 years of existing experience fanboys, not KDE,

Fixed That For You.

Re:Too late

[Peter H.S.]

There used to be the understanding that releasing soon made for pending features. Bugs, on the other hand, have always been a matter of the quality and seriousness of the developers involved.

New features=new bugs.
The quality of FOSS software like KDE have really improved over the decade. I used to expect application crashes and even DE crashes as a matter of fact, these days such crashes are much rarer. Gone are the usual huge memory leaks too. Everything from documentation to stability have improved much over the decades.

What people are complaining about these days are mostly subtle bugs or missing features like "widget X" no longer work like it used to do.

I find it sadly typical of the times that each and every Linux DE discussion on Slashdot quickly are degenerating into rants on how bad the DE is because {insert trivial thing} isn't working like expected. Usually the rants are from ex-users too. Why they feel a pressing need to discuss and rant about a DE they don't even use is something of a puzzle to me.

Something in peoples attitude have changed in the Linux "community"; these days it is all about negative rants, bug-whining and trash-talking of FOSS projects and its developers.

Re:Too late

[Anonymous Coward]

That is still something that should be handled at a lower level than a desktop environment. Mounting filesystems is kernel level.

Re:Too late

[JoeMerchant]

Unless you count Ubuntu and Unity - it works better on my 4K displays than any other Linux DE, which is to say, it works as well as Unity works on any resolution.

Re:Too late

[JoeMerchant]

It became "mainstream" for me when my new job supplied me with a laptop with a 4K display. Not long after, I bought a $600 25" 4K desktop monitor - that's pretty mainstream if you ask me. Looking around, these displays have been available since ~early 2014, and anybody who didn't know they were coming would have had to be in deep ostrich denial mode.

Re:Too late

[paulatz]

USB sticks mount fine for me.

Therefore the problem is you.

Re:Too late

[JoeMerchant]

I'd say Unity and Windows are neck-and-neck with respect to 4K resolution usability - with maybe a slight edge to Unity for ease of use and completeness of scaling. I find both to be usable without magnifying glasses, unlike KDE4.

Re:Too late

[Peter H.S.]

Sure, they work better now than they did 6 month ago, but HiDPI is still a work of progress on Gnome and Unity (and KDE too).

As I said, every iteration of those Gnome/KDE brings better HiDPI support. But the devil is in the details and certain apps have hardcoded assumptions on font sizes and DPI that doesn't work in HiDPI. It will take quite some time to shake out all the visual bugs.

Things move somewhat slowly simply because there are so few developers working on it and even fewer of these DE developers own 4K displays.

Re:Too late

[armanox]

I hardly consider a $600 display to be mainstream. It's availible, and it's way more then the average person is going to spend. 1080 displays are the mainstream displays.

Looking around, these displays have been available since ~early 2014, and anybody who didn't know they were coming would have had to be in deep ostrich denial mode.

Being around and being in the right hands are two different stories. Last time I checked OS X was the only operating system that properly handled very high resolution displays (I know that Windows 7 and 8.1 did not), and I don't expect Linux developers to be super far ahead of the Windows curve either.

Re: Too late

[buchanmilne]

It's impossible that Kubuntu has some bug that doesn't exist upstream?

Some KDE-centric distros are still providing KDE4 by default with KDE5 as a non-default option. Maybe Kubuntu was a bit trigger-happy?

Re: Too late

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe Kubuntu was a bit trigger-happy?

If you want a very stable version Kubuntu, there is the LTS version which is 14.04, which is KDE4 / QT4.

15.04 was the first version of Kubuntu to target KDE5 / QT5. Alot of functionality has been moved out of KDE5 into the upstream QT5 libraries. It is certain that there will be bugs and teething problems with the migration to KDE5/QT5, but will also be big step change for developers and making it easier, and faster to produce better code.

If you are using the non-LTS variety of Ubuntu, you should know this, and be able to put up with it, or revert to the LTS version. In other words, no pain, no gain, and if something is really bothering you, roll up your sleeves and help fix what ever problem you are having. Is /apt-get source / really that hard?

In the main, Kubuntu wanted KDE5 to be solid for the next LTS version of Ubuntu, which is 16.04, and wanted to have enough time to sort out the problems.

Re: Too late

[Anonymous Coward]

Spelling and grammar Nazis need to calm down in the age of smartphones and autocorrect.

Re:Too late

[JoeMerchant]

I hardly consider a $600 display to be mainstream. It's availible, and it's way more then the average person is going to spend. 1080 displays are the mainstream displays.

Define average? When I graduated college, my (small) company put a computer on my desk that cost 2 months of my salary to purchase (1991, 16MHz 386 with 15" VGA color monitor, $5K computer cost vs $30K starting salary). Kids these days can (commonly) start out anywhere from working for free up to $60K/year fresh out of school, and most of them start with a PC on their desk (not running Linux, but....) I doubt many people spend $10K on a college fresh-out's computer these days, but $2K wouldn't seem out of line, and that's plenty of room to afford a 4K monitor.

Re:Too late

[JoeMerchant]

The thing is, you don't need a 4K display to work on variable DPI support, you just need to make sure that the apps you have responsibility for DO IT!

I mention Unity as "working" because I've tried it and had virtually no problems at 4K, it seems that more stuff in Gnome is hardcoded, and KDE4 is hopeless. Too bad that you need to "make the leap" to KDE5 to get HiDPI, I'm guessing it will be 2-3 years before KDE5 is "ready" the way that KDE4 is "ready" on a 1080p screen today. I enjoyed using KDE4 on 1080p screens in 2013, but when the 4K hit my life, it really killed KDE4.

Re:Too late

[Peter H.S.]

The thing is, you don't need a 4K display to work on variable DPI support, you just need to make sure that the apps you have responsibility for DO IT!

Sure, you don't need a 4K display to work on HiDPI support, but it would probably help with the motivation though. Remember, KDE is mainly coded by volunteers that have full time jobs doing other things, and mostly their work queue is extremely long.

Personally I am quite pleased with KDE 5/Plasma 5. As usual the KDE developers delivers a lot of new stuff between each point release. KDE 5 (Apps, Plasma 5) is already in much better shape than KDE 4 was at a similar point back in 2008/2009.

Re: Too late

[armanox]

All the places I've been since joining the professional workforce don't spend anywhere near that. The place I interned in college at (2007) gave the interns the oldest crap that still functioned - Pentium 3s and CRTs were common with much of the staff there. My previous job (2013-2015, a Network Security company in between Baltimore and DC) issued me a Precision M4700 with a 1366x768 display resolution and two 1080p monitors for when I was at my desk. The company I am with now is a similar setup - I have two 24" 1080 monitors, and in both places my setup has been on the upper end of what people have (some people at my current place have triple monitors). Outside of graphics design I don't see companies spend money on displays - they keep them far longer then the desktops (we have some Sony monitors that date back to 2006 running at 1280x1024 that for a chunk of the company is their secondary display.).

Re: Too late

[JoeMerchant]

Today, you can get a 28" 4K monitor for ~$450, and I think that's been true for over a year.

The common setup at my company is a pair of 24" 1080p on a dual stand - the stand itself costs $100, so if the monitors are $175 each, you are at the same cost for the same number of pixels... I prefer the single 16:9 monitor to work on instead of a 32:9 aspect ratio.

Re:Too late

[Anonymous Coward]

If it compiles, it ships. This is way too common pattern on open source world, as developers who do the work at their own time are quite used to have unstable environment and can circumvent/fix the problems they get.

Re:Too late

[allo]

> Therefore the problem is you.
you're so very helpful.

What about trying to solve the problem in HIS COMPUTER?
No, let's get personal. HE is the problem.

m(

Re:Really? No compability?

[Anonymous Coward]

KDE applications now require porting? How utterly inept.
Even Win-Doze does better than this.

Porting?? Yeah "Win-Doze" is just great for cross-platform compatibility! Do it the Microsoft way, or not at all. Absolutely the most open standard there is! Who could possibly question THAT?! Those total FOOLS, writing *nix software and releasing the source so it can be built on multiple different POSIX-compatible systems, when will they ever learn?!

Fonts?

[garphik]

KDE needs better fonts to effectively utilise space...

Re:GAY-DE - GNAA - GAY NIGGERS OF AMERICA APPROVE

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh hell yes! I cant wait to take gay commands from you!

GNAA 4 life!

KDE5 works, especially just using KWIN with XFCE

[Sadsfae]

KDE5/Plasma5 has been very solid for me, but I use KWIN with XFCE only as the compositor/window manager.

A lot of the instability people discuss around KDE5 is actually an Intel bug which features in Plasma 5 seem to trigger on Intel chipsets.
If you're using an Intel chipset and have weird issues, artifacts or instability you might want to try switching to the older UXA driver instead of SNA that's shipped with more recent distributions.

/etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/20-intel.conf

Section "Device"
        Identifier "Intel Graphics"
        Driver "intel"
        Option "AccelMethod" "uxa"
EndSection

Is there any point to reporting bugs with it ?

[Anonymous Coward]

Bet you still can't create IMAP folders in the mail client. Two years later.
https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=292418

Okular

[serviscope_minor]

I'm not a KDE desktop user, but I use some of the applications. Okular is excellent and has been improving rapidly. The lack of a good tool for annotating PDFs was a problem on Linux and that's solved now.

Also, Okular is actually almost nicer to use than xpdf, finally. Evince (the Gnome version) is predictably awful. Sure it has pretty features, but they decided to omit a feature that xpdf has had since forever: a back button.

Okular has one of those, although bizarrely it's buried in a menu not there on the toolbar.

I mean I like and use Okular, but what's the trend with making new Linux programs that are demonstrably worse than the ancient ones written in M*tif or lesstif or whatever over silly, trivial, obvious features?

Back button! It's not hard!

Every browser has one! xpdf has one! File browser dialogs have them! Okular only sort of has one. WTF!

Re:Okular

[yokljo]

Settings -> Configure Toolbars...

Most KDE software is very, very flexible.

Re:Okular

[serviscope_minor]

Woo hoo!!

Forget that criticism then. Okylar is best PDF viewer.

Re:Really? No compability?

[armanox]

Actually you would be wrong. Windows APIs change too, and applications get ported (not just Win16 -> Win32, but optimized and rebuilt on newer versions). Porting a KDE application from QT4 to QT5 is no different then moving from .NET 3 to .NET 4.

Quanta +

[zeugma-amp]

So, does this mean we'll finally see an update to Quanta+?

Re:KDE5 works, especially just using KWIN with XFC

[maestroX]

But why haven't tests revealed this issue? I'd think Intel is about the most common graphics chipset around nowadays.

I'm happy with

[mundlapati]

https://wiki.archlinux.org/ind...