Slashdot Mirror
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.
I didn't like Kubuntu 15.04, so I switched to 14.04 LTS. What's wrong with KDE 4 until 5 is ready?
This space intentionally left blank
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.
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
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.
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.
...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.
Good, inexpensive web hosting
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.
Section "Device"
Identifier "Intel Graphics"
Driver "intel"
Option "AccelMethod" "uxa"
EndSection
Have a squat over at the hobo house.
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.
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!
SJW n. One who posts facts.