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KDE 1.1.2 is out
Title says all. KDE 1.1.2 is out for the masses. Press release is here. Please use the Mirrors . (note: ftp.kde.org doesn't have the files yet, but ftp.de.kde.org. have it). Go get it. Try the themes and the new (and very colourful) icons, and enjoy. Update: Currently, it's available only as a .tar.gz, and .tar.bz2, and for Debian (Sparc & Intel). No binaries for most of the distributions yet. (RedHat - please make it faster this time - hint!)
That's exactly what I was thinking. Claiming your desktop is superior because it's the de facto standard is obviously something Microsoft does quite well. At least Microsoft has something to back that up - they are the de facto standard desktop, with millions of users. KDE most likely doesn't even have a million users, so it's not a de facto standard anything.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
I hate seeing all these flame wars about which desktop environment is better. People argue that gnome is unstable, it's completely stable for me. People argue over qt's license, etc. It's just plain stupid, people will always prefer what they like best, whether it's one of these 2, or something else completely, or even a mixture of both.
I'd really like to see the gnome and kde developers get together and work on making it so that each other's apps will be able to optionally look like whichever desktop environment they are run under. ie. some kde/qt app using a gtk+ theme, or a gnome/gtk+ app using a kde/qt theme.
These are just my opinions
Mike
Tigger's like to read
The thing i like about KDE is that the rest of my family (mostly computer illiterate) can sit down at a KDE desktop and start using it directly.
Most everything is where a windows user would expect it to be, yet it's different and more powerful enough for them to start recognizing the power of linux.
KDE makes a newbie linux user feel at home, he's got nice menus for everything and a consistant look and feel among all applications - Things like a windows (or mac) user take for granted.
So now i've started walking down the long road of converting everybody in the house to be linux users, KDE sure makes it a lot easier to convince them not to press the reset button every time they see something that's not windows.
BTW, I dont think any one has the right to whine at other people's code. If you think KDE sucks, don't use it. But don't come insulting the developers, for releasing thousands of hours of hard work for free.
ah, wishful thinking... alas...
--
with GNOME or KDE you might think about doing nondestructive installs to test its integrity first. I tended to install the pre 1.0 KDE's right off, and suffered library conflict errors which made previously compiled KDE related apps not work with the new version of KDE. But ever since I put the old KDE in /opt/KDE/0.x and linked the new /opt/KDE/0.x.y to /opt/kde, suddenly everything worked fine. I copied the /opt/KDE/0.x/bin stuff over to /tmp/kde, copied /opt/KDE/0.x.y/bin stuff over to /tmp/kde (to ensure the latest version of preinstalled KDE apps superceded), and then copied it all into /opt/kde/bin, and you know, Murphy's Law is right...with all those precautions KDE worked perfectly from at least 2 whole versions before 1.0 and onward. I also did this with GNOME, putting everything in /opt/gnome/etc. No problems. Not even with the rpm version of GNOME/KDE. Murphy's Law, I tell ya. If ya don't do it that way you could be in for a WORLD of hurt with any major app - KDE, GNOME, X, etc...
Check some facts:
1. KDE is LGPL
2. QT is QPL
Hetz (Heunique)
For those of you using E without following the development, the next release is supposed to have support for KDE hints. It's currently in a feature-freeze so it should hopefully be out soon.
Everyone remember, if you all hit KDE's ftp servers, no one will get anything! Use the mirrors! Use the mirrors! Thank you! OK!
I think it's high time that KDE be a little more configurable. It would be nice if the KDE folks could work on the next release to integrate E - which is really the only real reason anyone runs gnome :) That and the whole silly license thing. But seriously, KDE's installation needs to ask some more questions - and so does redhat's installation of kde. Like do you want kpilot & lots of k apps that just eat memory over the defaults - like konsole/xterm?
The ability to configure is really what people want.
Joseph Elwell.
I don't know what you mean; I've got a 64MB machine here, and although I don't run Caldera (too corporate for me) I do run Linux + X + KDE. And here's the part where I set the record straight:
1) KDE is a bit large; but the installation of KDE doesn't take up THAT much space, binary-wise. I don't know the exact numbers but last time I checked it was close to 30MB; you are correct. But it's an entire user environment, with MANY utilities. We can't compare it to Windows because a) windows is at 4.1 (or so they claim) and b) KDE is already better than it, despite being at 1.1.2. When I say better, I mean that it has more apps, it's more stable, and it looks cooler. What else matters? Oh, and it's a helluva lot faster than Win98 on this machine at least (overclocked Celeron300A).
2) Linux takes up less than a meg. The kernel fits onto a friggin' floppy! It's not that large, really; the source code to it is, but on my system at least the entire kernel (once compiled and made into a binary) which is 2.2.6, is less than a meg. How large is the Win9x one? I don't know offhand; some figures would be nice though.
3) yes, X is large, but when I downloaded version 3.3.4 (yup, downloaded it over a 56K... crazy me) it was about 30M (still compressed). I don't know how large it was when uncompressed, because I didn't bother to check, but I'll bet that the source code was pretty large too. But the binaries! That's what this is really about in the case you've made. The binaries for X are not that large, really; and it doesn't take up that many resources on my machine. I can run X and three Konsoles, all compiling different software, and my machine doesn't even break a sweat. (God bless Linux.) Personally, I run Blackbox with KDE stuff (the panel and the FM) because I notice the speed! differences. BB is FAST, man. And perty, too.
Well, just more of my $0.02.
What do many of us get paid for? That's right, knowing more than the average person about computers. I don't care who wins the GUI wars as long as it's not microsoft. I get tired of telling people to "reboot and call me if it doesn't work." We get paid for tech support. Isn't the goal here to get people to eventually move away from microsoft? And what will people expect? That's right, to sit down at their already running computer, fire up their word processor and start typing. How many of them are going to compile software? None, they will call one of us and have it done, that's what we get paid for. Wouldn't it be cool to live in a world where formatting C and re-installing windows wasn't a way of life? So leave them alone. Let KDE and Gnome market to the masses... they'll still be calling us to install things, but this time we'll only have to do it once, and won't have to be checking back for months. What a wonderful world this could be.
How do FUD posts like this get moderated up?
"You always read about Miguel de Icaza going to this press conference or that GNOME presentation. But you never hear anything from the KDE guys. Maybe it's because they're too busy coding and getting things to work right."
If you would bother to check on the GNOME status reports you would have noticed that there were over 1000 CVS commits between August 30-September 7. Does that sound like the GNOME hackers are sitting on their hands?
Also, anyone else notice the lack of a GNOME2.0 pre Alpha version? I have.
1) Version numbers are arbitrary and almost meaningless. 2) GNOME had a much later start than KDE 3) 1.0.50 (roughly equivelant to KDE 1.1.2 in amount of changes) is well on its way towards release. Bugs are being rapidly slayed as we speak. 4) GNOME 2.0 is already on the discussion table
Why people want to spread missinformed FUD about free software projects is beyond me. GNOME and KDE are both thriving and competing and will be for a long time to come, deal with it.
But when it comes to computers people a lot of people are proud about knowing nothing and the refuses to learn even the most basic things.
They read an error message that says something obvious, the call tech support and asks what it means, the tech support answers by repeating the error message word by word and now they understand!
People bother to learn all other tools before they perform any serious work with them, but when it comes to computers they do the opposit. 10 year old kids know a whole lot more than people that are payed to use a computer!
Are you even talking about the same desktop as the rest of us?
a) Interoperability with Gnome is in the works as we speak. Remember that it wasn't until RMS gave his official pronouncement of "free" that the Gnome guys would even speak to the kde guys. Some still won't.
b) I haven't looked yet because I'm at work, but are you sure that it's not already there? Most kde apps I install with rpm add a menu item automatically.
c) There is a way, switchdesk, and it's used by Redhat and Mandrake. It's GPL so feel free to rip it off for your own use. Or use kdm/gdm and choose the desktop at login. Or use any of a half-dozen other wm choosers out there.
d) Ummm, the help is standardized. Everything's in html under $KDEDIR/share/doc/appname. Since kdehelp is a html browser, it makes sense that the kde help files be html. However, most sources include the sgml version as well, and use the ksgml2html tool to generate consistant help manuals.
A Government Is a Body of People, Usually Notably Ungoverned
Mind you, that 20 million figure is estimated Linux boxes, not Linux users. This includes people with 8 Linux boxes, as well as corporations with 500-box clusters. As the previous poster mentioned, it's highly unlikely that 7% of the American population uses Linux. From my experiences (which happen to be among mostly technically oriented people), the average is around 2 or 3%. Among the general American public (many of whom don't have any computer at all, much less a Linux one), I'd guess it's probably less than 1%.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
"I want A STANDARD WAY FOR THE **APP** TO DO IT AT INSTALL TIME" ... "I want A STANDARD WAY FOR AN APP TO ADD ITS HELP TO THE HELP VIEWER."
As for all the shouting, why don't you "just do it"? I do believe there's a standard, but since I work with Qt and KDE/Qt, I can't say for sure. If there isn't, WRITE ONE YOURSELF AND SUBMIT IT TO KDE AND BE THE HERO OF THE DAY! If you're a developer, and you say you are, this should be a piece of cake. Everything already goes to standard directories and everything already uses standard files and everything uses standard formats. This isn't Microsoft. It's Open Source. It's Free Software. It's a community. That means if you have an "itch" and you can code, you go code and leave the whining to AC's.
A Government Is a Body of People, Usually Notably Ungoverned
On! On! I'll be in the bar watching it on the Biz channel. First person I meet with source in either tree gets a free beer on me.
Damnit would you guys lighten the hell up . I looked though all of your posts and they mostly are a bunch of whiny snivelling crap.KDE is too big, IT runs too slow, the themes don't work like I want them to, use black box,GNOME is better,BLAH BLAH BLAH..... The KDE team is creating a very well done GUI for all Unix. KDE runs on more that Linux !!! KDE could be the thing that Unix needs,the same look and feel for all Unix systems(if that is what you want), and ease of use. They are putting tremedous work into this endeavour and should be congratulated!!! Remember KDE is being done GPL and completly for FREE. Why do you complain about the QT license? Linus has said what license people use is their own damn buisness. If you guys think you could do a better job ;well then why don't you ? Dazzel us with your code.
If it's so new that you tell us in the feature about a bunch of servers it's not even AT yet, perhaps it shouldn't be on slashdot yet. What's a few extra hours?
Vidi, Vici, Veni
Add
to yourThey had 1.1.2 days ago. There are also binary KDE 2.0 snapshots available there.
More importantly, the kde/gnome BS has created some great apps for linux. Which is better or has a better license or whatever is not the point (here), the point is that the competition is creating some really wack ass apps out there.
In a way it's like linux vs ms... the mindcraft benchmark fiasco basically made linux say 'oh, gotta get better' and we did, and everyone benifits right?
If you had read the post I was responding to, he cited 20 million as the number of U.S. Linux users. It would make very little sense to be talking about Europe, as you suggested, when discussion estimates of U.S. Linux users, now wouldn't it?
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
Even though I'm currently using the Redhat dist, I still prefer to install the majority of my software from the sources. I like the additional control I get, and to be honest, I'm not all that thrilled with Redhat's package manager (Even though the update feature usually works, I find myself uninstalling the old RPM's first anyway, or I tend to get undefined behaviour, and I don't have these problems when I compile).
Compiling lets me provide further optimization for my platform (using PGCC, for example), and with apps like KDE and Gnome, every little bit helps to keep them running as fast as possible.
On another note, Kdevelop (a quite cool IDE) isn't included in 1.1.2 (although it had been considered), since the Kdevelop folks don't think it's quite ready. While a few might be disappointed by this, it is an example of one of the core OSS philosophies, that if it isn't ready, it won't be included, and IMHO, that's a very good thing. For those who want to try it (and don't know where to find it) http://www.kdevelop.org.
I am currently using the 1.1 beta, and it is very good, only a few rough edges. It will be an outstanding addition to KDE when the developers think it's ready.
Nunc Tutus Exitus Computarus.
Mandrakes new version 6.1 (currently called cassini to be called Helios) is in beta testing and has RPM's for KDE 1.1.2 available. Just head over to http://www.linux-mandrake.com and check it out. I've been using it for about two weeks and it's a vast improvement.
I'm sorry, I'm to tired to be witty at the moment so this message will have to do.
As a developer i'd like to see the following : .kdesktop file (or in the case of gnome the .desktop file is NOT the answer DAMMIT.)...something like a shell script call from an RPM will be nice -- work with redhat. the same goes for gnome. Note that RPM is probably going to be the standard for the LSB. .xinitrc.
[a] PUH-LEASE PLAY BETTER WITH GNOME !! At least have a standard way to communicate with gnome or something. and the same goes for you gnome guys.
[b] Have a standard method we can use to add an app to kde menus (NO, the stupid
[c] Standard way of switching between desktops (gnome/kde/afterstep). usekde scripts are NOT THE ANSWER. Use the control panel thing to switch if possible...allow the user to do it without editing
[d] STANDARDISE THE HELP. Including the documentation which RPM automatically makes the devloper put in %doc in the specfile is nice. A nice text/html/sgml integrated help viewer is nice too.
I've never used KDE and I've used GNOME very litttle, but I'm interested in the subject of component models. I was an OS/2 user and the WPS had a truly object oriented backend, that worked with SOM (a CORBA ORB!). Then OpenDoc showed up as the next big promise. The feature list was impressive. It was cool, it as CORBA based, it promised todestroy the concept of "application" as we know it (everything was going to be a component).
Enough for an introduction =). What are the directions KDE and GNOME are taking about these things? Are they just targeting a pseudo document oriented desktop as the one included in that OS we all know? I remember having read that Bonobo is based on OLE 2.. is that true? is KOM/OpenParts cool? It would be very interesting to have these things replied, at least for me.... bye! =)
I'm glad to see a new version of KDE come out. I don't use it and don't like it much but there are several people I know who use it and like it.
I really am baffled by all the fuss about Gnome and KDE and their 'integrated desktop enviroment'. As far as I can see a whole lot of effort is going into providing arriving Windows wienies with a "drag and drop' desktop. Is there more to it than that?
I use a 'homemade' version of WMaker, did you know there is a configureator deal in the later WMakers, I was just told about it and yes it is there ... hmmm I don't like it, I'll stick to editing text files thanks. Anyway I hate icons too they screw up my cool desktop pictures and take up space.
The point I'm trying to make is that there is something for everyone here. I love the flame wars as much as anyone and am guilty of starting quite a few of em' .... but they got to be FUN or there is no point.
We are getting a _lot_ of newbies now and they are complaining about the dumbest things so we need a lot of patience now.
I'm not sure 'taking the desktop' is worth it to tell the truth ... how does that go now ... "To gain the world yet loose your soul" ... somthing like that ;).
CC
"Pray arm me further by your reply" Winston Churchill
That's correct, KDE 1.1.2 will *not* build with QT2. It still requires QT1.44. The QT2 based version of KDE is KDE2, which isn't out yet... but it looks like the coolest thing since sliced bread, to use a shockingly non-technical cliche.