Memory graphs are in the "full" app. (Run the program "ksysguard"). I'm still not sure how to show graphs in the "lite" version, UI wise.
Disk usage info is already there - right click on the column headings, and chose "Show column 'I/O'". It's a pretty new feature, so distros might not have it just yet.
1. Will do that. 2. Hmm, maybe in the bottom left hand corner I could add one of those Help drop-down buttons that has Help and About? 3. Right click on the top of the column and chose megabyte/gigabyte. I'm not sure how to make that more discoverable? 4. Thanks:)
I work on the "System Activity" thing (pops up if you press ctrl-esc. Like Task Manager). It's hard to get feedback about it.
So if you're a KDE user and use this, let me know what you think, how you find it, suggest any improvements/features etc. UI designers, code documenters etc also welcome to give feedback:-)
I often see people posting about how KDE/Gnome never listen to UI designers, Usability people, etc. But I've personally never had any feedback or bug reports about that sort of thing, ever. So do feel free to file such bugs - us developers are listening.
The final release of KDE 4.4 is due in early 2010, and not since the arrival of KDE 4.0 two years ago has an open source desktop environment been so highly anticipated by the free desktop community. Unlike the anti-climax that was the first KDE 4 release, however, KDE 4.4's developers say this new version will actually deliver on many of the original promises of this next-generation desktop environment -- and then some. If maturity is the measure of a desktop environment then KDE 4.4 will have a lot to live up to, as it represents the fourth major release of the KDE 4 series. With the feature freeze for KDE 4.4 looming in November 2009 -- after which no new features will be added and only bugs will be fixed -- we decided to take a look at what KDE has in store to lift the free desktop to a new paradigm.
Features, updates and bug fixes
Like any major version increase, KDE 4.4 will include numerous feature enhancements, updates and bug fixes.
According to KDE's developers, 4.4 will have an immediate advantage over previous versions by leveraging the latest Qt 4.6 toolkit, which brings a new layout mechanism in QGraphicsView and improved performance, among many other additions. In fact, KDE 4.4.0 was delayed by two weeks until February 2010 to make it possible to release on top of Qt 4.6.
General enhancements include improved desktop search, better privilege escalation, remote controllable Plasma widgets and more polish to the existing code base. KDE developer and spokesperson for the project, Sebastian Kugler, says it's difficult to determine exact numbers of features, but for 4.4 it would be a very high number.
"4.4 is a significant release that brings many new features. We have new applications, for example Blogilo, a local applications for writing blogs, allowing for offline editing of articles," Kugler says. "There's is a new network manager (living in the notification area right now, a plasmoid for it is planned for later). Also applications that are not directly shipped with KDE are maturing now. Amarok, Digikam, Konversation and all those applications that are well known from their KDE 3 version are now available in a KDE 4 version."
The desktop look-and-feel has also received a makeover. The new Air theme for the Plasma desktop shell is more polished and has added subtle animations to improve the user experience.
"Many small things that make the user's life easier have been done, sometimes something as small as giving feedback from the buttons in the quick launch area of the panel," Kugler says. "Those changes might not be significant on their own, but they add up to a system that feels really well rounded and well done."
A more visible development in Plasma is the new netbook interface, which will also debut as part of KDE 4.4. Plasma-Netbook will sport a mobile computer form-factor for desktop Plasma widgets.
Kugler says there are plenty of interesting changes behind the interface, too. KDE 4.4 will ship an authorization framework based on PolicyKit, so applications and the desktop can elevate privileges safely, and administrators can specify exactly what a specific user is allowed to do.
KDE's developers have also made the desktop more social and "connected". There is a Plasma applet that shows answers to questions from the KDE knowledge base, with the aim of making it easier for new users to find help.
KDE 4.4 will also make it possible to drag content from Web sites onto the desktop. For example, a picture can be dragged it from the Web browser onto the desktop and a Plasma applet showing this picture is added to the desktop where the file was dropped. The wallpaper can also be set this way or from any remote URL.
In addition to new features, Kugler says the KDE team has been busy fixing bugs and improving the overall quality of the existing code.
"We've closed about 18000 bugs over the past 6 months -- so if we match the bug fixing frenzy before 4.3 (I'm quite sure we will), we'll probably h
Hah, we're a long way from finishing code to do text boxes and buttons.
There are many improvements:
1) Write them to work with opengl 2) Write them to scale properly at any DPI 3) Have them fully themable via CSS style sheets 4) Have them stylable with SVG files 5) Adding multi-touch support
Also, the linux kernel has something like 17 seperate linked list implementations, each doing slightly different things:)
I wouldn't instantly dismiss spending $20B on studying mating habits of snails. Given that snails are very helpful to farmers, and given that farmers received 10 times that in aid ($258B) in a single year and the total market is about $1.5 trillion, spending a 10% of the given aid on studying how to produce better snails could provide significant returns in the long run. If the study resulted in just a 0.1% increase in crop production, it would pay for itself in a single year!
He might not have thought about, but there's actually a fairly simply way to measure the size of an atom.
Take an oil drop and measure its weight. Then drop it on the surface of a very still lake, and leave it to spread it out. It will spread to be about 1 atom thick. Then you can simply look to see how big it spread out, divide by the volume by the area, and the result is the size of the atom.
This gives a result to within an order, which amazing given its simplicity.
Far more likely is that companies will behave exactly like they do in Windows - not bother updating their drivers for new versions. There is a lot of old hardware that simply doesn't work in Vista etc because there's no incentive for the company to fix the drivers.
Whereas if it's in the kernel, all the drivers can be fixed at the same time.
> SATA 6.0Gb has 576Mbytes/sec of bandwidth to USB3's 410Mbytes/sec of bandwidth.
Are these numbers actually comparable, or are they just theoretical figures? It's happened before that the slightly "slower" spec actually performs faster in real life (was it some versions of fireware versus usb? I forget)
Except that they will be pretty different - for one the x++ will invoke the copy constructor. Now _if_ the copy constructor is inlined, and it doesn't have side effects, and _if_ the compiler is really good, you might get the x++ case to optmise to the ++x case, but that's some big ifs.
That's rarely true. Modifiers (shift, alt, ctrl) rarely count. Global shortcuts (Win key, print screen, etc) also don't count, and have side effects. Etc.
Slashdot Mirror
Memory graphs are in the "full" app. (Run the program "ksysguard"). I'm still not sure how to show graphs in the "lite" version, UI wise.
Disk usage info is already there - right click on the column headings, and chose "Show column 'I/O'".
It's a pretty new feature, so distros might not have it just yet.
1. Will do that. :)
2. Hmm, maybe in the bottom left hand corner I could add one of those Help drop-down buttons that has Help and About?
3. Right click on the top of the column and chose megabyte/gigabyte. I'm not sure how to make that more discoverable?
4. Thanks
I work on the "System Activity" thing (pops up if you press ctrl-esc. Like Task Manager). It's hard to get feedback about it.
So if you're a KDE user and use this, let me know what you think, how you find it, suggest any improvements/features etc. UI designers, code documenters etc also welcome to give feedback :-)
I often see people posting about how KDE/Gnome never listen to UI designers, Usability people, etc. But I've personally never had any feedback or bug reports about that sort of thing, ever. So do feel free to file such bugs - us developers are listening.
It was slashdotted, so:
The final release of KDE 4.4 is due in early 2010, and not since the arrival of KDE 4.0 two years ago has an open source desktop environment been so highly anticipated by the free desktop community. Unlike the anti-climax that was the first KDE 4 release, however, KDE 4.4's developers say this new version will actually deliver on many of the original promises of this next-generation desktop environment -- and then some.
If maturity is the measure of a desktop environment then KDE 4.4 will have a lot to live up to, as it represents the fourth major release of the KDE 4 series.
With the feature freeze for KDE 4.4 looming in November 2009 -- after which no new features will be added and only bugs will be fixed -- we decided to take a look at what KDE has in store to lift the free desktop to a new paradigm.
Features, updates and bug fixes
Like any major version increase, KDE 4.4 will include numerous feature enhancements, updates and bug fixes.
According to KDE's developers, 4.4 will have an immediate advantage over previous versions by leveraging the latest Qt 4.6 toolkit, which brings a new layout mechanism in QGraphicsView and improved performance, among many other additions. In fact, KDE 4.4.0 was delayed by two weeks until February 2010 to make it possible to release on top of Qt 4.6.
General enhancements include improved desktop search, better privilege escalation, remote controllable Plasma widgets and more polish to the existing code base.
KDE developer and spokesperson for the project, Sebastian Kugler, says it's difficult to determine exact numbers of features, but for 4.4 it would be a very high number.
"4.4 is a significant release that brings many new features. We have new applications, for example Blogilo, a local applications for writing blogs, allowing for offline editing of articles," Kugler says. "There's is a new network manager (living in the notification area right now, a plasmoid for it is planned for later). Also applications that are not directly shipped with KDE are maturing now. Amarok, Digikam, Konversation and all those applications that are well known from their KDE 3 version are now available in a KDE 4 version."
The desktop look-and-feel has also received a makeover. The new Air theme for the Plasma desktop shell is more polished and has added subtle animations to improve the user experience.
"Many small things that make the user's life easier have been done, sometimes something as small as giving feedback from the buttons in the quick launch area of the panel," Kugler says. "Those changes might not be significant on their own, but they add up to a system that feels really well rounded and well done."
A more visible development in Plasma is the new netbook interface, which will also debut as part of KDE 4.4. Plasma-Netbook will sport a mobile computer form-factor for desktop Plasma widgets.
Kugler says there are plenty of interesting changes behind the interface, too. KDE 4.4 will ship an authorization framework based on PolicyKit, so applications and the desktop can elevate privileges safely, and administrators can specify exactly what a specific user is allowed to do.
KDE's developers have also made the desktop more social and "connected". There is a Plasma applet that shows answers to questions from the KDE knowledge base, with the aim of making it easier for new users to find help.
KDE 4.4 will also make it possible to drag content from Web sites onto the desktop. For example, a picture can be dragged it from the Web browser onto the desktop and a Plasma applet showing this picture is added to the desktop where the file was dropped. The wallpaper can also be set this way or from any remote URL.
In addition to new features, Kugler says the KDE team has been busy fixing bugs and improving the overall quality of the existing code.
"We've closed about 18000 bugs over the past 6 months -- so if we match the bug fixing frenzy before 4.3 (I'm quite sure we will), we'll probably h
How did this get modded up to +5 without a single bit of support for his claim that the kernel developers were calling him stupid?
Hah, we're a long way from finishing code to do text boxes and buttons.
There are many improvements:
1) Write them to work with opengl
2) Write them to scale properly at any DPI
3) Have them fully themable via CSS style sheets
4) Have them stylable with SVG files
5) Adding multi-touch support
Also, the linux kernel has something like 17 seperate linked list implementations, each doing slightly different things :)
I would love to hear your simpler explanation. Any will do, since you have a bunch of them.
True, but doesn't change the conclusion that it would be worth investigating, and such a study shouldn't be dismissed out of hand.
I wouldn't instantly dismiss spending $20B on studying mating habits of snails. Given that snails are very helpful to farmers, and given that farmers received 10 times that in aid ($258B) in a single year and the total market is about $1.5 trillion, spending a 10% of the given aid on studying how to produce better snails could provide significant returns in the long run.
If the study resulted in just a 0.1% increase in crop production, it would pay for itself in a single year!
Even though the bacteria is dead, its still there, no?
About 1/3 of the code is in drivers/ and 1/10 of the code in arch/. And another 1/10 in things like fs (filesystems) etc.
Heh, read the stable_API_nonsense.txt file in the kernel source. Here's an html version:
http://www.kroah.com/log/linux/stable_api_nonsense.html
Why would there be a limit in the non-atom model to how thin it spreads out?
He might not have thought about, but there's actually a fairly simply way to measure the size of an atom.
Take an oil drop and measure its weight. Then drop it on the surface of a very still lake, and leave it to spread it out. It will spread to be about 1 atom thick. Then you can simply look to see how big it spread out, divide by the volume by the area, and the result is the size of the atom.
This gives a result to within an order, which amazing given its simplicity.
Yes, good thing the US don't do anything crazy either
Er, that was fixed like several days after it was discussed.
If Linux ever gets a decent market share then companies will be pretty much forced to write linux drivers, whether they like it or not.
Far more likely is that companies will behave exactly like they do in Windows - not bother updating their drivers for new versions. There is a lot of old hardware that simply doesn't work in Vista etc because there's no incentive for the company to fix the drivers.
Whereas if it's in the kernel, all the drivers can be fixed at the same time.
Ah so now you're arguing that they should freeze the interface, and prevent any more improvements.
Read http://www.mjmwired.net/kernel/Documentation/stable_api_nonsense.txt
> SATA 6.0Gb has 576Mbytes/sec of bandwidth to USB3's 410Mbytes/sec of bandwidth.
Are these numbers actually comparable, or are they just theoretical figures? It's happened before that the slightly "slower" spec actually performs faster in real life (was it some versions of fireware versus usb? I forget)
Urgh, what a crappy article. He dismisses the well-documented placebo effect - out of ignorance presumably.
Except that they will be pretty different - for one the x++ will invoke the copy constructor. Now _if_ the copy constructor is inlined, and it doesn't have side effects, and _if_ the compiler is really good, you might get the x++ case to optmise to the ++x case, but that's some big ifs.
That's rarely true. Modifiers (shift, alt, ctrl) rarely count. Global shortcuts (Win key, print screen, etc) also don't count, and have side effects. Etc.
> If you're not able to learn on your own, what's the point--to have a reason to get up in the morning?
And what's wrong with that? What's the reason any of us do anything? To find purpose in our life.
By "Admin problem" you mean hiring someone who actually followed the security policies put in place?