KDE 3.3 Officially Released

scorp1us was one of several to note that KDE 3.3 has been released. You can also read the infopage and the requirements. Commence downloading. Features a new spell checking library, a new theme manager, and much more.

Kool

[by Anonymous Coward]

Kan't wait to get my Komputer running KDE 3.3

Re:Kool

[by Anonymous Coward]

I just hope the installation doesn't Krap out on you!

Every time...

[by Anonymous Coward]

It's getting tedious now. Every time anything KDE-related comes out, you guys make the same lame-assed 'k' jokes everywhere.

Kretin.

Yaay KDE!

[kmmatthews (779425)]

From the accountment page [kde.org], KWin got a button for always on top, Juk can now burn audio CDs, and Kopete can transfer files. e.g. features that I've really been wishing for (amongst many more)...

Guess I've got some downloading to do, eh? Which comes to a gripe - it's a real pain in the arse to download all the seperate files and install them. Sure would be nice if the KDE team wrote an "update" script that would check for updates and optionally download/install them. PS. Anyone want a gmail invite? mail me [mailto].. [only one left!]

Re:Yaay KDE!

[10Ghz (453478)]

Guess I've got some downloading to do, eh? Which comes to a gripe - it's a real pain in the arse to download all the seperate files and install them. Sure would be nice if the KDE team wrote an "update" script that would check for updates and optionally download/install them.

*cough* [kde.org]

Re:Yaay KDE! Yay Debian!

[pjkundert (597719)]

apt-get update apt-get -t unstable install kdebase

Re:Yaay KDE!

[by Anonymous Coward]

there is Konstruct you know which builds KDE for you. I am building 3.3 with it right now

Re:Yaay KDE!

[Sturm (914)]

Dude, the KDE police are going to get you. It should be:

*kough*

Re:Yaay KDE!

[WindBourne (631190)]

Don't you mean the KDE kops are going to katch you?

Re:Yaay KDE!

[Otter (3800)]

This is such a cliche I'm embarassed to say it, but -- I just finished emerging KDE 3.2.3 sometime last night. At least it'll be a few days before 3.3 gets moved to stable so I can finish updating GNOME and Mozilla...

Re:Yaay KDE!

[Malc (1751)]

Why would it take days? Are you on a really slow connection? I mean last time I installed X + KDE on my Debian box it took under an hour including download.

Oh... you're not per chance one of those people who likes to waste their time compiling things unnecessarily are you?

Re:Yaay KDE!

[Enahs (1606)]

You know, I used to say the same thing. I recently moved *from* Gentoo *to* Debian, and I have a few things to say on the subject.

See, the thing is, Debian tries to be this safe-as-milk Linux distribution. Packages are compiled (in most cases) in the most generic way possible. There are exceptions, such as kernel images, but other than that, on x86, it's i386 all the way. That cuts down on performance a little.

Having said that, now that I've bothered to configure my Debian system, I don't notice much of a difference at all in performance.

What did I do? I took a bit of what I had learned in the Gentoo world and applied it to Debian. I'm not running syslog/klog anymore; instead, I'm running metalog in async mode. I have all my partitions mounted with the noatime option, and the reiserfs partitions are mounted with notail. I made the root partition ext3; I formatted the partition to have sparse superblocks and to use btree hash directory structures. I've added local changes to tweak harddrive performance. Finally, I audited what services needed to be running and got rid of anything that wasn't necessary. I'm not done yet, either. Doing things like switching to faster, lighter getty alternatives help, and there are other speed improvements that can be made.

Much is made of custom CFLAGS in the land of Gentoo, but the real power (if you start at stage1) is being able to build a smarter, lighter Linux system from the beginning.

These are all things that some Linux-on-the-desktop distribution could do automagically, naturally, if you're thinking "yeah, buddy, sounds *reeeeal* easy har har har." Well, it wasn't that bad, and I relieved myself of the headache of devoting my main box to building KDE packages. Some joker with a blazing-fast P4 and several megatons of RAM can do that for me. ;-D

Re:Yaay KDE!

[cayenne8 (626475)]

" The problem isn't KDE centric. LINUX as a whole is a nightmare to have a desktop due to updates and patches."

Been awhile since you've played with Linux in GUI-land? Just get a distro with good package management...

Gentoo: emerge kde

Debian: apt-get

I just sit back and let it go...

Re:Yaay KDE!

[10Ghz (453478)]

Kwin's always had the option to make a window always on top....

Yep. But now you can enable/disable through a button in the windowtitle (if you want to)

Re:Yaay KDE!

[Compenguin (175952)]

AS opposed to intuitve names like Access, Excel, Outlook, and PowerPoint

The spell khekers broken

[by Anonymous Coward]

It told has no C!

Re:The spell khekers broken

[MikeXpop (614167)]

You must mean it has no K

Requirements

[kmmatthews (779425)]

Wow, that's a really nice requirements chart. I wish more projects
would use that. (Of course, with apt-get and dpkg, it's not such a
concern, but.)

Maybe even nicer if they would produce an .xml of it, and we could
write a tool to test the system against it - e.g. "you meet the
requirements," or "YOU FAIL IT, you need $PKG $VER."

Screenshots

[by Anonymous Coward]

KDE 3.3 Screenshots [akcaagac.com] at the bottom of that page.

slashdot

[sewagemaster (466124)]

Features a new spell checking library, a new theme manager, and much more.

hey, everything slashdot's webpage needs ;)
ironically, this is posted by the "founder"!

This might be nice...

[Eberlin (570874)]

For the gentoo folks who emerge from source and all that fun stuff. How 'bout the not-so-cool people who use the other distros like RH or MDK? I figure they'll show up in contrib in a few days but I've been bitten before when I upgraded a RH9 to KDE 3.2 using repositories...locked up my machine badly and used that as an excuse to transition to mandrake 10CE (which had 3.2 by default). Haven't even gone to the 10 Official because I've adopted the "hey, if I don't NEED to upgrade, I won't" more religiously.

For the more cautious/paranoid folks out there, when can we expect the distros to package 3.3 officially?

As always, thanks to the KDE folks for continually updating and improving the software.

Re:This might be nice...

[Laur (673497)]

KDE 3.3 is in Debian unstable. Who says Debian's release cycle is too slow ;).

But does it have...

[Toby_Tyke (797359)]

a cute animated paperKlip?

Site slashdotted...

[BubbaThePirate (805480)]

mirror here [microsoft.com].

Re:Site slashdotted...

[by Anonymous Coward]

Fine, but where's the download link?

YES!

[by Anonymous Coward]

Two weeks without the Gentoo users! Life is great!

No such luck; I use windowmaker

[Theatetus (521747)]

you insensitive clod...

languages

[I_am_Rambi (536614)]

Qt gained increased support for Indic languages, and languages as diverse as Farsi and Frisian were added

Will Kilngon be on their next release?

Re:languages

[ElGuapoGolf (600734)]

Will Kilngon be on their next release?

Today is a good day to compile!

Longest Journey

[Etriaph (16235)]

Aside from patches to 3.3, I don't think we'll see another major KDE release until Qt4 is finalized and we see KDE 4 creep up beside it. So for all of us who are reveling in a new release of our favourite desktop environment, just remember to hold onto that feeling, it could be another year before it happens again. :)

Debian

[debian4life (701155)]

In yet another sign that the apocolypse is upon us, Debian unstable actually had KDE 3.3 last week. I am glad they are finally pushing the edge with that repository rather than having unstable mean "not as stable as stable" and of couse stable meaning "running packages from 3 years ago". Those of us who choose to run unstable know what the word means and we are willing to chance it.

And yes, I am a Debian user.

Re:Debian

[KjetilK (186133)]

I tend to agree, but you bet calc got flamed for it. He hadn't told anybody else about the upload, which is probably a bad idea, but when Sarge releases, it would be really nice if it wasn't outdated the first few months.... :-) So I hope it will release with 3.3.

Son of a bitch!

[jb.hl.com (782137)]

I just installed Gentoo, and only finished compiling KDE 3.2.3 a few days ago! GOD FECKING DAMMIT!

(note: this is not a troll, this really is happening, and I love Gentoo. I also hate my life.)

Re:Son of a bitch!

[MarcQuadra (129430)]

So what?

Set PORTAGE_NICENESS="15" in /etc/make.conf
# ACCEPT_KEYWORDS="~x86" emerge kde

go about your normal business, it takes about ten hours to compile on my 1.4GHz Athlon. You can stiill use your system while it compiles, you know.

You'll still have KDE-3.3 months before most people can get it in thoer shrinkwrapped distros.

Re:Son of a bitch!

[by Anonymous Coward]

echo kde-base/kde >> /etc/portage/package.keywords

Crap, should have used preview. Of course, I mean

echo kde-base/kde ~arch >> /etc/portage/package.keywords

Posting as anon so not to karma whore.

great...

[ryanw (131814)]

How about features like, "Increased performance by 60%, less memory leaks/bloat, and increased stability."

PyKDE and PyQt on CVS !

[InodoroPereyra (514794)]

To me, one of the most exciting developments in KDE 3.3 is the addition of both PyKDE and PyQt to CVS. Hopefully, this will boster the use of these bindings. If you haven't, give them a try.

I humbly think that KDE + KDevelop (or Qt + Designer) give a beautifull Rapid Development tool. Python fits very well with the Object Oriented KDE API. And most of the heavy work is done by Qt anyways, so I would expect that many. many usefull aplications could be written with PyKDE and PyQT, now that they are officially part of the family ;-)

Kudos and Thank You to everyone involved.

-- Don Inodoro

does it work with

[by Anonymous Coward]

windows xp sp2?

New Features (site is slashdotted)

[by Anonymous Coward]

As culled from the Announcment page:

Highlights At A Glance

Some of the highlights in KDE 3.3 are listed below.

• New applications
  • Kolourpaint, an easy-to-use replacement for KPaint
  • KWordQuiz, KLatin and KTurtle expand the list of education packages for schools and families
  • Kimagemapeditor and klinkstatus make life easier for web designers
  • KSpell2, a new spellchecking library that fixes all of KSpell's shortcomings
  • KThemeManager, a new control center module to globally handle KDE visual themes
  • The Python bindings PyQT and PyKDE are now maintained with KDE in our CVS
• Integration of desktop components
  • Kontact is now integrated with Kolab [kolab.org], KDE's groupware solution, and Kpilot
  • Konqueror features better support for Instant Messenging contacts, with the capability to send files to IM contacts, and support for IM protocols (e.g. irc://)
  • KMail can display the online presence of IM contacts
  • Kopete can display a "now listening to" message from amaroK
  • Juk has support for burning audio CDs with K3B
• Many small desktop enhancements
  • Tab improvements in Konqueror, including scrollwheel switching
  • An RSS feed viewer sidebar in Konqueror
  • A searchbar for Konqueror, compatible with all keyword: searches
  • HTML composing, anti-spam/anti-virus wizards, automatic handling of mailing lists, improved support for cryptography and a handy quick search bar all make their way into KMail
  • Kopete gains support for file transfers with Jabber
  • Quanta Plus has a VPL (Visual Page Layout) mode to make editing even easier
  • aRts gains jack support, and aKode, a new multithreaded audio decoding/encoding library to replace mpeglib
  • KWin has new buttons to support its full features, including "always on top"
  • Over 7,000 bugs have been closed, and over 2,000 wishes have been fulfilled
  • Over 60,000 lines of code, documentation and other contributions have been committed to CVS

For a more detailed list of improvements since the KDE 3.2 release, please refer to the KDE 3.3 Feature Plan [kde.org].

mirrors

[sometwo (53041)]

* http://kde.pandmservices.com/ [pandmservices.com]
Location: Hartford, Conneticut
Provided by P & M Services, LLC

* http://kde.oregonstate.edu/ [oregonstate.edu]
Location: Corvallis, Oregon
Provided by Oregon State University

* http://kde.intissite.com/ [intissite.com]
Location: New York
Provided by BITS inc

* http://kde.feratech.com/ [feratech.com]
Location: Boston
Provided by Feratech, Inc

éxpose, komposé, expocity

[sewagemaster (466124)]

it'll be interesting to see whether Komposé [kde-apps.org], aka éxpose [apple.com] clone will make it into the next version of KDE...

Is it just me

[Julian Morrison (5575)]

...or does this seem a rather small list of changes for a point release? Not that I'm complaining, improvements are always nice.

Did they fix the memory leaks too?

[by Anonymous Coward]

Try staying logged in for awhile without eventually seeing all the memory eaten up. True, one can just log out, then log back in to reclaim the memory, but this is a kludge. If one has several windows open with specific tasks (that won't come up automatically on log in) it's a pain to get resituated.

It's an annoying problem that I've seen with different hardware and different kernel versions, so I know it's KDE. Mark this as troll or flamebait, but that won't make this any less true.

Re:it happend

[discogravy (455376)]

hope your proud!

my proud what?

Re:Spell Check?

[stratjakt (596332)]

My favorite is "umount". How much productivity is gained by not having to type that pesky extra "n"?

Re:Spell Check?

[Jondor (55589)]

Not really as a lot of people who are hardly used to a commandline anymore will type:

unmount^H^H^H^H^H^Hmount

or in the best case
un^Hmount

Re:Spell Check?

[stratjakt (596332)]

No, they'd type:

#~> unmount /mnt/cdrom

unmount: command not found

#~> which unmount

which: unmount not found

#~> man unmount

man: no entry for unmount(8)

#~>find / | grep *mount /sbin/supermount /sbin/mount /sbin/umount ... etc etc

#~>umount /mnt/cdrom
umount: device busy

AND SO ON AND SO ON

Re:As I type emerge -uD kde

[aussersterne (212916)]

It's all about personal preferences. I find KDE's interface (once I've added a slave panel for a taskbar and made the main panel vertical, plus adding about ten additional menus to it) to be nice and usable, with everything in easy reach.

I find GNOME, on the other hand, to be uncomfortably light and clean, with nothing in easy reach, kind of like a one-button mouse or a one-button walkman... so simple that it's hard to get anything you want done, because the functionality's either missing, or requires extra steps to access.

I'd be interested in seeing research that compares peoples' living spaces to peoples' PC desktops. I wonder if you have a very empty, Zen-like living space. I myself have an incredibly cluttered (but orderly) living space; books, equipment, tools, etc. all tend to be within view on umpteen shelves, hooks, stacks, etc... bus and train schedules are posted on the wall... everything is easy to access, and easy to put away, requiring only one step ("reach").

Re:KDE vs. GNOME

[Anomalous Cowturd (673181)]

[KDE] is not the best for developers since they cannot create commercial application for it without paying TrollTech. I wonder how tyrannical Microsoft would be if they would ask you to pay them for using Window Forms, Win32 API, WTL, MFC, or any other API they have. Not everyone wants to create GPL applications, nor do they want to pay the TrollTech tax.


Two things:

* You don't pay to use the various Windows APIs, you pay to use Windows. That's the product they sell. The APIs are the incentive to use it. Trolltech's product is QT. That's how they actually make that pesky money that lets them have the GPL version.

* If you're doing commercial software development, you expect to pay to do it. It's just like any other business. The cost of buying computers, dev tools, office chairs, etc. are trivial in comparison to big costs like salaries, office space and bandwidth, not to mention the income you expect to make from selling the product.

Re:Is it smaller? Or faster?

[Brandybuck (704397)]

At least this way I have strictly what I need.

If all you need is a barebones window manager, then by all means stick with FluxBox. But some of us want applications to go with it...

Seriously, FluxBox is just a window manager. A window manager (KWin) is only one small part of KDE. You also have a panel which can hold a task manager, applets, systray, subpanels, etc. And a desktop (e.g., smart root window). And a file manager / webbrowser integrated into everything. Easy to edit menus with icons. Drag and drop from anywhere to anywhere. Complete network transparency and flexible IO protocols. Complete development toolkit for the hacker in you. Loads of eye candy. Etc, etc, etc.

That's without getting into the bundled applications. It may be more than you need, but you cannot claim that FluxBox fills the same ecological niche. That's like claiming Honda automobiles are too expensive and heavy so you're going to ride a Scwinn bycicle instead. There's nothing wrong with bicycles but don't pretend they serve the same purpose as cars.

BTW, you don't have to install all of KDE in order to use KDE. Just install kdelibs and kdebase and you'll still have the full desktop.