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KDE 4.0 RC 1 Released
Posted by
CmdrTaco
on Wed Nov 21, 2007 12:09 PM
from the who-wants-to-restart-x11 dept.
from the who-wants-to-restart-x11 dept.
angryfirelord writes "The KDE Community is happy to announce the immediate availability of the first release candidate for KDE 4.0. This release candidate marks that the majority of the components of KDE 4.0 are now approaching release quality.
While the final bits of Plasma, the brand new desktop shell and panel in KDE 4, are falling into place, the KDE community decided to publish a first release candidate for the KDE 4.0 Desktop. Release Candidate 1 is the first preview of KDE 4.0 which is suitable for general use and discovering the improvements that have taken place all over the KDE codebase."
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Yes but... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Yes but... (Score:5, Informative)
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kde 4 apps will run on Windows (Score:5, Interesting)
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Re: (Score:3, Informative)
I miss KMail, like the desert misses the rain.
Slashdotted. (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Slashdotted. (Score:5, Funny)
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Slashdotted (Score:5, Informative)
Screenshots (Score:5, Informative)
I like the widget and window theme, but the kicker replacement at the bottom looks pretty tacky. It was the same in beta, and I'd hoped they'd change it for release, but it seems like they're sticking with it.
Re:Screenshots (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Redunant (Score:4, Interesting)
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Re:Screenshots (Score:5, Informative)
No, it's gonna look like this [imageshack.us]. In fact, it already does in CVS apparently.
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Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Why did they put 3 battery applets on the desktop? Why is the clock huge and in the middle of the panel? Because it's not final. You can't honestly think that those buttons will stay that way?!
Why are the sides of the taskbar chopped off? What's the point in rounding off the corners?
Because it's not full size? You can have it run all the way across the bottom and it won't have the corners and sides but if you have a panel that's less then th
Screenshots and previews of slightly olderreleases (Score:4, Informative)
Graphics suck (Score:2, Interesting)
Coming together (Score:5, Informative)
So KDE 4.0 will be cool, KDE 4.0 + 6 months of people creating fun plasmoids, even cooler.
Release Candidate or Beta --what's the diff? (Score:5, Insightful)
Software or distros that are "coming together" are not Release Candidates. They have no possibility of being released. Suppose everyone who tried this KDE4 RC1 said, "Yup, everything works fine! No changes need to be made," would KDE release it? No, because they're NOT DONE YET --Plasma still has to be put together. Since they won't be releasing this version at all, it shouldn't be called a Release Candidate. It's another beta.
There's no shame in calling it beta (heck, half of Google's services are labeled beta); I don't see the need to keep advancing the terms. What's next? If "Release Candidate" comes to mean "beta", should we start using the term "Release Candidate with Potential For Use Unchanged"?
Maybe someone can correct on this if I'm wrong. What makes this a Release Candidate and not a Beta?
(Btw, diehard KDE fan here --I'm not even considering GNOME until they start having user-configurable key shortcuts. Waiting for KDE4 final release in December to be worked into Gutsy so I can put it on my Came-With-Ubuntu laptop.)
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Re:Release Candidate or Beta --what's the diff? (Score:5, Interesting)
No, you aren't alone, but according to KDE fanboys [kde.org], beta means that it compiles and release candidate means they've decided what features are going in. And if you disagree, then you're an idiot who doesn't understand open-source.
Whether 4.0 will actually be usable depends on the way in which you ask. If you read the press releases or praise the developers, then 4.0 will be the best thing since sliced bread. But if you are worried about the quality and wondering why they are dropping features that were in KDE 3, then 4.0 is merely a preview release and 4.1 is going to be the real, finished thing. That way, they can get all the praise, but write off any criticism as "it's not ready yet", regardless of how finished the final release is.
For example, the much exalted Plasma has been hyped since long before it ever existed. It had its own website when it was nothing more than mocked up screenshots and vague descriptions of how awesome it was going to be. And it was hyped right up until the alphas, when people were wondering where it was. It seems to be a last-minute job, and when people on dot.kde.org complain that "basically nothing works" in response to the third beta, one of the core developers responds with "i'm not particularly taken by the heartstrings people are plucking here. there are lots of things to test and bump around with in these betas. stop fixating on plasma for the moment; you'll get to play with more of its features as more releases come. [...] there is exactly one release that counts for plasma, and that'll be 4.0, though the rc's leading up to it will be important as well. there is also exactly one canonical place to gauge the "workingness" (hm. neat word.) of things right now and that's svn." [kde.org]. The KDE project is not interested in using the release cycle as a method of quality assurance, they release betas in order to show off how far they have gotten with features for the people who can't compile it themselves. As somebody else put it [kde.org]: " I know Plasma is barely more than a fetus at this point, and it doesn't even fully replicate all the features of the old desktop." - that's in response to the third beta, and still people tell him to wait. Shouldn't a core part of the desktop be relatively finished by the third beta?
Disclaimer: I've used KDE since the 1.0 betas. I'm no GNOME troll. I just think the attitude the project is taking towards 4.0 seems to be all about ego and has dropped the transparency or quality that I've become used to with open-source projects.
PS: I think it utterly sucks that I have to add disclaimers like that because otherwise I get called a troll (which is apparently the term for people who do something other than emit unadulterated praise for the developers on dot.kde.org). Christ, look at the fawning that is normal on the dot [kde.org]: many people says that kde3.0 was untable, full of bug and that kde will be the same, but kde4 look really stable, some parts crash, but the are apps like juk, kwin4 like composite works without problems, dolphin stable, i have hope that when kde4.0 is released can be used like kde3.5.x." That's right, it's not unstable or full of bugs if some of the apps work, and it's considered praiseworthy to hope that KDE 4 is as good as KDE 3.5. This is ridiculous.
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Re:Release Candidate or Beta --what's the diff? (Score:5, Funny)
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KDE 4 Live CD (Score:5, Informative)
http://home.kde.org/~binner/kde-four-live/ [kde.org]
Have a lot of fun!
Compiz (Score:2)
...where's the meat? (Score:5, Interesting)
Well, I can't say I object to any of these improvements, but most of them seem pretty minor and incremental. Cleaner APIs and more efficient libraries are nice. For the end user, where's the meat of this release? Okay now it supports Widgets. Well, that can be sort of useful if there is a good selection of them. I've heard claims they added support for OS X native widgets and that could help a lot to make this actually useful. Anyone actually tried using them yet?
When a new full version comes out and I find myself looking forward to the improved spellchecker, because it is still worse architecturally than on other platforms I use, but at least it is better... well I start to wonder what happened. I'm not trying to put down the developers or anything, this is obviously a lot of work, especially Dolphin, but I guess I was hoping for more. When will KParts be upgraded to work like OS X system services? Where's grammar checking? Where's anything we haven't seen on another OS/Window manager already? As a Kubuntu user, I guess I'm just not really as excited by this as I'd like to be.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Okay now it supports Widgets.
KDE has supported widgets for years, via SuperKaramba (which is bundled from 3.5 onwards). Plasma brings some innovation into the area.
I've heard claims they added support for OS X native widgets
Not in the main branch, no. A showstopper for this is that it would require using the WebKit renderer, which still doesn't come with Qt (but it will next year).
When will KParts be upgraded to work like OS X system services?
What do those have that KParts don't? Never used OS X myself...
Well, I can't say I object to any of these improvements, but most of them seem pretty minor and incremental.
Sure, the single biggest change in KDE4 vs KDE3 is the porting to Qt4.
Where's anything we haven't seen on another OS/Window manager already?
I won't compare to non-free platforms... from what I've heard, OS X's desktop e
Gnome developer's review (Score:3, Interesting)
Fat or muscle? (Score:5, Interesting)
And when is GNOME ever going to get a good burning app like K3b?
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Re:Fat or muscle? (Score:5, Insightful)
I find that the KDE apps (k3b, kate, etc.) are more full-featured, but the Gnome desktop seems much cleaner to me. So I'm just glad they can peacefully coexist.
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Re: gnome burning app (Score:3, Insightful)
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All this psycho right wing DE advocacy is nothing but a childish pissing contest, and is symptomatic of the fact that people need to feel like they belong to something special, and that everyone who disagrees with them needs to have their brains bashed out with a rock.
Sheesh, we're no better than fricking cavemen with cool gadgets and nukes...
Re:Fat or muscle? (Score:4, Funny)
where can I find these RPM's for Debian? And do I need to run them through alien first?
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Re:Fat or muscle? (Score:4, Interesting)
That may change in KDE 4, even though QT 4 is supposed to use less memory and run faster, but between the new kdelibs and Plasma, you have enough new features that is taking up more system resources than KDE 3. This is also still an early RC of the first release of the KDE 4 cycle. Given that KDE 3 got more efficient over time, I can hope KDE 4 will also get more efficient over time.
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Re: (Score:3, Funny)
And if Mustangs were really faster than Accents, you'd never see whale tails on a neonned Hyundai.
Re:Did they de-fat KDE (Score:5, Informative)
And yet, despite all the extra features and configurability, KDE still manages to use about the same resources as GNOME:
http://ktown.kde.org/~seli/memory/desktop_benchmark.html [kde.org]http://spooky-possum.org/cgi-bin/pyblosxom.cgi/kdevsgnome.html [spooky-possum.org]
KDE doesn't have much fat; it has muscle.
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Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
It seems KDE devs may have realised this since KDE 4 appears to have something more comparable to the OS X prefs (and GNOME's).
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Yes. There already is, in fact. Aaron Seigo has prepared a screencast which will be linked with this week's Commit Digest. Among other things, it shows the true transparency of Plasma applets and the panel. Also, you can check out these old (non-Plasma related) kwin_composite videos: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4WBLlc6xCQ4 [youtube.com]
Eavesdropping on IRC, I get the f
Re:do not stop progress by not wanting 'bloat'... (Score:5, Insightful)
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Xfce and others are great for older hardware, but even older computers can run KDE fairly well.
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WHAT THE HELL FOR? Thanks to vista most off the shelf computers have at least 2 GB of ram. Let the desktop rock. If I want moving background of poledancer going off behind my transparent windows, why not? I got the memory and CPU to let it run.
And there's nothing wrong with that if it's what you want, but some of us would like to use those resources on our applications instead of our window manager. It's always a good idea to be able to scale those sorts of things back so that when you really want to get some serious work done you don't have to fight with the eye candy over cpu cycles.
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I used to think this mattered, but in practice for any moderately advanced user there's very little difference between them; the desktop environment provides launch menus and virtual desktops, and that's about it, because you'll be doing most of your file management from a shell prompt or a dired buffer, and the rest is just applications.
And really, the only thing in GNOME that ever annoyed me was
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Release Candidate? (Score:5, Interesting)
This release candidate marks that the majority of the components of KDE 4.0 are now approaching release quality...
And so on. Now, unless I missed something, a release candidate is when you think your product is about ready for public release but you want to have people test its "final form" first. You think it is ready, but you want to real-world test it to iron out bugs that have escaped you. Release candidates are not packages that are known to be incomplete. Is KDE doing this just to show some progress since the year is stretching on without a release of KDE 4? Just call it another beta. Heck, it sounds like it might should be alpha still. They are not yet to the final bugging stage, it is not feature complete, they are still adding new code. I can forgive them for calling an alpha a beta, but calling an alpha a release candidate? Come on!
(P.S., I know I'm hijacking a thread to get higher position with my post. Please forgive me. This post is in release-candidate status and the final form of this post is expected to be relevant to the current discussion thread.)
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You forgot how FS release schedules work (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Why do I want a giant clock or battery widget (Score:5, Funny)
Gexactly. GGNOME Gdoesn't Ghave Gthese Gissues.
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Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
I don't know why, but if you don't like it, you can turn it off.
I didn't think KDE was into showing off as much as working right.
If you don't like it, you can change it.
While many applications to begin with a K, there are many that don't. I also don't see it bei
Re:KDE vs Gnome (Score:5, Informative)
I recently had a very busy weekend trying edubutu, ubunutu, xubuntu, and gOS on an IBM T40, with mixed results.
I did not get around to kubuntu, perhaps I should have.
Me, myself... I'm using Kubuntu. I just like KDE better and am familiar enough with it to deal with Kubuntu's occasional rough edge. You might feel inclined to test those waters once you're feeling like you've got a good footing.
It should be stressed that the issue of Gnome vs. KDE (vs. Blackbox, Enlightenment, etc., etc.) is mostly a matter of interface and taste. The applications you run aren't necessarily restricted by your desktop... even if they are often bundled with one project or another.
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Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Klearly it should have been named Kalamity.
Before we get into a GNOME vs KDE flamewar... (Score:3, Insightful)
"(x) sucks! Real people like me use (1-x) instead!"
where x = KDE or GNOME, and KDE+GNOME=1.
Anyway, let me step outside all this and say what *I* wish. I wish that KDE and GNOME apps would let the user choose what widget set to use. I think each of KDE and GNOME have applications that simply have no counterpart with the same quality. KDE has Amarok and K3b, while GNOME has Firefox and GIMP, not to mention non-KDE/non-GNOME app
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Neither Firefox or the GIMP are gnome apps. They use GTK, but the gnome libraries are entirely optional.
And things like the portland project aim to allow apps to use native file dialogs for the environment they're running in.
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KDE has dropped DCOP and uses DBus now, I suppose thats the biggest news on the fd.o front.