KDE 3.0 Screenshots

Lawrence Teo writes: "The screenshots of the upcoming KDE 3.x are out! More treats for you screenshot-loving people and I-need-my-desktop-to-look-perfect types. :-)" Frankly, they look a lot like ... previous KDE desktops :) That by itself says a lot about how mature KDE has become.

Got there... Excited

[SolidCore]

KDE 3 provides a database-independent API for accessing SQL databases. It provides support for ODBC as well as direct support for Oracle, PostgreSQL and MySQL databases (custom drivers may be added as well). I am really looking forward to this feature, as I am a SQL junkie. If I could backend everything to a SQL database I would.

Not much change

[LinuxGeek8]

Well, there's not much change.
But that was said beforehand, it won't be the big change like going from kde1 to kde2.
It's more an upgrade to Qt 3, which has as result that kde2 and kde3 are binary incompatible.
Maybe they are lucky (or not) that it is in about the same timeframe as going from gcc2 to gcc3. All c++ binaries will be broken with or without qt2/qt3 in most major distro's.

On kernel-cousin I read that a beta version should become available at the end of the month. Might be interesting.

I just hope that kde 3 will be ready to ship in the new distro's for next year, like Redhat 7.3/8.0 and Mandrake 8.2.

Re:Got there... Excited

[furiousgeorge]

>>KDE 3 provides a database-independent API for
>>accessing SQL databases.

This isn't coming from the KDE gang..... it's coming from v3.0 of the Qt toolkit. The latest Qt is seriously kick ass....

Mirrored

[_xeno_]

Try here [wpi.net] (that's http://cstrike.res.wpi.net/offtopic/kde/kde3shots. html [wpi.net] for those who don't trust me).

We'll see how long this box can last...

KDE mirror

[Anonymous Coward]

http://www.uk.kde.org

Enjoy. Actually, it's not much to look at.

Mostly a switch to Qt 3

[InodoroPereyra]

Yes, it may be that it will look a bit prettier. But the major change in KDE 3.0 will be the port of all the apps to Qt 3

That seems to be the last major change in the libs for a long time. I think they will try to keep a consistent API for a couple years (after 3.0 is released) to let programmers write apps for KDE. I undertand (from previous discussions in the dot [kde.org] ) that they decided to jump to (the apparently much improved) Qt 3 now, spend a few months in the ports and then provide a mature, solid API. I guess they made the right decision.

Many thanks to the KDE folks,
-- Don Inodoro

Re:Does it run on windows yet?

[ikekrull]

There are several linux distros that will happily coexist with Windows - i.e. boot off a disk image stored on a Windows partition.

ZipSlack/BigSlack are good examples of this type of thing (http://www.slackware.org)

Just install KDE on one of those and you're good to go.

You might also look at VMWare, which will also achieve the same thing, but will let you run 'KDE-in-a-Window-on-your-Windows-Desktop'.

I think VMWare Express is about $49US.

Hope that helps

Re:Bad screenshots for showing anti-aliasing

[Spy Hunter]

What? KDE 2 had font anti-aliasing, and so does KDE 3. It isn't "better" in KDE 3 or anything (plus it didn't work in CVS for a little while).

Maybe you're thinking of alpha blending? I hear QT 3 supports alpha blending everywhere using the RENDER extension, which should lead to such eyecandy as full PNG transparency support in Konqueror, alpha-blended icons everywhere (shadows), and cooler themes, among other things. I haven't seen this applied yet, though. You wouldn't see it in any screenshots you could make at this time.

current state from a user's perspective:

[7-Vodka]

I've been using the kde development versions from cvs since before kde2 was released.

I used kde 2 for a while.

Right now I'm using last night's cvs of kde3 called kde 2.9.0.

Not much has changed as far as looks go. Here are some changes i've noticed as i have both cvs and 2.2.1 installed on the same machine:

• Konqueror : slightly different buttons, renders a lot more web pages correctly, deals with POST much better than b4, javascript much improved, slightly different menu workings. Oh, and better filebrowsing look and improved filebrowsing sidebar with more options.
• Koffice: better .doc support.
• Kmail: nifty visual improvements, better imap support, loads faster.
• kdemultimedia: noatun (kde media player) actually works as opposed to 2.2, kaboodle a new useless (for now) little embedded multimedia player mostly works
• Overall: slight performance increase, slight loading time decrease, better general feel, K menu has a win2k style bar on the left side of it, start splash screen has new spiffy graphics with dragon, pull down menus etc work a little better but look a little larger, slight improvements in konsole, taskbar is different but don't know how, kwin works a little better (not sure whats changed tho)

Not a huge change as kde1 -> kde2 but enough of one that i always choose my kde3 session instead of kde2.

Re:Mirror or mirror

[tekxtc]

i have mirrored your mirror here [dhs.org]

enjoy

Not just lucky..

[FudgePackinJesus]

Maybe they are lucky (or not) that it is in about the same timeframe as going from gcc2 to gcc3. All c++ binaries will be broken with or without qt2/qt3 in most major distro's.

No that's not luck. That was a major reason why the desicion was made to move to Qt3 so quickly. This was heavily discussed about 4 months back and finally decided to timeframe the release with g++ 3.1 (because the minor release of g++ will break BC again).

Don't put it pass the KDE team to coordinate efforts with other projects.

Re:Does it run on windows yet?

[x mani x]

I'm sure with the slightest bit of coding skill and a bunch of patience, Qt and KDE would compile under the Cygwin/XFree86 environment.

I tried the Cygwin/XFree86 thing on my girlfriend's Windows box, and was quickly up and running with a full-screen X Window session, so I could VPN to work and export my XEmacs client from my workstation to the Windows box's display.

I haven't tried compiling anything with it, but the UNIX compatibility headers are all there as well as GCC. All the X headers also seemed to come with the cygwin XFree86 distribution.

Check out this user's guide [redhat.com] for an excellent step-by-step document (with pictures!) of how to get the Cygwin/XFree86 environment running. After that just try to run configure then make in the QT source tree and see what happens :)

Good luck!

Re:SMB (Samba) kioslave in Konqueror yet?

[JimMcCusker]

smb:// is all you need.

Re:KDE3 can't beat a screenshot of any MacOsX desk

[jonathan_ingram]

The screenshots presented for KDE 3 aren't the most visually stunning in the world, I agree.

If you like OS X, you might like KDE's
Liquid widget theme
http://www.kde-look.org/content/preview.php?file =1 65-1.png
http://www.kde-look.org/content/preview.php?file =4 8-1.png

Also nice is the QNix widget style
http://www.kde-look.org/content/preview.php?file =1 41-1.png
http://www.kde-look.org/content/preview.php?file =3 24-1.jpg

... and kwin is already very themable. You can use any IceWM themes, and kbox (http://www.kde-look.org/content/show.php?content= 355) provides support for Blackbox styles.

Very few people seem to be providing themes that mimic Gnome ones: perhaps people actually prefer KDE's icons over Gnome's (I know I do). The path is open for someone to create a Gnome icon theme for KDE, if they want to. There are people working to improve KDE's icons, however, as in the iKons theme:

http://www.kde-look.org/content/preview.php?file =2 03-1.png

[pardon the spaces in the links -- ready mangled by Slashdot]

Recent KDE antialiasing looks worse than before

[Nailer]

The latest versions of Freetype remove a Apple patented method of hinting, which changes the shape of characters to better match the pixels they are displayed on (ensuring that the arms of your `m' character aren't pushed together, for example, despite that at very small resolutions they might render this way).

Most of the recent KDE2 packages are compiled against the newer freetype, whose output is of slightly inferior quality due to the removal of the code for patented hinting method.

Re:now all kde needs is a decent window manager.

[fault0]

>The /single/ thing that keeps me from running kde is that cruddy excuse for a WM they /force/ you to use.

Not true, KDE's hints support come from NETWM, which is used by KDE 2.x and GNOME 1.4. Any NETWM complient window manager works with KDE 2.x and GNOME 1.4. So far, the only NETWM compliant window managers (that I know of) are kwin, sawfish, and blackbox. WindowMaker's next release should also add support.

> They (trolltech) hired the author of
blackbox, which is a good WM, and I hoped some of his wisdom might flow down to the KDE team... but alas, no sign of that yet.

Kwin is a minimal (like Blackbox), but very extensible window manager. I wrote kbox, which lets you use blackbox styles in kwin. I can tell you that in fact, much of the vector gradient code in Blackbox actually orignated in KDE. Also, some of Brad Hughes (author of Blackbox) "wisdom" would naturally flow down to KDE because he wrote the Qt3 style engine :-).

> KDE developers, please
take note: The /only/ advantage of GNOME is the
fact that you can choose your own window manager.

Again, I say, you can use any NetWM compliant window manager with KDE 2.x. Kwin is to KDE as Sawfish is to GNOME. It's just the default.

Re:Bad screenshots for showing anti-aliasing

[fault0]

Yeah, but GIF/PNG make huge screenshots.

The majority of Net users are still on 56k or below.

Re:current state from a user's perspective:

[uchian]

Yes and yes. You can do that in KDE 2, because both are part of the printing system.

You can print to a printer, a post script file, a pdf file, send as a fax, etc. and you can configure your own custom commands as well

Print preview is basically using kghostview to show the postscript file that's going to be printed, so you can see what it looks like there.

Re:Recent KDE antialiasing looks worse than before

[Spy Hunter]

I believe that it is XFree86 that actually uses the library to display text. Anyway, it doesn't matter which version of KDE you have, the version that matters is the version of the Freetype library. You can still turn on the patented stuff when you compile the library if you want to, but you have to do it yourself, specifically before you compile. I did it and didn't notice any difference. They have some "auto-hinting" code in the new libraries that simulates the old patented code without the patents. It seems to work pretty well as I couldn't tell the difference after I installed the supposedly better patented one.

If someone has screenshots to compare the two library versions, I'd be curious.

Re:KDE XP

[Anonymous Coward]

1. cursors with shadows

if you have an nvidia card, you can use it's drivers to do it.

2). thumbnail view

has for a long time

3). transparent menus

some themes, like liquid and megagradient have this

4). cutomize your login

kcmkdm (or whatver its called).

Re:SMB (Samba) kioslave in Konqueror yet?

[HeUnique]

Totally changed in KDE 3.0 (now you can search your entire network with a "wizard" in Kcontrol in KDE 3.0)

Re:Mature?

[HeUnique]

Back at my previous job, I was hired to work at a new start-up where all the workstations are Linux and all developers are ... Windows developers..

So, I decided to make a small test case - I took 8 machines, installed on 4 of them Ximian GNOME and on the other 4 - full KDE 2.2.1 and I asked the developers to play with those machines and decide which enviroment they want to use.

2 hours later I got the results from them - all 30 developers wanted KDE, none of them wanted GNOME, and those developers never touched Linux before...

Just goes to show you that KDE is much better suited for corporate use when your users have used Windows before.

Of course - the point where there is no MS Office is a PITA, but for that I installed them VMWare and win98+office

Re:Still needs Customized GUI.

[cloudmaster]

Win'95 had (and 9x has) "region window" support. The power toys kit had a round clock included.
http://www.microsoft.com/windows95/downloads/conte nts/WUToys/W95PwrToysSet/Default.asp [microsoft.com]
says that you need OSR2, which was '95a with the plus pack and new IE. I don't have a '95a install to test with, though, so I can't be sure. Oh well.

Learn all about region windows in VB at http://www.vbcodemagician.dk/tips/forms_win32rgnwi ns.htm [vbcodemagician.dk]