KDE 3.3: A Milestone For Linux On The Desktop

comforteagle writes "O'Reilly's OSDir has published the first of a new bi-weekly column called "KDE: From the Source" from which KDE developer and unofficial North American spokesperson George Staikos will be regularly writing on issues and happenings from the KDE camp. Naturally, his first piece focuses on KDE 3.3 and its implications for Linux on the desktop."

Re:Fedora users?

[GreatDrok]

Have a look at ftp://apt.kde-redhat.org

It works with yum and also covers a range of redhat/fedora versions. You'll find KDE 3.3 in testing. You will also likely have to remove a number of packages to get it all working though.

Re:Not too shabby...

[koody]

Well, at least in debian sarge it's merely a matter of uncommenting some lines in /etc/kde3/kdm/Xservers

This will cause a "Start New Session" entry to appear in the "Screen Locked by user" dialog and also in the K-menu.

Re:Welcome integration of IM and Mail...

[JohnFluxx]

It does the same thing.

It works by IM programs (like kopete) implement a dcop interface (sorta like how you implement java interfaces).
This interface does stuff like emit a signal when presence status changes, lets you send a message or file to the contact, get an icon for the contact, and so on.

Then you modify the IM's .desktop file to indiciate that the program implements this interface, (called kimiface - kde IM interface).

Then kaddressbook and kmail etc just look for processes that have done this, query them for details, and hook into the changedPresence signal.

At the last moment of the kde3.3 release, supported was for applications that aren't unique-instances. Like kopete can only run once per user, but now other applications, like konversation, will be able to show presence.

Konversation support should be there in the next release, whenever that is. (it doesn't follow the kde release schedule.) It's mostly there in cvs, but I keep running into delays :)