KDE 4.0 Beta 1 Released 249
dbhost writes "Along with this morning's cup of coffee and log reviews, I discovered that the KDE team is moving forward with a long awaited beta release of KDE 4.0 beta release of KDE 4.0. The most interesting item I found in the notes is that the file manager in KDE is being separated from Konqueror into a component called Dolphin. Also, according to the announcement, konsole has been treated to a number of improvements such as split view, and history highlighting."
KDE4 != KDE 4.0 (Score:5, Informative)
KDE Four Live CD (Score:5, Informative)
Dolphin (Score:3, Informative)
Minor clarification (Score:5, Informative)
Re:KDE Four Live CD (Score:3, Informative)
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Re:Already I'm conused. (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Dolphin (Score:4, Informative)
You misunderstand. The file manager capabilities in Konqueror aren't going away: it would be vandalism to do that!
I personally hate Dolphin: it's too GNOME-ey and dumbed down. I like the fact that I use Konqueror for everything from ripping CDs (audiocd:/) through managing my files and browsing the internet to reading documentation (man:/ and info:/).
Re:Question from huge fan (Score:2, Informative)
Some graphical things are very difficult to implement and get broken too easily imo between even minor releases of QT.
But again, I'm a huge fan, and I'm not going to stop programming in QT ;) There are just a lot of challenges that I can understand from the development standpoint the difficulties KDE developers are facing and believe that the ongoing QT4 development is the biggest factor that keeps pushing KDE4 deadlines back.
Re:Already I'm conused. (Score:5, Informative)
Re:KDE Four Live CD (Score:5, Informative)
Re:What are they for? (Score:2, Informative)
So there
Re:Plasma? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:ambitious (Score:1, Informative)
I like it. Didn't read the rest of your post as the writing style and lack of formatting really grates.
Re:KDE4 != KDE 4.0 (Score:3, Informative)
- Visual Guide to 4.0 alpha-1 [kde.org]
- KDE 4.0 alpha-2 announcement [kde.org]
- KDE 4.0 beta-1 announcement [kde.org]
Many of us in the open source community have expected that beta releases are damn-near finished. The KDE developers are using the terms alpha and beta much more conservatively.Re:I'll switch... (Score:3, Informative)
I'm using openSUSE 10.2, and I had to recompile Kaffeine and install DeCSS to watch encrypted DVDs. Unfortunately, Novell compiles Kaffeine and libxine with encrypted DVD support disabled by default, but it's straightforward to recompile it using rpmbuild to include DVD support. 3rd party repositories out there, such as PackMan, also have precompiled Kaffeine packages available if you don't want to recompile Kaffeine and libxine.
Cool Stuff Planned (Score:5, Informative)
Right now Konqueror still exists as the super-app for those who love it, but there is a better dedicated file viewer called Okular that renders all kinds of documents including PDFs, and does so amazingly fast. There is a dedicated new file manager that I believe both KDE and Gnome fanatics will love. Now if only they have a KHTML/QT fork of Firefox, I'd be happy as pie, but that isn't happening anytime soon.
You get a new series of icons, which some I really love, and others I don't care for. Honestly, I'm just going to replace them with another icon set anyway, but the default icons on the whole are much nicer. There was a new default widget/theme set called Oxygen as well that I thought looked incredible, but the code was poor and so was performance so it went out the window. The new Oxygen widget/theme looks a little to plain for my taste. And it doesn't look like an OS X clone, but it certainly seems to follow the same design philosophy. Given that many worship at the altar of OS X, I'm sure it will be popular, but right now I'm particular to the Domino widgets and a nice dark theme.
The new kwin today has composite technology, which is good and bad. It is good in that we get 3D eye-candy in the desktop without too much fuss since it is built right into KDE. It is bad in that with all the peace and love of Compiz and Beryl getting back together, we just split into two camps again, and the truly brilliant compiz-fusion project is no basically delegated to Gnome users for the most part. I was very disappointed that the KDE team decided to invent the wheel from scratch (and as far as I know they don't really have many effects or plugins right now, where as Compiz-Fusion has tons) rather than just extend support for what already exists.
KDE 4 already has some other great technologies like the semantic desktop project, and Sonnet is very promising, though unfinished. Solid, Phonon and Decibel might not be obvious to the end-user, but apparently are very important back-end technologies. I'm also a fan of Strigi, which is very much a reality today, but I'm not sure if it is being included by default in KDE 4 or not.
There are tons, and I mean tons of little new things, like "Get New Hot Stuff" which is a terrible name, but a neat concept. It is a simple seamless way to download new content into applications. It can already been seen in Amarok if you want to download plug-ins and such.
Plasma does exist, but it is just basically a new (easier) way to make widgets largely. The API and libraries are supposed to very useful, but the revolution in how we use our desktops doesn't exist, and I'm not sure anyone is working on it.
So on one hand, we do have plenty of new toys and great technology that is part of KDE 4. And at the same time it is fair to say that with the most visible project (Plasma) there were huge promises and little delivered. Take that as you will.
It should also be noted that Amarok and KOffice aren't tired directly into the KDE release schedule, but Amarok 2 and KOffice 2 are planned to be major versions and coincide with KDE 4, though they will likely release slightly later than KDE 4.
Re:Plasma? (Score:3, Informative)
App icons in KDE4 (Score:5, Informative)
Aside from the fact that I've never been "daunted" by a KDE app even when I was a newbie, you may like the way KDE4 is actually dealing with the issue. If you look for example at this screeshot of Okular [kde.org], you will notice that now icons will be presented by default with text. This means a much bigger overall icon area, which makes the icon much easier to hit and forces the developer to separate wheat from chaff when creating toolbars.
Re:Cool Stuff Planned (Score:1, Informative)
Re:ambitious (Score:1, Informative)
And then you go on a rant about changing font size. Gee, you mean just like KDE has been able to do for the past half a decade or so, in KControl -> Appearance & Themes -> Fonts? Sorry, that entire paragraph of yours is a baseless accusation.
As for KDE's preferences system, it works just fine. I personally prefer to see my preferences in a well-organised dialog, than having to hunt around in GConf for basic settings (such as, say, changing the 'battery low' warning to come up based on battery charge rather than the 'time left' estimation. Or setting Nautilus to not use the horrible 'spatial' mode which is now the default) because, goodness forbid, they'd 'confuse' the user. There are unfortunately some dialogs which are a horrible mess (KDE3's Konsole, for example), but they are being fixed (KDE4's Konsole).
Re:ambitious (Score:4, Informative)
Anyway, to what I wanted to say. Gnome between 1 and 2 took a steep dive to the worse.
The main problem I have with gnome is simply twofold.
The project started as a Win32 wannabe (typical Icszaza Project) and you still can see that left and right. The apis are 10 times harder to utilize and feel more like hodge podge as Windows does.
The concepts in 1.0 were windows alike, in 2.0 they started to move towards MacOS8 usabilitywise, but didnt make it, it actually felt way worse.
The approach the gnome project follows, if a user cannot understand something, then lets remove it without any possibility to get it back is simply wrong. Torvalds called this approach User Interface nazis.
Ok the mileage may vary, but I personally feel locked in if I use gnome, and many people, whom I know do the same, solution kick gnome switch to kde. While KDE is not perfect, they are in a way better direction from a long term usability standpoint. They are somewhat hodge podge in the user interface, but, they are in the long term process of cleaning everything up without reducing the functionalities loved by so many users.
Here is an example:
The old configuration view was a mess, they moved to a layered system which gave sane macro settings and then once you klicked onto the macro settings you got into the micro areas (which also were cleaned up) web like. Everthing was cleaned up but yet no functionality was cut down, they even left the option to switch to the old system.
The same happens now with Dolphin and konqueror, Konqueror still is there, but it is not the sane default anymore. I personally would miss konqueror to a huge degree, no other file manager on any system has its flexibility, its own fault simply was you had to learn to use it, because its user interface was not slick. But on the other hand, compared to Finder or Nautilus, Explorer or whatever you name it, the thing really deserved the title file manager.
On the other hand Nautilus while becoming faster took a huge nosedive in its usefulness when being moved from the old 1.0 naultilus (which was not more usable than the windows explorer and dreadfully slow) to the spatial 2.0, without any possibility to fall back at least on the 1.0 user interface!
Btw. besides konqueror I only know one filemanager which comes close to its usefulness, Total Commander on windows, all others fall flat on their faces. But both have the problem, you really have to learn to use them
The same goes down on the API level, the KDE api is one of the cleanest I have ever seen, second to none, everything purely oo, everything purely component oriented highly flexible. Gnome on the other hand started as an approach to build a system on a win32 lookalike which is broken in itself, then they started to clone ole with bonobo, while ole never really was working bonobo also wasnt and it inherited the problems of ole, being way too complicated being not adopted out of exactly those reasons, trying to push corba down as a transport layer. 2-3 years before KDE kicked corba out of usability and performance reasons, well gnome repeated history, they than finally took the concepts kde implemented pushed it down on freedesktop and let kde reimplement them again so that both communication object layers become somewhat compatible, see the entire problem.
Anyway kudos to the KDE people for their hard work, they really push technology forward!
Re:Dolphin (Score:3, Informative)
There's a KIO-FUSE [ground.cz] module that does exactly that. It allows you to mount the KDE ioslave hierarchy on a local directory, where it becomes accessible to non-KDE applications.