KDE 4.0 Is Out

Many users wrote to alert us that KDE 4.0 has been released. Here's Computerworld Australia's take on the release KDE 4.0 is based on the Qt4 toolkit, which brings significant enhancements in the way memory is used. "So it ends up making KDE less resource intensive than KDE 3, which is quite an improvement," according to Australian KDE developer Hamish Rodda, who calls the new architecture "future-proof." Computerworld notes that developers are already at work porting the new environment to Windows and the Mac.

Configurable?

[debilo]

Not having tested any of the betas or release candidates, but having seen countless stunning screenshots, I was anxious to try it out. Just installed it on Kubuntu, and to my dismay I found it to be a bit of a letdown. There's hardly any options to customise the desktop/menu/taskbar or general behavior, it seems to lack most widgets found in KDE3, and I have seen no option to add your own non-officially packaged apps as an icon to the desktop/taskbar.

The menu is a bit awkward to navigate, and again there are hardly any options to change the default behavior or look. I know they promised more features for 4.1 or 4.2/3, but I was still a little shocked as to how completely barebone it felt compared to KDE3, which I will continue to use for the time being.

Anyways, I'd still like to thank the KDE team for their effort, and I'm looking forward to using KDE4 once it has been optimised.

Re:Why only 4 words on the main page?

[debilo]

Yeah, I think so too, but at the moment KDE4 is nothing to show off, really. Most changes seem to have happened under the hood, and from a user perspective there is not much else to mention. It feels like KDE4 = KDE3 + new theme - functionality. I don't want to sound too negative, though, we were told to expect maturity with later point releases.

I hope then it'll be worth a full summary on the front page.

More than Memory

[Assembler]

The KDE4.0 release is about so much more than memory usage!

o. Complete library overhaul
o. Complete graphical overhaul
o. Simplification (see Dolphin)
o. New desktop, taskbar, dashboard

The changes to a desktop environment don't get any bigger than that. I'm very surprised that the article summary only seems to mention memory usage.

To avoid Slashmeat accusation

[tepples]

I think the 4.0 release of KDE deserves an un-abbreviated summary on the front page.

Since Andover.net brought Slashdot and Freshmeat under one corporate umbrella in about 1999, a lot of Slashdot users suggested that too-frequent reports of software releases made Slashdot look like "Slashmeat". Now, release stories often get posted to section and, once they have enough comments, automatically promoted to front page.

Distribution support

[tonan]

Looks like Kubuntu already released a CD [kubuntu.org] to install KDE 4.0 alongside your KDE 3.0. There are releases for openSUSE [opensuse.org] and Debian [debian.org] also, but it looks like other distributions are still working on it (including Fedora/Red Hat and Madriva).

Re:woo-hoo

[CastrTroy]

I hope that they get Amarok working on Windows. That's one app that I think it miles ahead of the windows counter-part (iTunes or WMP). It has all the things that the other ones are afraid to offer. Like Automatic lyric downloads, and links to the band's Wikipedia page, that are viewable right in Amarok. Those two features make Amarok a lot better. I also like how they manage the playlists, and how they make it easier to have a temporary playlist of the current music you are listening to.

Re:Configurable?

[Bralkein]

Yeah, KDE4 is definitely being developed according to the "release early, release often" philosophy here. For months now the word has been that KDE 4.0 will not completely realise all of the hopes for KDE4 as a long-term project, rather it is targeted towards enthusiasts and developers. I think it's a fairly good idea, because the ball needs to get rolling in order to build activity and interest around the new platform. Aaron Seigo, a high-profile KDE developer made this blog post [blogspot.com] which clears up a lot of the confusion around this 4.0 release.

As I've mentioned elsewhere, KDE4 is still making rapid progress, and in the mean time KDE3 is still a great desktop. When KDE4 is ready for mass consumption (hopefully 4.1 will be better in this regard, scheduled for 6 months or so), the Linux distributors will pick it up and start delivering it as a supported option. Until then, this first release still shows a great deal of progress, and I think the developers can definitely justify a bit of self-satisfaction!

Re:Configurable?

[teslar]

Well, I've been running KDE4 for about 10 Minutes now (writing this in it, in fact) and things I am missing so far (note that I may simply not have found yet) - and yes, I need them to work efficiently:

• The ability to bind keyboard shortcuts to 'Desktop to the left/right/up/down' as well as 'move windows to the desktop to the left/right7up/down as I could under KDE3
• The ability to get a list of all windows on all Desktops
• The ability to resize the bottom panel to something smaller
• The abillty to reorder the widgets in the bottom panel in a way other than removing them and then readding them where I want

Other things that I found insta-annoying:

• My Desktop icons have become a jumbled mess on the left side of the screen
• Moving them around somehow also MOVES the entire background (albeit in the opposite direction and to a lesser degree) - and I mean everything, icons, wallpaper and that plama thingy in the top right corner. WTF?
• Font size for non-QT apps has somehow reduced to barely-readable

Things I insta-like:

• Well... I do like the black taskbar, but I'd still rather set it to translucent.

Bottom line... yeah, nice work but it's simply not ready for proper usage. It feels and handles like a beta. I can't configure it so I can work efficiently in it and it's broken in places (I don't think I'm supposed to be able to shift my entire background out of the screen). Right, back to KDE3 for me now.

Re:Why only 4 words on the main page?

[xtracto]

I think the summary at OSNews [osnews.com] had it right. KDE 4.0 is not KDE 4 per-se, this release represents the technology backend release (the middleware) to developers all over the world. It is from now on that developers should get attention to KDE 4.0 and start porting or writing applications for it.