What To Expect In KDE 4.1 288
andrewmin writes "Recently, Gnome's been gaining a lot of ground on its KDE counterpart in the desktop environment wars. The KDE developers were hoping to change this with KDE 4, the new radical release of KDE, but it was not to be. KDE 4.0 was buggy and unstable, leaving everyone except the hard-core KDE lovers. Mainly, this was because it just didn't work most of the time. However, the developers were not without hope. They promised that KDE 4.1 would be more stable and fix all the holes and problems with KDE 4.0. That time is coming soon: in just four days, K Desktop Environment 4.1 will be released to the Linux masses." A release candidate for 4.1 came out just over a week ago, with binaries available "for some Linux distributions, and Mac OS X and Windows."
Re:TFS is a lie? (Score:3, Informative)
On the KDE website, there was no mention of KDE 4.0 being a developer release. It hinted strongly, in fact, that KDE 4.0 was a general release.
It was only after all the problems and complaints that the KDE devs said that the release wasn't for mainstream users.
Re:TFS is a lie? (Score:5, Informative)
using KDE 4.1 (Score:5, Informative)
Re:KDE 4.1 (Score:5, Informative)
They promised that KDE 4.1 would be more stable and fix all the holes and problems with KDE 4.0.
The KDE developers never promised that all the holes and problems would be fixed in 4.1...
/. was saying it would be a finished DE, despite the KDE developers themselves saying this wasn't the case. People will be happy with KDE when /. stop exaggerating and lying about what it will be like
Reminds me of 4.0 when
I like it (Score:5, Informative)
Those are the ones that I've had problems with that are KDEs fault. This one probably isn't, but it makes 4.0 worthless to me:
Overall though, I really like it, especially since someone clued me in to the Make It Fast setting. This is coming from a KDE user since 1.x. I loved 2.0 when it came. Hated 3.0 (which grew into my favorite GUI of all time including OSX), hated 4.0, like 4.1 OK so far.
Re:What is in it for me ( a user ) (Score:5, Informative)
1) All KDE applications using Phonon and thus the same sound server, no more "oh I can't play audio here because I'm playing it over there". Or maybe that's pulseaudio's job to really fix, but I'd be happy either way.
2) The Phonon framework hopefully means I can use one media player (Dragon Player?) for all my needs, with a codec backend like on other operating systems. Right now mplayer/xine/vlc work on different media.
3) Once the KDE4 applications are up and running, you can use the same applications on Windows. No need for learning a separate application when you have to use Windows.
That's at least my top three...
Re:TFS is a lie? (Score:5, Informative)
Ubuntu 8.0? Ubuntu doesn't have version numbers, they just have dated releases - perhaps you meant 8.04 (April 2008) - followed by lots of patches as they appear to the various packages.
The Apache setup in Debian and Ubuntu is one of the best around, and I've not had any problems with it - what exactly could you not do with it?
Re:TFS is a lie? (Score:4, Informative)
That's not true. I remember when KDE4 was released and the expectation from before day one was that it was not ready for mainstream usage.
Re:TFS is a lie? (Score:2, Informative)
Re:TFS is a lie? (Score:1, Informative)
Uhh...
But doesn't everyone know that you don't buy a release that ends with ".0"?
I don't know, Firefox 3.0 seemed pretty good.
More generally, one of the standard rules is that you avoid releases whose bottom digit is even. Those are the releases that contain new stuff. The next release, with the last digit odd, is the one that contains the bug fixes for all the new stuff.
There is no "International Versioning Standard". On many projects, your "rule" is reversed: the odd-numbered releases contain new features and are intended for developers; whereas the even-numbered releases contain bugfixes for those features.
That's why I didn't get KDE 4.0 on my new machine a few weeks ago. In fact, I decided to give Gnome another try, since it's been a few years since I last rejected it in favor of KDE. It seems to work OK now (though I do sorta miss Konqueror).
KDE 4.0 was unstable because it was meant only for developers. That said, it should've been called "KDE 4.0 RC1" or perhaps even "KDE 3.9".
OTOH, I did install Ubunto 8.0. The Ubuntu crowd seems to have developed a reputation for violating the usual rule that .0 releases are buggy.
Ubuntu's releases are based on the year and month in which they are released: Ubuntu 8.04 was released on 2008 in April, or 8.04.
Short Memory Huh? (Score:2, Informative)
Ummm... okay, so you can rewrite the article: KDE developers don't understand release version concept, confuse users with improper 4.0 version number, and gain a reputation for a buggy major release.
Really? And was the same said of GCC 3.0 & 4.0? I suppose the same was also said of Kernel 2.6?
The bottom line is this: OSS projects are ready when the maintainers tell you they're ready. It's always been like this, and it'll probably always be like this.
ps. I should also point out for those with short memories that GNOME 2.0 wasn't exactly a great release. It was buggy, it lacked features AND applications, and it didn't even have a decent file manager. Nautilus was buggy and dog slow until version 2.4
Re:Calling Capt. Logic (Score:5, Informative)
I think you misunderstood the excerpt. What it says is that KDE lost ground in the last few years, which it did. Even SuSE, once a cornerstone of KDE's market share, defaults to Gnome now. Kubuntu is not on par with Ubuntu, and Red Hat/Fedora always was a Gnome shop. Today, no major distro has KDE as its default desktop environment. I'd call that "losing ground".
I hope KDE 4 is able to stop or even reverse this trend. I use 4.1 on a daily basis since Beta 1. It's mostly stable and shows big improvements compared to 4.0.
Re:NVidia issues? (Score:1, Informative)
He's right you know.
8xxx and 9xxx cards with the closed nvidia driver will have slower 2d than with the vesa driver.
7xxx and before work fine though.
Re:TFS is a lie? (Score:5, Informative)
On the KDE website, there was no mention of KDE 4.0 being a developer release. It hinted strongly, in fact, that KDE 4.0 was a general release.
It was only after all the problems and complaints that the KDE devs said that the release wasn't for mainstream users.
KDE 4.0 wasn't a developer release. What it was, was the first release with major architectual changes for public consumption. This was the first release with a stable library and without this release, a large number of KDE application developers wouldn't have a platform for porting and polishing their applications for KDE 4. Ultimately it is the decision of the distributions on what to include in their releases. I wouldn't consider KDE 4.0 a proper replacement for KDE 3.5.x, but I would make it available for use by application developers.
All this was well known and openly discussed during the planning and development of the KDE 4 platform including 4.0, 4.1, 4.x. To state otherwise is disengenious at best.
See http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20080710131440951 [groklaw.net] for more information.
Re:Slashdot Effect Channeled (Score:4, Informative)
The ATI drivers work fine with XRender. The Intel drivers work fine with XRender. There are people with low end systems, and basic on-board Intel video reporting great performance with KDE 4, where as there are people with high-end systems with top-notch Nvidia cards reporting unbearable performance.
I think you have a reasonable question, as to whether or not XRender is just bad, but every one seems to utilize it without a problem.
Re:first post (Score:3, Informative)
Re:TFS is a lie? (Score:2, Informative)
I'll just wait and see.
Actually, I probably should have said "configure their Apache manually, editing httpd.conf, knowing exactly what they're doing". But then, there wouldn't be as big a chance for a funny mod...
Re:first post (Score:3, Informative)
I'm still going to wait for a little while before using the 4.* releases. I remember people complaining about early 3.*, and I did the same back then (waiting, not complaining). It got OK around 3.2, and i expect it to be similar with 4.*
How surprising is it that a big release takes time to stabilize ?
What about a KDE 3 stable release? (Score:2, Informative)
They say "use KDE 3 if you want stability".
Stable MY ASS. I've submitted recently several bugs and which are marked as "fixed in KDE 4". Most of the annoying bugs I currently run won't be fixed for KDE 3.
P.S: I've just sumbled upon a konqueror bug which made me to write this message again!! AARGH
I'll begin to make plasmoids in python as soon as kde 4.1 final is released. I already started to use KDE 4 apps. KGet 4 is sooo much better than kget 3. I'll start to use konqueror 4 also.
Re:KDE 4.1 (Score:3, Informative)
Re:NVidia issues? (Score:3, Informative)
I have a 7600GT and I can see the screen drawing on KDE 4.
Re:NVidia issues? (Score:3, Informative)
I've been told by Xorg guys that Intel does, but they just really seem to love that the Intel driver is fully open. Intel is on-board, so really the choice is ATI I guess if you want serious 3D performance.
And ATI is moving to a mostly open driver.
Re:Calling Capt. Logic (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Developers vs. Marketers (Score:3, Informative)
Eww, I doubt developers are using some toolkit instead of another because that they can count it's available and the other is not. And by the way, I doubt Gnome libraries are used in every base installation of every distribution, even though the distro may be a LSB-compliant. AFAIK LSB Core includes nowadays both GTK+ and Qt, but not Gnome or KDE libraries.
I for myself think that the licensing of Qt may affect more for the developers than the availability, as Qt (and KDE) libs are available to every major distribution nowadays.
And since when Amarok has been equal to KDE? And even though people are asking for a native GNOME version of Amarok, I doubt it will happen. Or at least it wouldn't be done by the same developers. And nevertheless that Amarok is using KDE and Qt libraries, I've seen that the userbase of it is growing all the time.
About your statement that there won't be a 5.x series of KDE, do you have any sources for that? KDE has been gaining more contributors, more applications etc. and for me this doesn't mean that KDE is dieing, but in fact opposite.
So please, give us something to back up your claims or please stop spreading FUD.
Re:first post (Score:4, Informative)
What do you mean 'if you have the resources to run it'? /me pats his Pentium 3 laptop running it just fine. :)
It can even get a frame per second if I turn a bunch of effects on.
Damn Intel 815 graphics.
Mod Parent Informative (Score:2, Informative)
I've got a Thinkpad t21 running kde4.1 just fine.
In fact the damn opengl is so buggy on the laptop-only graphics chip, it uses software rendering and works great.
KDE 4.1 is a huge step forward. The idiots that whined about 4.0 not being up to par do not comprehend the scale of the work involved for 4.x. They may have also gotten used to 3.5+ stability, applications, etc.
I'll might be the first to tell you once you get beyond the eye candy changes, the next layer down appears radically simpler. That's **very** hard to do.
The test is not 4.0, 4.1, 4.x as much as getting the older 3.x apps into the new desktop.
Re:Disastrous. (Score:3, Informative)
There are desktops that ship with lightweight desktops, such as xfce, enlightenment, fluxbox, etc.
Give xubuntu a try, it's got a lightweight non-compositing window manager that works wonderfully, and you get all the new packages. Remeber that you can install as many window managers as you want, and choose which one to use when you log in (it's under 'sessions').
Don't give up after trying Gnome and KDE.
Re:Calling Capt. Logic (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Calling Capt. Logic (Score:3, Informative)
It is a pity that Kubuntu sucks. At least Suse offers a reasonable choice.
There are also a lot of smaller distros default to KDE: Mepis, PCLinuxOS, Knoppix, Slax, Slackware, Arch, TurboLinux, Vector, Linspire, Ark, Xandros, Pardus, Red Flag, ALT and probably a lot more I have not heard of.
I think that big business is more comfortable with the LGPL licensing of Gnome, so KDE probably does have a disadvantage that will not go away.
Re:NVidia issues? (Score:2, Informative)
Re:What is in it for me ( a user ) (Score:3, Informative)
You could use Gparted, as another poster said. Also, since you're already running KDE/Qt, you could just as well save memory and run qtparted (same backend as Gparted)
http://qtparted.sourceforge.net/ [sourceforge.net]
Works pretty well.
Re:Slashdot Effect Channeled (Score:3, Informative)
It isn't just KDE 4 or 4.1, but any XRender effects are horribly slow, and other QT 4 apps have the same issue with Nvidia drivers. And apparently the QT devs have been reporting it to Nvidia for ages.
Re:KDE 4.1 (Score:4, Informative)
I just disagree, and that's all there is to it. I think there was a hype problem, I don't think it really came from the KDE camp so much as from the general free software noise machine (yes, Slashdot, I do mean you). There was a lot of talk about it, but through it all the message I got for 4.0.0 was "Here it is, it's rough, we're gonna be doing rolling bux-fixes on it in the midst of working on 4.1 (hence the rapid progression through 4.0.x releases), it might eat your children but we hope not. Have fun." In fact, that is almost exactly what Aaron Seigo said the moment 4.0.0 got out the door.
As stated, I'm on Kubuntu8.04-KDE4.1 RC, so I'll try to fill the following in with up-to-date information as I have it...
I had that once on a Saturday afternoon as well, I think. The problem was fixed almost instantly, but unfortunately a lot of these critical buxfixes haven't moved out of the ppa repository into main yet for Kubuntu, and some may not be fixed in Kubuntu until 8.10. If you weren't aware, you can get very up-to-date packages for KDE4 here [kubuntu.org] (thanks to the unceasing work of people who love you).
Regarding Katapult, the menus, and so forth: You can manually bind a shortcut for the menu now, but I don't remember how to do so (because I haven't done so, that's why). There is no option for it in preferences yet. This is "coming soon to a theatre near you." I agree that it's a major lack. Alt-F2 right now has most of the Katapult functionality (search menu entries, address book contacts, web bookmarks, run one-liners, all that happy crap). One thing I really like about it over Katapult is it shows all your options as you type instead one at a time, and you can arrow through them. Really and truly, Alt-F2 is the Katapult replacement. And last but certainly not least, the menu editor is there now and you can assign shortcuts to menu items (but not the menu itself, grrrr).
[sarcasm] Every bit as wonderful as it always was. [/sarcasm] Not especially great. Evolution and Thunderbird still beat the pants off it, at least for me (although I credit a lot of my problems to Gmail's pisspoor IMAP service).
best regards
-p.
Re:then dont release it as "KDE"4.0... (Score:3, Informative)
See this blog post. [blogspot.com] You can call them excuses or rationalizations or whatever you want, you're not breaking anybody's heart. You disagree with their decision, that's all. Don't make it out to be some kind of personal betrayal or something.
Re:4.1 still worse than 3.5 in daily usage (Score:3, Informative)
Nice FUD you got here, mate. For the first question here is a video [youtube.com] (made by yours truly) that shows that it can be done. As for the second, the Plasma FAQ [kde.org] gives an answer:
Can I move the applets on the panel?
Just before KDE 4.1 RC1, a change has been introduced in Plasma to allow movement of the applets on the panel. To do so, open up the panel controller (by clicking on the cashew or by right clicking on the panel and selecting "Panel Settings") and hover the mouse cursor over the applets. Its shape will turn into four arrows, and you'll be able to rearrange the applets as you wish.