KDE 4.4 Released Alongside Website Redesign 368
Cryophallion writes "KDE 4.4.0 has finally been released, along with a redesign of the KDE.org website. New features include tabbed windows, improved desktop search and social desktop features. 'Major new technologies have been introduced, including social networking and online collaboration features, a new netbook-oriented interface and infrastructural innovations such as the KAuth authentication framework. According to KDE's bug-tracking system, 7293 bugs have been fixed and 1433 new feature requests were implemented.' A feature guide is also available."
Sweet (Score:2)
Looking forward to when this rolls out to Fedora 12.
Re:Sweet (Score:5, Informative)
You can use KDE 4.4 with F12 right now using the Redhat KDE testing repos: http://kde-redhat.sourceforge.net/ [sourceforge.net]
I haven't bothered checking, but I believe that generally Fedora will wait for the next release to upgrade KDE 4.x numbers, so you may have to wait for F13 to actually get it from Fedora.
Re:Sweet (Score:5, Funny)
I tried, and yes, F12 seems to work great in KDE 4.4, but my keyboard doesn't have an F13 key so I'm kinda stuck.
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the info page [kde.org] says it is in rawhide - but I've run into trouble mixing the rawhide repos in with the stable - so I'll just wait. Even if I did have to wait until F13, it wont be that long. I was skipping every other Fedora release for a while because they come so quick but the last few have all had something that I just didn't want to wait to get. MySQL Workbench pushed me onto 12 and this might speed my move to 13.
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Actually, it looks like 4.4 is still in the kde-unstable repo (4.4.0-1). I'm surprised it's not in -testing yet, I'm used to running -testing and hearing about releases here a few weeks after I've been updated.
It still sucks for developers (Score:5, Interesting)
The API "documentation" is still completely unorganized and most of it is just Doxygen pages. While the Doxygen tagging is fairly good, this is not a "manual," it's a reference. And what about Plasma? I've wasted hours hacking applets without a real understanding of the APIs. The Plasma API front page [kde.org] is pretty much useless.
Although I suppose somebody will now yell at me for being too lazy to contribute to the docs... I'd be happy to, if I had some kind of handle I could grab to bootstrap myself and start delving into it. But seriously, no, you don't get good docs by people who are unfamiliar with the code just staring at it and trying to document their own misunderstandings. Somebody who actually designed and wrote this crap needs to step in. Please?
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>> But seriously, no, you don't get good docs by people who are unfamiliar with the code just staring at it and trying to document their own misunderstandings. Somebody who actually designed and wrote this crap needs to step in. Please?
Disagree.
I started developing for KDE as part of GSoC 2006. It was a hell of a time getting started, and I made little progress towards the actual project. But in the meantime, documented the process of getting involved with KDE so that other people can breeze past the
Re:It still sucks for developers (Score:5, Insightful)
And this is different from most Linux projects how?
I don't think KDE should view itself as "most" Linux projects. KDE isn't an application, its a framework and base upon which to CREATE an entire desktop environment. Given the amount of hours which have obviously gone in to code development, I'm just asking for a tiny fraction of that effort put toward helping me understand how to develop apps for it. Open source shouldn't have to be synonymous with amateurism. And like I said, I'd be happy to help with docs, but I need some guidance. I really am not in the mood to spend several weekends working on docs just to have some "guru" tell me that I'm completely full of crap and I've just been wasting my time (and this has happened to me a couple times, it really has a tendency to sour a person toward contribution).
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> I'm just asking for a tiny fraction of that effort put toward helping me understand how to develop apps for it.
techbase.kde.org
and it's an open wiki with a large number of people contributing to it.
> I'd be happy to help with docs, but I need some guidance.
you can find many of us on irc.freenode.net in #kde-devel and there are all the mailing lists.
Re:It still sucks for developers (Score:5, Informative)
techbase.kde.org
I'm aware of techbase. It's not really helpful. Let me give an example. Suppose I want to write a Plasmoid. Okay, let's start at techbase.kde.org. Under "Discover" I click on "Developing with KDE." Fine so far. Now what do I click? It's hard to say -- I want an API reference. Nevertheless, I figure out that I need to click on "KDE Architecture." Okay, now I click on "KDE 4 Architecture Overview." Ooh, I finally see a link to "Plasma - the Desktop." I click it.
Now, I have three choices. The most logical is the link called "API." I click that, and now all of a sudden I need to shift my focus to the left hand column, where I finally locate "Plasma/Applets." I click it. I get this useless [kde.org] page. But hey, there's a link to Plasma again! I click it, and I get this. [kde.org]
Guys, this is not documentation.
Link? (Score:2)
Anyone have a link to the binary that actually works? Tried a bunch of the ones in mirrors and none seem to function.
Come a long way (Score:3, Interesting)
The decision to seriously overhaul KDE was a great decisions in the long run though it was completely unusable for several releases after the switch. I must say, it is beautiful now. With this release, I think it's time for me to switch back.
I love the new features shown in the videos.
What's a good KDE distro? (Score:2)
The last time I used KDE was around the middle of 2000. 10 years on I'd like to try out 4.x and see what all the fuss is about. Can anyone recommend a distro that has a good KDE experience? I hear that some distros have screwed up KDE 4.x so I'd like to use one that will give me a decent experience.
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openSUSE is the best in my opinion. If you install the 11.3 Milestone 1 (alpha release) it comes with an early build of KDE 4.4 out of the box. Or you can install openSUSE 11.2, add a KDE repository, and grab the latest KDE that way.
They have good Firefox and OpenOffice integration with KDE, stable packages, and a great desktop overall.
Arch, Fedora, and Sabayon also put out good KDE 4 desktops.
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Fedora.
I hear OpenSuse is good as well, though I cannot personally attest for that.
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Mandriva has an excellent KDE integration imo. If you like the vanilla version, you might want to try Archlinux too.
What about plasma-widget-networkmanager ? (Score:2)
Was that thing finally rewritten, because knetworkmanager is kind of pathetic -- it doesn't even show type of encryption of available networks, and I know I could get that information from /sbin/iwlist, but the whole purpose of that program is to be convenient, and it fails at that. What happened to network manager plasmoid, where did it go in 4.2, is it coming back and why in gnome everything is working. (netbook-remix is sweet, BTW).
Nepomuk (Score:2)
My only complaint with 4.4 is that I get an error message if I'm not running Nepomuk.
If I start it, it crashes most of the time. Even when it runs without crashing, it does nothing for me. I've noticed that every major distro has open bugs relating to Nepomuk crashes, and I'm not seeing fixes to be found anywhere.
If enough apps do a good job of making Nepomuk useful, then I might consider it in the future. But right now I have zero interest in it, and it isn't exactly optional in KDE 4.4.
It is the only ugly
Try it now on a Live CD (Score:2)
openSUSE 11.3 Milestone 1 includes KDE 4.4 RC2 (a build from two weeks ago)
http://download.opensuse.org/distribution/11.3-Milestone1/ [opensuse.org]
mac (Score:2)
... and still we have no real Mac support.
Like the new glowing website (Score:2)
Re:Is it time to look yet? (Score:5, Informative)
I think 4.3 is pretty great. I'm running 4.3.5 on Fedora 12 and it's probably my favorite KDE yet. Sure they had to step back to move forward, but sometimes that is absolutely necessary if the current foundation is impossible to support the desired end state.
Fortunately Linux users have a lot of choices, and it will cost you nothing more than time and bandwidth to see if you want to return to KDE or stay on Gnome. Or don't put even that into it and keep using what works for you. Not sure why anyone has to "lay low" or anything like it.
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I'm not an expert on these things, but I'm fairly sure that is a complaint about Debian, not KDE. I'm not familar with how Debian does it, but if they handle things anywhere near the same as the Kubuntu people do, that would explain a lot...
Complaints from a GNOME user about ease of configuration are amusing though ;)
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No, I think he's saying he tried KDE because he broke Gnome, not the other way around.
And by the way, he's talking about Debian Sid, also known as Unstable. The "real" release is Debian Stable, the others are WIP.
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Yes, you are right. I read that wrong.
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More likely PEBCAK. Debian's KDE 4 is fine and a perfectly standard KDE. It's not Gnome, though, so if that's what you want, you're not going to get it.
Re:Oh that's easy to explain (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Oh that's easy to explain (Score:4, Informative)
You couldn't download it from them without seeing the warnings. You couldn't install it from a distro without seeing the same warnings. They made it clear it wasn't even "alpha" quality, it was just a snapshot to show the new direction they were taking, because people were asking to see it.
I don't believe that is correct. Here is the KDE4.0 release announcement:
http://www.kde.org/announcements/4.0/ [kde.org]
Not a thing about being a testing or development version. And I believe you could have downloaded and compiled it without any warnings. Certainly there were no warnings when I added the extra software repository in ubuntu and installed it that way.
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And this is why I will never point anyone toward free software. On one hand, OSS people say you're a sucker for paying for a closed source OS (which, btw, most people don't give a fuck if they have the source or not). Then, when someone tries it and has a ligit complain, they're told, STFU, you get what you pay for.
I'd disagree with your premise though, and argue that users DO have every right to bitch and complain about something they got for free. The reason is simple; a project without users is a wast
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You're right, of course. Everyone gets to talk, that's the bottom line. Funny after thousands of years we're still arguing over it.
I still say free software is the best way. There are lots of free projects miles better than their nearest commercial equivalents. Not always, but often.
If you're a business, and you get told to STFU when complain or ask for help for free, you can then buy that help with real American monopoly dollars. And instead of being stuck buying it from whoever made your software, you can
Re:Oh that's easy to explain (Score:5, Insightful)
Then, when someone tries it and has a ligit complain, they're told, STFU, you get what you pay for.
I am trying really hard to remember reading a bug report that was answered with STFU. Maybe because complaints look more like offence (Concern look like doing a lot of that on this topic) in direction of /. (where maturity is not a prerequisite), then STFU answer is not surprising.
In your opinion, how should "OMG, KDE suxors, crashes all the time. And Amarok, gah!!!" be addressed? With "Thank you for valuable input, we will address these issues right away"?
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I had a similar opinion, but ended up upgrading to KDE 4.x from 3.x when it hit 4.3. While things are different, I find it very useful. The only thing I miss at this point is Quanta has no love -- or replacement.
Wait until there is a live distro using 4.4 and give it a try. Remember, different is different, not necessarily worse or better.
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The openSUSE 11.3 Milestone 1 live disc is running a weekly snapshot build of the 4.4 trunk. It is about a month old, but it is a fairly good indicator of the final 4.4 release.
Re:Is it time to look yet? (Score:5, Informative)
The KDE team isn't responsible for what happened to Amarok, that is a seperate project.
I totally agree though, Amarok turned into complete and utter shit, I used to love Amarok but now I just use xmms2. KDE 4.x has been perfectly usable since 4.3 imho, though I've been using it since 4.1.
Re:Is it time to look yet? (Score:4, Insightful)
Agree 100%. Amarok jumped the shark when it went to version 2.x. To the point where it was one of the best mp3 players to what the hell is this?
That said, KDE was almost unusable at 4.0 but is now quite nice (I used Gnome for a bit).
Re:Amarok 2.x (Score:4, Informative)
Done.
Seriously, make an effort.
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It's a goddamned music player, why should I have to "make an effort" at all? Not to mention, that is hardly the only thing wrong with it.
I was patient with Amarok 2 for a long time. Far too long. Eventually I got fed up and wrote my own fucking client for xmms2 so I could finally listen to music with something that wasn't a complete pain in the ass and could reliably scan my music collection without placing all of my Rush albums under random jazz artists.
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The entire aim of Amarok is to provide contextual information about your library (and all other music sources you play) to help you rediscover your music.
There are simple players like Juk.
If you want a really simple client, then Amarok is not for you. If you liked Amarok 1.4, but don't like the defaults in Amarok 2, it takes less than a minute to configure it how you want.
I'm not seeing any reasonable explanation for someone being upset that Amarok 2 being MORE FLEXIBLE than Amarok 1.4 when it comes to making it look and operate how you want.
I already know the music I own and it's accompanying context. Hell I follow the bands I like, buy their CDs, even rip them to flac/mp3/ogg/whatever when I'm at my workstation to have background music [assuming I'm not doing heavy compiles and then I turn to the standard home system]. I have the liner notes, know what gear they used, etc. Amarok is still a POS design and those fat buttons at the top look like a 12 year old designed them. The interface looks like a bad version of Kopete's contact list, mixed
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I totally agree though, Amarok turned into complete and utter shit
Hard to believe, but this is an understatement. I cannot think of any application that turned into a huge steaming pile like Amarok. Maybe Kino after the 0.6.x changes.
Re:Is it time to look yet? (Score:4, Funny)
Just because someone agrees with you doesn't mean the people who disagreed somehow changed their mind. Perhaps they just didn't read you comment, or didn't bother replying... As for Amarok 2, I personally don't see what's wrong with it. It does what I want it to do (organize and play music) and stays out of the way.
If that's what you classify as, ``stays out of the way,'' I'd hate to see what you consider in your face.
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PS (Score:2, Funny)
Oh I was hardly vague or speaking out of turn - that's now proven.
I have open patches on bugs KDE4, one for many months, and part of my frustration is watching how badly issues are treated on that project - even when they have a clean fix all prepared and ready to apply, at the end of an impeccably documented bug. But you know, that wasn't even worth mentioning, because your underlying point was so stupid.
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LOL. Any other last words?
Re:Is it time to look yet? (Score:5, Interesting)
I have not used KDE since 3.
The simple reason is that Ubuntu and Gnome feel more finished than KDE did to me.
Gnome really works well for what I need. I use it to launch programs and to manage files.
Where I think both Gnome and KDE are blowing it is complexity.
Take a look at the settings in both of them sometime. Way to complex.
The other place I feel they are falling down is supporting applications.
I love choice but there needs to be some good defaults.
Oh and I wish GTK had a better file dialog.
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The simple reason is that Ubuntu and Gnome feel more finished than KDE did to me
That's not a problem with KDE, but a consequence of the fact that Ubuntu focuses far more on Gnome than on KDE. I still use Kubuntu at home, but from what I've read, other distributions that give more attention to KDE might work better.
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To each their own. I won't use Gnome because Gnome doesn't give me enough options to run the desktop I want. I want configuration options.
That being said, almost every single app in KDE 4 land was redesigned to clean up the interface and make every menu and dialog look simpler. In most cases, they accomplished this without losing functionality. In many cases, they expanded functionality.
LinuxToday.com had some articles recently breaking down the system settings for KDE 4.3. If you haven't used KDE since 3,
Re:Is it time to look yet? (Score:5, Informative)
KDE 4 doesn't seem bad to me anymore. I tried 4.0 and it was a fairly miserable experience. UI issues I could forgive, but not coupled with the constant crashes. I still think the devs should be ashamed for labeling that a release version. 4.1. was slightly better. Lacking configuration options and a bunch of UI stuff, but generally more stable. KDE 4.2. was, finally, something usable and the dev team also said that it's an okay choice for "end users" and not just "enthusiasts". I've been happily using 4.3. since its release and that's a very nice desktop environment, though I do hate the changes to Amarok.
Kubuntu is a separate issue. The Ubuntu project has always been very Gnome-centric, which is one of the things I dislike about the approach to Ubuntu. The K versions have always felt like an afterthought, including the ones that predate KDE4. I wouldn't really say that Kubuntu sucks but it sure seems to implement KDE worse than numerous other distros do.
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Re:Is it time to look yet? (Score:5, Funny)
Are you looking at the same KDE that the rest of us are looking at?
My 11 and 15 year old daughters use it successfully, without crashes.
Dude, you're being out-linuxed by little girls!
Hah! (Score:2)
OK, OK! Mercy! :)
Victory to the little girls. :)
Which version do you all use? If they like it, maybe it's worth another look.
Re:Hah! (Score:4, Insightful)
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Re:Is it time to look yet? (Score:5, Informative)
The question is, should we even bother to look at this release?
Yes, you should. Not only Plasma has become a viable replacement of the old desktop, it has improved to the point where I would miss it in a KDE3/Gnome desktop. The netbook plasmoid is interesting not only because it's better for netbooks, it's a proof of how flexible the whole infrastructure is. You even can switch your desktop to the netbook plasmoid in the desktop preferences (it's not only useful for netbooks, newbie users could use it aswell in workstations).
Amarok dropped the new ugly UI, and went back to a UI like the one they had in the 1.x series.
Nepomuk not only it is becoming a cool tool, it is also starting to allow to do [wordpress.com] today the same kind of things Gnome's zeitgeist will do
External projects like Koffice 2, K3B or Gwenview are stabilizing after the switch to KDE4....
I'm afraid that the KDE brand is ruined only in the head of people who haven't bothered to look at how cool KDE4 is...
Thank you. (Score:2)
This is the kind of informative post I was hoping to get. It seems like it's time to look again.
I hope I made clear exactly how and why the KDE team ruined their own brand. No one else is responsible.
I hope I also made it clear how glad I will be to see them find their feet again and if this is the release I can finally use, then I only have one last observation:
Maybe they should call it KDE5 or something else that would draw attention to a newly working release (as opposed to the "KDE4" splash that drew at
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I couldn't care any less about how "cool" KDE4 is. I care about stability and functionality and being able to get my work done. What are your opinions on the functionality? Is it working well for you for day to day work? Any glaring bugs or issues? You also mentioned about external projects saying they "are stabilizing." Does that mean that they are not yet stable and have work to do to beco
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I'm afraid that the KDE brand is ruined only in the head of people who haven't bothered to look at how cool KDE4 is...
I agree that KDE4 is "cooler" looking than KDE3. Unfortunately, for many of us that actually use Linux to get work done, KDE4 is much less productive than KDE3. I was a heavy user of many of the more advanced features of Konqueror for example. However the Konqueror in KDE4 is a pale imitation of its KDE3 self. You want a simple example? Just try editing your Konqueror bookmarks in KDE4. Nearly faster to edit the bookmarks.xml file--in fact you appear to have to do that to do an obvious thing like reor
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OK, I'm running 4.4rc so I might be able to help.
For the first problem, the 'save settings' has been replaced by the profile system. When you modify the settings your actually changing the current profile, so that might explaine some things. Don't use profiles myself but there.
As for the terminal size, not to say but I can't see a use case for having a fixed size, and IIRC the 'save window size' thing is done outside the application, ie it's a standerd, probably window manager, thing.
HTH
David
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For the first problem, the 'save settings' has been replaced by the profile system. When you modify the settings your actually changing the current profile
OK, so is there a way to make it *not* change the profile?
I can't see a use case for having a fixed size
Using multiple terminals, when I want to see what's going on in them at the same time. Also, some terminal apps are "optimised" for 80x24 or 80x25 (and some don't display properly when using the "wrong" size.)
IIRC the 'save window size' thing is done outside the application
It's not a window manager thing - the app requests a specific size when you open it (which is why in 3.5, you can save the settings from the menubar, and why "Width" and "Height" appear in the config file.)
I suppose I could force the windows to
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There's a default profile that you can save to
Could you tell me how? It's been a couple of months since I tried it, but I couldn't find any "save" button or menu item anywhere.
I changed the font size and colors, saved, and it's been good to me since.
Does it address my problem - namely that when I resize the window, it doesn't save that as the new default?
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You do know that you can re-arrange your Amarok any way you want, don't you (yes you can even remove the central zone if that's your thing).
David
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I tried 4.0, decided to sit way back and switched with the Jaunty on 4.2.2 but upgraded via backports to 4.3 and since then I've had no real issues. The only issue I have is that my sound sometimes fails to initialize, but it seems to be a heisenbug with my chipset in ALSA that is hard to pin down as others report the same. What seems to me as the biggest problem right now is that several of the KDE projects are really struggling to keep up with the times like Konqueror or is never hitting release quality l
Kubuntu (Score:3, Insightful)
After the pathetic state of the last several Kubuntu releases...
I think that's half your problem right there.
Re:Is it time to look yet? (Score:5, Interesting)
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If someone has mod points, mod parent up.
As a huge Ubuntu fan (which to adopted while KDE was getting over the 4.0 fiasco) I looked to Kbuntu for the same quality as regular Ubuntu. Its just not there. If you want a "quality" KDE4 release, you really need to try OpenSUSE.
Good Instincts? (Score:2)
Hi.
UltraTurbo++ Linux Newbie here.
After some random pokes at Gnome Ubuntu 6.06, and hearing the rumblings of the early KDE 4, I held off for a few years. Based on some NotCited reports on the web, I went exactly for OpenSuse 11.2 KDE (I think 4.3?). Apparently I Chose Wisely.
KDE 4.3 has a few odd feeling placements compared to WinXP, but I managed to stumble my way through some Nvidia drivers and a terminal svc client, and flash mostly works by this point.
Anyone know if the difference between 4.3 and 4.4 is
Maybe, you were too much used to KDE3 to be fair? (Score:3, Interesting)
I totally disagree with your notion of "digging the hole deepe
Re:Maybe, you were too much used to KDE3 to be fai (Score:4, Funny)
First of all I really appreciate you sharing your perspective on this.
Who can be objective about these things? I loved KDE3, really did. I've really enjoyed may different fundamental UI frameworks, from Amiga's Workbench to nextstep to early gnome and xfce... Everyone's particular about different things. Who knows.
Obviously KDE4 was unstable for ages, but beyond that there seemed to be things that hinted at a bad underlying direction, too. Take the plasmid that showed folder contents on the desktop. Context menu items, keyboard shortcuts, and drop behaviors were broken and/or different from what konq or dolphin did. You know, I actually liked that they contained the "desktop" folder in a plasmid and let you control that. Great concept. But someone clearly was implementing file management a second time rather than generalizing what KDE already had. And that's just the first basic bit of functionality on the desktop that most everyone sees by default.
It's just one example. It was not only a bad user experience (when the DEL key deletes selected files, except on the desktop), but it betrayed a kind of architectural ineptitude.
BTW, I assuming they must have fixed that DEL key on the desktop at some point. But did they do it by laboriously getting the plasmid to copy the existing file browser code?
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> Context menu items, keyboard shortcuts, and drop behaviors were broken and/or different from what konq or dolphin did.
little of that was easily sharable when folderview was started. with each release, the people working on the file management components (konq, dolphin, file open/save, folderview) have been pulling this kind of code out into libkonq (in kdebase-apps) and libkfile (in kdelibs; this is actually where most of this stuff exists now).
the was pretty much the same for kdesktop in kde 3, as wel
Re:Is it time to look yet? (Score:5, Insightful)
Kubuntu consistently puts out the worst KDE packages. If you want a good KDE desktop, please try another distro like openSUSE, Fedora, Sabayon, Arch, PCLinux OS, Mandriva, etc.
If you want to blame someone for the "disaster", consider pointing a finger at your distro.
Usually when I make this statement, half the time I get modded troll. The other half of the time I get modded informative. Frankly, I don't care. But I am speaking the truth here. Anyone who follows KDE knows that 90% of the complaints seem to stem from people running terrible Kubuntu packages.
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I specifically made that point about arguments over blame because I was aware of this issue. I know that KDE blamed Canonical for having "bad" KDE4 releases. And they may well indeed not be good at doing a KDE distro. When I try again it will not be with Kubuntu, this much is certain.
What makes this argument confusing, though, is that it started around 4.0 and 4.1, back when it was not possible to have good KDE releases. In the end, it's tough to make yourself care who blames who.
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I heard that a lot, so when I went to try KDE 4.3, I've did that with OpenSUSE.
Guess what? I've had a crash within 5 minutes of using it, just by right-clicking something randomly in the file manager. Another crash 10 minutes later in Amarok.
That's called "stable" these days?
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I run weekly snapshot releases of KDE on openSUSE. I've been doing so for probably the past 2 years.
My wife has the stock KDE 4.3 packages that shipped on the openSUSE 11.2 DVD, and she hasn't complained once about a single crash, ever, except for Flash in Firefox. (She complains about that a great deal).
The only thing that seems to crash for me is Nepomuk for the most part. I do get an occassional Plasma crash, usually when I'm changing the panel on a new install. Once I'm done setting up my panel, I never
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I agree. When I first go into Linux (I think I first installed Debian around 1997, but it was really 2000 or so before I really got into it heavily) KDE was THE desktop environment to use for general use (I still used WindowMaker when programming back then, but for general use, it was KDE). By comparison Gnome looked like some cobbled together hack. I remember way back when when some organization (who I'm not even sure had much "authority" to make such a claim) proclaimed that Gnome was going to be the "
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Meanwhile this loyal Gnome user dreads the time when "Gnome Shell" becomes mandatory and forces me to switch to something else, KDE or XFCE I'm still not sure.
What I hate about KDE4 right now is the Henry Ford mentality of, you can have your features any way you want them as long as you want it as a plasmoid. I HATE DESKTOP WIDGETS, desktop widgets are basically small applications that don't scale and use a different window manager, one which is less functional and harder to use than the default window mana
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I think only r
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Well, everyone makes up their own mind. [theopensourcerer.com] I'm against Mono. The problems with it are not "MS hate." They're a very practical response to Microsoft. If you follow the news (SCO, etc) it's unremarkable fact that they're trying to destroy Linux via intellectual property law. Tricks just like Mono fit right in line.
Microsoft and de Icaza have been trying for ages to tie Mono to Gnome's success, and in a small way, at least, they are succeeding. Canonical considers Mono to be a "core framework" in ubuntu [mono-project.com] and they
Re:Is it time to look yet? (Score:4, Insightful)
My forays into the KDE 4.x release series were unpleasant too, although not necessarily for stability problems.
Look, it's obviously a labor of love, but sometimes the eyes of love are a bit blind to faults. The hardest thing to do in any creative endeavor is to set aside some idea you really love. But you have to do it, otherwise you end up with an exuberant but irritating mess. KDE 4 had a kind of an Andy Hardy "hey kids, let's revolutionize desktop technology!" feel to it. Or maybe like an art show for young UI designer's desktop concepts. It doesn't have a natural feel to it, by which I mean that after a few minutes with it you forget you're using some arbitrary set of conventions. It's an attention grabbing user interface, and I don't want my attention grabbed. I have my own uses for my attention.
The things I value in a user interface are consistency, responsiveness, and deference. I want the interface to stay out of my way, not to educate me on somebody's philosophy of user interface design. I regard my computer a my slave. When I give it an order, I want to be able to that quickly and have the result be absolutely predictable in how long it takes and how it ends up. I am not interested in any shuck-and-jive that the user interface designers want to throw into the process.
The whole program of revolutionizing the desktop is out of date anyway.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
I agree with what you said about amarok.
amarok 2.x is simply godamn awfull. makes even iTunes look good.
the interface is confusing, can't get rid of that ridiculous area in the middle
You can rearrange the panels (including removal of the middle panel) in Amarok 2.2.
Re: (Score:2)
I guess your frustration comes from the fact that there's nothing out there that even comes close to Amarok (either version) in terms of usability and functionality. And that most certainly includes iTunes.
Flame all you want, but that's the reality.
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
I'm also getting pissed at dolphin either. the old konqueror browser|file manager was pretty decent. dolphin OTOH plain sucks, from the way it displays stuff in detailed view, the impossibility of reordering the columns, how the tree view pane keeps moving the directory tree left and right by itself. again, any sugestions of a replacement that looks/feels more like the old konqueror will welcome.
Right click on a folder, go into properties, click on the wrench & screwdriver icon (settings?), and remove Dolphin from the list of apps to open folders with. Move Konqueror up to the top of the list. Click 'okay' and wait for the system to update the configuration. Done.
Re:Is it time to look yet? (Score:4, Informative)
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
1.3MB for the "footer1.png" file! Linus is gonna be pissed when he sees the bill for data on his Google phone.
Re: (Score:2)
Wow almost a meg for the front png file slide4.png ... easy to understand why site inst responding already....
It's painfully slow. They must have something against a jpg file format when it comes to the large graphics size or they just can't figure out you can create layers [divs] to duplicate that front pay with alpha transparency in pngs while the background including the shadow and rounded rectangles can actually be a jpg inline. It would most likely take > 1MB and cut it down to around 200K.
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Can I put my taskbar at top now? (Score:5, Informative)
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
> There's no such thing as a taskbar. There are Plasma panels,
This, this right here is what's wrong with KDE4.
Yes, it's entirely too flexible and properly-abstracted, we might restrict user choice!
(the fact the default configuration is incredibly like the Windows 95 contruct, not withstanding).
For the mentally handicapped, click on the 'cashew' and drag the label 'screen edge' to the top of the screen. Gods, when did the Slashcrowd devolve into babies that need to be spoon-fed? The typical Mac user is
Re:Can I put my taskbar at top now? (Score:5, Informative)
it wasn't talled "the taskbar" in KDE 2 or KDE 3 either. :) in fact, Plasma calls them exactly what they were called in KDE 2 and 3: panels. the "taskbar" has always referred to the windows picker/manager. personally, i wish we'd always called it something like "windows" that was a bit more obvious.
but yes, in this case it's actually completely consistent with what's always been there.
sorry to burst your bubble.
Re: (Score:2)
I think I've seen a fully customizable panel (in any location) since KDE 4.1, or 4.2 at the latest.
Re: (Score:2)
Right click on a panel area with no widgets, pick "Panel settings" in context menu. A toolbar will appear next to the panel, one of the buttons is "Screen Edge" that you can use to move it to the top (or sides or whatever). Just tested it on KUbuntu 9.10 (karmic) and works fine...
Re: (Score:2)
My eyes are above my nose, mot in my chin.
But obviously your head is in your ass. You could change the panel positions in 4.1, IIRC.
Did they get rid of that damned cashew? (Score:3, Informative)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
There's a plasmoid for that. Actually, there are several. IHateTheCashew for example.
Re:Gnome 3 (Score:5, Informative)
KDE hasn't duplicated the feature; it was being worked on long before Gnome Shell was even conceived.
Re:KBadDesign (Score:5, Funny)
Why do the KDE developers insist on using uber-bizarre names for user programs? Can you get even the slightest idea what these programs do from reading their names: Neopomuk, Dolphin, Gwenview, Blogilo, KGet, Kopete, Kstars, Parley, Marble, Cantor, Rocs, Nepomuk, Akonadi, Kauth, KNewStuff3?
You're right. You'd never catch reputable software distributors carrying on with such shenanigans. Like Adobe Flash, Apple iPods, Microsoft Excel, or Mozilla Firefox. I mean, where do these KDE guys get off?
(Please tag as flamebait since ./ers don't like these kinds of challenges.)
Nah, I'll see it and raise.
Re:No. Real Sucker is Debian not KDE4 (Score:4, Informative)
While Debian is the source of many *buntu packages, Kubuntu have their own KDE packages, they are completely separate from Debian's KDE packages. So don't badmouth Debian KDE just because Kubuntu suck. Debian's is one of the most vanilla and well working KDE versions.