KDE Announces 4.9 Beta1 and Testing Initiative 134
jrepin writes "KDE released the first beta for its version 4.9 of Workspaces, Applications, and Development Platform. With API, dependency and feature freezes in place, the KDE team's focus is now on fixing bugs and further polishing new and old functionality. Highlights of 4.9 include, but are not limited to: Qt Quick in Plasma Workspaces, many improvements in Dolphin file manager, deeper integration of Activities, and many performance improvements. The KDE Community is committed to improving quality substantially with a new program that starts with the 4.9 releases. The 4.9 beta releases are the first phase of a testing process that involves volunteers called 'Beta Testers.' They will receive training, test the two beta releases and report issues through KDE Bugzilla."
I was recently forced into installing GNOME 3 (who knew printing required removing GNOME 2); after trying for a while to get Sawfish working again in the deprecated fallback mode, I gave up and tried KDE again. I have to say that I was surprised: KDE 4.5 was unpolished and painful to use whereas 4.7 is pretty slick. With the GNOME 3 developers catering to some seemingly mythical user, it's nice to see the other major desktop using user feedback to make design decisions.
GNOME 3 uses user feedback (Score:5, Informative)
Hey! The GNOME 3 team DOES use user feedback, you insensitive clods! After they print them out (which requires GNOME 3, as you've seen), they shred them and turn them into fine bedding for their various rodent pets! And the rodents, in turn, whisper great design ideas to the developers!
Re:kubuntu? (Score:4, Informative)
I dont know what the options for Amiga are btw...
Does it still have the deal-breaker? (Score:4, Informative)
I would love KDE if it would just stick to being a window manager. But everything related to that semantic desktop nonsense is perpetually buggy and knotify refuses to live with anything less than 100% of the CPU. These problems come and go with different releases, but they never entirely go away.
I have used KDE for many years on many computers, but I finally had to give up on it this year. Like so many open source projects, the bloat drove me away.
Re:kubuntu? (Score:5, Informative)
Not to mention Opensuse is a very good distro with full KDE support. (They do Gnome and other flavors as well).
I happen to think Opensuse does KDE better than anyone else, but that's just my opinion.
Having long ago gone the "educational" route, I'm perfectly happy to start with a well thought out distro these days, and have 4 of them on this machine, in (Virtual Machines), including some pretty old school ones running nothing graphical.
Re:kubuntu? (Score:4, Informative)
If I want to try KDE I just download the kubuntu distribution?
Many here will argue that Fedora or openSUSE will give you a much better KDE experience, out of the box. My personal experiences with Kubuntu's take on KDE4 have not been positive, unfortunately...
Random question - How come Ubuntu 12.04 has a 5 year support system instead of the usual 3 year cycle?
12.04 is an LTS (Long Term Support) release. This means that it will be supported and patched for a longer period of time than their regular incremental releases, and this works well for people who don't feel inclined to go through the upgrade process every six months. It tends to be the more stable route for those who just want to work and don't want to have to fiddle with their computer more than they need to. It is also possible to upgrade directly from one LTS to the next. Every two years in April, they release a new LTS.
Re:Does it still have the deal-breaker? (Score:4, Informative)
Re:kubuntu? (Score:5, Informative)
If you want "bleeding edge, but upstream", then nothing beats Arch.
Re:kubuntu? (Score:2, Informative)
I always just install the Oracle JDK - I did it last week after I upgraded my laptop to F17 - simply a download and install as directed - no problems. This was a Dell Latitude laptop.