KDE Software Compilation 4.10 RC1 Released 59
jrepin writes "Today KDE released the first release candidate for its renewed Workspaces, Applications, and Development Platform. Thanks to the feedback from the betas, KDE already improved the quality noticeably. Further polishing new and old functionality will lead to a rock-stable, fast and beautiful release in January, 2013. One particular change in this RC is an updated look to Plasma workspaces."
Re:Has its speed improved in any measurable way? (Score:5, Insightful)
To me, having used it exclusively for the last 6+ years, it's never been better. Very stable, everything works, and it's reasonably fast, even on my 1000PE Eee.
With the right configuration, it can also be very pretty. If you really want to find out, grab the latest the Kubuntu 12.10 live cd and play around with it your self.
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Re:Has its speed improved in any measurable way? (Score:5, Informative)
To me, having used it exclusively for the last 6+ years, it's never been better.
6+ years puts you into the long suffering crowd, (with me) to whom almost anything approximating stable earns high praise.
Somewhere around 4.6 it actually became fully functional again. I can't wait to try RC1. There were many releases where I
wouldn't dream of trying an RC?, having been bitten too often.
It has been a long and bumpy road. One more upgrade like 4.0 would probably kill this project completely. Its not totally the KDE Team's fault,
there were far too many Distros that jumped on way too early, making 4.0 the default, then claiming they really didn't.
Some of the most obvious additions since KDE4, Activities, are still poorly understood [datamation.com], and under utilized. A very large subset of users ignore them all together, finding old-school multiple Desktops much more satisfactory for their work environment.
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Have to disagree with you on the fault. It was the damn devs fault in the fact that they didn't listen to the users and used the Beta QT 4 to build the project.
For example, the removal of the multiple desktops setting for the same single desktop paradign that MS has used since Win3. That was just one of the many features I used regularly - each desktop was devoted to specific work flows but they decided to duplicate Vista not only in looks but fucking performance. Hell I found that Konqureor worked better a
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For example, the removal of the multiple desktops setting for the same single desktop paradign
On Fedora: System Settings -> Workspace Behavior -> Virtual Desktops
I'm pretty sure it's been there since 4.0. It was buggy then, but it's always had virtual desktops.
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Other than that its awesome!
I used it at work and home.
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Yeah, I find that to be very annoying, especially when trying to scan over what files are being copied, etc.
I'm still a few KDE versions behind (will upgrade over Christmas break hopefully). Has that been fixed in more recent versions?
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> Has it improved in any measurable way at all?
> I am inclined to think, "nothing at all!"
Oh look at the cute little troll.
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BMO
Re:Has its speed improved in any measurable way? (Score:5, Informative)
Absolutely. KDE has made many leaps in the past few releases. I fully recommend anyone that has been sitting out for the past couple years to give it a try again.
Unfortunately, the release of 4.0 was a bit botched (rushed out to the public eye in a few distributions) before it was ready for prime time, but the KDE developers laid very good foundations that have been paying off greatly. It looks polished, runs quickly, and I think much of the KDE software is snappier and more useful than its GNOME equivalents.
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Yes, 3 years is six point releases so, 4.9 (current) - .6 = 4.3.
4.4 = first usable release. I'd call it RC quality. .0 (2 years ag, Plasma would still crash some, but less than Win95 or 98SE, may have been my graphics)
4.5 = what should of been
4.6 = stable and functions really working
When they did the update for OpenGL ES it really got smoother, with less visual artifacts (this video shows what I mean by visual artifacts at 00:35 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CPIgEFIv5MI [youtube.com]) Based on the date, that video is 4
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4.2 was the first good usable one. 4.0 was a disaster and 4.1 a fixup.
But yeah, its getting better and better.
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Stable? (Score:2, Insightful)
I'm running Ubuntu 12.04. I tried Unity (for a few weeks to let it seep in), and really didn't get it, so I installed Gnome 3. It has it's flaws, many of which are solved by extensions. Recently I got sick of some of the limitations and decided to try KDE. An apt-get install kde-desktop later, and I can. Except that it seems to be incredibly unstable. I'd already installed some games (Konquest, Ksirk, etc.) and these also seemed to be buggy. E.g. go to the about menu and it crashes...
Well, KDE is buggy (at
Re:Stable? (Score:5, Insightful)
I'd recommend going a non-Ubuntu route if you want to try KDE out. Kubuntu's implementation is not without its quirks and you may find that other distros offer a more polished (if not vanilla) KDE 4 experience which is actually quite pleasant.
Re:Stable? (Score:5, Informative)
> Kubuntu's implementation is not without its quirks
Friends don't let friends install kubuntu-desktop.
On Ubuntu, install kde-full, or a selection of the other smaller meta-packages, or a combination of individual packages, etc. This also means not starting out with the Kubuntu distro disk, but rather going with vanilla Ubuntu and going from there. Installing kubuntu-desktop is always hit-or-miss, so it's best to just avoid it and go with your own settings imposed over the default instead of someone else's idea of "good settings." Back in the 4.2x days, this was apparent when Kubuntu's KDE was an unmitigated disaster while the Pardus distro had a spectacular setup, demonstrating that yes, someone could build KDE and not screw it up. These screwed up settings are always pulled in by the kubuntu-desktop metapackage.
I have been using the KDE PPA on Ubuntu 12.04 without installing the kubuntu-desktop metapackage and it works fine.
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BMO
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Seconded here. Also make sure you don't accidentally install the tablet stuff. I'm a recent KDE convert after using Gnome and Gnome-shell for five years. It's extremely stable, especially compared to the last couple of Gnome-shell releases. The downside is that more configuration is required to get things just as you like ... the upside is that it's actually possible. The developers don't have the "you'll do things our way and you'll like it" attitude.
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Yep. Unity is too slow, and flawed in design in a couple of fairly major ways.
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>Can I ask what is so wrong about the kubuntu-desktop package/settings?
There are too many things to list.
The only thing I can say is to do it yourself. Install kde-full by itself, and then do a separate install of kubuntu and compare. It is less drastic today than it used to be, but I've been burned far too many times to give kubuntu-desktop any more chances.
>but based on your comments it looks like I'm missing something here...
You are.
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BMO
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You could just mention few most jarring ones. Your post wouldn't look like empty FUD then.
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Ok, I'll just mention a couple.
"Recomends:" abuse. Rampant, idiotic Recommends.
Here's another one: Sometimes when you remove something you don't want that should not depend on anything whatsoever (like a KDE game), it causes a cascade of derpage when you type "sudo apt-get autoremove" basically removing the entire desktop all the way back to nothing necessitting setting a bunch of things as "manually installed." Because some idiot set a hard dependency between the game and one of the basic libraries on r
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Apologies, my suggestion wasn't intended to be mean or insulting. It's just that posts like yours ("it's bad because I say so, but I won't tell you why") are dime a dozen on slashdot, and they really add little value
Thank you for the follow-up, though.
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Then I take back being offended.
It's just that the Kubuntu team has had a wide reputation (fairly earned, imo) for not being the sharpest knives in the drawer. I'm not quite sure who to blame, be it Shuttleworth giving KDE short shrift and not supervising the Kubuntu team when it needed it, or the Kubuntu team under Shuttleworth ignoring his directives without enough planning.
The adoption of KDE 4.0 with no fallback to 3.5.10, when it came out was the harbinger of things to come. The KDE devs clearly told
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I know about the 4.0 fiasco, kubuntu was the prominent distro pushing it despite KDE team's advice, but I thought things have settled since then. At least on Debian, current KDE is awesome.
This Pardus thing looks interesting enough to give it a try in a virtual machine, thanks.
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I'd recommend going a non-Ubuntu route if you want to try KDE out. Kubuntu's implementation is not without its quirks and you may find that other distros offer a more polished (if not vanilla) KDE 4 experience which is actually quite pleasant.
Mod this up. The best KDE experience is #1 openSUSE or #2 Mageia.
KDE User since KDE 2.2.0
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that was true for kubuntu 6.x or 8.x (dunno), where they patched a lot of stuff like ayatana and so on.
But since they said "kubuntu is only second priority", kubuntu just ships vanilla KDE. you may want to use kde-full additionally, to get the whole apps, and not only the ones which are selected for the kubuntu-desktop.
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Try Mint. It was 110% better on my laptop than Ubuntu.
Re:Stable? (Score:4, Informative)
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But they dictate the direction. And they do stuff like patching gtk3 for better support of unity.
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i only know (second hand), that they patch gtk+ to work better with unity. I do not know, if it affects other applications, nothing i would have noted on kubuntu, yet.
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> Canonical has shown no signs of letting up with the crazy
Unity is by far not as unusable and "different" as all the haters make it up to be. In its essence, it a reimplementation of WindowMaker with desktop icons.
I've had Windows users without _any_ prior Linux experience use it intuitively without any difficulty or complaints whatsoever.
The only people who complain about Unity are those who cant believe that Gnome2 was killed and desperately want it back. I know that because I was one of them. Until I
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funny that you would recommend debian for a good KDE experience. KDE issues were the reason I moved from debian wheezy) to arch on the desktop and suddenly all my pet quirks are gone. Just look at kdepim and all the version mixing debian does here, essentially keeping kdepim frozen at some ancient level (4.5x, if memory serves me right) which just doesn't work. Just try syncing a google calendar account (with many different calendars) to KOrganizer and you see what I mean.
At some point in time I had enough
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And if Debian just worked with my wireless, sound and touchscreen out of the box, I would use it instead. But it doesn't. Ubuntu does.
I've been running Fedora+KDE happily for several years now. And with the RPM Fusion repos, I've had no unsupported hardware for at least 3 years. I have to turn off compositing on my antique laptop, but that's about it. I've set up dozens of machines with the same.
Turned an Ubuntu-using friend on to KDE couple weeks ago. Buggy as hell. Pretty sure it's the Ubuntu. But it's okay; he's new to our world. Ubuntu is like training wheels for Linux.
On another note, I tried Mint to see what the fuss was abou
I think KDE (Score:4, Informative)
is the most interesting DE out of the FOSS choices. Enlightenment would be a close second. KDE has everything but the kitchen sink, and it has Kate, a rocking text editor as well as well as K3B, likely the best burning software in FOSS.
Kudos to KDE!
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Software complication (Score:1)
Did anyone else read the title as KDE Software Complication 4.10 RC1?