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KDE GUI

KDE 2.2 Tagged 286

Posted by Hemos from the keeping-on-keeping-on dept.
ByTor-2112 writes "According to dot.kde.org, KDE 2.2 has been tagged out. Awesome." Plans were originally to release 2.2 today, but scheduled release is now next Monday, to allow some time for more stability/speed work. 2.2 rocks my world. Excellent work on the part of all the KDE developers. Other dates mentioned are 2.2.1 in September, and opening work up on 3.0, which will hopefully come out at the beginning of 2002.
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KDE 2.2 Tagged More

KDE 2.2 Tagged

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  • Ximian's afflicted with mono, which might have something to do with why they can't make up their mind about whether they want their next Gnome to be bonobo-based or not.

    All my karma are belong to your -1 Trolls!

    • Re:In other news... (Score:2, Troll)

      by Anonymous Coward
      FWIW, the Ximian guys (led by Miguel) always wanted GNOME 2.0 to be Bonobo based, while the Red Hat guys (led by Havoc) seem to be avoiding Bonobo at all costs. The fact that the GNOME core won't be Bonobo-ized for 2.0 provides some insight into which company has more clout in the project.

      • Re:In other news... (Score:3, Insightful)

        by Harvey ( 22651 )
        The only reason that the GNOME core won't be bonoboized is if there isn't enough time before the freeze to do it in. (The GNOME guys are really serious about getting the release out in a timely fashion, they set an early freeze date of July 31 and limited the feature set due to that.) Havoc never had any objections to the GNOME core being bonoboized, the argument was about his library (GConf) being replaced for GNOME 2.0 without his knowledge. The gnome-core maintainers have always planned on bonoboizing the panel (Vertigo), nautilus already uses bonobo, and the control-center is moving away from any embedding mechanism, which was a joint decision with both the Ximian guys (Chema, Zaphod) and Havoc.

        Sorry for drifting so far off-topic...
  • ...because the visual style just looks more refined. I don't know about you, but I choose desktop environments based on visual style alone.

    :-)

    I'm updating my installs the day it is released, just like I did with GNOME.

    Apologies to any GNOME entusiasts for the comment. I like GNOME. I like GTK+. I like puppies, but not as much as GTK+.

  • Desperately hoping for non-Linux support (Score:5, Interesting)

    by devphil ( 51341 ) on Monday August 06, 2001 @02:44PM (#2117885) Homepage


    Great. I'm very glad to see that KDE is making headway. (Now if they'd just fix the minor security hole in their screensavers...) I'll be upgrading my Linux desktop for 2.2 pretty soon.

    I just wish installing KDE on Solaris was as simple. Non-Linux situations just don't receive as much attention as they need to if KDE is really going to live up to its cross-platform promise. I've converted some of my Solaris users to KDE on the strength of the 1.1.2 release alone; if I can give them 2.2 on the SPARCs as soon as it appears on the x86s, I'll have won them over, I think. :-)

    (They really like browsing the contents of a tar file in Konqueror. But they still laugh when the "system information" screen complains that it can't find the IRQs in use, or the game controllers, or any of the other all-the-world's-a-PC things. Enh, it's a start...)

    • I have been installing KDE on Solaris for a couple of years now. I've added patches for features like audio support for Solaris and I tracked down a nasty konsole bug that would cause it to constantly crash on Solaris.
      KDE 2.1.1 compiles and installs with a little bit of work on Solaris. You first must download and install the latest Solaris patches due to some bugs in X. There arn't too many add on packages required for Solaris, unlike Gnome.
      You need GCC, some libraries like libjpeg, and QT, of course.

      It would be nice if a standard package were available for Solaris, though.

      I havn't tried 2.2 yet.

      -Aaron

    • I just wish installing KDE on Solaris was as simple.

      PatriotSoft [patriotsoft.com] makes Solaris 8 KDE packages. Only catch is they replace Sun's dtgreet logo with their own but that is easily fixed. We have been using their KDE 1.x package in production where I work for 1.5 years now. The KDE 2.x stuff seems to have problems when you logon on graphically more than once but that might be fixed now (run the control panel while logged in twice but only on a box no one cares about).

      You can get the packages at: ftp://ftp.patriots.net/pub/solaris_packages/8-Spar c/KDE/ [patriots.net]

      -- Argel
      Give a man a fish and he'll eat for a day. Teach a man to fish and he'll get hit by a nuclear submarine.

  • KDE 2s2 feature depth is astounding (Score:5, Informative)

    by benploni ( 125649 ) on Monday August 06, 2001 @02:43PM (#2119611) Journal
    You simply must spend time diggin through all that 2.2 offers before offering an opinion on it. The depth of available features are astounding.

    For example, I *love* how finegrained Konqueror's support for cookie and javascript is. You can specify particular sites that allowed to run javascript, to the exculsion of all others.

    Kasbar, the newly spiffed up task switcher, pop up a scaled down screenshot of the app whose icon your mouse is hovering over. This makes it WAY easier to pick the web browser windows you REALLY meant.

    Konqueror's support for file-data-as-the-icon has truly matured. It renders text, html, pics, postscript and pdf, alphablending in the normal icon underneath the data. Sweet and really effective for me.

    KMail gives surprising good control of mail. Some of the options make procmail unecessary, except for really advanced stuff. ANd it supports IMAP now.

    Konsole may be a bit bulky for a shell, but I love having a menu listing all my nachines on the network, giving me one click ssh to them, all in one manageable window.

    How many times have you seen a newbie click the icon to launch a program, get tired of waiting for it to come up, and click it again? Of course, two copies get launched, confusing the user. Well, KDE now "attaches" the 16x16 icon of th program you asked to launch to the mouse cursor, throbbing gently until the app comes up. this gives *useful* feedback to the user. Not only does it tell them that something is happening(which an hourglass can do), but it tells them what is being launched, boosting their confidence.

    The kicker can now take up less than the full screen. The default is not to have a handle on the left, making good use of Fitt's law; slam the mouse to the lower left and you are *sure* to get the Start Menu when you click.

    KDE is full of wonderful touches. Keep digging, you'll be pleasantly surprised, constantly :-)
    • The kicker can now take up less than the full screen. The default is not to have a handle on the left, making good use of Fitt's law; slam the mouse to the lower left and you are *sure* to get the Start Menu when you click.

      <pick mode=nit>
      I notice things like that. But if they decided to do that, why the hell didn't they do the opposite: on maximized windows, slamming the mouse to the upper right should land you a click a away from the "X" for closing the window, but it doesnt. Every time, I have to look after "slamming" and move the mouse slightly down, and left. Not smart design.

      </pick>
    • KDE now "attaches" the 16x16 icon of th program you asked to launch to the mouse cursor, throbbing gently until the app comes up. this gives *useful* feedback to the user.

      Holy crap, that's great. Just my luck, my posts are typically so full of sarcasm, that no one will think I'm serious here, but I am. People do the "double-click... double-click again" thing all the time. I've been using computers for a couple decades now, and I still do it on occasion, because there isn't any feedback. KDE just solved a long, long time problem. I hope other Operating Systems steal this idea and improve upon it. Unfortunately, Microsoft won't on principle: they'll say the "idea" is "infected" with the GPL (argh, there's that sarcasm again, I've got to get rid of it).

    • If anybody wonders what Fitt's law is, here ya go [kde.org].
    • I *love* how finegrained Konqueror's support for cookie and javascript is. You can specify particular sites that allowed to run javascript, to the exculsion of all others.
      You're right, the basic cookie and javascript permission features are very good. But what makes Konqueror cookie management really shine is the way it's implemented at the user level. If you choose to filter your cookies manually, you can accept or reject cookies from whole domains with a single click. Before you know it, you have a cookie policy that accepts legitimate cookies from all your favorite sites, and permanently filters out abusive usage-tracking cookies. From that point on, cookies are something you only think about briefly, each time you visit a new site. Very, very cool.

      My only complaint is that there isn't a similar automatic feature for Javascript.

  • ./ed (Score:4, Funny)

    by xZAQx ( 472674 ) <zrizer@@@sbcglobal...net> on Monday August 06, 2001 @02:42PM (#2121394) Homepage
    poor little dot server. it goes down for like a week or something, and now it's being slashdotted.
    maybe they should switch to an IIS server
    if you think that was anything other than a joke, kill yourself; you're stealing my oxygen

  • I'm a disappointed GNOME user... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by erroneus ( 253617 ) on Monday August 06, 2001 @02:40PM (#2125981) Homepage
    I really really am. I use GNOME and have virtually ignored KDE with extreme prejudice. I know it is rather small-minded of me but at least I admit it.

    I love the progress that KDE has been making. It has been steady and strong. I love the sane orderly and approach that KDE has taken from the beginning.

    Originally, I hated KDE because of the non GPL issue. Now that is resolved. Next I hated it because it lacked nice eye candy. There have been terrific improvements in the theming department though there is more to go before it wins me over. I still don't like the lack of choice in window managers but I'm having second thoughts on that position since by only having one WM, more uniform configurability is possible.

    I still hate that seemingly everything has an inappropriate use of "K" in there somewhere. Of course GNOME stuff is prone to the same problem, but you have to understand, I'm in the U.S. and it reminds us of K-Mart... bleah... white trash... too much associative crap associated with "K" words.

    Just the other day I was wishing KDE and GNOME would just merge.

    And where is GNOME's promised 2.0 release!?!? I'm getting seriously disillusioned. I think when I install this RedHat 7.2(beta) I'll give KDE a try... nothing new for me to see with the GNOME 1.4 there anyway.

    Damnit Miguel?!?! What happened to the enthusiasm and momentum?! Put your marketting hat on!
    • There doesn't seem to be much difference between the two Desktop Environments. It's largely a matter of personal taste as to which one people prefer.

      The big difference to me seems to be between the apps. Here GNOME is racing ahead: Gnumeric, Gstreamer, Nautilus, The Gimp, Gnucash, Abiword, Open Office, Evolution, Galeon, Sodipodi etc, etc are all well ahead of their KDE counterparts. The apps where KDE has the edge are very few. There's Kdevelop, and that's about it

    • Mandrake's distro is trailored for quite seamless use of KDE. RedHat is not and, frankly, I've been disappointed in RedHat's KDE offering to the point where I dropped it. Of course, now they're going to take it more seriously, but I'm still tired of RH and their crap.
      • This is exactly why we have switched to Suse from RedHat. RedHat KDE packaging is very disappointing, so we decided to switch all our 4 Linux PCs to SuSe since we have decided to use KDE as desktop. We are frankly very satisfied with Suse 7.2 and I would not go back to RH.

    • Re:I'm a disappointed GNOME user... (Score:5, Informative)

      by Skeezix ( 14602 ) <jamin@pubcrawler.org> on Monday August 06, 2001 @03:09PM (#2163653) Homepage
      And where is GNOME's promised 2.0 release!?!? ... Damnit Miguel?!?! What happened to the enthusiasm and momentum?! Put your marketting hat on!

      Huh? Do you even remotely keep a watch of the GNOME community? A couple months ago the GNOME 2.0 schedule was released and things are moving along pretty much as planned. A 2.0 API freeze just occured [gnome.org], activity on the lists and in CVS is dramatically rising. We've had recent releases of the new Control Center [gnome.org], a brand new AbiWord [abisource.com], second Beta of Evolution [ximian.com], new releases of development tools gIDE [gnome.org] (screenshot [ximian.com]) and DevHelp [codefactory.se] (screenshot [codefactory.se]), a new file selection dialog [bug-buddy.org], etc...I could go on. I suggest you at least read the GNOME Summaries [gnome.org] or check out Gnotices [http] every now and then.

      • Cool, a new File Selection dialog [bug-buddy.org] - I wonder if the files now have icons and... what's this...?

        AAAHHHH!!!

        That's the goddamn Windows 2K file selection dialog, with the same damned problems it has.

        Has anyone at GNOME ever done task analysis about what the user is most likely going to be doing when trying to save a file? While the shortcut bar to the left is nice (and I truly hope there's some obvious way to add new shortcuts, via the dialog), the most common task is to find the folder where the file either is (on open) or should be (on save) - ie, a tree view of files, or a separate list of folders from the list of available files. The old Gnome dialog used to separate the folders from the files - the new one apparently doesn't [bug-buddy.org] (although that completion is nice) - although there is evidently a mode to set it to [bug-buddy.org].

        Given that the dialog is already so damned big, couldn't a tree view be placed somewhere? And I really hope the greyed-out Folder icon next to the file type drop-down is "Create New Folder," another very common task when saving files - all the examples are evidently showing a file being opened, so I suppose removing the option on open sorta makes sense - although disabling it on open is a bad idea, IMHO.

      • This is my opinion, but its shared by a lot of people. What the hell, its only karma...

        I use three main PCs, each with 128MB or more of RAM, and one with 640MB. They're all PII 400 or better. I update GNOME to the latest stable Ximian every day. see lots of news on the GNOME lists about the new CC, and Bonobo vs GNOME flamewars, but I've yet to see a version of Nautilus with a useable UI, which responds to mouse clicks, can quickly show the contents of directories, can actually surf the web like it was goddamned supposed to, can edit launchers without a text editor, can edit menus without a text editor, and do other things that other desktops can. And if I can somehow do this, then why it is so damn obscure I can't find it, when GMC was entirely understandable, if featureless.

        All GNOME 1.4 game me was antialiased fonts for the desktop and Nautilus which should have been introduced in GNOME 2 via XRender, a file manager that doesn't fucking work, and a better file open and save dialog box.

        That said, the newfile open / save dialog and CC look OK. As in, they don everything they're supposed to and nothing else. But how long does it take?
    • Well, first off, I'll disclaim this whole thing by letting it be known that I'm a self-acclaimed GNOME zealot, and proud of it! None the less, I think I can be objective enough about this to be worth listening to... :)

      Anyhow, allow me to retort.

      I love the progress that KDE has been making. It has been steady and strong.

      GNOME is still moving along at a great pace too, but much of their work is on the backend right now, developing libraries, APIs, etc, rather than just new apps based on the old libraries.

      Also, GNOME is planning a 1.4.1 release which really cleans up on the 1.4 release - lots of changes and improvements have been made based on all the feedback the developers have gotten from everyone who's been using GNOME 1.4 (like Nautilus - WOAH is it faster now! 1.0.4 beats the crap out of older releases for speed and usability, and is finally becoming a viable "everyday" file manager. It's still a little "pudgy" memory-wise, but with SDRAM prices where they are, this is less of an issue than speed, IMHO)

      I still don't like the lack of choice in window managers but I'm having second thoughts on that position since by only having one WM, more uniform configurability is possible.

      See Ximian's "Metatheme" for your answer, my good man. If you're using Ximian's GNOME 1.4 (Highly recommended!), you can get Metatheme from the "Ximian Preview Channel" in Red Carpet. Otherwise, just go to ftp://ftp.ximian.com/pub/metatheme/ for all your metatheme needs!

      Just the other day I was wishing KDE and GNOME would just merge.

      heh.... maybe when Satan ice skates to work and opens up a sno-cone stand. ;) Seriously, though, having 2 desktops is a GOOD thing! Linux, if anything is about Freedom and choice; combining the projects is not only technologically unfeasable, it's foolish. What we all *should* be hoping for is further development on standards to help KDE and GNOME play nicely together, ie: universal Drag'n'Drop, similar menu system, etc... This would be more than enough, really. I have a GNOME desktop, but I have tried a KDE app or two in the past, and they work fine, so where's the problem? :)

      I hope this answers some of your questions - and feel free to try KDE - as much as I *personally* think Gnome is far superior, it may not be what's right for you. If KDE suits your needs better than Gnome, so be it! (that's where that *choice* I brough up earlier comes in!)

    • Hey,

      Someone already posted a very nice list of projects that are being developed for GNOME, new projects: DevHelp and GIDE (it even has an integrated debugger!).

      A new File Selector widget; A new control center that is very pretty and integrates system adminisrtation tools (the Setup Tools which are a cross platform set of tools for doing system configuration).

      On the GNOME 2.0 front: we are frozen now (a lot of work has gone in there): Bonobo is now split into UI and non-UI pieces, so it can finally become a full component system for Unix. Gnome Print is much more advanced (six months of development, polishing and improvements ;-).

      Evolution is of course one of the bits that has me super excited. Beta2 just came out, and there are so many features, productivity and usability that you will be amazed. Give it a spin, you can install it very easily:

      lynx -source http://go-gnome.com | sh

      (Do that as root).

      We also have a new desktop-wise theme engine, that enables you to build themes that encompass all the system: Nautilus theme, Gtk+ theme, window manager theme, Gnome libraries theme (and it has a pluggable architecture).

      The Setup Tools have reached maturity, and support many different systems: one UI to manage all the systems. It also comes with the time-travel feature, and we will be moving towards supporting small clusters (mostly for managing computer labs and small clusters).

      Our HTML editor is extremely good, one of the best out there in the market. How to you use it?

      Just create a moniker:

      moniker-test -c OAFIID:GNOME_GtkHTML_Editor

      Or from your application, just embed it like this:

      w = bonobo_get_object ("OAFIID:GNOME_GtkHTML_Editor");

      Full with table editing, templtaes, full undo, etc.

      On the GtkHTML2 side of things the guys at CodeFactory have a full CSS2 implementation (complete, not a partial one) plus DOM support and god so many features.

      Gtk+2 is also packed with features, too many to list: double buffering rendering all across the place; Simplified API; Support for Pango (everyone who has seen pango loves it); New model-view widgets and oh man. So much. So much. I can not even make sense.

      Some technologies are available on GNOME 1.4, some will be out with GNOME 1.4.1. Many of these are scheduled for GNOME 2, by the end of the year.

      Accesibility is another major improvement that comes with GNOME 2, all contributed by Sun. All these features bring GNOME into a more mature level and a complete product that will help us regain the desktop market share.

      You can help make this dream a reality, just join us in the effort to improve GNOME and make it perfect.

      I am missing too many things, and I apologize for those hackers working steadily on all those pieces of GNOME that are going continously into the tree. But there is way too much going on in the GNOME world.

      Miguel.
      • "All these features bring GNOME into a more mature level and a complete product that will help us regain the desktop market share."

        Now, without meaning to be flamebait, but does anyone else find it a little unnerving when a open-source project leader starts talking about "desktop market share" in relation to another open-source 'competitor'?

        I thought there was more to open-source then market share...

      • lynx -source http://go-gnome.com | sh

        dude, that is too sick. far too sick.

        but aside from the fact that i'm floored by your hoopy voodoo hack, i have a fundamental objection to asking people to run a shell script (as root!) without having them look at it. true, you never said "don't read it, just run it." but shouldn't we be discouraging this "su and say" behavior? especially just having people run a shell script that's stored remotely. making things easy to install is good, but "configure && make && make install" is good enough for me. (although i don't even encourage that. do a "./configure --help" first and decide what you really want/need. and do a "make -n install" to try and figure out what's going where in case things break.) A lot of people prefer package management schemes like rpm or apt, but i always feel like i lack a degree of control when i use those. anything past installing rpms is going too far for ease of use. (note to those who think my grandma should be able to use linux: i never said there couldn't be a gui frontend to rpm.)

        • You forgot at least one step. You do have the person read and understand the Makefile, right? I mean, you don't really expect them to "make install" without checking out what is going to happen first. Especially when it's a Makefile that's was stored remotely! Actually, you do mention "make -n" but only to see what's going on when things break.

          The reality is that there is a certain level of trust involved in downloading and installing software. If a black hat wants to replace some well known installation package with a trojan, it doesn't really matter whether it's being installed via "lynx -source | sh" or "configure && make && make install". Some people will download the go-gnome.com script and check it out. Most won't. Some people look at Makefile's before they "make install". Most don't. make is just as powerful a scripting language as sh, so it's not like one is "safer" to run as root than another. I agree that it certainly feels as though one is safer than the other, but if you think about it for a little bit, they are basically equivalent. Actually, it's easy to prove that they are equivalent. A Makefile can execute any arbitrary shell script that happens to have been downloaded with the tarball. A shell script can include a Makefile which it saves and make's. Any task which can be performed with one can be performed with the other!

          In the end, the go-gnome.com trick is a really easy way to bootstrap yourself into having Gnome running. It's something that anybody can run. And yes, they are putting a lot of trust in the source of the shell script. Just like they would be doing if they downloaded tarballs and compiled them. Two paths to the same place with equivalent risk levels. The difference is, a newbie user might get one of them to work. Unless things have changed drastically, trying to compile Gnome from scratch is a challenge even if you have a lot of Linux experience. Last time I tried it, I ended up chasing down to about third-order dependencies before giving up. I don't think a Linux newbie has a chance in hell of compiling Gnome from scratch.

          • more installation packages should be set up in such a way that they can be installed as NON-ROOT, goddammit.
            not only is this totally insecure, but all users without root access are utterly fucked when they want to install some custom software and

            configure --prefix=${HOME}

            does not happen to work.

  • Damn! Just when I realized (thanks bero!) that there will be no 2.2 beta packages for Redhat and went ahead and installed the CVS snapshots from Roswell (and a long train of dependencies along with them), now they had to release the final. Aargh...

  • Quick release (Score:5, Interesting)

    by chill ( 34294 ) on Monday August 06, 2001 @02:37PM (#2126626) Journal
    This sort of short update schedule, etc. is great. I've always like that about OpenBSD (new version every 6 months) and if I remember correctly, Linus had made comments about trying to get the Kernel on that type of track as well.

    Fewer "massive" changes that take 2 years to complete and more "evolutionary" style.

    Whatever happened to that idea? (Officially)
    • Fewer "massive" changes that take 2 years to complete

      Yeah, like everybody's favorite compiler... It stalled for a year or so due to political arguments, hence the EGCS fork. After the FSF formally handed control of GCC to EGCS, the team got the 2.95 series out the door... but it still took forever to get 3.0 released. Afterwards, everybody sat down and said, "Okay, now that that's done, what could be improved?" and the result is the new development plan [gnu.org]. The 3.0.1 code should be freezing in another ten days or so.

      I suspect that this is just part of the growth of projects. A massive growth spurt (fast development) followed by a slowing and ossifying, followed by a clean-out-the-crap cycle which leads to a growth spurt...

      and more "evolutionary" style.

      You realize that can mean anything you want it to mean, right? It's way too vague of a term.

    • Re:Quick release (Score:3, Informative)

      by Spy Hunter ( 317220 )
      KDE is sticking to a short release philosophy even for 3.0. The transition to 3.0 will be nothing like the long transition from 1.1.2 to 2.0. Basically 3.0 will be almost a direct port of KDE 2 to QT3 (of course adding a few new features though).

      The big reason for the major version number change is binary compatibility. KDE 3 will be using QT3 and GCC 3.0, which will both break binary compatibility with KDE 2. At the same time, the KDE guys will use the opportunity to fix any problems that have been uncovered with the 2.0 API (since the API can't be changed much without breaking compatibility). Therefore, KDE 3.0 should be a very stable desktop (since it's not a complete rewrite), based on the newest and best in Open-Source technology, with refined APIs for developers.

      Once 3.0 is out, they plan to standardize on it for a long time to allow a large application base to build up. Of course in the meantime they will make lots of point releases with the great new functionality we've come to expect from KDE releases.

      The future looks bright :-)

      • Re:Quick release (Score:2, Interesting)

        by mimbleton ( 467957 )
        "Once 3.0 is out, they plan to standardize on it for a long time to allow a large application base to build up. "

        That depends on Trolls schedule....
        I doubt KDE folks will resist temptation to upgrade to 4.0 Qt ...

  • Great timing (Score:4, Funny)

    by gmhowell ( 26755 ) <gmhowell@gmail.com> on Monday August 06, 2001 @02:24PM (#2136388) Homepage Journal
    Great timing with this release. I figure by the time my infant gets into college, this'll show up in Debian stable.

    (Blah, blah, blah. I use Progeny. Now go away Debian flamers, it's a joke.)

    • Don't worry, it will normally be there soon enough in unstable/testing which is actually as usable as any other Debian around, provided you remember to apt-get on a regular basis...
      But, hey, are there still decent geeks using the "stable" Debian?
    • Funny? I obviously agree with that.
      Flamebait? Okay, in retrospect, probably.
      Overrated? Okay, now that is the moderation of a karma whore, afraid to get fucked in M2.

  • Everyone is talking about how good KDE is. Maybe I'll try it. I want to list a few of the biggest hangups I have with UI's that I hope KDE or someone else would address 1) bottom line everything should be fast and responsive. Wanna switch between many apps? Should be no problem. Apps should launch instantly 2) a directory system that makes sense. Everything should make should be in its place: apps shouldn't touch a "Windows" folder. A "bin" is where you put garbage-not files. Come on guys 3) I understand the idea of a commandline but what we have now is either inadequate (DOS) or completely unintuitive (bash). Come on like I'm supposed to figure out that 'ls' lists the directory? What the heck is 'grep' supposed to be? Please use or refer to real English words or even better-make it localizable so the rest of the world can be more productive. 4) I would like to be able to say "I want mozilla to open all my html files except pistachio.html and everything in the webwork folder. I want Go Live Pro to open those" 5) kill the refresh button/menu option. If something is updated I want to see it immediately
    • You're asking for things to be changed (directory structure, command names, etc) that are absolutely nothing to do with, and therefore beyond the control of, the KDE team.

      If you dislike that many fundamental things about Linux that much, then it simply isn't the right OS for you.

      Point 4) simply isn't possible right now, on any platform I've ever heard of. Sorry, but you're at least a decade ahead of us there.

      5) is actually being worked on - for more information, go to http://oss.sgi.com/projects/fam for more information. Note though that this project is in development, and requires you to patch and recompile your kernel - more unintuitive stuff, I'm afraid :) The only thing I'm aware of that uses it is Enlightenment 0.17 and it's file manager, but I've not yet managed to get that compiled and running (only tried briefly during a quiet period at work)

      Cheers,

      Tim
      • Point 4) simply isn't possible right now, on any platform I've ever heard of. Sorry, but you're at least a decade ahead of us there

        In AmigaOS you could set the program that opens an file on a per file basis.

        I haven't used it for years, but if it still worked the way it did back then, HTML files would get a default browser, but you could bring up the File Info dialog and change it.

        • It's been a long, long time since I used my Amiga (I doubt I could even find all the bits now), so I'll trust you on that one.

          However, being able to open some files in one app and others in another wasn't what I was nay-saying. I interpreted the original point literally - ie that the poster wanted to be able to "say" to his computer "do this for me" as though speaking to a human. That's (probably) the Holy Grail of HCI - enabling people to literally say to their machine "reopen that letter I was working on last night, bring up Slashdot, oh and start an email to my brother...".

          Rereading it, I probably did misread it, but s/he did say "I'd like to be able to say..." :)

          Cheers,

          Tim
  • I am runing 2.2 beta and here are some new things that I discovered in konqueror:

    An interesting (and very usefull) feature is that Konqueror will show the HTML DOM Tree, therefore making much easier to study a document structure.

    Another very important tool is the web archive (something I've been waiting for a long time) - it makes you a tar with a html and all the pictures, a complete web page (Opera had this also but it didn't compress). Web archives can be opened directly in konqueror.

    You can validate html's directly from konqueror toolbar, and from the same toolbar you can use babelfish to translate pages.

    In the file manager you can see thumbnails of ps and pdf pages now, (up to 2.2 you could see html, text and images).

    Sorin M

  • irc party (Score:3, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 06, 2001 @02:53PM (#2163562)
    For more information on KDE, the release and support for 2.2, please visit irc.openprojects.net #kde-users. For anyone interested in the development path that we'll be taking in the future, discussions about that will happen on the mailing lists (lists.kde.org) and #kde. Please do not fill #kde with support related questions... go to #kde-users for that if possible. Thanks, and enjoy the release. Troy Unrau troy@kde.org

  • Screenshot links? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Matt2000 ( 29624 ) on Monday August 06, 2001 @03:01PM (#2163603) Homepage

    I can't find any. Can someone relpy with some links for all?

    Thanks.
  • Just give me the libraries for KDE so I can continue to run the programs in their new and improved form on my AfterStep desktop.

    Yes, even with 1.x Ghz CPU and 1 Gig RAM, KDE is still a pain and I don't particularly like the way it's set up. If I wanted to run Windows, I would. I LIKE my 18 desktops and low overhead of Afterstep and the automount thing is a pain in the neck when you're running VMWare. I'm sure you can turn it off, but is that not what Linux is good for, the choices?

    But, the libraries are great, then you can run the programs without the KDE overhead.

    DanH
    • Much of the "KDE overhead" is the dynamic linking of KDE applications. The number of symbols imported from the libs is enormous, and running KDE seems to reduce this overhead with kdeinit.

      Don't use the analogy to Windows, because the similarity to Windows ends with the default (and themable/replacable) looks. You can have 18 desktops in KDE, and I'm not quite sure Afterstep has less overhead than the KDE2 Window manager (KWin).
      If you don't like the panel - KDE doesn't require you run it.
      If you don't like the window frames - replace the window decorations.
      If you don't like the widget set style - change the theme.
      KDE runs a bunch of lightweight applications in the background to manage things, and your machine can handle those easily.
      BTW: Run some KDE app with stdout/stderr visible, and see if it doesn't spawn a DCOP Server/etc (what you call KDE overhead).. I wonder if you were running apps with the 'KDE Overhead' all the time and never even noticed it :P

  • I wonder if gcc/g++ 3.0 will make kde3.0 faster (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Billly Gates ( 198444 ) on Monday August 06, 2001 @03:32PM (#2163775) Journal
    I like c++ alot. I just think the fsf version of it really sucks. I love tail-recursion and the way c++ does handles. I believe oop can really make gui development faster and more bug-free if its done right. I hate gnome's c++ like hack written in c.

    Anyway the orignally arguement why c was the defacto standard in gnome and not c++ was that g++ was mediocre and sucked really bad on anything non-intel. The other one was that comprises in the core QT libraries had to be made so it could compile under g++. This slowed kde down quite alot. I know alot of c die hards like to blame c++ on this but I believe its due to limitation in the g++ compiler. I noticed some code really runs fast on Visual c++ and runs slower and is more bloated on linux with gcc. Anyway I would love to see faster load times on kde3.0.

    Do any of you know if the new compiler can help make kde3.0 run better?

    • Re:I wonder if gcc/g++ 3.0 will make kde3.0 faster (Score:5, Informative)

      by mandolin ( 7248 ) on Monday August 06, 2001 @05:09PM (#2164447)
      I just think the fsf version of it really sucks

      Well, like, that's just your opinion, man :) could you elaborate on which parts (in gcc 3.0?)

      I noticed some code really runs fast on Visual c++ and runs slower and is more bloated on linux with gcc.

      gcc's prime advantage over compilers like vc++ is retargetability/portability and (nowadays) standards compliance, not speed (tho it tries).

      Anyway I would love to see faster load times on kde3.0.

      That's actually a run-time linker (not compiler) issue. (read the dot or the kde mailing lists for more) .. "kdeinit" is at least partly a hack to get the load times down. They're still working for more improvements on the kde end, but the last word will be when the binutils guys get their linker more optimized for c++ code.

      Do any of you know if the new compiler can help make kde3.0 run better?

      Not yet. gcc3.0 has some bugs (again, they're working on it) that causes it to miscompile parts of kde. These issues ought to be resolved by kde3.0 time.

    • Waldo Bastian's document demonstrates that the current g++ implementation generates lots of expensive run-time relocations. This translates into the slow startup of large C++ applications (KDE, StarOffice, etc.). The attached program "objprelink.c" is designed to reduce the problem. Expect startup times 30-50% faster.

      The Dot [slashdot.org]

      /me smiles :)
  • How is xinerama support in kde nowadays? I'd love to use it but since enlightenment seems to be the only window manager/desktop environment to reasonably support two or more monitors I think that I'm stuck with it..
    • sawfish seemed to like xinerama just fine for me, and i hear that window maker also supports it.

      sawfish seemed (at the time, before gnome 1.4) to have a few bugs with window positioning - i had a 19" at 1600x1200, and 4 15"ers at 1024x768 - sometimes a window would end up in the "dead space" above one of the 15" screens. but windows would maximize correctly (maximized on _that_ screen, not across all 5) and everything seemed generally to be working well.
    • XFree's Xinerama extension is fully supported - no more windows right between your monitors, and it works quite nicely (tested on my G400 + 2 20" monitors on 1280x1024)...

      Of course - it really depends if your packager compiled the KDE with Xinerama or without it...

  • I want to express my heartfelt thanks to the KDE team. KDE is amazing.
  • I hope RedHat 7.x binary RPMs will be available SOON after the release this time. We didn't get the RPMs for the latest beta release at all (or at least I didn't find them).

    RedHat doesn't seem to take packaging too seriously, unlike Mandrake, Suse and Debian, which typically provide the packages in just a few days.

    I'm not quite sure why I haven't yet switched from using RedHat. I guess there was some reason, I always seem to forget what.

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