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KDE GUI

KDE 3.0 Screenshots 359

Posted by timothy from the need-wackier-screenies dept.
Lawrence Teo writes: "The screenshots of the upcoming KDE 3.x are out! More treats for you screenshot-loving people and I-need-my-desktop-to-look-perfect types. :-)" Frankly, they look a lot like ... previous KDE desktops :) That by itself says a lot about how mature KDE has become.
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KDE 3.0 Screenshots More

KDE 3.0 Screenshots

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  • Got there... Excited (Score:3, Informative)

    by SolidCore ( 250574 ) on Thursday November 15, 2001 @04:08PM (#2570906) Homepage
    KDE 3 provides a database-independent API for accessing SQL databases. It provides support for ODBC as well as direct support for Oracle, PostgreSQL and MySQL databases (custom drivers may be added as well). I am really looking forward to this feature, as I am a SQL junkie. If I could backend everything to a SQL database I would.

    • Re:Got there... Excited (Score:4, Informative)

      by furiousgeorge ( 30912 ) on Thursday November 15, 2001 @04:12PM (#2570930)
      >>KDE 3 provides a database-independent API for
      >>accessing SQL databases.

      This isn't coming from the KDE gang..... it's coming from v3.0 of the Qt toolkit. The latest Qt is seriously kick ass....
    • What version of ODBC is supported? I hope it is 3.x which is better than 2.x. Also, what level of complaince. ODBC is a great way to write applications for many different databases with one set of sorce code! This one of the few things I am glad Microsoft copied and improved.
    • If I could backend everything to a SQL database I would.

      I agree, but when will databases be at the point where they can hold images/movies *in* the database, as a column type? My porn collection is cluttered all over my hard drive.

      • Any decent RDBMS has a BLOB (or simmilar) datatype, in which you can store binary data of any size. I've heard many time sof things such as images and even movies stored in here. Just be prepared for some huge database backups!

  • Come on, everyone knows that a modern desktop needs to have excessive animation. I want a parade of dancing midgets everytime I iconify emacs!

    Oh wait, these are just screenshots. Perhaps I just can't see all of the glorious animation? That must be it.
    • Actually, there are animated window widgets! Select the new "Glow" window decoration, hold your mouse over one of the close, minimize, or maximize buttons, and watch the button pulse and glow.

      Plus, there's always Amor [powerup.com.au] for all your "little animated character" needs (also included with KDE in the "toys" package).

      Yessireebob, KDE is one great desktop ;-)

    • Try M-x dancing-midgets-mode

      ;-)

    • Heh. I know you were kidding, but I'm the author of the dotNET style used in two of the new screenshots (possibly more, if there are more than 4 now). In any case, I'm now working on a style with animated text and pushbuttons. If you've got a copy of Qt3, grab http://clee.azsites.org/kde/se7en.tar.bz2 and follow the README. It's like dotNET on crack!

      -clee

      PS : Oh, one other thing. I'm considering renaming the dotNET style to dotORG, due to 1) possible legal ramifications wrt MS and 2) the fact that it could be pronounced 'dotorgy'. heh.

  • Not much change (Score:3, Informative)

    by LinuxGeek8 ( 184023 ) on Thursday November 15, 2001 @04:11PM (#2570920) Homepage
    Well, there's not much change.
    But that was said beforehand, it won't be the big change like going from kde1 to kde2.
    It's more an upgrade to Qt 3, which has as result that kde2 and kde3 are binary incompatible.
    Maybe they are lucky (or not) that it is in about the same timeframe as going from gcc2 to gcc3. All c++ binaries will be broken with or without qt2/qt3 in most major distro's.

    On kernel-cousin I read that a beta version should become available at the end of the month. Might be interesting.

    I just hope that kde 3 will be ready to ship in the new distro's for next year, like Redhat 7.3/8.0 and Mandrake 8.2.

    • Maybe they are lucky (or not) that it is in about the same timeframe as going from gcc2 to gcc3. All c++ binaries will be broken with or without qt2/qt3 in most major distro's.



      No that's not luck. That was a major reason why the desicion was made to move to Qt3 so quickly. This was heavily discussed about 4 months back and finally decided to timeframe the release with g++ 3.1 (because the minor release of g++ will break BC again).



      Don't put it pass the KDE team to coordinate efforts with other projects.

      • g++ 3.1 (because the minor release of g++ will break BC again).
        >>>>>>>>>>>
        Really? I thought 3.0 was supposed to have the set in stone, perfect C++ ABI?
    • Does anyone know if KDE will support the Resize and Rotate extension of Xfree86 4.10 or later?

      Its another piece of Keith Packard niftiness that (among other things) allows the X server to notify the toor window and window manager when the resolution changes.

      This is mainly used to be provide desktops which keep in sync with the display resolution - i.e, so when you change the screen res, you don't have to pan around an oversized desktop.

      Anyone know if theres KDE3 support?

  • Beware... (Score:3, Funny)

    by O2n ( 325189 ) on Thursday November 15, 2001 @04:12PM (#2570926) Homepage
    [...] and the friendly tips from Kandalf.

    "Friendly tips", eh?
    Beware... the PaperClip also started like this... :)

  • Solid Foundation (Score:2, Insightful)

    by rhekman ( 231312 )
    The great thing about the current and especially the next generation of Gnome and KDE is they establish a powerful framework for creating complex apps.

    Evolution and Gnumeric are great examples, as are KOffice and Konqueror.

    I know it's cliche, but I can't wait for Evo 1.0, Gnome 2.0, KDE 3.0, Mozilla 1.0, Abiword 1.0, et al.

    Regards,
    Reid

  • Bad screenshots for showing anti-aliasing (Score:3, Offtopic)

    by jmv ( 93421 ) on Thursday November 15, 2001 @04:13PM (#2570931) Homepage
    Actually, I understand that one of the most important difference between KDE 2 and KDE 3 is anti-aliasing. Unfortunatly, they only have JPEG screenshots, so it's almost impossible to notice the anti-aliasing because of how JPEG works. JPEG encodes pictures in the frequency (DCT) domain, so it has a normal tendency to slightly blur (low-pass) the image (which is OK in most circumstances), which makes is also roughly what the anti-aliasing does.

    However, PNG (or GIF, but if you don't mind the patent issues) would have been a good alternative, as it doesn't have that low-pass effect since it just works by quantizing values (colormap) before a lossless compression (which is the patented part in GIF). Anyone have GIF or PNG screenshots?
    • Actually, I understand that one of the most important difference between KDE 2 and KDE 3 is anti-aliasing.

      Not really -- KDE 2 does anti-aliasing very well. Certainly I at least have a lovely anti-aliased KDE 2.2.1 desktop (using the QNix widget style).

      Also, these screenshots aren't particularly anything special. Take a look at some of the pictures on KDE-Look.org [kde-look.org] for a better idea of how you can theme KDE.
      • The latest versions of Freetype remove a Apple patented method of hinting, which changes the shape of characters to better match the pixels they are displayed on (ensuring that the arms of your `m' character aren't pushed together, for example, despite that at very small resolutions they might render this way).

        Most of the recent KDE2 packages are compiled against the newer freetype, whose output is of slightly inferior quality due to the removal of the code for patented hinting method.
        • I believe that it is XFree86 that actually uses the library to display text. Anyway, it doesn't matter which version of KDE you have, the version that matters is the version of the Freetype library. You can still turn on the patented stuff when you compile the library if you want to, but you have to do it yourself, specifically before you compile. I did it and didn't notice any difference. They have some "auto-hinting" code in the new libraries that simulates the old patented code without the patents. It seems to work pretty well as I couldn't tell the difference after I installed the supposedly better patented one.

          If someone has screenshots to compare the two library versions, I'd be curious.

    • What? KDE 2 had font anti-aliasing, and so does KDE 3. It isn't "better" in KDE 3 or anything (plus it didn't work in CVS for a little while).

      Maybe you're thinking of alpha blending? I hear QT 3 supports alpha blending everywhere using the RENDER extension, which should lead to such eyecandy as full PNG transparency support in Konqueror, alpha-blended icons everywhere (shadows), and cooler themes, among other things. I haven't seen this applied yet, though. You wouldn't see it in any screenshots you could make at this time.

    • Seems like I was wrong about KDE 2 not having anti-aliasing, but my point remains: I think it's bad to make screenshots as JPEG. JPEG is better than GIF/PNG for pictures, but when you want to keep sharp (to the picel) edges and don't have that many colors (compared to a "continuous" image), GIF/PNG are usually better.
      • This is really one of my bette noires. It's one of two simple rules when it comes to image filetypes: if it's raster and it's 'photographic' then use JPEG. If it's more flat in colour or with lots of sharp pixel perfect edges (like a screenshot) use PNG/GIF.

        Anything like a graph or a diagram should be done as vector.

        Very simple rules but nobody seems to teach them. The number of people I come across that do things like saving data plots as JPEGs is not funny. Windows' inability to save useful complete vector formats is definitely a large factor.

        I used to respect Don Knuth. Then I went to his site and he had done screenshots as JPEG. I now wouldn't trust him to set my video ;0).

      • Yeah, but GIF/PNG make huge screenshots.

        The majority of Net users are still on 56k or below.
        • Yeah, but GIF/PNG make huge screenshots.

          That mostly depends on the content of your screenshot. If you're using a theme with a lot of gradients, JPG will be smaller. However, when all you have is a couple different colors and large areas with *exactly* the same pixel value (as is common for not too fancy themes and simple applications), the GIF will be much smaller than JPG, with a much better quality at the same time.
    • Bad screenshots for showing anti-aliasing (Score:5, Offtopic)

      I think some code in Slash needs a couple changes. This is getting ridiculous(I know it's logical given how the system works, but the result is really stupid). Next thing we'll see: "(Score:-1, Insightful)"
      • This happens when someone moderated his comment Offtopic, then posted to the discussion, revoking his scored moderation. The comment remains there, however. So, theoretically, a Score: -1, Insightful would be possible. I suppose it wouldn't be too hard to fix this issue, I mean Slash already stores the type of moderations done to the comment, so when reducing 1 from the score, it could just pick one of the other categories that was used in moderation.
      • Interesting.. I had some moderator points.. let's see if your theory works :)

  • KDE. (Score:3, Insightful)

    by laserjet ( 170008 ) on Thursday November 15, 2001 @04:13PM (#2570935) Homepage
    I remember way back in the day, I thought KDE was an unstable, showy piece of crap. I think a lot of us did. A lot of us didn't even consider KDE over Gnome on our linux box. And I think it is safe to say, and many will agree, that KDE really has done an outstanding job - and that in a relatively short period of time. The screen shots look beautiful, and I wish continued success to the KDE team.

    I think several years ago if I would have placed a bet on which GUI would succeed, I would say Gnome. Now, I wouldn't bet on either - I think both are excelling in their own way. Gnome seems to be the accepted choice that the commercial Unixes are going with, while KDE is doing a fine job of fulfilling the desktop wants and needs, and looking cool at the same time.

    Hats off to the KDE team - their contribution is taken for granted every time you login to your pretty KDE desktop. KDE, thank you.

    • Yup. I tried KDE back in the 1.x days. Was nice, but it just didn't feel right for me, so I stuck with E. Have moved to Gnome and like it, but have just starting noticing that apps are loading slooooooooooooooowly. (Not smart enough to figure out why either.. I think the latest apt-get update grabbed something a little wonky) So I've given KDE a try. Wow. Leaps and bounds better than the old 1.x KDE (in terms of what I like). Am mighty impressed and will probably switch between the two of 'em for the time being.

      Gotta say I'm still pulling for gnome, but either one's fine with me.

  • The big changes aren't visible (Score:5, Insightful)

    by LMCBoy ( 185365 ) on Thursday November 15, 2001 @04:16PM (#2570957) Homepage Journal
    Keep in mind, there isn't much new screen candy in KDE 3.0; a lot of the changes are in the libraries. The biggest change is the port to Qt 3.0, which provides database-aware widgets, improved Qt Designer, bi-di text support, a new regexp class, among other things.

    There are also many new applications being added to KDE.

  • KDE mirror (Score:4, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 15, 2001 @04:19PM (#2570969)
    http://www.uk.kde.org

    Enjoy. Actually, it's not much to look at.

  • arrggg (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Nate Fox ( 1271 ) on Thursday November 15, 2001 @04:22PM (#2570986)
    Frankly, they look a lot like ... previous KDE desktops :) That by itself says a lot about how mature KDE has become.

    Windows 95 looks just like Windows 98. Theres nothing really different, aside from supporting USB. Windows sucks.

    Heard Tori Amos on the radio [kroq.com] this morning. She had a geat quote: Perspective changes whenever you move. Things always look different from another viewpoint.
    Some of the linux zealots need to move around a bit. The view never changes unless you're in front.

    • Re:arrggg (Score:3, Funny)

      by update() ( 217397 )
      Heard Tori Amos on the radio [kroq.com] this morning. She had a geat quote: Perspective changes whenever you move.

      Not (in all seriousness) to knock on anything that provided you with an epiphany but -- that's what perspective _is_. It's like saying that your position changes whenever you move.

    • Re:arrggg (Score:3, Funny)

      by dimator ( 71399 )
      Perspective changes whenever you move. Things always look different from another viewpoint.

      Wow. Bright girl, that tori amos. I remember another poignant quote she had: "When you close your eyes, you can't see anything. Always keep your eyes open to see."

  • Mostly a switch to Qt 3 (Score:4, Informative)

    by InodoroPereyra ( 514794 ) on Thursday November 15, 2001 @04:25PM (#2571003)
    Yes, it may be that it will look a bit prettier. But the major change in KDE 3.0 will be the port of all the apps to Qt 3

    That seems to be the last major change in the libs for a long time. I think they will try to keep a consistent API for a couple years (after 3.0 is released) to let programmers write apps for KDE. I undertand (from previous discussions in the dot [kde.org] ) that they decided to jump to (the apparently much improved) Qt 3 now, spend a few months in the ports and then provide a mature, solid API. I guess they made the right decision.

    Many thanks to the KDE folks,
    -- Don Inodoro

  • current state from a user's perspective: (Score:5, Informative)

    by 7-Vodka ( 195504 ) on Thursday November 15, 2001 @04:36PM (#2571075) Journal
    I've been using the kde development versions from cvs since before kde2 was released.

    I used kde 2 for a while.

    Right now I'm using last night's cvs of kde3 called kde 2.9.0.

    Not much has changed as far as looks go. Here are some changes i've noticed as i have both cvs and 2.2.1 installed on the same machine:

    • Konqueror : slightly different buttons, renders a lot more web pages correctly, deals with POST much better than b4, javascript much improved, slightly different menu workings. Oh, and better filebrowsing look and improved filebrowsing sidebar with more options.
    • Koffice: better .doc support.
    • Kmail: nifty visual improvements, better imap support, loads faster.
    • kdemultimedia: noatun (kde media player) actually works as opposed to 2.2, kaboodle a new useless (for now) little embedded multimedia player mostly works
    • Overall: slight performance increase, slight loading time decrease, better general feel, K menu has a win2k style bar on the left side of it, start splash screen has new spiffy graphics with dragon, pull down menus etc work a little better but look a little larger, slight improvements in konsole, taskbar is different but don't know how, kwin works a little better (not sure whats changed tho)

    Not a huge change as kde1 -> kde2 but enough of one that i always choose my kde3 session instead of kde2.

  • I'd prefer one that worked well and intuitively (Score:3, Insightful)

    by SCHecklerX ( 229973 ) <greg@gksnetworks.com> on Thursday November 15, 2001 @04:47PM (#2571128) Homepage
    More treats for you screenshot-loving people and I-need-my-desktop-to-look-perfect types.

    Looking good is nice. Too bad these environments get it backwards and always focus on form over function first. I'd rather have OS/2's wps on linux updated to be pretty. IBM was smart and actually got the SOM and DSOM and OOI stuff nailed down properly early. Now, if we had that environment to build on, we could make it prettier. Oh well. Windowmaker and ROX do a very nice job for me for now.

  • I wish the KDE people published more binaries during the development, nightly or weekly builds or something. Compiling all the stuff takes several days, and it's usually hellishly difficult to get through compilations successfully.

    SuSE seems to have published a limited 3.0.0 beta1 binaries, but I haven't found them for RH nor Mandrake. Well, RH takes usually a long time to publish even the release versions.

    At one time, I participated in some minor KDE development, but it was somewhat bothersome that I could rarely get even kdelibs compiled easily. It made development a bit difficult sometimes.

    KDE is just so damn big, and the libs change just too much all the time.
    • Are you kidding me? I have yet to see the difficulty in compiling KDE:

      ./configure
      make
      make install

      I was about to compile it on an Athlon 800 in about 4 hours. And that was compiling all the packages in the FTP directory.

      What sorts of problems are you seeing? This isn't a flame or anything, I just have never had a problem getting KDE built before.

      Pbur
    • I wish the KDE people published more binaries during the development, nightly or weekly builds or something. Compiling all the stuff takes several days, and it's usually hellishly difficult to get through compilations successfully.

      During development, they want to focus on development, as opposed to packaging it for Joe Luser. If you want nightly boulds, you could always try CVS (-; If the builds don't work, that in itself is a good reason not to release binaries

      At one time, I participated in some minor KDE development, but it was somewhat bothersome that I could rarely get even kdelibs compiled easily. It made development a bit difficult sometimes.

      If you're participating in development, either stick with a given release or track the CVS tree. If it's really "minor development", you're probably better off doing the former.

  • Mature? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by swordboy ( 472941 ) on Thursday November 15, 2001 @05:38PM (#2571438) Journal
    That by itself says a lot about how mature KDE has become.

    Exactly! now they need to concentrate on other stuff - notably on reducing the learning curve for new (i.e. - Windows) users. Right now, you can't *just* deploy a Linux PC to a former Windows user.

    I suggest a minimal, 'less is more' approach. It would be nice to have an 'interface' button that would be common to all KDE (or even all open source desktops) that users could use to change the look and feel of things. Former Windows users could use a 'Windows' preset that would bring the learning curve up to par for these people. A standard set of 'beginner' through 'advanced' would also be nice followed, of course, by customizable and downloadable versions. Sorta like skinning the whole GUI.

    Now if they could just come up with a standard, easy to use installation utility, then Linux might be viable for the mainstream desktop. Hell - I saw someone who bought a Mac the other day because they just wanted to "surf the web". Now I don't think that this is any worse than buying a Windows based PC, but they could have paid much less if they did and still retained the functionality desired. The bottom line is that I don't like Windows or Mac but I would be hesitant to recommend Linux to this kind of person.

    Sigh...

    • Re:Mature? (Score:3, Informative)

      by HeUnique ( 187 )
      Back at my previous job, I was hired to work at a new start-up where all the workstations are Linux and all developers are ... Windows developers..

      So, I decided to make a small test case - I took 8 machines, installed on 4 of them Ximian GNOME and on the other 4 - full KDE 2.2.1 and I asked the developers to play with those machines and decide which enviroment they want to use.

      2 hours later I got the results from them - all 30 developers wanted KDE, none of them wanted GNOME, and those developers never touched Linux before...

      Just goes to show you that KDE is much better suited for corporate use when your users have used Windows before.

      Of course - the point where there is no MS Office is a PITA, but for that I installed them VMWare and win98+office

  • Why KDE is good. (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Leimy ( 6717 ) on Thursday November 15, 2001 @05:46PM (#2571532)
    I personally don't care if KDE looks like GNOME, OSX, Windows or whatever. The fact is that people can sit down and actually use it. It helps get alternative OS's [FreeBSD & Linux and others] on the desktops of laymen.

    It also has one hell of a cool API if you want to write apps for it and now with language bindings for Java, C and Objective C [Perl? I think] its becoming a better toolkit/framework for application development.

    If you don't like it cuz it looks like windows:

    1) You must really have a chip on your shoulder about windows.

    2) You just want something original.

    Perhaps in KDE's future an ultra configurable Window Manager can be setup to do what YOU want. If there is enough interest it will happen.

    As far as I am concerned I used IceWM and other Win95 looking Window Managers when I first started with linux to help break me in. I can see the need for more or at least different look and feel. WindowMaker is an excellent example but that is a NeXT "ripoff" if you want to call it that.
  • Personally I loved the 1.X series as the application bar/switcher was seperated from the menus/menu-ing system.

    You could have menues and virtual desktop's buttons on the top (as it should be :) ) and application switcher on the bottom (I suppose why I never saw the fuss about the dock in OS X) that would even *switch* between apps on different desktops! Cool.

    Now the "K" bar (or whatever it is called, I forget) is so damn crowded and the move to 2.X or so took the ability to seperate the app switcher bar from the "K" bar... major suckage and I switched to Gnome/sawfish and wanted to go back for that simple functionality.

    Did it ever reappear? I'd consider going back to KDE for its visual appeal and added abilities, but the loss of that one function was enough to make me defect.

    Oh, and someone asked about the "OS X-ness" being noticed...yes.

    I'd venture to call it KDEOSXXP 3.0.
    Rounded buttons of Aqua, flat brite menus of XP.

    Also, I a not an interface designer, but for some odd reason I want/need/wish for would be to have the max/min button on the left (a la Aqua) and the close button/box on the right of a window (a la windows/KDE).

    Maybe this just makes sense to me, dunno.
  • One of the things that I don't like about KDE2 (and what looks to still be a problem in KDE3) is that the Kicker Panel is still not quite extensible enough. I know that you can do all kinds of cool things with it.. but just try moving it around the screen, away from an edge. Try dynamically changing menu items around in the K menu. Things that Windows users have taken for granted for 2 or 3 years are still completely missing. I hope they address these issues soon.

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