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KDE GUI

KDE 3.0.1 Ships 237

Posted by Hemos from the heading-out-the-door dept.
Andreas "Dre" Pour writes "Short on the heels of the remarkably successful launch of the KDE 3 series with a very stable and complete KDE 3.0 last month, the KDE Project has announced the immediate availability of KDE 3.0.1. While primarily a translation release, it also squashes some bugs, including some minor security issues with the HTML engine. Read the (relatively short) announcement and the fairly complete ChangeLog for more info. Binary packages are already available from the stalwart KDE packagers at Compaq Tru64, Conectiva Linux, Mandrake Linux and SuSE Linux. As always, we hope you enjoy the latest and greatest KDE!"
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KDE 3.0.1 Ships More

KDE 3.0.1 Ships

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  • arts
    Build fixes

    It seems to be that we finally have GCC3 support :)

    • Re:GCC3 Support? (Score:5, Informative)

      by Ween ( 13381 ) on Thursday May 23, 2002 @08:08AM (#3571438)
      and to reply to my own post, here it is from the announcement

      KDE will not compile properly with gcc versions earlier than gcc-2.95, such as egcs-1.1.2 or gcc-2.7.2, or with unpatched versions of gcc 3.0.x. However, KDE should compile properly with gcc 3.1

      • Re:GCC3 Support? (Score:2, Informative)

        by stilborne ( 85590 )
        i can attest that it does indeed compile properly with gcc versions earlier than gcc-2.95 as i build it daily on a box with egcs 1.1.2. there are no guarentees it will remain compileable with egcs 1.1.2 in the future, though it probably will at least until i upgrade this machine here ;-)

  • KDE (Score:1, Flamebait)

    by iomud ( 241310 )
    Too bad debian doesnt enjoy any kde 3.x release...yet.

    • Re:KDE (Score:1, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward
      There are experimental kde 3.0 debs available. See here [calc.cx] for more info.

    • Re:KDE (Score:3, Informative)

      by jonathan_ingram ( 30440 )
      KDE 3 (as well as XFree 4.2) is not going into Debian at least until Woody is released. In addition, Debian will be switching to using GCC 3.1 as the main compiler after Woody, so you'll probably have to wait for that to happen as well.

      Until then, use the unofficial debs in the post immediately above. Note that there are several packages (such as kdegames and kdeartwork) which are not included, as calc is not their maintainer (I wish he were - I miss the 'Glow' window theme and 'Shisen-Sho' :) )

    • Re:KDE (Score:3, Informative)

      by Jaldhar ( 24002 )

      At this point it is the freeze which has held up adding new packages it seems. In the mean time some of the Debian packagers have made their .debs available by other means. Here are the lines for /etc/apt/sources.list:

      Chris Cheney: kdelibs, kdebase, kdenetwork, kdemultimedia, kdegraphics, kdeutils, kdepim
      deb http://www.ping.uio.no/~mortehu/kde-i386 ./

      Ben Burton: kdesdk,kdeaddons,kdetoys,kdeedu,koffice(not there yet)
      deb http://people.debian.org/~bab/kde3 ./

      I assume the other packages are being worked on by their respective maintainers.

    • True. I want KDE for my Debian desktops as well. At least when it finally does arrive it will have several months worth of bugfixes and polish. It's a pity that their release freeze came with all of this good stuff just down the road....Gnome 2, Mozilla 1.0, KDE 3.0.x......

      Since Sid (unstable) is the gateway to Testing (Woody about to supplant Potato) it can't even be had from there. The real pisser is that once Woody releases and this all good stuff shows up in Sid it will be wise to wait for it to come to testing(next codename?). The very first truly new bits of software to go in are apt (heh heh!) to be flaky. Oh well, in this context its a GOOD thing that official Debian releases are infrequent.

    • Re:KDE (Score:3, Informative)

      by oyenstikker ( 536040 )
      I have KDE 3.0.5 running on Debian woody. Just check out qt-copy and kde from anon cvs (http://www.kde.org/anoncvs.html), follow the instructions in README.qt-copy, then compile and install cvs as per instructions on kde's page, with --prefix=/usr/local/kde. It plays nicely with KDE 2 from apt.

  • Congratulations! (Score:1, Flamebait)

    by JanneM ( 7445 )
    Congratulations to the KDE team! Projects like these have a fairly high visibility, and it's good to see solid releases.

    Now, when Gnome2 comes out I'll be _really_ happy!

    /Janne
    • Yes, congrats are certainly due. KDE 3.0 was, in any case, surprisingly bug free for a ".0" release as it was.

      Bob
    • Yes, congrats - I've been enjoying KDE 3.0 for a week now, and it's mainly very good (except for a silly sound server problem, mutter grumble).

      But HTML security holes? You'd be forgiven for thinking only IE and MS had those... :-)

      And I hope the upgrade from 3.0 to 3.0.1 is as easy as Windows Update updates... I hope, but I don't expect.

      At least when Gentoo get round to GCC 3.1 support it'll be worth doing the whole shebang over again.

  • Modular solution (Score:1, Informative)

    by gazbo ( 517111 )
    some minor security issues with the HTML engine
    A better solution surely would be to pick a browser, such as mozilla, and integrate it with the environment. To do otherwise would be reinventing the wheel each time an HTML engine was needed.

    One of the goals of OSS is to allow developers to reuse each-other's code, so a technique like this would put KDE miles ahead of the Microsoft desktop, where such code reuse is not possible.

    • be careful how you word...
      " ...pick a browser... and integrate it with the environment..."
      pot....kettle....
      seriously, if they do that, they better make DAMN sure that they make the browsers flawlessly interchangable or else they just gave MS a stepping stone.
      • environment..

        The difference is that in this case the environment is firmly in userland, and you want this. Otherwise usability can drop. But being firmly in userland gives me choices. I can run konqueror in Enlightment and even in gnome.

        Separation at this level is vital for healthy growth. Any other methodology is poisoned and will wither.

    • Re:Modular solution (Score:4, Informative)

      by ViXX0r ( 188100 ) on Thursday May 23, 2002 @08:31AM (#3571520) Homepage
      Good gawd no!

      The KDE KHTML part is small, efficient and awesome. The Mozilla engine is big and cumbersome.

      There are people on the KDE team that know the KHTML part inside out, to use Mozilla, they'd have to learn the internals of that if they wanted to make changes.

      I say stay with KHTML. One of the goals of OSS is to allow choice. If you want to use Mozilla in KDE, use it. Or you can use the included one built on KHTML.
    • Actually the reason for Konqueror and KHTML is the really tight integration of the system components and IO substructure of KDE.
      KDE has a brilliantly easy to use component technology called KParts, which is good for Desktop use and a equally great (and extremely useful) IO system called KIO, which is used in combination with KHTML and KJS (the JavaScript engine) to make Konqueror a browser.

      Now it could be basically possible to use Gecko (the HTML/XML/XUL renderer of Mozilla) like they do in Galeon, but honestly when they began writing Konqueror Mozilla just wasn't something useful and there was and is no release quality Gecko port to Qt, which is absolutely required for an integrated browser.
      Now for normal browsing both browsers are greatly useful and I do use both (Mozilla RC2 and Konqueror for KDE 3.0). But honestly to me Konqueror is just more friendly for general work, while I use my Mozilla for netbanking (mostly due to the really insistent browser ID checking of the banking webapp).

      It's all good, all the time
      -Herbal Thought, Dark Angel TV series, brought to u by RandSig
    • KHTML and Gecko serve two different purposes actually.

      KHTML = small, light, fast, good at displaying HTML quickly. Ideal for embedding, which is what it's used for.

      Gecko = not so small (though still quite diddy), fast, very good at displaying HTML but also designed for groovy XML stuff like XUL - this adds its own overheads.

      They are both pretty good, though Gecko is light years beyond KHTML in terms of technology. That's okay though, because KHTML does quite a good job of standard web pages and is fast to load/embed, unlike Gecko. KHTML for some reason also looks better on my box, I think it's a fonts issue.

      And finally, if you want you can use the KMozilla bindings to replace KHTML with Gecko - well I say replace, actually unlike Windows KHTML is not required per se for KDE to function, rather an HTML Renderer with the correct KParts interface is. Somebody has wrapped those interfaces around Gecko and the result is a pluggable HTML handler. This is why browser integration with KDE is good (it's not actually specific to a browser/rendering engine) but with Windows it's bad (IE or else).

      • And finally, if you want you can use the KMozilla bindings to replace KHTML with Gecko - well I say replace, actually unlike Windows KHTML is not required per se for KDE to function, rather an HTML Renderer with the correct KParts interface is.

        You can do the same thing with Microsoft Windows and Microsoft Internet Explorer. IE is just an ActiveX component, and any other component that implements the same interface will work in 98% of cases. For instance, Mozilla ActiveX Control [www.iol.ie] implements all IE interfaces (except for document.all and VBScript) in terms of Gecko. Heck, it even comes with a program that patches IE to use Gecko!

  • OpenBSD (Score:3, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 23, 2002 @08:18AM (#3571476)
    And the OpenBSD project is now part of the game, e.g.,
    the update of various ports to kde 3.0.1 will be committed
    today, thanks to advance access to the tarballs from the
    kde guys. Thanks a lot !

    --
    Marc Espie

  • stable? (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    3.0 was stable?

    could you please tell that to my copy of Konqueror, crashing every 10mins. Still, better than 2.2.

    AC
  • I have to admit, Im not that much a Linux user. But if there is one thing that comes to my mind if I hear KDE its "slow". When I start it up on my Computer I better get a cup of coffee ^^; Hopefuklly this version is a bit faster :)

    • Not on my computer it isn't (PIII 600 192MB)

      What version are you running?
      I'm using KDE3 (from CVS, wanted the tabs in konqueror :), in itself already fadter than 2.2.x , compiled with GCC3.1 and the newest binutils (2.12.90.0.7).

      That version supports combreloc, wich makes the linker perform much better (does some kind of prelinking), wich causes C++ programs like KDE to startup much faster (starting konqueror now takes about a second or so)

      • Is this a default compile option or does something need to be specifcied when running the configuration script?

        • Re:KDE slow? (Score:5, Informative)

          by cxvx ( 525894 ) on Thursday May 23, 2002 @08:57AM (#3571639) Homepage
          No, it does that automatically. Here are the instructions I followed (found on gentoo mailiglist), they are targetted for the gentoo distro, but you could follow similar steps on any system:
          --------

          The install: (important parts marked with *)
          ===========
          1) set up Gentoo 1.1a w/stage3 per install docs
          2) installed kernel-2.4.19-r4, preempt, lowlatency
          3) *important: merged binutils-2.12+ in order to take advantage of combreloc (but built kernel with 2.11 beforehand just to be safe)
          4) *USE flags="-march=i686 -O3 -pipe -fomit-frame-pointer" Many people use a lot of crazy optimizations, but the only one to me that makes a noticable difference in "feel" is -fomit-frame-pointer, and I don't need to debug my system so its all good.
          4) *rebuilt glibc with new binutils installed
          5) finish install per docs. (I use metalog, and lilo instead of grub)
          6) reboot
          7) use hdparm to make sure DMA is enabled
          8) you now have a Gentoo system ready to build apps with the combreloc tweak (you can test this by running apps with 'LD_DEBUG=statistics' and checking the relocations)
          9) build X, kdebase, kdenetwork, mozilla, vim, etc... (doesn't matter)
          10) *add fam to start on boot (allows KDE to track files quicker)
          11) *add your hostname to /etc/hosts (if it's not already there)

          After doing all of this, I can notice a HUGE difference in speed. KDE is very very fast..apps pop up instantly, and it is no less stable then before. Konqueror is definately faster than IE6 on Win2k..just amazing! Overall, I would give KDE3 a 95% stability rating.

          Anyways, I'm just sharing my experience. You may or may not have the same results, email me if you have questions. Remember that reiserfs has been known to cause corruption for some, and the binutils-2.12 is considered experimental, but for me it's been all good so far.

          ------------------

          • I work on a 95% W2K campus, with the remainder being Mac. I've been gently pushing folks here to consider various Unix solutions. I even occasionally joke with my only-slightly-pointy-haired boss about replacing W2K and Office with Linux/OpenOffice whenever MS licensing costs come up.

            I love Linux. I've got the only Linux box here since I don't feel like porting a bunch of CGI Perl I wrote to IIS. But I hear people talk all the time about how Linux is ready for the desktop and that KDE is just as easy as Windows.

            And then I see the above post, and realize just how detached that view is from reality...

            • There's a distinction between setting up KDE so that it runs decently and easily and seeking optimization for every possible bit of performance increase.

              You might as well say that Windows isn't ready for the desktop because many gamers like to use registry hacks to tweak out a little bit of extra performance.
            • The post above yours was talking about building KDE from scratch (not to mention that the instructions were for Gentoo, which is an expert-only distribution that builds itself from scratch). This procedure is not for the novice, nor is it even required by the novice.

              Try reading the SuSE quick-start manual sometime, and you'll see your view is not quite as detached from reality as you'd think.
            • I think you misunderstood. No one has to go through all those steps to set up KDE. These days you can pop in a CD and be running Linux, KDE, and hundreds of applications in a half hour without ever using the command line.

              Those who want to squeeze more speed out of their system go through a process as described above. Eventually, the distribution makers figure out how to achieve the same extra performance, and everyone benefits.

              If it were possible to do the same thing with Windows, lots of people would. I think it would make Bill G jealous, though. Maybe that's the real reason MS won't open their code. ;-)
          • You can also try to renice the X and kdeinit processes to a negative value (more priority). I tried this last night while doing some pretty heavy processing (emerge galeon) and it seemed to help..
            I used top to renice the processes... X to -20 and kdeinit master process to -19.

            Seemed to help. Especially with the mouse.. Not as sluggish.
          • The use of objprelink [bottou.com] really, really speeds up the KDE 2 series. Does anyone know if there is support for this in KDE3?

      • I agree with cxvx. I run Gentoo linux (kernel 2.4.19-gentoo) and compiled KDE3 optimized for my humble processor, a Pentium II 400 on an ASUS P2B board. Lots of RAM, 392 MB, but otherwise not a flashy box. My experience is that KDE3 on that machine runs about as fast as IE 5.5 on my PIII/800 MHz did. If you saw it, you'd agree that speed was not a problem. Maybe you could recompile your version of KDE3 with a few optimizations for your particular processor? Kudos to cxvx for outlining the step-by-step for Gentoo, a fast bird indeed.
    • I've recently installed a fresh copy of Mandrake 8.2 with KDE 3 on a Celeron 500 notebook (512mb RAM) and I'm quite happy with it.

      It actually boots in the same time as my P4 XP machine and I don't notice any slowness of the UI.

      Compared to KDE 2, it is much improved.
  • Down at the lab we of course use Linux for all our servers and workstations. It provides the power we need at an affordable prices[1]. Obviously we could never be a cool futuristic lab while running on the CLI, so we shopped around for a GUI that would give us much-needed features like metal themes and the ability to add Star Trek wav files to desktop activities.

    We found KDE and have never been happier since. And the stability rivals that of Tru64, AIX, VMS or any of the other "big iron" OS's.

    [1]Well, the admins are a little pricey. But they earn every penny of it.

  • Anyone know where one can find the diffs for 3.0.1 (diffed from 3.0)? I will certainly not download the whole damn source again!!
    • you can always use anon cvs to keep you from downloading unchanged sources all the time.

      the source downloads aren't that large, it's generally build times that can drag out. specially when you've got to build kdebase, kdelibs, kdenetwork, kdeextras, kdeextraextra.

  • Wait untill 3.1 before getting all those sexy new features u know u want ;p, kde 3.1 has tabbed browsing support in konqueror, and a few other nifty enhancments, but for those wanting a stable kde release, this is getting pretty stable.

    Nerv

  • RedHat RPM's (Score:1, Interesting)

    by robtm ( 199348 )
    Are the KDE 3.0.1 RedHat RPM's out?
    Where?
    • Are the KDE 3.0.1 RedHat RPM's out?

      I cant find any - at least not yet.

      Ok, newbie question:

      How do I download all the RedHat RPM's in one go? Its really tedious clicking on all the rpm's in the folder. I'm sure there is a better way.

      Michael
      • Try using an ftp client (I use ncftp for command line stuff & gftp when I'm in X).

      • Re:RedHat RPM's (Score:3, Informative)

        by Camulus ( 578128 )
        I think when I checked last night Red Hat had the rpms for thier up2date service. I would highly recommend registering with Red Hat (it's free) and you can setup hardware profiles that allow you to use the Red Hat up2date feature for each of your machines. You can access it from the control panel in KDE 3 (i think, on a 2k box right now) it is some where on the K menu. Either way, look around and you will find it. It works great for me. It even updates the kernel on the fly.
    • I just found them in rawhide [redhat.com]- most likely it would be best to rebuild the source rpms [redhat.com] (because I don't know how compatible the binary rpms are with RH 7.2 or 7.3).

      Since the main RH site seems slow at the moment, check the mirror sites [redhat.com] for rawhide (some sites don't have the directory).

  • Forget about Dre... (Score:5, Funny)

    by Nailer ( 69468 ) on Thursday May 23, 2002 @08:34AM (#3571531)
    Andreas "Dre" Pour writes ...

    Its nice to see this kind of thing on Slashdot. Now days everybody talks like they've got something to say, but nothing comes out when they move their lips, just a bunch of gibberish and motherf**kers act like they forgot about Dre...
  • Primary Mirrors

    source: http://www.kde.org/ftpmirrors.html [kde.org]

  • From the press release:
    The KDE Project Ships the Third-Generation of the Leading Desktop for Linux/UNIX, Offering Enterprises, Governments, Schools, and Businesses an Outstanding Free and Open Desktop Solution
    So what exactly is the difference between an Enterprise and a Business?
  • No, not on 3.1.1, on the original KDE 3. When I start it up the splash screen runs through normally, but instead of terminating properly it segfaults at the end. Everything else is fine, and KDE seems unaffected by the splash screen crash, but it's a little unnerving to have it happen every single time. Anyone know 1) what might cause it and 2) whether this release might fix it?

  • KDE Myths (Score:1, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward

    The KDE project is famous for its funded and organised trolling of weblogs and message board associated with Linux and Free software/open source. Outrageous newbie impressing claims are made for the software and huge quanities of FUD are spread to destroy competitors. If this sounds familiar, then you are correct, most of these tactics were lifted straight from Microsoft's arsenal of dirty tricks. The Windows look and feel is not the only thing the KDE project has copied! In this short article I will address some of the lies and FUD spread by the KDE trolling teams. It is my hope that this, in some small way, will redress the balance and re-introduce two things almost eradicated by the KDE project: Honesty and facts.

    • Myth #1 - KDE is more integrated than GNOME

      The oft-heard cry of the noisiest KDE advocates. No explanation is given, the reader is expected to simply grok the wholesomeness of KDE and the lack of this mystical quality in GNOME. It is nonsense of course. Neither desktop is particularly "integrated" compared to Windows XP, and certainly not compared any version of the Apple Mac. Whatever "integrated" actually means.

    • Myth #2 - KDE is easier to use

      Again, such nebulous arguments are never explained, and the reader is expected to simply understand the truth of the zealots statement. Both KDE and GNOME have user-interface irritations (all systems do), but "ease of use" is not a simple thing to measure. KDE has never been subjected to detailed user testing, unlike GNOME [gnome.org] [gnome.org], and the claims of user-friendliness are from crazed supporters and not average users. Furthermore, the KDE faithful rarely look beyond simple-minded copying of Windows, and forget that administering a desktop system is just as important as having widgets in the correct place on the toolbar. For example: What about application installation and removal? GNOME has the excellent RedCarpet by Ximian [ximian.com] [ximian.com], which makes the installation, removal and updating of applications trivial. KDE users are expected to fend for themselves with brutal command line driven systems. GNOME also has the excellent Ximian setup tools to handle various tricky cross-platform and potentially risky system configuration operations. KDE offers none of this, only a few small half-assed Linux-only tools, which make no attempt at check-pointing to return to known working configurations.

    • Myth #3 - KDE is more popular

      In what sense? Arguably more people use KDE, but it is a close run thing. Most KDE zealots use the results of online polls as proof of their superior userbase - which is, quite frankly, complete and utter nonsense. Online polls are the joke of the century; it doesn't even require a motivated script kiddie to render then worthless. A single post alerting the faithful on a zealot-ridden site can skew the result so much it makes American presidential elections look fair and well organised. Popularity is also difficult to measure when *both* GNOME and KDE are frequently installed on the same system. The systems can co-exist and even run at the same time, except for certain applications such as panels. Many KDE users actually run GNOME applications for their superior features and stability, not realising that by doing so they are barely running KDE at all.

      One of the few solid measures of popularity is commercial use of a desktop, and here, GNOME is far ahead with both Hewlett Packard and Sun committing to using GNOME as the desktop for their Unix systems. This also ties in with the previously mentioned ease of use. Sun's major contribution to the GNOME project is in the areas of user/developer documentation, testing, accessiblity and user-testing. Three of the less glamourous parts of desktop development. The arrival of the GNOME 2.x series will see these contributions reach fruitition and allow GNOME to make a quantum leap ahead of KDE in most of the basic computer/user issues.

    • Myth #4 - Konqueror is the best Linux browser

      Oh for a penny every time this lie is told in any KDE story! Konqueror not a bad piece of software. It's authors deserve praise for the work done on it. However, the sheer amount of orgasmic gushing by the KDE faithful is completely out of proportion to its actual quality. It is quite unreliable and even simple standards compliant pages can crash it quite comprehensively. It is also lax in its support of basic web standards compared to either Mozilla or Opera. It is also extremely slow - much slower than the latest incarnations of the GNOME Nautilus filemanager/browser (a target of much KDE FUD during its development).

    • Myth #5 - KDE applications are better/more advanced than GNOME ones due to the ease of developing in C++ using the Qt toolkit

      See also: Qt/TrollTech. This is the most common wail heard by KDE developers, and yet it is easily disproved by looking at the actual applications for GNOME/GTK and KDE/Qt. KDE applications often have larger version numbers than GNOME ones... an old trick played by commerical software developers. Most KDE apps seem to jump for 1.x releases long before they are ready - KOffice being the best example. None of the components in Koffice are worthy of a 1.0 release, let alone 1.1 or 1.2.

      GNOME applications get much more testing in their 0.x stages and despite shorter development phases they mature and reach stable featureful release states much more quickly. Some examples of this are: the superb Evolution (groupware/email), Gnumeric (spreadsheet), Pan (newsreader), The GIMP (image manipulation), Abiword (word processing), RedCarpet, X-Chat (IRC client), XMMS (media player), Galeon (web browser), and for developers: Glade and Anjuta. All of these packages ooze quality, and far outclass their KDE counterparts. It is no understatement to say that GNOME is at least 18 months ahead of KDE in applications, and pulling still further ahead.

      It's not only in the area of user applications that GNOME is vastly more advanced. With the forthcoming 2.x release, a number of impressive behind the scenes technologies will finally mature: component technology (bonobo), media (Gstreamer), internationalisation (pango). As a developement platform, GNOME 2.x is, conservatively, 2-3 years ahead of KDE. And what is more, because it is not tied to a lowest common denominator cross-platform bloat-fest like the Qt toolkit, the lead (as with applications) can only increase further.

      It is also worth noting that GNOME also develops code for use outside the project (see the XML libraries as one example) - the KDE project rarely (if ever) engages in this kind of work. KDE developers ensure that all software must link with Qt, and hence tie it closely with the Qt toolkit preventing re-use and enhancing the value of TrollTech intellectual property.


      Yet despite all this, we are still regularly fed the lie that Qt and C++ makes application and desktop development easier. Judge for yourself.

    • Myth #6 - KDE is faster and takes less memory than GNOME

      KDE is written in C++. While this is not necessarily a problem, it can be when Visual Basic reject programmers (which the KDE project is overrun with) do not know enough to avoid important pitfalls that plague C++ software projects. Stupid use of autoincrementing operators and iteration with C++ objects; and masses of unnecessary allocations and deallocations of memory are two of the most common. KDE suffers badly from both problems.

      Perhaps the most cretinous of all problems is blaming the extremely slow startup times of KDE apps on GCC. The GNOME 1.x releases were hardly svelt (2.x fixes many of these issues), but GNOME is a fashion cat-walk superwaif when compared to KDE's 500lb fat-momma cheese-burger scoffing trailer trash. One need only look at the recent fuss over ugly KDE hacks (such as prelinking) used to bandage up the design and coding flaws in the decrepit KDE architecture to see the truth.

    • Myth #7 - GNOME development is slower. KDE releases faster.

      Fundamental misunderstanding. The KDE project releases as one big lump of code due to its use of C++ and the many problems this causes with libraries. The project bumps the version number of the entire KDE system for the smallest modifications. GNOME, on the other hand is componentized and each component releases on a (almost) separate schedule, bumping it's own version number but not the main GNOME version (1.4, for example). Occasional releases of the entire GNOME system happen, and that's when the GNOME version number is bumped (currently it is at 1.4). To see this in action, use RedCarpet and you will regular updates to GNOME components. GNOME development is not slower, it is in fact faster and more advanced. Lamers and newbies, however, fail to understand the advantages of this method and just see KDE 1.1.1 followed a few weeks later by KDE 1.1.2. Wow! KDE roolz.

    • Re:KDE Myths (Score:5, Informative)

      by pubjames ( 468013 ) on Thursday May 23, 2002 @09:16AM (#3571769)
      [... Huge KDE Myths rant ...]

      Hey, looks like you feel really strongly about this. Can I give you a little advice?

      Try to go out more. Talk to people. Try to talk about something other than computers. Listen to what other people have to say.

      Play some sport. Take up a hobby that's not related to computers. Try taking an interest in girls.

      Relax. Have fun. Don't worry.

      Forget about KDE and Gnome. They're not as important as you think.
    • ok.
      first, just as with windows most of these are just perception. believe it or not, some people actually like windows better.

      in reply to you FUD points
      Myth #1 - KDE is more integrated than GNOME
      yes, in my mind it is

      Myth #2 - KDE is easier to use
      well, i feel that it is. i keep using both, trying them out. i have some features in gome i like, but for me, kde is easier to use than gnome. i guess that just makes me mythical.

      Myth #3 - KDE is more popular
      well, again, it is more popular with me. and that's what really counts isn't it

      Myth #4 - Konqueror is the best Linux browser
      of course it is. it is my favorite linux browser along with opera. unfortunately i haven't found one browser that does everything for me in linux, but the same is true for windows also.

      ok, i'm running out of energy responding to this troll but the rest of it continues in the same way.
  • ...and there aren't even any debs for 3.0.0 yet!

    Look, at the risk of being labelled a troll, could the Debian packagers PLEASE sort themselves out? I can understand slippage, I can understand that you've got other things to do but this is an absolute joke! if your life's busy, DELEGATE.

    I guess the core of the problem is that nobody else has stepped forward to package them... though it can't be that difficult. If this takes much longer though maybe I'll do some (nevermind the fact that it takes me six hours to compile KDE on my puny box =\)
  • As a relative newcomer to the linux platform, I (and probably a few others) are not comfortable recompiling large masses of code.

    Is a Redhat binary available? I've looked through most of the mirrors as well as ftp.kde.org, and have not seen one.

    Is the Suse compile psudo-compatible? Rumor I've heard around here.
  • I tried 3.0. I was kinda impressed with the fancy eye candy and stuff. It was, however, too much environment for me. Too 'in-my-face'. Kudos to the kde team, but I think i'll stick with my basic, light-weight window manager (Enlightenment) and its simple, 'click-on-the-desktop' menus.
    • basic,light-weight window manager (Enlightenment)

      Yeah, I notice that every time I wait 2 seconds for the desktop-switch cause all that eye-candy is simply too much for my box

      Those who consider lowering the level of sfx an option simply haven't understood the point of using e16 =)

    • Re:no thanks (Score:1, Offtopic)

      by Strog ( 129969 )
      Elightenment has a lot more bloat then when it started. It's not as much of a lightweight anymore. It is still a lot lighter than some of the others out there.

      You could try Blackbox [sourceforge.net] if you want a nice fast lightweight window manager. You can try Fluxbox [sourceforge.net] if you need tabs. It is a modified Blackbox.

      I use all of the above and need to get KDE 3.0.1 on my main box to try out. Keep up the good work guys.

  • Ohmygod... (Score:5, Funny)

    by plaa ( 29967 ) <sampo,niskanen&iki,fi> on Thursday May 23, 2002 @09:25AM (#3571842) Homepage
    The KDE Project Ships the Third-Generation of the Leading Desktop for Linux/UNIX, Offering Enterprises, Governments, Schools, and Businesses an Outstanding Free and Open Desktop Solution


    Whatever happened to the good old way [helsinki.fi] of announcing open-source software??
    • I think that's pretty obvious. The more enterprises, governments, schools, and businesses you get to jump on the bandwagon, the greater the chance that an enterprise, government, school, or business will sponsor your efforts and allow you to buy some honest-to-goodness capital goods in return for your hard work. (I know this is something of an anomaly, even heresy, in the free software world, but I assure you--it does happen.) It also means that the quality of the software itself will increase, with faster bugfixes, more features, and higher quality code in general. Call me old fashioned, but I'll trade a press release worth of MBAdoublespeak in return for that any day of the week.
  • Bueller... Bueller??? Does anyone have solaris binaries yet? Thanks!!

  • KDELook.org (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Foxman98 ( 37487 ) on Thursday May 23, 2002 @09:32AM (#3571905) Homepage
    For those of you who are not aware of this site, www.kde-look.org [kde-look.org] is a great site for all kinds of themes, icons and backgrounds. Check out some of the work there, especially mosfet's liquid theme and the crystal ikons.
    • haha, you got a little messed up. Thats 2 different sets of icons. 'crystal icons' by conectiva and iKons by i dunno who. Another good original set is the 'free icons'. Now kde3.0.1 is out, maybe we'll see some of those vector based icons show up too.
      • Oh, I forgot the most important thing... Sometimes I wish people would make some animated icons for kde3. Yes, they are supported via mng.
        No I don't mean like in win95 PLUS. I mean with mouse over animation as in some VERY cool websites, glowing symbols etc.

        Your desktop could look VERY spiffy with a custom theme+colorset+animated icons. Think dark background, toombraider, glowing aincient runes.

        Does anyone have any cool examples of websites with nice animated buttons?

  • As a minor contributor to the internalization of KDE I'm very happy with this.
    Thank you to all!!
  • I was wondering why more companies dont utilise P2P downloading to distribute their applications - like KDE here

    While the servers may have been able to cope with the number of downloads in this case, there have been others where they have not

    Why arent the kernel / distros / KDE / Gnome / etc, etc, etc released (even over a custom network) where P2P sharing can be used?
    This would also be useful if some of the mirrors were less used than others - might make them last longer

    so why dont more companies use p2p?
    • I would think, mainly for content control, and abuse of said network.

      Sure, they can post MD5 sums on the website for people to verify them against, but I don't think that many people actually bother doing that. I imagine for safety, I'd probably download from a central server (web page/ftp site) even if such a P2P infrastructure were in place, simply for the fact that I can be reasonably assured that it hasn't been tampered with.

      Additionally I would think it wouldn't be too long before miscreants started finding ways to share their warez on the network as well, giving it a bad name. Of course, we could continually fix the network against such uses, but they'd continually find ways into it. I'd much rather have the [kernel|KDE|gnome|etc.] developers working on their respective projects than on some peer to peer network.

      I know the ftp sites can get fairly flooded, but I started getting KDE 3.0.1 from ftp.kde.org when I first saw the news this morning and got well over 100K/s here in Canada - doesn't seem so bad to me.

  • For Debian fans... (Score:3, Informative)

    by proxima ( 165692 ) on Thursday May 23, 2002 @10:35AM (#3572376)
    I've been casually monitoring the Debian-KDE mailing list (May archive [debian.org]). Apparently the KDE packagers for Debian are working off of 3.0.1, so when they do arrive in official unstable they'll be quite up-to-date.

    Instructions for how to use experimental unofficial packages can be found here [calc.cx]. I haven't tried them myself - I'll wait until they appear in unstable. Check out the mailing list to see others' impressions.

    • Re:For Debian fans... (Score:2, Informative)

      by Kowh ( 61371 )
      I've been using the experimental packages for a week or so and other than having to purge the old KDE packages, they've been just as good as official packages. No problems whatsoever (other than wasting too much time playing with the eye-candy settings).
  • Isn't this rather minor news to make the front page of Slashdot? Freshmeat says this is primarily a translation release that squashes a few bugs. I don't mind hearing about KDE, in fact I *like* hearing about KDE, but I wish I didn't have to hear about every little point release! I think I've made my .... point. (doh!)

  • Important KMail fix (Score:5, Informative)

    by IamTheRealMike ( 537420 ) on Thursday May 23, 2002 @11:40AM (#3572917)
    # kmail: Don't eat in some cases the whole folder, when moving messages between IMAP folders.

    This is one that I noticed on the KMail homepage. If you use KMail with IMAP then please please upgrade for your own sake, or else massive dataloss could occur! I'm not sure how the KMail team let this one slip past, but it's a pretty important fix.

  • If you are going to download the rpms and try to do an upgrade/install...dont.

    They are broken. Bad.

  • One to ponder (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Rogerborg ( 306625 ) on Thursday May 23, 2002 @12:35PM (#3573339) Homepage
    • I grudge paying money for Microsoft products, I'm constantly disappointed when they fall short of my expectations, and when they roll out the regular fixes for products that had been billed as the most stable ever, I grunt in annoyance.
    • I buy boxed Linux distros even though I don't have to, I'm constantly delighted when they surpass my expecations, and when they roll out the regular fixes for products that had been billed as the most stable ever, I go "Yippee! Now it's even better!".

    We've been debating what it is Microsoft fears about open source. It's probably not the money (in the mid term) and I'm not even sure that it's the pressure to open their source (in the short term). Right now, the big different for me as a consumer is that I feel good about buying and upgrading Linux based distros. It actually makes me happy. The last time Microsoft made me feel even vaguely like that was with Windows 3.1

    I wonder if what they fear is that they've dug themselves into a position (with software as a service active for business and threatened for consumers) where they can't persuade people to pay them more money voluntarily, and instead they have to go down the slippery slope of coercing and compelling. That can't be a good long term prospect for them.

  • I just tried installing on my Mandrake 8.2 box, and it rendered my KDE unuseable, and barfed on my system.

    I had a very recent backup, so I forced the installation (using urpmi *.rpm). Perhaps not the brightest thing to do, as it complained quite a bit, but I forced it anyway.

    Anyway, buyer beware. Now I get to sit reading slashdot while I recover my system!!

    Hey Hugo, if you're out there, Mondo covered my ass!! ;-)

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