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KDE GUI Software

Review: KDE 3.2 577

Posted by michael from the sweet-creamy-gui dept.
Anonymous writes "Today I installed KDE 3.2, third major release of the award winning KDE3 desktop platform, on my Fedora box. I have been using KDE 3.2 RC for the past few days and the final version from today. My first impression is 'wow.'"
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Review: KDE 3.2 More

Review: KDE 3.2

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  • Slashdoted? (Score:3, Funny)

    by pklong ( 323451 ) on Friday February 06, 2004 @12:08PM (#8201905) Journal
    Wow, sucide by Slashdot.

    Philip

    • Re:Slashdoted? (Score:4, Funny)

      by lurwas ( 518856 ) on Friday February 06, 2004 @12:11PM (#8201952) Homepage
      The page just takes awhile to load. My advice to you is: 1. Cut down on sugar an coffein 2. Get a girlfriend 3. Learn to be patient (se point 2) Patience my friend :) Ah, I lost you at number 1, didn't I?

    • Re:Slashdoted? (Score:2, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Maybe, just maybe, it's "Link to reviews of KDE" day at Google. Did you think of that? Did you?

  • Let me guess... (Score:5, Funny)

    by davidmb ( 213267 ) on Friday February 06, 2004 @12:09PM (#8201912)
    ...they included screenshots in their review? And then submitted it to Slashdot? Server suicide, anyone?
  • Article is already ./ed, I've been debating the 3.2 compile (stupid freaking gentoo, oh but how I love you), and want more info.

    Mirror of article, other peoples impressions, would be most welcome.

    • Comment removed (Score:5, Informative)

      by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Friday February 06, 2004 @12:15PM (#8202018)
      Comment removed based on user account deletion

    • Re:Mirror anyone? (Score:5, Interesting)

      by CrosseyedPainless ( 27978 ) on Friday February 06, 2004 @12:18PM (#8202052) Homepage
      I'm using a release candidate of 3.2, so naturally I kept 3.1.whatever handy in case 3.2 didn't work out. Hah! I *tried* to go back to 3.1, and just hated it (I had loved it before trying 3.2).

      So far, tabbed browsing in konq and kwallet are my favorite features, but I haven't had much time to dig around looking for KDE easter eggs. I'll bet there's more neat stuff in there!

      • Re:Mirror anyone? (Score:3, Insightful)

        by Afrosheen ( 42464 )
        Mods, what's so interesting about this post? Konqueror has had tabbed browsing for quite some time. Kwallet *is* a new feature but looks unfinished in some respects.

        • Re:Mirror anyone? (Score:3, Informative)

          by Spy Hunter ( 317220 )
          The parent poster didn't make this clear, but the tabbed browsing in 3.2 is improved *SO* much that going back to 3.1 is painful. When there are too many tabs they now resize smaller instead of doing that stupid scroll-button thingy. There are buttons to close and create tabs right on the tab bar, and the website icon can be turned into a close button if you desire. Dragging a tab lets you drop the URL of that tab anywhere. Middle-clicking the tab bar makes a new tab with the clipboard contents. You ca

    • Re:Mirror anyone? (Score:5, Informative)

      by BenjyD ( 316700 ) on Friday February 06, 2004 @12:22PM (#8202102)
      I'd second the "wow". I've been using it as my primary desktop since beta1. The final release version has a few rough edges, but it is a .0 after all.
      Favourite new features:
      - the new macos style menubar + panel
      - Speed - much faster than 3.1
      - virtual folders in kmail - a folder that holds the contents of a search, but behaves like a normal mail folder
      - the polish - so many little annoyances from 3.1 are gone.

      The compilation on gentoo really doesn't take that long. Leave it running overnight and it'll be done in the morning (well, it was on my athlon-xp 1800). kdetoys and kdeaddons wouldn't compile for me, but someone on the forums probably has a fix.

  • Wooooohoooo! (Score:2, Insightful)

    by nycsubway ( 79012 )
    Ahhh. I love the smell of fresh rpms in the morning...

    Not that KDE 3.2 isn't distributed in other formats besides RPMs. But, man, I love new desktop environments. Gnome is nice and stable, but KDE is quite configurable.

  • Really? Infamous? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by ObviousGuy ( 578567 ) <ObviousGuy@hotmail.com> on Friday February 06, 2004 @12:09PM (#8201925) Homepage Journal
    What awards has KDE3 won?

    I like KDE much better than Gnome, personally, but that's because I like have a well-designed API. When it comes to window programming, object-oriented is the way to go. QT gets this, so does anyone using wxwindows (a good rewrite of MFC/OWL). But the Gnome folks stick to their procedural programming style APIs which are fine for simple programs, but for larger programs it just means that the programmer has to reimplement the OO overhead.

    • Re:Really? Infamous? (Score:5, Informative)

      by JimDabell ( 42870 ) on Friday February 06, 2004 @12:18PM (#8202045) Homepage

      I didn't know you had to win awards to be infamous. Anyway, here you go:

    • What awards has KDE3 won?

      The most important one : My Very Own Award Given To Whatever Is Useful To Me(TM)

    • Re:Really? Infamous? (Score:5, Interesting)

      by __past__ ( 542467 ) on Friday February 06, 2004 @12:26PM (#8202154)
      Gnome (as well as Gtk) does use OOP, with inheritance, polymorphism and all that. They just decided do it in C, so they had to implement their own object system, called GObject [gnome.org]. Object-oriented programs do not neccessarily need an object-oriented language.

      Of course, the elegance of the result is still debatable, but fortunately, there are lots of language bindings available.

    • Re:Really? Infamous? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by krumms ( 613921 ) on Friday February 06, 2004 @12:40PM (#8202326) Journal
      But the Gnome folks stick to their procedural programming style APIs which are fine for simple programs, but for larger programs it just means that the programmer has to reimplement the OO overhead.

      You don't know what you're on about.

      1. Gnome and GTK are both object oriented APIs.
      2. C is for Compatability ...
      3. ... which means it runs on a larger number of platforms than that C++ of yours you only barely stop short of calling a silver bullet.
      4. ... and wrappers for other languages can be written more easily.

      Gnome developers chose C because it works. Everywhere.

      And don't forget stepping up to C++ leaves C developers out in the cold - especially if you make any sort of use of templates. That goes for moc too.

      Even wxWindows has a GTK port. Where's the KDE/QT port?

      So stop laying shit on the "Gnome folks".

      • Re:Really? Infamous? (Score:4, Insightful)

        by tommck ( 69750 ) on Friday February 06, 2004 @01:14PM (#8202743) Homepage
        As far as I'm concerned, we're way past the time where C developers should be left out in the cold when it comes to UI programming.

        I don't care if the OS and Kernel stuff is written in C for speed, whatever, but don't force an obviously OO concept (UIs) to be implemented in a procedural language...

        • Re:Really? Infamous? (Score:3, Insightful)

          by steveha ( 103154 )
          What do you care about which language the GNOME guys use to do their thing? If you just want to write GNOME apps, you can use C, C++, Python, or whatever.

          One of the major reasons the GNOME guys chose C was to make it as easy as possible to use other languages to write GNOME apps. It's pretty easy to write language bindings for a C API, and much harder for C++. With C, it's easy to know what symbols the linker will see when you export things from your API. With C++, the compiler does "name mangling" and

    • Re:Really? Infamous? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by rixstep ( 611236 ) on Friday February 06, 2004 @12:53PM (#8202477) Homepage
      wxwindows (a good rewrite of MFC/OWL)

      That's oxymoronic. You cannot get a good rewrite of something so lacking as the MFC, and OWL is hardly better.

      Don't believe me? Then why don't MS use the MFC themselves? For they don't - for all practical purposes they've shunned it all along, and with good reason.

      I don't really believe the KDE people patterned their work after Microsoft's anyway; and as for 'procedural programming' in Gnome needing C constructs to achieve object orientation - well, if Linus himself says it can be done and done efficiently, then that's two voices who say so - at least.

      I am not touting Gnome - on the contrary. And I am not touting KDE by any means - I've seen the code and it gives me vertigo. For you cannot achieve OO with C++ anyway. It's far better to use straight C, and then you don't have the overhead.

      Whatever - if you want OO, use Objective-C. It's based on Smalltalk, and that's the only viable paradigm we've ever had (Simula/C++ just don't cut the muster, not by a long shot), and there I'll quote Alan Kay himself, thank you.

      Finally, there is never any 'overhead' in OO any programmer has to 'reimplement'. OO is a way of looking at programming assignments - 'organisms' as Alan Kay saw it. It has nothing to do with orientation, or reimplementation, or any of that.

      All of which might be too 'developer oriented' for this discussion, but you brought the topic up (and clumsily), not I.
      • if you want OO, use Objective-C. It's based on Smalltalk, and that's the only viable paradigm we've ever had

        And there are Qt bindings for it. Plus you can code for OSX.

        --
        Evan

    • Re:Really? Infamous? (Score:4, Informative)

      by caseih ( 160668 ) on Friday February 06, 2004 @01:37PM (#8202986)
      Umm, the GNOME APIs are very well-designed and extremely object-oriented. As far as raw speed goes, gtk signal propagation is many times faster than QT's signals and slots mechanism.

      Gnome/Gtk apps are not procedural. They are event-driven and object-oriented, just like QT. There are many apps written in the C++ bindings of Gnome. The idea that Gnome is fine for small programs but not large programs is false, if not stupid. Please do your research before posting such an obviously unresearched opinion.

      As for overhead, C++ is, in many ways, simply syntactic sugar. As I said, there are awesome C++ bindings for Gnome and the Gnome object model (implemented in C) is very good. Programming overhead to do objects in C is minimal and there are great tools for generating objects. Also the switch to using XML primary to describe the guis makes Gnome GUI generation very easy and in just a few lines of code. In my experience your argument about reimplementing the OO is largely moot.

      Also wxWindows is hardly a great example of an OO gui api. It's very much like MFC, which uses a event message mapping system, unlike QT and GTK which use signals and callbacks that can be dynamically created and conneccted together. I've never liked MFC, and I don't like wxWindows. I do like QT and GTK, though, particulary GTKMM.
    • I agree, doing object orientation by ideom is really ugly. But there is something called gtkmm that puts a true objectoriented wrapper around the gtk libraries. That ought to improve the situation. Gtkmm uses pure C++ instead of some language extensions requiring preprocessing like QT.
      But even so, I feel more at home using QT, but that is perhaps just me.

      Anyway, I wish that the KDE people could get their act together on usability. As they
      clearly have a technical edge over Gnome this is
      really sad they they

      • Re:Really? Infamous? (Score:5, Insightful)

        by Rysc ( 136391 ) <sorpigal@gmail.com> on Friday February 06, 2004 @03:38PM (#8204782) Homepage Journal
        Anyway, I wish that the KDE people could get their act together on usability. As they
        clearly have a technical edge over Gnome this is
        really sad they they doesn't do better in this area.

        II keep hearing this complaint, but I just don't see it. KDE has /always/ been more useable than GNOME,a nd still is. So they haven't published a fancy guideline manual with all kinds of rules everyone has to follow. Big deal! The apps work, and importantly "just work", intuitively and as expected. The interface is cleaner and more consistant than GNOME.

        Reading the rest of your post, I think I see the problem: You and GNOME people seem to equate "Useable" with "Feature-starved". Just because GNOME's epiphany can't be configureed does NOT mean it's more useable! I don't know who first introduced this "No options is inherently superior" doctrine, but I don't like it, and it is just plain wrong.

        I used to /like/ GNOME, and I preferred it to KDE up through GNOME 1.2. After that it seemed that they started removing features for no reason, or little reason. Topical example: Right click the Epiphany toolbar. Nothing! What I EXPECTED is to get some contextual options. Right click the Konq toolbar: Aha! A menu. Low and behold! It allows me to configure what's on the toolbar! That makes sense! AND SINCE NORMAL USERS WOULD NEVER HAVE CLICKED, IT IN NO WAY DEGRADES EASE OF USE TO HAVE THE OPTIONS THERE. Options hidden in plain quickly-accessed sight is GOOD.

        This "Too many small icons" arguement doesn't hold water. Maybe there are for YOU, so right click and change them! For GNOME, they've decided being able to suit your environmnt to your needs is BAD, so they give me what is acceptable to the LOWEST common user skillset. That's fine! But since they've also decided that users shouldn't be given options, I CAN'T CHANGE IT!

        I really prefer C to C++ for a lot of reasons. Some things about KDE annoy me. But GNOME /really/ pisses me off.

        Functionality != hard to use! Get it right, people!

        If the toolbars are crowded, the context menus are even worse. E.g. in the right menu button menu of the konquerer file manager you have both a "Move to trash" and a "Delete" item. Wouldn't it have bin better to just have a "Move to trash" item, and then configure the trash to perform the correct action this would have bin more in line with the desktop metaphor. On the your normal desktop you put things you don't want in the waste basket, and then you decide when to empty it.

        No. On SOME people's desktops "trash, then delete" is the norm. Most people, however, when they want to delete something, they want it GONE, not hanging around and taking up disk space. Thus the very-clear, understandable, and /seperate/ "MOVE to trash" and "DELETE" options.

        And, incidentally, being "in line with the desktop metaphor" is NOT a valid reason to configure a GUI one way or another. The desktop metaphor is merely a minor convenience, I practically guarantee that it is not how most people actually think of their computers. The technical people think differently because they know better, the nontechnical people don't think about it enough for it to make much difference whate metaphor s being used. If the goal is being easier to use, then the GUI should make things easier, not conform to a model which might, maybe, we HOPE, be easy to understand and relate to for some office workers.

        The menu still have a dominating red cancel button. That button is probably the first thing the user sees when he drops a file over a folder, and the menu pops up. To me its somewhat unclear why this menu needs a cancel button in the first place, all other menus seam to be able to do without it. And second why does it have to be that eye catching. After all in most of the cases "Cancel" is not what the user is most likely to do.

        The reason that the Cancel is in big and red is not that it is the most LIKELY thing the us

  • Wow (Score:5, Funny)

    by AndIWonderIfIWonder ( 718376 ) on Friday February 06, 2004 @12:11PM (#8201949)
    My first impression is 'wow.'

    His second impression was, 'Noooo... my poor server, what have they done to you...'

  • This is a good sign (Score:5, Funny)

    by gertsenl ( 719370 ) on Friday February 06, 2004 @12:11PM (#8201951)
    Less than 9 replies, none really even vaguely on topic, and it's already slashdotted. Looks like everyone wants to RTFA before posting. I think the ./ community deserves a big pat on the back! Good job!

    Now, will you stop lurking and tell us something about the site, you bastards!?

  • Mirror (Score:5, Informative)

    by timothv ( 730957 ) on Friday February 06, 2004 @12:11PM (#8201955)
    http://freecache.org/http://fedoranews.org/krishna n/review/kde3.2/ [freecache.org]

  • Article Text (Score:5, Informative)

    by digitalvengeance ( 722523 ) * on Friday February 06, 2004 @12:12PM (#8201963)
    Because of early reports of slashdotting:

    KDE 3.2
    by Krishnan Subramanian

    Today I installed KDE 3.2, third major release of award winning KDE3 desktop platform, on my Fedora box. I have been using KDE 3.2 RC for the past few days and the final version from today. My first impression is "wow".

    KDE 3.2 provides an integrated desktop along with various applications to carry out common desktop tasks such as web browsing, email, instant messaging, multimedia, graphics, etc. Some of the impressive features which you will notice include

    * Increase in speed evident from faster application startup time
    * Improvements in usability and performance
    * Better appearance through interface refinement
    * Browser performance boost evident through better webpage rendering

    Upgrading to KDE 3.2 is a breeze. If you are a newbie and want to learn how to do it, you can refer to my HOWTO. I started my installation and within few minutes I am logged into my new KDE 3.2 desktop.

    The desktop is very polished and you can configure it in any way you want by right clicking on the desktop. You can setup your desktop background as a slide show so that the background picture changes at predetermined intervals. The style and window decorations are very refined increasing the overall appearance. I love plastik for style and window decoration. A better icon set is also available. Now that you can find a wide array of themes and icon sets in www.kde-look.org, you can customize your KDE desktop in any way you want. In fact, you can even select the KDE splash screen (which appears when you login) from the available choices.

    The K Menu is better organized now. It is grouped into "Most Used Application", "All Applications" and "Actions". Even the applications are grouped in a much better way compared to earlier version.

    The new KHotkey feature is really hot. You can create keyboard shortcuts and mouse gestures for various tasks. This comes very handy. People used to such features in Microsoft Windows environment will love this feature. It is really cool to press the "Windows" key in your keyboard and see KMenu pop up in your screen.

    The control center is well spruced up and better structured in KDE 3.2. Some of the tabs like background, window decoration, style etc. are redesigned.
    Some of the welcome addtions to control center are

    * Splash Screen - where you can select a KDE splash screen of your choice
    * Wireless Network - where you can configure your wireless network. You can save upto four different configurations.
    * Vim Component Configuration - where you can configure Vim to use inside KDE
    * KHotkeys - where you can specify keyboard shortkeys and mouse gestures to lauch applications in KDE
    * KDE Wallet - where you can configure KDE Wallet to store your internet and local passwords
    * Sony Vaio Laptop - where you can configure the hardware for this laptop

    KDE 3.2 has more countries under Country/Region. Also these countries are better organized. This is a very positive step in the internationalization efforts of KDE.

    Another welcome feature in the control panel is the "Font installer". With this, installation of new fonts is a breeze. This is very useful for people who want to install their regional fonts and other extra fonts (many fonts are available in kde-look.org). The best aspect of the font installer is the instant preview available with it. I feel this is one of the greatest additions to KDE.

    Many new applications are added and some of the existing applications have been upgraded. It is quite impossible to discuss all the applications available in KDE 3.2. I will just discuss some of the applications based on my preferences.

    Konqueror: This is the central part of KDE environment. it is a web browser, file manager, network browser and so on. Konqueror has finally matured as a web browser. I feel, though many would disagree with me, that rendering of sites is somet

    • check on the news story on internetnews.com (Score:5, Informative)

      by darthcamaro ( 735685 ) on Friday February 06, 2004 @12:54PM (#8202489)
      READ the story on internetnews.com they talk to KDE people and SuSe development internetnews.com [internetnews.com] Here's one of my fav lines in the piece... "KDE 3.2 is very important for many people because it offers a nice set of new features," said SuSE's Schlaeger. "It's not a revolution as it used to be in the early days of KDE, when it brought something completely new to the Linux world that wasn't there, but I think the KDE project is making steady progress."

  • Before the trolls come out. (Score:4, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 06, 2004 @12:13PM (#8201982)
    Mods should read this.

    This is about the state of SuSE and their kde strategy [kde.org]
    This is about Qt and its licence. [kde.org]
    This is about the G word [slashdot.org]

    Mod the gnome/anti-qt trolls down before suckers bite!

  • that's it? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Savatte ( 111615 ) on Friday February 06, 2004 @12:14PM (#8201992) Homepage Journal
    Wow! That's it? That's the entire review? No offense slashdot editors, but this is pretty insubstantial. Hell, a Gene Shalit movie review is more insightful. Why not just a link to download the new KDE?

    Damn, there goes my already diminishing karma.
    • Wow! That's it? That's the entire review?

      It's the summary of most reviews that usually are pages upon pages with many sentences with almost no content. All of this is liberally sprinkled with ads, of course.

  • kde-redhat project (Score:5, Informative)

    by nsushkin ( 222407 ) on Friday February 06, 2004 @12:16PM (#8202025)

    I always get my KDE for Red Hat (and Fedora) from the kde-redhat project [sourceforge.net]. The project's lead Rex Dieter is doing an awesome job of keeping the latest KDE packaged as rpms that are available via apt-get with all dependencies worked out. Upgrade is as easy as

    apt-get update && apt-get upgrade

  • It's nice to know (Score:4, Funny)

    by kensai ( 139597 ) on Friday February 06, 2004 @12:16PM (#8202026) Homepage
    that during this cold, frigid season that he will be able to bask in fire that is his server after being /.ed

  • Desktop Slide Show (Score:5, Funny)

    by JuliusRV ( 742529 ) on Friday February 06, 2004 @12:17PM (#8202039)
    The article basically starts off with the _really_ important stuff:

    "You can setup your desktop background as a slide show so that the background picture changes at predetermined intervals."

    Yes! This was the one missing feature I was waiting for! Finally, I can switch to KDE!

    Urgs...
    • My wife's OS X is set up to randomly show different pictures of our kids (twin boys) every 5 seconds or so, with a nice fade-in/out. Not exactly a productivity feature, but it makes us happy while we work.

    • kde has had this since 3.1.1, and possibly earlier. i use it, its great :)

    • Re:Desktop Slide Show (Score:4, Informative)

      by sparrow_hawk ( 552508 ) on Friday February 06, 2004 @12:32PM (#8202241)
      Aw, crap! If KDE has it integrated, my little cron-and-perl script for GNOME is so *totally* last year... Just goes to show how new technology replaces old. ...sniff...

      Ah, well... be free, little guy! I hope you have a nice life!
      #!/usr/bin/perl

      # Script to randomly select a file from a specified directory
      # and set it as the wallpaper in Gnome.

      # make the compiler yell at me if i screw up
      use warnings;
      use strict;
      use diagnostics -verbose;

      # we're going to need a function this module provides later
      use File::Spec;

      my $location = "/home/kevinr/images/wallpaper/";

      # get a list of possible images

      opendir(WALLPAPER_DIR, $location) || die "cannot open $location: $!";

      # change to the directory so all filenames are local
      chdir $location || die "cannot chdir to $location: $!";

      my @files = readdir(WALLPAPER_DIR);

      # strip . and .. from the list (see note at end)
      @files = File::Spec->no_upwards( @files );

      closedir WALLPAPER_DIR;

      # select an image at random
      my $wallpaper = $location .= $files[int(rand(@files))];

      # set the image as the wallpaper
      print "Setting $wallpaper as the desktop background...\n";
      system("gconftool-2", "--type", "string", "--set", "/desktop/gnome/background/picture_filename", $wallpaper);
      happy happy lameness filter. i want the lameness filter not to eat my post, dangit. knock it off, filter. for a site that is *coded* in perl, you would think they would be nicer about letting you post code samples. this is getting ridiculous, you know.

      Note:
      Unix represents the current directory with a period (.) and the parent
      directory with two periods (..), and it includes these in the list of files.
      Since these are directories, not images, we use this function to strip them
      out of our array of files. Cool, huh?

      I've currently set this to change the background at random every time I log
      into my Linux box, plus every night at midnight. I like to keep things
      interesting! :) -sparrow_hawk 9/8/03

    • Re:Desktop Slide Show (Score:5, Insightful)

      by hardaker ( 32597 ) on Friday February 06, 2004 @01:43PM (#8203087) Homepage
      I don't get it. Random backdrops have been around in KDE since at least 3.0 and possible some of the 2.x series (I don't remember that far back). They just changed the name to "slideshow" and suddenly everyone seems to think its new!

  • don't bother reading (Score:4, Insightful)

    by musikit ( 716987 ) on Friday February 06, 2004 @12:18PM (#8202046)
    it's just a KDE fan boy with screenshot reiterating the change log

  • Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Friday February 06, 2004 @12:18PM (#8202049)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion

  • Konsole slow? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Otter ( 3800 ) on Friday February 06, 2004 @12:19PM (#8202062) Journal
    Is it just something I did wrong, or is text display in Konsole now really slow, with annoying lag during typing and especially tab completion? It's almost as bad as gnome-terminal, where the system spends more resources on displaying compiler messages than it does on compiling.

    Yes, I could turn off anti-aliasing. But I've used it in Konsole since pretty much always and have never seen this problem.

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

      by Balinares ( 316703 ) on Friday February 06, 2004 @02:08PM (#8203411)
      No problem here -- Konsole is zippy as usual, with all the helpful stuff (antialiasing, transparency + contrast, tabbed terms) turned on.

      You should try to:

      1) Fiddle with the conf (font family and size -- I use Andale Mono 8pt here, excellent readability/size ratio; transparency; bidi text...) to see if something in particular seems to trigger the slowness;

      2) Submit a bug. Random slowness in some configurations is NOT normal. If it's a regression since KDE 3.1, do indicate so.

      Hmm, you may want to make sure that your Konsole got compiled with the right font support, now that I think of it. Does the command 'ldd `which konsole`' yield links to libXrender.so, libfreetype.so and libXft.so.2 (not sure about that list, but that's already a start)?

    • Konsole blows.. (Score:3, Informative)

      by msimm ( 580077 )
      Try aterm [sourceforge.net]. It does pseudo transparency as well.

  • From the article: (Score:3, Funny)

    by Bluesman ( 104513 ) on Friday February 06, 2004 @12:20PM (#8202077) Homepage
    >The style and window decorations are very refined increasing the overall appearance.

    That's what KDE has the Gnome doesn't. More appearance, please. I just can't get enough.

  • I use KDE from Time to Time (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Greyfox ( 87712 ) on Friday February 06, 2004 @12:22PM (#8202100) Homepage Journal
    Whenver something breaks in Gnome. Since I live on the Debian unstable branch, that's about once every 6 months or so. It's gotten a lot better from the last time I used it. It's a lot faster and doesn't feel nearly as awkward as it used to. Their default window manager also seems pretty smart about focus handling and stuff. It's also very pretty. All in all I'd say I could just as easily go either way on the desktop these days.

  • Features (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Asic Eng ( 193332 ) on Friday February 06, 2004 @12:24PM (#8202124)
    I was a bit disappointed with the review, many of the features described as "new" (e.g. tabbed browsing, KDE splash screen) have been around for a while already. A lot of the other stuff is just as well described in the KDE release notes.

    It's not bad as such, but it didn't help me much either.

  • Dont forget to check the Window Manager. (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 06, 2004 @12:25PM (#8202140)
    Most people are confused about desktop enviornments and Window managers, thats why you often get people saying KDE is big and bloated, when its not. KDE, does by the way have its own window manager, its just that it is transparent to the user, and in KDE 3.2 it has a really good one.

    You will find oozes of new features and fun in the new Window manager, such as kool keys, fat borders, Window below others, and much much more. My favourite one is the abillity to have borderless Windows. But don't worry, you can get them back by pressing alt+f3.

    So give it a whirl if you like managing your windows by right clicking any window title bar in KDE 3.2.

  • Update on Novell/Ximian/SUSE situation (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Karma Sucks ( 127136 ) on Friday February 06, 2004 @12:27PM (#8202178)
    It's only fair since Nat and Miguel started their rumors here to post this [kde.org]. This is big news folks. Apparently SUSE has a much stronger say on the Novell Desktop than what we were led to believe by Miguel and Nat.

    • Re:Update on Novell/Ximian/SUSE situation (Score:5, Insightful)

      by d-Orb ( 551682 ) on Friday February 06, 2004 @12:38PM (#8202304) Homepage

      Not to appear as a troll, but wasn't it about time that someone noticed that SuSE had a product which is very well received in a lot of environments (read companies), and Ximian have a few (admittedly) "killer" apps? If SuSE's got a system that works for their clients, why break it? Enhance it, by all means, but if you're buying a KDE-centric distribution, why would you like to throw all the work done in it away?

  • Personal Thoughts (Score:5, Interesting)

    by spoonboy42 ( 146048 ) on Friday February 06, 2004 @12:30PM (#8202214)
    A couple of days ago, I emerged KDE 3.2 on my Gentoo system. Aside from a wierd ALSA bug that I had to fix, the upgrade from 3.1.5 was pretty painless.

    Anyway, my thoughts on the latest iteration of my chosen desktop. Let's just say that KDE 3.2 should raise eyebrows in Cupertino and soil pants in Redmond. There are numerous small eyecandy improvements, plus tons of little usability-enhancing features in common areas of the system (for example, Konqueror has a vastly improved file-manager sidebar that gives idiot-proof access to local partitions, printers, and even network shares). Some of the new applications debuting in this release are truly excellent, as well (like the slick iTunes-clone JuK or the lovely multiproticol IM client Kopete). Finally, some rather extensive optimizations seem to have taken place throughout the system, as KDE now seems more responsive than in the past (true, some of these optimizations are "cheating", like the option to keep an instance of Konqueror preloaded, but it's still a nice option to have).

    Anyway, congrats to the KDE team on an excellent release, and thank you for proving once again that UNIX on the desktop isn't just a wild fantasy, it's a real-life joy.

  • Slashdotted because ... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Kourino ( 206616 ) on Friday February 06, 2004 @12:38PM (#8202295) Homepage
    Wow. I'm impressed that the entire page actually loaded, instead of just timing out. So the server was able to at least send me a couple bytes every second to keep timing out, that's impressive.

    I was kind of shocked to see what they were doing with the screenshots though ... those "thumbnails" on the review page? They're not; they're just the pics they link to, resized a bit using img width= height= ... I didn't know people were still that stupid, especially given that at least one was full desktop sized.

    That having been said, I didn't find the screencaps even particularly flattering; not that I dislike KDE (though I don't use it), but ... they were kind of boring. Everything was of empty windows; a little data to make things look, um, real would have been nice :3 It also hit me that KDE seems to have more K-programs than GNOME has G-programs now, which is just ugly.

  • At least (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Gothmolly ( 148874 ) on Friday February 06, 2004 @12:42PM (#8202350)
    it's not OSNews doing the 'reporting'.

  • Installing from source (Score:3, Informative)

    by RKone2 ( 720851 ) on Friday February 06, 2004 @12:45PM (#8202389)
    I to, have installed KDE today. I also installed it yesterday, the day before, and I probably will still be installing it tomorrow.

    Next time I wait for the RPMs.

    "oh, by the way, if you want a UI, don't forget to also download such and such at website t46."

  • WRT Debian + KDE (Score:3, Informative)

    by sirReal.83. ( 671912 ) on Friday February 06, 2004 @12:50PM (#8202435) Homepage
    I've been using unofficial KDE 3.2 CVS debs for about 4 months. I'm loving it. For all those who are wondering about Debian/KDE, 3.2.0 will enter unstable when 3.1.5 enters testing. First, however, 3.2.0 will be in experimental. If you can't wait, however, fear not. At the Debian/KDE FAQ [debian.net] there are instructions to get KDE 3.2 whether you be on stable, unstable or (for some fool reason) testing. It only involves adding one or two APT sources and dist-upgrading. If you run into problems, come to #debian-kde on irc.freenode.net and ask around. The folks there are really helpful.
  • I was taken aback by the significant speed improvements. 1st time I've ever done a KDE upgrade and really noticed the changes. The Plastik Style is finally a pleasant, harmless change of pace, the bouncing activity icons are actually cool this time. I still find the file manager far more versatile than the one found in gnome. Overall well worth the install. I just did a wget on a mirror for SuSE 9 RPM's ,removed some of the development RPM's I didn;t need and did an RPM -Uvh *.rpm. Worked great. I'll admit, it's the superficial thinbgs I like and notice, ie better looking penguin icons for the kdm login manager and a cool choice os splash screens, etc. I'd been running Slack 9.1 for a long while with Dropline Gnome, still the most beeyootiful Desktop environment, but it doesn't have the functionality of KDE. I like both projects thhough, hopefully Novell can give each the room to do their own thing, even if KDE gets the nod as the preferred Novell/SuSE desktop.

  • This must be a world record? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by joeykiller ( 119489 ) on Friday February 06, 2004 @01:19PM (#8202800) Journal
    He installed KDE 3.2 earlier today and already have a review ready? How is it possible to get an impression of such a big piece of software as that so fast, and still have time to write a review?

    A piece of advice for future reviewers: Being fastest isn't the point with reviews -- thouroughness and being informative on behalf of the customers is.

  • Mirror (Score:5, Informative)

    by paulproteus ( 112149 ) <slashdot@[ ]eesh.org ['ash' in gap]> on Friday February 06, 2004 @01:27PM (#8202880) Homepage

    Here's a mirror, folks. [jhu.edu]

    People, when you mirror things for Slashdot, your home cable modem probably won't work very well....

  • I still cant help but be a little disappointed.. (Score:3, Troll)

    by Bowie J. Poag ( 16898 ) on Friday February 06, 2004 @02:22PM (#8203578) Homepage


    The work the KDE team has done is great, but... (*deep breath*)

    ...at the end of the day, all they've done is mimic a pre-existing design with (at best) a questionable pedigree...Windows. Since when did "the Windows way" become "the way everyone should do everything, including Linux users" ?

    Before you go off and mod this a troll, stop and think about the idea. Why are we mimicking Windows? Or anything, for that matter? By mimicking Windows, aren't we simply reinforcing bad habits that Redmond introduced 10 years ago? If we all agree that Windows' GUI is sub-optimal, why are we expending so much time and energy attempting to replicate it, point for point?

    I'd be sort of interested to see the point in KDE's history where this debate took place, if it ever did.. It certainly should have.

    It's just frustrating to see so much work go into being the desktop equivalent of an Elvis impersonator, when we could easilly challenge (or even trump!) the real Elvis.. We've built an enterprise-class OS from scratch...You'd think that a good GUI would be trivial.

    Anyway, as far as I know, neither GNOME nor KDE's team offer a skunk-works forum to discuss and develop new and different ideas. Quite the contrary. New ideas tend to be ridiculed and quickly dismissed. It's sort of odd, given how many truly creative people there are working on these respective projects.

    • Well, there are a couple of good reasons (and I *do* wish that KDE followed Windows a wee bit less closely, a la GNOME).

      * First, Windows has become ubiquitous in the past ten years. Everyone knows Windows. That's how they expect computers to operate. This has produced a barrier to entry for anyone that chooses a different method.

      * Second, the approach is pretty good. Remember that Microsoft themselves chose to use Apple's design. It isn't perfect, but there *have* been significant improvements made i
    • While I agree that we shouldn't be mimicking Windows, what do you mean by this:

      "You'd think that a good GUI would be trivial."

      When in fact, it's not. Very rarely are UI engineers actually have any background in human factors, when they should be experts. UI engineers are more often software engineers, and may or may not have any knowledge of human factors or user interface design.

      I assume that you do know that by mimicking Windows, these projects can get more traction with existing Windows users ? I r

  • Eyecandy for old and new KDE (Score:4, Informative)

    by LarsWestergren ( 9033 ) on Friday February 06, 2004 @02:33PM (#8203783) Homepage Journal
    Check out http://www.kde-look.org/ [kde-look.org].
    Good even if you don't use KDE, they have lots of Linux related wallpapers for instance.

    One app I have fallen in love with is
    SuperKaramba [sourceforge.net], a clone of Windows XP Samurize. It enabels easy Python scripting of widgets on the desktop, enabling such things as weather forecasts [kde-look.org], system information [kde-look.org], Mac OS X style dockers [kde-look.org] on your desktop, or even some very beautiful themes [kde-look.org] complete with new toolbars, XMMS skins etc.

  • KDE + Non-GCC compiler == No-go. (Score:5, Informative)

    by MROD ( 101561 ) on Friday February 06, 2004 @02:59PM (#8204152) Homepage
    Specifically, having tried many times to use Sun's (vastly faster then GCC) compilers to compile KDE and found that it's impossible due to a combination of GCC specific extensions or at least syntactic laxity and other GNUish bias I've had to give up.

    I'm forced to compile the whole thing with the highly sub-optimal (for SPARC) gcc/g++.

    I wish that programmers wouldn't depend upon the lax syntax of the world's favourite compiler and optimise their code specifically for systems which are already fast enough not to make much difference when it degrades performance on those which absolutely need the greatest acceleration to make them usable.

    Sorry for the rant. :-)

    My compile of KDE 3.2.0 at work on the Sun Ultra 10 has been going for a day already and I've just got QT, arts and kdelibs compiled. I should have a working system by the middle of next week, assuming I don't find any show stopping Linuxisms (which I usually do during KDE builds).

  • My experience (Score:4, Informative)

    by Peter H.S. ( 38077 ) on Friday February 06, 2004 @03:53PM (#8205037) Homepage
    I have been using the release candidate from http://kde-redhat.sourceforge.net/, on Fedora FC-1, since it has native mp3 support.

    It is very fast.

    I managed to crash Ktouch (Typing tutor program) once, but couldn't reproduce the crash. I haven't found other bugs.

    Konqueror now seems to offer integrated spell checking when writing on forums such as slashdot, which is nice, since English is not my native language. I think A-spell is used, so many languages are availably.

    The "kde-wallet" is a very nice, and seemingly secure way to store on-line passwords and forms.

    All in all, I like it a lot.

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