KDE 3.3.1 Released

Michael Pyne writes "It's finally out, KDE 3.3.1 has been released with many bugfixes and translation improvements! Those who just want to start downloading can visit the KDE 3.3.1 Info page, which also includes packages for Red Hat, SuSE, Conectiva, and Yoper." wikinerd adds some details, writing that the new version "fixes a number of bugs in Konqueror, improves JuK and enables VPL in the Quanta webpage editor. The new Plastik theme is very fast and may become the default style in 3.4."

No Suse binary yet

[thelexx]

All the mirror sites I went to show this:

#
# KDE 3.3.1 packages for SUSE distributions.
#

Sorry, we were to lazy to build packages yet.
They will be here tomorrow, hopfully.

Re:No Suse binary yet

[twener]

There are first SUSE binaries on ftp.kde.org available - in some hours i18n and x86_64 should have also synced.

Re: Forget ol' SUSE - where's the Mandrake RPM?!

[Llama_STi]

Out with the old and in with the new! Where's my Mandrake people out there?! ;D

works for me!

[oever]

Just downloaded it by adding this [suse.com] as a resource to SuSE's YaST. It got rid of some really annoying bugs in KDE 3.3.0 as far as I can see so far. Also the beginnings of GMail support are there (thanks David Faure) although this is not complete.

I'm using KDE for a couple of years now and it's really the best!
Some of my favorite shortcuts that I can't live without anymore:

Alt-F2

Execute command

Ctrl-[

Previous konqueror tab

Ctrl-]

Next konqueror tab

Shift-left

Previous konsole tab

Shift-right

Next konsole tab

Middle mouse click on 'maximize' window icon

Maximize vertically!

whoa...

[CaptainPinko]

as a long time KDE user (well depends how you define long... RH7.3 anyway) I'm surprised I've never learned about these before. Is there a book on KDE becaue I'm sure there are lots of other sthigns I'm missing out on.

Re:whoa...

[Brandybuck]

Someone needs to write a "Newbies Guide to Advanced KDE Features For Intermediate Users", or something like that. There's an awful lot of these tiny one line tips that need to be collected all in one place.

Re:whoa...

[twener]

wiki.kde.org [kde.org] has those (Tips and Tricks, Secret Config Settings, ...)

Re:works for me!

[JabberWokky]

Where do you insert the URL? Into Installation Source, Online Update URL? Which location?

--
Evan

Re:works for me!

[belroth]

Go into Yast, click on "Software" then "Change Source Of Installation" and then "Add" - then add an ftp site - site is ftp.suse.com and direcory is /pub/suse/i386/supplementary/KDE/update_for_9.1/y a st-source - watch out for slash-inserted spaces.
Don't forget to have only this source active and then finish and go back to the software tab and then click on "Install and Remove Software" - then it's up to you but the new packages will be highlighted in an alternate colour. For me it was c.800Mb.

It seems muc

Re:works for me!

[JabberWokky]

Nope. There's a global keybindings panel in the Control Center. You can also generally access the same panel (slimmed down to only the commands that the app uses) by clicking on "Settings|Configure Shortcuts...". There is a UI standard for many of the shortcuts, although you can globally change them to "Windows like" or "Mac like" or "Emacs like", etc.

--
Evan

kdegames bugfixes

[y2imm]

* kreversi: Fix against possible cheat (#90195)

Cheating at reversi? Does anyone take it that seriously? That has a girlfriend, or a dog, or even a friggin fish or two.

Re:kdegames bugfixes

[dash2]

surely if your fish is constantly friggin' in the public eye it is being a bit self righteous just because you are cheating at what is, after all, a relatively harmless form of internet card-based entertainment?

PlastiK!?!

[vijaya_chandra]

The new Plastik theme is very fast and may become the default style in 3.4."

When the entire world's trying to get plastic away and replace it with environment friendly stuff, it's surprising to see the kde people going in the opposite direction.

jokes apart I hope the plastik theme wouldn't be like plastic but lively

Re:PlastiK!?!

[JabberWokky]

It's available in 3.3 right now. It has very subtle animations, nice low contrast in points that shouldn't stand out and high contrast for the items (like slider bars) that you want to see. Buttons have a soft glow when you mouse over them, the critical ones (close window) glow red. Progress bars have a very subtle stippling that moves as the bar grows.

Very nice looking, totally rendered on the fly and surprisingly fast, even on slow machines (no pixmaps to load, so it's got a small memory footprint, too).

--
Evan "And blackbox/fluxbox also works with KDE"

Re:PlastiK!?!

[wikinerd]

default or not, in any case you will be able to switch to your favourite theme. so it's not the end of the world :)

Hey, KDE, pay attention to keyboard use!

[KWTm]

One thing about the KDE desktop I wish would improve: more emphasis on use of the keyboard over using the mouse, so that I don't necessarily need to have a mouse to use the GUI.

When I used Win2k, I could flip open the Start Menu and start a program with a few rapid keypresses: Ctrl-Esc, P, A, P for MS Paint (you have to organize the Start Menu so that each entry starts with a unique letter). You can flip to another window and maximize with Alt-Tab, Alt-Space, X.

With KDE 2.x, you couldn't even select a program with a letter key --either cursor up/down or click with the mouse.

With KDE 3.x, you could now navigate with letter keys --it could tell when you had typed enough of a menu entry to make it uniquely identifiable.

HOWEVER --it wasn't fast enough to catch my keystrokes. For example, setting up my KDE menu to mimic the MS Windows menu, I could type Ctrl-Esc, P, A, P --but I could be finished typing all keystrokes before that danged menu actually popped up on the screen and sluggishly said, "Huhh?? You gonna press a key? I'm waiting for your keybpress you know..." So now I end up having to take my hand off the keyboard to click with the mouse. It's damn annoying.

This is again the case with KDE programs like Krusader, a Norton Commander-like "clone" that is handy enough for me to rely on, but just aggravating enough to be a thorn in my side. It's not officially part of the KDE main package, but it should be --maybe the main KDE developers would pay more attention to the interface part of it.

I have to say that, as GUI-based as MS Windows was, you could do almost everything by keyboard without the mouse. You can't do that with KDE, and I wish I could.

Now for the footnotes:
1. I don't use Windows any more. I've been using Mandrake Linux since v8.1.
2. I don't hate KDE. It has many excellent features such as redefinable keystroke shortcuts. This is the main reason I use KDE; can someone tell me if GNOME has this yet?
3. On using keyboard instead of a mouse: "If you were a *real* geek, you'd use the CLI." Yeah yeah yeah, whatever, I'm sure you get off on ASCII pr0n. There's a place for the GUI, and a place for the mouse, but not necessarily at the same time.

A New Desktop Orientation Proposal for KDE Folks!

[wikinerd]

Hey slashdot folks!

I want to write and present to the kde developers an official proposal for a new default desktop orientation in kde 3.4.

To see a draft of the proposal (with some humourously text for fun), see: http://nsk.wikinerds.org.nyud.net:8090/img/ [nyud.net] (coral cache, original at http://nsk.wikinerds.org/img )

If you like what you read please communicate with me to agree on a final version to be proposed for kde 3.4!