Submitted by The second KDE 4 developers snapshot is now available. This 3.80.2 release includes source from all the KDE modules. Application developers are strongly advised to work primarily on KDE 4 from now on. This release builds with Qt 4.2.0 and 4.2.1 (but not the 4.2 preview). Packages are available for Kubuntu and currently working through the SUSE buildservice.
KDE 4 will pretty much look exactly the same as KDE 3. Maybe a little more functionality, but the end of the day, it’ll still be multiple steps behind say OSX or Windows (like KDE 3 is behind say ‘XP’).
People are getting excited about ‘plasma’, but the fact of the matter is, it’s just ONE GUY doing most of the work, and he’s busy doing other things.
If I had the time I’d try to do my bit, but I don’t, so it looks like Win XP/Vista/OSX will have the upper-edge for a while to go yet 😉
Putting one group ahead or behind is terribly hard to do with user interfaces.
Apple is just not adding virtual desktops in, and Windows still lacks a LOT of window manager features that many X11 users consider vital.
When it comes to the technologies it runs on Apple is probably ahead of the game, and has been since 2002. However, that has absolutely nothing to do with KDE (it’s all under KDE).
When Vista comes out though, I think they’ll actually be a little ahead of Apple. Unfortunately, the things they’ll be ahead on won’t be of any importance to 99% of users and it’ll all be young and barely tested technology until 2008.
Actually… Apple is adding virtual desktops – dubbed Spaces in OS X 10.5 (Leopard). http://www.apple.com/macosx/leopard/spaces.html
“Actually… Apple is adding virtual desktops – dubbed Spaces in OS X 10.5 (Leopard). “
Virtual Desktops are known to various X11 window managers more than 10 years ago. 🙂 They are a conept I like very much, so it’s nice to see them in MacOS X.
“not” was a typo, it should be “now.”
Keep in mind that this snapshot is not in any way representative of the look of KDE 4. You predicting anything from this is completely ridiculous. It’s a snapshot for people to start using the new libraries, and there hasn’t been much work done on the user-visible stuff.
Whether plasma materializes or not (I don’t know what to expect from it myself), I don’t see Vista as having any features that the linux desktop is lacking. Besides the usual game/hardware support issues of course. I’ve tried Vista, and while parts of it are an upgrade from WinXP, other parts are a downgrade for me (speed, inconsistent UI, hardware support).
Right now, all other things being equal, I would rather use XP or KDE 3 than Vista, so I’m sure KDE 4 will be a nice upgrade, with or without any new eye candy.
> KDE 4 will pretty much look exactly the same as KDE 3.
given the changes happening with the file manager and browser, the oxygen icons and theme and apps like okular emerging i can’t really agree.
> it’s just ONE GUY doing most of the work
wrong. =)
> and he’s busy doing other things.
i’ve always been busy with multiple things. hasn’t stopped me yet
people are not particularly patient and freak out when they don’t see something yesterday. this is, given the larger scope of kde4 development timelines, a bit silly.
Exactly. Aaron, you’re wright, as always 🙂
I’d like to mention the work that mr. Lubos Lunak is doing on Kwin. Together with Plasma and the Oxygen icon set I personnally think that KDE 4 will rock!
“KDE 4 will pretty much look exactly the same as KDE 3…”
I don’t think so. Beside the new oxygen icon set, which is beautiful and functional (some new features include changing colors depending of the state of the icon), the art team now include Thomas Lübking. He is the author of the popular and impressive Baghira style for QT/KDE. He is working on Oxygen style and window decoration for KDE4.
So I think that KDE4 will have a much fresher look than KDE3 and it will have nothing to envy from Vista and OS X.
In addition, qt4 can render through software or opengl, so I beleive that we will see some neat effects as well in KDE4.
First you mention that the art team has a guy responsible for Aqua style for KDE and then that he’s working on Oxygen which is also clearly inspired by OSX style of icons and then you say KDE4 will have nothing to envy form OSX?
>(like KDE 3 is behind say ‘XP’).
For my use, KDE 3 is way ahead of XP. There are dozens of tiny reasons. Here is what I could think of off the top of my head. If I was in KDE right now I could just glance around my Desktop and come up with a lot more. Some of these may be possible in windows, But such features aren’t easily exposed:
I can see all the programs in the alt-tab menu without flipping to each one individually.
The alt-tab menu is clickable if my hand happens to be resting on the mouse.
I can remove the menu bar from below the title bar and place them at the top OS X style.
I can remove the task list and the “start menu” completely if I wanted.
The auto hide feature of the task bar doesn’t break and get stuck on top of my windows.
I can set the autohide trigger points at the corners of the desktop rather than an entire side. This way I won’t accidentally trigger it over and over again.
If I place the taskbar on the right or side of the screen I can orient the text and width so I can actually read it.
I have handy movie and image and text previews on the icons of my media in the file browser.
I can right click and open a new window in my file browser just like in my web browser.
I have tabs in my file browser.
and there are many things to add. one thing i hate in windows is how scrolling the mousewheel doesn’t work – scroll anywhere, mostly it won’t do a thing. scroll over the taskbar, you won’t switch tasks. scroll over the volume, it won’t change. scroll over a scrollbar, it won’t scroll (most scrollbars only scroll if you first click’em). and horizontal scrollbars ignore the scrolling as well. but there is some inconsistency: if internet explorer is open, scrolling ANYWHERE (even over other windows and scrollbars in them) scrolls the active IE window. same with MS Word. but not with most other apps.
yeah yeah, it’s clear – microsoft can’t even get scrolling right, and i’m sure it won’t work in vista either, no matter how expensive it is.
XP leading on the desktop?
You cannot be a user who uses Windows and KDE approximately the same amount of the day.
Because then you would see clearly, that while XP definitely leads at some inconsequential features, KDE is by far more consistent and usable and ahead at many or most of the features that really matter (desktop clutter, window orgies, virtual desktops vs. 40 tasks in the taskbar, a decent command line).
I might add, that I am not mainly an office worker, but working on engine development, using CAD/CAE & FE programs. Here it really is necessary to have a command line which allows me to start an application at a specific location in the file system because all result files will be dumped into that folder.
As for Office work, I cannot see any shortcomings of KDE when compared to XP. It is essentially similar (or can be configured to be so).
And for Plasma: One guy is doing the design work, thats right, but he uses the tools 100s of others write. Through this he can focus on doing just the design work and not much aside it. It is like 100 people are pushing the car (adding power to it), and one is steering it.
The post I’m replying to went from +5 to -2 in two hours. The only possible reason is that people don’t agree with the author. Which translates to KDE fanboys abusing the OSNews voting system. Anon is not a known troll!
So what was the reason then? Personal attacks? Hardly. Offensive language? Not even if you read it backwards. Off-topic? Not by a long shot. He talks about KDE4 in the context of other desktop environments. Is that wrong? Of course not. He doesn’t believe in all the hype around KDE4? So be it, let him express his opinions.
If you don’t agree with the fanboys, you get modded down. Is that it? Then I’m in trouble too, I guess.
I guess he was perhaps modded down because, for some reason, he was first modded up to +5 while stating incorrect facts that he came up with from nowhere and finishing with a trollish conclusion?
I guess people thought that making an inflammatory comment with no way of it being able to be supported by any current fact, such as ‘the entire DE will look the same as the current one’ when the only code for the new DE is a developer snapshot of a few core libs and ported apps and making statements about the number of people working on plasma that were dead wrong (at least according to one of the people working on it) might be considered trolling.
I do actually agree that the mod system is abused here (usually by MS faboys and GNOME fan boys, wow, name calling is fun) but in this case there is perhaps a valid point of view that the OP was a troll (if not intentionally perhaps).
One of the problems with the ‘only way is up’ mod system here is that one person wanders into a thread read by hundreds, makes a dumb comment that may not actually be technically a troll, but is factually wrong and if some others are also misinformed or just have a negative feeling towards the DE/OS/License/whatever and mod th comment up then you have a big chunk of wrong that has been mod’d up to 5 and its not appropriate to mod it down because it’s not technically a troll and it doesnt contain adverts or name calling. I’d say the OP was such a post and I can understand why people are modding it down (I wasn’t one of the FWIW)
a dumb comment that may not actually be technically a troll, but is factually wrong and if some others are also misinformed or just have a negative feeling towards the DE/OS/License/whatever and mod th comment up then you have a big chunk of wrong that has been mod’d up to 5
Bingo. It’s too bad there is no “Wrong, -1” option in the moderation.
So while I agree with djst that the original poster should not be in the negatives (another abuse of the moderation), he should also not be at +5 as he was. I modded him back up to +1. Just because he’s wrong/troll doesn’t mean he should be modded down. It just means he shouldn’t be modded up as much as he had been.
Well, I wasn’t trolling.
I just don’t think KDE 4 will have all these grandiose visual cues intended IF they are aiming to release it in a respectable timeframe (eg, 12 months).
Having a new ‘icon’ set is exactly what I mean by looking like KDE 3 in any case. The icons are different, but the visual runnings of the desktop environment is exactly the same, eg, potentially KDE4 = Konqueor with Oxygen icons. Hardly revolutionary (no disrespect to the beautiful icon set though).
In any case, it was moreso a personal opinion, hence the title ‘prediction’ not ‘fact’. I’m not a big optimist when it comes to big goals and software development, not that it isn’t a bad thing to have grand plans and only end up implementing a small subset of these – but then you end up with the development/feature story lke with Windows Vista…
I’m not a big optimist when it comes to big goals and software development, not that it isn’t a bad thing to have grand plans and only end up implementing a small subset of these – but then you end up with the development/feature story lke with Windows Vista…
Uh.. KDE 4 is not Vista
much of the base work for the nice things they expect to do is already there. it might not be turned on, it might still be in a seperate tree, not build-in in kdelibs or kdebase yet, but the beginnings are there. so unless development goes slower, many of the things promised will be in KDE 4.
in some apps you can already see some things which will be very easy to do with KDE4/Qt4 (hence will be done a lot more…). look at the edu apps (kalzium) or some games.
Imho the mod system should allow an “overrated” -1.
The overrateds should be applied after all other mods and shouldn’t be able to mod anything below the 1 it started out with. That would be a way to mod down posts that aren’t offensive but are trolls (like the one who started the discussion. It served no purpose but to start another flamewar), wrong (it’s not right if a factually wrong post and a correct reply are both at +5 but there’s no real way to mod the parent down without going against the modding guidelines) or simply overrated (stating the obvious in a karma whoring way)
an example: the troll that started this discussion could have +8 (from gnome fanboys and flamewar lovers =), -2 (from kde fanboys), -8 overrated (from enlightened kde fanboys), it would then be at 1 (starting score) +8 (modded up) -2 (modded down) -6 (overrated but reached the cap) = 1.
a similar underrated mod could get posts out of the negative numbers but could be capped at 1, too.
“KDE 4 will pretty much look exactly the same as KDE 3. Maybe a little more functionality, but the end of the day, it’ll still be multiple steps behind say OSX or Windows (like KDE 3 is behind say ‘XP’). ”
Oh, man, because looks are all that matter ? I believe for many people it is so, but we are amongst us here, so please, wake up a bit. Even if it would look the same, which it will not, how can you so easily and dismissively say that kde is so way behind ? Hell, windows will never in this life will achieve the level of modularity kde apps have, and let’s not even talk about kioslaves, dbus and kparts.
For me, I’m really waiting for kde4 to happen, both on linux and on windows. For the features, for the looks, for the apps, for the windows-ported libs. It will be fun.
Based on the mockups they at least have big ideas for KDE4. They’ll only implement a fraction, as development always goes, but it’ll be very different from KDE 3.
I think KDE 3 is way ahead of Windows XP in a lot of ways.
“I think KDE 3 is way ahead of Windows XP in a lot of ways.”
Most definitely. I just meant that in terms of pure eye-candy.
I’d rather they spend time on the technical aspects in any case. Once you have a great underlying framework (not that KDE doesn’t), the interface can then follow.
well, there is already some eyecandy, but not in the main branch – they want to keep it fresh. so all icons are in the KDE tree, but you won’t see them in the apps. the new style is on Thomas’ pc, but not in KDE, and the work on 3D/openGL compositing is in a seperate Kwin tree – again, you won’t see it.
some of the games and edu apps are already showing off some KDE 4 goodies, check’em out. try kstars or kalzium, you’ll see some new stuff.
but most stuff is still to come.
and don’t think Aaron is alone, check plasma.kde.org, to be precise: http://plasma.kde.org/cms/1031
(“the team”).
“This release builds with Qt 4.2.0 and 4.2.1 (but not the 4.2 preview).”
I suspect the latter was about the 4.3 preview.
nope. KDE doesn’t use any Qt 4.3 stuff (yet). maybe they’ll switch later, but not now.
Will the ‘kwin’ in KDE4 support AIGLX/XGL effects like Compiz/Beyrl etc..?
Yes. http://kde.feedjack.org/user/811/
Technically, right now kwin_composite should about match Kompmgr’s possibilities, of course with the added bonus of being able to develop much further (as soon as somebody does that development, indeed). Which means that COMPOSITE_TODO has now entries listing all the Kompmgr effects, saying that they should be rather easy to add, using either effects or changes directly somewhere in the compositing code. With the exception of shadows, as I still need to decide on how to do them.
So, now we’ll get another incompatible desktop effect project
But it’s badly needed. I believe Compiz and Beryl are reaching end of the road with possible effects, so better integration with DE’s is needed.
Native WM is of course best suited, as it can easily talk to DE and be notified where/when to disable/enable/modify certain effects. Of course it is not impossible to do that with compiz/beryl but requires more work to support multiple systems and one needs to persuade DE people to create, export (and USE!) API for that, in other words cooperation.
Next wave will also be toolkit-based accelerated gfx effects which will e.g. exploit compositing/GL capabilities of future Qt and blend well with compositing(window) managers. It is also crucial to have all those effect layers consistent, fitted into one framework (for easier developent of effects) and configurable at one place.
Beryl and Compiz did nice and interesting initial R&D on possibilities of accelerated compositing effects and I’m sure lots of their work will be reused and ported to popular desktop environments, but I don’t expect them to replace standard window managers.
indeed, compiz and beryl are totally new windowmanagers, written just for one feature: GL compositing. it’s much better to just add this feature to current, stable, feature-complete windowmanagers instead of starting a new one. so that’s what the gnomes did to metacity (i guess it’ll be in the next release) and what is being done to Kwin.
Where?
”
and there are many things to add. one thing i hate in windows is how scrolling the mousewheel doesn’t work – scroll anywhere, mostly it won’t do a thing. scroll over the taskbar, you won’t switch tasks. scroll over the volume, it won’t change. scroll over a scrollbar, it won’t scroll (most scrollbars only scroll if you first click’em). and horizontal scrollbars ignore the scrolling as well. but there is some inconsistency: if internet explorer is open, scrolling ANYWHERE (even over other windows and scrollbars in them) scrolls the active IE window. same with MS Word. but not with most other apps.
”
That is really annoying, I always have to click to focus a part of a window. Scrolling doesn’t trigger focus in the tree view of Explorer, although it used to in Windows 98. Not in XP.