The KDE Project today announced the immediate availability of KDE 3.1 beta2, the third development release of a significant feature upgrade for KDE 3. KDE 3 is the third generation of KDE’s free, Internet-enabled desktop for Linux and other UNIXes. KDE 3.1, scheduled for final release in October 2002, will provide substantial improvements to the KDE desktop experience. As the KDE 3 API is frozen for binary compatibility, KDE 3.1 will be binary compatible with KDE 3.0.
KDE 3.1-Beta2 Released
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Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
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who really needs binary compatibility in linux? a fair chunk of users compile their own stuff and everyone else has it precompiled by their distribution. everyone has an aversion to non-open source software, so what is it that needs binary compatibility
There are a lot of people who are using RPMs. For these users, binary compatibility is important.
I really beleave binary compatibility is very important.
At one point I wasn’t able to run a Linux native version of a program (compiled for a newer distro then what I was using) while the Windows version did work using Wine.
How about everyone else you didn’t mention? Normal people who want to use stuff that didn’t come with the distro and don’t want to have to compile (yeah, yeah; configure,make,install or some apt-get variation thereof). Off the shelf software. Stuff from The Kompany and other commercial devs.
i only ./configure-make-make install if the rpm doesn’t install right. which is a regular occuance. rpm hell is alot worse then dll hell.
There’s no such thing as RPM hell. Just clueless users who don’t read manuals. Debian has apt-get, Red Hat has up2date, Lycoris has IRIS, Mandrake, which I use has urpmi. Do I need to go on?
I installed KDE 3 today. The install was fully automatical. Urpmi downloaded and installed all required files.
Using rpms you can’t break anything on Linux. Any app on Windows could break the whole system. That’s why people reinstall it regularly when it becomes “cluttered”. I could tell you much more about this, but I will stop now.
As I said, today I tried KDE 3. It’s worse than Win XP.
The control center comes from hell with it’s hundreds of useless options. By default maximized windows are resizable, Konqoueror uses single click, the theme is worse and the style of window borders is ugly, files are underlined by default, clock stlye is ugly. You can’t turn off different colors in the list view. Toolbars are cluttered. There are options, options and more options.
The KDE team simply doesn’t get it. People want to use the desktop not configure it. Provide sensible defaults. Gnome gets it. Even better it now uses the MacOS style direct activation of options. This is even better than in XP.
I don’t see any future for KDE until they start thinking about GUI design and HIG.
There’s no such thing as RPM hell. Just clueless users who don’t read manuals. Debian has apt-get, Red Hat has up2date, Lycoris has IRIS, Mandrake, which I use has urpmi. Do I need to go on?
Are you on drugs? The last RH I used (6.x) wouldn’t compile anything, so I was forced to use RPMs. But guess what? 90% of the RPMs I tried to install (from the packaged CD no less!) didn’t work! Then the newer RPMs told me I needed a new version of RPM in order to use the RPM, but the new version of RPM wouldn’t compile *and* wouldn’t install using RPM. If this isn’t RPM hell, I don’t know what is.
The last RH I used (6.x)
Bingo. A very old version with immature tools. The RPM is extremely good technically (even better than DEB in some instances eg. triggers), it’s the ancillary tools which are problematic for some people. ‘course this is a problem which is being worked on.
Don’t rag on KDE for those options. I’ve personally used almost every single one of them, and thank the KDE devs for putting them in there. I’d personally like to see them put *more* options in there, especially related to the window manager (ala Sawfish). As for your other rantings, the default KDE style is fine (nice and boring), as is the default window borders, and I *like* the default clock style. As for the single click and underline thing, I don’t like it either. It’s a concession to moron users to make KDE look more like the web.
As for GNOME, I HATE 2.0. You can’t configure didly without digging into gconf-editor, and the direct change “feature” means that everytime I want to try out some changes, I have to make the effort of remembering my old ones because they’re committed automatically.
Speak for yourself. YOU might want to “just use the desktop” but most Linux users (the ones using KDE right now) don’t. They don’t mind taking a few hours to tweek the hell out of the system so it becomes a paragon of efficiency. Right now, I’ve got KDE tricked out. Shortcuts to launch noatun, kopete, kate, konsole, and kword. Global shortcut to autoplay noatun wherever I am in the desktop. Shortcuts to bring up the run menu, close/minimize/maximize windows, switch desktops, the works. I go hours without touching a mouse. I just can’t understand how people would be willing to give up that kind of comfort just so they could save an hour or two configuring?
KDE 3.1 has more stylish defaults. I am using it to post this message and the icons are wonderful, the Keramik theme is nice, etc.
It’s still in beta, however.
I’d agree that KDE 3.1 is a “Good Thing” in the KDE stable. I’d love to see it a little less bloated, but I guess it’s the trade-off for some of the features…
Developments that I find exciting are listed as the first two on the announcement:
* A plug-in to work with Exchange 2000
* A “Desktop Sharing” app supporting NVC and RDP.
The former is a Good Thing(tm) for the corporates that need their “Outlook” environment.
The latter; well, nothing actually new in terms of the technology, however the implementation is extremely exciting. It allows people to share their desktops as easily as an XP or OSX user would.
This makes it a great contender for the thin-client environment, too. Easy-to-use VNC out of the box.
There’s lots of eye-candy for the OSX-er out there, too. It’s getting far more polished. I just wish that it didn’t make my Athlon XP 1800+ feel more like a P200MMX!
What’s that gotta do with binary compatiblity. KDE kept binary compatiblity between KDE 3.0 and 3.1 because it is needed. If just say theKompany releases an app that was built for KDE 3.0, what happens if it doesn’t work for KDE 3.1? Not many people would like to downgrade…
I don’t mean to feed the troll, but KDE is really quite nice. 3.1’s tabbed browsing is great, I slip back into Mozilla because this feature is missing in 3.0.
As for the plethora of configuration options, first off: KDE 3.1 seems to have really cleaned up both the K menu and the control panel. Things are logically grouped into a few menus. HOWEVER, the troll’s comments about too many config options and, in his opinion, bad defaults is an issue that should be, and is, addressed by the people bundling the distribution. KDE provides source only. Red Hat, SuSE, MDK etc are the ones that should be going through and customizing the interface to meet the needs of their respective users. IMO, they do this quite well. So, unless you’re compiling KDE from source (which I just did) then the “bad defaults” shouldn’t be an issue. If you’ve compiled it from source, then you’re most likely the type of user who doesn’t mind fiddling a bit to make the environment look and work the way you want.
While Gnome 2.0’s approach is a good idea, I think that they stripped away all of the config because in Gnome 1.x there really was _too much_ that you had to configure. That and the fact that, unlike KDE, all development is basically being done by RH, Sun and Ximian, all of whom target similar users. There’s no need for Gnome to be as configureable as KDE.
Anyway, I personally think that the options open to KDE users are great. I set my environment up very differently than the default. I also don’t really like the Gnome 2 default, which is a real problem to change.
1. KDE’s desktop sharing does *not* support RDP. There have been people interested in porting rdesktop, but AFAIK no one has started coding this
2. The KDE desktop sharing feature is not intended for thin-clients. The focus is on support issues, and some people also use it to access their own computers (not a good idea, but the technologically better ways like
starting a dedicated vncserver seem to be too complicated). I hope to have a better solution for this in 3.2, you will need a KDE client though.
So my comments were addressed and you call me a troll!? Is anyone criticizing KDE a troll?
I’m happy that KDE has addressed these problems. As soon as KDE 3.1 is out for Mandrake I’ll test it again. Until then I stick with XP and Gnome 2.0.
First of all let me commemt on RPMs, and i must say that if they become standard for *all* distros, then we might go somewhere with it. But, as it is clearly showed and stated on popular site like rpmfind.net, one need to find his particular distro rpm, released and tweaked by the distro team.
Secondly, all depends about what people are looking for. Ease of use and user friendly has already been done ( Bill and Steve ), and re designing the already ‘consummers known commands, shortcuts and tricks’ is not gonna do *nix any good. Instead new directions for user friendly are maybe coming from project as menuetOS ( http://www.menuetos.org ). If you want to learn *nix, then KDE is not what you chould choose. The pletoria of wizards is really annoying too.
God, Debian and Blackbox are refreshing !!!!!!!
I just compiled beta2 from source, with a boatload of optimizations under Gentoo. Boy is it fast. Really fast. UI responsiveness is faster than WinXP now. Under Konqueror, even complex /. pages resize with barely visible rubber-banding. Also, Keramik has grown up. There’s no visible speed difference between Keramik and .NET now, and it looks pretty. I could get to like this.