Guest post by PolishLinux site takes a look at KDE 4.2 based on the latest subversion branch and concludes: “As it can be seen, the KDE4 development is running at full throttle. KDE4.2 will include much enhanced functionality and versatility than KDE 4.1, but still a lot of work has to be done in many areas, especially when it comes to the stability of the applications.” Hopefully some of the long standing stability and maturity issues with KDE 4.x branch are resolved before the GA release.
For anybody who reads the article and decides to try it out right now, the soft feature freeze just happened and a bunch of major changes have gone into svn. It’ll take a little while for all the new things to get settled. On the plus side, a bunch of great features and improvements went in (Jingle support in kopete, for instance, a python dataengine in plasma). So if you want to try it out, consider waiting a week for things to settle down.
I’m still partial to Polyester myself ( http://kde-look.org/content/show.php/Polyester?content=27968 )
Not just made it, control it. And because webkit isn’t just something that gets dropped in, as explained by someone who is working on it ( http://zecke.blogspot.com/2008/01/joys-of-debugging-webkit.html ).
That would have been nice a couple years ago. Jingle support was first added to the source at least as far back as December 2005 ( http://wiki.kde.org/tiki-pagehistory.php?page=Kopete%20Jabber~*… ) but was not enabled by default. I got sick of waiting
It was to me unfortunately typical of things I would love to have working in free software but which for whatever reason, don’t. I’d love to have a mediated VPN (ala hamachi), voice/cam chat (ala Skype), many to many voice comms (ala Teamspeak or Ventrilo) but there are no alternatives with the same ease of use. Sure there’s openVPN (no third party mediation), jingle (finally in Kopete), and Mumble ( http://mumble.sourceforge.net but nowhere near as easy to set up and much more bandwidth intensive), but they are not as polished/easy/workable.
Obviously people working in their spare time (or to kep Tyrione happy, for large companies interested in selling hardware or services) can’t be expected to make whatever users may want, and it’s really out there to expect a free software program that uses for mediation a central server with all its bandwidth costs, which makes a free software Hamachi unlikely. Regardless, it’s frustrating.
Free software is doing a great job putting out superior browsers, passable office suites and desktop environments that pretty much work. But when it comes to communication I’ve found myself stuck with proprietary apps
Growing up I always changed my own oil because I had more time than money. Now I let someone else do it because I have more money than time. This holds true with software as well. As much as I love the idea of Free Software (seriously, check my posting history here), I find it impractical anymore to use it for everything. I don’t have the time to wait for jingle to be enabled, for KDE4 to regain all the functionality of KDE3, etc. I’m glad those two things have happened (or are happening, still waiting on full khotkeys functionality), but it took long enough
So, that was a little OT for a preview of new version of KDE. Maybe I’m grumpy today. The proper response to jingle support should be “yay” not “took them long enough, and here’s other stuff that’s bothering me”. I’ll try and find a livecd for KDE 4.2 and see if it’s good for me.
Is good to see the KDE4/4.0 drama fading away. Once it gets released, I plan to give it a try using a KDE-friendly distro (most likely OpenSUSE).
And since I know a few KDE devs read these comments: Is there any reason behind not switching to WebKit and keep working on KHTML besides, you know, the fact that you made it? Are there any technical aspects I’m missing or something?
It’s not flamebait, I just want to know
Anyway, seems like you guys are making a good job, congrats.
Is good to see the KDE4/4.0 drama fading away
Is not that they are fading away, is because people stopped caring KDE4 long time ago, the KDE4 hype has passed and now is just another proyect and some others had taking its place.
It is still relevant to KDE loyal users thougt.
> Is there any reason behind not switching to WebKit
webkit in Qt 4.4 is really too slow for daily web browser use and the KPart for it isn’t mature yet. these things can change with Qt 4.5, however.
additionally, KHTML comes with a bit of API glue that a lot of KDE apps use. there’s really nothing in there that Webkit couldn’t be used for, but it does mean porting apps (though thankfully it’s usually just a handful of calls in the entire codebase)
and most of the apps stick with KHTML.
> and keep working on KHTML
well, you can’t tell people to work on something and you can’t tell them not to, either. the group who continues to work on KHTML does so because they wish to.
those who work on Webkit do as well.
it’ll all sort out as the future unrolls.
p.s. i’m using the webkit kpart in konqi right now. have been for about 2 months. not end user ready, as i noted, though.
One of the things I mention to people who still bring that all up is the Lancelot alternative menu plasmoid for KDE 4.
http://lancelot.fomentgroup.org/main
It is not unlike the Mint Menu, or the Tasty Menu.
It is normally available in distribution repositories if not installed by default as an available plasmoid, and it generally dissipates all complaints about the kickoff menu.
YMMV. Use it if you like, it is good to have the choice available. Its main benefit by far is to further accelerate the fading away of the KDE4/4.0 drama.
The new “show directory” mode for the desktop should also help significantly in this regard.
I’d also recommend installing SMPlayer instead of using the default Dragon Player. SMplayer is MPlayer with a Qt GUI.
Amarok 2 is still in beta, but nevertheless it does come with some distributions. K3B is still not ported to KDE 4 yet, but the version for KDE 3 works fine in KDE 4.
The default handling of GTK applications is still ugly. It is necessary to do a bit of twiddling with styles and/or themes and your .gtkrc file (whatever it is called) in order to overcome this on most distributions. IMO it wouldn’t hurt for a few KDE 4 themes to adjust the contents of a user’s .gtkrc file to something near-compatible to help with the integration of non-KDE applications.
Apart from these minor things KDE 4 is getting there. Quite a few people still recommend KDE 3, and quite a few KDE-based distributions still install KDE 3 by default (eg, MEPIS and PCLinuxOS new betas) but IMO is is now time to start re-evaluating that recommendation.
Edited 2008-10-21 05:19 UTC
BTW the folderview desktop (traditional desktop) DOES allow for widgets 😉
Rather crashy right now, though.
I’m running a KDE4 port of K3B on KDE4Mod ArchLinux.
In the About screen of K3B:
Edited 2008-10-21 21:08 UTC
Thanks everyone
Looks like more playskool interface design and less actual functionality, woo hoo!
And this is why I regret not being able to bury once I have posted in a thread. You can’t discuss anything with a troll, I’d rather argue with a mirror, it’ll be far more interesting.
What?
If you post a comment, you can’t vote anymore on comments in that article. Unless they’ve changed it again.
Vote? Or bury? I’m used to the not being able to vote part. It’s the “bury” part that is new.
The original post:
“””
And this is why I regret not being able to bury once I have posted in a thread.
“””
Edited 2008-10-21 17:28 UTC
Maybe he just means to vote it down? who knows
Indeed, the causal chain between the “vote” part and the “bury” part tends to be longer in other contexts.
I’ve been wanting to upgrade to KDE4, but I’m still holding off till KOffice 2.0 is ready.
Should be ready by the end of the year/beginning of next year. It’ll be a rather basic release, focusing on getting feedback on the many newly introduced features & interface elements.
http://dot.kde.org/1222347961/
They should work on widget alignment and general look and polish of the default theme, it really doesn’t look well (“plastic” feel, not enough contrast, dull grey color everywhere – generally, gradients would help quite a bit).
Example: address bar and tool buttons in konqueror are really badly aligned. Also the close tab button seem somehow out of space (should be attached to something).
Anyway, 1 year later we should all expects a huge improvements not only in graphic look, but in everything else. No excuses this time
Yeah, unfortunately I must agree. While I absolutely love many of the KDE apps, the graphical presentation is not exactly hot atm. But this is also where we can expect much input not only from the programming but also artistic part of the community, which is starting to move in already. Ignoring all the plasma themes, you already have some nice alternatives if you want to spice up the KDE apps themselves:
* Skulpture (a retroish yet modern and smooth design):
http://kde-look.org/content/show.php/Skulpture?content=59031
* QtCurve (extreme configurability and familiar from KDE3):
http://kde-look.org/content/show.php/QtCurve+(KDE4%2C+KDE3%…)?content=40492
* QGtkStyle (brings all those lovely gtk-styles to Qt for a nice consistently looking cross-desktop desktop and my favorite atm):
http://labs.trolltech.com/page/Projects/Styles/GtkStyle
and http://linuxtechie.wordpress.com/2008/09/24/install-qgtkstyle/ for more installation hints.
The latter does a really nice job of pimping the Qt-apps and oh boy, Kmail and Dolphin looks nice indeed using the Aurora Smooth gtk-theme:
http://www.gnome-look.org/content/show.php/show.php?content=80431
I’ve made the switch to KDE4 once KDE 4.1 landed in Fedora and, as weird as it sound, I’m fairly pleased.
While it has yet to achieve feature parity with KDE 3.5.9/10 (that I still have on my CentOS/RHEL machines – kudos to the KDE-redhat team), and while I will never get used to the plasmoid’s weird resizing method (Resize like Windows, pleaaaaase) – KDE4 does grow on you.
I like the new clean(er) look; I love the file view plasmoids; (Having the ability to group icons together is a God-send). Ark is far better than it used to be; Dolphin is showing a lot of potential, etc.
Yes, I’m still faced by the occasional bug (in the KDE team’s defense, they are doing a good job at reducing the bug list) and I do agree that the KDE4 release out-come was somewhat unfortunate. But never the less, I doubt that anyone will remember any of it in two year’s time.
– Gilboa
.. I forgot to add that the main reason for the F8 – F9 upgrade (on 3 different machines) decision was:
If I want a rock solid KDE 4.5 experience in two years, I better help finding bugs in KDE 4.x now.
… One shouldn’t expect a perfect product in two years time, unless he’s willing to dig-in and help now. *
– Gilboa
* Unless he belongs to the “I don’t ‘do’ – I just criticize others” group.
I like how criticizing any open source software is trolling on this website, nice.
lol kde 4 is the new linux.
In a year it will be ready for prime time!
so there’s a GA release of KDE4??
Thats news to me – I thought only MS did “GA” releases. Not quite sure what it means…i’m guessing “generally available” or something along those lines…
as far as I know KDE will just have an official 4.2 release when its ready. Then 4.2.1 etc…
As far as when its stable, its more a case of when its stable enough for you to use it.
http://techbase.kde.org/Schedules/KDE4/4.2_Release_Schedule
– Gilboa
I was able to install KDE 4.1 on my PowerPC Mac. It installed very easily and Konqueror and Okular work great. All my PDFs and websites rendered fine.
4.1.2 just landed on Gentoo unstable, and although the deployment was designed to be “slottable” (able to coexist with KDE3), it didn’t quite work out for me and my .kde3.5 folder got symlinked to my .kde4 folder and, therefore, pretty much trashed for use with KDE3. So I guess my migration is more-or-less permanent now…
Plasma is nice but needs more killer widgets. I’m still relying on my superKaramba themes for mail biffs and system monitor stuff that works reliably.
The taskbar is too fat. Try to shrink it, and icons start disappearing off the bottom of the screen. What happened to scalability?
The system tray icons (the old-fashioned ones) are all corrupted to hell. I gather aseigo and co. see this as something for freedesktop.org to fix, not them: Good luck with that :S
For those like me wishing to keep Konq as file manager, I’ll save you the googling: System Settings > Advanced > File Associations > inode/directory. Ah, that’s better.
Pleased to see that Katapult’s functions have been adopted by the Alt+F2 launcher. But how the hell do I get it to do calculator sums? It says it can, but I can’t figure out how…
I’ll love the accelerated Desktop Effects, when enabling them doesn’t lead to an instant X crash. They worked on the 4.0.2 OpenSuse LiveCD, why not now?
…Before you ask, I am filing bugs about these as time allows
Edited 2008-10-24 04:39 UTC
As an end user, you shouldn’t be required to say that. There is a special place in hell for those who blame their end users.
Edited 2008-10-24 04:55 UTC
Expecting users to help when the software is given away for free is totally unreasonable. They should be flogged for not giving you everything you want for free.
Well, as KDE4 has “gone gold” some time ago I suppose that should be a sound position… but I think we both know how likely a “file a bug then n00b” response would have been from one of our number :S
/real world diplomacy blog
To do sums in krunner, prepend an ‘=’ sign to your sum. It took me a while to figure out, too, and I’ve always meant to investigate why the KDE 3 minicli could do its sums without. Krunner is also not quite as good at remembering your history as the minicli was.