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The first KDE 4.3.0 release candidate
July 1st, 2009. The KDE Community today announced the immediate availability of KDE 4.3 RC1, a release candidate of the 3rd iteration over the KDE 4 desktop, applications and development platform. KDE 4.3 focuses on polishing and completing the user experience by providing a modern and beautiful Free working environment. Compared to the Beta releases, this release candidate now contains the new Air theme, which will be the default for KDE 4.3.0. Air is a theme lighter than Oxygen, which ist still available as an option through the "Desktop Settings" dialog. KDE's award-winning tools and applications are available in more than 50 languages. After the second beta, the focus is now on ironing out the last problems with KDE 4.3.0, to be released at the end of this month. Full announcement: http://kde.org/announcements/announce-4.3-rc1.php -- sebas http://www.kde.org | http://vizZzion.org | GPG Key ID: 9119 0EF9 _______________________________________________ kde-announce mailing list kde-announce@kde.org https://mail.kde.org/mailman/listinfo/kde-announce (Log in to post comments)
The first KDE 4.3.0 release candidate Posted Jul 1, 2009 16:10 UTC (Wed) by Holmes1869 (guest, #42043) [Link]
Over the weekend I took the big plunge and upgraded my Gentoo 3.5.10 to 4.2.4, which is in testing (thanks to the Gentoo folks for making the upgrade so easy). Once it looked like it was all good, I removed all of my KDE 3 apps and libraries.
FWIW, I have to say that I am very impressed so far. I had compiled my own SVN pulls of KDE 4.0 and 4.1, but (not to beat a dead horse) they really just weren't that usable. With 4.2.4, I haven't had any crashes yet with my main apps (Konqui, Konsole, and Plasma), and the speed has been noticeably better than than the previous KDE4 releases.
I've definitely experienced the "confidence shift" and am now really looking forward to future KDE4 releases. Thanks to all the devs for your work.
The first KDE 4.3.0 release candidate Posted Jul 1, 2009 20:59 UTC (Wed) by alecs1 (guest, #46699) [Link]
If you take a look, you'll notice that many of the really hard problems that require hard work and thinking are still there.
Take a look at the "most hated bugs" (http://tinyurl.com/2zkqr6) and search for the bugs with smaller numbers. They have been there for many years because are hard to solve, for example #70063 for which I constantly receive activity in the inbox because of being subscribed.
There's also "most wanted features" (http://tinyurl.com/l5fg7m), with bugs from 2001 in top 10. I receive some activity from there too.
That's not to say I am comparing KDE with Xorg's 255 keycodes limitation (the first that comes mind now). Far from me. In many respects KDE is a fast moving project.
Otherwise, the feel good air is there, and I switched to KDE 4.2 as soon as it made it to Debian and didn't look back too much.
The first KDE 4.3.0 release candidate Posted Jul 2, 2009 2:10 UTC (Thu) by bcebul (guest, #41527) [Link]
I switched to Debian Sid's KDE 4.2 and did look back. The KDE 4.2 bugs are too many to swallow for me. There too much loss of functionality still for a day to day desktop. From this report KDE 4.3 has done little to address this. KDE 3.5.x is still much faster for me, has fewer bugs and fewer headaches. Introduction of new features should not sacrifice old functionality for the sake of developers' whims. This seems to be a basic flaw in the open source community development model.
The first KDE 4.3.0 release candidate Posted Jul 2, 2009 9:33 UTC (Thu) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link]
Of course prioritizing new features over old functionality is not a fault
that has *ever* been levelled at proprietary software developers.
This is a bug in *all software developers*. :)
The first KDE 4.3.0 release candidate Posted Jul 2, 2009 14:23 UTC (Thu) by khim (subscriber, #9252) [Link] This is a bug in *all software developers*. :)It's not a bug, it's a feature. If you'll take a look on rare software projects who are trying to fix bugs before starting to add new features (like Emacs) you'll see that they are invariably in bad shape (Ok, some are in VERY bad shape) - and they have tons of unofficial patches to add this or that feature anyway. Why is that? Features attract users, bugs detract them - and projects without users either die or become zombie (like Hurd). That's why KDE developers switched almost entirely to "bugfix mode" when reaction to KDE 4.0 showed that people are hurt enough to consider switching to GNOME, XFCE and other projects "en masse". When real danger passed (how many guys are still consider dropping KDE today?) they returned back to normal modus of operandi: adding features and leisurely fixing bugs. And this is good decision IMO. Introduction of new features should not sacrifice old functionality for the sake of developers' whims.How astute! Sure, new features should attract new user and not hurt old users too much. KDE 4.3 looks fine to me: new ideas are interesting and there are not enough bugs to force exodus of old users. Please answer honestly: when (not if, but when!) you distribution will drop KDE 3.5 support what'll you do - switch to KDE 4.x (screaming and kicking) or to GNOME/XFCE/etc? Answer "I'll stick with KDE 3.5" is not an option in a long run, you know :-)
The first KDE 4.3.0 release candidate Posted Jul 2, 2009 14:55 UTC (Thu) by boudewijn (subscriber, #14185) [Link]
You are so right...
You know, I get so sick of people who complain that there are new features in a release while
* Sunday afternoon: I fix a bug
Rinse, repeat until Saturday. On Saturday I get up at 8 so I have the morning for Krita. I feel like
Sunday night, I commit the feature, together with notes on two dozen improvements that really
Then, after a few months, we release. Guess what's going to be noticed in the release
That's life for a volunteer developer, and in the KDE world, we're nearly all in that situation. We
(And people should stop getting so defensive when asked "can you please help out
The first KDE 4.3.0 release candidate Posted Jul 2, 2009 16:02 UTC (Thu) by vblum (guest, #1151) [Link]
emacs dropped ctrl-x x in its newer versions, it seems - what a shame ! apparently I was the only user, for the last 15 years! So not even emacs is as holy as it used to be.
(NB - this post is intended as humorous, no more - yes, I use ctrl-x x and it's gone in some incarnations, but I did literally NO work to investigate why that might be! Could be completely trivial!)
The first KDE 4.3.0 release candidate Posted Jul 2, 2009 19:46 UTC (Thu) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link]
Well it's one line to put it back :) I suspect most people use C-u C-SPC
more than C-x C-x...
The first KDE 4.3.0 release candidate Posted Jul 2, 2009 18:53 UTC (Thu) by aseigo (guest, #18394) [Link]
"There too much loss of functionality still for a day to day desktop."
such as?
The first KDE 4.3.0 release candidate Posted Jul 2, 2009 20:48 UTC (Thu) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link]
Well, if you believe the bug votes, smooth scrolling. Personally I have no
idea why anyone would ever want smooth scrolling... but konsole dcop/dbus automation would be nice to have back. (It may be back in 4.3.x, I'm not on that yet.)
The first KDE 4.3.0 release candidate Posted Jul 5, 2009 0:09 UTC (Sun) by aseigo (guest, #18394) [Link]
konsole dbus seems to be there :)
aseigo@independence:~> qdbus org.kde.konsole /Konsole
aseigo@independence:~> qdbus org.kde.konsole /Sessions/1
there's even more there than that, but you can probably see them for yourself with qdbusviewer :)
The first KDE 4.3.0 release candidate Posted Jul 5, 2009 11:46 UTC (Sun) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link]
Like I said, I haven't built it yet, or even svn uped :) but pre-emptive
before-I-ask feature additions are just what I expect of KDE!
The first KDE 4.3.0 release candidate Posted Jul 2, 2009 9:45 UTC (Thu) by callegar (guest, #16148) [Link]
I have a problem with KDE 4 and release 4.3 apparently is not solving it.
In an office with cheap printers KDE 4 more than doubles the paper and ink usage over gnome and MS Windows, showing very little attention at costs and none at the environment.
It is not possible to select odd/even pages to do manual duplex printing (you need to first print to pdf and then use the non free acrobat reader for that) and there is no 2-up or n-up printing option at all.
Note that kde3 supported all the features from the pstools suite, including booklet printing.
All this looks funny to me:
- when KDE shipped its 4.0 release everybody was horrified, while to me it was perfectly ok that the KDE people wanted to try new technologies, also in view of the fact that at that time KDE 3.5 was still supported and that users could make a choice.
- now that KDE is at 4.3 (mature?) and that there is no more support at all for 3.5 everybody seems to be happy and I am the quite disappointed one because more than 1 year after KDE 4 came out and after 3 releases, I still see that features that I would tend to consider "obvious" are completely missing. For instance, I am speaking of:
- having (as mentioned) a working print dialogue allowing one to save resources by printing both sides or putting two pages onto one.
- the possibility to download photos and files from your handy phone browsing its filesystem with an obex ioslave;
- etc.
Unfortunately all these things were on the release goals list for 4.3 and have been scrapped on the way. Personally, I would like KDE to prioritize these features rather than seeing a release announcement enthusiastic about a screensaver that eats your desktop (which I agree is a nice thing to have, but with no impact on productivity).
But unfortunately it looks like I am the only one. 5th most requested feature is smooth scrolling. 19th is different wallpapers on different virtual desktops (that I believe is already in place btw through the "activity" framework), then we find screensaver for kdm, face detection, automatic volume level adjustment for songs, continuous resize for plasmoids, ... to find something slightly connected with working on a computer, like odd/even page selection you need to go down a few hundreds positions, n-up printing is not even there.
The first KDE 4.3.0 release candidate Posted Jul 2, 2009 12:50 UTC (Thu) by bfeeney (guest, #6855) [Link] now that KDE is at 4.3 (mature?) and that there is no more support at all for 3.5As far as I know, the KDE devs are still supporting 3.5 with bug-fix / security releases. - having (as mentioned) a working print dialogue allowing one to save resources by printing both sides or putting two pages onto one.I've got KDE 4.2, and if I hit the "Options" button on the print dialog, and select the (poorly named) "Actions" tab I can select whether or not to use Duplex printing and / or use greyscale only. On the "Pages" tab I can set the pages per sheet to 1, 2, 4, 6, 9 or 16. On the Obex front, it's not finished yet, but people are clearly working on it (http://kde- apps.org/content/show.php/kdebluetooth4?content=84761) so you can't really accuse the KDE team of ignoring your needs.
The first KDE 4.3.0 release candidate Posted Jul 2, 2009 17:20 UTC (Thu) by callegar (guest, #16148) [Link]
KDE 3.5.10 shipped 10 months ago and on the KDE site there is no sign of a release schedule for a 3.5.11. So I do not know if bugs were discovered or fixed. Also I am uncertain about the support status of the libraries KDE 3.5 is build upon (qt3 to mention one). But let's stop speaking of 3.5...
First of all... thanks for the information!!! I now see n-up in the options menu! I missed its appearance after the latest updates. Good news!
On the other side, I truly hope the odd/even page selection and the kdeprint application can also arrive first or later... unfortunately, the current duplex options are good only if you have an expensive duplex printer. Also, to print from say a legacy CAD application without a kdeprint dialog application can be tough. With regards to kdebluetooth4, the site you mention has not been updated in the last 6 months, so its hard to appreciate the progress. I expect it to be there, but you must agree that desktop effects and screensavers are getting a better "communication" effort right now.
And I'm sorry if my comments could be exchanged for an accusation. That was not my point at all. In the end I am a KDE user and the one who did not complain about the 4.0 experimental release! Conversely, I only wanted to point out that while I can enjoy all the effects and cuteness of KDE 4 at home (where I have no problem to use pstools or the multivalent pdf tools from the commandline to do odd/even page selection), at the ".3" release still I find issues in advocating KDE in productivity environments where certain features (communication with mobile devices / sensibility wrt paper and ink usage) are taken for granted.
And I also wanted to point out that the wishlist you find on the website is most likely the wishlist of people enthusiastic enough to write their wishes on a website. It may show different priorities (smooth scrolling at the very top) from the wishlist of people who merely use the desktop as a tool.
The first KDE 4.3.0 release candidate Posted Jul 2, 2009 18:52 UTC (Thu) by aseigo (guest, #18394) [Link]
KDE now uses Qt's printing system; there simply was not enough interest in and manpower to devote to printing systems to keep kdeprint going. it fell by the wayside, and now we work with Qt Software on it, increasing the number of people working on printing substantially.
now that Qt has opened up development fully on gitorious, this becomes quite a bit better of a proposition because we can also get involved more directly with what resources we can manage to find in the community development pool.
you should check out this blog:
http://www.layt.net/john/blog/odysseus/
he's a community dev who has been doing some work on printing. you may find it interesting. i'd also suggest providing feedback directly to Qt Software about these things as they are a major part of printing support in KDE now.
The first KDE 4.3.0 release candidate Posted Jul 3, 2009 7:26 UTC (Fri) by callegar (guest, #16148) [Link]
Thanks for the pointer to the blog. Good to see things moving on this front.
The first KDE 4.3.0 release candidate Posted Jul 5, 2009 0:37 UTC (Sun) by mikov (subscriber, #33179) [Link]
You have got to be kidding me. I am 100% KDE fan, though to this day continue using KDE 3 because it is in Debian Stable.
However it would never even for a second occurred to be that KDE 4.3 - a supposedly mature mainstream desktop environment - does not have something so fundamental and simple Even/Odd printing. This is ridiculous. I don't happen to own a double-sided printer, and I use Linux+KDE 100% of the time, so how the hell am I going to print???
Don't get me wrong, I love KDE, but if this is really the case, then KDE 4 can still only be regarded as an Alpha version. Not only that, but the entire development process seems broken. Before worrying about utter nonsense like widgets on the desktop, the fundamental functionality like printing should work first! The guy on the linked blog seems to really be trying, but people this is 4.3 already!!!! How can you have a desktop environment without printing. Plus, printing happened to work great in the previous version of KDE.
Man, I was really considering upgrading to KDE 4 sooner or later, but now I really don't know. The only problem is that I find Gnome ugly and inconvenient, so I don't really have much of an alternative.
KDE 4 Posted Jul 3, 2009 9:07 UTC (Fri) by ldo (subscriber, #40946) [Link] Overall I am pleased with KDE 4. I have upgraded all 3 of my Linux boxes to run it. Except for one thing: KNode. KNode 4 seems a step backwards from KNode 3 in some annoying ways: line wrapping can no longer be reliably controlled; I get some weird behaviour copying and pasting text from web pages; and I no longer have tooltips to show the full version of truncated subject lines.
KDE 4 Posted Jul 3, 2009 10:50 UTC (Fri) by boudewijn (subscriber, #14185) [Link]
KNode really, really, really needs someone to help maintaing it. That was already true in the KDE 3
days and personally I'm surprised it even made the transition.
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