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KDE Software Compilation 4.4 Beta1 Released
KDE Software Compilation 4.4-beta1 Out Now: Codename "Kompilation" KDE Ships First Preview of New 4.4 Desktop, Applications and Development Platform December 3rd, 2009. Today, KDE has released a first preview the KDE Software Compilation (KDE SC), 4.4 Beta1 The first beta version of KDE SC 4.4 provides a preview and base for helping to stabilize the next version of the KDE Desktop, Applications and Development Platform. The list of changes this time around is especially long. Important changes can be observed all over the place: The Nepomuk Semantic Search framework has made leaps: A new storage backend makes it a lot faster, new user interfaces to interact with the Nepomuk database are first delivered with KDE 4.4.0 and a timeline view of your files makes finding files used in the past easier. The Plasma Desktop has been further polished. Many user interface elements have received attention by developers and designers. The new widget explorer provides a richer experience for managing desktop widgets. Plasma widgets can now be shared with other users over the network and the handling of storage devices in the desktop shell has been streamlined. Also, in 4.4 Plasma's little sibling, the Netbook shell debuts as a technology preview. New applications on the horizon range from Blogilo, a rich-client blogging tool to Cantor and Rocs, two scientific applications for advanced math and graph theory needs. Many other applications, such as the Gwenview image viewer and the Dolpin file manager have been further improved. The KDE Development Platform adds the new KAuth authorization framework for easy and secure privilege escalation, printing of odd and even pages, scanner support for the Windows platform and the first pieces of integration of the popular webkit rendering engine. These are only some of the changes one can expect from the new KDE Software Compilation 4.4, there is also a longer list of the changes: http://techbase.kde.org/Schedules/KDE4/4.4_Release_Goals Read more: http://www.kde.org/announcements/announce-4.4-beta1.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)
KDE Software Compilation 4.4 Beta1 Released Posted Dec 6, 2009 14:11 UTC (Sun) by alecs1 (guest, #46699) [Link]
The release goals page seem to show a big concentration on Plasma, which after enough releases (4.3.2 here) still has lots of quirks, non-standard and non-uniform behaviour. In my opinion it still fails to live up to the expectations (I've been using gnome-panel until 4.3.2 instead of plasma panel).
There are also listed some other changes, like the long standing odd/even printing.
But if my understanding is correct, then the change in the Nepomuk backend should be most important.
KDE Software Compilation 4.4 Beta1 Released Posted Dec 6, 2009 14:37 UTC (Sun) by bjacob (subscriber, #58566) [Link]
The KDE release announcements usually focus on plasma because, being the most visible part, this is what people are the most excited about.
The Nepomuk Virtuoso stuff is indeed very important, yes.
KDE Software Compilation 4.4 Beta1 Released Posted Dec 6, 2009 15:04 UTC (Sun) by aseigo (guest, #18394) [Link]
"The release goals page seem to show a big concentration on Plasma,"
that's mostly because the Plasma team documents what they are working on fairly thoroughly. as it's also one of the more active teams, this leads to a lot of items on the changelog.
that said, would you rather we didn't work on it so much? ;)
"non-standard and non-uniform behaviour"
specifics? hard to have a conversation otherwise.
"like the long standing odd/even printing."
that's a Qt issue, as KDE software now relies on Qt fully for printing services. with the fully open development model now, however, KDE people have been able to start working directly on the Qt printing code, and things like this. see:
http://www.layt.net/john/blog/odysseus/the_good_the_bad_a...
"But if my understanding is correct, then the change in the Nepomuk backend should be most important."
it's very important, yes. there are oher very important strides being made in other areas as well, such as akonadi, but nepomuk is really starting to hit it's stride.
KDE Software Compilation 4.4 Beta1 Released Posted Dec 6, 2009 19:41 UTC (Sun) by alecs1 (guest, #46699) [Link]
"specifics? hard to have a conversation otherwise."
I just didn't want to turn the discussion over my pet bugs. Some that I am directly affected of:
Non standard:
Non uniform:
Quirks (thing that appear rarely, but seem to appear in all versions):
"that said, would you rather we didn't work on it so much? ;)"
Debian Lenny Posted Dec 6, 2009 21:27 UTC (Sun) by davi (guest, #18853) [Link] I want to follow using KDE 3.5. I will not upgrade my Debian Lenny.
Debian Lenny Posted Dec 7, 2009 0:19 UTC (Mon) by Adi (guest, #52678) [Link]
Then don't.
In fact, no one cares what you think.
Debian Lenny Posted Dec 7, 2009 17:49 UTC (Mon) by martinfick (subscriber, #4455) [Link]
That's a little rude. I care. :) And I suspect that some kde devs do too.
I would like to upgrade to 4.x, but my performance testing so far side by side on the same machine at the same time (and thus equally affected by the same machine load: kde3.x running in one linux vserver, kde4.x running in another), and kde 4.x has noticeable page load lag in konqueror while kde3.x is responsive. These kde4.x latencies are unacceptable for browsing on my setup. I don't really want to stay on an old KDE, but with my aging hardware, I just can't upgrade to 4.x yet, but I do keep hoping that kde4.x will get faster... That means, of course, one more vote for maintaining kde3.x a while longer.
Debian Lenny Posted Dec 7, 2009 23:29 UTC (Mon) by aseigo (guest, #18394) [Link]
it's probably not your hardware, it's probably the drivers. which leaves us in a quandry: screw the people with hardware that has decent driver support (mostly <3 year hardware and newer) or support the dwindling group that has really old stuff. sad? a bit. true? yes.
thankfully, kde3 is still there and can be used on system without reasonable drivers.
i truly wish we'd pushed harder on x.org drivers years ago so we wouldn't be in this annoying state now.
Debian Lenny Posted Dec 7, 2009 23:47 UTC (Mon) by martinfick (subscriber, #4455) [Link]
Do you really think page loads are that affected by drivers? And, again, what is so essential in kde4.x konqueror that merits this? I am confused. How can browsing a simple web page in kde4 stress my drivers, but not in kde3? Is kde4 doing useless 3D rendering somehow when it is not required in kde3? Is it because the QT widgets are fancier? Is it the window manager doing scaling or something like this in kde4?
I am not against good eye candy on the desktop (if that is what you are suggesting stresses my drivers), I just have a hard time understanding why my browser has higher latencies. If it is eye candy, do you have any suggestions how this can be turned off? I love KDE, and really do want to upgrade to 4x when the performance becomes bearable (I am no power user, I have very low expectations for speed).
Debian Lenny Posted Dec 9, 2009 10:26 UTC (Wed) by jospoortvliet (subscriber, #33164) [Link]
actually it's not just the drivers (but that does play a part in this),
it's also that konqi simply hasn't been keeping up with the competition. Hopefully we'll see a better webkit in future releases. I often use Aurora now, webkit based, works pretty good. And reqkonq is coming, too.
Debian Lenny Posted Dec 9, 2009 17:30 UTC (Wed) by martinfick (subscriber, #4455) [Link]
What competition is konqi not keeping up with, an unmaintained kde3 series??? This simply doesn't make sense. But I agree that it is likely not the drivers, especially since I use simple onboard intel video. I think that unless someone from kde honestly sits down on older hardware circa ~2004 with both a copy of kde3 and kde4 to attempt to bring konqi up to snuff, it will likely never get fast enough.
Debian Lenny Posted Dec 9, 2009 21:51 UTC (Wed) by oak (guest, #2786) [Link]
> Do you really think page loads are that affected by drivers?
Has Kwin compositing always enabled? That would slow down things.
KDE4 and Drivers Posted Jan 24, 2010 2:30 UTC (Sun) by martinfick (subscriber, #4455) [Link]
You were indeed correct! I managed to finally get my kernel and Xserver
stack upgraded and it IS indeed much faster (and usable) now on my machine. I will transitioning my daily usage to KDE4 in the next few days. Thanks for all the hard work and for pushing forward. It seems that perhaps KDE4 really did pressure the other components to improve. I am excited about some of the new kde4 features that I already see.
Debian Lenny Posted Dec 8, 2009 10:58 UTC (Tue) by nye (guest, #51576) [Link]
This may sound trivial, but it's something that annoys me a tiny amount so many times per day that it adds up:
In KDE3, pressing alt+f2 causes the run dialog to appear instantaneously; in KDE4, KRunner will appear in about 0.5-2 seconds, assuming it hasn't crashed. I may be wrong about this, but as far as I recall, in KDE3 there wasn't a permanent dedicated process running for this, so it's disappointing that KDE4, which has one, is slower to respond.
Not exactly something I could file a bug report about though, is it? But there are a number of annoyances like this that contribute to a rough user experience IMO.
Debian Lenny Posted Dec 9, 2009 10:27 UTC (Wed) by jospoortvliet (subscriber, #33164) [Link]
Hmm, here it comes up instantly, but then again, I recently upgraded my PC
to a rather beafy thing. Still the diff shouldn't be big. Sure, KRunner does a lot more than the old alt-f2 thing (a shitload more) but it's preloaded and only has to show it's window. That shouldn't take more than a few miliseconds...
Debian Lenny Posted Dec 10, 2009 1:17 UTC (Thu) by MarkWilliamson (guest, #30166) [Link]
I think it comes up quite a lot faster on my system since I switched from
the open source (but nasty) nv driver to the Nvidia closed driver and enabled compositing.
I really don't see what it could be doing to be so much slower without
I like krunner but I too find that its usefulness as a quick access for
KDE Software Compilation 4.4 Beta1 Released Posted Dec 7, 2009 13:37 UTC (Mon) by Janne (guest, #40891) [Link]
"185665"
Nothing in that is about calendar being "non-standard".
"186144"
The problem here seems to be that you keep on thinking that the calendar-applet is an application, but it's not. By that logic we should be complaining how tooltips and the like are "non-standard", since they do not have close-buttons on them, like other "standard" windows have.
"214205"
Kickoff not being able to cover other windows is obviously a bug, and not a conscious design-decision.
"changes in plasma settings only apply on Ok, not immediatly"
Isn't that the standard KDE-way of working? IIRC GNOME has instant apply, KDE does not.
"very difficult to configure a full taskbar"
What's so difficult in it? How is it "non-standard"? Shouldn't new software try to make things better than before, as opposed trying to mimic the way first pieces of software did it, for sake of "constistency" and "standards"? How could you ever make things any better, if changes are not allowed?
"214205"
Isn't that the way it's supposed to work? The instanses where the applet does not appear above other windows are obviously bugs that should be fixed. Highlighting them as "inconsistent" behavior is disingenious, since their current behavior is not the intended behavior.
"-taking 100%--processor"
That's a bug obviously. Unfortunate, yes, but all software has bugs.
"kwin crash when changing the theme"
Isn't that a Kwin-problem, and not Plasma-problem?
"the slew of themes that are bad usability wise"
Then don't use them.
KDE Software Compilation 4.4 Beta1 Released Posted Dec 7, 2009 18:16 UTC (Mon) by alecs1 (guest, #46699) [Link]
185665
Standard Qt + Kwin: -the window is movable, closable, resizable and stays on top; -right/left/etc keyboard keys navigate the calendar; To make it simpler, the old one was of a nimble perfection, the new one has an animation, but is less functional. Old one - good, new one - not that good. About the other argument (186144), I only want the functionality, it doesn't matter if you call the software "application", "applet" or "script".
"Kickoff not being able to cover other windows is obviously a bug, and not a conscious design-decision."
I believe I expressed my Plasma dislikes clear enough, I won't take the space/time to reply the other things, because I feel you're trying too aggressively to dismiss my points.
KDE Software Compilation 4.4 Beta1 Released Posted Dec 8, 2009 1:23 UTC (Tue) by xorbe (guest, #3165) [Link]
I don't understand why people defend KDE4 so viscously -- it's clearly a side step or back step so far from KDE3. It's like polishing a turd at this point.
KDE Software Compilation 4.4 Beta1 Released Posted Dec 8, 2009 8:53 UTC (Tue) by Janne (guest, #40891) [Link]
To me, KDE3 seemed like a confusing mess. Yes, it could do just about anything, but USING it was not enjoyable, since everything was so confusing and complicated.
Now, if some people really love that confusing pile of random features, they are totally free to keep on using it or hack the codebase themselves. Funny thing is that no-one seems to be interested in doing that. No, what they do instead is to complain about it.
I for one commend the KDE-team for doing the brave thing, and letting go of the past. It's quite obvious to me that KDE3 had run it's course and it didn't really have any future. What KDE needed was a clean break from the past and a new direction that lets the project grow.
Had KDE continued with KDE3, we would have had another GNOME (I love GNOME as well, so don't flame me) in our hands, where each new release brings with it a handful of new minor features and some polish, and that's it. the desktop would be more or less identical from version to version.
In short: stagnation.
What I see KDE4 doing is to take the polish and ease of use from GNOME, and combine it with functionality from KDE3. Now, it could be argued that KDE4 hasn't yet reached GNOME in polish or ease of use, and/or that it hasn't yet reached KDE3 when it comes to functionality, but they have chosen the correct path. GNOME is stagnating, KDE3 was a dead-end. KDE4 is moving along faster than KDE3 ever did.
Sure, KDE3 might have had some specific features that you came to rely on, and those features are not in KDE4. But that's hardly a reason to demand that KDE4 should be killed in favor of KDE 3.6. Sometimes we have to keep on using older systems for a while, or we need to adjust the way we work. expecting that new versions of software must have all the features of the previous version, and those features must work identically is disingenuous in the extreme. It would mean that the software could only become more complicated and that no innovation is possible. By that logic, KDE should still be more or less identical to very first version of KDE!
KDE Software Compilation 4.4 Beta1 Released Posted Dec 8, 2009 19:10 UTC (Tue) by JoeF (subscriber, #4486) [Link] Had KDE continued with KDE3, we would have had another GNOME (I love GNOME as well, so don't flame me) in our hands, where each new release brings with it a handful of new minor features and some polish, and that's it. the desktop would be more or less identical from version to version.You say that as if it is a bad thing. Having a familiar desktop is a good thing, even if the underlying code is different. We don't need to emulate that company from Redmond, which changes the desktop completely with every new release. Now, that of course doesn't mean stagnation, just a more gradual path. What I see KDE4 doing is to take the polish and ease of use from GNOME, and combine it with functionality from KDE3. Now, it could be argued that KDE4 hasn't yet reached GNOME in polish or ease of use, and/or that it hasn't yet reached KDE3 when it comes to functionality, but they have chosen the correct path.
KDE Software Compilation 4.4 Beta1 Released Posted Dec 9, 2009 10:57 UTC (Wed) by mpr22 (subscriber, #60784) [Link]
My impression is that KDE 4.0 was released in a messy half-finished state because it was the only way to get people to start moving their apps.
KDE Software Compilation 4.4 Beta1 Released Posted Dec 9, 2009 11:17 UTC (Wed) by boudewijn (subscriber, #14185) [Link] I'm wondering what makes people phrase these things so negatively... Maybe it's more fun to write or makes them feel better about themselves. What you said could easily be phrased as "KDE 4.0 was released for developers to enable them to start porting their applications." That phrasing has the twin advantages of being more more accurate and more insightful. (As well as being politer to all the volunteers who have put in many hours of labour into the work, but that might not be seen as an advantage.)
KDE Software Compilation 4.4 Beta1 Released Posted Dec 9, 2009 14:18 UTC (Wed) by alankila (subscriber, #47141) [Link]
A few years' worth of commitment of supporting 3.5 while 4.0 was being fleshed out would have been great. But the message was that 3.5 is now abandoned and 4.x is the way.
Thus, distros were forced to put 4.0 to the masses, or face the prospect of supporting 3.5 themselves. It all worked, I guess, if your purpose was to drag people kicking and screaming into the 4.0 land to act as unwilling beta testers. Unfortunately, 4.0 worked so poorly that people -- me included -- were soured on KDE.
KDE Software Compilation 4.4 Beta1 Released Posted Dec 9, 2009 14:35 UTC (Wed) by kragil (subscriber, #34373) [Link]
Well, I am sure KDE wouldn't do it this exact way again .. the time spend defending the 4.0 release on the interwebs could easily be used give 3.5 small updates to keep the illusion or good maintenance.
So let's just bury the past, the lessons were learned and we can all now move forward.
My guess is that 4.4 will be fairly great and 4.5 will have fixes for every ones problems (great KDE browser, good Office apps, activity management that does not suck etc.)
KDE Software Compilation 4.4 Beta1 Released Posted Dec 9, 2009 16:01 UTC (Wed) by JoeF (subscriber, #4486) [Link] So let's just bury the past, the lessons were learned and we can all now move forward.I am not so sure that the lessons have been learned by the KDE people... I see a lot of rather rude comments, like in this thread (prime example: "no one cares what you think") whenever "normal" people say anything against KDE4 and pro KDE 3. That attitude troubles me. It is somewhat understandable since they had to deal with a lot of negativity after KDE 4.0 came out, but nevertheless, insulting your users is not the way to go.
KDE Software Compilation 4.4 Beta1 Released Posted Dec 9, 2009 17:47 UTC (Wed) by kragil (subscriber, #34373) [Link]
Is that Adi dude even KDE? IDK and it is not like people are always super friendly and caring on the LKML either ..
All the key KDE people I know are very very nice people, but they still are only human. And compared to Gnome the number of volunteers compared to full time devs is higher. So don't expect too much maintenance work done .. (that is something KDE 4.0 might have change. See my previous post.)
And maybe KDE is more European and maybe US devs are a little bit nicer (in their special shallow way) than German or French .. IDK.
KDE Software Compilation 4.4 Beta1 Released Posted Dec 9, 2009 18:37 UTC (Wed) by JoeF (subscriber, #4486) [Link] Is that Adi dude even KDE? IDK and it is not like people are always super friendly and caring on the LKML eitherI don't know if that person is a KDE developer, but aseigo is and he wasn't much friendlier, either: "how disengenous to the point of dishonesty"... As far as the tone on LKML, that's a developer mailing list. LWN certainly is not targeting developers in particular. And the issue with niceness has nothing to do with being US-based or European-based. I am a European living in the US. If anything, I have seen Europeans being nicer than Americans.
KDE Software Compilation 4.4 Beta1 Released Posted Dec 10, 2009 18:09 UTC (Thu) by kragil (subscriber, #34373) [Link]
aseigo is frank but honest and quite logical in argumentation and he knows what he is talking about. He is not perfect, but he had to deal with so many haters that I find his general attitude to criticism to be superb considering the circumstances.
KDE Software Compilation 4.4 Beta1 Released Posted Dec 10, 2009 21:52 UTC (Thu) by JoeF (subscriber, #4486) [Link]
Well, that's what they got for releasing KDE 4.0 too early...
KDE Software Compilation 4.4 Beta1 Released Posted Dec 11, 2009 23:42 UTC (Fri) by jospoortvliet (subscriber, #33164) [Link] 26th August 2008 - KDE 3.5.10 Released "KDE Community Ships Tenth Maintenance Update for Fourth Major Version for Leading Free Software Desktop." 29th July 2008 - KDE 4.1 Released "KDE Community Ships Major Update to Leading Free Software Desktop."
Our 3.5 release was supported long after 4.0 was released. Still works
KDE Software Compilation 4.4 Beta1 Released Posted Dec 9, 2009 15:54 UTC (Wed) by JoeF (subscriber, #4486) [Link] What you said could easily be phrased as "KDE 4.0 was released for developers to enable them to start porting their applications." That phrasing has the twin advantages of being more more accurate and more insightful.Except that it isn't. That would imply that the old version, KDE 3.5, would continue to be supported until KDE 4 was ready for the masses. But that's not what happened. With the release of KDE 4.0, KDE 3.5 became abandonware. That fiasco soured me quite a bit on KDE 4. Tried it, found that it sucked, went back to KDE 3. And I haven't decided yet if I switch to KDE 4 or another window manager.
KDE Software Compilation 4.4 Beta1 Released Posted Dec 9, 2009 16:52 UTC (Wed) by boudewijn (subscriber, #14185) [Link] Except it is. KDE 3.5 was supported and got releases after 4.0 was released. Ergo, it was supported. KDE 3.5.10 was released after KDE 4.1, even. And KDE 4.1 was a version with which I, at least, could be just as productive as with 3.5. I could read mail, the websites I follow, write the texts I needed and develop the applications I was working on. And even now, companies like KDAB are working on features for the PIM applications of KDE 3.5.
KDE Software Compilation 4.4 Beta1 Released Posted Dec 9, 2009 18:47 UTC (Wed) by JoeF (subscriber, #4486) [Link]
Ok, didn't know that. I take my assertion back, then.
However, applications like Kopete didn't get any updates, like getting it working after Yahoo changed their protocol.
KDE Software Compilation 4.4 Beta1 Released Posted Dec 11, 2009 23:50 UTC (Fri) by jospoortvliet (subscriber, #33164) [Link]
Yes, not all teams from the KDE community continued updating their apps.
But you've got to remember - we're not a company with top-down control, we're just a bunch of volunteers each doing their own thing. Sure, we coordinate, communicate, plan. But in the end - it's our own time, not KDE's. There is only so much boring work you're willing to do until you wear out and stop caring altogether.
This is probably gonna be better in the future now more and more companies
And about the 4.0 to early: the only thing I personally regret was the
Releasing 4.0, besides the communication screw-up which hurt our users,
KDE Software Compilation 4.4 Beta1 Released Posted Dec 10, 2009 17:08 UTC (Thu) by juanjux (guest, #11652) [Link]
KDE 4.0 and 4.1 were not very good on my experience. 4.2 started to be nice,
but has lots of quirks. 4.3 is pretty good, stable, fast and the glitches are few and nonimportant (for me.) 4.4 will probably be pretty awesome.
Congratulations for the KDE team, and thanks for not committing suicide
KDE Software Compilation 4.4 Beta1 Released Posted Dec 7, 2009 23:43 UTC (Mon) by aseigo (guest, #18394) [Link]
"-185665, 186144 (calendar applet),
-214205 (kickoff),"
seriously, how disengenous to the point of dishonesty. in KDE3 you could not add the menu or the calendar to the desktop. only panels.
when the menu is in the panel it behaves _exactly_ as it does in KDE3. when you add kickoff to the desktop, it shows the full interface (the whole reason you add things to the desktop) and if you want it, show the dashboard (ctrl+f12 by default). i'd like to eventually make shortcuts for widgets on the desktop "synonymous" with ctrl+f12, but using that as reason why it's worse than KDE3 when KDE3 can't even put the menu on the desktop is pretty aggravating.
the only one with any validity is 186144 where it asks for a close button in the calendar.
"changes in plasma settings only apply on Ok, not immediatly, not on clicking "Apply";"
that's a problem in KConfigDialog, hopefully will get fixed sooner rather than later.
"very difficult to configure a full taskbar."
yes, known issue; workaround: click the panel toolbox button to bring up the configuration bar and then right click anywhere on the taskbar.
"-taking 100%--processor, for ex. because of caching,"
if it's taking 100% constantly something is very broken; i haven't seen such bugs since 4.1. if caching is broken, it will only take cpu briefly (And it's not like kde3 didn't do that regularly either, btw) and there was a fix in 4.3.4 for SVG (un-)caching
"-kwin crash when changing the theme,"
nothing to do with plasma and afaik fixed in recent releases.
"-the slew of themes that are bad usability wise,"
that's why we ship a default.
"-misplaced icons in the tray, blended icons in the tray,"
i tried to get the systray changed 5 years ago, nobody listened. now we have a new system and apps that use it Just Work(tm)
"-with some themes the temperature monitor becomes unreadable."
broken themes. shall i remove all theming so you can't change anything? then i can guarantee that no random artist can fail at their endeavor.
"you where not misguided to invest so much in Plasma then I will be very happy."
and what will you do, exactly, when that happens?
KDE Software Compilation 4.4 Beta1 Released Posted Dec 8, 2009 19:05 UTC (Tue) by alecs1 (guest, #46699) [Link]
Hi,
"seriously, how disingenuous to the point of dishonesty".
Taking 100% processor still happened in a 4.3.x version, I was told that is because of caching, I just believed KDE devs.
Kwin still crashes, but I agree it's my mistake to bring to discussion.
About themes, indeed, I was wrong to bring the temperature monitor in discussion, I apologise for that. But I would argue that even the default theme was bad usability wise up to 4.2. I believe the taskbar in the screenshot here proves it: http://origin.arstechnica.com/news.media/kde4.0.png (I'm refering to the fact that it's difficult to realise what window has the focus).
("you where not misguided to invest so much in Plasma then I will be very happy.")
How arrogant to the point of aggressivity Posted Dec 9, 2009 6:59 UTC (Wed) by man_ls (subscriber, #15091) [Link] seriously, how disengenous to the point of dishonesty.That is how one of the prominent KDE devs deals with a user who has taken the trouble to report several issues with his favorite desktop. How glad I am not using KDE.
How arrogant to the point of aggressivity Posted Dec 9, 2009 16:30 UTC (Wed) by JoeF (subscriber, #4486) [Link]
It sometimes looks as if some people try to out-de Raadt Theo deRaadt...
How arrogant to the point of aggressivity Posted Dec 11, 2009 23:54 UTC (Fri) by jospoortvliet (subscriber, #33164) [Link]
Well, de Raadt would have been a lot more impolite. This wasn't that bad,
besides, I get why Aseigo said that. A lot of the points the guy made could have been debunked by a little research - yet he made them anyway. So he either honestly didn't know, or he did but just wanted to complain and be unfriendly. The latter I'd call dishonest.
I don't think he DID do it on purpose, at least not to a great extend, but
Did that come out wrong? I just meant we have had an occasional (very
KDE Software Compilation 4.4 Beta1 Released Posted Dec 10, 2009 15:06 UTC (Thu) by MarkWilliamson (guest, #30166) [Link]
"seriously, how disengenous to the point of dishonesty. in KDE3 you could
not add the menu or the calendar to the desktop. only panels."
Seriously? As others have observed - that's a pretty aggressive and
I've just reproduced the inconsistency with application launchers myself.
I also think your dismissal of the report about the calendar being placed
The system tray comment is interesting: I know there's a new system tray
Personally I think Plasma is a much better direction than the old-world
KDE Software Compilation 4.4 Beta1 Released Posted Dec 7, 2009 11:32 UTC (Mon) by macson_g (subscriber, #12717) [Link]
> "non-standard and non-uniform behaviour"
- Plasmoids on desktop are resizeable and movable like windowes, nut with very weird and non-standard interface - handle on the side, resizing/oving be dragging icons, not handle/edges/corners
- Multiple desktops (my long-loved feature of X) seems to be something orthogonal to multiple "plasma activities". Both those systems have similar ides behind them, but are managed and switched with similar in idea, but completely different UI's
And yes, I've reported and/or voted for this issues in KDE's bugzilla.
KDE Software Compilation 4.4 Beta1 Released Posted Dec 7, 2009 13:27 UTC (Mon) by Janne (guest, #40891) [Link]
"- Plasmoids on desktop are resizeable and movable like windowes, nut with very weird and non-standard interface - handle on the side, resizing/oving be dragging icons, not handle/edges/corners"
I don't really see the problem here. Plasmoids are not apps in traditonal sense. And besides, Plasmoids are still consistent enough that you figured out how to move and resize them. It's not like it's totally alien concept or anything.
As to multiple desktops vs. plasma activities.... Again, I don't see the problem here. You still have your multiple desktops, so it's not like that feature has been taken away from you. Plasma activities offer you a new feature that you may or may not find useful. If you find it useful, great! If you don't.... well, don't use it then.
Plasma activities is to plasmoids and panels as to what virtual desktops are to apps and app-windows. And doesn't recent KDE-version offer you the option of tying activities to desktops, so they are simplified.
It seems to me that you think that KDE (or any other piece of software) should not add any new features, since that would be "inconsistent" and "non-standard". Well, of course they would be if they are the first ones to do it. There are no standards to build on.
KDE Software Compilation 4.4 Beta1 Released Posted Dec 7, 2009 15:11 UTC (Mon) by morhippo (subscriber, #334) [Link]
"- Plasmoids on desktop are resizeable and movable like windowes, nut with very weird and non-standard interface - handle on the side, resizing/oving be dragging icons, not handle/edges/corners"
I don't really see the problem here. Plasmoids are not apps in traditonal sense. And besides, Plasmoids are still consistent enough that you figured out how to move and resize them. It's not like it's totally alien concept or anything.
I do see the problem - resizing and placing applets is really difficult compared to resizing and placing windows - the interface offered with the handle does make it extremely cumbersome to place several applets in a coordinated way. Allowing resizing on the edges would help a lot here!!
KDE Software Compilation 4.4 Beta1 Released Posted Dec 7, 2009 19:20 UTC (Mon) by macson_g (subscriber, #12717) [Link]
> It seems to me that you think that KDE (or any other piece of software) should not add any new features
Ooooooh, far from this. I consider myself an early adopter. I love KDE plasma, and all the the flexibility and gadgetry it has to offer.
> As to multiple desktops vs. plasma activities.... Again, I don't see the
Nope. I work on multiple desktops. I _alwyas_ used multiple wallpapers - different on each desktop. This helped me distinguish between them, and also multiplied my daily intake of eye-candy.
(I also had habit to use mouse wheel to switch desktops, but KDE4 cured me; but this is different story...)
Suddenly - the feature disappears in 4.0. I am using KDE 4 anyway ('early adopter'), while most of my friends are reluctant to switch. I am promised that the feature will be back in 4.3
Then comes 4.3. The feature is not here! I am told that I can 'tie activities to desktop', using terrible user interface. It takes me few minutes to do it, because in the 'zoom out' mode UI becomes almost no responsive at all, and each mouse click takes 10+ seconds. But I succeed.
And then another unpleasant surprise: during the year with KDE4 I learned to work with plasmoids on desktops and loved them. And now I have to re-configure them separately on each virtual desktop. Some of them are really hard to configure.
(Sorry about nagging here, but the bugzilla is so full of complaining like this, that KDE maintainers are probably ignoring it already)
KDE Software Compilation 4.4 Beta1 Released Posted Dec 7, 2009 23:46 UTC (Mon) by aseigo (guest, #18394) [Link]
"Suddenly - the feature disappears in 4.0."
as an "interesting question": which would you prefer .. kde3's "multiple wallpapers" or kde4's widgets and activities? why?
KDE Software Compilation 4.4 Beta1 Released Posted Dec 11, 2009 10:51 UTC (Fri) by mpr22 (subscriber, #60784) [Link]
I'm not a KDE user (I have yet to see a Linux desktop environment even 75% as pleasant-and-usable-for-me as "Win32 Classic; Rainy Day colour scheme; all bell-and-whistle effects disabled"; a hefty chunk of this is a question of fonts and font rendering), but my instinctive response to your questions is "Both, because I can conceive of no halfway-decent reason why it should be a matter of XOR."
KDE Software Compilation 4.4 Beta1 Released Posted Dec 11, 2009 23:56 UTC (Fri) by jospoortvliet (subscriber, #33164) [Link]
Well, it is kind-a possible now but you'd have to configure it yourself
(eg put the same widgets on each desktop). Yes, maybe it's an idea to allow both options - though I doubt anyone currently on the plasma team feels like writing it. Patches will most likely be welcome, however.
(not saying "shut up or send a patch", just "don't hold your breath until
Konqueror Posted Dec 7, 2009 1:06 UTC (Mon) by hisdad (subscriber, #5375) [Link]
I'm hoping that konq will get a bit of loving.
On my 4.3 System its useful only a a man page browser.
For a site such as bar.baen.com (sorry reg required) entire sections don't display.
Fortunately, installing firefox is not a problem.
--John
Konqueror Posted Dec 7, 2009 1:54 UTC (Mon) by Kit (guest, #55925) [Link]
I believe the issue you're having is more so centered in KHTML than Konqueror itself (as it sounds like it has to do with rendering troubles). Last I heard (admittedly a decent while ago), the effort to make it so that Konqueror could use either KHTML or WebKit interchangeably turned out to not be as simply as initially thought (i.e. lots of KHTML specific code in Konqueror, and Konqueror is fairly scary to work with).
On the other hand, rekonq has been maturing quite well, and it's based on WebKit (which generally has better support for arbitrary sites) as well as having a structure similar to Chrome's multi-process approach (which is really nice when Flash leaks memory like crazy... although Konqueror already kept Flash as an external process anyways).
Konqueror Posted Dec 7, 2009 6:07 UTC (Mon) by Sho (subscriber, #8956) [Link]
FWIW: The WebKit KPart will be shipped with KDE SC 4.4 (and is in this beta, too), so using WebKit in Konqueror is in fact an option now.
Konqueror Posted Dec 7, 2009 11:44 UTC (Mon) by Sho (subscriber, #8956) [Link]
Whoops, it appears I got that wrong. The KPart has, in fact, not been moved into the Software Compilation so far. What is shipping with 4.4, however, is KDEWebKit, a library sitting on top of QtWebKit that provides various forms of KDE integration and is described here:
http://techbase.kde.org/Projects/WebKit/Library
The KPart makes use of this library, and is still being worked on.
Konqueror Posted Dec 7, 2009 12:20 UTC (Mon) by wstephenson (subscriber, #14795) [Link]
I'm following the WebKitPart development, and noticed that KWallet support for form completions went in a couple of days ago - now the only feature needed for KDE integration parity with KHTML is the the ability to update the status bar.
It's in playground/libs, so build it and give feedback!
Konqueror Posted Dec 7, 2009 15:47 UTC (Mon) by drag (subscriber, #31333) [Link]
One of the major goals in KDE should be dropping the KHTML dependency and
moving entirely to Webkit...
Konqueror Posted Dec 9, 2009 10:37 UTC (Wed) by jospoortvliet (subscriber, #33164) [Link]
Oh, many agree with you (including me). However this is an area where the
Free Software nature of the KDE community makes things a bit harder. We can't decide what the Konqueror/KHTML developers work on - that's their prerogative. Luckily some are working on the WebKit KPart, as is said, and once it is good enough (tm) it might become default one day.
Konqueror Posted Dec 7, 2009 12:43 UTC (Mon) by alankila (subscriber, #47141) [Link] WebKit is amazing. It has by far the best javascript engine out there when I've tested it with some crazy hacks like this:
HDR in javascript In particular, KHTML is able to use pretty much optimal amount of memory in the HDR experiment (where each image takes 25.6 MB if it's implemented as a double array). Firefox consumes something past 2 GB of memory when trying to calculate Fattal tone mapping operator, while WebKit runs in about 400 MB all the time, most of which is spent by the raw image data arrays. Chromium was just as bad memory-wise. The "blitting effect" doesn't run properly on Linux firefox because someone must have been lazy with the canvas tag. And let's not forget that 64-bit firefox doesn't have JIT.
Konqueror Posted Dec 7, 2009 12:44 UTC (Mon) by alankila (subscriber, #47141) [Link]
When I said KHTML, I meant WebKit. Sorry.
Konqueror Posted Dec 7, 2009 22:08 UTC (Mon) by hisdad (subscriber, #5375) [Link]
Thanks for that. I was unaware of reconk. Unfortuately on my gentoo system it doesn't compile.
From everyones comments though, it seems konq is certainly getting its lovin', perhaps not in this release.
In other news, I just had a hard look at firefox under kde4. It works great, but dear god, its fugly.
KDE Software Compilation 4.4 Beta1 Released Posted Dec 7, 2009 13:31 UTC (Mon) by jackb (subscriber, #41909) [Link]
If KDE really wants to push web integration then they need to get all the
apps on the same page. Unless this has changed very recently Kopete had its own address book that's distinct from kaddressbook. Kaddressbook should be the single source for metacontacts and groups that all the other apps use. Once that's done they should look at synchronization between kaddressbook and online accounts, like how MotoBlur can create a single coherent contact list by merging contacts from Google, Facebook, Myspace, Twitter, etc.
KDE Software Compilation 4.4 Beta1 Released Posted Dec 7, 2009 23:49 UTC (Mon) by aseigo (guest, #18394) [Link]
"Kopete had its own address book that's distinct from kaddressbook"
that hasn't been true since 3.5 when you could choose to use the global addrress book for Kopete entries. with Akonadi managing the address books this will become even more moot.
"Once that's done they should look at synchronization between kaddressbook and online accounts"
Akonadi.
KDE Software Compilation 4.4 Beta1 Released Posted Dec 8, 2009 0:06 UTC (Tue) by jackb (subscriber, #41909) [Link]
I must have missed that when I upgraded from 3.5 to 4. Is there some way to
change over to using Akonadi?
KDE Software Compilation 4.4 Beta1 Released Posted Dec 9, 2009 10:38 UTC (Wed) by jospoortvliet (subscriber, #33164) [Link]
I don't think it's done yet... Sorry. That will probably have to wait
until KDE SC 4.5 :(
KDE Software Compilation 4.4 Beta1 Released Posted Dec 10, 2009 2:49 UTC (Thu) by MarkWilliamson (guest, #30166) [Link]
"that hasn't been true since 3.5 when you could choose to use the global
addrress book for Kopete entries. with Akonadi managing the address books this will become even more moot."
By default, Kopete did use a separate address book though, right? In that
I remember the address book integration being behind a not-very-
"Akonadi."
Akonadi is a centralised PIM store, right? From what I've seen it's a
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