KDE Release 4.9 – in memory of Claire Lotion

[Posted August 1, 2012 by ris]

KDE has released version 4.9, providing major updates to KDE Plasma Workspaces, KDE Applications, and the KDE Platform. "This release is dedicated to the memory of KDE contributor Claire Lotion. Claire's vibrant personality and enthusiasm were an inspiration to many in our community, and her pioneering work on the format, scope and frequency of our developer meetings changed the way we go about implementing our mission today. Through these and other activities she left a notable mark on the software we are able to release to you today, and we are grateful for and humbled by her efforts."

KDE Release 4.9 – in memory of Claire Lotion

Posted Aug 2, 2012 8:02 UTC (Thu) by Duncan (guest, #6647) [Link] (2 responses)

This release really has had a focus on stability and bugfixing. I've been running the betas and rcs, and unlike previous pre-releases, I didn't notice any regressions at all this time. There wasn't a whole lot of new features leaping out either, but the emphasis on bug-fixing was evident, with some bugs going back to the kde 3.5 era (!!) finally being fixed! =:^)

In particular, I've appreciated the fixes in kwin and konsole. The biggest single bugfix for me was in konsole, which added support for two wide-terminal mouse protocol extensions, finally "unbreaking" mc when used at the far right of wide-screen konsole sessions. When I saw that bug-fix/wishlist-item going into then 4.9-targeted "trunk" shortly before the pre-beta1 freeze, I knew for sure I was going to be running the betas this round! But like I said, even beta1 went surprisingly smoothly.

Now, being a gentooer, I better go, as I have some building to do! =:^)

(FWIW, one of the things a good gentooer appreciates is the ability to do things like entirely opt-out of semantic-desktop at build-time. It's precisely that kind of control that makes the hassle of scripted build-from-source worth it. =:^)

Duncan

KDE Release 4.9 – in memory of Claire Lotion

Posted Aug 3, 2012 10:35 UTC (Fri) by niner (subscriber, #26151) [Link] (1 responses)

And what is the big advantage of disabling at build time compared to the single checkbox you can disable at runtime?

KDE Release 4.9 – in memory of Claire Lotion

Posted Aug 7, 2012 11:26 UTC (Tue) by dgm (subscriber, #49227) [Link]

I guess that, for Gentooers at least, not having to compile code you don't plan to use.