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KDE 4.1 Beta 1 Released

Posted by timothy on Wed May 28, 2008 04:01 PM
from the when-improvements-amplify-each-other dept.
KDE GUI Software Operating Systems IT Linux BSD
appelza contributed a link to Tuesday's announcement of the next step toward KDE 4.1: "The KDE Project is proud to announce the first beta release of KDE 4.1. Beta 1 is aimed at testers, community members and enthusiasts in order to identify bugs and regressions, so that 4.1 can fully replace KDE 3 for end users. KDE 4.1 beta 1 is available as binary packages for a wide range of platforms, and as source packages. KDE 4.1 is due for final release in July 2008." I haven't used KDE much for the past few years, but the screenshots of a "grown-up" plasma are enough to make me correct that.
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[+] Technology: KDE 4.1 Alpha 1 Released 186 comments
Crobain writes "The first alpha release for KDE 4.1 is out, and bugs aside, it looks promising. The KDE Plasma desktop shell now has preliminary support for Mac OS X dashboard widgets and SuperKaramba, and panels can be added and removed via contextual menu items. 'This alpha release marks the start of the 4.1 feature freeze, so virtually all of the remaining developer effort between now and the official 4.1 release in July will focus on bug-fixing, polish, and stability. Despite the current breakage, the actual feature set that has been stubbed out for this release is pretty darn good. If the developers can deliver on all of this functionality and make it stable and robust, version 4.1 will offer a much better overall user experience than 4.0, and Plasma will come close to achieving functional parity with the KDE 3.5.x panel system.' The KDE Techbase wiki has a full list of the features planned for the 4.1 release."
Firehose:KDE 4.1 Beta 1 Released by appelza (1151359)
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  • Is KDE Taking the Lead? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by ryanisflyboy (202507) * on Wednesday May 28 2008, @04:25PM (#23575797) Homepage Journal
    I am not a window manager guru by any stretch. I use Gnome since that is what a lot of my friends use, and at the time I made the choice KDE didn't seem as capable. Now I look at KDE and get the impression that Gnome is falling behind in breadth and depth of features, configurability, and ease of use. Is that an accurate view of the situation? If so, why isn't Gnome able to keep up?

    • Re:Is KDE Taking the Lead? (Score:4, Interesting)

      by domatic (1128127) on Wednesday May 28 2008, @04:37PM (#23576001)
      The GNOME guys idea of user friendly is strip features and configurability rather than refining features, picking good defaults, and laying out dialogs for ease of use by normal users and having tastefully accessible extra options for the particular and demanding power user. And no guys, clicking around in gconf which may not even respect those customizations on the next login doesn't cut it.

      Historically KDE has fallen down by making configurability difficult for casual users and a pain for power users but at least power users could eventually get things the way they want them. I read good things about how KDE4 is going with that but have yet to see it for myself as it was a mass of regressions from KDE 3.5 the last time I tried it. Once it acquires polish and forward ported features and apps from 3.5, I'll be switching too.

    • Re:Is KDE Taking the Lead? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Chineseyes (691744) on Wednesday May 28 2008, @04:39PM (#23576033)
      Taking the lead of what exactly? Gnome has followed a trend of removing features and giving users few options while KDE has been giving users more features and more options.

      Some people feel that completely removing options is a good idea because they are looking to target corporations and limiting options makes support easier, but I have always felt that KDE's approach is much better. Give the users all the options they could imagine and then let them decide what is best. With KDE's approach you can always have some sort of locked down "corporate default" setting that would make support easier but with Gnome's approach what do you do when a user wants a feature that has been removed?

      • Re:Is KDE Taking the Lead? (Score:5, Informative)

        by Niten (201835) on Wednesday May 28 2008, @05:22PM (#23576727) Homepage

        No, there's a huge difference between removing options and leaving advanced under-the-hood features, well, under the hood.

        GNOME takes very much the same approach as OS X here. For instance, in order to let users adjust how Spaces handles new windows popping up in different workplaces, Apple didn't throw yet another checkbox into some huge and unnavigable control panel. Rather, they left it as an option to be configured with defaults write com.apple.Dock ..., because 95% of users won't want to change this behavior, and those who do won't have any trouble figuring out defaults write anyway.

        Likewise, a lot of obscure GNOME / Metacity / GTK+ configuration options that aren't wasting space on a control panel somewhere are still accessible through GConf or a separate configuration file. I'm an "advanced" user, and I like this because it gives me less junk to hunt through when I want to change something in the GUI; and I know many "beginner" users who appreciate GNOME for the very same reason.

    • Re:Is KDE Taking the Lead? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by theJavaMan (539177) on Wednesday May 28 2008, @04:45PM (#23576139)
      I would say it's the design philosophy. Gnome says "Do this our way, because it is better" (see the ok-cancel button debate). KDE says "You can do it this way, but you can also configure your own way".

    • Re:Is KDE Taking the Lead? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by cozziewozzie (344246) on Wednesday May 28 2008, @04:49PM (#23576207)
      The KDE team has been rewriting/porting basically everything over to Qt4, which was a gargantuan task.

      During this time, they used the opportunity to fix some long-standing issues and redesign some key components. Things were broken and in development for a long time, while the stable release 3.5.x went into bugfixing mode. Gnome was making steady improvements to their 2.x codebase this entire time.

      KDE is only now starting to reap the fruits of this effort. The real power of the platform will become more obvious in the coming years.

    • Re:Is KDE Taking the Lead? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by inalienable (670771) on Wednesday May 28 2008, @06:39PM (#23577961)
      I've been using linux since 1999, and in that time I don't recall there ever being a moment when it would make any sense to say that KDE didn't seem as capable as GNOME. Some people prefer GNOME's appearance, design philosophy, or set of apps to KDE's -- and vice versa -- but when it comes to capabilities, KDE has always (at least since '99) been the clear winner. In fact, lack of capabilities is GNOME's selling point -- less capabilities means a simpler interface that many people prefer.

  • Beta? (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 28 2008, @04:31PM (#23575909)
    "The KDE Project is proud to announce the first beta release of KDE 4.1. Beta 1"



    What?! The first beta of beta?

    • Re:Ob (Score:4, Insightful)

      by pak9rabid (1011935) on Wednesday May 28 2008, @04:09PM (#23575525)

      Does it run on linux?
      More importantly, does it not rely on KDE3 apps anymore?

    • Re:Ob (Score:4, Informative)

      by wizardforce (1005805) on Wednesday May 28 2008, @04:12PM (#23575581) Journal
      depends on what linux distro you're using. so far there are packages for mandriva, opensuse, debian and fedora. the release has also been ported to windows and mac with a set of packages for kubuntu coming up in a little bit however you can compile from source if you really really need to have the beta on other distros/OSes

    • Re:Ob (Score:5, Interesting)

      by El_Oscuro (1022477) on Wednesday May 28 2008, @07:05PM (#23578299)

      But does it run on Windows?

      Seriously, if there was a Windows version, I could replace the crappy Windows shell with it. I still need Windows for certain critical applications like Rollercoaster Tycoon and Battlezone. Losing the Windows shell (and I.E of course) would reduce the attack surface area somewhat and maybe allow me to connect to the Internet occasionally with it.

      By slowly replacing Windows components with Linux ones (OOO, Firefox, KDE), it makes it much easier to convert someone to Linux later.

        • Re:Ob (Score:4, Informative)

          by ArcherB (796902) on Wednesday May 28 2008, @04:33PM (#23575945) Journal

          if you're trying to use the debian port, know that Linux Mint being based on Ubuntu which is based on Debian is no longer close enough to use Debian's experimental branch packages. for an experimental beta like this, you would probably be better off either compiling from source [pain in the arse if you ask me] or installing the debian port on debian through a virtual machine of course any of the other OS/port combos would likely work too.
          Well, in my case, "Runs" can be measured in terms of degree. Sure, it launched and I was able to put a few widgets (or whatever) on my desktop. I could even launch an app or two before the whole thing fell apart. At one point, I was even able to drag my desktop wallpaper around the desktop as if it were a giant icon.

          I am using the what appears to be Kubuntu repo's btw:
          http://ppa.launchpad.net/kubuntu-members-kde4/ubuntu/ [launchpad.net]

    • Re:4.1 -- Now with no desktop icons! (Score:5, Informative)

      by zapakh (1256518) on Wednesday May 28 2008, @04:31PM (#23575919)

      Is this is the release that has no more desktop icons [blogspot.com]?
      Did you read the rest of that page?

      Well, we now have a folder view applet courtesy of Frederik HÃglund. It can view any folder you want, including the desktop folder. You can also set a filter, making it possible to, for instance, view just images or whatever. It uses KIO so you can view remote folders as well. You can drag items to and from it, delete files, scroll, etc. It lines everything up in a nice grid and uses the same drawing routines that Dolphin, Konqueror, KRunner and others use from kdelibs for the icons.

      You can have 0, 1 or more of these folder views in your plasma, all viewing different (or the same, I suppose) folders. You can put them on different activity areas (aka "desktop containments") as well.

      In the future we'll have a little label in the folderview telling you which folder you are looking at, it will turn into an icon with a menu listing in horizontally constrained containments (e.g. panels), it will be collapsible on the desktop with a single click (it's already resizable, rotatable and removable) and you will be able to use it as a containment itself.

      That last bit is important: it means that you can have an Old Skool(tm) desktop with an icon mess if that's what you really, really want. So don't bother with that flame, nobody has anything to complain about. ;)
      Nothing about "no more desktop icons"; just that the desktop-icon concept has been reformulated as an instance of something more general and configurable.

    • Re:4.1 -- Now with no desktop icons! (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Hatta (162192) on Wednesday May 28 2008, @04:39PM (#23576031) Journal
      That would be the best thing ever. Desktop icons are an abomination. I find myself unable to use them with proper discipline, and my desktop becomes a complete and utter mess. All I can do is use a WM that doesn't support them (fluxbox). I might actually have to check out kde4 now.

    • Re:One word (Score:5, Informative)

      by dotancohen (1015143) on Wednesday May 28 2008, @04:42PM (#23576075) Homepage
      Are you not aware that Qt4 uses less resources than Qt3? KDE4 is therefore less resource intensive than KDE3 (Or at least will be when the KDE3 apps are rewritten for KDE4. Until then, both Qt3 and Qt4 must be loaded).

    • Bloat = many apps on a desktop, with few libs (Score:5, Insightful)

      by CarpetShark (865376) on Wednesday May 28 2008, @07:17PM (#23578453)
      KDE is absolutely not bloated. A modern desktop SHOULD provide a wide range of services to apps --- including net IO, a web browser component, rss, clipboards, drag and drop, color management, printing, contacts, emailing, calendaring, multimedia, threading, event passing, IPC, tagging, database access, URL shortcuts, launching, file management, thumbnails, etc. Many modern apps use these these things, and it makes absolutely no sense for them all to have dis-integrated separate implementations.

      If you want to see bloat, look at the apps for any popular desktop that DOESN'T provide a solid, modern, complete core. Run any modern workflow, like quoting a webpage and editing photos to embed in your spell-checked word processor document, to email to someone whose name is all you can recall. Compare memory use, workflow, and integration, AFTER getting used to each desktop for a few months and learning all of the little integration features provided by each solution. I challenge anyone to do it on linux and find a desktop that beats KDE.

    • Re:I dunno.... (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Tanktalus (794810) on Wednesday May 28 2008, @05:12PM (#23576553) Journal

      I dunno ... I'm running kde 4.0.4 right now, and I have to say that while there are apps that are prone to crashing (darned open-source imperative to release early and release often, but, hey, I knew that before electing to install it), I do love what they've done with many things. A few things stick out in my mind: konqueror - VASTLY improved, okular - replaces kpdf and can read MS's "compiled html" (.chm) format (which is helpful for me), the composite effects are not all just eye candy - things like dimming background windows help me focus on the foreground application and pushing my mouse into a corner of the screen (default: top-left) to show all the windows on the desktop (or on all desktops) is HUGELY helpful.

      That's just some of the KDE3 apps that are already ported to KDE4. Even extras like ktorrent have already been ported to KDE4, which is nice.

      I really miss the PIM stuff (kmail, knode, kalarm, kaddressbook, etc), so I'm really looking forward to seeing KDE 4.1 in the main Gentoo portage tree, even masked, as soon as possible.

      I expect to see MANY kde3 apps moved to KDE4 this year.

      Heck, I was running the KDE4 version of ktorrent on KDE 3.5.8 earlier this year (yes, I know, 3.5.9 is out), so it's not like it's entirely a problem to have these apps coexist. This provides apps the opportunity to port to KDE4 without needing their users to actually use KDE4 as their desktop.

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