The newest version of KDE Four Live, an openSUSE-based Live CD for testing KDE 4, was released three days ago, just nine days after the initial version that included Release Candidate 1 was released. KDE/openSUSE dev Stephan Binner announced the release on his blog, celebrating the strong public interest in the initial RC1-based Live CD - over 10000 downloads achieved in the first few days. Meanwhile, although mainstream reviews of RC1 are still scarce, Binner's blog announcement of the previous version contained this interesting tidbit: "It looks like whatever [version of KDE 4] will be released or presented at the event which was fixed by the sponsor to happen in January will be only used by very early adopters. Hopefully openSUSE 11.0 will be able to ship some KDE 4.1.x release or some very high KDE 4.0.x release (which saw some light features freeze lift)," he wrote. Readers are welcome to download the newest Live CD (Torrent) and test it for themselves. A Debian LiveCD is also available, but it still includes KDE4 Beta4 and not RC1.
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Member since:2005-07-07
"1- Completely replace the Oxygen style. It's just too white. The green bars do not fit. It's really hard to see where a widget starts and where it ends. KDE4 really needs something more refined. Just look at how Apple did it. It's not that hard you know. PLEASE MAKE SOMETHING BEAUTIFUL. PLEASE..."
It still has widget and icon themeing...
"2- Remove OpenSuse's Kickoff. Usability-wise, it stinks. It's by far the worst application launcher I have ever used (and I'm not the only one). It makes it really hard to go back and forth when searching for an application. Ever Kicker was better. No replacement for Kickoff? Reintroduce Kicker please! At least it was usable..."
Find somebody to port it, or just wait. New menus are apparently easy to integrate. That was one of the ideas behind Plasma.
"3- Plasma needs more work. It's starting to look beautiful but it needs more work. There should be a way to aggregate Plasmoids together. Also, I hope the new "taskbar" Plasmoid will change dramatically."
Once again, wait... It has to get out the door at some point. Many eyes, and more / new hands, with broad testing are what's needed most. That's what makes a 'mature' technology.
"4- Keep on removing the useless junk from previous KDE releases. Bouncing cursor? Remove!"
If it's buggy and unmaintained, Sure. If it's nearly universally unused, Sure. Failing that, I much prefer the move towards sensible defaults with a clean interface, and a well organized config system. You know, one of the joys of free software it that you are free to explore the alternatives. GNOME is rather excellent.
"5- KDE4 needs a brand new control centre. Something more beautiful and easy to use. The current one makes it boring to tweak KDE."
It has one. Kcontrol is dead-- Systemsettings is where its at. Oh, and I hope to god configuration is boring, that's the last thing want to have adventures with. (Albeit, continuing to usability audit the modules is a good idea. I look forward to future refinements there.)
"6- KDE applications in general need to adapt to KDE4. They need to be part of the "experience". Legacy applications do not feel at home."
Well, they've been ported... Toolbars cleaned up, some new features, minimal ports away from depreciated frameworks. Other than some apps that won't ship, and some new additions that were slated for 4.0 but have slid to 4.1, there not really much that's surprising there. As far as better integrating with all of the new KDE 4.0 goodness goes, it'll likely happen in earnest on the march to KDE 4.1.
I mean really, KDE 3.5.x isn't going to vanish, and will probably even get another release. Or use GNOME. Everything you mentioned is either a non-issue or should be addressed by KDE 4.1. And the last I read, the KDE folks were thinking of having a short cycle for 4.1 anyway.
The only thing that's going to be hard for me is to wait for all of the killer 3rd party KDE apps to get ported over to KDE 4. I fully expect my KDE 4 migration to be an incremental thing that last until about the time KDE 4.1 gets out the door.
Edited 2007-12-03 07:12
Member since:2005-07-07
Replacing oxygen just because the contrast is too low? Can't we increase contrast, that's just a color thing... Personally I do agree, but they're improving it already, and you can choose another colorscheme as well.
And about the bouncing cursor, I hope they don't remove it. That thing has been a major reason KDE has been choosen over Gnome several times in big deployments already. Giving instantanious feedback when starting an application is very good in terms of usability.
Member since:2005-07-06
I like Kickoff. It's the biggest reason why I even use openSUSE despite its extremely crappy YAST. I'm so happy that KDE 4 will get Kickoff, I can't wait to trash my openSUSE installation and replace it with something good (=Debia-based -- probably Debian, Sidux or Kubuntu).
Edited 2007-12-03 22:23 UTC
Member since:2007-07-25
I also like kickoff. I wish I had a choice though, because on my laptop its a bit huge and the old menu would be better. But for my desktop...its perfect.
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"In NixOS, the entire operating system - the kernel, applications, system packages, configuration files, and so on - is built by the Nix package manager from a description in a purely functional build language. The fact that it's purely functional essentially means that building a new configuration cannot overwrite previous configurations. Most of the other features follow from this." Interesting approach. A Linux distribution, sure, but with some very refreshing ideas about system configuration.
Appfour added, among other features, C/C++ support to its new version of AIDE. From Android-IDE, "Now you can write parts of your app or your whole app in C/C++ on your device. AIDE supports the Standard Android NDK toolchain (GCC 4.6 + Bionic, STL, ...). No changes are necessary if you want to build an app developed on a PC with Eclipse. C/C++ development is fully integrated: Build errors appear in the error list and files can easily be navigated to with Go to file. The editor supports C/C++ syntax highlighting."
Ars nails it: "The answer is that Google did announce what amounts to a fairly substantial Android update yesterday. They simply did it without adding to the update fragmentation problems that continue to plague the platform. By focusing on these changes and not the apparently-waiting-in-the-wings update to the core software, Google is showing us one of the ways in which it's trying to fix the update problem."
"It is good for programmers to understand what goes on inside a processor. The CPU is at the heart of our career. What goes on inside the CPU? How long does it take for one instruction to run? What does it mean when a new CPU has a 12-stage pipeline, or 18-stage pipeline, or even a 'deep' 31-stage pipeline? Programs generally treat the CPU as a black box. Instructions go into the box in order, instructions come out of the box in order, and some processing magic happens inside. As a programmer, it is useful to learn what happens inside the box. This is especially true if you will be working on tasks like program optimization. If you don't know what is going on inside the CPU, how can you optimize for it? This article is about what goes on inside the x86 processor's deep pipeline."
"It was the only moment I heard regret slip into Otellini's voice during the several hours of conversations I had with him. 'The lesson I took away from that was, while we like to speak with data around here, so many times in my career I've ended up making decisions with my gut, and I should have followed my gut,' he said. 'My gut told me to say yes.'" The world would've been a much different place - Apple would have been less dependant on Samsung for its chips, which probably would've meant less money for Samsung to develop its Galaxy business.Glass is getting some love at Google I/O as well. New applications have been released - Facebook, Twitter, Evernote, Elle, Tumblr, and CNN. Perhaps more interesting: the newly announced Google Glass Developer Kit will allow offline applications and direct hardware access - great for hacking and expanding Glass' potential. This kit will really allow hackers to put Glass through its paces."But Beck and Merrill decided that simply banning toxic players wasn't an acceptable solution for their game. Riot Games began experimenting with more constructive modes of player management through a formal player behavior initiative that actually conducts controlled experiments on its player base to see what helps reduce bad behavior. The results of that initiative have been shared at a lecture at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and on panels at the Penny Arcade Expo East and the Game Developers Conference." Absolutely fascinating stuff. I'm a League of Legends player, and to be honest, the community isn't nearly as bad as some make it out to be. I'm happy Riot games has the guts to employ science to address the issue.
"Android and iOS, the number one and number two ranked smartphone operating systems worldwide, combined for 92.3% of all smartphone shipments during the first quarter of 2013 as Windows Phone crept past BlackBerry for 3rd place. According to the International Data Corporation Worldwide Quarterly Mobile Phone Tracker, Android smartphone vendors and Apple shipped a total of 199.5 million units worldwide during 1Q13, up 59.1% from the 125.4 million units shipped during 1Q12." Windows Phone doubles from a few to twice few, iOS loser market share as its growth is slower than that of the overall market. BlackBerry continues slide into irrelevance."According to the latest research from our Wireless Smartphone Strategies service, global Android smartphone profits reached US$5 billion in total during the first quarter of 2013. Samsung dominated and captured an impressive 95 percent share of all Android smartphone profits." Wow.
Member since:
2005-07-08
I just played with that new LiveCD and I can confirm it's better than a week ago. The new APIs for Plasma seem more stable.
However, to make KDE4 usable, the people behind KDE needs to:
1- Completely replace the Oxygen style. It's just too white. The green bars do not fit. It's really hard to see where a widget starts and where it ends. KDE4 really needs something more refined. Just look at how Apple did it. It's not that hard you know. PLEASE MAKE SOMETHING BEAUTIFUL. PLEASE...
2- Remove OpenSuse's Kickoff. Usability-wise, it stinks. It's by far the worst application launcher I have ever used (and I'm not the only one). It makes it really hard to go back and forth when searching for an application. Ever Kicker was better. No replacement for Kickoff? Reintroduce Kicker please! At least it was usable...
3- Plasma needs more work. It's starting to look beautiful but it needs more work. There should be a way to aggregate Plasmoids together. Also, I hope the new "taskbar" Plasmoid will change dramatically.
4- Keep on removing the useless junk from previous KDE releases. Bouncing cursor? Remove!
5- KDE4 needs a brand new control center. Something more beautiful and easy to use. The current one makes it boring to tweak KDE.
6- KDE applications in general need to adapt to KDE4. They need to be part of the "experience". Legacy applications do not feel at home.
...