Submitted by “The KDE Release Team has revised the release schedule for KDE 4.0. The first visible bits of KDE 4.0 will be the KDE Development Platform release on October, 30. This Development Platform release consists of bits and pieces needed to develop KDE applications. It includes kdesupport, kdelibs, kdepimlibs and kdebase/runtime. The purpose of the KDE Development Platform release is to make it easier for third party developers to port their applications to KDE4 technology and to start developing new applications. The final and long awaited release of the KDE Desktop 4.0 is planned for December, 11th 2007, well in time to be a Christmas present for everyone who has been longing for KDE 4.0.”
Im so feed up of KDE 4 that Im starting to hate it.
You may hate KDE 4, but KDE 4 loves you!
Good for you. Now find an article that you DO like and post there and leave this one clean for us to discuss without your rubbish.
I would much rather them take their time then rush a product. though putting out definative dead lines for somethign this big almost seems silly. I usuly go by the “2 more weeks” or “when its done” release method.
The ‘when it’s done’ method does not work, case in point: “Duke Nukem Forever”…need I say more?!
Or a little closer to home. E17, Need i say more?
a combination of “when it’s ready” and a rough deadline works the best
When is it ready?
Isn’t KDE like the kernel itself in constant development?
(not meant malignent!)
to a much lesser extend. We do have branches and stuff, but the kernel is much more volatile in that regard.
Yes. Considering how long the Duke Nukem Forever product has taken, do you really think they are waiting for bad reasons? Would it have been better to just ship junk and hope for the best?
Anyway, I don’t like the long release cycle that they chose for the 4.0 release, either. Release early and often is much better even if that means forcing a trimmed stable release every 6-9 months.
But now that they’ve done it with the longer cycle for the initial 4.0, the best thing for them is to get it solid before the release. If that means a few weeks (or even a month or so) delay, then so be it.
“The rovers Spirit and Opportunity were proposed, authorized, announced, designed, launched and successfully landed upon Mars within the timeframe of Duke Nukem Forever’s development.”
If we see more RC’s are needed, we will of course delay…
I’ll probably start using it when they at least get some sort of workable taskbar/menu in there. I’m hoping this will be somewhat soon.
yeah, me too. Hopefully next beta…
I don’t know about you guys but I’m going to wait until 4.1 before I try anything.
Hopefully all the plasma goodness will be demonstrated by then and a good set of bugs will be knocked off into the water.
I’m the more adventurous type so as soon as packages are released I’ll be upgrading. Not adventurous enough to compile them from source on release day though as I’m much too lazy for that.
I’ll be trying it out on as a VM image as soon as it’s out.
Might even try the beta’s out this weekend if i get time…..
deal
Browser: Links (2.1pre28; Linux 2.6.20-hardened-r6 x86_64; x)
how is this news? I thought this was announced last week …
It has been revised. Main difference is that there will be an SDK-like “platform” release around the time the original release had been planned for, i.e. end of October.
I guess the intention is to have a released “library and required runtime” set available for third party developers before the main 4.0 release, so they can release their KDE4 versions simultaniously or shortly after.
They also moved up the final release date from Dec. 20th to the 11th, as some people thought that was a little to close to Christmas.
Edited 2007-09-07 20:20
I’m waiting to see what the PC-BSD and DesktopBSD guys can do with this.
I think we’re going to see Kubuntu really shine with this release….
Before it seemed kinda like Ubuntu witha vanilla KDE tossed on top. Which isn’t bad by any means. I think most Kubuntu users will agree however that it’s felt like it was lacking a lot of the polish and perks we see in Ubuntu.
With KDE4 (4.1) I think we’re going to start seeing some real polish and thought put in.
I can dream right?
I can dream, but I can’t WAIT!
No, I just think they did Kubuntu wrong, instead of using whats there already in Ubuntu they did a package manager fronend that is screwy. Synaptic works great in Ubuntu and it should work exactly the same in Kubuntu, but it just dont.
They could do the same for KDE4, dont make any difference .
If Adept (Kubuntu package front end) is all you think was done wrong, that’s really not an issue at all…
You could use your own, or just use apt-get (like most Kubuntu users probably do)…
Do you feel Kubuntu is just “wrong” in some other way?
Afaik Kubuntu won’t be putting it in the 8.04 rls although it will be in the repositories, although I’ve heard they will have an unofficial CD for it. Either way, I’ll be sticking with my trusty Debian install to test it out. I prefer the Debian way of keeping KDE as vanilla as possible.
Edited 2007-09-07 17:15
I compile KDE 4 from svn once a week or so and I have to say it got quite useable lately. I really like the Oxygen Style. It is not finished, but it already looks quite good and everything looks very clean. I also like the new Oxygen icons. kwin includes a composition manager now. kwin always was my favorite window manager. It just works and feels right. kwin now includes many of the effects known from compiz/beryl and they work quite well. The new plasma taskbar looks quite good, but it still lacks lots of features. Applications like kwrite/kate and konsole are already quite stable and look more clean then the KDE3.5 versions. Konqueror used to be quite stable, but at the moment it crashes after some seconds, but I am sure that this will be fixed soon. In the beginning KDE developers mostly worked on the libraries/frameworks and there wasn’t much to see, but that slowly changes and you now can already get a good idea how KDE 4 will look when it is released.
I love how people can’t take the time to try out betas or even first releases of software but can comment on how they will use it later.
Such is the nature of beta software. Even of the people who did try it, only a small percentage will know how to file reports, and only a small percentage of them will actually do it.
But the thing is, comments and criticisms are just a superset of bug reports.
Only if the developer(s) get to read them. Otherwise they are just bugs, not reports.
Developers thrive on feedback. Often times, they can’t wait to fix the stuff. The problem is that many users feel so entitled and are so cruel it just makes the devs mad. This is why traditional bug reports are often so much more productive.
superset as in all bug reports are comments/criticisms, but not all criticism/comment is a bug report?
and I know how much developers can rock
…I’ll try KDE 4.0 on Slackware. I am sure that even if KDE 4.0 is “missing” some features they had wanted to include that it will still be fast and stable. The other bits will come and will probably come shortly after.
I think it would be better if they wait until TrollTech releases that flicker-effect fix when resizing the controls.
Also they need to make the colors “warmer” to the human eye and sharpen up/polish the edges/corners of the widgets that they use. This will make the look “non-dull”. An example of a warm color is the XP/Lunux “color-scheme”. Note, I am not referring to the glowing toot-paste effect in Luna, instead I am referring to the actual color scheme only.
When it comes to the way the widgets looks (which is QT related really) they need to make the corners and edges of the controls thinner, more elegant and more professional. Here are a few examples of professional widgets: the UI controls in XP or the widgets in the Windows classic look, another example: GNU Step/Window Maker. The way the widgets look in Window maker is another example of “professional” business-like look. Until they achieve all this, KDE will always be “dull” for me. Now you can vote me down all you want just like last time because your disagree with me and the facts.
Also here is a ridiculously stupid unprofessional look. Compare this http://kde.org/announcements/announce_4.0-beta2/kword-big.png with the way even Office 97 Word looks like or Star Office 5.2 word document. Look at the ridiculously oversized bold, italic, underline buttons and the size of the icons, 100% dull, unprofessional look especially when compared to the rest of the office suites where the toolbar buttons are nice and neat. Unfortunately the rest of KDE is like that. The over all look of KDE’s widgets is oversized. The buttons are too big, the combo boxes are too high/toll. For a dialog of a 3/4 controls, a “considerably large” portion of the screen will be occupied.
Edited 2007-09-07 23:03
I think it would be better if they wait until TrollTech releases that flicker-effect fix when resizing the controls.
That’s Qt 4.4, and if they waited for that to come out and then stabilized KDE on top of it they’d need to delay the release until next December. While the flicker-free effect will be nice I don’t think anyone really wants to delay KDE by an entire year for it.
When it comes to the way the widgets looks (which is QT related really) they need to make the corners and edges of the controls thinner, more elegant and more professional. Here are a few examples of professional widgets: the UI controls in XP or the widgets in the Windows classic look, another example: GNU Step/Window Maker. The way the widgets look in Window maker is another example of “professional” business-like look. Until they achieve all this, KDE will always be “dull” for me. Now you can vote me down all you want just like last time because your disagree with me and the facts.
Also here is a ridiculously stupid unprofessional look. Compare this http://kde.org/announcements/announce_4.0-beta2/kword-big.png with the way even Office 97 Word looks like or Star Office 5.2 word document. Look at the ridiculously oversized bold, italic, underline buttons and the size of the icons, 100% dull, unprofessional look especially when compared to the rest of the office suites where the toolbar buttons are nice and neat. Unfortunately the rest of KDE is like that. The over all look of KDE’s widgets is oversized. The buttons are too big, the combo boxes are too high/toll. For a dialog of a 3/4 controls, a “considerably large” portion of the screen will be occupied.
I agree with most of your observations. Kde does not look professional yet.
The fact it’s a desktop and offers to users a bunch of possibilities to modify more or less everything might be part of the problem.
Another side of the problem is the HIG. AFAIK there is no clear HIG for kde 4 right now which is kinda weird imho (if I’m wrong please point me to the kde 4 hig I’ll be glad to read it).
Hopefully, that will be fixed. Some day.
Edited 2007-09-07 23:43
HIG is probably second only to FUD as an acronym that is sorely abused by tech enthusiasts and, far more often than not, in an improper context.
Regardless, the KDE project is working with openusability.org on developing standardized interface guidelines for KDE4. There has even been research and testing done. AFAIK, the lead on this effort is Celeste Lyn Paul, and she seems to be very good at it. You can search either through developer.kde.org or openusability.org.
Man, you must really hate GTK…
Oh please, you better not start me on GTK hehe
I prefer KDE instead of anything closely remotely related to GTK.
Edited 2007-09-08 04:37
looking forward to seeing KDE4 in a future opensuse.
hopefully KDE 4.1 in opensuse 10.4 (11.0) in May 2008.
How can you say “KDE looks dull” etc etc.?
Do you mean with the default theme (which is different between distributions anyway)?
If its not to your liking, then look for another theme that is. I’m sure you’ll find one you like.
Not professional enough? I’m sure someone has created a theme that looks professional.
And even if this hasn’t yet been done, its not a fault of KDE itself, it just needs the right themes/styles. This wouldn’t be that difficult for the naysayers to actually do themselves. But of course whining is sooo much easier.
I’m pretty happy with many themes/styles in KDE and have always thought other OS’s look extremely dated and boring in comparison. winxp is good but KDE is way more customizable and its only a few clicks to download new themes and styles. XP has the ability to use new themes but its not well supported by all apps and I dont even know if users can create their own. Are there even any other themes available? I’ve never seen any.
The look is only as good as the style you use – not a fault with Qt or the KDE team really. They cant please everyone (although they do try).
http://www.nuno-icons.com/images/estilo/image2476.png
http://www.nuno-icons.com/images/estilo/rect3048.png
http://pinheiro-kde.blogspot.com/