“As most of you desktop users already know, the KDE Project recently released KDE 3.1beta2, which will be the final development release before KDE 3.1. The good news is, KDE 3.1 is scheduled for release in just a few weeks. KDE 3.1, the strongest KDE release to date, promises new goodies for just about everyone who gets to enjoy the full KDE desktop experience. Here is a sampling of what is in store for you:” Read the promotional article at promo.kde.org. In the meantime, KDevelop reached the alpha release of KDevelop-3.0 (Gideon). Changelog here.
KDE 3.1: The Best KDE Yet
About The Author
Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
Follow me on Twitter @EugeniaLoli
Hmm KDE with a look of XP, doesnt impress me.
I can accept copies(GUI ripoffs) of Jaguar (MAC OS X) but why copy the look of Microsoft XP. Its like taking a shower and put own your workclothes that havent been washed in months, and they are also cheap copies of a better brand.
/Ann Onymo
I don’t think it looks like Windows XP at all.
I agree, 100% the new keramic look is ugly. Really, really really ugly. But THAT’S WHY WE’RE ALLOWED TO CHANGE IT. And if you’re upgrading from 3.0, you might never even see keramic, except as an option in the style configuration dialog.
Why don’t people discuss the technical issues? I’ve been writing a program which makes some use of the new KFileMetaInfo API and it’s fantastic stuff. The more code I write using KDE APIs the more I realize that it’s mature and well designed. It’s really on par with modern windows programming and cocoa.
And yet, all people can do is complain about the damn styles.
It just keeps getting better and better! I look forward to two things:
1) Kroupware. That’s the soloution for me! Perfect!
2) Better filters for MS file formats in Koffice. I love Koffice, and I wish more people would work on filters. I’d learn and contribute, but I don’t have the time. Koffice looks nice and it’s fast….just needs filters…
Oh yeah, personally, I like keramik.
To each his (or her) own!
I think keramik looks GREAT and I don’t think it looks like XP either.
To me, this seems to be a relatively original look for KDE that also looks pretty darn good.
Maybe some people are suprised to hear someone say they really like the keramik look but keep in mind that probably some people are suprised to hear you say you don’t like it.
And the most important thing is that not only can you change the look, it’s real easy to change the look.
i really like the way kde evolves, but the keramik and liquid gui-themes are really one of the worst in terms of accessibility.
it just looks cheesy but if thats what kde-users like may it be so.
i would really like to see some community [in terms of OSS-community] based effort to bring gtk and qt guis close to each other. you know its just theme engines and redhat has shown us how it goes, but please focus on making a open-source cross-widget-system gui so users can have a unified look and feel. one thing that bugs me most is that simple stuff like just the base background color of the gui can’t be configured in one application.
but what am i writing i dont want to be a bitching moron. its all ok as it is. keep up the good work everybody.
I enjoy using KDE, actually. Thanks a lot for the great work, development guys. 🙂
Everytime a new version of KDE or GNOME comes up, the first thing people comment on is the way it looks. Which is funny, because in the OSS world, everything is usually customizable. I do think the defaults are often somewhat ill-chosen though. KDE has this damn program start indicator cursor on by default which never works properly and is just plain annoying, for example. Also, who needs window animations? etc.
I personally like Keramik, but if the majority doesn’t, it shouldn’t be the default. Stuff like that should be voted on — what’s the point of the KDE League if they can’t even organize a poll? As a bonus, this would get us some accurate new data on the number of Linux/KDE users.
As for the actual features of KDE 3.1, tabbed browsing might get me to actually use Konqi on a more regular basis, although it still occasionally crashes in KDE3 and doesn’t cope well with complex pages. Other than that, I’m fairly happy with KDE and primarily interested in improved apps.
If you would go to http://www.kdelook.org you can see that they regularly run poles about how kde should look.
The poll index page is here: http://www.kdelook.org/poll/poll.php
And specifically – it looks like most people like keramik – atleast enough to make it the default.
Look here for the style specific pole: http://www.kdelook.org/poll/poll.php?poll=10
These polls really do have an impact too. The one about where the Printer preferences menu is going to go made a direct impact on the KDE 3.1 trunk (it was moved to the position that was in the majority).
KDE is great! Keep up the good work people!
Derek
I am still asking my self about what’s the point of having such gigantic popup menus. Compare the popup menus in KDE with the ones in Windows. Also KDE’s dialog boxes are huge even if they have like say two text boxes, a frame and a two buttons or similar.
See this gigantic popup menu in Konqueror.
http://www.mieterra.com/promo/konqy.png
Please, don’t tell me to change the resolution. I am not gonna do it. I have a 15″ monitor and 800×600 is just perfect in Windows.
until there is some fundamental changes in the speed of xwindows, it doesnt really matter what the desktop looks like …
What’s wrong with the speed of X. I was using a WinXP desktop all weekend, and it feels good to get back to my nice fast KDE 3 machine. Aside from application load performance (which will improve once prelinking becomes more commonplace) KDE 3.1 is very fast. Maybe not BeOS fast, but certainly a match for XP.
Do NOT call it ‘x-windows’
The word “Windows” is apparently trademarked by Microsoft, and hence references to X where there is an ‘s’ added to the word ‘Window’ can be argued to be a trademark infringement.
X is commonly called ‘The X Window System’, ‘X’, ‘X11’, ‘X11R6’.
[from some of the emails I got over the past few months]
Do not call OpenOffice.org as OOo, better call it OO.o.
Do not call Red Hat as RedHat.
Do not call NVIDIA as nVidia or Nvidia.
Do not call GNU/Linux as Linux. (that was from RMS directly)
Do not call XFree86 as XFree.
You know something? The whole thing is getting boring.
I think RMS is messing with the wrong person this time… 🙂
The new interface is bad. Bulky, inconsistent, too many candy-colors and beveled everything. Red Hat got it right with Bluecurve. Who needs an icon in the Konqueror toolbar for “Print Selection?” How about back, home, forward, stop, reload. Sure you can customize it, but even if 51% of the users love it, the rest are sure to hate it. KDE can do better. An interface with tons of eye-candy looks a hundred times better in a screenshot than it does in practice. Subtlety and style are what will please more users.
You know something? The whole thing is getting boring.
Yeah! Let’s start on pronunciation instead!
Just to get us started, in UK English (spoken in most English-speaking countries), “Aluminium” has two ‘i’s’ and both are pronounced… As for “Ad-ver-tise-ment…”
(Nah, even I don’t feel that pretentious today… And I’m aware that it is “Aluminum” in the US, and that the US doesn’t speak UK English…)
On to KDE:
This does look like the best KDE release yet. Of course, I’m concerned about what sort of performance issues there might be – Run KDE for a while and then Gnome runs blazingly fast by comparison… Run Gnome for a while, and IceWM runs at lightning speed by comparison. Run IceWM for a while and… You get the picture.
Has anybody run the beta? Speed impressions would be great. Oh, and it’d be lovely if it runs at a decent rate on a sub 1GHz machine – no matter what anybody says, it shouldn’t take a 1GHz+ 256Mb RAM machine just to run a GUI!
A funny thing; KDE is taking it upon themselves to effectively create the Enterprise definition of “Desktop Linux” on their own. Just look at the goodies:
Desktop sharing (via VNC) built-in. Groupware built-in (Go Kroupware! But were all of the good “KNames” taken? “Kroupware” is “Krap,” and gives me breathing difficulties just thinking about it!
Then you’ve got things like KOffice which is maturing all of the time and so forth.
I must say, I’m extremely impressed with the offering from KDE – and I even think that the default theme (of 3.1) is attractive. It’s familiar to Windows users, whilst still being different enough to not be a ripoff.
You never know, the next “Terminal Server” I build might be based on KDE instead of WM!
(Oh crap! Looks like I broke OSNews with this post! Sorry! Re-tried when it was back up)
Sure you can customize it, but even if 51% of the users love it, the rest are sure to hate it.
Erm, 51% is “Critical Mass.” That’s all that you have to hope to achieve…
It seems like these are the latest buzz phrases people pick-up from all the promotional material we are fed.
I mean if the next version isn’t better then they have done a terrible job.
Sorry to be off topic.
Anyway I love KDE, great job. Can’t wait to install 3.1. To all those people complaining about speed. If you want to run old hardware fine use a Window Manager. Also I wonder what the performance would be like if you switched off all the eye candy and chose a fast loading theme?
Isn’t croup….. a disease?
Ewwwww…..
(What’s with biological names for Linux PIMs? Evolution…. Kroupware….)
Croup is a respiratory disorder, related to asthma. Hence my comment earlier.
Having suffered from both in my younger years, one developing into the other, I can say that I would use something croup-based before something asthma based.
I’m just going to run and hide when they start naming the products after sexually transmitted disease… The idea of Kerpes of Klap gives me the heebie-jeebies!
Why do in all the screenshots that the KDE developers produce, have to have the most gawd awful fonts ever?
If you ask me, KDE developers should concentrate on some nice font rendering. Then again that’s what RedHat’s KDE is for
Anonymous: Hmm KDE with a look of XP, doesnt impress me.
Doesn’t at all look, nor feel, like Windows XP. Colour blind? Or just blind?
Anonymous: I can accept copies(GUI ripoffs) of Jaguar (MAC OS X) but why copy the look of Microsoft XP.
Well, firstly, you stand a chance of getting sue. Secondly, Keramik is KDE’s first attempt in making something that looks like their’s. Not like XP, or OS X.
Besides, IMHO, I much prefer Windows XP’s UI to Mac OS X 10.2’s UI. Tend to get in the way less.
happy gnome user: i really like the way kde evolves, but the keramik and liquid gui-themes are really one of the worst in terms of accessibility.
I agree with your stance about Liquid… heck, it doesn’t even look nice when compared with the original thing. However, on Keramik, I think you are using KDE 3.0’s builds, which doesn’t do justice to the usablity changes it has taken. I very well like Keramik, I like it above other Kde-look.org themes. However, it would be hard to get me to move from Bluecurve to that…
Xirzon: Stuff like that should be voted on — what’s the point of the KDE League if they can’t even organize a poll? As a bonus, this would get us some accurate new data on the number of Linux/KDE users.
What’s wrong with kde-look.org polls?
http://kde-look.org/poll/poll.php?poll=10
Keramik, in its KDE 3.0 form gets the highest vote. Liquid is out of the question because it isn’t an original look.
Alex: I am still asking my self about what’s the point of having such gigantic popup menus.
Try making the fonts smaller, it would reduce the size.
Sikosis: until there is some fundamental changes in the speed of xwindows, it doesnt really matter what the desktop looks like …
Uhhmmmm, what’s wrong with X Window System’s speed? Ever tried Xi’s implementation? Surely, not at BeOS speed, but if you compile KDE 3.1 with optimization for either AThlon XP (if you are using that) or Pentium 4 (again, if you are using that), you can see huge performance differences.
martrom: An interface with tons of eye-candy looks a hundred times better in a screenshot than it does in practice.
Actaully, as a early adopter of KDE 3.1, it actually works better than it looks. The first time where I actually like KDE defaults (if you forget KDE 2.0, that is).
Antarius: Has anybody run the beta? Speed impressions would be great.
Well, yeah. But I have a 1GHz Duron, I don’t think it is fair. But looking at the CPU meter, it doesn’t take much CPU power to render it. What you need is LOTS of RAM.
Antarius: I’m just going to run and hide when they start naming the products after sexually transmitted disease… The idea of Kerpes of Klap gives me the heebie-jeebies!
LOL, I just, BTW, found out that they are finding a name for Kroupware. Something German, IIRC. That starts with “K”.
[Speed comparisons]
Well, yeah. But I have a 1GHz Duron, I don’t think it is fair. But looking at the CPU meter, it doesn’t take much CPU power to render it. What you need is LOTS of RAM.
How much is “LOTS?”
I’m going to be starting a new project to (hopefully) teach a Windows-based-sysadmin how to migrate to Linux. Aimed at the “average Small Business” in Oz, I want to look at between 5-10 users.
In my travels in my city, I’ve found the average business box to be an Athlon XP 1800+, 768Mb RAM and 7200rpm IDE HDD.
I want to build a “Citrix/Terminal Server” like box, with TightVNC. (Reduce the TCO for an enterprise big time!)
From your play with 3.1, will the above hardware pump out 5-10 silumtaneous connections and still run applications nicely? (Assuming things are compiled from source with appropriate optimisations, etc.)
I feel that, look-wise, a KDE 3.1 box like that will help bring Linux to the small business market. Historically, I’ve found its performance to be incredibly lacking for this setup though, leaving IceWM the “best choice” for the Windows users it is destined for…
“The word “Windows” is apparently trademarked by Microsoft, and hence references to X where there is an ‘s’ added to the word ‘Window’ can be argued to be a trademark infringement.”
…get a life.
…get a life.
I don’t know what is funnier:
a) That you summed up the appropriate reaction to the statement
or
b) That you mentioned the word “life” on a geek-related site, without it being a reference to a little X-Windows (ahem, “X Windowing System”) application.
Nope. I’m sure it’s “b.” A Geek with a Life?! Bwahahahaha!
(I had to give mine up years ago.)
😀
The trademark on windows has been tested in court. Microsoft lost because you cannot trademark generic phrases.
http://www.internetnews.com/ent-news/article.php/1135821
Yes it is the X Window System but you cannot formulate a sentence in most contexts with that so X Windows has become common usage.
I can’t wait for KDE 3.1 I haven’t tried the beta because of bandwidth restrictions and I am waiting for a Slackware 9.0 Beta with it.
I use KDE apps daily, Konq, Kmail, knode and other on occassion Kdevelop, Koffice.
I like in the new Kdevelop the ability to contract the code so you only need to scroll over what you are working on.
If you ask me, KDE developers should concentrate on some nice font rendering.
Please stop with those “all KDE developers should concentrate on (font rendering|performance|…)” sentences.
These things are outside of the scope of the KDE project. Font rendering is a X11 issue, performance mostly a gcc+glibs issue. Complain to your distribution or the project whose fault it is. Most KDE devs do not have the experience to fix this, because writing applications in C++ and writing low-level font rendering in C are two completely different things. And I doubt that it is useful that 200 people start working on a font rendering systems.
In my travels in my city, I’ve found the average business box to be an Athlon XP 1800+, 768Mb RAM and 7200rpm IDE HDD.
Well, I’ve been using KDE daily since 1.x and all I can say, is that since version 2.0, KDE has gotten faster with each release. Seriously. These days (finally), running kde 3.1 beta2 on my p3 700 thinkpad with 319 megs ram, kde is comparable to 1.x in speed on the same machine. Of course, 3.x does SO MUCH MORE than 1.x it’s really astonishing that it is as quick as it is. Sure, it took them a couple years to optimize, but this is *free* software.
But, where I’m going, is that KDE *can* be made to run quickly. here’s a list of things I do:
-1: Use 1 background for all desktops, or no background at all. If you do use one, don’t do alpha blending against bg color or a pattern. This takes up a few to dozens of megs of memory.
-2: use a simple widget/window style. I use light3, and MKUltra (which I wrote). The two together are fast, simple, and clean.
MKUltra:
http://www.kde-look.org/content/show.php?content=2865
-3: Turn off unneeded services. This sounds obvious, and it’s not really a KDE thing, but it’s relevant.
-4: Use the lowcolor icons. They look good, classic, and since they use 1-bit transparency, they’re easier on the x-server. Of course, if you’re lucky enough to have a good graphics card, xrender will obviate this one.
Anyhow, there’s probably more, but I follow these and while my kde isn’t as responsive as win2k, it’s every bit as fast. Yes, there is a distinction there. Once a kde app is running, generally it hauls *ss.
And I have to say, if you’re worried about those athlons being fast enough, don’t. They’re more than fast enough.
Font handling is one of the improvements in KDE3.1.
You can now choose an exclude range for font anti-aliasing, and also whether or not to use sub-pixel hinting.
KDE developers are not marketing droids (thank god). As such, they have their fonts set up the way they like, and their screenshots reflect that. However, you really can get great looking fonts in X. Just download the FreeType from CVS, compile it, and replace your libfreetype.so.6.2.x with the new one. Then, find some good Postscript fonts (a lot of DTP-type apps will come with them, as some of Corel’s stuff). Even the standard X Type1 fonts look pretty good if you’re running at high resolutions. Anyway, just so you know what to expect, let me point you to a screenshot.
http://home.mindspring.com/~heliosc/fonts.png
This shot was taken running FreeType 2.1.3 with Adobe Times New Roman as the serif font. As you can see, italic text still needs some work (it’s using the autohinter) but overall the anti-aliasing strikes just the right balance between shape accuracy and smoothness and the autohinter does a wonderful job on the regular (non-italicized) serif text and an even better job on the sans serif text.
Antarius: How much is “LOTS?”
Minimum, 256MB. Of course, you can run relatively well with 128MB, but for optimal speed, something higher than 256MB would be nice.
Either that or turn off every form of eye candy, using low color icons, a fast Qt style (no gradients or pixmaps), the KDE 1.x window deco etc. You could pretty much pull the resources needed down.
Antarius: In my travels in my city, I’ve found the average business box to be an Athlon XP 1800+, 768Mb RAM and 7200rpm IDE HDD.
Amazing for a country with no real economic growth. Anyway, that machine would be good enough for KDE. Heck, it might be an overkill. With that amount of RAM, you would probably never need to use swap memory, which means, it would be just as responsive as Windows.
Antarius: From your play with 3.1, will the above hardware pump out 5-10 silumtaneous connections and still run applications nicely? (Assuming things are compiled from source with appropriate optimisations, etc.)
I’m not sure, but I think as long the server is fast enough to handle the workload, the terminals would be just fine. Besides, the resource difference isn’t that big a difference between KDE 3.1 and KDE 3.0+Keramik+Crystal.
antarius: I feel that, look-wise, a KDE 3.1 box like that will help bring Linux to the small business market.
Maybe ease of use, but looks?
I switched from GNOME to KDE. Now I’m happy. KDE simply offer everything that GNOME lacks. Starting from application A ending to application Z.
Great Post!
I have ordered SuSE 8.1, and will get it today/tomorrow.
I would like to get the fonts like they are on your screenshot. Will compiling freetype as you suggest do the trick or do I need to install a Standard KDE as well (compiling from source).
Any pointers, links or advice you may be able to offer are appreciated.
Let’s see if I can’t give a little HOWTO here
0) Make sure you already have KDE fonts working properly, with anti-aliasing visible. If you aren’t using anti-aliasing, then KDE will use FreeType1 through the core X protocol.
1) Download the freetype2-current tree. You can get it at:
ftp://ftp.freetype.org/freetype/unstable/freetype2-current.tar.gz
2) Gunzip and untar the file, and cd into the folder. Don’t enable the TrueType bytecode interpreter (it should be disabled by default). Just leave the sources as is.
3) Type make once to setup the configure, make again to build, and make install to install
4) Look around for all the libfreetype.so.6.x on your system. There should be some in /usr/lib and perhaps others in /usr/X11R6/lib. Back these up somewhere the system can’t get to it. Make sure you delete the symlinks that point to the old freetype libraries. Also make sure you only remove the freetype2 libraries (they’ll be so.6.x) and not the freetype1 libraries (KDE doesn’t use them, other apps might).
5) Copy over *freetype* from /usr/local/lib to /usr/lib. No need to remake symlinks, they’ll be generated as needed.
6) ldconfig to update the share library state.
7) Restart KDE to allow the changes to take effect.
This works best at high resolutions (I’m using 1600×1200 on a 15″ flat panel) with some good Postscript fonts (the tweeks are mostly in the pshinter). You might be able to steal some out of Acrobat (it comes with standard Type-1 fonts renamed to something weird) any publishing programs you’ve got around, or you could just buy some. Times New Roman is $25 from Adobe, and their $99 Font Basics collection includes 65 Postscript fonts (including Times) and is a great deal. In a pinch, you could use the Luxi Type-1 fonts included with XFree, which look fine.
PS> Don’t enable sub-pixel rendering if you have a flat-panel. FreeType CVS breaks that.
PS2> Try reading the devel mailing list at http://www.freetype.org, especially the ones from August to September. There’s some good info in there.
Thanks I’ll do it.
Uhm, I’ve an AMD K6-2 300mHz with 228MB RAM and tried KDE 1.x on it some years ago, too slow. Now two months ago I downloaded Knoppix (last release in August I think) with KDE 3.0.3 and am using it since (moved it onto hd using the included knp-hdinstall script). Can’t complain so far. =)
http://home.mindspring.com/~heliosc/fonts.png
That is a joke right? Those are the ugliest fons I have ver layed eyes upon, maybe it’s Konqueror or Mozilla or that screenshot is really loq quality. If that’s not the case than those fonts are ugly enough to make someone throw up!
Did you just diss my fonts? I think they’re nearly perfect, easily the equal of ClearType rendering on the same machine. The only think that needs work is that the the weight on the italics is slightly uneven. What, specifically, don’t you like? Of course, it might just be my monitor. I’m looking at this on a 1600×1200 15″ flat panel, they might not look terribly nice on a lower-res CRT.
Equal in looks, maybe. But in speed?
Anyway, is it possible to use XFT2 like Red Hat did? I have little interest right now in deleting symlinks… Hopefully Qt 3.2 would include this… hopefully. (because I have no money o buy Acrobat nor Adobe’s Postscript fonts).
Besides, anyone using this. How much better is this compared to KDev 2.2? way better? Way worse? A total piece of crap? The next best thing to sliced bread?
What are you smoking?
The fonts look awesome. I haven’t tried them at every conveivable resolution, but I have tried even at 800×600 on a 17inch CRT.
Mario: The above should answer your question about low res CRT screens.
Generally I like KDE a lot. Not by only by look because I think this has to do with the person that is using it and his ability to customize. I don’t know what machine the Rayiner Hashem has but on My AMD K6-II 400/256 Ram/TNT2 it is not very fast. Applications take too much to start. About the other stuff is not bad. What I like most is applications like kinternet wich are perfectly integrated and it kicks off my connection with one click. But I think that they still have to improve the speed item.
1) It’s irrelevent whether FreeType is faster than ClearType. Both render the text to bitmaps which are then blitted to the screen. These bitmaps are cached so FreeType is only invoked when there is a cache miss (rarely).
2) Xft2 won’t do anything for your font quality. Xft2 simply uses the unified FontConfig mechanism, and makes it easier to tweek your hinting parameters. Usually, this means disabling hinting, which results in ugly OS-X like font rendering. It doesn’t fundementally change FreeType itself. The same effect can be achieved by editing FreeType2 in certain places, and doing so is much easier than patching Qt to use Xft2. I’ve done it before, and it’s pretty hairy, because the Qt-Xft2 patches are out of date.
3) Qt 3.1 will support Xft2 by default. Won’t get you optimal font quality until the new version of FreeType becomes stable and you can rpm -i the package…
4) It’s really not hard, and don’t pretend it is.
rm -rf /usr/lib/*freetype*
mv /usr/local/lib/*freetype* /usr/lib
Significantly easier than any update to core OS code I’ve ever had to do under Windows… Windows Update don’t got nothing on this.
5) Acrobat is a free download. And since you didn’t pay anthing for the OS itself, I’d consider $25 bucks entirely reasonable for a high-quality serif font. But like I said, the Luxi Type-1 fonts are professionally designed, and look just fine.
Tools -> Internet Options -> Advanced -> Enable Automatic Image Resizing
Tools -> Internet Options -> Advanced -> Enable Automatic Image Resizing
It is this feature in IE that makes looking at Screenshots in IE terrible. I really don’t want it to make the image fit in the window.
If the image is being resized because of IE then that would explain why he thinks the fonts look ugly.
I don’t like some part if it either:
1) for me the “blackness” of some character is uneven, the vertical bar of the a is too strong compared to the rest of the letters.
2) and why the italics are so grey?
3) the separation of letters is mostly right but not perfect, for example in the word Western, the W and the e are too far apart, maybe it is because the word is in italic.
There are some good points: the letters are very smooth, it must be some high-resolution screens.