The KDE project have just unleashed KDE 3.1 RC-2 for testing. This version only has bugfixes from last week’s RC-1 and (so far), it is only distributed in source form.
KDE 3.1-RC2 Released
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Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
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The announcement can be found here:
http://dot.kde.org/1036463135/
If you are able to help test it then please do so as this is very likely the last RC before 3.1 is released.
But… who uses KDE?
I certainly wouldn’t want to use that bloated beast.
> I certainly wouldn’t want to use that bloated beast.
Yes that’s why I stick with DOS
o the joy
Yes that’s why I stick with DOS
Bah! You DOS users are all the same! There’s nothing original in DOS – it’s all just a ripoff from us CP/M users!
… who uses KDE?
Lots of people. I do. Many people I know do. A friend of mine who is a latin teacher uses KDE. He likes it, too.
If you define “bloated” as functional, sure. KDE is bloated. If you define being able to print to PDF from any KDE program bloated, sure. If you define having integrated network abstractions into the filesystem bloated, sure. If you define a fast, dynamic and easily configural component system bloated, sure. If you define a BeOS-like ability to pick viewer/opener components and programs for files based on mimetype bloated, sure. If you define better performance, and less memory consumption with each release bloated, sure. Then KDE is bloated.
You know, people always gripe “I won’t use linux/kde/gnome/whathaveyou until it does X/Y/Z”, but then when it does do it, and it does it well, in a configurable and open manner — they then start yelling “it’s a bloated tub, no way will I use it.”
The fact is, windows, linux, macos — their developers all want them to *do* more, so that it will attract users. All those systems are bloated then, by definition. In my observation they all have both scaled very gracefully and kept performance good. KDE 3.1 beta2 runs as well on my crappy laptop as win2k (did — I deleted it when linux/KDE/gnome was finally able to do everything I need). Seriously. KDE has hauled *ss since the 2.2 days.
Memory consumption is low, enough, that I never use swap. Performance is good — konq starts in les than 2 seconds on first start, less than 1/2 second thereafter. KMail is fast, and good. KDevelop — the program I use most — is fantastic and so damn functional it blows my mind.
So, why don’t you just go back to your hole and run a “lean” OS which makes everything you do hard and take hundreds of steps. I’ll happily get work done, quickly, on my bloated KDE system and then have time free to go out and enjoy my youth.
gnome is a hodge-podge of garbage. it makes me laugh when people say that gnome has caught up with KDE….gimme a break.
maybe if kde stopped all development at 3.1, then gnome could catch up by version 3…but I doubt it.
“gnomes are for gardens”
KDE is great because you can open and save files in Kate directly over ssh, or have your sftp directory appear in Konqueror just like any other. It just saves one extra step, and it’s a good example of the thorough integration that KDE is achieving.
Had things been done differently (e.g. Miguel “waste time”, as he put it, in reimplementing Qt), I’m quite sure GNOME would have caught up and maybe surpass KDE. A lot of things are terribly wrong from the design point of view.
But from the user point of view, I expect with KDE 3.2 and GNOME 2.4, both would have relatively the same amount of features.
That’s the main thing KDE does MUCH better than GNOME. Plus Konqueror whups ass
> I expect with KDE 3.2 and GNOME 2.4, both would have relatively the same amount of features.
That will not happen, KDE 3.1 compared to GNOME 2.2 expanses the gap.
I use KDE. Coming from an exiled BeOS user, saying that KDE 3.x is “fast enough for me” is quite a compliment. Of course, it’s on hardware that’s 10 times faster, but for when I really need those processor cycles, the Linux kernel handles the load better than the BeOS kernel ever did, so it’s a wash in the end. In return, KDE does more than BeOS ever did. Do I wish it was faster? Of course. But is it unusable? Hell no!
There are a few things that you have to give KDE credit for:
1) Components: In the early ’90s, Microsoft, Apple, and the entire computer industry was making this big deal about components. It was only with KDE that I finally saw a truely componentized desktop. With KDE I can embed anything into anything else, and it works like it should.
2) Configurability: TweakUI? Don’t make me laugh. KDE is the GUI equivilent of emacs in the tweekability department.
3) Performance: Perhaps KDE isn’t all the way to being “blazing” just yet, but KDE’s performance get’s better with every release, something that I’ve only seen before in BeOS. As the environment matures this performance will only get better. Let me give you a very concrete example of this. Resizing Konqueror is not as smooth as resizing Internet Explorer? Why is that? Is Konqueror more bloated? No. The reason is that modern HTML layout (thanks to stylesheets) is a very demanding job, and because IE has been around longer, they have had more time to work on the performance of the layout engine. Currently, the KDE project is still trying to get the layout engine in Konqueror standards complient. Once that’s done, they can work on improving display speed. Speed isn’t just a matter of avoiding performance-costing features. It’s often a matter of very sophisticated algorithms to improve “precieved speed” (which any BeOS user will attest to).
4) Progress: KDE is improving at a phenomenal rate. Since KDE 2.x was a rewrite, it’s only really been a few years in which the KDE project has achieved what it has. In that time, they’ve made an incredible desktop environment, a capable office suite, a fully modern web browser, a full IDE, and god knows how many utilities. At this rate, KDE 4.x is going to be one heck of a product.
PS> As for the RC2 release itself, I’m compiling it right now
As in the first RC release, there is some weirdness with the build process. So if compiling kdebase gives you errors while building the docbook documentation, check to see if you have the latest versions of libxml2 and libxslt and rebuild kdelibs. I posted a more detailed overview of this in the Gentoo forums.
PS2> As for RC1, it looks very solid. Beta2 was pretty stable, but their was some weirdness in places. It seems more polished now. In all, 3.1 is a very nice “maturity” release for the 3.x series. Keramik, in particular, is looking nicer, and seems to be quite fast at this point.
<opinion>
I use what looks good and what flows well. I choose Gnome, it looks so… complete and the apps actually look like they’ve been coded to work with the Desktop Environment. Enough said, people like KDE and they have very good reasons, I mean I cannot fight opinion with opinion it doesn’t work that way. </opinion>
People need to put emotions and feelings behind and understand why you are arguing, you all have your preferences and opinions and when they clash we get these flame wars. Nobody is wrong we all have our tastes.
OT: I scrapped Linux for Mac OS X on my G4 after Jaguar was released, there is nothing that Linux offers “for me” that I cannot do in OS X, really for me, I get more done and can do more.
I like how Konqueror handles cookies. Much better than ALL the other browser around. Nuff said.
I think you’ll find most ppl use KDE, all the latest Linux desktop OSes are using it. It’s heaps better than Gnome too, but KDE isnt the problem – XWindows is.
I think you’ll find most ppl use KDE, all the latest Linux desktop OSes are using it. It’s heaps better than Gnome too
Subjective… but true 😉
KDE isnt the problem – XWindows is.
Work on making XFree86 (not XWindows god damn it!) more suitable for desktop use have just begun: http://osnews.com/comment.php?news_id=2033&limit=no
Typical CP/M user, always wanting a nice interface. Punch cards, they’re the future. 😉
Hey, don’t get all logical here. Don’t you know X11 is the source of the worlds problems? when your car breaks down, its X11’s fault. When your taps leak or children miss-behave, it is caused by X11.
Why don’t we support GDI+ and its fabulous idea of throwing everything, including the kitchen sink, into ring 0. Wow! what innovation. When in doubt and you need some speed, throw it into ring 0 and hope the who OS does freak out!
btw. I was sarcastic! 😉
This makes no sense to put the RELEASE CANDIDATES out as source only. The Mozilla project had a better idea when it released every RC for 1.0 in binary form.
Source only limits the number of bug reporters severely and unnecessarily so. I’d love to participate but I a) don’t have the pipe, b) don’t have the time to download, and c) don’t have the time to compile. Others may be in the position of d) don’t know how to compile.
It makes no sense…
In general, if you don’t have the time to compile it, you don’t have the time to test it. If you can’t figure out how to compile it, even after reading the FAQ then you’re feedback is unlikely to be more helpful than “Konqueror crashed. Stack trace? What’s a stack? Core dump? Eww!”
This makes no sense to put the RELEASE CANDIDATES out as source only.
A controversial suggestion is that the KDE team, at this stage, doesn’t have time for all stupid bug reports filed by all users downloading the latest binaries.
Punch cards, they’re the future. 😉
Nah. Too many pregnant Chads!
<g,d,r>
I think it’s impossible to mention Gnome or KDE without a flamewar between the two camps beginning, which is sad cause both are good (I use gnome btw) and people that flame other desktop environments are just pathetic idiots with nothing better to do…
… btw, Gnome kicks KDE any day!!
>>>>But… who uses KDE?
>>>>I certainly wouldn’t want to use that bloated beast.
you have a small world.
you could have stated why you won’t use it, and why you hate it.
instead you inform us that you don’t know any one who uses it. (quote: “who uses kde?”)
i might prefer linux over microsoft…but for me to pretend microsoft is not established and widespread…i’d have to be a fscking moron.
i might as well say: “but…who uses microsoft? I certainly wouldn’t want to use that bloated beast”
while i might appreciate/understand that you dislike something…pretending something isn’t when it is…you come off sounding like a pea brain.
> But… who uses KDE?
> I certainly wouldn’t want to use that bloated beast.
heh, KDE runs quite a bit faster on my p4 2.53 @ 3.02 ghz than MSDOS 6.22/Win3.11 for Workgroups did on my i486 boxen at 60 mhz.
KDE = less bloated than DOS