While last week was a tad bit uneventful, this week made up for it. Not only did we get the long-awaited release of KDE 4.2, we also gained more insight into the whole Palm/Apple thing, NVIDIA’s CEO said a few funny things, and we got an important sit-rep on SkyOS straight from Robert Szeleney himself. This week’s My Take is about life, death, and resurrection.
The biggest news of the week was the long-awaited release of KDE 4.2. This new release marks the end of the testing phase by being the first release ready for everyone – instead of just developers and enthusiasts. It was well-received by most people, but some still noted bugs and certain features from the 3.x days lacking. Sadly, the discussion around the release here on OSNews focussed on KDE 4.0, instead of discussing the actual release at hand – but hey, you can’t steer a community, and apparently, KDE 4.0 made a lasting impression. Positively or negatively, your pick.
We had some additional insights into KDE 4.2 thanks to a short interview we did with KDE’s Aaron Seigo, who detailed some of the new features in KDE 4.2, while also giving some information on the direction KDE 4.3 is heading. Right before the release, we published an editorial about change and resistance in the light of KDE 4 and Windows 7.
The week started off with news that the EU might force Microsoft and OEMs to offer a choice of browsers to their customers, in order to break the monopoly position that the EU thinks IE still has. This idea was mostly met with scepticism by many, even by those in favour of action against Microsoft for including Internet Explorer with Windows.
Engadget dove into the whole Apple/Palm patent issue, and concluded that both companies infringe on a number of each other’s patents, raising the question whether or not it makes sense for ether of the two to go on the legal offensive. A patent agreement between the two seems the more likely option, but with Apple’s rather protective and isolationalist policies regarding patents, it could still end ugly.
Also of note this week was NVIDIA’s CEO Jen-Hsun Huang, who went on a rather inconsistent tangent against Intel. He claimed that Intel’s Atom is hurting the software industry, holding it back, and that netbooks are, excuse my wording, shite. His arguments, however, were rather weak, and most in the comments agreed that his words were of the clutching-to-straws variety.
Later on in the week, we ran an editorial on the lack of updates and activity within SkyOS, and rather harshly, I concluded that paying for SkyOS was unwise. This led to an interesting debate, but with the desired outcome: Robert Szeleney explained the lack of progress, and stated he is pondering SkyOS’ future, possibly releasing it as open source. Time will tell where this will lead to.
My Take: Life, Death, Resurrection
Back in 2003, an unlikely television series made its way onto the Showtime network. Created by Bryan Fuller (also known as god), the series was one of the weirdest pieces of television to ever gain traction – a story about a dead girl becoming a grim reaper in this surreal world of Der Waffle Haus, Rube Goldberg-esque death sequences, and the Happy Time temp agency. The series excelled at something usually only found in quality films: dialogue. There weren’t any major special effects, no tits, no explosions – just a series filled with surreal events and dialogues and monologues that made you think about life, death, and everything in between – and after.
Dead Like Me had this weird thing where it kind of took control of your life, making you see things that weren’t there. I remember getting a text message from one of my friends – fellow DLM fanatic – which read: “Saw someone who looked like George. I moved seats just to be safe”. Personally, I got scared of yellow post-it notes. That was a fun counselling session.
The series became a cult hit – despite my despise for the term cult (either something is popular, or it isn’t; quit making up words [cult, indie] to set one type of popularity apart from the other). In any case, it gained a loyal and very passionate fanbase, who were saddened by the decision to axe the show after only two seasons. Using the magic power of hindsight, it was probably the right thing to do, though; season 2 lacked the spark of the first season. It was still good – but not as good as.
I am one of those crazy Dead Like Me fans – you’ve surely encountered some of us, lonely, stranded across the internet, curled up in corners, asking for another Dead Like Me fix, grieving over a photo of Ellen Muth, spastically clutching onto our box sets of season one and two as it were our offspring.
Still, on the fringes of society, we DLM fanatics hung onto the impossible dream: the resurrection of our object of affection. George, Mason, Rube, Daisy, Roxy – surely, the evil demons at Showtime wouldn’t just let them rot away for eternity? As it turns out, they did not. Us fans received word that a direct-to-DVD film was in the making, with most of the original cast returning to duty. Cheers abound, but also some sadness because two important cast members would not be returning: Mandy Patinkin as the enigmatic Rube Sofer (leader of the reapers), and Laura Harris as the she’s-sad-about-something Daisy Adair.
I’ve already seen the new film – titled “Dead Like Me: Life After Death”, and I have a few things to say about it. I’m not going to review the entire thing, but I want to specifically address the biggest fear of DLM fans: can DLM survive without Mandy and Laura? Short answer: yes. Long answer: read on.
Many expected the lack of Rube to be the biggest problem for the new film. Mandy Patinkin shone brighter than ever in his role as Rube, and portrayed the aloof pack leader with excellence. Rube’s cryptic nature and enigmatic one-liners were one of the main pillars of the show. I am glad to tell you that his absence doesn’t seem to affect the film all that much; I never really missed him – the way he eparts the show is believable and fits into the story quite well. The new leader is played by Henry Ian Cusick – of Lost fame – and he does a good job, as always. He’s no Rube, and he doesn’t try to be; he brings a different and fresh spark to the team.
Personally, I was expecting the lack of Laura Harris as Daisy Adair (see photo) to be the biggest loss to the show. Daisy Adair has always been my favourite character – she has this dumb blonde actress thing going on, but from the moment she joined the show, it became obvious there’s this troubled backstory to her existence, something intrinsically sad, and hints to this are left all throughout the series.
Laura Harris – one of the most beautiful women I’ve ever seen – played that role beyond excellence. Luckily the writers didn’t decide to write Daisy off, and instead found an actress to replace Laura: Sarah Wynter. Sarah has some very big shoes to fill here, and for the most part, I can say she pulls it off. It’s clear she’s a very good actress, but she does need to grow into the role of Daisy a little more. Daisy’s mannerisms and facial expressions were mesmerising, and Sarah simply doesn’t have the type of face and style to pull them off.
However, this is her first go, and she obviously brings her own interpretation of the character, and I’m definitely giving her the benefit of the doubt. I’m sure that if the series gets a new season, she’ll turn out to be an excellent Daisy.
Overall, as a die hard Dead Like Me fan, I really liked the new film. It moves away from season 2, and inches closer to the surreal and playful feel of the first season. Fans like me are hard to please, but I think the writers, actors, and the rest of the team pulled it off, no small feat. My advice is a definitive “buy!”. The more copies sold, the greater the chance we might see another season.
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that’s kinda cute… of course there are bugs – in the past 5 days, it pulled +100 MB updates twice already (suse 11.1). Not that I noted any personally.
To clarify, that doesn’t imply 100MB worth of security patches, that’s simply the nature of the opensuse build service. Those KDE packages would have been automatically rebuilt if any package they were dependent upon changed, triggering an update.
It’s a little bit of overkill, but it helps ensure stability with the packages, since packages in some projects often depend upon packages in other projects.
Other thing to remember is that the repo being used for 4.2 in openSUSE 11.1 is actually the KDE desktop for factory, the developmental version of openSUSE 11.2. This will be somewhat in flux and will sometimes trigger changes separate from KDE upstream updates.
I absolutely loved DLM when it was a regular series back in 2003. I was very sad to see that it was not renewed since it was arguably one of the best shows at the time. I own the complete series of DLM on DVD and watch it often. Every time it’s like visiting with old friends. I can’t wait to add the new movie to my collection with the hope that Showtime wakes up and brings this excellent show back for a new run.
DLM all the way! Thank goodness Thom is doing these pieces now. Adds real segways to the otherwise blinkered view of OSNews stories.
Thinking on the subject I got to wondering what KDE 4.2 added to the experience not counting bug fixes. I looked around and found some info but largely the added features were either not of interest to me (such as the added kwin effects) or too vague to constitute much to me (most references to improved apps).
So what I am wondering is what other users found as important features added in KDE 4.2.
For me the things that stuck out were:
1) The ability to set global hotkeys again, including from the menu editor.
2) Lancelot is in the default install and seems to be fully functional now. I find it to be much more pleasant than the default application launcher.
3) Power management – I am fairly impressed by powerdevil though it does seem to adjust brightness and tries to suspend when I do not want it to. This is likely a problem on my side though.
4) Support for Ruby based plasmoids. While I am not sure I would want to do a production plasmoid in Ruby it is nice for a throw away or a rapid prototype. If nothing else it lowers the threshold for trying out ideas.
-Grouping in plasma taskbar
-Multirow taskbar
-More plasmoid by default, including system monitor
-Akonadi intergration in KDEpim
-More work on nepomuk and strigi
-Panel autohide
-Most konqueror feature are back (including rich text popup with preview and preview in open file dialog)
-Bug fixes
-More work on solid
-Konqueror web is almost usable again
-Most konsole feature are back
-Most kate feature are back (including color in file management dock)
-2 or 3 new games
-kipi plugins in gwenview
-Folderview as desktop background with every feature from kdesktop and much more
-Many new feature in applications like oktera and okular
These are the one I found when using it. To name only the most visible one.
Thanks for the reply but it was not quite what I was looking for.
Not to pick on you but don’t just list everything you find. I asked what new features added to 4.2 you found important or useful. You accidentally demaonstrated my problem with the lists of added features for kde 4.2. The feature lists involves a lot of hand waving but not specifics for what the reviewer found useful. This strikes me as more an attempt to justify the release than an honest assessment of what you, personally, like about the release. I am looking for a personal list, not a review of the release features.
What does that mean? EDIT: Ah you mean more widgets, including the system monitor one?
Can you provide specifics on what was added that you found significant in these features? Akonadi is a neat backend thing but how does it specifically make your experience better?
And I believe strigi has been surfaced I could not find any references to any additions or improvements to the nepomuk integration. What was added there that you consider important?
like?
like?
like?
I was hoping for specific, personal, notes on things, not abstract features.
Edited 2009-02-02 02:23 UTC
You have to understand that 4.2 goal was to be better than 3.5, to acheive that, they had to finish the port and bring features back. The panel one are the most usefull to me, shortcut too. But it is the addition of all little deatils that make the greatest new feature of 4,2, the plus value of all tweak: it is polished. It was not the case in previous release. this one feel mature and ready.4.0 was “working”, 4.1 was usable and now 4.2 is ready, it is why it is called “The anwser”. Now we have a KDE with the feature and configuration od 3.5 and the feature that KDE4(.0) did bring, like the pillars (that start to be widelly used by more and more apps with every new release).
And a feature that I forget to list in my previous post: the new kuiserver that does not steal focus and stack in plasma, thats usefull.
I think 4.2 == 42 == “answer to everything” from Douglas Adams’ THHGTTG.
I’m wondering the same thing.
Akonadi enabled or disabled doesn’t seem to have any effect on my experience with kontact.
Everything runs as it does with or without akonadi.
All it’s good for, as far i can tell, is keeping my cpu warm.
Indeed. Akonadi is neat, but for end users atm it is no big deal. What is neat is what it allows developers to…well…develop. It takes time for frameworks to be used by app writers.
It’s not very user-visible yet but it is personal – in Solid I added support for various serial and mobile broadband devices to support development of the new NetworkManager-kde4 applet. I fixed a bunch of other stupid bugs and updated the dbus backend to the most recent changes in NM 0.7. The Solid abstraction helped a lot with the applet development – I’ve essentially been able to rely on it to do what it says now and concentrate on higher level bugs. It was important so I can release a standalone NM-kde4 that will work with any 4.2 release and don’t have to wait for 4.3
Dario Freddi did some work too that PowerDevil needed including an easy signal reporting the remaining battery time. And Tom Patzig worked on finishing the Bluetooth APIs there, but I think that will only bear real fruit in the 4.3 timeframe.
Others went through the core and put some loop optimisations in. Codepage handling, needed when you mount DOS and NTFS filesystems, was improved so that hot harddisk you bought off ebay.ru shows its contents directly,
I guess he means session management for tabs. OH YES!
Ah yes, I’ve noticed that too. It has a bad habit of dimming the screen even when you’re not on battery. Haven’t had it suspend unexpectedly though.
I loved Rube and I missed him. The new Daisy sucked .. not my type I guess.
I know this is the typical reaction to change .. but I just cannot help it. Mandy was cool and Laura was a 9 .. Sarah is just a 6 (in the looks and acting department.)
Btw did Ellen Muth get a boob job?
Edited 2009-02-02 00:29 UTC
No.
So was the DLM movie aired on TV, theaters, or straight to DVD?
Can anyone comment on Dolphin performance and stability in 4.2?
Would like to extend your question a bit. What do you feel about KDE 4.2 performance?
I build it on a CentOS 5.2 in a spare Athlon XP 2k with an old Nvidia Quadro and 1Gb mem.
The positives points:
* konqueror as a file manager is working fine;
* the default theme and icons are way better (actually, I like them) than of the 3.x series;
* Plasmoids are a nice addition;
* The new taskbar is really good;
* The menu is ok, but I’m going to try Lancelot.
And what I miss:
* k3b for kde4;
* Don’t like the new Amarok layout. Would like the developers to give a choice to set it in “classical” mode;
* On this old system it is not snap, though usable (may be, it has something to do with the plumbing and on a more modern system, software wise, it would behaves better).
I’m still testing the other applications and integrating things. One thing a really don’t like is the default layout of dolphin (what amarok, more or less, mimic), which can be changed. I don’t know why they like that. To me is just a waste of real state.
Edited 2009-02-02 09:40 UTC
Yeah, I hope that Mandriva re-focuses its priorities for Mandriva 2009 Spring. It’s mostly Mandriva’s “fault”, because it employs the main K3b developer who is also one of the main Nepomuk developers and his work is mostly going into Nepomuk.
It’s already done and will be in Amarok 2.1.
Uhm… sort of but not exactly… 🙂 What Amarok 2.1 will bring is a very flexible playlist that can potentially be made to look much like the playlist from the 1.4.x series. This will hopefully preempt the need for a dedicated “classic mode”
See this blog for details and screenshots: http://amarok.kde.org/blog/archives/876-Playlist-Layout-Editor.html
Since you build yourself, it should not be a problem. Just get it from extragear, it’s ported to KDE4 and for my use it has been as flawless as ever.
I don’t know what the developers intend, they have in the past been very conservative regarding releases. But to me it seems like it’s good to go, and the developers should really get a beta out the door.
Watch True Blood on HBO. Very cool.