“KDE releases 4.6 beta1 of Workspaces, Applications and Development Frameworks, bringing significant improvements to desktop search, a revamped activity system and a significant performance boost to window management and desktop effects. Efforts all across the KDE codebase pay off by making KDE’s frameworks more suitable for usage on all devices. The release provides a testing base for a stable release in January 2011.”
The coolest feature I’ve been holding out for has finally arrived:
Which is great for Linux but I wish someone would creative a OpenIndiana native backend for KDE’s Solid framework so that HAL can be removed from OpenIndiana as well. I wonder how successful such a project would be if one assembled some sort of ‘bounty’ to make such a thing possible?
In the original submission, knowing that you were particularly interested in it, I actually mentioned the support for upower, udev and udisks, allowing applications and the workspace to run without HAL.
I also mentioned that “The KWin compositing manager has seen major optimizations in rendering and plugin handling, leading to a smoother window management experience”, which I though would be of interest to Thom.
These and mentions of the other highlights of the beta release didn’t make it past the OSNews editing floor. I suppose that is fair enough, because it would read like an advertisement if it was just a list of highlights.
Summary here:
http://www.h-online.com/open/news/item/New-features-in-KDE-SC-4-6-B…
People who are interested can find out about all the improvements by reading the original linked article, or the link above, or both. The caveat is that this is just a beta release, and hence is not intended for production use, because the new features have not been stabilised as yet. Try it out if you like at your own risk and only on a non-production machine.
Edited 2010-11-26 01:14 UTC
Push Imap (IMAP IDLE)
Tag Folders
Annotations to emails
And that’s only in Kmail. This is just AMAZING
And the performance improvement? WOW! Kwin even feels faster than compiz!
And I can now make phone calls from the krunner interface…
I’ve been running the beta for 3 hours now and haven’t found any problem so far. No hangs, no slowdowns.
This seems like a really nice release. Thanks for the good work the KDE community has done, thanks a lot.
Regards
How is KOffice going? when ever I use KDE I avoid OpenOffice.org like the plague in favour of something that is better integrated and more light weight such as KOffice. Has it made the big leap to KDE 4? sorry I’ve been out of the KDE/OSS loop for a few months so I am unsure as to the exact status.
KDE really looks like it is making advances after the initial disruptive release of KDE 4.0 – hopefully with the push forward with upower/udisk/udev and the further optimisation of Xorg and drivers the experience as a desktop will be comparable to the other offerings that are out there.
There are a few projects I have in mind (since graduating university) that will hopefully put KDE at centre stage – the big trouble is finding the resources to turn those dreams into reality.
As far as I can recall, KOffice 2.0 made the switch to KDE4.
The current KOffice stable version is up to version 2.2.
http://www.koffice.org/news/koffice-2-2-released/
Notes about KOffice version 2.3 beta 4 (which will be the last beta for the upcoming version 2.3) are here:
http://www.koffice.org/news/koffice-2-3-beta-4/
The various beta releases of version 2.3 are mostly to address bug fixes. The actual feature upgrades slated for verion 2.3 were described here:
http://www.koffice.org/news/koffice-2-3-beta-1/
Summary:
Having said all that, I am using LibrOffice on Arch Linux right now:
http://www.archlinux.org/packages/extra/x86_64/libreoffice/
… and the KDE integration is quite good. It is virtually indistinguishable from a native KDE application.
Edited 2010-11-26 06:13 UTC
Koffice still has problems with Microsoft office documents that open office does fine with. But I like its interface and faster ui. I use it when ever I don’t need to deal with MS formats
Nokia are interested in KOffice because they want an open source office suite for mobiles and handsets. Nokia have put in a lot of work to bring up KOffice compatibility with MS Office files to a good standard.
http://www.linux-magazine.com/Online/News/Freoffice-Free-Office-Vie…
http://freoffice.blogspot.com/
This new code is in both the new mobile office suite called FreOffice, and also in KOffice 2.3 beta.
Well, as it is I always have to check openoffice to see if there is any missing text. So if they ever got it to the point where it just showed all of the information in the document ( regardless of format), that would be awesome. Unfortunately I can’t file a bug report with koffice as many of the documents I look at that cause problems are under NDA’s, so I can’t just ship the doc to them saying ” this doesn’t work”. And I don’t have much time to figure out why it doesn’t work.
When you say “as it is” you need to indicate the version you are talking about. There has reportedly been a huge increase in KOffice compatibility with MS Office very recently, due largely to a significant effort from Nokia. This huge improvement is only seen in the KOffice 2.3 beta versions.
So, when you say “figure out why it doesn’t work”, if you are talking about any version of KOffice prior to KOffice 2.3 beta 1, then you don’t need to figure it out … it is because this capability in KOffice hadn’t been worked on for ages (due to lack of manpower) prior to Nokia’s interest in it.
http://www.koffice.org/news/koffice-2-3-beta-1/
http://www.koffice.org/news/koffice-2-3-beta-2/
http://www.koffice.org/news/koffice-2-3-beta-3/
http://www.koffice.org/news/koffice-2-3-beta-4/
AFAIK, KOffice 2.3 beta 4 is the last planned beta.
Yeah, I understood that. I assumed everyone would understand I was talking about a version prior to 2.3 beta. I think its 2.2, but not really sure.
In my speak “as it is” means ” with the version I am using “.
Fair enough, but bear in mind that OSNews readers are not mindreaders, and that they do not know what version you are using. KOffice 2.3 beta is a public beta, so that people may download it and run it. It is currently at beta 4, and just about to change to a release candidate. It is at the point where quite a number of reasonably competent users might decide to give it a trial.
So when you say “as it is” without saying what exact version you mean, some readers might interpret that as you saying that the current 2.3 beta version (which is about to become an RC version) has inadequate MS Office compatibility. That was true of version 2.2, but I don’t know that it is still true of the upcoming version 2.3. From various reports, it isn’t true any more of the upcoming (soon to be released) version 2.3. For this reason alone I think it is a good idea to mention the explicit version one is talking about, because sometimes a lot can change from one version to the next.
Edited 2010-11-29 04:59 UTC
Version 2.2.0
For anyone curious. As always I thought what I wrote was obvious, as you pointed out it wasn’t. I didn’t include the version number because I didn’t have the computer in front of me and I didn’t remember, otherwise, I would have.
While I will continue to try ( as I always have) to make my posts as widely understood as possible, that’s not always going to be the end result as I can no more read the mind of the reader anymore than they can read mine. Communication: Ain’t it a kick in the head?
I don’t mean to be pedantic, but version 2.2.0 is not the current released version of KOffice. Version 2.2.0 is not “as it is”.
I myself am running version 2.2.2-4 under Arch Linux.
http://www.archlinux.org/packages/?sort=-last_update&arch=x86_64&re…
AFAIK, the 2.2.2 refers to the latest released code from KOffice itself, whereas the -4 suffix refers to changes in the Arch build.
Here is the release announcement for version 2.2.2 from KOffice:
http://www.koffice.org/news/announcements/stable/koffice-2-2-2-rele…
This latest KOffice 2.2.2 release has had two bug-fix updates following the version that you are using, but it contains no new functionality over that version.
Edited 2010-11-30 03:42 UTC
Last I heard, KOffice is being forked due to ideological disagreements among the developers, so there will be two separately supported office suites. I can’t see that being a good thing in the short term, and who knows where it will lead in the long-term.
Too bad, KOffice has always shown a lot of promise. I had high hopes with Nokia’s involvement on working to improve the MS document compatibility.
I keep hearing arguments otherwise, but IMHO it will never be able to achieve anything more than niche status without robust MS office support. It’s simply the reality of the way things are. Hell, even MS had to support Lotus and WordPerfect formats in the beginning to be taken credibly as an office suite.
Still, even if it can’t sub for a full-fledged office suite, it remains a remarkable collection of useful applications with excellent KDE integration. Krita is a particular shining star.
There’s nothing ideological about the “split” of KOffice, it is just that people are fed up with the constant rows and quarrels one developer caused and have decided to continue without him.
We expect to release the first release candidate of KOffice 2.3 very soon. It will contain a lot of improvements already to the support for loading Microsoft Office files (both binary and ooxml-based). And of course, as you say a really good Krita release!
Meanwhile, in a feature branch, we’re working very hard on improving text layout, ODF compatibility and performance improvements. This branch will very likely the basis for the successor of KOffice.
And, of course, KOffice is the core engine for the only free sofware mobile office suite in the world; FreOffice, which is being developed right inside the KOffice subversion repository. I recently managed to get it to run on the meego-based WeTab — now I need to find time to actually make it conform to the WeTab user interface :-).
So in short: development is not interrupted and we’re still making really good progress and going places where no-one has gone before.
The UI is good, performances and light weight is not there yet. KOffice 1.6 still usually work better, but 2.x is a rewrite, so it take time. I submitted many bugs and they have all been fixed, but the lack of table edition in kword and good compatibility with even the native file format prevent me to use it for real docs. Fortunately, data loss and crash seem to be gone in 2.3, so it is at least stable now.
That feature’s been in KMail for many, many, many years. Used to use it with our Cyrus IMAP webmail server before we moved to Zimbra.
You are wrong. Maybe years ago there was a version working with Push Imap but if that was the case, support was dropped.
Regards
Oh, you’re right. D’oh! Just tested with KMail in KDE 3.5.
I was thinking of the server side of things, which we’ve been using for years. Even have push e-mail on my ancient Sony Walkman phone (w580i).
Seems it wasn’t until KMail switched to using Akonadi that it got IMAP IDLE support.
“no hangs, no slowdowns”
I wish I could say the same. Maybe it’s my distro, but 4.6 Beta1 is considerably slower than 4.5.3 in many respects, not just KWin.
I hope it gets worked out soon.
How about being able to reply to an HTML email without breaking the HTML? This is one thing that drives me nuts. Most people these days don’t email in plain text.
It really is time I put some effort into using KDE, Opensuse looks OK, Kubuntu was so awful it almost made me cry.
What distro should I try? or maybe PCBSD?
Personally, I’ve been using Sabayon KDE for the past 18 months. After using Debian forever!! Give it a try if you want a simple-to-use, elegant, feature-rich, powerful rolling distribution backed by the power of Gentoo.
Another good rolling release distro that I have liked using for KDE 4.x is Arch. If you are comfortable enough with config files and very little hand holding (i.e. Slackware) then you might like it.
Fedora 14 KDE spin is rock solid.
Fedora 14 KDE spin was working fine for me until they upgraded kpackagekit to .6.2. Now I can’t install any programs using it. I rolled back TO Version .6.1 and everything works again but the experience left me a bit disappointed.
Arch Linux
http://www.archlinux.org/
This is the distribution I am using with KDE right now.
I went with Kubuntu for a while because of a wider selection of packages available, but Kubuntu 10.10 was caught up in a early release of KDE 3.5 that had real issues with prformance and with the open source graphics drivers. It was not good.
Gieven that it is Ubuntu, if you happen to have a set of packages that don’t work well together when it is released, then it will be bad for six months at least.
Arch is a rolling release, and is already at KDE 3.5.3, and has had updates with the opens source graphics drivers. The issue that Kubuntu 10.10 had has gone away in Arch.
The only problem with Arch is a relatively limited range of packages, and it is not newbie-friendly. You need someone with some Linux skills to get it initially installed. After that it is OK, however.
The biggest problem with Arch is that it’s not Ubuntu/Fedora compatible.
Would you please expand on why it is a limitation of ArchLinux?
All software just isn’t packaged or tested for ArchLinux, especially if it’s closed source (and Arch people can’t package it up themselves) or terribly complicated (e.g. scratchbox).
To use myself as an example – I need to use Ubuntu for my work. I could use Debian but then I would have a lower chance of stuff I need working (because stuff I need gets tested on Ubuntu). If something is broken in Ubuntu, chances are 99% that it’s broken in Debian too (IME).
If I were to use ArchLinux, I would need to run Ubuntu in VM. I don’t enjoy using VM’s. If I want to use KDE on my work machine, apt-get install kubuntu-desktop is the name of the game.
Could someone explain me what the differences between the various KDE distros are? I am using Kubuntu, and while it is true that I see some serious issues, most of these stem from the KDE packages themselves. In this case I fail to see how using another distribution would help. (While I can imagine how the user could benefit from rolling releases, Kubuntu usually provides the latest KDE version at least in the backports or in a PPA.)
They all use the same core KDE codebase, so they differ only in: (1) the version of the KDE codebase, and (2) they underlying OS support for that codebae (kernel, drivers, libraries, etc).
The KDE codebase is updated every six months, whereupon it goes up by one point release. That is to say, the next six-monthly release of KDE, which is due in January 2011, will be version 4.6. The current version is 4.5.4. The transition of a new point release will introduce new features (so version 4.6 in Jan 2011 will have new features that are not in version 4.5.4). The minor sub-point releases happen every month or so, and they are bug fix releases, so that the current version 4.5.4 has no new features over version 4.5, but it does have a significant number of bug fixes since version 4.5.
OK, Kubuntu 10.10 has verion 4.5.0 (I believe), or it might have version 4.5.1. Whichever, that version won’t change, Kubuntu 10.10 will always have KDE 4.5.0 or 4.5.1 (whichever it actually has). Kubuntu 11.04 will probably have version 4.6.0.
Anyway, getting “stuck” as it does every six months with a KDE 4.x.0 or 4.x.1 release, Kubuntu’s release timing is not optimal with respect to KDE’s release timing. Kubuntu would be a lot better off to have a 4.x.4 or 4.x.5 version of KDE, since these versions are bug-fixed yet they have the same functionality.
Arch Linux, OTOH, uses a “rolling release”. As soon as a new version of KDE is released, Arch will implement it. This means that right now, Arch has 4.5.4, and so it is more stable than Kubuntu with 4.5.0. In January 2011, Arch will have KDE version 4.6.0, which presumably will have more features but become less stable.
PCLinux OS is also a rolling release, but it is a “less rolling” release than Arch. In other words, PCLinux OS are quite likely to upgrade to 4.5.4 and 4.5.5 in order to get stability improvements and bug-fixes, but they will probably refrain form updating to 4.6.0 in January 2011. They are more likely to wait until 4.6.3 or something before upgrading to the new 4.6.x features.
Only some issues stem from KDE itself, and these are due to the low sub-point release (i.e. new feature version, e.g. 4.5.0 or 4.5.1). If Kubuntu used 4.5.4 or 4.5.5 instead, there would be far less issues. A good number of issues are not due to KDE, but rather due to the underlying OS itself … Kubuntu 10.10 suffers not only from a new-feature release of KDE, but also from issues with the open source graphics stack for example.
I hope this helps to explain the differences between KDE distributions a little bit.
Edited 2010-11-28 22:35 UTC
not really, you have kubuntu backports. I’m running kubuntu 10.04 and installed kde 4.5.3. Just add ppa:kubuntu-ppa/backports and you can upgrade your kde version
True.
Here is what you have access to:
https://launchpad.net/~kubuntu-ppa/+archive/backports
Basically, it is KDE 4.5.3. Not KOffice 2.2.2. AFAIK these packages are not vetted by Canonical.
Most people wouldn’t know about this, and they wouldn’t do it because it isn’t tested enough.
Somewhat ironically, the backports packages often have a lot of bug fixes from the KDE developers that are still bugs in the official Kubuntu packages. Because of this, the backports packages may well be the more stable ones.
Edited 2010-11-30 12:00 UTC
I’m using PCBSD 8.1 on my work desktop and its KDE support and integration is wonderful. KMail especially is much better than on my OpenSuSE 11 desktop and laptop. I have thousands of IMAP folders containing tens of gigabytes of content, and on OpenSuSE from 11.x onward my KMail app runs out of file descriptors trying to synch that account. Apparently it’s using one thread per folder. A bad idea in general, but specifically for me it means thousands of popups to be dismissed before I can kill the app. I don’t know what the OpenSuSE integrators were thinking, there.
That said, OpenSuSE 11 has been my primary KDE platform ever since it came out, and OpenSuSE 10 before that. I’m switching to PCBSD because I’m more familiar with FreeBSD sysadmin and now that there’s a KDE-integrated version of FreeBSD I don’t need Linux any more. But OpenSuSE has been extremely useful and its support of KDE, other than the KMail issue noted above, has been first class.
Wow this is the first time I have ever seen anyone mention this if it is the problem I have been experiencing. Whenever I try to use Kmail it somehow marks all my mail as “new” again and I get notifications on my phone for every single email I have…SUPER annoying. I wish this could be fixed.
It seems kwin tweaks are bearing fruit (smooth windom resize w/ nvidia):
http://everydaylht.com/2010/11/26/kde-4-6-beta-1-a-first-look/
Nope, it’s better but very far from smooth. Compiz with native/good window decoration theme is much smoother.
GeForce GTX 275 / 260.19.21
That is a Nvidia card. Nvida and 2D on Linux don’t get along.
My bad, placebo. There’s no difference.
Seems to be working just fine. (Minus some weird issue with kgpg and dolphin seems to be slower at startup)
– Gilboa