“KDE has released a release candidate of the upcoming 4.7 release of the Plasma Desktop and Netbook workspaces, the KDE Applications and the KDE Frameworks, which is planned for July 27, 2011. With API, dependency and feature freezes in place, the KDE team’s focus is now on fixing last-minute showstopper bugs and finishing translation and documentation that comes along with the releases.” Focuses of this release are Kwin support for OpenGL-ES 2.0 (oooh purty!), an interface refresh for Dolphin, and loads of other stuff.
Any link to downloas the live image iso?
KDE is not a Linux distribution. KDE4 live demo DVD do not seem to exist anymore. It was nice to have before KDE4 was usable to see the progress, but there is no point now. It was never intended to be a fully supported distribution, but rather a proof of progress. If you want to try KDE, the best way is to create a separated user account and use the cmakekdefull bash script or something else to compile it for you. Like that you will have an “unstable” KDE version trapped into an user account (no real installation required).
Compiling even the smallest programs can be a massive pain in the ass. I wouldn’t want to see a complete desktop compile (that is, assuming it will compile without you pulling all your hair out in the first place…). Not to mention all the time required, even if it did work successfully.
I would actually recommend just waiting for KDE 4.7 to officially be released, and soon enough distros will start shipping it. And certainly at least a few of them will be live CDs/DVDs. And of course they will all implement it somewhat differently and with their own finishing touches, some of them better, some worse–which IMO is definitely better than having one standard sub-par set of binaries with the same exact feel (or in other words, one distribution). KDE hasn’t been making too many huge changes though, so I doubt that anything new is truly groundbreaking.
I have to admit though, I was wondering “why the f*** would you want to integrate a desktop environment with a bootloader, and how the hell would you integrate it with such a low-level piece of software?,” and once I read why and saw the screenshot, I thought that’s pretty cool. But still… not groundbreaking, because the only difference is that you select the OS before rebooting instead of after. Very cool, but not amazing. It seems like every new release is full of those things, little things that aren’t groundbreaking, but they add up and really give you feeling that the desktop is very fresh and full-featured.
Edited 2011-06-27 04:01 UTC
Compiling small programs is, in fact, not a pain at all. Compiling big, complex programs can be only because of (1) the time involved and (2) the fact that large projects have large dependency lists, some of which you may not have.
Properly written build scripts will make detecting depenencies that you need simple and compiling once you have them merely a matter of waiting (and not running out of disk space).
That said, I don’t think KDE4 is a good place to start if you’ve never compiled your own software before.
You won’t get KDE 4.7 in any Live image just yet.
The very latest KDE distribution to be released is PCLinuxOS, which is very newbie-friendly.
http://distrowatch.com/?newsid=06753
http://www.pclinuxos.com/?p=1267
This uses KDE 4.6.4. KDE 4.7 won’t start appearing in desktops for a couple of months yet.
Having said that, this release of PCLinuxOS is, like Arch Linux, what is known as a “rolling release”. A “rolling release” means that once the PCLinuxOS developers have had a chance to integrate and test the formal release of KDE 4.7 it will be released to user via a package update. You won’t have to re-install a new version of the .iso image to get KDE 4.7, you just wait a bit for the update to appear, but be advised: there won’t be any rolling release of this version, which is only the KDE 4.7 RC version, to PCLinuxOS users.
With PCLinuxOS you also have a few different kernel optimisations to choose from. The BFS scheduler kernel is supposed to be optimal for desktop use.
Edited 2011-06-28 02:50 UTC
what about doing something that actually benefits the user? Such as
– making a mobile broadband wizard. KDE requires you to fill all the cryptic parameters by hand, while in Gnome you just select your provider from a list and you’re ready to go…
– fix the (disconnected) IMAP feature in Kmail. Mails keep disappear after download and reappear sometime later, which is pretty annoying
– fix issues that seriously hinder productivity and make KDE users look stupid, like the “copy from Kmail adds xml tags to text” bug, immediately, and not months later in the next big release.
I’ve always liked KDE more than Gnome, but problems like this can really ruin the experience.
I have such a wizard on my KDE.
Distro is Opensuse 11.4 and KDE version should be 4.6.
Would you sir elaborate on how you got this? On my openSUSE 11.4 KDE 4.6 the knetworkmanager does not list mobile broadband at all, and barely works with anything different than normal WiFi. It does not detect my Nokia phone being attached at all. Please help.
The plasmoid with modem manager and network manager should show 3G, Wifi and bluetooth if proprely installed.
It worked for me out-of-box without any extra effort by me whatsoever. After selecting “Estonia”, it showed me all three local carriers and all I needed to do was to enter PIN-code, that came with SIM-card.
The KDE network manager should look like this:
http://easylinuxcds.com/blog/wp-content/gallery/linux-mint-9-kde/li…
“Mobile broadband” is on the third tab (following after “Wired” and “Wireless”). The tab will only be selectable (i.e. not greyed out) if there is applicable hardware detected. If the “Mobile broadband” tab is greyed out, then there has been no mobile broadband network hardware detected by the kernel.
From the mobile broadband tab it is possible to enter the parameters for your mobile broadband service provider. When I did this some time ago, there were only two or three values I had to enter. I found out what the correct values were by a simple phone call to the technical helpline of the mobile broadband provider. It took only a couple of minutes.
If you don’t have this dialog box, then you don’t have the KDE network manager installed, you probably have the OpenSuse configuration software (which is called Yast, isn’t it?) running instead. I can’t offer you any suggestions about that.
Edited 2011-06-28 02:35 UTC
I live in Adelaide, South Australia.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adelaide
This is a relatively small city of a little over 1 million people.
Even though I don’t use mobile broadband, I would be willing to wager that there is absolutely no wizard, for any OS, which would know the parameters for any local mobile broadband provider.
When I once did install mobile broadband for another extended family member on Mint (which uses GNOME), no wizard was of any use at all. I simply called the mobile broadband provider technical help on the telephone, and I asked what the parameters were, and then I typed them into the network manager dialogue box. The same network manager code is used in KDE, BTW.
Edited 2011-06-27 10:42 UTC
That may be so in Australia, but the mobile-broadband-provider-info package lists e.g. all three major providers here in Hungary. Gnome uses it; KDE does not. Even if the list does not cover 100% of Linux users (only, say, 95%), it’s still better to have it than not.
sorry, but using opensuse 11.4 kde 4.6 and after the kde mobile brand info package, it automaticly has the info for “TMN” , “VODAFONE” , etc.
that is not a kde problem, rather a packaging problem
Yeah kmail does some odd things with IMAP sometimes. The key being *sometimes*. I used it everyday for a year with out problems then at some point it stopped working as well and I switched back to thunderbird. I recently switched back ( after I got frustrated with thunderbird for its issues) and every thing seems to be okay… Well actually not, it just crashed on me while trying to search. Its beautifully designed and works great, when it works.. Anyone have a better suggestion for a linux email client?
Well, if we ignore the IMAP folder refreshing bugs and some exceedingly complicated interface bits, I like thunderbird
As long as we also ignore their searching as well, then I like thunderbird too.
Unfortunately, I do need to search email frequently.
What’s the problem with TB’s searching ? I give you that the fact they have two search functionalities (one global, one in the currently examined folder) is quite confusing, but in my experience the local one at least works extremely well.
Also, Mozilla have recently released a new version of Thunderbird (“Thunderbird 5”). I’m playing with it currently. So far what I’ve noticed is that they finally use standard notifications on Linux. However, the settings are still a mess. Currently experimenting to see if the IMAP bugs have been fixed…
EDIT : No. When a message is in multiple folders and you delete it in one of them (typical example being the “unified folders” view, which I happen to like), it still remains visible in the left panel. =_= I wonder if Mozilla have such a thing as a bug reporting system for Thunderbird, though I doubt that they are not aware of this one.
Edited 2011-06-29 06:49 UTC
I have two problems with thunderbird searching.
1) The search results cannot be correctly sorted by date. It does an alphanumeric search which can cause me to miss some items if I’m not thinking about its messed up sort.
2) Searching the body of a message also searches the contents of an attachment. Even binary attachments are searched. So sometimes I get a hit on a message, but the real search hit was in the strings table of the pdf or what not. Searching the contents of a text attachment might be nice, but that should be a separate search option.
Tried “local” search, or quick filters as TB calls it ? It does both of these perfectly well, although I can understand that it can be a bit of a bother if you have lots of mailboxes. Myself, I’ve given up on global search since I’ve discovered that, and now systematically disable it for interface cleanness and speed.
Yeah, but that only works for simple searches. Haven’t used it much because of the reduced functionality. I’m not sure if it still searches attachments. It doesn’t work for more complex searches where I’m filtering by sender and subject and body contents.
Just tested for attachment searching… It still does search attachments.
Edited 2011-06-29 18:48 UTC
At least KDE 4.7 continues to offer a more traditional desktop experience. The window controls are still present and located where users expect them; there’s still a traditional desktop paradigm with desktop shortcuts, folders, or launchers (of course ‘activities’ are fully implemented too for those users who actually use them); The task bar and task bar applets are still present and accounted for. All in all, KDE 4.x may become a refuge for those fleeing the radical and seemingly bizarre changes that came with Gnome 3 and Ubuntu’s horrid Unity desktop experience.
This reviewer of Fedora 15 KDE spin (featuring KDE 4.6.2, but not a rolling release):
http://desktoplinuxreviews.com/2011/06/27/fedora-15-kde/
apparently had the same view. Fedora is a GNOME-focussed distribution, but they provide alternative “spins” of the distribution.
Anyway, from this review:
“Fedora 15 provides the excellent KDE 4.6 desktop. If you aren’t familiar with what 4.6 has to offer, check out the KDE 4.6 release announcement for details and screenshots. Given all of the hoopla going on about GNOME 3 (and Unity of course), KDE 4.6 is quickly emerging as an important alternative to some GNOME and Ubuntu users. The KDE developers have wisely refrained from going the same route as the Unity and GNOME 3 developers and KDE itself may well see an influx of users coming from the other two desktops.”
I don’t know if that will happen or not. Probably not.
What I found comical when I installed Gnome 3 under Arch Linux was that all I could think was “Did they steal all of this from the Nokia N900? Maemo 5’s hildon interface acts almost identically.
Sure enough, I found that is where they got a lot of their inspiration for it.
Guess what, Gnome guys? It works very well for a small touch screen, or any touch screen for that matter (tested it on my HP Touchsmart) but it doesn’t work well for a standard desktop interface.
If it weren’t for the fact that the catalyst drivers caused graphical corruption, and the default radeon driver didn’t support the new interface at all, it’d be my only usage of Gnome 3.
Gnome 3 finally made me switch to KDE 4.6. I had tried just about every version of KDE previous to 4.6, and something always pissed me off, so I kept going back to Gnome. But knowing that Gnome 3 was going to suck (I keep telling people to avoid it like the plague until about 3.4) and have stayed with KDE 4.x since.
Quite excited at the prospect of using KDE 4.7 on my N900 though.
It’s fantastic that there is so many choices with Linux. I just wish E17 would become stable enough for my uses.
yeah, that’s what I’m finding myself doing. Been a Gnome desktop user for some time, but the direction of it being nothing more than a tablet/phone interface has me evaluating KDE. Honestly I find some very good things about it but at the same time disliking a number of it’s behavior. But bottom line is the direction of this crap of “touch” screen interfaces that work well with tablets and phones have no business in a desktop. If I wanted a tablet I’d buy a tablet, but there are reasons why I stay with desktops and lappy’s.
OK end of rant ……
Two things caught my attention:
1- the last sentence on the page: “All other trademarks and copyrights […] are the property of their respective owners.” Isn’t it usual that things be the property of their owner?
2- while copying the sentence above for pasting here, I noticed a “halo” effect around the letters when text is highlighted… Very nice, the letters seem to have a glow to them. I guess it’s caused by some shadowing.
On-topic: I only hope that KDE will be smooth on old systems.