The KDE Project’s KDE 3.2, which eWEEK Labs previewed in its initial alpha release, should impress companies countenancing desktop Linux deployments, they say. On other KDE news, KDE 3.1.3 built with Sun Forte on Solaris.
eWEEK: Alpha Code Shows a Strong KDE 3.2 Ahead
About The Author
Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
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Hey I just converted over to linux 100% and I am using KDE. I wanted to use Gnome but the xinerama support wasn’t as solid as KDE.. but i’m very happy with KDE none the less. Now that I can run Photoshop and Flash MX (on the rare occasion) I had no reasons I couldn’t make the jump.
GNOME Xinerama support is apparently greatly improved in GNOME 2.4. Might be a good time to check it out.
GET XFT2 WORKING!
I know this is probably not a trivial thing to do, but the results are extremely dramatic. If there’s one thing KDE 3.2 needs, XFT2 definitely ranks pretty high.
-Erwos
Since I switched to Gentoo from Redhat, I’ve been trying everything out. First, I tried GNOME 2.4.0. It’s a pretty good improvement over 2.2. GNOME 2.4 on Gentoo is a bit faster than GNOME 2.2 on RedHat too.
Then, I tried out the KDE-cvs ebuilds from http://dev.gentoo.org/~caleb/kde-cvs.html. And all I have to say is **wow**. I really didn’t use KDE 3.1 much– I used it for a few weeks before I switched back to GNOME, but I did use KDE 3.0 for a few months and I eventually hated it.
But 3.2 is a –great improvement– from what I’ve tried so far. Not only that, but it’s very stable for an alpha release. What I like best is all of the improvements in Konqueror. It seems not only a lot faster, but has a cleaner interface too. It finally has context menus that make sense and don’t give options for unrelated options like IE. The changes from Safari have also made it render pages a lot better too.. I hated konqueror back in 3.0.
Oh yeah, khotkeys2 is very nice, I have a dozen mouse gestures setup to launch many apps :~)
Overall, I’ve been pleasently suprised, but an alpha release of KDE has replaced GNOME 2.4/sawfish on my hardrive
(GNOME 2.4 is also very good, but I expect KDE 3.2 to turn heads when it comes out– it’s fixed a lot of the things that made KDE shitty for me in the past)
Xft2/fontconfig definatly works here in KDE 3.2. I guess it was a problem this guy is having (perhaphs this konstrukt thing? never heard of it)
//
GNOME Xinerama support is apparently greatly improved in GNOME 2.4. Might be a good time to check it out.
//
Its not. Ive enabled Xinerama on every package (that could) and its still not up to part with KDE. The Panel has trouble spanning 2 monitors. Windows never pop into the right Monitor,etc.
And KDE (3.1) is not up to part with XFCE. If you want to see perfect xinerama support, check out XFCE4. xfce.org
Speed is a big step up in KDE. In the previous alpha, it was pretty close to XP, but still a bit slower in complicated apps like Konqueror. Now (with my laptop’s button-pointer) resizing Konqueror is as smooth as resizing IE in XP, taking into account the fact that jerkiness in IE entails the window-frame lagging, while jerkiness in KDE entails the window-canvas lagging. These improvements are most likely due to a rewrite of the window manager component. If KDE devs can really concentrate on polishing the interface for the next few months, KDE 3.2 is going to kick ass.
KDE-3.* series have been faster than XP or Mac on my machine. In fact, I switched because of that.
Athlon 1.4GHz
256MB RAM
80GB Hard Disk
233 FSB
Gentoo Linux
Is a very nice combination. For some reason when I used GNOME on FreeBSD, when I selected text from the GNOME Console the whole desktop would become completely non-active and as a result I would have to wait 15-20 seconds for it to suddenly “wake up” from its “daze”.
The funny thing is that I have not seen it happen on KDE (3.1.x series). Maybe there is has something do do with that widget set the console relies on (vrt or what ever it is called).
http://developer.kde.org/development-versions/kde-3.2-features.html
“Make kdelibs compile (and run) without dependencies on X11, for example useful for qt/embedded or qt/mac. Holger Schroeder <[email protected]>
This would be an awsome advance. It is however a shame that the GTK community haven’t put more effort into porting GTK to Quartz so then Evolution and GIMP can run natively. I know that there is a 1.x port, however, that is basically dead and nothing is happening.
I am using KDE3.2 CVS HEAD for quite a while and I am really impressed:
– Konqueror is faster and more responsive, the new tabs feel much better then the old ones (I like the nice close buttons, but you can also have icons which change to close buttons if you move the mouse on them).
– KDevelop3 looks very promising. It supports a wide varity of languages, uses automake/autoconf, has code completion (did not try it yet), has many templates for KDE/Gnome projects, etc, etc. I also really like the IDEAL mode.
– Kontrollcenter is cleaned up. It really looks much better now. There are still a lot of options (and I think this is a good thing, just don’t use it if you don’t like all the options), but it looks more clean now.
– Kate: did not try it for too long, but it also looks very nice and I am quite sure it is only a matter of time that I change from xemacs to kate. I really like toe IDEAL mode here, too.
– Kopete: did not really try it, but looks promising. Gaim is still ahead, but lets see again next year.
There are many more things, but find out yourself. Btw. there are KDE CVS debs available. I really look forward for KDE3.2!
> GET XFT2 WORKING!
Tell that the eWEEK editor, KDE 3.2 always worked fine with XFT2. My guess is, that he missed some installed development headers but thought after using GARNOME that he has everything necessary for XFT2 support installed. But GARNOME does include way more system level libraries (and installs them as duplicate to existing ones) than Konstruct. “With more time spent tinkering, we probably could have enabled Xft2 on our KDE test system” is so true, he just should have read the requirements of KDE (and installed the development headers for them too).
From what I see, KDE (already my favorite Desktop Environment) almost has all the features that I require to switch for 100% to linux. These are the important issues:
– The most important changes come from kde-PIM, not Kde-base: Kontact is an important project. The new Kaddressbook looks beautiful, with the ability to add photos to your contacts. I hope Kmail will be able to import my outlook contacts/mail/calendar options flawlessly, a prerequisite for switching.
– Koffice 1.3 should be able to import and export the openoffice (.sxw and other) file formats, and from 1.4 on it will be the standard file format, increasing the acceptance of open-source, standard, xml-based office file formats.
– Kopete has already replaced Gaim for me.
– Konqueror has *almost* replaced Mozilla for me, because it starts up faster, but it is less standards compliant and plugins are still a pain.
Thank you KDE-team for the Huge amount of work done!
Yes I know it is still Alpha.
Buat it is already stable for me. Konqueror launch faster. Transparet panel. Faster KMail when deleting/trashing multiple mails. I don’t have a reason to go back to 3.1.3.
Tried it… wasn’t any better.
Here is what happens
Primary Monitor: Launch Mozilla
Left Monitor: Mozilla shows up
*drag over to primary monitor*
Primary Monitor: Launch Mozilla Mail from mozilla
Left Monitor: MOzilla mail shows up
*drag it to the right monitor*
Primary Monitor: Create new mail
Left Monitor: New mail shows up
*drag over to right monitor*
Too much like work. KDE doesn’t have these problems
How has kopete replaced gaim? kopete is so unstable to run, gaim hasnt crashed in the last 2 weeks. Koffice is a joke, Gnumeric and Abiword are so much more mature products. KDE may’ve got a snazzy interface, but a lot of applications are still immature and featureless compared to gtk/Gnome equivalents
I don’t run debian but you might try:
http://opendoorsoftware.com/cgi/http.pl?p=kdecvs;frame=1)
I’m running MDK 9.2RC2 and the file manager in KDE takes forever (seems like) to open. I switched over to Gnome and its file manager loads immediately. Although I like the look and themeing of KDE the file manager issue keeps me with Gnome.
There are some significant improvements in KDE 3.2 IMHO:
* Sane message threading in KMail (it actually works now!)
* More speed
* You can dock anything into the menu bar at the top of the screen. Now, KDE is better than Mac in this respect.
* Konqueror improvements (but it’s still somewhat unstable, at least on debian)
* Nice updates to KDevelop.
Digressions:
* The application menu is even more cluttered than before. I think this will need to be fixed before the release. Now, instead of about 14 menu entries on the main menu, there are also three annoying bars, with text informing me of the divisions in the KMenu (“Most Used Applications, All Applications, Actions”).
This is a major step backward. Instead of simplifying the menus and deleting unecessary options and menus like “Applications” or “Edutainment”, these new bars were put in to guide the noobs. But there’s no way to turn them off! Very annoying and quite ugly besides.
* Kontact is still in need of major help, imho. It’s quite unstable for me.
Why do you have kdeedu installed or not deleted “Edutainment” from your menu if you don’t need it?
You can tweak Konq’s performance and have it preload as soon as you start KDE (which is basically a reprise of Microsoft’s speed trick for IE and Office). Go to Configuration –> KDE –> Components –> Performance.
How has kopete replaced gaim? kopete is so unstable to run, gaim hasnt crashed in the last 2 weeks.
GAIM 0.6 is a joke.
* It’s not KDE/QT and thus looks strange
* I was unable to properly talk to ICQ-Lite users (they only got a mess of HTML codes from me showing up)
* It is very unclear, if at all possible, how to use these ICQ features:
– Changing the screen name
– Viewing contact details
– Using server-side contact lists
* It’s interface is a mess
* The difference between ICQ and AIM accounts is very vague. * Your ICQ UIN or MSN mail-address are called a “screen name”.
* It displayed text of some others in bright yellow on white.
On the other hand, I have not had any such problems with Kopete 0.7, I can’t remember that it crashed. The most important advantage of it, is that the UI is actually clear, that you can actually find an option you need before sunrise.
And can you name me a decent Gnome webbrowser? No, not Galeon or Epiphany, those are Gecko wrappers. Indeed, a decent Gnome browser.
And Nautilus reports 18.1 GB free space on /home – err, the disk is 5 GB? df reports 2.7 GB free.
Network transparency in Gnome is a joke too. I have to type ftp://username:password@host/ to get access! And then talk about security. If you drop such an FTP file on GEdit, the latter even shows the password in the title bar! Saving is not even possible. And no, typing ftp://host/ only complains that the authentication failed, and does not nicely display a LOGIN dialog like KDE does.
Surprise suprise, I skipped the file selector, indeed, I don’t find it that important. I do find the above important though, Gnome looks and feels very polished, but also feels rather limited in it’s functionality.
I actually have plenty of use for the edutainment programs for my users, however, it’s bad design to give them their own submenu on a KMenu which is already quite crowded.
I also wish that OOo would put its entries inside the Office menu instead of its own. It’s annoying to have to move it there everytime I upgrade OOo.
looking forward to ksvg
Hopefully they give the world a Mozilla-like JavaScript-Console or even it’s debuger
Mandrake compiles KDE with debug info for his RC’s, thats the reason why Kde-base is about 50MB instead of the normal 16MB. Ans that’s the reason why your file manager is so slow. But anyway, Mdk9.2 will come with KDE3.1.x, so you’re off topic…
He didn’t say kopete replaced gaim, it just replaced it for him, this does nto mean it’s better necessarily.
Also, KDE has XFt spport author just didn’t have the require d libraries!
http://dot.kde.org/1064353967/