The first beta release of KDE 3.2 has just been released. The announcement can be found here and a discussion can be found here. This release features 10,000 closed bugs and 2000 closed wishes. Enjoy.
KDE 3.2 Beta 1 “Rudi” Available
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Adam Scheinberg
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Mr. Anonymous,
That is a very good question, considering the scope and breadth of KDE and the fact that they have closed 10,000 bugs, no small feat.
Maybe, an innocent mistake; maybe the product of an unspoken and possibly, unexplicable, editorial policy. You know all that BS about the beatiful simplicity of GNOME and users being confused by too many options… ad nauseam, I have heard it! You have heard it!
Now back to the story. I am very much looking forward to the new KDE and I hope KOffice will one day display OpenOffice as it is more compact and it integrates better with the rest of the desktop.
Good day.
…is that if the OSNews admin tool is anything like the blog tools I’ve tried before, the date used for the article is the creation date, and not the posting date. So if an editor creates a story first but only finishes it after another editor has already created and posted a story, then it will appear after it (in time) but before it (in the list of articles).
Now, back to the topic: woo-hoo! I can’t wait for this to be out – I don’t want to mess with my KDE installation just yet, so I’ll wait for the final release. (Although a Knoppix/KDE 3.2 live cd would be sweet and help testing quite a bit…)
Yeah, a new KDE! Always cool to see your favourite DE grow
Although I have to confess that I cheated on KDE with Gnome/XD2… But hey, returned to KDE! Who wouldn’t?
Unpossible because the KDE story could not have been submitted at the time where the Vector Linux was already published.
“Me fail english? That’s unpossible!”
A little Simpson’s humor never hurt anyone
-G
There’s something called ‘Finglonger’. A little Futurama humour never hurt anyone
Looking forward to this release.
I typically use gnome as my prefered DE. However, I just installed kde 3.2 from cvs over the weekend and really like the changes they have made. The one thing that I wish they would change (and I am far from an expert on kde so maybe it is just my ignorance) is the mouse pointer showing the icon of the application that is being launched. The way it is displayed, and the fact that the image cant keep up with the mouse movement makes for an unpleasent appearance. It would be nice if KDE would allow for the use of custom pointers. Otherwise, great job KDE!! When the final release of KDE comes, I may have to convert to KDE full time.
“Linus: I think the biggest single thing that has happened on the (garbled) have been a lot of good library frameworks. Qt in particular I think made a huge difference. And he KDE libraries and toolbuilder things… (garbled) infrastructure. Gnome is getting there too. But for some reason I just noticed that the KDE people consider it more important to have it working, and sane. Instead of trying to aim for perfection, which the Gnome people are trying to do.
I don’t get involved very much. I used to send a lot of bug reports to the KDE people, until I didn’t have bugs anymore and I stopped.
(Laughter.)
But I cared about it.
The issue is, it takes a lot of time to build up that infrastructure….
The killer application for Windows was Visual Basic. It allowed you to make your hokey, self-made applications that did something stupid for your enterprise. But you could make them look good, and you could use a database. And you didn’t have to understand it. Or care. Right? And that was a huge leap.
And that leap is happening right now in the sense that it is so much easier to make a good-looking clean application for Linux that has all these magic things. Like the menus you can drag off, right? And all of that is just written for you. And you don’t need to care. And you can concentrate on the hokey application and it will look good. And that’s changed in the last year. To me, at least. Before that, if you wanted to make some good-looking graphical application, it was going to be buggy and you had to do a lot of work yourself.
The framework is really starting to be there.
OpenOffice is still, in my opinion, a complete disaster. And part of the reason is that it’s not using any of these frameworks that were signed for different applications. It built its own framework. I am told people are trying to fix it.” …IMHO the fix is KOffice.
Read more @:
http://www.osnews.com/story.php?news_id=5005
http://www.oetrends.com/news.php?action=view_record&idnum=277
Great work KDE! I can’t wait for a Rudi-Knoppix LiveCD
n
To put this issue to rest, the policy is that original articles stay at the top of the page for a certain length of time. This is a KDE *BETA* release, not a full release. It’s not earth-shattering news, so it gets relegated to number 2. OSNews collectively doesn’t have any preference for any DE (our editors certainly do though) and doesn’t favor one or the other. I’m sure KDE 3.2 is a huge advance beyond even 3.1.
And for the curious, the only thing that governs display order is posting time, not submission time. Posting time is easy to fudge.
I hate this too, it’s easy to switch it off in the control centre. Mouse properties I think.
Check out this nice looking theme too
http://www.kde-look.org/content/show.php?content=7559
The one thing that I wish they would change is the mouse pointer showing the icon of the application that is being launched.
Actually, I’m pretty sure you can remove the icon next to the mouse pointer in KDE. Look up “application startup notification” (or just “startup notification”) in the KDE Control Center.
It would be nice if KDE would allow for the use of custom pointers.
Good news, KDE can already do that – although as of now you still need to use a command-line script, such as the one found in this (Mandrake) package:
http://speakeasy.rpmfind.net//linux/RPM/mandrake/9.2/contrib/i586/c…
KDE 3.2 will let you choose your cursor directly from a Kcontrol module.
I stand corrected. 🙂
I never noticed this policy before. Perhaps you better split it up into visible stories and “newsvac” sections then?
1) KControl -> Appearance & Themes -> Launch Feedback
Change “Busy Cursor” to something else. I like “Bouncing Cursor” myself, it doesn’t appear to have a problem keeping up on my machine.
2) KControl-> Peripherals -> Mouse -> Cursor Theme (tab)
You can install and change cursor themes there.
Quote from this link http://www.kde.org/announcements/announce-3.2beta1.php
Between a slimmed down and refined default Keramik look and a more comprehensive and improved set of icons KDE has never looked better. For those who live to tweak, there is a new style called Plastik and a new control panel for installing full color mouse cursor themes. Configurable drop shadows around text on desktop icons, improved panel backgrounds, new desktop wallpapers and many other look ‘n feel improvements add to the sweetness of Rudi.
So anybody willing to take a screenshot of the default desktop for us?
Plastik is, IMNSHO the best widget style bar none. It should be the default because it’s unique, modern and fast.
I just wanted to say that I have never like KDE’s look. It’s nice but maybe too nice. I mean, Crystal icons are great but too much flashy colors destroy my productivity
More over, KDE’s toolbars always have too much icons on them. Just look at konqueror’s toolbars for an example of how _not_ to use toolbar icons 
As for keramik, those rounded toolbars are really ugly IMO. More over, the light blue color just doesn’t fit well. I like light grey widgets and simpe icons. For example, I _love_ Bluecurve (the window decoration, the icons and the widget style) !
Now, to go back to the subject:
– I’d like to see screenshots of the new keramik and of the new icon theme. If anyone could make some, that would be great.
– I also think plastic is very nice and would make a greate default for KDE. And, by the way, a GTK plastic theme to match this one would be great too.
I am a fan of small icons. I hate using apps that don’t allow me to put my most needed actions on the toolbar, or make them so big that they’re useless. KDE is nice in that it saves screen real estate.
And if you don’t like the Crystal icons being so colorful, you can colorize them in the Icon control panel to your favorite drabby grey. (sorry for the “drabby”, I just like the word)
Here is the new version of crystal that’s included with KDE 3.2. I absolutely love it.. I didn’t care much for the version of Crystal that shipped with KDE 3.1– the new ones are much better.
http://www.kde-look.org/content/show.php?content=8341
The changes to Keramik in KDE 3.2 are nice, but not earth shattering. The tab widgets and buttons were made smaller for example. The progressbars have a nifty scrolling animation. They certainly aren’t as big as the changes between ThinKeramik and Keramik though. See http://www.kde-look.org/content/show.php?content=6986
It was deemed too late for 3.2 to change the default theme, as well as the fact that it had JUST changed in kde 3.1. Perhaps in kde 3.3/4.0.
I just wanted to say that I have never like KDE’s look.
Me too. I really like KDE but was put off for a _long_ time by the default KDE look. It took a while to configure KDE to my liking. On the other hand, almost every GNOME theme looks great to me, but otherwise I find GNOME seriously lacking for my needs, not least in configurability (for example, why there’s no way to disable window minimizing animations in Metacity 2.4 even when there have been numerous Bugzilla entries and public complaints about it?).
I’m really looking forward to trying out KDE 3.2 beta as the alpha versions (while being seriously buggy) looked very promising.
i’m a gnome user, i dunno, i just prefer it for some reason. but, the reason i’m posting this is i’m really impressed with kde, its nice to see two really good polished DM.
Hmm, since nobody will likely read to the end, I’ll post screenshots right up front
http://www.prism.gatech.edu/~gtg990h/kde_32_screenshots/
Sorry that some of them didn’t turn out right (apparently, you can’t take SNs of context menus).
———————————————————————- —-
No matter what you do, KDE will have a “shiny” feel to it. Even if you change your theme to something conservative (dotNET, BlueCurve, Astro) and your icon theme to something conservative (Gorilla), individual apps will still retain some of the KDE “look.” Plastik, though, is a nice compromise. Its shiny and good looking, but not over the top like Keramik. For those who want a little more (tasteful) flashiness, there is always Thin Keramik or Liquid.
As for the icons, its a problem with most KDE apps. However, there is reason to be hopeful. KDE releases past 3.2 will have a large focus on polish. Indeed, KDE 4.0 will largely be a big polish/maturity release combined with a port to QT4. Already in 3.2-beta, you can see a lot of polish work going on in the major apps. The context menus have been trimmed down, and things have generally been given a good scrubbing. Hopefully, more work on the toolbars will be done in upcoming releases.
The font rendering on those screenshots is awesome.
OpenOffice is still, in my opinion, a complete disaster. And part of the reason is that it’s not using any of these frameworks that were signed for different applications. It built its own framework. I am told people are trying to fix it.”
The problem with this PoV is that Mr.Torvalds doesn’t consider that people will want to port OpenOffice to non-free platforms, and by designing its own portable framework OpenOffice has made this far easier than porting KDElibs to all the target platforms.
KOffice may indeed be a better office suite but is also harder to port to other platforms, being entrenched in KDE-land whereas OpenOffice by not forming a part of any one desktop can find itself at home on any of them
“This release features 10,000 closed bugs and 2000 closed wishes.”
I’d rather have 2000 fulfilled wishes myself…
Thanks Rayiner for the screenshots.
If what you say is right (And I don’t doubt it
), KDE4 might be great because all it needs is _polishing_ the look and feel. If KDE developers manage to make KDE as useable/nice-looking as GNOME is (or at least aims to be), and if GNOME developers manage to add all those features that GNOME still lacks, it will be difficult to choose between those two desktops…
Future seems bright for Linux/BSD/… users !
Hmm, KOffice most certainly is not better than OpenOffice. Its got some features that most office suites today do not (frame-based layout, great for heavily graphical documents) but overall, OpenOffice is probably a better fit for the type of work most users do.
FYI: KOffice does run on Windows, although it needs the Cygwin XServer. However, one of the strengths of KOffice is its integration with the rest of the desktop, which you don’t get on a seperate platform.
It’s not true to say that KDE 4 will be a polish release. It will undoubtedly contain many new features (indeed some have already been discussed). What generally happens is that we polish the older code and work on new code at the same time. The newer components are always going to be a bit rough at first, but fortunately they tend to learn lessons from past experience so the ‘initial quality level’ from which they start gets higher.
The problem with this PoV is that Mr.Torvalds doesn’t consider that people will want to port OpenOffice to non-free platforms, and by designing its own portable framework OpenOffice has made this far easier than porting KDElibs to all the target platforms.
—
Well, OpenOffice developers could have used GTK, which has been ported to Windows. More over, having such a huge app using GTK’s Window port would have helped find bugs in GTK’s Windows port.
Or they could have done like for Abiword: have a different version per platform.
Anyway, I think it’s way to late to talk about that as it would take too much time and efforts to port OpenOffice to GTK or QT or any other toolkit…
To go along with the screenshots, some notes:
KDE 3.2 CVS 20031019 (October 19th)
Plastik widget stye (slightly customized — wider scrollbars + flicker fixes)
Plastik color scheme
FreeType 2.1.5 (from CVS)
UI Font: Arial 9 point @ 133 dpi
Serif Font: Bitstream Vera Serif 10 point @ 133 dpi
Hmm, I think I misrepresented myself. I didn’t mean that it would be a polish release in that there wouldn’t be new features, I meant that it wouldn’t be huge architectural changes like KDE 1.x -> KDE 2.x. From what I gather from the mailing lists, KDE 4 is going to be a straightfoward port to Qt4, so most of the existing code will stay there and have time to mature.
Arguably, KDE is the most powerful and most configurable desktop environment. As GNOME user, I acknowledge GNOME can learn a lot from KDE, especially it’s unique technologies (dcop, kparts, kio, etc). I miss a lot of KDE features that made using KDE a joy to use.
For example, I haven’t found a way to launch specified applications on different workspaces, or virtual desktops, via a terminal or script in GNOME. When I used KDE, I wrote a Bash script that will launch 15 applications, I always have open, each on different workspaces, or virtual desktops, when I logged into a new session. I still can’t figure out how to do that in GNOME. Last time I heard, it wasn’t possible yet.
Good to see KDE marching ahead.
Ok, that’s certainly true. That said, there are various things that /will/ be rewritten but certainly nothing like the change between 1.0 and 2.0 – basically because we have most of the core facilities about right.
Assuming your WM follows the NET spec properly, your script using KDE’s kstart should still work.
Anyway, I think it’s way to late to talk about that as it would take too much time and efforts to port OpenOffice to GTK or QT or any other toolkit…
The ximian version of OpenOffice partially support GTK. In fact, it inherits your GNOME/gtk themes. Ximian is working towards the “gtkification” or “GNOMIFICATION”, for lack of a better word, of Open Office.
There was also also work on porting OpenOffice to KDE/QT. I can’t remember the name of the project, though.
Assuming your WM follows the NET spec properly, your script using KDE’s kstart should still work.
I use metacity. I’m not aware of the NET specification and I don’t know if metacity conforms to it. And, unfortunately, I don’t have KDE (kstart) installed on the box I run GNOME on.
I am more excited about those than anything else. Every time I see the misuse of screen real-estate that is GNOME or Windows I cringe, especially Microsoft’s Start button snatching defeat from the jaws of victory. Perhaps the KDE developers have seen the logic in what Apple has known all along?
The only thing that makes me sad in those screenshots is that the K menu has left its usual haunt in the lower left-hand corner of the screen. Is this the default??
No, the overall setup in the screenshots is nothing like the default. The default is distinctly Windows-like, only with a bigger panel. The following customizations are in the screenshots:
1) Menubar in a panel at the top of the screen. You could add the KMenu up there, but I don’t use it often enough to bother, and its too damn small to be noticable there at the resolution of my screen.
2) Main panel (dynamically sized) in the middle-bottom of the screen.
3) Both panels set up NeXT-style. That means that windows can be on top of them. They’ll be raised to the forground if you bring your mouse to top or bottom edge of the screen.
You can make kicker (the Icon bar thingy) as wide as the screen (default) or only as wide as needed (the setting seen in the screenshots). You can also choose to have a Mac OS-style menu, or a “normal” menu. This is the strength of KDE, customization to the extreme.
Some people prefer less customization and more consistency and go for Gnome, which is also a legitimate choice. To each his/her own, this is the beauty of the OSS.
> Serif Font: Bitstream Vera Serif 10 point @ 133 dpi
Isn’t it called Bitsteam?
KJSEmbed looks really cool, it will probably be a great asset and improve KDE greatly. Nice work, Richard and co-developers!
Are there any plans of making kjsembed a part of the KDE API (perhaps by including kjsembed in libkjs)?
No. Its Bitstream. As in http://www.bitstream.com
Thanks for your comments about KJSEmbed, you can see some docs on http://xmelegance.org/kjsembed/“>the . There are no plans to make it part of kjs, but there are plans to make it part of kdelibs in future. It has only started to mature towards the end of the 3.2 release cycle so it hasn’t been appropriate to move it in this release, but there’s a good chance you’ll see a lot more of it in future.
I would prefer that new items be put at the top, as I can see new stories at a glance instead of scrolling down.
Control Center -> Appearance & Themes -> Icons -> Advanced
There you can tweak the color appearance of icons, click “set effects” and you’ll be allowed to turn them into black/white (“to gray”), blend with a custom color (“colorize”), tweak gamma (uh, “gamma”), and tweak the saturation (“desaturate”). A check box to make the icons semi-transparent is there as well. Afaik this all has been there since KDE 3 or so.
In those screenshots of yours the kcontrol app looks exactly like Lindows on the left side.
Kcontrol has two view: list view and icon view. List view is default and icon view is used by Lindows, Rayiner and others. You can change that in the View -> Mode submenu.
Screenshots: http://www.prism.gatech.edu/~gtg990h/kde_32_screenshots/
Thanks, I didn’t know. LOL.
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