KDE 3.3 Release Cycle Starts with KDE 3.3 Alpha 1 “Kindergarten”
The KDE 3.3 Alpha 1 has been released to the FTP servers this morning. There won’t be any binary packages for this release, everyone using Kindergarten is asked to compile it with –enable-debug, so that we can get valuable feedback.
KDE 3.3 Release Cycle Starts with KDE 3.3 Alpha 1 “Kindergarten”
About The Author
Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
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Screenshots?
The 3.3 feature plan dosent say much about cosmetic changes to the kicker/k-apps. Looks like this release is going to be mostly bug fixes and lots of new functionality.
Cant wait! KDE = Best DE known to man
maybe after a while when someone manages to compile it
KDE 3.2 is very buggy (many crashes, Startmenu often doesn’t draw correctly, it broke my ALSA sound and so on). I hope 3.3 will be better.
Although I’m excitd that there is a new release of KDE I am concerned that the release cycle will create problems. I would much rather have KDE release cycles based on milestones ( fix ‘x’ number of bugs and add ‘x’ number of new features ) rather than base on a release date. I belIEve that something will eventually break by just trying to get it out the door in time.
For Instance: Mozilla releases updates based upon if the build meets their requirements, and the Moz. team does not care if they have not met their release dates. For the most part I find that this has made Mozilla/Firefox/Thunderbird very stable and fast.
Mandrake takes the opposite approach. It tries to get the next version out the door by a pre-determined day, and it’s usually full of bugs that could have been easily caught with just a bit more time (ie: the LG CDROMS that would fail during the install of Mandrake 9.2 ; In XMMS the background/foreground colours for the playlist editor were the same colour with no easy way to change them)
In short I would prefer quality of quantity!
“Although I’m excitd that there is a new release of KDE I am concerned that the release cycle will create problems. I would much rather have KDE release cycles based on milestones ( fix ‘x’ number of bugs and add ‘x’ number of new features ) rather than base on a release date. I belIEve that something will eventually break by just trying to get it out the door in time.
”
kde releases are not based on time. gnome has a 6 month release cycle. kde does not have such things. it bases itself on a combination of both features and time
“KDE 3.2 is very buggy (many crashes, Startmenu often doesn’t draw correctly, it broke my ALSA sound and so on). I hope 3.3 will be better.
”
maybe something is wrong with your setup. in general it is know to be more elegant faster and better
KDE 3.2.1 is much more stable than 3.0.4 or 3.1.4 In
my experience and faster too
I’ve been using kde 3.2 since it was released. It’s been rock stable for me. Can’t remember a single crash. Sounds like you have a seriously messed up system…
As for 3.3: I’m a bit disappointed that the “alpha” release doesn’t imply that most features are finished. Looks like most of the features are still marked red or yellow… How is this release different from a random cvs snapshot?
Looking forward to a more complete release
One of the few things worthy to show is perhaps real transparency in Konsole when running fdo’s X-server.
You want KDE 3.2.2 (or soon 3.2.3), not 3.3 which for sure will introduce new bugs.
Tell me, when was the last time when KDE released a major new version on the initial schedule?
I’ve put up a few screenshots on our LUG site. Note that the settings for wallpaper and icons are not default but everything else is. It’s not just bug fixes but some new features as well e.g. The new Theme Manager which they are working, new profiles in Konqueror and some changes in KPersonaliser. There are obviuosly a lot more. Follow this link.
http://www.linux.org.zw/index.php?option=content&task=view&id=10&It…
> How is this release different from a random cvs snapshot?
It compiles. 🙂
This alpha _is_ a CVS snapshot that compiles cleanly. Releases are CVS snapshots. What makes releases stable is the freezing period, and bug hunting. In this sense, even the stable releases are CVS snapshots.
Now we are before the feature freeze. So there is no way to make it a bit more stable. The choice is to release as is or not to release at all.
Of course I know that every release is a CVS snapshot. Releases aren’t random snapshots, though
It’s just that I would expect the first alpha to mark the feature freeze. I realize that the KDE team would like to get as much testing from users as possible, as early as possible, but I still think labeling it “alpha” is a bit missleading when half your features are still unfinished. “Technology preview 1” or “development snapshot 34-X-BFG9000-WHATEVER” seems more appropriate 
@Anonymous > It compiles. 🙂
You don’t check in non-compiling code, do you?
Is that the default theme?
> You don’t check in non-compiling code, do you?
Me? Never. 🙂 But laugh, there are different “it compiles”. For example, normal compilation mode and –enable-final mode (which should work in these tarballs).
Yes, thats the default theme. I only changed the wallpaper and icons (Nuvola icon theme from kde-look.org).
“Is that the default theme?”
its the default theme. its called plastik. very famous already but they couldnt add it as default earlier because it meant changing the documentation to include the screenshots in all languages and it was too late to do that due to the string freeze
the noia icon set also is included now
And plastik is for the mentioned reason *not* the default of KDE 3.3.
What fonts are those that are used on the kde 3.3 screenshots?
You know what I just realised you are right. Keramik is the default, but in the new Kpersonaliser, you get to choose between the two.
Comic Sans MS for the desktop font and Arial for the others, I copied them from windoze xp.
“maybe something is wrong with your setup. in general it is know to be more elegant faster and better”
Maybe, I’m not a Linux guru. I can use and update it, but if there are problems that are more complicated than average, I’m often lost.
But according to Google the problems with ALSA occurs relative often, so it’s probably a bug. Also some of my friends that know more about Linux have problems with KDE 3.2.
BTW: I’m using KDE 3.2.2 on SuSE 9.0, so it maybe SuSE, but it wasn’t really better with Debian.
Is it just me or does KDE continue to look toyish. Thats the one thing that has always irritated me. I wish they would work on making it more professional and elegant. Dare I say OSX. I think the biggest problem for me are the icons. I know you can get on kde-look.org and have a field day, but I think they should work the gui over for KDE 4.0.
“And plastik is for the mentioned reason *not* the default of KDE 3.3.”
ya. i meant to say not the default. thanks
Unfortunately, I too have found it to be buggy. The Scrensavers did not work properly. Kate has issues and Kdegraphics was looking pretty sorry.
The bugs are a result of the Kde developer mentality to put “features first” and bug fixing last. It was this unfortunate tendency that also lead to the demise of Koffice. Yeah I know Koffice still exists but it’s in sad shape. How did Koffice get to be in such bad shape? By ignoring end users and accepting any feature patches that were submitted. Submitting buggy features that are poorly thought out is not “contributing”; it’s really an act of sabotage.
NOTE: I was a long time Kde contributor (several years).
You can MS fonts from here
http://corefonts.sourceforge.net/
ya. its legal. you cannot redistribute it thou.
if you want bitstream fonts you can get it from
gnome.org/fonts.
they look equally good
I also have had some weird problems with KDE 3.2. First it was Quanta, which would suddenly start chewing almost all of the CPU. That forced me to switch to Eclipse and the Epic Perl plug-in. Then, for some odd reason, kdeinit and dcop started screwing up. After awhile I would be unable to open a new KDE app and if I closed an app I would get the segfault popup. I had no troubles with 3.1, but it could have been my system since I had to re-partition my disk to correct some problem that was preventing me from being able to boot the 2.6 kernel. All that stuff appears to be corrected. Now the only problem is some screwy thing with kdesu, which no longer recognizes the root password if I try to run apps that need root permissions.
“Yeah I know Koffice still exists but it’s in sad shape. How did Koffice get to be in such bad shape? By ignoring end users and accepting any feature patches that were submitted. Submitting buggy features that are poorly thought out is not “contributing”; it’s really an act of sabotage.”
koffice isnt good enough because of lack of developers.
NOTE: I was a long time Kde contributor (several years).”
really. what did you contribute?
if you had been a contributor you would have known that bug fixes are very important for kde devels too. look at the cvs digest
“Is it just me or does KDE continue to look toyish.”
come on man. kde plastik theme looks very pleasing and professional. i agree that the interface needs some polish and changes in a few places thou
Does this Theme Manager control centre module with it’s Install button mean an end to ./configure && make && make install for kde themes?
And if that’s the case, does anyone know if this uses the ~/.themes in the same way as gnome, allowing an installation of themes for everything in a couple of clicks?
arial? why arial? arial is not a display font. it’s an output font – that is, it’s optimised to look good when printed. it looks terrible on screen. verdana is the microsoft sans serif display font.
No, Tahoma is the microsoft sans serif display font.
I also had some problems with my sound when I upgraded my slackware system to KDE 3.2.2. All I did to fix it was:
#chmod a+r /dev/snd/*
#alsamixer
#alsactl store
That seems to fix everything for me.
Anytime a development team starts calling a build of software “Kindergarten” its time for concern.
Is it just me or does KDE continue to look toyish. Thats the one thing that has always irritated me. I wish they would work on making it more professional and elegant.
It probably is you. If you mean making it look like Gnome then to many, that’s like going to a funeral.
Dare I say OSX. I think the biggest problem for me are the icons.
To many, OS X looks like a toy.
Unfortunately, I too have found it to be buggy. The Scrensavers did not work properly. Kate has issues and Kdegraphics was looking pretty sorry.
Saying it is buggy isn’t really good enough. Are you using a commercial distro, in which case things should work as is? If you are using a DIY distro then you’ll have to look into the screensaver issues etc. – some configurations may have changed. Using your own distro does mean building it yourself, you know?
‘Kate has issues’ doesn’t mean anything either. That’s just a bit of easy mud to throw.
The bugs are a result of the Kde developer mentality to put “features first” and bug fixing last. It was this unfortunate tendency that also lead to the demise of Koffice.
Nope sorry, you’re clutching at straws here.
How did Koffice get to be in such bad shape? By ignoring end users and accepting any feature patches that were submitted.
There’s a lot of very good stuff in KOffice, even more than in Open Office. Kivio and Kexi are a couple of killer apps. KOffice has a lot of dedicated developers spread very thinly, so I hardly think they’re ignoring end-users.
Submitting buggy features that are poorly thought out is not “contributing”; it’s really an act of sabotage.
Rather subjective. That’s why you do more testing, and why you can only do so much with a few developers.
NOTE: I was a long time Kde contributor (several years).
Well, you didn’t get to know it very well. If you really were you also wouldn’t have come up with sorry comments such as the screensavers being buggy (I have them running fine), Kate having issues (whatever that means), and kdegraphics looking sorry. The themes in there are good, and the last I looked they had some pretty good screensavers packaged in there. They work.
I want to say why I think this post has been posted, but I’m not going to. It just seems as though some peole are a bit worried about something.
Well thats your opinion, but its not well backed up. Both KDE’s icons and color themes look like a 16 color palette desktop IMO. Like a childrens toy, or better yet like Windows 3.x I know you can fix that, but Im simply referring to their defaults. I’m not baggin on KDE, its what I use on all my Linux systems.
OSX doesn’t look like a toy at all. The OS itself, as well as most new apps, are a nice brushed metal look. The icons are very good looking icons that make use of more realistic pictures and take advantage of the entire color palette. They also scale up and down to virtually any size without losing a hint of quality. Not sure if they’re using SVG or OpenGL on that, but its quite cool.
Well, at least in KDE you *can* change the colors without editing a theme’s rc file.
They are prerendered and prescaled. It’s not OpenGL, it’s not SVG, it’s just large icons.
At least GNOME its original and do not rip off XP Luna theme to make the plastic theme, and BTW, GNOME looks more profesional than the toys’r us icons from KDE.
Plastik looks absolutely nothing like Luna. I know, because I can’t use Luna on Windows at all.
Professional is a word I hear constantly being applied to Gnome, but I’ve never seen anybody explain exactly what it means. It is also a very loaded word. You’ve got to have some jovial colours on icons and on a desktop otherwise people don’t feel that good using it. It is a terrible balance to get right.
”
At least GNOME its original and do not rip off XP Luna theme to make the plastic theme, and BTW, GNOME looks more profesional than the toys’r us icons from KDE.”
plastik isnt a luna rip off at all. i hate luna and love plastik. looking “professional” doesnt mean looking dull. xp luna looks toyish too and it sells. there are more valid complaints about kde. looking toyish isnt one of them
“t. Go look in the March 2002 Koffice archives and see how they pilloried Eric Raymond becuase of his criticism of Kpresenter.”
esr got ridiculed when he tried to reimplement the linux kernel build in python. he isnt god or something. everybody does get cricised. i am sure he could have helped in the development instead of his rants.
I submitted .gt. 125 bug reports. Your response is typical of the Linux zealots. Anybody who publicly disagrees with the “feature flipping” that goes on at Kde must be destroyed.
What feature flipping? One or two people seem to have latched onto the fact that KDE has some features, and for some reason decided to attack that.
It just amazes me; Kde and it’s advocates are a kind of totalitarian orginization and not an open source project.
I’ve seen no evidence of that, and it is better than many open source projects I have seen in this regard. You wish this to be true.
Go look in the March 2002 Koffice archives and see how they pilloried Eric Raymond becuase of his criticism of Kpresenter.
You call that discussion being pilloried! Eric Raymond did not get pilloried. He made some robust comments about KPresenter, mainly about documentation, and there was a reasonable discussion went on. He never got pilloried.
Please, I remember well this long thread on the kde mailing list, first eric raymond’s wife post a bug report about the importation of a word document, she was just telling they should focus on what really mater to end user instead of adding some crappy fonctionnality and she and her husband had been send to hell by the vast majority of koffice developper…
I’m sure it’s easy to find this thread on the kde mailing list
Djamé
I saw an ad here on osnews for som kind of jabber. In the flash demo they used a cooleffect for opening windows.. something for KDE?
http://www.intellim.com/demo.html
(mabe the effect will appear in OS X?)
I’ve actually had a lot of luck with KDE 3.2.x. I run it on Whitebox (Red Hat Enterprise 3) from konstruct (version 3.2.1) and I run 3.2.0 on Mac OS X. KOffice is my preferred office environment and several other programs are needed due to KDE builtin sftp capability. The only problems I’ve had are kopete crashing on OS X, but I’m sure that’s due to me using the native qt/mac port because it’s fine on the whitebox machine. Anyway, I’m waiting for 3.3 to make it into beta and I’l be at it.
This one of the worse discussions ever here at osnews.
First, this is not about KOffice, this is a KDE release. Second KDE is getting so polished thse days, it will be hard to convert people from KDE to something else. Third, if icons is the only thing you can comment about a desktop, get lost.
Djamé, you are a troll. For all others here, this is what he is talking about:
http://www.linuxandmain.com/news/raymond.html
KOffice lacks man power _severely_. There are many bugs currenly, and only a few developers. In fact, they are _amazing_ people, they are true heros. The stuff these guys perform considering the resourses is nothing short of amazing. Remember: KOffice offers programms no other suite offer.
And BTW, complaining that “one shoud fix all bugs before adding new features” is plain moot because:
– By fixing one bug you may create another.
– Sometimes the only way to fix a bug is to add a feature (bugs and features mix). Example: filters.
– Adding features is fun and developers are *volunteers* (in case you forgot).
The list of new new features is amazing. Only looking at kopete worth the upgrade(finally file transfer!):
Kopete:
* New disconnect API so we can tell when we’ve been disconnected by the server and can then reconnect. Matt Rogers <[email protected]>
* Add buddy icon support to AIM Matt Rogers <[email protected]>
* Add support for bold, italic and underlined messages to Yahoo Matt Rogers <[email protected]>
* Extend the DCOP interface Jason Keirstead <[email protected]>
* Fix up the RTF support / inline spell checking Jason Keirstead <[email protected]>
* Make all contact list manipulation asynchronous Martijn Klingens <[email protected]>
* Make message processing asynchronous Martijn Klingens <[email protected]>
* Add the ability for plugins to register the available online states with libkopete. Martijn Klingens <[email protected]>
* Make the names of the XSLT styles translateable Martijn Klingens <[email protected]>
* Port the configuration dialogs over to KConfig XT Martijn Klingens <[email protected]>, Matt Rogers <[email protected]>
* Move buddy icon support to libkopete Matt Rogers <[email protected]>, Olivier Goffart <ogoffart @ tiscalinet.be>
* MSN File transfers trought the chat session as MSN Messenger 6 does. Olivier Goffart <ogoffart @ tiscalinet.be>
* Better MSN Messenger 6 custom emoticons support. Olivier Goffart <ogoffart @ tiscalinet.be>
Thats not actually the complete list
there is three lists in the feature section and kopete is there is each of them
already completed
in progress
to do
OSNews has become Slashdot. Sad times indeed.
A codename for an alpha release, based on a ploy that it IS an alpha release (thus early, thus kindergarten.. hint hint..) gets becomes trollfeed.
That reminds me of a certain another tech news website, not OSNews.
There are some “professionalism” issues missing in KDE. There is a lot of toolbar and menubar clutter, but more egregious are things like missing or poorly scaled icons. I agree that these things need to be fixed. On the other hand, I also think the overall quality of the KDE icon set makes the deficiencies seem more egregious. There are lots of crappy icons in windows, eg: the Winzip icon, but in general the Windows icon set is pretty subdued, so they don’t stand out as much.
I like the WinXP classic look. Now that’s what I call
professional. I am sure many of you will disagree. What I like about it? It doesn’t hurt your eyes, the lines on the UI elements such as toolbars, frame boxes, tabs, buttons are nicely bevelled etc. Sure it doesn’t look like eye candy but it certainly looks office-like environment. OS/2 and now eComStation looks pretty much the same and I like that. I believe something like that should be the default style for KDE, later on you can always change it.
> Does this Theme Manager control centre module with it’s Install button mean an end to ./configure && make && make install for kde themes?
No. Native styles and window decorations will still have to be compiled.
My gosh you kde bashers!!! You cry that because kde looks nice it’s for children. You argue that because you can change the colors in kde it’s a toy. You think having a DE that’s shiny is absolutely unprofessional.
You don’t like the way kde looks? Change it! Doesn’t take a genius. Oh, wait! the gnomer’s don’t think you should be able to chage how it looks. Being able to change the look is sooooo unprofessional. Right. I mean you might change the text color to something you can’t see.
Enter WindowMaker. That’s what I would call professional.
But all these “professional” stuffs are irrelevant. Use whatever you like, period.
I did another install of linux and kde recently to see if it was possible to migrate from windows, and I found a number of things problematic with x/kde. I know that I used the source directly from the release and as such thats unpolished, but I think many others do, and kde and xorg should do some work to resolve these issues, some of which seem to not be easily resolved.
1) The fonts were ugly…and largely misrendered. I went through a tutorial on how to improve them, but they were still far from good. This was after altering the default fonts in kde, adding new ones, etc. Not a kde problem as I tried gnome and it had the same problem.
2) Konqueror still doesnt render many pages properly, and doesnt seem to have the features of the mozilla renderer…if you could transparently replace one with the other this would not be an issue.
3) Kopete is still not as capable as the native windows messengers, they have a tough task to ever get it as capable, (ie voice, webcam). But when I was using kopete, it was still unpleasent to use, the display picture was small and not well placed, and the fonts on the sent messages was way too large and could not be adjusted.
4) Too many programs installed by default. 3 Media players, none of which are the one I like (kplayer) and 5 sound programs, kstars, kolf…stuff few would ever use. Oh yes, 4 text editors. Why dont they just make one default and make it good?
Wine didnt work for msn messenger or yahoo messenger, and it doesnt render as nicely in linux either. Its tough when the desktop world wont make things accessible for linux, it could just be as easy as compiling their windows programs with winelib and making a unix version available on their website.
On the other hand, kde and linux are much faster than windows, but functionality is very important, and its got a way to go.
Why cant konqueror display fonts in their intended size by default? They have to be much larger than the windows default to be somewhat readable.
”
1) The fonts were ugly…and largely misrendered. I went through a tutorial on how to improve them, but they were still far from good. This was after altering the default fonts in kde, adding new ones, etc. Not a kde problem as I tried gnome and it had the same problem.”
http://www.linux.org.zw/index.php?option=content&task=view&id=10&It…
this one looks good enough to me. i personally dont find your problem.
corefonts.sf.net or gnome.org/fonts if you need them
”
2) Konqueror still doesnt render many pages properly, and doesnt seem to have the features of the mozilla renderer…if you could transparently replace one with the other this would not be an issue.”
you can very well use mozilla or firebird in kde. i do that
”
3) Kopete is still not as capable as the native windows messengers, they have a tough task to ever get it as capable, (ie voice, webcam). But when I was using kopete, it was still unpleasent to use, the display picture was small and not well placed, and the fonts on the sent messages was way too large and could not be adjusted.”
gaim-vv has a level of webcam and voice support. as far as proprietary protocols are considered people do that best to reverse engineer them. fonts can very well be adjusted in kopete. look under settings or use gaim.
”
4) Too many programs installed by default. 3 Media players, none of which are the one I like (kplayer) and 5 sound programs, kstars, kolf…stuff few would ever use. Oh yes, 4 text editors. Why dont they just make one default and make it good?”
remove those which you dont want.
kedit is only there because kwrite doesnt support bidi text. kate is a programmer’s editor. its not the same as a simple text editor. kommander is not a text editor its a dcop enabler
”
Wine didnt work for msn messenger or yahoo messenger, and it doesnt render as nicely in linux either. Its tough when the desktop world wont make things accessible for linux, it could just be as easy as compiling their windows programs with winelib and making a unix version available on their website.”
actually winelib is very good for that. corel did that for wordperfect and adobe is doing that for photoshop.
personally i have used yahoo messenger with wine. if you buy crossover office its is know to work out of the box but it is always a hack.
”
On the other hand, kde and linux are much faster than windows, but functionality is very important, and its got a way to go.”
there might be missing functionality but i dont agree with your points
You make some good points, and some not-so good points.
1) The fonts were ugly…and largely misrendered. I went through a tutorial on how to improve them, but they were still far from good.
It’s not hard to get good fonts on Linux. Download Freetype2 from their CVS, compile from source. Make sure to delete *freetype* in /usr/lib and /usr/X11R6/lib, then install it. Depending on your tastes, you might want to play with enabling or disabling the bytecode interpreter. If you don’t want to do all that, do yourself a favor and try out a pre-polished distro like Fedora Core 2 or SuSE 9.1.
Kopete is still not as capable as the native windows messengers, they have a tough task to ever get it as capable, (ie voice, webcam).
Hmm, I can understand this to an extent, but if you need video conferencing, why not use a proper video-conferencing app?
4) Too many programs installed by default.
Since you compiled from source, why’d you install them all? Why not install the ones you want?
Why dont they just make one default and make it good?
I don’t think you understand how KDE works. KDE isn’t a company that releases a product. They are a group that works on the source code of programs. Its the job of integrators (like SuSE), to take that code and release products. All the competitive, evolutionary stuff happens in the source code world, and the integrators act as a filter to deliver a coherent selection of products to the user. The KDE developers are pretty adamant about this — they don’t want to go into the business of delivering end-user products directly.
Integrators like SuSE do a pretty good job of this. SuSE installs one editor (KWrite, called editor in the menu), one office suite (OpenOffice), one audio player (XMMS), one video player (Kaffeine), one CD ripper (KAudioCreator), etc.
Mozilla is called web browser
open office is called office suite
audio player is xmms
editor is gedit
and so on. everything has exactly one default and its clearly explained in the redhat docs why it was choosen and offers hints for other people to choose defaults
”
Wine didnt work for msn messenger or yahoo messenger, and it doesnt render as nicely in linux either. ”
First, theirs a *native* yahoo messenger avaliable for linux. Secondly if you want an MSN clone check out Amsn [http://amsn.sourceforge.net/]
Of course I know that every release is a CVS snapshot. Releases aren’t random snapshots, though
It’s just that I would expect the first alpha to mark the feature freeze. I realize that the KDE team would like to get as much testing from users as possible, as early as possible, but I still think labeling it “alpha” is a bit missleading when half your features are still unfinished. “Technology preview 1” or “development snapshot 34-X-BFG9000-WHATEVER” seems more appropriate 
Incorrect. Alpha means that it isn’t feature complete, beta is feature complete but features *could* be added if no parts are broken in the process, and release candidates are final tests which has strictly NO new features added, only show stopper bugs are corrected.
Enter WindowMaker. That’s what I would call professional. But all these “professional” stuffs are irrelevant. Use whatever you like, period.
Strange you should say that!? In the early days I used WindowMaker for years and loved it.
These days while having real CPU grunt and a lot more than 32 megs of ram
– I recently noticed that over time I’d setup KDE to behave in a WindowMaker like manner.
Vertical transparent panel on the righthand side of the screen with clock up the top with temp/cpu/network meters and a popout drawer with fav progs etc. (btw KDE’s external popup taskbar is great feature too.)
Guess there something about WindowMaker/Nextstep style and feel that makes a deep and lasting impression 🙂
this one looks good enough to me. i personally dont find your problem.
corefonts.sf.net or gnome.org/fonts if you need them
You didnt read what I said, I installed all those fonts, and the screenshots fonts arent great compared to windows either. I could post screenshots to contrast them but I think its pretty clear…ESPECIALLY at small font sizes.
Hmm, I can understand this to an extent, but if you need video conferencing, why not use a proper video-conferencing app?
Because those I chat with are lazy, unknowledable non computer types that just want it to work, getting them onto netmeeting is a real chore. Gaim is not kde…but if they have audio conferencing compatible with yahoo messenger its worth a shot for sure.
remove those which you dont want.
kedit is only there because kwrite doesnt support bidi text. kate is a programmer’s editor. its not the same as a simple text editor. kommander is not a text editor its a dcop enabler
How do I not install the ones I dont want in the first place…emerge kde does it all, and if I dont want it to install the games package then it wont install any game, same for all the others.
As for your last point, the unix yahoo messenger is a POS, and has no functionality besides basic text messaging, I dont think its even supported. If I wanted something so basic I could just use the java version.
It’s not hard to get good fonts on Linux. Download Freetype2 from their CVS, compile from source. Make sure to delete *freetype* in /usr/lib and /usr/X11R6/lib, then install it. Depending on your tastes, you might want to play with enabling or disabling the bytecode interpreter. If you don’t want to do all that, do yourself a favor and try out a pre-polished distro like Fedora Core 2 or SuSE 9.1.
I am skeptical on your font comment making a difference, but next time I get around to using linux I will give that additional step a try.
Hmm, I can understand this to an extent, but if you need video conferencing, why not use a proper video-conferencing app?
See my previous reply to anonymous…sorry put it in the wrong reply.
Since you compiled from source, why’d you install them all? Why not install the ones you want?
Not so sure how to do that with gentoo.
I don’t think you understand how KDE works. KDE isn’t a company that releases a product. They are a group that works on the source code of programs. Its the job of integrators (like SuSE), to take that code and release products.
I do understand this, as I said it in the original post that I know this…but…end users are still using their work, packaging their releases in a more user friendly way does not threaten their development.
you can very well use mozilla or firebird in kde. i do that
Yes, I installed firebird, it works, its also my default browser for windows…but I dont like two browsers in windows, IE is a POS, why would I want two in linux? Besides, my posts are more focused on kde than desktop linux in general.
I also had some problems with my sound when I upgraded my slackware system to KDE 3.2.2. All I did to fix it was:
#chmod a+r /dev/snd/*
#alsamixer
#alsactl store
That seems to fix everything for me.
NO, no, noooooo
That’s a terrible way to do it.
It should be
kicker(start)==>control center==>Sound & Multimedia ==> Sound System ==> Hardware==>
Select the audio device: Threaded Open Sound System.
i just hope that there will be a day/release, when KDE does not get bigger but more usable. currently, different applications are thrown into a big bucket called “desktop environment”. usability? oh, that can be done afterwards. new kontrolcenter? no, wait for kde4. meanwhile, we add useless apps and improbe ktumberling (yeah, that’s REALLY necessary).
i have a dream – KDE-apps are planned with usability in mind and implemented AFTER the usablity-issues a cleared. currently, usability is something “additional” that can be done after the coding. and of course, usability is just for complete idiots who aren’t able to use the 17 different config-sections for konqueror… wrong! make your apps usable first, draw the UI, test ist yourself and give it to a newbie to test it and code it afterwards. after all, it is much easier to maintain a well layouted app than trying to make a badly layouted app usable… my 0,02 ?…
Well, I see ‘kde looks unprofessional’, ‘gnome has a hig’ kinda arguments are getting old, so now we have a buggy KDE! This is quite strange considering the massive amount of stability/performance issues with the latest gnome releases. And if you think KDE is buggy, than what’s the alternative? Fluxbox? As much as I like fluxbox, it’s not the same category…
Before you say KDE is buggy, please include your distro and KDE version – because most of the time it is a particular vendor’s implementation that is buggy! KDE on FreeBSD never crashed on me – yes, there were some very minor glitches in kde 3.2, and one bigger one: kuser. Oh btw, someone mentioned kuser here and how it removed the root account – well, that bug was fixed last year for god’s sake! 3.2.2 is fine release, and I’m sure that there might be some obscure bugs left (which warrants a 3.2.3 release), but you’ll have hard time convincing me that KDE is terribly buggy, for I use it 12h/day and it is nothing sort of excellent.
Oh – did you notice that mouse gestures now work in konqi just like in Opera? I mean I had the mouse gestures plugin(s) (yeah, there are a few implementations) for mozilla/firefox, but they never seemed just right. I can’t explain why – they were too slow or clumsy somehow. Only opera had it right so far (at least for me). Now KDE 3.2.1 was the first release where I could remove moz/ffox completely, and now I only use Konqueror and Opera exclusively for webbrowsing. It is THAT good!
usability? oh, that can be done afterwards. new kontrolcenter? no, wait for kde4. meanwhile, we add useless apps and improbe ktumberling (yeah, that’s REALLY necessary).
Repeat after me: KDE is a Free Software project. That means almost all the developers are volunteers. A lot of polish is added by the commercial distros, but basically the bulk of the work is on a volunteer basis. And you can’t make volunteers do things they don’t want to do.
If you want usability work, then why don’t you spend some of the time you spend whining on message boards on submitting some patches instead if you know so much about usability?
d00d, what are the chances of me clicking on your screenshot links and it going to a zimbabwean site! I thought we had all left the country!
Anyways, I can see that the look and feel are the same (expected). KDE is a great distro, I prefer GNOME, but I recommend KDE to a lot of Linux noobs!
Well most of us have left, I’m not there right now, but there are a lot of guys in Zim using Linux, mainly at work and those doing computing degrees. In your post you meant KDE is a great desktop right, not distro 🙂
Yeah, I was thinking about something else at the time :$ I don’t usually make mistakes like that! How embarrassing! To think I am an FOSS developer and I made a little mistake by calling KDE a distro? I should be shot on the spot! Its all wotk, I am forced to use windows at work, its EATING MY BRAAAAAAANE!
“How do I not install the ones I dont want in the first place…emerge kde does it all, and if I dont want it to install the games package then it wont install any game, same for all the others.”
1. Using the list found at this link, http://docs.kde.org/ choose the apps you DO NOT want installed, for each kde package set.
2. Once your list is made, append it to the end of your /etc/make.conf file. Here is an example:
DO_NOT_COMPILE=”aktion artsbuilder atlantik
atlantikdesigner irkick kamera kandy karm kasteroids
katomic kbackgammon kbattleship kblackbox kbounce kchart
kdat kdeprintfax kedit kenolaba kformula kfouleggs
kgoldrunner khexedit kiconedit killustrator kivio kjots
kjumpingcube klickety klines kmines kmid kmidi knewsticker knotes kolf konquest kontour kooka korn kpaint kpilot krayon krdc kregexpeditor kreversi krfb kruler ksame kshisen ksim ksmiletris ksnake ksnapshot ksokoban ktalkd kspaceduel ksysv ktimer ktron ktuberling kwikdisk
kwin4 kxconfig lisa lskat”
From now on, every time you emerge KDE, you will only emerge the apps you choose, saving space and decreasing KDE compile times.
The annoucement on dot.kde.org has a link to the gnu website, implying that KDE is “free as in freedom” part of the GNU project. I don’t understand why they would do this because KDE is not part of the GNU project because of its licensing.
That’s correct.
One can also add the following:
Alpha: compiles, but expect lots of bugs. Gives you an idea of what the developer(s) is (are) aiming at.
Beta: less buggy than alpha, most features are implemented (but may not be totally functional yet).
Release Candidate (RC): less buggy than beta, feature-frozen.
Final: all show-stopper bugs found to date have been fixed (supposedly – see below).
Post-release (the infamous .1, .2, etc): no new features, but large & small bugs that weren’t caught before Final are fixed now for good (again, hopefully).
These categories are really fuzzy, this is not the Bible we are talking about. So you **could** get a feature or two added in your RC releases – who cares?
Sn0wman. KDE is more GNU than you. As a % of code KDE has more code under the GPL than the LGPL, when compared to that other DE. Whether or not this is a good thing could be debated, but please try to enter this century with your trolling.
> Oh – did you notice that mouse gestures now work in konqi just like in Opera?
yes, but for some reason i have to use the middle mouse button. how can i change it to the right one (as in opera)? i realize kcontrol has an “editor” for it, but it’s not very intuitive.
IANANS (i am not a native (english) speaker — so please forgive any grammatical/spelling errors).
“Whether or not this is a good thing could be debated, but please try to enter this century with your trolling.”
Sn0wman is not trolling, although I thought that too at first. If you refer to the software directory listing at Gnu.org, you will find that although KDE is in the listing, it specifically states, “This is not a GNU package on the right hand side of the page:”
http://www.gnu.org/directory/gui/KDE.html
I wonder why it is so politically correct to bash the KDE project for all kinds of minor and silly things? Every thread about KDE here and on site like Slashdot always end up being full of people bashing KDE for all kinds of stupid reasons. Why is this? What is wrong with people?
It however is *not* ok to bash other desktop environments such as OSX, Xfce or Gnome, doing that would forever ban the critizising person from the fine halls of the Open Source software movement.
KDE is so shock full of excellent technology and good apps, I find it a very minor issue if some app has a few menu entries too many or some icon that doesn’t 100% fit in with the rest. Big deal! Why can’t these users spend their naive wrath on fixing those things instead? Or maybe just shut up, the issues are very well known by now by the developers and are documented in KDE’s bug tracking system…
Sigh.
in windows there are this apps calls http://netlimiter.com/ that can control yours netspeed, i dont find that for linux, and i well like to have it.
“I wonder why it is so politically correct to bash the KDE project for all kinds of minor and silly things? Every thread about KDE here and on site like Slashdot always end up being full of people bashing KDE for all kinds of stupid reasons. Why is this? What is wrong with people?”
Drop the word ‘politically’, and you’ve got a valid question. The reason it’s correct to criticize KDE is plainly obvious to anyone who’s ever used it. There are millions of examples, and each of them only gets fixed only after they become a widely known laughingstock (eg, clock preferences dialog).
To most people, the desktop environment is just what they operate under. In the view of KDE’s designers, the desktop environment (inc. configuring it) is an end in and of itself.
Well, tc can do all that. Not per-app, but per-protocol.
KDE it’s not part of the GNU project, that’s right. That does not mean it’s not free software, since it’s licensed under the GPL. Do you realise GNU is the name of the OS Stallman envisioned and GPL is a license, do you?
Forgive my English, btw.
“The reason it’s correct to criticize KDE is plainly obvious to anyone who’s ever used it. There are millions of examples, and each of them only gets fixed only after they become a widely known laughingstock (eg, clock preferences dialog). ”
The reason it’s correct to criticize GNOME is plainly obvious to anyone who’s ever used it.
The reason it’s correct to criticize Windows is plainly obvious to anyone who’s ever used it.
The reason it’s correct to criticize FORD is plainly obvious to anyone who’s ever used it.
The reason it’s correct to criticize potatoes is plainly obvious to anyone who’s ever used it.
(Yawn)
Took the words from my mouth…
DeadFish Man