The KDE Project released the first release candidate of KDE 3.4. Only sources, Live-CD and build script are available at time of release.
KDE 3.4 Release Candidate 1 Released
About The Author
Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
Follow me on Twitter @EugeniaLoli
65 Comments
2005-02-28 2:36 pm
2005-02-28 4:49 pm
http://shots.osdir.com/slideshows/slideshow.php?release=265&slide=1
Nice nice. Is Konstruct updated yet? Got to compile me some binaries tonight
Yes.
http://www.kde-apps.org/content/show.php?content=9725
(1) Someone should really re-oganise those menu’s, they’re far too many menu folders and the file names (and description) are too long. Just simplify.
(2) Theres still 3 text editors.
(3) the Add-To-panel window is *HUGE*
The correct place for your constructive criticism would be http://bugs.kde.org/
Adding on…
4.) Fix KOrganizer’s UI.
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v64/super_science_monkey/snapshot…
Oh no, now I’m blind
Live CD anyone?
Not much has changes in the fonts category. sad.
You didn’t RTFA, did you?
hint: http://ktown.kde.org/~binner/klax/
What’s wrong with fonts? Anyways KDE doesn’t handle fonts. freetype and to a lesser extent Qt does.
to ask how it was working, not if there was one.
> Theres still 3 text editors.
KDE.org is commited to providing a reasonable amount of backwards compatibility within the KDE 3.x series of releases, which includes the existence of applications it ships. However, KDE.org is also aware of certain collisions, and an opportunity to sort these issues out presents itself in the upcoming KDE 4 release cycle. Bottom line, keep the feedback coming.
> Not much has changes in the fonts category. sad.
Not true, actually – KDE now defaults to the Bitstream Vera font family if installed on the host environment.
Just compiled with GCC 3.4 and -fvisibility. Seems faster. Is it the placebo effect?
That’s the -fvisibility effect. 🙂
>>Not much has changes in the fonts category. sad.
What are you going on about – re Desktop Linux, Bitstream Vera Sans is as good as anything aroung IMO !! –
What he meant by “nothing has changed” is that everything looks fine, as in the previous versions.
“What are you going on about – re Desktop Linux, Bitstream Vera Sans is as good as anything aroung IMO !!”
That’s your opinion, I also think kde default font looks like crap. It’s too narrow and big, i’ll take arial any time.
There must be an irony in that KOrganizer’s UI needs reorganizing
You guys have a good website that teaches how to compile kde? cuz I’ve tried it several times and I always fail miserably, thanks, and btw is their a list of required libraries or what nots before compile?
Eike,
In terms of constructive feedback, the biggest problem I have with KDE is the amount of clutter. I have provided feedkback in Bugzilla nd various forums. what is being done in terms of HIG for KDE in the future?
Most of my problems are around little things: the icons being inappropriate (such as a “star” for bookmarks” and so on and the overwhelming nature of a few key tools, most notably Konqueror. More sensible default options and less colourful themes would also be great. Will KDE 4.0 address these usability issues?
I know concerns about these have been raised by many many people, so whilst my opinions are, of course, subjective, many people have similar feelings about the software.
Hey JM, an helpful tool for compiling KDE can be found here:
http://developer.kde.org/build/konstruct/
Damnit, will they ever get rid of that dragon? I always liked KDE, until I had to log-out/shutdown, where I’m faced with that amateurish dragon.
Please, kill it.
You’re probably one of those who want Linux to get rid of the penguin too?
You don’t like the amateurish dragon ?
Create or get an image you like, name it shutdownkonq.png and
overwrite the original !
cp -f shutdownkonq.png /usr/share/apps/ksmserver/pics/shutdownkonq.png
Easy !
Ciao
The last time I used that, I got a desktop which has a “?” in place of the text haha! I dont know what i missed.
I’d say it’s one of the easiest thing to compile out there. You ought to get it by only folowing http://developer.kde.org/build/compile_kde3_3.html. And when you run configure it even tells you what you miss, just install the package and/or corresponding -devel package. If you have had KDE installed already you probably only need the devel’s. Using the following order Qt, arts, kdelibs, kdebase and then everything else you want. If it does not work my guess is you have a seriously broken system and have bigger problems on your hand.BTW remember setting QT and KDE dirs.
Quote: “I know concerns about these have been raised by many many people, so whilst my opinions are, of course, subjective, many people have similar feelings about the software.”
From what I see not a lot of KDE users are unhappy with the KDE look, or consider it ‘bloated’ or ‘too busy’ or ‘too complex’. A minority do, but the majority don’t seem to. Some applications are too busy I agree, but it can be altered easily. It’s not that hard. The arguments of ‘sensible defaults’ do have merit however. And consistency between applications. However – even in Windows applications can get busy. Photoshop anyone? It’s a unmitigated UI mess. Yet, people live with it because they ARE used to it.
I guess it comes down to what the desktop environment will be used for, why and how, and the personal ideas and preferences of the user.
Dave
Whatever happened to kde-volume-manager? I know it was talked about a lot after gnome-volume-manager, but there hasn’t seemed to be any recently.
> the icons being inappropriate (such as a “star”
> for bookmarks” and so on and the overwhelming
> nature of a few key tools, most notably Konqueror.
> More sensible default options and less colourful
> themes would also be great. Will KDE 4.0 address
> these usability issues?
A more muted color palette is on its way and will lead to a less saturated default theme for KDE 3.5/4.0.
In fact the KDE Artist as well as the KDE Usability Team are in favour of a KDE 3.5 release which would have the main purpose of streamlining KDE in terms of usability.
Although we aim for a much more simple and clean interface we don’t want to improve usability at the expense of the user’s freedom to use important functionality. Of course this will mean that we’ll have to walk the tightrope and that we’ll have to put quite some thoughts into this.
More appropriate metaphors for icon symbols will be one of the top items of our TODO for KDE 3.5 as well. The same is true for icons which are currently confusingly similar to other unrelated actions (find vs. magnify e.g.). With a little bit of luck the latter might partly be fixed for 3.4.1 already.
> I always liked KDE, until I had to
> log-out/shutdown, where I’m faced with that
> amateurish dragon.
Until KDE 3.4 Beta2 I would have agreed with you because our Mascot appeared out of context and didn’t really help to visualize the current action. For KDE 3.4RC1 the situation has somewhat improved as you might see from the screenshots:
http://shots.osdir.com/slideshows/slideshow.php?release=265&slide=5
http://shots.osdir.com/slideshows/slideshow.php?release=265&slide=4
The appearance is more related to the About-/Logout action and the quality of the picture has improved. Our current feedback has been extremely positive. Still we’ll try to push the envelope even more for the next KDE release.
Torsten Rahn
KDE Artist Team
Historically KDE have had rather good handling of disks and media, both removable and othervise. Some functionality have been depending on your distribution to do things right, as usuall some don’t. But as replacement for gnome-volume-manager, I’d guess you talking about the media:/ meta IO slave. As usuall with this kind of KDE technology it just works as expected, so there are no need to talk much about it.
The KDE Volume Manager (kvm) has been replaced by the media-kioslave which works very well in KDE 3.4. If you’re curious there’s more information about it here, e.g.:
http://mvgrafx.dyn.ca/~vmark/documents/DBUS-HAL-MEDIA-HOWTO.html
Great work, I absolutely love the new logout look. But it raises some valid concern:-)
http://www.kdedevelopers.org/node/view/899
You should use nuvola icons instead of crystal.
> I always liked KDE, until I had to
> log-out/shutdown, where I’m faced with that
> amateurish dragon.
Personally, I love what I see in Klax. Konqui looks great
> You should use nuvola icons instead of crystal.
Nuvola has various issues as well. We are aware of the issues that Nuvola as well as Crystal have with regard to being appropriate as a default theme.
So we are working on a major overhaul for Crystal which will address these issues. In addition we are working on a KDE Branding Manual called CIG (“Corporate Identity Guidelines” or “Community Identity Guidelines” if you like that better 😉 . Together with the new HIG and the AG (“Accessbility Guidelines”) these will define the KDE Interface Guidelines.
Some issues that we aim to address wrt icons are:
– better icon metaphors
– less XPish colors and a more unique look and feel.
– 100% SVG source files (vectors graphics).
– more consistency wrt the color palette as well as the style.
– a look that appeals to corporate as well as home users.
As a supporter of the Nuvola team you’ll hopefully like to hear that David Vignoni (aka IconKing) supports our project as well.
Best Regards,
Torsten Rahn
Nuvola is a bad default icon set, in my opinion. Too childish. Even Chrystal seems sort of childish. I know GNOME and XP are plain, but sometimes plain looks a little more professional. Apple’s are a little more colorful and exciting then GNOME and XP, but they certainly don’t look as childish as Nuvola. Now, I’m not saying they should be removed, (choice is good) just don’t make them the default.
I can’t stand gnomes icons, they are so Windows 95’ish.
> is their a list of required libraries or what nots before compile?
It’s linked right on http://www.kde.org: http://www.kde.org/info/requirements/3.4.php
“Until KDE 3.4 Beta2 I would have agreed with you because our Mascot appeared out of context and didn’t really help to visualize the current action. For KDE 3.4RC1 the situation has somewhat improved as you might see from the screenshots:…”
The first screenshot isn’t good. The picture is cool, but it makes the dialog window big. Because there’s no other reason why the window should be so huge (more buttons etc.), I suggest that you should use a picture with smaller height. An additional image should use the empty space in the dialog window, not make more of it. The second screenshot is good.
The screenshot doesn’t show all the available shutdown options because the user is logged into the system is a guest. If all options are shown, it looks quite good.
“The screenshot doesn’t show all the available shutdown options because the user is logged into the system is a guest. If all options are shown, it looks quite good.”
I can’t imagine how two or three more buttons would fill the rest of the empty space, or are there more options in 3.4 than in 3.3?
Anyway, it would be cool, if the other options were shown shaded in the quest mode.
“Anyway, it would be cool, if the other options were shown shaded in the quest mode.”
Ok, I pull that back. It wouldn’t look cool at all. But I’m still a bit concerned about the height of the picture.
> In terms of constructive feedback, the biggest problem I have with KDE is the amount of clutter. I have provided feedkback in Bugzilla nd various forums. what is being done in terms of HIG for KDE in the future?
You may be pleased to learn that there is in fact an effort underway to re-write, refurbish and, within reason, extend the existing KDE Human Interface Guidelines for the KDE4 release cycle. Also, major interface components will undergo stricter UI review policies before inclusion in a KDE.org release in the future, in corporation with OpenUsability.org and other experts in the field.
Feedback on interface clutter and inconsistencies does not fall on deaf ears. KDE.org is commited to improving quality in all areas, including usability.
As far as KDE 3.4 goes, there have been small improvements already – tighter Konqueror toolbars (although this is by no means “done”, as acknowledged by the involved developers) and polished dialogs and context menus within the KDE PIM suite, among others.
I think the new logout dialog absolutely rocks! The image of the sleeping Konqui is really beautiful. I also like the Konqui image in the about KDE dialog. Thanks for this great artwork!
I think Konqui looks great also, and is also great from a usability point of view as it gives an indication what you’re doing i.e. putting the system to sleep or shutting it down.
All those that complain about these sorts of things, and start using words like clean, professional and corporate have been brainwashed with that kind of bollocks that’s been doing the rounds for some time. Before you know where you are your desktop looks like this (http://shots.osdir.com/slideshows/slideshow.php?release=234&slide=3).
The default theme of Windows XP is Luna. Hands up how many people think that looks clean and professional? Any ideas why Microsoft chose it? Because in the end they didn’t want their desktop looking boring – however awful the Luna theme is.
does this mean that KDE4.0 will be delayed, or do the 3.x and 4.x versions get developed in parallel?
*still waiting for the KDE4, Reiser4, Samba4 uber distro* :p
@Salsa:
> (1) Someone should really re-oganise those menu’s,
this is actually a two pronged challenge: people seem to want to install 8 billion applications *and* have access to them. we’re going to have to end up compromising on one or the other. or … provide something better than the menu.
> (2) Theres still 3 text editors.
Eike addressed this one well. it is, however, one of my favourite “but, but, but!” type of “usability” saws i hear. i look around the desktop, see all these gaping issues and yet people continue to moan about 3 text editors, something practically no user actually stumbles over. they may choose an editor that’s not perfect for their needs, but we don’t get reports of people staring at their screen wondering “Oh no. Now what do I do? I have three choices!”
yes, this “3 editors” situation can (and likely will) be made better. but if this is the most glaring issue … but it isn’t. and it sort makes me wonder why some people keep going on about as if it were. perhaps they don’t know better.
> (3) the Add-To-panel window is *HUGE*
well, they installed every possible applet known to man in that screenshot, and did so on an 800×600 screen! next release will have a dialog based add GUI (as opposed to a menu based one) which will it a bit easier to get around. but.. yeah.. if you don’t want to pick from that many applets: don’t install so many applets.
@Anonymous
> 4.) Fix KOrganizer’s UI.
the screenshot you posted is old, so you’ll be happy to know that it is indeed cleaner looking. try it from Kontact in particular.
@Cameron Kenneth Knight
> Whatever happened to kde-volume-manager?
as was mentioned, there is the media:/ URL in KDE now that optionally uses the HAL/DBUS back end (so those who don’t have HAL/DBUS aren’t relegated to suckdom
. custom HAL-event-triggered-actions (e.g. autoactivation, automount) won’t be in 3.4 however, due to developer time. it will be in an upcoming release, though.
> does this mean that KDE4.0 will be delayed, or do the 3.x and 4.x versions get developed in parallel?
From the looks of it, KDE 3.5 will be primarily an application release, granting KDE application developers the opportunity to maintain and update their work while version 4 of the KDE platform is being specified and stabilized in parallel.
This pays tribute to the fact that KDE 3 won’t go away any time soon – think about long-term deployments inside corporations. Also, the KDE 4 release cycle will likely take longer than your average KDE 3.x cycle.
After KDE news posts (not just here, everyplace) I always come across the same old silly opinions of some peolpe complaining about KDE being too complex, offernig too much settings, too much options, being too slashy and colourfull, etc etc.
I have many years of user experience with both kde and gnome (I wont’ list the many lightweight wm’s and de’s I used, not relevant here) and while I love the clean-ness of gnome2 (well guys, remember gnome<2 ?
good god, and also remember kde~1 ? good heavens 
) I have been a devoted kde fan and supporter for many years now.
Why ? Because what these complaining people mention I all take as an advantage. Many options, settings, etc ? Great ! I can make it to suit my needs and desires every imaginable way ! I love that ! Also, kwin is the best of its kind. Konqueror ? Fast, and very very impressively functional: browsing files ? browsing internet ? doing ssh (fish://) ? vieweing images, files, … I won’t go on: all easy, nice, fast and stable.
To cut it short, knowing and using almost all DEs and WMs in the Linux world (I also currently have and continuously checking out newest of fvwm2, wm, flux, black, ice, e-1.6, xfce4, gnome, kde), I always end up with kde at the end of the day. That’s enough proof for me.
For the rest of you ? You all need to find your own way. If not kde, be it something else. But for God’s sake, keep the useless complaining in the back pocket.
I am kinda looking at KDE 3.4 as the start of a process, to clean up their desktop from a UI perspective. Baby steps. There is a lot of work to be done in this area quite frankly, so I am not expecting miracles in this release (though the use of Plastik instead of the horrible Keramik theme could be seen as some as a minor miracle).
I think the expectation is that the real gains in usability will occur in the KDE 4.x timeframe. I applaud the increased attention that usability seems to be getting in the KDE. I can’t wait to see how this process evolves over the next few years.
“From the looks of it, KDE 3.5 will be primarily an application release, granting KDE application developers the opportunity to maintain and update their work while version 4 of the KDE platform is being specified and stabilized in parallel. ”
If you develop in parallel, won’t that cause a lot of extra work and confusion?
Why not just delay KDE 4, after all, Qt 4 was delayed too.
> If you develop in parallel, won’t that cause a lot of extra work and confusion?
Not necessarily. KDE 3.5 will likely hapen fairly early during the KDE 4 release cycle, before the bulk of the development effort shifts to KDE 4.
The reason for this is that KDE4s APIs will have to reach a certain level of stability before large-scale application porting within KDE can be accomplished comfortably (or else everybody would be in a constant state of “chasing the API”), which opens the window of opportunity for KDE 3.5 to happen in the interim.
Also, keep in mind that not everyone who maintains an app in one of the KDE packages is necessarily interested or involved in developing the core libraries.
thanks for the earlier reply.
given what you have said in the above posts, do you believe that SUSE will have migrated to KDE4 in time for their Oct/Nov release this year?
i have SUSE 9.1 installed now, but this PC is going to be butchered in the near future, so i’m considering trying out Gnome 2.10 in Ubuntu Warty when i get the new PC up and running in Mid April. however, while i am a Linux n00b of limited experience i can say that i like SUSE/KDE and will be looking forward to trying a KDE4 based version.
regards
Dimble
> does this mean that KDE4.0 will be delayed, or
> do the 3.x and 4.x versions get developed in parallel?
[…]
> If you develop in parallel, won’t that cause a lot
> of extra work and confusion?
Looking at the current state of Qt4 and at the discussions on kde-core-devel a KDE 3.5 release appears very likely:
Porting kdelibs and kdebase to Qt4 will most likely happen as soon as Qt4 is close to its release. The progress of porting itself will also take some time. During that time there are quite a few groups of people who wouldn’t have a stable 4.x plattform to do their work upon:
– KDE application developers
– KDE usability engineers
– KDE artist team
– KDE documentation team
– KDE translation team
– …
These will be the people who would be able to contribute to a KDE 3.5 release instead of idleing around and waiting for the KDE 4 framework to be mature enough to be able to start any serious work.
Most of these people think that (although KDE 3.4 rocks!) there’s still a lot of potential for refinement in KDE 3.4 in terms of usability, artwork and documentation left.
So this is our chance to get an even more polished release out of the door which won’t focus on framework and features but on a high-quality streamlined interface!
Greetings,
Torsten Rahn
Details of the KDE 4 release schedule have yet to be worked out, but I think it’s safe to say we won’t see a KDE 4 release in 2005.
From what I’ve seen, maintainers don’t want to budge form their position that it’s helpful for people who like media players in the sidebar of a file manager/inet browser (of all things!!!). I think a return to the kfm tree view, with an option to of course let people have sidebars
I’m glad work is being done on the artwork side, but that wasn’t horrible at all, while Konqeuror could use a lot of work.
http://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=56315
Using a star for the icon makes a certain amount of sense when you’re bookmarks are called “favorites” as they are in Internet Explorer (as in a teacher putting a gold star on their “favorite” pupil’s homework).
Put the desire to be superficially familiar to Windows users and the developer’s likely preference for non-IE browsers and their conventions through the cargo-cult UI design machine and you get gold star icons for bookmarks.
PS: What’s with those humongous “tool tips” with the icon not much larger than the one DIRECTLY BELOW IT! I hope those don’t constantly pop up as you move the mouse along the taskbar.
> Why not just delay KDE 4, after all, Qt 4 was delayed too.
One reason is that we want to get enough of kde using qt 4 to know if we find any problems with the APIs etc. That way we can get qt fixed before it is released, rather than having to wait.
Rich.
Well since theres some KDE devs here, I might aswell ask.
I was reading on the KDE-lists that KDE4 will include something that resembles the performance tuner , but instead for usability. Its suppopsed to rearrange KDE’s UI using KXMLGUI. Is this true?
No doubt, after some mad lovin KDE looks very attractive, its just the defaults that are absolutely terrible.
Super sexy Konqueror screenie:
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v64/super_science_monkey/konquero…
I’m not using KDE right now, however, I found that many of the truetype fonts were lacking in the quality department, IMHO, grab the free Type1 URW fonts, and use thoses, the quality is great, and the visual presentation of them is fabulous.
just please keep the the default colours of KDE bright and vibrant. i know technically you can always change to another theme but no thereme is as complete ever as the default theme and it’s nice having a decent bright happy vibrant theme.
Super sexy Konqueror screenie: