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KDE GUI BSD Linux

A Quick Look At KDE SC 4.5 Beta 1 122

dmbkiwi writes "The latest in the 4.x series of the KDE Software Compilation is due to be released in early August 2010. With the first beta of this release recently unleashed, I thought I'd download the openSuse packages and see what 4.5's got in store for us."
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A Quick Look At KDE SC 4.5 Beta 1

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  • Sad... First post, and already:

    Service Temporarily Unavailable

    The server is temporarily unable to service your request due to maintenance downtime or capacity problems. Please try again later.

    Wonder what will happen to that poor server in just a couple of minutes? Will it beg for mercy? Resign and open a beach bar in the Caribbean?

  • For the lazy: (Score:5, Informative)

    by X0563511 ( 793323 ) on Wednesday June 09, 2010 @06:44PM (#32517386) Homepage Journal

    What’s New? The Beta 1 release announcement lists only 4 major new features, which seems a little underwhelming.
    These are:

    • A reworked notifications area;
    • Window tiling;
    • Webkit in konqueror;
    • Stability improvements.

    One of the big upgrades that was scheduled for KDE SC 4.5 was porting the PIM (ie. kmail, korganizer, kaddressbook) applications to the Akonadi framework. Unfortunately, that process won’t be completed in time for 4.5.0, and will be delayed until 4.5.1. This is a little disappointing given that Akonadi has been full of promise for quite some time, with no real user visible outcomes. It would have been nice to see what Akonadi will bring to the party. However, it’s better to wait until all the kinks are ironed out. But unfortunately, it leaves the KDE 4.5 feature cupboard a little bare.

    That being said, there are a whole bunch of little improvements that I’ll talk about later on in this article.

    • Re: (Score:1, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward

      ``For me, Nepouk's ability to index my files is a nice feature. It's also one I currently have turned off due to personal preference.'' -- Aaron Siego.

      should I laugh or cry?

      http://pim.kde.org/development/meetings/osnabrueck4/roadmap.jpg

      look out, Zimbra! look out, GOOG! psscheerowwk, Akonadi is coming 4 u. all pheer the imminent release of MILESTONE 1. :(

    • Re:For the lazy: (Score:5, Insightful)

      by TopSpin ( 753 ) on Wednesday June 09, 2010 @08:13PM (#32518298) Journal

      The Beta 1 release announcement lists only 4 major new features, which seems a little underwhelming.

      ...porting the PIM (ie. kmail, korganizer, kaddressbook) applications to the Akonadi framework. Unfortunately, that process won’t be completed in time for 4.5.0, and will be delayed until 4.5.1...

      KDE 4 has had five releases since Jan '08. It wasn't until 4.3 in August '09, 19 months after 4.0, that the thing became tolerable. Prior to then it was very unstable, amazingly memory hungry and lacking features that 3.5.x had had for years. If the only thing 4.5 and all future 4.x releases accomplish is stability enhancements, bug fixes, even less memory use and recovering those few missing features that vanished with 4.0 then the KDE developers deserve our praise.

      As far as I'm concerned they can take all that PIM stuff, Akonadi whatever and shovel the lot into 5.x. Do as you will with Konquerer's HTML engine but, with respect, DO NOT FUCK UP THE FILE MANAGEMENT functionality. Linux already has several good browsers so Konquerer's ability to render web pages has little or no actual value any longer.

      it leaves the KDE 4.5 feature cupboard a little bare.

      Whatever. If they are working on stability and efficiency they do the lords work. 4.x should be rock solid, fast, efficient and feature complete. The rest is damage that belongs in 5.x, which needs to start existing sometime soon and then bake for a good half decade or more.

      • Re: (Score:1, Interesting)

        by Anonymous Coward

        They've already been trying to shove the file management capabilities into Dolphin.

        Sadly, it looks sort of like an old version of Nautilus - all bare and not KDE-like.

      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        by lanner ( 107308 )

        Like this guy, I have nothing good to say about the KDE developers and their current desire to remove code and replace it with new, less functional, more buggy, code that just happens to have their names on it. It's like they just want to check in stuff with their name to get credit in the community ("I wrote most of KDE, all by myselfs!").

        Had I posted this on a KDE forum, it would have been deleted before morning.

      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        by visualight ( 468005 )

        I can't understand why they want to deprecate the best file manager ever and elevate the worst browser ever.

    • Re:For the lazy: (Score:4, Interesting)

      by Trogre ( 513942 ) on Wednesday June 09, 2010 @08:28PM (#32518440) Homepage

      ...
      Stability improvements.

      Underwhelming? I think not - this is exactly what KDE needs, and fewer "feature" additions. Even KDE 4.4.3 still has major stability problems, at least for me.

      • Re:For the lazy: (Score:4, Informative)

        by adamofgreyskull ( 640712 ) on Wednesday June 09, 2010 @11:14PM (#32519588)

        fewer "feature" additions

        I'd settle for zero feature additions and 100% feature retention.

        • You're mistaking this for Gnome. KDE does not drop features (unless they are being replaced by more awesome features)
          Any missing features from 3.x versions of KDE are almost always due to lack of time/effort by developers. Not because it was decided to drop them.
          • by Rix ( 54095 )

            That's really not better.

            • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

              by arcanumas ( 646807 )
              Since you were modded insightful i think i should answer.
              It really *is* better.
              You see GNOME actively drops features and then the drop itself is presented as a new feature. The dropped features will not come back. The developers think its actually better that way. (Its a whole philosophy)
              KDE has had some features missing due to the change from 3.x to 4.x. In the beginning quite a bit of features were lacking, but gradually most have been re-introduced. If any are still missing (and it might be the case)
              • by Rix ( 54095 ) on Thursday June 10, 2010 @12:26PM (#32524688)

                You really think dropping features for years at a time in a stable release is ok if you just call it a bug, effectively meaning there is no stable release?

                All your hyperbole aside, the Gnome strategy is at least honest. There's no reason they couldn't opt to put back whatever features they've dropped in the future, but they're being up front that they're not going to now.

          • by soppsa ( 1797376 )
            I'm not sure you understand what drop means. It doesn't imply a reason, it simply says they were... dropped from the release. Design decision, lack of time, lack of interest, lack of voodoo magic, it doesn't matter. Dropped is dropped.

            Though if people care enough for their ill maintained features, they are certainly more than welcome to commit code to KDE!
  • Well (Score:1, Interesting)

    When I tested KDE 4.4, it wasn't the most stable desktop I'd used, let's just hope they've been working on that... I honestly have to wonder why they keep adding features, they have plenty as it is, and from my experience KDE hasn't been the most stable desktop as of late, I really think it should be a high priority to make/keep the desktop as stable as possible, with new features as an afterthought.
    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Dragoniz3r ( 992309 )
      From what I've seen of the KDE devs, you'd be exactly wrong on that front. New features are always prioritized because they're exciting, while bugfixes get ignored. I don't have the link handy, but awhile back I saw a bug report regarding (iirc) icon opacity, that had stagnated for years. From everything I've seen, the devs aren't as interested in making sure everything works flawlessly as they are in being progressive.
      • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

        I really think at this point in KDE4 that they need to work on bugfixes, sure new features are exiting, but what's the point if they don't work? There's a reason why I don't use KDE as my main desktop, it just sits next to my gnome/xfce/e17/whatever desktop, and every once in a while I boot in to KDE to play with it.
    • Re:Well (Score:5, Informative)

      by QCompson ( 675963 ) on Wednesday June 09, 2010 @07:14PM (#32517750)
      On a related note, Aaron Seigo had an interesting post on his blog (http://aseigo.blogspot.com/2010/05/i-dont-need-no-stinking-nepomuk-right.html [blogspot.com]) where he struggled (mostly in vain) to explain to people why akonadi and nepomuk were needed or even useful. A lot of comments were similar to yours... basically, just give us a stable KDE desktop to run apps and stop messing around with whizzbang buggy features and eye-candy.
      • Re:Well (Score:4, Insightful)

        by clang_jangle ( 975789 ) on Wednesday June 09, 2010 @07:43PM (#32518058) Journal
        In truth, akonadi and nepomuk are just a waste of system resources. Not only are they not needed, they're buggy as hell. Seems to me the kde devs have gotten lost in minutiae and forgotten that the point of a DE really is to provide a transparent, appealing framework from which to run apps. If it gets in the way or demands you read a lot of documentation, it means you're doing it wrong.

        Hell, it was less effort for me to script my own DE functionality around awesome wm than to learn kde4 so I could support my users who want it.
        • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

          by Warbothong ( 905464 )

          In truth, akonadi and nepomuk are just a waste of system resources. Not only are they not needed, they're buggy as hell. Seems to me the kde devs have gotten lost in minutiae and forgotten that the point of a DE really is to provide a transparent, appealing framework from which to run apps. If it gets in the way or demands you read a lot of documentation, it means you're doing it wrong.

          Hell, it was less effort for me to script my own DE functionality around awesome wm than to learn kde4 so I could support my users who want it.

          'In truth, graphics and sound are just a waste of system resources. Not only are they not needed, they're buggy as hell. Seems to me the kde devs have gotten lost in minutiae and forgotten that the point of a shell really is to provide a transparent, appealing framework from which to run apps. If it gets in the way or demands you read a lot of documentation, it means you're doing it wrong.

          Hell, it was less effort for me to script my own shell functionality around bash shell than to learn kde4 so I could sup

          • Re:Well (Score:4, Insightful)

            by clang_jangle ( 975789 ) on Thursday June 10, 2010 @10:23AM (#32523208) Journal
            Yes that's all well and fine, but my point is that that particular functionality has no business being an integral part of the DE. Why is kde4 trying to be an OS? Just provide the DE, or at least make it properly modular so that all this extra crap isn't a requirement. It's too much like Apple or MS, they're trying to stuff this notion of "the kde way" down everyone's throats.

            I guess it's just one more example of how mainstream Linux has lost sight of the UNIX philosophy.
        • by thsths ( 31372 )

          > In truth, akonadi and nepomuk are just a waste of system resources.

          I agree completely. I switched to KDE 4 at 4.1.8 or so, and it was terrible. 4.2 was usable, but still not great.

          Now I am playing with trinity, and while it looks a bit dated, it is really nice to use. Plus it responds a lot faster, even on a state of the art PC with 8 GB of RAM and binary 3D drivers.

      • Re:Well (Score:4, Interesting)

        by shutdown -p now ( 807394 ) on Wednesday June 09, 2010 @10:02PM (#32519100) Journal

        This was a very enlightening blog post (and comments) to read. It does explain a lot about why KDE4 is the way it is.

        That said, what are the options? As far as widget toolkits go, I much prefer Qt - it's miles ahead of Gtk from programmer's perspective, and it's faster as well. But I'm not aware of any DE (not WM, DE - with file manager and so on) written in plain Qt, with no KDE4-style reinvention of the desktop wheel, and useless bells and whistles.

        But okay, I can stick to GNOME for the time being, especially since I don't really develop for Linux full-time, and who cares what widgets apps use under the hood? All well and good, except until that relatively recent announcement of "Gnome Shell" to come in 3.0, with those awful screenshots. Oh. My. Fucking. God! It's like GNOME devs looked at the trainwreck that is KDE4, became envious, and devised their own cunning plan to mess up their clean and usable desktop, and overall screw over existing users as much as possible, for the sake of pushing through some brand new bright UI design and usability ideas. I suspect this will go about as good as their "spacial file browser" did in the past, except that one was relatively minor and could be trivially disabled; whereas Shell design has far-reaching implications for entire desktop, and even third-party apps.

        I had preventively moved to Xfce for now, which seems to be free from that "reinvent the wheel again, our own special way" disease mentality (so far). It's okay, but I'm still open to alternatives. What other options are there? (again, DEs, not WMs, so please don't suggest OpenBox etc).

        • That said, what are the options? As far as widget toolkits go, I much prefer Qt - it's miles ahead of Gtk from programmer's perspective, and it's faster as well. But I'm not aware of any DE (not WM, DE - with file manager and so on) written in plain Qt, with no KDE4-style reinvention of the desktop wheel, and useless bells and whistles...... It's okay, but I'm still open to alternatives. What other options are there? (again, DEs, not WMs, so please don't suggest OpenBox etc).

          This might be what you are looking for:

          Antico: a Qt4/X11 Desktop/Window Manager" [netsons.org]

        • by armanox ( 826486 )
          LXDE is well on its way to being a good DE.
      • by Kjella ( 173770 )

        The comment by Ron (emphasis by me) is the best and deserves a +5, Funny:

        I'm surprised to see so many people claiming Nepomuk gives them no added value. Personally, I find the promise of Nepomuk, KDE 4 and semantic desktop enthrilling. Unfortunately this has been so for the past 2 years.

        Development seems to me to be heading in the right direction - semantic desktop sounds the more natural way to deal with entities in the computer. But people are used to the traditional way of interaction with the machine, the switch to a novel way is hard to make. Moreover, Nepomuk services are now being developed, and immediate benefits are not apparent. Until the framework and services become more stable and reliable, and the benefits become more prominent, objection to Nepomuk will stay. The point is, at this point of time Nepomuk may be a nuisance, but it is injustifiablly wrong to judge it now. If Nepomuk development fulfills the dreams presented here and elsewhere, these critics of today might find they have been wrong all along, and by a long shot - they might find out that semantic desktop interaction is the right way of doing things. It feels attitude towards Nepomuk now is as has been to KDE 4 in the beginning. That it is immature and present creates problems, that would subside as it matures and the advantages become more present.

        Productively, it seems that there should be a better (i.e. more apparent) UI to disable Strigi and Nepomuk - perhaps as a question dialog at install time or when the computer is under heavy load/RAM usage because of Strigi. That people have to actively seek the system settings option might be a fault in this case.

        KDE is not free of problems - in fact I can't use it right now. I was greatly disappointed in finding that Kubuntu 9.10 on an old machine with 512MB of RAM is hardly usable. Battery life on my laptop is not satisfactory, and I can't install KDE on Windows for some reason.
        But the promise, and the hard work of all involved keep me assured that one day I'll be able to use my computers to their fullest using KDE (on Linux. And not any other DE). So this is thanks and keep up the good work.

        Gee, no apparent benefits, if fact it's so resource hungry you can't use it, but you wonder why people don't like it... really?

      • I have no intention of reading blog posts that are trying to convince me that the biggest pieces of crap in computing were *needed*. They are there because the KDE developers want them, and think they are cool. And they don't care that they are slow, annoying, broken and take the system and its functionality together with them. When you're trying to convince me that software, which only feature is to annoy the user, is useful, you need to shut the fuck up.

      • by richlv ( 778496 )

        i think the problem is... priorities.
        i believe nepomuk is cool. akonadi is cool, and useful. and we need those two.
        but AFTER we have solid foundation to use every day.
        don't get me wrong, i'm a kde user since... a looong time ago. i recently set up a laptop with kde4, and it indeed has progressed a lot since the first few releases, and is mostly useful. some features are very cool and i sometimes consider upgrading my main computer, which is still 3.5.10... but it's the little things and lots of them that an

  • by Anonymous Coward

    Biggest problem with KDE is its massive memory usage and poor performance on low-end hardware. It's much worse than GNOME not to mention the actual lightweight DE's.

    • by seyyah ( 986027 )

      I don't know about that. With a default install, logging into KDE 4.4 (with preloaded Konqueror, compositing, file indexing, etc) clocks in at a shade under 400mb. That's 400mb, not just for KDE, but for the whole system which runs apache, mysql and so on. Obviously Fluxbox is much less resource hungry, but calling KDE a "massive" memory user is not all that accurate.

    • Precisely. I had heard KDE would work better on low RAM systems, but in practice it seems to be worse than the default Gnome desktop.

      Now I want to try LXDE (Lubuntu) to see how it performs. Supposedly it only needs 160 MB RAM

      • I still have the latest KDE installed, but generally I just use openbox wm + a few light tools to get what I need done. If you have a low end system a light window manager might be your best bet.

    • You meant poor performance on all hardware. I'm using it on a Intel Core 2 Q6600 with 8 GB RAM and it is slow as hell compared to KDE 3.5 on my old Athlon XP 2100+, and even GTK+ on the same Athlon XP. And I badmouthed GTK+ about its slowness then. How wrong have I been?

    • by Haeleth ( 414428 )

      Really? I recently switched to KDE from the supposedly-light-weight Xfce on my tiny underpowered netbook, and I honestly have not noticed any speed difference at all, even with most of the bells and whistles enabled. Haven't run out of memory yet, either, even with Firefox and KDE running.

      Gnome might be faster. I wouldn't know because its interface design makes it unusable on netbooks. But if Gnome is faster than Xfce then there's something seriously wrong with the world.

  • well at least they finally fixed having to click the cashew twice to close it after making various changes.
    • The only way to truly fix the cashew is to enable a way to remove it (not just in opensuse). Have they done that yet?
    • The ? What? [wikipedia.org]

      • KDE4 has an icon in the corner of a desktop shaped like a cashew nut. It allows you to add and remove desktop widgets. Kind of like pressing F12 on the MacOS.
        • That's a cashew? I thought it was a fireball thing.

          That's the plasma widget thing. Doesn't bug me at all.

      • It's a goofy little icon thingy in the upper right corner of the screen that brings up a toolbox. Many KDE users find it extremely annoying; I personally don't use KDE as my primary desktop because I see it as too immature at this point, but having played with it, I definitely concur.

  • by agm ( 467017 ) on Wednesday June 09, 2010 @06:58PM (#32517572)

    The only thing holding me back from upgrading to KDE4 on my primary work computer (from KDE 3.5.10) is that I need an accelerated triple head display. From what I can tell this is just not possible with KDE4, while it is working fine with KDE 3.5.10.

  • by syousef ( 465911 ) on Wednesday June 09, 2010 @07:20PM (#32517824) Journal

    Service Temporarily Unavailable
    The server is temporarily unable to service your request due to maintenance downtime or capacity problems. Please try again later.

    New feature: KDE can now be slashdotted.

  • by victorhooi ( 830021 ) on Wednesday June 09, 2010 @08:59PM (#32518722)

    heya,

    You know, I'm curious how many of the people complaining about bugginess and memory issues are running say, Kubuntu?

    I'm on Arch Linux, and the KDE 4.x branch has been quite stable for me - the odd crash here and there, e.g. of Konsole, particularly early on, but nothing that really blew up the whole desktop.

    And it's performed very well on my desktop, much more snappy/responsive than Gnome.

    There's a lot of distributions that have done terribly, half-done jobs of packaging KDE. Kubuntu is a prime examble, seriously it's an absolute joke how terrible they've done. Last I heard, apparently it was because Kubuntu only had a single guy or something? That might just be a rumour, but I seriously think Canonical should just shelve the Kubuntu branch, instead of giving KDE a bad name.

    Arch has been stable for me, and openSUSE was quite good for KDE as well. Don't know about other distributions, but I've heard that outside of those two, the rest are pretty much a joke - they just do a bad job of packaging KDE, or adding their own half-done patches, and pushing out low-quality KDE desktops.

    Cheers,
    Victor

    • Kubuntu is a prime examble, seriously it's an absolute joke how terrible they've done. Last I heard, apparently it was because Kubuntu only had a single guy or something? That might just be a rumour, but I seriously think Canonical should just shelve the Kubuntu branch, instead of giving KDE a bad name.

      Their packages are in the same place, in fact. And you can even buy commercial support fro Kubuntu from Canonical. It's not one guy maintaining a port.

      Did you have any real, actual examples of area
      • by walshy007 ( 906710 ) on Wednesday June 09, 2010 @09:53PM (#32519042)

        He is probably just indicating that those with the most issues seem to strangely be coming from the kubuntu camp, fedora, opensuse etc seem to treat kde as more a first class citizen than second.

        Then again it could just be typical ubuntu users are more from the newer to linux camp and thus complain more in general.

        • Then again it could just be typical ubuntu users are more from the newer to linux camp and thus complain more in general.

          I think it is this. I had more problems using Debian's KDE 4.x branch (in relation to polickit action at least) than I have with kubuntu. I should give arch a go, though. I have plenty of time to mess with it at work.

          • Is there an arch kde dvd or cd? I don't usually have an internet connection.

      • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

        by victorhooi ( 830021 )

        heya,

        Hmm, I really hope you know what you're talking about, and aren't just talking out of your rear-end...lol. Have you actually tried to use Kubuntu, then tried a different KDE 4.x distro and compared them?

        I've been a KDE fan since the 3.5 days, and a Ubuntu fan from around those days as well. So it was a natural progression to use Kubuntu. I've basically tried every Kubuntu release since 7.04, until around 9.10, when I basically gave up on it. The 8.x branch, from memory, was particularly patchy for me.

        • Comment removed based on user account deletion
          • heya,

            Lol, I don't think you've actually proven anything there.

            Yes, people criticise every OS release, but the funny thing about the Kubuntu criticism is that:

            1. It's dogged it from release to release - from the 6.X days, right through to the current 10.X days. You compare that against the criticism from say, Vista to Windows 7, or say, OSX 10.0 to 10.6, or heck, ironically, even KDE 4.0 to 4.4/4.5. Kubuntu has sucked, I regret to say, from day 1, right through to today, and unless Canonical suddently decide

        • by Wee ( 17189 )
          Have you actually tried to use Kubuntu, then tried a different KDE 4.x distro and compared them?

          I've used Kubuntu for years, both at home and at work. Before that, I used KDE on Red Hat at home. When they went off into Fedora-land, I switched to Debian and GNOME, with a little CentOS thrown in on the work side (used KDE on CentOS). Hated GNOME with a flying passion, went to Xfce. Along comes Ubuntu and then Kubuntu. Been using it ever since, and have been quit happy with it.

          I understand what you
    • by shutdown -p now ( 807394 ) on Wednesday June 09, 2010 @09:54PM (#32519048) Journal

      I was having various stability problems with KDE4 (up to and including 4.4) on pretty much every distro I've tried - Kubuntu was on the list, but also OpenSUSE and Mandriva.

      I do run Arch now, and 4.4 seemed to be better in that in terms of stability. But the whole thing still feels so unpolished coming from either KDE 3.5 or GNOME 2.x that I can't be bothered.

      It feels like KDE4 developers are chasing the uber vision of the desktop of the future (which is totally unlike the desktop of today) that they have in their head, and KDE4 releases that we see in the meantime are stepping stones on that road. So they're neither here nor there, and it is not clear when the road is going to end (if it is going to at all, which I'm starting to doubt at this point).

    • by carlmenezes ( 204187 ) on Wednesday June 09, 2010 @11:38PM (#32519724) Homepage
      Mod parent up. I was on Kubuntu for the last couple of years. You would think that on a distro whose sole reason for existence is to give people a KDE based version of Ubuntu, that you would be able to get anything done without logging in to GNOME. No dice. Ok...maybe we'll show some tolerance here. Maybe GTK apps would at least be themed to look like they fit in on KDE? Nope. OK...getting harder to stomach this distro. At least, something as frequently used as Firefox would be themed correctly in KDE - file dialogs, menus and all? No dice. In summary, its not a KDE distro - its KDE bolted on to a distro. I finally grew tired of the constant tweaking required to get things to work right and the constant additional tweaking required every time some update was released. Time to jump ship. Looked around. There were reports of OpenSuse doing a good job. Tried them out. Paradise in comparison. Stuff just works. I can actually administer any part of the system from within KDE. Firefox is themed right - I didn't have to think about it. Guess what? I don't have GNOME installed, because I don't need it. Package management works beautifully and the fact that I can do a one click web install is pure icing on the cake. What do I miss from Kubuntu? Probably the software ratings. However, here is the important bit - has KDE broken once since I installed OpenSuse? Nope. I'm on KDE 4.4. and in 5 days, will be upgrading to OpenSuse 11.3 for some KDE 4.5 goodness. See, the OpenSuse guys proved to me that a nice enjoyable, stable KDE experience is possible and that by the time I start salivating about the next KDE release, there's a new version of the distro that is ready to release. I'll wait for the distro because I trust them to iron out the kinks for me. They've already done it once. I'm sure they will do it again. Look, if you're a KDE user and you're on Kubuntu, do yourself a huge favour and at least try out the OpenSuse live CD. A lot of effort has gone into that distro and it shows.
    • "I'm on Arch Linux, and the KDE 4.x branch has been quite stable for me - the odd crash here and there"

      Funny, I haven't had any crash on Kubuntu.

    • the odd crash here and there, e.g. of Konsole, particularly early on, but nothing that really blew up the whole desktop.

      Yikes, that's why I stopped using KDE. I can't have an odd crash here and there of my terminal emulator. That might take with it an email I've been working on, or a long-running file download. Stability is critical.

      The ancient xterm that I now use has never crashed on me, not once.

  • What isn't new? KDE is still slower than a virus-infected Vista installation.
  • by TheCycoONE ( 913189 ) on Wednesday June 09, 2010 @09:51PM (#32519032)

    Interesting timing on this story. KDE 4.5 beta 2 was released today.

    http://kde.org/announcements/announce-4.5-beta2.php [kde.org] for the official announcement

    • by MirzaD ( 1357375 )
      Quote from release announcement:

      Over the last two weeks, roughly since the first beta, 1459 new bugs have been reported, and 1643 bugs have been closed, so we're witnessing a lot of stabilization activity right now. More testing is in place, however, while the restless developers continue to create a rock-stable 4.5.0

      Really nice to see much work being put in to stabilization, even if it means few less features :)

  • I know that the vast majority of people don't care about it, but I honestly want the PIM finished, if they are going to integrate akonadi with it, then fine, but finish it already...

    Other than that, it was about time to make a big release with mostly bug fixes in it, maybe it's me but I don't find it as unstable or as memory hungry as people are claiming here, it was some versions ago, no argument there, but now it's pretty decent, for me, what is left are mostly annoyances, and I have suffer a lot of them,

  • by GeekDork ( 194851 ) on Thursday June 10, 2010 @04:01AM (#32521076)

    From the bug reports, it seems like KDE still can't handle silly things nobody ever uses, like persistent printer settings [kde.org] or SSL certificates [kde.org]. Both of those are regressions from KDE 3.5, and it seems like KDE tries to mimic Mozilla when it comes to usability.

    But yeah, we totally need more UI bling. Not like there was work to do.

  • "Webkit in konqueror"

    If a browser uses webkit does that automatically make it compatible ( javascript, CSS, etc ) with other browsers that use web kit?

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