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Jan
11
KDE 4.0 is out as of today. Click here for the official announcement. A separate announcement with info on packages for different distributions is here. OpenSUSE had the updated packages available when I checked at midnight last night–great job yet again by the packagers (or packager?).
A wll written and helpful Visual Guide to KDE 4.0 is available here. It has plenty of screenshots and information.
A post on Aaron Seigo’s blog is very interesting, and gives you more of an idea on why you should be excited about the KDE 4 series. Click here for that. If anything, it should give you an appreciation for what the devs are going through and the hard work they put in. All for something we get for free.
This is a big step forward, and the first of many big steps for KDE. Congratulations to all of the developers and to everyone involved!
Using KDE 4.0 yet? If so, leave a comment with your experience.
Update! The following link, and Emergency FAQ, has been posted and is helpful:
http://software-libre.rudd-o.com/KDE_4.0.0_emergency_FAQÂ
Comments
6 Responses to “KDE 4.0 Released Today! Visual Guide Now Available.”
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Personally, I am holding off on KDE 4. Yesterday, I checked out the KDE Four Live disk with RC2++ and to be frankly honest, really let down.
Some of the new changes, seem cludgy. Such as the menu, giving no easy and quick way to drop back folders, just close it entirely and reopen (which seems a bit silly), or click, click, click, click on the back arrow. This is annoying to me, because sometimes applications get their shortcuts automatically installed to a location I might not think it should be, and so when I’m hunting around for them to find out where the folder is, things slow down (the search thing is nice, but I like to know where stuff is too). Or oops, I clicked the wrong folder, and unlike before, I cant just move my mouse a few pixels over to highlight what I meant to go after to change, I have to move around and click some more. Yeah, this is minor, but, the new kmenu was supposed to make things faster and easier, where as this is a bit of a regression.
I WANT TO BE ABLE TO CHANGE THE KICKER! I HATE, HATE, HATE a big fat kicker. Yeah, I know it is “Plasma” now, but why the fuck should you REMOVE functionality? Also, I liked my LCD looking clock! I had my theme how I liked it, thin kicker, bland grey, Clock with LCD look, Plastik and Keramik mix on the theme. It was small, bland, and utilitarian.
Control Center. How do I start with this. It looks like shit. Takes up WAY too much screen real estate for what it does. It is kinda similar to the Windows Control Panel and OSX System Preferences, BUT GONE WRONG! Also, with the tabs, shit is more difficult to hunt down.
Basically, I would like some of the old ways brought back. Old style Kmenu, with a search bar at the bottom would be nice. Normal Kmenu look, but when you search, it converts into the List style. Old style control center. Ability to make the new plasma kicker as customizable as the old kicker. I had been looking forward to KDE4 for a while, even been using the 3.5 backport of Dolphin for months, but with some of the things I had issues on, everyone kept reassuring me that “oh, you can make it look how it used to”. If that is still the case, let me know how.
Great thing KDE 4 got released!, of course I won’t use it as my main Desktop manager just yet, but a major milestones for the KDE team for sure.
My main question is: What are the system requirements?, and I’m not that really interested in the minimum requirements, but more on the recommended requirements to see the whole potential of KDE 4 (so that everything runs smooth without choppy performence)
@ Hellmark:
I think those are all solid points. Some of them are addressed in this post:
http://software-libre.rudd-o.com/KDE_4.0.0_emergency_FAQ
I’m going to add that link to the above post.
Your comments also point out the benefit of the 4.0 release. Getting real world, everyday usage and comments like yours will help the direction of future development and make 4.1 outstanding. I’m going to get into this further in my next post. I complained about the big fat kicker previously. It will be changing. The pace of development has not slowed since the release was tagged. My bet is we will see rapid changes. The somewhat rocky start is only going to help KDE in thlong run.
@Sergio:
I’m not sure of the answer, I think a reasonably modern system will do the trick. The key currently seems to be a decent Nvidia card with the latest proprietary drivers. There is a fix in the latest drivers (I can’t remember currently exactly what it is) that makes KWin’s composite work a lot better.
Thank you both for visiting and commenting.
rich
Personally, I think that 4.0 seemed kinda rushed, and really, more of a prerelease feel. Several developer blogs I’ve read talked about features that were left out due to not making the deadline, that really should have been included. I’ve just always been of the school where you shouldn’t ever lose features that had existed previously, unless people wanted them gone. Right now, reminds me too much of Vista, in how it runs, how it looks, and from what I’m hearing about all the things that missed the boat. Well, here’s to 4.1. Hopefully that is what 4.0 should have been.
New technologies are always imperfect.
It’s the imitations that are full-on broken.
I like the new KDE 4. It actually was a bit more responsive than KDE3 on my computer. I have a 1gb of memory and an old 1.2ghz amd processor which is starting to feel a bit aged but it surprisingly can handle it.
The one thing I want to see is more walkthroughs and easier handling of widgets. The potential is there for widgets and the desktop/panel to be a really innovative and deeply customizable but right now it seems difficult to deal with and also seems to be missing some commands (such as bottom panel configuration and easier ways of adding widgets and configuring them).
I’d like to see more guides and publicity that will better help people become affiliated with the interface as well.