KDE 4.5 Released 302
An anonymous reader writes "KDE 4.5.0 has been released to the world. See the release announcement for details. Highlights include a Webkit browser rendering option for Konqueror, a new caching mechanism for a faster experience and a re-worked notification system. Another new feature is Perl bindings, in addition to Python, Ruby and JavaScript support. The Phonon multimedia library now integrates with PulseAudio. See this interview with KDE developer and spokesperson Sebastian Kugler on how KDE can continue to be innovative in the KDE4 age. Packages should be available for most Linux distributions in the coming days. More than 16000 bug fixes were committed since 4.4."
W00t (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:W00t (Score:5, Insightful)
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Seriously though, phonon has pluggable backends, and this does not mean the PulseAudio is going to be compulsory for KDE users, any more than its DirectShow integration makes MS Windows compulsory for KDE users.
I really appreciate this feature. Instead of just hearing sound from speakers, I find it tremendously important to be able to "plug my own backend" to hear it, you know, somehow differently.
Re:W00t (Score:4, Insightful)
Or your distributor can plug in the best backend on your OS (yeah, they really might be different on Solaris, BSD, Linux, Windows and Mac) so that you can get sound from your speakers.
Of course if you're an obsessive tinkerer or your distributor ships you a broken version of a particular backend then you have the option to fix it yourself too.
Stu J (who can't be bothered to register and account)
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Sorry about redundant posts. Slashdot web backend seemed to be failing badly.
Which backend works for your hardware? (Score:3, Insightful)
I'd rather have just the working backend; not as a default, but as the only option.
How is the distributor supposed to know, in advance, which backend is the best working backend for your particular hardware? The options are there in case automatic detection fails, so that you can at least have sound for the six months between when you install a distribution and when the distributor releases the next version that may or may not correct the defect in automatic detection of your particular hardware.
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Why not? Compiling to change an option is not user-friendly.
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In general, I would rather that developers keep obscure options available, (with sane defaults, and under an "Advanced" tab or similar) than remove them in case idiots play with them. If you don't agree with me, you're welcome to u
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It's KDE. Any change is a reasonable change for a user to do. That's why I use it.
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Compile-time? Why? Phonon is designed so that *all* backends that work with your OS can be provided and users can change backends in run-time without any applications having to handle anything, or even needing to be aware that anything has changed. Why should it be "unreasonable" for a user to select backends?
How often do windows/mac users change their audio backend?
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In foobar2000 in Windows 7 you can choose Windows Audio Session API (WASAPI), DirectSound or ASIO/Kernel Streaming, and each has different advantages.
Re:W00t (Score:4, Funny)
Windows Users don't have multiple workspaces, or window transparency (at least I haven't encountered it in Windows 7), or a package manager.
Which of these is relevant to audio?
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I guess you're being sarcastic, but some people do want to use network-transparent audio systems, for example.
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I can't tell whether you're implying that KDE developers getting to use a unified audio API across different operating systems complicates the user experience in some way, or that you are somebody who pointedly doesn't care how things work internally, in which case I'm not sure why you bothered replying.
Phonon in KDE *is* a user-visible entity. You have to priorize different backends, etc. You can also enjoy nice error messages about Phonon backends not working when running KDE programs inside Gnome.
Re:W00t (Score:5, Informative)
Sorry State of Sound in Linux. [blogspot.com]
He wrote an update in 2009. [blogspot.com]
He pretty much hits the nail on the head with every single problem I've had with Linux audi.
Re:W00t (Score:5, Funny)
He pretty much hits the nail on the head with every single problem I've had with Linux audi
Bloody latency, the 'o' still hasn't arrived.
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plug my own backend
I find that plugging the sound in my backend, the deep bass really helps me loosen up.
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Frankly, not supporting PA well has been the most ridiculous shortcoming in KDE (after networkmanager). It has been the "no audio desktop environment" lately, but this appears to be fixed now.
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I've been using KDE since 4.2 with PA, often using the ability to output to another PA instance on the network, reliably, on Gentoo and Ubuntu, mainly using Amarok. You are trolling hard and fast.
Nice that it worked for you.
With freshly installed Ubuntu, I could hear sound from Gnome, but not KDE. Well, KDE 4.4 works ok.
Clearly it was not the fault of KDE - perhaps I should have called a computer repairman?
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Frankly, not supporting PA well has been the most ridiculous shortcoming in KDE (after networkmanager).
I am puzzled at what this networkmanager problem you state is/was? been using kde since 2002 and networkmanager has been around at least five years plus on my fedora system.
In regards to kde and PA, ever since PA graced it's ugly head some years ago (fedora users are always first for every new system, yay for bugs) it's been no more buggy than under other window managers.
Professionals use jack for their whole sound system anyway.
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I think he's speaking about the fact that networkmanager integration in early KDE 4.x releases was EXTREMELY deficient.
If I recall correctly, Ubuntu had to pretty much write their own NM interface for KDE 4.x, and on my one remaining Gentoo box, I had to run the KDE 3.5 networkmanager applet for quite a while to have any sort of networkmanager functionality.
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Back in KDE 3.x days, NetworkManager was just getting started, and Unbuntu shipped a very bad snapshot of it which prevented network connections.
At the time Unbuntu shipped this broken copy, the KDE NetworkManager group had already shifted dev work to the 4.x series, but Unbuntu didn't ship a 4.x KDE until much later. As a result, Unbuntu's poor QA and packing practices led most people to think that NetworkManager didn't work under KDE, rather than the correct conclusion, which is that Unbuntu didn't do pr
Re:W00t (Score:5, Insightful)
I can't comment on the rest of the Linux UI experience (my Linux knowledge is firmly positioned in the headless server region), but come on - audio is something that shouldn't even be on a users agenda for worrying about these days.
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I don't even know what the audio subsystem is called because its never been an issue, Ive never had to tinker with it. Hell, for the past 5 years I haven't even needed to install drivers and its still produced beautiful sound.
Yeah, that's been my experience with GNU/Linux as well.
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Wait until you need something like SP/DIF output to work, or want to actually make it run natively at 44.1KHz instead of the abomination that is 48Khz.
Re:W00t (Score:5, Interesting)
Linux sound works perfectly for me now that Pulseaudio is stabilized. And it is great, I no longer use the system volume like I did in the past, I have a pulseaudio plasmoid which shows a volume bar for every app streaming audio and I tweak the bars as I like. I still see many people who like to bash Pulseaudio, but most of them seem to talk about the Pulseaudio of one or two years ago. In the latest releases of Ubuntu and Fedora I did google for any review that would talk about pulseaudio or any kind of sound problems. It turns out I found several reviews talking about how the new release had fixed the audio problems they had in previous releases, and only one talking about new audio problems. So it seems to me that Linux audio has got fixed and greatly improved with PA, but I don't think the PA haters will admit it.
Re:W00t (Score:5, Interesting)
Linux sound works perfectly for me now that Pulseaudio is stabilized.
It has certainly gotten better, but there are still plenty of issues with audio in Linux, at least out of the box. Some of them are driver related, some are still PA related, and some are related to poor default Alsa configurations. I can give several current (Ubuntu 10.04) examples of audio issues in Linux.
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Well. audio support is no KDE4 issue. They did everything right with Phonon.
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I don't know if it is Phonon or Amarok-specific, but I can tell you that for whatever reason, AmaroK completely screws up my system sound every time I use it.
Music played within Amarok will play fine, but everything else becomes silent until I fire up MythTV and watch something, as Myth seems to do a pretty thorough reset of my system's audio output settings once it finishes playback, while AmaroK seems to leave them hanging in a wacky state.
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If something completely screws up your system sound, it's the system sound's fault. No app should be able to do that, no matter how broken.
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I have never needed to tinker with my audio for the last 8 years with Linux.
I've had a Pentium 2, an AMD 2800 and currently a Phenome 9950 X4. My Eee PC 900 (Celeron version) was also just working. An Pentium Dual Core Dell office pc and a Dell Precision with a Core 2 Duo...
Audio problems? Linux? I know some Alsa drivers are truly crappy. So crappy and buggy that PulseAudio doesn't work. But PulseAudio never failed me, except once with that Dell Precision for the first two Ubuntu releases that shipped Pulse
Re:W00t (Score:5, Informative)
I think you will find that pulseaudio is able to quite a lot more than just play sounds. E.g, you can have one program play in your speakers and another in your usb headphones. The mainstay of the discussion is whether anyone needs this, and whether pulseaudio is bugfree enough for everyday use. The bit you mention has been solved by ALSA for a long time now.
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You don't game much, do you?
Game sounds go thru speakers. VoIP (TeamSpeak or in-game) go thru headset. At night, when people are sleeping, both sets of sound go thru headset.
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I never managed to make the audio system in Windows XP behave as i would like. I have 2 sound output devices(Headphones and an usb headset) and I never managed to
control which software did output to which sound device. And I also miss a Windows application to control the sound level on an "per application" level. And features such as redirect audio to other computers.
So part of the reason the linux audio system is still in a bit of a flux is that it is designed to do so much more then windows, thus making i
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You don't need to standardize on a single backend: you can use OSSv4 with the ALSA API. Just get all apps/sound libraries to use that API, and then you can switch backends without any problems.
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Personally, I love the new OSS. What I don't love, is the pain in the ass procedure to get it installed. I'm no guru, but I'm no dummy either. It took me about 3 hours to get OSS4 installed. Yeah, it was GREAT - but it was just to much sweat. Every once in a while, I do another search for a distro that ships with OSS4 instead of PA/ALSA. No luck so far.
http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/linux-general-1/list-of-distributions-that-have-oss4-in-their-repos-683617/ [linuxquestions.org]
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Draco Linux [google.com] is OSS only.
notifications (Score:4, Insightful)
i like the new notification system, but it still feels hacked together.
if you close tabs or subwindows in your notification it resizes in a jerky way.
doesnt feel really smooth and looks unprofessional.
it would be nice if you could make the notifications "transparent" in front of
certain windows (the way its done with the ubuntu notifications).
it annoys me to no end having notifications pop up, while you are gaming.
but i hope they will fix that in later releases.
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"but i hope they will fix that in later releases."
This is basically now the KDE mantra.
I remember when I used to be excited by new KDE releases. Now I just greet every new one with a sense of dread at what they've broken this time.
Bug fixed (Score:4, Insightful)
More than 16000 bug fixes were committed since 4.4
I'm not really sure whether this is a good thing or not.
At least for code quality.
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Re:Bug fixed (Score:4, Informative)
KDE Code quality is high and they have a KDE review board [kde.org]
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Just because it complies with some formal coding styles and formatting doesn't say anything about the actual content and sanity of the structure. Very many systems seem to get do-overs on a regular basis.
Re:Bug fixed (Score:5, Interesting)
review board isn't about code styles and formatting. Its about seeing what the changes were to the code. Sure, you can use reviewboard for style-based code reviews, but its trivial to also use it for potential code issues. Its really there for an experienced developer to cast his eyes over the changes, and to make sure it doesn't do anything he knows is wrong.
If you're using reviewboard solely for style reviews, its because your development processes havn't yet been printed out, rolled up and shoved into your development manager.
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It's a huge codebase, and it seems it is getting stable just now. Some tens of thousands of fixes more and I can even start thinking about switching to KDE 4 :)
Why do I need KDE? (Score:5, Insightful)
I think I'm the typical techy user. During the day I'll use xterm , open office, firefox and gxine. And maybe one or 2 other apps.
Can someone explain to me why I need a huge resource hungry window manager, sorry - desktop enviroment - like KDE running as my machine? This is a genuine question, not an anti KDE troll. I simply don't get it.
Re:Why do I need KDE? (Score:5, Informative)
Because for every one of you, there are 10 (or more) folks that are not techy's and appreciate the richer UI.
You can probably get by w/ e16/fvwm/fluxbox, and be extremely productive. Users who have used Win32 will appreciate a similar UI to help them ease into the power of a linux desktop.
KDE is more than just a desktop Environment, it's a whole programming library and philosophy that unifies a family of applications, so they can interoperate, exchange data, and work together as well as you do.
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Because for every one of you, there are 10 (or more) folks that are not techy's and appreciate the richer UI.
Do not forget techy's that like using rich UIs too.
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While that may be debatable, I'm alluding to (IMHO) brilliant technical achievements of kio-slaves, kparts, dcop (which worked really well before dbus was widely adopted), and so on. The component architecture of KDE, when fully embraced, is a great modern interpretation of the old unix philosophy "Each tool should one thing, and do it well"
If they've lost sight of that, then I too would be saddened.
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In your case, it sounds like a solution in search of a problem. You seem quite able to do your own thing and having to do similar things in KDE's framework might prove to be a stumbling block for your workflow.
That said, for a lot of people who might not be so technical inclined, the KDE desktop *becomes* linux. Sure, in reality, it's just a desktop manager, but for those who choose to avoid digging deeper, KDE for all purposes becomes a metaphor for linux itself. For other people like me (mind you, I'm
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Depends on your needs. If you are running on a notebook, for example, common things that you might need are:
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I use KDE for the same reason I use eclipse instead of emacs: It is functional, integrated and easy to apply my work flows to it. KDE is comfortable and comfort if very important when you are using the desktop hours on end every day of the week.
I hate to use MacOSX or Windows because I lack empathy to the way Mr Jobs and the whole MS & Partners think I should interact with my desktop. I annoys me and instead of getting things done, I get the feeling of fighting the computer. I also dislike plain window
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That being said, I actually do love KDE eve
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I think I'm the typical techy user. During the day I'll use xterm , open office, firefox and gxine. And maybe one or 2 other apps.
Can someone explain to me why I need a huge resource hungry window manager, sorry - desktop enviroment - like KDE running as my machine? This is a genuine question, not an anti KDE troll. I simply don't get it.
If you start integrating things like GUI file manager, GUI system configuration/control panel, and a desktop widget system (application launch menu, volume control, network/WLAN status&control, printer status&control, application notifications...), you quickly end up with something very much like Gnome or KDE.
KDE and Gnome are also a set of application libraries. It saves memory and simplifies updates when all the applications use the same libraries, not to mention unified look&feel of applicat
Re:Why do I need KDE? (Score:4, Insightful)
First of all, if you really aren't trolling, you should know the difference between a window manager and a DE. It's about as irritating as saying "Ubuntu is a terrible window manager, sorry - distribution".
As to why you need a DE? You don't. Some people like using them, others don't. A few examples of things I use KDE for:
KDE also has some very nice features for application developers, such as the kparts system, which further improves consistency. For example, kate (an advanced text editor), kwrite (a notepad-style editor), Kile (a LaTeX IDE) and kdevelop (a software development IDE) all use katepart for text editing, which gives their text editing widgets the same appearance, keyboard shortcuts, indenting options and so on.
I've only scratched the surface here, but it's still perfectly reasonable to use a simple WM with some kind of launcher instead, or to switch between them.
KDE is great (Score:5, Interesting)
I really like KDE and I believe that it needs to be supported better by distributions. Kubuntu is a mess.
The investments of KDE in code quality [englishbre...etwork.org] and design will pay off. Unfortunately runtime quality was lacking, esp. reg. Plasma crashes in earlier versions. KDE is now in a state where it maturates. Here the SC split in three components really makes a whole lot of sense.
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I agree Kubuntu is a mess, I installed it recently to try KDE 4.4 and was completely turned off it. Mandriva seem to get KDE right. But I'm still not coming back, not just yet.
I really liked KDE 3.5. KDE 4 turned me off Linux desktops completely - I'm now a Mac user. It'll be years before KDE regains the users lost due to early KDE 4 versions.
KDE is like Ford! (Score:4, Insightful)
I am not stubborn or anything, but if KDE made a mistake once, they can never be trusted again! Ever! Especially in the software business, where hardly anybody takes any wrong decisions these days.
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Funny you should say that, since OS X 10.0 was barely beta quality as well.
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KDE was always a mess on Debian.
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I really like KDE and I believe that it needs to be supported better by distributions. Kubuntu is a mess.
I've been running KDE on Arch Linux since 4.1, and it's been great.
This is odd (Score:2)
I am still getting massive RAM usage from plasma-desktop after moving from RC2. I understood it being higher in RC2 but 174mb in Plasma, in the stable version, is extremely odd. Anyone else getting it this high? Not using many plasmoids here, just a pretty standard set of clock and taskbar and such.
Anyway this release is strangely disappointing. I am not even sure of what I was expecting with it but feels the same with a new notification system (still bothersome when doing anything fullscreen, too). Oh well
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How do you measure RAM usage? not with top, I hope... Because most of the plasma memory is in fact the pixmaps which are counted thrice (once for the app, once for the xserver, and an extra time in the videocard for the double-buffering)
See, plasma runs on phones [slideshare.net], so clearly it is not that heavy (not that phones are not pretty powerful these days, but still)...
That's all nice (Score:2, Troll)
KDE is doing a Miguel de Icaza lately and imitating Microsoft's "total integration," including their own version of the Registry: akonadi. Which may be nice, but it's also terribly fragile for something that's supposed to hold all of your data. See, for instance, bug 244250 [kde.org].
Coolest feature yet... (Score:5, Interesting)
I use the Marble globe with satellite images as a background for my KDE desktop. After upgrading to 4.5 yesterday, I noticed clouds were added to it. "How pretty", I though. It turns out that clouds are not placed randomly for scenic effect, they are actually downloaded images of the current state of clouds all over the planet. Yes I checked yesterday, and today the image is slightly different and still consistent with satellite imagery from weather websites.
Call me easy to impress, but that blew me away.
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Maybe you're even more impressed if I tell you that the stars in the background aren't random stars. They show the positions of the real stars. So if you look above the earth's north pole you can spot the big dipper and polaris.
Konqueror and Webkit? (Score:2)
Re:Konqueror and Webkit? (Score:4, Insightful)
Strangely, WebKit integration back in Konqueror has never been particularly "robust".
Re:Konqueror and Webkit? (Score:4, Interesting)
Integration is not simply about having an extra widget (which has been there for some time). Integration is about saving sessions, integrating with kwallet.
It is also about providing the API which is used by other applications for purposes other than displaying web pages. All these things, KHTML does, and does well (as well as displaying the web pages), but the webkit kpart needed much development.
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It's not KHTML by another name, it is a fork of KHTML.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KHTML [wikipedia.org]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WebKit [wikipedia.org]
Webkit has had Apple developing for it in the 8 or 9 years since they created it. It also has a much larger userbase than KHTML since it is used as the basis for Safari, Chrome and many mobile browsers (notably those on Symbian and Android, and of course iOS).
not quite yet for kubuntu... (Score:2)
The 64-bit binaries have been released, the 32-bit haven't yet - at least not on the beta ppa.
I upgraded my 64-bit machine over FreeNX this morning and it appears to work fine.
16,000 bug fixes (Score:2)
16,000 bug fixes committed.
That's a lot of work, really.
But I don't know whether it's something to be really proud of, as it also means that there were at least 16,000 bugs in KDE 4.4. And no matter how you look at it that's no small number!
Does it still require you to install a RDBMS? (Score:4, Informative)
I hopped off the KDE4 train at 4.2 when Akonadi required MySQL as a dependency. IIRC, it can now use PostgreSQL as well, but the point stands: Why do I need a RDBMS to run a desktop?
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And if you do, why not just use Sqllite?
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Because Akonadi needs a RDBMS to do what it does.
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Because I have tens of thousands of mails with way too many attachments. And some people have ten or a hundred times as much.
So nothing short of a RDBMS will in fact cope with that volume. And I should also add that whining about is is a purely knee-jerk reaction as in most cases it will use very little resources (way less than your browser). I guess you are an old hand who remembers days when servers would be dedicated to running these beasts. Well, that still happens, but only for very, very large dataset
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I disagree about the 'waah, it uses too many resources' as there's plenty of times code is written as cheaply as possible (for the developer, that is) leaving the users to pick up the tab. The cost-basis of coding *should* be the other way round, but I guess that's just my ideal.
However, in this case it looks like Akonadi has used a DB to store its cache instead of a simpler, internal, construct. Or a sqlite DB, which is very suited for this task. Whether the developer didn't know about serialising a key-va
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Insane. And it looks like the KDE devs are not even considering making the whole Akonadi and associated daemons mess optional. What happened to good old Kmail?
INSANE.
Notification System? (Score:5, Interesting)
I definitely appreciate very much the developers fixing bugs and making the system more stable and polished. Thanks! However, if some trivial things get sold in an exaggerating way, this may actually not help the image of KDE (GNOME, Linux, etc.). After all, one of the reasons I am using FOSS is because I am really tired of stupid bullshit advertising crap.
Re:Notification System? (Score:4, Interesting)
the notification system is hard: applications like to embed little applets in the tray, for one thing, and interaction with these in a clean, consistent way is not easy. Notifications are also hard to get right: you want all the information, you want it non-obtrusive, you want to know what is happening, you want to be able to respond to them in a timely manner.
Basically, it is a very small part of your desktop which can cause immense amounts of grief: a lot of the bad rap vista got was from the popups from there...
A Gnome user that wants to give this a try... (Score:3, Interesting)
I've been using Gnome on Ubuntu for about 5 years.
I know that Kubuntu is not as polished as Ubuntu. What would be a good KDE distribution to give a try, to see the desktop environment for all it is?
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openSUSE
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"I know that Kubuntu is not as polished as Ubuntu." -- how do you know that? In what respect is not as polished?
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Ubuntu gives a lot of love and care to its Gnome configuration, as well as adding their own addons. Kubuntu ships something closer to vanilla KDE, and there have been a few releases which have been a bit broken in the past. That said, I'm using Kubuntu currently, and I rather like it.
So, to GP: Why don't you just "sudo apt-get install kubuntu-desktop" on your current Ubuntu installation, switch GDM to log you into KDE, and explore a bit? You should be able to remove kubuntu-desktop and the unwanted KDE pack
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Well, I for one I'm happy that they didn't start to polish it by moving the window buttons God knows where.
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SUSE is the champion.
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KDE in slackware works perfectly out of the box. Might not be the latest version they're using, but it's most likely the most stable one.
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The main reason I'd suggest sticking with it though is just familiarity. You can switch back and forth between GNOME and KDE pretty effortlessly running the same distro.
That being said, I hate to discourage exploration! Download live CD's for every distro that sounds interesting! Try them all! (-: Maybe you will like one better... after all, with Linux even switching an entire
Perl Bindings (Score:3, Informative)
It's very nice the Perl bindings were updated and are now included in KDE. :)
It makes me itch to start playing with KDE again.
Re:why would you not just use dwm (Score:5, Funny)
if i wanted to get raped by a mouse i would just go to a pet store, buy one and shove it up my ass
So you have a pluggable backend too?
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Fuck KDE. Seriously, who wants a desktop with a smelly foot on it?
smelly foot = Gnome
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For me there never was a war. It's KDE, hands down. The most popular option is never the highest quality.
Enter ye in at the strait gate: for wide is the gate, and broad is the way, that leadeth to destruction, and many there be which go in thereat: Because strait is the gate, and narrow is the way, which leadeth unto life, and few there be that find it.
-- Matthew 7:13-14
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The most popular option is never the highest quality.
Dunno, Ubuntu is pretty popular.
Exactly. So is Windows.
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Never a war for me too. I used both, each has a different what-ya-ma-call-it... fuck, blank... philosophy! Each has their own philosophy towards the user experience. You gel with the one, or the other, and some folks can switch between the two and not care about the differences.
Kinda like being bisexual, a double adapter, open-minded to exploration and pene... [cut explicit rambling here]
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which basically tells us something about how mature fans of each desktop are...
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It appears there isn't a package for the backend in Ubuntu Lucid currently. But I'm actually using it, using a package I made and store in my KDE-related PPA. I also have a package for the MPlayer backend. Here's the link, if anyone is interested:
https://launchpad.net/~pxc/+archive/pxc-kde [launchpad.net]