- Wednesday, 10 February 2010
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Corporations cannot commit treason, nor be outlawed, nor excommunicated, for they have no souls - Sir Edward Coke
KDE 4.3 is released
THE OPEN SAUCE KDE Community released its 'K Desktop Environment' (KDE) version 4.3 yesterday.
Codenamed "Caizen" for the Japanese philosopy of continuous improvement, KDE 4.3 is the latest iteration of one of most popular heavyweight desktop windowing, toolset integration and applications software suites for the Linux and Unix operating systems.
Built by a worldwide team of over 700 contributors who logged more than 63,000 code changes during the last six months, KDE 4.3 includes fixes for over 10,000 bugs and implements almost 2,000 new feature requests.
Major features of KDE 4.3 include KWin, a 3D graphical window manager, the Plasma desktop panels and widgets integration shell, the Dolphin network and content aware file manager, the KRunner desktop search and command launch system, and improved access to desktop and system settings and controls.
The KDE suite also includes a variety of integrated applications in the categories of networking, multimedia, graphics, personal information management, education, games, utilities and software development.
This latest KDE 4.3 release should start showing up within the next few months in the Linux distributions that include KDE as an alternative to the competing heavyweight desktop Gnome and other, lighter-weight desktops.
Or, if you don't want to wait for your favoured distribution to work through integrating it, which can take a while, the announcement includes instructions for downloading it. µ
L'Inq
KDE.org
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Gnome User, Ubuntu
Maybe when it is out I will back up my files, buy a six pack and install Debain with KDE 4.3 and give it a whirl.
Good to see continuing development and improvements for KDE... Gonna have to load it up and give it a go here..
@ Regulas, Give them a little bit. Won't be long before it's in the repos and available for easy installation. Kbuntu team has probably already started playing with it.. LoL
There is nothing in any of the desktops that is very impressive.
When they get the functionality of the OS/2 desktop then there would be something to shout about, until then meh.
...your bloated desktop environment
Which desktop environement, or all in general? Maybe just the KDE, or maybe you're referring to one commenter's use of Ubuntu, or another commenter's mention of OS/2. Or are you talking about all the people reading this while using Windows or OSX?
Wow, nice troll, you flamed everyone and no one at once lol.
Well, it is an improvement over the previous 4.x. But 4 was a definite fail compared to 3.5.x qua functionality, customizability, usability and stability.
Anon: it is kinda funny - the most useful thing about Linux GUIs for me is that I can have lots of terminal sessions running without having to ALT-FUNCTIONKEY between them.
No thanks, I assume the KDE community is still marking missing features from KDE3 as 'wishlist' instead of 'bugs'? Because that sort of blatant disregard for the existing community is what pushed me into XFCE.
Fuck KDE.
It's not easy for open source to achieve Vista's level of bloat.
FVWM2 for me.
Until the end of the year and then revist KDE4. My 3.5.x desktop works very nicely.
I see here that many people praise KDE 3.5 When I switched away from Gnome to KDE, I went directly to 4.x and I really like it. When my wife saw it, she also switched away from Windows on her computer to Linux. I also have an older computer with Fluxbox, but that one is more rarely used. So far, I think that KDE 4.x is the only modern nicely integrated Linux window manager.
Last time I tried KDE 4 was early this year (just before Ubuntu 9.04 was released). I tried Kubuntu and really couldn't get on with it and went back to Ubuntu.
Maybe it was just a bad implementation or it could have been me being inpatient. I'll probably give it another go this time but in a VM on top of Ubuntu so I can get used to it in between doing what I normally do.
Rob
@Ivan
I've been in computing for nearly 25 years. I started out in the early DOS days. All programs had a different UI, so to speak. I watched the early Windows where you used it on 5 1/4" floppy and had to swap them--it was excruciatingly slow, Win 286/386, Win 3.0/1 (and OS/2), and on to Win7. To my experienced pallet at this point the most sophisticated, most polished looking, and the most configurable desktop manager to date is KDE 4.2+. It is hard to believe anyone but a bigot would claim that KDE doesn't hold a candle to OS/2. Obviously you don't remember or know of those days.
@Jim B
I started with computers using punched cards and I remember very well the early days and most of the GUI attempts with DOS and so on - in fact I still have several of them in their boxes down in the garage.
If you want shiny, shiny, then yes, the new KDE and Win 7 are shiny - but that is all.
You appear not to have used OS/2 to any great extent or you would know what I am talking about when I say it is an active desktop. Until the shiny GUIs actually do something other than look shiny they will remain nothing more than the prety new face of the Xerox Star.
The KDE 4 series started off a bit rough, and it's still missing some 3.5 features but it's a tremendous step forward.
KDE 4 is a proper modern desktop with a forward looking architecture. What has been implemented is top quality. Yes there are still many 3.5 series features missing but what you do get currently is a complete and workable desktop environment. I use Linux at home but have to use WinXP at work. The Linux at home started off as a bit of an experiment and I expected to miss a lot of the features and programs from the Windows world - but I reasoned I'd still have access at work. Guess what? The opposite happened - on a nearly daily basis at work I wish for some Linux/KDE feature I now take for granted from home.
I've also used GNOME 2.26 - compared to KDE it does seem a bit more finished, but it also seems a bit last generation.
After seeing the cool video from the release announcement I just had to try KDE. It simply looked too beautiful not to give it a chance. But for this I didn't use Kubuntu as lately I see a lot of comment all around the web that Ubuntu/Kubuntu is not the best way to try KDE (no wonder since they have so much more focus on GNOME). So I decided to give it a go with Mandriva updated to KDE 4.3 packages. And boy I am extremely pleasantly surprised. it looks even better live. Not to mention all the nice touches all around. I love the philosophy of desktop built out of widget objects. Apps also appear to be more powerfull than GNOME equivalents. So yeah. After using KDE 4.3 for about a day it looks like I'm switching. And I think Ubuntu will have to start to pay a lot more attention to KDE as it looks like this is the best desktop that Linux has to stay competitive with the big boys of the industry.