Submitted by The KDE team has pushed out the first beta release of KDE 4.3. The highlights of this release are the integration of many new technologies, such as PolicyKit and Geolocation services, new window animation effects, a more usable run command popup, many new and improved addons in Plasma, Many bugfixes and improvements across all applications, and more integration of features coming with the KDE 4 platform.
Even if this changelog is not really appealing, features are there. 4.3 bring so many small improvement just about everywhere to improve the user experience and the look of KDE. I love the new dolphin preview, the new “natural” plasma animation, foldiewview navigation on hover feature (really cool), pastebin plasmoid, improved (classic) KMenu, alt+f2 work better than ever and everything feel fast (finally). Kate also got some improved plugins like completion (I am a big Kate user).
KDE 4.3 is my main desktop in Mandriva 2010.0 (cooker). Going from 4.2 to 4.3 is not a big leap forward like 4.0 to 4.1 or 4.1 to 4.2, or at least, is not a big leap forward at the moment. But it’s quite stable. My feeling is that this is more like a bug fix release rather than implementing new features.
If you want to try KDE 4.3 beta DistroWatch has a nice article on how to transform your Mandriva 2009.1 in Mandriva 2010.0 (cooker).
http://distrowatch.com/weekly.php?issue=20090511#tips
Edited 2009-05-13 21:08 UTC
The features for 4.3 are not yet done. By the time 4.3 final is released, it will have more features.
By the way, 4.3 is pretty nice and responsive so far.
The features are done. Feature freeze was a while ago. Now only bug fixing is allowed.
The fact they are taking portions of WebKit and refactoring them into KHTML and keeping that going, instead of moving to WebKit directly and using it’s engine for the Help System amongst other subsystem features in WebKit tells me Ego runs amuck in some areas.
Just looking at the Plans section:
“Move KDE integration of QtWebKit into kdelibs (but not KPart!) ”
The rate at which GTK+ WebKit is starting to move it’ll be more complete in Epiphany than Konqueror is with WebKit duct taping.
to paraphrase:
ttttttrrrrrrrrrrrrooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooolllllllllllll lllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllll.
Edited 2009-05-13 21:23 UTC
He’s still right. Khtml is a total and utter mess compared to Webkit.
I refuse to use KDE4 because I don’t want to use Khtml. They can call me the moment they get sane again and ditch Khtml in favour of Webkit.
I hate to break it to you, but you don’t have to use KHTML to use KDE 4. Go download Opera, or FireFox, or ___________ (insert other browser + rendering engine heere) and use that instead. If that is the main issue keeping you away from KDE 4 you are really missing out. Once 4.3 goes GM its going ot be the KDE 4 that everyone was waiting for, even as a beta its doing awsome.
Well yes, the “Dream KDE” is always Current+1, no surprise there.
Because KDE + 1 is always better than the current one. Not like gnome where
gnome – 1 = current gnome = gnome + 1
</trolling>
The KDE fanboys are still waiting for the “final version”. 4.1 was the first try and become a mess, 4.2 the second and is still a mess: Dolphin is slow like hell and wired content rendering bugs occur (stripes on the display).
(Almost) Every major distribution is using GNOME as their default DE. And Moblin enhances compiz to make GNOME eye candy like KDE 4. Nokia will enhance Qt to make it a good framework for Symbian@handhelds. They do not care about desktop solutions anymore.
For me it’s current. But you are right, current+1 will even be better then current and that’s what I like most about KDE: They improve by each release!
Poundsmack: they said the same about KDE4.2. You can verify that yourself by just digging up the story about KDE4.2 and reading the comments there. When the _current release_ is what Real KDE4 (TM) is supposed to be then you can inform me and I’ll gladly try it. But you’re just doing a disservice to everyone by promising how fantastic and eye-opening and mind-blowing the _next_ release will be.
KDE 4.2 is awesome.
That’s not the point I was arguing about. I just mean that he should stop trying to promise the moon and the sky for when the next release happens.
As for KDE4.2, now that you mentioned it; I still can’t bring myself to like KDE4 :/ I still find it awkward and cluttered. But maybe some day..
4.2 was a mind blowing improvement over 4.1. and now 4.3 will be a mind blowing improvement over 4.2
its not like the gnome updates where i ussually skip every other because teh new features don’t appeal to me or make me in any way shape or form to excited.
What new feature?
All I see is adding new apps it. For a desktop that always said that it was about giving the minimum and letting 3rd party app complete the OS, that sound strange. We are seeing the kdeisation of gnome.
And they said the same about KDE 4.1… 16 months ago.
I recall it quite clearly. Aaron, in this very forum, even went so far as to say he thought that it must gall me terribly to see KDE4 actually coming together. Which was, on two counts, a rather odd thing to say:
1) There was and is absolutely no reason for it to gall me.
2) Sixteen months later, there is still no general agreement that KDE really *has* come together.
Edited 2009-05-14 04:33 UTC
There will never be “general agreement”. People are far too fond of disagreement. But KDE 4.1 was perfectly usable (in fact, I still use it at work, for the use of that development workstation there’s no reason to upgrade), KDE 4.2 was good to go for everyone who doesn’t make a hobby out of quibbling. And sure, 4.3 will be better. 4.4 will be better. Maybe when 5.0 gets released, people will suddenly get together and wax lyrically about how the previous release was perfect, compared to the new .0 release.
That’s human nature for you.
No. KDE 4.2 was the release that works for everyone — and it was just that. A perfectly usable, good release, well maintained. KDE 4.3 improves on that — but then, where’s the suprise in that? Everything that gets more love and care will improve, so the next version will always be better. That’s the way with all software. That doesn’t mean that the software that’s available right now isn’t good enough.
KDE 4.2 has been far from usable or working. Every so called bug fix has brought new even more annoying bugs to deal with. The latest 4.2.3 release is so far the only one I’ve been happy with.
Earlier on I had rather said KDE 4.2 “has the features that are necessary” for an every day user. Though I’m still missing a unified model for the user interfaces (and am sure many of you are too). Currently there are usability bugs in how the menubar and toolbars work (hiding, customizing, icons) and the same with context menus (Konqueror’s and Dolphin’s have same actions but in different locations, etc) and so on. There are currently at least three different icon sets in use for the Next/Preview buttons, that’s insane! (Dolphin, Okular, Gwenview)
Edited 2009-05-14 07:46 UTC
This is going into a “it does — it does not!” type of argument. Simple, dumb fact is that it did work. 4.1 did work. Sure there are bugs. But then, all software has bugs. Safari crashes three times a day on my powerbook, and the dock locks up regularly, too.
OSX works — I can do the part of my work I’m supposed to do with it, with the occasional curse. KDE 4.2 locks up significantly less, crashes significantly less, and I am able to do the part of my job that needs Linux using it.
That simply means that, no matter how often you say “doesn’t work”, that it does work.
(And khtml rocks and still has got some important features that webkit hasn’t, and this is someone speaking who builds a qt/webkit based application for his dayjob.)
Pff, shot me but that is just not true. I was _pretty_ happy with kde 4.2 on Ubuntu 9.04. Minor things like occasional crashes of bluetooth applet or painfully slow dolphin copying of files were painful but I could stand that. Until one day it just stopped. Literally. It stopped loading just after panel showed up and nothing happened. One restart of KDM, another one, and another later. No joy. rm -rf ~/.kde and restart of KDM. Still nothing. Well f–k that, I am using Gnome for 2 weeks now and since I was always KDE fan I don’t enjoy it much but at least it don’t crash. I’ll give 4.3 a try when it’s out as I am hopeless guy who just wants his KDE desk back!
by your description , and if you removed ~/.kde ( in fact , if its kdm crashing , you didnt even had to remove ~/.kde ) , you should know that its not kde’s fault , but your ubuntu kde installation.
probably ubuntu updated or changed something ( or you ).
of course , properly installed kde ( and Xorg ) wont make kdm crash and restart indefinitly, no matter which version ( kde 4.0 , 4.1 , 4.2 or even beta’s or svn versions )
What’s the point of childish comments like this?
Please tell me you aren’t being serious there.
I mean, where would you even use KHTML? Konqueror? I think most people have moved on to Firefox by this point anyway, or Aurora if they prefer a lighter weight Qt based Webkit browser. Not only do they have better engines, they have cleaner UIs because they aren’t part of an all-in-one app.
Pretty much everything new, like Plasma, is using Webkit. It’s just a handful of developers working on KHTML that refuse to move on, and the rest of the KDE community can’t really force them to stop coding on what they want. I think Webkit would probably become the default even in Konqueror if someone stepped up and fixed all the bugs in the Webkit KPart. So far no one has, which is disappointing.
Edited 2009-05-14 00:16 UTC
No new KDE applications usw KHTML. They all use WebKit (Mailody, Plasma, etc.)
KHTML is only used in Konqueror (just don’t install that), Help Viewer (nobody reads documentation anyway), and a few pieces of Kontact, but brilliant HTML rendering is not required there anyway.
Not using KDE just because a single small sub-team consists of arrogant d*ckheads sounds more like anti-KDE trolling rather than any sane mind could come up with.
they are keeping khtml for the help system. you can use webkit in konq if you like. The only purposes of the parent comment was to spark a stupid and pointless debate over the (for all practical reasons, since both are options in the web browser) irrelevant pros and cons of webkit over khtml.
I got a solution for u..
Go to your linux package manager “pacman,apt-get,zypper..etc” and install “kde4-webkitpart” now under kde4 for go to Personal Settings >> Advanced “Tab” >> File Associations >> text >> html >> Embendding “Tab” and move Webkitpart to the top..that’s it..
No more khtml under Konqueror.. easy no.?
its not a troll
kde deserves all the credit in the world for creating what would become webkit
but webkit is more popular and better than khtml now, and so that is what kde should use
KDE keeping khtml in the help system is irrelivent. Both are options in the browser.
The KDE4 API is stable until the end of KDE4. No function call will be removed, nor actual one will have significant new behavior. WebKit was not usable in Qt when KDE4(.0) went out. They can’t just delete it now. But yes, konqueror can switch to WebKit, and it will, at some point.
And yes, many core KHTML developper will quit KDE that day and hate it until the end of the universe.
I’m not certain I understand your comment, which is unusual, so I expect I am missing something significant.
Also, I should disclaim that I follow the khtml/webkit relationship very closely. But I will say that while KDE is off using their own thing, I feel a slight but unsettling disturbance in The Force, as if things are not quite as they should be.
That said, Epiphany’s Gecko->WebKit conversion, although it has experienced delays, is now coming together quite nicely. I think it is on course for a solid debut in Gnome 2.28 coming this Fall.
I’m running a recent 2.27 build of Epiphany-Webkit pretty much full time. And with just a couple of workarounds, I’m loving it. For anyone interested, the two things lacking for me at this time are adblock and on-disk cache. However, unlike in previous releases I have tried, proxy support works quite nicely. So I just chained Squid with Privoxy… and voil~A!! Still lacks the nice process-based model of Chrome. But hey! That’s life. At least for now. I’m happy as a clam, though I must confess that I’ve never understood what clams have to be so eternally blissful about. The predation you see in those nature shows on the public channel gets downright grisly.
Edited 2009-05-14 02:32 UTC
konq in kde 4.3 can use either engine. The beef in the origional comment was that kde hasn’t completely removed khtml from the DE, and that it had to do with egos. The goal was to troll, get everyone talking about how inferior khtml is (which it is), and how egotistical kde devs are (which they can be). Ended up working too.
Truth is as long as webkit is in konq, it really doesn’t matter what is used in the help system, unless you have some sort of weird hatred of khtml.
Perhaps the full saying would explain what the clams are so happy about.
“Happy as a clam at high tide”
to explain that even further, clam digging has to be done at low tide – they are safe at high tide from being eaten.
Yes, KHTML sucks big time, but for the KDE 4 life time this refactoring is the best choice. The main problem is, that the KHTML devs managed to get KHTML into kdelibs. kdelibs the the KDE module that guaranies 100% binary compatibility throughout the life time of a major revision.
So that means that we can’t get rid of KHTML anytime soon. The best solution is to replace the inner workings of KHTML with WebKit code bit by bit in a way that’s binary compatible.
That’s not so bad as it sounds. Putting the KPart into kdelibs requires kept binary compatibility as well. I don’t think that it is crucial that the KPart in addition to QtWebKit is put into kdelibs.
Yer, I’m afraid the penny still hasn’t dropped with some people that the reason why Konqueror wasn’t well used was because KHTML provided you with an unreliable browsing experience. Sorry, but web developers just do not test for your insignificant HTML and JavaScript engine.
Thankfully, that’s why the original and sensible KHTML people like Lars Knoll and George Stalkos, amongst others, decided the brick wall had been reached and started working on QtWebKit.
While KDE developers are free to use the engine they want it’s a safe bet that they’ll end up using what works better for their users as QtWebKit improved and APIs get better – regardless of what is in kdelibs which is the usual excuse. That’s why Plasma uses it. That takes a bit of time.
Edited 2009-05-14 08:11 UTC
It is possible to use webkit with konqueror. Here are some instructions how to do it on Debian:
Create a directory for the sources, e.g. /usr/local/src/kde4 or ~/kde4. cd to that directory and do
svn co svn://anonsvn.kde.org/home/kde/trunk/playground/libs/webkitkde/
It will create a directory webkitkde with the sources. Do
cd webkitkde
and create a build directory:
mkdir build
Go to that directory and run cmake:
cd build
cmake ..
If you get error message, you have to install the appropriate headers (you can find them using apt-cache search package name. You need to install the packages that end with -dev). When cmake finishes without errors, run make:
make
Next you have to install the kpart:
make install
This might not work as normal user. If it does not work, do it as root. The webkit kpart will be installed to /usr/local. Next you have to restart KDE. Then open a page in konqueror. You can switch engines with
View -> View Mode -> {KHTML, WebKit}
This only works if a page is open. If you want to set the WebKit part as default, run:
keditfiletype text/html
and move “WebKit (webkitpart)” in the “Embedding” tab to the top. For me, youtube did not show any videos with the webkit kpart (it does with khtml).
The webkit kpart is not included in KDE because it is not finished. I think the only way getting it into KDE soon is to help developing it. Complaining in forums wont help.
Tks michi now i know how to do this on Debian..tks
>> a more usable run command popup
It would be nice to know exactly what they mean by that. I find it perfectly usable as it is and I would like to know what they have done to improve it.
Smarter completion, more plugins and new layout when you have too many entries. The run command can do more than execute apps, if you enter =2+2, it will say 4 (that was here in 4.0, but it is a good example anyway.
^aEURcNew Tree Mode in System Settings
Let the klutter begins, there wasn’t necesary another view, why add another one?, please, learn from the past.
Edited 2009-05-13 23:26 UTC
The KDE usability team doesn’t like the tree view either that’s why it’s not default and never will be.
There are, however, many old KDE 3 users who prefer the tree view. I find it pointless as well, but whatever… a simple option to enable tree view doesn’t hurt either.
In that case everything could have been fixed with a “Favorites” section, where the user selects the configuration option he likes and after that added it to the Favorites section, that way it will always easy to reach, everyone happy.
Please KDE usability team, have the balls to stop this nonsense klutter, is in your hands.
1.) OSAlert is not a way to reach the usability team.
2.) The usability team doesn’t control KDE.
3.) Open a feature request on brain storm and post it in the usability team’s mailing list.
[edit] – wrong comment replied
Edited 2009-05-14 12:59 UTC
It’s rather like Windows’s Control Panel having a ‘Classic View’ (why would anyone do that?) and what you suggest would create even more clutter than what you’re railing against.
Sorry, but spelling clutter with a ‘k’ won’t make you look any more clever.
It is really hard to find settings in the current systemsettings. You have to go down —4 level of tabs— before beeing able to edit your command. On top of that, they all load slowly on after the other.
Treeview is faster, better and have less useless clic/load time to reach settings.
I agree completely. I personally cannot stand the System Settings layout. It is too similar to Mac’s layout. The old KControl IMO was the best.
Is this the one that has a competent replacement for kdeprint?
Is this the one that will allow me to configure mouse gestures again? (Yes, apparently: http://forum.kde.org/mouse-gestures-t-39636.html )
Does setting a proxy work? (mostly it seems: http://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=155707 )
My list of questions keeps getting shorter. This is nice. Only took a couple years, during which time I stopped using Linux as my main OS
Why? I wasn’t aware that KDE 3.5 or anything else had a timebomb in it that made it stop working.
Ah but it does. If I want to keep using Debian (as I have been since 2003) there will come a time when 3.5 is not in the repositories. I’ll be left with compiling it myself (defeating the purpose of a binary distro) or sticking with the software museum that Stable always ends up as (which is what I’m doing so far), and then OldStable, and finally receiving no updates, security or otherwise.
And it’s simply deprecated. I eventually got sick of using a stale version (that wasn’t 100% perfect itself) while all the work went into its successor.
And really it was symptomatic of the whole constant reinvention thing that has been bothering me. I went through supermount and dev to udev/hal/hotplug. I went through OSS to ALSA. Now hal is being replaced, PulseAudio is stuffing things up, and I have to wonder about a resurgent devfs, all the while waiting for the DE I use to regain some features that were in its previous incarnation years ago. This is to say nothing of the glacial pace of GEM/DRI2 (stuff that’s meant to bring the free stack into more feature parity with the nVidia proprietary stack. OpenGL 2+? Memory management? whoo!) and the horrible performance regressions currently reigning in Intel Graphics Decelerator land as a result.
Add to that frustrations with a USB hub not working with mixed 1.1 and 2.0 devices until I got a new kernel. This new kernel however has broken drivers for my webcam, and my previously working *driverless, hardware* RAID device (which works fine on OSX and Windows and why shouldn’t it) broke forcing me to roll my own kernel despite getting reassurances from the responsible kernel dev that it would be fixed only for it not to be and I got sick of wasting my time.
So yeah, it’s unfair to blame my migration on KDE. I could have just continued to use 3.5 and put up with the other stuff like I always had. It was just the thing that tipped me over the edge. So it was dumb of me to mention that I no longer use Linux day to day in a thread about KDE4 and I’m sorry. I can’t blame KDE4 for that.
I still love free software. I keep a few partitions for Linux, and still use it on the server. But I can’t wait for things to get fixed. And yeah, I know a lot of devs don’t get paid. It’s a perfectly fine excuse, but it doesn’t change the result.
Sorry for rant
This post is sort of a microcosm of my thought process over the last couple years. It started with KDE and led to frustrations with all sorts of things. Follow the post, you follow why I don’t use Linux anymore. If 4.3+ finally destroys the remnants of my questions list, perhaps the road back will also start with KDE.
Edited 2009-05-14 09:51 UTC
I understand you clearly.
I went from running Linux most of the time on my desktop PCs to Windows only laptops.
I keep trying to go back to Linux for a few years now, but my laptop is yet to be supported and is already 5 years old!
Your laptop doesn’t support Linux … it is not a case of “Linux doesn’t support your laptop”.
Linux would be more than happy to support your hardware if the hardware OEM would let them.
http://www.linuxdriverproject.org/twiki/bin/view
Heh, I feel your pain. I’ve gone through those changes just like you, and some of them gave me the same pain they gave you. I must say the current graphics situation is the worst I’ve seen in years. The previous changes (from supermount to hal & friends) were clear improvements which took about a release to work out – while this is taking longer already. And they should kill Pulseaudio right away.
Well, I guess that’s the nature of a FOSS world – many changes with temporary regressions. Then again, I just bought a laptop with Vista, and despite some nice features it regresses in many ways compared to XP and linux. So maybe it’s just a software thing…
I can’t seem to find any live cds with it, http://home.kde.org/~binner/kde-four-live/ doesn’t have it either (yet). Someone knowing of one?
Nevermind: “For a Live-CD with KDE 4.3 Beta 1 download one of the KDE4-UNSTABLE-Live 1.2.85 ISOs from KDE:Medias on download.opensuse.org”
http://download.opensuse.org/repositories/KDE:/Medias/images/iso/
Can someone please tell me what’s the font the taskbar / panel is using in this screenshot?:
http://kde.org/announcements/announce_4.3-beta1/plasma.png
Looks like it could be any of the standard sans serif fonts, like Bitstream Vera Sans.
Hmm I don’t know, the font is too small for Sans or Nimbus. These two fonts don’t look too good once they go below size 9.
This one however looks almost as it was running Windows with Tahoma size 8. Very neat (to my own eyes).
I once managed to get PC-BSD’s version of X.ORG, its font to look exactly literally like Windows. I turned off anti-aliasing and dropped Tahoma in PC-BSD. Unfortunately I could not replicate the same result with Linux’s version of X.ORG. There is something different about PC-BSD’s version and I don’t know what it is. I remember I once did it with Linix too but it required modifying some config files and it was a long time ago. Don’t remember what I changed back then.
Edited 2009-05-14 11:39 UTC
Exactly. On my display, Droid Sans 8px looks just like tahoma (look at the toolbar, here: http://www.thebuggenie.com/kde44.png ). I prefer it 9/10px tho.
Looks like 8px Droid Sans. If you’re using ubuntu 9.04: sudo apt-get install ttf-droid. It’s my new main font.
Thanks for that zegenie, I will try that font. Looks good.
http://pinheiro-kde.blogspot.com/2009/05/kpgp-icon-and-fonts.html
Thom:
It very probably is Bitstream Vera Sans. It certainly looks like it.
That BTW is the very first thing I do on a new KDE4 installation. I open the Font Settings dialog box, and change all fonts to Bitstream Vera Sans. If I have an LCD display, I also ensure that anti-aliasing is enabled.
Highly recommended.
The next thing to do is install gtk-chtheme (which is a faily small package with few dependencies), and run it. This will allow one to choose a GTK+ theme other than Raleigh (which is the default) and which looks terrible under KDE4. Choose Qt4 or Qtcurve or whatever else is available. Search for and install some extra GTK+ themes using the package manager if the available choices don’t suit. There are a couple of themes available which have packages available for a KDE4 theme and also a GTK+ theme.
Also, while you are there, use gtk-chtheme to set the default font for GTK+ applications … and choose the same Bitstream Vera Sans font.
Doing all this gives you a very nice system font in KDE4, far better than the default I find, and it also makes GTK+ applications fit in quite nicely on your KDE4 desktop.
Edited 2009-05-15 02:44 UTC
Are there any plans for an option for app-centric dock a-la OSX and Win7?
I don’t think KHTML is bad – I use it in Konqueror quite a lot and it works well.
I’d be very unhappy about a switch to Webkit. Anything that Apple has its hands on tends to end off full of dumb security flaws. Yes, Chrome uses Webkit, but Chrome isolates each Webkit instance from itself and from the operating system.
I’d prefer that Webkit features get ‘backported’ to KHTML so there can at least be some code review, and so the KDE developers can fix up all the security problems.
I started out on KDE in 1999 and have been primarily KDE ever since until the release of KDE4. I needed something a little more stable than the first releases could provide.
What is everyone’s opinion? Is it time for me to switch back? GNOME is nice, but kind of boring.
It is time to come back. 4.2 is better than 3.5 and stable for day to day use. 4.3 bring almost only polishing and bugfixes
I have to say that KDE is an “ego-driven” project.
Facts:
KHTML forced over WEBKIT
Konqueror (why still develop it?)
KCrap, KMoo, KDumb… why privilege apps with K, over much better ones?
The problem with KDE is simply not a desktop project. It’s a entire ‘Microsoft’ project (Microsoft Money, Microsoft Office, Microsoft Solitaire, Microsoft Publisher). You just feel the brand is the dominant push.
Wanted KDE to build a real slick fast, functional and killer desktop, these developers would concentrate only on delivering the best, and stop bowing down to democracy, housing and feeding poor code to please developers who have nothing more to add to the project.
Your comment shows a complete lack of understanding of how humans work.
I feel dirty just reading it.