KDE 3: All About the Apps

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KDE 3: All About the Apps

Posted by Carsten Niehaus on Monday 10/Apr/2006, @02:14
from the cool-stuff-for-KDE-3 dept.
Last November, KDE 3.5.0 was released. Since then, many users have been waiting for the next big steps. While most of the core developers are working on the first iterations of KDE 4, the KDE 3 developer platform is more vital than ever, resulting in new and exciting applications. "All About the Apps" puts the spotlight on the classics of KDE's applications as well as new and promising applications from the KDE community that can make your KDE desktop more productive. We will also keep you informed about development in current KDE 3.5 series.

New rules in the KDE 3.5 release cycle

Until KDE 3.5, when a KDE release was frozen in preparation to be released, new features, and new user-visible text (strings) were not allowed in the later releases in the series, in order to make sure that no new bugs were introduced and no translations were broken. For KDE 3.5 this has been changed slightly.

Since the KDE 4.0 development cycle will take longer than usual due to the scope of the changes and improvements being undertaken, the developers want KDE 3.5.x to be the best possible KDE for users in the meantime. Therefore, KDE 3.5.1 and 3.5.2 not only fixed a lot of bugs (see 3.5.1-fixes and 3.5.2-fixes), but the developers were also allowed to change some strings in KDE so that many usability-improvements and updates in documentation found their way into KDE 3.5.x.

KDE 3.5.3 will even include some new features. When a new feature is already in the upcoming KDE 4 code, well tested and known to work in KDE 3.5, the author of the code can ask for inclusion in KDE 3.5.3. If no other developer objects, the new feature can be added. Therefore, you will see some new stuff in KDE 3.5.3 (this list is constantly being updated and not yet complete).

Artwork

KDE-Look.org features many new themes, colour schemes, KDM themes, new icons, improvements to Kopete styles and many other artworks. If you want to pimp your desktop, kde-look it is the place to go!

Fast Forward with amaroK

amaroK 1.4 analyzes the mood of your songs.

Many people already know that amaroK is the best audio player available. Version 1.4, of which Beta 3 was just released, takes this even further. With the help of a new artwork team, amaroK has a great new look, including new icons, and introduces moodbar: the first audioplayer to support this new way of representing your music! The improved media device system allows many more devices to be supported, as well as vastly improving the handling of iPods and iRivers. There have also been major improvements in all supported audio engines, including support for extra codecs such as WMA, MP4/AAC and RealMedia (RA,RV,RM).

Tellico: Keep your collections in Order

In February 2006, Tellico 1.1 was released. Tellico is a KDE application for organizing your collections, be they CDs, films, files or books. Version 1.1 brings you many improvements over 1.0 which was the latest version when KDE 3.5 was published. Version 1.1.4 is quite an improvement compared to version 1.0.x which was the stable one when KDE 3.5.0 was released.

RSI-Break: Stay fit

Repetitive Strain Injury is an illness which can occur as a result of working with a mouse and keyboard. With the new tool RSI-Break your are reminded to take a break now and then. In the last month, development has really picked up speed, so now you can enjoy version 0.6 with many new features.

Kaffeine's new user interface in DVB mode.

Kaffeine: Multimedia all around

Kaffeine is the Xine-based media player. The authors just released Kaffeine 0.8. Compared with the previous version (0.7), many new features have been added and the user interface has been revised. Of course, Xine itself is constantly improving, so that you can expect an even better multimedia experience!

K3B: Hot stuff

What is the tool for burning DVDs and CDs in Linux? Most will probably agree that this is the famous K3B! In the past few months the author has published several new versions of K3B to provide you with the most stable burning tool ever. The changes included are far too many to be listed here, so just have a look at the extensive ChangeLog

That's it for this week. If you have a favorite application, please propose them in the comments section. If you want to stay up to date with new cool KDE applications, look at the list of latest KDE applications.

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Related Links

·   Articles on Desktop Environment
·   Also by Carsten Niehaus
·   Contact author

The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whomever posted them.
( Reply )

Over 40 comments listed. Printing out index only.

amarok versus consistency and usability
by Anonymous Coward on Monday 10/Apr/2006, @03:40

It's sad to see my loved amarok doing it so totally wrong to include an iconset own its own. That is so contraproductive in order to get a good desktop experience.

Welcome to the Windows world, where every application delivers its own icons.

I don't want that, listen!

[ Reply To This | View ]

Re: amarok versus consistency and usability by max on Monday 10/Apr/2006, @03:47

Re: amarok versus consistency and usability by Anonymous Coward on Monday 10/Apr/2006, @04:26

Re: amarok versus consistency and usability by max on Monday 10/Apr/2006, @06:39

Re: amarok versus consistency and usability by Carlo on Monday 10/Apr/2006, @10:18

Re: amarok versus consistency and usability by superstoned on Monday 10/Apr/2006, @11:38

Re: amarok versus consistency and usability by Alex on Monday 10/Apr/2006, @14:07

Re: amarok versus consistency and usability by ac on Monday 10/Apr/2006, @12:48

Re: amarok versus consistency and usability by Carlo on Monday 10/Apr/2006, @13:00

Re: amarok versus consistency and usability by mr double standard on Monday 10/Apr/2006, @03:57
Re: amarok versus consistency and usability by Dan Leinir Turthra Jensen on Monday 10/Apr/2006, @05:51

Re: amarok versus consistency and usability by Human in HCI on Monday 10/Apr/2006, @06:03

Re: amarok versus consistency and usability by Ian Monroe on Monday 10/Apr/2006, @09:05

Re: amarok versus consistency and usability by As you like it on Monday 10/Apr/2006, @08:59
Re: amarok versus consistency and usability by Jakob Petsovits on Monday 10/Apr/2006, @10:06

Re: amarok versus consistency and usability by Christian Nitschkowski on Monday 10/Apr/2006, @08:26

Re: amarok versus consistency and usability by Ian Monroe on Monday 10/Apr/2006, @09:08

Re: amarok versus consistency and usability by Christian Nitschkowski on Monday 10/Apr/2006, @17:10

Re: amarok versus consistency and usability by Jakob Petsovits on Monday 10/Apr/2006, @10:46

Re: amarok versus consistency and usability by Anon on Monday 10/Apr/2006, @16:04

Re: amarok versus consistency and usability by D Rollings on Sunday 07/May/2006, @14:08

Re: amarok versus consistency and usability by dhill on Monday 21/Aug/2006, @09:39

Good
by jmfayard on Monday 10/Apr/2006, @03:44

That is a fine initiative, and it's well done.

For the next editions, I suggest to let KDE users discover good but not very well known applications. I know three of them :
* Basket (wow, innovative and useful http://basket.kde.org . Don't cover the stable version 0.5, but the much better 0.6a1)
* KPhotoAlbum (see http://ktown.kde.org/kphotoalbum/videos/ )
* KIO from a user point of view (why you don't need a clumsy FTP/SSH client in KDE)

[ Reply To This | View ]

Re: Good by Carsten Niehaus on Monday 10/Apr/2006, @03:56

Re: Good by Morty on Monday 10/Apr/2006, @05:18

Re: Good by Carsten Niehaus on Monday 10/Apr/2006, @05:27

Re: Good by Ookaze on Monday 10/Apr/2006, @05:43

Re: Good by Carsten Niehaus on Monday 10/Apr/2006, @05:50

Re: Good by birdy on Monday 10/Apr/2006, @08:53
Re: Good by AJ on Monday 10/Apr/2006, @23:46

Re: Good by Morty on Tuesday 11/Apr/2006, @03:14

Re: Good by AJ on Tuesday 11/Apr/2006, @06:27

Re: Good by Thiago Macieira on Tuesday 11/Apr/2006, @09:39

Re: Good by Tim on Monday 10/Apr/2006, @11:29

Re: Good by Evan "JabberWokky" E. on Monday 10/Apr/2006, @11:58

Re: Good by Tim on Monday 10/Apr/2006, @19:20
Re: Good by Thiago Macieira on Tuesday 11/Apr/2006, @09:41

No thanx for fish by a.c. on Monday 10/Apr/2006, @12:16
Re: Good by Thiago Macieira on Tuesday 11/Apr/2006, @09:43

Media KIOSlave
by Ookaze on Monday 10/Apr/2006, @05:38

Unfortunately, I don't see any improvement for the media KIOSlave.
This is very important : will the next KDE support the latest hal version, which does not provide mount points (through modifying the fstab) ? Or is pmount/gnome-mount the only way to go ?

[ Reply To This | View ]

Re: Media KIOSlave by gnumdk on Monday 10/Apr/2006, @06:50

Re: Media KIOSlave by Martin Zbořil on Monday 10/Apr/2006, @08:53

Re: Media KIOSlave by AC on Monday 10/Apr/2006, @15:16

Re: Media KIOSlave by Ookaze on Monday 10/Apr/2006, @08:56

Re: Media KIOSlave by superstoned on Monday 10/Apr/2006, @11:45

Re: Media KIOSlave by ac on Monday 10/Apr/2006, @12:53

Amarokian icons
by hachaboob on Monday 10/Apr/2006, @14:33

Pretty on the website but don't work in amarok because they are not defined when small. The pause button resembles the stop button too much for example.

[ Reply To This | View ]

Re: Amarokian icons by Mark Kretschmann on Monday 10/Apr/2006, @14:37

Re: Amarokian icons by Torsten Rahn on Monday 10/Apr/2006, @20:30

Re: Amarokian icons by Firetech on Tuesday 11/Apr/2006, @02:35

KDE 4.0
by Anonymous Person on Tuesday 11/Apr/2006, @06:27

When will there be alpha release of KDE 4.0 ?

[ Reply To This | View ]

Re: KDE 4.0 by vito gonzaga on Tuesday 11/Apr/2006, @06:47

Re: KDE 4.0 by Thiago Macieira on Tuesday 11/Apr/2006, @09:44

Re: KDE 4.0 by Nicolas Goutte on Tuesday 11/Apr/2006, @07:43

What about Wireless
by Mario on Tuesday 11/Apr/2006, @06:36

One thing I really miss from windows its the ability to change and connect to a wireless network on an easy fashion.

Ive tried a lot of tools for WiFi connection (KDE and Gnome based) and at the end I end up with iwconfig as the only reliable tool.

[ Reply To This | View ]

Re: What about Wireless by Falcon on Tuesday 11/Apr/2006, @07:06

Re: What about Wireless by Anonymous on Tuesday 11/Apr/2006, @21:34

Re: What about Wireless by hiasll on Tuesday 11/Apr/2006, @10:21
Re: What about Wireless by PCLinuxOS on Tuesday 11/Apr/2006, @14:27
Re: What about Wireless by Daemon on Wednesday 26/Apr/2006, @04:13

Kaffeine good, Codeine better
by Leo S on Tuesday 11/Apr/2006, @12:20

Maybe Kaffeine has improved recently, but I always found the interface to be kind of confusing. I really enjoy Codeine (http://kde-apps.org/content/show.php?content=17161) because it just works, and the interface is dead simple. I don't care about playlists or anything, I just want to double click on a video and have it play.

[ Reply To This | View ]

what k3b is missing to be a killerapp
by pinky on Tuesday 11/Apr/2006, @13:12

k3b already can do all the common burning jobs. The only thing i'm missing is an easy way to rip, shrink and burn a Video-DVD. If this would be integrated in k3b, k3b would the the absolute killer app.

[ Reply To This | View ]

Re: what k3b is missing to be a killerapp by hiasll on Tuesday 11/Apr/2006, @14:03

Re: what k3b is missing to be a killerapp by Morty on Tuesday 11/Apr/2006, @15:47

Re: what k3b is missing to be a killerapp by pinky on Wednesday 12/Apr/2006, @05:59

Re: what k3b is missing to be a killerapp by Morty on Wednesday 12/Apr/2006, @10:52

Re: what k3b is missing to be a killerapp by pinky on Wednesday 12/Apr/2006, @05:48

Re: what k3b is missing to be a killerapp by Thiago Macieira on Sunday 16/Apr/2006, @03:44

Re: what k3b is missing to be a killerapp by pinky on Monday 17/Apr/2006, @05:17

The Fine Print: The previous comments are owned by whomever posted them.
( Reply )


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