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  The Start of Something Amazing with KDE 4.0 Release
KDE Official News Posted by Sebastian Kuegler on Friday 11/Jan/2008, @03:19
from the a-ppeal-coming-true dept.
Several years of design, development and testing came together today for the release of KDE 4.0. This is our most significant release in our 11 year history and marks both the end of the long and intensive development cycle leading up to KDE 4.0 and the start of the KDE 4 era. Join us now in #kde4-release-party on Freenode to celebrate or come to the release event in person next week. Packages are available for all the major distributions with live CDs available currently from Kubuntu and openSUSE. Read on for details or take the KDE 4.0 Visual Guide to find your way around.

The KDE 4.0 desktop

The KDE 4 Libraries have seen major improvements in almost all areas. The Phonon multimedia framework provides platform independent multimedia support to all KDE applications, the Solid hardware integration framework makes interacting with (removable) devices easier and provides tools for better powermanagement.

The KDE 4 Desktop has gained some major new capabilities. The Plasma desktop shell offers a new desktop interface, including panel, menu and widgets on the desktop as well as a dashboard function. KWin, the KDE Window manager, now supports advanced graphical effects to ease interaction with your windows.

Lots of KDE Applications have seen improvements as well. Visual updates through vector-based artwork, changes in the underlying libraries, user interface enhancements, new features, even new applications -- you name it, KDE 4.0 has it. Okular, the new document viewer and Dolphin, the new filemanager are only two applications that leverage KDE 4.0's new technologies.

The Oxygen Artwork team provides a breath of fresh air on the desktop. Nearly all user-visible parts of the KDE desktop and applications have been given a facelift. Beauty and consistency are two of the basic concepts behind Oxygen.

Distributions known to have packages:

  • An alpha version of KDE4-based Arklinux 2008.1 is expected shortly after this release, with an expected final release within 3 or 4 weeks.
  • Debian KDE 4.0 packages are available in the experimental branch. The KDE Development Platform will even make it into Lenny. Watch for announcements by the Debian KDE Team.
  • Fedora will feature KDE 4.0 in Fedora 9, to be released in April, with Alpha releases being available from 24th of January. KDE 4.0 packages are in the pre-alpha Rawhide repository.
  • Gentoo Linux provides KDE 4.0 builds on http://kde.gentoo.org.
  • Kubuntu packages are included in the upcoming "Hardy Heron" (8.04) and also made available as updates for the stable "Gutsy Gibbon" (7.10). A Live CD is available for trying out KDE 4.0. More details can be found in the announcement on kubuntu.org.
  • Mandriva will provide packages for 2008.0 and aims at producing a Live CD with the latest snapshot of 2008.1.
  • openSUSE packages are available for openSUSE 10.3 ( one-click install), openSUSE Factory ( one-click install) and openSUSE 10.2. A KDE Four Live CD with these packages is also available. KDE 4.0 will be part of the upcoming openSUSE 11.0 release.
    • openSUSE based KDE Four Live CD

Thanks to the coders, artists, usability experts, testers, bug triagers and many more who have made this release the start of something amazing. Tell us what you think on this 4.0 feedback page.



<  |  >

 
  Related Links
 ·   Articles on KDE Official News
 ·   Also by Sebastian Kuegler
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Over 40 comments listed. Printing out index only.
YAY!
by Andrew Donnellan on Friday 11/Jan/2008, @03:23
GO KDE 4.0!

Will be trying it out as soon as I get a chance tomorrow morning Sydney time ;)

KDE 4.1 will be even more awesome!
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Looking forward to the return of kdepim
by Luke-Jr on Friday 11/Jan/2008, @03:24
Hope kdepim comes along soon!
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At last!
by NabLa on Friday 11/Jan/2008, @03:25
Downloading kubuntu packages right now :)

I'd like to say THANKS to anyone that have made this release possible. Nice one!
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Party!
by Andre on Friday 11/Jan/2008, @03:25
Congratulations to the whole community on reaching this very important milestone. May 4.0.0 be the basis for an amazing series of releases!
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Minority Free Software Platforms
by Adriaan de Groot on Friday 11/Jan/2008, @03:25
I'll report on "my" platforms, as a non-Linux user. FreeBSD is in the "it compiles, but runtime is buggy" stage; there is a Qt4 port you can use, and compiling out of SVN has been fairly stable for a long time. Weird konqueror slowdowns have still not been investigated. Lack of manpower is to blame. Some modules fail to compile (multimedia, utils) but I have not looked at them. Join us on #kde-freebsd to help out.

For OpenSolaris, the situation is the perhaps muddier "runtime is ok, but I can't explain how to compile it." Stefan Teleman just blogged more screenies, but getting KDE4 to compile means a lot of manual work to get the dependencies all compiled with the right C++ libraries. It looks like Qt 4.3.1 is required; Qt 4.3.3 seems to have serious memory leaks in the OpenGL stuff on Solaris, but we haven't had time to track that down either. Join in on #kde-solaris for *that* side of the fence.

KDE4 continues the long KDE tradition of cross-platform support (even if it's not-quite-there on the non-Linux Free Software OSsen -- don't get me started on Plan9 unless you have ported X.org to it recently).
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Great!
by AIK on Friday 11/Jan/2008, @03:31
Congrats to all who worked on it!
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Careful!
by Jakob Petsovits on Friday 11/Jan/2008, @03:32
Heh, the promo team managed to surprise me again. I expected a loud hallelujah and praises in this release announcement, it almost feels like pure understatement :D

Congrats to everyone involved! Let's make 4.[0.]1 even more rock!
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Hurray !
by Thomas on Friday 11/Jan/2008, @03:33
Congrats! KDE-team.. you rock!
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Man I am jumpin :)
by Junaid on Friday 11/Jan/2008, @03:41
Bundles of congratulations to the devs, you did it people !!
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THIS IS IT
by Emil Sedgh on Friday 11/Jan/2008, @03:47
/me gives free beer to whole KDE Community!
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I love you all...
by j.v. on Friday 11/Jan/2008, @03:51
I really do!!!
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OS X and Windows packages
by Jos on Friday 11/Jan/2008, @03:59
Excellent! This is truly a great moment. KDE4 can run on Mac OS X and Windows, allowing people that cannot yet switch to a free operating system to use it.

So where can I get the windows version of KDE4?
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KRunner
by JohnFlux on Friday 11/Jan/2008, @04:13
KRunner has a lot of contrast - white on black. Is this the final design? Will it be like that in 4.1 as well?
It would be nice if it was a bit more soft imho.
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Awesome!
by Jan on Friday 11/Jan/2008, @04:27
4.0 is awesome (and its just the beginning :D), thanks to all the people for their hard work!

By the way, splitted packages for Arch Linux are available here:

http://www.kdemod.ath.cx/bbs/viewtopic.php?id=406

Thanks again, and have a nice weekend :)
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openSUSE wiki bug?
by Koko on Friday 11/Jan/2008, @04:29
"openSUSE 10.3: For openSUSE 10.3, the KDE Team worked on the base technologies of KDE 4. openSUSE 10.3 offers by default a KDE3 desktop with single KDE4 applications. A preview of KDE 4.0 desktop (Beta 2) can also be installed. The aim is to offer an easy way to update to the final KDE 4.0 release once it is available."

Beta2? This is outdated right? When I w ill click this button on 10.3 I will get KDE4?
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Congratulations!
by m. on Friday 11/Jan/2008, @04:36
Big thanks to all involved and congratulation to users :)
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looks good.
by kdeuser on Friday 11/Jan/2008, @04:44
Congratulations! Thank you for your great work.
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Thanks and congrats!
by Joergen Ramskov on Friday 11/Jan/2008, @05:17
Thanks a lot for all the hard work that all the KDE people have done to make KDE4 a reality!

Congrats on a major archievement!


I look forward to trying it out later today.
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KDE4Daily
by yman on Friday 11/Jan/2008, @05:19
Just wondering whether or not this excellent service will continue.
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Congratulations!
by Erwin Boskma on Friday 11/Jan/2008, @05:24
Congratulations to the entire KDE team with the release of KDE 4! I've been trying it since Beta1 and it looks and works great. Keep up the good work!
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yahoo!
by Gerwin on Friday 11/Jan/2008, @05:26
They said it couldn't be done .... Congratz guys! Feels very snappy here!
Thanks all your volunteers for making this possible....
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Thank you KDE Team!
by Gian on Friday 11/Jan/2008, @05:43
Thanks for your hard work, it will pay off! KDE rocks!!
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Wow
by Sweeny Lover Of Meat Pies on Friday 11/Jan/2008, @05:45
My eyes are having orgasms just looking at these screenshots! Thank you KDE developers, you are all amazing!
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Again, Congratulations!
by Luca Beltrame on Friday 11/Jan/2008, @05:48
I'd like to join the other posters in saying "Congratulations" for the release of KDE 4.0! It is a great day for Free Software.
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good work
by Mihail Mezyakov on Friday 11/Jan/2008, @05:48
KDE is true! I like it :D
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A BIG THANK YOU
by Swaroop Shankar on Friday 11/Jan/2008, @05:49
Thank you for this sweet release. Sure KDE4 is going to be a great success. I am currently downloading and installing it on my opensuse 10.3 machine. THANKS once again. Great going KDE team
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Application Cleanup
by Luk` on Friday 11/Jan/2008, @05:56
what about the Application Cleanup (http://wiki.kde.org/tiki-index.php?page=KDE%204%20Application%20Cleanup) ?
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Wow!!!!
by Wow on Friday 11/Jan/2008, @05:58
Look at kde-apps, there's a KDE 4 KPlayer, just released!

/me dances and hugs KDE
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What's the name?
by liquidat on Friday 11/Jan/2008, @06:01
I just realized that there is no release name mentioned anywhere. Are names just things for Alphas and Betas?
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Hats off
by bsander on Friday 11/Jan/2008, @06:20
Hats off big time to everyone who made this possible. I have followed the entire development process through Planet KDE, and am very confident that with all the skilled and talented people out there, KDE 4 will grow to become something seriously awesome.

So all you guys (coders, translators, writers, PR folks, everyone involved) should definitely crack open a cold one and celebrate, this is your moment and you've earned it! Again, hats off to all of you!
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Compliments!
by motumboe on Friday 11/Jan/2008, @06:38
my compliments to all the developers!
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Thank you!
by bheil on Friday 11/Jan/2008, @06:40
Very big thanks to all who contributed and especially for the upcoming KDE 4 series. KDE 3 is/was the best desktop out there and I bet KDE 4 will beat it on all ways.
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Applause
by Miglen.com on Friday 11/Jan/2008, @07:04
Applause to all of you, who made this version of KDE.
Best regards,
Miglen Evlogiev
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Congrats!!
by TheGreatGonzo on Friday 11/Jan/2008, @07:13
Well done to everyone that worked towards this. Roll on 4.1.

Kubuntu packages are coming down the line now and building 4.1 on Lenny right now!!

Well done once again.
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Congratulations
by Jochen Becker on Friday 11/Jan/2008, @07:34
I am sharing you happiness and I hope KDE will be successfull as the KDE 3 Series now is. But I also hope it will become more configurable as it is now :(. This blessedly is the only big downer i found yet. I have not investigated this for later Versions.
So i am looking forward to the see what you guys make out of it.

nice regards
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When reading...
by Linus Berglund on Friday 11/Jan/2008, @07:35
... Matthias Ettrichs post about "starting a linux gui" at http://groups.google.com/group/de.comp.os.linux.misc/msg/cb4b2d67ffc3ffce
and then thinking about how big KDE has become I almost start to cry :) This demonstrates the success of visions and opensource!

Thanks everyone involved!
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It rocks
by mihas10 on Friday 11/Jan/2008, @08:55
Best relase of KDE! It is fast... on my 512 MB RAM system.
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Finally!!!
by fred on Friday 11/Jan/2008, @08:57
Damn!! I missed the dot news for few minutes, and the dot is already full of comments.... Finally after waiting for more than 2 years, party time folks!!
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KDE rocks!
by Whoever on Friday 11/Jan/2008, @09:09
Excellent!
Congratulations to the KDE team for their great job!Fantastic!

Cheers!
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alignment
by MamiyaOtaru on Friday 11/Jan/2008, @09:16
Maybe someone can explain why none of the comboboxes in this shot are aligned?

http://img186.imageshack.us/my.php?image=comboboxesyk4.png (annotated to show what I mean)

And I only pointed out the alignment of the right side. The left side of the combo boxes doesn't match up either, and neither does the spacing. Why are Scale and Crop and Color closer together?

It's just a little thing, and hopefully not indicative of the broader situation but it probably is. Widgets and doodads here and there (and I'm glad they are there, the alternative would be further feature paring), but laid out rather haphazardly and without that last bit of polish.

The two color schemes fighting for dominance bothers me too.

Despite that it looks loads better than the betas, and like something I'll consider using around 4.1 or so. Congratulations on getting it out. Sitting on it further at this point probably wouldn't have helped. It's out, being used, critiqued, poked and prodded. This is a good thing and I'm glad to see things moving forward.
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Tanks
by -Flo- on Friday 11/Jan/2008, @09:21
A great thank you goes to all the programers making this dream come true... Thank you very much for your hard work..

Keep it up...it's great
-Flo-
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Greetings and Congrats from Africa
by Mark Adubofour on Friday 11/Jan/2008, @09:40
To all you kde developers i wanna say a big thank you and a job well done. I have been following together with friends via the live cd distros and i must say i was impressed with the massive improvements release after release and the final as well. This is the beginning of more great things to come in the 4 series and we look forward with so much enthusiasm. So from all my folks in Accra, Ghana in West Africa we say "ayeeko" (job well done) to Aaron and all you other kde developers out there.
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I LOVE YOU GUYS
by me on Friday 11/Jan/2008, @09:44
Thank you guys for all the effort putting this together, thank you all!
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Where do we report bugs?
by last on Friday 11/Jan/2008, @10:00
Since this is a release with many changes, there are quite a few bugs. Where do we report them. Some of them are KDE specific, some due to the distro. For example, I am unable to run dolphin in KDE4 (just installed from OpenSUSE 10.3 packages). I get some wierd error, and I don't know where to look for help.

(Soprano) Error occured in thread 3056904416 : "The name org.kde.NepomukServer was not provided by any .service files"
dolphin: symbol lookup error: /usr/lib/libnepomuk.so.4: undefined symbol: _ZN7Soprano4Util10DummyModelC1Ev
<unknown program name>(9165)/: Communication problem with "dolphin" , it probably crashed.
Error message was: "org.freedesktop.DBus.Error.NoReply" : " "Message did notreceive a reply (timeout by message bus)" "
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YEAH!!!
by Marcello Anni on Friday 11/Jan/2008, @10:34
Thank you guys!!!!!
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Am I missing something?
by ac on Friday 11/Jan/2008, @11:01
Just installed KDE4. So...how do you configure the taskbar? By default it's stuck at the bottom of the screen and it's huge. Any ideas? The "System Settings" app doesn't seem to have as many options.
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Wow...
by Odysseus on Friday 11/Jan/2008, @11:14
... my small contributions are finally in the wild. Scary. :-)

Big ups to everyone who've put blood, sweat, and tears into this, especially Mr Seigo who's skin thickness must now be of elephantine proportions.

It's the end of an incredible journey, but just the start of another that promises much for the future, a future that the people are already working full-speed on. Geez you'd think they would at least stop for a few moments to catch breath :-)

So, does anyone have plans for a launch party in the UK?

John.
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Thanks & congratulations!
by xavier on Friday 11/Jan/2008, @11:30
Congratulations! KDE is the best Linux desktop enviroment, I have used it since years in my laptop.

Using openSUSE 10.3 + KDE 3.5.8 and will try this new release sun.

Thank your very much for your big effort.
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Some positive reviews from people who get it...
by Odysseus on Friday 11/Jan/2008, @11:39
http://blog.wired.com/monkeybites/2008/01/kde-4-brings-im.html

http://rackit.gartnerwebdev.com/2008/01/11/kde-40-the-grand-unified-desktop/

http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080111-kde-4-0-rough-but-ready-for-action.html
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shoukran, ini ouhiboukom
by mimoune djouallah on Friday 11/Jan/2008, @11:57
thanks, i love you,in my mother tongue ;) and really i am very impressed by the new presentation of kde, i love the new vision
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yatikoum esaha
by djouallah mimoune on Friday 11/Jan/2008, @12:08
thanks guys u rock;)thanks from the heart, i could not find a better word then in my own mother tongue
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yuck
by anon on Friday 11/Jan/2008, @12:10
reminds me too much of gnome and the dumbed down systems settings is awful. Think I will go back to 3.5

booooooooooo for making KDE a piece of crap. It's funny really, it looks like a monster, a mix of gnome, apple and vista. KDE no longer is unique.
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well actually.. it's not even that bad!
by Marcel Partap on Friday 11/Jan/2008, @12:23
after several failed attempts to compile KDE4-win32 from SVN under WiNE during the last couple of month, two days ago I finally emerged the kde-svn ebuilds (thx to berniyh, philantrop, zephyrus...) and have IT (the coolest thing of 2007) runnnig since then. After some initial weirdities (attention: put '<b>export KWIN_NVIDIA_HACK=1</b>' in your /etc/profile or so if you have an nvidia card, it does make a huge difference!) and fiddling I find this thing totally usable and, despite some strange problems within my xorg-server (cpu hogging, memleaks, crashes in composite mode.. and damn, 7.4 will be released not until march) fast and relatively easy on my memory.. So, <b>thanks and congratulations to all the devs and artists</b>, this really is a great start. And this plasma thingie, it's like the first ipod, nice and sleek but missing several customer feedback loops. I'm totally looking forward to the next few months, and I hope I can join in after my exams and probably fix some of my bug reports myself.
Oh yeah, critical topic, bugs... there are quite some. We should have joined reporting and fixing them back in Beta stage. (Right now, no go in reporting: "bugs.kde.org is temporarily offline to celebrate KDE 4.0.0 launch.")
Even a few grave ones have slipped into the final (your grandmother is probably not gonna hit the konsole one *g), so I expect 4.0.1 and so to be released <em>very</em> soon..
Hot air aside, this is the start of something great. <b>Everyone FEEEEED the baby!</b>
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!!! Amazing !!!
by Nassos Kourentas on Friday 11/Jan/2008, @12:54
Amazing people can only produce amazing results!

Congratulations to everyone involved for what an awesome result KDE 4.0 has proved to be!

Thank you all!
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thank you
by martin on Friday 11/Jan/2008, @13:09
just tried it out, congratulations!!

thank you!
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KDE 4 seems to be alpha quality...
by Yevgeniy on Friday 11/Jan/2008, @13:24
This might be just me but I have just installed KDE4 onto my mythbuntu system. The results were way below what I expected. Although this may be my fault because I this system is not quite clean.

First I had a ton of files on my desktop. When I mouse over these icons the all highlight. The problem is that they highlight and don't un highlight automatically. (I am not using any modifiers - etc shift or control.)

Second the desktop effects (rotations and window movement is really choppy.

Third half of the customization options from KDE3 are missing.

Fourth amarok started twice when I double clicked on an MP3 file. It then crashed.

Fifth did I mention this release was incredibly slow.

Hopefully this is because I installed KDE4 on a dirty system. (Mythbuntu 7.10 with Gnome installed.) My system also uses a nvidia geforce 7900gs. (with the proprietary driver).

Also my brother likes Kolf. However since it moved to SVG it is one of the most buggyest games in the world. (try aiming the ball into a corner. and watch it leave the boundries.)

I will be trying to reinstall KDE4 on my system later (from scratch) and retest KDE4. Hopefully all the issues will be fixed. All of the issues that remain will be reported as bugs to the KDE developers.

Even though the system worked pourly for me, I must admit that it looks amazing.
PS I don't like the icons becoming widgets!
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Parley
by Markus Büchele on Friday 11/Jan/2008, @13:46
I would like to thank Frederik Gladhorn and the KDE Edu team for their outstanding work! Frederik has ported or actually rewritte KVocTrain and has put in an incredible amount of work.
Parley is an excellent vocabulary (and partly grammar) trainer and will be even better with the new features implemented in KDE 4.1! A BIG thanks!!!
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glad to see Konsole is back!
by KDE User on Friday 11/Jan/2008, @13:52
Did anyone notice the screenshot at the top? Konsole now has its rightful place back on Kicker!!
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Congratulations!
by Remulus on Friday 11/Jan/2008, @15:09
You've all done a terrific job! Ale or lager?
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congrats + randr 1.2
by Bram on Friday 11/Jan/2008, @15:40
Thanks to all the KDE developers for this release! I am a KDE user since 0.x and believe KDE 4.0 is a good base for the future.

Does anyone managed to get a dual head setup running with the new 'intel' X driver and randr 1.2? When I try to add a second screen next to the existing one with the xrandr command line tool, strange things happen (white screens etc).
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Congratulations KDE Team
by Saulo on Friday 11/Jan/2008, @17:28
I'd like to contragulate KDE Development Team, programmers, designers, documenters, testers, everyone of them, for this release; I believe that every new KDE release is 'the most important', because it shows to the world how open source can be efficient, beautiful, socially responsable, communitarially sustentable; a happy 2008 for every of you with big advance in KDE 4 development!
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Yes, great. But now I am waiting for KDE 5.0
by Confidence guy on Friday 11/Jan/2008, @19:52
It will be the most impressive and amazing release ever done.

Congratulations for all KDE team.
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To Matthias Ettrich
by Oh Calcutta on Friday 11/Jan/2008, @20:00
Sir,

We would like to hear from you.
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Configurability?
by David James on Friday 11/Jan/2008, @20:52
I downloaded the Kunbuntu live CD image. I guess my first comment is that this took forever @ 40 kb/s; surprisingly there was no listing under the KTorrent search engine for a torrent.

I tested this on a computer with a serial mouse, which, while more Kubuntu's fault than KDE's, the lack of being able to do anything until I pulled the USB mouse out of my main computer and plugged it into the test computer was not an auspicious start. Ya, that's right - a serial mouse wasn't supported "out of the box".

I found the launch menu irritating, especially the arrow system. And why is it so short yet so wide? I mean there was a scroll bar in it in the default layout. That's ridiculous. I haven't yet figured out how to configure that sucker, but it needs an overhaul to make it useable.

Dolphin seems fine once it is configured and customized, but the default is next to unusable. I had to change just about every setting to something else. Even basic things like file attributes under detail view and the lack of the up button in the default set up. And where are my tabs?

Has Konqueror been stripped of its search bar or is that a Kubuntu thing?

About this time I noticed that overall KDE 4 is a lot faster than KDE 3.x, even though it was running from a CD! That I have to say is impressive.

Next I decided to do something about the clock in the tray. What happened to the configuration options? Where's the option to show seconds? Either leave the option in place or take the setting from the system date/time preferences where seconds are set but removeable. And the date - I want to see the numeric date, not the short format date. Even the handy little ability of being able to copy the date/time to the clipboard has been stripped out.

I hope the clock isn't indicative of an overall change in direction towards the GNOME model of stripping out customization options as that's one of the many things about KDE that makes it truly unique and usable desktop. It would be a disappointment if this advantage is just given up.
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oh man....
by Serpentus on Friday 11/Jan/2008, @21:50
Please don't think that I feel mad and disapprove KDE developers work and everything, I know these things happen and that they put there best work to this and make this at their free time so all of us can enjoy. So yeah, I'll be patient cause I know they will get a great product, they have proven to be good at what they do.

Hope to see a better kde in the next update. I know this is the first 'stable' version and almost always with the first versions there are lots of problems.

I don't know, all in all this looks like a temporal reverse in kde, I think this should have been marked as Beta3. But oh well, with all the bugs people are going to open they are going to improve very fast and kick the butt of every Window manager out there because this looks very promising once the bugs are fixed!

Here are my problems (Maybe this happens because I still have kde3 installed??):

Fist of all, You need a MEGA PC to get things working fast (I have an AMD 64 2.2GHz, 1.5 GB RAM, and an ATI x1650 with 256MB maybe the ATI is the problem, cause the drivers suck BIG time). I can't listen to my music and navigate at the same time, IT IS SO SLOW!, I can just do one thing at a time, forget about multitasking! Hell, even the mouse moves with lots of jumps.

The biggest problem I see is that the kde configuration is to basic, I would of like something like previous versions. I would of like to see something similar to kcontrol (Maybe I can't find it, can someone tell me if there is one?)

The panel has a huge bug, It has disappear and can't get it back. So I'm currently unable to use KDE4, my experience lasted like 30 min. before this happened T_T. ii also looked around for an option to hide the panel automatically, but to my surprise, didn't find it anywhere, you can't even right click the panel, it feels like they chained down the configs.

The start menu, is horrible, to difficult to navigate and can't make it bigger. Would love to see an option to let it like it was in KDE 3.x

Can't sort the icons on my desktop by type, and there is also a Bug, if you put your mouse over an icon and then take it off, sometimes the "square" with options won't go away, and if you sort your icons with that "square" on, it gets all messy.

Konquest, the game, is a big NO! this game was great, now it isn't. I liked how the properties of the planets were shown at the left, AND there is also a bug, even if you select to play against a computer player, it plays like a human.

Get a crash when trying to open most of the apps.

Ok, that was my short experience before the panel disappeared. Maybe all this happens because I still have KDE 3?

Even if what I'm going to type next sounds ironic, It isn't, it's the truth, [cause I know it is really hard to write a program, If I knew how to program better (just know basic C and Assembly, not even C++ T_T) I would help this great community. Unfortunately I only can fill up bug reports T_T and seems like I'm only complaining about things.]

Keep up the great work!!! Keep kicking butts like you've always done! =D
Serpentus
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Great work everyone
by JRT on Saturday 12/Jan/2008, @00:24
(so far at least).

Least there be any misunderstanding, I wanted to say that the developers have done great work (in most cases -- nothing is 100%) on KDE4. Major (and much needed) work has been done on the multimedia and hardware interfaces, and the libraries have been updated to make use of new features of Qt4. Some work has been done on Konqueror, but some of it needs considerably more (you can't do everything at once and we shouldn't try). Dolphin has become a mature application. Etc.

It is unfortunate that KDEPim didn't make it into the release. But you will get no argument with me that software shouldn't be release till it is ready (as Linus says). And, we seem to be missing a multimedia application -- Kaffeine is fine but not Qt4 and not shipped with KDE4.

My only complaint is that this release was called 4.0.0. If it had been called the public Beta instead, I would have no problem except for the unfinished desktop; we need to acknowledge that the Plasma project is late -- something that isn't a new problem in the software industry. So, I suggest that those that complain should consider it at that before them complain.

I will continue to complain about things that don't work -- I do so because I want them fixed. But, please don't just complain: there are bugs to be reported and I hope that everyone will take the time to report them -- and please keep track of your bug after you report it.

I do have to say that I wonder why applications are thrown away and replaced with new ones. This seems to be a waste of a lot of code.
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Please provide howto/help for nvidia users
by Marc on Saturday 12/Jan/2008, @00:28
Please provide an official howto or something for kde4 users with nvidia cards - there should be a lot of them around. I read things like "do this" and "tweak that" to make accellerated effects smoother, but for me it just doesn't work.

I have the latest driver and a Geforce6600GT, and i read to this point:

- add "export KWIN_NVIDIA_HACK=1" to /etc/profile

- add
Option "AddARGBVisuals" "True"
Option "AddARGBGLXVisuals" "True"
Option "DynamicTwinView" "false"
Option "RenderAccel" "true"
Option "AllowGLXWithComposite" "true"
...to xorg.conf in section "Screen" and/or "Device"

- add / don't add
Section "Extensions"
Option "RENDER" "true"
Option "DAMAGE" "true"
Option "Composite" "Enable"
EndSection
...to xorg.conf

Without effects, all is smooth. With effects the Desktop Grid is smooth, but minimizing/maximizing, scaling in, moving and rotating of widgets and the overall impression is choppy.

Searching google and testing becomes really frustrating when you get no results, so pleease...
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Widget colours
by fnord on Saturday 12/Jan/2008, @00:41
Black - it's the new last year. Nice work guys!
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Fedora Rawhide based KDE 4.0.0 Live CD
by Kevin Kofler on Saturday 12/Jan/2008, @02:37
Some news from our KDE Live CD maintainer:
http://www.deadbabylon.de/blog/2008/01/11/livecd-for-rawhide-with-kde-400/

WARNING: This comes from our development branch (Rawhide) which is what will become Fedora 9 in about 3.5 months. You may therefore encounter bugs on that live CD which are not necessarily KDE's fault.
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Please provide support!
by Sebastian on Saturday 12/Jan/2008, @04:41
Hi folks,


I like to thank the KDE4 developers for their hard work. I'm using KDE since the first beta (I contributed KBruch) and it was always an exciting journey since that time seeing how the project evolves!!!

I installed the currently release and I came over some problems. I'm not sure if it is related to KDE4 itself or just the kubuntu packages, but I encourage every user to go to the support forums (http://www.kde-forum.org) and try to help out!


Cheers,


Sebastian
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I CAME!
by Uncle Rooster on Saturday 12/Jan/2008, @07:09
this news made me ejaculate a pine scented semen dragon which crept down my monitor until I licked it off and howled like a wolf
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Coolness
by Ryan on Saturday 12/Jan/2008, @09:31
So, while I think that the release has a few annoying bugs here and there that make me want to wait for 4.1 to use it as my main desktop, I think that 4.0 is an absolutely stupendous achievement. It looks great, except for a few areas of theme polish (has anyone noticed a black line that appears when tabs get those scroll buttons?), has spectacular applications (my jaw dropped when I opened okular), and just seems downright cool.
I thank everyone who worked to bring this great pile of awesomeness to the desktop from the bottom of my heart.
Way to go guys.
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KDE4
by Boyle M. Owl on Saturday 12/Jan/2008, @10:33
First reactions:

This doesn't suck. Gnome has a lot of catching up to do. LiveCD runs in a VirtualBox VM with 384MB with no swap. That's really...really good.

Knotify4 seems to be a pig. This needs debugging. Sorry, I am only a whiner and my only programming languages are TTL, Assembler, BASIC, Pascal, and GE FANUC G-codes (forget about C and C++).

I am going to have to play with this more. As yet, it is not a replacement for 3.5.x, but this is extremely promising.

I take back my whining about Dolphin, but you will pry Konqueror and kioslaves from my cold dead hands.

--
BMO
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Congratulations!
by Richard Van Den Boom on Saturday 12/Jan/2008, @12:06
First, congratulations to everybody who worked on this, I'm looking forward to see it working.
And congratulations for the build system, everything compiled very well on my Slackware-current and I think faster than KDE3, great job! It's so easy to compile everything with KDE (and it has been for quite a while), I thought the people responsible for this should also get the thumbs up!
Now, I get a "Cannot start D-bus" message after startx, while the dbus daemon is running... :-( If anyone has a clue, I'm interested, otherwise, I'll have to dig around. I've already found something in the kde forums, but it didn't help me.
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Windows and OS-X ports?
by Max on Saturday 12/Jan/2008, @12:55
I know it might be a bit early to ask this, but it's on my mind, so here goes:

When will the Windows (XP/Vista), Mac OS-X ports of KDE 4.X.Y be released?*
Is there a tentative schedule?

Take your time though. I much rather have a stable, feature rich version of KDE, Amarok, the rest of Compiz fusion's features ported to Kwin, cool add-on's for the 4.X branch. :-)



____
* Is that actually happening, or was that just an evil rumor?
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KDE4 First build and look
by John Stanley on Saturday 12/Jan/2008, @13:32
For personal/home use I use a modified semi-automated lfs/blfs environment. Currently I have kde 3.5.8 on all systems (never really thought much of gnome). I've been building and trying kde4 since v3.94, and v4.0 is almost there... One thing nice is that its much easier to build than kde3, and MUCH faster to build (1/3-1/2 the build time). Of this could simply be due to missing features. The first thing I do with after installing kde is change the Desktop theme to something that doesn't look as much like windows.. "Platinum" is my first choice .. but still, in kde4.0, attempting a Desktop theme change crashes after the progress bar, without changing... Also, kde4.0 is quite sluggish. Various internal apps like konsole/dolphin/konqueror appear to be working ok (although I've hardly tested them thoroughly), and external apps like mozilla thunderbird/firefox/seamonkey, mplayer, vlc are working as well, so I'm happy. All in all, very impressive... If the marked sluggishness can be reduced (perhaps due to my builds being debug builds? Qt 4.3.3 is also a debug build), it'd be fantastic.
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Compiling...
by lordbios on Sunday 13/Jan/2008, @00:09
Yo!

i wasn't KDE user since 1.0!
But with 4.0 KDE gets interesting again.

Now my workstation is gone to compile the whole using kdesvn under Fedora 8.
I hope it will be successfully!!!!!
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Congratulations! I am looking forward to future
by Hobbes on Sunday 13/Jan/2008, @01:38
Congratulations to the KDE team! A huge amount of work has been achieved. I am sure this is the beginning of a successful series.

Anyway I have a few comments, that should not offend the developers as they are just issues I faced with on this very first release. I am sure other people more or less noticed the same problems.

I have used KDE 4.0.0 under Kubuntu 7.10. IMHO, there is some work in order to make it a competitive desktop, considering the current standards. I have noticed several problems (maybe related to Kubuntu packages sometimes?):
1) The windows manager is slow (resizing a window is not smooth).
2) The desktop is too "rigid", like the K menu that cannot be resized (on the vertical) with the mouse.
3) Browsing the applications in the K menu is inefficient (large mouse movements, loss of visual "information" as only one level in the menu tree can be seen, ...).
4) A click on "Add widget" (Plasma, top right) does not work all the time: you need luck to open the widget window. The applets seem useless. BTW, this would be my main criticism on KDE4 vision: I don't understand all the buzz on Plasma since one uses windows, not a desktop with the outdoor temperature hidden behind the windows... Maybe next applets will get me wrong.
5) Konqueror sometimes pops up strange empty windows that disappear very quickly.
6) The Oxygen theme does not seem to be finished. The icons and buttons are very good, but the windows and colors should be improved. In particular, it is not obvious to find the window that has the focus because it is very similar to the background windows: isn't it a usuability issue? I finally switched to Keramik which is more convenient.
7) Obviously, there is no more kcontrol and the basic configuration panel is limited (but this is maybe Kubuntu work?). I could not find a way to move the task bar on the left (instead of at the bottom): at least, I could not do it with the mouse, which makes the desktop "rigid" again.
8) The fonts of my KDE3 applications are very small; but this is maybe related to Kubuntu management too.
9) There is something strange with some windows or menus style (like after a right click on the taskbar): there are very rounded, flat and with no frame. This reminds me of the smooth appearance of Gnome (or maybe MacOS actually), and it does not seem really consistent with the usual "tech" style of KDE.

Anyway, again, congratulations! The future is bright (but it is the future!). The current state of KDE is interesting but the desktop surely needs to mature.
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Amazing!
by chris on Sunday 13/Jan/2008, @02:12
Wow. I'm seriously impressed.

I installed KDE4 right after I got home last night, and I must say: simply great. The overall responsiveness of the system is a huge improvement over KDE3, and I just love the new looks.

To everyone who contributed to KDE4; you all did a wonderful job here.

Hats off!
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Disappointed...
by Matthias on Sunday 13/Jan/2008, @03:39
I'm very much wondering what all this praise is about. When I installed KDE4 (openSUSE 10.3 packages) my first thought was "nice", my next thought was "Did I forget to install something?". Really, there aren't even the most basic configuration tools available. For example, it doesn't seem to be possible to configure the application launcher, the panel, ... A quick look into some "Emergency FAQ" reveals that, sorry, the configuration programs "didn't make it in time". Oh boy...

Also, the looks are not great at all, the default color set cannot decide if it wants to be dull gray without contrast or look like a zebra with hard black and white contrast. Hit Alt-F2 to see what I mean: A light grey border, then a thick, black border, then all white boxes - it more or less exactly fails to please the eye, as Douglas Adams puts it. The "Run Command" has useless buttons: Why would I want to launch a task monitor tool from here? And why is the main action just one amongst many buttons. Really, there should be just two buttons, "Run" and "Cancel". Yet this is, according to surveys, the most used element on a KDE desktop. It deserved a more loving hand, for sure.

The application launcher, the second thing after the desktop itself people look at, has a very unpolished look. The margin between content and border on all elements is too small, the degree of detail between the icons varies too much, the icons for the different categories (Favorites, Applications, ...) vary in size, ...

I really do hope that this is just "the start of something".
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Nice work!
by Leiteiro on Sunday 13/Jan/2008, @04:44
Congrats to all, nicely done.

One question: is it possible to make the run command (ALT-F2) to work using the search entry in the kickoff menu?
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Isn't is a beta version?
by mkrs on Sunday 13/Jan/2008, @06:12
All right... You may kill me, you may curse me, do whatever you want.

I *DO* appreciate a great piece of work from KDE dev team. I really do. But the problem is that KDE has been released despite the fact it's still no more usable than a beta version. I do understand that KDE 4.0 is not a "full" version of KDE4... However if I lose Kickoff and can't launch it again even after reboot, if I have no possibility to find room for all icons because of great distances between icons which I can't change, if KDE hangs at random - if all this happens, this should not be called an official release. I know it's been looked forward, I know everyone was expecting it, but wouldn't it be better to wait for another month or two and release a fully usable product? Right now I theoretically have KDE 4.0 in my hands but I can't use it anyway - how's an environment working like this going to be a true alternative for Vista or Leopard? I just don't get it.

Once again: this is no offence to the work of devel team - I understand you work for free, that it's just your free will to work for KDE and all - but I don't really understand why a product with such a number of errors has been released. Anyway, I get back to using KDE 3 again and I'll wait to see what future brings. Good luck!
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