openSUSE 11.0 Released with KDE 4.0.4

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openSUSE 11.0 Released with KDE 4.0.4

Posted by Francis Giannaros on Sunday 22/Jun/2008, @09:18
from the take-the-green-pill dept.
openSUSE 11.0 has been released (screenshots), offering KDE 3.5.9 and an excellent experience of KDE 4.0. There has been a huge collection of changes and additions in this new release. For an overview of the improvements in KDE, see the KDE Sneak Peeks article over at openSUSE News, which features an interview with KDE developer Stephan Binner. He talks about the challenges faced, plans for the future, and what changes you can expect in the upcoming KDE 4.1.

KDE 4.0

The openSUSE 11.0 release includes an installable Live-CD with a SUSE-polished KDE 4.0.4 desktop, while the DVD contains KDE 3.5.9 as well. While many applications such as the openSUSE updater applet (with an optional PackageKit backend) have been ported to KDE 4, not all KDE applications are ported to KDE4 yet. In these cases, KDE3 versions of applications such as Amarok, K3b, KOffice or KNetworkManager (adapted to NetworkManager 0.7) are used, which integrate pretty seamlessly. A native KDE4 NetworkManager plasmoid is in development and will become available via openSUSE Build Service repositories. There has also been a whole horde of Plasma updates and fixes put into the release.

As KDE 4.0 doesn’t include KDEPIM (Kontact, KMail, KOrganizer etc.), therefore openSUSE 11.0 includes beta versions of KDEPIM 4.1. These applications work fairly well, and will be updated to final versions via official online update as soon as possible. The online repositories contain many more KDE 4 applications, such as Dragon Player, Okteta, KSystemLog, and Yakuake. Webkitpart is optionally included which makes use of the WebKit part of Qt 4.4.

YaST Ported to Qt4

openSUSE's administration and installation tool, YaST, and SaX2 have been ported to Qt4 for this release. This allowed the YaST developers to use CCS-like Qt stylesheets for the installer, giving it a themed look:

YaST is now using Oxygen icons to give it an integrated look in KDE 4.

KDE 4.1, KDE Four Live

While KDE 4.1 did not manage to make it into openSUSE 11.0, its packages will be available via 1-click-install in the openSUSE Build Service. You can track KDE4's development by using the regularly updated KDE 4 snapshot packages. The openSUSE-based KDE Four Live CD will be based on openSUSE 11.0 in future releases.

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Related Links

·   Articles on KDE in Linux Distributions
·   Also by Francis Giannaros
·   Contact author

The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whomever posted them.
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Over 40 comments listed. Printing out index only.

Congrats
by Troy Unrau on Sunday 22/Jun/2008, @09:51

Congrats to the openSUSE team on this release, it seems like a good one.

One question: how much of the work put into your plasma modifications has been obsoleted by KDE trunk already, and what (of those changes) will not be going into trunk?

Cheers

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Re: Congrats by IAnjo on Sunday 22/Jun/2008, @13:20

Re: Congrats by winter on Monday 23/Jun/2008, @08:30

Re: Congrats by Grósz Dániel on Tuesday 24/Jun/2008, @10:35

Re: Congrats by Anon1234567 on Sunday 22/Jun/2008, @13:20

Yast Package Manager
by Kitsune on Sunday 22/Jun/2008, @10:24

In the 10.x series the Yast package manager was incredibly slow and forced an update of the repositories every time you updated it. Very good news for people that switch to 11 because now it's FAR faster and you can skip the automatic updates. The openSUSE devs have really done a great job fixing a lot of the annoyances from the 10.x series (the package manager's speed being the worst IMO) and deserve congratulations for such a good release!

A while ago I switched my openSUSE 11 install (technically rc install) over to using the KDE 4.1 development repositories and it's actually *quite* stable, adding several nice features. I believe the amount of improvements in 4.1 over 4.0 should illustrate quite well that the KDE4 series will completely obsolete the 3rd series much sooner than a lot of people would expect for such a massive re-architecting. The entire KDE team does *amazing* work!

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Re: Yast Package Manager by Iuri Fiedoruk on Monday 23/Jun/2008, @05:48

Suse
by fooz on Sunday 22/Jun/2008, @11:50

Suse is still one of the best distributions for Desktop users who use the KDE technology. But when will OpenSuse be switched to an apt-based package installer? This really keeps me away. YaST is great, the KDE is polished but I still prefer Kubuntu just because of apt.

Do you think the LSB can be helpful to standardize the fundamental architecture?

Just look at this:
http://wiki.winehq.org/LibraryDependencies

Why aren't Linux distributors able to standardize at least the fundament, the naming of standard libraries?

For KDE Suse stands for quality. The advantage of using Vista as an OS is that you can always install the lastest free software and it just runs. Firefox 3 out, you can install it. Under Linux package availability is a problem. And Suse worked very hard to improve the situation. Still I wonder why Linux distributors can't standardize at least the core. What are the advantages of diversity here?

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Re: Suse by Kevin Krammer on Sunday 22/Jun/2008, @12:11
Re: Suse by Francis on Sunday 22/Jun/2008, @12:18
Re: Suse by anon on Sunday 22/Jun/2008, @22:42

Re: Suse by Dima on Monday 23/Jun/2008, @11:03

Re: Suse by anon on Tuesday 24/Jun/2008, @01:20
Re: Suse by Thomas.S on Thursday 26/Jun/2008, @02:25

Re: Suse by Ian Monroe on Monday 23/Jun/2008, @12:27
LSB by T. J. Brumfield on Tuesday 24/Jun/2008, @12:18

Thanks!
by galarneau on Sunday 22/Jun/2008, @11:59

Thanks a lot to all the developers for this release. I installed it yesterday and I feel I'm going to have a lot of fun with it. The new package management rocks!

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Good impressions
by suy on Sunday 22/Jun/2008, @15:10

I'm having really good impressions with the Live CD. I've never seriously used SuSE, and I'm quite happy with Debian Sid on my Desktop, however, I'm seriously thinking in using OpenSUSE as a recommended distribution for my newbie friends, instead of Kubuntu. I will have to refresh my knowledge of RPM distros (I used Red Hat and Mandrake years ago), but I think that this gorgeous KDE will be worth it. Plasma and Kickoff looked awesome: it all ran smooth, and maybe it was a placebo effect, but I found the styles/themes/colors a bit more distinguishable than with vanilla KDE.

What the hell, I can even try it on my old laptop. How good is the PowerPC port? It's supposed to be the same than on x86(-64)?

Seriously, congratulations to the OpenSuSE team.

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Re: Good impressions by Francis on Sunday 22/Jun/2008, @18:34
Kubuntu by robbie enderle on Friday 27/Jun/2008, @09:50

Amazing!
by Apple Pi on Sunday 22/Jun/2008, @17:40

I had a really great experience installing openSUSE 11.0 (KDE4) on my new laptop... seems much more polished than Kubuntu 8.04.

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Re: Amazing! by anon on Sunday 22/Jun/2008, @22:45

Re: Amazing! by winter on Monday 23/Jun/2008, @08:36

Disappointed
by rkphil on Sunday 22/Jun/2008, @22:57

I loved LiveCD but I've never had this many problems installing a distro. I tried beta 3 and it didn't install at all and wouldn't even load KDE, the initial boot would go straight to windows without showing GRUB etc. Gave the final a shot and again, LiveCD works nice and it was brilliant to see how much KDE 4xx has improved but I had installation errors with the DVD and the CD version installed but then my wired ethernet wouldn't connect and my sound card stopped.

Had installation problems on another machine too. Guess I'll wait till Sidux moves on to 4.xx, really looking forward to it though.

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Re: Disappointed by Francis on Monday 23/Jun/2008, @01:59
Re: Disappointed by john on Monday 23/Jun/2008, @02:02

Re: Disappointed by Francis on Monday 23/Jun/2008, @02:13

Re: Disappointed by mxttie on Monday 23/Jun/2008, @08:30

The best openSUSE ever!
by fhd on Monday 23/Jun/2008, @00:46

Seriously, everyone who loves KDE (as a mere user, without svn and cmake) should consider using openSUSE. I've switched after several years of Kubuntu and I can't help but recommend it. You really feel the love they put into beautiful configuration, the ONLY thing I'm wondering is why there's a huge firefox icon on the desktop and no visible way to make it the standard browser.

But really, other than that, I'm 100% satisfied. zypper is great, the artwork is uber, installation and booting is bloody fast and it features the most usable KDE I've ever seen, in version 11 even an everyday usable KDE 4.0!
When using KDE 4.0 back on Kubuntu, it was like a joke. Almost no plasmoids shipped, if, at all, monthly updates, and no more than zero love.

But on openSUSE, I saw the beauty (not only visual) of KDE for the first time with my own eyes rather than on mockups, I love it!

Really, if you're looking for a good KDE distro (KDE 3 is great on SUSE too), try it.

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Re: The best openSUSE ever! by jos poortvliet on Monday 23/Jun/2008, @01:55

Re: The best openSUSE ever! by fhd on Monday 23/Jun/2008, @02:20

Re: The best openSUSE ever! by winter on Monday 23/Jun/2008, @08:41

Re: The best openSUSE ever! by Alex on Monday 23/Jun/2008, @14:30

Re: The best openSUSE ever! by Winter on Tuesday 24/Jun/2008, @02:05

Re: The best openSUSE ever! by fhd on Tuesday 24/Jun/2008, @23:39

Re: The best openSUSE ever! by Grósz Dániel on Thursday 26/Jun/2008, @15:48

OpenSUSE vs. MacBook
by Mike Wyatt on Monday 23/Jun/2008, @01:08

I tried out the 11.0 livecd and it definitely seems to be a very polished distribution, let alone the best for KDE. The only thing keeping me from using it is that it won't install on a MacBook without the use of rEFIt. I used refit before and it caused serious pains when having to upgrade from tiger to leopard

Ubuntu and fedora install fine, I wish opensuse was the same. also I've always found yast vastly more confusing than kcontrol, and with systemsettings/the solid KCM, redundant

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Re: OpenSUSE vs. MacBook by Francis on Monday 23/Jun/2008, @02:06

Re: OpenSUSE vs. MacBook by Sebastian on Monday 23/Jun/2008, @04:33

Re: OpenSUSE vs. MacBook by fhd on Monday 23/Jun/2008, @05:05

Re: OpenSUSE vs. MacBook by Mike Wyatt on Monday 23/Jun/2008, @19:46

Re: OpenSUSE vs. MacBook by Grósz Dániel on Monday 23/Jun/2008, @07:26

Re: OpenSUSE vs. MacBook by winter on Monday 23/Jun/2008, @08:45

Re: OpenSUSE vs. MacBook by Morty on Tuesday 24/Jun/2008, @04:15

No GUI on Dell Latitude C400
by sp1507 on Monday 23/Jun/2008, @06:34

I am a new convert to Linux, OpenSuse11 in particular, I tried the live CD on my old Dell Latitude C400( PIII 1.2Ghz, 1GB Ram) for the first time,and it was love at first site, But after installing, there is no GUI only a command prompt login

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Re: No GUI on Dell Latitude C400 by Willard on Monday 23/Jun/2008, @07:05
Re: No GUI on Dell Latitude C400 by Grósz Dániel on Monday 23/Jun/2008, @07:21

Problem with livecd and firewire
by Yves on Monday 23/Jun/2008, @15:50

I have a cdrom-drive which is connected via firewire.

When I boot the livecd, it stops very soon in the bootprocess, with the error "Failed to detect CD" in the kiwi installer...

Is there any kernelparameter to make the livecd find the firewire cd drive?

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Re: Problem with livecd and firewire by anon on Monday 23/Jun/2008, @16:45

opensuse 11.0
by susegebr on Wednesday 02/Jul/2008, @10:30

The presence of the wireless driver ath5k (not finished prerelease)
are giving trouble when you instal madwifi drivers .
Configuring the card with yast chosing ath0 all go's well until you reboot.

ATH5K is still loaded and gives trouble.

So you have to delete the map ath5k from lib/kernel/drivers/net/wireless
to get a atheros wireless card working right.
Further more you have to add a line in /etc/modprobe.conf "alias ath0 ath_pci"
or the driver won't load, or you have to use modprobe ath_pci in boot.local

On a quad Q6600 processor with 6 gig mem kde4 is slow in starting slow in opening what ever via the menu. Video card is Geforce 8600GT with nvidia 173.09 drivers.

So i deleted kde4 and now KDE 3 is running like a chevey 12 cyl on nitro

Complements for this great version 11.

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KDE 4.1
by Niko Rosvall on Wednesday 09/Jul/2008, @09:51

I'm on to install opensuse 11 with KDE. Juts thinking that when KDE 4.1 comes available(released as stable) is it possible to upgrade the opensuse 11 KDE to 4.1? Coming as update? Like firefox 3 beta 5 came firefox 3?

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Re: KDE 4.1 by Beineri on Wednesday 09/Jul/2008, @11:37

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