The KDE Project today announced the immediate availability of KDE 3.5.4, a maintenance release for the latest generation of the most advanced and powerful free desktop for GNU/Linux and other UNIXes. Even while KDE 4 is being prepared, improvements to KDE 3.5 have been made and this release makes them available. The new features were subject to rigorous quality testing so that KDE 3.5.4 is as stable as the maintenance releases that precede it.
Significant enhancements include improved support for removable devices (users can now mount all devices supported by FreeDesktop's HAL and control how it will be done). Multiple holidays can now start on the same date in KOrganizer. Lots of fixes have been applied to Konqueror's HTML engine, KHTML. The dialog for sending client-side SSL certificates is now more usable, the StartCom SSL certificate was added and KNetworkConf now supports Fedora Core 5 and handles WEP keys better.
Packages are available for ArkLinux, Fedora, Kubuntu, Pardus Linux, SuSE Linux, Slamd64, amongst others. You can also download the source or have it built for you with Konstruct.
Comments
Congratulations for KDE 3.5.4.
I'm using KDE 3.5.3 on Tomahawk Desktop and did not try the latest version of KDE yet. I have following queries regarding that:
1. You get MP3 and Ogg settings under Control Center->Sound & Multimedia->Audio CDs. Where the settings for FLAC? If this is not available for KDE users who intend to convert their CDs to FLAC, is there any plan to include into KDE 3.5.X or KDE 4.X?
2. Can the KDE convert 24bit 96kHz CDs into FLAC at the same rate? I have converted one such CD (www.orangemusicnet.com, Montana Skies) into FLAC, but it turn out to be 16bit 44.1kHz! I worry may be the CD is not recorded into 24bit 96kHz in first place even though its printed on the CD cover. Can others convert 24bit 96kHz CDs at the correct rate? How about converting even higher, such as 24bit 170kHz CDs (Reference Recordings, etc)?
3. Currently the Tomahawk Desktop is based on X.org 6.8.2. If I upgrade the Xorg server to 7.1 and the KDE to 3.5.4, can I get the latest desktop features sports in SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop 10? Eg. Desktop previews, desktops in a cube, etc. Please see http://www.novell.com/video/bs_06/monday_press_demo.ogg if not sure what I mean.
4. Is there a Screen capture program for KDE which can capture live desktop sessions at high definition resolution, 1280x800, 1280x720 or DVD quality?
Tarsier
1.
What would be the point? FLAC is lossless, the only thing you can adjust is how long it spends on compression, and we have defaulted it to the most sane value.
2.
I think Audio CD expects real CDs and therefore 16bit 44.1kHz
audiocd copying is missing in linux.
http://exactaudiocopy.de/eac3.html
http://exactaudiocopy.de/
Umm, what?
Exactly what do you think tools like cdda2wav and cdparanoia do?
Or even better: kaudiocreator, or just use Konqueror to copy the audio cd :)
Nick probably never used linux or kde before :o)
Yeah, and of course we can use K3B to make copies of audio CDs. :)
Thanks for replies. But I'm still not convinced whether KDE/Konqueror could be used to convert 24bit 96kHz CDs (or even higher 24bit 170kHz) into FLAC. Does this means nobody in the KDE community attempt to convert such CDs into FLAC !? :)
I read it somewhere if you create a CUE sheet when you convert CDs into FLAC, you can recreate the CD from FLAC with similar gaps between tracks. But when I create I don't get any such CUE files. That's why I mentioned why don't we have FLAC settings section like for MP3. In fact, if it is possible to select maximum compression when converting into FLAC, we may be able to save couple of gigabytes. At least we can try them and see. Please see this url: http://mac.softpedia.com/progScreenshots/MacFLAC-Screenshot-3989.html
24bit 96kHz CD?
CD is a standard with mandatory 44.1kHz and 16bit. What you are refering to sounds more like an AudioDVD or SuperCD, which is unfortunately not supported yet.
funny how they call this a 'Maintenance Release' and still include so many new features. I thought the whole idea of a Maintenance Release was bug and security fixes.
It fixes well over 100 bugs (the changelog lists about 160 bugfixes). The new features are
a) well tested in 3.5.x
b) very small
c) in trunk (the is what will become KDE4)
d) reviewed in public before being added ('backported') to KDE 3.5.4
These four conditions make these features safe.
Well you are trolling. Its a maintenance release, or can you tell me a list of new super shiny features?
Ok now to something more interesting than stupid troll-posts.
I am using the smaller WMs, still fluxbox is my favourite.
I need all the speed i can get :-)
That being said, I prefer KDE over Gnome for 2 reasons:
- KDE is easier to handle than Gnome (that starts with compiling, and
goes over to do certain tasks. Gnome seems CONFUSED to me about
how it handles things)
- Dcop and scripting support is much better in KDE than in Gnome.
The 2. reason is my main reason why I use KDE. I love scripting.
I dont want to miss that feature.
At least he was on topic. You're not; you're just being a dick.
IIRC the rules for feature inclusion were slightly relaxed for this release. Due to the long time before 4.0.0 comes out, some features, which a) seemed very useful to have soon, and b) did not seem too "dangerous" to add, were allowed.
So actually it's not a pure Maintenance Release, but given the fixes-to-features-ratio it's still quite reasonable to use that term.
Thanks for those contributed to the KDE 3.5.4 and I would like to take this opportunity to make a suggestion to KDE project.
We are now heading for much anticipated KDE 4.0 and since it has serious architectural changes and incorporating new technologies, why not we have a separate page dedicated for the development of KDE 4.0. So that potential developers, users, artists, other contributers, media, distros, etc. could easily follow the developments of the KDE 4.0.
It seems currently users, media and others are completely kept in the dark of the developments of KDE 4.0.
Sagara Wijetunga
Tomahawk Computers
Well, that's technically not true, it's just not all in one site. Check these out:
http://pim.kde.org/akonadi/
http://solid.kde.org/
http://phonon.kde.org/
http://plasma.kde.org/
http://www.oxygen-icons.org/
http://appeal.kde.org/
http://developer.kde.org/development-versions/kde-4.0-features.html (possibly not reliable or up-to-date at this stage)
I am not having a good day and this is my rant:
My objective assessment is that things are not improving.
We have the kicker problems (child panels vs. icons, and vertical external taskbar size) which haven't been fixed.
It would be nice to be able to have icons on the DeskTop without having them rearranged everytime KDE starts up.
The DeskTop device icons are seriously broken. The CD doesn't work the same as the floppies. My CD ROM drive is only recognized as a CD Writer and there seems to be some confusion between a drive and a disk. The CD only shows on the DeskTop if it has a disk in it (empty drive would be a good option). But the floppies are there all the time (they are drives not disks). I have a 3.5 and a 5.25 floppy. The Control Center makes a distinction between them although for some reason a 3.5 floppy is just a floppy. Doesn't work on the DeskTop -- they both have the same icon again (used to work once I put the correct devices in fstab).
The configuration for the DeskTop devices doesn't work correctly (again).
Suddenly Konqueror quit working on some on-line banking and credit card sites. I found a non-banking site with the same error -- what is "Error 500"?
I think that all of these issues are regressions. This stuff used to work from last week to a few versions ago.
And then tonight, Ark crashed and lost the archive with all my on-line banking passwords. I have also noticed more random crashes of Konqueror in the last two months.
So, I see the new KDE release as pretty much broken, and I can't help wondering why developers would release stuff before they got it to work correctly. Do the developers actually use the current release of KDE?
I am also concerned that KDE now relies on DBus and HAL which are not really ready for general release yet and seem to be poorly documented -- are there up to date HOWTOs on these and UDEV anywhere? My Zip drive mounts fine (I do wonder why it doesn't have an "eject") but I get an error message with the CD or the conventional floppies. I wonder if I can go back to the old methods that worked perfectly. It is real cool for the system to detect that I inserted a new CD and ask me what to do with it, but it would be nicer if I could click on the icon and it would mount correctly.
So, I have to think that I accidentally installed the development release rather than the stable release. If this was the development release, this would be fine because if this stuff is fixed so that it works correctly it will be really nice. But, I couldn't recommend the current KDE release to anyone and I am wondering what my options are since I can't use something this broken.
Boudewijn appears to be correct that developers can not properly evaluate their own work. If this is true, there is no hope that TQM can help solve the problem.
Checked some of your problems in suse 10.1 with kde 3.5.4, but they are not there?
I have no doubt that you are correct in this statement - YMMV after all.
Some of the DBus & HAL issues are probably configuration issues. But, without good documentation and with no GUI configuration for it in Control Center, if it doesn't work there is little that a user can do:
http://home.earthlink.net/~tyrerj/kde/DBus00.png
This isn't exactly a user friendly error message is it?
XML is making it harder to fix such issues by editing configuration files by hand. As we go to more and more complicated underlying technologies we must have GUI configuration available for them.
Other problems only occur with specific configurations.
http://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=128552
This is still reported with SuSE 10.0. It can be fixed in you build from source by using an older version of one file.
And the kicker child panel vs. icon issue only occurs with child panels -- especially if you have autohide child panels. I think that it is only the autohide child panels that cause the DeskTop icons to get rearranged.
Distros may have fixed some of these issues, but should we rely on distros to fix our bugs?
I'm using KDE 3.5.4 on Kubuntu, and even with 3.5.2-3.5.4, I haven't had any of the problems you're describing.
Do you have a 5.25 inch floppy drive?
Do you do on-line banking with the Bank of America?
Do you have a Chase VISA card?
Do you have a CD-ROM drive (i.e. READ only)?
Bug 128552 was fixed after the 3.5.4 release. Have you tried a _vertical_ External TaskBar with "length set to "3%" and: "Expand as required to fit contents" checked?
Do you have autohide Child Panels that cover DeskTop icon when they unhide?
I had no big issues with kde 3.5.4, but my online banking doesn't work anymore, it work great with firefox and used to work with konqueror 3.5.3
I can't connect to any pages of https://directnet.dexia.be/
The Bank told me they haven't changed anything to their site,...
Is someone able to connect with konqueror 3.5.4
Maybe a SSL Problem?
Any thought?
You can nab it via adding "deb http://kubuntu.org/packages/kde-latest dapper main" to your /etc/apt/sources.list file and running "sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get dist-upgrade". They fixed the remaining issues they had, so now you can actually upgrade and not get screwed with a bad install.