KDE 4.0.1 is There For You

While the world is still recovering from the work on KDE 4.0.0, we are ready to announce the release of KDE 4.0.1, the first bug fix update of the KDE 4.0 desktop. KDE 4.0.1 contains numerous bugfixes such as stability improvements, performance improvements and, as in every point release, updated translations for most components. Lots of work has been put into shared components making the life of most applications easier. Particularly striking is also the high number of bugfixes in KHTML. Have a look at the change log for a more detailed, if maybe not 100% complete list of improvements. KDE 4.0.1 is already translated into 48 languages with more coming soon.

The KDE 4.0 branch receives regular updates, including bugfixes in trunk/ which are backported to the KDE 4.0 branch and more will appear in our monthly bugfix updates. For those following the development more closely, a shift towards the development tree that is to become KDE 4.1 this summer can be noticed. KDE 4.1 will be based on Qt 4.4 with all its performance and functionality improvements. KDE 4.0.2, with even more of the above goodness, will be released in early March. While KDE 4.0 is still rather young, we hope to be able to address even more issues people encounter while getting used to KDE 4, so make sure to keep your KDE up to date.

For those among us that prefer the more stable and proven KDE 3.5 branch, KDE 3.5.9 will be available later this month (planned for February, 19th) with an updated KDE-PIM from the enterprise branch and of course lots of other improvements.

Dot Categories: 

Comments

by blacky (not verified)

«The Novell MS deal was announced as a means to work cross-platform between the two companies, and yet they aren't doing that in the least.»

From some talking with a few OpenOffice Novell developers, it does seem like there is cooperation. Both in the support of Office Open XML, and in the Windows OO.o builds.

by JRT (not verified)

The missing piece of the Novell puzzle is the WordPerfect suit. Prior to the deal with MS, Novell was still persuing legal action regarding the illegal restraint of trade by MS in connection with WordPerfect (as documented in the US vs. MS). I have not been able to find any information regarding the current status of this lawsuit.

by elsewhere (not verified)

>>I have not been able to find any information regarding the current status of this lawsuit.

Then you haven't really looked hard enough, google is your friend.

A couple of weeks ago MS filed a petition with the Supreme Court to have the lawsuit quashed, the story was carried in much of the tech media. A response from the court is due Feb 11.

Novell specifically stated at the time of the MS/Novell deal that the Wordperfect lawsuit would continue and was specifically excluded from the agreement.

by JRT (not verified)

Thanks. I'v been busy being ill. I get CW & ET email news letters, but I must have missed it.

Yes, I read that it would continue at the time of the deal, and then it dropped off the radar.

by S (not verified)

Agreed. They didn't even make NTFS file support. The open source world did.

Also is it just me, or did they quietly kill XEN - virtualization off. (doesn't Microsoft have a similar product?? *I wonder*)

I haven't really seen any obvious benefit from the deal. To either parties really.

Life support for Novell? That's all I can think about.

+1 agreed.

Novell has been doing much more for KDE than Canonical has been doing.

Look at the joke that Kubuntu turned into. SuSE has much more features.

openSUSE is different from SUSE: openSUSE is community-developed (much like Debian, Fedora, and Ubuntu for example) whiel SUSE is the corporate version that has all the Microsoft-related drama. I don't use openSUSE on my own computers, but I have used it many times, and it is also a very good distribution (especially for KDE).

yeah same happened to me I just removed my ~/.kde4 and done :D
it worked all again but beware your kde4 settings will go to hell

by T. J. Brumfield (not verified)

How much will QT 4.4 and Alien improve performance?

And will some kind soul port over Domino to KDE 4? Maybe even somewhat of a cross breed between Oxygen and Domino? And these two improvements to Domino?

http://kde-look.org/content/show.php/Domino+menu+hack+for+Beryl+shadows?...

http://kde-look.org/content/show.php/Domino+Mockup?content=72412

The day I can configure KDE 4 to look and operate the way I want is the day I use it for my desktop.

by alsuren (not verified)

It strikes me that alien sub-windows will eat ksnapshot's babies, as ksnapshot relies on X11's native windows for some of its features. It will also destroy performance over remote X11. Hopefully, Solid will be able to help with this.

Also, alien windows only help with resizing internally. If you resize the outermost window of a Qt app, it will still flicker horribly, as all X11 and win32 programs traditionally do. If we want this stuff to be fixed properly, it needs to be done within the X server. Someone needs to look at how they do it in OSX.

[/negative]

by Troy Unrau (not verified)

Solid will not have anything to do with this situation, as it's a hardware detection and presence library. X is still X.

by Aaron Seigo (not verified)

> It will also destroy performance over remote X11.

the obvious solution is to fall back to non-aliens. on request, the widgets can become non-aliens so this should be possible. just .. need to do it =)

> it will still flicker horribly,

compositing and aliens actually help quite a bit here. but you're right, it's still not perfect. i discussed with some x devs while in the airporate in melbourne last week about possible solutions. nothing on the near horizon yet, though.

by Anon (not verified)

"he obvious solution is to fall back to non-aliens. on request, the widgets can become non-aliens so this should be possible. just .. need to do it =)"

Would it be possible in principle to toggle this (with full-fledged KDE apps only, if need be) on-the-fly using a DBUS call? What about double-buffering of widgets which is hugely wasteful if a compositing window manager is running? Being able to easily turn either of these features on or off in all running KDE4 apps would be great :)

by jos poortvliet (not verified)

Turning of doublebuffering for widgets is NOT what you want, everything will look horrible even with compositing. That one needs TT to work on it...

by Nick Shaforostoff (not verified)

btw, what's about xcb adoption by Qt?

by David Johnson (not verified)

Top level windows will still be true X11 windows, so this shouldn't affect knapshot. Alien targets all those widgets that aren't top level windows. At least this is my understanding of it.

by Henning (not verified)

With KSnapshot you can also select sub-windows which is very handy. This works much better than manually selecting a rectangle on the screen. I use it to make screenshots of certain dockwidgets when doing documentation.

But as far as I know alien windows can be disabled with an environment variable.

by Aaron Seigo (not verified)

> manually selecting a rectangle on the screen.

speaking of which, have you tried ksnapshot's new rectangle selector? you get to resize it before you take a shot!

i need to improve the obviousness of the "take it now" though. maybe add a push button in the middle of the shot. right now it's too easy to miss the instruction label at the top of the screen.

but other than that, it's pretty neat.

by markc (not verified)

> you get to resize it before you take a shot!

Wonderful! Any chance it could provide a Width/Height (even Xoffest/Yoffset could be handy) coords popup while resizing so one could get a consistant set of same-sized snapshots without post editing?

by Richard Moore (not verified)

You have width/height displayed already.

by Matt (not verified)

Did ksnapshot in 4.x fix the artefact bug? Link:
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/kdegraphics/+bug/108673

by Richaard (not verified)

When will the Kubuntu versions be available?

Will KDE 4.0.2, or 4.0.3 make it into Kubuntu 8.04?

Will they finally have some custom touches to it, the way openSuSE brands their flavor of KDE?

Somebody please point me to answers.

by Max (not verified)

I second the question. +1

Ubuntu treats Kde+Kubuntu as their red-headed stepchild. Hopefully they will embrace the 4.x branch and actively develop/customize the desktop.

https://wiki.kubuntu.org/HardyHeron/Alpha4/Kubuntu

https://wiki.kubuntu.org/HardyHeron/Alpha4/Kubuntu/Feedback

by Jonathan Thomas (not verified)

Kubuntu already has KDE 4.0.1 packages. They have a repository set up at ppa.launchpad.net.

by Max (not verified)

Cool..
I'll try it out. Hopefully it won't feel as disjointed as Kubuntu's 4.0 release. (That was a headache to install. I tried 4.0 on my SuSE box with 1 click and it was easy!!!)

Wish me luck!

by Richard (not verified)

Where exactly is it?

I went to ppa.launchpad.net and couldn't find it.
Adding it to apt package manager didn't seem to do the trick either.

Maybe Kubuntu should just post it on their announcement page. (or include it in a new alpha. Like Alpha 4a or something. =) )

Well I guess I can always just give up on Kubuntu once again and try it with the next alpha of openSuSE. 2 more days until the release!!!

by Jonathan Thomas (not verified)

The repo link is given in the 4.0 release announcement.

by Max (not verified)

Yea. Found it now. kthanx :)
I think I jumped the gun before the ppa was complete. The announcement wasn't posted at that time either..

All worx now.. I'm happy. :)

by Vide (not verified)

Maybe they DID and you weren't able to read? Please make us a favor and go RTFM, kubuntu.org in this case. Thanks.

by ramses (not verified)

I tried them, it's not good there are worst than the 4.0 version. At least they correct the bug for the icons but nepomuk is not there so no possibility to use all the feature in it (like the comments). In konqueror the protocoles remote:// and applications:// were not working. You can't use anymore the kde application outside kde4. I did a purge and i'm waiting for hardy to try it a little bit more.

by ramses (not verified)

just in case, I tested another time and I discover another problem konqueror is useless at least as browser and with kubuntu package. As it is now, if you are clicking on a link in a webpage it ask you if you want to save the html file or open with konqueror. If you choose konqueror it open a new window... Not exactly something expected for a browser!

I tried to use konqueror to send this message but when I clicked on the preview button it send me on my /tmp/kde-ramses directory...

Something is weird with this packages I think.

by Sutoka (not verified)

Sounds like a configuration issue to me (had you run the alphas/betas/RCs with that account?), you could try moving your ~/.kde4 directory and then restarting KDE4 (or if you're just running apps in kde3, start up the kde4 app after should work fine) and see if it works then. If it doesn't, you can just delete the new ~/.kde4 directory and restore the old one.

by ramses (not verified)

to test kde4 I always deleting the .kde4 directory. Just to be sure I even create a new user just for the test and same result. I suspected a problem with some old package so I did a clean de-installation and re-installation (ie I purge all the file when deleting the kde4 package and even delete the /usr/lib/kde4 directory to be sure.

by Anonymous (not verified)

Questions -

- Why is it being hosted @ the launchpad site vs. the Kubuntu site?
- Is it signed with the same Kubuntu gpg key?
- Is it packaged by the same people @ Kubuntu?
- When will KDE 4.x be included in the official Ubuntu repo?
- Do I need to remove my current install of KDE 3.x beforehand?
- Should I feel "lucky"?

by SAABeilin (not verified)

-- there's a service named "personal package archive" at Launchpad, many Kubuntu developers use it.

-- that in PPA are not.

-- yes, that's the Kubuntu/KDE team. apachalogger, stdin, jriddell -- you know them.

-- it is there alread: in Hardy it is in Universe section.

-- no, it install alongside; You con run KDE4 apps from KDE3.x or start a full KDE4 session from kdm.

-- hhmmm... You should try ;)

by ramses (not verified)

no, it install alongside; You con run KDE4 apps from KDE3.x

Not anymore...

by Patcito (not verified)

Yes you can.

by anonymous (not verified)

Please tell me how to do this.

After updating, my shortcuts to KDE4 apps no longer work, and if I try in konsole to write oku and press tab to complete it to okular-kde4, it doesn't complete it to anything. Same goes for kate, kat and two tabs only suggests katapult and kate(the kde3 version).

This is also mentioned in some posts in the ubuntuforums and no-one has responsed to those posts.

by ramses (not verified)

I honestly think that the ubuntu package are "not completely finish" but it's only my opinion.

Nothing is working fine, neither the interaction between kde3 and kde4, nor the icons (at least the ones for konqueror, systemsettings are correct but still missing the ones in the application menu for the differents categories and there are plenty of application with icons missing (okular + f6 for exemple) but this one is kde4 problem and not packaging, konqueror is not working as a browser and since dolphin this is is only purpose in kde....

By the way in the extra toolbar you cannot remove the text under the icons but agin this is kde4 problem (same problem with ubuntu or suse).

Next round kde4 4.0.2 will see :)

by Max (not verified)

I hope this mess will get sorted out and streamlined by the next Kubuntu alpha 5.
It's still disjointed and harder to use than necessary.

If the Kubuntu team will keep treating the KDE 4.X branch as perpetual beta, they will be the last ones to adopt it in their final product, and probably loose users in the process.

by John S (not verified)

The (K)ubuntu port sucks!

There is no customization, and next to no features. (K)ubuntu, please work on 4.0 some more.

We're trying Fedora and opensuse this week. Maybe they're better.

by mxttie (not verified)

you are really keeping pace, guys! congratulations!

by cedric (not verified)

I'm a little bit disappointed that the panel resize and positioning thingies didn't make it into 4.0.1.

But hey, at least the white Background on every login disappeared :)

Keep on the great work, Konquies.

by Max (not verified)

I'm still downloading.

Is the panel still huge? :(

I would like a way to make the panel as thin as possible, as on my laptop screen real estate is precious. There is no need to have a huge panel in my case, as long as I can recognize the icons. Under 3.5.8 I always had the panel size as "tiny", aka. the smallest pix setting possible.

Please incorporate that somehow in future releases.

side note: There goes my surprise to myself.

by Max (not verified)

Any new compositioning effects?

I don't think the 3.X branch ever had me so exited about new releases as the 4.X.Y branch. The exitement and anticipation about new features is literally tearing my co-workers and I apart. :)

Never before has a desktop environment been so exiting...
I think when the Windows branch will be finalized we'll probably mutiny and install KDE on top of all Windows computers at work. :)

by cedric (not verified)

panel is still huge.
and, still just one line of taskbar entries.

didn't test kwin effects.
I'm stuck with a Radeon 300 something and no composite.

by jos poortvliet (not verified)

resize will come in 4.0.2 (unless distro's backport it, suse does, Kubuntu might). The taskbar switches to two lines of taskbar entries when there are many apps running (so that DID get it). KWin got a new effect, not sure if it made it into 4.0.1.

by Jake (not verified)

resize comes with update today

by Marc (not verified)

Ha? You speaking about kubuntu?