After last week's update to the KDE 3.5 series, today's KDE release updates the stable KDE 4.1 branch to KDE 4.1.1. It bears the codename "Cebidae" referring to an in-joke often made during Akademy 2008. With only a good month of development time -- and Akademy in between -- the changelog is still impressively long. Pretty much all applications have received the developers' attention, resulting in a long list of bugfixes and improvements.
The most significant changes are:
- Significant performance, interaction and rendering correctness improvements in KHTML and Konqueror, KDE's webbrowser
- User interaction, rendering and stability fixes in Plasma, the KDE4 desktop shell
- PDF backend fixes in the document viewer Okular
- Fixes in Gwenview, the image viewer's thumbnailing, more robust retrieval and display of images with broken metadata
- Stability and interaction fixes in KMail
To find out more about KDE 4.1, please refer to the KDE 4.1.0 and KDE 4.0.0 release notes. KDE 4.1.1 is a recommended update for everyone running KDE 4.1.0. It will be followed up by more x.y.z updates over the next months and ultimately by a new feature release, KDE 4.2.0 this coming January. Enjoy KDE 4.1.1 and let us know your findings.
Comments
KDE 3.5 behavior would be my preference. There are a LOT of things in plasma that look kind of neat, but I really like 3.5's behavior, and I don't like plasma's at all.
For example, knotify4 sat at 97% CPU for several minutes after I created a directory on the Desktop; I may as well have been using a brick as a laptop. Modifying KDE4 settings messed with KDE3.5.9 settings (shouldn't have, separate directories, all that, but it DID mess with them, putting the lie to the clear statement by KDE that one can run the two side-by-side).
Unhappy is the least of the words I'd use to describe my thoughts about KDE4.1.1 right now. I would not, at all, describe it as STABLE. Not Debian-STABLE, anyway. Right now, KDE4 is what I would call ALPHA. If you're offended by that, live with it. I had to reboot to make the mouse behave properly again, and it's STILL not quite right, even after I removed KDE4 from the system.
I'll wait for more bug fixes. LOTS more bug fixes. I'll wait for 4.2 or maybe further before I try to mess with it again in any serious way. Plasma looks really neat - gotta admit that - but it sucks the cycles out of my CPU, and I need every one of those; and it breaks my system, and I don't need that at all.
Come 4.2, the last piece (that I can see) to make Plasma act like Kicker and KDesktop in KDE 3.5 in all important aspects will be in place: being able to set the folderview as the desktop and have a background.
The KNotify4 issue is a bug - I hope you've reported it at bugs.kde.org. If not, it's unlikely to be fixed (since it's not a common issue as far as I'm aware). If changing KDE 4 settings (assuming they are KDE4-specific settings and not system settings) affects the KDE 3 desktop, then it sounds like your distribution hasn't set up the environment properly. By default, both will use ~/.kde, and you need to explicitly set the KDEHOME environment variable or modify the startkde script to alter that.
For most people, KDE 4.1 is perfectly usable. There are bugs, for sure, and sometimes people run into ones that are showstoppers, for them at least. But I would strongly disagree that it is unstable. Maybe it doesn't match Debian-STABLE or KDE 3.5.10 stable, but Debian is famously conservative and KDE 3.5.10 is the tenth bugfix release of the fifth feature release of KDE 3, which was nowhere near such a big change from KDE 4 was, or even as KDE 2 was.
The truth is that developers can't test every possible setup on every possible system, and the sort of stability you get from Debian-STABLE can only be acheived by the long exposure to a lot of systems that comes from being installed by a wide user base.
Well, I still see no way to add a printer in KDE. system-config-printer-kde has no way to set up a printer and system-config-printer-applet-kde doesn't seem to do anything. There is no Printer section in System Settings. The only way I've been able to set up a printer is via http://localhost:631
Also, mailing to Distribution Lists in KMail is still broken. It never expands the list to the individual list members addresses.
This is on Kubuntu Hardy.
--
Cheers,
Rob
system-config-printer-kde is a Kubuntu tool, so all blame should go to them. :P
That being said, the tool has been greatly improved in Intrepid. Adding printers, etc is possible. This is nice because in Hardy I too had to revert to the bare CUPS interface.
Or you could use the regular system-config-printer, which is GTK+-based, but which actually *works*. ;-)
If you want to know what is going on, there are a couple of options. As KDE is a Free Software project, you can look as deeply into the kitchen and check out what's cooking as you want. Some pointers in order of depth:
- Feature Plan on techbase (http://techbase.kde.org/Schedules/KDE4/4.2_Feature_Plan)
- dot.kde.org
- commit-digest.org
- planetkde.org
- kde-commits (you can read this list of commits via nntp, gmane offers a bridge, or subscribe yourself only to certain areas via commitfilter.kde.org)
Please bear in mind that we do not promise anything for future releases. The improvements and additions you can find on those side are all plans, and more a matter of communicating with each other rather than with the public. You might read about new features, but you'll only see them a couple of months later in a released KDE version.
The numbers you are after aren't so easy to interpret. What would it mean if 60% of
... your post was all we got to read?
[sorry, I tried, but I could not resist :D]
Actually, you got 106% of it to read ... :-)
I'm surprised by some of these responses to a reasonable question: communication regarding the status of KDE components in the 4.x world. It sounds very reasonable.
it's still crashing like in 4.1.0 :(
Have you tried new user account for them? If not, try and report if it still crash to bugs.kde.org with backtrace.
Yes I have created a new user account? Why? And yes an bug report is already exist.
yahoo is working perfectly for me on openSUSE 11. No crashing
also opensuse 11 and it doesn't work
I will test/install the opensuse livecd, tnxs you very much people, its impressing to see the hard work of this mounth (akademy, kde3.5.10, kde4.1.1), would you focus in the kde4 now? or its another 3.5.x release?. cheers from argentina.
There is no "Or" there. Some people still want to continue to maintain 3.5, others prefer to work on 4. You will probably see releases of both in the future.
Congratulations for your newest release from an avid KDE user! For years - it must be around KDE 1.9x I jumped on - I have been using KDE as my one and only working environment and I love it! I couldn't live without it.
It's too sad I couldn't try KDE 4.1.0 or even KDE 4.1.1 since there are no ebuilds for it in Gentoo's official tree. Maybe the KDE team can come over and help Gentoo's KDE team to get KDE 3.5.9 and KDE 4.1.1 into the official tree. And no, I don't want to try any obscure overlay from your friend's cat...
Greetings
Dr. B.Rosenbaum
Not to be a troll, but both 3.5.9 and 4.0.5 are in the tree right now. kde 4.1.1 is in the testing overlay of the kde team. None of these are marked stable, but at that point you are asking for a lot more :) Yes, they are not in the main portage tree in a way that mom and pop users would get, but what's the point of bleeding edge then...
smenon@monalisa ~ $ eix kdelibs
[I] kde-base/kdelibs
Available versions:
(3.5) 3.5.8-r4 ~3.5.9 ~3.5.9-r1 ~3.5.9-r2 ~3.5.9-r3 3.5.9-r4
(kde-4) [M]~4.0.4 [M]~4.0.5
(4.1) {M}(~)4.1.0[1] {M}(~)4.1.0-r1[1]
{3dnow acl alsa altivec arts avahi bindist branding bzip2 cups debug doc elibc_FreeBSD fam htmlhandbook jpeg2k kdeenablefinal kdehiddenvisibility kerberos kernel_linux legacyssl lua mmx nls openexr opengl semantic-desktop spell sse sse2 ssl test tiff utempter xinerama zeroconf}
Installed versions: 3.5.9-r4(3.5)(01:19:08 PM 08/24/2008)(acl alsa cups fam jpeg2k kerberos kernel_linux openexr spell tiff -arts -avahi -bindist -branding -debug -doc -elibc_FreeBSD -kdeenablefinal -kdehiddenvisibility -legacyssl -lua -utempter -xinerama)
4.1.0-r1(4.1)[1](11:30:43 AM 08/31/2008)(3dnow acl alsa bzip2 fam jpeg2k kerberos mmx nls openexr opengl semantic-desktop spell sse sse2 ssl zeroconf -altivec -bindist -debug -doc -htmlhandbook -test)
Homepage: http://www.kde.org/
Description: KDE libraries needed by all KDE programs.
[1] "kde" /usr/portage/local/layman/kde-testing
emerged kde 4.1.1 from kdesvn overlay today
running like a sharm :)
One of the reasons why i migrated from gentoo to kubuntu... There's simply not enough packagers for everything in gentoo. I couldn't sustain that situation any longer
As soon as KDE 4.1.1 is released, Kubuntu releases the packages for it. On the same day! So, thanks to Kubuntu team also.
I wonder how difficult it is to pack KDE for Kubuntu/Debian. How can they make it so fast? Was it that fast in the past? In the previous commit digest, KDE 4.1.1 was said to be tagged; maybe the delay between the tag and the actual release is there for the distributions?
BTW, are there new tools to help? I am thinking about CMake: does it help in packing nowadays?
Yes, we get about a week from when the release is tagged to when it is released.
We were working all last week. (Since we have to make packages for 2 versions of Ubuntu, but we'd have probably spent time on QA anyway) We got the Intrepid packages ready + uploaded a day and a half ago, and uploaded the Hardy packages early this morning.
Opensuse had it on the servers ready to download before it was officially released, lol.
hm, but by the sound of it they could have done with a bit more QA time given the breakage reported above with their packages... :-/ I'll wait a few days to update I think!
the breakage appears to be a nvidia problem, which is out of the hands of distros and kde.
The breakage may or may not be a driver bug (some very similar breakages also show up with some non-nVidia hardware, but those may also be driver bugs). It's triggered by a patch OpenSUSE backported from the 4.2 trunk, and it made it into their 4.1.1 packages despite there having been reports of breakage on the developer's blog, so you may blame them for that. Who is to blame for the actual bug remains to be decided though, I'm inclined to blame the drivers there. NVidia sucks!
They are working incredibly hard to make their drivers work smoothly with KDE4. And they are doing a good job as well. I am amazed: There has not been any 2d acceleration framework in the drivers and they present a production ready beta driver only a half year later. It does not power up the gpu to its full extent, but it runs smoothly.
The broken packages result from experimental "features" openSuse was working on. Yes, openSuse uses their own "fork" of KDE4. Thus, they can provide better usuability than other distributions (particular than Kubuntu to my experience) and sometimes, as in this case, they include improperly tested stuff.
They will stop sucking the day they actually support Free Software, at the very least by releasing specs like ATI/AMD now does, but ideally by actually developing a Free Software driver in the upstream Linux (kernel), X.Org X11, Mesa and DRI repositories like Intel does.
Currently, nVidia does NOT support Free Software in any way, all they release is proprietary crap and they aren't helping the Nouveau project (which tries to actually provide a Free driver) in ANY way.
Btw: users with ATI cards reported the bug as well.
I decided that 4.1 has now advanced enough to warrant a full switch. It's a different world than 3.5, but I mostly like it. The major KWin 100% CPU show-stopper that prevented me from switching just a few weeks ago is now gone, and KWin sits at a calm 0 to 1% CPU utilitization when not busy compositing. During heavy compositing, the CPU load briefly goes into the mid to high 30% range, occasionally spiking to 40%, before quickly returning back to 0%.
The main significant issue I am experiencing is not KDE4's fault, but rather nVidia's. The well known sluggishness during window resizing is still present in nVidia's driver, but it's just an annoyance at this point. The awesomeness that is KDE 4.1.1 easily overshadows the driver problem.
The KDE devs have done a remarkable job at keeping to their intended development schedule. Excellent work!
I am wondering what is the additional power consumption (if any) of KDE 4.1.1 compared to 3.5.10. The underlying question is: should I switch to KDE 4 on my laptop (too)?
I've done some benchmarking last week, albeit with trunk. It's behaving very nicely now with respect to powersaving. The top 5 wake up reasons are drivers (usb, hda_intel, iwl3945, ata_piix and a kernel scheduler).
You can compare yourself using powertop, as it obviously depends a lot on hardware / drivers.
Really? Did you enably sound notifications via knotify as well? With 4.0.5 that one took an enormous amount of wakeups.
Are there some (official) news when NVidia is going to fix that XRender issue?
yes, soon nvidia will release a beta drive with some updates for the kde 4.x x Render bug.
http://www.nvnews.net/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=118602
I am using the latest nvidia beta drivers and kde4 performance increases quite a lot with every new beta release they do.
They sure are on the right track.
anyway..i check what i'm interesting in kopete...and nothing new..no show buddy pictures, no work webcam(in yahoo protocol, only who interest me).I notice the icon for "Buzz" is anonim, is too hard to draw something like a bell?And i must to say in early stages of KDE4 , in Kopete when click on "participants" in right apear names and pictures of them.I wait for this feature but only name apeare now.what's the plan? no buddy picture in conversation window? I want to know when this features who work good in KDE3, will be present in KDE4.
I do not know anything about video/webcam.
But Buddy pictures are working just like in KDE 3.5.9/10. It depends on your chat window style and the settings for your contact list if buddy pictures are shown or not. (at least it is this case for ICQ and Jabber protocol)
DanielW
I set buddylist to show pictures, and i get only BIG green balls..i check transfers and working (on my pc i send from KOPETE to PIDGIN and viceversa:P) and webcam,when i don't have libjasper installed i get a warning about, after i installing the packet when click " invite to view...".. nothing happen..Must to say in PIDGIN i see budy pics , in GYACHI idem and webcam working, in DIGSBY the same...the only real hope is MAIKU who work to implement audio video in PIDGIN..and when this is done, i think a lot of people leave Win XP and start to use LINUX..:D
Anyway, I like to get a replay from KOPETE developers..what are the plans for this program?
All the best !
Have the functions removed from Konqueror in KDE 3.5.x been restored to Konqueror and added to Dolphin yet. If not they are still barely usable.
And I have tons (150) of 'konqueror -session' processes also in 4.1.1
This is caused by the javascript debugger, and was fixed after tagging two days ago or so. Your distro may not have incorporated the changes. I know Kubuntu has, though.
It looks for me it's not fixed. I don't use the javascript debugger at the moment and also with latest packages today.. I have the same problem :(
After he ask me twice to restore konqueror.. I say no.. and I have my 154 processes.. and 3,4 GB used memory :(
Are you sure it's not just saved session from the old version somehow?
What happens next login if you kill them?
ok that work.. but IMHO it's a workaround and not a fix!
How should one answer to it?
Delphin got a lot of new features in the 4.1 release. (4.1.1 is a bugfix only release). It even has features which were never there in Konqueror.
AND: There will likely always be features in Konqueror which will not make it to Dolphin.
So, to answer your question, I need to know what features you are missing in Dolphin.
DanielW
My only problem is when I use the embedded konsole in dolphin if you have any file selected in the folder view (use ctrl-leftclick to select) dolphin intercepts presses of the spacebar key despite the konsole part having focus (all other character go through fine). I use kde 4.1.64 on suse11.
Apologies for rudely hijacking this thread.
This is a temporary issue in trunk because of a colliding shortcut. The issue does not occur on KDE 4.1.x and will for sure be fixed on trunk quite soon.
Multi Column View as implemented in Konqueror 3.5.9 is missing, I use that all the time, and there is no replacement for it in either Dolphin or the KDE 4 version of Konqueror, just the fact that that is missing makes both Konqueror 4 and Dolphin barely usable for me. Last time I looked you get three views Icon View, List view and some abortion called Columns that is nothing like Multi Column View.
A "multi column view" is available in Dolphin since KDE 4.0, the icon view can be configured to act as "multi column view" (Dolphin Settings -> Icon View -> Alignment).