KDE 3.2 Reaches Final Stage: Announcing Release Candidate 1

After over a year of development we're ready to announce the release of the first (and hopefully last) release candidate for KDE 3.2.0. Get it from download.kde.org or use Konstruct if you don't feel like calling configure by yourself. Due to the time constraints, don't expect distribution binaries, but they may pop up at download.kde.org URL too.

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Comments

There is a point you are missing. Ultimately, in Open Source projects, the best project always wins, because there is no monetary requirement.

If Sun and others choose to fund Gnome, that is all well and good, but the KDE developers and community will continue to develop it, because they want it. You can't kill off KDE by withholding funding, like you can with commercial products; they just keep going. They keep going, in fact, until sooner or later someone says "Well, why don't we try KDE instead of Gnome?" and then it snowballs.

The only time KDE would never have a shot, is if Gnome incoporated KDE's benefits and made a platform that to all people is better. At that point, everyone would be happy.

What will happen? Who knows? But Gnome can't win because of a worse product with more funding. That's the Microsoft way, and it is obvious at this point that they are losing massive amounts of market share right now. Linux has been picked up by people, and now use is snowballing.

> Ultimately, in Open Source projects, the best project always wins, because there is no monetary requirement.

Actually there is a monetary requirement. We need a memory upgrade for cvs.kde.org and the

memory sticks
for that

beast
are pretty expensive.

> If you too think KDE isn't doing enough to encourage donations, vote here:

Better vote here :-)

Hehe, yeah, there too =)

by Gerhard den Hol... (not verified)

1) Xinerama seems broken. Windows are placed random, not where they were left when I last saved my session
2) kweather seems to be unable to update. How am I supposed to know what the wetaher outside is, if I cannot use kweather .. ;)

by Nadeem Hasan (not verified)

Hi,

Does it update at all? I have not seen this problem at all and I only run CVS HEAD. Please provide more info or file a report at b.k.o.

by Ian Monroe (not verified)

I haven't had any trouble with KWeather. Perhaps their settings got messed up in one of the upgrades.

by Jello Biafra (not verified)

How do we compile KDE from scratch using the prelink option?
is there an info or howto on this using Konstruct.

by Anonymous (not verified)

There is no "prelink option during compilation". Just install KDE and run (or let it run at night if cron'ed) prelink on your system.

by ah (not verified)

if you use gcc 3.3.x then you can use gcc/ld builtin prelinking support. Just set export LDFLAGS='-z combreloc' before running ./configure
Also it's useful to run ./configure with option --enable-fast-malloc=full

by Anonymous (not verified)

combreloc is not prelink (Jelinek) is not objprelink (Bottou)

by Jello Biafra (not verified)

I find this whole issue of prelink confusing

by poison (not verified)

awsome ... absolutely awsome 8)

by KA (not verified)

There seem to be some glorious feeling about this release...

I guess glory shines on the KDE developers.

by Alain Knaff (not verified)

1. Kicker crashes when starting it with 3.1.4's config. Yes, I'd expect this to work, or how else would you do it when you administer a multi-user machine, and want to avoid breaking everybody's personal config?

2. K menu comes up almost empty (even when starting from scratch, with a new user)

3. Quicklauncher just shows five generic "folder" icons, which say "Malformed URL" when you click on them. There's now possibility to customize them into something useful (RightClick->AddApplication leads to a greyed-out No Entries label).

4. Kcontrol (the KDE Control panel, started manually) comes up empty as well.
On stdout, it says "No K menu group with X-KDE-BaseGroup=settings found ! Defaulting to Settings/"

5. No .xsession-errors log file created, to analyze what's going on.

-------
N.B. KDE 3.1.94 for Redhat (Fedora Core) works all right.

i think you messed up your installation.

did you install something by force ?

by Alain Knaff (not verified)

Found it.

I was missing the kdebase3-SuSE-9.0-68 and desktop-data-SuSE-8.2.99-46 packages. After installing them, everything works fine.

Curiously enough, abscence of these packages was no problem with KDE 3.1.4 and KDE 3.1.5 ...

by Alain Knaff (not verified)

I was mistaken, actually only desktop-data-SuSE -8.2.99 is needed, not kdebase3-SuSE.

Now, while continuing my install, I ran into a another problem: kdemultimedia needs libkdeinit_noatun.so, but this is nowhere to be found:

# rpm -i kdeaddons3-sound-3.1.95-0.i586.rpm kdemultimedia3-sound-3.1.95-0.i586.rpm kdemultimedia3-video-3.1.95-0.i586.rpm
warning: kdeaddons3-sound-3.1.95-0.i586.rpm: V3 DSA signature: NOKEY, key ID 9c800aca
error: Failed dependencies:
libkdeinit_noatun.so is needed by kdemultimedia3-video-3.1.95-0

All other KDE 3.1.95 packages, except these 3 (multimedia-sound, multimedia-video, addons-sound) are installed. Or is libkdeinit_noatun supplied by a "standard" SuSE RPM? If so, which one?

Thanks

by GeorgeMoody (not verified)

Alain,

libkdeinit_noatun.so is supplied by kdemultimedia as shown below:

george~> rpm -qf /opt/kde3/lib/libkdeinit_noatun.so
kdemultimedia3-3.1.95-1

Regards

George

by Alain Knaff (not verified)

Unfortunately, there is no kdemultimedia3-3.1.95-1 in SuSE-9.0's directory.
So I just used the 3.1.94 version, and it worked anyways.
Btw, is it expected that the 3.1.95 RPMs are much smaller than the ones for 3.1.94 ? More space-efficient code, or less goodies?

by Gareth Sargeant (not verified)

There seems to be a kdemultimedia3-3.1.95-1 in the other SuSE directories. I think the packager forgot to upload the 9.0 version. Maybe I will try to build just KDEMultimedia from the sources.

BTW: What I have is excellent. Well done KDE Developers!

by Richard (not verified)

It is possible to install kde-3.2 with apt on SuSE.
See; http://linux01.gwdg.de/apt4rpm/kde31to32.html
This helps a lot to get dependencies solved.

by mj (not verified)

hi,
I've got installed all kdemultimedia 3.1.95 packages from a kde mirror for SuSE 9. But when i start the packet manager of YaST, There is an error: "You must install libkdeinit_noatun.so" - I'm a linux newbie - can anybody help me?

bye

by Dennis Nigbur (not verified)

Do these required files exist for SuSE 8.2 also? I have the same problem with KDE 3.2rc on the SuSE 8.2 box: calling up the start menu causes the menu to be truncated at the right edge and/or to crash the kicker.

What can be done?

by Robert Krawitz (not verified)

Something new since 3.1.4 seems to be drop shadows on the text beneath icons on the desktop. Unfortunately, I can't find a way to turn it off. The only thing in the control center that looks close to this is Shadowed Text in the Liquid panel, but that doesn't seem to actually turn it off. Am I missing something?

It does seem to start up very quickly compared to 3.1.4.

right click desktop->background->advanced options->shadowed text

btw, the default shadowed text looks quite ugly. :(

by Robert Krawitz (not verified)

Thanks. Wonder how I missed it.

Personally, I think they've gone a bit heavy on the eye candy (bouncy task bar frobnitzim, which fortunately I did figure out how to turn off).

I think you only get those eye candy effects if you set your processor speed to high in kpersonalizer.

by Navindra Umanee (not verified)

The bouncy icon is *much* better than the weird flashy thing from before. Surprisingly, I quite like it myself and so do many people. The desktop shadow text could have been *so* much better though...

Couldn't find the desktop shadow config either. "Background" --> "Appearance & Background" would be better in the config app.

by Alex (not verified)

I love the bouncy thingy! And IT'S NOT TOO LATE TO CHANGE THE CRAPPY SHADOW!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

by Tony Espley (not verified)

me thinks he likes it :)

Tony

by hoonweird (not verified)

and how do you hoon?

by James Richard Tyrer (not verified)

> Wonder how I missed it.

Not hard to figure out -- it is in a very illogical place.

Somebody please call the usability people! :-)

First question, why is: "Advanced Options" a button rather than a tab?

Second question, why is: "Background Icon Text" called: "Background" when it is actually: "DeskTop"?

Third question, why is that option in that obscure location?

Where to put this? Since it is an option for: "Color", I would add a tab to the "Color" KCM -- have two tabs: "Window" & "Miscellaneous".

Perhaps it could also be made clear how to set the color for the shadow.

--
JRT

by Diederick de Vries (not verified)

> Second question, why is: "Background Icon Text" called: "Background" when it is actually: "DeskTop"?

Ha! Did you ever give any thought to why people stick wallpaper to their desktops? So quit nagging on inconsistent terminology!

by James Richard Tyrer (not verified)

I was referring to what it is called in the Control Center.

Wall paper *is* background. But text is not.

My comments are not based on my opinions but on the comments of users and questions on the support lists: 'kde' & 'kde-linux'.

This magic button to set this is a dumb idea, and it is in the wrong KCM. Actually, all of these magic buttons are a very dumb idea. The reason that they are a very dumb idea is that they are inconsistent. The user interface should be as consistent as possible. The reasons for this can be found in any basic (1st year college) physiological psychology text.

--
JRT

by Abby Ricart (not verified)

I wrote a dumb tutorial on changing that default (fugly!) desktop dropshadow. Get it here:

http://datiku.com/documents/kdesktopshadows.txt

by mononoke (not verified)

cool, thanks!
:)

isn't the file empty?

Windows XP

Open System Properties in Control Panel, choose the Advanced tab, and click Settings in the Performance section. Turn on the Use drop shadows for icon labels on the desktop option, and click Ok.
You can also try MicroAngelo (v5.5 or later), which allows you to change the text color, configure custom icons, and change other aspects of Windows.
Another utility of this type is WindowFX.

by anonymous (not verified)

I dont know if this is the right place to put this question, but will ever be a profession file manager in kde like Total ( old Windows ) commander? Smth like that would be greate for freaks. There are a few commanders like Krusader, but nothing is so advanced ad TCmd.

Midnight commander is good, but ... eh ... and konqueror is not very usefull when you have to manage a huge hdd.

Thanks.
Sorry for bothering you.

by aleXXX (not verified)

Hi,

please tell us a bit more exactly, where you see deficiencies in konqueror.
What's missing, what can be done better ?
You can also email me directly, also in german: [email protected]

Would be nice if I would hear from you.

Bye
Alex

by anon (not verified)

You can see, for example, why Xandros rolled their own kparts-based file manager rather than using Konqueror:

http://consultingtimes.com/articles/xandros/filemanager/filemanager.html

by anonymous (not verified)

Yes nice, but there are 2 types of file managers ... the one like krusader, XFM, windows commander, and the 2 tabed ones like krusader, mc, totalcommander.

You cant compare them, i like the 2 tabes ones :)

regards.

by luca (not verified)

for me the performance has to be improved, improved extremely ...

but from the number of features I am totaly satiesfied.

by Christan Kuzmanic (not verified)

Well, I run KDE 3.2_rc1 on my Gentoo G4 (1ghz) ppc system and I have to say that Konqueror simply rocks. It's much faster than I ever thought it could be, and has all the features I could wish for and then some. I love gnome, but KDE 3.2 enables me to do things faster and more efficiently (Kate vs Gedit for example). I'm not trying to flame gnome, but kde is a few steps ahead as of right now. Kudos to the kde development team.

by anonymous (not verified)

Sorry, for long absence,

Well in krusader you dont have that supr speed from total commander.
It takes a lot when you enter in a folder with many files, take your chance in /dev/

You can see it flipping whyle you move the cursor.

Just try TC. i can case you ever touch a M$ windows :D

regards.

by Sean (not verified)

Konqueror WISH-LIST (you asked for it!):

permissions-changing feedback would be nice if there is a reason
it fails (& there must be!). Cascaded changes through subtrees is
good when it works, but doesn't always (and sometimes does but the
view is not updated to reflect that).

Desktop-icon click should always start a new instance (even if
the global setting is single-window) ... to facilitate occasional
separate-window drag/drop (as for nautilus).

I need to change desktops to use nautilus for some file deletes and
overwrites that Konqueror just refuses to do (seems to be crippled
to only working within a user's home-tree, despite group permissions
that allow otherwise).

Hows that for starters!

Cheers

by JW (not verified)

btw

If you are looking for a Total Commander-like project on KDE, have a look at Krusader (http://krusader.sourceforge.net). It is a dual pane file-manager with most of the features present in TC and a very nifty viewer.

by Alex (not verified)

I was browsing around the theKompany's website and I came across a free little multiplatform gem called Aethera.

It is functional, clean and attractive. (http://www.thekompany.com/projects/aethera/screenshots.php3)

It also looks a lot like Kontact, and has just about all the functions I need. Is it based on Kontact code, is it using KDE parts and is it open source? Finally, how is Kontact BETTER, or WORSE than Aethera?

Thank you!

by Bryan Feeney (not verified)

Aethera predates the whole Kontact thing, it's been around for a good few years now (SuSE distributes it, don't know about anyone else). It doesn't use parts as far as I know, but I think it might use the KDE address book. It's not quite as good as Evolution, but it's a good Outlook replacement if you've got Gnome issues.