KDE 3.0RC3: Prepare to Fall in Love

The KDE Project has announced the release
of KDE 3.0RC3 (on this, the first day of Spring). The release comes a month after the release of KDE 3.0beta2, with
two (semi-public) release candidates, as well as a well-attended 1-week hacking session for fixing problems, appearing in the interim. KDE 3.0rc3 can be downloaded through KDE's load-balancing system (source code, RedHat packages (only partially uploaded at this time), and SuSE packages). Additional packages should become available in the coming days, both on KDE's and some distributions' servers. Other than for show-stopper fixes, this release candidate will be released
early next month as KDE 3.0. Personal impression: love at first sight,
it simply rocks!

As much as I hate to admit it, with my
busy schedule I have not been able to keep up the KDE 3 releases. But yesterday morning I installed KDE 3.0rc3 and, to be honest, it is truly magnificent!
Konqueror is fast, fast, fast!
Never seen anything like it (except maybe Lynx) in
the main browsers - even
long pages in my Most Often Visited list all but instantly popped into
place.

The rest of KDE 3 is simply spectacular, too. Everything is snappier,
from menus (despite the addition of cool menu icons) and dialogs (these pop up much faster) to applications, and the look is even more professional than KDE 2. Wowwww, I am in total awe. Superb, excellent, amazing job, guys, KDE 3 absolutely rules!

Due to the imminence of the 3.0 release, for this release candidate only, please post crashes and grave bug reports directly to [email protected] rather than using the conventional bug reporting system. Let's see who of you can make KDE 3.0 even better by finding any elusive shot-stopper bugs before the end of the week!

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Comments

by Julien Olivier (not verified)

Just two questions about Suse-8.0:

will it feature a KDE3-compatible version of kwinTV ? I really like this app.

will it be possible to totally update a Suse-7.3 to Suse-8.0 (Yast2, KDE, Kernel...) via Online Update or will I have to buy a new box ? (if online update is possible, when will it be possible ?)

Thanks.

by Stephan Oehlert (not verified)

1) I have no idea.

2) No it won't. This wouldn't make any sense at all since SuSE wouldn't make any money any more. If you want this feature, use Debian.

Latez

by Ty (not verified)

For RC3, which I'm running right now with 7.3, SuSE made a kdeartwork rpm. It's got lots of cool wallpapers and icons, especially from KDE-Look.org.

by Julien Olivier (not verified)

But kdeartwork doesn't have kghostview and kview, does it ? Those packages go into kdegraphics and I can't find them.

by Ty (not verified)

I was wondering where they were! I got kdeartwork and kdegraphics confused. Thanks for reminding me.

Now that you mention it, a lot of the KDE utilities seem to have not been included in RC3 rpms...

I dunno what to do, except just wait for the final, or compile from CVS.

by Ty (not verified)

Yep. YaST2 is statically linked to whatever Qt libs it needs (like Opera can be), so it's not necessarily dependent upon what version of Qt you have.

I've upgraded to KDE3 RC3 and Qt 3.0.2, and KDE2 and Qt2 apps still run fine. The libs get installed into different directories (as do KDE2 and KDE3) so you don't have the problem of a newer version overwriting the older one.

YaST2 runs nice 'n' spiffy in KDE3.

by Dieter Nützel (not verified)

I've compiled it mysef. Works nicely.

Regards,
Dieter

ftp://ftp.kde.org/pub/kde/unstable/kde-3.0rc3/SuSE/7.3-i386+kde

kdenetwork3 is still there.

Sounds work fine in KDE2, but in RC3 some sound events don't work while some do. Is any other SuSE user - or user of any other distribution - having this problem?

Also, KHTML wants to antialias everything at all sizes. This was not a problem in KDE2; it rendered in accordance with my XftConfig file (non-AA for certain font size range). KHTML in RC3 doesn't obey this; it AAs all font sizes. Non-KTML is AA'ed or non AA'ed appropriately.

by Ty (not verified)

That last sentence should read, "Non-KHTML stuff (like menus, buttons, UI in general) is AA'ed or non-AA'ed in accordance with XftConfig.

by Sad Eagle (not verified)

AFAIK, it's a bug in Xft triggered by the way KHTML handles font sizes.. There might be workaround in final, not sure..

by Julien Olivier (not verified)

For the sound event problems, I noticed it and reported it. It seems that it's an artsplay problem. Try running artsplay from a terminal: it'll crash artsd !

I sent 'em an email, too.

Whenever I run artsplay from a terminal, it jsut returns without doing anything. Then when I run it again, it complains about not being able to connect to the sound server. Now, I do have a firewall running, but only on my ethernet interface, not lo (did that once, and discovered lots of thing didn't work :o) ).

I wonder if it's a source-code level problem or a packaing problem? Someone suggested that I recompile my SDL libs, maybe get an updated version. I haven't tried it yet. It is that, though, then that would mean the problem in on SuSE's end of the line, instead of KDE's.

Are any other distros having problems?

by arabbon (not verified)

how on earth, can you say KDE3rc3 would be fast, fast, fast ???
on my 600MHz PIII, all SCSI with 380meg and kde3rc3 built from source is even slower than kde2.2.2
(built as release, with all the recommended options)
logging in takes for ever
switching virtual desktops takes half a second for all apps to show up
slidebars for konsole, kompare, ... are extremely slow. the text is miles away from the slidebar position
launching applications still needs a lot of time
drag and drop for Icons on the desktop still makes the icon run behind the mouse pointer
selecting text also is not as fast as moving the mouse
only browsing the file system preforms better now, but this should not even be necessary to talk about.
I don't mind the minor quirks like konqueror does not get the mouse pointer right on slidebars or similar, but why do you spend so much effort on special features (animating icons, themes, themes, themes) rather than improving the basic (look &) feel = performance?
There would be a lot of developers in my company, willing to switch to linux/kde, but not if it is ten times slower than windows2000/XP. ... and nobody will spend money for 2GHz machines, just for animated icons ...
It once was a really fast system, but now I'm really dissapointed seeing Linux going this direction and tired of waiting for a usable desktop.

by JC (not verified)

I'm running the same configuration with all SCSI.
I compiled both KDE-2.2 and KDE-3.0
KDE3 is faster than old release. I agree that is not as fast as some windows apps but a big effort has been done.

I didn't tried yet pre-objlink with KDE-3.0 (only KDE-2.2). It's improving speed but some stuff like javascript does not work.
May you should swith to gcc-3.x to have better results.

JC

by Christian (not verified)

No. Do not switch to gcc 3.
It simply doesn't compile C++ correctly (bad code generation).
Maybe 3.1 will works, but there are other problems than
virtual classes to cope with even with 3.1.

by munehiro (not verified)

i tried kde3 on my laptop. It has 266 non mmx cpu and 48 megs of ram... and it runs fairly smooth, even with _all_ effects running.
So, i'm not sure about your report, but i think that maybe the problem does not sits in kde itself.

About the whole kde, well... i didn't saw (in the front face... behing the curtain seems really different) a lot of really exceptional improvements. I think kde really needs:

1) something that is able to deal with the plenty configuration of the system, from users to peripherals to apache/ftpd conf... and so on. For now a lot of these are arranged by some applications from mandrake, redhat, suse and so on, but i think it's the wrong direction. The best idea should be sort like a daemon for a uniform configuration mode that deal on one side with different config files, and on the other side with different config dialogs (so this daemon could be contacted from gnome/distro specific config dialogs. maybe gconf is the answer?)

2) more pluggability... i was wondering if kde allows a simple toy like embedding something (like an image) in a rbm popup on a file.

3) something that really deal with installation of kernel drivers and so on...

4) something really kool that remove the windows/macos desktops from the earth's face.

i'm not doing critics on kde developer work. They are great and their code is great too. I'm only reporting something that, imho, should go in the todo list to grant some future enhancement of linux/bsd on the desktop.

by christian (not verified)

It must be something wrong with your setup!

I have PIII 500, just IDE and 256MB and KDE3rc3 *is* running fast. In fact I think it has least 25% faster feel than KDE2.2.2 and that for free! Think about how much you have to pay for hardware to speed up your computer by this figure :)

Christian

by Reality Check (not verified)

These guys in KDE3 mini-forum can be only... guess who... the 'actual' KDE developers! KDE3 is slower than KDE2 and plus, there are many many many bugs to be fixed. The next major KDE release for me perhaps will be 3.2.2. But SPEED is definitely something that is not promising.

by Roger (not verified)

Check your allocated memory... some 2.2 kernels didn't automaticaly recognize more tthan 64Mb... try free and top on your system.

by Michael (not verified)

Compared to the 2.x versions it is fast. It still is relatively slow on my machine (550MHz PIII, 786MB) compared to win2k.
aRTs really improved. With the new version I can listen mp3 and move the mouse.
Most apps start within 4 seconds. In the prior versions I often started apps twice because I thought the click wasn't recognized.
If the developers continue to improve performance like that one of future releases will be really useable.

by J.A. (not verified)

4 secs is a looooooooooong time!!
I have a PII 350Mhz 224Mb Ram. Kde2.2.2 here and no application takes that long to get started!!!
If I had to wait that much for apps to get started I'd probably change to another Desktop Env.
J.A.

by fn (not verified)

I run suse 8.0 and kde3 on a 1.9 GHz, 768 Mb and the apps start within 3 sec. for me. XP is much faster.

by eze (not verified)

my results have been varied. At work it is super speedy on my PIII-450 256MB (faster than kde-2.2.2). At home it is pokey on my K6II-450 (slower than kde-2.2.2).

by Göran Jartin (not verified)

I simply can't beleive this. Either you've fucked up badly during installation,
or you're not telling the truth.

I run KDE on three machines - one celeron 300@450/384, one celeron 466/128 and
one AMD Thunderbird 800@880/256.

I've compared KDE 2.2.2 with 3.0b2 (that's right; beta 2!) thoroughly, and the
3.0b is MUCH faster in almost all aspects: change between desktops is
virtually instantaneous, there is no latency when moving objects, and selecting
text is virtually instantaneous. In 2.2.2, though, my results are the same as
the ones you describe. (Opening a new application is, in all cases, very slow
(usually around 4 secs) but that seems to be inheritant in KDE - I surely hope it will
get better).

Actually, my 466 celeron with 128 MB RAM running 3.0b2 (Matrox G200 8 MB)
is MUCH snappier than my 300@450 w. 384 RAM (nVidia GForce 2 32 MB, factory
driver).

The OS in all cases is Mdk 8.2 final.

by R.Zikken (not verified)

I also run Mandrake 8.2 final.
Applications take at least 4/5 seconds to start, even small application like
the calculator!!! During this delay the harddisk is silent.

(tested on AMD Athlon 1200Mhz/512MB RAM and AMD Athlon 800 Mhz/320 MB RAM)
These are fast machines on which I do not expect to wait for my calculator
to pop up!!

I also do have a Mandrake 8.0 installation on the 1200Mhz PC with an older
KDE (2.1.x I think) which launches applications without noticable
delay (REALLY!!).

The launchtime of applications in the newer KDE's is irritating enough (for me)
to keep me from doing 'production' work on the 8.2 Mandrake installations.

I also noticed that GNOME 1.4 is almost as slow as KDE (if not slower) so
maybe there's something else causing these strange delays (newer kernels?,
Latest XFREE?, Some new Mandrake 'features'?)

Is there a SUSE 7.3 user out there experiencing the same startup delays?

by Göran Jartin (not verified)

I think you have a problem. There is no way that KDE should be THAT slow.
I have checked repeatedly on smaller apps (systems as in my previous post).
On KDE 2.2.2, the calculator starts in ~1.5 seconds, less than 1 second on
KDE 3.0b2.

This from a clean startup - a little bit longer with both StarOffice 5.2 and
Gimp (with one 1meg picture) running. (Of course, I wasn't really DOING anything
at the moment, the other apps were just loaded.)
Maybe a second or so longer time when I have been working for a few hours.

Same with other small KDE apps like KJots - starts in 1 - 2 secs. KWrite starts
in less than two seconds; noticeably faster on KDE 3.0, on the machine with
less RAM and a much slower video card!

I have run every version of Mdk since 7.0 and every verion of KDE since 1.1.x.
I have never seen a backlash like the one you're talking about, so I guess that
it's either an installation problem or a hardware problem.

by Evan "JabberWok... (not verified)

:: Is there a SUSE 7.3 user out there experiencing the same startup delays?

Not I. Like others have said before, if you're experiencing this problem, it's a rather severe and rare or undocumented problem. Try opening up konsole and run a few programs like "ls" and see if there is a delay - try a few times and see if the delay goes away after the frist time. But really, you need to jump on a Mandrake mailing list for this kinda stuff - the dot really isn't a venue for tech support. Good luck, though.

--
Evan

by tapak (not verified)

I am wondering how you can say that starting calculator is fast if it takes 1 1-5 s
it takes more on my machine p4 1.3g, but however even 1s e an age for calculator,
compare it to windows

by static (not verified)

i imagine that this news item was posted eons ago.. i found it in a google search.. i'll reply to it anyway..

i used to have a problem with kde apps talking 4-5 seconds (or more) to load on my computer.. the harddisk was silent as in your case.. it just sat there doing nothing taking it's time, apparently.. actually, many non-kde apps were taking a lot longer than usual as well. when i booted my computer, sometimes mysql and apache would take up to 10 seconds or so apeice to load..

i lazy and put up with it for quite a long time (i hardly ever reboot the box and always keep lots of apps open anyway).. it turned out to be the ram speed setting in the bios.. i was using 133mhz ram but had it set at 100mhz in the bios.. so i set it to 133 and stuff started loading fast again (about twice as fast, at least.. perhaps faster)..

oh.. and after that i also recompiled kde with some sort of magical switch (--objprelink or something) that shaved about 33% of the load time off of kde apps.. the switch might be obsolete by now, though.. i think it was some hack to deal with slow c++ library loading issues with older versions of the ld linker or something.. not sure exactly..

by duval (not verified)

my computer is too slow

by Karl Franco (not verified)

I have an ECS desknote A928. It has P4 1.6Mhz, 256MB SDRAM running 333Mhz and a 40GB harddrive. I found it wierd this phoenomena. I have installed it for more than 10 times already and it was always slow. It takes like a minute or so just to log-in. But there was one time i installed it and it runs perfectly fast (But the was the one and only time it did). I wonder what the hell is wrong.. I tried installing it for another 20 times, selecting and unselecting some packages that I thought would have caused the delays, but i still cant find what's wrong. I hate it. Even the other GUI's the same.

I dont think its the bios setting of RAM speed because I didnt changed anything in the bios during that one time when it run fast. I am still searching for the answer. I hope there are someone who can help/.

by Cristian (not verified)

I have exactly the same problem. I'm running kde 3.2.2 in a gentoo system with kernel 2.6.5.
When i installed it for first time it worked very fast. But now it takes about 1 minute to finish loading everything. The only change i did was the use of the program "prelink" to speedup the applications loadtime. ¿Could it be the problem?.

by Chunhua (not verified)

I am running KDE 3.5.5 P4 3.4 GHz. Kernel 2.6.17.
I got exactly the same problem. After I first installed KDE
it is fast. Then I installed some packages (gcc, g++, vim, etc)
it became extremely when launching a program.

I re-installed KDE and the same thing happened.
I cannot figure out what is going on.

by albert (not verified)

Windows Calculator loads instantly on a pentium I 166mhz with 32mb of ram, so why does KDE Calculator takes 1.5 seconds to load?!
KDE developers should stop messing around with the graphical crap, and start dealing with the most important subject => SPEED!!!
Currently, linux has nothing to offer to the home user, except for it's lower price. If you compare Linux to Windows 2000, You'll see that Windows 2000 is faster than Linux in every aspect, Windows Explorer loads instantly while Konqueror takes 4 seconds to load, It's outrageous to wait 4 seconds for a file manager to load. Windows Media Player plays DivX videos with much better performance then Linux media players, like MPlayer, Xine, or Noatun.
Until Linux won't take care of this speed problem, it has no chance to replace Windows as a desktop operating system.

by feathersmgraw (not verified)

this is very true!!!!!!!!

i got a p4 2gb, 256mb ddr, geforce4 64mb, 82.3gb hdd 40X lg cdrw and a pioneer dvd. under mandrake 9.0

one it doesn't like dvd's
two yeah loads up mega fast but as soom as i open any one app turns sluggish
three the kde games/ toys make it worse

by steve (not verified)

I don't know whether your problem has anything to do with this (sorry, I'm a newbie), but it corrected it for me... All programs used to take at least 10-15 seconds to load, often up to a minute or two for the big ones like Konqueror. This made no sense to me as the system resource monitor said I was using only a small portion of my processor and I still had some unused RAM (I have an 1800 XP with 512MB DDR RAM). It turned out that adding the hostname of my computer (jupiter) to the line in /etc/hosts totally fixed this problem:

127.0.0.1 localhost.localdomain localhost jupiter

I have to admit, I don't see why it mattered. (I am also surprised Mandrake 9.0 didn't do this for me automatically.) I guess there must have been some process running in the background that had a high prioirty? I hope someone who has this problem will come upon this message. I thought for a while that KDE and GNOME just weren't as fast as Windows!

by Georgi (not verified)

It worked!!
my /etc/hosts was something like this

10.0.0.2 router
127.0.0.1 localhost

the first was the address of my dsl modem.
the 10.0.0.2 was not reachebla and needed more

I removed the first line and all is mutch quicker whithout to restart X!!
It seemes it was automatic reloaded, because I'm not restarting any process. (just wonder how)
Maby there are some local tcp connections used from KDE and it takes some time to resolve the internal domain names if an address in this file is unreachable.

My new /etc/hosts is

127.0.0.1 localhost.localdomain localhost europe

OS Mandrake 9.1 KDE 3.1 all updates and patches related to KDE from Mandrake update

Hope this helps
Thanks for the idea steve!
Georgi

by Moray (not verified)

Hi,

Thanks guys. My kde (and gnome) was moving agonsingly slowly when I installed Suse 9.1 and couldn't see what to do.

I'm using a dhcp that calls my pc something like pc-000097 which was not in the /etc/hosts file. I added it in (as an alias to localhost) and voila! Everything is running normally.

Nearly binned the distribution on the problem so thanks again.

Some search terms I use in google that I used which might help pick this up if anyone else is having problems as it took me a while to find you (suse kde slow opening loading).

Cheers

by dan Reed (not verified)

Hi, ive just installed suse 9.1 pro and its also a bit slow.

Moray, could you expand a bit on what you did as Im not sure what youve done. Im using DHCP too. Im using a router, i set my hostname up during the install, is the hostname that dhcp uses/grabs different?

Cheers
Dan

by Dan Allen (not verified)

Oh man, what a difference! I have had this problem in the past. If your localhost points to a non existent hostname (or your hostname is not listed as a local hostname in /etc/hosts and it is not a real hostname), KDE just becomes unusable. I am burning again now that I have made the change!

by John Bishop (not verified)

Fantastic. Your suggestion worked!
I had just updated SuSE 8.2 pro with a free version of 9.1 from a magazine. Allmost everything had gone well after a rather slow update - I also did remote update via a DSL connection to ensure I'd got latest software. However, I found KDE was much slower than before, often taking mintes to open an app.
I thought it was a disk problem at first, but having checked network settings and updated as you suggest, all is back to normal now.

by Paul (not verified)

I was having the same problem with windows taking as much as a minute to load, but after I changed the hosts file, it was like night and day things now pop up in less than 2-3 sec.

Take care,
Paul

by Peter Smith (not verified)

I've a similar problem - which I haven't resolved yet.

Orginally, I didn't have sound working but everything loaded promptly. Once I got sound working, i got the problems that are described in general here (althought changing the hosts file doesn't fix anything).

by inch9 (not verified)

Why don't you try turning some of the settings down??

If you put it on the same level as Win2k/XP it will be faster.

I have the exact same config as you except for 512 Ram and no SCSI and it FLIES for me. (Debian package) Perhaps you need to spend a little more time configuring before complaint shold be warranted.

To compare Win2k/XP to KDE# is a bit of a stretch considering the true benefit lies in the O/S running behing the GUI. If you are stressed with KDE and you want blazing speed you should try a desktop manager like Blackbox or Ice.You will find these minimal in features but abundant in speed.

At least with Linux you have a choice of GUI's :)

cheers

PS I know this an old post but the above opinion bares relevance even today.

by Jimmy (not verified)

I put KD3 on a pentium. 4 3.6 533 mhz. 512ram. I am new to kd but the price was right. I have had all windows systems. And it seems to run as fast as xp.

Is there any bench mark programs for linux? I would like to see what it looks like.

I also would like to say if I went and bought all the software that this comes with and the xtras you get. On top of the operating system!!!! it would have cost me 1500 bucks.

I still have windows xp on the hard drive dual boot.But haven't booted to it since installing KD3
Keep up the good work who ever contributed to this great system.

by shishir (not verified)

Hello

i am shishir.

i have a latest laptop, which has ibm preloaded software.

its takes to much time in booting.

i have reinstalled it by ibm factory state. but after two days it will get slower.

tell me waht to do.

i have scanned in with norton antivirus and Xoftspy Spy remomer tool

pls give me advice.

thanks

shishir
9871349323

by another reality... (not verified)

Don't take it personally guys. It's taken me years to pluck up the courage to use linux fulltime, and now I am totally hooked. I'm using KDE3.0 from the SUSE 8.1 Distro, and although I love it, it is true. KDE is painfully slow. It's taught me patience and that is a good thing :)
Don't scream at me or ignore this!!! I've tried turning settings down, I've tried pretty much everything (inc. ram settings etc.) but the problem is RELATIVE.
Objectively speaking Windows (on a dual boot) is MUCH faster. Funnily enough, so is WindowMaker, so is IceWM, so is Gnome. I stick with KDE because I have become so accustomed to it, but it IS heavy running.This DOES represent a problem for the developers in the sense that it WILL make KDE look bad to windows users in terms of first impressions - which is a terrible pity.

by Philip Davidson (not verified)

Don't worry there is nothing wrong with your computer KDE, is slow.
You were saying you would need a fast PC computer I have 4 such computers
and KDE, is slow on all of them. Out of frustration I keep on going back to Windows 2000 professional. I have used KDE, since its beginnings It is a lot of work to make such an interface and it seems so ungrateful to mention that it is slow but it is slow.

I no longer have KDE, on my main computer I now have it on a P4VM800
PC with a 1000 MB and the usual blah blah blah. The most frustrating thing you will come across are people telling you it runs perfectly on their computer people will do this because they treat computers like motor vehicles my car can do blah blah blah. If they had a piece of string and two baked bean tins they would tell you that KDE worked perfect on that. Such people are not worth the time of day. Don't worry about it there is nothing wrong with your computer KDE is slow.

by cupoftea (not verified)

[Dickmode On]
Spring actually started on the 20th this year.
[Dickmode Off]

by turdle-wobbler (not verified)

In which country?