KDE 3.1: Well Worth the Wait

The KDE Project today
announced
the release of KDE 3.1, "a major feature upgrade to the third
generation of the most advanced and powerful free desktop for Linux
and other UNIXes.
"
While you are busy downloading
the new packages for this fabulous release, we hope you will enjoy the
über-cool (disclaimer:
I wrote it) KDE
3.1 Feature Guide
, as well as a sortable
KDE 3.1 Requirements
page, both new for this release. And if that's not enough, you can also
check out the detailed
ChangeLog. And - ah yes - there are also screenshots. So much to do today . . . .

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Comments

by Me (not verified)

Usability!! I know they are working on it, still it's a shame we have to wait at least until 3.2. Konqueror is powerfull in deed, but also a complete mess!
Anyway great job with KDE 3.1! :)

Me

by JC (not verified)

konqueror a mess ? HHmmm, did you tried Nautilus ????
Tell us what you don't like.

Konqueror is powerfull and well designed.

by Ed Moyse (not verified)

I'm still using RC6, but I sort-of agree with the previous poster: konqueror is getting fantastically powerful now but it's very complciated. I know for a fact that my mother would be terrified by the multitude of incomprehensible icons!

Don't get me wrong! I love it (fish:/ is fantastic!!!!) but even on my most KDE-yay! day I'd never argue that Konqueror is a tool designed for newbies ... try sitting a novice down in front of it and watch them struggle.

by Ian Eure (not verified)

So, uh, hit Settings->Configure Toolbars and remove all the stuff your mom doesn't need.

I suppose you could even create a simplified browsing view profile for her, if you let her use your login.

by mark (not verified)

i'll have to agree that konqueror is a _REALLY_ nice file manager.

i can't think of what i don't like, but rather what i would like to have. perhaps this is already there, in which case just shoot me now. it would be nice to be albe to have a split screen. on the left side there's a folder browser, on the left middle you see the file view, and on the right there's the inverse of possibly a different set of folders. i think this would really make moving files around in a large file system much easier. i find that i have to use two konqueror (or explorer in 2k) windows open to move things from one deep folder to another often far away folder.

by Ed Moyse (not verified)

Windows->Split View Left/Right

(or ctrl-shift-L)

Consider yourself shot ;-)

by KUI YUK (not verified)

... by a top notch GUI HID team ...

Currently, well, can anyone say "WAY TOO MANY CATEGORIES" ...? Poorly organized too (though the search function helps).

by AC (not verified)

I find things like little broken, ugly and non-lined up icons (close button on sidebar for konqui is an example), configurable toolbars that don't configure properly, etc. more of a hassle.

Need more "polishing"!! ... it's tiny nitpicks like this *UI and correctness* that non-techie users or people's grandmas can comment on. It would be neat if there was an xprop sort of thing that users could call up and it would take a small screen shot that identified the window/resourc/app and dumped the small screeny and info into an e-mail the user would then fill in according to a template.

Like current bug reports but focussed on UI

by NONInstaller-of-KDE (not verified)

I'll use this at cybcafés but KDE needs to run *well* and *fast* on pII-233 with 128 megs RAM to meet the main criteria I have for my own machines. Since it doesn't (or on a pIII-500mhz for that matter) I can't use it :-(

by ac (not verified)

Wrong. I user it on a Celeron 400 with 128M.

by Datschge (not verified)

And I use it on an AMD6-2 300mHz with 224MB RAM. =)

by Henrique (not verified)

I'm the winner: Pentium 233 MMX, 64 MB RAM.
Or am i the looser ?

by Anders Juel Jensen (not verified)

Fist of:
KDE is a *full featured* desktop enviroment.. kept in analogy with "that other [non]OS" the KDE-3.x series matches winXP. And last time i checked nobody in their right mind runs XP on a PII-233. This is why the KDE team is so kind to still release security-patches for the 2.x.x series ("win98se").. so ppl with small systems can still get a nice GIU on their free OS.

Seccond of:
Compile u code yaself if you want it to run fast.. search the net for help, or ask in the apropriate IRC channel. KDE handles hard optimization better then most other things around (except for noatun *shrug*, just re-./configure with lower opts; cd noatun; make all install)
Trim down the eye-candy to 0.
Choose a low-color theme.
Ditch that l337 wallpaper.
Use latest glibc (it hold lots of speedups for C++ apps)
Use latest gcc (which also has other stuff that we used to "handhack" earlier)
Use latest binutils (cant remember why ;-)
Go over your startkde and look if there is anything that could be removed.
And last but not least.. recompile ever single thing that you think KDE might issue underneath the surface.

In other words.. if u want to do the impossible: www.linuxfromscratch.org
THAT will give ya all the speed that can possibly be tweaked out of that box.. and if thats still not fast enough.. get an uptodate workstation or go help the gcc/g++ guys making C++ optimizasion even better (or go for 2.x.x).

Kind Regards
/kidcat

by crazycrusoe (not verified)

hi

i have the 3.1 screenies (beautiful ones) along with some screenies of the upcomming 3.2 (cvs 3.1.90) with the new features but i dont have webspace to load them up( these files are big prolly take 15-20MB), if any one is willing to host them i can pass them my screenies for uploading.

let me know (irfan at slingshot.co.nz)

How about posting the best of them at kde-look.org?

Maybe try getting the size down? Ask yourself if we really need to see an entire 2000x2000 desktop just to see one or two new features?

According to my quick calculations, to have a 15MB file he must be running something like 2640 x 1980 at 24bit. Not counting compression.

I thought he might have about two screenshots for every single KDE app. =P

by Haakon Nilsen (not verified)

kdelibs wants libart_lgpl, and at least my experience when compiling rc2, it needed such a recent one that I had to grab it from cvs. libart_lgpl is maintained in the GNOME cvs, and I can't seem to find any info on the KDE side on how to check it out, although it is listed as a (recommended) requirement. Now here's how I got it:

export CVSROOT=':pserver:[email protected]:/cvs/gnome'
cvs login (press enter when asked for password)
cvs -z3 checkout libart_lgpl
cd libart_lgpl
./autogen.sh --prefix=... (+ other arguments usually given to ./configure)
make
make install

And you're set to compile kdelibs. For convenience I also put the snapshot up at http://rasmus.uib.no/~st03069/libart_lgpl.tar.bz2, but then you would of course have to trust me not to trojan it ;)

by Anonymous (not verified)

Just can say that libart_lgpl 2.3.11 works fine: http://ftp.gnome.org/pub/gnome/sources/libart_lgpl/2.3/

by Anonymous (not verified)

I'm getting the following error in compiling kdelibs under rh 8.0 + libart_lgpl
(from rawhide). Does anyone else have this problem?

/bin/sh ../../libtool --silent --mode=compile --tag=CXX g++ -DHAVE_CONFIG_H -I. -I. -I../.. -I../interfaces -I../.. -I../../kdeprint -I../../interfaces -I../../interfaces/kregexpeditor -I../../kdefx -I../../kutils -I../../dcop -I../../libltdl -I../../kdecore -I../../kdeui -I../../kio -I../../kio/kio -I../../kio/kfile -I../.. -I/opt/qt-x11-free-3.1.1/include -I/usr/X11R6/include -I/opt/kde_3.1/include -DQT_THREAD_SUPPORT -O2 -fomit-frame-pointer -march=athlon-xp -D_REENTRANT -I/usr/include/pcre -Wnon-virtual-dtor -Wno-long-long -Wundef -Wall -pedantic -W -Wpointer-arith -Wmissing-prototypes -Wwrite-strings -ansi -D_XOPEN_SOURCE=500 -D_BSD_SOURCE -Wcast-align -Wconversion -O2 -O2 -fomit-frame-pointer -march=athlon-xp -fno-exceptions -fno-check-new -DQT_NO_TRANSLATION -DQT_CLEAN_NAMESPACE -DQT_NO_ASCII_CAST -DQT_NO_COMPAT -c -o katefont.lo `test -f 'katefont.cpp' || echo './'`katefont.cpp
/opt/qt-x11-free-3.1.1/bin/moc katehledit_attrib_skel.h -o katehledit_attrib_skel.moc
rm -f katehledit_attrib_skel.cpp
echo '#include ' > katehledit_attrib_skel.cpp
/opt/qt-x11-free-3.1.1/bin/uic -nounload -tr tr2i18n -i katehledit_attrib_skel.h ./katehledit_attrib_skel.ui > katehledit_attrib_skel.cpp.temp ; ret=$?; \
sed -e "s,tr2i18n( \"\" ),QString::null,g" katehledit_attrib_skel.cpp.temp | sed -e "s,tr2i18n( \"\"\, \"\" ),QString::null,g" | sed -e "s,image\([0-9][0-9]*\)_data,img\1_katehledit_attrib_skel,g" >> katehledit_attrib_skel.cpp ;\
rm -f katehledit_attrib_skel.cpp.temp ;\
if test "$ret" = 0; then echo '#include "katehledit_attrib_skel.moc"' >> katehledit_attrib_skel.cpp; else rm -f katehledit_attrib_skel.cpp ; exit $ret ; fi
make[3]: *** [katehledit_attrib_skel.cpp] Error 139
make[3]: Leaving directory `/home/ustun/kde_3.1/kdelibs-3.1/kate/part'
make[2]: *** [all-recursive] Error 1
make[2]: Leaving directory `/home/ustun/kde_3.1/kdelibs-3.1/kate'
make[1]: *** [all-recursive] Error 1
make[1]: Leaving directory `/home/ustun/kde_3.1/kdelibs-3.1'
make: *** [all] Error 2

by Another Anon-person (not verified)

In the changelog I saw:

Support for "Multimedia keys" on your keyboard

Is it supposed to work? It doesn't here.

by caoilte (not verified)

hasn't worked for me and there's no obvious place to configure it in the control center, so i'd guess no, not yet.

hotkeys works quite well enough for the moment.

by Mark (not verified)

I've got a microsoft natural pro w/KDE 3.03, and the multimedia keys work fine--for most apps--but not all. Kmix, for example will work; just set the key bindings.

Mark

by Me (not verified)

That's bullshit, I have no multimedia keys on my keyboard!

by Justin (not verified)

I think you have to map them in X first, just like what you would do with the "Windows" key. Not that I know how to do any of that though.

-Justin

by coolvibe (not verified)

xev and xmodmap are your friends :)

by Sheldon (not verified)

Or better, use klineakconfig http://lineak.sourceforge.net

by L.Lunak (not verified)

You need to configure your X correctly for it. In Control Center, go to 'Regional & Accessibility/Keyboard Layout', and select a proper keyboard model there (e.g. the 'Microsoft Internet Keyboard Pro' matches my keyboard). Then KDE should recognize all the multimedia keys (you can also check by running xev, it should print e.g. XF86Back for the back key and not NoSymbol). It's possible that your XFree86 version doesn't support the particular keyboard you have - bad luck, you'd have to upgrade XFree86 then or try to write the map yourself. The keyboard model can be configured in XF86Config too if you don't want to use the kcontrol module.

by caoilte (not verified)

except sadly, kde doesn't support my memorex keyboard.

by L.Lunak (not verified)

It's not KDE, it's an XServer issue. KDE doesn't care about what kind of keyboard you have.

by Anon (not verified)

I've got the same kb, but the keys aren't mapped correctly. Not sure why. Wonder whats preventing it from "just working"?

by Andreas Joseph Krogh (not verified)

Can anyone post their xmodmap-file with these multimedia-keys enabled?

by Sheldon (not verified)

Seriously checkout klineakconfig http://lineak.sourceforge.net no need for xev, xmodmap, etc.

by Mikey (not verified)

> Is it supposed to work? It doesn't here.

In KControl->Peripherals->Keyboard, i picked

Keyboard Model: Microsoft Natural Pro
Primary Layout: U.S. English
Primary Variant: pc_universal

Still, it didn't work for me until I picked "U.S. English" in the Additional Layouts frame. I don't know why it made a difference, but now it works great (and that's with KDE 3.0.3).

by PimpDaddyA (not verified)

I've gotten all versions of KDE that I've used to take advantage of the "special" keys on my keyboard. It took a bit of reading and a lot of trying but it works very well now.

I use Mandrake. Google helped me find the necessary information, but here it is in a nutshell:

Older versions of KDE couldn't directly recognize the keys that XFree86 assigned to those keys (they had symbols like "XF86Back" and such). Those keys are enabled when you enable keyboard layouts ( KCC | Peripherals | Keyboard ).

After enabling the keyboard layouts, I had to find the file with actual symbols that were used for that keybard. For my Mandrake system, and for my keyboard, the relevant file was "/etc/X11/xkb/symbols/inet". I had to change all the XF86xxxxx symbols to F13 through F26. As I understand it, it was Qt (not KDE) that couldn't recognize the XF86xxxxx symbols. ( I believe this may be the support now available in 3.1 but I'm not sure.)

Once I have F13 through F26 working (check using xev), KDE was more than happy to assign them to whatever I wished.

Questions? :)
-----------------

And on another note, since I saw L.Lunak posted a reply too - I'll assume that it's the Lubos Lunak that maintains khotkeys. Lubos, I really really love khotkeys, but JEEZ was it hard to find in KDE. Once I found khotkeysrc, everything was doable, I just wish there was a KCC module for it somewhere. ("wish" in the sense that someone besides me codes it :) )

Also, it took some doing and a lot of errors before I figured out the safest thing to include after the "Run=" in khotkeysrc was a small script to do something, rather than just the path to mozilla, xmms etc. LOTS of errors in .xsession-errors and wierdness that way, and I have no idea why. My ~/bin directory now has a bunch of tiny scripts that just serve to be called by khotkeys to launch programs. Later, I added a bit of XOSD to the scripts, so that's nice, too.

Once again, thanks and I love khotkeys!

-----------------

by Kevin Rogers (not verified)

Have anyone tried to compile this on a standard RedHat 7.3 box?
Are any upgrades of compilers or other non-kde packages required?

by Rex Dieter (not verified)

Coming soon at
http://kde-redhat.sourceforge.net/

Stay tuned.

-- Rex

by olf (not verified)

also for RedHat 8.0 ? ^_^

by Bradley Woodward (not verified)

I run RH 7.3. I've updated my gcc using Redhat's update agent, but that's all. I installed QT 3.1 too, seperately from KDE 3.1.

And I've had no problems so far. I've sucessfully built arts, libs, base, network and multimedia. It's taking the normal long time, but should go quickly from here on in.

by Kevin Rogers (not verified)

What version of gcc are you using?
Have you upgraded other components than gcc?

by moZer (not verified)

RH releases bugfix updates to gcc 2.96 via up2date, unless you're subscribing to the "gcc-3.1 for rh 7.3" channel, then you also get gcc 3.1 (installed as gcc3, which means that it's installed parallell to gcc. I.e., gcc has version 2.96, and gcc3 has version 3.1.).

Either way, gcc 2.96 should build KDE just fine. I've buit KDE 3.0.x and a few betas of KDE 3.1 with it, and I've had no problems. Gcc 2.96 is _not_ a bad/buggy compiler (for comparison, gcc 3.0 could not build arts correctly).

by Jaime Fordham (not verified)

Hi!

I've compiled KDE 3.1 using Konstruct on my Red hat 7.3 box and it all works fine except for a rather weird problem with Konqueror! Take a look at tis image : http://www.navero.co.uk/misc/erro-konqueror.jpg

by Marcus Reuss (not verified)

KDE 3.1 seems to work quite well on a SuSE 8.1 distro. However, one thing still does not work, the S/MIME in KMail. It's still the same old problem, I can not configure the needed plugin because the "Certificate Manager" does not start.
Can anyone confirm this? Do I need to download some extra Aegypten stuff that can not be distributed with the original rpm's?

by Anton Velev (not verified)

which rpms have you downloaded for suse81? those provided by kde or you have found suse prepared ones?

by Marcus Reuss (not verified)

The ones provided by KDE for SuSE 8.1

by Tim Gollnik (not verified)

Binaries are never provided "by KDE". The SuSE-binaries found here are packed by SuSE, of course.

Greetings

Tim

by Anton Velev (not verified)

> The SuSE-binaries found here are packed by SuSE, of course.

Are you sure? Because i checked the suse ftp mirrors and there was nothing about kde3.1 the last kde we can see there is 3.0.4, this is also the latest one we see on their site (check http://www.suse.com/us/private/download/linuks/index.html )

Look into each of the package information
about who and where compiled it,
and loook at the RPM's changelogs as well.