KDE 2.1.1 is Out!

As everyone has been gleefully pointing out, KDE 2.1.1 is out. The main features of this release over KDE 2.1 are bugfixes, additional language translations, and numerous documentation updates. As an added bonus, you can now also "paste" a URL to Konqueror and have it automatically load the website. I'm also told that KPilot 4.0.1 is in pretty good shape in this release. See the ChangeLog for more details, and the full announcement here. Enjoy!

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Comments

That explains why i can't get AA after i upgraded to 4.03 from 4.02. It worked just fine in 4.02.

Craig

by Rikard Anglerud (not verified)

The Cooker freetype2 rpm's install fine under 7.2

by Mike (not verified)

Hmm, https does not work again :-(

with 2.1 it did work okay, but now i get that "died unexpected" error.

Any hints?

by Justin (not verified)

I encountered the same problem when I tried to use KDE on a different system than the one I built it on. Turns out that I had different versions of OpenSSL installed, and so there was probably a shared library issue. Recompiling kdelibs on the new system solved the problem (although IMO it shouldn't have been necessary.. Now I understand the heck that people go through when they deal with binary packages.)

by David Faure (not verified)

Ok, I just added a section to
http://www.konqueror.org/bug.html
about this kind of problem.
Please follow the instructions there.

by KDE User (not verified)

It was really nice when everything we needed was in kdesupport now we have to all over the place to find optional modules and dependencies that don't work. :(

Please put everything in kdesupport again! It will be just like qt-copy.

by David Faure (not verified)

You want KDE to ship
* lesstif
* openssl
* libpcre
* all sorts of database access stuff
* libsmbclient
* etc. etc.
?

kdesupport would be 40 MB, and you would _have_ to get it all, even if you don't care about most of the stuff, and even if your system already has it !

At least, as it is currently, ./configure adapts to what you have decided to install, without _requiring_ you to download everything.

If compiling and grabbing stuff is too much for you, use a distribution's CD, it's all in there.

by David (not verified)

Common sense answer. Taking to the extreme why not add qt to kdesupport? It just doesn't work.

David, what is libcre for? Is limsmbclient availble now, I guess os? and does this mean samba io-slave is actually @ a usable version that works well?

by David Faure (not verified)

libpcre is for the regexp support in KJS
(the javascript module for konqueror)
configure in kdelibs warns if it can't be found.

libsmbclient isn't released yet, AFAIK. But you don't need it with KDE 2.1 - only with 2.2, which will finally have full-fledged SMB support.
You can try this out in CVS - but you have to get libsmbclient from the samba CVS.

by David (not verified)

As always, great info, thank you. I'm off to raid samba's CVS :-)

Also, *real* good support for windows shares is another great step for KDE in 2.2 along with the new printing lib that combines most KUPS. I feel that two issues that I would like to see addressed are now been worked on, I use KDE for everyday tasks anyway and have long since ditched M$ on my home machine. I've been fighting with printing for a while and it does now work, the same thing with file copies, FTP is a make and mend solution here. So thanks to the developers, I'm looking forward to what kde 2.2 brings.

Keep up the great work with Kword David, this is begining to look very very impressive.

Thanks again

David

by wim bakker (not verified)

quote:
"You want KDE to ship
* lesstif
* openssl
* libpcre
* all sorts of database access stuff
* libsmbclient
* etc. etc.
?"
No, but is there a list of all optional libraries
that any of the kde parts might wish to use when enabled (lesstif, openssl and libpcre I knew about but libsmbclient is new for me) That would be convenient
e.g
lesstif -----> konqueror netscape plug-in's

some sort of list like that
TIA
wim bakker

by Manolo Sampedro (not verified)

Any plans to release binary rpms for those who are still using Red Hat 6.2?

by Rimmer (not verified)

I still can't find Redhat 7.0 rpms. All I see are Mandrake and SUSE rpms. Anyone suggest someplace to look for these?

Rimmer

PS - using RedHat is a pain now that I use KDE *sniff*

by Evandro (not verified)

they will be released soon.

by Bill Vinson (not verified)

That is what the release notice says, but I wish they would come soon. The spec files in at least kdelibs and kdebase leave something to be desired.

The do not handle qt-2.3 as they come and they also don't include an icon file the spec seems to require. This can be fixed, but seems rather painful when building RPMS from the generic src tar. I typically compile a lot of my RPMS and the only painful experience thus far has been the kde sources.

Bill

by Carg (not verified)

get qt-2.3.0 packages from rawhide (ftp.redhat.com/pub/rawhide/i386/RedHat/RPMS).

get the srpms of kde 2.1 from ftp.redhat.com/pub/rawhide/SRPMS/SRPMS and edit the spec changing the Version tag to 2.1.1. add kdeXXX-2.1.1.tar.bz2 to /usr/src/redhat/SOURCES and do a:

rpm -ba /usr/src/redhat/SPECS/kdeXXX.spec

in the order:

kdesupport
kdelibs
kdebase
kde_any_order_now

by Ross Baker (not verified)

I installed the SuSE 7.1 RPMs, but had a few problems -- I wound up not installing the qt-experimental rpm. Why are there two qt-2.3's and can the experimental be made to work?

by Adrian (not verified)

qt-experimental has suport for OpenGL and AntiAliasing. Since there are several X drivers (particulary with NVidia binary only) which are not stable with these features they are not enabled in the default qt package.

Not qt is the problem, but it might trigger the problems in the drivers.

bye
adrian

by Antialias (not verified)

Can anyone tell why legacy theme importer doesn't work.
I actually never worked here (since 1.9.2 release). I installed kde (both rpm & cvs) and tried every single pixmap gtk theme and never been able to get it work.
It changes fonts to unreadable small size, it crashes kde
(so Ctrl + Alt + backspace is the only way to get out) etc.
I run Mandrake, but have everything compiled here: Xfree, Qt, KDE from cvs, etc.
I've heard that some people run it successfully, so I am wondering if it is possible to run it on Mandrake.
Any clue?

by Asif Ali Rizwaan (not verified)

It seems that KDE is against RedHat, I am much annoyed when I see KDE apps don't work (mostly Kaiman, noatun, artsd, kdm, etc) on RedHat Linux. The sources are also making many errors.

Are you KDE people against RedHat? I never had a proper KDE installation on RedHat since KDE 1.94 till now...

by Rimmer (not verified)

I'm sure the KDE guys want to see KDE on as many desktops as possible.

That being said... I also had major problems with noatun. Often trying to pause and then play an mp3 cause noatun to freeze hard (taking arts with it). I have to use "artsdsp xmms -p" to play mp3's when I click on them in Konqueror. I have not noticed any problems with arts otherwise (even playing system sounds while an mp3 is playing or with Q3A).

Installation of KDE 2.1 was a breeze otherwise (I installed using rpms from ftp.sourceforge.net). The only problem I had was Konqueror looking for an older verions of a library I had (which was easily fixed with a sym link).

by wim bakker (not verified)

>Installation of KDE 2.1 was a breeze otherwise
Yes kde 2.1 was good, and compiled straight from the generic source packages, but none of the generic source packages can be compiled on RH-7.0
all of them exit with errors, so I'm sticking to kde-2.1.

by engage (not verified)

I realize this is an old message but I was searching for a solution to my xmms problem with google and this link came up. My problem is somewhat related. I have this problem with artsd randomly preventing xmms from playing. Killing artsd fixes the problem. I'm running Mandrake 9.1, kernel 2.4.21-0.27mdkenterprise, KDE 3.1, on a Presario notebook.

by Waldo Bastian (not verified)

No, we are not against RedHat.

Companies like SuSE and Mandrake employ several full-time KDE developers. As a result KDE works very well on these distributions. RedHat seems to be less interested in the desktop market and does not have any full-time KDE developers on their payroll. That, combined with a poor choice of C++ compiler, makes your KDE desktop experience on RedHat Linux less optimal.

Cheers,
Waldo
--
Disclosure: I work full-time on KDE for SuSE Labs.

by Carg (not verified)

i don´t agree that redhat has chosen a poor C++ compiler. from www.bero.org/gcc296.html: ¨is almost fully ISO C99 and ISO C++ 98 compliant, unlike any previous version of gcc.¨. and that´s why it may not compile kde.

bero, which mantains kde packages for redhat, has send a few patches to kde-core-devel to make it ISO C++ 98 compliant, so it would work with gcc-pre3.0.

while the desktop is not redhat´s focus, they have full-time desktop developers on their payroll. not working on KDE, but on another free desktop.

--
Disclosure: i don´t work for redhat, inc.

by Waldo Bastian (not verified)

> don´t agree that redhat has chosen a poor C++
> compiler. from www.bero.org/gcc296.html: ¨is
> almost fully ISO C99 and ISO C++ 98 compliant,
> unlike any previous version of gcc.¨. and that´s
> why it may not compile kde.

Well, that might have caused some problems but those are fairly easy to solve, not in the least thanks to the patches send by bero.

But that's only half the story. Based on the bugreport/complaints from RedHat users that I see coming by, I can not conclude otherwise than that you will run into a lot of problems with a stock RedHat 7.0 and KDE due to their choice of compiler. You need to install the "correct version of gcc 2.96", e.g. a bugfixed version, to get correctly working binaries.

> while the desktop is not redhat´s focus, they
> have full-time desktop developers on their
> payroll. not working on KDE, but on another free
> desktop.

Maybe they should consider hiring a full-time KDE developer as well then to serve the KDE users among their customers better :-)

Cheers,
Waldo

by John (not verified)

RedHat want's to support a compeletly free linux solution for all there customers, if you don't know non GPL Qt cost alot of money, also hiring people cost money, supporting 1 desktop reduces support cost ALOT.

by Evandro (not verified)

redhat chose to support another desktop. suse chose to support kde.

if you think redhat is wrong, why isn't suse?

by nap (not verified)

Well, SuSE has hired at least one Gnome core hacker to develop Gnome (Martin Baulig)

by Roberto Alsina (not verified)

Well, Red Hat hired Preston Brown, who used to code for KDE (korganizer). Sadly, he's management now, so can't code too much.

And I can sympathize with his situation :-|

by nap (not verified)

Management? Sounds like a cruel and unusual punishment

by not me (not verified)

"RedHat want's to support a compeletly free linux solution for all there customers"
"if you don't know non GPL Qt cost alot of money"

QT is completely free! RedHat would have no need to buy any version of QT. What are you talking about?

Yes, to get a non-GPL QT you need about $1500, but a non-GPL version of GTK can't be had for any price. I fail to see how that's an advantage for GTK and GNOME (except for those truly hardcore GPL zealots out there).

Will KDE never be rid of this "non-free" nonsense?!

by Scott (not verified)

It's only been that way for about six months. Prior to that the Gnome project really took off because KDE was only released under their own liscense. As a matter of fact, that's a lot of why Gnome exists at all. KDE had a strong start and it really scared a lot of free software (http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html) people (myself included). Note, we're talking (to use the standard GNU example) free as in free speech, not free as in free beer. Qt repented and has now been let back into the fold, but not with open arms from everyone. Of course, I'm about to switch to SuSE.

by Stuart Williams (not verified)

Hey I use Redhat 7.0, but I didnt like their version of gcc at all. I went back to the stable version that just got released 2.95.3. it is great. Why did Redhat want to you a version of pre3.0 compiler, i dont have a clue.

Good job-- looking for to the redhat rpms.

by mathi (not verified)

I'm also totally against Redhat in using a pre3.0 version of the gcc compiler in their distro's.

I too had problems installing KDE in Redhat 6.2 (Most of the time the audio won't work)

I strongly believe the Linux Standards Organization should come with some sort of restriction to make the distro's not to use any non-standard software

c'mon gcc 2.95.3 is out and redhat is planning to ship its next distro with it's own compiler version called 2.96RH which is not at all released by gcc.gnu.org, the people who develop gcc. Why do they do such things?

I don't have anything against Redhat. But simply don't agree with their policy of taking a snapshot of a development version of some software and release it even with out the knowledge of the developers who worked hard for the software. How is this different from stealing?

by Evandro (not verified)

¨I'm also totally against Redhat in using a pre3.0 version of the gcc compiler in their distro's.

I too had problems installing KDE in Redhat 6.2 (Most of the time the audio won't work)¨

redhat 6.x is compiled with egcs 1.1.2.

¨I strongly believe the Linux Standards Organization should come with some sort of restriction to make the distro's not to use any non-standard software¨

the LSB shouldn´t (and won´t) make any restriction of any kind about what software a linux distribution should use.

¨ c'mon gcc 2.95.3 is out and redhat is planning to ship its next distro with it's own compiler version called 2.96RH which is not at all released by gcc.gnu.org, the people who develop gcc. Why do they do such things?¨

you can read the full text on www.bero.org/gcc296.html:

* gcc 2.96 is actually more standards compliant than any other version of gcc so far, not counting CVS snapshots of 2.97.
It may not be "standards compliant" as in "what most others are shipping", but 2.96 is almost fully ISO C99 and ISO C++ 98 compliant, unlike any previous version of gcc.
* gcc 2.96 has more complete support for C++. Older versions of gcc could handle only a very limited subset of C++.
Earlier versions of g++ often had problems with templates and other valid C++ constructs.
* gcc 2.96 generates better, more optimized code.
* gcc 2.96 supports all architectures Red Hat is currently supporting, including ia64. No other compiler can do this. Having to maintain different compilers for every different architecture is a development (find a bug, then fix it 4 times), QA and support nightmare.
* The binary incompatibility issues are not as bad as some people and companies make you believe.
First of all, they affect dynamically linked C++ code only. If you don't use C++, you aren't affected. If you use C++ and link statically, you aren't affected.
Second, the same issues appear with every major release of gcc so far. gcc 2.7.x C++ is not binary compatible with gcc 2.8.x. gcc 2.8.x C++ is not binary compatible with egcs 1.0.x. egcs 1.0.x C++ is not binary compatible with egcs 1.1.x. egcs 1.1.x C++ is not binary compatible with gcc 2.95. gcc 2.95 C++ will not be binary compatible with gcc 3.0.
Besides, it can easily be circumvented. Either link statically, or simply distribute libstdc++ with your program and install it if necessary. Since it has a different soname, it can coexist with other libstdc++ versions without causing any problems.
Red Hat Linux 7 also happens to be the first Linux distributions using the current version of glibc, 2.2.x. This update is not binary compatible with older distributions either (unless you update glibc - there's nothing that prevents you from updating libstdc++ at the same time), so complaining about gcc's new C++ ABI breaking binary compatibility is pointless. If you want to distribute something binary-only, link it statically and it will run everywhere.
Someone has to be the first to take a step like this. If nobody dared to make a change because nobody else is doing it, we'd all still be using gcc 1.0, COBOL or ALGOL. No wait, all of those were new at some point...
* Most of gcc 2.96's perceived "bugs" are actually broken code that older gccs accepted because they were not standards compliant - or, using an alternative term to express the same thing, buggy.
A C or C++ compiler that doesn't speak the standardized C language is a bug, not a feature.
In the initial version of gcc 2.96, there were a couple of other bugs. All known ones have been fixed in the version from updates - and the version that is in the current beta version of Red Hat Linux. The bugs in the initial version don't make the whole compiler broken, though. There has never been a 100% bug free compiler, or any other 100% bug free non-trivial program.

¨ I don't have anything against Redhat. But simply don't agree with their policy of taking a snapshot of a development version of some software and release it even with out the knowledge of the developers who worked hard for the software. How is this different from stealing?¨

redhat contributed to the development of gcc and you say they´re stealing? what the hell are they stealing?

redhat doesn´t use a gcc snapshot. they´re using a patched to make it stable. all of their patches made it into the branch of gcc 3.0 (and 3.1).

by mathi (not verified)

Evandro, thanks for your post. very informative...

by Craig Black (not verified)

That's alot of knowledge for someone that i thought was a Mandrake user.

Craig

by jafar (not verified)

hello

i want to work c language on linux (redhat) ,pls give me the instruction for
that
thanking you
jafar

by Evandro (not verified)

> But that's only half the story. Based on the
> bugreport/complaints from RedHat users that I
> see coming by, I can not conclude otherwise than
> that you will run into a lot of problems with a >stock RedHat 7.0 and KDE due to their choice of
>compiler. You need to install the "correct
>version of gcc 2.96", e.g. a bugfixed version, to
> get correctly working binaries.

indeed, the compiler provided by gcc-2.96-54 has its bugs, gcc-2.96-79 fixes most of them. redhat's next release will be released in days. if you try to compile kde with it, you'll see warning that will show you BUGS and you can get them fixed for KDE.

> Maybe they should consider hiring a full-time
> KDE developer as well then to serve the KDE
> users among their customers better :-)

you're right.

by JimJamJoe (not verified)

Awright, quit pussyfooting around.
Truth is Red Hat don't give a Rat's Arse
about KDE.

They are enamoured wit de Gnome.

KDE gives more thought to Redhat than vice versa.

I suspect the originator of this post was
hoping for a little flame fest.

Shame on me for taking the bait.

by JoeJamJim (not verified)

I don't think so, JimJamJoe!
Visiting Red Hat at CeBIT here in Hannover, Germany I discovered that on _all_ desktops KDE was running. On Monday I checked the release and it was KDE 2.1.1!
So wait a little bit - there will be RPMS.

P.S. There are some "rumors" that RedHat will switch to KDE as their default desktop for the European market. But note: RedHat is not relevant in europe.

Bye

by Mikael Helbo Kjær (not verified)

Well, I am not quite ready to join the KDE project yet (give me a couple of months to settle into my new job and programming for linux), but I have quite a few ideas, which I think could go into KDE. BTW shoot me with flames if this is already possible I would make my nights more pleasant to know we can already do this.

1) Animated background picture
Eye candy for those who want an MNG in the background.

2) Better Icons:
Icons which aren`t always underlined. Icons which animate/play sounds on mouseover (pure UI candy I know), Allowing for configuration of placement of text (for internationalization) top, bottom or down/up one of the sides. I think the African/Asian/Middle eastern crowd can use this to make the UI more useful for them (allowing them to use the UI in a readable fashion). Possibly the addition of functionality ala the KIO layer of Konqueror. If certain icon of file dragged over icon of program then if filter present then program activated using filtered/transformed data. Or finally we could have previews for most mime/types (configurable of course) so that not only Konqueror would be able to show files as previews, it should even be possible to configure which form of preview is wanted (HTML as text or as KHTML rendered page, which is cached as picture).

3) WebDAV KPart or IOSlave for Konqueror.
This could ease up the life for those writing web publishing software and make us all happy. Imagine taking a page from the webserver opening it for editing and when you save it back then it simply goes back in corrected form to the webserver. I think this is possible (if not easy)

4) CVS KPart or IOSlave for Konqueror
This could make us programmers happy if it`s possible or feasible.

Anyway these are off the top of my head ideas for projects in KDE (2.2, 2.3 or maybe 3.0?). I`ll be happy to help a little later on.

Mikael Helbo Kjær

by Mikael Helbo Kjær (not verified)

Whoops forgot a little thing.

I heard recently that the default keybindings in KDE suck. Now I know of the policy of leaving stuff up to the user, but should someone do something about it and add a default (and smart?) set of keybindings to most programs in KDE2.X.
This alone would help I think. I hope there is some KControl module for doing this easily and somewhere for programs to get default keybindings from as well? So that if Joe User can say: I want Ctrl + S to be Save in all programs using the default keybinding.

Again I am only firing ideas off into the wild.

Mikael Helbo Kjær

by not me (not verified)

>1) Animated background picture
Total fluff, and it would take lots of memory. I don't think we'll see this anytime soon. You're welcome to add it yourself, however, if you really want it.

>Icons which aren`t always underlined
KControl -> Desktop -> Appearance -> Underline Filenames

>Icons which animate/play sounds
My icons are set to light up on mouseover, and my panel icons zoom in on mouseover. They have a little animation when you click on them, too. You can configure the mouseover effect in the control panel. You'd need MNG icons to do anything more sophisticated than that. Sounds aren't available, but I don't think it would be hard to add to the Notifications Control panel.

>3) WebDAV KPart or IOSlave for Konqueror.
I don't know what WebDAV is, but this has been suggested many times before. I feel certain it will be added eventually.

>4) CVS KPart or IOSlave for Konqueror
I think CVS might be a little complex for an IOSlave. Check out Cervisia for a GUI CVS program.

>I hope there is some KControl module for doing this easily and somewhere for programs to get default keybindings from as well?
KControl -> Look and Feel -> Keybindings
All KDE programs automatically respond to the changes made there. You can save and remove schemes. BTW, the current default keybindings are parallel to the default Windows keyboard shortcuts. It would be quite easy to make a scheme for more Unix-like shortcuts (although there's no way to make 2-stroke shortcuts like C-x C-s).

by Rikard Anglerud (not verified)

When I upgraded to 2.1.1 my fonts have been givng me trouble.

drakfont sees and displays all fonts correcly, but the kde font manager seems to substitute all the fonts with a default one.

In the fonts control, my choises have been limited to 8 fonts (Bitstream courier, Courier, Courier 10 pitch, cursot, Lucidux Mono, Lucidux Sans, Lucidux Serif and Utopia. - 4 families, and an unusable cursor font)

Konsole (and the fixed font selection) also only contains one font "fixed" which is nearnly unreadable when aa is enabled.

Is anyone else experiencing this, or know how to fix it?

Rikard

by Thorsten Schnebeck (not verified)

Try XFree 4.0.3

Bye

Thorsten

by Rikard Anglerud (not verified)

I should have mentioned. I am using Xfree86 4.0.3, freetype2 from Cooker, Mandrake7.2, Qt2.3.

by eric sperano (not verified)

i experience the same problem.

by Glenn Alexander (not verified)

The release docs said Chinese font problem was fixed, but I can't get it to work still. It just either puts nothing (not even empty space) everywhere or gobbledygook that looks like utf8 printed as ASCII.

What must I do abnd can the instructions be added to the docs?

Thanx.