KDE 2.2 Ships (Visit an FTP Server Near You)

After some delay caused by a severe hardware failure on KDE's ftp server,
the KDE Project has announced
the official release of KDE 2.2. This release brings a lot of goodies,
including: faster startup times (using the experimental
objprelink
method
) and performance; numerous improvements to HTML rendering
and JavaScript support; the addition of IMAP support (including SSL and
TLS) to KMail; a new plugin-based print architecture with integrated
filter and page layout capabilities; a number of new plugins for Konqueror
(including a Babelfish translator, an image gallery generator, an HTML
validator and a web archiver); native iCalendar support in KOrganizer; and
a new personalization wizard. Compaq
has also announced the addition of KDE to
Tru64. Time to tell the boss to forget XP, and use KDE (hmmmm, back in my college days that would have made a nice chant: 'Forget XP, use KDE', . . .).

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Comments

by Billy Nopants (not verified)

For crying out loud! Don't you think that Adobe's solution is still clearer than ours?

Jeez, they're offering different versions of their software for COMPLETELY different OS's that have nothing in common from a binary standpoint.

Or did you not notice that Linux (EVERY BL**DY DISTRO!) is represented by just one link?

That's what we should aim for... or at least something aproaching it.

--BN!

This is another reasons why KDE doesnt do the final packaging:

The choice of the size of the packages i.e. all in one big file (100MB - no choice ) or many smaller packages - ( choice and less download problems ,but maybe difficult to install if your distribution doesnt provide something like apt-get ). Nothing demands from the distributor to use the same packaging that KDE provides.

Why do you think one link ( == file ) is better?
There are many who would disagree. And again: its
not every distribution. PPC is missing, the binaries are not optimised, you have to tell the installer the target directory ( and thats only for one program, not the 50? KDE consists of, and which need install directories dependent on the distribution.

The distributors provided KDE adjusted to their distribution on the release date.
Where is the problem?

>That's what we should aim for... or at least something aproaching it.

Normally I would say: so when do you start packaging?

But in this case:
This is the task of the distribution - I think some distributions allow for submission from outside.

by Anonymous Coward (not verified)

I agree to a certain extent although I have to say that I compile just about everything that is on my system.

What kde needs is a sort of red-carpet (like what ximian gnome has. it really is awesome) on steroids that can use wget and netselect to check various mirrors around the world to find out which one is the fastest etc and make it really easy in the sense that you can simply select what you want to install and it checks the mirrors, downloads and configures software etc etc and make an advanced users mode that lets people override stuff as well.

For non techies it really is quite difficult for them to set it all up compared to the gnome which installs *very* easily with the go-gnome script. (not to say that i'm a gnome user i just think they do the install part much better)

Us debian users really are spoilt with apt-get! :)
The kde developers really need to sort this kde-debian thing out, and fast!

by Anonymous Coward (not verified)

I agree to a certain extent although I have to say that I compile just about everything that is on my system.

What kde needs is a sort of red-carpet (like what ximian gnome has. it really is awesome) on steroids that can use wget and netselect to check various mirrors around the world to find out which one is the fastest etc and make it really easy in the sense that you can simply select what you want to install and it checks the mirrors, downloads and configures software etc etc and make an advanced users mode that lets people override stuff as well.

For non techies it really is quite difficult for them to set it all up compared to the gnome which installs *very* easily with the go-gnome script. (not to say that i'm a gnome user i just think they do the install part much better)

Us debian users really are spoilt with apt-get! :)
The kde developers really need to sort this kde-debian thing out, and fast!

by Marcel Offermans (not verified)

I would be happy if somebody just created a "KDE" channel for Red Carpet. Why duplicate the effort if Red Carpet works? Most users will probably mix KDE and GNOME to select the "best programs" each platform has to offer. At least, I do. I like and use KDE, but nothing in KDE comes close to Ximian Evolution.

by jz (not verified)

> I would be happy if somebody just created a "KDE" channel for Red Carpet.

Why don't you? ;0

> Why duplicate the effort if Red Carpet works? Most users will probably mix KDE and GNOME to select the "best programs" each platform has to offer.

Yes, true. It'd probably be a weekend job to convert the Red Carpet interface into a native Qt/KDE app. Most of the package/network handeling code is nicely abstracted into a lib in redcarpet anyways.

> At least, I do.

I think quite a few people do. I do (I used xmms and xchat, although I may consider at least replacing xmms) once KDE 3 rolls around.

>I like and use KDE, but nothing in KDE comes close to Ximian Evolution.

How about kmail+kpim? I think that the major things missing from Kmail that Evolution has will be added in KDE 3. See http://developer.kde.org/development-versions/kde-3.0-features.html. Look at the Kmail finished stuff. I've tried kmail-cvs, and it seems to fix many of the imap bugs that were present.

Of course, if you need exchange, neither Evolution nor Kmail+kpim will do. You'd have to buy Ximian Connecter.

by Hugo Hering (not verified)

You wrote: "I have to allege that you are denying our basic right of getting upgrades quicker and you are giving us trouble by only providing sources."

It's this kind of attitude that makes me doubt whether Open Source can ever succeed. Do you not realize that there is no such thing as a "basic right to upgrades". What the fuck were you thinking? There are dozens or hundreds of people working on a project - for free! - and you bastard start telling them about your "rights" to THEIR work. You should be happy that they let you use, copy, and modify (hey, that's an idea: stop whining and write a KDE installer; how about that?) the fruits of their labours.
Your last statement is probably the sickest thing I've heard in years. Does it not occurr to you that first of all they are not "giving you trouble", but hundreds of thousands of lines of (mostly well working) code???

I like reasoned arguments, but for once I'll let my instincts get the better of me; so I conclude with a hearty FUCK YOU!

For me as a SuSE user it normally is not such a big problem to upgrade KDE, because they compile binary packages and offer them for download as they are required to. And I am a software developer, so I can usually solve that.

But for other people who have not installed KDE at all or do not have such a KDE-friendly distribution, when the are not software developers or other computer people, but just non-technical linux users they have a big problem.

To give an example/vision how an easy installation of a huge software system can work: at work I recently installed CygWin on Windows NT:
At first you click on "INSTALL NOW" on their homepage http://cygwin.com, then a setup_cygwin.exe is downloaded, which you start. It shows the already installed files and the available new versions, you can select by clicking what you want to upgrade. Then you can select some user settings, e.g. the download directory on your machine etc. Now you can select an FTP-server from a huge list and finally it downloads the stuff showing a download progress window similar to Netscape.
At the end it starts the installation of the downloaded packages and shows the README.

The additional problems we have are:
- different distros need different KDE-binaries
- the download source depends on the distro

That should not be so difficult to solve: if such an installer is part of the base KDE installation, the distro will be required to put it in their KDE installation (distro _and_ download offers) - maybe even customized to the appropriate download directories for that distro. That would make the first install _and_ upgrade from KDE to KDE easiest.

Fabian

by Christopher Young (not verified)

SO far, everything has been wonderful after upgrading to KDE 2.2, however it seems that my CUPS printing isn't available via kdeprint. I'm assuming that this is because CUPS support wasn't compiled in. This kinda sucks that kdeprint isn't a seperate package that I could just rebuild with CUPS support. Any ideas on how I can get this? (Yes, I know RedHat does not ship CUPS, but I like it ;) )

Anyway, besides a few minor issues and one crash that I've had, everything has been working very well. Good work KDE Team!

by bruno majewski (not verified)

Some chap commented on this a few posts earlier. To repeat my reply to his posting, the same happened to me -- but there's a twist: I'm using Debian Woody (testing), with XF86 + CUPS from Debian Sid (unstable).

Your posting points to a possible explanation to our predicament: that you (might) need to compile in support for whatever underlying printing engine you use. Urgh, this is not good...

Michael Goffioul: is this true? Or does kdeprint automagically adapts to whatever is present?

by Michael Goffioul (not verified)

What you can do is to grab a kdelibs source package, uncompress it and configure it with

./configure --prefix=

Then go to kdeprint/cups/ and try "make". The problem will be at linking time, as the Makefile's a configured to used the libraries from the source tree and not installed libraries. So you may need edit the Makefile's and do the needed changes in the *_LIBADD tags to use the libraries installed in $KDEDIR/lib. You can contact me privately if you need some assistance to do it.

Michael.

Since we don't ship cups, we can't link anything against libcups.

However, I've expected that this problem would come up (seriously, LPRng sucks) - simply install the source rpm, change the "%define cups %{nil}" somewhere near the beginning to "%define cups cups", rebuild, and it'll work.

by Christopher Young (not verified)

Thanks bero,

I'll give this a try and hopefully, things work out well. :) It's amazing.. you ask about something, and then you find out that it's there; just need to put a little work in it! :)

Chris

Red Hat won't ship CUPS with 7.2 either?

No.
Don't ask my why, I most certainly disagree.

by Craig Kelley (not verified)

So you would reccomend CUPS for a production environment? I agree that LPRng is complete mess, but I was under the assumption that RedHat wasn't shiping CUPS because it wasn't robust enough yet.

by ide (not verified)

While doing an apt-get of kde, I noticed that it removes gdm. I went ahead and installed kde, while intending to reinstall gdm. However, once kde 2.2 was installed, I found that installation of gdm required removed of kdm and kde.

I really prefer to have gnome and kde available. Any suggestions? (please don't flame --- 'use kde all the time.' Maybe I am an unusual user, I like kde and gnome)

by JC (not verified)

Why can't you run Gnome from KDM? (or KDE from GDM for that matter). You don't really need both login managers....

by JC (not verified)

Why can't you run Gnome from KDM? (or KDE from GDM for that matter). You don't really need both login managers....

by anonymous (not verified)

KDE2.2 removed GDM on install. I cannot reinstall GDM because GDM requires removal of KDM and KDE. So, I could stick with KDM. I am having problems with KDM, though. Perhaps it is because I am inexperienced with KDM (how could a *DM be difficult?) --- KDM does not accept input from the keyboard, although when exit I x the keyboard is fine (and this was not a problem with GDM). Also, I assume the sawfish option in KDM == ximian gnome?

by anonymous (not verified)

obviously sawfish is the option to start gnome, but this option does not work for me. Where can the session settings for kdm be found? A session can be added in configuration, but the parameters/bash script cannot be modified like in gdm.

by anonymous (not verified)

use 'gnome-session' Thought sawfish & exec gnome-session was required.

by Toastie (not verified)

kde package is a virtual 'task' package which requires all of the KDE packages, including kdm.

kdm, gdm and xdm are mutually exclusive (only one may be installed at a time).

'kdm' is a part of a complete KDE installation (the 'kde' task), so if you're not installing it, you no longer have a "complete KDE installation".

Solution? Install the 'kde' package (let all dependencies install along), install 'gdm' (this will remove 'kdm' and 'kde').

(Since 'kde' doesn't really contain files, but simply depends on the rest of the KDE packages, you can safely remove it.)

by tweet (not verified)

Thanks for the really good information.

So, my understanding (and you were clear, just want to verify I guess) is that I can install gdm and when removing kde, I can still work/start in kde because 'kde' is useless/not really the package for the desktop or applications?

by Toastie (not verified)

Yes, feel free to remove package 'kde'. The basic KDE stuff (startkde, kdeinit etc.) is in 'kdebase' really.

by Tweet (not verified)

I really appreciate your help :)

by juln (not verified)

I'm not sure why people have said you can't have gdm and kdm installed at the same time. Of course you can only use one, but one doesn't remove the other. I prefer gdm to kdm, and installing kde did set my system to use kdm... but it didn't REMOVE gdm. There is usually a file called /etc/X11/prefdm that is supposed to let you select which you use! IN Mandrake and Redhat, though, that file is a fairly complex script with failsafes and stuff.

The gdm executable was still in /usr/bin, so I went to that directory (where the kdm binary is found) and renamed the kdm binary, and then made a link to gdm called kdm:

ls *dm
(should show gdm, kdm, maybe xdm)
mv kdm _kdm
ln gdm kdm

and then gdm is executed when kdm is called. You could also change /etc/X11/prefdm.

by tweet (not verified)

yep, gdm is not there. Gone. Moreover, I confirmed the removal of gdm during kde install (the install would not continue without gdm removal and I planned to simply reinstall gdm (but gdm cannot be installed without removing kdm and kde)).

Perhaps this is an issue with debian packaging. While kdm is ok, it would be very nice to have kdm and gdm available. Not happy having any application required over another.

by Hyperknuck (not verified)

When you install kde with apt-get in Ubuntu Linux, you will get a dialog box asking if you want to use gdm or kdm...

Now i can boot in both kde and gnome, and i use gdm...

by Jon (not verified)

Here's an even simpler way to choose your display manager:
1) Verify 'gdm' or 'kde' are at your disposal in /usr/bin by doing a 'ls -l *dm'
2) su to root
3) open the file called '/etc/sysconfig/desktop' with your favorite text editor (gedit) You should probably see an entry such as 'DESKTOP="GNOME"' Leave this entry alone.
4) Add a newline 'DISPLAYMANAGER="GNOME"' Save and exit
5) Restart X or reboot

The reason this works is the script /etc/X11/prefdm contains a line (if [ -f /etc/sysconfig/desktop ]; then .. if [ "$DISPLAYMANAGER" = GNOME ]; then preferred=gdm ...fi fi) These lines look to the file /etc/sysconfig/desktop for an entry for $DISPLAYMANAGER. Since by defaut an entry for DISPLAYMANAGER does not exist, you must add it manually.

Hope this helps people. I like having a choice also.

Jon

by cable (not verified)

What revisions, exactly, does the install of kde2.2 make to xf86config-4? thanks

none

First off: Hats off to all of the KDE developers!
2.2 is smoother than 2.1.2, with even more things that "just work."

Now, a few constructive criticisms. Perhaps some of these should be bug-reports.

(1)
KDE2.2 completely wiped out my personal preferences as well as the login "sessions" and login manager preferences. Not a nice thing to do. Not the end of the world, but a warning would be nice. It would be even better to respect previous preferences.

(2)
At least on my machine, the default fonts are completely illegible, and anti-aliasing makes it worse. Perhaps it's my LCD panel. Not a big deal.

(3)
Konquorer is acting a bit strange. eg. clicking on a text file launches Korganizer and gives an error.

(4)
The preferences seem to get corrupted. Nothing definite yet, just "odd" behavior.

(5)
Gtop still reports 135MB in use by KDEInit with only Kmail, Konquorer, and emacs running. This seems a bit large.

Thanks for all of the hard work!

Matt

by Rk (not verified)

I installed the RedHat 7.x RPMS and Kicker is unstable. It seems unpredictable, but when I set to auto-hide and wait for it disappear, then put my mouse at the bottom of the desktop, it core dumps (!). It also core dumps when I start KDE, forcing me to start a terminal and restart it. (Dr Konqi isn't invoked)

Any ideas as to what is wrong?

by Rk (not verified)

I thin I've found the problem -

QGDict::hashAsciiKey: Invalid null key
---
Can anyone explain what this means?
Does it have something to do with applets?
How can I fix it?

by Rk (not verified)

The problem appears by the Taskbar applet...
So, my new shiny taskbar, well, can't be a taskbar, at least for the moment. Oh well, there's always Alt+Tab

by Eric Laffoon (not verified)

It's like the old saying, no good deed goes unpunished. ;-) Something are done by others and reflect poorly on the wrong people. Case in point. RPMs are generally assembled by somebody working for the distro. In fact they change requirements for every version so...

> (1)
KDE2.2 completely wiped out my personal preferences as well as the login "sessions" and login manager preferences. Not a nice thing to do. Not the end of the world, but a warning would be nice. It would be even better to respect previous preferences.

This is one place that is a challenge. Try installing XFree86 binaries and answering yes to everything and see what I mean. X start up is highly customised not only for each distro but differes greatly even by revision. Translation, this is a distro issue... one that seems to frequently get hosed.

> (2)
At least on my machine, the default fonts are completely illegible, and anti-aliasing makes it worse. Perhaps it's my LCD panel. Not a big deal.

Yup, that's a problem. If you are running a card capable of xrender and have QT built for it along with KDE you will almost certainly need to edit XftConfig. Yes, you now have two font config files and no, there is no simple way to deal with this. If KDE does it then the distros will change it anyway. It's their mark, and there are not many decent fonts for free anyway. If you can import Windows fonts they are pretty good and most likely if you play with it you will get nice results. Search out antialiasing fonts here on the dot.

> (3)
Konquorer is acting a bit strange. eg. clicking on a text file launches Korganizer and gives an error.

Cool! ;) Go to kcontrol and see what's hosed in your file associations. Someone didn't have enough coffee.

> (4)
The preferences seem to get corrupted. Nothing definite yet, just "odd" behavior.

Are they not being saved? Run this
$ ls -l ~/.kde | grep root
If you have fonfig files with root ownership then using your [username] as root
# chown username.username -R /home/username/.kde/*

> (5)
Gtop still reports 135MB in use by KDEInit with only Kmail, Konquorer, and emacs running. This seems a bit large.

gtop? Hey man... this is the dot. ;) Ctrl+Esc gets KDE System Guard... but they use the same resources. Note kmail running 30 megs? This has been discussed on kde-devel. Essentially these numbers are not entirely accurate (though I forget teh exact explanation after a long day).

Cheers

by David van Hoose (not verified)

Is there any reasons why the KDE packaging team is not posting ALL of the dependencies for KDE 2.2 in their non-kde directory? I have RedHat 7.1 and update it regularly, and I do not have glibc-2.2.3, lesstif, or rpm-4.0.3. I would sure hope RedHat (http://www.redhat.com/)and RPM.org (http://www.rpm.org/) would have the latest version available. 4.0.3 isn't even out yet.
What is going on here? I don't think KDE 2.2 is worth the hassle of tracking down and compiling all of the dependencies. I have an awkward processor that requires me to compile everything and not use rpms. This just takes too long.

by Asif Ali Rizwaan (not verified)

To get all (perhaps most) Dependencies/updates to RedHat 7.1 Visit:

http://rpmfind.net/linux/rawhide/1.0/i386/RedHat/RPMS

And download rpm-4.0.3, etc.

by Oliver (not verified)

Glibc is there now, so you can update to rpm-4.0.3 (you will break dependency with gnorpm).

by bero (not verified)

People, read the README files. I don't write them for nothing.

ftp://ftp.kde.org/pub/kde/stable/2.2/RedHat/7.x/non-kde

has all the dependencies you might need.

by Falrick (not verified)

I've scoured the README's, looked in the above listed directory, but what is still desperately needed is a concise list of all libraries that KDE is capable of using. I'm compiling from source and am on an SGI, so rpms do me no good. Please, add this to the FAQ.

Yes, I can glean some information from the above directory, but what about LDAP? What LDAP library do I need? I'm sure that there are other such optional dependencies that are not in the above directory. Besides, this should be somewhere that is easy to get at. I'd make the list if I had any idea what is needed. But I don't, so I can't.

by Bill Vinson (not verified)

Well there is one dependency missed in that rpm-4.0.3 asked for glibc-2.2.3.

I was wondering why you chose to build against rahide or roswell? If these rpms are designed for 7.x, then the least common denominator of 7.x should be used as that way anything greater could be supported as there is binary compatibility inside of 7.x on redhat. Building against rawhide or an unreleased beta seems that it can only cause headaches for new users :)

I can't say I had any trouble with this, but I can see where confusion could come from.

Bill

by Michael Wardle (not verified)

Thanks for the packages bero.

I had some problems (konqueror hanging for one)
using the version of FAM supplied (fam-2.6.4-9),
but the latest FAM from Raw Hide (fam-2.6.4-10)
worked well. I would recommend using this
instead (or changing rpc_version=1-2 to
rpc_version=2 in /etc/xinetd.d/sgi_fam).

by Jarek Luberek (not verified)

It's probably on my system only but for I don't know how many releases, the sound servers have messed up KDE on this desktop at least.

Did you consider possibly that artsd is scaling it's usage? I don't know too much about arts myself, but programs sometimes do this (that is, using as much CPU as possible, but giving it up if the kernel/another process requests it).

Also, did you try turning off realtime priority?

same on my system.

Uses about 85% leaving 10% for dnetc and 5% for other misc processes.

by bjorn (not verified)

Thanks, this is a great step forward. Looks better, behaves better. The improvements of Konqueror (which already was good) are great, with the very notable exception that I'm told HTTPS is not a supported protocol. Where did HTTPS go? I need it!
_
/Bjorn.

by Rk (not verified)

HTTPS is still there, but you need a new version of OpenSSL to use it.

by Joe Gadell (not verified)

Did anyone get KDE2.2 to install cleanly via the posted RPMs under Mandrake 8? I get a boatload of dependency errors. I tried using urpmi and rpm -UVh. Any suggestions or could somebody outline their process?

Thanks,
Joe