KDE 2.2.1/3.0 Release Schedules Updated/Posted

Waldo Bastian, the KDE 2.x release coordinator, has announced that KDE
2.2.1 was packaged as a tarball yesterday and will be officially released on September 17, 2001. Those
of you expecting the release this Monday will be happy to know that the extra week was used to squash bugs. At about the same time, Dirk Mueller, the new KDE 3.x release coordinator (thanks, Dirk!), posted the projected KDE 3.0 release schedule. The short and sweet: first beta on December 3, 2001, first release candidate on January 7,
2002, and KDE 3.0 on February 25, 2002. Unlike the KDE 1 to KDE 2 change, this one
should be much smoother: Qt has changed far less, and very few (if any) core applications will be completely rewritten, as many were for KDE 2.

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Comments

by jamal (not verified)

i really really hope will see something like that on kde ftp....
will it come ??

by Inorog (not verified)

With the very very large size of KDE code, such a patch would be huge. Those yo whom such a patch would be addressed would need to know how to compile KDE from source, hence it would be expected from them to use CVS directly. With CVS, going from KDE-2.2 to KDE-2.2.1. is a simple "cvs upd -dPA" away.

by jamal (not verified)

owh... that's nice :) thanks !!

by Inorog (not verified)

In fact, sorry, it's not "cvs upd -dPA" but it's rather "cvs upd -dP -r KDE_2_2_1_RELEASE"

Hope I didn't cause you much trouble.

by jamal (not verified)

yes , you make me in trouble !! ..
hehehe .. nope , it's all right :) , yes.. i'm in trouble in a few minutes .. then i realize it , go to kde web , and found about that -r thing .
thx .

by Reggie (not verified)

Going from 2.1 - 2.1.1 the KDE team released a patch (or at least it was on their ftp server) at ftp://ftp.kde.org/pub/kde/stable/2.1.1/distribution/tar/generic/src/diffs/. And although the diffs would be large, they wouldn't be as large as downloading the full source distribution (especially going from 2.1 -2.1.1 which are bugfixes). Not everyone using KDE will have access tot the web from the UNIX machine (thanks to winmodems), so a patch would be of big help to those who like to compile from source, but may not have access to the web from their machine. I just hope that they do provide them becuase sometimes even CVS isn't always the best option, especially if you get a slow server.

--Reggie

by Spark (not verified)

I have just one question: Will Qt3 fix the clipboard?
Atm it is that mouse selections always overwrite my clipboard.
I think it's much neater to store the "Strg+C, Strg+V" clipboard in a different X-Clipboard than the the "Mouse selection, MMB" clipboard.
AFAIK Qt3 WILL handle it this way (like Gtk does already), but I want to be sure cause it is REALLY hard for me to work without it. :) And will it be compatible to the Gtk clipboards?

by Bryan Feeney (not verified)

Yes it will, and I'm totally gutted as a result, as I really liked that drag and click method of copying and pasting. Other OS's aren't always better you know...

by Spark (not verified)

Maybe you misunderstood me... using two clipboards does not take away any functionality.

See, in Gtk it works like this:

There are two clipboards. I call them CA and CB.

Now if you select text with the mouse, it's always copied to CA and everything there is overwritten.
If you press the middle mouse button, the text is pasted from CA.

If you press Ctrl+C (or use the menu, toolbar) while text is selected, it's copied to CB.
If you press Ctrl+V (or menu, toolbar), it's pasted from CB.

So you can use CA for quick copy and paste (I do most of the time), but if you need something stored longer (i.e. it shouldn't be overwritten if you select something else), then you can press Ctrl+V to store it in CB. Now you can still use the mouse for quick copy and paste with CA, but you can always paste the selection in CB by pressing Ctrl+V cause it never gets overwritten, unless you press Ctrl+C again.

I hope that Qt 3 will have the same functionality!
Everything else is cheap.

by Gary Storla (not verified)

Yes, Qt3 fixes this. This was a long overlooked bug in Qt.

by Spark (not verified)

n.T.

by Bryan Feeney (not verified)

Phew!!!

by mike.s (not verified)

... and while you're at it: would be nice to have the clipboard content available for motif and java based apps. If I want to paste some text into
JBuilder I always have to middle-mouse-btn-paste it into nedit and then copy it with ctrl-c. Would be nice if there could be a "direct" way ;o)

keep up the good work
Michael

by Peter (not verified)

I don't know about others, but for me klipper works as a good work-around for the multiple clipboard problem. No matter how I enter text into the clipboard, I can always get it out later. And the copy history can be set to almost any size. This is definitely one of the most useful applications under KDE!

by Spark (not verified)

Hmm yes. Klipper is a workaround, but nothing more.
It's not very comfortable and I don't like to use it. :)
You have to click it, than search the text, etc, instead of just pressing Ctrl+V to enter the text.

by Asif Ali Rizwaan (not verified)

Right from KDE 2.0, the Help seems to be ages old and not quite helpful. And the "What's This?" context sensitive help is just missing in most of the KDE applications. Can we expect updated help in KDE 3.0?

by Joeri Sebrechts (not verified)

You seem to know what should be in the help and in the context sensitive help. Maybe you could help the KDE team (which mostly consists of volunteers) by improving the help yourself. I'm sure it's not at all that difficult to do (as in, you don't need to know how to program to author the help).

All the KDE apps I have tried to use have poor (generally sparse) help. (I might say, not as bad as man pages which overall should take the prize for "worst technical writing of all time")

Being realistic, it is way too difficult to write up-to-date help after the code has been done. For the developers it becomes a choice between new features/bug fixes OR documentation. No choice really.

Probably the only way that you have a chance is for the help to be embedded in the source code, and co-written with it.

Matlab takes the initial comment lines of the file as being help for that function, and I use this as the default help page for the gui screen created in that file. This is a simple and very effective system, that has resulted in almost all matlab functions written here, having documentation.
By comparison I just did a quick count of some in house VB and C: 11 of 74 documented main fn's, and only 1 of 5 apps with online help at all.

I think the help source needs to be in the files, right with the functions that respond to UI events, or in the UI builder as properties of the widgets. This context sensitive, widget bound help is the front line help of a gui app. By co-writing, it can become more useful. Written with the code it is likely to tell the use about known "gotcha's" and twists associated with using a feature. This is what the user is in the help for.
When it is written after the event, you get useless help that states the self evident: "The START button starts programs"

In delphi I use all the tooltips for documentation as these are so easy to edit as you go along. I would love Borland to put the context help editor in with the gui property editors, so you write the context help as you add a new widget.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------
Improving the overall standard of help is a job for the development tool writers.
If X hours of time is spent on an easy to use "help with code" system at the tool end, the results are multiplied by the number of application developers.

Documentation is already integrated with the code, but it is documentation for programmers. User documentation on top of that would just clutter up the source files, I think, since user help isn't necessarily directly related to the various functions that are in the source. The underlying design of the program would start to leak into the user help and just confuse the user.

What is really needed is an easy way for non-programmers to create help files. Something on the order of KBabel (KDE's translator app) for help files. That way the programmers can concentrate on coding, ordinary people can have a nice way to contribute, and KDE gets up-to-date and useful help files!

by Asif Ali Rizwaan (not verified)

I thank KDE team for including Kinstaller in KDE 3.0. I would love to see improvements in Kicker, KOffice, and KWin. And overall redesign of KControl modules, the KStyle module going out of my desktop (screen area) not just at 800x600 but also at 1024x768 resolution.

by Underground (not verified)

Is Kinstalle a app that provide a easy way to install and remove aps one KDE and will there be a update app zo that we can download update and new software out of a data base one the internet sort a way as windows updater and windows installer.

Is this http://www.mslinux.com/software/kinstaller.html the web site of kinstaller ore is this a other project.

by Kent Nguyen (not verified)

That's the project.

The idea is to create an XML file from the RPM and DEB packages. Think of it like an index file. It will have a KTicker feature where you can specify the interval of time to check for update.

--kent

by Wolfgang (not verified)

nice!
I think the major thing that the KDE world doesn't have and GNOME has is a good installer. It kept me from running KDE for a long time. Thanks!

by lildawg (not verified)

I saw this on kde-devel a few weeks ago, anyone care to comment on any of them?

Hi, after not using kde since 1.1, I've switched back
to kde with 2.2. It is great! It is 95% of what I want
my desktop to act/feel/look like. However, there are a
few features that I mess from other kde-like software,
wether it be Windows, GNOME, or MacOS. So, here is
what I'd look foward to seeing in kde 3.0 (or even kde
2.2.1, but I guess that is only a bug fix release).
Keep in mind that I am not a programmer, so I don't
know what is viable or not.

1. drag and drop in more things that now, for example,
it would be neat to drag and drop text from konqueror
to kword, or maybe perhaps
dragging a paragraph from konqueror and having it
styled in kword, but would appear as simple text in
something like kwrite.

2. downloads windows have checkbox to close when done,
and a button to show the directory in which it is
downloading (very useful feature from internet
explorer).

3. with plugins enabled in konqueror, and when a
plugin for a type is not found, only popup a window
once for it.. for example if you do not have flash
installed, and you goto a flash website, you may see 5
or 6 windows popup trying to show you that the plugin
is not installed. annoying. maybe there should be
option for turning off these altogether.

4. support in khtml.. this is probably the most
widely used non-standard tag.. it still prevents soem
pages from being rendered
correctly.

5. in konqueror, add an action that represents the
functionality of the find window, this could be placed
in a toolbar and quick searchign of webpages could be
done without the need of opening a find window
everytime. opera has something like this afaik.

6. fix the user style sheet option in konqueror, I
could not get this to work with stylesheets that work
in both IE and opera. This is really a must for people
with special accessibility needs.

7. maybe some kind of mouse trails for the mouse
arrow? I'm not sure if kde could do this, but judging
>from some of the funky animations
KDE does with the mouse pointer, maybe it is. I hope
:)

8. Fix applets when the panel is vertical. some
applets, such as the Application Launcher, have a
habit of dissapearing when the applet is
vertical. Other applets, such as the clock sometimes
do not display well with less space available (and oth
er times it works perfectly).

9. Kde app wide alpha channel blending (if that's
possible).

10. Make selecting text in khtml faster. It is
noticbly more sluggish compared to Mozilla. rendering
it self is pretty fast.

11. Make the kmenu editable without need for any otehr
apps. For example, you could drag "Graphics" under
"Internet" to make it go under Internet. Or maybe you
could hold down middle mouse button for a
few seconds, and the text of a name could be editable.

12. kmail imap support is very cool, but it is really
unstable/doesn't work properly with large IMAP
folders. This needs to be changed

13. in konqueror's file browsing mode, if double click
is enabled to open up folders, if a icon is selected,
and the mouse pointer is on the label of the icon for
a few seconds, it should go into rename mode (like in
macos).

14. have more meaningful names in the kmenu. I really
like names like "konqueror- web browser". that shows
to the user that whenever they
see that icon, it is konqueror the web browser.
However, if the user sees something like "kit", they
don't know what it is without chosing
it. Maybe it should be renamed "kit - AOL Internet
Messanger client" or more simply, "AOL Internet
Messanger Client". Maybe theer should be
a policy for this.

15. a "reboot" command in kmenu, or maybe logout has a
reboot checkbox

16. Maybe have a "send bug report" button in the crash
dialog

16. show kde version in splash screen

17. tooltips in stuff in kmenu

18. in the pager applet, have a row and columns
option, for example, the user, if he/she has 4
desktops, might want to have the desktops arranged
horiztonally

19. a "floating" type of panel should be introduced
that can be put anywhere in the desktop

20. in panels in kicker which don't take 100% of an
edge, they should allow panel extentions to use up
part of the rest space. for example, i could have the
main kicker panel starting from te northwest corner
down, and a kasbar starting from southwest corner up.

21. Have a "drawer" button in the kicker, a drawer
slides out, and can hold applets, other application
buttons, other drawers, or stuff liek
more kmenus

22. make button positions in kwin-clients modifibable
like in kde 1.1

23. in kde apps, Make menubar movable, like toolbars

24. in kde apps, add the ability for menubars and
toolbars to appear in new windows (like a palette). I
saw this in the qt3 designer app,
so I think qt3 has this ability.

25. in konsole, add ability to change cursor color,
also, when you open up konsole, the tab name is
"konsole", but when you click on new
it is "shell". imho, it should start with shell, and
not konsole.

26. ability of kicker to "swallow" other apps, like
swallowing gkrellm/ksim into a vertical panel

apps that I'd like to see kde3 equivs of (that are not
any kde2 equivs):
1. lyx (there was klyx for kde 1.1? what happened to
that?)
2. ethereal
3. gimp (well, I don't like krayon's interface that
much, if krayon's feature set was expanded a bit, and
it's interface was tweaked for some kind of MDI
setting, I'd prefer it over GIMP any day. (GIMP's
Interface isn't that great either.. I guess I am
looking for Photoshop for X11 :))
4. xmms/winamp - noatun is a great MS media player
replacement, but it *feels* too heavy for a mp3/ogg
player. but maybe that's just me.
5. aviplay or mplayer (aviplay would be easy to port
to kde since its in qt.)
6. xmame
7. zsnes/snes9x- there are several gtk/gnome
frontends, but no kde ones afaik
8. xchat - well, kvirc and ksirc are great... but I
don't like kvirc's interface much, and xchat is a bit
more customizable than ksirc.. so what I'm trying to
say is that ksric would be great if more
customizablity wwere added.
9. nethack/gnomehack
10. xqf (a online game finder for gtk)
11. adaptec directcd- packet burning app for windows..
it'd be prolly easily done through konqueror. just
select a group of files/dirs, drag to a special cd
burner icon, and then after you are done, right click
on the special icon and chose "burn".
12. xine or oms-gtk - somethign th at can play dvds
13. a wysiwyg html editor-- something like mozilla's
composer mode
14. gcolorsel/xcolorsel
15. xmag
16. an app like gtk-theme-switch to switch kde or qt
widget themes on the fly without kcontrol

Keep in mind that that these are just my wishlist, you
guys are doing a great job already. just putting in my
2cents. And sorry, for any speling, grammer. and other
dumb errors, I'm tired. :)

by Salva (not verified)

Wow!

I had never seen a list so complete of things that KDE is missing. I don't really care about the apps (as long as they exist for linux, I'm not bothered about if it's gtk or qt), but I agree that most of the things in the list are expected from users that come from Windows and I hope that the KDE programmers read this message.

Salva

by Alain (not verified)

Very intersting list ! I don't understand all things, but very few seem useless.
And I recognize some improvements I strongly wish :

> 1. drag and drop
-- Yes, and also between two full screen apps, I think by moving thru the
taskbar

> 4. support in khtml.. this is probably the most
widely used non-standard tag.. it still prevents soem
pages from being rendered correctly.
-- Of course !

> 5. in konqueror, add an action that represents the
functionality of the find window
-- Perhaps, but at first enable the F3 key to be used for "Find Next". And also
(very important !) use the "Back" Key for going on the previous page

> 8. Fix applets when the panel is vertical. some
applets, such as the Application Launcher, have a
habit of dissapearing
-- Yes and make the clock more readable when the panel is vertical.

> 11. Make the kmenu editable without need for any otehr
apps.
-- Yes (already said last week)

And I add :

27 In all apps, memorize the positions and properties of all the tasks bars,
so that they will be the same when opening the program. I first think about
Kate...

28 Add icons in the right mouse menus of many apps. For example in Konqueror
for refreshing the frame (the icon already exists...) (and about the refreshing
button of Konqui, display the page at the same place it was before the
refresh...)

by Nitro (not verified)

I agree too, here are my additions:

29 when you hold down the mouse button in konqueror on a directory icon, it should popup a new window with the listing of the directory, which could be further traversed. This would be useful if you dragged a file from /home/foo/test/ to /usr/foo/test/blah/heh/sdsd. you would not have had to open the second directory. This is like MacOS's spring folders.

30 a theme creator is needed!

31 the kmix applet should have a mode in which it appears as an icon. when yourrmb ont he icon, a little popup menu shows with sliders for controlling master/pcm/etc..

32 the pager applet should have a mode to remove the labels of the desktops (like 1 2 3 4). I frankly don't care what those desktops are named or what number they are. Other people might, but I should still be given a choice.

33 a way to simplify all menus, sorta like in Microsoft Office 2000's menus. a small subset of the menu items are shown, and there is an arrow is shown at the bottom of the menu. When you get your mouse over that arrow,the rest of the items of the menu show up. If you select one of these items, it'll be added to the small subset, and remembered next time when you load that menu or app. Right now, imho, kde menus are really cluttered compared to GNOME's, and I think this would be a good way to simplify it somewhat.

34 menus should have flexible locations, like GNOME's or Window's. THey really should just be toolbars with text being the default. I'd even be nice to turn some of the menu names into Icons like in MacOS.

35 keyboard navigation should be improved. There should be a way to do through keyboard. To start, I think tabbing in Konqueror needs to be fixed. It should work like it does in IE.

36 tabbing in konqueror. the only thing I miss from galeon or opera.

37 a smart bookmark feature in konqueror like in galeon

I'd like to see these apps ported to KDE3 (not really that important, but still):

xqf
a mathml widget/kpart (like mozilla's or gtkmathmlwidget)
xmms

also, I think kinkatta should replace kit and kvirc should replace ksirc (wll, I dunno about that, is kvirc a true KDE app?). it'd still be nice to remove the perl dependencies in ksirc.

by Charles Hill (not verified)

>33 a way to simplify all menus, sorta like in Microsoft Office 2000's menus. a
>small subset of the menu items are shown, and there is an arrow is shown at the
>bottom of the menu. When you get your mouse over that arrow,the rest of the
>items of the menu show up. If you select one of these items, it'll be added to
>the small subset, and remembered next time when you load that menu or app.
>Right now, imho, kde menus are really cluttered compared to GNOME's, and I
>think this would be a good way to simplify it somewhat.

In addition, apply this logic to the file type picker. When saving a graphic, show only the most recent -- with JPG, GIF, PNG, TIF and BMP being the defaults. It's wonderful some programs can save in dozens of formats, but how many are really used by the average user?

Also, give the file type picker extended text -- like a description of the file type. I've had novices repeatedly ask me what file type to save images in for the net and then wonder why their BMP files take so long to download.

Sort of like:
.JPEG -- Photographs and pictures for the web.
.PNG -- Icons and an alternative to GIF
.GIF -- Animated icons, banners and web buttons.
.TIFF -- Full fidelity images for pro printing.

by Alain (not verified)

> 33 a way to simplify all menus, sorta like in Microsoft Office 2000's menus. a small subset of the menu items are shown, and there is an arrow is shown at the bottom of the menu.

I desagree. It is very irritating to 1) search, 2) not find and then 3) make a supplementary click for having the good command.

For me it is a very bad option and MS Windows is very irratating with such things where the system try (badly of course) to think for the user. So please, if such a thing has to exist one day, make it only in option and not the default option.

by Cyber Rider (not verified)

I currently find this one of the most annoying and irritating “features” of MS software. It drives me nuts not being able to quickly find a menu item because the program/OS got a brainwave and decided to hide it from me because it knew I didn’t want to use it. IMHO it is much faster to find an item in a menu if the menu remains the same as apposed to if it keeps changing which items are immediately visible to the user.

Just my 2 Oz cents plus a rant :)

by Electroniceric (not verified)

Count me in agreement, too.

I *HATE* "Intelli"menus. And it makes support a nightmare, because you don't really know what will show up on a users monitor when you're talking to them.

Keep them out of KDE.

by Andreas Silberstorff (not verified)

I guess it can't be underlined often enough!!!

If there really are lots of users who think they need
'intelligent' menu make it optional and never default.

I would have something else on the wishlist:

I would like to use a filefilter on the url-field.

If I give it a URL like f.i.
file:/path/to/somewhere/*.jpg
konqui should show me only jpegs simiulary to an
ls /path/to/somewhere/*.jpg
on the console. Even my really very old Atari had
a file-filter-option, allthough a little bit hidden.

by Thijs (not verified)

Mathml support (and maybe SVG) would be great. Love KDE by the way, keep up the good work.

by kdefriend (not verified)

> > 1. drag and drop
> -- Yes, and also between two full screen apps, I think by moving thru the
> taskbar

This is really one of the few things bugging me: When a window is hidden it is not possible to drag something into it. Windows is better in this respect: Drag to the taskbar and the appropriate window will open.

by not me (not verified)

WHY does everyone think this doesn't work?!? Of course it works: drag something to the taskbar, HOLD it there for 1-2 seconds, and the corresponding window will pop up! Seems easy enough. In fact, it works in *exactly* the same way as it works in Windows!

Maybe it was a recent KDE addition or something, but I'm here to tell you that it works great in KDE 2.2.

by Michael (not verified)

You're right, it does work. But what aur you doing with "Group similar tasks" switched on? I allways get the wrong window...

by Me (not verified)

Do you need do do anything in the control center for this to be activated? I've held over a button in the taskbar for 10 seconds and jack all happened. A little square popped up to the right of the task buttons (shrinking the buttons) indicating that I could drop on the panel, but no windows magically popped up.

by Carbon (not verified)

>an app like gtk-theme-switch to switch kde or qt
widget themes on the fly without kcontrol

Hmm, couldnt you just use a console dcop command to accomplish the same thing?

by Wolfgang (not verified)

Hi! How do I do this?

by not me (not verified)

Run "kdcop" to get a nice tree-view of all the DCOP-callable functions registered on your system at the moment. (which will of course vary depending on which programs you have open) If you can do it with DCOP, it is listed there. Then if you run "dcop" from the command line you can call any of those functions.

by Anonymous Coward (not verified)

One thing I miss is KMail support for authenticated SMTP.
As it is, I can read my POP3 mailbox just fine with KMail,
but need to use Netscape to send mail, as my ISP's SMTP
server requires authentication.

by Lev (not verified)

Me and other people requested this feature more than a year ago, but they seem to ignore it for now, well thats OS, nobody likes to do things that are neither interesting nor simple. I guess thats OK, the guys already to a good job. In the 3.0 feature list there's a point about switching smtp to io slave - does a smtp io slave support authentication ?

Cheers,
-Lev

by Michael Häckel (not verified)

Well and we also ignore the other 300 outstanding wishlist requests for KMail since ages :-)
It's just, that nobody of the KMail core developers uses an SMTP server, that requires authenitcation.

Also in this case there were unfortunately also some other non technical problems that caused a delay. A few different people promising to work on the issue and not delivering anything for weeks or months, some different opinions of how things should be done and a licencing issue.

Anyway, please note, that we do now finally have SMTP authentication in CVS. Check it out and test it!

by Lev (not verified)

:) Well its just as I thought :) Anyway thanks much for new features! Keep up the good work!

Cheers,
-Lev

by Bob Riddle (not verified)

I downloaded just the Kmail stuff from CVS but con't seem to be able to build it. I'm missing the configure.in file (probably others?). Do I have to download all of KDE to build the Kmail with autehnticated smtp send support?

Any helpful advice?

by Sashmit Bhaduri (not verified)

Do you have kdelibs and qt3 already installed? make -f Makefile.cvs already?

You might just want to wait for kde 3 beta1 to be made (next week, likely). Many distros will package it.

by duber_ertw (not verified)

wow....quite the list - I've got a few things to add.....

after using gnome/sawfish for the last 2 years, I switched to kde 2.2 - lovin it! except for 2 little things:
1) I can't seem to find an option for edge-switching of my virtual desktops (eg move the pointer to the far right of the screen and keep "pushing" for a few milliseconds to move to the desktop to the right)
2) also with the window manager - I'd really like to see an option to remove certain applications from the taskbar - I've got a few apps (licq, gkrellm, xmms) that are on all my desktops, always on top - and they just clutter up the taskber list.

by Meir Kriheli (not verified)

1. This should be re-enabled in version 3.0 I think. Check out the kde-core mailing list archive (search for electric borders). I guess it is already in the cvs version.

2. Use the kstart command to start your application. Type kstart --help to see to options. For example I start gkrellm with:

kstart --alldesktops --skiptaskbar --skippager '/usr/bin/gkrellm'

by ik (not verified)

> 1. drag and drop in more things that now, for example,
> it would be neat to drag and drop text from konqueror
> to kword, or maybe perhaps
> dragging a paragraph from konqueror and having it
> styled in kword, but would appear as simple text in
> something like kwrite.

is already being worked on ... (but i don't know if it will be ready by 3.0)

> 10. Make selecting text in khtml faster. It is
> noticbly more sluggish compared to Mozilla. rendering
> it self is pretty fast.

This is known (it bugs me too btw) but there is no easy fix for this...
currently konqueror traverses the whole dom tree for every event
(as someone pointed out here).
(try waving with your mouse above freshmeat.net and watch your
cpu load)

> 13. a wysiwyg html editor-- something like mozilla's
> composer mode

kafka is really promising, but not yet finished.

by ProfDumb (not verified)

Re: your request for a KDE-Lyx, you might like to know
that the Lyx folks are working on GUI-independence so that
there can be multiple front-ends to the back-end engine.

You can track the (slow) work on the lyx-developers site;
there is progress on both gnome and kde front-ends.