KDE 2.2.1 Goes Live

The KDE Project has just released KDE 2.2.1. Though a week and a few days late, I am happy to report that the delay made this (perhaps the last stable release of the KDE 2 series) better. Read the announcement or go straight to the source. Please note that some of the packages -- RedHat and Yellow Dog spring to mind -- were uploaded late and may take some time to sync to the mirrors. Also, there were some problems identified with some i18n packages late yesterday; these problems are being corrected, so if the i18n package you want is missing or broken, please check back in a few days. Update, Wednesday September 19, @08:22PM: Mandrake has advised its users to (i) update to "cooker", the
development version of Mandrake 8.1, which has KDE-2.2.1 packages
here; (ii) update to the release candidate of Mandrake 8.1 (please visit here for more info); or (iii) wait for the official packages, which should be available next week. Also, for those who have not read the announcement, I should highlight that TurboLinux has announced that they have made KDE the default desktop in the next TurboLinux Workstation release.

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Comments

by TomL (not verified)

I didn't know it could do that (the clock/calendar thing). Way cool!
I love it. I'm so glad I read your respose. I've just emailed that hint to all my kde-pals.
Is this in the little hint thing that comes up when when KDE comes up?
If not, we ought to submit it.

I wonder what else I'm missing?

by ac (not verified)

Checked the announcement, it's buried there! Congratulations! Hooray!

by Johan Veenstra (not verified)

> The library requirements stated in the anouncement are:
> qt 2.2.4.
> For OpenSSL support, OpenSSL >= 0.9.6x,
> For Java Support, JVM >= 1.3
> For Netscape Communicator Plug-in support, recent version of Lesstiff
> Searching local documentation, htdig
> Other special features, require other packages.

Especially the last requirement(s) got me wondering. What other special features are there, and what are the requirements for those special features. Does anybody have a complete list?

Shouldn't libjpeg, libpng, liblcms, libmng, libtiff be in the list of requirements?

Johan Veenstra

by Jon (not verified)

Well, for example, to use the audiocd: slave to write Vorbis files, you need the Vorbis libraries.

by Billy Nopants (not verified)

Exactly right!

Did the writer of the requirements get bored? Or did he/she not know all the supported functions that will be magically enabled when you have the right libraries/programs installed?

Let's face it... if they (KDE programmers) don't know, then we sure as hell wont!

--BN

by not me (not verified)

>Let's face it... if they (KDE programmers) don't know, then we sure as hell wont!

I don't know if any one person knows every special feature of KDE. Remember that many, many people have contributed and no one oversees all of the development. People only know what they have contributed or discovered on their own.

Here are some that I know: Playing videos in Noatun requires mpeglib, you don't get a help browser if you don't have libxml, you can get an improved "network neighborhood" type thing if you have libsamba, you get an improved KDEPrint if you have CUPS, you get mp3 and/or Ogg Vorbis ripping in the audiocd ioslave if you have Lame/libvorbis, and you can get better directory change notification if you have something which I can't remember.

Many of these require the libraries to be present at compile time, so if you use a binary compiled version of KDE (like RPMs) you are stuck with the features that your packager compiled in. One exception is the audiocd slave.

If you compile KDE yourself it usually tells you whether or not you have these libraries and what features are going to be enabled.

by jason byrne (not verified)

It would be great if they added the short list you just mentioned...

I've had these 'extra' features working on one of my machines for quite a while... but when I went to compile KDE-2.2.1 on a relatively 'new' linux install - I found myself grumbling... 'now what were those things that gave me mp3/vorbis/mpeg/etc... support again?'

works great once you get it going... but I'm sure plenty of people are missing out on features because they've never seen them ;-)

by not me (not verified)

If you look at the output of ./configure doesn't it tell you "missing libvorbis, compiling audiocd: without vorbis support" or something like that?

by jason byrne (not verified)

the faster your machine... the faster the configure details fly by (if you were trying to monitor the details to begin with)

I'm sure my linux installs are absolute cadillacs (TV/video/DVD, etc...) compared to the typical 'out of box' experience some people settle with - but there's no reason not to just post all the known features/dependencies for *everyone* to enjoy.

by Per (not verified)

configure saves its results in a config file. Not sure of the filename, but its one of the (if not the) newest files starting with ".". Another option is to do ./configure > configure-output.

by dids (not verified)

libsamba

is this separate to the normal samba files

I just downloaded something called libsmb

is this the one ?

thanks
dids

by not me (not verified)

Probably. I'm not 100% sure but that sounds like it. It hasn't had a stable release yet so no, it isn't included with Samba normally.

by Paulo Eduardo Neves (not verified)

Another one: kamera:/ ioslave if you have gphoto2 libs instaled.

by David Johnson (not verified)

You can play videos in noatun!! Wow! If only the release notes would have said that...

Now I am faced with the choice of *recompiling* KDE, or just forgetting about it.

by Evandro (not verified)

Some that come to mind are lesstif, libxml2, pcre, libogg/libvorbis, cups.

by David Johnson (not verified)

I fully second Johan's concern. I recently built a complete set of KDE-2.2 packages for a friend (for Slackware). It was a major pain involving the following steps:

1) Unpack kdexxx-2.2.tar.bz
3) ./configure
4) Examine output from configure.
5) Go find missing stuff.
6) Install missing stuff.
7) ./configure
8) make; make install
9) Test.
10) Repeat...
11) Make package.
12) Move on to next KDE source package.

This process took me one week to complete. And then the day before my friend came to pick up the packages, I discovered that none of the documentation was built because I didn't have libxml2 installed. Sigh.

How much work does it take to add a line to the README for each mandatory, recommended and optional requirement?

by dimonb (not verified)

please, replay where could i find patch from kde-2.2 to kde-2.2.1.. it's very difficult to me to download all souces of kde-2.2.1 :(

maybe it is possible to get those with cvs ... (cvs diff ?)

by Michael Häckel (not verified)

Try something like
cvs rdiff -rKDE_2_2_RELEASE -rKDE_2_2_1_RELEASE kdelibs
And the same for the other packages.

by dimonb (not verified)

thnx, i'll try this..
but BTW having diffs on ftp would be more convinient and less load on vcs server

by Michael Häckel (not verified)

Sorry, it just came into my mind, that you eventually might not get binary files like icons, that have changed, this way.
Anyway, if you compile KDE from sources, then you can also check out the sources from CVS, that is also not much more difficult as from ftp. If you have done that once, then you can get any other version with only transfering the differences.
That has even the advantage, that you can get post release fixes if you use KDE_2_2_BRANCH or get the code a week earlier than others.

by Hywel Mallett (not verified)

You can find some (not all) at my site - http://www.hmallett.co.uk - follow the link near the bottom of the page.

Hywel Mallett

by J35u5 (not verified)

One of the best ways to support KDE is to not buy Redhat, and to buy a pro-KDE distro instead, such as: Suse or Mandrake.

I recommend Suse because of its stability and overall polish, compared to Mandrake. Suse has that wonderful German efficiency.

Redhat sends lots of money towards Gnome development. If they are convinced to switch their efforts to KDE, that would mean lots of money towards KDE development.

Its all about the distros. That is where the battle is being fought for the Linux desktop environment.

by Eleknader (not verified)

As a matter of fact RedHat does support KDE also.

kcmlilo and kwuftpd are made by RedHat with RedHat money.

Eleknader

by Asif Ali Rizwaan (not verified)

And these f*** pro KDE distros are hampering system and network configuration modules for KDE and its users for easy system configuration like used to be in Corel Linux for their own selfish advantage over RedHat!!!

by Alexander Skwar (not verified)

What the heck are you talking about? The MandrakeControlCenter is purely GTK, not QT, so I don't get what you're flaming about....

by Alessandro Magni (not verified)

I got this problem:

to upgrade RPM to v4.0, I badly damaged the archive containing the list of RPM installed on my system (I'd like so much to know what I did wrong BTW)

so I dont have anymore a list of KDE stuff (version2.1) installed

It seems that to upgrade I should rpm -erase all previous KDE packages, but I dont have them in the archive anymore!

Is it safe to say "who cares" and try installing them over?

Any help appreciated, thanks

Alessandro

by Aurélien Gâteau (not verified)

Did you try to run rpm --rebuilddb after upgrading to RPM 4.0 ?
It might get your RPM database back from the dead :-)

by Alessandro Magni (not verified)

yes, I knew that and tried it - without success. I dont know where rebuilddb could go check a backup database, but failed.
So, Im stuck with the doubt: do I risk a $> rpm -i * --nodeps --force ???

by bondowine (not verified)

I believe you were suppose to do "rpm --rebuild" right after updating to rpm 4.0! Rpm 4.0 uses a newer db format and rpm 4.0 seems to have trouble with dealing with the old one.

by Danny (not verified)

you could try to rpm --rebuilddb to rebuild your database (i'm not sure of syntax,check man rpm)

D

by kunnar (not verified)

https through proxy does not work since KDE2.2, i have openssl-0.9.6b-7. Mozilla and other browser works, also did work konqueror 2.1.1

by Ingo Klöcker (not verified)

Did you configure the proxy for HTTPS? Since KDE 2.2 there is an extra field for HTTPS. In KDE 2.1- there was only a field for HTTP and the proxy entered there was also used for HTTPS.

by kunnar (not verified)

Yes i did and noticed that. Somehow simply konqueror 2.2 refuses to use https and now also konqueror 2.2.1 in our network. Not only my machine, we installed for example Redhat 7.2 beta with KDE2.2 to one new machine, there was same problem. Put into that extra field what you want, same proxy as http or anything else or leave it empty, it simply dont work. If i read faq or something, then there is "you must use openssl-0.9.6x to use https" or something like that, but i have openssl-0.9.6b-7...

by David Bishop (not verified)

I have the exact same problem, though I use an authenticating proxy as well. Of course, it's tons better than 2.1 that didn't work with authenticating proxies at all. And ebay works now! Woohoo!

by not me (not verified)

Did you use the RPMs? It is possible that openssl-0.9.6 wasn't on Bero's computer when he compiled the RPMs. If you compiled it yourself or looked at some of the other KDE RPMs floating around you might be able to get it working. (no guarantees though)

by Fahimeh Samareh (not verified)

Konqueror has a problem with https via proxy.

by Johnny Andersson (not verified)

I notice that there's a lot people missing (good) packages of recent software (read: KDE).
Having used RedHat since ver 4, I recently grew tired of 7.1's incompatibility with everything, (mostly because of the unstable compiler) as well as all the strange dependencies of pre-packaged rpm's.

I had wanted to try Debian for some time, and I gave it a shot, just to find that the much-hyped apt-get system didn't work as well as I'd hoped.

In anger, I thought "well, screw all this packaging shit then", and downloaded Slackware. Best thing I ever did. :) True, I was forced to learn some things about the system to make everything work, but that's well invested time.

So, y'all: get rid of the packages and start compiling your software yourself (with a non-beta compiler, of course). It's boring and slow, but it's also rewarding.

by Thilo (not verified)

Try Gentoo!

They seem to combine the advantages of slackware (you know what is going on!) with the best of debian (apt-get)...

http://www.gentoo.org/

They have ebuilds of new KDE releases out fairly quickly too!

by 870Fragmaster (not verified)

yeah compiling is great if it works. lot of times on my system i run into compile problems more often than package problems.

by Some Poor Slob (not verified)

Yeah, Slackware gets a lot of flack but I think it's still a good distro... Of course, REAL linux experts prefer to roll their own a la Linux From Scratch!

Heh

by Eric Veltman (not verified)

Hello Johnny,

It depends on what you want to do. Distributions with weak package management,
like Slackware, are ideal for learning how to Read The Fascinating Manual,
hand-configure software by editing configuration files, build software,
install software, solve problems. But if you don't like doing that all day
( anymore ), then better choose for a distribution with good package mgt.

The good package management is a Linux _jewel_ and a huge advantage over for
example Windows NT. With it, you can easily add packages, update packages,
remove packages and during those operations, it takes care of conflicts
and dependencies. For instance, don't install postfix and sendmail together.
Or another example, a kde package requires Qt version something.
Very nice about package mgt. is that update and removal of packages
doesn't leave piles of junk on your system. You don't need to re-install
your system once every couple of months to get it "clean" again.

Another thing that you can do with f.i. RPM is checking which
files, that belong to packages, changed since installation of the
packages. You can use that to make a very space efficient backup
script that puts a list of packages on the backup CD, puts the files
that changed since package install on the CD and puts files that don't
belong to packages on the CD. You can use good package management to
keep installed packages in sync between systems. Numerous things that
a Windows NT administrator can only dream of. One of the reasons that NT
administrators fall back on re-installing systems to "solve" problems
is that there's no good package management on NT.

Because of the weak package management in Slackware
and because after about 2 years of Slackware I didn't want
to spend much time anymore configuring my system, I chose
for SuSE somewhere at v 5.x and am now happy using 7.2.
And it helped. I now have time left to learn C++
and write long and boring messages like this one.

Best regards,

Eric

by Johnny Andersson (not verified)

You might be surprised to learn that I agree completely. Well, almost, anyway. ;) I'm all for packages, although not always in the state they're in right now.

We all have better things to do than stare atc ompilations and editing other people's source. A package system that *really works* would be great.

But in my experience, there's a lot of problems with packages too. Maybe it'll work better in the future, when it has had some time to mature. I guess the main problem is that the person who makes the packages has to have a system very similar to yours, as you can't use any compile-time options.

Just consider the following; you want to use inetd instead of Redhat 7.1's xinetd. Many programs packaged for RH 7.1 depends on xinetd, so you have to use --nodeps and then do the best you can to adapt the files installed to inetd. Or, like me, you just think "allright, I'll continue using xinetd then, if that's what they want, the bastards." ;).

I've heard good things about SuSE though, maybe I'll give it a whirl some time. Just wish I knew how to pronounce it. ;)

by Eric Veltman (not verified)

That xinetd / inetd issue seems to me to be a political decision from RedHat.
Anyway it doesn't have anything to do with packaging system's weakness.
With a little bit extra effort they could easily create packages that
work with both inet daemons. I never tried RedHat myself, but from what
I hear from you, it sounds like SuSE is much better. I don't remember
any significant problem with packages and SuSE also has the policy to
let the admin choose between variants instead of choosing for them.
For instance, you can choose between postfix and sendmail.
You can choose between plp, cups, and [I don't remember the name].
You can choose between kernel NFS daemon and a userspace one.
You can choose between kernel 2.2.x and 2.4.x.
You can choose from several JVMs
and you can choose between xinetd and inetd.

by Russell Cloran (not verified)

Hi,

As a university student, I tend to have a lot of time to fiddle with things. As an ex Caldera Linux, Red Hat, OpenBSD, FreeBSD and Slackware, and current Gentoo user, I fully agree that package management is a *must* in terms of keeping the system clean.

I have found Gentoo great. Issues such as xinetd/inetd are resolved very cleanly. You can choose *any* package that provides, for example, "logger" or "opengl" or "x11" and on and on.

I still roll a lot of stuff myself, and a simple "emerge -i" "injects" a certain package... so the system knows its there, but you get to control it. Useful for custom kernel patch-levels!

Kudos to the Gentoo team for learning from *BSD ports, and improving it. I also now have more time to write long mails and get on with real studies!

Cheers
Russell

by Jim (not verified)

Would it be possible to obtain a list of miscellaneous packages, and what non-core features they give? For example:

openssl -> HTTPS support for Konqi
lesstif -> netscape plugin support
cdparanoia -> audiocd: kio_slave

I was all excited last KDE release I got about using audiocd:/, but I didn't know about the cdparanoia requirement until it was too late. I'd like to get all the cool goodies this time :-)

Thanks for all your effort with KDE...hopefully I can help out all of you soon!

by Per (not verified)

I second that. Ideally I would like to see a table like this:
first column: Library name and version (click for homepage)
second column: What it provides
Third column: Possible comments

But someone has to gather this information and put it together.

by Joshua Penix (not verified)

When KDE 2.2.0 came out, I got it installed on my RH7.1 system by adding the "non-kde" upgrade RPMs that Bero provided. Everything worked great...

Now that 2.2.1 is out, I was able to download the 2.2.1 RPMs made for Roswell and apply them with no troubles. Again, everything on my desktop appears to work great...

However, KDM now refuses to run. It also refuses to give any useful errors :^)

I saw a couple other people mentioning this same problem in the Slashdot thread, but saw no solutions. Anyone have an idea?

by Scott Dowdle (not verified)

Do a verify of the kdebase packages (rpm -V kdebase). The problem with the upgrade is that there is a directory named kdm where the rpm package is trying to install a file named kdm. That's how I remember it anyway. I had to delete the directory and try the install of the kdebase package again and all was well with the universe. I'd give you the exact directory and filenames BUT since I fixed it, I don't remember exactly what they were. I think verifying the package will tell you what is broken. Essentially, before you fix it, there isn't a kdm binary on the system... so it can't run.

by Oliver (not verified)

Did you s-link /etc/kde/kdm/kdmrc into /usr/share/config?