AUG
2
2007

KDE 4.0 Beta 1 Released, Codename "Cnuth"

Submitted by Sebastian Kügler

The KDE Community is happy to announce the first
Beta release for KDE 4.0 is available now. This release marks the beginning of the integration
process which will bring the powerful new technologies included in the
now frozen KDE 4 libraries to the applications. Simultaneously KOffice have released the second Alpha of KOffice version 2. Highlights are improved text rendering and layout and the new Flake library. Read on for more details.

Almost two months after the foundations of KDE 4 have been laid with the first Alpha, KDE enters the stage of a full freeze of the library interface. From now on, the applications will focus on integrating the new technology refined during the last months, and the library developers will try to fix all bugs found during this process. No new applications will enter the official KDE modules and usability and accessibility work is an ongoing process. In the following weeks, KDE developers will be able to add features to their applications until the next Beta is released and the application features will be frozen as well.

The info page has the download links, including packages for Kubuntu, Mandriva and openSUSE.

Comments

In danish 'Snut' and means sweetie..

Damn polar bears

By Allan Sandfeld at Thu, 2007/08/02 - 5:00am

For all other Gentoo'ers out here, there are SVN ebuilds avaible with which you can get the most recent version, and if you pull them now, you'll get the beta (Please bear with the overhear. If there's at least one visitor who didn't know, the last sub-sentence was useful :) )

http://overlays.gentoo.org/proj/kde/wiki

Best wishes,
Arne, now waiting anxiously for the KDE4 beta to finish compiling.

By Arne Babenhause... at Thu, 2007/08/02 - 5:00am

One thing to bear in mind if you intend to keep using your KDE 3 install is to follow the advice here

http://overlays.gentoo.org/proj/kde/wiki/CommonProblems

immediately AFTER building kdelibs. Otherwise, all your menus will go bye-bye when you install the rest of the ebuilds.

By Addicted to Gentoo at Thu, 2007/08/02 - 5:00am

Just too bad it's so sadly configured that you need to mess around with multiple package.masks, now that it's on Beta1 (+Alpha3 apps, heh) maybe M~ or even ~arch (ok, maybe not) ebuilds would make it simpler for people to start breaking their systems... :-)

It's way too simple to just cp -a the system to other partition anyway. ;-)

By anon at Thu, 2007/08/02 - 5:00am

I was updating my Gentoo KDE4 svn with this ebuild (last build, 1 mounth ago).
kdelibs compile fine, but kdebase complains that no libsolid.so.5 is installed.

In fact I noticied that kdelibs install "libsolid.so.4" !!! Where is the error?

By Minkiux at Thu, 2007/08/02 - 5:00am

Will this replace my current KDE or install it into a new slot?

By Dire Dicker at Thu, 2007/08/02 - 5:00am

Install in a new slot

By Minkiux at Fri, 2007/08/03 - 5:00am

My installation of this version is not much better than most of my daily builds. I'll keep on using SVN for a while. :)

It's nice that KDE4 is getting usable though. I removed KDE 3.x a while ago and I can live with the current KDE4 quality. Kwin and Konsole (the most important apps) are working fine and I can use non-KDE apps where things get fucked-up.
Furthermore, Juk (running on Phonon-xine) and Kopete have gone into a pretty good shape the last couple of weeks. The only thing I'm really missing is a working system tray. This seems broken for Kicker and not implemented for Plasma.

By Kurt at Thu, 2007/08/02 - 5:00am

there is a system tray applet in playground already, but don't know if it works

By djouallah mimoune at Thu, 2007/08/02 - 5:00am

It doesn't in the build from a few hours ago ;-)

By Jos Poortvliet at Thu, 2007/08/02 - 5:00am

Is marble really the most important architectural feature in this Beta? Where are Plasma, Phonon, NEPOMUK and the other components that are supposed to be the foundation of the new desktop?
People who have been tracking KDE4's development may be up to speed on these issues. But if I were someone who was supposed to be informed by this press release, I would have thought this Beta to be in very poor shape.

By Elad Lahav at Thu, 2007/08/02 - 5:00am

most of them are not actived by default.you have to enable them to test.but it doesnt mean they doesnt exist.
and what you read in the official page, I think it was a visual changelog.

By Emil Sedgh at Thu, 2007/08/02 - 5:00am

they are all activated by default. however, it was decided to focus on the apps that were most ready and stable for this beta release. why? to showcase what is currently at the best working state and to show that app devel is indeed very possible with the current libs.

By Aaron J. Seigo at Thu, 2007/08/02 - 5:00am

There simply was no really big, major news since Alpha 1 on those. So when I wrote this announcement, I simply choose not to talk about them... They are there, under the hood. Dolphin has progressed in integrating NEPOMUK, but isn't ready yet, nor is it enabled. I did talk about plasma, Phonon did improve, but mostly under-the-hood again - so the most visible things are those that are mentioned (though I might have left some out, of course).

By Jos Poortvliet at Thu, 2007/08/02 - 5:00am

In swedish "Snut" is slang for "cop" or "police officer"

( This is just so the interests club can take a note )

By M4d Swede at Thu, 2007/08/02 - 5:00am

I love that literal translation:

"the interests club takes notes" = "intresseklubben antecknar" = "thanks for the information, but nobody is likely to care"

What would be the corresponding expression in English, I wonder?

By Martin at Thu, 2007/08/02 - 5:00am

Well, to take a crack at it: "So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish" is about the most that I can make out of it. :).

By a.c. at Fri, 2007/08/03 - 5:00am

It's the worst realease, even worst than alpha1...
Let me say I tried 3 different setups: gentoo overlay, kde4live and then,
believing I choosed some wrong options, again kde4live with different settings
at boot.
Gentoo ovelay emerged but doesn't even start.ugh.
After downloading kde4live I rechecked if I had downloaded the right
version dated 1 aug:
Nothing is stable, I got a crash of the mixer before starting, even konsole is unusable, amarok showed a nice screen but just hitting a button crashed it,
I tried to change some setting in systemsettings and no joy, can't even change
decorations or style.
The menu is ridiculous: one submenu for the calc alone, and most submenu have
less than 4 items inside, in the worst windows style. Kde 3 is much better!

That's a nightmare to me, I hope you're joking, this is not a beta, and
you're not wasting all that time on koffice (without fixing the only part of koffice which is really needed, the file format filter), I won't believe that,
tell me it's just a nightmare.

By nae at Thu, 2007/08/02 - 5:00am

Yes, it is. This is a beta, no one promised stable throughout. Some applications are further along, some are crashy. That's life.

By Thiago Macieira at Thu, 2007/08/02 - 5:00am

Easy dude, beta status does not mean "mostly works" as you seem to think. Beta normally means "this is it, we won't be adding any more features, from now on we focus on making things work". So beta 1 in fact means the very first release after they did the feature freeze. KDE has always been of the higest quality, I don't expect it to be any different now. Start yelling when they say they are close to release and you still feel this way. Have faith! ;-)

By Quintesse at Thu, 2007/08/02 - 5:00am

Actually it's just an API lib freeze, apps are still getting features.

By patcito at Thu, 2007/08/02 - 5:00am

> Easy dude, beta status does not mean "mostly works" as you seem to think. Beta normally means "this is it, we won't be adding any more features, from now on we focus on making things work".

No, that's an alpha. It normally goes like this:

Alpha: Architecture finished, everything major is in place, mostly operational.

Beta: Ready for testing by end users.

Release candidate: Should actually be finished at this point, will be the final release if no major bugs are found.

There's a growing tendency to play cowboy and just release whatever you feel like in order to meet the deadlines, but that's the usual distinction between alpha/beta/rc that responsible software engineers use.

By Jim at Fri, 2007/08/03 - 5:00am

Hasn't the Open Source mantra always been: release early, release often? I'm not sure if calling it "beta" is the smartest thing to do, and maybe alpha 2 would have been more appropriate, but the name tag doesn't really matter to me. I'm going to install it over the weekend and have a go at it.

By Andre at Fri, 2007/08/03 - 5:00am

i like your definitions. please, release your software using those guidelines and i'm sure you'll feel very satisfied.

our definitions are slightly different (well, not for RC ...). we do want people, particularly developers, testing things with the beta, particularly the libraries. your definitions are made for a different of software development model from another time. kde is a huge and dynamic project developed in an open, cooperative model. this change in development model (which you probably have noticed) results in needed changes in the traditional release models.

wait, wasn't that one of the most basic tenets of open source in the first place?

so yeah, please chill out, relax and think about why it was released. and no, it wasn't so we could listen to whinging. ;)

By Aaron J. Seigo at Fri, 2007/08/03 - 5:00am

Yes that's a different definition. Now that I know, as end-user, I'll never
try to test and bugreport KDE betas anymore and I'll always wait to..
(gamma ?) RC as you teach me.

Sorry for whinging, now that I know I'll never waste mine and your time anymore, and I'll warn other end-user too that kde betas are not for
bugreports of users but only for bugreports of developers.

By nae at Sun, 2007/08/05 - 5:00am

You should be sorry for whinging...
Infact you should stop it completely.

Which part of "we do want people, particularly developers, testing things with the beta, particularly the libraries." didn't you get?

Of course they want other experienced developers to test their code at this stage.
How on earth would you test new a new library as an end user who presumably only know how to operate things though a GUI, when there are no GUI's for libraries (in far the most cases)?
As a developer you'd like -particularly- other developers to test your library by using calls or functions in it.. which makes it hard for end users if they don't know how to write code which uses the library...

The corner stones and most fundamental things like the libraries, has to be _very_ functional before you can even think about building an application, hence GUI, on top which people like you can fiddle around with and deliver your optional bug reports.
Aaron even said they want people to test it and give feedback.

But my guess is that the devs will get more bug reports on crashes in the early GUI, from end users, which aren't the focus point and probably are just there as a placeholder for some other GUI. The more fundamental things like libraries are probably more important at this stage in development as I see it.

Therefore you really need to relax and take a deep breath before crying out about crashes or missing stuff in the graphical user interface (referring to the Great Great Great Grandparent Post here).

...And chill.. no one said they didn't want your end user bug reports? a developer bug report is maybe just a bit more specific on the exact problem at this point?

By Larpon at Tue, 2007/08/07 - 5:00am

Ok, that's how, for example, Microsoft works. This is opensource, this is KDE, so this works differently

By Vide at Sat, 2007/08/04 - 5:00am

No it's not a nightmare.
So throw in the towel cause kde4 ain't shit
or better yet, take that towel and hang yourself with it.

By Bob at Thu, 2007/08/02 - 5:00am

Well, the things you are looking at, like Amarok and the desktop or the almost-gone kicker, simply are so much in flux it's not funny. For me, Konsole works fine, though it's also under heavy development. Plasma is mostly nice to look at, but unusable for anything real. Okular is fine, though PDF's don't work here... etc. Some apps work fine (all games and edu, most graphics & network, dolphin...), others are way too much in development.

See all this in a positive light - the more unstable the app, the more in development it is ;-)

By Jos Poortvliet at Thu, 2007/08/02 - 5:00am

> For me, Konsole works fine, though it's also under heavy development

Konsole is now feature complete and should be stable and usable enough for day-to-day work, with the notable exception of missing input method support, which I will try to do in time for the next beta.

If it is crashing or doing something else wrong, please file a bug report.

By Robert Knight at Thu, 2007/08/02 - 5:00am

... and the winner of the Most Hilariously Melodramatic and Incoherent post goes to ...

By anon at Thu, 2007/08/02 - 5:00am

I had a similar experience (gentoo overlay not starting, then kde4live)
an altough I don't think absolutely that kde4_beta1 is ready to be inserted
in gentoo portage, I've enough faith that beta1 is not the final product
(yes, a submenu for just 2 painting apps is nasty, makes me do in 2 clicks
what before I did with just one) and there's still time to improve, in those
2 months and half.
Better wait the realease candidates to have a much clear idea of what it will be.

By mat at Thu, 2007/08/02 - 5:00am

This reminds me of the first beta of KDE 2.0 that I tried. It was so horrendously slow and crashy that I thought it would never become usable. However, shortly thereafter, 2.0 was released and it was much faster, much more stable, and much prettier.

Patience! :)

By Apollo Creed at Thu, 2007/08/02 - 5:00am

The problem is that then there was approximately twice as much time between the beta1 and the release as now.

By Grósz Dániel at Fri, 2007/08/03 - 5:00am

Honestly, I expect the release date to get postponed if it should turn out that the new version is not ready for release. This has happened before.

By reading the dot... at Fri, 2007/08/03 - 5:00am

Well, I'm pretty sure this will run on 64-bit at the moment, though I haven't tested it with the 64-bit that KDE 2's betas wouldn't run on, alpha. (Actually it took until about beta5 for it to work on Alphas.)

Fun little crash there, I and a friend could fix it some, but either the WM would work and nothing else, or the other way around. Finally someone else much more familiar with alphas fixed it.

But that's the way of betas, getting things like that figured out and fixed before .0-rc or .0

By James L at Wed, 2007/08/08 - 5:00am

Flamebait!

Gnome troll

By CeVO at Fri, 2007/08/03 - 5:00am

I blame google for making people think that "beta" = "ready for normal use".
...heck, has any google project ever come out of beta?

also: it's the framework that's beta. most of the apps are still alpha, I think.

why am I feeding the trolls?

By Chani at Sat, 2007/08/04 - 5:00am

Sounds like "Knut", the little polar bear of the Berlin Zoo.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knut_(polar_bear)

By Martin Bober at Thu, 2007/08/02 - 5:00am

Am I the only one to nerdy to realise the code name is a reference to Donald Knuth?

By Keegan at Thu, 2007/08/02 - 5:00am

Blast, beat me to it. That's what happens when I start to reply, then get caught up in work.

By Tryke at Thu, 2007/08/02 - 5:00am

Yes, yes you are :)

Damn polar bears

By carewolf at Thu, 2007/08/02 - 5:00am

> Am I the only one to nerdy to realise the code name is a reference to Donald Knuth?

I did, too.

Actually, I'm very surprised others didn't recognize the fine joke on Knuth and the traditional K* KDE naming scheme. I find it not only funny, but also touching. Kudos to the guy who came with the idea.

By Anonymous at Fri, 2007/08/03 - 5:00am

I think only some ppl got the joke, eg those who where involved in the huge 'goto is or is not evil' discussion on KDE-DEVEL ;-)

By Jos Poortvliet at Sun, 2007/08/05 - 5:00am

Patientia est virtus

By Jesus R. Acosta at Thu, 2007/08/02 - 5:00am

Patientia virtus est

By Youssef at Fri, 2007/08/03 - 5:00am

Sickos are virtually at eastern standard time?

By reihal at Fri, 2007/08/03 - 5:00am

Google said:

"Patientia virtus est" :: 36 Results.
"Patientia est virtus" :: 661 Results.

Google gives me the reason ;)

By Jesus R. Acosta at Fri, 2007/08/03 - 5:00am

I guess we ran out of 'K's and had none to spare?

Donald Knuth is the guy that wrote "The Art of Computer Programming".
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donald_Knuth

By Tryke at Thu, 2007/08/02 - 5:00am

I'm not sure whether releasing a version with so many bugs to shake out is the nicest way to pay a tribute to someone who built a reputation by releasing bugless versions of TeX...

By Veig at Tue, 2007/08/07 - 5:00am

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