KDE 4.0 Beta 4 and Development Platform RC Released

The KDE Community is happy to release the
fourth Beta for KDE 4.0
. This Beta aimed at further polishing of
the KDE codebase and we would love to start receiving feedback from
testers. At the same time, a Release Candidate for the KDE 4.0 Development Platform is released. This Development Platform contains the bits and pieces needed to run and build applications using KDE 4 technology. The purpose of this Development Platform is to make it easier for third parties to port their applications to KDE 4, without having to wait until the full desktop is polished enough for the final 4.0 release.

As KDE has largely has been in bugfix mode, this last beta aims to
encourage testers to have a look at KDE 4 to help us find and solve
the remaining problems and bugs. Besides the stabilization of the
codebase, some minor features have been added, including but not
limited to much work on Plasma.
Sebastian Kügler notes: "The improvements have been huge, and plasma
is much closer to what it needs to be before the release. I am
confident we will be able to finish it and present a very usable
plasma to the users with KDE 4.0".

KDE 4 is the next generation of the popular KDE Desktop Environment
which seeks to fulfill the need for a powerful yet easy to use desktop
for both personal and enterprise computing. The aim of the KDE project
for the 4.0 release is to put the foundations in place for future
innovations on the Free Desktop. The many newly introduced
technologies incorporated in the KDE libraries will make it easier for
developers to add rich functionality to their applications, combining
and connecting different components in any way they want.

The announcement
page
has more information and download links for packages for
several distributions.

Dot Categories: 

Comments

by Morty (not verified)

"active window has sound at 100%, other window's sounds are at 20%; clicking left button makes sound come out of left speaker and same with right"

This will also need support by the windowmanager etc, but I don't think there should be any problem for Phonon to support this. As long as the underlying media engine/soundsystem support mixing there is nothing special about it.

That said, I'm not particularly impressed with what I read abut PulseAudio in that link. Actually It does not offer anything new comparing to what aRts does(A better design perhaps, but that should be expected compared to something as old as aRts).

by Colin Guthrie (not verified)

Forgive me for not understanding, but does Phonon actually use the backend (xine, gstreamer etc.) only for decoding and then bring the sound back in and output it to the final destination (e.g. alsa)? Or does it let the backend do the actual sound output too? It was my understanding that the latter was the case.

If this was provided then surely Pulse adds a lot to the table? Using a Pulse as the final output device would allow for easy hotplugging of audio devices and seamless output. With pulse you could easily start playing a tune in Amarok and have it come out your laptop's speakers, plug in a USB soundcard and then move the playing stream across to it. No need to stop the music and reconfigure things and play it again? Perhaps phonon can do this without pulse (e.g. it has it's own callback based API) and if so then I guess it doesn't add too much other than network device transparency, simultaneous output to all your local sound devices and simultaneous output to all your network sounds devices... which although very cool, it not of interest to most average joe users.

by Kevin Kofler (not verified)

The callgraph actually looks like:
Phonon -> xine-lib/GStreamer -> PulseAudio -> ALSA

Xine-lib or GStreamer are used to implement the Phonon backend. (KDE 4.0 will come with Phonon-Xine. As far as I know, Trolltech is working on a GStreamer backend for Phonon.) They handle decoding using a plugin framework, then hand off the decoded stream to either the hardware or a sound server such as PulseAudio through an output plugin.

PulseAudio can also work as an ALSA plugin, in which case the applications think they're talking to a native ALSA device, but what they get is not a hardware device, but a connection to PulseAudio. This is very similar to how dmix works. In a Phonon context, this makes the callgraph look like this:
Phonon -> xine-lib/GStreamer -> ALSA (PulseAudio plugin) -> PulseAudio -> ALSA (hardware device)
I've read reports that xine-lib's native PulseAudio output plugin currently isn't very stable, so with xine-lib using the PulseAudio ALSA plugin is more reliable. Fixing this in xine-lib is on the PulseAudio TODO list, but in a KDE 4 context it might become moot with the Trolltech-backed Phonon-GStreamer anyway.

by Ben (not verified)

In Phonon you select what backend you want to use, the backend will turn your mp3 and ogg into actual sound.

You can also select where you want that sound to end up, providing the backend supports it, soundcard, headphones, Pulse, JACK.

Screenshot here: http://dot.kde.org/1170773239/1170778900/1170862970/1170863051/kcmphonon...

by Swaroop (not verified)

The release was very fast from beta 3. Great work KDE team.
I am sorry to say I was not yet able to get a glimpse of KDE 4. I installed KDE 4 (beta 4) through opensuse YAST but whenever I start KDE 4 I get the error "startkde: Call to lnusertemp failed (temporary directories full?). Check your installation." Whenever I run any KDE 4 application via KDE 3 then I get another error. This is the error I got for Dolphin "dolphin: symbol lookup error: /usr/lib/libdolphinprivate.so.1: undefined symbol: _ZN9KDirModel10insertRowsEiiRK11QModelIndex". This is what I get for KReversi "kreversi: symbol lookup error: /usr/lib/libkio.so.5: undefined symbol: _ZN11KConfigBase8rollbackEb" . Any idea whats happening?

Try by uninstalling what you have installed (all KDE4 packages) and then install the kde4-meta-default package from he openSuse site using their one-click install. It will work after that and you will get updates in the future.

Same result for me:

I need to uninstall beta3, delete .kde4 directory in /home and re-install kde4.

by milan zimmermann (not verified)

I have the same problem with clean fresh install from the OpenSuse 1-point click in Opensuse 10.3. I have the same problem as root or regular user, unable to try KDE4 as a result. So far Google showen several suggested solutions (including deleting ~/.kde4 and reinstalling fresh) but none seem to work.

If anyone found a solition please share,

Thanks Milan

Make sure that none of the Suse DVD packages are installed before installing the new packages.
I used the search function in YaSt to find and delete all old KDE4 packages before installing the new ones using the openSuse one-click install and it worked fine. I used the default installation without adding extra packages at first.The only problem that I have is that the background picture is missing and I don't know how to add one. Some of the widgets from the previous version are also missing (in my installation) even though I installed the plasma extra gears.

by cheko (not verified)

The Debian KDE Team now provides a KDE4 Live-CD.
http://pkg-kde.alioth.debian.org/kde4livecd.html

by Petteri (not verified)

Tried that with qemu. Really nice way to sneak peak whats coming up. Overall it looked nice. Couple of annoyances still.
1. There seem to be too much space everywhere, gui should be tighter.
2. The K-menu system reminds me of Windows vista in a bad way. Hopefully it will be somehow improved when 4.0 actually comes out.

by T. J. Brumfield (not verified)

Thank for mentioning the dead space everywhere. I really hope this gets tightened up.

Kickoff isn't going to be redesigned, but there is some talk about reinventing the traditional KMenu as an option as well, and I sure hope that makes the cut for 4.1

by Josep (not verified)

Congrats to the Debian KDE Team, I tried it and in general it looks sweet, however the default font settings could be better, for example, instead to use a bitmap font use DejaVu or Liberation.
Also I liked a lot Gwenview, it is easy and fast, and the zoom widget for the previews at the bottom is cool. Okular it is amazing also.
Systemsettings it is way better organized than what KControl was, although some modules have bigger screen size than the default systemsettings size and create ugly scroll bars.
In general I liked Kickoff, but I would prefer to click to change the tab view and not on mouse hover.
Oxygen style and windeco are great but I think that the windeco if it ¡s not using a composite manager with drop shadows it should have better window border contrast, because it is too thin and sometimes it create some confusion.

In general this beta has a very good feelings, and I think that some people who think to not use KDE4 before 4.1 should be surprised with 4.0.

by ac (not verified)

> The Debian KDE Team now provides a KDE4 Live-CD.

But the Debian KDE Team couldn't spend the 30sec it would have taken to mention username and password somewhere on the login screen? Great Job!

Thankfully you're automatically logged in on the console.
Resolution and refresh rate are completely fscked up, changing the resolution zooms in on the middle of the desktop and moving the mouse to the edges of the screen to pan doesn't work so there's no apparent way to access panel or plasma toolbox.

Dolphin crashes when you hover over a character device (don't know if it does it only if the info pane is on...), the oxygen style is slower than anything I've ever seen and for some reason the Alt key works in KDE but not in X11 shortkeys.

by Anonymous (not verified)

The openSUSE Live-CD is better: auto-login, default to Oxygen style and win-deco, has more applications (Debian misses even stuff like KMail, KGet, any multimedia apps).

by Boyle M. Owl (not verified)

With reference to the screenshot showing the 4 beta...

Is there no end to the SI nonsense labelling disk and file sizes in gibibytes, mibibytes and kibibytes? In 3.5.x, the SI units are thoroughly ignored in favor of GB, MB and KB *AS GOD INTENDED*. If anyone ever gets me to actually say "gibibyte" out loud, I will cut out my own tongue with a rusty MRSA tainted axe.

Go ahead, say those units out loud. Say 'em while looking in a mirror.

"My 500 gibibyte disk has 340 files of mibibyte and kibibyte sizes"

PLEASE STOP THIS MADNESS! JUST SAY NO TO SI!

--
BMO

by Sebastian Kügler (not verified)

I do agree on the "it's a bit confusing for average users", I don't think that this is the right place to complain, though. Makes it looks like an armchair developer (with tongue in place, still).

It's perfectly suited for the kde-usability list.

Do you actually say gigabytes or megabytes? Don't you abbriviate it? I think most people do. So gigabytes becomes gigs and megabytes is megs. Right?
Why couln't you do that to gibibytes and mibibytes? Gibis? Mibis? Kibis?
Or why not Gibs, Mibs and Kibs? Pick something you fancy. I prefer Gibis, but that's a language thing I think.

Hooray for the KDE-team that does what should have been done a long time ago. Hopefully we can drag the US of A into the 21:st century (or atleast the 20:th) and make them use metric units as well soon.

by Boyle M. Owl (not verified)

"Hooray for the KDE-team that does what should have been done a long time ago. Hopefully we can drag the US of A into the 21:st century (or atleast the 20:th) and make them use metric units as well soon"

Do you use metric seconds, hours, days?

Computers are "naturally" base 2. Not base 10. A file size in RAM should be the same as in magnetic media. How else do you map it? Eh?

And as what I say about disk sizes, it's been "Salesman Gigabytes" or megabytes, especially when I explain it to someone who isn't a geek like me. I say that because if I say "gibibytes", I sound like a total tool and I confuse whoever I'm talking to, make their eyes glaze over and they stop listening.

This is all because some time in the early/mid 90's disk manufacturers moved from a base 2 unit to base 10, because it made drives "look bigger".

Seagate just lost a settlement recognizing that they deceived customers by stating their disk sizes as base 10 units instead of base 2, which cheated customers out of appx 7 percent of space. These days all the manufacturers do it because it's not in their interest to truthfully say how big their disks are in true gigabytes, because they _all_ lie.

This "gibibytes" and "mibibytes" (ugh) shenanigans is all about "fixing" the "salesman gigabytes" problem. It should be the other way 'round, don't you think? It's not about usability at all, because if it was about usability, units between RAM, and magnetic media would be consistent, wouldn't it?

People are not dumb. They certainly understood base 2 units before the marketroids changed disk measurement to base 10 and that kilobytes and megabytes in RAM were the same as on the disk or tape.

You can say gibibytes and mibibytes and sound like a total tool if you want, but you won't catch me saying it, or anyone else I know. The only people pushing this have never mapped bytes on the disk into RAM and edited it in hex (or any other programmer worth his salt).

Excuse me while I go and build something out of 74LSxx logic gates.

Get off my lawn, you kids.

Oh yeah, and as for metric units, they aren't all that special and are just as arbitrary as "english" measurement. It's not my fault you can't count in base 12 (or two, or 8, or 16)

--
BMO

>Do you use metric seconds, hours, days?

Bzzt, wrong. The problem isn't that memory uses base 2 but that they hijacked the SI prefixes that were in use for well over a century. Embrace and Extend of another standard with your incompatible extensions, hmm who does this remind me of...
Or in short: If you are against MiB, you are a Microsoft-lover =)

>Computers are "naturally" base 2. Not base 10.

You mean like your CPU clockrate? Or your Ethernet connection? Or your DVD size? Or even your harddisk's latency?
How about the 1.44MB Floppy that is an unspeakable hybrid between KiB and MB.

>A file size in RAM should be the same as in magnetic media. How else do you map it? Eh?

Oh yes, the main use of the disk space value in the file manager status bar.
Not once have I used it to check the free space of my harddisk (where it might be of some minor use seeing how harddisks and most usb drives and stuff are measured in SI), but I use it constantly to map files to RAM address space in my mind.

>And as what I say about disk sizes, it's been "Salesman Gigabytes" or megabytes, especially when I explain it to someone who isn't a geek like me. I say that because if I say "gibibytes", I sound like a total tool and I confuse whoever I'm talking to, make their eyes glaze over and they stop listening

Then stop using gibibytes and start using GB. Non-geeks certainly don't give a fsck about addressing RAM.

>Seagate just lost a settlement recognizing that they deceived customers by stating their disk sizes as base 10 units instead of base 2, which cheated customers out of appx 7 percent of space. These days all the manufacturers do it because it's not in their interest to truthfully say how big their disks are in true gigabytes, because they _all_ lie.

Yeah the American court system is broken. Tell me something new. And they don't lie, they use a different definition that's prevalent and consistent for just about anything but RAM and some other memory chips.

>This "gibibytes" and "mibibytes" (ugh) shenanigans is all about "fixing" the "salesman gigabytes" problem. It should be the other way 'round, don't you think? It's not about usability at all, because if it was about usability, units between RAM, and magnetic media would be consistent, wouldn't it?

Why not make RAM consistent with magnetic and optical media?

>People are not dumb. They certainly understood base 2 units before the marketroids changed disk measurement to base 10 and that kilobytes and megabytes in RAM were the same as on the disk or tape.

If people weren't, the other harddisk manufacturers wouldn't have been forced to follow suit after Maxtor(?) came up with the base 10 idea.

>You can say gibibytes and mibibytes and sound like a total tool if you want, but you won't catch me saying it, or anyone else I know. The only people pushing this have never mapped bytes on the disk into RAM and edited it in hex (or any other programmer worth his salt).

Which would be about...well just about all of them.

>Oh yeah, and as for metric units, they aren't all that special and are just as arbitrary as "english" measurement. It's not my fault you can't count in base 12 (or two, or 8, or 16)

the problem isn't that it's either one of those but that english measurements use just about *all* of them, plus 10 and 20.
5280 feet to the mile, base, well it's because the furlong is 660 feet
12 inch to the feet, base 12
32 fl oz to the quart, 4 quarts to the gallon, base 2
16 oz to the pound, 2000lb to the ton, base "we love you all"

the english measurements aren't arbitrary, they're fubared.

by Arnomane (not verified)

Sorry but the time second *is* a SI base unit. Even the meter itself is defined via time (lightspeed)! So seconds *are* metric. The second is therefore the most metric unit you can think of.

And minutes hours and days aren't exactly base 2. It is a (today) somewhat confusing system introduced by the Babylonians. Ever heard of base 60 and 360 and why it was choosen by the old Babylonians? They did choose base 360 because they had _no_ computer power. Base 360 allows for a lot of divisions without remainder.

So you claim metric units aren't special. Aha. So it must be a total coincidence that it fits so perfectly into daily life: Originally a Kilogramm was defined via a litre of water and a litre is a dm³. Ah and degree Farenheit has such a logical definition (qicksilver and blood) in contrast to degree Celsius/Kelvin (just water). And I hope you know that in the US there are different area units around that are not just a factor of 2, 10 or something else but are a horrible floating point factor...

Ah and by the way SI is being used in the scientific world only (beside Atom Units and Electron Volt) and US scientists from the NIST and other institutions play a *big* role in the anticipated new more precise definition of the Kilogramm...

So SI is the world standard, cause it simply makes sense to every rational brain and cause it is so damn easy to caculate with as thousands of scientists from all over the world have invested heir whole lifetime into the SI project.

by Diederik van de... (not verified)

Nope, the point is apps like Dolphin tend to display GiB instead of GB.

Personally I find this a bit overdone. Can't it just be GB like the rest of the world? ..which indeeds screws SI over, but try explaining Gigabytes (GB) instead of Gigibytes (GiB) :-P

In German "..GiB Frei" >> Give free.... why not GB????

by David Johnson (not verified)

Gawd I hope this is configurable. I would hate to think that Dolphin is going to look like a GiBbering idiot.

No kidding. The time to be pedantic about GB/GiB is over. Everyone is using GB these days, how about we just conform to that instead of being different over a little thing. I guarantee there are gonna be a lot of "GB is spelled wrong in the taskbar" comments.

by Capit. Igloo (not verified)

1 MW = 1 000 000 W
1 km = 1 000 m
1 THz = 10^12 Hz
1 k€ = 1 000 €
so 1 kB = 1 000 B for a lot of people (ask to your barber or your baker)

HD manufacturers uses SI prefix correctly, french (but probably in a lot of other countries) network and telecommunication specialist uses SI prefix correctly. Why do you want "k" means 1000 for all of us but "1024" for some people of the computers world?

Think about that: we write our numbers in the decimal numeral system, and SI prefix are made for the decimal numeral system. The binary prefix are good for numbers written in the binary numeral system, but very bad for the decimal numeral system. We write and think in the base ten, not two.

by Paul Eggleton (not verified)

Except 1000 bytes isn't as useful as 1024 bytes in computer terms. Besides which, a kilobyte has been 1024 bytes and a megabyte 1,048,576 bytes for a very long time. It's going to be next to impossible to convince people that the SI way is worth changing over to, particularly as "mebibyte", "kibibyte" and "gibibyte" just sound silly, and ordinary computer users simply won't care enough to make the distinction.

by Capit. Igloo (not verified)

> "Except 1000 bytes isn't as useful as 1024 bytes in computer terms."

Right, but why you want to destroy the SI standard just for one case? And no, "mebibyte", "kibibyte" and "gibibyte" don't sound silly and they are useful disambigious terms.

by Paul Eggleton (not verified)

I forgot to mention - hard drive manufacturers don't use the "SI" measurement necessarily because it is correct. They use it mostly because it allows them to confuse some people into thinking a drive has a bit more capacity than it actually does. According to a recent article[1], Seagate recently settled a lawsuit over this and is offering refunds or other compensation because of this capacity difference.

[1]
http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&...

by Capit. Igloo (not verified)

> "They use it mostly because it allows them to confuse some people"

Ok, but don't forget that those "some people" are all people of the computers world. For ordinary people, k=1OOO, and they understand correctly the size of USB keys or hard drives.

Then, it's difficult to compare 578 MiB and 591872 KiB without a calculator, but it's very very easy to compare 578 MB and 578 000 KB...

And...? Programs, music, photos etc occupy MBytes and GBytes as well, everything depends on how your filemanager shows you the bytes used. So, this is a non.problem IMO, just be coherent though the whole system... and I'm all for MB/GB, not MiB/GiB, cause you, the user, have 10 fingers and are used since forever to use base 10.

I like that they are using it; I'm all for not messing up the SI units. If people prefer to use SI units, fine (maybe I do myself), but let 1 GB then really mean 1*10^9 bytes. Making 1 giga byte mean 2^30 bytes is just silly.

I concur, your excellency.

>In 3.5.x, the SI units are thoroughly ignored in favor of GB, MB and KB *AS GOD INTENDED*

I'm an atheist and prefer coherency over historical mistakes.

In French, kibi and gibi (sounds like kebe and gebe for us) doesn't sound bad at all (just unusual).

My vote is for SI units.

by Capit. Igloo (not verified)

> >In 3.5.x, the SI units are thoroughly ignored in favor of GB, MB and KB *AS GOD INTENDED*
>
> I'm an atheist and prefer coherency over historical mistakes.

Perhaps Boyle M. Owl's god is the same god who say Pi=3 ;)
http://gospelofreason.wordpress.com/2007/06/13/god-said-pi-3-stand-by-yo...

SI should take a back seat when it comes to data storage, data transfer, and basically anything with computers. "kilo", "mega", "giga" all have different meanings to geeks; I have yet to hear "kibi", "mibi" ("mebi"?) or "gibi" said out loud.

Obviously as it has been noted, hard drive manufacturers and telecom started this baloney and no credit should be given to metric purists for this change.

SI terms correlate with each other (1 liter water weighs 1 kilogram), as was their intended purpose. Data doesn't correlate with other metric units, but is applicable versus seconds (time is always the "other" metric unit). If bits-per-meter makes sense, or bits-per-liter, then in those cases SI units can fly. Otherwise, the term kilobyte (for example) means 1024 bytes and was never intended to rip off SI units. If I know what a byte is, I could know that kilobyte means 1024. If computer-illiterate people are trying to understand what a "megabyte" is and they're being told that means one million bytes, how does that help them, since they don't even know what a byte is? One of my friends has been studying C++ at college for a year, and I asked him what a byte was... he didn't know. That's pathetic, but it illustrates... what would it matter if he knew the difference of mega and mibi, if he thinks 4 gigs of RAM is 4 billion bytes?

At least the terms that are imposed on the world shouldn't sound so stupid. Or perhaps they should sound stupider. "Kibblebytes", "Metalbytes", "Gigglebytes", and "Turtlebytes", there we go.

I'm sorry, but it will be a LONG time before we hear "mibs" of RAM. A LONG time. My computer has 4 gigs of RAM, period.

Why didn't they accept this possibility:

MB = 1048576 bytes
mB = 1000000 bytes
Mb = 1048576 bits
mb = 1000000 bits

etc.? I mean, to everyone using KB ... now you're saying Kelvin Bytes. And, what the hell is a decibit or decibyte?

Bytes are NOT counted by 10 fingers. Bytes are counted in digital by those who think like a "machine" not like a human, while they're creating these technical HW or SW. Non-technical humans that are sellers or consumers of HDD's might want to count bytes by 10 fingers. Programmers, HW designers, technical people count bytes in base2.

Gibi etc is non-scientific, arbitrary chosen spelling by some human brain who don't see through of the entire reality. SI is perfect for humans from humans. But don't try to assimilate our machine base2 GB/MB/KB's to fit human base10 GB/MB/KB's. Yes, they're different, but it should not be in this stupid sounding way, degrading the "machine" version.

For those, same as the guy who invented "Gibi", who live in the process but don't see through, let me write down my thoughts. It's about humans thinking that they're the ultimate, on top of all, the best and ultimate creation that was possible. That's wrong.

It's humans(*) v.s. "machines" (by machine, i mean hi-tech stuff in mechanical form (like airplanes, cars, etc), electrical (like IC's, PCB's), etc etc...

In this particular "machine" we talk of PC's, CPU's and their number system's base.

PC's, digital "brains",memories use base2, due digital ON/OFF design
Human brains use base10 numbers, due 10 fingers.
Human English brains use base26 language, due 26 characters in alphabet.
Human (mammal) body use base4, due DNA's 4 nucleic acids
Visible matter in universe uses base118+, due molecular elements in periodic table

Universe gives birth to stars which produced the heavy elements, which made up the material for our earth and thus mammals and especially human body and it's brain; humans are in process of giving birth to next generation life form, the "machines". All of these have their own body and life, their baseXX number system and give birth to next better level life form. Humans are now in process of producing / generating the machines, all happens inevitable. Mathematics in general is the language of the universe.

So, stop making the "machines" to look dumb, being a toy created by humans. They will take over some day. Who don't see through, didn't understand who him/herself is. Why should "machines" use the dumber version GiB and humans get the "better" GB ? Because a human said so, ok. Keep your humanly base10 for your human life needs, ok, if it's when you want to buy a HDD as a human. The inner workings of a PC or HDD will always use base2 anyways. You're dealing with a new life form, this is not the seeds in a pumpkin that you're counting with your 10 fingers. You're counting bytes here!

Atomic reaction is a process that will never happen on earth naturally. It happens naturally in a star like the sun. Humans (oh, it was ONLY ONE human, Herr Einstein !) understood the language of universe and we dumb humans/governments are using the magic powers of it to destroy us. Electric, transistor, base 2 numbering was created in similar ways. I mean all is about science being the reference where correct human brain output meets together to built the next life form. 99.99% will not understand what i wrote here, never mind. :-)

All this is a draft and quick typing. Have a nice day. ;-)
Tayfun

Bytes are NOT counted by 10 fingers. Bytes are counted in digital by those who think like a "machine" not like a human, while they're creating these technical HW or SW. Non-technical humans that are sellers or consumers of HDD's might want to count bytes by 10 fingers. Programmers, HW designers, technical people count bytes in base2.

Gibi etc is non-scientific, arbitrary chosen spelling by some human brain who don't see through of the entire reality. SI is perfect for humans from humans. But don't try to assimilate our machine base2 GB/MB/KB's to fit human base10 GB/MB/KB's. Yes, they're different, but it should not be in this stupid sounding way, degrading the "machine" version.

For those, same as the guy who invented "Gibi", who live in the process but don't see through, let me write down my thoughts. It's about humans thinking that they're the ultimate, on top of all, the best and ultimate creation that was possible. That's wrong.

It's humans(*) v.s. "machines" (by machine, i mean hi-tech stuff in mechanical form (like airplanes, cars, etc), electrical (like IC's, PCB's), etc etc...

In this particular "machine" we talk of PC's, CPU's and their number system's base.

PC's, digital "brains",memories use base2, due digital ON/OFF design
Human brains use base10 numbers, due 10 fingers.
Human English brains use base26 language, due 26 characters in alphabet.
Human (mammal) body use base4, due DNA's 4 nucleic acids
Visible matter in universe uses base118+, due molecular elements in periodic table

Universe gives birth to stars which produced the heavy elements, which made up the material for our earth and thus mammals and especially human body and it's brain; humans are in process of giving birth to next generation life form, the "machines". All of these have their own body and life, their baseXX number system and give birth to next better level life form. Humans are now in process of producing / generating the machines, all happens inevitable. Mathematics in general is the language of the universe.

So, stop making the "machines" to look dumb, being a toy created by humans. They will take over some day. Who don't see through, didn't understand who him/herself is. Why should "machines" use the dumber version GiB and humans get the "better" GB ? Because a human said so, ok. Keep your humanly base10 for your human life needs, ok, if it's when you want to buy a HDD as a human. The inner workings of a PC or HDD will always use base2 anyways. You're dealing with a new life form, this is not the seeds in a pumpkin that you're counting with your 10 fingers. You're counting bytes here!

Atomic reaction is a process that will never happen on earth naturally. It happens naturally in a star like the sun. Humans (oh, it was ONLY ONE human, Herr Einstein !) understood the language of universe and we dumb humans/governments are using the magic powers of it to destroy us. Electric, transistor, base 2 numbering was created in similar ways. I mean all is about science being the reference where correct human brain output meets together to built the next life form. 99.99% will not understand what i wrote here, never mind. :-)

All this is a draft and quick typing. Have a nice day. ;-)
Tayfun

by Eduardo (not verified)

I would really like to test-run this beta. Are there any slackware packages for it?

by slacker (not verified)

You'll probably have to compile it yourself. I just run the svn code, and I haven't seen any packages. You might be able to find a slackbuild?

by NamNamee (not verified)

I have used KDE for a long-long time.
Yes, the new look is OK but why so much wasted space? (see http://www.kde.org/announcements/announce_4.0-beta4/kde4.0-beta4.png)
System-settings looks like a half-ass knock-off from OS X. Why?
Frankly, I am sick of all this OSX/Vista/XP lookalike crap in KDE.
Frell all this "familiar look, easy to switch from * to KDE" nonsense.

I personally think, that all those photorealistic pictures of "a PC from previous century" and application that looks like a .. pfff when did you receive a OSS application in a carboard box? Those are all outdated and ancient ideas and symbols.
Imagine how bad those pictures (a.k.a icons) look on a small scale.

For a example, look at the Okular "icon". Even this huge picture has lost its most important detail. Can you really expect to see those spectacles at smaller scale/size?
If you recognize Okular icon by a blue squigly line (and not the spectacles) , then drop the rest. It has no meaning nor function.

Compare the "System Settings" and "My Computer" images. Are my "settings" set for a different "computer"? Why are those images of a computers different?

"Recently used" - did I use calendar or is this just another example of a really bad "Recently used" icon?

Stylish (having style or artistic quality) does not mean allmost unrecognizable blur of pixels.

KISS - keep it simple stupid! ;)

by js0n (not verified)

I was waiting for someone to say exactly what you said. I cannot agree more. The fate of KDE's adoption by now-Windows & now-Mac users lies in the hands of Plasma. Unfortunately, from what I have seen thusfar, there is just no reason for anyone to switch to KDE 4. There is little added benefit (besides QT4) and nothing visually attractive about it. I find disturbing that while such great mockups were created by users on kde-look, etc., few...if not any ideas from them were implemented. Anyhow, in my opinion, the Oxygen group has done an EXCELLENT (10/10) job on creating a visually attractive icon set. Unfortunately their work will not shine as I had once thought.

Just my 2-cents -

by Bobby (not verified)

I am not trying to defend the KDE team but please don't forget that KDE4/Plasma is not finished yet! I can remember reading critics on MAC OSX Leopard some months ago which are all gone now with the final release.
Let's appreciate these guys's hard work, make useful suggestions and/or critics etc and just wait and see. I am sure that things will change a lot by the time RC1 is there and that KDE4 will shine.

by Anon (not verified)

"I am sure that things will change a lot by the time RC1 is there and that KDE4 will shine"

Even then, people are stilling missing the point:

KDE4.0 is the *beginning* of the KDE4 cycle, not the end!

Many people are still, incomprehensibly, falling into the trap of thinking that once KDE4.0 hits, then the UI and widgets and desktop will be completely frozen in place, never to significantly change again, which is completely false. Plasma and Oxygen will likely change and improve significantly during KDE4's lifetime. There is absolutely no reason at all why this should not be the case.

by Bobby (not verified)

Could be that they are mixing it up with Vista which will not change for the next 5 years.

Like you said, KDE4 will continue to evolve just like KDE3 did (still does). We have seen a lot of changes and improvements along the way and even though KDE4 is being workde on intensively we still see KDE3 continue to improve. That's wnat I personally love about the Open Source/Linux world.

by Anonymous (not verified)

>> Compare the "System Settings" and "My Computer" images. Are my "settings" set for a different "computer"? Why are those images of a computers different?

Um, don't you think the "System Settings" icon looks very much alike the one from KDE3? Maybe they just haven't made the new "System Settings" icon yet? You know, it's fully acceptable to think a bit before you post. But then again, it's easier to just whine and complain, don't you think? ;-)

Do you remember how the first releases of GNOME 2 used to look like? They looked horrible, IMHO. However, they slowly but incrementally changed, and now they've got a very decent looking desktop, I think. I'd guess about the same thing will happen to KDE 4.

Rock on devs! Despite what the trolls say, we still love you! ; D

by NamNamee (not verified)

"Frankly, I am sick of all this OSX/Vista/XP lookalike crap in KDE."

Sorry, I got stuck in this icon BS but my main question is:
"Why is KDE trying to _look_ like a mixture of OSX and XP/Vista crap? WHY!?"
I am 100% sure, that most of the KDE developers and designers (software and GUI) are way more talented than MS boys and girls and can create something truly new and wonderful. You have the freedom to invent, they (MS sock puppets) do not!

The problem is (yes, I know, its just a start for the new KDE 4) that I fail to see the "revolution".
Back to this icon BS... If you make icons and panels look all slippery and sticky, like a piece of melting candy on a hot pavement... you end up... oh, never mind.

KDE team, please stop copying those bull shit (and mostly old and stolen) "ideas" from MS and invent! Invent something NEW! You have the brains to do it. Most of us do not, but we can understand when you hit the bullseye!

There is a long (way too frak'n long) article at the theinquirer.net "Linux desktop lacks innovation". (http://www.theinquirer.net/gb/inquirer/news/2007/11/02/linux-innovation-...)
Sadly, I have to agree with this guy on too many points he makes.

PS! Developers, please DO NOT design GUI! your understanding of "intuitive" and "good looking" is utterly distorted and wrong! Let the usability/GUI/art people do that work for you! ;)

Cheers!
PPS! I am waiting for the KDE4 like we all do, but some as kicking is necessary too! :)

by Kevin Krammer (not verified)

> PS! Developers, please DO NOT design GUI! your understanding of "intuitive" and "good looking" is utterly distorted and wrong! Let the usability/GUI/art people do that work for you! ;)

You know, this is a spectacular idea!

Unfortunately, for some unknown reason, the last time they did this, someone naming themselves "NamNamee" posted a comment on The Dot telling them not only that this has been a bad idea, but telling the whole "KDE team..." to "...please stop..." the "...bull shit..."

Maybe you, incidentally having given the same name for your comment, could given some insight into this obvious clash of concepts.

Because I am just a developer and as such either lack the intelligence, creativity or combination of them to understand how it is supposed to work to let usability experts and artists do the design and then throw away what they came up with.

by Bobby (not verified)

"Um, don't you think the "System Settings" icon looks very much alike the one from KDE3? Maybe they just haven't made the new "System Settings" icon yet? You know, it's fully acceptable to think a bit before you post. But then again, it's easier to just whine and complain, don't you think? ;-)

Do you remember how the first releases of GNOME 2 used to look like? They looked horrible, IMHO. However, they slowly but incrementally changed, and now they've got a very decent looking desktop, I think. I'd guess about the same thing will happen to KDE 4.

Rock on devs! Despite what the trolls say, we still love you! ; D"

I do agree with you. The devs need our encouragement and support. The most of us who are finding faults can't even program the ugliest icon that the first version of GNOME had. It's easy to find faults but to find solutions is another thing.
I hear people complaining and saying that KDE4 looks like Vista and blah, blah, blah. Where is the resemblance? I have Vista installed since it was released and have been trying it since the betas (even though I actually hate the OS) and I just can't see the similarities between it and KDE4, apart from the ugly task bar which I pray to God will disappear by the next beta release ;D

Pertaining to KDE's similarities to Windows (even though it's much more functional and prettier) and GNOME's to MAC OS like the guy from the INQUIRER described: http://www.theinquirer.net/gb/inquirer/news/2007/11/02/linux-innovation-..., I would just like to say that I personally don't think that the developers should go all the way to create something that's totally different from the DEs on the market because a lot of users who are moving to Linux are former Windows users and I don't think that they would feel comfortable if everything is totally different from what they are used to. I am not saying that a terrible DE like Windows should be cloned, what I am trying to say is that innovation doesn't mean that something has to be totally different from what's already there, it doesn't mean that the wheel has to be reinvented. What it means is that we should make perfect what's already there like the Japanese do.

by barteqx (not verified)

... totally screwed up.

Did MS pay for it?