The Start of Something Amazing with KDE 4.0 Release

Several years of design, development and testing came together today for the release of KDE 4.0. This is our most significant release in our 11 year history and marks both the end of the long and intensive development cycle leading up to KDE 4.0 and the start of the KDE 4 era. Join us now in #kde4-release-party on Freenode to celebrate or come to the release event in person next week. Packages are available for all the major distributions with live CDs available currently from Kubuntu and openSUSE. Read on for details or take the KDE 4.0 Visual Guide to find your way around.

The KDE 4.0 desktop

The KDE 4 Libraries have seen major improvements in almost all areas.
The Phonon multimedia framework provides platform independent multimedia support to all
KDE applications, the Solid hardware integration framework makes interacting with
(removable) devices easier and provides tools for better powermanagement.

The KDE 4 Desktop has gained some major new capabilities. The Plasma desktop shell
offers a new desktop interface, including panel, menu and widgets on the desktop
as well as a dashboard function. KWin, the KDE Window manager, now supports advanced
graphical effects to ease interaction with your windows.

Lots of KDE Applications have seen improvements as well. Visual updates through
vector-based artwork, changes in the underlying libraries, user interface
enhancements, new features, even new applications -- you name it, KDE 4.0 has it.
Okular, the new document viewer and Dolphin, the new filemanager are only two
applications that leverage KDE 4.0's new technologies.

The Oxygen Artwork team provides a breath of fresh air on the desktop.
Nearly all user-visible parts of the KDE desktop and applications have been given a
facelift. Beauty and consistency are two of the basic concepts behind Oxygen.

Distributions known to have packages:

  • An alpha version of KDE4-based Arklinux 2008.1 is expected
    shortly after this release, with an expected final release within 3 or 4 weeks.
  • Debian KDE 4.0 packages are available in the experimental branch.
    The KDE Development Platform will even make it into Lenny. Watch for
    announcements by the Debian KDE Team.
  • Fedora will feature KDE 4.0 in Fedora 9, to be released
    in April, with Alpha releases being available from
    24th of January. KDE 4.0 packages are in the pre-alpha Rawhide repository.
  • Gentoo Linux provides KDE 4.0 builds on
    http://kde.gentoo.org.
  • Kubuntu packages are included in the upcoming "Hardy Heron"
    (8.04) and also made available as updates for the stable "Gutsy Gibbon" (7.10).
    A Live CD is available for trying out KDE 4.0.
    More details can be found in the
    announcement on kubuntu.org
    .
  • Mandriva will provide packages for
    2008.0 and aims
    at producing a Live CD with the latest snapshot of 2008.1.
  • openSUSE packages are available
    for
    openSUSE 10.3 (
    one-click
    install
    ),
    openSUSE Factory (
    one-click
    install
    )
    and openSUSE 10.2. A KDE
    Four Live CD
    with these packages is also available. KDE 4.0 will be part of the upcoming
    openSUSE 11.0 release.
  • openSUSE based KDE Four Live CD

Thanks to the coders, artists, usability experts, testers, bug triagers and many more who have made this release the start of something amazing. Tell us what you think on this
4.0 feedback page.

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Comments

by yman (not verified)

I'm running it on a VM with 256 MB RAM, and it runs great, except for rendering SVGs.

by fred (not verified)

Damn!! I missed the dot news for few minutes, and the dot is already full of comments.... Finally after waiting for more than 2 years, party time folks!!

by Whoever (not verified)

Excellent!
Congratulations to the KDE team for their great job!Fantastic!

Cheers!

by MamiyaOtaru (not verified)

Maybe someone can explain why none of the comboboxes in this shot are aligned?

http://img186.imageshack.us/my.php?image=comboboxesyk4.png (annotated to show what I mean)

And I only pointed out the alignment of the right side. The left side of the combo boxes doesn't match up either, and neither does the spacing. Why are Scale and Crop and Color closer together?

It's just a little thing, and hopefully not indicative of the broader situation but it probably is. Widgets and doodads here and there (and I'm glad they are there, the alternative would be further feature paring), but laid out rather haphazardly and without that last bit of polish.

The two color schemes fighting for dominance bothers me too.

Despite that it looks loads better than the betas, and like something I'll consider using around 4.1 or so. Congratulations on getting it out. Sitting on it further at this point probably wouldn't have helped. It's out, being used, critiqued, poked and prodded. This is a good thing and I'm glad to see things moving forward.

by Aaron J. Seigo (not verified)

that particular dialog was very, very new and didn't get any polishing love for 4.0.0. i mean, look at the checkboxes at the bottom even. surprised you didn't red ink those too ;)

we're working on this guy, along with the other plasma dialogs, in the 4.1 branch (well .. trunk)

by yman (not verified)

"The two color schemes fighting for dominance bothers me too."
I find that they are complementary, rather than clashing. you could just switch the color settings under System Settings->Appearance->Colors

BTW, where did all the color schemes and wallpapers in KDE4DAILY disappear to? there are many of them I liked. are they included in the official release?

by -Flo- (not verified)

A great thank you goes to all the programers making this dream come true... Thank you very much for your hard work..

Keep it up...it's great
-Flo-

by Mark Adubofour (not verified)

To all you kde developers i wanna say a big thank you and a job well done. I have been following together with friends via the live cd distros and i must say i was impressed with the massive improvements release after release and the final as well. This is the beginning of more great things to come in the 4 series and we look forward with so much enthusiasm. So from all my folks in Accra, Ghana in West Africa we say "ayeeko" (job well done) to Aaron and all you other kde developers out there.

by me (not verified)

Thank you guys for all the effort putting this together, thank you all!

by last (not verified)

Since this is a release with many changes, there are quite a few bugs. Where do we report them. Some of them are KDE specific, some due to the distro. For example, I am unable to run dolphin in KDE4 (just installed from OpenSUSE 10.3 packages). I get some wierd error, and I don't know where to look for help.

(Soprano) Error occured in thread 3056904416 : "The name org.kde.NepomukServer was not provided by any .service files"
dolphin: symbol lookup error: /usr/lib/libnepomuk.so.4: undefined symbol: _ZN7Soprano4Util10DummyModelC1Ev
(9165)/: Communication problem with "dolphin" , it probably crashed.
Error message was: "org.freedesktop.DBus.Error.NoReply" : " "Message did notreceive a reply (timeout by message bus)" "

by Adriaan de Groot (not verified)

bugs.kde.org is always the place; that *particular* one is a link error, and is pretty sureley a build / distro error. Check that your nepomuk packages are up to date.

by Bille (not verified)

And your soprano packages. Dolphin works on openSUSE 10.3 - you have some mixed up packages.

If you are in doubt, start YaST and examine all the packages in the KDE:KDE4 repository there; if they are BLUE there is a newer version available - if they are RED they are newer than is in the repo which means you have something unreleased, hacked, self built - if in doubt, replace it with the repo copy. You can click a package to toggle it between Keep, Update, and Delete, or right click to change all packages in a list.

by Volker (not verified)

same problem with my installation after clean install with Opensuse 10.3 1-click install for KDE4.

checked in Yast that all packages are updated

by Volker (not verified)

I had the same issue and found the bug:

- use Yast and search for libsoprano4
- update to most recent version
- restart KDE4

this fixed it for me

by daris (not verified)

I've got same problem on debian (sid). I updated libsoprano4 package but it not solved this problem

/usr/lib/kde4/bin$ ./dolphin
(Soprano) Error occured in thread 3056387872 : "org.freedesktop.DBus.Error.ServiceUnknown - The name org.kde.NepomukServer was not provided by any .service files"
(Soprano) Error occured in thread 3056387872 : "org.freedesktop.DBus.Error.ServiceUnknown - The name org.kde.NepomukServer was not provided by any .service files"
QBuffer::seek: Invalid pos: -1209409168
kbuildsycoca4 running...
kbuildsycoca4(2212) kdemain: Reusing existing ksycoca
QBuffer::seek: Invalid pos: 134850024
(2208)/: Communication problem with "dolphin" , it probably crashed.
Error message was: "org.freedesktop.DBus.Error.NoReply" : " "Did not receive a reply. Possible causes include: the remote application did not send a reply, the message bus security policy blocked the reply, the reply timeout expired, or the network connection was broken." "

Sorry for my english ;)

by Marcello Anni (not verified)

Thank you guys!!!!!

by ac (not verified)

Just installed KDE4. So...how do you configure the taskbar? By default it's stuck at the bottom of the screen and it's huge. Any ideas? The "System Settings" app doesn't seem to have as many options.

by Odysseus (not verified)

Unfortunately, the panel config dialogs were something that missed the release, but I'm told there's a lot you can still configure through the rc file. Not optimal I know, but the config dialogs will appear in the near-ish future.

John.

by Aaron J. Seigo (not verified)

the plan is actually to be able to avoid "dialogs" per say and do something a lot more like the desktop toolbox for the panel. hopefully we'll be able to avoid new strings as much as possible because i'd like to backport this from trunk/ (4.1) to 4.0 along with taskbar improvements (e.g. multiple lines of tasks)

by ac (not verified)

As long as it's configurable, I've got what I need...and as long as it's configurable via GUI, I've got what I want. I'll leave the details up to you!

I feared an "executive decision" had been made that a configurable taskbar was no longer needed. Thanks for the reassurance!

by wizard580 (not verified)

how can you configure taskbar?

by Aaron J. Seigo (not verified)

non-configurable taskbar? oi vey! please don't tell me you think we, or rather i, am that stupid. =) i freely admit that i can only code (and do everything else on my plate) at a certain pace, and that that pace is obviously not as fast as anyone would like (if i did get close to those expectations, the expectations would surely shift ;) ... but i'm not a complete moron.

sorry if you were concerned that this was the case.

by ac (not verified)

No offense intended. Gnome voluntarily jumped off that bridge, so I thought there may be some sort of free software desktop deathwish at work. Glad to know it doesn't affect KDE.

by Bobby (not verified)

Gnome will eventually follow KDE's lead. Just wait and see ;)

by secret agent (not verified)

You can just drag into desired position such as left right etc.
There is also another way to do it using >kcontrol
hope it helps

by Odysseus (not verified)

... my small contributions are finally in the wild. Scary. :-)

Big ups to everyone who've put blood, sweat, and tears into this, especially Mr Seigo who's skin thickness must now be of elephantine proportions.

It's the end of an incredible journey, but just the start of another that promises much for the future, a future that the people are already working full-speed on. Geez you'd think they would at least stop for a few moments to catch breath :-)

So, does anyone have plans for a launch party in the UK?

John.

by Aaron J. Seigo (not verified)

finally, some part of me is elephantine in proportion! (those who have met me in person will know what that's so funny; for those who haven't: i'm not exactly the biggest person in the world ;)

> So, does anyone have plans for a launch party in the UK?

i don't know.. you should ping the UK kde reps to find out, or maybe tag Riddel about it =)

by xavier (not verified)

Congratulations! KDE is the best Linux desktop enviroment, I have used it since years in my laptop.

Using openSUSE 10.3 + KDE 3.5.8 and will try this new release sun.

Thank your very much for your big effort.

by mimoune djouallah (not verified)

thanks, i love you,in my mother tongue ;) and really i am very impressed by the new presentation of kde, i love the new vision

by djouallah mimoune (not verified)

thanks guys u rock;)thanks from the heart, i could not find a better word then in my own mother tongue

by anon (not verified)

reminds me too much of gnome and the dumbed down systems settings is awful. Think I will go back to 3.5

booooooooooo for making KDE a piece of crap. It's funny really, it looks like a monster, a mix of gnome, apple and vista. KDE no longer is unique.

by Dolphin-fanatic :) (not verified)

"it looks like a monster"
you looked the same when your mother give you a new live. Then in few years you were unique. So give a KDE4.X.Y series a chance and shut up for now

by Marc (not verified)

LOL! You're cool.

by Bobby (not verified)

"you looked the same when your mother give you a new live. Then in few years you were unique. So give a KDE4.X.Y series a chance and shut up for now"

WELL SAID!

by Hans (not verified)

I would say it's more unique than ever. :)

Oh by the way, congratulations everyone! Be free (from your children?! o_o)

by T. J. Brumfield (not verified)

Gnome intentionally hides options and designs with the assumption that users are idiots and don't know how to configure, let alone use their box.

KDE has always been very flexible. The problem is that so much of KDE 4 is new, that it is difficult to nail down configuration dialogs until the apps and components themselves are nailed down. Configuration dialogs will come.

by Marcel Partap (not verified)

after several failed attempts to compile KDE4-win32 from SVN under WiNE during the last couple of month, two days ago I finally emerged the kde-svn ebuilds (thx to berniyh, philantrop, zephyrus...) and have IT (the coolest thing of 2007) runnnig since then. After some initial weirdities (attention: put 'export KWIN_NVIDIA_HACK=1' in your /etc/profile or so if you have an nvidia card, it does make a huge difference!) and fiddling I find this thing totally usable and, despite some strange problems within my xorg-server (cpu hogging, memleaks, crashes in composite mode.. and damn, 7.4 will be released not until march) fast and relatively easy on my memory.. So, thanks and congratulations to all the devs and artists, this really is a great start. And this plasma thingie, it's like the first ipod, nice and sleek but missing several customer feedback loops. I'm totally looking forward to the next few months, and I hope I can join in after my exams and probably fix some of my bug reports myself.
Oh yeah, critical topic, bugs... there are quite some. We should have joined reporting and fixing them back in Beta stage. (Right now, no go in reporting: "bugs.kde.org is temporarily offline to celebrate KDE 4.0.0 launch.")
Even a few grave ones have slipped into the final (your grandmother is probably not gonna hit the konsole one *g), so I expect 4.0.1 and so to be released very soon..
Hot air aside, this is the start of something great. Everyone FEEEEED the baby!

by Marcel Partap (not verified)

so I guess html tags do not actually work. And I forgot the screenshot.
Moving right alooong... HURAAAY! JIPPEE ;)

"put 'export KWIN_NVIDIA_HACK=1' in your /etc/profile or so if you have an nvidia card, it does make a huge difference!)"

That was a great tip man. I just tried it out and the difference is like night and day. The effects are much smoother now .
Thanks :)

by Nassos Kourentas (not verified)

Amazing people can only produce amazing results!

Congratulations to everyone involved for what an awesome result KDE 4.0 has proved to be!

Thank you all!

by martin (not verified)

just tried it out, congratulations!!

thank you!

by Yevgeniy (not verified)

This might be just me but I have just installed KDE4 onto my mythbuntu system. The results were way below what I expected. Although this may be my fault because I this system is not quite clean.

First I had a ton of files on my desktop. When I mouse over these icons the all highlight. The problem is that they highlight and don't un highlight automatically. (I am not using any modifiers - etc shift or control.)

Second the desktop effects (rotations and window movement is really choppy.

Third half of the customization options from KDE3 are missing.

Fourth amarok started twice when I double clicked on an MP3 file. It then crashed.

Fifth did I mention this release was incredibly slow.

Hopefully this is because I installed KDE4 on a dirty system. (Mythbuntu 7.10 with Gnome installed.) My system also uses a nvidia geforce 7900gs. (with the proprietary driver).

Also my brother likes Kolf. However since it moved to SVG it is one of the most buggyest games in the world. (try aiming the ball into a corner. and watch it leave the boundries.)

I will be trying to reinstall KDE4 on my system later (from scratch) and retest KDE4. Hopefully all the issues will be fixed. All of the issues that remain will be reported as bugs to the KDE developers.

Even though the system worked pourly for me, I must admit that it looks amazing.
PS I don't like the icons becoming widgets!

by Luca Beltrame (not verified)

"Third half of the customization options from KDE3 are missing."

From the PLasma FAQ (at least for plasma related features):

Q. I can't find my favorite !

Don't forget that Plasma is still in its infancy (it's brand new, after all) and that KDE 3 was an extremely polished codebase: it took seven years to get to that, while Plasma had about 18 months to get to its current status. With time, the Plasma developers plan on reintroducing features that are missing and fix regressions. As KDE progresses through the KDE4 cycle, Plasma will improve with it.

(I've been posting it everywhere today...)

alpha for sure, or whatever comes before that!

I have a fast system, and simply rotating the digital clock plasma applet is choppy. With all this talk about SVG i'm surprised that i see some raster trickery when scaling and rotating, is this going to be changed? Also, i see many places where icons are missing, is there somewhere i can find a list of ones still needing updating so i can contribute? Am i missing some setting for the anti alising of plasma applets? when i rotate them they look jagged and remain that way until i enter settings and click apply. I changed the font and the text didnt center itself, clicking the "etc" popped up the calendar half off the screen unmoveable and without the edge transparency. Also... when moving the mouse over different applets that grey box appears differently, on one applet it fades in and you can see the three icons fall down a pixel or two. on another applet it simply just appears and with no icon movement, why is this different? why cant i draw a bounding box (which is also jumpy when it's big!!) around the applets to select them or move in groups? this is basic functionality. sometimes when moving the digital clock the black background disappears and in it's place is a piece of the wallpaper..

also.. in dolphin when starting things the bouncing k symbol erases everything it touches on screen..

i notice also that there does not appear to be any standard to icon sizes which makes everything look cheap, consistency is key and would simplify things i think..

i think i might just wait for 4.1 or later...

ps. id take a screenshot but it'll have to stop crashing first!

the dream has become reality? more like a nightmare

by Stephan (not verified)

4.0.0 is for developer and hard core users.. not for anybody!

Wait for 4.1 if you search for an kde 3.5 replacement!

ha, i'm anticipating 3.6 more than anything else.

So what was the bloody point in calling it an OFFICIAL release? Why wasn't it just called a beta? The frustrating thing is that right now I REALLY don't like KDE4 and the funny thing is that I don't even know when to come back and check it out again because KDE4 is a so-called official release, which by definition should be more or less flawless or at least fully usable.

Mac OS X 10.0, GNOME 2.0, KDE2.0, KDE3.0 were all "official releases", and they all thoroughly *sucked*. People are either forgetting their history or are holding KDE4.0 to a grossly unfair double-standard.

by T. J. Brumfield (not verified)

Don't forget Windows 1, 2, 3.0, NT 1, 2, 3, and early versions of 4. Windows ME, XP pre-SP1, and Vista. All pretty horrible. Honestly, Windows 2000 and Server 2003 were probably the best out-of-box, initial official releases they did.