KDE 4.1 Beta 2 Ready For Testing

Another milestone on the road towards KDE 4.1 has been packaged and put online for testing. The release notes highlight some features in Dolphin and Gwenview, as well as additional information on where to get the release, make sure you also check your distributor's websites as well. While there are some bugs left, the release already works quite solidly on most people's machines. Performance problems on NVidia chips remain, but we are confident that those will be solved by the teams over at NVidia in one of the next releases of their graphics driver. In KDE 4.1, there is also some preliminary Mac and Windows support coming up. Several apps can be tried by a wider audience on those proprietary platforms this summer already. On the side of Free operating systems, support for OpenSolaris is coming along nicely, but is not free of bugs yet.

As every Beta, we release this software to gain feedback and to provide a preview of our upcoming technology. When encountering problems during testing, please help us by reporting bugs through KDE's Bugzilla so developers are aware of them and can make the necessary changes. When trying this release you will encounter a number of new things, most of the new features are listed on Techbase, make sure to check out that list and give the next KDE a whirl.

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Comments

by Morty (not verified)

"Please look it up."

Exactly, it matches my understanding of the word. Editorialize:
1. to set forth one's position or opinion on some subject in, or as if in, an editorial.
2. to inject personal interpretations or opinions into an otherwise factual account.

"I took 2 years of journalism classes,"

Perhaps you should ask for your school money back?

Given that the parent comments are immediately above the current post, they aren't hidden or removed from view. I'm not hiding anything. I'm not circumventing anything, or misdirecting anything.

"You suggest I altered my quoting practice to editorialize"

No quite the opposite, actually. Perhaps the problem lies in reading comprehension, it will explain most of your responses and comments.

"Given that I quoted every word Janne wrote verbatim, by definition, it was complete."

By removing the original issue, you removed the context of the answer. An hence witout the part, context, making it incomplete. Basicly you are editorializing.
It's easily seen if you merge the comments.

And this was obviously the third three-pointer, but given your problems it may have come as a surprise.

by T. J. Brumfield (not verified)

"Perhaps you should ask for your school money back?"

One of the two of us works for a large newspaper company. Don't attempt to lecture me on editorializing. Stating an opinion is always editorializing. When I state an opinion, I'm clear about it. I try to clearly seperate subjectivity from objectivity. Perhaps you missed the 5 times or so when Janne was saying my opinion was factually wrong, missing the difference between facts and opinions.

You insist that my quoting style is editorializing. I follow a standard style and quote every word. You insist that it is incomplete.

Here is the kicker. Not only is it not incomplete, and not only have I not gone out of the way to slant things by quoting (since I quote the same way for everybody) but you are doing exactly the thing you are accusing me of.

I've got another definition for you.

http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/en:hypocrisy

You are only quoting my words, and not the context. Let me repeat. You are only quoting my words and not the context. So how is it horribly wrong when I do it?

Get off your high horse immediately. It doesn't suit you, or your attempted position.

"Perhaps you should ask for your school money back?"

Again, it landed me a job in an incredible newspaper company. And one of us has a good understanding of said industry.

by Morty (not verified)

Since by removing your original comment in which Jannes reply was aimed, making your out of context reply harder to spot. So intentionally or not you did editorialize.

The standard practice is not to consequently remove everything one level above in a discussion, when required you should include necessary information to keep the context clear.

And my parent comment including a example with 3 levels clearly show this.

by Janne (not verified)

"Accusing someone of BS is a personal attack"

No it isn't. Let me spell it out for you. If I called you a "retard", that would be a personal attack. If I called you an big-eared shithead, that would be a personal attack. If I called you a fatso, that would be a personal attack. In short: if I attacked your PERSON, it would be a personal attack. And I'm noitn doing any of that stuff.

If I call your comment BS, it's NOT personal attack, since it's directed at your comment, not to your person.

"Furthermore, the point in contention here is that Janne repeatedly accuses me of being a troll, and now contends that one negative comment denotes being a troll regardless of past behavior"

What I heve seen is this comment here, and the constant whining about the desktop-icons. And do you want to know what the problem with your comment is? It's this:

"Should I read this as, "we've talked to Nvidia, they know what the issue is, and they've assured us it should be fixed" or, "like Flash working in every browser but Konqueror, we have no intention to fix the issue, so we're putting it off on someone else."

Is that latter half REALLY necessary? You could have made your point with a lot less negativity, but no. You had to add in some uber-negative whining and complaining.

"Dissenting opinions are in fact invaluable in any community driven product that strives for quality."

Dissenting opinions are indeed valuable, and I have provided my share of those (when talking about Krunner for example). What is NOT valuable is whining that basically says "So are you going to keep on sitting on your asses and do nothing?".

"I get an applet running on top of my desktop which looks terrible"

The look of the applet depends on your plasma-theme.

"or I replace the desktop containment for a new one that has no support for wallpapers"

So this is about your wallpaper, is that it? And at least the Plasma-faq says this:

"You can have icons and launchers (shortcuts) by dragging them from Dolphin or the K-menu."

"We're regressing horribly here."

An old and busted system is being replaced by a new system that is more flexible and offers more features. Regression indeed....

"And frankly, opinions can't be wrong by definiton. No one proved me wrong."

You were utterly defeated. You ran around claiming that KDE wont support icons on the desktop. You were 100% wrong there.

"You're forcing people to operate the desktops differently and I guarantee you will lose a bunch of users over it."

Every UI in the world forces the user to do certain things, including KDE. Even your old precious desktop-system forced it's way to users, since either you used it in the only way it works, or you didn't use it at all. This new system offers more flexibility and features.

Why aren't you whining how the old desktop-system also forced users to do certain things?

"You repeatedly call me a troll and then deny making personal attacks. You call me a whiner and deny making personal attacks. Do you understand what constitutes a personal attack?"

I do, but apparently you do not.

"You insist nothing changed, when it did."

It changed for the better. If you were in charge, we would still be stuck at KDE1, since nothing could ever be changed.

"No, several people didn't want their icons in an applet. For once, an applet does not operate the way a normal window does. You insist anyone who doesn't like what you like is ignorant. I won't even begin to describe that philosophy."

I read some of the blogposts in question. And they basically claimed that you can't have any icons in your desktop. But you can.

"That depends on the issue here. That is why I raised a question."

What you could have done then is to ask something like "what exactly is the issue here?". Did you do that? No. What you basically said is "Or is this really a problem in KDE/Qt, but you guys are lasy assholes who feel like passing the puck to someone else?".

by T. J. Brumfield (not verified)

"If I called you a "retard", that would be a personal attack. If I called you an big-eared shithead, that would be a personal attack. If I called you a fatso, that would be a personal attack. In short: if I attacked your PERSON, it would be a personal attack. And I'm noitn doing any of that stuff."

You call me a troll, and you call me a whiner. In direct response to those two things I called personal attack, and you said those two items weren't a personal attack. You then repeat the charges just paragraphs after you insist that you don't make personal attacks.

And frankly, saying that someone is full of BS is paramount to calling them a liar. My word is very important to me. Calling me a liar is very much a personal attack.

Your posts are without merit. You rarely post anywhere remotely related to the topics at hand. You throw about incenidery remarks without care or apparent cause. You displayed positive emotion when you thought you had me riled. You repeatedly use terms like "win" and "defeat".

These are the systematic patterns of a troll. I can tell by your worsening typing skills with each post that you emotionally invest in trying to get under my skin. Let me be explicit. I could care less. I told you to grow up precisely because you need to. You attacks are precisely that attacks, transparent and needless.

Let me preempt the accusations of hyprocrisy. I am now in return addressing you directly. Some might suggest I turn have become a hypocrite for making such a personal response. I have only responded in due form to a litany of personal attacks.

Stating that I don't like the apparent direction of KDE isn't factual. I'm not sure how you're so utterly convinced I'm been proven wrong. You fixate on minute details and miss the overall message. You argue incessantly when there is no need.

I understand that some people feel very strongly about KDE. I'm one of those people. I've long advocated people to use KDE. Those who insist I'm some troll or hater have completely missed the mark. Yet attacking me is not the same as defending KDE, which I feel you mean to do.

I'm certainly not the only person unhappy with the 4.0 release, nor with how the 4.1 release is shaping up. I'm certainly not the only person unhappy with the future direction of KDE.

I voiced some concerns during the 4.0 alpha stage, and was repeatedly rebuked for blind advocates who insist one must only say positive things about a project. I was repeatedly told everything would be golden by 4.0 and it certainly wasn't. Then I was told everything would be golden by 4.1 and it won't be.

Furthermore, I believe one of the biggest mistakes of the 4.0 to 4.1 cycle was to hold back important features and fixes for 4.1 when they could have been put in the 4.0.x trunk. It was only when people voiced their displeasure did backporting happen. Voicing displeasure can in fact lead developers to realize what their audience wants.

I'm not concerned reading blogs that many things that just missed the 4.1 cut are being aimed for 4.2, when again some of these things might best be served in a 4.1.x release.

I voiced repeatedly displeasure at empty white space all over the Oxygen design, and was rebuked. Yet when review after review mentioned the same things, eventually people listened and the design was tightened considerably.

I mentioned that lack of consistent design, which many reviewers picked up on as well.

I think Oxygen is nearly great. I think KDE 4 is nearly great. But I worry a great deal about the direction of the project. Microsoft is losing market share, and there are some opportunities to make powerful in roads right now. I'm worried that the KDE team is going to squander those opportunities. Even worse, I fear the philosophy that made KDE so great is dying.

by nae (not verified)

Beside what he did in the past, he's right here.
He has the right to request when/if nvidia issue is gonna
be resolved and if it's just another try to hide an issue
under the carpet, as:

1) Linux users +3D = nvidia (no choiche here, gaming or blender)

2) It's a bad habit of oss to hide issues under the carpet. Nobody
is saying things like "kde 4 is trash if don't work as I want with
my nvidia card", so please don't act as if anyone did. We're asking
"does it makes sense for us (nvidia users) to wait or should we move
to something else?" (no offense, no judging, just please consider
that we MAY have some needs, after all)

About what I did in the past, yes, you can tell me I was trolling and BSing
because I was the first to announce that KDE-4.0 (.0) wasn't ready for
production.
I got attacked for that and I don't care, everyone who tried it can now
confirm that I was widely right.....

by Boudewijn Rempt (not verified)

"It's a bad habit of oss to hide issues under the carpet."

Except, of course, that this problem has exactly nothing to do with open source: the problem is caused by your choice for closed source software. You may feel that you had no choice, but the fact is that KDE4's effects work really well on my intel chipset with its open source drivers.

by nae (not verified)

Again, there's NO CHOICHE for who needs 3D,really.
(gaming but expecially graphics like blender)
ATI isn't a choiche at all, and after 3 tries and 3 boards
I'll try another ATI next life (thanks to ati fanboys
continuing to say the driver was perfect while it was crashing
everywhere).

Intel is not a choiche for performance, and anything else
is ridiculously slow or expensive.

by Boudewijn Rempt (not verified)

So what? It still has nothing to do with bad habits of open source development but is caused by the bad habits of proprietary, closed source software. Because you want games and blender, you apparently need an nvidia card with a proprietary, closed source driver driver. Shucks. That may mean you will have to do without fancy window effects in KDE4 until you have convinced nvidia (whose customer you are) that they need to fix the software you get from them. Open source developers cannot help you there.

by nae (not verified)

No, the real issue is that I want (games OR blender) AND Kde. As Compiz
is free from that bug, this means there's a way to have composite working fine.
Still I'm not asking for people to fix these bugs for me, today or tomorrow, just for a bit of transparency in how this issue is managed.

Is this to be pretending? Is this to asking open source to be more open than it is?????

by Boudewijn Rempt (not verified)

Everything is completely open and transparent, it cannot be more open.

You just have to do some homework to track the issue yourself. Lurk at all relevant mailing lists. Lurk at the relevant irc channels. Subscribe to the commit mailing lists of all relevant projects. Gather the information yourself.

Expecting busy people to make time to explicitly feed you the information you need, yes that is asking too much.

by nae (not verified)

Are you kidding me?????????????????

T.J.Brumfield asked POLITELY if the nvidia bug
"left in the hands of nvidia developer"
was meaning that:

a) KDE Team started a collaboration with nvidia Team to discover and resolve that bug (and in this case I'll wait)OR

b) KDE Team washed his hands and sent the hot ball to nvidia, (you may add "damn closed drivers" if you like, but in this case waiting would just be
much more frustrating, more or less like waiting for a 100% working 3D openGL
driver on an ATI card).

And the thread became an infinite flame and various attacks for a 100%
legitimate question ("will my nvidia work in some months, or should I change
graphic card or move to another DE?").

IT'S "A)" OR IT'S "B)" , THERE'S NO SOMETHING LIKE "AB)" OR
"A but it's closed drivers faults as them are evil and mum will sent me sleeping without dinner if I help there".

by sebas (not verified)

T.J., do you actually see the irony in *what* you say and *how* you do so?

I'd kindly like to ask you to not post to the Dot anymore. Your comments clearly show that you don't care about understanding the actual issue -- not only in this particular thread. I therefore conclude that you either don't have the communication skills discuss on a level reasonable for this forum, or that you just don't care about the information you seem to be asking for and aim at just being negative. Both of those are showstoppers when it comes to interacting in the KDE community.

So please don't post to the Dot anymore. Thanks for understanding.

by andras (not verified)

T.J brought up a valid technical issue, which Janne turned into a personal attack. So why ban T.J..? I see his contribution to be more useful for KDE than the Janne kind of fanboyism.

by T. J. Brumfield (not verified)

I think it is a valid question to ask if the issue really lies with Nvidia, and if this will be addressed. Someone did thankfully answer stating that the issue is xrender code in Nvidia's driver. So perhaps this really is their issue. QT 4 apparently heavily relies on xrender, and KDE heavily relies on QT 4.

by Morty (not verified)

Most of T.J comment did not bring up anything valid, most of it was simple trolling. Bringing up one small relevant issue in a large troll post and lines like "calling me a troll again" are both classic troll technics. He could easily have brought up the valid issue whitout it. And with Jannes respons you clearly see whats happen when you feed the troll.

by fred (not verified)

T.J. indeed brought up a valid technical issue, just a pity that this has been discussed several times, and the problem is _really_ because of the nVidia driver (has been explained by another guy here)

And also usually I see T.J. as the one who brings valid issues and not trolling, the problem is just how he conveys the message and sometimes it is quite hard to convince him how a change (especially a radical one) can be good for us in the future :)

by Janne (not verified)

"T.J brought up a valid technical issue, which Janne turned into a personal attack."

What "personal attack"?

"I see his contribution to be more useful for KDE than the Janne kind of fanboyism."

If you see utterly negative whining as "useful", then go ahead. That does not make it a fact though.

by Bobby (not verified)

Janne, I think you should try and read T.J with an open and fair mind. A lot of what T.J brought up are facts. I am a hard core KDE lover but I have to admit that KDE 4.1 still has quite a few issues, which I can live with because it's a beta! Look at Vista, it has a bag of misconstruction and still it's been sold as a finished product.
T.J is not a KDE hater and because he is not I am sure that what he is saying is meant to be constructive.

by Janne (not verified)

"Janne, I think you should try and read T.J with an open and fair mind."

I did. And while the issue (problems with NVIDIA) is real, his attitude sucks. He basically asked "are you just going to sit on your lazy asses, and let others fix this problem?".

"I am a hard core KDE lover but I have to admit that KDE 4.1 still has quite a few issues, which I can live with because it's a beta!"

So how about reserving your final judgment until it's actually released? We can't really comment on the qualities of 4.1 since it hasn't been released yet.

It seems to me that quite a few people don't understand what a huge undertaking KDE4 is. 4.0 got quite a bit of flak because it felt half-baked when compared to 3.5. That issue was partly created by communication-problems, when people expected something else than what was going to be delivered.

"Look at Vista, it has a bag of misconstruction and still it's been sold as a finished product."

It's a good thing that you brought up Vista. Microsoft expects you to BUY Vista. They are going to kill support for XP and they are trying to force everyone to move to Vista instead. Vista is a pig, and it will likely require the user to buy new hardware.

What about KDE? Well, the developers are not trying to sell KDE4 to you. They are GIVING it to you, for free! You have the choice of using it, or not using it. If you want, you can keep on using KDE3.5. Both 3.5 and 4 will work fine on older hardware, and KDE3.5 is a fine desktop that can serve you for a long time.

Looking at the amount of complaints and vitriol directed towards KDE4, I keep on thinking "do these people forget that they are being given all this software for free?". I could understand the complaints if paying customers complained about being forced to move to a half-baked system (as is the case with Vista). But that is not the case here. We are being given a gift. A gift of software.

This whole situation is kinda similar if I gave someone a car for free, and then he started complaining "what is this crap? I don't want a car, I want a motorcycle! This sucks!". There's a feeling of entitlement that should not be there. When I should see gratitude, I see feeling of entitlement.

by Bobby (not verified)

Somebody with brain at last. I often critizize T.J but if the man is right then by God accept it people!
Like you said andras, it's a valid technical issue that T.J brought up so I can't understand the fuss.
T.J has made a tremendous contribution here even if it might come across as negative at times. On the other hand, would we see such great strides of improvement in KDE 4 if people like T.J weren't pointing out issues that they are having with the DE? a-non is one negative .... and nobody bans him so why do they want to ban T.J?
People, let the man express himself, after all open source is about freedom, isn't it?

by T. J. Brumfield (not verified)

"T.J., do you actually see the irony in *what* you say and *how* you do so?"

Irony is by definition unexpected. If I understand the contrast you apparently see, then it wouldn't be irony.

However I don't see what you're getting at. I'm not above admitting I'm wrong. If you feel that I'm doing something wrong, then please address it directly and I will take your post into consideration.

However, my growing temperament has more to do with how others have dealt with me in very uncivil fashion rather than address my questions directly. I ask questions not to infuriate or instigate, but because I'm looking for answers.

Unless I'm mistaken, the civil response to a question is an answer. I don't feel that I'm out of line for expecting exactly that.

by sebas (not verified)

"However I don't see what you're getting at. I'm not above admitting I'm wrong. If you feel that I'm doing something wrong, then please address it directly and I will take your post into consideration."

Until you actually see that, I'd be happy if you refrained from posting. I've given the whole discussion some thought, and while I also don't like Janne's attitude, yours crossed this line. This kind of behaviour, indicated by profanity and just not understanding others puts you in the category of "poisonous people". Note that I did not say there's nothing useful in your posts, it's the annoyance / use ratio that makes it prohibitive. Or put simply, you're doing more harm than good. (And I'm not talking about this single thread, it's a behaviour that postings under your name have exposed repeatedly in the past.)

It would good tactique to not just respond to every reply and instead follow those of others, keeping more silent. People like you have drained enough energy from real contributors already.

by T. J. Brumfield (not verified)

"Until you actually see that, I'd be happy if you refrained from posting."

I asked very politely for to explain exactly what I'm supposedly doing wrong. I very civilily stated that when I ask questions, I'm just looking for answers. You response was to evade my questions. How appropriate.

"puts you in the category of 'poisonous people'."

You're not addressing ideas here, but rather me as a person. How are comments like these not personal attacks? When someone disagrees with you, the appropriate response is not to attack them personally. I post a whole lot on a whole lot of forums. Feel free to Google up enderandrew, as I'm the only one. You'll find someone highly regarded and respected in every community I'm in. Someone seeks me out and replies to every one of my posts with vitrol, makes repeated personal attacks, and the issue is me because I told someone to grow up? I responded in kind after weeks of carefully directed attacks.

That by definition makes me a poisonous person?

"It would good tactique to not just respond to every reply and instead follow those of others, keeping more silent."

Apparently the ideal model in an OSS community is to keep silent.

by MamiyaOtaru (not verified)

I'm in full agreement with TJ about just about everything, from his concerns with the project to his feelings about being attacked. Difference being, I don't post about it all the time. Like you are suggesting to TJ, I rarely post here anymore. I also don't use KDE4 and at this rate never will. I'm consoled by the thought that KDE4 probably won't be in Debian Stable for years, so I can keep using KDE for a while. But I don't like how KDE4 is evolving (or how it performs), and I don't like the way you treat people who express concerns. TJ, maybe you should give up. Let them have their grand experiment.

by Birger (not verified)

Please Sebas,

Although T.J. can be annoying he did have a very valid question here.

If someone should be corrected here it is Janne for his rather plump communication in this thread.

And therefore I think you overstep a line here. Do you only want the fanboy users? That is what you will get with this kind of response.

And T.J. , can you please stop responding to the attacks? Please keep strictly to the case? It seems like all your posts have put you in a negative light and only seeing your name anoys some people.

Regards Birger

by Janne (not verified)

"Grow the fuck up."

I'll take this as an admission of defeat. Thanks for playing.

by Martin (not verified)

OK. You just proved that you were, after all, just trolling. Only trolls seek to "defeat" their "opponent", rather than aiming for a constructive discussion. Have a nice day.

by Birger (not verified)

Please Janne,

This does not help. Can you also please stop fueling the fire?

Regards Birger

by Anon (not verified)

So out of the two posts:

"Grow the fuck up."

and the response to this:

"I'll take this as an admission of defeat. Thanks for playing."

you take issue with the latter?

The mind boggles, quite frankly.

by ac (not verified)

> Does anyone actually know specifically what the issue is, and how likely it is to be addressed?

the problem is bad hardware xrender acceleration and an unnamed problem that amplifies this on 8xxx and 9xxx cards. making nvidias xrender actually slower than some software implementations (at least on my machine - 8800gt and an old amd64).

qt4 and newer versions of gtk/cairo use xrender way more extensivly than qt3. it seems qt3 doesn't use much of xrender at all, when comparing desktops on my machine. qt3 based painting is quick, everything else is slow as hell. meaning scrolling of simple webpages (like this one) isn't smooth with kde4-konqueror or cairo-based-firefox on my machine. thats quite impressive when you consider this is a allmost top-of-the-line graphicscard, way oversized for a simple desktop pc.

the solution is working xrender acceleration. thats planed for an later driver release. currently they are working on memory management issues, that should bring 8xxx and 9xxx cards back in line with nvidias xrender performance.

to me it seems that's what you get for not using x-technology. nvidia tries to reuse as much code as possible bitween their driver implementations. so there is no xaa or exa, and there will probably be no glucose for nvidia. they have their own acceleration engine that didn't keep up with the advancements of the linux desktop.

the current "solution" is to use xgl. ironically, nvidia provides one of the best opengl drivers to date, so you'll get an amazing desktop performance.

so, to address your trolling: this has nothing todo with kde. trolltech isn't to blame either. nvidia still has the best 3d drivers in the world. but their 2d linux driver just SUCKS for current hardware. unfortunate, when you look at the smooth drivers they produce for windows and osx.

by SadEagle (not verified)

Seems like some people have problems with 7600s as well;
while I often can't reproduce them with a 7100 (which is really a 6200, of course, and hence has even more mature drivers), and the far lower-end Intel embedded GPUs also seem to perform well.

However, I would not completely absolve our end and TrollTech from responsibility, either. Qt4.4 has some serious performance regressions --- see e.g. http://troll.no/developer/task-tracker/index_html?id=203591&method=entry,
and in some cases we may not be making the best use of it to get top performance. Unfortunately, however, the vast differences in performance of different drivers on different things makes it really quite hard to track and address things on our end properly.

by ac (not verified)

i don't think one can blame desktop software for not being 100% efficient on all hardware when it comes to rendering.

when we talk about those nvidia problems, we are not talking about a few percent in some benchmark, but about a complete unuseable desktop for the all users with certain hardware.
nvidias xrender acceleration is currently completely cpu bound on my machine, so something must be realy wrong.
when i do updates on my gentoo machine using kde4-konsole, i can literally see it repaint the whole window, from top to buttom, line after line.
kde3-konsole renders smooth on the same system.

those problems don't exist on any other driver i know of. and it doesn't happen on windows nor mac. so, while neither qt or kde may render everything perfect, they most likely don't have anything to do with this problem.

by T. J. Brumfield (not verified)

Thanks for your response.

I have the same issues however with my 7600GT, and with an onboard Nvidia 6100 chipset.

by Bobby (not verified)

I agree with you here. I don't use Konqueror as a web browser because of such issues and it's as slow as a lawyer going to hell.
Compiz Fusion (like I mentioned above) is at least 4 times faster than KWin with it's effects turned on.
The Folder View is not a bad idea but it's looks like something that is still in the early development stage - I don't know, it feels like something is missing but I can't say exactly what... I trust the developers though and I am sure that they will deliver as usual :)

Nvidia is like you put it, bugging the heck out of us all. It started with the installation of openSuse 11 RC1. I installed the OS - all went well, booted and then I was greeted with a blinking screen, decorated with every imaginable colours on earth. Imagine I were a Newbie, I would say that Linux is utter crap and go back to Windows. These are issues that have to be solved before Linux can really challenge Windows at the noob level.

by NabLa (not verified)

I'll tell ya what's missing (not sure if it's been done for b2 as I left it installing this morning), right click > [file operations].

I think it's great to be honest, not only I've got one for desktop icons, but also another one for my mldonkey incoming folder so I can quickly access anything I'm downloading.

by Stefan Majewsky (not verified)

> I'll tell ya what's missing (not sure if it's been done for b2 as I left it installing this morning), right click > [file operations]

It's available on my 4.0.83 (= 4.1 Beta 2) packages from openSUSE.

by Bobby (not verified)

Yes the present version has improved, it even has a slidebar so that I can make it really small and still can access my folders but I think that there is still room for improvement ;)

by opensuse user (not verified)

The link for the one-click install file points to the KDE:/KDE4:/Factory:/Desktop repository. It seems that this does not have 4.0.83 yet (rather it has 4.0.82), no doubt it is building as we speak but in the interim you can use the KDE:/KDE4:/UNSTABLE: repo instead which does have it. ie use this link

http://download.opensuse.org/repositories/KDE:/KDE4:/UNSTABLE:/Desktop/o...

by Sebastian Kuegler (not verified)

The upload of the packages might still be in progress, and AFAIK some dependency issues are still being worked out.

by opensuse user (not verified)

Yep. It's come though now! So use the original links folks http://www.kde.org/info/4.0.83.php

KDE-4.x is also unusable for me with a ATI Radeon card. Scrolling is not smooth as in KDE-3.x, all GUI elements react slower.

by jospoortvliet (not verified)

As I wrote in my blogs about this topic, KDE/Qt 4 uses hardware acceleration quite extensively. Most proprietary drivers don't really work very well in that area, thus Qt 4 seems much slower. Rather unfortunately, but nothing Trolltech or KDE can do about it. The graphicscard vendors will have to fix it, and they probably will - in time. In the meantime, Intel hardware performs superior - thus that's what I'm gonna buy, and I advise you to do the same...

by Henrik Pauli (not verified)

Particularly hard to do that as intel hardware doesn’t seem to exist in AGP / PCI Express variants, only on-board.

by Jure Repinc (not verified)

Maybe it would help to make some great looking benchmark software, like LinuX Eyecandy Mark or somethig, based on Qt 4. It would be an order of magnitude more demanding of hardware than the currently released Qt4/KDE4 software. There could also then be a site where people could freely upload their benchmark results and compare them. And these results would include info about drivers used and hardware used. Maybe this braging with higher scores could drive in some way the demand for driver writers to make better drivers with more performance. Hopefully no hardware manufacturer would like to be the slowest in that benchmark. Probably the graphics ninja Zack Rusin could come up with something like this, if he has any time left of course.

I guess I'm having the same problems with my S3 Savage 8MB on my notebook. KDE4 apps seem to draw a lot slower.

The drivers are fully opensource and just included with X.org, so I hope the devs will (can?) still fix them :)

Well, it's not like we don't have work to do on our end, but, well,
one wouldn't expect the latest graphics card models to perform comparable to an ancient S3 card card now, would one? THAT is the performance problem with some NVidia HW + driver combos --- they don't perform anywhere near as well as they should. Mid-range graphics cards from the most current generation should not perform much worse than low-end/cheapo cards from a few generations ago.

Do you use the proprietary fglrx driver? I always thought along these lines: Hey, fglex is proprietary but it comes directly from the manufacturer - it surely must be better than the Open Source driver, even if I sacrifice the "openness".

But no so - I found out after *LOTS* of trial and error that the "radeon" driver is WAY better than fglrx. There are some minor display artifacts, BUT: It uses much less CPU here (with fglrx quickly around 40%, even if simply moving a window, with radeon 3%). So, if you didn't do this already (and there are no other reasons why you are using fglrx), I'd recommend to at least give radeon a try. I didn't need many additional settings in xorg.cofn and even video runs much better. The only settings I did enter were:

Option "DRI" "true"
Option "EnablePageFlip" "true"

I used the free radeon driver. My radeon 9250 is too old for the actual proprietary driver.

by FL (not verified)

Hello,

anyone knows where to get precompiled Mac OS X packages of Beta 2? http://mac.kde.org is still Beta 1, are they expected to show up there later?