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 Aaron Seigo (not verified)

or buggiest packages? or buggiest video driver? or ..

if you can say what the fatal error message was and what the something you tried to adjust was it might be possible to give some advice.

by pete (not verified)

needless to say all the error messages i got from knotify (i got them after all the adjustments i tried in the kontrolcenter ). the white screen appeared after trying to adjust the panel .
meanwhile i found out that others also had big probs with knotify .
btw: i was not trying to get some help , i only wanted to share my experience

by Richard Dale (not verified)

Why head your post 'buggiest release ever' if all you wanted to do was 'share your experience'. As far as I can see you're suffering from a single bug of some sort which may or may not be something to do with KDE 4.1.

by Will Stephenson (not verified)

A cool-headed response from Richard. The knotify4 crash didn't have anything to do with KDE 4.1beta2. It was an experimental patch we added at openSUSE and thanks to all the bug reports we have already replaced it with a safer one, so no need for any hysteria.

by T. J. Brumfield (not verified)

I was wondering if it was an openSUSE thing as I ran across it myself today.

That being said, I have been very impressed with the openSUSE packages. I'm seriously considering going away from Gentoo to openSUSE on my desktop. I switched my wife's laptop from Sabayon to openSUSE last night.

If only you guys supported ext4 and reiser4 as options (even largely hidden by the installer and only opened with a disclaimer).

I'd also like to see you guys work with the KDE Mod team. They also provide some great patches.

http://kdemod.ath.cx/

by Bobby (not verified)

openSuse is the best KDE distro that I have used upto now. I can only recommend this distro and especially the latest version. OpenSuse is also the best distro for people who love bleeding edge software.
I would also like to try Reiser4 or EXT4 but unfortunately there isn't any option to use these formats on openSuse :(

by Bobby (not verified)

Thanks for that :)

by Morty (not verified)

And don't you think the developers would have noticed the KNotify error message every other seccond, and not released a beta with such a obvius bug. Did it not cross your mind at all before you worded your rather trollish post?

And did you consider that the Suse liveCDs are more or less auto generated and don't see much testing, other than perhaps a quick run on Beineris computer.

And the workaround was rather obvious if you bothered to read the error message. Open System Settings->Notifications->Systems Notification->Player Settings and select no audio output. Then enjoy for a live CD, a quite stable desktop beta.

by Morty (not verified)

And I forgot to write, had you said the error message was from KNotify everyone could have told you how to remedy it. So it would not have been needless to say at all, it would(with a different title and less offensive wording) actually have transformed you post from poisonus trollish to relevant.

by Bobby (not verified)

I have the same problem (but not white screen) but I haven't got the time to file a proper bug report as yet. And like you said, ALL the error messages came from knotify.

by Iuri Fiedoruk (not verified)

I can say that it seems a little buggy than beta1, what is bad, but it seems on the other hand more mature in the sense of being more complete and having some parts better finished.
Overall, I like it, but did not see major differences from beta1, let's hope from now on they focus on stability over features as release date approaches.

by Linus Berglund (not verified)

Well... I have to disagree with you on that one. 4.1beta2 is a lot more stable than the 4.0.x realeases were. Tell me: did you do as recommended when one gets "update-errors"? You know the "delete your .kde4-dir"??

by Matteo Agostinelli (not verified)

I have the same problem and a bug has already been posted: http://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=164859 (it looks like an openSUSE-specific problem). There is a workaround: go to "Notifications" "System Settings" and change "Use the KDE sound system" to "Use an external player" (I've put mplayer),

by Marc J. Driftmeyer (not verified)

Does anyone know the status of KDEPrint, CUPS and KDE 4.1? Are we still using a Qt Print Panel to interface to CUPS in lieu of a release for KDEPrint?

by Toki (not verified)

I am very impressed with KDE 4.1 betas, but I have a question about adding widgets to the panel and about already added widgets. When I add a new widget the old ones moves to the middle of the panel. Is there a possibility to move them back to their previous position? I would like to have the digital clock on the right side of the panel, but now it is not possible.

Cheers

by Richard Van Den Boom (not verified)

Well, I've been running 4.1 betas for some time now and I think it's going pretty well. Plasma has now a very good shape and I believe we can see now where the devs are heading, which should provide a configurable desktop as no other exists. Together with the improved XRender composite support (my laptop still have some problems with OpenGL composite, should be improved by the next X release), I must I'm really starting to enjoy the KDE4 experience as a desktop.
The betas have been very stable to me for several monthes now, another very good point.
I also like where KOffice seems to be going and have found apps like Gwenview or Okular really nicely improved.
On top of that, there's a pretty obvious sense that there is a lot underneath that will appear as time goes on. I'm convinced that that successive releases of KDE 4.X will bring quite a lot to the table.
My thanks all of you for your work!

by Justas (not verified)

Nice improvement in KDE 4.1, but sadly in my opinion there are and some steps backwards in design. Is it bug?

What happened with oxygen style minimize/maximize/close buttons? Buttons was best thing in all style. So if some of them was changed why not all including "apply" "ok" etc buttons was changed. Now they are completely from different stories.

Active inactive window problem was simply solved with all dimm and etc. effects. Stripes are useful for somebody too, but they are optional, but thees new buttons not.

Buttons become ugly when are inactive and I don't know how to turn off that thing.

Ok it's subjective opinion, but why delete old style, when already was created new ozone style. If somebody like it do it, create dozens of new styles, but keep old ones and let people choose.

Another example analog clock, old was very good. Again if somebody like new one, why not to do possibility to have both styles.

Digital ckock and task manager improved, but gone ability to change task managers size. Tasks on that taskbar looks much worse, pager too, they was nice and simple, why change?

Worst thing in KDE 4 design is wasting desktop area. Huge empty spaces, large bars, and inability manually adjust and this was left untouched.

I am architect and designer, so watch in to KDE from designer point of view. I think good design is essential. And would like to see KDE as best DE in design aspect.

Good luck

by giricz81 (not verified)

So you can participate to this project :) feel free to expres your suggestions with developres.

by Justas (not verified)

I subscribed to [email protected] mailing list, wrote my opinions and started to participate I hope :)

Is it right place? I'm absolutely new in this area, but I believe in KDE and see it's potential!

by somekool (not verified)

I upgraded this weekend from 4.0.1 to 4.1beta2
it's rockin' solid.

I wish I could move applets by a simple d&d from panel to panel which does not seems to be yet possible. but hey, i'm sure it's coming...

but so far, it is stable enough for me for daily use.