KDE 4.2 Beta1 Out for Testing

Today, the KDE team invites interested testers and reviewers to give KDE 4.2.0-Beta1 a go. The release announcement lists some significant improvements. The purpose of this release is to get feedback from the community, preferably in the form of bugreports on the new bugs.kde.org bugtracker.
Beta1 offers critical features like the Eyes applet (an XEyes clone), but also a more streamlined user experience all over the workspace and applications.
With the KDE team being in bug fixing frenzy after the recent hard feature freeze, now is the time to help us smoothing the release for your pleasure starting in January.

So install KDE 4.2-Beta1 and help us make it rock.

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Comments

by Bert (not verified)

Does anybody else have the following problems:
- system tray icons cuddled together and unusable
- kicker (I still think that sound better than "plasma containment resembling the classical bar") because of compositing problems completely translucent at least with Nvidia cards (and as no "solid" theme is available, there's no workaround)
- At least one plasma crash per session, mostly at logout
- Konsole crashes after every session
- Konsole cannot properly manage profiles
- Startup sound cut short

I'm just wondering, because all this problems seem obvious to me (so I didn't file a bug report), but they accompany me since 4.1.x times and I had high hopes, that 4.2, even beta, would cure them.

Basically, I don't really see a stability difference between stable 4.1 and unstable 4.2, so I decided to run 4.2 as I hope that problems will be solved quicker in this tree :-/

by Bert (not verified)

To reply to myself, some more remarks:
- Konqueror simply not accepting certificates of https-sites (you always have to manually accept them)
- Dolphin for som reasons simply does no longer accept the "sort by alphabet" setting. This has occured suddenly during the 4.1.x cycle.

Don't get me wrong, I know that this should be in Bugzilla, however I'm a bit surprised that nobody else does seem to have these obvious problems, and so I'd like to rule out that this are local flaws of my openSUSE installation.

On the other hand, the LOOK of 4.2 is simply better than 4.1. Some ideas, like the small progress window, are really great ideas. On a whole, I like what KDE4.x (with x obviously >2) is going to be, but I see that there is still some way to go.

by Peter Penz (not verified)

> Dolphin for som reasons simply does no longer accept the "sort by
> alphabet" setting. This has occured suddenly during the 4.1.x cycle.

I cannot reproduce this issue in Dolphin for KDE 4.1 + 4.2. Do you have more details how to reproduce this issue (e. g. which view mode did you use, which sorting did you have selected before, etc.). Thanks!

by Phil (not verified)

Peter, I logged this bug a few weeks ago:- https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=172413 about (lack of) ability to cancel a deletion, there's been no updates - could you take a look please? I notice you're pretty good at responding to requests here on the Dot, so I thought I might mention it :-)

Many thanks!

by Vide (not verified)

The Dolphin problem you are reporting is something only happening in your environment, cause I've no problem at all with alphabetical sorting in KDE 4.1.3 (Kubuntu packages), and never I did (or at least I wasn't aware of :)

by Larx (not verified)

You hit a point here:

I'm usually quite active in filing bug reports. But for some of the flaws in KDE4 I'm not really sure whether to report them, as they seem so obvious.

Take that "startup sound" problem e.g. It is, functionality-wise, only a very very very very minor problem. However, the chopped sound is the first impression you get of your shiny new desktop. This gives you an "alpha" feeling quite from the start.

Bug has been reported as #157810 in February, and seems to have a fix available now. A small thing, but a bit symptomatic for the current state, as nobody seemd to care.

To be sure, I'm using the latest bleeding edge KDE4, because I simply like the shiny new effects and features KDE4 offers. It's great, devs, go on like this!

But with 4.2 approaching I still don't see a desktop I can - without a second thoughts - install on my "non-geeks" friends and family-computers. As long as e.g. many plasma crashes require a removal of the config files, KDE4 is still restricted to the die-hard fans.

by Aaron Seigo (not verified)

> As long as e.g. many plasma crashes require a removal of the config files,

i'd love to see what those are.

by Paul Eggleton (not verified)

This is not really the [lace to be discussing this, but I thought I'd respond with my experiences anyway. For reference, I'm using Kubuntu Intrepid with KDE 4.1.3.

> - system tray icons cuddled together and unusable
No.

> - kicker (I still think that sound better than "plasma containment
> resembling the classical bar") because of compositing problems completely
> translucent at least with Nvidia cards (and as no "solid" theme is available,
> there's no workaround)
No, but my laptop has an ATI card. I find that with recent updates, compositing now works but I can't have it enabled because the last time I tested it, the system locked up after about 20 minutes. For that I blame the drivers, not KDE, and personally I can live without compositing.

> - At least one plasma crash per session, mostly at logout
No. It's likely we are not using the same plasma configuration though.

> - Konsole crashes after every session
No, works fine here.

> - Konsole cannot properly manage profiles
Yes this is a known issue. This was being worked on, I thought it looked like it might be fixed for 4.2.

> - Startup sound cut short
Yes.

by Aaron Seigo (not verified)

> - system tray icons cuddled together and unusable

nope; report it on bugs.k.o with a screenshot

> - kicker (I still think that sound better than "plasma containment resembling
> the classical bar")

how about "panel" or even "plasma panel"? i mean, sure, you can make anything sound stupid if you try hard enough.

> because of compositing problems completely translucent at least with Nvidia
> cards (and as no "solid" theme is available, there's no workaround)

there absolutely are "solid" themes provided. install kdeplasma-addons.

and if you use the latest nvidia beta drivers, things should work nicer with kde4.

> - At least one plasma crash per session, mostly at logout

backtrace? bugs.kde.org report? a few weeks back there was a crash-on-logout that was introduced during 4.2 dev, but i fixed that a while ago.

> - Konsole crashes after every session

i'm not seeing that either.

> - Konsole cannot properly manage profiles

it works here, but then as you didn't give a definition for "manage" it's impossible to know what you actually mean.

look, go to bugs.kde.org, file some reports and follow up on them as needed. vague lists here don't help anything get fixed.

by Luca Beltrame (not verified)

I have installed them a few hours ago. They work nicely, but you have to bear in mind that Kopete does not have MSN support out of the box because libmsn (on which now it depends for Messenger support) is not packaged yet AFAIK.
As it's unsupported etc. I wonder if I should file a bug report or not.

by Matt Rogers (not verified)

If your distribution hasn't packaged the new version of libmsn yet (yes, it's beta, but will go final before the KDE 4.2 release), then you should file a bug with that distribution.

by Luca Beltrame (not verified)

I found it in the repository after a few hours, so I assume this has been taken care of already.

by Benoit Jacob (not verified)

I didn't manage to finish the Mandelbrot wallpaper plugin for Plasma (contrary to what the announce suggests), so it'll have to be for 4.3. Meanwhile you can find it in its current state in playground.

by Alex Medina (not verified)

Looking at this screenshot: http://www.kde.org/announcements/announce_4.2-beta1/desktop-folderview-d...

I really love the new progress-bar and scroll bar look, it's so nice! Also that plasma theme!.

KDE4 it's getting better and better..

by James B. (not verified)

True, it looks like a "I must have it!".

by Hans (not verified)

Actually that isn't a progress bar. So far I've only seen that bar in Dolphin and Kickoff.

Anyway, the Oxygen progress bar has got a new look too. :)

by sebas (not verified)

You're right, it's not a progress bar (it doesn't show progress). It's a new UI element called capacity bar.

by Anon (not verified)

Wow, that tooltip is so sexy! Much better than KDE3's.

by Bobby (not verified)

Mine looks better with the Naked theme ;)

by Dexter (not verified)

It looks cool and I hope it does actually work.
In the current version you can't copy by dragging from a SFTP folder to a FTP folder on a split window... a show stopper for me.

by jospoortvliet (not verified)

Sounds like a serious bug... If you find this issue in the 4.2 series, PLEASE file a bugreport (if it doesn't yet exist)

by Rahux (not verified)

Actually I found SUSE beta 4 with KDE 4.1.3 much more stable than than the newest Fedora Cambridge GNOME. The only thing that frustrates me is not being able to easily re-arrange the items on the taskbar (and if I'm just being ignorant, please let me know in the comments)

by Anon (not verified)

Just right button on the bar, "unlock components" and click on the icon that appears on the right.

Then in "edit mode" you can rearrange plasmoids.

by Hans (not verified)

I think Rahux meant the tasks in the taskbar. In trunk there is an option to sort the tasks manually. It isn't perfect yet but you can reorder the tasks with drag and drop.

by schnebeck (not verified)

Who still needs a taskbar when you have active desktop corners? ;-)

Bye

Thorsten

by Taupter (Cláudi... (not verified)

Me. I have an ATI card, and the fglrx drivers do a good job, but because they lack DRI2 support I'm not able to watch video or run an OpenGL program when 3D compositing is enabled.
Time to our darling ATI upstream to catch up.

by Sebastian (not verified)

For me, it is faster to look up a window in the taskbar than in all the window switching effects...

by yman (not verified)

Arranging them in logical order in the task bar helps me to organize what I'm doing, though I usually switch with Alt+Tab. I also like it for drag-and-drop. Not to mention that I care about battery-life, and fancy effects seem to drain it faster.

by Paulo Cesar (not verified)

It looks very good! I'm using it with nightly builds and it seems to be much faster here on my computer then the official intrepid's build.. strange..

My only complain is that the blue border when compositing is disabled is really really ugly.. And I didn't found how to remove it.. My solution is to use compositing, because the borders looks very smooth and beautiful with it

by Hans (not verified)

Sorry, but which border are you talking about?

by SONA (not verified)

Yeah, I hate this ugly blue border too. It's really a shame! Really bad is that you can not disable it, only the colour itself can be changed thought System settings > Appearance > Colors > "Hover Decoration"

I hope in the final this "stupid-artwork-error" is gone, but I dont think so!

by pinheiro (not verified)

well goes back into how come we need ozone problems.

But you can change that in kcm its the active windeco color...

by Paulo C (not verified)

Hi Nuno, I really like your original mockups, but this modifications being made to Oxygen win decoration are pretty devastating in my opinion..

first that stripes thingie, and now this blue border.. I'm glad I can disable these things, but for the average user looking for a nice visual isn't that good IMHO

By the way, why the heck people has so many difficulty to distinguish between active and inactive windows??? Why they need so many excessive visual clues? It just makes everything look polluted..

by Aaron Seigo (not verified)

"but for the average user looking for a nice visual" ...

... for them, $DEITY invented compositing window managers.

"why the heck people has so many difficulty to distinguish between active and inactive windows?"

because people aren't good at distinguishing grey on grey ;)

by Vincent de Phily (not verified)

"because people aren't good at distinguishing grey on grey ;)"

Count me in. And that's why I love the "dim inactive windows" compositing effect. Much better than all the window decorations tricks (color, stipples, shadows). Thanks !

by Sebastian (not verified)

Maybe KDe should not only detect if compositing is possible or not, but also to chose the right windows decoration if compositing is either dis- (Ozone) or enabled (Oxygen).

by jospoortvliet (not verified)

It does change the windowdecoration based on compositing status. If you have compositing? Blue glow. If you don't? Blue border.

by Peppe (not verified)

Why, I actually find the blue glow very useful. It makes the current window much easier to track, and it's not that obtrusive.
And in my personal opinion, it's nice :) .

by Paulo Cesar (not verified)

The blue glow is indeed very nice, but it requires compositing.. The problem comes when compositing is disabled and it appears a rough blue border

by Sebastian Sauer (not verified)

I second that. Thanks to our artist-team for the fantastic work done on 4.2! :)

by SONA (not verified)

Yes I know this, but when you TURN OFF the desktop effects there is a blue 1px border around the active window. That`s looking terrible, especially when you use a brighter wallpaper.

With activated desktop effects it looks great, but without desktop effects the 1px border should be removed. It simply does not fit into the beautiful design of KDE4!

by Paulo Cesar (not verified)

totally agree

by Bobby (not verified)

It doesn't look terrible to me because it's very thin and as some people already said, it helps me to distinguish between active and inactive windows very quickly.
It's okay man :)

If you don't like the ugly blue border:
Systemsettings > Appearance > Colors > Colors tab > Active Titlebar

by anon (not verified)

Thanks, KDE 4.2 is really nice, one small thing though, compositing and shadows
seem to be really slow on my GF9800GT, it actually worked fine before. I guess i'll fill out a bugreport instead ;)

by sebas (not verified)

Make sure you have the latest nvidia drivers installed. While most nvidia cards do perform decently now (with 180.something), there seem to be cases where the nvidia drivers still show performance problems. If you can make sure that the reason for you performance issue is not the nvidia driver before reporting the bug, that would help us immensely.

by anon (not verified)

It actually is the latest beta and every tweak available has always been used, everything else works fine, moving around windows get slow only when enabling the shadows. I'll file a bugreport then.

by Simon Krämer (not verified)

It's strange, I also use a 9800GT with the latest (stable) drivers, no (speed) issues whatsoever.

by Fredde (not verified)

Try using the standard shadows on all windows, size 10 and x 3, y 6, this is what i use, not very insane imo, the standard settings are somewhat ok, but not that good either.

by NabLa (not verified)

May be worth disabling all those tweaks and see if it still happens on a sane config?