David Faure, our release manager, has announced the latest KDE 2.1 release schedule. KDE 2.1 will now be officially announced Feb 26, mainly due to popular demand and the fact that the KDE Artist Team is hard at work polishing up this release. For a preview of what's to come, check out the new KControl design. Definitely seems worth the wait!
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hye, thanks! It would be nice to have this in the control center tho, also, the ability to set fonts for different display elements like menu text and window and message texts.
Kcontrol > Look and Feel > Fonts
I've been looking everywhere to find how to increase the tiny scrollbar size too - surely this should be a simple thing to do. For me Linux isn't currently useable due to the fixed tiny size of the scrollbars.
just been trying to do this myself. I'm used to the windows windows so all the big resize bar made me constantly resize windows whenever i was trying to scroll or reposition them... anyway, the following settings seem best to me...
Control Center > Desktop > Window Behavious > Moving > Turn off "Allow moving & resizing of maximised windows"
Control Center > Appearance & Themes > Window Decorations > Use Plastik with normal border size and all three options unticked.
Control Center > Style > Use Plastik.
That seems the most Windows like to me so far anyway :o)
Excellent work. KDE (and konqi) were what pushed me over to using linux 100%.
After installing 2.1beta2, I ran into a rather silly problem with XEmacs (that I can't figure out how to fix). Alt-x no longer maps to M-x (oddly, it does in vanilla emacs). Is this an xemacs setting or a KWM setting?
Thanks for any help.
seth
That has more to do with X than KDE. I don't know why installing KDE would affect that at all. If you have an M$ keyboard, try using the windows key instead of alt. I finally figured out that my Windows key was mapped to the Meta key (notice that if you try to assign the windows key to an action in the Control Center, it says you pressed the meta key). There are various settings in the XFree86 configuration file that can map Meta to alt and stuff, so if it still doesn't work, you can search around the XF86Config man page (notice the capitalization) and make the necessary modifications to your config file. Good luck!
The real fix for this is with xmodmap.
Use xmodmap, it will show you the modifiers.
There you can add/remove modifiers, and test with xev.
Hmm, Alt is mapped to meta in my xemacs and I simply have
mod1 Alt_L (0x40)
in the xmodmap output. There's a missing link somewhere...
KDE looks absolutely great! I must say, I am very impressed with whats happened so far. It's almost up to the level of user-friendlieness of windoze, and already is more powerful and more stable.
Begin rant:
However, I see a problem constantly that really bugs me : shitrific distros. I'm talking about distros who, although are great companies, have an annoying habit of screwing things up and acting in a very non-open source way. Distros such as these are constantly trying to build brand new apps and remake the wheel. A good example is hard-ware configuration. Both RedHat and Mandrake (and a few others) have built entirely new apps to do this with, instead of building upon the very cool framework of Linux-conf (which I still want to be ported to QT). Another example is X configuration, which is done in both distros, repeatedly, in a way which suggests that their QA teams highest expendature is donuts. Very blatantly, in Mandrake 7.2 they include a universal menu system, which
Almost every distro I have tried has problems that reach this point. This includes Caldera, Redhat, SuSE, and others. Although they have great intentions, and they have some very good talent on their side, I think that perhaps the rush to release a certain package ahead of the competition is very hard to resist, even if it results in bugs that a casual user can notice within 5 minutes of installing. The solution : I'm not sure. Maybe we can get some of the awesome KDE bugfixers on a distro we like, and start killing bugs. Or perhaps the solution is that I simply have no decent taste in distros.
End Rant
In any case, I applaud the KDE team for your seriously high cool factor, and also the GNOME team for your also very seriously high cool factor. And, I would also like to add that I am not saying "All distros suck". Troll bashers, lay off!
Stay tuned to the dot. Currently working on something which will help your rants. ;-)
I know, that Mandrake menu crap is the worst. Good thing it doesn't even work on Gnome. But I sure would like the good old KDE menu editor back. And I agree, rather than Mandrake creating whole new things, they should, for instance add a KDE LinuxConf to KDE itself you know? Although, I see where they may want to create Distro-specific apps, otherwise, why would people use that distro if its the same as all the others? (I disagree, the installation is where they should be different).
Well, if a distro did something using standard open source methods, then wouldn't that make them DIFFERENT from their competition? :-)
Also, a truly distro specific app is impossible anyways, because only an idiot distro would release something distro-specific that isn't open source. I always wondered why other distros didn't adapt or fork the one exceptional part of caldera, LIZARD.
Mandrake 8.0 will make it possible to disable that "menu crap" and leave the menus up to the desktop environments. Not really a step back, more like letting the choice up to the user.
BTW if you use cooker, you can already
rm -rf applnk
mv applnk.kde applnk
get rid of the menu packages
and use kmenuedit
Both RedHat and Mandrake (and a few others) have built entirely new apps to do this with, instead of building upon the very cool framework of Linux-conf
Um, linuxconf *IS* a distro-specific app. It's one of Redhats. Unless they've fixed it recently, Redhat actually requires GNOME before it will install the text-only version of linuxconf.
And speaking of distros, there will be no single configuration utility that will work. There's no way a universal configuration will work for each of Debian, Slackware, SuSE, FreeBSD, Solaris, AIX, HPUX, etc. KDE is not just for Linux, let alone Redhat based Linuces.
Not really. Linuxconf does not specifaclly require GNOME, unless you compile it with GTK support, which still allows you to run it in text mode. Basically though, even though I might have been mistaken on that, my main point was basically that stupid actions by distro companies really screw up really good software such as KDE (and GNOME, and GIMP, and XMMS, and PHP, and so on), and also drive people away from Linux (and other open source OSes), who assume that the problems introduced by the distro companies is not a distro specific bug, but rather a general problem with the program.
....Not really. Linuxconf does not specifaclly require GNOME, unless you compile it with GTK support, which still allows you to run it in text mode....
maybe Linuxconf doesn't need gnome to work in text mode even if compiled with GTK support but the package manager may think otherwise,let me recall a situation which hapenned to me a few years ago.....
i was running debian and i wanted to install a sound app requiring the alsa drivers,since i already had the newest kernel at the time (one of the 2.2.1X series IIRC,i think 2.2.12),i also had my alsa driver (also the latest),i fire up apt-get which download all the requisite package including some less recent alsa driver (mine werent in dpkg's database,i compiled them)....well...those debian alsa driver conflicted with the same kernel they depended upon and apt-get decided to uninstall my kernel !!!! you're free to imagine what kind of mess this situation created....
Alain
Wow, that does sound messy. However, how did it unistall the kernel. I can almost see removing the source file off the hard disk, but I can't possibly imagine an app packager stupid enough to set his package to screw with the MBR. And btw, I have never used it, but I keep hearing people say the Debian's pkg manager is basically proof to the kind of nutsiness that goes into RPM, and I guess that no tool is idiot-proof after all! Ah well, at least in open source we have the ability to fix stuff like that when it pops up.
distro with lowest weasel moves quotient?
Debian.
Keep in mind KDE runs on other platforms beside Linux, who does not have the problem (with the various distros fsck'ing up everything) at all. :)
/leg - happy KDE-user on FreeBSD 4.2
Just to answer a question above (regarding something like helix gnome for kde), a kde installer is being worked on as we speak (a graphical frontend for selecting which packages you wish to install (workstation, minimal, custom and so on), and then either lets you fetch the packages from a ftp mirror site, or from a local directory.
And the new look for 2.1.0 is simply great :)
Check out http://realityx.net/kde/ for A LOT of cool screenshots of the new look and other various kde goodies :)
IMHO this installer sould be a static binary so that one can install QT/KDE with no requirements
--
Andreas
It is..
*blink, blink, blink*.. hmmmm, i presumed M$ would once again take the lead of most good looking GUI with Whistler.. ..but.. ..i think.. ..i was wrong..
Just want to say good job KDE team! Can't wait for the "official" 2.1
I wonder if they ever have time to sleep :)
-Justin
sleep -- sleep .. hm
/me doing a "dict:sleep" in konqueror.
ew -- does anybody really do something like *that*?
What's this for?
Irritated,
Tackat
What's this for?
To dream of new great icons.
I've been a Gnome user since summer '99 (Red Hat 6.0) and I liked it more that KDE 1.x. Last week I installed Mandrake 7.2 and started using KDE 2 for the first time. I'm really shocked. There is nothing in Gnome that is better than it's counterpart in KDE. KDE simply feels complete, whereas Gnome seems a neverending work in progress. I will continue to watch both projects, but I now understand what the KDE people have been saying all along. It's slick, beautiful, highly configurable and highly stable. Incredible work.
It's funny you say "highly stable" because even though I love KDE2's look & feel, I just got through installing Nautilus and using Gnome(I have Mandrake 7.2 also). It's mostly because I am tired of KDE apps crashing so much. Also, because Mandrake really screwed up the KDE menu system. Even though I prefer KDE2's look & feel, I think with Gnome2, Eazel & Helix Code's UI designers & artists, they may actually surpass KDE's great looks, while keeping robustness and stability.
Please don't reply, I'm feeling really bad, because this is the first time I've actually started to prefer Gnome over KDE--you just have to spend a whole day downloading stuff first. Then again, maybe 2.1 will solve some of the stability problems, and maybe Mandrake will get rid of the menu thing. Hell with it, maybe I'll just give in and use RedHat.
> Gnome2, Eazel & Helix Code's UI designers & artists
*yawn* Gnome2 is actually at least 8 months away -- maybe even a year. They need to port everything to Gtk2 first (which doesn't even exist as a beta yet). And as the API of Gtk2 is claimed to be so much better they probably need to rewrite *everything*. Eazel & HelixCode have been there for more than a year now and have aquired about $30mio within that time. Still KDE/Qt is technically concerning almost everything ahead of Gnome/Gtk.
And yes: KDE 2.1 is a huge improvement over KDE 2.0. For a user maybe even a bigger improvement than KDE 2.0 was over KDE 1.1.2. And of course it's much more stable.
Actually Mandrake 7.2 came in two versions with one of them being a Release-Candidate and not the final version. Maybe you installed one of these. Furthermore KDE 2.0.1 was shipped afterwards which has been a lot more stable than KDE 2.
And further: a significant amount of crashes people saw was due to bad packaging. Of course it's your choice to trash a great product because you chose a bad distro...
I installed KDE Beta2 for Mandrake 7.2, and everything is great, but in Konqueror, I put lan:\ into the address bar, and Konqi trys to search for "lan:\" on Google.....
I cant find the LAN Browsing module in KControl either.
Do I have to download and SRPM for kdenetwork and compile it by hand????
Chris Adams
I am also using KDE 2.1 Beta2 on Mandrake 7.2 and was having the same problem.
Next I _disabled_ the Control Center -> Web Browsing -> Enhanced Webbrowsing -> Enable Internet Keywords.
Now, when I put 'lan:/' or 'cd:/' in the addressbar, I get "protocol not supported". However putting 'audiocd:/' in the addressbar works.
Any Ideas?
i have the same problem
Did you install the KDE-Network package? That package contains LISA, needed for the lan:/ thingy.
Yes, I did install kdenetwork.
kio_lan was installed with the Mandrake RPM, just wasnt loaded into konqi, but there was no libkcm_lanbrowsing.so in the package.
I have uninistalled kdenetwork, and compiled it from source, and after some toiling, managed to get the lan:/ and rlan:/ into konqi, and get the configuration dialog running, and set it up, but when I put lan:// in, konqi says:
lan://localhost not found.
??????
isnt that smb:// ?
Works here if its access to samba/windows shares/workgroups you're after..
In KDE Beta 2, smb:// doesnt give you a workgrougp list. You have to type smb://PC1/root to access that share or smb://PC1/ to get a share listing, and lan:// for a list of machines
You need to have installed: kdenetwork, after you will need to configure lan settings in Madrake Control Center, and finally and the most import point, that you are missing.
You have to start lisa daemon.
#/usr/bin/lisa --kde2
now you can point to:
lan://localhost and you will get it :))))
KDE is stable and good looking but not as user friendly and intelligent and animated as other desktop environments... like Photon (window manager of QNX) and windows.
KDE can have these but it is not implementing. I wonder why?
1. Animated mouse pointers: like AMOR this can be created in a jiffy.
2. Instance management: you can openup too many instances of any application which eats up whole memory. Windows on the other hand do not allow to create more instances above physical memory.
3. Administration: Both system and network administration is a drawback or missing feature of KDE. Mandrake which is a great supporter of KDE is using Gnome's application for doing system and network configuration using Linuxconf, X configuration, font installation, hardware detection, and even menu management of Kicker!
4. Securing: unlike windows, many application of KDE can mess things up.
1. Kwrite/KEdit: can open any media (picture, audio, video) file and can change its content.
2. Konsole can run system related dangerous commands which may lead to loss of user's data. like if you enter "telinit 0". all your work that is unsaved data is lost.
3. Kpackage runs shellscripts/binary files, when clicked on the filelist view. which is not desirable.
Delaying the release is welcome. What we expected in KDE 2.0 is what we are going to get in KDE 2.1.
I'm only going to comment on a couple of these points, because the others don't affect me at all, OR are good ideas.
5) KWrite/KEdit opening any file
You suggest that editors should be LIMITED in what they can edit? This is a very bad idea. If a user opens a non text file and start typing random things, this is his own fault. Don't restrict people who know what they're doing because some people don't.
6) telinit 0 in konsole
You also want to restrict what programs konsole will run? First, to run telinit you need to be root (if you don't on your system, that is NOT KDE's fault, your OS is really screwed up). Second, unless you have a very bad setup, init will send SIGTERM to all apps, which gives them a chance to save anything that might be open (among other cleanups) and terminate themselves. Don't blame konsole for anything a stupid user does as root.
kde-developer: dont restrict kwrite to any kind of files!!!!!!!
please: NO restriction in any application!!!!!!!
wass soll der scheiss! nur micro$oft denkt, dass der benutzer zu bloede ist und darum davon abgehalten werden muss nicht-text dateien zu aendern.
wenn ich immer erst umstaendlich irgendwas umstellen muss um ne file zu laden, dann werd ich kwrite nich mehr benutzten.
so einen schwachsinn hab ich echt noch NIE gehoert!!!!
good work!
thnx for kde2.
- gnu128
> KDE can have these but it is not
> implementing. I wonder why?
> 1.Animated mouse pointers:
> like AMOR this can be created in a jiffy.
> 2.Instance management: you can openup
> too many instances of any application which eats
> up whole memory. Windows on the other hand do
> not allow to create more instances above
> physical memory.
I don't understand exactly what you mean, but I'll add a few comments:
1) Memory management of KDE (and Linux) is much better than Windows IMHO.
2) Be careful when getting the memory from top (or kpm, KDE's process management tool). The memory it lists for each application includes the shared memory so it looks like apps are being bigger memory hogs than they really are. This is especially true in KDE2 from what I've seen.
> 3.Administration: Both system and
> network administration is a drawback or missing
> feature of KDE. Mandrake which is a great
> supporter of KDE is using Gnome's application
> for doing system and network configuration using
> Linuxconf, X configuration, font installation,
> hardware detection, and even menu management of
> Kicker!
Part of this is distro specific. There isn't a single administration tool under Linux that is truly excellent, although a think Caldera's is the most interesting.
> 4.Securing: unlike windows, many application of
> KDE can mess things up.
I have absolutely no idea why you would think this. You've obviously never had an application screw up and hose your Windows Registry. Unlike Windows (SE or older) where any user can screw up the Windows system, Linux/Unix systems are protected by restricting actions to a root (or other something like "admin") account. A user should NOT be using the root account for regular usage.
> 5.Kwrite/KEdit: can open any media (picture,
> audio, video) file and can change its content.
The ways to manipulate text varies dramatically from how you would manipulate the image. Having a single tool do both is silly. Having a single tool imbed the other tools, like KOffice, makes sense, and is being done.
> 6.Konsole can run system related
> dangerous commands which may lead to loss of
> user's data. like if you enter "telinit 0". all
> your work that is unsaved data is lost.
You can only do this if you're root. If you are stupid enough to type "telinit 0" while you are logged in as root, then you shouldn't be root.
> 7.Kpackage runs shellscripts/binary files,
> when clicked on the filelist view. which is not
> desirable.
This is more of an issue of the fundamental package systems being used by Linux (rpm or pkg). If you don't want to run scripts by installing an rpm, then go download the source and build it from scratch. The ability to run scripts is very essential to the whole concept of packages.
1. They're pretty much useless. They'll arrive eventually but they're not exactly urgent...
2. What on earth are you talking about? I don't think you really know, if you do then please explain.
3. A system admin front end isn't really our job - we run on a very wide range of UNIX platforms for one thing. I guess this will come along at some point, but I think you'll see tools provided by your distro integrating with KDE much more quickly. WRT Kicker, there have been tools to manage the menus since before 1.0.
4. What do you mean?
5. This is a feature not a bug.
6. It is a console, what do you expect it to do? To give an example from your book: you can run 'format c:' in a Win32 DOS prompt.
7. There aren't any Linux package formats which are totally data driven at the moment, so I don't see how this can be avoided. I agree it's not ideal, but I can't see a way to avoid it without sacrificing compatability.
The title says it all! ;)
first post!
GNAA
Instance management: Why shouldn't I be able to open up as many instances as I wish?
Administration: Not everything running KDE will be Linux. Or even a PC. KLinuxConf on a SPARC Solaris would be as useless as tits on a boar.
Securing: unlike windows...: You saying that every Windows app is well behaved? Hell, not there's a lot of MS issued apps that can screw up your system in a heartbeat.
Kwrite/KEdit: If you don't let me do it in KWrite, I'll just go do it in vi. I want KWrite/KEdit to have at least the basic functionality of a text editor. And that means they can edit XPM files.
Konsole: I want Konsole to have at least the basic functionality of xterm and rxvt. That means I get to run telinit.
Conclusion: three instances where you want to eliminate the user's choice of action, one instance where you want to eliminate the user's choice of software, and one instance where you want to eliminate the user's choice of hardware or operating system.
>Animated mouse pointers: like AMOR this can be >created in a jiffy.
The point of this is to annoy the user?
Suppose this can be done anyway... you
actually tried?
>Instance management: you can openup too many >instances of any application which eats up whole >memory. Windows on the other hand do not allow >to create more instances above physical memory.
Isnt that up to the user?
And on my windows machine.. i sure can
pop up a few dozen of IExplorers ,Excels
that uses 400MB of my 160 MB's...
>Administration: Both system and network >administration is a drawback or missing feature >of KDE. Mandrake which is a great supporter of >KDE is using Gnome's application for doing >system and network configuration using >Linuxconf, X configuration, font installation, >hardware detection, and even menu management of >Kicker!
Yup... but it's getting there.. many
applications for sysadmins to come..
>Securing: unlike windows, many application of >KDE can mess things up.
Nothing has EVER messed up things on a computer
i've seen like IExplorer and office 2000 occasionly does to me...
(ad i suppose the ILoveU virus was neither
a windows application, nor did it mess things up ?)
Not to mention Dr. Watson that wisits 3-4 times
a week...
>Kwrite/KEdit: can open any media (picture, >audio, video) file and can change its content.
Oh?.. I can very well open jpeg/mp3/zip whatever
files in kwrite...(right click a file, choose
Open With, select Advanced Editor or Kwrite...)
>Konsole can run system related dangerous >commands which may lead to loss of user's data. >like if you enter "telinit 0". all your work >that is unsaved data is lost.
What do you want ? a fool prof OS.. id not
be using linux if i couldnt do what i wanted
with it.. You are joking about thisone?
(You are not one of those who is always
logged in as root ? )
>Kpackage runs shellscripts/binary files, when >clicked on the filelist view. which is not >desirable.
Because?
The only one that makes any sense whatsoever here is #1. Everything else is either
And all of this is pointless anyways, because requests like these will make no difference unless they are done in a non troll-like way, and put into their respective catagories in the bug database!
BTW, what "we" are you referring to?
I couldn't resist to change Mandrake's ugly splash screen with this one.
That IS a beautiful splash screen!