KDE Software Compilation 4.4.0 Introduces Netbook Interface, Window Tabbing and Authentication Framework

KDE Official News

Today KDE announces the immediate availability of the KDE Software Compilation 4.4, "Caikaku", bringing an innovative collection of applications to Free Software users. Major new technologies have been introduced, including social networking and online collaboration features, a new netbook-oriented interface and infrastructural innovations such as the KAuth authentication framework. According to KDE's bug-tracking system, 7293 bugs have been fixed and 1433 new feature requests were implemented. The KDE community would like to thank everybody who has helped to make this release possible.

Read the Official KDE SC 4.4.0 Announcement and the Visual Guide To KDE Software Compilation 4.4 for more details on the improvements in 4.4.

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Comments

Following my experience, the distro list are as follows. Obviously, AVOID KUBUNTU AT ALL COSTS. I'm thinking in review that advice when Lucid is out, because Kubuntu started to do the right things with Project Timelord, but Karmic is a no go, and that also includes Mint.

1. Mandriva. 2010 Spring promises a lot of DRAMATIC enhancements, like they did in 2010 as a technical preview. This time, they are going serious. And Cooker promises. In the meantime, visit aapgorilla repo.

2. Fedora. Nepomuk in KDE 4.3, with Fedora, was a disaster, because the Fedora KDE team refused to package Sesame 2. Now, with Virtuoso, things are changing. If you tried Fedora with Nepomuk before, you'll see a 30x speed increase (yes, 30 TIMES) with Nepomuk under KDE 4.4. Utilities are OK, KPackageKit is OK, and the KAuth framework needs some polishment. But at least we don't have any major distro-specific bugs, like the load of Kubuntu-specific bugs.

3. Chakra. Keep an eye on that one. They NEED more manpower. And if they get it, they may be _the_Ubuntu_killer_. Arch is a MUCH better distro to be based on, and if you really want to work in a distro, let Chakra be that one.

4. Sabayon and Gentoo. They are doing the right things. Particularly Sabayon; try that one, and be in the dev channel ;). If you can't, with Gentoo you'll have a good system.

I avoid OpenSuSE like the plague. Not because I like childish boycotts against Novell, but because a) YaST is a LOT slower than any competing package management system, b) if I really need a total system configuration panel, Mandriva Control Center wins hands down, and c) OpenSuSE has been the only distro to fail miserably the suspend to disk, suspend to RAM, and resume tests in my notebook. Try to install NVidia drivers in OpenSuSE and you turn it into a OS less stable than Windows ME. I'm not kidding. And I haven't been able to replicate that behaviour with any distro but OpenSuSE.

I have to agree with you and Mandriva, I don't use other Distros so I cant compare, but apart from some bumps (mostly coused by my bad use), it is rock stable, my only grippe with it, is the defaults it ships, iora theme is obviously not my favorite :)

Still i wish all the luck in the world to all distros shipping KDE, I know theyr try their best.

Fedora's policy is to not ship java binaries so thats why sesame isn't there. There're now virtuoso-opensource 6.1.0 packages so Nepomuks should work fine.

BTW Fedora 12 and 11 will have 4.4 soon as an official update and it's already in the updates-testing repo. I have personally been using 4.4 since beta and I'm loving it! It's an amazing software compilation indeed :)

"Will 4.5 have something simpler? Easier to understand. More like gnome-shell. You press one button and you see your activities and you can put widgets on them and delete one or add a new one.
I would really appreciate that."

Now you can see activities using the activities widget. When you click the Cashwe, you place widgets to them and delete new activities or remove current ones.

So all what you need to do, is to now add new panel to side, place it autohide and add a activities widget there. Then just use them.

The Gnome-Shell has same kind idea as ZUI is.

That sounds a bit better. I just tried it on my Kubuntu netbook and somehow I can't add new activities when I zoom out. That is probably bug in the Kubuntu packages, but that shows that the functionality is not widely used and even with those tweaks (whcih you have to know) it isn't really straight forward.

Edit: I just tried again and it works when widgets are unlocked .. hmmm .. I don't like the unlocked look of plasma and always unlocking then adding and then locking again is .. again A LOT of clicks.

Edit2: I thought about some more and I think you should always be able to add panels and activities. Locking widgets (Miniprogramme in German) is OK and logical, but locking activities makes no sense to me and looks like a bug.

fun:
where's the live wallpaper option!!??

I have that on my nexus one! I want them on kde!

ps: yes, I know about "virus" and other "live" wallpapers. guys, you should patent your ideas :)

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the question:

does anyone have their printer applet open on login? mine does open on login and I don't know why. is this normal behavior? can it be changed? I would like the printer applet only run when a print job is in the queue.