KDE 3.4 goes into Beta Phase: Welcome "Krokodile"

A lot of development has happened since KDE 3.4 Alpha, so we are now happy to publish KDE 3.4 Beta 1 code named Krokodile. For a list of already implemented new features skim over the KDE 3.4 Feature Plan. For sources and packages (only Slackware so far, more have been promised to be released in the next few days), please visit the KDE 3.4 Beta 1 Info Page and browse the KDE 3.4 Requirements List. The Konstruct build toolset has been updated for this release. KDE 3.4 Beta 2 is planned for mid February with a final release due for mid-March.

The KDE team asks everyone to try this version and give feedback through the bug tracking system. Please make sure to check out the reworked panel and the KDE service auto discovery features. Note that the kdepim, kdevelop and kdewebdev modules also compile on KDE 3.3 systems.

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Comments

by me (not verified)

YAY!

by Martin (not verified)

LOL ...everyone living in Germany now certainly knows what inspired
that name ;-)
And I have an idea for a new default KDE startup sound (or rather:
song)!

The most exciting things for me:
1) Improved KPDF (This will make it the best free PDF reader available)
2) Passwordless KWallet (This stupid password thing was _really_ annoying)
3) Themeable KDM (Will this be in for KDE 3.4? Would be great)

by ch (not verified)

perhaps people from around the world would like to know what song is on Place 1 ! in the German Charts since 2 weeks. Its called Schni Schna Schnappi from Krokodil. Perhaps you can find it somewhere , and keep in Mind : thats Place 1.

ok dont judge us by that :>>>

by charles samuels (not verified)

Is it as good as Wadde Hadde Dudde Da?

by MaX (not verified)

You can see the schnappi video here: (RealVideo works with XINE)
http://artists.universal-music.de/_real/schnappi/v/schnappi_schnappi.ram

by CPT (not verified)

I am utterly speechless.

by charles samuels (not verified)

I would agree.

It's kind of mesmerising. I've already watched it twice.

"Da Da Da" - award winning lyrics from germany, indeed. :)

by Panzerboy (not verified)

Don't forget about that other "hit" that toped the charts all over western Europe last year: o-zone's "Dragostea din tei", which has same shitty lyrics (maaa-iaaa-hiii, maaa-iaaa-huuuu).

Is it just me, or people are getting dumber and dumber?

by thefrog (not verified)

Keep in mind that "schnappi" was designed to be a song for children in the famous children TV-show "Die Sendung mit der Maus".

So it's not the song but the taste of the masses which becomes more and more infatile.

regards

Indeed.

What is worser "Schni, schna, schnappi" (played in disco,
for small kids its ok), DJ Bobo/Ötzi or Scooter?

by scaba (not verified)

Still, it is not Banana Phone: http://www.mikeserve.info/raffi-banana_phone.mp3

by Billy (not verified)

They even have a merchandising site! www.vdmcd.com

by Carnevalier (not verified)

...or schnappi.tv (in German)

It is also very interesting to hear this song if you have had some beers intus!

by Asmodeus (not verified)

It's hard to believe these songs topped European charts when Schni Schna Schnappy has barely made it to America. Same with Dragosta Din Tei. Here in the US, VERY different songs top our charts.

by michelle (not verified)

well the schnappi song waz hhhhhhhhhhuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuggggggeeeeeeeeee in australia.But now its the crazy frog.

by challo (not verified)

Hi guys,

I am from Germany. I read this topic in a German forum. I want to express myself times to the song "Schnappi".

Many Germans hate the song. I also. And I cannot believe that it is sing by a 8 year old little girl.

At the beginning it was still funny, but with the time it is used only to the commerce.
I legend: Away with "Schnappi". Nobody needs this stupid, green crocodile.

From where do you actually know "Schnappi"?

Many greetings from Germany

challo

by Jase (not verified)

I agree to most of the comments made so far...including the one about the beer. The song is hilarious when you're intoxicated. Besides...a little immaturaty is good for you. Y'know...in small doses.
Jase(New Zealand)(Yes, we have heard this song ALL the way down in New Zealand. And no, New Zealand is NOT a part of Australia, and no we do NOT live in mud houses.)

by Annie (not verified)

Hey people i live in newzealand and i love the schnappi song ;P its all over da place i hear this song on da radio !! :P ... and i think its cool coz im learning german at skool n yeh :P [ im 13 ] i hope theres more and NEW ZEALAND aint part of australia lol ... and of course we dnt live in mud houses wea on earth u gt dat frm ?

by hailie (not verified)

the schnappi song is now at number 3 on the new zealand charts! it jumped 29 places in a week :) i love the song but after hearing it a number of times in a row it can get on ur nervs

by Annie (not verified)

yeah i hate the schnappi song now .. i think it is stupid .. !! i want all mi old fav so
ngs to jump bk on da charts lol ..

by cm (not verified)

Let me guess, you turned 14 between your two posts. ;-)))

SCNR.

by -grace- (not verified)

It's been out in Australia for a little while, and doesn't seem to be going that great... after the onslaught of that bloody 'crazy frog' thing we do NOT need more stupid animated singing animals...

However I don't mind it... I guess it is SLIGHTLY musical :P

It's catchy and cute- it achieves its purpose. I would not listen to it often, unless I just fancied learning the German lyrics, as my first and only language is English [excluding a little Italian]. However, I think I would prefer "99 Red Balloons"!

- grace

P.S No, New Zealand is not a part of Australia, but we're still mates, and it's only natural for people to associate NZ with Australia and vise-versa. HINT: ANZAC.

P.P.S I know where you're coming from about the mud huts. Just because we're isolated, it does not mean we are a third world country (or countries, when including New Zealand)!!! I get it even worse as I live in Perth- I even get it from other Australians!

by alex (not verified)

Can't say that Crazy Frog has won me over either. I do love Schnappi though, it has made me laugh on many a Saturday morning! I would love a translation of the lyrics as my German is a little shaky!

P.S - try living out bush, most people think I've never heard of email, let alone use it!!!

by anna (not verified)

i love that song!!! plus schnappi is super cute!! :P but the song gets a bit annoying after a while cos im learning german at school and we listen to it like EVRY LESSON!!

by simon (not verified)

Schnappi has hit Australia.....

Came in through New Zealand and has just started on radio.

God help us all.

And to top it all of I just heard that f@#$#^%g frog song!

by ... (not verified)

it's an ok song if ur bored and need something-anything to listen to... and I like the Dragostea din tei. Well not the english version so much...

by la la la la lauren (not verified)

hey everi1

i thort that this iz a FAB song, its so cute, i luv it!!!! also i do German at skool so i can undastand a tiny amout of it (im 13) i spos i luv it so much cuz it's in a different language to english lol ( i am from australia and no we DO NOT ride kangaroos to skool lol hoo started that one?)

by Melissa (not verified)

Look Germans are cool (although my dad says they are pricks) but the language sounds cool.. so I won't judge germany on some little song... but I like the song.. I know it's not a real song and i don't mosh to it for god sakes but it's cute and sounds cool.. plus I am begining to learn german sooooo... it's ,cool.. but F!@#@#** crazy frog can burn!!! man, that would have to be the lamest thing on the plant right now.

Schnappi is doing ok in Australia, It was pretty big for a little while but it's lost appeal I think.. but I still think it's cool.

If I had to choose between rap and schnappi.. Scnappi kicks raps ass.. rap can also burn...

I think it's pretty stranger I am writing this in december when this entry was writen in january...

conclusion..
schnappi kicks crazy frogs ass... germany is cool

peace.but burn crazy frog and his censored areas.

by Blarney (not verified)

Jem, Blarney and Robin, our three dogs, love the Schnappi song. We recorded it into a dog toy and they fight over it when it is playing. Then they go into a tug of war.

by Someone (not verified)

Hey, I heard this song in German class and though it was cute. From the US too.

by Timme (not verified)

Schni schna schnappi was not the number one hit because it is a great song everyone is walking around hearing this song on his iPod...

It is just funny to listen to this song BECAUSE the lyrics are this simple and there is a funny dance to... well don't you have some songs for children that are so ammusing that it get's popular all over the country?

Wadde hadde dude da - was published by Stefan Raab, famous entertainer since years.
This song was intended to be funny, less then it was intended to be a great hit. And it WAS funny, if you know how it came to this song:

Stefan told the audience that he was sitting somewhere watching a woman with her dog and the dog had something in his mouth, saying "wadde hadde dude da"
I try to translate..
"was hast du da" -> "what do you got there"
"wadde hadde dude da" (look at the additional letters) is just a childish way of pronounce the sentence..
what sounds cute but is a little bit riddiculous ^^

Germans are really funny people so they are addicted to some funny songs ;) that's all :)

greets from cologne!

by blacksheep (not verified)

Thx for the Passwordless KWallet, kde guys! I'll be updating to kde3.4 as soon as it comes out, just because of this single bugfix.
It is really annoying to login and then, after the startup sequence, having to insert the same password again for Kopete...
Kudos!

by pinky (not verified)

>1) Improved KPDF (This will make it the best free PDF reader available)

why people need kdpf? I feel really comfortable with kghostview. What can kdpf what kghostview can't? And why always so many programs for one task?

>2) Passwordless KWallet (This stupid password thing was _really_ annoying)

And how will the password protected?

by Anonymous (not verified)

> What can kdpf what kghostview can't?

Look at the open "most wanted" KGhostView features: Continuous page mode, search function, saving of selected text, 2 pages at once, ...

by Leo Spalteholz (not verified)

"why people need kdpf? I feel really comfortable with kghostview. What can kdpf what kghostview can't? And why always so many programs for one task?"

In KDE 3.3 they're pretty similar. But both of them are dreadfully slow when displaying large PDFs compared to the Adobe Acrobat Reader. The new KPDF should fix that as well as adding a lot of cool features like continuous page view and text select and links.

"And how will the password protected?"

It will be protected in that you have to be logged in before you can see your passwords. I'd still keep my kwallet password though. KWallet stores too much sensitive information to be fast and loose with security.

by brockers (not verified)

"It will be protected in that you have to be logged in before you can see your passwords."

ahh.. only by system user/group settings. Anyone who can get access to the kwallet file (root user, someone who has local access to your machine, a compromised system, etc.. etc.. etc..) will have full access to your password list. Maybe that is OK when you are only storing your kopete passwords, but if you are using kwallet to store anything more useful than that.. then God help you.

Bobby

by Roberto Alsina (not verified)

If the one who wants to read your data is root, all he has to do is install a keyboard sniffer.

You know, to any half-awake hacker that will delay him about 50 seconds, plus whatever it takes for you to log back in. And some of the data will still be in caches anyway.

IMHO, the password only protects you from someone stealing your data storage. Which is good, but not terribly likely. And you could just encrypt your $HOME and mount/decrypt on login (much better idea). Anyone knows of a reasonably simple way to do it?

by Scott Wheeler (not verified)

Qryptix is supposed to do something like that -- or so the author claimed when we were talking at Linux Bangalore. Sounds pretty interesting, actually -- it uses PAM as the authentication mechanism for the encryption / decryption.

http://sourceforge.net/projects/qryptix

by a.c. (not verified)

>2) Passwordless KWallet (This stupid password thing was _really_ annoying)

Persoanlly, I have to disagree with you on this. While I understand why george did it (to appeas ppl such as yourself), I wish that he had not. But a quick suggestion (new company is blocking bugs.kde.org - how stupid :( ); Please consider modifing it so that it goes password iff the user has a passworded login.
No sense helping the future crackers.

Thanx.

by Ian Monroe (not verified)

How would that provide any protection. Passwordless login only works for people who are at the physical computer I thought. And anyone with physical access to a computer could access anything in a passwordless kwallet.

by Tom (not verified)

Hang about, you wish he hadn't put the feature in?

This is just a matter of choice... if you want the extra security afforded by using a separate password for KWallet, go ahead and enable it.

Meanwhile I'll keep the password disabled. I already enter a password to login, and I'm the only person who uses my computer. The second password is redundant.

As for passwordless logins, again, it is pointless for force that behaviour. If somebody has a passwordless login and they use kwallet, they presumably don't worry about other people even touching the computer and so won't want a password on KWallet either.

by Fabio (not verified)

> The second password is redundant.

That is simply not true! The password encrypts your Wallet, which is a very important extra security. If someone gains access to your machine he can access all your passwords in plain text. If you have an extra Password in KWallet then even if your box is rooted the attacker still has to either crack the encryption or find a way to crack KWallet.

> As for passwordless logins, again, it is pointless for force that behaviour

No, not realy. Especially for your usecase it would be more secure to have a passwordless login, and a password for kwallet than vice versa.

/////

I agree with you that entering two passwords at startup is tendious though, but the only real solution to this problem is to integrate pam into kwallet, so that kwallet gets the password you entered at login, and can decrypt the wallet with it. (Provided that both passwords are Identical)

by Spy Hunter (not verified)

The KWallet master password *is* redundant. Let's examine the possible attack scenarios:

1. Rooted
If your box is rooted you are lost anyway. The attacker can impersonate KWallet and capture your password, or he can read the passwords out of KWallet's memory directly as they are decrypted, or even impersonate your real login screen to capture your real password! There is no protection from an attacker who is already root.

2. Your account compromised
If the attacker has cracked your user account but not gotten root access, he can still impersonate a KWallet dialog, read KWallet's memory, or install a keylogger and capture your password. Anyway, since Linux has so many privelege escalation holes this will likely turn into scenario 1...

3. Other account on same computer
As I said above, this will likely turn into scenario 1 (rooted) momentarily. But ignoring that, depending on the priveleges of the compromised account this is equivalent to either scenario 2 or scenario 4 below.

4. Only read access to KWallet file
This is the only scenario where the second password could help you: if an attacker can read your KWallet files but cannot do anything else. However, we can protect against this attack in a way that is more secure than a password dialog, while being more convenient at the same time. Instead of using a user-supplied (weak) master password, we can use a master key supplied by a daemon running as root and stored in a file readable only by root. KWallet starts, asks the daemon for the user key, and then decrypts your passwords with it for the rest of your session, without ever asking you anything. Since the key is autogenerated it can be very strong and immune to dictionary attacks, unlike a user-supplied password. The only problem is in this case we need to cooperate with distros to install a KWallet daemon, and we have to do a thorough security audit on the KWallet daemon to make sure it doesn't have any security holes of its own. It could be made extremely simple to make this an easy process.

So KWallet's password dialog is redundant and useless in most situations, and in the one situation where it is useful it can be replaced by something that is more secure *and* more convenient at the same time.

by Gino (not verified)

http://www.crocodile-schnappi.co.uk

It's all about Schnappi... Finally in English!

by Saulo (not verified)

Hey guys, where the shots with comments showing us the new great additions?

by Saulo (not verified)
by Anonymous (not verified)

How do you switch to another than the first picture on this site?

by Saulo (not verified)

I had the same question: just download the .tar.gz file with the other pictures; the download button is in the same screen, above the 3.4 screenshot!

by Eleknader (not verified)

Yay, I'm the first to ask for screenshots :)

Eleknader

by Eleknader (not verified)

Sorry, seems like I was late for four minutes ;-)