4.1 Release Candidate Out For Testing

Today, we are passing the last milestone on the way to KDE 4.1, a release that will be suitable for a larger audience than 4.0 has been. While it is not yet up to the features that people are used to from KDE 3.5, KDE 4.1 provides a significant amount of improvements over KDE 4.0, which some said was a bit of a bumpy ride. Sources and available packages are linked on the release info page.
KDE 4.1-rc1 is the only release candidate for KDE 4.1, which will be released on July 29th.

The development in trunk/ in Subversion has already been opened for feature development, which is going into KDE 4.2 (to be released in January), but developers are strongly encouraged to concentrate on bugfixing in the 4.1 branch for now. Do give RC1 a spin, file bugreports and fix things, there is only a week left until 4.1 is being tagged. Do have your changes in the 4.1 branch reviewed by your peers, though. Note that some users might still be suffering from performance problems with NVidia graphics chips. There is a page on Techbase that gives some more information about it. Make sure you report bugs via KDE's Bugzilla so they can be addressed and do not get lost.

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Comments

by Michael "Web Se... (not verified)

It requires KWin desktop effects. When they are enabled, move the mouse into the upper-left corner and you get expose-style presentation of the windows. Ctrl-F8 gives you desktop grid.

by Sebastian (not verified)

Awesome idea...

by Aaron Seigo (not verified)

yeah, i'm so happy that we no longer have a hardcoded panel in plasma like kicker did and that the plasma desktop layer can be actually useful as a panel tools replacement, unlike kdesktop.

w00t for flexibility =)

by hias (not verified)

good idea

it could be a workaround for autohide if there is a possibility to bring the dashboard to the top by moving the mouse to a corner or the border of the screen.

by Iuri Fiedoruk (not verified)

What I miss to install KDE4 on my eeePC are:
- panel auto-hide
- personalize systray area (choose witch icons will be hidden or not)
- global keys like we had in KDE3 (both for launching apps and actions)

Some can be done today by editing configuration files, but seems like all will be there for 4.2. So, I'll wait a bit more, while using KDE4 on my desktop machine :)

by David (not verified)

Hi Ruari.

When you get it install on the ASUS 900, would you mind providing some feedback as to ho well it runs. I was thinking of buying one of thes sublaptops.

As this thread will probable go away, would you mind sending me an email.

Thanks
David
[email protected]

by neaghi (not verified)

yes..a little offtopic...I install KDE4.1 from Kubuntu Intrepid Ibex alpha 2..and i'm very surprizing because see more changes one of them I can move icons in panel..good work guys..
anyway i want to know what's about kopete..I trying all KDE4.xx versions and I can't see buddy pictures, only a square empty and in RC1 none square only big ball green..don,t work webcam..don't work file transfers..all of them I try in Yahoo protocol..It's normal or I missing to install some packages ?
many tanks, all the best!

by blauzahl (not verified)

We (BugSquad) found lots of bugs and devs fixed lots of bugs for Kopete during the Kopete BugDay. I'm not sure if they would have all made it into 4.1, but if you are running from SVN, keep getting new updates! They've been working hard in their limited time. Feel free to join us this Sunday, too. :D
freenode, #kde-bugs, you just need a new copy of kopete

by blauzahl (not verified)

We (BugSquad) found lots of bugs and devs fixed lots of bugs for Kopete during the Kopete BugDay. I'm not sure if they would have all made it into 4.1, but if you are running from SVN, keep getting new updates! They've been working hard in their limited time. Feel free to join us this Sunday, too. :D
freenode, #kde-bugs, you just need a new copy of kopete

by Deniz (not verified)

Yes there are more incomplete features on KDE4 and how can you complete to KDE4 on july,29.
I try to explain what are incomplete features;

1- no panel auto hide
2- there is no panel configuration( not flexible like kde 3.5)
3- where is the align vertically and horizontally for icons on desktop
4- still no support HD audio and no working.
5- there is no RDS widgets
6- there is no preview any window on panel
7-when run the konqueror and put any web site and try to download flash plug in but still go to "macromedia web site", please change it. I can help you flash web site is "www.adobe.com"
last one is; I fell use like windows because there is no free and no changeable anything. I want to KDE 3.5....

by Level 1 (not verified)

Hi, I want to hear what your problem is regarding #2. What is it about the panel configuration that is not "flexible" for you? What feature did 3.5 have that 4.1 doesn't?

Also, 4.1 is not the end of the 4.x series. Panel autohiding (which I agree is taking unexpectedly long) will have to wait till 4.2.

regarding your other issues:

1- working on it.
2- ...
3- I'm not sure what you are refering to... is this a standard feature of most desktops?
4- thats a hardware configuration issue... we can't say whats wrong about it without more information.
5- whats rds?
6- That should be there, maybe you just don't have it enabled? This requires compositing.
7- its better to install distro packages for flash than get them from adobe... believe me, you will be much happier. Its an unfortunate part of the internet that people assume you have windows. I wish the adobe website would make this more clear rather than just giving people a red hat package that they can't use.

At the end you made a comment, it was a little hard for me to understand, but what I think you said was that "KDE 4.1 is like windows in that it is not configurable, I wish it was more like 3.5". While I agree that the configuration dialogs feel more spartan these days, I don't notice much missing. Is there something that you feel is gone and shouldn't be? I can maybe add it back in for you.

by Matthew Smith (not verified)

My system has an old GeForce card which uses the legacy driver, and it doesn't support Compiz and the other X11 bling; is that affected by these issues also?

by Manuel Mommertz (not verified)

What I heard the problem only effects GeForce 8000 and newer series. So it should work for you.

by Luca Beltrame (not verified)

The slowness issue, along with some graphics glitches, is also present on an NVIDIA series 6 card (the one I own). I'm unsure if it's related to the same issues, though.

by Kovac (not verified)

I also have the performance problems here on GeForce 6800. It is working slower then the poor integrated ATI graphics on my laptop. I hope that nVidia resolvs their driverproblems as soon as possible.

by Lucianolev (not verified)

I have several performance issue, especially with window resizing and I use an onboard Geforce 6150.
If I disable desktop effects resizing and 2d performance is greatly improved. Also, setting "InitialPixmapPlacement=2" (http://techbase.kde.org/User:Lemma/GPU-Performance#NVIDIA) make resizing a LOT faster when using desktop effects, but it introduces a "lag" when opening or closing windows.
Hope Nvidia comes up with a fixed driver. However, when free ATI drivers are complete and working well, I'll be buying an ATI card for sure.

by T. J. Brumfield (not verified)

I have a 7600 GT, and it certainly affects me.

by jospoortvliet (not verified)

Yeah, I have a 6600 and it affects me as well. Not as heavy as some seem to experience, but it's not pretty. Boy, am I looking forward to a fix from NVidia...

by kinto (not verified)

I have a quite old geforce4 440mx on which I run compiz on everyday use and it works fine. Sadly I can't say the same for resizing, dragging and zoom out performance of my kde4 installation (using Neon packages). So I think it affects me too. For example, zoom-out with the cashew on the top-right takes about 4-5 seconds (with the screen freezed). I hope this situation will improve but I'm not that confident since all the fixes (for what I know) are going into the current driver and not in the new-legacy one that I use. Any suggestion? Or buying a new card is the only solution?

by jackflash (not verified)

Yes, KDE 4.x runs poorly on my Geforce Go 6800. Ah well, I think I'll switch back to ATI for the next round. Looking at a 4850 for my next rig.

by mikmach (not verified)

I have very old GeForce 2 MX 400 and have mixed feelings about performance.

Most kwin effects are working - shadows (with some glitches), expose-like windows list, transparency. These I find really helping the rest I find just eye-candy and not tested properly.

Big problems are with:

- apps on SVG (games, edu) but am not sure if this is issue of nVidia driver or just my old machine
- scrolling: sometimes it works flawlessy, sometimes it is slooow
- all Plasma related things: I had to get rid of folder views - one of most promising features, it is not possibly to work with them; krunner hints are very slow to appear and navigate;
- not sure how it relates to KDE but mplayer has problems with fluent playing of films, there were no such problems with KDE3.5.9
- interface of Kontact is dog slow; no other app has those problems

Overall impression is very good. Visually it is years ahead of KDE3. Apps are coming nicely, although some are still bit unstable - Konq crashes at least one time daily.

by Alex (not verified)

I also have an old Geforce, from end of 2002, and sometimes I also see these slowness effects (yes, only sometimes).
I think I built Qt once without support for xrender, and I think it felt faster.
Can anybody confirm this ?

Alex

by jospoortvliet (not verified)

Aaah, that makes sense, it's mostly the XRENDER implementation of NVidia which is slow. With 'acceleration' many actions are slower compared to rendering on the CPU... Pretty bad. I'm really looking forward to a fix from NV for this...

by kinto (not verified)

I could only speak for my experience but...with my Geforce4 440mx I have poor resizing,dragging and zooming performance (not only in plasma, in all kde4 applications) and if I turn on kwin desktop effects dragging and resizing improve a bit but zooming stays pretty much the same (4 seconds delay with screen freezed). It seems hard to find a common behaviour! :-(

by parena (not verified)

GeForce 7xxx has the problem as well, but this RC1 is the most stable I have seen so far with the nvidia drivers. Something very important to nvidia users (at least for me!) was to NOT use the Blur plugin. If you do that, you get artifacts and other shit all over the place. I turned it off and it reduces the problems big time.

by Anonymous (not verified)

I have a NVIDIA card (07:00.0 VGA compatible controller: nVidia Corporation G72 [GeForce 7300 SE] (rev a1)) and other than a 1 second delay kwin effects or konsole window resizing I don't suffer any issue. My question is: are these all NVIDIA videocard issues?

by Level 1 (not verified)

8800 GT here: If you have problems with folder view, run the command mentioned in the article:

nvidia-settings -a InitialPixmapPlacement=2 -a GlyphCache=1

This worked wonders for, but apparently it doesn't work for everyone. You might have luck with a different value of InitialPixmapPlacement, like 1 or 0 (maybe 3? who knows...)

by annma (not verified)

Please when you report crashes always join a valid backtrace as explained here:
http://techbase.kde.org/Development/Tutorials/Debugging/How_to_create_us...
If you see a long list of
(no debugging symbols found)
please do not paste those lines and install the debug packages for your distribution.

This will help us greatly to quicker fix bugs. Thanks in advance and also thanks to all potential testers!

by Joergen Ramskov (not verified)

This is taken from http://www.kubuntu.org/news/kde-4.1rc1

"There will be many bugs with this release and it is recommended that you do not file bug reports against the packages in this release. If you come across any issue which may be packaging related, it is recommended that you join the Kubuntu KDE 4 IRC channel (#kubuntu-kde4) and query those in the channel."

Those are the packages I'll be using. I don't think they include the debug packages, but I could be wrong...

by xapi (not verified)

Kubuntu packages from PPA have "dbg" packages of KDE 4.1...

by vf (not verified)

I know that KDE is in de-clutterization phase removing all the "not needed for average joe" stuff from dialogs, but if you really want useful reports you'll have to add that sentence to the crash dialog. I'm surprised that this was not done earlier?!

by sebas (not verified)

The "remove everything not necessary for Joe A." is not accurate.

First, there is not Joe Average. Second, there are three reasons why you might miss a certain feature:

- It's not implemented yet
- It has moved to a more logical place (a lot of options are not in the direct context of the data they're manipulating, see for example gwenview)
- The app has become smarter so the option is not needed anymore

As to the crash dialogue, that makes sense. Can you send a patch for this? It should be rather trivial to do.

by Koko (not verified)

OT: I really like new KDE4 aproach which is IMO "hide by default to hardcore-pro-users options but still alow them to by turned on or sth." Fot ex. Kget4 default toolbar is SO MUCH better. There are available only options whitch are needed "for average joy' and still pro-user can add more buttons in 4-5 clicks.

by Philipp (not verified)

I'm bringing this up because kwin's performance is still a serious issue for people with nvidia cards (those were considered a good choice for a linux desktop some time ago ;)

There are folks that say "well, i've nvidia geforce-xxx" and it's running great. But matter of factly plenty of people with fairly powerful nvidia cards get very very bad fps. So the problem clearly is that there's no concise source of information what one can do to achieve that.

Other than this slightly outdated article on techbase I at least couldn't find anything. And those options didn't work out for me, as for many other people I spoke to in forums, no matter what combination, setting or tweak was tried.

So how about doing an up to date, tested article that clearly gives all the possible tweaks and options to get a decent performance out of a nvidia card? I'd like to help, but I'm afraid I can't because as said I didn't discover any suitable solution to get more performance.

Ah, just found the new techbase article ... so I'll work through that.

by jos poortvliet (not verified)

Now that's the spirit ;-)

Ultimately NVidia has to fix this in their drivers.

Yea, I know. Please stomp on their feet to do this asap... I heard they generally work relatively well with requests from developers.

After all one reason to push out KDE 4.0 was to encourage people to do that kind of work in order for 4.1 to be great. So I hate the fact that they're crashing the party for me. KDE 4.1 looks gorgeous, and the compositing stuff is a vital part of that.

If I'm not mistaken, Aaron Siego blogged about this in the past, post 4.0 release (I don't have a link for it, but I remember reading about this). He stated before that KDE found performance issues with Nvidia cards and was trying to get them to help out with the issues. I've got an 8600 series card on my laptop, and when I use the stock nv driver performance is great (but then again I can't play OpenArena or ET:QW this way) and when I enable the Nvidia driver for acceleration performance is crap for me. Whenever I open the menu or a window, I get a stream of black lines before the actual contents of the menu/window appears. But, I love this project so I'm sticking with it. Hopefully Nvidia will do something about their crap drivers though. I'm considering upgrading my video card on my desktop to an ATI one, as they are kicking butt on the open source drivers.

by JackieBrown (not verified)

My performance is fine with my nvidia card **if** I turn off desktop effects.

I try turning it on every couple of months to see progress (and on every new nvidia release.) Not much luck.

by fast_rizwaan (not verified)

Slackware 12.1 packages are available at:
http://kde4.rlworkman.net/packages/

And kudos to KDE team, wonderful progress, seems stable and snappy than all previous releases.

Aaron, thanks for your creative work :)

Thanks Robby for your packages.

I'm not doing KDE Slackware packages anymore as I don't have enough time (2 kids, 1 job, 1 company to manage).

I'm happy to see that someone will take back this job that I did for about 5 years. You should upload them on the ftp.kde.com

by fast_rizwaan (not verified)

All New intel chipsets works wonderfully with kwin-compiz, but video playback is not working with XV video driver when desktop-effects are enabled. the problem is with "intel" driver (is blacklisted by compiz-fusion).

The solution is that one should use "X11" vo in mplayer (mplayer -vo x11 movie.avi) and "XShm" in xine, so that we can use both kwin compiz and video playback.

and with Dragonplayer what should I do?

by Michael "nothin... (not verified)

I've use an Intel card with dragon and never had to do anything. It worked out of the box. If it doesn't for you, set it in the Phonon back-end (Xine, GStreamer, etc).

there is no such option to set video driver in dragon player or in Phonon Backend.

Use EXA.

and suffer performance loss.

I hate this bug too :((

by Iuri Fiedoruk (not verified)

Maybe it's just me, but I've installed KDE 4.1 RC1 on my Ubuntu machine yesterday and some plasmoids simply show a small circle (aprox. 10 pixels large) on the desktop and when righ clicked do not show any configuration dialog.

I've deleted my plasma configuration files, restarted KDE, but still have this.
The usual ones (most used in panel) as clocks, taskbar and such all work fine, but things as show desktop do not :-(

Besides that problem (that is big because I cannot show my desktop files) KDE 4.1 RC1 is rock solid. I only do not install it on my eeePC because the panel still lacks some usefull options that existed in KDE3 that helps using less space :-)