KDE 3: All About the Apps

Last November, KDE 3.5.0 was released. Since then, many users have been waiting for the next big steps. While most of the core developers are working on the first iterations of KDE 4, the KDE 3 developer platform is more vital than ever, resulting in new and exciting applications. "All About the Apps" puts the spotlight on the classics of KDE's applications as well as new and promising applications from the KDE community that can make your KDE desktop more productive. We will also keep you informed about development in current KDE 3.5 series.

New rules in the KDE 3.5 release cycle

Until KDE 3.5, when a KDE release was frozen in preparation to be released, new features, and new user-visible text (strings) were not allowed in the later releases in the series, in order to make sure that no new bugs were introduced and no translations were broken. For KDE 3.5 this has been changed slightly.

Since the KDE 4.0 development cycle will take longer than usual due to the
scope of the changes and improvements being undertaken, the developers want
KDE 3.5.x to be the best possible KDE for users in the meantime. Therefore, KDE 3.5.1 and 3.5.2 not only fixed a lot of bugs (see 3.5.1-fixes and 3.5.2-fixes), but the developers were also allowed to change some strings in KDE so that many usability-improvements and updates in documentation found their way into KDE 3.5.x.

KDE 3.5.3 will even include some new features. When a new feature is already in the upcoming KDE 4 code, well tested and known to work in KDE 3.5, the author of the code can ask for inclusion in KDE 3.5.3. If no other developer objects, the new feature can be added. Therefore, you will see some new stuff in KDE 3.5.3 (this list is constantly being updated and not yet complete).

Artwork

KDE-Look.org features many new themes, colour schemes, KDM themes, new icons, improvements to Kopete styles and many other artworks. If you want to pimp your desktop, kde-look it is the place to go!

Fast Forward with amaroK

Many people already know that amaroK is the best audio player available. Version 1.4, of which Beta 3 was just released, takes this even further. With the help of a new artwork team, amaroK has a great new look, including new icons, and introduces moodbar: the first audioplayer to support this new way of representing your music!
The improved media device system allows many more devices to be supported, as well as vastly improving the handling of iPods and iRivers. There have also been major improvements in all supported audio engines, including support for extra codecs such as WMA, MP4/AAC and RealMedia (RA,RV,RM).

Tellico: Keep your collections in Order

In February 2006, Tellico 1.1 was released. Tellico is a KDE application for organizing your collections, be they CDs, films, files or books. Version 1.1 brings you many improvements over 1.0 which was the latest version when KDE 3.5 was published.
Version 1.1.4 is quite an improvement compared to version 1.0.x which was the
stable one when KDE 3.5.0 was released.

RSI-Break: Stay fit

Repetitive Strain Injury is an illness which can occur as a result of working with a mouse and keyboard. With the new tool RSI-Break your are reminded to take a break now and then. In the last month, development has really picked up speed, so now you can enjoy version 0.6 with many new features.

Kaffeine: Multimedia all around

Kaffeine is the Xine-based media player. The authors just released Kaffeine 0.8. Compared with the previous version (0.7), many new features have been added and the user interface has been revised. Of course, Xine itself is constantly improving, so that you can expect an even better multimedia experience!

K3B: Hot stuff
What is the tool for burning DVDs and CDs in Linux? Most will probably agree that this is the famous K3B! In the past few months the author has published several new versions of K3B to provide you with the most stable burning tool ever. The changes included are far too many to be listed here, so just have a look at the extensive ChangeLog

That's it for this week. If you have a favorite application, please propose them in the comments section. If you want to stay up to date with new cool KDE applications, look at the list of latest KDE applications.

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Comments

by Anonymous Person (not verified)

When will there be alpha release of KDE 4.0 ?

by vito gonzaga (not verified)

Please forget KDE 4.0 for now and focus on KDE 3.5 The better we get it the better forthcoming KDE major releases will be.

by Thiago Macieira (not verified)

That recommendation is valid for users only.

If you're a developer and want to help us, you're welcome to try KDE 4.0 right now. But be aware that you have to be willing to get your hands dirty with coding.

by Mario (not verified)

One thing I really miss from windows its the ability to change and connect to a wireless network on an easy fashion.

Ive tried a lot of tools for WiFi connection (KDE and Gnome based) and at the end I end up with iwconfig as the only reliable tool.

by Falcon (not verified)

Try looking at OpenSuSE 10.1, They have a nice client to handle this.

by Anonymous (not verified)

There is no openSUSE distribution, it's called SUSE Linux.

by hiasll (not verified)

I use knetworkmanager. It's simple to switch between different nets and you can add new wireless connections easily.

by PCLinuxOS (not verified)

Try the Wireless assistant (wlassistant) that comes with PCLinuxOS, it works well and I use it wherever I go.

by Daemon (not verified)

http://www.gnome.org/projects/NetworkManager/

It's simple and works very well, there's not much more that could be asked from it!

I've found it to better than the inlcuded Windows apps and many 3rd party applications. WPA also works perfectly, something that I was really shocked at :)

by Leo S (not verified)

Maybe Kaffeine has improved recently, but I always found the interface to be kind of confusing. I really enjoy Codeine (http://kde-apps.org/content/show.php?content=17161) because it just works, and the interface is dead simple. I don't care about playlists or anything, I just want to double click on a video and have it play.

by pinky (not verified)

k3b already can do all the common burning jobs. The only thing i'm missing is an easy way to rip, shrink and burn a Video-DVD. If this would be integrated in k3b, k3b would the the absolute killer app.

I don't think that k3b should do this. k3b is a burning app and no video editing program.

Try lxdvdrip!

Or one of the DVD ripping tools at apps-kde.org.

there are a lot of apps, can you recommend one? Thanks!

Since I don't have a DVD burner and hence no need for such tools I don't know how much my recommendation is worth:-) For rip, shrink and burn I think I'd go for k9copy or DVD BacKup Express. If you are out to recode to XviD, perhaps DVD Rip-O-Matic would be better. Anyway I think they all use K3b for their burning.

http://www.kde-apps.org/content/show.php?content=23885
http://www.kde-apps.org/content/show.php?content=35247
http://www.kde-apps.org/content/show.php?content=21455

i don't want k3b to be a video editing program.
But if i can use k3b to copy data cds, audio cds, video-cds and data dvds than i think it's a logical step to offer video-dvd copying too.

by Thiago Macieira (not verified)

Copying? Yes. Shrinking, reencoding and otherwise editing? No.

>Copying? Yes. Shrinking, reencoding and otherwise editing? No.

I think you should see this more as a use case with the eyes of an user and not from the technical side.
User want to copy CD/DVD and don't care what's the content of this media. And i think a "killer-bruning-app" should do this.
I don't talking about a sophisticated video-DVD app where i can select tracks etc. Just a simple function which allows me to copy Video-DVD's and do what's necessary to get the data from one DVD to another (including ripping and shrinking if necessary as intermediate steps).

For more powerfull things like selecting special tracks etc. there can be a extra video-editing/ripping tool. But a simple copy should be possible with a "killer-burning-app".