KDE 4.1 Alpha 1 Is Out

The KDE Community is happy to announce the first preview for the upcoming KDE 4.1, due in late July. KDE 4.1 is based on Qt 4.4's goodness, bringing performance improvements, WebKit, widgets-on-canvas and other goodies. Also new is Dragon Player, a KDE 4 port of the codeine video player which is famous for its simplicity and ease of use. KDE 4.1 Alpha 1 ships with Akonadi, the new data storage framework for our beloved PIM applications. KDE-PIM will also see its first KDE 4 release with 4.1, but is not yet based on Akonadi. More planned and already implemented features can be found in the KDE 4.1 Feature Plan. The Plasma desktop shell has just undergone major surgery, so expect some additional breakage there.

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Comments

by fred (not verified)

> Because the point is not that Plasma is currently unstable, the point is that after telling everybody that 4.0 was the broken release and 4.1 was for stabilisation, they did the exact opposite and went ahead with more major changes to Plasma.

> Whether they pull it together and fix things before 4.1 is released is beside the point. Porting to new APIs while adding features does not increase stability, it does the opposite. The fact that they are willing to do that shows that the claims that 4.1 was the stabilisation release was just an excuse. The truth is that 4.0 was simply unfinished and moving to 4.1 is a case of completing all the development they wished they had done for 4.0.

Dude, making a software stable is not only achieved by keeping all things in order and start bugfixing. Sometimes if the underlying tool offers something better, we need to replace our own implementation with better one.

With the new WoC on Qt 4.4, Plasma devs can get rid of tons of code in their own layouting and widgets code, and probably less bugs since they're now relying on Qt's layouting which is already proven. So the devs can spend their time fixing other bugs and issues rather than spending time fixing the layout issues. They can't use WoC for KDE 4.0.x simply because Qt 4.4 was not released (Qt 4.4 is to be released before KDE 4.1)

You can read here: http://vizzzion.org/?blogentry=812 And some more blogs about Widget on Canvas which I've forgotten.

by Janne (not verified)

"Because the point is not that Plasma is currently unstable, the point is that after telling everybody that 4.0 was the broken release and 4.1 was for stabilisation, they did the exact opposite and went ahead with more major changes to Plasma."

Again: You are whining about alpha-software. That is: software that is nowhere near release. And in case you didn't know, major version-numbers (4.0 ==> 4.1 ==> 4.2 etc.) are for new features and functionality, besides bugfixes. And that is exactly what is happening here. New functionality often bring with it new bugs. But those get sorted out.

"Whether they pull it together and fix things before 4.1 is released is beside the point."

No it is not.

"I'm complaining about the development process, not the software."

Why? What matters is the software that gets developed. I don't care one bit if KDE-coders create 4.1 night before the release, what I care about is the quality of the software that gets released. And alpha-software is way too early to pass judgement regarding the quality of 4.1.0.

by she (not verified)

No, he has a point. There was a lot of anticipation that KDE 4 will shake things up positively. I still believe it will, but there was a lot of frustration from user's point of view too.

It would have been much more honest to not raise expectations too much as was done last year.

by Aaron Seigo (not verified)

> Plasma is undergoing yet more big changes rather than stabilising

the changes we have done are required to stabilize things.

more over, these changes were planned for 4.1 before 4.0 itself was released.

this was not some random changing of everything because we feel like it ... they were changes with a purpose that were planned, expected and now executed.

by dkite (not verified)

What was written reflects my experience over the last weeks. I am reassured when what I read fits what I see.

This is good.

Derek

by anon (not verified)

I'm honestly getting bored of people using alpha and beta software and complaining when things aren't working, that is the point of alpha's and beta's. KDE 4 is still a beta. Released to get people to port to it. It is not something that anyone should use if they want a stable release. It's release was solely to get people porting applications to it and for people to test and find bugs.

by JRT (not verified)

I would not complain at all if 4.0.0 had been released as either Beta or the unstable branch (like other OSS).

I also see no problem releasing 4.1 Alpha that is less stable than 4.0 Beta -- isn't that what you would expect. It is logical to release the new Plasma API for testing.

I think that the point that people are trying to make is that Plasma development doesn't *seem* to be progressing very well. This may only be how it looks rather than the actual progress made on the internals. But, when basic things still don't work, people will wonder.

I am starting to wonder if KDE is making the Vista mistake. The DeskTop is being radically changed. The question is whether users actually want this or if they would be happier with Kicker and KDesktop ported to KDE4. Since Plasma isn't going to be ready for 4.1.0, perhaps we should still consider doing this. The problem is that there are issues with Kicker and KDesktop that would need to be fixed.

IAC, I think that there are users that would be much happier if the KDE 3 DeskTop GUI was ported to KDE 4.

by Anon (not verified)

Frankly, Plasma is becoming sufficiently powerful, flexible and easy to write for that someone would probably be able to re-implement Kicker and KDesktop using libplasma relatively easily. Heck, once the scripting API is a bit more stabilised, they'll probably be able to re-implement it Python/ Ruby, QtScript if they want, and you'll be able to install it using GetHotNewStuff!

The default configuration of your Plasma desktop is going to become more and more of a non-issue as it matures (except for first impressions, that is :))

by JRT (not verified)

>Frankly, Plasma is becoming ...

You seem to miss the point. If the existing KDE 3 DeskTop had been ported, it would be up and running NOW, not 6 months to a year from now.

by Stefan Majewsky (not verified)

Yes, it would be running _now_, but Plasma is being developed to run _now_ and _in the future_. Also, Plasma works great for me and my fellows, for example on openSUSE 11.0 Beta 1. I suspect the problems people are experiencing are due to lack of integration (the distributors need to step in here, just as the openSUSE people do) or simply personal incompetence.

by Leo S (not verified)

>> If the existing KDE 3 DeskTop had been ported, it would be up and running NOW, not 6 months to a year from now.

And plasma would be developed by the magical development fairies? Yes, there could have been kicker/kdesktop in KDE4. It would have taken a boatload of time, which means that plasma would have been delayed by about a year. So you would have kicker/kdesktop for at least another year (and it would be buggier than the KDE3 version because of the port), and then you wouldn't have a replacement for a long time. Sounds like a fantastic idea.

From your posts, it seems like you like to do everything the "proper" way. Rigorous design up front, then seamless migration paths, and stable the first time software. Well all that stuff is fine if you have unlimited resources. Fortunately most kde devs realize that time is limited, resources are limited, and the motivation of devs is limited, so all those things need to be balanced against the development effort. I've seen endless projects fail because they get stuck in endless planning, instead of getting something done.

by fred (not verified)

> I would not complain at all if 4.0.0 had been released as either Beta or the unstable branch (like other OSS).

I recalled when GNOME released their 2.0, all people cursing GNOME devs for that release (did you remember, they did huge change to GTK and GNOME?), but now it is already very mature so that they think no big architectural changes should be introduced in the next few years.

And also 4.0 is not merely for desktop users, we need to attract application developers to start utilizing the new KDE library.

> I am starting to wonder if KDE is making the Vista mistake. The DeskTop is being radically changed. The question is whether users actually want this or if they would be happier with Kicker and KDesktop ported to KDE4. Since Plasma isn't going to be ready for 4.1.0, perhaps we should still consider doing this. The problem is that there are issues with Kicker and KDesktop that would need to be fixed.

Uhmm... that's what people said when XP was released, MS did mistake by releasing XP at that point. And also when OS X 10.0 was first released.

> IAC, I think that there are users that would be much happier if the KDE 3 DeskTop GUI was ported to KDE 4.

Yeah, but they'll start bitching again when they see other cool desktops: "Hey, other desktops can do this XYZ cool stuffs, why can't KDE do this? So we will never be able to satisfy all users.

by anon (not verified)

JRT, you miss the point completely, you say the Plasma isn't progressing well. It is, it's in development stage just like KDE 4 is. If you want a stable environment use 3.5, which has been told each time people come in here complaining because they do not understand that 4 is not stable and is a work in progress.

Port a very old GUI to KDE 4, yeah that would be unwise, as people want something that is continually changing and getting better. So please shut up, or start working on KDE 4 yourself, since you obviously think it is not up to your standards of work being done.

by sebas (not verified)

Well, I wrote it because it's a fact. Tagging happened in the middle of the API review porting, and when that happened, it was broken even for most of the Plasma developers -- let alone tested for users. Sure, Plasma got lots of flak in the past, but we're working hard to make it better.

The last sentence in the announcement is all about not raising too high expectations for this Alpha, especially if you gauge Plasma. Even if things have settled down considerably by now already, what people that install Alpha1 will see is that Plasma is broken in lots of places. People can have a look into our 'kitchen', but should be able to stand the heat then.

That said, the next pre-release will be much, much better with respect to Plasma.

Other components, I'm not so worried about. What I'm running right now (latest SVN) looks rockstable already.

by David Johnson (not verified)

Widgets on the canvas is a cool feature, but please don't overdo it. Some of us don't have high end video cards. On my laptop's Radeon X1400, it's dog slow. Qt's pad navigator is barely usable and the he embedded dialogs demo is downright painful. It's even worse on my home system. This is with qt-4.4.0 release (commercial).

I know this isn't KDE's problem, but Trolltech's, but it's still still going to directly impact us. I'm not going to throw away a perfectly good two year old laptop just to run the KDE desktop!

by Aaron Seigo (not verified)

> Some of us don't have high end video cards

there haven't been performance degradataion associated with our use of WoC. to use your words, we haven't overdone it.

thank you for your concern, i just hope this doesn't turn into another piece of FUD for me to have to deal with now.

by David Johnson (not verified)

It's not happening on my coworker's system, but it is happening on mine. Trying to move the slider on the pad navigator example shows a significant lag, and that's a pretty simple widget. The embedded dialogs demo is completely unusable. It's not a crappy video card and easily handles most things compiz throws at it with ease. (But even with a high end card, remote desktop access is still a frequent use case for me).

I'll report this to Trolltech as a bug.

p.s. I've tried making a screen capture with xvidcap, but it's not capturing the widgets.

by mat69 (not verified)

Maybe it has something to do with the drivers of your video card.

E.g. I did not have good experiences with my X1600 AGP -- in other words it sucks -> no OpenGL ;) -- while I was able to run KDE 4 from trunk on an onboard intel chip without _any_ problems.

If that was the case putting the presure on the KDE team to work around driver bugs or generall messy drivers would be the wrong way imo.

by David Johnson (not verified)

I'm not meaning to put pressure on the KDE developers, as it is a Trolltech bug. I am only alerting KDE developers to a problem that many users will face.

by me (not verified)

it's not a trolltech bug as these effects work good with on board intel cards which are less than or as powerful as your Radeon card.

by David Johnson (not verified)

Well it's somebody's bug because it doesn't work!

I should add that the bug is not as pronounced on my Radeon 9000, which is a much older and less powerful card than the X1400. Also, I get great results under Windows with the same card. So it's definitely in the driver.

I say this is a Trolltech bug because Trolltech has made this feature dependent on specific driver capabilities without specifying what they are. At least with antialiasing Trolltech will tell you that you need XRender. But what do I need for Plasma to work? I have no clue because Trolltech hasn't disclosed the requirements of WoC. Maybe it's something simple like one line added to my xorg.conf, maybe it's applying a well known patch to my driver, or something like that. I'm hoping it doesn't mean I have to get a new video card, because this is a *laptop*!

by Stefan Majewsky (not verified)

> At least with antialiasing Trolltech will tell you that you need XRender. But what do I need for Plasma to work? I have no clue because Trolltech hasn't disclosed the requirements of WoC.

On the technical side, the whole trick about WoC is that a QWidget has QPaintDevice as its base class. That means that a QWidget can be "drawed" on every painting base (such as a display, a printed document, or a QGraphicsView which the Plasma desktop is derived of).

The technical requirements for the drawing process depend on the render hints set by the application (for example: antialiasing and bilinear filtering) and, of course, on the implementation of the drawing process (for example: which external libraries are used). All of these requirements are set by Trolltech through the implementation of Qt.

To come back to your question: A QWidget is essentially the same as a rectangle or an image (= an object that can be drawed on some display). If your machine can paint rectangles or images on the Plasma desktop, it will definitely also be able to paint widgets on the desktop.

by lee (not verified)

Is that really the most constructive thing you can say? It's almost like you're being paid by MS to try to stir up trouble or something.

by Anon (not verified)

Can we drop this "Someone says something bad about FOSS - OMG they *must* be paid by M$!11"? It's stupid and childish.

ac is quite clearly a common-or-garden troll (or just one of these idiotic "armchair software developers" who, incomprehensibly, seem compelled to post on subjects they know nothing about) rather than a Microsoft shill.

by lee (not verified)

The fact that it's an annoying comparison is exactly why I pointed out the possibility of comparison. Most Free Software people who act in a way that could be mistaken for a Microsoft shill might actually want to rethink their behaviour once they realise this.

I could take further issue with what you said above, but I'll leave it there for the sake of reducing negativity around an article about great news.

by T. J. Brumfield (not verified)

I think you're dead wrong. Openly praising bad ideas isn't helpful in the least.

I love KDE on the whole, and honestly, it looks like I'll be waiting until 4.2 to switch to the 4 series at the earliest now. I'm not upset that the KDE team is taking this direction, but I can see why others are. Everyone has said, "wait for KDE 4.1, and then you'll have the stable desktop with the common features people are looking for."

I was already worried since they are adding so many new features. New features do not go hand in hand with stability. Refactoring plasma at the last minute as well does not bode well for stability either.

This will blow up and give more negative PR to KDE. 4.0 got good press, but it also got bad press. If 4.1 isn't stable, it will only feed the cynics and haters more.

I think the real solution here is to move to something like git, where plasma breakage can happen in a seperate repository. Refactor it there, and then test some builds with it. If it works, then include it in 4.1, but what is happening now, is that people are breaking plasma in SVN, and talking about changing things up even more. Not to mention, the QT 4.4 changes have to be taken into consideration. I have little faith that KDE 4.1 will be more stable than KDE 4.0 at this point.

by Jonathan Thomas (not verified)

From the Aseigoborg:
"There seems to be some concern amongst users about the massive surgery we did on libplasma this past month. The concern stems from the idea that these changes will work against the stabilization of libplasma and result in prolonging a "beta" quality to plasma itself.

It's important to first understand that these changes were planned, even before 4.0. We knew that "widgets on canvas" was coming and so we could eventually remove our own layouting and QWidget bridges at some point for something that was more robust and less of a hack. We also knew that being a first revision of a library API (application programmer's interface) that would see a lot of usage, it was highly likely that changes would come to be needed or wanted. It's nearly impossible to foretell exactly what will be used and required in such an API, and it's really unrealistic to hope that the first draft of the semantics in an API will be optimal any more than it is to expect the first draft of a novel to not need any editing and revising.

So before 4.0 came out I told everyone that libplasma would not be binary compatible between 4.0 and 4.1 so that we could reshape the API as needed to make it last longer. I told everyone that we'd be porting to widgets on canvas when we could begin using Qt 4.4. I told everyone that we'd be replacing the icons-on-desktop implementation with something more robust that offered access to the same features.

This was all known and planned for before 4.0 was released. None of them could be done in 4.0 for various reasons (such as Qt 4.4 not being available to us), and so we lived with various hacks and bodges.

Moving to the development of 4.1, we executed on these changes. Right now plasma is approximately as stable and in most areas a bit more featureful than what is in 4.0.4, even with all those backports we did to catch up the 4.0 branch. There are a few regressions that remain in the development tree right now, but they are disappearing with rapidity. But being able to finally see things happen that we always imagined, such as the device notifier expanding from an icon to the full view when dropped onto the desktop (aka "adjusting the visualization in response to the form factor"), is very rewarding to watch happen.

There has been one downside to the massive changes: it took time away from creating more new features. So some of the plasmoids I wanted to have working for 4.1 may not happen and get punted to 4.2 instead. Thankfully with all this work done, features that do get worked on from here out should be easier to accomplish than when working with the 4.0 API.

Thankfully we will not have to repeat this process again during the 4.x time frame. We will be able to move forward with keeping the API in place. We will add to it as needed, which isn't disruptive, while modifications such as these ones for 4.1 simply won't be on the table.

So if you are concerned about the recent changes made impacting stability, I thank you for your concern and empathize with how one could arrive at such a conclusion. Thankfully, these changes have been made specifically to answer your concerns, as well as mine, about stability and feature completeness both in 4.1 and beyond.

I hope that clears up a few things. If not, you may wish to track the betas and release candidates as they begin to appear near the end of May and see for yourself."

From: http://aseigo.blogspot.com/2008/04/on-recent-libplasma-changes.html

[My commentary now]
This API refactoring was planned even before 4.0, and 4.1 is still in the alpha stage; nowhere near to release. It's still another 3 months until final release, which is half the dev cycle, with the latter part of the cycle dedicated to bugfixing. And hey, right now, a mere week after tagging alpha1, Plasma is pretty much stable again. :)

by T. J. Brumfield (not verified)

Plasma still has some serious breakage as of yesterday from what I understand.

Yet, the QT 4.4 changes were only the start. Now even more changes are planned. Even if they are finished soon, those changes are being made in the 4.1 trunk. The big problem with that, is that the 4.1 trunk isn't going to get much use for bug-testing and stabilization. We'll have 4.0.4, 4.0.5, etc, and if this rate of a new release every few weeks, we'll get tons of releases from the 4.0 branch. The 4.0 branch is becoming fairly stable. When 4.1 comes out, I fear it won't be as stable because of the changes. Even if you plan months in advance that you will eventually move and rewrite things, you need time to test, bug hunt, debug, etc.

by Sebastian Sauer (not verified)

Well, we will also have 4.1.4, 4.1.5, etc. :)

btw, at the time KDE 3.0.0 was published I didn't switched to it either before 3.1.something cause things where not as stable as I would like to have them for my productive system.
Anyway, that KDE4 does follow the "release early, release often" rule is at the end an advantage for me. So, let's wait till 4.1.0 and probably even till 4.1.1, 4.1.2, etc. to see if KDE4 is finally stable enough for productive-systems like imho 3.1.x was :)

by Aaron Seigo (not verified)

a) where do you think the plasma features in 4.0 came from?

b) we have a deadline (the 20th) after which no new features can be added, giving us a forced period of testing, bug hunting, etc. to work on stabilization for 4.1.

by Anon Reloaded (not verified)

"I think you're dead wrong. Openly praising bad ideas isn't helpful in the least."

Agreed.

"Everyone has said, "wait for KDE 4.1, and then you'll have the stable desktop with the common features people are looking for."

Then they've spoken out of turn, or are being very optimistic. You don't bring a huge departure like 4.0.0 into something near-perfect in just 6 months.

"Refactoring plasma at the last minute as well does not bode well for stability either"

"3 months before scheduled release" or "one month before feature freeze" or "just after half way through the dev cycle" (take your pick) != "at the last minute". Get some perspective, please.

"If 4.1 isn't stable, it will only feed the cynics and haters more."

Cynics and haters don't need feeding - if 4.1 rules everything in the world, they will continue to hate. And anyway, so what?

"I think the real solution here is to move to something like git, where plasma breakage can happen in a seperate repository. Refactor it there, and then test some builds with it."

Agreed - I'd like to see more and more devs using Git. It seems to be an excellent way of easily managing branches.

"If it works, then include it in 4.1"

Disagree - there's no point having another 6 months of third parties writing against outdated APIs. The new API should be in 4.1, full-stop. And it seems it does work, anyway, so the point is moot.

"but what is happening now, is that people are breaking plasma in SVN, and talking about changing things up even more."

Major changes happen in trunk three months before release! - sky is falling, etc. This is basically what is supposed to happen. Frankly, I'd be worried about the future of KDE if it weren't.

by Tom (not verified)

Plasma will just get stronger ;) Really happy about KDE4 so far. Thanks!

by Kit (not verified)

I'm really looking forward to 4.1. I tried 4.0.0/1 and found it mostly stable but lacked many of the features I've been spoiled by in KDE 3.5 (in the future maybe you shouldn't make such a good desktop environment? ;) so I haven't switched full time (though I _love_ using Okular and the 4 version of KSudoku taught me how to play and love it as well). 4.1 is supposed to have many of the missing features from 3.5 (mouse scroll wheel switching desktops was one of those little things that annoyed me but I've seen added since) so I plan on trying to move again later.

I hope KDevelop 4 is released around then as well (either its Dev's are quiet or I'm just not very observant... possibly both), since I'm hoping to convert my current project, a QtWebKit based browser, to being a full fledged KDE4 application (QTabWidget -> KTabWidget and QIcon -> KIcon I imagine will greatly help, the former for the scroll wheel switching and hover-close button, the latter for the ability to simply use the system's default icons instead of hard coding specific ones in or other ugly hacks). The tutorial's I've read on Techbase have been more so about working on applications that already are set up to use cmake and didn't really seem to cover how you'd convert from qmake (although I should admit I haven't looked very hard, trying to break things until they work is always my favorite way of learning things :P)

After reading Aaron's blog I also believe the changes to Plasma are definitely for the best; but like KDE4 itself, there's going to be growing pains before you can have the amazing final product (remember the old adages like 'Rome wasn't built in a day' ;)

by Will Stephenson (not verified)

Mouse wheel on pager works here on 4.0.4, openSUSE.

by Kit (not verified)

I remember reading about that being backported (I'm also using openSUSE, although I only have 4.0.3, although I think thats new enough), though I haven't really tried much since 4.0.0 and 4.0.1.

Next time I try moving I should take some time and write down my annoyances and any missing features I find then make sure they're documented somewhere, I'm sure theres probably a wiki page that people have already made for that (or b.k.o as a last resort). Then again I could always try my hand at implimenting the features myself (although the last time I did that another developer fixed it in SVN/CVS at around the same time I attached my patch to the bug report... curses you for stealing my thunder! :P)

by Jonathan Thomas (not verified)

Mousewheel on pager works here in Kubuntu w/ KDE 4.0.3.

by T. J. Brumfield (not verified)

What is the status of the Windows ports?

Are people working on them, or are devs needed? If so, can we put the call out?

I dual-boot at home, and use Windows predominately at work (though I'm getting a new laptop at work and intend to make that a dual-boot beast as well). I'd love to use KDE apps on both.

I would love to see a better installer that includes a start menu group.

I'm also wondering if plasma moves into kdelibs (or a large chunk of it) if we'd possibly see more desktop components (containments, perhaps a taskbar replacement, plasmoids, etc) on Windows then.

by Andreas Braml (not verified)

I can't wait for the day when Okular, KMail, Konqueror, Dolphin, Amarok, Krita and all those other killer apps will be available on http://portableapps.com/ so that anyone can use them, even at those "install new software and you will be banned" sites.
KDE4 already rocks (using 4.0.3 here), keep up the astonishing work, both in code and in honest PR on the dot and on developers' blogs.

by M (not verified)

I second. ++++++++++

I can't wait for Amarok on Windows! It'll be what Firefox was to the internet browser world. :)

by Ralf Habacker (not verified)

> I would love to see a better installer that includes a start menu group.

In the kdebase-runtime package there is a tool named kwinstartmenu included which makes it able to creates/update/delete start menu entries. After an installation it could be started by hand.

by T. J. Brumfield (not verified)

Thanks!

by anon (not verified)

On the openSUSE news site, one of their people have stated that they wont delay 11 for KDE 4.1 because there is a chance that 4.1 will be delayed, and that it wont include some of the popular applications. I guess this comment from them is false?

by Erunno (not verified)

I'm not aware of any concrete plans for delaying 4.1 but there's no guarantee that it will ship on time either. If major bugs are discovered during the beta / rc cycle additional unscheduled test releases might become necessary. My guess would be that the openSUSE developers are just taking the possibility of a delay into account and don't want to take the risk of having delay their own release just to get 4.1 in (I reckon that they also have to plan for advertisement, producing the boxed version and other things which need a more stable schedule).

by Iuri Fiedoruk (not verified)

Also, there is no concrete plan to port for 4.1 apps like k3b, amarok and others.
There is a plenty of old and good software for KDE3 that is not being worked anymore, so when distros actually abandon kdelibs3 we will loose them (but I don't belive kdelibs3 will be dropped before 10 years or more).

This is really sad when good apps are not updated, can we please have a longer ABI compatibility even when qt5 is released? Niiiiiiiice please?

by have a look (not verified)

The porting of Amarok and k3b is ongoing. See here for details:
http://polishlinux.org/kde/kde-4-rev-802150-work-in-progress/

by Iuri Fiedoruk (not verified)

I know, I did not meant that they will *not* be ported, but that there is no plan to follow KDE team release schedule.
So opensuse guys probally tought they could not be ready for KDE 4.1 and just will wait for next release to ibnclude KDE4.

by Adrian (not verified)

openSUSE 11.0 will have KDE 4, just 4.0.x and not 4.1.

by Iuri Fiedoruk (not verified)

Yes, but will it have KDE4 only, or KDE3 as satable and 4 as an option for the brave ones?

by Kit (not verified)

I doubt any major distros will stop shipping KDE3 anytime soon (as in, probably 3-5 years at the soonest). I haven't read much about 11, but I'd be very shocked if they dropped 3.

by binner (not verified)

You don't consider Fedora major? :-)

openSUSE 11.0 will have KDE 3.5.9 and KDE 4.0.4: http://en.opensuse.org/Image:OS11.0beta2-inst6.jpg