KDE 4.0.4 Out Now, Codenamed File-Not-Found

Another month, another update to the KDE 4.0 series. This time, we are presenting KDE 4.0.4, dubbed File-Not-Found to the audience. KDE 4.0.4 brings improvements to KHTML, Okular and various other components. We recommend that people who are already running KDE 4.0 releases update to 4.0.4. The emphasis of this release lies, as usual in stabilising, bugfixing, performance improvements and updated translations -- no new features. The developers have again squashed quite some bugs which you can find some of in the changelog. With this release, the KDE community continues to support the KDE 4.0 series that has been released for brave users earlier this year. KDE 4.1, to be released this summer (in the northern-hemisphere) will bring new features and applications. KDE 4.1 is based on the recently released Qt 4.4 while KDE 4.0.4 is still based on Qt 4.3 as is the case with the whole KDE 4.0 series. So put on your update shoes and install 4.0.4 today.

Dot Categories: 

Comments

by Yves (not verified)

There are no changes mentioned regarding plasma nor kwin.

Is the changelog really already fully updated?

by Dan (not verified)

Plasma did not recieve any attention, everything was focused on 4.1

Not sure about kwin

by Jonathan Thomas (not verified)

KWin received several bug fixes, like for the bug that caused the password box to hide behind the screensaver when you locked the screen.

The effects seem smoother too, but that could be also due to the fact that I upgraded to Qt 4.4 too.

by sebas (not verified)

The changelog is never really complete. The SVN changelog reveals that there are indeed a couple of fixes in both, Plasma and KWin.

http://www.kde.org/announcements/changelogs/4_0_4/kdebase.txt

by Leaves (not verified)

Hey,

I was wondering since Qt is backwards compatible in the 4.* series you can also run KDE 4.0 with Qt 4.4?

Thanks,
Leaves

by Ian Monroe (not verified)

Yep you could.

by Jonathan Thomas (not verified)

It works quite well actually. I'm happy with the update, the speed improvements are welcome.

by Bille (not verified)

Yes, openSUSE 11.0 has KDE 4.0.4 with Qt 4.4. In fact, if you've tried an 11.0 live CD in the last few weeks you've already run this combination.

Most people I know either got back to kde 3.5.9 or jumped to the 4.1 alphas. I'm curious to know how many masochists (brave?) people are still on the 4.0 series.

PS: I do think releasing 4.0 was a good decision but I don't think anyone is still using it now, so maybe kde devs should forget about it and just focus on 4.1 now. I know I wouldn't care less if there is no 4.0.5 in june but a kick ass 4.1 in july :D

by Matt Williams (not verified)

AFAIK, the latest Kubuntu and the upcoming openSUSE 11.0 are both using the KDE 4.0 branch since 4.1 isn't out yet. This allows them to provide a stable (if somewhat lacking in some features compared with 3.5) and shiny platform for users while giving them a clear upgrade path once 4.1 is released.

Up until now, the benefit has been that having the 4.0 branch in bugfixing mode has meant that whenever a bug is fixed in the branch, the unstable trunk (4.1) would benefit from it too. Otherwise, it would be quite likely that few bugs would have been fixed since January since all the devs would have been focussing on adding features for 4.1.

Also I think for users who's distros provided STABLE 4.0 packages and UNSTABLE 4.1 packages they would likely choose the stable packages, if not for the whole desktop then for things like the games, konqueror etc. without having to worry about the UNSTABLE label.

by Kevin Kofler (not verified)

Fedora 9, which is due next week, also uses KDE 4.0, for the same reason. It will ship with KDE 4.0.3. KDE 4.0.4 will be available in updates-testing at release time and move to updates after a few days (usually 1 or 2 weeks, depending on testing feedback). The current plan (subject to change) is to push KDE 4.1.0 as an update for Fedora 9 once it's released. KDE 4.1 snapshots will hit Rawhide (our development branch) as soon as Fedora 9 is released and Rawhide starts targeting Fedora 10.

by T. J. Brumfield (not verified)

Since 4.0.4 is nothing but bug-fixes (no new features) shouldn't it ship with 4.0.4?

by Kevin Kofler (not verified)

No, Fedora 9 was already in "critical bugfixes only" mode when 4.0.4 was tagged. We need approximately 1 week to fix the last blockers (without breaking anything else) and 1 week to get the images mirrored, which means we can't really update all of KDE two weeks before the release, even for a bugfix release (and the Fedora release engineering team would probably have vetoed it). Moreover, sometimes some tarballs have to be respun by KDE upstream between the tagging / packager prerelease and the actual release, we wouldn't have been able to guarantee that any respun tarballs would have made it if we had rushed 4.0.4 in. (In this case, kdelibs was respun on May 5 because it reported the version number incorrectly.)

Please trust us to know what we're doing. It's not like our users will have to wait another 6 months to get the new version, it will be in updates-testing on release day and in updates shortly afterwards.

by Kevin Kofler (not verified)

Oh and we wouldn't have been able to get the fix for this 4.0.4 regression in either:
http://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=161769

by mactalla (not verified)

I'm running 4.0 I like it more than 3.5, but I'm waiting rather impatiently for 4.1.anything binaries for Kubuntu. I'm getting more and more tempted to switch to OpenSUSE, but I'm really not wanting to reinstall/configure my system, so I'm just hoping things will improve.

by mimoune djouallah (not verified)

just do it my friend, you will never regret switching to OpenSuse

I'm tempred to switch to OpenSUSE, too. And tried the LiveCD, unfortunately there are is a problem with the TouchPad. I filed a bug, and when/if it is fixed, I'll switch :-)

The openSUSE Live-CD seems to have some problems with hardware detection which have been allegedly fixed (according to bugzilla). I'll file a couple of bug reports regarding my own hardware (macbook) once I find some time but there's a chance that the bugs are limited to the Live-CD. Nevertheless, such bugs are bad enough as I doubt that many people will install openSUSE if their hardware doesn't work in the live session.

by apokryphos (not verified)

Is this with the openSUSE 11.0 beta 2 live CD? What's the bug number?

Yes, it is. The bug number is 387793

by Gerry (not verified)

I have just updated to 4.0.4 (on 10.3) using one-click. I have the same problem that I had with 4.0.3, it starts up OK then crashes back to log-in screen. Not complaining, just wondered if anyone had any ideas

by binner (not verified)

I guess without some more information and some own debugging from yourself nobody will be able to help you, best would be to join #opensuse-kde IRC channel.

by Gerry (not verified)

That's a reasonable answer, was hoping for "oh yeah, need to tweak that" but at risk of sounding like a moron, if e.g., konqueror crashes it generates a back trace in which case even I can work out what to do, however this one goes goes silently back to log in without a hint. No idea where to go next. I even checked dmesg in hope rather than expectation.

by binner (not verified)

Rather look at ~/.xsession-errors for a hint.

by Gerry (not verified)

Thank you - acquired the file, will seek help

by Kavalor (not verified)

What helped me once in a similar situation with KDE4 was to delete the KDE4 Desktopsettings.
I logged into my KDE3 adn deleted the folder /home/username/.kde4

When i treid to login into KDE4 again it rebuild the settings and everything worked again.

Dont know if it is the same in your case.
Of cource i neded to redo all personal configuration.

by Gerry (not verified)

Thank you for suggestion - tried it, didn't make any difference :(
Logged it on bugs.kde.org

by jos poortvliet (not verified)

Most likely driver issues with the hardware acceleration used in KDE 4/Qt 4.4... I have the same with my laptop. It's annoying, but probably an X.org issue - good luck debugging that one.

by dum (not verified)

I had the same problem after updating a month ago on opensuse. I'm don't know if that bug is still there because I'm running Kubuntu now.

by augustm (not verified)

I have often had this problem- I do a failsafe login, then start the sessions
with "startkde4".

Opensuse often pushes out inconsistent sets of files. Typically the session
stops with a symbol absent in an important library, or even a whole library
missing...

The opensuse build process/packaging seems to be a little fragile.

This is why you don't get the stacktrace, its not a crash as such.

by T. J. Brumfield (not verified)

openSUSE > Kubuntu

I regretted just trying it, after reading about their involvement with Novel and MS.

by Ian Monroe (not verified)

I made the switch a couple weeks ago. Having the latest KDE 4.1 without building anything is just nice. (And my other computer runs Gentoo so it's not like I'm scared of building). OpenSuse is obviously for corporate environment, it's install process has lot's of control including giving the user the ability to install a pretty messed up system (which I did :P). Kubuntu's set of sane default apps makes more sense for the desktop user.

But the KDE 4.1 build service is a killer feature for me.

by apokryphos (not verified)

> OpenSuse is obviously for corporate environment, it's install process has lot's of control including giving the user the ability to install a pretty messed up system

This is more the result of being an early adopter of a graphical installation than of some corporate tendency. However, this has all been changed in openSUSE 11.0 too -- installation takes something like 18 minutes, requires about 6-8 clicks, and takes out a lot of questions from the user.

by Ian Monroe (not verified)

This makes sense, the openSUSE 10.3 install reminded me of Linux installs circa 2001.

Good to hear things have improved!

by apokryphos (not verified)

Yeah, definitely; just take a look at the beta2 screenshots of the installation for an example of the good looks: http://en.opensuse.org/Screenshots/openSUSE_11.0_Beta2

Opensuse 11 Beta 2 took me an amazing 10 minutes to install

It has a couple of bugs, but hey that is what a beta is for. It's not a stable release.

by T. J. Brumfield (not verified)

I think the ideal installer will ask a user up front if they want all defaults, and then do just that (akin to *buntu installer) or ask if they want to get more specific.

I'm curious how you got a messed up system from the installer. What options did you select that gave you a messed up box?

by Ian Monroe (not verified)

I selected the KDE desktop. But since I was wanting to install KDE 4.1, I deselected KDE and selected XFCE.

But xdm took me to FVWM not XFCE. I guess it's an insult to the FVWM folks that I consider their window manager to be so horrible as to define my system "messed up". :) Anyways it took a bit of wrestling but now my KDE 4.1 laptop is rockin.

by Iuri Fiedoruk (not verified)

OpenSuse 4.0 series is better because they ported a large portion of KDE 4.1 bugfixes to 4.0.

by Martin Fitzpatrick (not verified)

I'm running 4.0.3 only at the moment and my main desktop (aka only computer) - from the Kubuntu packages. Perfectly stable, a few oddities but habit works around them.

Saying that: the fact that it is so stable for me makes me agree that 4.0.5 might be unneccessary.

by Stefan Majewsky (not verified)

Scheduling 4.0.5 is generally a good idea. It is very unlikely that there will be no changes.

by Martin Fitzpatrick (not verified)

Meh. I'm easy... if it comes I'll quite happily use it. I was more meaning that (for me at least) it's not essential as the system in it's current state is perfectly stable and usable for everyday.

Which is a good thing ;)

by Jens Uhlenbrock (not verified)

When I first installed 4.1 over 4.0 some apps were not working. Later i found out that it was my fault. Should've deleted the .kde4 folder before updating. After I finally fixed that plasma was broken due to the tokamak changes. KDE 4.0 is running smoothly and stable on my system. To me it seems more of a hassle to have 4.1 running atm.

by Kevin Kofler (not verified)

Uh, if KDE 4.1 doesn't work if you have settings from 4.0, that's not your fault, but a serious bug in KDE. New apps are supposed to handle (or migrate using kconf_update) old config files, even KDE 3 ones!

by Jonathan Thomas (not verified)

The 4.0.x has been perfectly stable. It's not a scary thing to run at all. It would be scary, however, to run KDE 4.1 alpha. Due to the tagging being in the middle of the Plasma API refactoring Plasma is super buggy and crashy.

KDE 4.0.x, on the other hand, is stable and can be installed without compiling anything, unlike a more stable revision of trunk.

Lots of people are running KDE4; probably more than you think. It is very stable, and is the only stable release you can install without compiling crap.

by SAABeilin (not verified)

I do. I started using KDE4 as a full-session from the latest beta (and used some KDE4 apps withe a KDE3 full-session before). Yes, it is sometimes buggy, but mostly sometimes ;)

p.s. Help->About says it's 4.0.3 while dpkg -l says it's 4.0.4 ;) Kubuntu Hardy.

Yes you are right... did the version-number not be increased ?

Yeap, I do too, on openSUSE, for my regular desktop. I also keep a svn tree of kde for developing, but normal use is 4.0.3 (now 4.0.4) from rpm's.

by Artem S. Tashkinov (not verified)

This is exactly my sentiment.

On my turn I keep waiting for KDE 3.5.10 which is still being actively developed and I'll probably try KDE 4.4 rc1 when it's out.