KDE 3.1beta2 Hits the 'Net

Yesterday the KDE Project
announced
the release of KDE 3.1beta2, the third (and final) development release of the
KDE
3.1 branch
. On top of the large number of improvements over KDE 3.0 which have already been
announced, this release offers
a
number
of significant improvements, such as a new Exchange 2000®
plugin for KOrganizer and a KVim plugin for KDevelop
(screenshot).
In addition, release coordinator Dirk Mueller notes that
over 1,000 bugreports on bugs.kde.org
have been fixed in the last 4 weeks
.
Please run this release through its paces so that KDE 3.1 will be the best
we can make it! Thanks to all for the hard work in getting this release out.

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Comments

by Andreas Joseph Krogh (not verified)

I get the following error trying to install:

error: failed dependencies:
libpng12.so.0 is needed by libarts3-1.1.0-0.beta2.1mdk

urpmi libpng:
everything already installed

Anybody knows how to fix this(without --force).

urpmi libpng-devel

I had the same problem, and I found the solution : we must update our libpng, see that page :
http://www.linux-mandrake.com/en/updates/2002/MDKSA-2002-049.php?dis=8.2

I used that mirror :
http://ftp.belnet.be/packages/mandrake/updates/8.2/RPMS/
and I download libpng3 and libpng3-devel.

(but a problem still remains with timidity++ for me, and I had to uninstall timidity++ before installing)

I reply to myself : those rpm package seems to be very bad : almost all doesnt't work :((
I think compiling himself is a better solution.

by Andreas Joseph Krogh (not verified)

I installed libpng3 and libpng3-devel from ftp://ftp.sunet.se/pub/os/Linux/distributions/mandrake/updates/8.2/RPMS/
They seem to work ok

--
Andreas

any reason why all the control modules are gone with the mandrake stuff???

the same here :(
i don't understand it! why these rpm packages are even worse than for beta1? there were also some missing modules for kcontrol and this is almost empty of them!
it seems we have to compile beta2 from source ourselves :(

i was too much expecting that it will be repaired with new beta but i'm very dissapointed about these MDK packages now.
luci

Thanx for confirming. I was starting to wonder.

by L1 (not verified)

are there any sarge packages available?

by Dale (not verified)
by Heiner (not verified)

Is an (X)Emacs support planned for KDevelop? Just curious...

Heiner

by MarkusK (not verified)

Hi,

i got suspicios, because kmail wasn't starting for me. So i checked ftp dir, and found no kdenetwork for x86 8.0 and 8.1 SuSE packages. Is that correct?

Markus

by David Grant (not verified)

I'm experiencing the same problems with SuSE 7.3. The network package is available as source, so I assume it's been missed off by mistake.

I've just tried building from source as well, although it can't seem to find the correct version of QT. :-(

by Hermann (not verified)

same prob here.

Solution: used KDENetwork RPMs from Beta1.
works fine for me.

have fun
H.

by Anthony (not verified)

Attached is a kdenetwork spec file for SuSE. You need to download the KDE 3.1Beta1 source RPM so that you can get the patches necessary to compile this, install the source RPM, then download the Beta2 tar file, cp the Beta2 tar file to /usr/src/packages/SOURCES, then place this spec file in /usr/src/packages/SPECS.

After you have done the above cd to /usr/src/packages/SPECS and run rpm -bb kdenetwork3.spec

It will take a while but it should compile, and will place some RPMS in /usr/src/packages/RPMS/i386. Install these and all should be right in the world again. I have no place to upload my network files or I would simply share my rpms for SuSE 8.1. Hopefully this will help out some people.

by Anonymous (not verified)

There are since today kdenetwork packages available, now only kdesdk is missing.

by Alex (not verified)

Hi,

I got a problem with the SuSE8.0 RPMs. When I start the filemanager it crashes with following message:
Mutex destroy failure: Device or resource busy

When I start the filemanager as root I get the same errormessage, but konq doesn't crash.

Any idea?

Thanx,
Alex

by Dieter Nützel (not verified)

My "problem" is not that it looks so Win... like but it's "pretty" colored, overloaded and ugly.

Where is the "old" clarity of KDE?
A desktop should be useful and "clear" in the first place.

No offence about all the great new stuff in the back!

-Dieter

--
Dieter Nützel
Graduate Student, Computer Science

University of Hamburg
Department of Computer Science
@home: Dieter.Nuetzel at hamburg.de (replace at with @)

What exactly prevents you from using different colors, less icons, etc.? Just because the default is somewhat colored, overloaded and (?)ugly doesn't mean you can't change it to whatever you consider more "clear".

by Anonymous (not verified)

All styles and icon themes of "old" KDE are still contained.

by Dieter Nützel (not verified)

To both of you.

All you posted is vaild and I know that.
But I talked about the "default" behavior.

It should be as "clear" as possible.

-Dieter

>It should be as "clear" as possible.

Yes, this is your opionion, but not mine and not the one of a lot of others (which would even be the majority).

You can discuss this as well on usability.kde.org if you still like to.

I find the theme very nice. It's very good to see KDE not trying to imitate Windows or MacOS, but have something new.

And i personally like Keramik very much. It's very nice and though does not affect the `feel` in a bad way like WinXP's Luna or OSX's Aqua, and yes, i've used all three of them.

As L. Lunak already said - what prevents you to set up your own style? Your own colours, theme, look & feel, etc.. Isn't that what KDE tries to provide?

How about a slashdot theme?

by Paul Seamons (not verified)

Anybody with 9.0 rpms out there yet?

by Øyvind Sæther (not verified)

KDE 3.1beta 2 is great, it looks like KDE has finally 'grown up'. But it's still not instant (and probably never will be, anyway).

Regarding speed: On AMD400, Gnome2 is usable and KDE3 is unusable (way too slow). On Athlon 2000+, Gnome2 is instant and KDE3 is usable.

So my prayer is that the KDE developers concentrate on optimizeing for performance once KDE3.1 is stable.

By makeing KDE usable on old, slow computers, KDEs potential user-base would increse substantial.

Another idea is to have a fist-time-you-run-kde setup-tool where you select/detect computer speed and apply settings for (a) slow computer (b) fast computer and (c) hot-of-the-line computer.

Features and flashy effects are great, but to me, INSTANT is equally important (no waiting period whatsoever, ever).

Look at the gui on mobile phones. Would users accept a 10 minute waiting period when they open their phonebook?

by Anonymous (not verified)

> So my prayer is that the KDE developers concentrate on optimizeing for performance once KDE3.1 is stable

You haven't compiled it yourself with gcc 3.2, or?

> Another idea is to have a fist-time-you-run-kde setup-tool where you select/detect computer speed

Such thing (kpersonalizer) exists since KDE 2.2, don't blame KDE if your distribution cripples KDE.

by Kosmo (not verified)

Is KDE noticeable faster if you compile it with gcc 3.2 instead of gcc 2.x
and how long does it take to compile it? (i use a PII 450Mhz)

by Hoek (not verified)

Yes, of course it's faster. Search google on how you can optimize your CFLAGS/CXXFLAGS, download latest binutils, latest KDE, latest GCC, and compile.

Compiling kdelibs, kdebase, and kdenetwork on an AMD 1200 Mhz/ 256 MB RAM takes ~ 3 hrs. But it's worth it, trust me.

Or, better, look at Gentoo (http://gentoo.org) if you don't have it already. It's a source distribution optimizing everything for your CPU and compiles it automatically, the speed difference is incredible.

by fault (not verified)

> Or, better, look at Gentoo (http://gentoo.org) if you don't have it already. It's a source distribution optimizing everything for your CPU and compiles it automatically, the speed difference is incredible.

I wonder how much of it is a placebo effect. I noticed almost speed difference between Gentoo and Debian on the same machine. On the other hand, I noticed a good deal of difference between gcc 2.9x and gcc 3.2.

by Ben (not verified)

Yeah, I wonder about this too. I have an Athlon4 1GHz with 384MB of RAM. I notice Gento 1.4 with gcc 3.2 to be a bit faster than Debian, but night and day compared to SuSE or MDK (and to a lesser degree, RH.)

by whocares (not verified)

I personally think that much of it *is* a placebo effect. I did notice a slight difference, but nothing revolutionary.

However, switching from gcc 2.9.X to gcc 3.2 really made a *huge* difference, especially when using the "-fomit-frame-pointer" flag to gcc. I read somewhere that bzip2 runs about 25% faster with that single change to the compile flags, and after recompiling my Gentoo distro I'm inclined to think that it's like that with most programs. Especially KDE startup times decreased noticably, but the desktop also felt much "snappier".

Unfortunately some programs are extremely unhappy with -fomit-frame-pointer. One particular version of binutils got completely hosed and left my system unable to compile anything. Much fixing of this has gone on in Gentoo over the last few months, so I'm just about ready to try it again. :)

by JC (not verified)

If you compile kde from sources, don't forget to disable the debug (--disable-debug) and --enable-final to have smaller objects (it will also load faster)
and -mcpu=i686

I'm not using gcc-3.x yet, but it's already working fast, really fast.
Sometimes I even don't have to click on konqueror icon and konqueror is already loaded :-))))

by luci (not verified)

configure: error: unrecognized option: -mcpu=i686

by JC (not verified)

When I suggest -mcpu=i686, it's not an option in ./configure but flags :
export CFLAGS="-O2 -march=i386 -mcpu=-i686"
export CXXFLAGS="-O2 -march=i386 -mcpu=-i686"
and then configure, make && make install

Sorry, I should have mention that before :)

by luci (not verified)

it's ok, thanks for explaination :)
i will try it.

by Melchior FRANZ (not verified)

Come on! I'm running KDE3.1b2 on a 266 MHz machine and it is =very= usable, even when I'm compiling stuff in the background. Your computer must be badly set up. Of course, my KDE is self-compiled, but nobody keeps you from doing the same.

by Thomas (not verified)

My old HP Omnibook with 233 Mhz and 96 Mb Ram runs KDE 3.0.3
and it's reasonably fast. I'm running SuSE 8.0. The only thing I
modyfied was the startkde skript. I removed all SuSE specific stuff and
now even login to KDE is fast enough :)

by ac (not verified)

This issue has been discussed to death and beyond. It's not like developers aren't aware of the issues you mention, but it certainly isn't as easy as just dropping everything at hand and just "concentrate on speed".

I can imagine KDE developers are pretty damn tired of hearing this (and I suspect they long ago stopped reading comments about KDE speed).

by sorry (not verified)

i understand your point, but you also want to see them developing with new PeeCees in mind.try running xp on a Athlon400...

by fault (not verified)

An athlon 400 does not exist. It started at 500mhz.
WindowsXP does run pretty fast on a (slot-A) Athlon 600 though. You've just got to turn things like auto-indexing off. Of course, that's more because of the slow hard drive than the processor.

by George Bush (not verified)

I run it on KDE3 on a 266Mhz laptop and it runs fine. Sure the "loading" is alot slower than Gnome, but who cares. It's like 2 seconds....not gonna kill anybody. Actually I fine the memory is a bigger factor in speed. I guess KDE was a little slow in moving windows around back when I had 128MB ram...but now that I got 512MB it's really fast. But I think X is the one actually handling all the window moving stuff anyway. That laptop has 96MB and kde runs fine, but java is slow!!

by Thomas (not verified)

Hm.. my laptop has even a slower CPU (233 Mhz) and 96 Mb Ram.
With KDE I've a filemanager and a webbrowser and built-in
sftp-client (I like this kio-slave a lot !)
All components load almoast immediately (really)

O.k. standard Gnome filemanager (do not even try to _think_ of Nautilus. This beast won't load in half an hour on my weak laptop) loads faster than
Konqu does... (at least for the first start)
...but to be fair I'd have to compare Nautilus with Konqu...

For webbrowsing I can not use Mozilla (another beast that kills my time).
If I want to have gecko I have to use Galeon (and even galeon has to load
the gecko engine)

So I'm better of with KDE at the moment

by NS (not verified)

I could not understand why AMD400 is slow for KDE3. I run KDE3.0.3 Keramic on Armada 1500c Celeron 366Mh with 64mb RAM. I even run KDE 3.1 beta on it. It works fine. I find Gnome2 a bit slower than KDE3. I could assure you that KDE 2.1 is slower than KDE 3. I guess XFree86 on this AMD400 is not properly configure. Do a bit of reading on what graphic you got and visit xfree86.org for how to configure it properly.

by Håvard (not verified)

For the first beta I compied QT 3.1 beta 1 and then compiled KDE.
For some reason things seemed much more responsive then than with
QT 3.0.5???
But now I see that the requirements say that B2 won't work with QT
3.1 B1 (or B2). There was only a small glitch in the UI with QT 3.1
B1 and KDE 3.1 B1.

Håvard

by Karl Günter Wünsch (not verified)

It says that it should work with Qt-3.1-b2 so what's the problem?

regards
Charlyw

by jaymz (not verified)

funny, i'm sitting on a p166 running kde3 right now, and it's fine... it just need rams (it's kinda nasty in 32meg, but in 64meg it's all good(tm)).
-jj

by laz-e-coyote (not verified)

How on earth does it work fast on a pentium166?
I have a Pentium III 550Mhz Coppermine with 128mb ram using gentoo and it works slow
The main problem is that it takes way too much memory and swaps like a maniac.
When it doesn't swap it works really fast, but it always swaps so it always works slow.

Is there any way reduce the memory consumption or something like that?
Am I doing something wrong? my gentoo version is 1.4rc1, I emerged kde by running 'emerge kde'
My CFLAGS and CXXFLAGS are "-march=pentium3 -O3 -pipe -fomit-frame-pointer"
People here with 350mhz processors say it works really fast for them, then I don't understand what's wrong with my system.

by gunnar (not verified)

kde is great and i use it for all my work!!! thanx

but - who is choosing names such KRfb and KRdc for desktop sharing????

oh man. is it so difficult to name it deskshare or something else u can remember?

anyway. looking forward to kde3.1.

-gunnar

by Tim Jansen (not verified)

KRfb and KRdc are internal names, you will never see them (unless you call them by command line and look at the source code). The public names are 'Desktop Sharing' and 'Remote Desktop Connection'.
Rfb stands for Remote FrameBuffer, the first version was based on an app called x0rfbserver. Rfb is also the official name of VNC's protocol. Rdc stands for Remote Desktop Connection.