KDE 2.2beta1: Ready to Roll

It's finally official: KDE 2.2beta has been
announced. "With this release, KDE is in a great position to deliver a very strong KDE 2.2 release," said Waldo Bastian, the KDE 2.2 release coordinator. "With support for IMAP, the totally new printing framework and improved proxy support, KDE 2.2 will be an excellent foundation for the desktop needs of many businesses." Some other goodies: KMail now can send mails without
blocking. Konqueror enhancements include stopping
animated GIFs (thank you, thank you!!), "Send File" and "Send Link"
options, new file previews and lots of new plugins. Noatun boasts
an improved plugin architecture and some new visualization plugins. KWin has Xinerama support. A number of new applications are part of the package, such as KPersonalizer (desktop configuration) and Kooka (scanning).
For a longer list, read the
announcement (also attached below),
and for a really long list of improvements, read the
ChangeLog. As always, enjoy, and thanks to the KDE "we never sleep" Team!

 

DATELINE JULY 4, 2001

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

New KDE Beta Released for Linux Desktop

KDE Ships Beta of Leading Desktop with Advanced Web Browser, Anti-Aliased Font Capabilities for Linux and Other UNIXes

July 4, 2001 (The INTERNET).
The KDE
Project
today announced the release of KDE 2.2beta1,
a powerful and easy-to-use Internet-enabled desktop for Linux. KDE
features Konqueror, a
state-of-the-art web browser, as an integrated
component of its user-friendly desktop environment, as well as
KDevelop,
an advanced IDE, as a central component of KDE's powerful
development environment. KDE 2.2beta1 completely integrates the
XFree anti-aliased
font extensions
and can provide
a fully anti-aliased font-enabled desktop.

The primary goals of this release, which follows two months after the release
of KDE 2.1.2, are to provide a preview of KDE 2.2 and to involve
users and developers who wish to request/implement missing features or
identify problems. Code development is currently focused on stabilizing
KDE 2.2, scheduled for final release later this quarter.
Despite all the improvements, KDE 2.2 will be binary compatible with KDE 2.0.

Major changes to KDE since the last stable release are
enumerated below. In addition, a
more
thorough list of changes
since the KDE 2.1.1 release,
FAQ about the release, are
-->
as well as information
on using anti-aliased fonts
with KDE, are available at the KDE
website.

KDE 2.2beta1 and all its components are available for free under
Open Source licenses from the KDE
server
and its mirrors (including
many precompiled packages) and can
also be obtained on CD-ROM.
As a result of the dedicated efforts of hundreds of translators,
KDE 2.2beta1 is available in
38 languages and
dialects
. KDE 2.2beta1 ships with the core KDE
libraries, the core desktop environment (including Konqueror), developer
packages (including KDevelop), as well
as the over 100 applications from the other
standard base KDE packages (addons, administration, artwork, bindings, games,
graphics, multimedia, SDK, network, PIM and utilities).

Incremental Changelog

The following are the major improvements, enhancements and fixes since the
KDE 2.1 release earlier this year:

  • KDE has added a new plugin-based printing framework, which features:
    • support for CUPS,
      lpr and rlpr, though support for other printing systems can be
      easily added;
    • a Control Center module for managing printers
      (add/remove/enable/disable/configure), print servers (currently
      only CUPS), and print jobs (cancel/hold/move);
    • a configurable filter mechanism (for setting number of pages per
      sheet, etc.);
    • a print job viewer for the KDE panel's system tray; and
    • support for configurable "pseudo-printers", such as fax machines,
      email, etc.;
  • Konqueror, the KDE file manager and web browser, sports a number of
    new features:
    • HTML and JavaScript handling has been improved and made faster;
    • Ability to stop animated images;
    • New file previews, including PDF, PostScript, and sound files;
    • New "Send File" and "Send Link" options in the Filemenu;
    • Added a number of new plugins:
      • A web archiver for downloading and saving an entire web page, including
        images, in an archive for offline viewing;
      • Babelfish
        translation of web pages;
      • A directory filter for displaying only specified mimetypes (such as
        images);
      • A quick User Agent changer to get Konqueror to work with websites
        that discriminate based on the browser you are using;
      • An HTML validator using W3C to
        validate the XML/HTML of a webpage (useful for web developers);
        and
      • A DOM tree-viewer for viewing the DOM structure of a web page (useful
        for web developers);
    • New configuration for user-defined CSS stylesheets;
    • Saving toolbar layout in the profile;
    • A new "Most Often Visited" URL in the Go menu; and
    • Many other enhancements, usability improvements and bug fixes.
  • KDevelop, the KDE IDE, offers a number of new features:
    • Enhanced user interface with an MDI structure, which supports multiple
      views of the same file;
    • Added new templates for implementing a KDE/Qt style library and Control
      Center modules;
    • Updated the kde-common/admin copy (admin.tar.gz); and
    • Extended the user manual to reflect the new GUI layout and added
      a chapter for using Qt Designer with KDevelop projects;
  • KMail, the KDE mail client, has a number of improvements:
    • Added support for IMAP mail servers;
    • Added support for SSL and TSL for POP3 mail servers;
    • Added configuration of SASL and APOP authentication;
    • Made mail-sending non-blocking;
    • Improved performance for very large folders;
    • Added message scoring;
    • Improved the filter dialog and implemented automatic filter
      creation;
    • Implemented quoting only selected parts of an email on a reply;
    • Implemented forwarding emails as attachments; and
    • Added support for multiple PGP (encryption) identities;
  • New Control Center modules:
    • Listing USB information (attached devices);
    • Configuring window manager decoration;
    • Configuring application startup notification;
    • Configuring user-defined CSS stylesheets;
    • Configuring automatic audio-CD ripping (MP3, Ogg Vorbis); and
    • Configuring key bindings;
  • Added Kandy, a synchronization tool for mobile phones and the KDE address
    book, and improved KPilot address book synchronization;
  • KOrganizer, the KDE personal organizer, has a number of improvements:
    • Added a "What's Next" view;
    • Added a journal feature;
    • Switched to using the industry-standard iCalendar as the default file
      format;
    • Added remote calendar support; and
    • Added ability to send events using KMail, the KDE mail client;
  • Noatun, the KDE multimedia player, sports a number of new features:
    • Improved the plugin architecture and added a number of new plugins:
      • An Alarm plugin for playing music at a specified time;
      • A Blurscope plugin which creates an SDL-based blurred monoscope;
      • A Luckytag plugin for guessing titles based on filenames;
      • A Noatun Madness plugin, which moves the Noatun window in sync with
        the music being played;
      • A Synaescope plugin, based on
        Synaesthesia,
        which provides an impressive SDL-based visualization; and
      • A Tyler plugin, which is similar to
        XMMS's
        Infinity;
    • Added support for pre-amplification; and
    • Added support for hardware mixers;
  • Added a Personalization wizard (KPersonalizer) to configure the desktop
    settings easily;
  • Added KDict,
    a powerful graphical dictionary client;
  • Added KDE-wide scanning support with the application Kooka;
  • Replaced the default editor KWrite with the more advanced editor Kate,
    which provides split views and basic project management;
  • The window manager now supports Xinerama (multi-headed displays);
  • Improved the file dialog, including mimetype-based file previews;
  • Improved the configurability of the KDE panel;
  • Added IPv6 and socks support to the core libraries;
  • Improved application startup:
    • applications are now placed on the desktop from which they were
      launched; and
    • startup notification can be configured with a new Control Center module,
      with options including a busy cursor next to the application's icon;
  • Improved icons and added new 64x64 icons;
  • New window manager decoration styles (quartz, IceWM themes, MWM, Web);
  • Improved the help system, which is now XML-based;
  • Added support for the Meta and AltGr keys for shortcuts; and
  • Made many other usability improvements.

For a much more complete list, please read the
official
ChangeLog
.

Downloading and Compiling KDE

Source Packages.
The source packages for KDE 2.2beta1 are available for free download at
http://ftp.kde.org/unstable/2.2beta1/src/
or in the equivalent directory at one of the many KDE ftp server
mirrors.

Library Requirements.
KDE 2.2beta1 requires at least qt-x11-2.2.4, which is available from
Trolltech at
ftp://ftp.trolltech.com/qt/source/
under the name qt-x11-2.2.4.tar.gz,
although
qt-2.3.1is recommended (for anti-aliased fonts,
qt-2.3.0and XFree 4.0.3 or
newer is required).
KDE 2.2beta1 will not work with versions of Qt older than 2.2.4.

Compiler Requirements. Please note that
gcc 3.0 is not
recommended for compilation of KDE 2.2beta1. Several known miscompilations
of production C++ code (such as virtual inheritance, which is used in aRts) occur with this compiler.
The problems are mostly known and the KDE team is working with the gcc team
to fix them.

Further Instructions.
For further instructions on compiling and installing KDE, please consult
the installation
instructions
and, if you encounter problems, the
compilation FAQ.

Installing Binary Packages

Binary Packages.
Some distributors choose to provide binary packages of KDE for certain
versions of their distribution. Some of these binary packages for
KDE 2.2beta1 will be available for free download under
http://ftp.kde.org/unstable/2.2beta1/
or under the equivalent directory at one of the many KDE ftp server
mirrors. Please note that the
KDE team is not responsible for these packages as they are provided by third
parties -- typically, but not always, the distributor of the relevant
distribution (if you cannot find a binary package for your distribution,
please read the KDE Binary Package
Policy
).

Library Requirements.
The library requirements for a particular binary package vary with the
system on which the package was compiled. Please bear in mind that
some binary packages may require a newer version of Qt and/or KDE
than was included with the particular version of a distribution for
which the binary package is listed below (e.g., LinuxDistro 8.0 may have
shipped with qt-2.2.3 but the packages below may require qt-2.3.x). For
general library requirements for KDE, please see the text at
Source Code - Library
Requirements
above.

Package Locations.
At the time of this release, pre-compiled packages are available for:

Please check the servers periodically for pre-compiled packages for other
distributions. More binary packages will become available over the
coming days and weeks. In particular,
RedHat Linux packages should be
available shortly.

About KDE

KDE is an independent, collaborative project by hundreds of developers
worldwide to create a sophisticated, customizable and stable desktop environmentemploying a component-based, network-transparent architecture.
KDE is working proof of the power of the Open Source "Bazaar-style" software
development model to create first-rate technologies on par with
and superior to even the most complex commercial software.

Please visit the KDE family of web sites for the
KDE FAQ,
screenshots,
KOffice information,
developer
information
and
a developer's
KDE 1 - KDE 2 porting guide.
Much more information about KDE is available from KDE's
web site.

Trademarks Notices.
KDE and K Desktop Environment are trademarks of KDE e.V.
Linux is a registered trademark of Linus Torvalds.
Unix is a registered trademark of The Open Group.
PostScript is a registered trademark of Adobe Systems Incorporated.
Trolltech and Qt are trademarks of Trolltech AS.
All other trademarks and copyrights referred to in this announcement are the property of their respective owners.

Press Contacts:

United States:

Kurt Granroth
[email protected]
(1) 480 732 1752 
Andreas Pour
[email protected]
(1) 917 312 3122

Europe (French and English):

David Faure
[email protected]
(44) 1225 837409

Europe (English and German):

Martin Konold
[email protected]
(49) 179 2252249

Dot Categories: 

Comments

by Dude (not verified)

Anyone have screenshots of this thing?

by Pasha (not verified)

Hahaha, you'll need about a 100 screenshots to show all new things!!

by Navindra Umanee (not verified)

I came across these (as mentioned on the gui-lords site):

http://home.houston.rr.com/texstar/index.html

by Jon (not verified)

Interesting screenshots, but it's a real pity that they are using a Windows window&widget style: the default KDE one looks much prettier, and doesn't give the casual viewer the impression that KDE is just a Windows rip-off. If I want to use Windows, I'll use Windows.

by not me (not verified)

Also, the first thing that guy did after installing the beta was to replace the Konqueror icon in Kicker with Opera! What kind of KDE fan is he?! Konqueror is way better!

by Jason (not verified)

Whatever he wants to run is his business. Opera for Linux rocks in my opinion.

by Antialias (not verified)

Opera for Linux doesn't have multilanguage support at all. It is probably OK for english speaking users...
I experienced Opera not being faster than Konqueror and Netscape 4.7.
I dunno about Java support in Opera for Linux.

by Rikard Anglerud (not verified)

I've found that opera is fast enough for me to use on my p200; which apart from netscape - nothing else is. (konqueror is fairly fast while browsing in one window - but opening new windows takes a long time, and tends to block the UI.)

by Evandro (not verified)

try opening new windows with the Ctrl + N command. they´ll start much faster (less than 1 second here).

by Mattias (not verified)

What's the reason for all "unstable" versions of KDE having only the right kicker hide button and the stable releases having both or none by option? I think it could be nice to be able to choose between left, right, both or none (replace left/right with top/bottom for vertical panels) in the stable releases. Admittedly, it's not the most necessary feature, though.

by Remenic Q. LeBeau (not verified)

lol, that guy doesn't know how to make screenshots =))

And why do i get the feeling this dude is Pro-Windows? KDE has other themes, too!

Nah, don't judge the new KDE on these screenshots... they're really bad compared to the real thing. In my humble opionion that is =)

by Jason (not verified)

Dont be so hard on the guy, he threw them up rather quickly so everyone could atleast see the new wizard. Geesh...

by Remenic Q. LeBeau (not verified)

Hmm okay, you're right. To be honest, i didn't really look at it that way... I hope the author can forget what i said. Sorry.

by mpattonm (not verified)

Whow... KDE2.2 is gonna rock!

by mpattonm (not verified)

Whow... KDE2.2 is gonna rock!

by maxwest (not verified)

oh my god,

this rocks, ford better has a close look :-).

the personalizer is a great move (just there is no undo yet :-).

i'm always amazed in how many areas (small and large) changes happen. all these improvements have a time to market vendors even don't dream about.

for sure these are some of the great benefits of open source that gives it the capability to move beyond other "software business plans".

thanks to the community.

maxwest

by Andras (not verified)

Actually I tried the latest snapshot two days ago, but it crashes a lot of time (font selection in KControl and during printing). I thought that it's a good idea to use the latest beta and report the bugs (if they are present) for this one, so I downloaded it (yesterday and today). But there is a problem:
The kdesupport package is missing both from the source and Suse 7.1 directory, and the when I configure the kdelibs, it claims that I will not have sound without the kdesupport.
Do we really need it (I think we do)? Now I'm trying to use the snapshot version of the kdesupport.

by Kalle Pahajoki (not verified)

The kdesupport module is deprecated except as a convenience for the cvs compiling people who do not want to go hunting for the right pieces of software (the one piece of software not available elsewhere, mimelib, was moved to kdenetwork). It is the job of your distributor to provide the necessary packages like libxml and, in your case, libaudiofile.

Thanks for clarification! I hope that the Suse packages are working correctly. I just had the problem because I'm compiling the packages for a Solaris 2.6 machine (as user), and it was present in the CVS, but not in this release. Anyway, the KDE is getting better each day!

If you succeed, would you put tarballs online. Please ?

I have been unable to compile KDE under solaris 2.6 since the 1.1 series -- because of gcc not compiled with libtools. And the admin does not have time.

There is a good chance that I will succeed, because I've done it a lot of time (altough I didn't compiled everything, just the kdelibs, kdebase, kdenetwork, kdeutils). The problem with making the tarballs is, that I do this at my work (as an user), with restrictions about where will it be installed and so on. I wrote a "tutorial" how to do this, I can post it to you (or to anyone who is interested in - maybe put it somewhere on the web (KDE pages???) ). It may help you to get it work.

Please, I'm VERY interested in this tutorial. I'm also running Solaris 2.6 at work ,and I tried many times compile to compile KDE 2.x with no success.

Please, I'm VERY interested in this tutorial. I'm also running Solaris 2.6 at work ,and I tried many times compile to compile KDE 2.x with no success.

For thos who are interested: please send me a private mail, so I can send the tutorial for you. (Otherwise provide an email address when you write a message to this site).

by Aronnax (Acqua ... (not verified)

Someone has noticed that kdenetwork* RPM packages for Mandrake 8.0 of KDE2.2beta1 are missing?

Best regards.

by ac (not verified)

maybe its just your favorite mirror
mine has stopped updating at kdeartwork.

aaaargh!

anyone who knows a better one?

by vluvlu (not verified)

the french i18n file is missing, too

by Antialias (not verified)

All packages are available on Mandrake Cooker mirrors.

Regards,

by TheDarb (not verified)

If you don't want to go and install tons of Cooker packages to meet the dependancies... Texstar of PCLinuxOnline has built the missing kde-network and kde-network-devel packages. These work with the packages for Mandrake 8 available on ftp.kde.org (and its mirrors).

I believe he used a modified spec file from 2.2alpha1 against the 2.2beta1 source tree. Clever, that guy...

*TheDarb
GUI-Lords Host
Dedicated to Linux Domination of the Desktop.

by TheDarb (not verified)

Argh... those HTML tags sure didn't work, now did they! *sigh* Oh well, you get the idea... Texstar on PCLinuxOnline.com has what you are looking for. He be your KDE pusher man. ;)

*TheDarb

by Jonas Koch Bentzen (not verified)

SuSE Linux users might find that KDM (the login thingy) doesn't work after they have installed the new KDE 2.2beta1: The keys simply do not work, so it's impossible to enter your password. The solution is to push Menu -> Restart X Server - then the keys will work. To avoid that in the future, you could change the KDM settings to allow automatic login. Within KDE, push K -> Preferences -> System -> Logon. Choose the last tab in the menu and enable automatic login for your user.

by daniel kranich (not verified)

Hi,

there's an additional solution to this problem.
You simply have to edit the file (IIRC) /opt/kde/share/apps/kdm/Xservers. There's a comment inside which explains what to do (simply uncomment a line and comment out another one).
I'm not at home at my linux box, so I cannot give
more details.

daniel

by Moritz Moeller-... (not verified)

The file is called (on SuSE):/opt/kde2/share/config/kdm/Xservers

And it contains the following text, maybe it is just a bad default setting:

# Xservers - local X-server list
#
# This file should contain an entry to start the server on the
# local display; if you have more than one display (not screen),
# you can add entries to the list (one per line).··
# If you also have some X terminals connected which do not support XDMCP,
# you can add them here as well; you will want to leave those terminals
# on and connected to the network, else kdm will have a tougher time
# managing them. Each X terminal line should look like:
#»······XTerminalName:0 foreign
#

:0 local /usr/X11R6/bin/X

# For Linux use this one
#0 local@tty1 /usr/X11R6/bin/X vt7

# For Solaris use this one
#:0 local@console /usr/X11R6/bin/X

by ik (not verified)

same here. debian unstable.
seems like a kdm bug

by Will Stephenson (not verified)

Another glitch I'm experiencing (on SuSE 7.1) is:

When I start as a normal user I get a lot of error messages of the form:

kio (KSycoca): WARNING: Found version 32, expecting version 38 or higher. kio (KSycoca): WARNING: Outdated database found

The result is no kioslaves available (even file:/), no icons to speak of, most of the configurable menu entries are gone, and no apps run from the Run Command...

When I start as root, everything works fine.

Any suggestions as to which file has the wrong perms on it?

cheers

Will

by Will Stephenson (not verified)

Fixed:

removed kde-
ksocket-
mcop-

and it works now

Will

by Matthias Pfafferodt (not verified)

Solution:

just don't start the FAM daemon and all will work!

by Jonas Koch Bentzen (not verified)

How do I prevent the FAM from starting?

by Matthias Pfafferodt (not verified)

with yast you can set "START_FAM" to "no" and all works fine (for me )

by zaq rizer (not verified)

another suse user writes:
I feel like I screwed it up real bad. I did everything I could to install the update right but I MUST be missing something. Using kpackage, I first installed kdelibs (well, first i installed cups b/c i needed it) then i installed kdelibs2.2beta. then i tried to install kdebase2.2beta and i need oggvorbis and libogg or whatever, so i installed those. ok...so then i installed kdebase. tried to run konqui, and it didn't work -- no buttons on the toolbar and it wouldn't browse anything. tried to restart kde and here's what i'm getting (something like this:): unreferenced object line XX changeToolbar_style8Q . like i said, i'm not sure if it's that exactly, but it won't run. note: i went straight from kde 2.0.1 to 2.2beta is that the problem? do i need to install kde 2.1 first? how can i now that i've installed 2.2beta. i'm such a newbie...sorry...
thanks in advance for any and all help

by lazaros (not verified)

Hi there,

I have recently downloaded and installed suse linux 10.1 (KDE environment). When I finished all the installing process and was about to start using it, I found out that i cannot login. The screen appeared says "linux-ptmv login" and, although I can type there, when I press enter it ask me a password but i can not type anything. How can I fix this problem, after three days i have not still use linux. I am really pissed off.

Lazaros
Greece

by wim bakker (not verified)

It's great,

I wonder, would it be possible to get it compiled against qt-3.0.0-beta2????

by Jon (not verified)

I don't believe QT 3 is binary compatible with QT 2, so they'd have to bump up the major number of KDE.

Probably, after KDE 2.2 they'll release 2.3 about 6/9 months later, then release a 3.0 fairly soon after that, which will be 2.3 ported to QT 3. Luckily, the changes from QT 2 to QT 3 seem a lot smaller than the changes from QT 1 to QT 2.

by Timothy R. Butler (not verified)

Actually they are saying that there will be a 2.9 release that will be KDE2 on QT3, and then they will release KDE3 some time after that.

-Tim

by Jon (not verified)

Yes, thanks for reminding me. I'd forgotten the exact plans.

by ac (not verified)

With every new KDE release the number of pro-KDE and anti-GNOME trolls increases...
(while the entire overhyped GNOME vs KDE war was only invented by trolls who have nothing else to do)
Let's hope this article doesn't reach Slashdot.

by someone (not verified)

> Let's hope this article doesn't reach Slashdot.

it did ;-)

by KDE_User (not verified)

---- Found this on mosfet site ---------
Update (7/01): Actually, this isn't entirely true anymore. While everything will still remain free software, I'm going to switch to the modified QPL (some of the commerical restrictions will be removed). I'm being forced to do this because I've just been notified of KDE developer's intent to fork code that I never even had in CVS and add it to the KDE packages. It seems anything I do is subject to immediate forking by the KDE team and unofficial versions included in the base packages as a matter of procedure. If I don't want my code there they will just fork it, which has been their right but forks are usually done to add features or fix bugs. In the case of KDE2.2 this code has less features and more bugs! In many cases they didn't even rename their forks, so it makes it difficult for users to tell which versions are the ones in KDE CVS and not officially maintained by the author, and which ones are my versions and maintained by the original developer. Some developers even had the nerve to say *my* versions are the forks, even though I'm the primary author and copyright holder! Nonsense.

Thus the switch to QPL. The following software is going to be re-released under the QPL: Highcolor default, KDEStep, Laptop, Liquid, MegaGradient, ModernSystem, System, and Marble. Sorry for the inconvience this may have caused if this is a problem for you. Of course, KDE has the right to distribute forks based on obselete versions of my software, which were BSD licensed. The new license *will* be enforced for future versions, nonetheless. This is a shame, because I do truly believe the most effective development model is completely open, but this is not the case when the people designing the platform your developing for consistently take inferior versions of your code and add it to the system against your wishes instead of letting users just use your versions instead. It wouldn't be so bad if some independent coder decided to just fork my stuff and release worse versions, I really don't mind competition - but when the entire platform your developing for decides to do it simply because you've decided to start developing independently and adds less features and bugfixes you have a problem.
--- End of Message

I guess someone from KDE Developement Team can clarify rhis to stop this FUD

by Jon (not verified)

It's not a problem. Most of those styles really should be replaces with pixmap styles/themes, anyhow (and it's thanks to Mosfet that we have a nice fast pixmap style engine).

It's a bit of an anachronism to have these code based styles in, that offer absolutely nothing over pixmap styles. Once they are made pixmap themes/styles, they can be also made much easier to update and install.

The one thing we need with KDE 2.3 is a nice window/widget style designer. I imagine people are working on it, but over the summer I might write one as a good introduction to KDE programming for me.

by Hmmm (not verified)

Except beeing faster, which I find to be very important. The also offer a greater liberty as to how the widgets look.