In this week's KDE Commit-Digest: "Pencils down" marks the end of the Summer of Code for 2007. Python highlighting support, with work on a new, handwritten lexer in KDevelop. A data engine and associated Plasma applet for KGet. Start of the Plasma-based Wikipedia and Service Info applets for Amarok 2. Wikipedia integration, and other improvements in the Step physics simulation package. A console added to KAlgebra. New graphical themes for KGoldRunner. XMP metadata support in Digikam. More progress in the unobtrusive search dialog for Kate. Usability work across many applications. No mixer functionality in Phonon for KDE 4.0. The start of development on KChart 2.
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I dunno about Gaim, but the Kopete devs are working on Decibel/telepathy stuff, thus sharing all technical stuff over freedesktop.org - even better than what you suggest. Writing a Qt interface for Gaim, removing all GTK crap, would equate rewriting it - pretty useless. Sharing the underlying messenger stuff is much more efficient - and it's the road they are taking.
looking forward to a dot article about all this.
And by the way, what does it mean that kopete wont be ready for kde 4.0? will there be no kopete at all? or kopete from 3.5? how does that work?
You don't know GAIM architecture at all. There is no "gtk crap" to remove. Libpurple is pretty modular and is used by the cocoa Mac OSX app Adium.
Ouch! No kopete for 4.0?? Are you sure? That is very bad!!
These days IM is up there with email and web.
I find it hard to imagine there will be NO Kopete... probably just an older/not yet rewritten version.
You will be able to just use the KDE 3.5.x kopete version. And of course, I might be mistaken... (Let's hope so)
BTW it's not like NOTHING is going on, it's also that the lower level technologies like Akonadi and Decibel are aiming for KDE 4.1, so I guess it just makes more sense to aim for that too. Remember we want to do a KDE 4.1 release in six months, so youll hopefully have KDE 4.1 with Kopete, Decibel, Akonadi and of course a lot more before the summer next year :D
I'd really, *really* like to see the KDE Promo team start going into damage control mode and making damn sure that people know just how rough KDE4.0 is going to be, because otherwise it's going to be a PR disaster. Especially given the ludicrous hype around e.g Plasma & Tenor from before those projects were even properly started. I have every faith that the devs will pull off an excellent DE, platform and suite of apps in the med-long term, but the distinction between KDE4 and KDE4.0 is still completely lost on pretty much every user I've seen talking about it and really needs to be impressed on them: most are still thinking that KDE4.0 will be some absolutely incredible paradigm-shift that cures all of the problems associated with the KDE project so far, and they are going to be very disillusioned when they find out the real situation.
GNOME has already gobbled up a huge share of the userbase according to recent polls, and I fear that having people judge the whole KDE4 series based on the buggy and incomplete KDE4.0 release will only exacerbate the situation :/
what would also be good is to name the areas were it will be difficult to meet the deadlines.
This is open source. One does not do "PR damage control". You want to know the state of development, you go look at the SVN. It is more important to impress developers and cutting-edge "advanced" users at this stage than anyone else. If the armchair pundits are unhappy, well, tough.
Second, KDE4 is a huge change, massive. It is a complete dev platform. It is cross-platform. But many KDE apps are not developed in the SVN, and for their developers, it would make no sense to make a release against an unreleased platform.
Thus, the goal of 4.0 is to a have a stable base so the migration of the community apps is possible and happens. But this means that KDE will be "complete" only around 4.2. This is fine, because if an (incomplete) 4.0 doesn't happen, the big porting effort will never take place. And as things go, 4.0, even if incomplete, may well be the coolest DE available on any platform :)
So what's wrong with a delay for 4.0. Nothing. IT's ready when it's ready. I say it again: First Impression matters!!! If 4.0 is going to miss major functionality from 3.5.x, then we should delay 4.0. Just my $0.02.
I've been trying to follow the release planning over the past months somewhat and back then when the current schedule was decided it seemed like the right way to get the developers into release mode and hammer KDE4 into a workable shape. Now with the release date coming closer I've also share other people's concern about the possible PR disaster that may occur should KDE 4.0 be less functional then KDE3, especially when missing common software like the IM. There's also still a lot of basic functionality missing like the taskbar and applets this close to the release date and I fear that it won't get tested enough before the final release.
It's totally possible that I'm talking out of my arse here due to not being aware of what's going on in developer land but would it not possibly be better to delay the release for a few months and have some additional Beta and RC releases instead? KDE 4.0 is a huge rewrite of the desktop and in my opinion this would warrant a longer initial testing phase. Plus, application developers might have a chance to finish porting some applications so that at least they are usable on a KDE3 level. A delay would probably be the lesser evil than the media and user backlash from which future releases will have to recover.
KDE 4.0 will be advertised as being "rough" and most distro's are going to stick to 3.5.x by default but will let users try 4.0 if they wish. The "incredible paradigm shift" will begin with 4.0, but won't be completed for awhile.
If it's "rough" it's called "beta" and never EVER released as a final product!
i would suggest to the people in this thread researching a bit more on open source release methodology. "release early, release often", "betas don't get used", "release when it is ready, but also before it is ready", etc..
seems to be a lot of nerves in this thread sweating over what will happen in the future. the future is always a bit scary because it's rarely ever filled with absolute certainty. the first hint of success or failure is rarely the last word, let alone the middle word =)
as for damage control, some people here are reacting to development code (that is leaps and bounds beyond where it was 6 months ago) as if it was the release itself, as if there was no public communication planned and as if we're releasing a proprietary product versus a community product.
however, it is nice to see how much people do care.
why not be honest to the users and call it "technical preview", then? Oh, and I was using KDE for at least as long as you are, so no need to spoon-feed me the "release often" philosophy cr@p, I'm quite familiar with the concept, thank you.
But I'd like to note that any issue for negativity tends to pop up pretty often in KDE recently:
- First it was Plasma;
- Then Konq vs Dolphin;
- Then "KDE 4.0 will be sub-standard".
Think of $ISSUE and it will be brought up. Not that it's going to help the developers, translators, promo people, in any way...
Personally I'm just waiting to see the release, and judge on final code.
They are being honest.
Who depends on a x.0 product for all their needs?
Give me x.1 every time!
And stop bitching, bitch.
I really don't like that tone of your's, it resembles more of a gnome-related forum :-(
So stop being hysterical and let people do their thing, it'll turn out just fine.
Have to agree with you. I don't see any need to release this as "KDE 4.0", when the features won't be complete until 4.1. Traditionally, major numbers are for features/compatibility issues, while minor numbers are for bug fixes. KDE hasn't done it that way, but it's still what the majority really expect.
By saying the upcoming release is KDE 4.0, lots of people are going to try it out, expecting big things. When it's incomplete, they're just going to go back to GNOME, thinking the KDE users are crazy, and not look at KDE again until 5.x.
I'd also suggest calling it "3.99", or "KDE*BASE* 4.0" or "KDE Development Platform 4.0" or yes, "4.0 technical preview".
As for users "not using betas"... well, that's because you haven't mislead them, and they know it's not yet suitable for them. That's EXACTLY what we need to do.
and delayed the release till December. Thats' a huge relief for everybody
http://lists.kde.org/?l=kde-core-devel&m=118856879831611&w=2
KDE devs have a different definition of beta than that of most computer users.
There's nothing bad in that, is just a matter of warning:
for example gentoo kde-herd decided that kde-4.0_beta1 was far away from the
stability and thoroughness needed to enter the official portage (never
happened before for a beta), and they'll keep this position even to RC and
4.0 release if will be the case.
(said that, for sure KDE 4.0 will contain at least a 3.5 version of kopete)
When I read "Wikipedia integration" I remembered the following dot-article:
http://dot.kde.org/1119552379/
I never heard from this anymore - does the mentioned API already exist?
I have seen some apps integrate wikipedia stuff (games, edu apps like marble, multimedia apps like Amarok), but no integral, KDE-wide API for that yet. Maybe a 4.1 or 4.2 thing, then...
DBpedia is a very useful way of querying the content of Wikipedia semantically (as opposed to using a free text search) via the SPARQL query language, and it combines the data with other sources, such as Musicbrainz or Geonames which makes it powerful. Currently it is a bit slow though as the site only has one machine, instead of a google-like data center.
You should be able to use apis in the Soprano KDE4 lib to query SPARQL end points such as DBpedia with C++ code, (or you can use ActiveRDF with SPARQL in Ruby as I tried out recently).
How easy will it be to use KDE3 apps in a KDE4? I'd like to move over to KDE4 as soon as it's ready, but there are some applications that don't seem like they'll be ported to the new libraries for the 4.0 release.
Will it simply be a matter of having the KDE3 libs installed as well? Sort of like running KDE apps in Gnome?
A lot of people already do the reverse, running KDE4 applications in KDE3. It should pretty much be the same as running Gnome/KDE apps in KDE/Gnome, just having the libraries installed and you should be fine. Though you'll probably have to tweak your settings in both systemsettings (kde4) and kcontrol (kde3) for things like style and color schemes.
Hopefully KDE 4.1 will kill off KDE 3 so that KDE land won't end up like GTK land (stuck with both GTK 2 and GTK 1 for the longest time).
The short-short answer - yes :) KDE3 apps will run against the KDE3 libraries just as fine inside a KDE4 environment (in fact, there was a long discussion at akademy on how to deal with this)
The first beta was actually a second alpha.
Some of the core technologies that are supposed to be the backbone of KDE 4 aren't ready yet, and it looks like many apps were just gaining steam, only to halt in the face of feature freeze.
People who are impatient and who want to run KDE 4 right away can always do that with alpha/beta builds, and do so today. However, those who see a release build will no doubt expect a proper release.
I know this release is huge, and entails a great deal of work, but as much as Ubuntu and the Gnome crowd has been growing and growing, I think this release is crucial to the future of the KDE community. This is just my opinion, but I'd rather see two releases in October.
KDE 4-RC1 and 3.5.8, and then ship KDE 4.0 when it is properly ready. How many incredible features that just missed the cut would make it if the feature freeze were reopened and pushed back say two months?
Every major distro that includes KDE will probably appreciate it more to have a fully-functional KDE 4 that blows people away, rather than one that will open up a slurry of gripes and complaining.
Furthermore, if the KDE devs posted a press release stating that they need a little more help to get over the hurdle, and then send it to Slashdot/Digg, etc. then it might encourage some more volunteers to come see what is happening. Now that the most of the core libraries are in place for KDE 4 (save for stuff like Decibel apparently) it is a better environment for new developers to start hacking on the code. Some fresh blood, and one last big push could really make the KDE 4.0 release even bigger and better, rather than a perceived let down.
And frankly, even if the porting to QT 4 was time intensive, and writing all the underlying libraries was time intensive, the end users will only care about what is immediately visible to them. Two months will not only mean more features sneek past the feature-freeze, but those systems that were already in place for 4.0 currently can get some testing, spit, and polish.
Seriously, I hope this gets some serious thought and consideration.
KDE 3.x line was (by my standards) unusable until it hit 3.4.x, and became somewhat pleasant for use in late 3.5.x. But, without 3.0 there would be no 3.4.x
You will not buy "ready" in 2 extra months .0 Conveys readiness in different ways. The only kind of people that KDE 4. needs now is the application builder, and for them, 4.0 will be ready as in "There is a chance that some significant portion of API will not change from now on"
To simplify the formula: without .0 an open source product is never ready.
That's fine for devs who understand it, but go ask GNOME users how many of them tried KDE 3.x (where x < 4) and gave up because it crashed a lot.
I think they should've tried another distribution. I don't see why KDE apps should be any more inclined to crash than Gnome apps, and I'm sure they aren't.
But that's the thing: KDE probably has better engineering, better object orientation, more integration, better oversight... and yet the early 3.x releases were buggy as hell. It really was 3.3 or 3.4 before things started getting reliable (kmail's IMAP, for instance). Users try the early releases, and take this as an indication of reliability/maturity overall. Thankfully the KDE 4.0 release date has been pushed back now, so hopefully that'll help.
http://troy-at-kde.livejournal.com/6794.html
I was glad to see it. I am very curious about the specific wording. The feature freeze is still in place, however there will apparently be exceptions. For those who can code, I think this is an opportunity to make a last push, and even if no new features make it in, I think two months of testing will help immensely.
For whatever reasons, some features planned in KDE4 will not make it to KDE4.0 but in 4.1. As if this did not happenned to other projects.
So what? What's the deal? Why would that mean that KDE 4.0 will be unusable or severely limited?
I'm pretty confident everybody will make sure everything's in place at release time and I certainly don't judge anything based on the state of the beta.
This is all very exciting, let's cut the doom and gloom crap, please.
As for Gnome, please stop panicking because of this DesktopLinux survey, you know it's utterly worthless. And if inded Gnome is making inroads in popularity, it tells more about Ubuntu's success than Gnome appeal. So there's little KDE devs can do about that, just let them concentrate on the work on KDE4 to make it so appealing it will be chosen as default by the bigger distributions.
It isn't simply the DesktopLinux survey, though those numbers are pretty alarming. Everyone I speak to mentions Ubuntu, from corporate IT guys who have never tried Linux, to random people at my wife's college. Ubuntu is spreading like wildfire. Everyone says it is the perfect Linux to try if you've never tried Linux before, and thusly most people who are new to Linux are experiencing Gnome. Anytime I talk to such a user, they're happy with something simple that seemed to work the first time, and don't want to up and switch again.
Distrowatch.com also paints a similar picture. Google search results show that Ubuntu is a hot topic as well.
Anyone who attempts to dismiss how quickly Gnome and Ubuntu are growing and just burying their head in the sand.
I understand it isn't a competition, and the growth of open-source software and Linux on the whole is a win for everyone. However, more and more support seems centered on what Ubuntu and Gnome are doing, and I'm worried that a poor showing with the KDE 4.0 release certainly isn't going to help.
You're confident that everything will be in place by release time. What are you basing that claim on?
Each week I look forward to the new digest, however each week I am growing more and more disappointed to see yet another feature that won't make release. Will decibel be in place by release time? Given that it was one of the core technologies touted in KDE 4, and all the core technologies were supposed to be done some time ago, I was shocked to hear it didn't finish in time for release.
So should I base my expectations of KDE 4.0's release on the actual real-world use of the beta (crashes all the time, and many core aspects of the desktop you'd use everyday are still missing), the digests (more and more features being cut) or you're assertion that everything is just going to appear in October?
One of the problems faced by the Kopete team is our own success, most of the long term have got jobs and other responsibilities that we didn't have in the days of KDE 3.0, and so development doesn't proceed as quickly as you might like.
However, Decibel is ready and already use in KCall (for VoIP). Kopete's usage of it is not ready for KDE 4.0, and rather than put time into writing code that will only be used in KDE 4.0 and then discarded, we're aiming to make a better Kopete for KDE 4.1.
Your worry that everything is going to be terrible is based on two states which are perfectly normal for the end of a release cycle:
*) Betas crash
*) Features only get cut, not added at this point
Those of you who remember KDE 2 betas and KDE 3 betas can confirm this. If you want something to feel good about, try installing and starting each KDE 4 alpha in sequence and seeing how much progress we have made.
Ubuntu has success because it's well made, not especially because it's Gnome. But they chose Gnome and now there's little KDE can do about that because they won't change to something else. Having a good KDE4 will be good for distributions which provide KDE as default but that's all you can expect. There's no point in worrying about that since there's little we can do about it.
And no, DesktopLinux numbers should not considered alarming since they're basically worthless.
I'm not basing any claim on anything anyway, I have just faith the KDE devs want to release something they're proud of and thus that it will be very nice. I see no point in bugging them with politics or false expectations, I prefer them to concentrate on doing the best they can, which is already fantastic.
If I was interested in running what everybody runs on a computer, I would be running Windows. So I don't mind if 80% of Linux users run Gnome, I use KDE because I find it better and everybody else be damned. A project the size of KDE will always attract devs anyway, and I'm pretty confident it will continue to improve steadily because people do it for fun and not because they have a commercial or political agenda.
So why worrying?
Even the choice for Gnome isn't set in stone. If KDE 4 is good enough, Mark said they would consider switching to KDE as main desktop. Of course, they've spend a huge amount of resources on getting Gnome catch up on KDE in terms of features - that's a waste, sure. But then again, Economy dictates to ignore 'sunk costs', so I hope they can and will ;-)
...if only as a reward for all the people involved in KDE.
Yes, please stop saying things like "some features planned in KDE4 will not make it to KDE4.0 but in 4.1." when Phonon will ship without a mixer, or things like "Krita is perfectly useable and has almost the same number of user that Gimp has" when there are 2 gazzillion gimp tutorials on the net and one, maybe two for Krita.
This will just ruin credibility, users will be moved to think things like "kde 4 is so simple that it's sound framework has not planned a mixer" or "krita is so ugly that it's users are all childs: they can't still write".
Being open-source doesn't means at all that testers/users voices shouldn't be taken in account.
I'd like also to point out that still (beta1 shipped, release planned in less than 2 months) there isn't a system tray at all (another little "feature" that will not make it for KDE 4.0????).
No crying, no screams, no panic: I just think devs should warn users about what to expect from KDE-4.0 , I'm already sure that Ubuntu will not switch to KDE for KDE-4.0 and about sure that most distros will keep 3.5.7 as productivity DE until the release of KDE-4.1 or maybe 4.2....
You are the one helping ruining credibility by giving meanings to one-liner in a changelog you don't understand or while propagating claims I've never read. Well, not just you, most people here who tends to overdo things.
The story about the mixer was explained above as having basically no impact on users : you'll have your sound mixer all right.
This digest is to check where things are going for people interested in following the development process, most people are just not concerned about KDE4 until it's actually released so they won't be disappointed, except maybe if you go and tell them all along that everything is going badly.
Maybe you'll be disappointed by KDE4 because you had high expectations and have been following from the begining what was supposed to be available at release. But most Linux users will actually discover what's new in KDE with the first release, so they'll probably not be very concerned about having Akonadi in KDE 4.1 or not (or whatever else is postponned).
You're just assuming some things won't be there because they're not here yet. So you're crying, panicking, screaming. Yes, that's exactly what you do.
Act as an adult and wait until people who actually do the working finish their job. Then you can judge and comment.
There's no reason yet to believe that KDE4.0 won't be great, even with some missing features.
Hear hear.
Have I ever said something like "Kde 4.0 will not be great" ????
Please try to LISTEN, I'm not judging at all.
What I'm saying is that my expectations were about those of every kde user
(because of the pr...), and that the RISK is that, after all this hype
(that I didn't contribute to spread, really) the 4.0 version of kde will
delude so much that most of the USERS will consider it no more than a
techdemo (devs can have the definition they want for techdemo, but
users have their, most common, one).
I still think developers should make clear what 4.0 is and what's not
(and I'm not telling about Akonadi, but also about TENOR, about
DECIBEL/KOPETE, about PHONON and it's backends, and all the other subprojects
that will not be really finished for october).
So please act as an adult yourself and consider the possibility that this
issue could be real, it's nothing so dramatic to admit that what wasn't
done in more than 12 months can't be done in the remaining 1,5 , this
obviously given the assumption that the public svn is what devs are
using, and there isn't a private svn with months-ahead code hidden inside
(yes, in this case I'm totally wrong and you're totally right, happy?).
It seems like this project is completely abandoned, yet, it's the most convenient application for viewing lm_sensors data (also a patch for viewing HDD temperature exists).
Does anyone have a time and skills to port this application from KDE3 to KDE4?
Why are you saying "most convenient" ?
Isn't superkaramba better?
(and now that there is plasma,
it should be even faster....)
It resembles Motherboard Monitor, besides it works well and has almost zero problems.
No SuperKaramba theme can present information which I need the way I want without all that unnecessary fuss. Plasma widgets are not yet mature and ready.
I HATE this! Why is Dolphin going to be crippled by not having tabs? Is there ANY good reason for this? If you don't want to use tabs, you simply don't use them, even if you could. But if you want to use tabs, and some stupid developers won't implement tabs because they think they have to be gnomish and patronize users? What's the problem in implementing tabs? That it will add a few kilobytes to a 500 Megabyte KDE?
Time.