Ars Technica Reviews KDE 4.0 Beta 1

Ars Technical points out that the first KDE 4.0 beta has hit the streets. "A major milestone release such as 4.0 is a long time in the making. Here follows a number of things to look forward to for those of you brave enough to try this early beta." The lengthy review covers the portability improvements, new build system, new multimedia framework, new artwork from Oxygen, the new Plasma desktop and composite effects in KWin.

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Comments

by Troy Unrau (not verified)

Heh, "lengthy review"... :) It was basically a rehash of my own articles that were posted here first :) Also, "from the un-rah-oo dept"? Aahahah.

For the 4.0 release, expect a 10 page feature :P

by jumpingcube (not verified)

"KWin has now seen testing for nearly a decade and pretty much every corner case has been solved." , hehe, i other kde-sub-projects this counts as "old code" which need to be rewritten, or replaced with a "better" api :-)

like compiz fusion ? :) , just joking...

arts was also tested for nearly a decade and many many many more which were replaced for kde4(.0)

by Troy Unrau (not verified)

There's a difference between keeping a good, working and usable technology than keeping something that is unmaintained, and no one properly understands :)

by Martin (not verified)

I understand it, that poor, poor orphaned thing.
Spaghetti has a soul too, you know!

by Eike Hein (not verified)

> "KWin has now seen testing for nearly a decade and pretty much every corner case has been solved." , hehe, i other kde-sub-projects this counts as "old code" which need to be rewritten, or replaced with a "better" api :-)

> like compiz fusion ? :) , just joking...

There are a couple of differences here specific to kwin:

- kwin has actually been rewritten once before, i.e. it already went through a "now we have hindsight; let's see what we can do better" phase during its lifetime. And that rewrite has held up really well.

- Unlike Compiz Fusion, kwin is capable of scaling from the non-composited case over 2D XRender-based compositing right up to 3D OpenGL-based compositing while offering a full feature set and consistent behavior in all of those cases. No other window manager on Linux/Unix is presently capable of this, i.e. kwin is very much at the top of its game.

by cb (not verified)

It is mentioned some where in this screen-shot http://arstechnica.com/journals/linux.media/kdebeta1_plasma.png,

that not all that beauty is shipped by default! This is annoying because there is incredible beauty in that screen-shot.

This is in regard to the fonts where a default KDE install has always been lacking. As a Joe User, I'd also like to see widgets made a little smaller and smoother to increase screen real estate.

by LordBernhard (not verified)

i wonder about these screenshots:

http://www.nuno-icons.com/images/estilo/

are those real ones or just mockups.. if they are real.. they are AWESOME!!!!!!
good bye kicker hello raptor.. or how it is called nowadays ^^

by LordBernhard (not verified)

and if this aren't real screenshots.. will raptor look a bit like this? *looking to aseigo*^^

by jumpingcube (not verified)

Awsome !!!

by asdx (not verified)

Amazing.

by Me (not verified)

Oh!! they are so beautiful, that, simply, they can't be real! :-(

by Riccardo Iaconelli (not verified)

The code is getting to it.
I'm working on the slider now, that will be used also for krunner, but that's another chapther. =)
The rest is coming with the plasma panel.

by Anon (not verified)

Hi Ruphy,

Thanks for the info :) So is this mockup roughly what you guys are going to be aiming for for 4.0, or just one of many possible designs?

by David (not verified)

Yes, I would like to know that, too, Ruphy. Please tell us!

by Erunno (not verified)

The file menu looks nothing less than totally awesome. And I'm glad that the scrollbars are more visible now although green wouldn't be my first choice ;-)

by thom (not verified)

It's UNIVERSALLY beautiful. really. most beautiful style *ever*.
I really do hope this is the target. It's way nicer and more original than the current implemented style.
Although it could be named oxygen chlorophyl edition ;^)

by szlam (not verified)

But, IMHO, yet again, the whole environment will become really stable around 4.0.8. KDE 3.5.0 -RELEASE 3.5.7 -STABLE (?). ;) :)

by DR (not verified)

And did you really expect it to be any different?

No major distribution that I know of will ship KDE 4 by default until several months into 2008. OpenSuse 10.3 and Kubuntu 7.10 could have chosen to go with KDE4 instead of 3.5.7, but they realize that it will still require more testing in the wild before it can be shipped as default. The reason why we have KDE 3.5 in the first place is because the developers knew that it will take a while before KDE 4 matures to the same level as KDE 3. Otherwise they would have cut it off at 3.4.3(or whatever it was) and started working on KDE 4 several months earlier.

by David (not verified)

I understand Fedora Core 8 will be shipping it. They are aiming for a November 8th release.

by jospoortvliet (not verified)

Well, of course we try to have 4.0 stable and usable... But besides being stable, there is more needed to have it really finished. User generated content, for example. When KDE 4.0 is released, there won't be many plasmoids, scripts, styles and backgrounds for download with GHNS2. That'll take some time.