KDE 3.1 RC3: Last Dance?

The KDE Project today released KDE 3.1 RC3 with fixes for several severe bugs in RC2. This RC is likely the last before 3.1 although there remain a few items on the TODO list for KDE 3.1. If you find a showstopper problem in this release candidate not yet listed on bugs.kde.org, please file a report as soon as possible. The download links are up as usual on the KDE 3.1 Info page.

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Comments

by Joe-Black (not verified)

I have the same problem and I am using Mandrake 10.1. I am trying to install kdeveloper, which needs Qt 3.2 or greater to run. To my knowledge Qt 3.2.3 had installed correctly, but the ./configure for kdeveloper can't find it. The problem seems to have something to do with QTDIR. When I set that variable to something different I get a different error. On one error it tells me it can't find the libraries or headerfiles and the other error tells me it can't find library qt-mt. Does anyone have any suggestions because I am completely lost.

by rgx112 (not verified)

me too

by joehacker2004 (not verified)

I had the same problem and i am just posting this incase anyone is still having this problem make sure you use the -thread option when compiling qt and then when you are building a program that requires that version of qt use the --with-qt-dir=/path/to/qt's/root option when you are running ./configure

by Anonymous Coward (not verified)

Someone mentioned upgrading to the lastest k3b.

I confirm that compiling the latest k3b (0.11.22 in this case) worked for me on Ubuntu. Of course i had to install a bunch of additional QT and KDE stuff, and had to pass QT libs with

./configure --with-qt-dir=/usr/share/qt/ --with-qt-libraries=/usr/share/qt3/lib/ --with-qt-includes=/usr/share/qt3/include/

but things are running now and k3b is recognizing my cd writer as writer.

Hope this helps.

by Arindam Haldar (not verified)

hi,
i faced the same problem on my Gentoo-Linux while upgrading kdelibs.
i have just recomplied QT & now i am able to upgrade my kdelibs too.
i am not sure of the sequence, but i have defility upgraded gcc & glibc a few days back.
can someone though some more light to this mistry as to why this is required ?
i was having impression of updating glibc/gcc is upwars compatible etc.. or is it some new features in these packages---have to find out :-)

hope the above info helps...

by Tim (not verified)

# export QTLIB="/usr/share/qt3"
# ldconfig
# ./configure

this should do it, i had the same problem and it worked for me

by idlecat (not verified)

And consume too much resource. I am wondering if there are some workaround. I can't bear the performance watching flash in konqueror using nspluginviewer.

by Dominic Jacques (not verified)

I just want to join my voice to those who want another release candidate. I think the KDE team should not release a product with a lot of bugs (even those minor but annoying ones...) just because there was a deadline for it fixed months ago, like in some commercial development.

I also think that some work should be done to increase the speed of KDE. How can I prove that Linux is faster and more efficient than Windows if its best user interface is slower?

Try compiling everything from source with gentoo and CFLAGS="-O3 mcpu=athlon-xp"
I'm not complaining right now :)
Running X-4.2.99.3, kde-3.1_rc3, gnome-2.1.2 :))) at amazing speed :)

by Dominic Jacques (not verified)

Already done.

I'm using Gentoo 1.4 on a PIII 450Mhz. I know it's not a really fast machine for today's standards but I run Windows 2K on the same machine and it's faster. However, I must say that GCC 3.2 and the patches for a preemptive kernel helped a lot to reduce the gap. Maybe the next thing to do is to try to compile KDE with the fast malloc implementation.

by ThanatosNL (not verified)

I guess they don't tell you this when you use Gentoo, but any LFS'er around here (just ask kidcat) knows that -O3 is bad news--it makes the bins rather large, and the speed kill from the large bin sitting in memory is worse than the performance gains. Stick with -O2, and be truly 'leet' :)

Still, I trust a Gentoo user compiling stuff more than a Mandrake user around here :) No offense to Mandrake users of course.

sorry ThanatosNL.. *but*... unless ppl are so fortunate to have some spiffy scsi raid the -Os is *still* the king of opts when it comes to kde.. i have now reached the point where my KDE speedwise saws down windows to the point where it becomes directly amusing :) I will publish a letter or an article about optimizing linux for workstation use in the near future (when i have bitch-slapped glibc to behave the way i want) that will focus on first responsivenes and seccond runtime.

/kidcat

by ThanatosNL (not verified)

Shweet...next time I compile KDE I'll try -Os. thx ;)

by standsolid (not verified)

hey hey now

I am a refugee LFS user. I did the whole system I did it all. I'm running a 1.2 ghz athlon system

I then switched to CRUX because the speed over SuSE --> LFE was very minimal. I didn't like compiling a proggie whenever i downloaded it. I wanted binaries.

CRUX was _great_, except binaries were for the core install.

I set my g/f up with a computer and installed Mandrake 9 for her. I was impressed with the rpm problems fixed (urpmi), and the compilation flags i used in LFS were probably apllied (Along with being compiled with GCC 3.1 and a newer glib than mdk8.2) for the speed increase.

I am now using Mandrake (considering Gentoo) and am happy. I am a l337 linux user (i.e. I don't use draktools to edit my configuration. vi for me thx). I love having binary packages, and the speed isn't all that much better. I know what compiling is, and I am a mandrake user. my two cents

by help (not verified)

checking if STL implementation is SGI like... no
checking if STL implementation is HP like... no
configure: error: "no known STL type found - did you forget to install libstdc++-devel ?"
..tho i have installed
ii libstdc++5-dev 3.2.1-0pre6 The GNU stdc++ library version

from KDELIBS-rc3 (running Debian Sid)

is KDE3.1rc3 compatible with 3.2.1-pre6?

by help (not verified)

Checking for Qt... configure: error: Qt (>= Qt 3.1 (20021021)) (library qt-mt) not found. Please check your installation!
For more details about this problem, look at the end of config.log.
Make sure that you have compiled Qt with thread support

./configure --prefix=/opt/kde/ --with-alsa --with-qt-dir=/opt/qt --with-qt-includes=/opt/qt/include/ --with-qt-libraries=/opt/qt/lib/
declare -x QTDIR="/opt/qt"

QT 3.1 was installed into /opt/qt

by help (not verified)

configure:25214: checking for Qt
configure: 25283: /opt/qt/include//qstyle.h
taking that configure:25391: rm -rf SunWS_cache; g++ -o conftest -Wnon-virtual-dtor -Wno-long-long -Wundef -Wall -pedantic -W -Wpointer-arith -Wmissing-prototypes -Wwrite-strings -ansi -D_XOPEN_SOURCE=500 -D_BSD_SOURCE -Wcast-align -Wconversion -O2 -fno-exceptions -fno-check-new -I/opt/qt/include/ -I/usr/X11R6/include -DQT_THREAD_SUPPORT -D_REENTRANT -L/opt/qt/lib/ -L/usr/X11R6/lib conftest.cc -lqt-mt -lpng -lz -lm -ljpeg -ldl -lXext -lX11 -lSM -lICE -lpthread 1>&5/tmp/ccF8fRpF.o(.text+0xb): In function `main':
: undefined reference to `QString::null'
/tmp/ccF8fRpF.o(.text+0x10): In function `main':
: undefined reference to `QStyleFactory::create(QString const &)'
/tmp/ccF8fRpF.o(.text+0x1e): In function `main':
: undefined reference to `QCursor::QCursor(int)'
/tmp/ccF8fRpF.o(.text+0x29): In function `main':
: undefined reference to `QCursor::~QCursor(void)'
/tmp/ccF8fRpF.o(.QValueListPrivate::gnu.linkonce.t.(void)+0x21): In function `QValueListPrivate::QValueListPrivate(void)':
/tmp/ccF8fRpF.o(.QValueListPrivate::gnu.linkonce.t.(void)+0x2a): In function `QValueListPrivate::QValueListPrivate(void)':
: undefined reference to `QString::makeSharedNull(void)'
/tmp/ccF8fRpF.o(.gnu.linkonce.t._._t17QValueListPrivate1Z7QString+0x27): In function `QValueListPrivate::~QValueListPrivate(void)':
: undefined reference to `QString::shared_null'
/tmp/ccF8fRpF.o(.gnu.linkonce.t._._t17QValueListPrivate1Z7QString+0x32): In function `QValueListPrivate::~QValueListPrivate(void)':
: undefined reference to `QStringData::deleteSelf(void)'
/tmp/ccF8fRpF.o(.gnu.linkonce.t._._t17QValueListPrivate1Z7QString+0x5f): In function `QValueListPrivate::~QValueListPrivate(void)':
: undefined reference to `QString::shared_null'
/tmp/ccF8fRpF.o(.gnu.linkonce.t._._t17QValueListPrivate1Z7QString+0x6a): In function `QValueListPrivate::~QValueListPrivate(void)':
: undefined reference to `QStringData::deleteSelf(void)'
/tmp/ccF8fRpF.o(.QValueListPrivate::gnu.linkonce.t.insert(QValueListIte
rator, QString const &)+0x27): In function `QValueListPrivate:
:insert(QValueListIterator, QString const &)':
: undefined reference to `QString::QString(QString const &)'
undefined reference to `QString::makeSharedNull(void)'
collect2: ld returned 1 exit status
configure:25394: $? = 1
configure: failed program was:
#include "confdefs.h"
#include
#include
#include
#include
#include
#if ! (QT_VERSION >= 0x030100)
#error 1
#endif

int main() {
(void)QStyleFactory::create(QString::null);
QCursor c(Qt::WhatsThisCursor);
return 0;
}
configure:25434: error: Qt (>= Qt 3.1 (20021021)) (library qt-mt) not found. Please check your installation!
For more details about this problem, look at the end of config.log.
Make sure that you have compiled Qt with thread support!

this is QT3.1 (installed with thread support)

by Francis Bouchard (not verified)

Did you find what the problem was? Cause the same thing happens to me and I do not know what's wrong ?

by Sad Eagle (not verified)

One thing to check: make sure the compile flags you may be passing to g++ through CXXFLAGS are OK (speaking from experience, it's pretty easy to make a typo in -march or -mcpu values). autoconf is pretty stupid, and to it a compile test failing because it failed or because of a typo in compile flags look the same. One tell-tale symptom of that is the test "Checking whether the C++ compiler is GNU C++" (or such) returning "no" even if you're using g++.

by RJ Marquette (not verified)

Hopefully, you got this fixed by now, but I'm putting this in because I just hit the problem myself and wanted to share the solution and have it archived on the web somewhere:

For me (upgrading to Slackware 9.0), I didn't have the kernel headers installed. I assumed installing a new kernel from source would put new header files in /usr/include/linux, but it didn't, at least not as part of make bzlilo. Once I installed the kernel-headers package, it worked perfectly. Note that other compiles failed as well before the headers were installed, including Perl modules.

So, there's something to check.

--RJ

by David (not verified)

For gentoo:
emerge STLport

by Ralph (not verified)

Sorry, but this doesn't fix the problem.

by Kevin (not verified)

Yay, emerge -u world works again on my Gentoo install!
Thanks, you are a thug.

by Kevin (not verified)

sorry about the double post... and it doesn't fix it in gentoo. crap.

by Kevin (not verified)

According to

http://bugs.gentoo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=38634

gentoo users can re-emerge gcc and that should fix things

by Terrence (not verified)

re emerge gcc
then run gcc-config -f

All [xft] fonts such as Bitstream [xft] don't appear in font list so that I can't choose these fonts to costomize my desktop. It did appear in previous version of KDE - 3.0.1, 3.0.3 and work fine. I get all packages compiled successfully, but I don't know how to check whether there is problem in QT3.1. And font anti-aliasing works well.

Could anyone help me, please?

OS: LFS4.0
KDE3.1RC2
gcc3.2

I've noticed the same thing with RC2, exept my font of choice is Verdana. I was just getting comfortable with trusting kde to xset everything too! I'm waiting for 3.1 to stabilize, because my work depends on the stability of my box. That's one of the reasons I use KDE on Linux. I wonder if specifying FontPath "/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/truetype/" would fix it? (I haven't tried it myself, because I'm marginally content with 3.0.4)

by Scotty Yallen (not verified)

They went thru the Alpah and Beta stages of LM 9 really quick But, Now they seem to be "hung on RC3". And now especially that KDE 3.1 looks so spiffy.

I don't have the stomach or the intestine to spare to keep trying to download and compile KDE stuff by hand. I'll leave it up to the PRO'z

Scott M. Yallen

by midnight_runner (not verified)

I am also running LFS 4.0, GCC 3.2 but KDE 3.1 RC3 ... I don't think it is KDE issue (but I haven't checked) .. .in /etc/X11/XF86config-4 there should be a FontPath to the folder of your fonts... remember to have a fonts.path or create it with ttmkfont ... anyway, look at beyound.lfs just before X (Freetype something)...

I've specified /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/TTF in XF86config-4. Where I added Bitstream Cyberbit Unicode and some other TrueType fonts. The fonts.dir and fonts.scale were generated according to beyond.lfs (ttmkfont somethings). It works well - Bitstream Cyberbit and Bitstream Cyberbit [xft] are available - in KDE3.0.3 and KDE3.0.4, and also KDE3.1beta2. But for KDE3.1RC3, ONLY Bitstream Cyberbit (without [xft]) is available. Unlike [xft] partner, Bitstream Cyberbit fonts are DOUBLE spaced which look unnatural.

Freetype version 2.1.2.

by Jesper Juhl (not verified)

I just compiled kdelibs and kdebase and installed them on my Slackware 8.1 system (building the rest right now). I was using KDE 3.1beta1 before this, and I must say that the changes from beta1 to RC3 are impressive. Everything looks better, feels faster and has an overall more 'polished' feel.
This is going to be an impressive release!

by Adrian (not verified)

Where is 3.1? There are no news whatsoever after the rc3 release. Is there going to be a rc4, cause there was a /pub/kde/unstable/kde-3.1-rc4/ on the ftp for a short time. Does anybody know anything.

by Adrian (not verified)
by Giovanni (not verified)

MMM...I think we'll know something new on Monday :|

by Adrian (not verified)

If theres nothing gonna be tomorrow I'll be sadly dissapointed :(

by srs (not verified)

Any news about KDE 3.1???? Does someone knows anything about this? why the silence???

by TimL (not verified)

List: kde-core-devel
Subject: KDE 3.1: delayed
From: Dirk Mueller
Date: 2002-12-05 23:44:24
[Download message RAW]

Hi,

The KDE 3.1 release has to be delayed further. Here is why.

On November 26th, we've been notified by FozZy from the "Hackademy
Audit Project" about security problems in KDE. They can, after user
interaction, cause unwanted execution of commands with the
privileges of the user who runs KDE. We fixed those on the same day and
updated the "hopefully final" KDE 3.1 tarballs. Unfortunately, it was
becoming clear after a quick search in the KDE CVS that the
problematic code is repeated in many places and in many variations.

Yesterday, on the targetted announcement date of KDE 3.1, Waldo and I
realized that while we only had audited maybe 30% of the code yet, we have
found enough occasions for them to be a big showstopper.

A short query on the packagers mailinglist showed that for the majority
there is no big pressure on having a KDE 3.1 to be released
according to the schedule. I'm considering a 3.1 with known security bugs a
no-go anyway, even though we first thought that those are minor that the fix
can wait for 3.1.1, I no longer think that this is the case.

Waldo, George, Lubos and I think that we can finish the audit by middle/end
of next week. This however brings us in a bad position: its unlikely that we
get many binary packages so short before christmas holidays, which means
that KDE 3.1 would go out, if released this year, probably with few or
none binary packages at the announcement date.

So, to sum up, we have two options:

a) Try to finish ASAP and try to get it out before christmas. December
12 could be a good tagging date.

b) Take the time and schedule for a release next year. Something around
January 8, 2003 sounds like a good candidate (tagging date,
announcement rougly a week later)

I neither like any of them, but I prefer to go with b), as it also allows
for other bugs which have been reported to be fixed. For an impression just
have a look at the lately steadily rising open bug count on
http://bugs.kde.org/.

In any way I'll tar up and release the current 3_1_BRANCH as 3.1RC5 in a few
hours. Many fixes for the above mentioned security problems are in there,
but there are still big chunks of code and patches pending for review. There
will be no binary packages as those which were made during the last week
refer to be "KDE 3.1 final" and are anyway not up to date.

As soon as the code review is finished we will have to release updates for
KDE 3.0.x (and at least patches for KDE 2.x) anyway.

Comments, opinions, suggestions, flames welcome.

Dirk

by Dan Scannell (not verified)

This may be out-of-date information, however;

I found out over the weekend that to stop the blinking icons was to turn off the 'hardware icons' on the desktop. Sorry for being so vague, Im remembering from memory.

It must be something that keeps checking mounted and unmounted devices and causing a refresh of the desktop

Hope this helps.

For the record, KDE 3.1 RC3 is the most impressive desktop environment. I was a Gnome 2.x person until Id seen KDE. Well Done! BTW, Im using KDE in a Linux From Scratch environment and was surprised how easy it was to install compared to Gnome.

Dan

by Jarl E. Gjessing (not verified)

What happened to Icon smoothing?
I cant seem to enable iconsmoothing, any idea why?
All the icons have real ugly edges..

by srs (not verified)

Hi guys. I was thinking in two things and wanna know your oppinion about that. The first, is about the kde screensaver. It's a good one, with good modules, but how about putting in the Screensaver module of kde control panel the option for running XScreenSaver? At least running it, but the better would be constructing a kde tool for manipulating the modules and it's configs. This includes putting the XScreenSaver to lock the kde screen also, pressing the lock icon.

The second idea (the most important) is: who has already used XScreenSaver, has seen that it has a option for fadding the screen. The effect would be very nice in KDE 3.1. For example. When the user is going to logout, the screen could be faded to black staying only the kde confirm window visible, and the rest with black 80% or 90% (dark gray). If the user confirms, the screen may be fadding from black before kdm is show. In the same way, when the user logs in via kdm, the window may fade to black untill ksplash gets in action.

There is a lot of places where the fade effect would be very nice without confusing the user or spending user time.

I believe that for the changes that kde team is proposing for 3.1, this fade option would be the crown. :)

by Charlyw (not verified)

I just gave the new RC a spin. I was able to stand it for about 10 minutes before everything in me cried for the old look and feel of Kde3.0.

Whoever thought of making Keramik the default style?

I haven't seen something as uggly in my life (not even the grotty first version of Windows was that bad). I have been using KDE beginning at pre 1.0 state and I am truly appaled by the lack of sophistication the keramik style puts forward. It simply looks as if some child was given a set of crayons and the result was integrated.

I have been recommending and installing KDE based desktops for friends and relatives and I can't honestly recommend using the new style as this is unbearable for anyone older than 10-12 years of age. I sincerely hope the old icon style (which put forward a very good, sleek, professional and consistent look) will not be abandoned some day.

The same holds for the gradient overloaded controls which are a sore to my eyes. There is a very old saying in the graphics desing profession: "If the designer can't find anything innovative he'll use a gradient." The latest styles I have seen were a mess in this regard and while there are times when a gradient may be pleasing to the eye the new style is way over the top.

regards
Charlyw (back on the old 3.0 icon set!)

by Julien Olivier (not verified)

Waow

I feel less alone now.

I too HATE keramik and crystal. I really hope someone will decide to revert to good old KDE default style/icon theme.

Currently, I'm using the KDE default style (not highcolor, plain default) with RedHat bluecurve's icons. That's flat, clean and nice. I couldn't imagine me using the keramik/crystal combination for more than 5 minutes without reverting to something "simpler".

No offence to everaldo and quertz (I think he's keramik's artist). Your style/icons are nice. Yes, they are. But they don't fit for a desktop. I mean that I like to see keramik/crystal screenshots but I hate to have them on my desktop. I like GNOME artwork much better for a real desktop.

by Charlyw (not verified)

So I'm not the only one...

I just realized that the icon set has got an own name: crystal. Hope this will NOT be the default for the release as the first impression really counts. And the SVG-icons really cost quite some time to show (even on a machine as fast as mine at 2Ghz I find that they slow things down).

The toolbar-icons (are those icons there members of the icon set or do they belong to keramik?) are a usability nightmare as well, as they are much too colourfull to be of any use. Didn't someone remember that 10% of all male computer users are colour blind (red green astigmatism)? These people (I'm lucky but I know some people who suffer from that) can't distinguish red from green and thus only recognize some things (such as a stop sign) by their form or alignment (red is always on top of the traffic lights), and a lot of icons only look right in their intended colour. IIRC (I switched very fast to the classical icon theme and style) there are even ones that you can only assign a funtion to by looking at the colour (really really bad!).

IMHO it is really a bad sign for the general public that a subrelease of KDE is looking totally different (as it comes; of course you can revert). First impressions make of break the acceptance of any new software. That's why KDE's similarities and GNOME's dissimliarities from windows drove people to the use of the more familiar one. On Windows XP (have to use it at times) my first thing of customizing is disabling the "design service" which makes it revert to the w2k look and feel as XP's luna is a nightmare in itself again.

regards
Charlyw

by Julien Olivier (not verified)

>> Hope this will NOT be the default for the release as the first impression really counts.

Sadly, it will be the default one.

It might be too late now to change it. Anyways, each time you complain about keramik/crystal being too colorful, too stylish or just ugly, there's always a KDE developer to tell you that you're the minority so you have to shut your mouth... very sad.

The problem with keramik/crystal, IMO, is that most users have only seen them on screenshots. When they'll have used them for a while, they'll want to go back to a cleaner style but that will be too late...

by charlyw (not verified)

They should have had a poll about it. I don't think that there would have been enough support for this uggly duckling to warrant making it default.

regards
Charlyw

by ac (not verified)

Most people like me think it's awesome. Most people are fed up hicolor default. This has been confirmed at shows, etc.

by Anne Observer (not verified)

If you want to say what you like the vote on kde.look.org, ofcourse the downside is that you can't vote for the old stuff, only the new stuff.

by Giovanni (not verified)

Really, I can't see the problem!
Honestly, I like Keramik and Crystal, but, if you dont't you can always change, there's no need to worry I think!
Keramik is the default style, but people aren't so stupid (I hope) to not be able to change it.
See you :)