KDE 3.5 Released

The KDE Project is happy to announce a new major release of the award-winning K Desktop Environment. Many features have been added or refined, making KDE 3.5 the most complete, stable and integrated free desktop environment available. For a quick look at some of the new features see the visual guide to KDE 3.5. Packages are available now for ArchLinux, Kubuntu, Slackware and SuSE or try Konstruct to build it yourself.

Notable changes include:

  • Konqueror is the second major web browser to pass the Acid2 CSS test, ahead of Firefox and Internet Explorer
  • Konqueror can also free webpages from adverts with its new ad-block feature
  • SuperKaramba is included in KDE, providing well-integrated and easy-to-install widgets for the user's desktop
  • Kopete has support for MSN and Yahoo! webcams
  • The edutainment module has three new applications (KGeography, Kanagram and blinKen), and has seen huge improvements in Kalzium

Stephan Kulow, KDE Release Coordinator, said: "The improvements made in the past year show how mature the KDE Project is. KDE is the most powerful desktop environment and development platform in the market. With huge changes expected in KDE 4, our next release, KDE 3.5 should provide users with the perfect productivity platform for the next couple of years."

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Comments

by JC (not verified)

One big improvement for me is Kopete :)

Thanks KDE Team

by Corbin (not verified)

I agree, the new release of Kopete seems great. I think its safe to finally say 'bye bye gaim' ;-).

by Anonymous Coward (not verified)

Do http proxies now work?

by collinm (not verified)

bof... we can't sent file with the icq plugin in kopete... that a very big lack

by morten (not verified)

The biggest in kopete's case, sadly.

by Iuri Fiedoruk (not verified)

Don't forget the inexistence of visible/invisible lists.
I have to create a new msn for home, then added people I like to see me online, and just removed the old msn from home (just for work now).
Voice in msn is sadly adscent too.
Kopete is still behind sim-icq in my opnion, but sim just was discontinued :(

by collinm (not verified)

i hope will we soon be able to send file with icq plugin in kopete...

a lot of people wait this feature

by Hobbit HK (not verified)

Well, Gaim has it now, can't Kopete use that? I know it's built differently, but the idea is probably the same..

by Iuri Fiedoruk (not verified)

sim-icq, also a GPL software can do that also.
But you know, the truth is that most open source projects never trade source or help each other :-P

by Greg (not verified)

Code usually isn't easily transplantable from one project to another. Assuming the file transfer protocol is documented somewhere ( likely since gaim and sim/icq can both work it out ), someone will still need to code support around kopete's internal structure.

by Mathias (not verified)

not the biggest.

I could count all occurences when i wanted to send someone a file via any kind of IM on the fingers of my left hand, and still have enough left to play a quint on the piano (not that i can play the piano at all but you get my point).

but what I really lack in kopete a way to block people from spamming me.

as it is now, any unknown icq user can send me spam, without even being on my contact list (because that would need my auth and joe j spammer doesnt get my auth. no way in hell. never ever.), and whats even worse, the kopete guys chose to ignore the issues for reasons of "we wont implement ignore for protocols that don't do it natively". Hell, they dont even recognize (or maybe they ignore) the duplicates of the bug report asking for that feature...

by Mathias (not verified)
by Inge Wallin (not verified)

Nice work, everybody. It will be very interesting to see if the new marketing workgroup will be able to make this release an even bigger splash than 3.4 was.

Go MWG!! Make headlines! Capture users!

by Wade Olson (not verified)

Capturing new users will be easier than ever, thanks to the combination of 3.5's features and Martijn Klingen's new tranquilizer darts.

by eol (not verified)

the way konqui reports about new media (cd / dvd /usb) is great.
many big-time
TTTTT H H   A   N  N XX XX
  TT  HHH  AAA  NN N   X
  TT  H H A   A N NN XX XX. 

by ac (not verified)

Do you really think that with no significant upgrades for two years the KDE project could stay alive without a loss in mindshare, if not users? Do you think that KDE 3.5 will serve users' needs for the next two long years without no major upgrades (apart bugfixes release)?
I hope to see one or two "interim" stable release before the drastic changes with KDE 4. Maybe call it KDE 3.9.

by Torsten Rahn (not verified)

Don't overinterprete everything said there. So far there isn't even a release schedule available yet. And I guess that I'm not the only one who thinks that a two years period would put the whole project at risk. Especially among long-time KDE contributors a release aimed at the end of next year seems to be favoured. So don't worry. :-)

by Carsten Niehaus (not verified)

3.5 will serve many in the next couple of years. Keep in mind that a major distro like Debian is still using KDE 3.3.x.
KDE 4.0 will be released in about a year. There is no exact roadmap but something like Q3 or Q4 2006 sound likely. I guess that is a "significant upgrade" :-)

by Thiago Macieira (not verified)

Indeed, that's what is meant here.

KDE 4 will be released in late 2006 or maybe even 2007 (we don't know yet). This means KDE 3.5 will survive for at least another 18 months while people upgrade. Also, existing production environments may decide to withhold updating for some more time, given that KDE 4 will have radical changes.

by Morty (not verified)

The couple of years figure are not a set date for KDE4, it also includes realistic migration time of distributions and applications before it's common among users. Personally I'm expecting the first alphas and betas 6-8 months from now.

Besides you are forgetting one very important thing when it comes to users need. The interresting part are not the core desktop system really, it's nice and all, but what's important are the applications. The way to continue increase the mindshare are to keep up the stream of high quality applications.

Since it's to early for most application developers to start porting to KDE4, this will happen. For instance a new and improved KOffice version is set to be released in a few months. And other high quality applications keep releasing at a regular pace, like amaroK, digiKam, K3b, Codeine, Kaffeine, Krusader, KTechlab, kdissert, Kile, Tellico, KMyMoney, TaskJuggler, KNemo and the list goes on.

by Thomas Zander (not verified)

> Since it's to early for most application developers to start porting to KDE4, this will happen. For instance a new and improved KOffice version is set to be released in a few months.

To avoid misinterpretation; the above is about KOffice version 1.5. This version will be available for KDE3 users and will now use any kde4 ported stuff.

by ac (not verified)

now = not

Avoiding misinterpretations you are. =P

by James Richard Tyrer (not verified)

I think that if KDE-4.0 is delayed past the end of 2006 that KDE-3.6 should be released. Perhaps it will be necessary to have a 3.6 release for technical reasons in any case.

E.G.: I was told that I can't fix some of the bugs in KView because that will require changes in the documentation which can NOT be changed except for a new minor release (i.e. 3.6.0).

Other than that, I don't see that there are any major new features that are needed for the KDE-3 branch -- that we should concentrate of finding the bugs, fixing the bugs and otherwise polishing the product.

I also think that there should be a final release of the KDE-3.4 branch since some work was done on it after the 3.4.3 release and some people continue to use the older branches for stability reasons.

by Scott Wheeler (not verified)

At some point you have to shift the focus of the development to where people are concentrating on a specific release. Bug fixes and so on can go into old releases -- that's why we have bugfix releases -- but it becomes too tedious to have feature development in two quickly diverging branches (for the things that have already started porting towards KDE 4 this is already the case).

by Hans (not verified)

Konqueror 3.5 works (Ok, more or less, but there is Firefox, too)
Kicker works
Kdesktop works
KIO-slaves, Dcop work
KGetHotNewStuff works

So, why do you want a new KDE release?

I'm not looking forward to KDE 3.6 but I'm looking forward to the next releases of

Amarok, Digikam, Krita, Firefox, Openoffice, Gimp, Kopete, Speedcrunsh, K3b, Hugin, Gwenview,...

OK, one or two independent Konqueror (+khtml) releases would be nice :-)

by Mark (not verified)

I hope KDE4 is the next release, that way the developers can focus on developing it instead of working on other releases in between.

KDE4 will rock!

We just have to be patient.

by Robert (not verified)

That's exactly what KDE 3.5 was.

With only one branch being worked on, everyone will be able to concentrate on progressing to KDE4 and getting their applications ready.

We could of course go through 3.6, 3.7, 3.8, 3.9... 'just to keep the stable users happy', but each one of those will set back KDE4 another 9 months.

by Praxxus (not verified)

Yay!

I forget --and haven't looked it up-- is this the update that finally fixes the "why won't those damn desktop icons stay put!" bug?

by Carsten Niehaus (not verified)

There were many bugfixes and yes, one was a famous desktopicon-bug. But if you don't describe 'your' in a little more detail I am not 100% sure.

by Jim (not verified)

If you are talking about the bug where hiding and re-showing the panel caused all the desktop icons to move upwards a little bit, then yes, it's been fixed :)

by uddw (not verified)

My icons still move around randomly if kicker is on the left. Try dragging kicker around, especially from the bottom to the left and back. Or is my system messed up somehow?

by Jim (not verified)

The icons move when I drag kicker to another side of the screen, but merely hiding and re-showing it doesn't move the icons, even if it's on the left.

by Mike Perik (not verified)

If I drag my taskbar from the bottom where it normally is to the left side of the screen. It will not 'unhide' unless I move my mouse to the bottom of the screen. I have the 'unhide' set to bottom edge but shouldn't this follow the edge the panel is on?

by illogic-al (not verified)

What would be the point of setting it to the bottom edge then? Remember computers aren't psychic and are only capable of doing what we tell them to do.
Now if there were a "Show panel when mouse gets to side of the screen where the panel is hidden" option you should expect this. There, of course, is not.

by Aaron J. Seigo (not verified)

moving the icons when the panels change configuration is purposeful. it's simply meant to help prevent them from jiggling around when panels simply hide and show.

by James Richard Tyrer (not verified)

Icons shouldn't move when you hide and unhide a panel.

HOWEVER, an autohide panel should NOT have space left for it to unhide. It should cover icons when it unhides. Otherwise, what is the point of having an autohide panel.

You appear to have introduced a serious bug by having the icon positions affected by an autohide panel. With the initial icon arrangement on the desktop, this isn't much of a problem but with multiple autohide panels and a lot of icons, it has made my desktop unusable.

by Praxxus (not verified)

I don't think it has anything to do with Kicker or the panel. I don't autohide kicker, nor do I really move it around any. My icons just never stay where I put them. Right now my Trash is at the top of my screen, near the left corner. The last place *I* put it was near the bottom right corner.

At one point I had seen something about "icons now stay where you put them" in one of those DevLog web updates. Hopefully that has been fixed.

I will find out soon enough . . . . *emerge emerge emerge*

by Dennie (not verified)

Congratulations to the complete KDE team for their good work and hard efforts to get this done. KDE is and will be the best desktop out there. Keep up the good work!

by MikeGR (not verified)

Yes, congrats and keep up the good work!

by oggb4mp3 (not verified)

The Arch packages haven't been moved out of testing yet, so if you follow the link you will only see 3.4.3 still. But I've been running 3.5 on Arch testing for two weeks and it is sweet.

by Darin (not verified)

They're available now.

by Lee (not verified)

If you're talking about "Arch Linux", you should clarify that. It took me quite a while to realise that you weren't talking about something to do with Tom Lord's Arch.

by Wolfger (not verified)

I love Kopete, but I had to switch back to GAIM in order to chat with friends who are on Google's Gtalk (or whatever they call it). I would love to switch back to Kopete. Can I do so with 3.5?

by Anthony Ettinger (not verified)

I got a certificate of authority invalid when trying the steps listed on the above page.

by richie (not verified)

I would prefer, that developers concentrate on fixing bugs than adding new features.

The same goes for Firefox :-(

I would love a stable system in favour of a system that has all the bells and whistles. I can't count how many times konqueror has crashed when broswing or working locally as a filemanager.

Don't follow microsoft in that way.

BTW: I will continue to use KDE 3.3.2 und will perhaps upgrade to release 3.4. I don't think that the new features justify to install KDE 3.5.

by Charles Samuels (not verified)

Maybe if you upgrade to 3.5, you'll find the bugs have gone away?

by richie (not verified)

I am quite conservative regarding updating my system. A new KDE version will certainly introduce new problems.

Shall others fight with new bugs. I can wait until the dust settles.

That might sound cynical, but I am not that person, which must have the latest
things around. If it works more or less why should I change something?

Regards,
richie

p.s. Happy with my MTB GT "Tequesta" built 1989 :-)

by Charles Samuels (not verified)

Well, there's a certain aspect to "known bugs are better than unknown bugs" (even if there are fewer).

However, KDE 3.5 is very stable, (even not counting that it's a x.y.0 release)! This is likely due to how it's mostly a "polish up" release as development was shifting to KDE 4.0.

cs

by MandrakeUser (not verified)

Richie, that's the power of freedom. You can stick to an older
version, update part of your system, etc. Hell, you can choose
a distro with focus on stability (rather than a bleeding edge).
There is a universe of possibilities.

KDE as a project, though, seems to be doing pretty well.
3.5 will add new features, and 3.5.x will fix bugs in the 3.5 codebase

4.0 will introduce fundamental (architectural, etc. changes).
And the 4.1, 4.2, etc release series will introduce incremental changes

Seems pretty solid software engineering.

In fact, let me go a bit OT and say that the linux kernel, OTOH,
seems to be a different story. Rather fundamental changes are
being introduced in the 2.6 series periodically (for each 2.6.x).
The changes are flowing to frequently and there is little time
to stabilize. This does not seem a good process, at least to me.