KDE 3.2 Released

Today the KDE Project released KDE 3.2. It is the result of a combined year-long effort by hundreds of individuals and corporations from around the globe. For packages, please visit the KDE 3.2 info page. At the moment binary packages for Conectiva Linux, Slackware (9.0, 9.1) and SUSE Linux (8.2, 9.0) are listed. Or compile the source either manually or with the help of Konstruct after reading the KDE 3.2 Requirements list. All changes can be found in the detailed KDE 3.2 change log or continue to read about the highlights.

Some of the highlights in KDE 3.2 at a glance:

  • Increased performance and standards compliance
    • Lowered start up times for applications and hundreds of optimizations
      make KDE 3.2 the fastest KDE ever!
    • Working in concert with Apple Computer Inc.'s Safari web browser team,
      KDE's web support has seen huge performance boosts as well as increased
      compliance with widely accepted web standards
    • Increased support for FreeDesktop.org standards in KDE 3.2 strengthens
      interoperability with other Linux and UNIX software.
  • New applications
    • JuK: a jukebox-style music player
    • Kopete: an instant messenger with support for AOL Instant Messenger,
      MSN, Yahoo Messenger, ICQ, Gadu-Gadu, Jabber, IRC, SMS and WinPopup
    • KWallet: providing integrated, secure storage of passwords and web form
      data
    • Kontact: a unified interface that draws KDE's email, calendaring,
      address book, notes and other PIM features together into a familiar
      configuration
    • KGpg: providing an easy-to-use KDE interface to industry-standard
      encryption tools
    • KIG: an interactive geometry program
    • KSVG: a viewer for SVG files
    • KMag, KMouseTool and KMouth: accessibility tools for KDE
    • KGoldRunner: a new riff on a classic game
    • ... and many more!
  • Thousands of incremental improvements and bug fixes
    • During the development of KDE 3.2 nearly 10,000 bug reports were
      processed via the KDE Bug Tracking System
    • Approximately 2,000 feature requests were also processed, with hundreds
      of requested features added to KDE applications and components
    • An improved configuration system that opens the door to new
      installation management possibilities, improved roaming support and
      many improvements to the "KDE Kiosk" environment management system
    • Inline spell checking for web forms and emails
    • Improved email and calendaring support
    • Powerful tabbed interface for the Konqueror file manager and web
      browser
    • Support for Microsoft Windows desktop sharing protocol (RDP)
  • Improved Usability
    • Reduced clutter in many menus and toolbars
    • Many applications, dialogs and control panels reworked for clarity and
      utility
  • Enhanced appearance
    • Plastik, a tastefully understated new look, debuts in KDE 3.2
    • Hundreds of new icons improve the consistency and beauty of KDE
    • Tweaks to the default look including new splash screens, (optionally)
      animated progress bars, styled panels and more!
  • New Tools for Software Developers
    • Comprehensive API documentation extended for 3.2
    • Language bindings for ECMAScript (aka Javascript), Python, Java and
      Ruby
    • New versions of the powerful KDevelop IDE and Quanta web development
      suite
    • Umbrello brings UML modeling for 11 different languages including C++,
      Java, SQL, PHP, Python and Perl to KDE

More information and why you should use KDE 3.2 can be found in the KDE 3.2 announcement.

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Comments

by mj (not verified)

i waited for this day a long, long time :-)

good

ill donate you

does anybody know where i can get languages for kde 3.2?

bye

by albert (not verified)

Can't view WWW.KDE.ORG

Too many access or DDOS?

by Arend jr. (not verified)

Ever heard of Slashdot? ;)

by ac (not verified)

Awesome dude!

by Gagnefs Träskod... (not verified)

Me happy!

by Ministeriet för... (not verified)

me too, kde is really starting to get somewhere

by Heja Leksand! (not verified)

Me too!

by aleXXX (not verified)

The KInfoCenter now also includes a graphical view of the firewire bus (if you have one), featuring the guid, node id, vendor name, capabilities and a bus reset button.

Somehow this must have been lost in the changelog.

IOW no need for gscanbus anymore.

Alex

by Mike (not verified)

I installed the SuSE binary packages - other than having to use nodeps to keep the kdebase3-SuSE package installed, it worked.

Two issues:
- Why the stupid shadow font for the desktop icons? Worse, I can't seem to find a way to change it (no appearance on "Configure Desktop" and the control panel setting for desktop font doesn't let me turn off shadow)
- The control panel is buried several several menus down - Why?

by muleli (not verified)

1.) configure desktop-> background -> advanced options ->enable shadow
2.) Drag the kcontrol icon to your desktop.

Look if you cant do these things, then you shouldn't be downloading raw kde. go and buy lycoris or lindows. its got this already nicely arranged for you. These guys working here are volunteers. not tech support.

by ac (not verified)

Raw KDE has KControl accessible direct from a Kicker menu anyway.

No idea about the bad desktop shadow though.

by Kevin Stone (not verified)

I just upgraded by Gentoo to KDE 3.2 (10 hours of compiling, whoopee!) and had the same problem trying to find how to remove the shadow. I would not say placing it in advanced options under background was obvious at all.

I would expect it under Control Center -> Desktop -> Behavior and was checking all the appearance options for a long time until a stumbled on this post.

Ps. I'm trying to get off XMMS to something more KDE integrated, I've been using amaroK but KDE3.2's install seemed to have wiped that, not liking JuK so far, what do you like for playing mp3s?

by regeya (not verified)

I saw nothing there that warranted being rude. Advanced Options isn't at all obvious, and if you think it is, and you volunteered your time to put it there, maybe you shouldn't be volunteering your time to put it there.

by Jasem Mutlaq (not verified)

I agree. Advanced options is not intuitive, put this option in "Background" screen.

by Stunji (not verified)

I'm new to SuSE, so let me ask a dumb question: can I expect to see KDE 3.2 turn up in YaST Online Update, or do I need to install these tarballs manually? I played around with the Beta and RC1 tarballs, but they had multiple dependancy conflicts, and SuSE integration (things like susewatcher) stopped working-- it was all pretty disappointing.

by Stephan (not verified)

They won't be in YaST as suse wants you to buy 9.1. What problems did you have with RC1? I didn't have any.

by Stunji (not verified)

Actually I just found instructions for SuSE which, if they existed before, I had never seen:

http://ibiblio.org/pub/packages/desktops/kde/stable/3.2/SuSE/README

I remember there being weird dep. issues with misc. things like taglib (which seems to be addressed in the howto.)

Also, konqueror segfaults frequently unless you remove kdebase3-SuSE, which gets rid of other useful things like new hardware notification.

by Eron Lloyd (not verified)

Yeah, I noticed this in the README on the FTP mirrors. Is there an ETA on when 9.1 will be released? If it is going to be later than next month, I can't wait that long... I don't really remember them doing this before--are they going to use new releases to string us along? Guess it's time to look at Konstruct.

Eron

by Boudewijn Rempt (not verified)

SUSE has never slipped significant new releases in YOU -- you would always have had to download the rpm's from the supplementary directory from SUSE's ftp server or a mirror and install them by hand.

by Steve (not verified)

This is pure speculation...

SuSE have brought out around 3 releases per year for some time now. The last release was at the end of September, which is 4 months ago. They like to include such major releases of KDE in their releases - other releases have come out following KDE releases.

It would not surprise me if we see 9.1 out this month, including KDE 3.2 and kernel 2.6.1. At least, I'm hoping they bring it out soon as I'd like to buy a copy!!

In the mean time, I download the RPMs and install by hand. I like to get the source RPMs and rebuild for i686, but often the build bombs out. Strange, huh?

-- Steve

by Anonymous (not verified)

> SuSE have brought out around 3 releases per year for some time now.

Wrong, two.

> It would not surprise me if we see 9.1 out this month

No chance, March or April.

by Gerry (not verified)

IANA Suse Employee however, not YOU but KDE download, and eventually a new distro (one way of giving something back...) and as for screwing things up with betas and RCs - do it regularly myself - but I've always thought that was my problem.

by Richard (not verified)

kde for suse is available via the Advanced Package Tool (apt).
This is a good alternative to YOU, more about it at;

http://linux01.gwdg.de/apt4rpm/kde31to32.html
http://linux01.gwdg.de/apt4rpm/freshrpms.html

by Timlinux (not verified)

The instructions at these pages are very unclear. In deban (e.g. at apt-get.org), when someone announces a new repository, they list the full repository line as it appears in the sources list. The suse apt site doesnt seem to do this anywhere. Could you please post the full sources.list lines required for this upgrade?

Thanks

by Boudewijn Rempt (not verified)

Ah, yes -- that was a fun afternoon. I use Debian on my old powerbook, so I had already encountered the charms of apt, but didn't know it existed for SUSE, too. A bit slow though -- does anyone know of a mirror in the Netherlands? And... It insists on installing qt-3.3.0, which is giving me a hard time picking up Krita development again. But it still was fun. Thanks for the tip!.

I'm impressed by the fast turn around time between RC1 and the actual release of KDE 3.2. It seems that there can't have been many bugs in RC1, well done!

by James Richard Tyrer (not verified)

I'm not (happy).

The reason for the fast turn around time was the failure to fix some of the serious bugs in RC1 and issue another RC (which would have been RC3).

Please see bugs #73379 and #73851 for examples. Actually, I was surprised that such serious bugs had not been fixed in the Betas.

I should try to make this clear since I have already been flamed for this on the 'kde-devel' list. I am interested in a high quality product. I believe that a commitment to excellence must come first. It has become obvious that there are a significant number of developers that lack this commitment.

Please get with the program!

As another user posted: Quality Management -- a Commitment to Excellence!

The first step in instituting a Quality Management program is to have a Quality Assurance team. For that we need volunteers. This could work if we have a lot of volunteers that only do a little. Specifically, if you report a bug and can keep an up to date copy of the CVS for the pending release, you can check to see if the bug gets fixed before the release. Of course, this won't do any good if the developers simply ignore the bug and release any way. A list of the critical bugs must be prepared and the release must be delayed until they are fixed and "signed off" by the QA team.

We need testers, to report bugs, that will install, preferably built from source from CVS, a copy of RC1 and risk using it as their regular desktop because it is only by using it as your regular desktop that you will find the bugs. You will need to update to new RCs when they are tagged. And, you will need to change the tag to RELEASE when it is added and update it every day, report bugs, and check on the bugs that you have reported.

We also need people to confirm new bugs and test old bugs to see if they have been fixed. It would be best if you had an up to date copy of the CVS for the current BRANCH. The reason such help is needed is that IIUC, many developers do not keep a copy of the current release BRANCH and are testing bugs only on HEAD -- not a good idea. Specifically, they should first be tested on the current release BRANCH to see if they are currently valid. Then, they can be tested on HEAD to see if they are being fixed. However, bugs that are valid on the current release BRANCH and which have been fixed on HEAD should not be considered closed until they are confirmed fixed in the next release. That is what Quality Assurance is all about.

Without your help, we will continue to have buggy releases like KDE-3.2.0

--
JRT

Yes, please join and help in ensuring high quality of KDE releases !

Everybody is welcome, no need to be programmer, people with communication skills can also help us very much :-)

Nevertheless, I think it was about time to release 3.2.0, now let's concentrate on the stable branch and polish it :-)

Bye
Alex

by Anonymous Coward (not verified)

This sounds really great, and I think I'm not the only one here who'd be interested in giving a hand.

The only piece of information you didn't provide is, just where do we sign up? :)

http://www.kde.org - there's a link called "Supporting KDE"

Regards,
Malcolm

Oh and of course you can report bugs at http://bugs.kde.org. :¬)

Regards,
Malcolm

JRT: Without your help, we will continue to have buggy releases like KDE-3.2.0

http://www.toonopedia.com/magoo.htm

"Magoo's inability to distinguish between his nephew, wearing a raccoon coat, and a wild bear, combined with his pig-headed refusal to consider the possibility that his sight might be failing, made a big hit with audiences.."

-- Richard

Software has bugs. There is no process that will make bug free software. Especially with something incomplete, like KDE.

So we will have a 3.2.1, etc. Some bugs will be fixed in those releases, some won't because of string changes, or design changes required to fix them. They will be done later, maybe 3.3, maybe later again.

If the release date was put off further, there would be an even greater gulf between what the developers are working on, and the release tree. Yes, developers generally get on with new stuff, features, finishing things up. The release dude can only suggest what people work on.

Yes it seems chaotic. But it works at least as well or even better than any other system. Even the tightly controlled processes that NASA uses didn't get everything right. But trying to impose tight control over this project will imho, cause harm.

Derek

Yes of course it has. But some bugs are just too grave to justify the RC or Release title. For example, in RC1, just drag a file to a konqueror window and it crashes. Such obvious bugs don't belong in a RC release.

Except for those few bugs, KDE 3.2 is a beauty. Keep on going!

by Waldo Bastian (not verified)

Those file dragging crashes are due to a Qt bug actually. Patch has been send to Trolltech and in the meantime you can use qt-copy from CVS.

Case in point.

A few months ago, I thought of doing a bug of the week sort of thing for the Digest. So on #kde-devel I mentioned a few of the obvious ones. The responses to each bug was an explanation of the issue. The problem had been investigated. The fixes often require major rewrites, adding new technology or capabilities, or as Waldo mentions, depends on someone else's libraries. Should the release be delayed? Till when? No. Release now. There are major improvements in 3.2. There is still much work to do.

Software is never finished.

Derek

by James Richard Tyrer (not verified)

Yes, Derek. That is why I chose my examples carefully.

I believe that both of them are small coding errors.

But please realize that my blog was a call to excellance -- nothing more and nothing less.

I believe that through Total Quality Management that we can do better.

This should not be taken as a negative comment about how well we are doing now, because no matter how well we are doing we should always strive to do better. And, investigate methods to achieve that.

The engineer is also an idealist, very odd isn't it. :-)

--
JRT

by Roberto Alsina (not verified)

There is a reason why when you implement TQM in a company, usually you have to force it onto people.

And remember, that´s people who are getting paid.

This is why we see TQM in companies distributing KDE.
Just look at Lycoris, Lindows, Mandrake, Suse whatever...

"Web pop-up windows open in new tab instead of a new window."
You call that a 'serious bug' ?

A serious bug? I'd class that as a feature!

by James Richard Tyrer (not verified)

The fact that it is a regression makes it more serious that it would be otherwise. And comparison with other software should also be considered when determining how serious it is.

That is, it works correctly in Mozilla and it works correctly in Konqueror 3.1.5. These two facts make it a more serious bug than if it were taken in isolation.

Although bugs (design issues) are to be expected in new features, when there is a regression which is clearly a coding error in mature sections of the code it is a greater issue. Consider what is going to happen, a user upgrades from 3.1.5 to 3.2.0 and something that worked fine in 3.1.5 suddenly stops working. Most users don't like that.

OTOH, consider a new feature (especially if it can be turned off) if it doesn't quite work yet, no big deal.

--
JRT

How is that a regression? It is clearly an improvement.
I don't see it breaking anything, in fact, it follows user directions precisely.

by Anonymous Coward (not verified)

I disagree.
Tabs are useful when you're browsing different sites at the same time, because they allow you to have many sites open concurrently with little desktop real estate overhead.
Pop-ups are NOT the same thing at all. Pop-ups work as additional information (password entry, movies window...) on the CURRENT site; you can't stash them away for later browsing like you do for a new site or page.

The current Konqueror behavior is a usability bug. I fear that if we don't fix it, people will switch back to other browsers that behave the way they expect.

I've just voted for the bug, too, since it's indeed a bit of a wart that should get fixed.

by Ingo Klöcker (not verified)

Aren't you confusing "works correctly in..." with "works differently in...". FWIW, I like the new behavior.

Unless this wasn't changed intentionally, it's just a change in behavior but not a regression.

I agree, I personally love the new behavior and can't imagine that someone is seriously advocating popup windows. I usually consider the utilization of popup window as bad behavior which should be avoided whenever possible, may it be on website or in applications.

by James Richard Tyrer (not verified)

I can't say if it was changed intentionally or not.

What I can say is that until somebody figurers out how to display two tabs at once that I don't find it a feature. Specifically when using an online catalog and the pop-up window is a larger view of the item.

Also, this behavior can lead to errors because the new tab is a fully functional browser window.

--
JRT

by Igor Romanenko (not verified)

It seems to me that this release should have been named
"beta" or "release candidate". It contains many oops's which are definitely due to hasty package preparation and lack of serious testing. Just two examples.
First, some .h.in files in subdirs of kdelibs package (e.g., dcop-path.h.in) are older then configure.in in kdelibs root directory. As a result, make tries to run autoheader. If autoconf is absent or is old enough (like 2.13), autoheader will fail, leaving config.h.in empty and newer then config.h. If you rerun make, config.h will become empty. So, if you run make just once, everything seems to be fine. But if you happen to hit some compilation error (more on that later), you are out of luck.
Second, kdefx/kstyle.cpp in kdelibs contains ifdef check for Qt 3.30. If Qt has this version, it adds additional cases in the switch statement for PM_MenuBarItemSpacing. I have Qt 3.30b1 installed. It defines QT_VERSION 0x030300, but does not have PM_MenuBarItemSpacing anywhere in it's source.
Now, take those two bugs together and...
May be I'm wrong and had done something stupid myself, but such things do not invest into KDE's popularity. Wasn't it better to allow more RC's just to stamp out such bugs?
Sincerely, Igor Romanenko

by Richard Moore (not verified)

1. We don't release the packages - we release the source.
2. We don't support 3.3 with this release and certainly not the betas.

If you run unsupported configurations then don't blame us if they don't work.

Rich.

by Igor Romanenko (not verified)

1. Ok, to be more specific: I was talking about compiling kdelibs SOURCE PACKAGE released yesterday (kdelibs-3.2.0.tar.bz2). Or why would i talk about such things as autoconf and autoheader?
2. Library requirements say Qt >= 3.2.3. So, either requirements page is wrong or my configuration is supported.