KDE 2.0 is Out!

It's official! KDE 2.0 has been released! Run, don't walk, to your nearest mirror or go directly to the source.
The full press release is below.

DATELINE OCTOBER 23, 2000

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

New KDE Release Is a Major Advance for Linux®
Desktop

Next Generation of Leading Desktop for Linux®
and Other UNIXes® Ships

October 23, 2000 (The INTERNET). The KDE
Team
today announced the release of KDE 2.0 (named Kopernicus),
KDE's powerful, modular, Internet-enabled desktop. This highly anticipated
release constitutes the next generation of the
award-winning KDE 1
series, which culminated in the
release of
KDE 1.1.2
just over a year ago. Kopernicus is the work product
of hundreds of dedicated developers originating from over 30 countries.

"With the experience gained from developing KDE 1, we
almost completely re-engineered KDE 2 to make it even more intuitive,
powerful and user friendly," explained
Matthias Ettrich,
founder of the KDE project.
"We think that current KDE users will be pleasantly surprised with the
remarkable improvements we have achieved. KDE 2 offers
the desktop user the benefit of standards compliance and an array of
new technologies, from
Konqueror, a full featured web browser and
file manager, to KOffice, an integrated
office suite, as well as a slew of usability enhancements, such as KDE's
expanded themeability and configurability and a new KDE Help Center.
It also offers developers an assortment of powerful new tools -- from
KParts, KDE's component object technology,
to KIO, KDE's network transparent I/O architecture
-- for rapid development and deployment of first-rate free or
proprietary software."

"KDE 2.0 is an important release," stated Ransom Love, president and
CEO of Caldera Systems, Inc.
"Our customers are anxious to migrate not only their servers but also
their desktops to the Linux technology. KDE 2.0 will be a key component
of OpenLinux eDesktop, our solution for a seamless and cost-effective
transition strategy."

"SuSE Linux views KDE 2 as one of
the key milestones to vault Linux to the same landslide success on the
desktop that it already has in the server space," added Dirk Hohndel,
CTO of Suse AG. "We are excited to
be able to offer KDE 2.0 as the
default desktop with our next version of the SuSE Linux OS. I am
confident that third party developers will realize the enormous
potential KDE 2 offers and will migrate their applications
to Linux/KDE."

"As Linux-Mandrake focuses on making Linux easy to use, we are very
pleased to include KDE 2, a major evolution of the already superb KDE 1,
in our upcoming Linux-Mandrake 7.2 release", added
Gaël Duval,
co-founder of Mandrakesoft.
"With KDE 2 and KOffice, the KDE team demonstrates again their deep
commitment to make Linux a viable desktop alternative for all users."

"Corel has had a long, successful relationship with the KDE project, and
the release of KDE 2.0 is an important milestone for Linux," said Rene
Schmidt, Executive Vice President for Linux Products,
Corel Corporation.
"We believe that our customers will be ecstatic over the improvements
and new features of this landmark version. The enhancements to the
framework provide power for the desktop in the simple and elegant
fashion that our customers have grown to expect."

Kopernicus includes the core KDE libraries,
the core desktop environment, the initial release of the KOffice suite, as well
as the over 100 applications from the other standard base KDE packages:
Administration, Games,
Graphics, Multimedia, Network, Personal Information Management (PIM),
Toys and Utilities. Kopernicus is currently available in 15 languages
and translations into 20 additional languages will be available in the
coming weeks.

All of KDE 2.0 is available for free under an Open Source license.
Likewise,
Trolltech'stm
Qt® 2.2.1, the GUI toolkit on which KDE is based,
is now available for free under two Open Source licenses: the
Q
Public License
and the GNU
General Public License
.

More information about KDE 2 is available in a
slideshow
presentation
and on
KDE's web site, including an evolving
FAQ to answer questions about
migrating to KDE 2.0 from KDE 1.x, a number of
screenshots, developer information and
a developer's
KDE 1 - KDE 2 porting guide.

KDE 2: The K Desktop Environment.
Konqueror
is KDE 2's next-generation web browser,
file manager and document viewer. Widely heralded as a
technological break-through for the Linux desktop, the standards-compliant
Konqueror has a component-based architecture which combines the features and
functionality of Internet Explorer®/Netscape
Communicator® and Windows Explorer®.
Konqueror will support the full gamut of current Internet technologies,
including JavaScript, Java®, HTML 4.0, CSS-1 and -2
(Cascading Style Sheets), SSL (Secure Socket Layer for secure communications)
and Netscape Communicator® plug-ins (for
playing FlashTM, RealAudioTM, RealVideoTM
and similar technologies). The great bulk of this technology is already
in place and functional for KDE 2.0.

KDE 2 also ships with the highly anticipated initial release of
the KOffice
suite
. The integrated
suite consists of a spreadsheet application (KSpread), a vector drawing
application (KIllustrator), a frame-based word-processing application
(KWord), a presentation program
(KPresenter), and a chart and diagram application (KChart). Native file
formats are XML-based, and work on filters for proprietary binary file
formats is progressing. Combined with a powerful scripting language and the
ability to embed individuals components within each other using KDE's
component technology (KParts), the free KOffice suite will soon provide
all the necessary functionality to all but the most demanding power users.

In addition, KIO's network transparency offers
seamless support for accessing
or browsing files on Linux, NFS shares, MS Windows®
SMB shares, HTTP pages, FTP directories and LDAP directories. The modular,
plug-in nature of KDE's file architecture makes it simple to add additional
protocols (such as IPX or WebDAV) to KDE, which would then automatically be
available to all KDE applications.

KDE 2 introduces a new multimedia architecture based on aRts, the Analog Realtime Synthesizer. ARts enables
playing multiple audio or video streams concurrently, whether on the
desktop or over a network. ARts is a full-featured sound system, and
includes filters, a modular analog synthesizer and a mixer. Its
architecture allows developers to create additional filter plugins and
users to apply sequences of filters using a graphical drag-n-drop
approach. Video support is available for MPEG versions
1, 2 and 4 (experimental), as well as the AVI and DivX formats.

KDE's customizability touches every
aspect of this next-generation
desktop. KDE's sophisticated theme support starts with Qt's
style engine, which permits developers and artists to create their
own widget designs. KDE 2.0 ships with over 14 of these styles,
some of which emulate the look of various operating systems, and additionally
does an excellent job of
importing themes
from GTK and GNOME. Other configuration options permit users to: choose among
icon themes and system sounds (using a simple drop-and-replace approach);
configure key bindings; select from over 30 languages; customize toolbar
layouts and entries and menu composition; employ single-click or double-click
to activate desktop items; navigate the desktop using a keyboard
instead of a mouse; and much, much more. Moreover, KDE 2 fully
supports Unicode and KHTML is the only free HTML rendering engine on
Linux/X11 that features nascent support for BiDi scripts
such as Arabic and Hebrew.

Besides the exceptional compliance with Internet and file-sharing standards
mentioned above, KDE 2 achieves exceptional
compliance with the available Linux desktop standards. KWin, KDE's new
re-engineered window manager, complies to the new
Window Manager
Specification
. Konqueror and KDE comply to the Desktop
Entry Standard
. KDE 2 generally complies with the
X Drag-and-Drop (XDND)
protocol
as well as with the
X11R6 session management protocol (XSMP).

KDE 2: The K Development Environment.
Kopernicus offers developers a rich set of major technological improvements overthe critically acclaimed KDE 1 series. Chief among these are
the Desktop COmmunication Protocol (DCOP), the
I/O libraries (KIO), the component
object model (KParts)
, an XML-based GUI class, and
a standards-compliant HTML rendering engine (KHTML).

DCOP is a client-to-client communications
protocol intermediated by a
server over the standard X11 ICE library. The protocol supports both
message passing and remote procedure calls using an XML-RPC to DCOP "gateway".
Bindings for C, C++ and Python, as well as experimental Java bindings, are
available.

KIO implements application I/O in a separate
process to enable a
non-blocking GUI without the use of threads. The class is network transparent
and hence can be used seamlessly to access HTTP, FTP, POP, IMAP,
NFS, SMB, LDAP and local files. Moreover, its modular
and extensible design permits developers to "drop in" additional protocols,
such as WebDAV, which will then automatically be available to all KDE
applications. KIO also implements a trader which can locate handlers
for specified mimetypes; these handlers can then be embedded within
the requesting application using the KParts technology.

KParts, KDE 2's component object model, allows
an application to embed another within itself. The technology handles
all aspects of the embedding, such as positioning toolbars and inserting
the proper menus when the embedded component is activated or deactivated.
KParts can also interface with the KIO trader to locate available handlers for
specific mimetypes or services/protocols.
This technology is used extensively by the KOffice suite and
Konqueror.

The XML GUI employs XML to create and position
menus, toolbars and possibly
other aspects of the GUI. This technology offers developers and users
the advantage of simplified configurability of these user interface elements
across applications and automatic compliance with the
KDE Standards
and Style Guide
irrespective of modifications to the standards.

KHTML is an HTML 4.0 compliant rendering
and drawing engine. The class
will support the full gamut of current Internet technologies, including
JavaScriptTM, Java®, HTML 4.0, CSS-2
(Cascading Style Sheets), SSL (Secure Socket Layer for secure communications)
and Netscape Communicator® plugins (for
viewing FlashTM,
RealAudioTM, RealVideoTM and similar technologies).
The KHTML class can easily
be used by an application as either a widget (using normal X Window
parenting) or as a component (using the KParts technology).
KHTML, in turn, has the capacity to embed components within itself
using the KParts technology.

Downloading and Compiling Kopernicus

The source packages for Kopernicus are available for free download at
http://ftp.kde.org/stable/2.0/distribution/tar/generic/src/ or in the
equivalent directory at one of the many KDE ftp server
mirrors. Kopernicus requires
qt-2.2.1, which is available from the above locations under the name
qt-x11-2.2.1.tar.gz. Kopernicus will not work with
older versions of Qt.

For further instructions on compiling and installing Kopernicus, please consult
the installation
instructions
and, if you encounter problems, the
compilation FAQ.

Installing Binary Packages

Some distributors choose to provide binary packages of KDE for certain
versions of their distribution. Some of these binary packages for Kopernicus
will be available for free download under
http://ftp.kde.org/stable/2.0/distribution/
or under the equivalent directory at one of the many KDE ftp server
mirrors. Please note that the
KDE team is not responsible for these packages as they are provided by third
parties -- typically, but not always, the distributor of the relevant
distribution.

Kopernicus requires qt-2.2.1, the free version of which is available
from the above locations usually under the name qt-x11-2.2.1. Kopernicus
will not work with older versions of Qt.

At the time of this release, pre-compiled packages are available for:

Please check the servers periodically for pre-compiled packages for other
distributions. More binary packages will become available over the
coming days and weeks.

About KDE

KDE is an independent, collaborative project by hundreds of developers
worldwide to create a sophisticated, customizable and stable desktop environmentemploying a component-based, network-transparent architecture.
KDE is working proof of the power of the Open Source "Bazaar-style" software
development model to create first-rate technologies on par with
and superior to even the most complex commercial software.

For more information about KDE, please visit KDE's
web site.

Press Contacts:

United States:

Kurt Granroth
[email protected]
(1) 480 732 1752 
Andreas Pour
[email protected]
(1) 718 456 1165

Europe (French and English):

David Faure
[email protected]
(44) 1225 837409

Europe (English and German):

Martin Konold
[email protected]
(49) 179 2252249

Dot Categories: 

Comments

by Eric Laffoon (not verified)

I have opted to go with compiling the KDE 2 sources for some time for two reasons. One is that I wanted a pristeen KDE 2 without the debian menus and two is that I think installing KDE 2 in /usr is not rational. During the beta I have had to wipe and re-install which is easy unless you have used /usr for your $KDEDIR. I also have a fully functional KDE 1 should I need it.

Find my Mandrake upgrade instructions for prepping Mandrake and compiiling KDE 2
here

by Oliver Bausinger (not verified)

Why not compile from source? This is really easy,
go with
./configure --prefix=/opt/kde2
make
make install

and you can keep your KDE1 in parallel

(OK, you have to tweak the login procedure a bit, but that´s not a great hassle ...)

by Unleaded (not verified)

KDE 2 IS AWSOME! GREAT WORK GUYS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

by Matt (not verified)

Congratulations from Sweden! It's not easy to decide when to release a big beast like this, there's always something to improve. But kudos to the development team, you have been professional working with a freeze for a long time, in order to get at stable version out. Boring I know, but necessary. Now comes the reward! Millions of users will start using KDE 2.0 in the coming months.

by Matt (not verified)

And one more thing: A very well written press release! Thanks to whoever worked on it.

by Navindra Umanee (not verified)

Agreed. Thanks goes mostly to Andreas Pour who did the initial write up and then slaved hours over it till everyone was happy. :)

Not an easy job considering how much has gone into KDE2.

-N.

by Gordon Tyler (not verified)

Does anybody know if the Mandrake RPMs (or any others for that matter) have been compiled with exceptions turned off (specifically for Qt)?

It makes an immense difference in performance and memory footprint.

So far, I've had to get the source tarballs for RC2 and compile with no-exception myself.

Ciao,
Gordon

by Djinn (not verified)

Congratulations from Spain to the KDE team!!!

Thanks for the big effort, for your patience and for making *freely* available this new release of the *best* graphic environment for Linux/UNIX...

...Helixcode, take note of this!!!!!...

Chapeau!

by King Egypt (not verified)

Are there any other (temporarily) unofficial anonymous mirrors out there? Please post the location! The official mirrors are either too loaded, or not yet updated.

by Djinn (not verified)

I don't know 'unofficial' sites, but I downloaded the 2.0 release from the following site, located in Germany: ftp.de.kde.org/stable/2.0/distribution/deb/Debian/dists/potato/binary-i386/

I downloaded the entire distribution at 5K/sec with a 56K modem (this site is less overloaded than the official server).

Djinn.

by King Egypt (not verified)

Are there any other unofficial anonymous mirrors out there? Please post the location, as the official mirrors are either too loaded, or not yet updated.

If youve got the server space and are able to handle the hits, help spreading these goodies... ;-)

by Mats Eriksson (not verified)

Will there be any Solaris binaries available?
(In tar.gz format)

by Fred (not verified)

Where can I find lates solaris binries for KDE ?
Fred

by bobblehed (not verified)

ftp.patriotsoft.com

They've ported KDE in the past to Solaris, and
they've made the directories available for KDE2.

They haven't released any KDE binaries yet though.

by Arturas B. (not verified)

Thank you, the KDE team, for the great work !!!

Take you biggest piece of cake ! ;^)

Best regards from Lithuania,
Arturas B.

by Paul Leopardi (not verified)

Please take down http://www.kde.org/install-binaries.html or update it.
It is wrong and misleading. Newbies and other people who don't know KDE well will see the instructions but ignore the date (5 September) and therefore think that these instructions are valid for the recent KDE 2.0 release.

The "Finding and Downloading Binaries" section is wrong. The "Installing Binaries" section is incomplete. It does not refer to the README files for the different distributions and it does not say how to start KDE 2.0. It does not say what to do to kdm to allow logins using kde2.

If you don't believe me, check for yourself.

Please also examine http://www.kde.org/kde1-and-kde2.html
I think it is not right for KDE 2.0, especially if KDE 2.0 is installed from the SuSE RPMs.
I did not need to do all this and am running both KDE and KDE2 RC2.

For more details, see my bug report 10102

by Paul Leopardi (not verified)

Yes, I know it is too early and there aren't enough questions, but the FAQ already contains a section called "KDE 2.0 installation instructions".

This section does not refer to /opt/kde2 as the directory where some or all distrbutions which use RPMs will install KDE 2.0. For example, SuSE RPMs have installed into /opt/kde2 all the way up to RC2 and I expect KDE 2.0 to also install into /opt/kde2, leaving the old KDE and QT alone.

Am I wrong and do the RPMS now install KDE 2.0
into /opt/kde, overwriting some but not all old KDE apps; or does the FAQ need to be updated and corrected?

by Philozen (not verified)

I thank you all for the fabulous job done.

The more I know about the KDE people and the KDE project, the greater is my respect and admiration. After the last "unpleasant" events, news, articles that surrounded the project, once again, the KDE team kept the right attitude. I've got a sentence that shows this perfectly:

"The one who knows, is humble by nature".

KDE is more than a wonderful project, it's an extraordinary human adventure. Thanks again.

by GeZ (not verified)

Kool, Klean, Klever, Kute, full of Killer-apps, KDE is promised to earn a Kolossal share on workstation. Kongratulations to all who've help this project. Definetly the best thing happened to Linux (after having the kernel GPL according to Linus).

by Manuel Román (not verified)

VIVA KDE!!!!!!!!!

THANKS

by Michael (not verified)

Now that KDE 2.0 is out.. What next? Will KDE 2.0 vs Gnome be a legitimate fight? How many permutations of desktop enviroments does there need to be? Linux needs some focus -- luckily it seems liek KDE and Gnome are becoming more standard and those other desktop environments are becoming less popular... Now if there were less releases of Linux distributions...

by Haakon Nilsen (not verified)

We *do* need more than *one* desktop environment and more than *one* distro. What's needed is standards. There's a lot of work going on to standardize various aspects of KDE and GNOME so they can interoperate. As for distros, they should strive to follow the file system standard (www.linuxbase.org) and other standards that lessen the fundamental differences between distros.

by Johannes Rohr (not verified)

Dear Folks,

thanks for your great Work!
However, I would suggest to remove the potato KDE 2 packages from the stable tree. I downloaded them, only to find that they are NOT the final KDE 2 release but RC 1 aka unstable.

I read that Ivan Moore (?!) has taken the KDE Linux Packaging Project down, because he was offended by some Debian users. Well, this is a pity.

But as long as these unstable packages are there in the stable tree people like me might think that they ARE indeed the stable version and download the entire 80 megs, only to be very disappointed. I would suggest that you rather remove all the files and replace them by a README that explains why they are not there.

Maybe then someone else will take up the job and package KDE 2 for potato...

(Not me. I've got no clue how to build Debian packages.)

Regards,

Johannes

by steve (not verified)

Anybody know more about these potato packages?

I had heared that they are the full final version
but you will get "symbols missing" errors at
run time.

Anybody baked a correct set of potato packages yet?

by mcking (not verified)

It would also be nice if they would put a Packages.gz file in the appropriate Debian directories so that we could just apt-get the packages.

by steve (not verified)

Just wanted to comment that I got the potato
packages last night from tdyc through dselect and they worked great, and they are the full 2.0 release. I had heared rumors that you get
symbol errors at runtime but this wasn't the case,
I had no problems.

Just add

deb http://kde.tdyc.com potato kde2

to your /etc/apt/sources.list and run dselect.

Ivan recommends getting them this way, apparently
he's had trouble keeping the KDE mirrors up to
date in the past so he prefers people to pull the
packages from tdyc.

Good work Ivan.

Cheers

by Johannes Rohr (not verified)

Hm, after writing the above message I have found out that my problem is actually a different one:

The debs on ftp.kde.org are indeed the stable version, but apt refused to install them because they depend on a libqt version which is not availabe. They want libqt >= .2.2.1-5 but the packaged version on ftp.kde.org is 2.2.1-4-potato-2.

by Jochen Weiss (not verified)

What a fantastic job that you guys did!!! I really love the new version.

Jochen

by Iuri Fiedoruk (not verified)

Now I hope they completly redesign the kde.org homepage.
The page look is from kde 1 and a lot of information is outdated.

by Ezz (not verified)

KDE.com needs a new look. It loks and feels terrible (subjectively)

by jliechty (not verified)

They are working on a new version of the website. I don't know when they will upload it to their official server, but for now you can see it here:
kde.granroth.org

by Ezz (not verified)

Yes, but is this KDE.org or KDE.com?
KDE.org as it is looks OK to me - I like it. It's simple, elegant and is readable.

KDE.com needs redesign to my mind.

by Gunnar Johannesmeyer (not verified)

GREAT!
thanx alot for kde2! its great! i love it!
gunnnar (from germany)

by Antonie Fourie (not verified)

It is really great to see KDE2 finally available for public consumption. This is a milestone achievement.

I see that the RPMs are only available for RH7.0 is anyone building them for RH6.2, or will I have to compile the source myself?

by Iuri Fiedoruk (not verified)

Bero told me he's doing the rpms, but seems
that the code have some erros on redhat 6.2,
and he's trying to fix it.
Well, it's another day without kde 2.0... to bad to me.

by Jeff Dooley (not verified)

Hello out there...

The mirrors are behind schedule. Not to be a major whiner here, but HEY... this is a MAJOR release

by Divine (not verified)

thanks, thanks and thanks once more! that's by far the BEST news of the year! finally... good bye, bash =)

by Mike Masseo (not verified)

Lets all rejoice, and say thanks to the KDE contributors.!!! KDE 1 was great, I cant wait to go home and download KDE2 with my measly connection.

by an (not verified)

i have corel linux 1.0 and red hat 6.1,
is there someone who can help me with kde 2.0
on these dist.
please reply.

by Unai Uribarri (not verified)

Where is the qt package for the redhat 7?

by Marcie (not verified)

The only qt.... packages I can find for RH are for Rawhide, not RH7. Don't go loading the 2.2.1 sources and expect them to compile right -- they won't. RH7 uses a bogus developement gcc, as pointed out by Trolltech. The solution, if you want to build it yourself is to use the "kgcc" included with RH7. Set CC in your environment to kgcc and CXX to "kgcc -x c++" Feh. Took me a day to figure this out. The configure line looks like this:

./configure -gif -thread -system-jpeg -platform redhat-kgcc

-marcie.

by Marcie (not verified)

Whups! Forgot the platform file. /usr/local/qt/configs/redhat-kgcc-shared (or whatever) should look just like linux-g++-shared, with the first few lines reading:

# Compiling
INTERFACE_DECL_PATH = .
SYSCONF_CXX = kgcc -x c++
SYSCONF_CC = kgcc

by Eduardo Gonzalez (not verified)

KDE 2 is great, but how does it must be installed from the RPM's on Red Hat 7.0 to avoid dependencies problems.

by Martin (not verified)

THANK YOU FOR THE GOOD WORK
CONGRATULATIONS FOR ALL DEVELOPERS

by Jesús Antonio (not verified)

Great job guys, I guess there are a few bugs with kcontrol and kdm, but it shouldn't be a problem for you guys to fix them. KDE 2 is GREAT !!!.

by Jarek Luberek (not verified)

here. Checked autoconf, egcs and automake versions.
Installed according to the installation instructions. I have to say, it used to work better with the snapshots back in september. Now, fonts are screwed up, knode crashes on downloading unread articles. I'm back on mozilla since kmail does not seem to send url:s correctly and I'm tired of bold large fonts in konqueror (and kmail).
Considering that this was a clean make of kde-2.0 release, I'll advise you people to wait for 2.1 in march.

/jarek

There seems to be something very broken in your installation. I've used 2.0 for a day now, and it works fine. I'm currently reading news with KNode without any problems at all.

by Coupon (not verified)

This is the most exciting things to me..and will well expressed among my friends to which I am introducing linux/KDE.

Congrats again from Weihai, China.

by Mark (not verified)

It'd be nice if there was an ftp directory with all the extra RPMs Mandrake 7.1 needs to install kde 2, like Qt. Anyone know of one? Without it, everyone has to go do the search..

Hi all,

Not mean to ruin the party but I don't know why I can't start KDE2 from linux shell. I think I have done all the instructions for compiling and installing the from the sources.
I have Red Hat 6.1 on my machine and I already remove KDE1.
After 3 hours compiling all the sources (including Qt 2.2.1) with no exception flags (as some user recommend to boost performance). I start KDE2 and it was OK and I feel GREAT!. But also there are some bugs. I noticed that I can't display jpeg file my background and KDE crash control gives report there are some crash when choosing jpeg as background image.
I play around a little bit. I guess I choose to play sound from KDE. I reboot and after that I can't start KDE from linux shell with startx command. I already put startkde on .Xclients file. The KDE splash screen pop up and showing some progress sign but after that it just blank, showing only background color, blue.
I tried this many times and the same thing happens. Anybody knows the problem?

Jamal