Announcing KDE 3.2 Beta 1 "Rudi"

With the new year fast approaching, beta testing of the upcoming KDE 3.2 release has begun. The KDE Project is excited to announce the immediate availability of "Rudi", the first beta version of KDE 3.2. Sharing its name with the Kastle conference's host coordinator, Rudi represents the culmination of the KDE Project's efforts to date.

As no further features will be added between the release of Rudi and KDE 3.2, this is an excellent opportunity to preview the most advanced and powerful KDE yet. Packages may be downloaded from download.kde.org. As of this writing there are sources and binaries for SuSE and Conectiva, but other distributions will follow. The Konstruct build toolkit was updated.

With its 25 page feature plan, nearly 10,000 bugs closed and over 2,000 user wishes processed a complete report on what one can expect from Rudi would be so long that by the time you finished reading it, there would probably be a more current KDE release to try out. The only way to truly appreciate this release is to experience it first hand, but here are a few of the highlights anyways...

Read on in the full announcement.

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Comments

by Eric Laffoon (not verified)

> I'll give a long answer to this. It will probably produce more questions+retorts than

answers, but here goes.

I have to give you credit there. Then again, it diminished the point doesn't it? ;-)

> I stated quite clearly at the start of my previous comment.

I AM NOT KNOCKING KDE IN ANY WAY. I am not. (Not much anyway.)

And when producing the long answer it's good to be clear... sort of. ;-)

> The original point was intended to stress that the numbers (namely the 10000, 2000 and 30) aren't that important, and those that are impressed by the numbers should try not to be. Instinctively, when faced with things like '90% fat free' and 'and amazing 1000 combinations', one should ask what these numbers are talking about. Don't listen to the numbers all that hard.

So in simple terms we can reduce this to that point, agree and say "so what". As Aaron pointed out the alternative is to list the items, which with those numbers is inherently ridiculous. Now if this was being disseminated by corporate conglomerate "X" with intent to mislead and stick their hand in my pocket as opposed to stand up programmers looking for a way to summarize I think it would be a lot more valid. As it is I think one of my favorite programming phrases applies which says basically abstraction is knowing what you don't have to pay attention to. Some details are in fact counter productive.

> Personally, I think it's better to say 'this, that, the other, and approx. x many other user wishes accounted for' rather than 'x user wishes accounted for.' This is more informative and places less emphasis on the numbers.

Sure, and to be fair you mention them all or... you say how many there are after giving some example so that it gives the reader an idea of scope. Just because you can lie with statistics doesn't mean all statistics are lies.

> I like to view the application count as a rough indicator as to how much useful stuff there is for getting work done. (So 'three applications' means things like

'KWord, KSpread and Quanta', not things like 'Kicker, Konqueror and KWallet')

This is the second time you mentioned Quanta in your talkback. That gets you enough points with me that I now agree with everything you said. ;-)

> Finally, I am not questioning any factual errors in the piece. I never was: I just don't consider the raw statistics to be very meaningful.

Maybe it's a matter of personal taste. In my business endeavors I can think of few things that have been more useful to me in assessing and planning. Then again that's not the same as a release but maybe I'm geeky enough to to get a kick out of it.

by ac (not verified)

screenshots where?

by Bart (not verified)

Is it just me or has the Mac-like menu swallower at the top of some of the screenshots now an actual applet? So that I can add other buttons/applets to the same panel?

by Datschge (not verified)

Yes, it's an applet now. And yes, it's cool. =o)

by anon (not verified)

yup, that's the general idea =)

by Tim_F (not verified)

Curious as to what font is being used there. It looks great, and I can never get my desktop to look quite that clean with the fonts. Any tips?

by Macolu (not verified)

Does anybody know if bug 66371 has been corrected ?
It's really annoying :-/

http://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=66371

Anyway, very good announcement !

by Evan "JabberWok... (not verified)

Looks like there was a bug in the bug database. It's marked closed as a duplicate of another bug (which it is), which is itself marked closed as a duplicate of another bug. But that third bug does not seem to have anything to do with the systray bug that you're describing.

It may have been fixed, may not have been. I'm not running CVS, or I'd check and reopen the bug if necessary. It looks like an accident, but may not be (that third bug *could* be the same).

by Charlie (not verified)

Anyone have any luck building it with Konstruct? It appears to be failing for me in libs/arts/work/arts-1.1.93/mcop (debug.cc, line 789).

In file included from libmcop_la.all_cc.cc:35:
debug.cc: In function `char *arts_strdup_vprintf (const char *, void *)':
debug.cc:789: `vasprintf' undeclared (first use this function)
debug.cc:789: (Each undeclared identifier is reported only once for
each function it appears in.)
asyncstream.h: At top level:
debug.cc:491: warning: `gsize printf_string_upper_bound (const gchar *,
int, void *)' defined but not used
make[6]: *** [libmcop_la.all_cc.lo] Error 1
make[6]: Leaving directory `/scratch/kde-3.1.93/konstruct/libs/arts/work/arts-1.1.93/mcop'
make[5]: *** [all-recursive] Error 1

It appears to be related to "HAS_VASPRINTF"... Any advice is greatly appreciated!

Thanks,
Charlie

by David Hiltz (not verified)

Try this..

cd /scratch/kde-3.1.93/konstruct/libs/arts/work/arts-1.1.93
./configure
make install
{go back to the meta/kde directory and continue on with 'make install'

by binner (not verified)

This likely installs to a wrong prefix! Removing "--enable-final" from libs/arts/Makefile and calling "make garchive clean install" while being in the libs/arts/ directory is better.

by Alex (not verified)

I am definittely looking forward to KDE 3.2 come early February! Great works!

Also, my browser gives a 28 page printout when i look at the features guide =0

by Pedro Sam (not verified)

I am consistently getting compilation errors from the gcc-3.3.x series compiler. Has anyone encountered this problem?

p2sam-pc:~/software/src/konstruct/libs/arts/work/arts-1.1.93/soundserver$ make
/bin/sh ../libtool --silent --mode=link --tag=CXX g++ -Wnon-virtual-dtor -Wno-long-long -Wundef -Wall -W -Wpointer-arith -Wwrite-strings -ansi -D_XOPEN_SOURCE=500 -D_BSD_SOURCE -Wcast-align -Wconversion -Wchar-subscripts -O2 -I/home/p2sam/software/kde3.2-beta1/include -I/usr/X11R6/include -L/home/p2sam/software/kde3.2-beta1/lib -L/usr/X11R6/lib -O2 -pipe -I/home/p2sam/software/kde3.2-beta1/include -I/usr/X11R6/include -L/home/p2sam/software/kde3.2-beta1/lib -L/usr/X11R6/lib -O2 -pipe -I/home/p2sam/software/kde3.2-beta1/include -I/usr/X11R6/include -L/home/p2sam/software/kde3.2-beta1/lib -L/usr/X11R6/lib -O2 -pipe -I/home/p2sam/software/kde3.2-beta1/include -I/usr/X11R6/include -L/home/p2sam/software/kde3.2-beta1/lib -L/usr/X11R6/lib -O2 -pipe -Wformat-security -Wmissing-format-attribute -fno-exceptions -fno-check-new -fno-common -ftemplate-depth-99 -L/home/p2sam/software/kde3.2-beta1/lib -L/usr/X11R6/lib -L/home/p2sam/software/kde3.2-beta1/lib -L/usr/X11R6/lib -L/home/p2sam/software/kde3.2-beta1/lib -L/usr/X11R6/lib -L/home/p2sam/software/kde3.2-beta1/lib -L/usr/X11R6/lib -o artsd artsd.all_cc.o libsoundserver_idl.la ../flow/libartsflow.la ../mcop_mt/libmcop_mt.la
/opt/gcc-3.3.2/lib/./libstdc++.so: undefined reference to `_Unwind_Resume_or_Rethrow@GCC_3.3'
collect2: ld returned 1 exit status
make: *** [artsd] Error 1
p2sam-pc:~/software/src/konstruct/libs/arts/work/arts-1.1.93/soundserver$

i had the same Problem (Ark linux) it comes from a bad gcc build/rpm (old library versions laying around or someting like that) just download the latest gcc version from http://www.gnu.org/software/gcc/gcc.html and do the usual stuff

./configure --prefix=/usr
make bootstrap
make install

it worked for me and doesn't take long (compared to the complete kde build ;-)

by Pedro Sam (not verified)

ahh, thanks for the response. This problem had been plaguing me for months. Would you happen to know of a way to install both versions of gcc cleanly without blowing away the default system compiler?

thanks,
Pedro

you could us a different prefix for example /usr/local/gcc and then create some aliases to that location if you want to uses the new gcc. (alias gcc='/usr/local/gcc/bin/gcc' - don't forget the others g++, cc, etc.......) and you have to add /usr/local/gcc/lib to your /etc/ld.so.conf.

but why would you want to do that ? if this error occurs your gcc suite is broken. the best would be to completely replace it with your own build - there won't be any binary incompatibilitys if that's your concern.

by Alex (not verified)

indepth, and well written, but I did find some small errors,s o maybe you can correct them later.

"The only way to truly appreciate this release is to experience it first hand, but here are a few of the highlights anyways..."

should be

The only way to truly appreciate this release is to experience it first hand, but here are a few of the highlights anyway...

Also, if KDE wants to get mroe donations and developers, which it definitely needs, it NEEDS TO BE MORE ASSERTIVE! KDE NEEDS BETTER WAYS TO ENCOURAGE PEOPLE TO DONATE! GNOME IS DOING AN OUTSTANDING JOB AT THIS AND WE SHOULD LEARN FROM THEM.

I've filled a wishlist about many ways that KDE ould encourage its users to give back a little something. Please check it out and vote for it if you agree, this is a priority.

http://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=63868

by Aaron J. Seigo (not verified)

i agree with you that it would be an very worthy goal to have a fundraising drive with clear goals for KDE. that's a big job, however, and probably not the sort of thing that most of the people involved with KDE are very good at. i think that Open Source projects like KDE could learn quite a bit from organizations like NPR and PBS, but i also think we really need some fundraising savvy people who are personally invested (as in they want it to succeed) to spearhead such an effort.

oh, and thanks for yours (and everyone else's) kind words re: the article.

by Waldo Bastian (not verified)

To donate to KDE please visit http://www.kde.org/support.html

by Alex (not verified)

SUSE is set to be acquired by Novell by January though a $210,000,000 deal as of course you already know since you work there.

Does that mean SUSE will change its desktop preference, rewrite YAST in GTK, quit sponsoring KDE, switch everyoen to GNOME related technologies etc. If that happens than I have just lost my favourite distribution ;(

I also think it would make more sense to keep SUSE the way it currently is, or they might screw it up as they have other things in the past when they tried to change it too radically. If everything becomes GNOME, not only is this uncompetitive environment goign to hurt Linux, but it will mean that ther ewon't be much difference between Redhat and SUSE and I definitely would not have any incentive to buy it anymore, but I do like 9.0 a lot, even though I think the real stellar releases will come in 2004 when linux 2.6, samba 3, KDE 3.2, KDevelop 3, OpenOffice.org 2, GIMP 1.4, GNOME 2.6, Xfree 4.4, etc. can all be incorporated.

Any information on this, or has hell just begun?

by Waldo Bastian (not verified)

> Does that mean SUSE will change its desktop preference, rewrite YAST in GTK,
> quit sponsoring KDE, switch everyoen to GNOME related technologies etc.

There are no indications of that. Novell expressed in general terms that it very much likes what SUSE is doing and wants SUSE to continue in its current direction.

Cheers,
Waldo

by Alex (not verified)

if they install XD2 on it though, it will kill KDE

I know because I've installed it and all my icons were not working, and KDE crashed everytime I went to the kicker and clicekd something, it was useless. It totally sabatoged my KDE.

by azza-bazoo (not verified)

Methinks your spelling error-hunt was a bit too pedantic. After all, "anyways" is perfectly valid (well, depending on who you ask) as an informal spelling of that word. It's fairly common in normal speech, and this isn't exactly a formal environment ...

Not that I don't like pedantry, but there's a time and a place -- like on b.k.o, to make sure that 3.2 really rocks!

by L1 (not verified)

does anyone know, if everaldos screenshot (http://www.kde-look.org/content/preview.php?file=8341-1.jpg) is just a mockup? this looks incredible. something right between m$ xp and mac osx. just better. if this is the way, kde 3.2 will look, i will switch. really, fantastic work!!!!

by Rayiner Hashem (not verified)

Those icons look like Crystal SVG, but I can't tell what that widget style is.

by emmanuel (not verified)

i think it's a mockup, the splitter is collapsable, which the QT with KDE 3.1 definitely can't do. i don't think it can do it now. or can it? :O)

by Datschge (not verified)

It could be just "painted" onto the widget indicating that the splitter is movable without offering anything like a button (which is possible and would actually make sense to me). I thought it might be a style Conectiva (for whom Everaldo worked initially) is using. But just now I saw that rounded, non-dotted selection in the navigation panel, so I guess it's indeed a mockup. Oh well...

by kinema (not verified)

AFAIK the theme/style of KDE 3.2 will not change. It has been decided that KDE can not drasticly change the way it look between every minor release. 4.0 will be the earliest that you will see a change.

--adam

by regeya (not verified)

December 8th will mark the day I can completely stop relying on apps like Mozilla Firebird, Evolution, and others that are currently infesting ;-D my desktop. The Alphas were great, and it sounds like the beta is even more impressive. Here's hoping that 3.2 can release before schedule.

by John (not verified)

I assume that you will not be viewing pictures with
your web browser then? Konqueror is horribly slow and blocks
KDE completely when loading a large picture...
In fact this is practically the only reason I still have
to use Mozilla...

See the current discussion at the kfm-devel list.

John

by Aaron J. Seigo (not verified)

and see how they are working towards a solution on the kfm-devel list.

by john (not verified)

But of course Aaron, this has always been the
reason I love opensource!! Things might take awhile,
but generally the direction is towards progress.

This is why my wife now exclusively uses kde and
konqueror for her studies.
And why I do want to keep using it, also for photo sites.
I guess I'm growing a bit impatient because this particular
bug has always bugged me.

BTW my 'reward' for fixing the bug (10 euro) still stands!
Anybody want to join?

And to let you see I mean it, my email adress is in the
bug report. I'm the van Spaandonk John. Just don't want
to post it in public.

John

by Mario (not verified)

I want 3.2, to rock, and if it is released in 2003, than I think it will be rushed ther eis a lot to do before a final and there are still many many bugs which are pretty critical.

Really, why does it matter if you relase in december or a month later? After all, 80% of the people won't even get it until march when their distro ships with it, no point in rushing. I would rather see a stellar release.

by Eric Laffoon (not verified)

Are you running CVS? Do you have a basis in facts? Do you watch the commits and talk with the developers like the release manager?

Once you put a person in the position of release manager you have to trust him. Coolo had the development schedule on hold to fix bugs for some time. This release is aready much longer than previous major point releases. Unless you can come up with something real you're just spreading FUD. If there needs to be a delay there will and if there doesn't there won't. If there is a delay it would be to 2004. Right now there is no delay planned.

by Aaron J. Seigo (not verified)

yeah, the hard part of the release cycle is indeed coming: at what point is it good enough to be good enough? test the betas, provide quality factual feedback... that counts a LOT towards the project's decision making when it comes to judging releases ready.

by Alex (not verified)

Even after removing almost half of the planned features from the 3.2 feature plan, 25% of the features are still in the to do list. http://developer.kde.org/development-versions/kde-3.2-features.html

To have these features be stable and well tested, i think December 8 is too early and I have heard other say the same thing. Anyway, this si an opinion, not a mathematical equation.

by Datschge (not verified)

My suggestion: Stop reading paper, paper doesn't blush after all. Test the real thing before masking uninformed sounding comments. Thanks.

by ryan (not verified)

for those with real distros like gentoo, we
$emerge rsync
$emerge -u world
practically every week, so I'd like to see it soon (but not buggy)

Looks pretty solid. I'd have to say that kwallet is pretty annoying though. It should have a checkbox "don't ask me again"... pretty much, it should act just like Mozilla's PSM does.

by ac (not verified)

Are the 'new sidebars' in KDevelop Qt or KDE widgets which every developer can now implement, or are they currently 'exclusive' hacks for KDevelop?

Does anyone have screenshots of the new konqueror tabs? I never saw them and do not know how closing tabs will work in 3.2

thanks

by Datschge (not verified)

KDevelop (and Kate btw.) are using KMDI's IDEAl mode, which is available ("standardized") in KDE's core libraries now, see: http://developer.kde.org/documentation/library/cvs-api/kmdi/html/index.html

The "new" Konqueror tabs don't look different at all, but now resize to fit into the width, show the tab title in other colors than black when loading and after finished loading but not viewed, each tab can be close by clicking on its little site icon, and optionally you can show buttons for creating new tabs and closing the current tab a la mozilla.

by cbcbcb (not verified)

IMHO the new tabs are an absolute disaster. They change size and move about several times while the page loads, and the different colours just look a mess. Half the time the page title isn't there.

by anon (not verified)

I absolutely agree. I am someone who uses Tabs and I'm surprised this hasn't been fixed.

by Aaron J. Seigo (not verified)

not at all. right now the tabs show up prior to loading a page, are quite configurable, have visual feedback as to loading status (icon animation would be better than colours, though), support drag and drop, etc... compared to the tabs in 3.1 they are frieking brilliant. they still have room for improvement, such as the titles getting replaced sooner (right now it waits until the whole document is loaded, uck!), fewer repaints and perhaps some nicer loading feedback. but the improvement from "huh, we have tabs. so what." to "wow, these tabs are actually useful." is, at least for me, quite noticeable.

by Hamish Rodda (not verified)

I believe you need to have a patched qt-copy to see tabs in their full flicker-free glory... eg. http://webcvs.kde.org/cgi-bin/cvsweb.cgi/qt-copy/patches/0013-qtabwidget...

Okay, probably just me, but according to the README, it should work with an rpm -Fvh *rpm

Here's my output:

error: Failed dependencies:
libartsbuilder.so.0 is needed by kdeaddons3-sound-3.1.93-0
libartsgui.so.0 is needed by kdeaddons3-sound-3.1.93-0
libartsgui_idl.so.0 is needed by kdeaddons3-sound-3.1.93-0
libartsgui_kde.so.0 is needed by kdeaddons3-sound-3.1.93-0
libartsmidi_idl.so.0 is needed by kdeaddons3-sound-3.1.93-0
libartsmodules.so.0 is needed by kdeaddons3-sound-3.1.93-0
libartsmodulescommon.so.0 is needed by kdeaddons3-sound-3.1.93-0
libartsmoduleseffects.so.0 is needed by kdeaddons3-sound-3.1.93-0
libartsmodulesmixers.so.0 is needed by kdeaddons3-sound-3.1.93-0
libartsmodulessynth.so.0 is needed by kdeaddons3-sound-3.1.93-0
libartsbuilder.so.0 is needed by kdemultimedia3-3.1.93-0
libartsgui.so.0 is needed by kdemultimedia3-3.1.93-0
libartsgui_idl.so.0 is needed by kdemultimedia3-3.1.93-0
libartsgui_kde.so.0 is needed by kdemultimedia3-3.1.93-0
libartsmidi_idl.so.0 is needed by kdemultimedia3-3.1.93-0
libartsmodules.so.0 is needed by kdemultimedia3-3.1.93-0
libartsmodulescommon.so.0 is needed by kdemultimedia3-3.1.93-0
libartsmoduleseffects.so.0 is needed by kdemultimedia3-3.1.93-0
libartsmodulesmixers.so.0 is needed by kdemultimedia3-3.1.93-0
libartsmodulessynth.so.0 is needed by kdemultimedia3-3.1.93-0
libartsbuilder.so.0 is needed by kdemultimedia3-video-3.1.93-0
libartsgui.so.0 is needed by kdemultimedia3-video-3.1.93-0
libartsgui_idl.so.0 is needed by kdemultimedia3-video-3.1.93-0
libartsgui_kde.so.0 is needed by kdemultimedia3-video-3.1.93-0
libartsmidi_idl.so.0 is needed by kdemultimedia3-video-3.1.93-0
libartsmodules.so.0 is needed by kdemultimedia3-video-3.1.93-0
libartsmodulescommon.so.0 is needed by kdemultimedia3-video-3.1.93-0
libartsmoduleseffects.so.0 is needed by kdemultimedia3-video-3.1.93-0
libartsmodulesmixers.so.0 is needed by kdemultimedia3-video-3.1.93-0
libartsmodulessynth.so.0 is needed by kdemultimedia3-video-3.1.93-0
libgnokii.so.1 is needed by kdepim3-3.1.93-0
libvcard.so.0 is needed by (installed) kbarcode-1.4.1-53
libvcard.so.0 is needed by (installed) myldapklient-0.6.6-143
libvcard.so.0 is needed by (installed) quanta-3.1.4-29
libvcard.so.0 is needed by (installed) synce-kde-0.6-48
libvcard.so.0 is needed by (installed) koffice-extra-1.2.92-60
libvcard.so.0 is needed by (installed) koffice-illustration-1.2.92-60
libvcard.so.0 is needed by (installed) koffice-presentation-1.2.92-60
libvcard.so.0 is needed by (installed) koffice-spreadsheet-1.2.92-60
libvcard.so.0 is needed by (installed) koffice-wordprocessing-1.2.92-60
libvcard.so.0 is needed by (installed) koffice-1.2.92-67
libartsbuilder.so.0 is needed by (installed) brahms-1.02-794
libartsgui_idl.so.0 is needed by (installed) brahms-1.02-794
libartsgui_kde.so.0 is needed by (installed) brahms-1.02-794
libartsmidi.so.0 is needed by (installed) brahms-1.02-794
libartsmidi_idl.so.0 is needed by (installed) brahms-1.02-794
libartsmodules.so.0 is needed by (installed) brahms-1.02-794

On a quite vanilly SuSE 9.0 installation, btw.

it looks like you need to insatll the libarts package before all teh KDE packages.

Try '-Uhv', because new rpms might be added by an upgrade, which were not installed by the previous Release.

I have got the same problem. Installing the KDE 3.2 RC Packages on SuSE 9.0 Professional (especially kdemultimedia3-sound.rpm) brings a dependency failure because of the libarts modules....

Have you got any solution?

Regards
Asterix