KDE Project Releases KDE 2.2alpha1

For those of you who like the cutting edge or want to help the KDE developers continue their phenomenal development pace, but aren't yet ready to compile from CVS,
the KDE Project has just released
KDE 2.2alpha1. A list of some of the significant additions and improvements
versus the recent 2.1 release is below (please add any
unlisted significant changes in the comments section), as well as a list of currently available
pre-compiled binaries (please read the KDE Binary
Packages Policy
). Please bear in mind that this is an alpha release and those enjoying a stable desktop should use KDE 2.1.1.

 

ChangeLog: KDE Alpha 2.2.1

If you know of any significant changes not listed below, please add them
in a comment!

  • kdelibs changes.
    • One major change you will notice right away is from KDE's new modular printing subsystem based on the new KPrinter class (dot story; KCKDE Issue 5, 4 and 1 ). It is compatible with the existing QPrinter class and also features a new printer management tool.
      Its plugin design currently supports lpr, CUPS and PDQ.
    • Konqueror also benefits from the new HTML form completion added to KHTML, which allows Konqueror to supply possible completions to text fields in web forms via a drop down menu, very similar to how it does with URLs in the location bar (KCKDE Issue 2).
    • Of interest to developers, KDE-DB, a modular database-connectivity class, has been added to kdelibs (KCKDE Issue 5). The MySQL plugin is the
      most complete, but also the PostgresSQL one works.
    • KDE's font selection dialog has received a facelift: it is now possible to
      preview fonts in dialogs using the KFontAction class (KCKDE Issue 3).
  • New applications. Kaboodle, a quick multimedia viewer/player, has
    been added to kdemultimedia (KCKDE Issue 5). It complements noatun but is intended for use as a KPart (e.g., to preview a video in Konqueror). KScan, a library to access raster scanners using SANE, as well as Kooka (dot
    story), a front-end for KScan, have
    been added to kdemultimedia (KCKDE Issue 2).
  • KMail. The KMail developers have implemented the oft-requested IMAP support (KCKDE Issue 4). In addition, KMail features improved (non-blocking) sending (KCKDE Issue 5).
  • Theming. Theming has gotten a big boost with support for both Windows themes from Tucows and pixmap-based IceWM themes and the addition of a Quartz Style (KCKDE Issue 4).
  • Networking.
    • Caldera has contributed a new smb kioslave which works with libsmbclient, released by the Samba team.
    • KDE now supports SOCKS (a generic utility which re-implements a number of libc functions) (KCKDE Issue 3).
    • KDE now supports IPv6 (tested on Linux, AIX, Tru64 4.x and Solaris 2.6 and 7) (KCKDE Issue 2).
  • Desktop. For the desktop, KDE 2.2 adds the new audiocd:/ ioslave,
    which, for example, permits you to drag'n'drop audio CD tracks onto your desktop using Konqueror and have them automatically be encoded as .MP3 or Ogg Vorbis (dot story; KCKDE Issue 2).
  • Administrivia. On the less ambitious side, Kant has been renamed as Kate (KCKDE Issue 5).

 

Packages: KDE Alpha 2.2.1
More packages may be released in the coming days (in particular Mandrake is said to still be working on their binaries), please read the KDE Binary Packages Policy.

Dot Categories: 

Comments

humm,

1. altough faster starting applications maybe make you feel more comfortable, they don't enhance your productivity, and thats also what themes do no ?.
2. I don't think apps can start much quicker than now because of the design of X and so (or am i wrong) ... X apps generally do start slow here, altough once started they work fast. (maybe zerocopy for unix sockets would help here, but now i am really talking about things i haven't a clue...)

by chchchain (not verified)

au contraire mon-swear...

Faster starting of your browser (including the case of opening a new window) makes a big dent in productivity. When bouncing back and forth between different reference sites, those 4 second delays add up, and more importantly, break your rhythm. The interface doesn't have to be lighting fast, but needs to move as fast as you think to not put a drag on your flow.

by Ev andro (not verified)

2. not really. i've written some apps which start up instantly (very small apps, though).

X apps can start up almost instantly, one of the problems is that the apps themselves need work, but KDE has a bad habit of making apps take like 3 secs to load no matter what they are, other desktops don't do that.

Don't get me wrong but if you know what is best for KDE why don't you take a more active, less talk more do, role? It's easy to sit on the sidelines and say what should be done but actually doing the coding and the planning is a much different game.

by jstultz (not verified)

while its not mentioned in any release i've seen so far, in 2.2alpha, konq is much faster at opening new windows and loading pages from the cash. i've had some trouble with a few rendering bugs, but other then that, its been as stable as 2.1.1 for me (although i do not run a full kde desktop, just konq)

form completion is nice too!

check it out!

by not me (not verified)

>in 2.2alpha, konq is much faster at opening new windows and loading pages from the cash

Neato! That sounds great! I'm really going to have to fire up CVS here...

by jstultz (not verified)

while its not mentioned in any release i've seen so far, in 2.2alpha, konq is much faster at opening new windows and loading pages from the cash. i've had some trouble with a few rendering bugs, but other then that, its been as stable as 2.1.1 for me (although i do not run a full kde desktop, just konq)

form completion is nice too!

check it out!

by Scott (not verified)

Take your trolls back to slashdot.

by ac (not verified)

Slashdot is the ideal place for trolls!
In fact: Slashdot is only intended for trolls!

I think the original poster has a very valid point. Just because you love themes doesn't mean he's trolling.

And before someone asks me what I've done for KDE--i.e., attempts to dismiss my comment--I am packing up a nice, optimized build of KDE for my friends. Speed does matter.

by Bojan (not verified)

ac has the point. Theming is cool, but not so important. It would be better to concentrate on KOffice and its import/export filters.

I would be cool if KDE/Konqueror would run 'good' in 16 megs of memory, the KDE people would still be lagging behind QNX, but not far.

by TrollKiller (not verified)

You don't have to be Kreskin to predict trolls' future.
The hand writing is on the wall: trolls faces a bleak future.
In fact there won't be any future at all for trolls because trolls are dying.
Things are looking very bad for trolls.
As many of us are already aware, trolls continues to reduce in numbers.
Red ink flows like a river of blood.

Let's keep to the facts and look at the numbers.

Troll leader ac states that there are 2000 trolls. How many usenet trolls are there?
Let's see. The number of Slashdot trolls versus usenet trolls posts is roughly in ratio of 5 to 1.
Therefore there are about 5000/5 = 1000 usenet trolls post.
Usenet trolls posts are about half of the volume of Slashdot trolls posts.
Therefore there are about 500 usenet trolls.
So there are only 1500 Slashdot trolls, compared to the 3 bilion Internet users.

All major surveys show that trolls have steadily decreased in numbers.
Trolls are very sick and its long term survival prospects are very dim.
If trolls want survive at all it will be among trolling hobbyists, Microsoft zealots,
and people with sick minds.
Trolls continues to decay. Nothing short of a miracle could save it at this point in time.
For all practical purposes, trolls are dead.

by Evandro (not verified)

kde core developers are working on that.

the thing is, Karol Szwed wanted to use icewm themes with kwin and implemented that (remember, kde is free software). there's no reason to complain.

by Mark Swanson (not verified)

Why is it that every version of KDE has such a small clipboard buffer? This is one of the most annoying things about KDE for me.
Please fix it!

by Daniel Molkentin (not verified)

This is nothing to do for KDE. It is a Qt issue. Expect a better behavior in Qt 3.

by jasja (not verified)

I Really like KDE and i hope that those distro's keep that in mind and package it quick. It's their job cause i'm paying them money when i buy a linux suite in the shop (yes i'm a newbie kind of user!)

by Scott (not verified)

I would recommend using a distro that actively supports KDE. I've been a RedHat user for about 4 years, but just switched to SuSE becasue RedHat is leaning very much towards Gnome/GTK.

by Evandro (not verified)

please, look at your linux box again.

it doesn't say anywhere "we'll create new kde packages when a new version is released". you didn't pay for that.

by Biswa (not verified)

Does anyone know if the new SMBLIB is in ?

by Daniel Molkentin (not verified)

Nope. It should be included in the new Samba Release (2.2.0). Get it and install it. If the kdebase's configure scripts detects smblib, the new smb io-slave will be built rather than the old read-only client based on the smbtools.

by not me (not verified)

Does the new client allow browsing workgroups like the Windows Network Neighborhood? I would really like that functionality in Konqueror.

by Theo van Klaveren (not verified)

It's not in 2.2.0. You have to check out Samba from CVS and compile libsmbclient by hand. I did so, but the I/O slave is still pretty buggy: I can use it to browse hosts directly, but I can't see the network neighbourhood (which I thought was a supported feature). It all feels pretty shaky, though less so than the smbclient wrapper.

It definitely still needs some work, though perhaps some of the bugs are just because I use FreeBSD.

Would someone tell me what is up with the addressbook and kmail? Take a look at the included screenshot. In KDE2.1.1's full-fledged addressbook, I have all the information for names and so forth for these people. But why can't that be included in the address book's entry? Can't we have:

, ,

??

by Daniel Naber (not verified)

Just go to Configuration -> Appearance -> Addressbook and choose a more powerful addressbook.

by TrollKiller (not verified)

You don't have to be Kreskin to predict trolls' future.
The hand writing is on the wall: trolls faces a bleak future.
In fact there won't be any future at all for trolls because trolls are dying.
Things are looking very bad for trolls.
As many of us are already aware, trolls continues to reduce in numbers.
Red ink flows like a river of blood.

Let's keep to the facts and look at the numbers.

Troll leader ac states that there are 2000 trolls. How many usenet trolls are there?
Let's see. The number of Slashdot trolls versus usenet trolls posts is roughly in ratio of 5 to 1.
Therefore there are about 5000/5 = 1000 usenet trolls post.
Usenet trolls posts are about half of the volume of Slashdot trolls posts.
Therefore there are about 500 usenet trolls.
So there are only 1500 Slashdot trolls, compared to the 3 bilion Internet users.

All major surveys show that trolls have steadily decreased in numbers.
Trolls are very sick and its long term survival prospects are very dim.
If trolls want survive at all it will be among trolling hobbyists, Microsoft zealots,
and people with sick minds.
Trolls continues to decay. Nothing short of a miracle could save it at this point in time.
For all practical purposes, trolls are dead.

by ac (not verified)

KDE suXXors, GNOME roXXors.

by end dood talk f... (not verified)

dude speak is so damn gay,......matter of fact the use of the word "gay" to describe somthing stupid is quite dull. what 14 year old retarded girl invented this crap?

it's about as cool a valley girl talk ANOTHER dopey way to express yourself.

by George R. Welch (not verified)

> New applications. Kaboodle, a quick
> multimedia viewer/player, has been added
> to kdemultimedia (KCKDE Issue 5). It
> complements noatun but is intended for use
> as a KPart (e.g., to preview

Does anyone know if multimedia supports
streaming audio yet? Noatun is really awesome,
but it's crippled by not supporting streaming
input.

by Daniel Molkentin (not verified)

Nikolas Zimmerman is working on this. Expect more for beta1.

by Eric Nicholson (not verified)

Why does kde keep getting new media players? This seems to be some seriously treaded ground. Everybody wants to make there own brand new mp3 player from scratch, or a SQL mp3 organizer. It seems like more people could benefit from a KDE enhanced version of XMMS. Some common features between GNOME & KDE would be great, the player is already "feature rich", and it's finished too.

by George R. Welch (not verified)

Xmms may be feature rich, and ``finished''
but it's so seriously butt-ugly that I
for one cannot stand to have it running
on my desktop. No amount of skinning can
cure the fact that it puts *tiny* little
buttons on the *wrong place* on its ugly
fakey title bar.

Whatever Einstein came up with the idea of
doing away with title bars for audio players
probably also wears a nose ring.

So keep xmms if it rocks your world, but
please understand that for some people
it's an abomination. Give me noatun, with
its clean, beautiful, simple, _excellent_
interface any day!

I'm using a theme for XMMS that make the buttons over 4 inches in circumfrence(there circular)(19 inch monitor). XMMS themes can look like almost anything, STOP THE FUD.

by not me (not verified)

XMMS themes can't change the size of buttons. The buttons are always the same size and in the same place (though they might appear to be bigger or smaller, the acutal clickable area never changes). That's because its based on Winamp, which has the same limitation. The titlebar buttons are _extremely_ small, especially at high resolutions. You can make the window double-sized, but that makes it too big.

That said, I can't say I like Noatun's interface any bettter. In fact, its worse (in KDE 2.1, but I'm sure its improving). The GUI plugins waste too much space and don't provide enough options. The playlist still needs some features like drag-n-drop-adding of directories, loading the ID3 tags and length of songs (and removing files that aren't acutally music/movies), icons for all the toolbar buttons, true shuffle play (I like to keep my mp3s organized but still hear them in random order), sorting, and other things. I do like the global key shortcuts and the tray icon interface though (very nice! just fix the seeking and volume control from the keyboard).

Winamp has the best interface, even though its titlebar buttons are small. XMMS hasn't implemented all of winamp's features (like right-click menus on the buttons and one-click setting of all the equalizer sliders). If winamp's titlebar buttons were bigger, and it didn't dump its playlist every time you opened a new file, it would be the perfect media player. (it even runs well under Linux with WINE!)

Okay, I'm done nitpicking now :-)

by Eric Nicholson (not verified)

What I'd like to see (to clarify my statements) in XMMS Is

Qt/KDE widget support
A KDE extensible inerface (for your little buttons)

XMMS already has:

Streaming audio (Ogg/Mp3/RM)
An aRts output plugin
KJofol skin support (way better than noatun)
Video Plugs (Avi/DivX/MPEG)
Large user base (tried and true)

It's already full fledged, just make a version thats not dependent on GNOME libraries, and we can then stop reinventing the wheel, and maybe help the GNOME & X community along the way, assuming that's a good thing

by Scott (not verified)

"and we can then stop reinventing the wheel, and maybe help the GNOME & X community along the way"

It's obvious every time that someone makes a statement like this that they aren't a developer.

KDE and Gnome aren't written in the same language!

C != C++

You can't just fit XMMS with Qt widgets and be done with it. It's just not that easy.

by Eric Nicholson (not verified)

"It's obvious every time that someone makes a statement like this that they aren't a developer."

Don't be so quick to judge, Scott. Although i'm not familiar with the source or XMMS, GNOME, or KDE/Qt, but I don't think might statements are invalid.

"C != C++"

true. what could be said is that well written C is a proper subset, and anything which might not map 1:1 can easily be implemented in C++. And I certainly hope your not going to say that GNOME has this amazing feature set that we couldn't mimic with KDE...

A port of the xmms code should be feasible. I'll start looking into it if people other than myself think it would be usefull. It seems like a great system, and with a little (or maybe a lot of) work it could be a valuable asset.

I really do apologize if I sound defensive or even agressive. I love KDE, it's the most exciting software I've uncovered in years. I really appreciate all the hardwork that's gone into Noatun/Kaiman/etc. aswell. I really want to find a way to participate positively in this community and help make it a viable alternative to the closed, impenetrable mainstream desktop i've been using (weendoze not Gnome). KDE, Linux, and all open software have one thing going for them, and that is the community behind it. Much like distributed computing, the biggest issue is overcoming the inherit ineffeciency and redundancy of such a complex system.

by Scott (not verified)

Sorry, this is just a rant that had been waiting to happen. You hear the cry "work together" all of the time.

Many of the people who proclaim this don't even know that KDE and Gnome are written in different languages. Standing on the sidelines they yell "work together" at the people who are actually doing the work. This is mostly directed towards them.

I'm glad to see that you at least intend to implement what you would like to see. This is why open source thrives.

The fact is that while a lot of C will compile with g++, given any large project, a lot of it won't. Try compiling a Gnome app with it. What's more, even what will compile in the end isn't Well Written C++ (tm). KDE/Qt is very clean and goes to great lengths to use OOP features so that code is reuseable, modular and efficient. You just don't get that in C.

This is a lot of why I use KDE. Well written code makes me happy.

by Carsten Pfeiffer (not verified)

> just fix the seeking and volume control from the keyboard).

Can you elaborate a bit? Did you send a bugreport? I might fix it, if you tell me what's broken.

by not me (not verified)

No, I didn't file a bug report. Sorry! I thought the problems were pretty obvious to anyone who used the plugin. Seeking does technically work, it just sounds really bad and it doesn't go that much faster than just playing the song normally anyway. It makes the keyboard pretty much useless for seeking. Winamp (XMMS too?) skips 4 or 5 seconds of the song at a time, then plays a little, which sounds much better and allows you to seek faster. I figured you'd get around to fixing it sooner or later, and it isn't a feature I use often, so I figured I wouldn't bother you with a bug report.

The volume control also doesn't change in large enough increments. Usually the reason I want to use it is because a song has just come on that's really loud (you know how MP3s are all different volumes) and it isn't very fast. If you do want the volume to change in small increments, you should take out the delay before the key starts repeating. That way the volume control will seem faster and more responsive, even if you don't change anything else.

I do like Noatun (more so now that I have aRts working correctly), it just needs a little more work to be as good as XMMS, which of course has been around for much longer. Keep up the good work!

by not me (not verified)

Now that I've tried seeking again, I notice that the first time you press the button, it does skip 3-4 seconds of music. However, if you continue to press the button quickly or hold it down, it doesn't keep skipping 3-4 seconds of music each time. Instead, it plays the same little bit of song over and over for a little bit, then skips to the next little bit of song. Anyway, it sounds pretty bad, especially on loud songs.

I'm sorry if it sounds like I don't like Noatun, I do! Next time I'll submit a bug report. In fact, I think I'll do that now about the mpeglib movie window.

by Evan "JabberWok... (not verified)

Qt as an underlying toolkit provides more than just a graphical interface, and KDE provides more than just a window manager. I use XMMS now and then, but run into a major, show stopper (or should I say "song stopper") problem:

Although every KDE app seems to be able to handle japanese text with no problem whatsoever, XMMS chokes and dies on any MP3 with a title/filename in anything but [A-Za-z] plus some basic punctuation. Even simple accents on the letters (at least the accent on the e in Anime) seem to cause it to simply and silently skip over the song.

Now, this is a fairly easy thing to fix, but the point is: Qt and KDE are extendable libraries, where one fix or one additional feature to the core code causes all applications to have the new feature or fix. That's the advantage to KDE apps in my mind. Look at the total network transparancy that exists in 99% of KDE apps without any effort on the part of their authors. Now *that's* the way computers should work.

--
Evan

by Asif Ali Rizwaan (not verified)

it feels weird why can't KDE release a generic binary KDE packages, like Adobes' acrobat, Netscape, StarOffice, Corel's wordperfect etc., when those companies can release their software in a generic way, irrespective of distribution, why can't WE???

This will benefit all Linux user's who love KDE more than other Unices :)

linux users of Redhat, Mandrake, SuSE, Caldera etc, will get latest builds on time. This can happen only when KDE installer comes in existence ;)

by nap (not verified)

I'm not so sure as there are many difficulties with this approach.
First, KDE is not just binaries, it comes with a boatload of configuration files, menustructures etc. that distributions modify quite heavily. It would be very painful to try to be compatible with each of them.
Second, distributions have different compiler and glibc versions in use, making them binary-incompatible with each other. This should be changed in a year or so, but it's still reality.
Third, this blurs the domain of responsibility, as distributions are not quite sure, whether they should build their own binaries, or rely on KDE's builds.
Fourth, taking all of the above into consideration, this takes quite a lot of resources in the area where there are not too many volunteers, so it would probably have to be done by paid employees, and giving one company the brand of a "Official KDE Company" is bound to cause problems (See elsewhere for examples ;)

by not me (not verified)

There was a big discussion of this issue when the story about KDE packaging policy (check it out, I think its still on the front page near the bottom). Basically, a generic binary KDE would have to be bigger, slower, and take more memory - it would give a bad impression to people who were just trying KDE and it would annoy longtime KDE users. The other programs you mention are much smaller than KDE (with the possible exception of StarOffice) so they can get away with increased memory usage and a little more slowness. However, for KDE it would be bad, since KDE is already so big, and made up of many smaller programs.

Plus, a generic KDE wouldn't integrate with your distribution - there would be no links to your distro's configuration utilities, and none of your distro's programs would appear in the KDE menus. You would have to use the command line for all these things.

Basically, the conclusion is that the distributions are supposed to provide packages which have none of these problems - and since they all do, there is no need for inferior generic KDE binaries. Even if some distros' packages are a little late, its still better than installing generic binaries.

by WorLord (not verified)

You know, I was about to re-hash that discussion you mentioned here, until I went to saw the reference to the KDE Installer.

http://www.rox0rs.net/kdeinstaller/

Apparently, someone is working on solving this issue already... so I guess we can chill and have a beer now. ;-)

--WorLord

by Chakie (not verified)

I wanted to check out kaboodle, but couldn't find it anywhere. I have the tagged CVS version (KDE_2_2_ALPHA_1) of all packages, but no trace of it anywhere. Where should it be, or is it not included anywhere?

Otherwise everything works just fine! A big thanks to all involved.

by Theo van Klaveren (not verified)

It is in 'kdenonbeta', and thus not part of the release. The announcement is incorrect.

by samuele.c (not verified)

I tryed KDE 2.0 , 2.0.1 , 2.1 , 2.1.1 (actual)
good!, the best desktop for linux,
but..
I hope that now keep in mind, "STABILITY and SPEED" for this newer version !