KDE 4.2 Answers The Needs Of End-Users [Archive]

phoronix

01-27-2009, 01:10 PM

Phoronix: KDE 4.2 Answers The Needs Of End-Users

A year after KDE 4.0 was released (with celebrations at the Google Plex) and six months after releasing KDE 4.1, the K Desktop Environment has now reached a new milestone. KDE 4.2 "The Answer" has been released, which the K Desktop Environment community is confident will even be able to satisfy the needs of normal non-technical end-users...

http://www.phoronix.com/vr.php?view=NzAxOQ

d2kx

01-27-2009, 01:49 PM

AMD R6xx/R7xx docs
KDE 4.2 released

That's how I want it.

MaestroMaus

01-27-2009, 02:03 PM

I hope this version is finally up to standards.

Melcar

01-27-2009, 02:20 PM

This is going to be a good fricking year.

Kano

01-27-2009, 02:32 PM

http://www.nvnews.net/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=122606

Even 4 new nv updates ;)

bulletxt

01-27-2009, 03:16 PM

great!!!!!! Finally kde4 is reaching a real stable state and in time be feature-rich!

Vadi

01-27-2009, 08:42 PM

That's a bold title there :)

Congrats to KDE devs & users!

Jimmy

01-27-2009, 09:44 PM

So wait for 4.3?

Sorry I couldn't resist. I'll be trying 4.2 with the next point release of my favorite distribution. KDE 3.5 will still be an option, Gnome not so much. I'm hoping for 4.2 :D

RealNC

01-27-2009, 09:49 PM

You can also wait for 5.0 :P

TechMage89

01-27-2009, 10:06 PM

jeffro-tull

01-27-2009, 10:27 PM

@TechMage89:

eh?

on my in-order execution machines, yeah, KDE4 isn't all that snappy. on my out-of-order execution machines, it's fine. A speed-demon? no. Significantly less of an abomination that Firefox 3? yes. A small set backwards from 3.5.9? also yes.

For the record, my current "main rig" is an Athlon XP 2600+ with 1GB of DDR1 with a Geforce 6200 256MB AGP card. So, yeah, it's a little long in the tooth. But I don't see what the big deal is. Are you using a GeForce 7 or 8 series with the 177-series drivers? I hear those cards with those drivers like to seriously but-heads with Kwin and Plasma.

cb88

01-27-2009, 10:34 PM

I have KDE 4.1 running on a 300Mhz dual PII and it runs half decently although CPU usage sits at 40% for a good while after it appears to have loaded then it drops down to normal levels... I prefer LXDE though or some custom mashup I just installed it to poke around with it

If im thinking right there were some bugs (since been fixed from what i've read) that caused lagging on nvidia graphics

IMO the job of a GUI is to put pretty graphics on the screen and be smart about it.... does KDE do that? well the first part but there is a LOT i found lacking in 4.1 .. 4.2 is supposed to be in the ArchLinux repo but i think my package database is messedup cause it won't update

sundown

01-28-2009, 03:26 AM

sabriah

01-28-2009, 04:26 AM

I upgraded to KDE 4.2 yesterday, but managed to remove the icon "System Settings" from the K Menu...

Does anyone know how I might get it back?

Yes, I am a clumsy, bad boy... :o

NeoBrain

01-28-2009, 04:58 AM

I upgraded to KDE 4.2 yesterday, but managed to remove the icon "System Settings" from the K Menu...

Does anyone know how I might get it back?

Yes, I am a clumsy, bad boy... :o

Where did you remove it from? In KDE 4.2 RC 1, it was in the favorites tab and also in the computer tab, but it can only be removed from favorites here. So, to re-add it there, just right click on the system-settings icon in the computer tab and select "add to favorites".

(This doesn't apply if you're using the traditional menu of course)

sabriah

01-28-2009, 05:34 AM

Where did you remove it from? In KDE 4.2 RC 1, it was in the favorites tab and also in the computer tab, but it can only be removed from favorites here. So, to re-add it there, just right click on the system-settings icon in the computer tab and select "add to favorites".

(This doesn't apply if you're using the traditional menu of course)

It used to be in the Favourites Tab in KDE 4.1.4, but when I had 4.2 installed the icon was missing (with only a question mark in place) so I removed it, in the belief it was somewhere else too. But, I possibly didn't look at the computer Tab. Gotta try it when I come home from work.

Thanks for the tip, however!

puelocesar

01-28-2009, 06:20 AM

I have to say I'm not impressed by the performance. Even without compositing it's hardly usable. This is on two machines less than a year old with core2 duo processesors and 3GB of ram.

I figure there must be something wrong here, but there doesn't appear to be. GNOME runs plenty fast, even with the compositor. Why is KDE so slow?

I run KDE4 on my EeePC and it's fast. But I know two things that cause performance problems. On thing is the old nvidia drivers, other thing is a bug on Ubuntu's xserver that causes garbage drawing on screen, and slow downs the interface.

If you are using Ubuntu, try adding "deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/adamspain/ubuntu intrepid main" to your repositories and upgrading xserver-xorg

d2kx

01-28-2009, 08:37 AM

I run KDE4 on my EeePC and it's fast. But I know two things that cause performance problems. On thing is the old nvidia drivers, other thing is a bug on Ubuntu's xserver that causes garbage drawing on screen, and slow downs the interface.

If you are using Ubuntu, try adding "deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/adamspain/ubuntu intrepid main" to your repositories and upgrading xserver-xorg

I know that it causes garbage drawing on the screen because of that bugged Fedora patch, but are you sure it slows down the interface? Why hasn't Ubuntu dropped this patch yet? Is it still a problem in Jaunty?

mutlu_inek

01-28-2009, 10:15 AM

Sweeeeeeeet. :)

P.S. It runs amazingly smoothly and speedy on my really not that fast laptop. Potential reasons for slowness issues are: misconfigured nepomuk/soprano/strigi (soprano should use the java-runtime dependent sesame2 backend) and crappy video drivers.

puelocesar

01-28-2009, 10:52 AM

I know that it causes garbage drawing on the screen because of that bugged Fedora patch, but are you sure it slows down the interface? Why hasn't Ubuntu dropped this patch yet? Is it still a problem in Jaunty?

Yeah, it's strange, because Ubuntu's developers are bitching against removing the patch because they say that removing it it will be a slow down, but here, on my setup, installing a xserver without the patch actually makes KDE4 much faster, so I think the video corruption also slowed things down

Well, now it seems that they dropped the patch for jaunty, but they won't do this for Intrepid as an update because they say it's not a security problem.. That's why I like Arch Linux, there they just fix the thing and everybody gets happy

NeoBrain

01-28-2009, 11:38 AM

It used to be in the Favourites Tab in KDE 4.1.4, but when I had 4.2 installed the icon was missing (with only a question mark in place) so I removed it, in the belief it was somewhere else too. But, I possibly didn't look at the computer Tab. Gotta try it when I come home from work.

Thanks for the tip, however!

Oh well... why do it easy if there's a complex way to do it...
Removing ~/.kde4/share/config/plasma-appletsrc should have the same effect, even if you'd need to restore all your personal widget settings.

MetalheadGautham

01-28-2009, 03:01 PM

I hope they port EVERYTHING IN KDE 3.5.9 to KDE 4.2.
Especially I want software like K3B back. Its got NO replacement.

Kaffeine too I miss and Dragon Player Sucks, but since VLC shifted to QT4, thats not as big an issue as it could have been.

sabriah

01-28-2009, 03:24 PM

Oh well... why do it easy if there's a complex way to do it...
Removing ~/.kde4/share/config/plasma-appletsrc should have the same effect, even if you'd need to restore all your personal widget settings.

Thanks that fixed it, even if don't think new users would dare to do it on their own.

Also, before removing plasma-appletsrc I noticed that my kmail icon was gone, and I cannot find that either.

Maybe I get these annoyances because i upgrade rather than do a clean install?

EDIT: Oh, it didn't fix all issues, I notice. It didn't bring back the "System settings". Hmmmm.

EDIT2: Like very often, this was a case of handling error. Doubly so. It appeared I had been too keen to install KDE 4.2 and had not received all parts of it. While reinstalling some components in an attempt to solve the issue there was a whole range of new apps trickling down the line! Sorry for wasting your bandwidth with my inane ramblings.

Zhick

01-28-2009, 03:32 PM

KDE4-Versions of Kaffeine and K3B are already in work. You can get them from SVN. K3B is already very usable (at least I haven't encountered any problems so far).
Kaffeine seems to work mostly as well, except if you want to use it to watch tv with a tv-card (like me). Also it uses Phonon, so many configuration-options are no longer available.

jeffro-tull

01-28-2009, 03:44 PM

Or, and I don't know why people are having trouble grasping this, you can run KDE3 apps in KDE4. Just like you can use Gnome, GTK, LXDE, Enlightenment, and Windows apps (via wine, of course) in KDE4.

It's not like the dev's are thinking "ah, screw it, you guys don't need a power-user-type media player or a burning program." Kaffeine and k3b aren't "official" KDE applications - they just happen to be applications that are built for KDE. So, they aren't tied to KDE's release schedules. They're coming, just not "there" yet.

But, yeah, you can get them from subversion. Some distros package them. OpenSUSE has them in their KDE:KDE4:UNSTABLE:Extra-Apps repository (which is pretty much /trunk snapshots from KDE's svn repo).

Smarter

01-31-2009, 04:23 PM

Yeah, it's strange, because Ubuntu's developers are bitching against removing the patch because they say that removing it it will be a slow down, but here, on my setup, installing a xserver without the patch actually makes KDE4 much faster, so I think the video corruption also slowed things down

Well, now it seems that they dropped the patch for jaunty, but they won't do this for Intrepid as an update because they say it's not a security problem.. That's why I like Arch Linux, there they just fix the thing and everybody gets happy
We(the Kubuntu guys) have added it to the repo we use to provide 4.2, so everybody should "gets happy" ;)
See http://www.kitterman.org/ScottK/2009/01/bug_254468_momentary_video_gar.html for more infos on that.

puelocesar

01-31-2009, 06:18 PM

We(the Kubuntu guys) have added it to the repo we use to provide 4.2, so everybody should "gets happy" ;)
See http://www.kitterman.org/ScottK/2009/01/bug_254468_momentary_video_gar.html for more infos on that.

Hey, thanks! :)