KDE 4.3.0 Desktop Released

[phoronix]

Phoronix: KDE 4.3.0 Desktop Released

It's arriving a week later than scheduled, but KDE 4.3 is now available. KDE 4.3 contains many improvements for Plasma, enhanced KWin effects, Dolphin effects, many application improvements, and much more. An extensive overview of the changes for KDE 4.3 can be found at KDE.org within their release announcement...

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

[blindfrog]

It's amazing! Air rocks and ability to customize each desktop independently is very neat.

It's pretty much perfect now, but still can't wait for 4.4 after seeing it's feature list (which is already massive) :D

[bulletxt]

Finally!

Kde 4.3 just rocks! It still of course has some minor issues, but it's reaching a stable and feature-rich status.

[val-gaav]

Personally I do not like the new minimize/maximize/close buttons. Those are way to sharp and IMHO not go nicely with the theme. Old ones from 4.2 were/are softer and were perfect. New tabs in oxygen also look strange, maybe I'm just used to the old look on this one. Still though the mentioned buttons look just wrong and I just cannot get over it, actually it may be the reason for me to change from oxygen style to something different.

Other then that all improvements seem nice.

[blindfrog]

Personally I do not like the new minimize/maximize/close buttons. Those are way to sharp and IMHO not go nicely with the theme. Old ones from 4.2 were/are softer and were perfect. New tabs in oxygen also look strange, maybe I'm just used to the old look on this one. Still though the mentioned buttons look just wrong and I just cannot get over it, actually it may be the reason for me to change from oxygen style to something different.

Other then that all improvements seem nice.

I like bespin it looks pretty nice IMO especially with this http://kde-look.org/content/show.php/Bespin+Reborn?content=98059

http://img11.imageshack.us/ifs/2406/img189/1/snapshotd.png

:)

[bulletxt]

Personally I do not like the new minimize/maximize/close buttons. Those are way to sharp and IMHO not go nicely with the theme. Old ones from 4.2 were/are softer and were perfect. New tabs in oxygen also look strange, maybe I'm just used to the old look on this one. Still though the mentioned buttons look just wrong and I just cannot get over it, actually it may be the reason for me to change from oxygen style to something different.

Other then that all improvements seem nice.

I highly suggest to use Air style.

[val-gaav]

I highly suggest to use Air style.
Isn't Air just a plasma theme though ? My concerns are about normal applications not plasmoids.

[jeffro-tull]

Yay! My overlay is finally out of limbo! (the kde-testing overlay has been looking for 4.3.0 tarballs since 4.3 was tagged, even though all the mirrors had 4.3.98)

4.3 really shaped up to a solid release. Kudos all around!

[DeepDayze]

Can't wait for this...thank goodness. If KDE4 continues to improve then I can dump KDE 3.5 once and for all

[eric.frederich]

I ran a fairly recent build if KDE a month or two ago and when I ran Inkscape I couldn't see the colors in any of the sliders.

I saw that the bug was known.

Wondering if this is fixed.

No idea whose fault it is? KDE, Qt, GTK+, Inkscape?

[kraftman]

The funny thing is Gstreamer is the default Phonon backend. At least in Arch. However, it's very easy to switch to Xine.

[Tsiolkovsky]

Aweesome release. Looks sexy, works great - a real joy to use. I can only thank all the contributors that have worked hard to make it possible.

[izual]

It's pretty much perfect now, but still can't wait for 4.4 after seeing it's feature list (which is already massive) :D

Do you have a link for that?

[krazy]

Do you have a link for that?
http://techbase.kde.org/Schedules/KDE4/4.4_Feature_Plan

This page gets updated regularly, so this list is by no means complete.

[netsurf]

lol that link is down at the moment, too many users on the connection :P must be slashdotted looking forward to trying this new release the versions of kde4.x i've tried appeared to just be lacking applications/features needed to make the whole thing useful

[izual]

Thanks for the link.

I can't finde any phonon improvements in these lists (4.3/4.4) and that sucks. Phonon still lacks too many "features" like equalizer support...

[bulletxt]

Thanks for the link.

I can't finde any phonon improvements in these lists (4.3/4.4) and that sucks. Phonon still lacks too many "features" like equalizer support...

Phonon does lack a lot of features. I my self discovered it while writing my qt app with phonon... well for the moment it does it's job quite well... hopefully though it will get some major advance features in the near future.

[d2kx]

lol that link is down at the moment, too many users on the connection :P must be slashdotted looking forward to trying this new release the versions of kde4.x i've tried appeared to just be lacking applications/features needed to make the whole thing useful

You sure that this isn't the task of Xine/Gstreamer? Phonon is just a wrapper I think.

Aaron Seigo recently posted a list with planned Plasma features for KDE 4.4 in his blog and it was H U G E.

[jospoortvliet]

I ran a fairly recent build if KDE a month or two ago and when I ran Inkscape I couldn't see the colors in any of the sliders.

I saw that the bug was known.

Wondering if this is fixed.

No idea whose fault it is? KDE, Qt, GTK+, Inkscape?Color in the sliders? I believe that's an option you can enable in SystemSettings...

[smitty3268]

Aaron's post was just about Plasma. http://aseigo.blogspot.com/2009/07/plasma-in-kde-44.html

Most of the GSOC projects will be in 4.4 as well. http://socghop.appspot.com/org/home/google/gsoc2009/kde

[tball]

This release rocks! Congrats kde team.
Kde is even better than windows 7 interface!

[Rahux]

Mmm KDE4Live with RC1 was probably my favorite distro for quite a while ;) now I've just discovered the joys of Pardus which has to be the best implementation of KDE 4x that I've come across. Unfortunately I would love some 4.3 action instead.

Any advice about the easiest way to get a nice 4.3 distro easily? i.e, which good distro is likely to implement this first and which current distro would be easiest to upgrade to 4.3.

Thanks all! Major respect to all the developers, they've been doing such a good job. I must be one of the few that switched from GNOME to KDE *because* of all the 4.xx innovations (4.1 onwards anyway).

[RealNC]

My Gentoo system is currently upgrading to it. Let's see if it's worth all the fuss :D

[glock24]

Kubuntu may not be the best KDE distro out there (I really hate the default settings), but the Kubuntu team releases packages on the same day there's a KDE update. I just finished upgrading to KDE 4.3 a few hours ago.

Mmm KDE4Live with RC1 was probably my favorite distro for quite a while ;) now I've just discovered the joys of Pardus which has to be the best implementation of KDE 4x that I've come across. Unfortunately I would love some 4.3 action instead.

Any advice about the easiest way to get a nice 4.3 distro easily? i.e, which good distro is likely to implement this first and which current distro would be easiest to upgrade to 4.3.

Thanks all! Major respect to all the developers, they've been doing such a good job. I must be one of the few that switched from GNOME to KDE *because* of all the 4.xx innovations (4.1 onwards anyway).

[rvdboom]

I regularly compile trunk anf like it very much.
I finally got to set up one Plasma activity per virtual desktop : it's really very good and should be the default in my opinion.
This way I have appropriate widgets per virtual desktop, allowing to use each one for a specific purpose, with its own apps and widgets.
Very very good!

[Tsiolkovsky]

Mmm KDE4Live with RC1 was probably my favorite distro for quite a while ;) now I've just discovered the joys of Pardus which has to be the best implementation of KDE 4x that I've come across. Unfortunately I would love some 4.3 action instead.

Any advice about the easiest way to get a nice 4.3 distro easily? i.e, which good distro is likely to implement this first and which current distro would be easiest to upgrade to 4.3.

Thanks all! Major respect to all the developers, they've been doing such a good job. I must be one of the few that switched from GNOME to KDE *because* of all the 4.xx innovations (4.1 onwards anyway).
I switched from Kubuntu to Mandriva recently. They already have packages for KDE 4.3 for their two last stable versions (2009 Spring and 2009). And in my opinion their integration of KDE is better then in Kubuntu. openSUSE is also usually quick to update to latest KDE. And I've just tried Pardus 2009 a couple of days ago and I'm quite impressed.

Oh and BTW, you are not alone in switching from GNOME to KDE because of KDE 4. Two of my school mates did the same and appears that KDE 4 is something that might finally concience my sister to switch from Windows to Linux. She was already tempted when I showed her KDE 4.2 on my laptop. I guess now she will do it when I show her KDE 4.3 :)

[L33F3R]

l33f3r will test short time.

l33f3r love you long time.


- if all the hype is well deserved i will report back :P.

[Rahux]

I switched from Kubuntu to Mandriva recently. They already have packages for KDE 4.3 for their two last stable versions (2009 Spring and 2009). And in my opinion their integration of KDE is better then in Kubuntu. openSUSE is also usually quick to update to latest KDE. And I've just tried Pardus 2009 a couple of days ago and I'm quite impressed.

Oh and BTW, you are not alone in switching from GNOME to KDE because of KDE 4. Two of my school mates did the same and appears that KDE 4 is something that might finally concience my sister to switch from Windows to Linux. She was already tempted when I showed her KDE 4.2 on my laptop. I guess now she will do it when I show her KDE 4.3 :)

There's something that just didn't sit right with me about Mandrive. SUSE I quite like but Pardus blew me away. Don't suppose if you guys know if Pardus will be updated with 4.3 or not? And whether it's likely to be soon?

As for Kubuntu.. It doesn't even feel like a distro, it feels like it has no identity at all, no character. Do Kubuntu devs add anything to stock KDE?

[val-gaav]

Do Kubuntu devs add anything to stock KDE?
See here :
https://wiki.kubuntu.org/Kubuntu/Todo

Quite a lot ...

[Rahux]

See here :
https://wiki.kubuntu.org/Kubuntu/Todo

Quite a lot ...

I stand corrected I suppose - I'll try and give it another shot with Karmic but out of the few times I've tried it, it always struck me as rather slow and lacking in character. Having said that, I'm not a developer so this is not to diss the kubuntu devs, probably more of a resource issue.

[val-gaav]

yeah well I think kubuntu is bashed a bit too much ... Sure it's not as polished as gnome ubuntu is ... It gets ubuntu features latter on or never :D but overall it's not that bad really.

OpenOffice.org KDE4 integration is something really nice, and all distros will benefit from it so here I guess kubuntu devs really are doing us all a favour.

[krazy]

I don't really see what's so unpolished in Kubuntu. I'm using KDE 4.3 in Kubuntu 9.04 and it's great!

What do the other distros like Pardus offer that Kubuntu doesn't?

[RealNC]

I don't really see what's so unpolished in Kubuntu. I'm using KDE 4.3 in Kubuntu 9.04 and it's great!

What do the other distros like Pardus offer that Kubuntu doesn't?

Counter question: What does Kubuntu offer that other distros don't? :D

[krazy]

Counter question: What does Kubuntu offer that other distros don't? :D
"Bugs" apparently, but I'm not seeing it.. ;)

[Panix]

KDE has turned into real crap. A lot of people don't like the new KDE 4 and several people wish it didn't change. Isn't there someone on here who thinks they have become more like Microsoft? So, the impression is they are taking away choice, features and options. Also, Linus Torvalds moved to Gnome and he didn't like Gnome for that reason and that is saying something (about KDE).

I don't like many things in KDE although that is my preferred desktop but I am contemplating using a Gnome-based distro nowadays.

I am tired of the SIG segfault crash in KDE but most of all, of certain applications that don't work right. Currently, I have a problem using the messager, Kopete, and since there aren't any other options (that I know of), I am stuck with the problem. I cannot use it since all contacts always appear 'offline' even though they are not.

There are other issues with KDE 4 especially the way you move around accessing programs and applications. The KDE 3.5 method in which clicking the KMenu gave you several 'paths' to choose from was reduced to a slower, more routed pathway (I don't know how to describe) and it's much harder to find what you want. The only reason KDE 4 is liked by some fans is because it is more 'graphical' or visually pleasing compared to KDE 3.5. But, the mechanics of it is poor as the developers seem to address 'visuals' more than functionality.

[NeoBrain]

KDE has turned into real crap. A lot of people don't like the new KDE 4 and several people wish it didn't change.
I guess there are _much_ more people who like KDE 4.3 and are happy about the changes it introduced.

Isn't there someone on here who thinks they have become more like Microsoft? So, the impression is they are taking away choice, features and options.
KDE 4.3 is almost all about feature parity with KDE 3.5 on top of the brand new desktop they gave us, how can you say it took away options and features? The point of introducing plasma was to make the desktop more flexible after all.

Also, Linus Torvalds moved to Gnome and he didn't like Gnome for that reason and that is saying something (about KDE).

I don't see why Linus' opinion is something special compared to the opinion of any other (experienced) KDE user.
Anyways, he didn't like KDE 4.0 and IIRC he regret moving away after he saw KDE 4.2 or so.


I am tired of the SIG segfault crash in KDE but most of all, of certain applications that don't work right. Currently, I have a problem using the messager, Kopete, and since there aren't any other options (that I know of), I am stuck with the problem. I cannot use it since all contacts always appear 'offline' even though they are not.
Of course that's something that shouldn't happen - it was the case in 4.0, but has become a lot better. Actually, I even only rarely (once per month) see any segfaults in the current SVN versions.

There are other issues with KDE 4 especially the way you move around accessing programs and applications. The KDE 3.5 method in which clicking the KMenu gave you several 'paths' to choose from was reduced to a slower, more routed pathway (I don't know how to describe) and it's much harder to find what you want. The only reason KDE 4 is liked by some fans is because it is more 'graphical' or visually pleasing compared to KDE 3.5. But, the mechanics of it is poor as the developers seem to address 'visuals' more than functionality.

The new menu was designed with usuability in mind. New users should feel comfortable with from the first use and from what I heard they do. The downside is that users who are used to the old menu system need to rethink their habits.

KDE 4 wasn't (only) about eye candy, it was also about usuability (e.g. the new menu), innovation (e.g. semantic desktop) and flexibility(e.g. plasma).


EDIT: Note that my whole post is about KDE 4.3, KDE 4.0 is an old story ;)

[Panix]

I guess there are _much_ more people who like KDE 4.3 and are happy about the changes it introduced.


How do you know that? You have some source of this?

People don't have much of a choice if they want an up-to-date distro with the KDE desktop. I've read of way more negative than positive and the positive usually doesn't include applications mentioned of what they use.

I've had several crashes on the KDE 4 desktop. But, that wasn't a deal breaker for me. I just thought it is a bug and it might be addressed.

But, various applications fare worse on KDE 4 and maybe it is because they are considered trivial programs. Who knows...

But, I don't know what the raving is about by the fans. It doesn't deserve that at all.

[jospoortvliet]

How do you know that? You have some source of this?[/QUOTE

read http://dot.kde.org/2009/08/10/reviews-kde-43

I found those reviews just googeling KDE 4.3 review. Just picked the biggest ones, and I didn't find any negative reviews. You'll also find the reactions of most, if not all users on forums, chat channels etc to be positive.

[QUOTE=Panix;87368]People don't have much of a choice if they want an up-to-date distro with the KDE desktop. I've read of way more negative than positive and the positive usually doesn't include applications mentioned of what they use.

I agree that the choice of good quality KDE distro's is a bit small. Ubuntu is well known for having big quality issues with their KDE packages. OpenSuse does a decent job, so do some smaller distro's like Arch (quite hardcore) and Pardux (quite new). Mandriva has a nice offering as well, even though I personally don't like it very much. I've heard positive stories about the more recent Fedora KDE packages as well.

I've had several crashes on the KDE 4 desktop. But, that wasn't a deal breaker for me. I just thought it is a bug and it might be addressed.

Yep, should be fixed. I suppose you tried the new bug report tool? Did you like it? Or are you talking about KDE 4.0 or 4.1 still? Those weren't meant for end users, as we said, and as distro's ignored.

But, various applications fare worse on KDE 4 and maybe it is because they are considered trivial programs. Who knows...

Or because nobody took it upon them to properly port and improve them? You know, we can't tell anyone to do something they don't want to... If you have suggestions on getting ppl to do the boring stuff, let me know.

Either way, with all the changes, some apps are bound to have regressed in some area's. But others have improved a lot, and I think it is unfair on your end not to acknowledge that.

But, I don't know what the raving is about by the fans. It doesn't deserve that at all.

Let's follow occam's razor and assume most KDE users consider 4.3 to be better than 3.5? It certainly is in many areas.

[jeffro-tull]

blah blah blah blah snip
There are other issues with KDE 4 especially the way you move around accessing programs and applications. The KDE 3.5 method in which clicking the KMenu gave you several 'paths' to choose from was reduced to a slower, more routed pathway (I don't know how to describe) and it's much harder to find what you want. The only reason KDE 4 is liked by some fans is because it is more 'graphical' or visually pleasing compared to KDE 3.5. But, the mechanics of it is poor as the developers seem to address 'visuals' more than functionality.

I don't know what, exactly, it is that you did with KDE 3.5, but as of 4.2 (to say nothing of 4.3) the vast majority of the functionality is back. Just because things are accomplished in a different way doesn't mean that it isn't there.

And if you'd spent more than five minutes reading about or using any KDE release after 4.0.1, you'd realize that the "traditional" KMenu has been ported to plasma (right-click on Kickoff's icon and there's an option for "switch to classic menu style).

[RealNC]

Right click on the Kmenu, select "Classic menu", done, lol.