KDE 4.3 Beta 1 Released, Many Improvements

[phoronix]

Phoronix: KDE 4.3 Beta 1 Released, Many Improvements

The KDE project has announced the release of KDE 4.3 Beta 1. This first beta in the KDE 4.3 series, which is expected to be officially released by late July, brings numerous enhancements to this popular desktop environment. Some of the features found in KDE 4.3 Beta 1 include PolicyKit integration, new window animation effects, configurable keyboard shortcuts for Plasma, an SVG-themed desktop and panel toolbox, a more complete JavaScript API, a fading desktop switcher, many new Plasmoids, new data engines, and many other changes to the desktop and underlying libraries. The KDE 4.3 Beta 1 announcement can be found at KDE.org...

http://www.phoronix.com/vr.php?view=NzI2NA

[piquadrat]

Any idea if and where packages for Fedora 11 will appear? I just switched over from Kubuntu and have a bit of a hard time finding resources like this

[panda84]

Any idea if and where packages for Fedora 11 will appear? I just switched over from Kubuntu and have a bit of a hard time finding resources like this

You should use kde red-hat testing / unstable repos for these pre release rpms. However I don't think that 4.3 beta 1 is packaged yet.

For more infos:
http://kde-redhat.sourceforge.net/
http://rdieter.livejournal.com/
https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mail...nfo/fedora-kde

[piquadrat]

You should use kde red-hat testing / unstable repos for these pre release rpms. [...]

Thanks for the information!

[callegar]

The release notes do not mention it. Can someone be so kind as to provide feedback about:

1) Whether a "kdeprint" like application has been integrated to allow printer control from legacy apps

2) Whether the print dialog has been enhanced to allow for odd-even page selection that is indispensable to do 2 sided printing on non-duplexing printers?

3) Whether kioslaves now allow one to explore/copy from/to the files exposed via obex by a handyphone?

Thanks!

[Zhick]

Yay. I'll let it build over night.
There are not many "eye-catching" features at first glance though. Well, we'll see.

[susikala]

Is it just me, or why does the KDE window manager look like utter crap to me every time I look at it. Could anyone link me to a theme that looks even half as awesome as GNOME Colors (AKA the default theme in Linux Mint)?

I admit, the bar in KDE actually looks quite awesome, and contrary to my QT-loath I am willing to give that desktop as many chances as there are new major versions, but... to me at least, it still looks too plastic. That's what I hate about QT, honestly, much less than all the bloat associated with it (and I hear KDE4 has several improvements in that respect, though I've yet to notice them).

[deanjo]

Is it just me, or why does the KDE window manager look like utter crap to me every time I look at it.

Yes it is just you

[hax0r]

Not much has changed performance wise, apps are still slow to startup e.g kate, RAM usage hasn't come down, and logging out remains problematic and & resource intense process, why can't this damn thing log out in reasonable time 1~2 sec? Massif'ing few apps reveals LOTS of heap memory leaks all over the place, simple apps such as kmix end up chugging 20MB once they stumble upon problematic libs such xine that is known for leaking memory very bad. Besides few visual glitches it runs pretty good in the end . With git noueveau, git drm & KMS on, git xorg, git mesa, I get a full blown DE with RAM usage ~170MB (indexing disabled plus few other things) on x86_64. Once they patch the leaks they can easily get down to ~130MB just like GNOME.

[KDesk]

Not much has changed performance wise, apps are still slow to startup e.g kate, RAM usage hasn't come down, and logging out remains problematic and & resource intense process, why can't this damn thing log out in reasonable time 1~2 sec? Massif'ing few apps reveals LOTS of heap memory leaks all over the place, simple apps such as kmix end up chugging 20MB once they stumble upon problematic libs such xine that is known for leaking memory very bad. Besides few visual glitches it runs pretty good in the end . With git noueveau, git drm & KMS on, git xorg, git mesa, I get a full blown DE with RAM usage ~170MB (indexing disabled plus few other things) on x86_64. Once they patch the leaks they can easily get down to ~130MB just like GNOME.

With Qt and GTK+ libs loaded I can start Konsole much faster than Gnome-Terminal, but it is like 3s vs 1s.

KDE 4 has only 18 months of life, compared to Gnome 2 which has, hmm, 84 months, they have had much more time to optimize the code.

It is natural to see a bit more RAM usage (~30% in you case). But this is not only 30% it is 40MB more. One GB DDR isn't so expensive as 10 years ago. There is no point to compare this little difference in RAM usage, come one...