KDE 4 rev 790000: Better stability and performance
[ Saturday, 29 March 2008, Bastion ]
This is another revision of the development version of KDE 4 environment. Lots of you have asked why it took me so long to publish this article. Well, I was just waiting for rev 790000, that’s all. I hope that your curiosity will be satisfied since there’s been a lot of changes to describe this time. I did my best.
Author: Korneliusz Jarzebski
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Desktop
Device notifier is an applet known and appreciated by the users. Its role is to monitor connected devices using Solid framework. This time a very handy feature has been added. I’m talking about fast disconnecting of a pointed device by clicking on the Eject icon.
Devices / Eject
In KDE 4 repository we can still find an old copy of Qt 4.4, but if we install one of the fresh snapshots of this library we gain the possibility to install any applet prepared for the Mac OS X system. Of course the implementation is still very new and unstable and you should not expect a very high reliability. In the future we can expect much better results.
Adding new Plasma applet
Installing new applet from file
I installed a few of the Mac OS X applets just to test them and see if they are usable. For now they seem to be capable of displaying themselves on the desktop.
Mac OS X applets
It’s possible to download new themes for Plasma from kde-look.org website.
Downloading Plasma themes
Choosing a Plasma theme
As far as Pager is concerned, an option has been added to display an icon of the running program on the virtual desktops.
Pager
Lots of people complained about the lack of the option to add a new panel. Well it’s been added so no more complaints!
Adding new panel
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Desktop with two panels
Dolphin
The default KDE 4 file manager surprised me positively. The changes are noticeable. When choosing the file preview, a frame has been added which looks marvelous. Also the information panel has been modified as well as the feature of adding a new comment. The most important new feature however (at least in my opinion) is the tag cloud, know from the Web 2.0 portals.
Dolphin
Adding a comment
File information
Konqueror
I launched Konqueror only to check how well it does in the Acid3 test.
Not bad at all. Soon we can all expect 100% compatibility, though, since WebKit, the Konqueror engine has been already fixed in Safari to pass the new Acid test.
I haven’t noticed any significant changes. In the lower part of the window I spotted buttons and a scroll bar which I believe should be able to resize the displayed elements. The feature apparently didn’t work or I misunderstood it goal.
Oxygen, Bespin
Traditionally, some screens comparing the current Oxygen style with Bespin.
Oxygen style
Bespin style
Dolphin / Bespin
Plasma
New Plasma applets appear almost every day so this time I can also present you something cool and interesting. First of the applets I liked is Folder View, which simply displays the home folder contents.
Folder View
Picture Frame can now a picture of the day from a selected (and supported) web site.
Picture Frame
Some other interesting applets I found are: Kate Session Applet and Konqueror Profiles Applet which enable you to quickly launch these apps with some pre-defined settings.
Kate Session Applet
Konqueror Profiles Applet
KDE 4 also has already a lot of applets for displaying RSS feeds. Some of them take a lot of screen since they try to connect all added channels in one view. RSSNow is currently one of the most interesting of feed applets, since it displays the messages one by one, grouping them by services.
RSSNow
Another applet I would like to share with you is System Command. It simply allows you to execute any command just like a traditional command line.
System Command
And the last one… World Clock. No explanation needed here, I believe.
World Clock
KGet
KGet has been enriched to support the history of downloads, which can be displayed in different ways. Being honest I’m not 100% sure if this option was not present before. I just noticed it now.
KGet
Advanced settings
Downloads history
Another view of downloads history
KWin
One of the special effects of KWin allows for better configuration of windows shades. From now on we can choose their color, except for the previously available options.
KWin : Shadow settings
KDE Info Center
KDE Info Center gained the processor info basing on Solid.
Processor info
System Settings
Settings applet also received some polish and new features. One of the best is the new Autostart panel.
Advanced settings
Using it, we can specify the scripts or programs to be executed during the KDE start-up, together with the exact time they should be run.
Autostart
Out of curiosity I installed two new mouse pointer themes from Oxygen. I was skeptical about them before, being afraid of the additional TODO they might introduce. The pointers are not yet in the official KDE 4 repos.
Mouse pointers
Oxygen pointers
A new full screen version of the default Splash Screen has been added, as well.
Splash Screen
Amarok
More visual changes in Amarok, yet again! Not only the looks has been polished, but also the behavior. What can be noticed is Amarok’s own style of Plasma applets, new progress bar and the ability to hide/show albums on the playlist.
Amarok
A lot of changes in last.fm module as well. Now we can use our friends’ channels, our own channels and choose any music genre from the long list of tags.
Last.fm
DigiKam
We have covered DigiKam in a separate article recently: KDE 4 Tour: digiKam 0.10. The only change I have noticed since then is the altered dialog for fetching photos from a digital camera.
DigiKam
Fetching the photos
Camera info
Shutdown timer
When logging out of KDE 4 a timer appeared in the lower part of the screen, displaying the remaining time to log off or shutdown.
Logging off
Stability and performance of the build
Considering that the previous revisions were surprisingly unstable, I can honestly call this one the most stable of the ones I have tested till now. I experienced only one crash and the performance was more than satisfactory. Now I can be almost sure that when a stable edition of KDE 4.1 is published, I will definitely say good bay to my old good KDE 3.5.
This article has been originally published on /dev/jarzebski blog. It has been translated and reprinted with author’s permission.
Update: same article is also available in Arabic now: ??? 4 790000 : ???? ??????? ? ????
thanks to Zayed Al-Saidi!
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Thanks for the screenshots.
thanks there, Bastion
Nicely written article. I’m just waiting for KDE-PIM and KOffice to be finished, then I’m definitely making the switch
I read somewhere they had implement a qt4 version of the old tree file view in dolphin. Can you post a screen of it?
love your visual changelog of KDE 4.1, thanks for showing us how does KDE 4 evolves.
Keep these KDE4 articles coming. Great to know where KDE4 is at the moment.
Yeah I love the screenies and I so can’t wait to test out KDE 4 myself! This looks waaaaaayy better than anything called “Vista”. More polished and more professional. Vista is to me as if it’s overdone (oh and very sluggy) which brings me to the point.
How fast is the general response time and so forth for KDE 4?
>KGet has been enriched to support the history of downloads, which >can be displayed in different ways. Being honest I’m not 100% sure >if this option was not present before. I just noticed it now.
Yes, this option was there, but it was not as polished as the current implementation, also we have now an SQLite-Backend =)
Lukas
nice, still on 4.0.66 in opensuse but its great here
KDE 4.1 certainly will be very nice indeed… but please tell me, where are you getting all those lovely wallpapers from ? *drools*
http://www.hdwallpapers.net/nature-landscapes-wallpapers
just search in google-pictures for the filename “nature 0035″ and you find the site
Thanks for the very nice article. KDE4 kicks Vista in looks.
Unfortunately the first thing I thought of when the first screen shot popped up at the top of this page, “Wow, once again another Linux theme based off the newest default theme for Windows.” I can understand why people would do this… if per say Microsoft were trying to get people to leave Apple behind because Apple were the industry leader, then I could see why there might be an Apple look and feel to a theme that Microsoft would offer in one of their operating systems. I know they are just themes and and colors and it can all be changed to your personal liking, but, it still makes me laugh.
Hi,
Great review - I had read the earlier KDE4 review on this site and it was fantastic. I can’t wait for KDE 4.1 to be released!!
Also, I have one “strange” request. I absolutely love nature pics, and from your screenshot, I can see that you have many. Can you *please* compress your nature pics in one file and email it to me? As the site administrator, you have my email address in the records for this comment, I hope?
Thanks a LOT
Rohan.
KDE 4 will support Linux in better desktop performance
by the way, for the record, as far as I have read, there exists no workings of a webkit backend for konqueror yet.
@ Avuton Olrich
A Webkit-based KPart for Konqueror is in the works:
http://liquidat.wordpress.com/2007/12/20/kubuntus-kde-4-livecd-comes-with-webkit-enabled-konqueror/
The webkit kpart is experimental, and not anything anyone would want to use in production. For one, you lose a lot of the integration with KDE. Two, it isn’t very functional.
http://liquidat.wordpress.com/2008/03/04/howto-test-the-webkit-engine-in-fedora/
The article has great pictures, but they do seem to be a bit confused about Konqueror. It isn’t currently using webkit. Even if it were, it wouldn’t be the Safari version, it would be the version that goes through Qt.
Brilliant article, great screenshots. I’m really looking forward to the KDE 4 version of Kubuntu - I’ve also read that it’ll run smoother on older hardware?
KDE is still overkill.
Too many different ways to do stupid simple things.
That’s why GNOME caught up with it and is the leading desktop in many distros.
Name the distros in which Gnome is leading. The Gnome devs are not better that those of Windows, they think that their users are idiots. Why I love KDE is because it’s flexible. I can adjust my desktop to what I want it to be, to fit my personal needs and taste and not the other way around. I feel free to do what I want and don’t have to search the hell for simple functions that Gnome hide from normal users.
Gnome simply lack in functionality and apeal.
Ubuntu, Fedora, SLED, there is probably a lot more but these are the important ones.
Think a little. Since the release of QT3, so much has happened in the graphic front, in Linux. Please, don’t forget that Qt 3.0.0 was released in 2001, and Qt 3.2 was released in 2003. Can you remember where were we in 2001, graphically speaking? We didn’t even have a way to reliably render scalable fonts (FreeType 1 was limited, and FreeType 2 was too unstable). Windows XP, graphically, in 2001, was immensely better than our outdated-since-1996 XFree86 X Server in every aspect. That is no longer the case.
Qt 3 is outdated, GTK is not (because of incremental upgrades). That’s why GNOME was able to use incremental updates made in the graphic front, without ugly hacks. And that’s why everyone is using GNOME now, even SuSE (once the strongest KDE-only distro)
That’s going to change with KDE 4.1. Really.
That’s three, from how many distros out there? Three are a few and not “many” for me. And there are KDE versions of the distros you mentioned. KUbuntu, Novel ships KDE with openSuse and Fedora also ships with KDE AFAIK.
Ubuntu (with Gnome) is that popular not because some or maybe the most of it’s new users would’t use KDE but because they only heard of Ubuntu and not KUbuntu and obviously there is also a lot of more love put into polishing Ubuntu as it is in the case of KUbuntu, which would give new users the wrong impression of KDE. Ubuntu is also promoted a lot in contrast to KUbuntu that dubbed it’s unwanted child.
I am not saying that Gnome isn’t good or that it isn’t the best desktop for some people but I have used both Gnome and KDE, compared them and I can say that Gnome is lacking. It’s too minimalistic and conservative for my taste.
There are things that the both DE can learn from each other but KDE seems to be doing a better job in that area.
I have been using SuSe since 2001 (at that time experimental) but even then it was shipping with both Gnome and KDE. It would install KDE by default if you didn’t choose which DE you wanted but there was always choice. On the other hand, at least 2 destros come to mind that use only KDE: PCLinuxOS and Knoppix but I still can’t think of a single distro that only uses GNOME.
I’m using Gnome on Ubuntu and I love only one thing about it, its the look and feel that I like. I tried KDE 3.8.5 (and som versions before) and didn’t like the Artwork and the Panel.
Then there was KDE4 appearing and I tried it - it looks great and I’m shure I switch to KDE4.1 after its release.
Thanks for the Screenshots - I expect a goot time with KDE4.x
]andy[
Many different ways to do things: yes, and that is why I love KDE. The environment does not compell me to do things in a unique way and let me choose which one(s) I prefer.
As for me, I do not like GNOME, although I know this is a matter of taste and that there may be objective reasons for some people to prefer GNOME to KDE. But the reason you give does not seem a valid one to me. One can understand your point as “GNOME attracts more and more users because it restraints their freedom”. To me, the more freedom, the better.
I think KDE’s main problem about usability is the lack of documentation for end users like me (at least in my native language). Many features I daily used, I discovered by chance, since they were not documented in my language.
Great article, this article series is a very good publication on KDE itself, keep up the good work! Kudos to the author
Wow, thanks for the screenshots. Could you please give us a link to your background picture, if it is possible?
Thanks, Mike
Thanks for the brief review and screenshots. Nice to see KDE4 evolving. Can’t wait till the 4.1 release.
I only hope the performance and stability will be good. BTW, the desktop backgroud is really nice … I also ask for the link, if possible.
Very nice review
KDE 4 is getting mor and more impressive with every passing day. I just can’t wait to see 4.1 release.
KDE is really looking good. I am a GNOME user by preference but I acknowledge the great work KDE guys are doing. I might take a try when 4.1 is out.
good bay? what does it mean??
Damn, it’s almost looking a bit like OS X in the polish and clean interface. Pretty!
Great write up. I’m currently using KDE4.02
Where can i get KDE 4 rev 790000?
thank you, I hope to test it very soon too.
Absolutely great.. Thanks for your work… Just can’t wait for KDE4.1 to be released..
Thank you for making these visual changelogs!!!!
You are doing a great service to the community. I managed to get tons of people exited about upcoming KDE 4.1. Mostly because I show them links and printouts of your site and your changelogs.
Please keep doing them. They really help.
-Max
Request:
Could you please do a visual changelog like this for Amarok 2.0?
I would love to show off Amarok and show features of it easily to friends and show printouts.
Videos/Howto’s would be great as well.
I really think that Amarok is the “killer-app” for KDE/Linux.
Greetings from Monterey, CA
Having family in Poland makes me really proud of this site and what the Polish people have done for Linux.
Very nice article! Please keep em coming! =)
Good to see BDS alive and well..
Wait a minute that… is KDE?
Nope. It’s Vista. What did you think?
Many of the links pointing to larger versions of the images are 404.
Should be fine now. Little SVN problem
Looks like KDE GUI is getting totaly ass Mac’ed.
This sucks!
Hang the idiot KDE designer who copied all the crap from the shitty Vista and the the OS-X GUI.
desktop background? where can I get it?
@üeüeiesj
you suck.
dont blame the designer. KDE (as OSS in general) is free work.
Go and help to make it better.
You can make KDE4 look like Mac, Vista, or anything else.
But you can’t make Mac look like Vista or GNOME/KDE/anything, and Visto neither.
So stop fucking around and help making it better if you don’t like it, it is no product you have to play, it’s done from people like you and me.
What about kopete? Its got great features that I couldn’t find in any other IM clients, but needs quite some polishing, I thought it would have been updated a lot more now that KDE4 is in the works but I’ve only seen minor changes. Do you know if they plan to upgrade it similarly to the other KDE apps?(Amarok,Konqueror..)
I can only say: I like KDE4
and I await eagerly a stable KDE 4.1