Quick Look at KDE 4.2-SVN
[ Thursday, 16 October 2008, riklaunim ]
As the work on KDE 4.2 turns out to be on quite an advanced stage, I’ve decided to test the current development version. For the purpose of this test I used the Archlinux distribution, that features the KDE 4.2-SVN packages repository. It is just enough to add appropriate entries into pacman.conf at the top of the default repositories, and there we can go on installing kde-svn. Read my impressions below.
Applications
KDE4.2 is the next step in evolution of the new KDE branch. Comparing to KDE 4.1.2, it makes a ‘new version’ impression, and the applications are starting up a little bit faster. The bug that prevented usage of Ctrl+C/V shortcuts for copying in Konqueror while the ‘internet’ tab was present, has been fixed. Also the automatic numbering of screenshots within ksnapshot (4.1.2 used to forget the last snapshot name) has been fixed, too.
Screenshot 1: KDE 4.2-SVN running applications.
Konqueror behaves similarly to the one shipped with KDE3, tough its components have been re-built. The file and folder browsing is now the KPart of Dolphin’s responsibility, the default file manager of KDE4. Dolphin’s interface is easy to use and reminds of Thunar, XFCE’s counterpart. The Dolphin’s programmers goal was to give the users a much simpler application than Konqueror is, which according to them, is best for “power users”. Konqueror has in fact become much more of a web browser - upon launch, the “home” icon brings the default home page, instead of the home folder. Only on the file manager tabs the home folder icon appears.
There is much attention turned towards KHTML and KJS web rendering engines. Comparing to KDE3’s Konqueror, it is remarkable, that the pages loaded with JavaScript do work better (e.g. the slideshare.net or IBM DeveloperWorks do not stutter any more). For now the new functionalities planned to be included in KDE4.2 list e.g. the SVG support in KHTML (ported from WebKit). The works on optimizing KJS or KHTML extensions haven’t started yet. Dolphin’s features that are finished so far are e.g. the tooltips. The improvement of zooming in and out of the elements list using a simple slider is currently a Work In Progress. Konqueror awaits the new tabbing support using Akonadi.
Screenshot 2: Dolphin with miniatures/file preview enabled
Screenshot 3: And the above disabled.
Screenshot 4: The file manager tab in Konqueror.
Ark works and has no problems managing the archives. What differs it between KDE3 version, is the completely new UI. Works on its improvement are on their way too. The goals are e.g. support for drag-and-drop between Ark and Dolphin, improvements to password-protected archives support, and servicing [menu serwisowe ?] options menu. These are currently work-in-progress.
Screenshot 5 : Ark’s new UI.
Okular is a new application for viewing files lile PDF, CHM, DJVU or graphics. It substitutes KDE3’s Kpdf. KDE4.2 goals list only the movie and their annotation support. The .snp and .emf support and general annotation improvements are still on Okular’s ToDo list.
Screenshot 6: Okular displaying a CHM file.
KGet received from KDE4 a few changes to the UI and better desktop integration thanks to the plasmoids (three of them available currently in KDE4.2-SVN). The download manager’s behavior didn’t change, but its capabilities were enlarged. The currently worked-on tasks list i.e. multi-source download, mms:// protocol support. The ToDo list includes the MLDonkey plugin.
Screenshot 7: Standard file download list view.
Screenshot 8: The new detailed download view.
The kdemultimedia department works currently on a more-or-less default movie player - the Dragon Player. All assigned goals are being worked on (i.e. Xine independence, adding the file manager, showing audio file properties and so on). As of Juka, its goals still remain on a ToDo list - i.e. dropping the Qt/KDE3 libraries dependencies.
Screenshot 9: Juk playing OGG files.
The Desktop
Plasma has most goals listed for inclusion in KDE4.2, followed closely by KWin. Currently Plasma behaves somewhat unstable and can crash while managing the plasmoids. With the default “plasmoid” desktop setting, we can add the plasmoids, but the files/icons are not supported, KDE3’s style. A plasmoid displaying the pointed-to folder contents has been added instead. Other than this, the default plasmoids aren’t too eyecatching. Some have problems sizing the individual components, or don’t work correctly (e.g. the KGet plasmoids).
Screenshot 9: Folder view and Kickoff4 as a plasmoid.
Screenshot 10: searching applications by name doesn’t always yield expected results.
The plasmoids can also be added to panels, that way extending their functionality compared to KDE3’s Kicker. For example, if we cannot decide which KDE menu style we like more, we can add the old-styled plasmoid and have them both.
Screenshot 11: Panel configuration is quite a powerful tool.
The desktop can also be switched into a “show directory” mode, to receive the similar to KDE3’s desktop functionality of displaying and placing files and shortcuts there. In return we cannot add plasmoids there any more.
Screenshot 12: KDE4.2 allows to place files on the desktop “the usual way”.
As it can be seen, the KDE4 development is running at full throttle. KDE4.2 will include much enhanced functionality and versatility than KDE 4.1, but still a lot of work has to be done in many areas, especially when it comes to the stability of the applications.
If you asked me “is it worth it to switch to KDE 4?” I’d say, that it is worth waiting for the 4.2.0 or even until its patched versions emerge (like 4.2.1) depending on mainline stability. KDE 4.1.2 doesn’t offer that much versatility to satisfy different users expectations. To make things worse for it, in spite of the second patch level release, there are still some persistent bugs emerging.
Translated-by: el es
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The biggest thing that drives me nuts in KDE 4.1.2 is how some of the settings aren’t persistent; e.g., customizing an application’s toolbar layout, changing default icon sizes in System Settings, etc. Have you noticed any progress in this department?
Great read, by the way. Thanks for keeping us posted!
Settings are persistent.
Use “lock widgets” to lock (and save) widget position and sizes.
Not all settings are persistent. For instance, in Akregator, if you adjust the width of the field headers and then close the program, you will have to readjust them when you reopen. There are many instances of this all over KDE 4 right now. I’m sure they will eventually get fixed, but it is majorly annoying to always have to readjust field widths.
i don’t like the contrast between the system menu ( mostly white ) and the rest of the kde4 desktop ( mostly dark )
this “shocks” me every time i try a new KDE4 iteration
I don’t like the whole KDE 4 color scheme; not just the contrast between the system menu. In my opinion it looks very unpleasant.
-Mark
>I don’t like the whole KDE 4 color scheme; not just the >contrast between the system menu.
I truly dont understand people like that “I dont like the default colors”. Its like the ones who dont like Ubuntu’s brown wallpaper.
CHANGE IT!!!
I use 4 different distros over 4 computers and NOT ONE looks like the screenshots because I DONT LIKE the default settings.
We have access to multiple desktop environments that are customizable and with KDE you can make it look like you want it to.
I understand joe public not knowing how to change icons, colors, borders, buttons and so on but not someone testing a beta.
Its not about you, you know.
rob i don’t get your point
i) are you saying that desktop environments should come with awful or unpleasant defaults color schemes, because users surely will change them?
ii) do you know that there are some mom-and-daddy-like users that simply don’t like to mess with “configuring” things?
‘orlando_ombzzz’ did you read what he said? That apart the default settings are very nice in KDE4 for me - the first release where I haven’t had to change much apart from the huge and pronounced fonts. I mean just look at the text used in the menu bar, it appears to be point 12 and in bold!
From what I saw after installation and what I found on the internet, you cannot change the kicker color (KDE 4.1.2, Fedora9).
You can download a different scheme, but if none of those looks nice to you (and none does to me), you are stuck.
Additionally, the system tray background stays at black, no matter what you do.
And no, I don’t want to change some awkward variable in some awkward and unfindable .kde settings file.
I want a “change color” dialog in the menu I get with a right-click.
Searching through a somewhat bloated dialoge box for the right option is still A LOT faster, than having to read several HOWTOs to get the setting adjusted I want to have adjusted.
Heck, I don’t adjust things every 10 minutes anyway, so I am not dependant on the fastest of all possible user interfaces. To the contrary, I want to have a flat learning curve, and that is where the GUI beats the CLI 100 times over.
If I wanted an unconfigurable ugliness, I would have switched to GNOME already a long time ago.
“I want a “change color” dialog in the menu I get with a right-click.”
use a colorizable theme, such as Aya, and then it follows your desktop color scheme.
what’s interesting is that you are looking for a way to colorize the panel the way kicker did it, by making it’s own settings for all of that stuff.
i’d rather have it follow my desktop settings or else be styled nicely with custom artwork. plasma provides both but does not, unlike kicker, force you to manage colours in multiple places.
some of the problems people are having with plasma are due to us fixing some of the oddnesses in kde2/3’s panels but which they are used to.
==
as for the article itself, kget’s plasmoids are not actually shipped with plasma but kget itself, so unfortunately the plasma team doesn’t really get to spend much time with that widget.
crashes with other widgets, etc. are most likely caused by stale applets from other pre-releases? at least right now in trunk, plasma is very stable.
>some of the problems people are having with plasma are due to us fixing some of the oddnesses in kde2/3’s panels but which they are used to
I agree. I was really mad when the digital clock applet did not have the option to show time in 12 hour format. I thought it was a bug and would be fixed. I found today that it just follows the global time format defined in the System settings.
I’m just switching over to gnome temporarily until kde4.2 is out. Kde 3 is really showing it’s age, why temporary gnome. Kde 4.1.2 likes to have lots of random and some predictable system hangups.
I have been using 4.1.2 on Opensuse 11.0 now for as long as it’s been in factory.
I’ve not experienced one crash at all. And I use it every day for web programming, watching video, listening music and much much more, still no crashes.
I’m not saying that it’s perfect but the crashes might also be a result of the distro’s implementation of KDE? This is just a question. Since it puzzles me that I do not experience this problem.
I tried the new Mandriva’s KDE. It hanged, it crashed it lagged. I just could not use it for a single day.
It just did not work at all. But that dont make KDE bad it also does not make Mandriva bad, it just makes that particular implementation of KDE on Mandriva bad.
> I tried the new Mandriva’s KDE. It hanged, it crashed it
> lagged. I just could not use it for a single day.
I have been using Mandriva 2009.0 powerpack edition since it recently came out and I have not had any problems using kde 4.1.2. I don’t understand how to use it kde 4, but it looks great and it works fine. Every Mandriva edition gets better than the last. It’s the best, and this one completely updated itself from urpmi package manager from 2008.1 just by selecting it like a simple package upgrade! and the system kept running in the mean time and a couple of hours or whatever later, it was just there and running. It was an amazing upgrade.
Is webkit kpart upto date yet? I don’t remember if the target to give a choice between KHTML and webkit kparts was on KDE 4.2 or 4.3.
Stigi and Akonadi should also find lot of developments in 4.2
Thanks for the review. Very thorough and good comparisons of what new things we can expect from 4.1.2.
Good review. I am reluctant to try Kubuntu 8.10 after having tried KDE 4.1 in Kubuntu 8.04. It looks very very appealing but the missing functionalities are frustrating at times. I am also planning to switch temporarily to Ubuntu/Gnome till KDE 4.2 comes out.
Well, I’m using Archlinux with KDEmod3-legacy
And Gentoo with Kde3 and masked Kde4 
Most distros have still KDE3.
@ Ajay,
You can already choose between KHTML and WebKit through
View(menu)>View Mode>Webkit
But Webkit is missing a lot when compared to KHTML kpart.
there’s no significant improvement from KDE 4.1
but, KDE still the best desktop environment in Linux
perhaps this article didn’t do a great job of noting what the improvements are, but there has been probably as much progress between 4.1->4.2 as there was 4.0-4.1.
KDE 4 is still beta, screw it.
you will probably say “KDE 4.5 rocks!” all over the net when it becames stable enough… hypocrite
What’s hypocritical about wanting to wait until a more stable version?
Im going to start using KDE 4 in KDE 4.5 release or something. Thre are too much bugs right now.
Are you kidding me? You start with Konqueror. Konqueror and Koffice are the most hobbyist applications ever. Maybe only about 200 religious fanatics are using it, and they make all the weather beating their drums (seigo is a biggest “cool” loser((cool = loser almost immediately)) )
If Konqueror and Koffice are removed, together with all this desktop crap, from KDE then, at some distant future it might become a decent platform for running decent applications.
What a troll. KHTML (even tough I agree that Konqueror need polishing) it’s amazing, that why Apple used it for WebKit, which now is default.
Koffice 2 is looking sweet, it isn’t made to be a Microsoft Office equivalent, it looks a lot more like iWork.
KDE 4.1/.2 it’s already the best desktop available for Linux, period.
Wow, Nokia Google Apple etc etc are fools to use something created by these “losers”.
Unlike you there are hundred of thousands probably millions who are grateful for everything people in KDE project have contributed to the open-source community, to be used the way we want it, and these guys listen to what users say.
They don’t have to listen, as they are not being paid for their effort. Yet they do. Yet they spend their precious time so that we can have something as cool as KDE.
These people are more than just cool.
Now tell me What YOU have achieved ? What is your contribution ?
Probably nothing, compared to ungrateful @ss%oles like you every one else is cool.
AND BTW, Konqueror is now using plugins, has the Adblock,restores session, is doing smooth scrolling, is awesome file manager etc etc.
There are lot of things that Konqueror can do what more popular browser cannot.
Very soon KOffice will be challenging office suites like MSoffice and OpenOffice.Org, it will go where they cannot like small devices and mobile phones.
And that is a BIG achievement, as they don’t get million or billion dollar funding from Corporate behemoth like Microsoft and Sun.
Develop a new modern Desktop Enviroment yourself that is not “hobbyist” but absolutely perfect. Then you can call seigo a cool loser. Right now, YOU are the looser (just loser, not cool).
So wait, whats wrong with Konquerer and koffice? You don’t like them because you assume only religous fanatics use them?? (Not sure where the reasoning is here).
You do know that since it is linux you have lots of options for apps…like firefox and openoffice….
The first things i need are:
1) Multiple rows task manager
2) A default quick launcher applet with multiple rows support
Some changes in that area in your 4.2 deployment?
both are coming in 4.2.
Quite true, personally I do not fancy the move to Mac OS X, despite the huge publicity and lures of my peers. If I were to switch to any system, Linux would be my preferred choice. Amongst the various Linux distributions, Ubuntu would have been my preferred choice, although I can make do with Debian and SUSE.
Finally, someone is making some sense of it all! Well done.
Jiff
http://www.online-privacy.se.tc
There is already a multiple row task manager plasmoid in kde-look.org, and i kind of remember seing multiple row supported in svn with the default panel, I’m not sure abput the quick launcher
both will be in 4.2
Oh and also no auto hide in 4.1.2 incredible!!!!
same thing in 4.2?
there is no auto-hide in 4.1.2 because it wasn’t there in 4.1.0: we don’t add new features to release branches. the x.y.z releases only fix bugs, add translations, etc.
autohide, has been in the development branch for at least 4-6 weeks now and will be part of the 4.2.0 release.
I hace to correct you: KDE 4.1.2 has panel autohide included, as well as all the other options of 4.2 panel-config - as longas you use openSUSE, because the suse-guys backported those features. One reason why suse is a preferred KDE-Disto IMO.
fedora and others are also backporting this stuff, and i had to point them to a patch that fixed a 100% cpu usage bug. personally, i’m very unhappy they are backporting features mid-way through a development cycle as we are still finding and working out bugs.
there’s a reason we have a release schedule, and it’s not to impress the people down the street. these distros are openly violating that cycle, and as a result are bringing bugs that we would never release into their distros.
and who will get the blame? not them, but upstream KDE.
these distros should not be praised, let alone rewarded, for this behaviour, but chastised for inflicting code that isn’t ready on their users at the expense of others.
Thanks to that you are getting more testing in some features that you would not have otherwise so it’s not completely a bad situation.
@Aaron:
We take bugs in the stuff we backport seriously, in fact the whole reason we had this 100% CPU problem at all is that I backported additional bugfixes which are not in the openSUSE backport! It turns out in this case a fix for the fix was needed.
Additionally, the package with the 100% CPU consumption was in Rawhide for only 1 day and never in any official Fedora release. I reverted the bugfix which introduced the 100% CPU consumption as soon as I got to know the problem (i.e. within hours) and only 8 days later we got the proper fix in (thanks again for your hint!).
We now have 9 revisions of bugfixes beyond the openSUSE backport (866710, 866715, 866998, 868231, 869277, 869882, 869925, 870041 and 871058) and it is working well in our testing. Please don’t think we don’t do QA on the stuff we backport!
Another important thing to consider: While in some cases, you may get bogus bug reports because the fix is already in trunk and we missed it, in other cases bugs are found by people testing the backports which really also affect the trunk (and I really thought this was the case here and I did check for a fix in the trunk (I just missed it), otherwise I wouldn’t have reported it upstream, I’m sorry for that mistake), so the backports can also help you make the next upstream release better.
As for why we backported this feature: Many of our users have been impatiently asking us for this feature, so we believe it is in everyone’s best interest to get it out there as soon as possible. And no, we don’t just dump it out there with all the bugs, we have Rawhide and updates-testing for a reason, and at least 4 people (including me) tested the backports directly from the build system. And as I said, I actively searched the trunk for bugfixes and applied them.
I also expect that once you get to a point where all the big KDE 3.5 features people got used to are also in KDE 4, the pressure on us distributors to backport things will get much lower.
“so we believe it is in everyone’s best interest to get it out there as soon as possible”
including not letting us actually finish the features, do the QA, etc on it? rubbish.
listening to your users is one thing, giving them the bad solutions (even if they ask for it explicitly) is quite another.
i’m glad you’re picking up revisions as we go along but that’s such a back-asswards way of doing it. let us complete the features, release them, then merge them. or heck, let us even just *finish* the feature: tell us “we’d like to backport $FOO, let us know when that’s complete enough to backport.” but you, and the other distros, don’t even go that common sense route.
i am, quite frankly, astounded. and not in a good way.
The problem is that users see missing features which were in 3.5 as bugs. They don’t care that it is because the code is completely different, all they see is that the feature used to be there and no longer is. And thus they expect those features to be readded in bugfix releases. Feature regressions are something which should not be taken lightly.
4.1 is even missing some features from 4.0 (!), like the Plasma tooltips (except if you use the Fedora packages, I backported the tooltip manager from 4.2 even before 4.1.0 was released - the code was out there in time for 4.1, the only reason it didn’t make it in is your inflexible release schedule) or like multi-line taskbars (which were added to 4.0 in 4.0.2, in the upstream backport series you did for 4.0, then got lost from the trunk before 4.1 in some rewrite). This sort of things is extremely frustrating to users and packagers.
Nice Report, your Site is always worth looking at for news about Projects as KDE4 etc.
Great work!
thanx!
I have kde4.1.2 on my HD but I don’t use it very often, at the moment Gnome is my Desktop of choice. But I’m still observing the evolution of KDE4 until it is ready for a fluent workflow.
What I miss the most is a good skin for gnome-apps under KDE4 - they look ugly and too simple…
So I installed gtk-kde4 now, lets see what this brings…
]andy[
Piotr, thanks for another great entry. Your articles about the cutting edge of KDE4 are always a godsend.
As a half-Slav I hope you’ll accept a quick tip from me, that “that” (że) in English is very rarely followed by a comma, except in contrived sentences like this
s/followed/preceded/
To be 100% exact, that’s only second article of Piotr on KDE4, the previous one being KDE4 Devel Live-CD Review: Work in Progress from 25 April 2007.
You probably remembered the articles by Korneliusz Jarzębski who used to write a lot on KDE4 between February and June this year. Korneliusz took a break from writing but we have other authors willing to cover KDE. Soon you can expect a series of articles about KDE 4.2 apps by Tomasz Dudziak, so stay tuned and subscribe to our RSS!
Borys Musielak
PolishLinux.org founder
it’s really cool that he’s writing these; we miss Jarzebski! still, there are some fairly unfortunate errors in this article; if he’d like someone to fact check articles without publicly releasing his text, Piotr (or whomever) could send their text either to me or to kde-ev-marketing at kde dot org.