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First KDE 4 Snapshot Released 60

Posted by CowboyNeal from the pretty-gooeys dept.
Rich writes "KDE has just released the first developer snapshot of KDE 4. This release isn't for end users, but should help developers who want to begin writing applications for the KDE 4 desktop. This release already includes a new CMake based build system, a change from DCOP to DBUS and of course a port to Qt 4. If you're interested in desktop development, check it out."
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First KDE 4 Snapshot Released More

First KDE 4 Snapshot Released

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  • Screenshots? (Score:5, Funny)

    by Yuioup ( 452151 ) on Saturday August 19, 2006 @10:17AM (#15940357)
    Snapshots? I thought you meant screenshots. Show me the screenshots!!!!

    (Bye bye karma. We will miss you).

  • Dbus over Dcop? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Surye ( 580125 ) <surye80@nOspAM.gmail.com> on Saturday August 19, 2006 @10:25AM (#15940385) Homepage
    a change from DCOP to DBUS
    Maybe I am a minority, but the dcop interface was one of the things I loved about KDE. It made scripting trivially easy, hell I could do old tasks that used to take a whole script (like a xmms announce script for xchat or something), and do it with a one-liner alias with dcop. Perhaps this will be good for dbus, assuming it's a better backend technology, to give it a dcop-style interface?

  • I'll switch to dbus when ... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Gopal.V ( 532678 ) on Saturday August 19, 2006 @10:25AM (#15940388) Homepage Journal
    They let me do this with dbus
    alias loud='dcop kmix Mixer0 setMute 1 0'
    alias silent='dcop kmix Mixer0 setMute 1 1'
    No, I've used dbus too [dotgnu.info]. But there's nothing like dcop, especially for such hooks for mundane things.

    But I guess, it is a good thing KDE and gnome are converging ... for the linux desktop, at least in the short term.

    • Re:I'll switch to dbus when ... (Score:5, Informative)

      by Laxitive ( 10360 ) on Saturday August 19, 2006 @10:44AM (#15940453) Journal
      You should still be able to do that in the new KDE. Maybe the command name will change (I hope not, because I have several scripts I'd have to change over).. but the functionality should still be there, the same interfaces should still be exposed by apps, and the ability to access it from the shell should still be preserved.

      DBUS is just a message passing layer implementation. How that functionality is exposed is still well within the control of the KDE developers.

      I don't think you have anything to worry about. If you have something to worry about, then I have something to worry about... and I'm not worried.

      Just chill and look forward to Kerry, solid, phonon, plasma, and all the rest of the good stuff coming our way :)

      -Laxitive

  • Here We Go Again! (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 19, 2006 @11:07AM (#15940535)
    Seconds out; round 328!

    In the blue corner, weighing in at 205 pounds - GNOME! He's certainly the more agile of the two, with considerably greater speed. There have been doubts about whether he has enough tools and power to stay competitive with his opponent, though. He is certainly the promoters favourite, however, and has consequently attracted more in the way of sponsorship. The main power brokers in the business are certainly getting behind this one. Preferred taunt of opponent: 'Bloaty Man'.

    In the red corner, the crowd favourite, weighing in at 325 pounds - KDE! He clearly has the weight advantage, but of course he isn't the speediest in the ring and may get caught wrong-footed if he's not careful. He also has more tricks up his sleeve than his opponent - but how many of them are really useful and how many are just for showing off? Many have remarked on his resemblance to the former champion from Redmond (who was sadly stripped of his title for match-fixing), but he claims to be no relation. A lot of the old hands in the business say he is the one to beat. Preferred taunt of opponent: 'Pretty Boy'.

    Well, it's certainly been a tedious and in many ways pointless fight! Just when it seemed that someone was gaining the upper hand, the other fought back and it still seems to be pretty much level overall. It may have to be decided on points, but there has been much controversy over the alleged bias of the judges, with both fighters' supporters accusing them of siding with their opponent.

    Well, it's time to cut to a commercial break, but don't worry as there is no doubt that this fight is going to run and run.

    • Not really (Score:4, Informative)

      by WindBourne ( 631190 ) on Saturday August 19, 2006 @12:26PM (#15940854) Journal
      In general, the developers and users all seem to say; eh, whatever. The simple answer is, there is no real battle. When GNOME had a late start into this, then yeah, there was a bit of a battle, That was years ago. These days, both sets of developers are trying to make everything interoperable (witness dbus and multimedia).

      For some odd reasons, there is a group of A.C.s that seem bent on starting a battle between these groups and making them focus on each other rather than focusing on beating others groups.
    • I don't think that is true. What is probably most surprising is how theming affects the way people view a desktop environment. The future is not KDE vs. Gnome but both.

      • What is probably most surprising is how theming affects the way people view a desktop environment.

        BINGO. :) You can tell the typical trolls, AC or otherwise, by their comments about appearance. The AC you responded to made a reference to KDE having a "resemblance to the former champion from Redmond", for example. This is a dead give-away that the AC hasn't actually used KDE and is merely "stirring the pot", hoping to get a fight started. The truth is you can make KDE look, and in many ways act, like jus

        • "KDE is far more customizable than GNOME, but because of that, also more complex."

          complex customizing = complex internals?

          Don't think that is true. When you look at the depencies KDE is clean. And QT is beauty, very clean and organised.

          Gnome was chaotic, then they removed the setting. But you can still customize it.

          ----

          Controversy makes discussions intresting. Same goes for politics.
          • I think what True Grit meant was that by directly exposing their customization options KDE increases their complexity. In contrast GNOME hides much of their customization options for the purpose of exhibiting simplicity. The post didn't appear to be about internals.
            • a) internals
              b) surface

              When b) is simple and a) is chaotic you cannot feel safe. And a) and b) have little in common.

              It is like putting garbage down under your bed.

              And we know that Gnome, like or not, is rotten on level b.

              I don't think KDE increased its complexity.

              Problems of Graphical Operating Environments are today not on the KDE/Gnome level but in the backend, in the space where distributors take responsibility. I mean system configuration, package management, etc. Most problems are interface related. Yo

  • Kde 4.0? :) (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Klaidas ( 981300 ) on Saturday August 19, 2006 @11:13AM (#15940562)
    First Development Snapshot of KDE4 "Krash" released. Before anyone goes ahead and compiles/runs this, please be aware that it will look exactly like KDE 3.5 - except for being broken in lots of places.
    • Does it qualify as alpha or pre-alpha release?

      • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

        by Punboy ( 737239 ) *
        Exceedingly pre-alpha. This is being provided solely for the purposes of debugging, and for porting important applications early. the main KDE libraries have been ported to Qt 4, and have been partially rewritten. To give developers a headstart (and for them to help work out bugs), they released this. It is in no way meant for the public to ooh and aah over, and frankly i'm irritated its on slashdot.
    • Yeah. It's new technology at this point, not new applications yet. This is also why it's a snapshot and not an alpha release. Alpha would imply it was preview of the final version, which it is not.
    • So it'll Krash a lot?
  • If there is one thing preventing me from installing Xgl is the horrible experience I witnessed using KDE with compiz.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Ant P. ( 974313 )
      What's wrong with it? Compiz is getting a lot better lately.
      • Compiz has a lot of plugins providing fancy effects but I find most of them disturbing and for some reason I think I am not the only one complaining about them. In contrast, last time I checked it was lacking even the most basic options provided by kwin like remembering window size and position, edge attraction, etc. I tried a little Xgl + KDE + compiz on a friend's computer and found it rather messy.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Ant P. ( 974313 )
          There are some useful ones but I turned most of the eye candy off.
          It does have edge-snapping though, it just does it in a brain-damaged way where you have to hold shift and the snap distance is too big to be useful. Oh and it depends on the wobble plugin for no apparent reason.
        • Compiz has had edge attraction for a very long time.
    • So why did Novell-ximian develop it in a closed process, enabling Gnome to be the first on stage?

      The proper way is followed by RedHat anyway, not Novell. Xgl is obsolete despite the hype.

      • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

        by Trinn ( 523103 )
        I don't know, but a fully open process for it is one of the goals I've been aiming for. see www.compiz.net and find out how to really make your compiz nice (note, I'm mostly a KDE user too, but for some reason, kicker is crashy with compiz, so I switched to a gnome-based session with lots of KDE apps. (I hate gnome's remove-the-options interface style, and hate that it's infected gaim...)

  • CMake and KDE (Score:5, Interesting)

    by The boojum ( 70419 ) on Saturday August 19, 2006 @02:05PM (#15941227)
    I'm really glad to see CMake [cmake.org] finally getting used by a high-profile project. I hated CMake at first sight -- having to install it first before I could build a project seemed strange after the autoconf ./configure; make routine. But it really is a nice system and has meant no longer having to support and keep in sync parallel make files, Visual Studio projects, XCode projects, etc. like I used to. Configure scripts failing on native Windows builds, for example, was always a pain. It's been a lot easier to build cross-platform projects now that I'm using CMake for everything.

    Seeing KDE adopting it has been great news for me, since it means that I may be able to start releasing my own small projects with CMakeList.txt files without getting funny looks. I love that it's looking like KDE will blaze the trail for us little guys who prefer CMake over the autoconf tool chain.
    • From my perspective English Breakfast Network [englishbre...etwork.org] looks like the greatest infrastructure improvement.

      For KDE the question is how to attract more developers to the plattform. The answer is of course to remove entrance barriers, e.g. the small annoyances which regularly break stuff and need certain more or less trivial knowledge to fix them.

      Cmake has to sides:
      a) you have to learn it and it is different from the usual toolchain
      b) it solves certain problems.

  • KDevelop4 will dave integrated forms design (Score:3, Informative)

    by Burz ( 138833 ) on Saturday August 19, 2006 @09:24PM (#15942440) Homepage Journal
    Have a looksee! http://www.kdedevelopers.org/node/2201 [kdedevelopers.org]
  • Personally I prefer Enlightenment (e17) as nothing on the Windows or GNU/Linux platforms touches it in terms of smooth operation and beauty as well as lightness and simplicity with tons of complexity and flexibility. I spent the entire Winter using KDE 3.4 and it just never struck me as having any worthy eye candy that makes it much different from Windows XP. It has the same chunky/clunky icons, buttons and fonts that XP does. At least Gnome is a Mac OS (preX) wannabe with plenty of innovation (ie. lots

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by nurb432 ( 527695 )
      Remember a true 'desktop environment' is more then eye candy. ( which is changeable pretty easy )

      Its about the underlying toolkits that allow you to create and integrate all the great applications that we all want to use. Changes like this are more intended for developers to get exited about, not the end users... ( tho agreed, in the end they benefit as well )

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by eno2001 ( 527078 )
        I agree to an extent. I definitely see that KDE is VERY integrated throughout. That's why it feels more "finished" than some of the other environments. But eyecandy seems to suffer. There's still way too much flat and solid color stuff in KDE. And anything that does have gradients or 3D look and feel is only at the most basic level. There isn't much photorealism in the GUI. That's a HUGE detriment if you are trying to attract the eyecandy crowd. Now... there are plenty of people who aren't in that c

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