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New KDE 3.5.5 Features 1,200 Changes 98

Posted by timothy from the viel-glueck! dept.
lisah writes "Just two months after its last update, KDE has released a new maintenance and bugfix update. KDE 3.5.5 boasts over 1,200 changes including speed improvements to KHTML, an update of Kopete 0.12.3, support for Adium themes, and improved support for Yahoo! and Jabber IM protocols. KDE 3.5.5 also now offers extensive support for over 65 languages. Just a day after the release of 3.5.5, developers say they are already looking toward the release of KDE4, which will include improvements in multimedia, hardware integration, and more." (Linux.com and Slashdot are both part of OSTG.)
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New KDE 3.5.5 Features 1,200 Changes More

New KDE 3.5.5 Features 1,200 Changes

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  • BSD? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by debest ( 471937 ) on Thursday October 12, 2006 @09:26AM (#16407161)
    Is this really the right catagory to post KDE news in?
  • 1200 seems a bit on the high side, did they just count all cvs commits or something?

    and yes, I did not RTFA ;)

    • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

      by chill ( 34294 )
      Yes, probably -- though I think they use SVN now.

      What the article mentions, but the /. blurb does not, is that there were 333 bugs closed from 3.5.4 to 3.5.5. That makes it half as evil!

    • As the other guy mentioned 333 were bugs. From the article... 1,222 changes have gone into the release between 3.5.4 and 3.5.5 and 333 bugs have been marked as closed.

      So basically they fixed 300 bugs and added 900 features. I'd be willing to bet that many of those are language enhancements that will never be seen by anyone except testers, since most peeps will be using KDE with one language.

      I can't wait for the Gnome camp to come out of hibernation now and start spouting how evil KDE is and how they need

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by makomk ( 752139 )
        Some of the closed bug reports seem to be features, though. For example:

        kdesu
        * Add sudo support. Fixes bug 20914. See SVN commit 570637.

        (Whick is nice and all, but definitely counts as a feature addition rather than a bugfix IMO. Remember, bug trackers aren't always just for bugs.)
    • There change-log [kde.org] lists only about 182 changes.

      There SVN commits are to 483 unique files. (cat kdebase.txt [kde.org]|grep branches|sed 's/*/ /g'|uniq|wc), Otherwise there are 485 (cat kdebase.txt|grep branches -c)

      But total number of lines are 1586 (wc kdebase.txt)

      Draw your own conclusions. (I have mine ;) )

      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        by Homology ( 639438 )
        A useful changelog is not just a list of each and every commit, for that you just use the history log of the repository. A changelog is a compact and informative overview of changes without going into the nitty gritty details.
    • Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • More or less. It's been in Debian Sid for some time now. I can't say I've noticed that many improvements, since KDE already worked pretty well for me. Konqueror seems slightly faster, and doesn't always crash when using a certain functionality on a certain Web 2.0 site.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by jZnat ( 793348 ) *
      Although it seems like the rounded corners on Slashdot are off by a pixel now. Hrmmm...

      BUT! Now Konqueror comes with an easy to use AdBlock thing! There's now a filter icon on the bottom, and you can create/modify rules from there just like the Adblock extension.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by MrHanky ( 141717 )
        I can't see any adblock icon in Konqueror, but I use the functionality (right click on image--> block is easy enough). Hasn't this been in Konqueror for some time now?

  • Misleading summary (Score:4, Informative)

    by SirTalon42 ( 751509 ) on Thursday October 12, 2006 @10:20AM (#16407933)
    Just a day after the release of 3.5.5, developers say they are already looking toward the release of KDE4...


    I'm not an expert on grammar so I may have misread the summary myself, but KDE 4 has actually been being developed for a good while now. Pretty much all of KDE has been ported to using Qt4, DBus has replaced DCOP, etc. Lots of work on the new frameworks in KDE4 has also being accomplished, as well as improvements to the already existing ones as well.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by javilon ( 99157 )
      the DBus is specially nice as it is a standard from freedesktop.org and is used in gnome as well.

  • Kopete (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Kadin2048 ( 468275 ) <.ten.yxox. .ta. .nidak.todhsals.> on Thursday October 12, 2006 @10:22AM (#16407975) Homepage Journal
    The fix to Kopete that lets it use Adium skins is definitely welcome, as there are a ton of Adium skins.

    However, I wish they had spent their time making Kopete compatible with Gaim's plugin architecture rather than a basically glitzy UI improvement. At least last time I checked, Kopete was completely incompatible with OTR encryption, and it looked like it was going to stay that way. (The reason I heard was that something about the existing Kopete plugin structure doesn't allow plugins to actually orginate messages, just modify them as they pass through, and OTR uses specially crafted messages to initiate connections and resend data. Or something like that; don't quote me on it directly.)

    Seems like the request is still open [kde.org] on Bugzilla, I encourage people to vote, as IMO this is a major limitation of Kopete versus Gaim. Kopete definitely looks nicer than Gaim, but it's not as functional because of that.

    Actually, I'm not sure why they don't just rebuild Kopete to use the libgaim backend, like Adium does (and Proteus, and Fire...). Maybe there are good reasons for not using it, but it strikes me as serious wheel-reinvention.

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by archen ( 447353 )
      It may be wheel reinvention but so is 99% of all Linux software... or all software period for that matter. I've never used kopete myself, but judging by how well kde apps integrate I would guess that kopete is reinvented not just for the sake of doing it, but for having the engine available to all other kde apps. I'm sure they could make some sort of dcop wrapper for libgaim, but I'm sure that if they really wanted to, they could have made a wrapper for gimp as well.

      The open source desktop already has enou
    • Why not help in the development of libgaim and then use that? This reinvent the wheel thing really is a bit much, and those gaim guys really could use the help to finally get 3.0 out the door and finally merge that gaim-vv stuff into the next version (4.0?)
      • Well, they are developing using their own time, so I think they need others to tell them how to spend their own time.
    • Don't be surprised at all. Kopete has a rather bumpy past and continually exists as one of the buggiest, worst-designed instant messaging program I've ever encountered (and I'm a big IM geek).

      The fact that they waste their time adding useless skin support instead of fixing the thousands of bugs that must exist in the codebase is enough evidence that the developers have no idea what they should be prioritizing.

      The real solution here is to forget kopete, and stick with gaim despite how ugly and non-kde it is

  • Komplaint about Kopete. (Score:3, Interesting)

    by B5_geek ( 638928 ) on Thursday October 12, 2006 @11:15AM (#16408789)
    For anybody who has followed the mailing lists know that the developers decision to change the 'message-send' default-key (from Ctrl + Enter to Enter) has met with a lot of resistance and complaints, but thankfully it is changable. Although kinda difficult to find as it is not obvious at first glance.

    This I can live with because it is a variable that _I_ can change. Kudos to the team for realising that not everybody likes to do things _your_ way. Hrm, Gnome; take a look.

    What I can't stand is a change to the code that eliminates a or space character at the end of a message. They have actually gone so far as to have the code actively delete and space or null characters at the end of a message.

    Gaim, and ICQ allow these actions by default. IMO i think Kopete devs went into a monkey-see monkey-do and just copied what MSN does.

    For me the deal-breaker is the space-character issue. Since I (like many of you other /.'ers) grew-up using BBS's, we all remember how difficult/annoying it was to try to have an online conversation with the sysop in the full-duplex windows, so as a good habit we all started adding and 'extra' ENTER to notify the other person that we were done talking. This habit has stuck with me throughout my IM'ing life. The only medium that this method doesn't work is IRC.

    For example:

    My desired Output:

    Person 1: this is a sample message that I would type in an IM window (Enter)
    (Enter)
    Person 2: And this would be the reply, nicely seperated (visually) from the previous message.(Enter)
    (Enter)

    ######

    Kopete's new-default behaviour.

    Person 1: Now converstions can/will look very cluttered.
    Person 2: Despite KDE's past behaviour of allowing users to setup whatever setting they wanted to use.
    Person 1: I have spoken with the dev's on freenode, but they had a holier-then-thou attitude that was very similar to the heated conversations that took place regarding the ctrl+enter vs Enter 'send-message' debacle.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Sentry21 ( 8183 )
      That's why the various message styles differentiate what you said and what the other person said, usually by different colours in your usernames, by adding spaces of their own, by 'blocking off' each distinct set of messages, or some other visual, automatic method.

      Let's face it, typing an extra newline to let someone know you're done only makes any sense if all parties can see what every other party types as they type it. Otherwise, you know that someone's done typing when they hit the enter key.

      It's not 19

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by B5_geek ( 638928 )
        The visual styles that you refer to just add to the screen clutter. The 'extra' space is just used to visually break-up large blocks of text.

                  Would you suggest that we abandon using paragraphs completely because we don't need to seperate "chains-of-thought", or topics.

                  This has nothing to do with being stuck in the 80's but instead a complaint about developers intenionally crippling software.

        • "crippling" software by not allowing you to send blank messages and waste the other person's time and energy? Sounds like a positive change to me. I don't give a crap what you did on your BBS in 1983, don't put random whitespace in conversations with me. Just think of it like an automatic "jerk-filter".

  • GNOME is falling futher behind. (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 12, 2006 @11:17AM (#16408815)
    I've been a user of GNOME since 1.2, but a coworker suggested recently that I try this new release of KDE. I must admit, I am very impressed. This is the first time I've used KDE in perhaps six years or so, so I really hadn't kept up to date with its development.

    I think the biggest difference I noticed was its speed and responsiveness. One thing I notice with my GNOME 2.16 installation is that applications will sometimes gray out their entire window for perhaps half a second or so, often after maximizing the window or sometimes upon a dialog box opening. This just isn't the case with KDE. The GUI repaintings are near-instant, as far as I can tell.

    The most impressive feature is their web browser, Konqueror. It completely shames Firefox, Galeon, and Epiphany. Besides being a lot faster, it used a whole lot less memory. At one point I had 16 tabs open (I counted them) and a download going, and according to top the memory usage never exceeded 45 MB. Meanwhile, I can open five of those same sites in tabs with Firefox 1.5.0.7, and memory usage skyrockets to 112 MB.

    The CSS support of Konqueror is also better than that of Gecko. It passes the Acid2 test, which to the best of my knowledge, Gecko still cannot do.

    KMail is another great application. I don't know exactly how to describe it, but its usability is far better than that of Thunderbird or Evolution. With the GNOME applications you have to take a moment to think about what you want to do, and how exactly to accomplish it, with KMail it's blatantly obvious. You just click instinctually, and often times it does what you want it to.

    At this point, I think I might stick with KDE 3.5.5. I hadn't realized how poorly GNOME was competing, but now that I do, I don't really see any reason to go back to GNOME. Simply put, it cannot compete with KDE based on features, speed, responsiveness, and other significant factors.

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by RAMMS+EIN ( 578166 )
      ``KMail is another great application.''

      Especially the feature that reminds you to actually attach an attachment.

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Sloppy ( 14984 )

      I must admit, I am very impressed. This is the first time I've used KDE in perhaps six years or so, so I really hadn't kept up to date with its development.

      This is almost identical to my experience. I tried KDE around 2000 and thought it was very, very lame. So I used GNOME for a few years, and then switched to XFCE on both my "fast" desktop and slow laptop.

      Then one day (about a year ago, I guess?) I wanted to look at some KDE features so I installed it on my laptop, and found it wasn't that bad. XFCE

      • > kmail looks good to me too. I'm probably going to eventually switch from Sylpheed to kmail, after I get all my old mail moved from local folders to a local IMAP server.

        I started using kmail when it could filter incoming mail on IMAP folders without require Sieve support on the IMAP server. Works pretty well, but has its warts here and there.

      • Re: (Score:1, Informative)

        by Anonymous Coward
        Yeah. I've been using KDE for quite a while. KDE itself has sped up a lot over time, but another gain is from GCC. On my current gentoo systems, kde probably about doubled in speed when I compiled with gcc-4.1.1 instead of various 3.4.x or 3.3.x versions. gcc-4.x also takes like 2-3x more RAM to compile KDE 8-). With --enable-final turned on, a few bits of KDE take nearly 1.5GB of RAM to build.
  • After using Kopete, Gaim, and Psi (all great programs, btw), I've settled on Kopete. It just *feels* better within the context of my KDE desktop.

    That said, I have 2 gripes.

    Firstly, it seems to take up a relatively large amount of memory for what it does. I *just* fired it up, and it's allocating 121M with 45M resident (FreeBSD/AMD64). And that's with *only* 2 accounts being active (one Yahoo! and one Google). And after a day's work with those 2 accounts, it sometimes get way out of hand and I need

    • > And last, it seems to lag/spinlock (or whatever it's called) all the time. Every time, without fail, I initiate a chat window w/ someone, it hangs for 5-to-15 seconds (giving me the KDE "not responding -- terminate or keep running?" dialog 50% of the time). Every single time. Never any such lag with the other 2 apps mentioned above. I've used Kopete 100% for over a year on 3 different machines, i386 and AMD64, but all of them FreeBSD.

      I can't help you specifically, but I can say that I use kopete extens
  • ...that can run on a computer with under a GIG of ram?

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by pembo13 ( 770295 )
      How about 256MB? Works with that.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by XO ( 250276 )
        well, it'll -work- on 64mb, but would you find that tolerable?

        Last time I used KDE, my 512MB ram was immediatly overcommitted. I stopped using Linux/X partly because the memory requirements for good software have gone absolutely through the roof. I have a 768MB machine now that probably won't get upgraded for at least a couple more years, and Windows + it's apps are quite happy. (yeah, i swap about a gig and a half normally, but on this same box I needed 3gb of swap for linux/x/gnome)

        Another reason I als

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by pembo13 ( 770295 )
          Sorry you had to stop using Linux, but I think that by itself is a poor reason. Yes it is tolerable.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by XO ( 250276 )
            Well, sure, I could go and use the less comfortable environments, but that would be getting less than Windows offers. I used Linux for years and years and years (OS/2 as well), but it's just not something I can get behind without a super powerful machine anymore.
  • Ok, I'm really not out to start a flame war so take your mouse off that mod button for a second.

    Generally KDE is great. I use it on my Linux boxes and we use it in our labs. Konqueror is the best damn general purpose browser (except web) out there. It handles just about any protocol you can thing of and does a great job (except http) of it.

    But it seems to me that KDE is starting to become more and more like the Windows "windows manager" where "one program" does it all. In Windows that would be explorer.

    • Re:KDE == explorer.exe? (Score:4, Insightful)

      by smash ( 1351 ) on Thursday October 12, 2006 @06:41PM (#16415235) Homepage Journal
      Thing is, with KDE you have the option to install/deinstall individual components. You don't *need* to run konqueror, kwm or any particular K app. The KDE apps are "tightly integrated" where that means "work well together". Not "integrated" in the microsoft sense, where they're non-optional...
  • 1200 possible bugs!

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