KDE 4.0(.0)
January 12th 2008 12:48 am
So at long last the first release in the KDE 4 series, KDE 4.0 has been released.
A couple of days after they tagged 4.0 I switched to using KDE 4 as my working desktop. (btw, isn’t it odd that the tag name is 4.0.0 if the release was called 4.0?)
It was remarkably more stable and usable than it had been just 4 or so weeks before when I had tried it last. I managed to fix a couple of JuK bugs (one very minor, another a crash) before 4.0.0 was tagged. Unfortunately I didn’t get time to do nearly enough testing so JuK as shipped with 4.0 has several bugs which are already fixed, including:
- Allow JuK to load the playlists and cache for KDE 3’s JuK (so you’ll need to wait for 4.0.1 to load your old collection. Sorry. :( )
- Correctly save the collection list after running JuK for the first time (so you’ll need to wait for 4.0.1 to save your new collection. Sorry. :( )
- JuK files in 4.0 will not be compatible with 4.0.1 due to the bug that prevented loading 3.5 data. But if JuK fails to load the files it will try again in a mode that should allow 4.0 files to load, so fret not.
- Some icons that used to show up had their names changed and I didn’t update JuK. Fixed in 4.0.1 and greater.
- I fixed a bug causing the Play Queue to show up twice on startup, and it was pretty random as to whether JuK would save whether you wanted the Play Queue shown or not on shutdown.
- The track announcement popup is pretty much completely hosed in JuK. I would disable it until 4.0.1, which has bugfixes for cover icon size, and track popup positioning.
- I fixed a bug where the list of playlist columns you wanted visible was not saved properly.
All of these issues are fixed in the 4.0 branch (what will be 4.0.1) and in trunk (4.1). There is still a bug where the History Playlist doesn’t have the extra “Time” column that it is supposed to have (and I’m not sure why it doesn’t). And of course JuK is still a little rough around the edges. But it is good enough for daily use I think even though the underlying code could probably still use some porting love on my part.
If you use kdesvn-build then it is possible to build the specific 4.0 release (using the tag 4.0.0 option pretty much everywhere) but I would recommend building the 4.0 branch instead if you’re going to be going to the trouble of using kdesvn-build. Especially since from what I under Gary L. Greene will be porting Konstruct to work with KDE 4 tarballs. Tarballs are mirrorable and put much much less load on our SVN servers. :)
Also I plan on pushing out the next kdesvn-build release at some point soon. kdesvn-build in /trunk supports downloading module updates while building which can be an impressive speedup. It introduces a few (minor) bugs which I may not have time to fix before I must release it or wait but I think the net benefits will be worth it.
Back to KDE 4 though, I wasn’t sure if I liked kickoff KRunner (the new Alt-F2 Run Dialog) but when I went to try and launch System Settings, as soon as I typed “system” it noticed what I was trying to type and brought up an entry to launch that program. Very helpful.
(Incidentally the reason I was doing that was to test switching cursor themes. I heard that in KDE 4.0 it worked without requiring a reboot of the X Server, and it worked for me so that’s pretty cool.)
So congrats to all the developers, testers, translators, artists, bug wranglers, marketers (I guess we have those now ;) and everyone else who worked so hard to pull of the next major release of KDE. I’ll try to keep doing my part (time permitting unfortunately).
The Alt-F2 Run dialog is actually KRunner. Kickoff is the start menu.
I have to say I’m actually pretty disappointed with KDE 4 (yeah yeah .0.0 - still should be an alpha but I understand the need to release it eventually!).
In my short (1/2 hour) playing around I found the following bugs:
* Often the desktop icons’ hover effect (the thing that lets you rotate them) stays on even after you move the mouse off them.
* Somehow (I think I was trying to move an icon) I moved the desktop background! Seriously! After logging in again I had no background and couldn’t get one back by changing it in the desktop settings.
* Speaking of that, the current background drop-down in the desktop settings isn’t initialised correctly.
* Couldn’t get any of the fancy KWin effects to work at all. They never complained, just nothing happens. Using the nvidia driver.
* Changing mouse cursor theme doesn’t work without restarting X.
* Changing the oxygen contrast slider doesn’t do anything.
* Files still open with Konqueror by default (I thought it was supposed to be dolphin now?)
* Just before windows appear they often start as either a black rectangle, or one that looks like uninitialised memory.
* The ‘Add Widgets’ button in the top right desktop corner thing looks like it is supposed to slide in from outside the screen. Actually it pops up and then slides a bit.
* KRunner doesn’t start in the middle of the screen.
* You can’t resize Kickoff, or configure the panel at all really.
* Everything is pretty slow.
* Probably other things I can’t remember.
Just sayin’ … KDE4 doesn’t rock *that* much (so far). Still, well done to everyone involved!
@Tim:
Yeah, there are a lot things that only bite some ppl in KDE 4.0.0 - it’ll probably take a while to get em all sorted out.
The contrast slider does something for sure, but it’s effect not very strong - you’ll see it on certain color schemes very clearly, less so on others. Some other issues might be due to X.org configuration (does compiz work?) or the packages you use. I think once distro’s start shipping KDE 4.0.1 or 4.0.2 the worst bugs will be fixed, and things will be a bit more smooth.