Comments on: KDE 4.2 is flat out going to rock

By: Valczir

Valczir — Tue, 09 Dec 2008 13:13:02 +0000

I’m installing KDE 4.2 on my gentoo box, right now, and I can’t wait. I used KDE 4.0 when it came out and hated it, and the improvement to KDE 4.1 was crazy – if there’s that much improvement from 4.1 to 4.2, I … well, I dunno what I’ll do, but it’ll be spectacular and embarrassing.

I’m especially looking forward to konqueror improvements. Konqueror and I have had a love-hate relationship since I first tried it. It’s crazy fast when there’s no javascript, but javascript seems to stab out its virtual eyes. I was completely dumbfounded by the ability to bind keyboard shortcuts to links, buttons, text areas, and the like, when I first found it, and the integrated search shortcuts are so much better than having a separate search bar.

And yet, it doesn’t display gmail correctly, not to mention the fact that there’s no way to enable flash on a per-instance basis (like flashblock for firefox and opera).

If what I’ve heard is correct and konqueror uses webkit in 4.2 (which I’m assuming it does, because I was told by portage that I needed “webkit” in my USE flags before I could install the 4.2 beta), then it’ll be that much closer to being my only web browser. I’ll still use firefox and/or opera for watching videos, because flash is currently permanently blocked in konqueror (and will be until I find a flashblock plugin), but I will be very happy.

By: hans paijmans

hans paijmans — Sun, 07 Dec 2008 13:41:44 +0000

Hi, Jason,
I would gladly install kdepim3-kpilot as you suggest, or even try the kde 4.2 version, but I have no idea how, as Adept does not know about kpilot or kdepim(3). A few weeks ago I toyed with an older deb-package of kpilot, but it complained about the wrong bluetooth library, and I use Kubuntu and Adept because I lost enough time over the last ten years in the dependency hell.
So what should I download to install kpilot in my intrepid ibex (updatted to kde4.2)?
Paai

By: david (aftertaf)

david (aftertaf) — Mon, 01 Dec 2008 16:22:38 +0000

Couple of points:

1) 4.2 beta from project-neon debs installed and looking damn fine
2) found a couple of bugs but the step forward from 4.1 is worth the niggles….

Just wanted to say Well Done Guys for your work. This is gonna be hot hot hot ! ! !!

By: Carl

Carl — Thu, 27 Nov 2008 03:45:39 +0000

Dude! Your little post had the effect Ballmer was only dreaming of when he ran around going “Developers, Developers, Developers!”. Nice post. It was such a joy to read because your enthusiasm for what you do shows. And its infectious

Any word on what Firefox looks like on KDE? Is there a way to make it fit in? Coz that’s my only complaint – I’ve tried to make it use a Qt theme, only to find it looks terrible. I want to show KDE off to my Windows friends, but I know they will try Firefox on it.

By: Jason 'vanRijn' Kasper

Jason 'vanRijn' Kasper — Tue, 25 Nov 2008 16:04:44 +0000

Hi hans!

You can (and should) install kdepim3-kpilot (iirc) in your KDE4 environment and that will give you KPilot. We will be including KPilot as part of KDE 4.2, yes, but it has received zero user testing, and I’m frankly a little concerned about that. You can install KPilot in the nightly/weekly KDE trunk/4.2 Kubuntu packages now, I think, and start testing it.

By: hans paijmans

hans paijmans — Tue, 25 Nov 2008 13:30:42 +0000

I installed Kubuntu 8.10 on my laptop and finally got some mileage from my rt61 wlan. But I had to pay with the absence of kpilot, which I sorely miss. So what you are saying is that kpilot will again be included with the next Kubuntu update?

By: Richard Steven Hack

Richard Steven Hack — Sat, 22 Nov 2008 20:26:03 +0000

Sorry – I’ll use KDE 4.x when openSUSE makes it the default install.

I know other distros are doing this – Kubuntu for example – and they’re getting complaints. Supposedly partly this is because Canonical treats KDE as an after-thought and their implementation supposedly sucks.

But I’m not a beta-tester. When KDE 4.x is feature complete and STABLE, I will use it – not before.

I’ve got enough problems with Firefox 3.x still being a POS.

By: Joseph Reagle

Joseph Reagle — Fri, 14 Nov 2008 14:37:02 +0000

@Aaron
Using Neon 4.2 debs now
1. printing seems OK now
2. urd:/home/reagle> qdbus org.kde.ksmserver /KSMserver saveCurrentSession
Interface ” not available in object /KSMserver at org.kde.ksmserver:
org.freedesktop.DBus.Error.UnknownObject (No such object path ‘/KSMserver’)
3. autoscroll uses 100% of one CPU on Mesa DRI Intel(R) 965G 4.1.3002 x86/MMX/SSE2
4. How do I even edit the shortcuts in the new menu? Alt clicking on the KDE button shows panel options, but no KMenuEdit options? But, it does work when I call it from the command-line.
5. Panel layout seems persistent.
6. Panel auto-hide seems to work.

So, it’s possible I will be able to happily use KDE 4.1!

By: Mike

Mike — Fri, 14 Nov 2008 09:10:40 +0000

Thanks to Aaron and Jason for the replies.

I’ve read descriptions of activities by Aaron and others before, and on paper it looks like a very good idea. In practice in KDE 4.1.x it seemed to me that there was another virtual desktop mechanism on top of the conventional one, but I only tried it briefly and as I understand the feature is not finished anyway.

Now that you reminded me, I actually did find on my own the key shortcut to switch to desktop number X, but not the one to go to previous/next, for which Alt-Ctrl-Left/Right are burned into my peripheral nervous system. I just seemed to be incompatible with Alt-. Maybe I can visit a re-education camp.

Another question: is there a way to set the desktop to use Emacs key shortcuts for text input in general? There is a setting in Gnome, although buried in gconf-editor. Once set, you can use e.g. Ctrl-K in the Firefox address field to kill the address from the cursor to the end of the line, which I do all the time. Emacs key combinations are also burned into my peripheral nervous system, and it is quite painful to keep hitting the commands in a system that does not support them (MS Word goes wild, for instance).

By: norwegian student

norwegian student — Thu, 13 Nov 2008 23:41:04 +0000

Thanks for this post. Its intresting and informative.

I use opensuse 11, kde 4.1.3 (scared that 4.2.x could be hard to install, or hard to maintain).
Recent week I got som amazing ugrades: (kde 4.1x updates almost each day here for me, and thats sweet)

-”Bling” update: one of the graphic themes recently(crystal or something) just made it all more usable and more beautifull.
-Session handling in konqueror, and konqueror got more options and fells faster

The only things I feel i miss now is:
-amarok4 working, because I am tired using it without sound (its looking much nicer than 3 already, I and did not like the remake…
-possibility to change color on my taskbar (the updates this week made it transparent, and I could only fix the clock-colour
-more plasmoids (way to hard to wait for them, need them now…..)

Its hard to wait for 4.2.x, I read to much about it, and think I will switch soon if its easy to switch, and if it is stable.
Noot looking forward for an update to 11.1 to, knowing it might be hassle, but knowing I will do it soon after having read to much about the new features…