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KDE 4.0 Release Candidate 2

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KDE

The KDE Community is happy to announce the immediate availability of the second release candidate for KDE 4.0. This release candidate marks the last mile on the road to KDE 4.0.

While progress on the quality and completeness of what is to become the KDE 4.0 desktop has been great, the KDE Community decided to have another release candidate before releasing KDE 4.0 on January, 11th. The codebase is now feature-complete. Some work is still being done to put the icing on the KDE 4.0 cake. This includes fixing some major and minor bugs, finishing off artwork and smoothening out the user experience.

With this second release candidate, the KDE developers hope to collect comments and bug reports from the wider KDE community. With their help, we hope to solve the most pressing problems with the current KDE 4 codebase to ensure the final 4.0 release is stable, usable and fun to work with. We would like to encourage anyone who is willing and able to spend some time on testing to find and report problems to the KDE developers. It is recommended to have a current snapshot of the codebase handy. That makes trying things easier, it also helps the process by not having to hunt down bugs that have already been fixed and makes it easier to test patches proposed by developers.

More Here w/ screenshots




Reaction to KDE4 RC2

It IS getting better with each Beta and Release Candidate. I'm running it from a Live CD as I type this. I'm running under a plain video driver so I can't enable fancy video desktop effects.

Right now, I've got an applet in my panel and I can't figure out how to get it out of there. I still can't drag an application icon from the KMenu onto my desktop.

I'm getting used to the new K-Menu interface. Unlike many, I do like the Oxygen widgets style and icons.

Konqueror as a web browser runs very well. I've tried at least one web site which won't render properly in KDE 3.5.8, which renders fine in Konqueror 3.97.

KWord fired up, but wouldn't print. The Kate text editor prints fine.

Although I'm primarily a KDE guy, I do run many non KDE apps. It'll be interesting to see how well non KDE-apps run under KDE4.

I'm feeling hopeful at this point. Even running under the Live CD, it's getting very responsive.

How to use the nvidia driver with the KDE Four Live CD

Instead of another non-productive gripe-fest about how KDE 4 RC2 lacks a gazillion features we take for granted in KDE 3.5.x, here's how to enable the nvidia driver while running openSUSE's KDE Four Live CD. (One assumes you have an nvidia card of somewhat recent vintage, as well as a fast Internet connection. I'm not sure how much free memory you have to have.)

While you can do most of the following from YaST, it's easy enough to do it before you start the KDE GUI. So boot into runlevel 3 (text console only) by putting a "3" on the boot options line. Next, log in as root (no pw needed - you may wish to change that) and add the nvidia driver repository with the command

zypper ar -t rpm-md http://download.nvidia.com/opensuse/10.3 NVIDIA

Next, refresh the repository database with the command

zypper ref

You can install a legacy ("9369") nvidia driver or one that supports most current cards ("100.14"). To see which drivers are available, type

zypper se nvidia

Then, for example, if your card uses the newer driver, type

zypper in x11-video-nvidiaG01

to install the "100.14" driver.

Next, issue the command (so well-known to us nvidia users)

sax2 -r -m 0=nvidia

to load the driver and modify screen settings. SUSE then creates an "xorg.conf" file.

Finally, in order to enable visual effects, issue the following command:

nvidia-xconfig --render-accel --add-argb-glx-visuals --composite --allow-glx-with-composite --depth=24

In order for the normal user (named "linux" by default) to have direct rendering enabled, he has to be a member of the "video" group. So run the command

usermod -G video,users linux

to do so. (You might want to go into YaST later and add the "linux" user to some more groups...) Finally, you're ready to go to runlevel 5 and start KDE by typing

init 5

Log on and you're now able to see all the fancy effects. Try going to System Settings > Desktop > Desktop Effects > All Effects. Try a "window close" animation like "Explosion" or "Fall Apart."

KDE4RC2

I hope you didn't take my comment as an unproductive "gripefest". My intent was a brief status report--I like KDE4, even without the snazzy video effects. Though a few minor things are lacking, it's stunning in its look and the performance running under a live cd is very, very good.

Nice to have the info on how to enable the nvidia drivers, so thanks.

That wasn't aimed at you, sorry

A quote from the Ars Technica review, "I was unable to find any way to configure the panel, which is significantly less functional than the panel in the current version of KDE," is an example of why I want to write complaints. Guess I'm more accustomed to the Debian philosophy of "it'll be released when it's done" than the KDE philosophy of "release early, release often."

It'll be interesting to see what KDE 4 looks like in 6 months (especially the desktop), and it'll also be interesting to see which distro will be first to consider it "production quality" and make it their default desktop.

Anyway. If you have the binary nvidia driver saved on a partition, you can install it instead of one from the nvidia repo. Just refresh the repositories and install the "gcc," "make," and "kernel-source" packages, then run the nvidia installer.

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