Jan 12, 2008

KDE 4.0.0

The long awaited and much anticipated 4.0 release of KDE has arrived!  Due to the KWin release notes - the COMPOSITE_HOWTO, to be precise - I got KWin OpenGL effects working!  They're fairly smooth on my Nvidia card, although they don't seem quite as smooth as I remember Compiz being.  Hopefully it, or X, or the Nvidia drivers, will improve to make KWin 4 w/composite snappy.  (It's not really "snappy" at this point like KWin 3 is.)  I haven't managed to install the KDE Edu or KDE Multimedia modules yet, and I am stuck with the Plasmoids that aren't in extragear, but hopefully Ubuntu will get those re-packaged for 4.0 soon.  (The current packages for those things depend on RC2, I think.)

KDE 4.0 is not perfect.  I wish I could put the panel at the top of the screen, for instance.  But I could certainly live with it (although I probably won't). I may stick with KDE 3.8 for a few more months, until I start writing plasmoids, or some other killer feature drags me into the new millenium. By the time Amarok 2 is released, and Decibal is added, etc, I'll probably convert.  At the moment, GTK apps look really bad, probably because I don't have the appropriate qt-theming-for-gtk-apps thing installed.  I'm sure Kubuntu will figure that out for Hardy at the latest.  I may insist on making it work sooner by doing the appropriate Google or IRC dance.  We'll see. I'm proud to have helped the KDE project, albeit in very small ways.  (One or two bug reports and a miniscule excursion in bug triage, which I plan to continue, time allowing.)  Mostly, just because KDE is the darn best collection of applications for the free desktop.  But also, because of the enormous vision of the project, encompassing everything from Windows and Mac ports to integrating Plasma with Linux MCE.  It's a bright future.  The present is bright too, obviously.

(If your wondering, why on earth I'm polluting the world with yet another random-user-posts-his-KDE4-experience, it's mostly because it's past midnight, and I get confused and ramble/waste time after 12:00.)