Ever wonder what KDE 4.0 is going to look like when it is finally released some time this year ? As far as end users should be concerned, it is going to be much more beautiful, responsive and usable than KDE 3.5.
Some of the features that it will have are as follows:
Some of the features that it will have are as follows:
KDE 4.0 is perceived to make extensive use of SVG (SVG stands for Scalable Vector Graphics) for images instead of non scalable pixmap that is used now. For example, in KDE 3.5.x, games artwork are in pixmap and are at best lackluster. But we can see some great artwork in games in KDE 4.0 which will be using SVG.
Fig: Kreversi game in KDE 3.x and 4.0 respectively
Fig: KMajhong game in KDE 3.x and 4.0
Fig: Ksysguard in KDE 3.x and 4.0The start menu is going to be redesigned. The sneak preview released indicates that it will have inner tabs and the applications will be grouped dynamically taking into consideration the usage of the person. Update (09-Jan-2007): A number of people have written to point out that the menu for KDE 4.0 while it just might incorporate some of the features of the kickoff menu shown below, has not been finalized yet, rather work is going on and it is developed implementing the Qt 4.2 libraries. The new menu is known by the name Raptor (More details here).
Fig: Sneak preview of the start menu in KDE 4.0KDE 4.0 will replace the present DCOP inter process communication (IPC) system with a more advanced version built from grounds up known as D-Bus. IPC is a system which lets different applications communicate with each other.
KDE 4.0 will feature an API layer called Solid which will interact with projects like the hardware abstraction layer to let hardware connect smoothly with KDE.
KDE 4.0 will feature better multimedia experience through a project called Phonon which will collaborate with Solid. So no more need to choose multimedia backends as the Phonon API will take care of it.
Plasma will provide the next generation desktop experience in KDE 4.0. It is planned to integrate three separate applications namely the Kicker (Panel), KDesktop and Super Karamba (Widgets) into a single application. And the surprise of all things is that it will be possible to run the beautiful Dashboard widgets of Mac OSX in KDE 4.0.
KDE 4.0 will sport a brand new icon set created by the Oxygen project.
The KDE developers are working to provide a better communication experience through the project named Decibel. Through this project, it will be possible to provide integrated chat and phone communication including with networks such as MSN, Jabber and Skype.
And lastly, the Akonadi project intends to design a extensible cross-desktop storage service for PIM data and media-data to communicate with KDE, Gnome, POP, and IMAP through the same storage protocol. And this will be available in KDE 4.0.
But the biggest change is going to be inside the hood so to speak. KDE 4.0 will be using Qt 4.2 library which brings with it its own extensive set of improvements. For instance, Qt 4 is designed to save lots of memory and will perform faster. Besides the speed improvement, Qt 4 has a lot of other features and some things are simplified. So programmers need less time to develop applications which run in KDE 4.0.
And since Qt 4 library has been released under GPL, one can look forward to KDE 4.0 being ported to Windows and Mac OSX. Earlier versions of Qt is available under GPL only on unix/X11 and is released under a commercial license for development in Windows and Mac OSX . So KDE 3.x and earlier which uses Qt 3.x found it difficult to be ported to these platforms.
30 comments:
So that new menu in OpenSUSE 10.2 is actually KDE4's implementation? (I hear you can switch it back to the old way, if you wish).
Its stuff like this that make me want to take a look at Qt4 out of plain curiosity.
The start menu described here, is what SuSE is using now, but I do not think it has been accepted as the new menu system for KDE 4. Personally I think SuSE's KDE menu is horrible as you have to click to open a submenu and the submenus appear "in place", which is not handy at all for quickly browsing the menus.
for KDE 4 series, the whole desktop will be based on Plasma, which will offer much more customisation. But I'm afraid Plasma for the moment is more marketing talk, I don't have the impression that there's a lot of working things to show, so probably will be more 4.1 or 4.2 material
mmm ... nice ... :-) ...
any dates yet? ...
But what would you gain if someone ported KDE4 to an outdated, unsecure System? :(
Thanks for the article. I've been using KDE since 3.0 and gonna be nice to see some real change!
More bling bling! I love KDE. Sorry gnome, just not cool enough for me.
How about if I want just a traditional flat, non-graphics intensive desktop?
All the eye-candy is distracting. How much computing power and memory will I need?
Oh man, it's like christmas - so hard to wait.
Does this mean that fonts will look better? Fonts on Linux have made a huge leap in the past few years, but they still don't look as good as windows ones do to me - even if I use the MS fonts (might be a graphics card driver prob though). Either way this looks very interesting, but the way windows works, can KDE 4 even be ported to windows? I'm sure running apps can't be that big a problem, but can an entire DE run inside of Windows?
Implementing these auto adaptable menus in KDE
is a mistake. There is much research and
experience to show that they usually slow the
user down as they never know what order to
expect the menu items to appear in. Hopefully
this feature will be removed (or at least made
optional) before release.
Congratulations on yet another awkward, poorly-thought-out GUI!
God, I miss the old days. Back when the Linux community wasn't afraid to forge it's own distinctive desktop image, rather than spend endless manhours building immaculate recreations of a certain Redmond company's bad design.
I just hope, aside from the improved aesthetics and back-end tweaks, that they also focus on squashing annoying bugs.
For example, starting Kontact without the Korganizer icon appearing every time in the sys-tray even if you explicitly select it to not appear.
Still, I'm looking forward to KDE 4.
Sounds like Vista, but still OK. Better later than never.
wow d-bus welcome to the future :P, thank god...i cant wait for amarok to implement d-bus...dcop is the worst
The biggest problem with smooth rendering is still the font rendering. Look at the font rendering on the CPU load window and you'll see what I mean. Compare this to Vista or event XP or 2K.
I wish the font rendering would be reworked to end once and forever the problem.
Do we really have to be so Vista-like? Please, the KDE team could come up with something better than that! This is a blatant mock up of Windows Vista's Start menu!
I suppose that you have not seen vista's start menu before. The prospected kde menu is totally different from vista's.
Though I'm a gnome user, but I'm very interested in KDE 4. I especially love how they've broken up the development into sections that specialize on a specific thing. I wonder, is there any source out on the web that explains in further detail what all these pieces do and how they'll come together to product the final KDE4???
The pieces i speak of is solid, plasma, decibel, etc.
Instead of flaming I think a couple of things are interesting and needs an applaus:
- xgl/aiglx support
- d-bus - for more than only kde
- qt going gpl
If people dont like redmond dont use redmond.
For linux there are many opportunies: kde/gnome/windowmaker/xfce/...
What could be nice is if something like d-bus etc could gain momentum so I can use the same application under the wings of gnome desktop and kde desktop...
in the end we (or me at least) are not sitting in front of my computer to look at kde/gnome/... I sit there to use something== applications
So 95% of time I am not browsing in menus, but using fox/emacs/pine/thunderbird/...
Jens@Denmark
Suse had the whole search and find ideal in there menu, it saved time and was great but then they had to change it. Now, a once huge, fan of opensuse 10.1 can I not stand 10.2. The suse menu has been redesigned and takes forever to use. I loved it in the original one for the same reason that Vista developed something much like it, the menu in 10.1 saved time. The one that is shown in this article is nothing more then a pain to use.
If you are to say that linux created a rip off of windows then I beg you to check out the suse 10.1 or 10.0 menu.
I personally don't like the openSUSE 10.2 kickoff. It drove me away from openSUSE to kubuntu.
Regarding KickOff - it might be ugly (Looks like a design by some deranged Vista guy) and apparently seems horrible in use, but I've been using it for a couple of weeks and I have actually end up liking it, It takes a bit of getting used to.
SVG : I like the looks, but how many ressources will it require?
I Like the Oxygen work and Phonon sounds great.
A lot of the focus seems to be on integration, I'm not really sure about that.
@Carlin : I'd rather say that it is Vista that could be describe as a half-arsed mock up of some cool X-thing
The Start Menu is totally different from Vista's, both in look and feel. It's a totally different concept. I have used both and can say that the new KDE menu is better organised.
I'm really excited about this. Kate in wondows XP (best editor I've worked with in any of the three main OSes), some other apps I'd really like to see ported over as well.
I've really come to prefer the look and feel of Gnome over KDE, but this has potential to change that. Assuming that the system as a whole can see my goddamn SD cards...
"...Assuming that the system as a whole can see my goddamn SD cards..."
Try Arch Linux, nice and lightweight distribution and my SD card interface is working like a charm! Running KDE 3.5, really looking forward to KDE 4!
GNOME already uses SVG graphics in a large number of its games. There's a bit of a delay when one resizes the windows, but the graphics are crisp and clear.
I prefer Kubuntu's Katapult to the KMenu as it is. Kickoff won't have much of an effect on me.
FYI kickoff is NOT the new menu for KDE4. I don't know why you think this but we are working on a plasmoid called Raptor which will be the new kmenu for kde4. It is based on kbfx which is available for kde 3.x but we are in the progress of rewriting most of the code right now to port it to qt4/kde4.
More information at http://plasma.kde.org/wiki/index.php/RaptorMenu
the idea of the search is very good, but unfortunately, the browsing through the menu to startup other programs is not handy and is very time-consuming.
The good things are: beagle search + being able to set your favorites. Add the kde 3 menu to that and it would be very good.
also not good: click on the suse button to open the menu -> type a search string -> go with the mouse to the desired result, or start scrolling => auch! accidentally activated the history or favorites tab!
best site
I think even more features will be available in the next version!
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