Talk:KDE 4

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To-do list for KDE 4: edit · history · watch · refresh

Here are some tasks you can do:
  • Expand: List of planned updates, and details of each, cite relevant sources

Contents

[edit] A better representation of what KDE4 will/may be

That picture is kde3, the article already specifies that this is an article about future software, so how about the picture from this KDE article?

http://dot.kde.org/1169588301/

its more representative of the leap ahead KDE4 is intended to be, and even though its a preliminary mockup its good enough to be used by KDE as a representative, so why not here?

That screen is from the alpha (KDE 3.80). While it isn't representative of the final, it is representitive of the current version of kde4. A mockup picture is suitable for the article, but down below somewhere, imho. This aside, I wouldn't worry about it too much because neither picture will look like KDE4 in about 2 months. --Sish 10:23, 25 June 2007 (UTC)

[edit] KDE on Windows and Mac OS X

Some people seem to believe that KDE 4 will be officially supported for Microsoft Windows (by KDE.org and not a separate project). Is there any truth to this?

I believe that KDE requires a POSIX environment, which would require that users of Microsoft Windows use a POSIX "emulator", such as Cygwin. This has been done for KDE in the past. The "supported KDE on Windows rumor," if it is a rumor, may have stemmed from the fact that Qt4 is finally available as Qt/Windows under a GPL license (it had previously been only available under a proprietary license). While this does mean that the widget toolkit used for KDE is now readily available on Windows (thus making the build process for KDE apps for Windows trivial), it doesn't necessarily mean that the desktop environment as a whole (konqueror/kicker/kdesktop/kcontrol/KDM) can be as easily ported. --Philipacamaniac 10:09, 31 May 2006 (UTC)
Windows is fully POSIX-compliant. -- mms 00:18, 21 January 2007 (UTC)
Yes it's true.  :)
The plan is to support KDE on both Windows and Mac OS X (at least kdelibs, and preferably as many applications as possible). The things related to a "desktop environment" (ie, X11-specific) have been moved to a separate space in kdebase SVN and nearly everything builds on Mac OS X out-of-the-box now, and kdelibs mostly builds, last I heard. The windows folks have done a decent amount of work writing library support for the POSIXy things that kdelibs does, and a lot of the X11-specific code has been factored out in the moved to Qt4. --RangerRick 19:32, 22 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Release Date

This article and the main KDE article have inconsistent KDE4 release dates. Likewise, from reading the official word: http://developer.kde.org/development-versions/kde-4.0-release-plan.html, the only factual information available is the technical preview in Oct 2006. That might result in a Fall 2006 release date (unlikely) or an early 2007 release date (more likely), but this is all pure speculation. I think some rewriting is due for both articles, to read something like: "KDE 4 is the next major release of the K Desktop Environment software. Although a release date has not been determined, a technical preview will be available in October 2006." This feels like an important change to this relatively short article, so I'm looking for opinions before making the change. --Philipacamaniac 09:50, 31 May 2006 (UTC)

Sounds like a good change. I imagine that the discrepancies on the release timeline might be due to inclusion of the sort of vague estimates thrown about in various semi-official places (such discussions on IRC, the dot, developer blogs, etc.) For now, using the information from the official release plan is probably the best option here. If more recent release information becomes available from a different (but reliable) source, we can always put that in later. The important thing is that we make sure it's citable and not speculation. — Jeff | (talk) | 01:19, 1 June 2006 (UTC)
I just changed it to inlude information from an interview with one of the developers about the release date. I cited it as well, but probably should have asked if there were any objections here first. Are there any? — reldruH | 21:23, 10 October 2006 (UTC)


Considering that it's now Nov. 1st (according to UTC time) I'm going to change the part about a technical preview being released in october. — reldruH | 00:40, 1 November 2006 (UTC)

Aaron, there was a technical preview released in September (3.80.1) and another one was released today (3.80.2), if anything this article should be updated with this information 205.132.170.97 02:20, 3 November 2006 (UTC)

yeah so shouldn't the "OS Unix-like" be changed? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 91.84.38.65 (talk) 10:38, 4 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Dashboard Widgets

It's claimed in the article that KDE 4 will support Apple's Dashboard widgets. It is not my understanding that a widget written for Dashboard will run unaltered on KDE 4. Can someone confirm this? Maybe cite a reference? Rljacobson 03:42, 12 July 2006 (UTC)

Since no one has confirmed this, I have changed the wording of the article. Rljacobson 21:02, 11 August 2006 (UTC)
Hope this works as a reference: http://www.kdedevelopers.org/node/1715
Just FYI, Zack Rusin has already started implemenation of the Dashboard widget api. http://zrusin.blogspot.com/search/label/dashboard –Sish 21:42, 22 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Huh?

There is FAR more on expected features in the main KDE article, but that article points here. There is some rationalisation needed.

--85.210.31.205 18:20, 29 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Added planned updates section

I've added the section as you can see, mainly just the same stuff that's on the main KDE article. Feel free to change it around and add to it, I haven't used KDE4 yet (and won't until it's official release) so i don't want to put in too much information about it, and would rather not chase around places to cite just to add some more stuff I don't even know about yet so hopefully someone who has used KDE4 can add to this soon.

I've also replaced the current status section with what I think is a tidier looking one, though feel free to revert if you disagree.

And I made the release schedule into a table instead of a list

Is there a wikiproject for KDE? Seems like a big project and many of the articles about KDE-related technology are stubs and could use some organised clean-up.

Happysmileman 20:51, 26 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Merge

There are no other software articles having a separate article for a specific version (except for operating systems), and I don't see the reason KDE should, either. - Sikon 03:34, 18 September 2007 (UTC)

I can't think of any other piece of software making as large a change from one version to the next as KDE 4, you say that OSes are the only software articles with their own article, but considering the change from KDE3.5 to KDE4 is at least comparable to any new release of an OS/distribution it would make sense that it has it's own article. Keeping it in the KDE article would probably confuse people and bloat the KDE article Happysmileman 23:45, 18 September 2007 (UTC)
I agree, KDE3 to KDE4 is a huge change. I propose that after the release the KDE4 it should be merged into the main KDE article since it changed from a future release to a current release. But this shouldn't happen the day of the release, more of a gradual process. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 208.102.145.1 (talk) 00:45, 19 September 2007 (UTC)
I agree as well. You have seperate articles for certain Windows versions where the underlying core hasn't changed so much, whereas the GUI has (compare Linux and KDE). In KDE4, the underlying core (speaking of kdelibs, not the linux kernel, which hasn't got anything to do with KDE anyways) AND the GUI has changed _a lot_, so it definitely should get its own article. 84.152.61.29 14:07, 22 September 2007 (UTC)
I'd also suggest a gradual merge following the 4.0 release. The main article will have to be rewritten by then anyway, i.e. to have its lists reflect the features and structure of the new stable version. - Cyrus XIII 00:40, 23 September 2007 (UTC)
I agree with a gradual merge. After the release of KDE 4, we will probably want to change the focus of 'KDE' to be more about KDE 4 and less about KDE 3, and that will be a good time for moving content across. guiltyspark 10:05, 25 September 2007 (UTC)
It's only gradual if we let it be, it should have it's own article until it's release for about a week or two, then we can start to move everything over, after that the release schedule and the Beta and Alpha higlights will not be needed, we just need to copy the new features, and the final release date, and some other small stuff, most of it cna easily be appended to current sections in KDE or put in new "KDE 4" section. Happysmileman 17:47, 26 September 2007 (UTC)
I agree with the gradual merge since after its release and its adoption everyone that says KDE will call it KDE and not KDE 4 all the time. At first they will, hence the gradual merge. I'd say about July next year (08) when most distro's have it down and nicely supported should the article itself be fully transferred.--WhereAmI 23:09, 27 September 2007 (UTC)
Yes, we should not move over the day it comes out. KDE 4.0 won't be adopted by very many distros by default, a good date would be around the release of Kubuntu 8.04. Kubuntu is a major KDE distro and by then most other distros will have adopted KDE4 by default. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 208.102.145.1 (talk) 20:29, 30 September 2007 (UTC)

So is it the consensus that the merge tag should be removed? - Pingveno ( talk | contrib ) 16:11, 2 October 2007 (UTC)

There are no other software articles having a separate article for a specific version (except for operating systems), and I don't see the reason KDE should, either. - Sikon 03:34, 18 September 2007 (UTC)
So Microsoft Office 2007 is an operating system? Aside from the name do KDE3 and KDE4 have almost nothing in common. Besides: Windows 1.0, Windows 2.0, Windows 3.0, and Windows 3.1x also have their own articles, even though they are just graphical environments for DOS and neither of them is as feature-rich as KDE.
IMHO there should be an article called KDE that gives an overview about the KDE project, the project’s culture and the most important milestones in its history. This article should be concise. At this time, KDE already is nine pages long. Do you want to kill readers with a huge amount of text? I don’t see why more shorter articles with better focused content for each major release shouln’t be better. --KAMiKAZOW 15:16, 1 November 2007 (UTC)

I disagree with merge. KDE articles needs more organisation. My option is that KDE talks about history, symbols, organisation, sponsors, most known apps and include table of releases; generations will have own article KDE1, KDE2, KDE3 and KDE4. Under KDE article under section Releases will be sub sections with describing mayor features of release. See sl:KDE for example. --Smihael (talk) 08:23, 15 December 2007 (UTC)

Its been more than a month to the last reply, I will remove the merge tags since I too desagree with the merge of KDE4 to the rest for the reasons above mentioned by many people.--QuicksilverPhoenix (talk) 20:09, 24 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Grave bugs?

What exactly are "grave bugs" as mentioned on the release schedule? I can't find the term "grave bug" on Wikipedia, Wictionary, or Urban Dictionary. --Explodicle 21:43, 3 December 2007 (UTC)

Eh... bugs that are grave, perhaps? I'd hardly consider it an uncommon word. 193.190.253.144 23:40, 3 December 2007 (UTC)
Oh ok. I thought it was a special term or something. --Explodicle 15:25, 4 December 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Rewrote major updates

It was sorely lacking in information, and saying everything in bullets would get a write this in prose tag in 10 seconds flat. Any objections? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Skeith (talk • contribs) 15:08, 15 December 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Where's the history?

This article only mentions KDE since 4.0. Yet, the DE existes for over a decade. Where is the history? --Mecanismo | Talk 19:51, 30 December 2007 (UTC)

In the KDE article. Gareth Aus (talk) 06:59, 31 December 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Merge (again)

Since KDE 4 is now out, I think this article should be merged with KDE. - Sikon (talk) 04:55, 12 January 2008 (UTC)

I've since thought about it, and I think we should reorganize the main KDE article akin to the GNOME and Xfce (I was promoting splitting the articles up, but that doesn't seem like the best solution now). Right now its a bit of a mess. I think mimicking the xfce article would be a good start, with the history and popular applications. We should also mention that KDE 4 is uses many more of the freedesktop.org standards.Skeith (talk) 15:34, 12 January 2008 (UTC)
  • I'm still against merging. I sated my reasons above. --KAMiKAZOW (talk) 07:21, 14 January 2008 (UTC)


I am against merging also; KDE 4 is a MAJOR upgrade akin to say going from Windows XP to Vista; both of which have their own articles.... --16:29, 28 January 2008 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by 213.202.156.154 (talk)

  • In this case, we also need articles for KDE 1, KDE 2 and KDE 3, and a major cleanup of the main KDE article. - Sikon (talk) 08:30, 29 January 2008 (UTC)
I agree with both having articles for each KDE version and a cleanup of the main article.Alecsescu (talk) 10:56, 30 January 2008 (UTC)
KDE 1,2,3 articles should only be created if there is the content for them, as there is enough content to warent a kde4 article then this article should be kept. my $0.02 —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.35.192.193 (talk) 11:35, 7 June 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Link to the OS X website

The link to the website hosting the KDE 4 packages for OS X, listed under external links as 'KDE 4 for Mac OS X' seems to be down. It's been down for at least a day, possibly more.

1) Does anyone know why? 2) Has the website moved or been closed? 3) What should be done with this link? Jackster (talk) 16:27, 12 January 2008 (UTC)

  • It works again. --KAMiKAZOW (talk) 10:56, 13 January 2008 (UTC)