KDE 4.2.2 Desktop Released

[phoronix]

Phoronix: KDE 4.2.2 Desktop Released

If you are currently running KDE 4.2, get ready, as KDE 4.2.2 has just been released. KDE 4.2.2 is a point release that incorporates many bug-fixes and in particular it incorporates stability fixes in KRunner, performance enhancements in KMail, and various optimizations to KHTML...

http://www.phoronix.com/vr.php?view=NzE4NA

[DanL]

I must say I'm fairly impressed with KDE 4.2.x. I'm usually more of a GNOME/Xfce guy, but I've been playing around with Kubuntu 9.04 and I like some of the KDE/Qt apps (Konqueror, Kmail, Kwallet, K3b). Kwin's also a very nice compositing manager.

[Long version] If only Phonon's xine backend played nicely with OSS4 (probably more OSS4's fault than xine's) and Kubuntu had better management than PackageKit, I might consider running Kubuntu. I'm currently running Ubuntu 8.10 as my main system (I also use Arch, Sidux, and have played with Fedora, SuSE and Sabayon in the past).

For e-mail, I'm using Evolution 2.24.3 to access gmail IMAP, though I'm somewhat unsatisfied with its bugginess. If Evolution 2.26.x doesn't work well for me, I'm going to look into KMail (Thunderbird's cool, but I would prefer something with less RAM footprint).

For video play, I use VLC. I like it.

For browsing, I've been using Swiftweasel, but I'd really like to move away from it since its developer has switched to Arch Linux and doesn't maintain .debs or repositories. (Yeah, I can compile from source, but it's a pain. Lightweight, WebKit-based browsers like Konqueror, Epiphany, and Midori intrigue me, but only if they can run Mozilla plugins seamlessly.
[/Long version]

I consider myself a Linux power user (despite the fact that I use Ubuntu :P ). I like experimenting with lots of different software, doing light development work, and I have a large audio library. Anyone care to share thoughts on awesome KDE apps that don't depend too much on KDE integration and would run well from Xfce?

[val-gaav]

I use Synaptic under KDE ... there are tricks to make it look nice and not download half of gnome with it ...

just apt-get it like that :

sudo apt-get install --no-install-recommends synaptic


and to fix the look :

sudo mv ~/.gtkrc-2.0-kde4 /root/.gtkrc-2.


As for Qt4 alternative Shaman2 is going to be a great one. Now shaman 2.0 supports just Archlinux but version 2 is going to have packagekit backaend and thus support debs rpms etc.

As for phonon, xine and OSS4 ... Well maybe using gstreamer instead xine would help ? Or some other engine... I really didn't touch phonon and do not use OSS4 so I cannot help with that ...

[Melcar]

I'm mostly a GNOME user and just play around with KDE on my laptop, but KDE4.2.x is really starting to look awesome. I never liked KDE apps. thought and rather prefer the simplicity of GNOME, and I usually try to avoid getting KDE on my GNOME (or the other way around). However, if KDE keeps on this track I may just reconsider in the future.

[jonnycat26]

Anyone care to share thoughts on awesome KDE apps that don't depend too much on KDE integration and would run well from Xfce?

Amarok. Hands down, it's the best media player on any platform. If you do a lot of media burning, you may also want to look at K3B.

The thing I like most about KDE is the network transparency. It's so easy to just open a file dialog and type ftp://[email protected]/ and open and save files using KDE IOSlaves. I've added my most commonly used places to the bookmark bar in the dialog, and it works great.

Plasma is also really starting to come into it's own, and the google gears integration is just a nice little bonus.

[KDesk]

...
As for Qt4 alternative Shaman2 is going to be a great one. Now shaman 2.0 supports just Archlinux but version 2 is going to have packagekit backaend and thus support debs rpms etc.
...

Wow, I didn't knew that. I like very much Shaman, and if it supports packagekit, it will be awesome for KDE.

[hax0r]

Let me see, kde4 is still slow as hell, uses way way too much memory, crashes its own apps, spits out tons of warnings when quitting apps, takes ages to logout, amarok is unusable, very laggy kickoff menu, and long start-up time / app start-up time. I can't do any useful work when using kde4.

[RealNC]

It's very fast here, less memory than KDE 3 or Gnome, no crashes, no warnings, fast logout, amarok is stable and kicking...

Dude, are you sure you're not using KDE4 in Vista or something?

[deanjo]

Amarok. Hands down, it's the best media player on any platform. If you do a lot of media burning, you may also want to look at K3B.

Amarok 2 still has a long way to go compared to Amarok 1.4 functionality and K3B still doesn't have a QT4 port. Those two apps and kaffiene (dragon player sucks donkey balls) make me stick with 3.5 until proper ports are in place.the QT4 version of Ktorrent on the other hand is by far the finest torrent client available in linux IMHO.

[KDesk]

Yes, Amarok 2 has some missing features compared to 1.4, but most of them will come in v2.1
K3b for KDE4 will be releases maybe next month. Koffice will also be next, but maybe a bit features-less.
I want also Konversation!
Kaffeine is also an important pice of software, but I can live with VLC.
Ktorrent 3.2 is mostly ok.

For me KDE 4.2.2 is very good, stable in GNU/Linux, I haven't tested it on other OS. Sometimes Firefox uses more than 2/3 of KDE's memory, and openoffice is another problem....