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Tag Archives: KDE 4

Optimize nVidia Video Cards for KDE 4

Posted on by Posted in guides, hardware, tips .

KWin, the standard KDE window manager in KDE4.0, ships with the first version of built-in support for compositing, making it also to compositing manager. This allows KWin to provide advanced graphical effects, similar to Compiz, while also providing all the features from previous KDE releases. Unlike Compiz, KWin still functions even when not system support for compositing is available, with only the compositing features being unavailable. KWin in KDE4.0 is also relatively new tails and has not been extensively optimized yet, therefore its performance may not be in loads areas comparable with performance of other compositing managers. In such cases performance should be improved with newer versions.Smoothness of KWin rendering can be improved by setting the env.variable KWIN_NVIDIA_HACK to 1. This sets ‘ _ _ GL_YIELD=NOTHING’ for KWin, letting KWin use more CPU Time for OpenGL operations, however at the expense of affecting performance of other applications. Therefore, this is disabled by default. This setting may be removed in the future if the negative impact becomes insignificant.

Open ~/.profile file and the following line:

export KWIN_NVIDIA_HACK=1

For more on this check COMPOSITE_HOWTO. Now see the difference.

Tip: In loads cases, overall smoothness may be increased by turning off direct rendering in advanced options in the Desktop Effects configuration module (Alt+F3->Configure Window Behavior).

No optimastion or tweaks for ATI video cards that I have noticed so far. If you know, let us know.

Clarifications on KDE4 and KDE 4.0 and Little More

Posted on by Posted in desktop environments, kde, quotes & thoughts .

As one of bloggers from kdedevelopers.org site mentioned correctly, KDE4 and KDE 4.0 are not the same. When people are reviewing and discussing the KDE’s latest release, i.e. 4, they are at times messing up the two terms.

  • KDE 4.0 is not KDE4 but only the first (4.0.0 even non-bugfix) release in a years-long KDE4 series to come.
  • KDE 4.0 is known to have missing parts or temporary implementations (eg printing, PIM, Plasma).
  • Most changes happened under the surface and cannot be discovered in a “30 minutes usage”-review anyway.
  • User interfaces being unchanged in 4.0 compared to 3.5 may be still changed/improved during KDE4 life time.
  • KDE 4.0 will not be the fastest KDE4 release, like for KDE2 most speed optimizations will happen later during KDE4.
  • Most applications (many are not even fully ported yet) will take advantage of new features which the new Qt/KDE libraries offer only later.
  • Don’t measure portability success (eg MS Windows) by current availability of application releases, they will come.
  • KDE 4.0 is only expected to be used by early adopters, not every KDE 3.5 user (and IMHO KDE 4.0 shouldn’t be pushed onto other user types like planned for Kubuntu ShipIt [btw said to have only 6 months support for its packages]).
  • KDE 4.1 development will not require the same amount of time as the big technology jump 4.0, expect 4.1 later this year.

BTW, do you know that KDE 4.0 can be installed on Windows as well; while using a Windows machine you can take a dive into the ocean of powerful applications, awesome user experience and the freedom Richard M Stallman talks about. An advanced user can compile KDE 4.0 for Windows through the toolkit available, but an ordinary ‘click-next’ user will have to wait for a while for the Windows-ready-to-install KDE version.

So, there you go. Enjoy KDE4 and the current 4.0.0 release :-p

Related: And here are few more latest reviews on KDE 4:

KDE 4 vs KDE 3.5: KMix – Volume Control

Posted on by Posted in desktop environments, kde .

Somehow KMix is not launched by default when KDE 4 starts, and people who are not aware that it can be launched by simply typing kmix, are lost how they can control volume within KDE 4. So now that you know how to get it there in your system tray, I wanted to show the sheer number of KMix channels offered with KDE 4, that of compared with KDE 3.5 … wow … I am quite sure I wont be needing all of them … perhaps professional musicians will find it usefull. When I launched it the first time, only the first 6 channles were enabled, but then I decided to see how many were there available. All this is with my Creative Audigy 2 ZS sound card.

+ (as it all doesn’t fit in one screen)

compared to the one with KDE 3.5:

i.e, 45 (not including separate channels) vs 37. And finally the system tray options for both versions:

The Long Awaited KDE 4 is Finally Here

Posted on by Posted in desktop environments, kde, news .

On 11th January 2008, the KDE Community released the fourth major version of the K Desktop Environment. This release marks the beginning of the KDE 4 era.

After five long months of development, the most expected project of 2007, KDE 4, has finally seen the light today! KDE 4 is the next generation of the popular K Desktop Environment, which seeks to fulfill the need for a powerful yet easy-to-use desktop, for both personal and enterprise computing. KDE project’s goal for the 4.0 release is to put the foundations in place for future innovations on the FREE desktop.

The KDE Community is thrilled to announce the immediate availability of KDE 4.0. This significant release marks both the end of the long and intensive development cycle leading up to KDE 4.0 and the beginning of the KDE 4 era.

The KDE 4 Desktop has gained some major new capabilities. The Plasma desktop shell offers a new desktop interface, including panel, menu and widgets on the desktop as well as a dashboard function. KWin, the KDE Window manager, now supports advanced graphical effects to ease interaction with your windows.

NEW with KDE 4:

  • Plasma, the brand new desktop shell and panel, is an amazing piece of technology that makes your KDE experience better than ever. Its role is to offer, to the end-users, an efficient and ergonomic access to their desktop.
  • The window manager of KDE 4, KWin, comes now with Solid (a sophisticated hardware API) and Phonon (a multimedia framework) and with some amazing desktop effects.
  • All known KDE applications, such as Konqueror, which is the default file manager and web browser, KGet, KColorPaint, Konsole, Kopete, SuperKaramba, are now greatly improved and I’ll bet you will not even recognize some of them
  • As an alternative file manager, Dolphin is included for those of you who have already been using it.
  • and tonnes of more new and cool features .

Lots of KDE Applications have seen improvements as well. Visual updates through vector-based artwork, changes in the underlying libraries, user interface enhancements, new features, even new applications — you name it, KDE 4.0 has it. Okular, the new document viewer and Dolphin, the new file manager are only two applications that leverage KDE 4.0’s new technologies.

The Oxygen Artwork team provides a breath of fresh air on the desktop. Nearly all the user-visible parts of the KDE desktop and applications have been given a facelift. Beauty and consistency are two of the basic concepts behind Oxygen.

KDE 4.0 Visual Guide:

The KDE 4.0 Desktop and applications deserve a closer look. The pages below provide an overview of KDE 4.0 and give some examples of its associated applications. Screenshots of many components are included. Be aware that this is just a small sample of what KDE 4.0 offers you.

The Desktop: Plasma, KRunner, KickOff and KWin
Applications: Dolphin, Okular, Gwenview, System Settings and Konsole
Educational Applications: Kalzium, Parley, Marble, Blinken, KStars and KTouch
Games: KGoldrunner, KFourInLine, LSkat, KJumpingCube, KSudoku and Konquest

Full Announcement

Related reviews and blog posts from around the net:

Being the real first release, be patient and don’t expect everything to work flawlessly. This build will still need some tweakings and bug fixing, once the Linux and other KDE DE users start reporting back to developers. KDE users who require mission-critical robustness and the full feature set of the KDE 3.5.x series should probably wait until KDE 4.1 before making the transition.

Yay, KDE 4 is here :)

KDE 4 Preview

Posted on by Posted in desktop environments, kde, review/preview/tests .

KDE 4 is coming. It’s starting to look and behave mature enough to use it on a normal desktop. This article is a little introduction to what you might be expecting from the brand new KDE due later this year.

It’s been a whole month when I’ve investigated the new environment called KDE 4. Honestly I wanted to wait till “Beta 3″, which should have appeared on 5th October. But as you all can see it has never happened. On the IRC channel #kde4-devel I was informed that the “Beta 3″ should have been tagged yesterday but unfortunately it didn’t turn out to be true. Not waiting any longer I made my mind and I have updated the SVN and have run the cmake.

First glance

Right after running the KDE you can tell at once that new wallpaper is far more beautiful than the grey old one and the marvelous contrasting flower is well matched to the bottom bar. Unluckily it does nothing more than displaying the clock. The taskbar despite the fact it was on the bar didn’t display processes and all the effort I made to add there any applet or the Pager was in vain, and ended with a complete crash of the bar. The only thing I succeeded in was to put there the Kickoff menubar.

desktop

Kickoff – the new KDE menu

The first appearance of Kickoff was in SUSE Linux 10.2 as a new menu for KDE. The icons were arranged in five categories: Favorite, Applications, My Computer, Recently used, Leave. There is nothing more than the search box that helps you finding applications and documents. It’s too early to discuss about the new KDE menu even talking about its appearance. IMHO I wish that the searching engine wouldn’t be based on Nepomuk or Strigi. I’d like to mention that it is only the initial version of this menu in KDE.

kick_fav

kick_app

kick_com

kick_lea

Kget – is still surprising

I’ve talked about this program a lot so far. Even now there has changed a lot of stuff, not only the appearance but the functionality. I’ll shortly remind that Kget is the download accelerator that provides you quequing, placing files in a specific directory chosen by some criteria. This version is enriched with the Transfer Graph applet, which shows you the graph of the download speed of current file. It’s the third applet like this. The first two are: Pie Graph and Bar Chart.

Kget

Kget_bar

Kget_pie

amarok

Kget_all

Plasma – new applets

I’m used to some sort of nice rule. All the time I check the state of KDE 4 I meet new Plasmoids – so is now. The first one is the old well-known Network Monitor which transformed from two flushing monitors to the graph that shows the traffic flow.

pla_net

The next two applets are quite new. The first one is the System Monitor. This applet in the intention of the creators will inform you about the state of the main parts of your PC. In the future you can expect for reading ACPI information such as temperature or fan speed. Unfortunately at the moment the applet tries to perform only the usage of the disc space.

pla_sysmon

Today the best applet I’ve tried was the Color Picker. It helps you to “pick” the color of any pixel on the screen. Using the standard tool, the “pipette”, you are provided with the color in a few color formats. Very interesting feature it seems to be the probe history that shows a few earlier tries.

pla_color

KWin Composite – defaultly enabled

It seems that KWin Composite effects are defaultly enabled. You can notice shadows under windows and the animated windows’ minimization. There are also available features from Compiz Fusion that pointing at the left top corner of the screen you are starting something similar to Scale plugin. Switching between windows using Alt+Tab displays thumbs of the windows. Quite interesting is the fact that KRunner looks different from when the Composite effects are disabled.

krunner

switcher

KSysGuard – the system guard

The System Guard has also changed its appearance by the new background under the graphs.

system_monitor

KStyle / KWin – styles and decorations

It is a rule that I always look very carefully at the appearance comparing Oxygen with Bespin (the unoffical style). IMHO Oxygen still seems too less contrast. I think authors are deserving of credit for continuous improvement. From the last version they improved the appearance of tabs and the highlightment of elements and buttons. The scrollbar turns to green under the mouse point. But still it is far away from mockups in the Internet.

oxygen

bespin

At last the buttons have tooltips. Now you don’t have to think which button closes the window :)

oxy

plastik

Dolphin and Kate – the new appearance

It is the high time to see how some applications look like in Oxygen. I’ve tried the file manager Dolphin and the text editor Kate.

dolphin

kate

Amarok – at least there is some noise!

At the end I’ve checked my favourite audio player. The best way to describe it is to say “sometimes better. sometimes worse”. This time I couldn’t manage to make a collection, not even play one mp3 :/ But instead I could connect to Jamendo and listen to their songs. Thanks to that you can see how the Amarok looks like.

amarok

This article is a direct translation of text published on author’s blog: KDE 4 rev 723381