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Home , Dolphin (file manager), Gwenview, KHTML, KOffice, Konsole, NEPOMUK (software)

KDE 4 – the future of the K Desktop

Beside KDE and GNOME, Mandriva 2008.1 contains also the future great evolution of the KDE desktop: KDE 4. The Mandriva 2008.1 is shipped with KDE 4.0.3, which can be seen as a technology of what will be the KDE 4 desktop. That’s why KDE 4 is not proposed by default and is not replacing KDE 3.5.9.

DE 4 will be a major update of the KDE desktop featuring Kmany new technologies and some radical changes in the KDE underlying infrastructures. KDE 4 is based on 4 which brings many improvements concerning the text handling (Arthur), graphical effects, performances improvements, Web- kit HTML engine integration. Many new infrastructure components have been introduced like for basic multimedia usage, Solid for hardware interaction and detection, or the new desktop shell Plasma (see Figure 1). For further informations you can visit the KDE 4 dedicated web :

http://kde.org/announcements/ Figure 1. The default KDE 4 desktop 4.0/guide.php http://kde.org/announcements/ announce-4.0.3.php Installing and testing KDE 4 KDE 4 is provided for testing purposes. You are not supposed to use it as your default desktop. Indeed as this is a technology preview, don’t be surprised if you encounter some crashes or bugs.

Installing KDE 4.0.3 Now the first thing to do before testing KDE is... installing KDE 4. Installing KDE 4 under Mandriva is very easy and straightforward. First, all the Man- driva official repositories need to be configured. If this is not already done, you can use the Mandriva Media Ma- nager to do it graphically. If you want Figure 2. and KDE 4 version under GNOME

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you can install both KDE 3.5.9 and KDE 4.0.3 without issues. When all the KDE 4 packa- ges are installed, you will be able to select the KDE 4 desk- top entry in the session menu of the display manager. You will be presented with the default KDE 4 desktop with the new panel at the bottom, the Plas- ma launcher at the top right, and some desktop shortcuts. Testing the KDE 4 applications under other desktop environments Once KDE 4 has been installed, you may be willing to test the KDE 4 applications but without having to log in the KDE 4 ses- Figure 3. New kickoff based application menu and Plasma in action sion. However as the KDE 4 ap- to do it from the command line (as also some plasmoïds (plasma plications are not installed in the root), you can use the following applets), Koffice 2 and 2. PATH, you can’t launch them direct- command: From CLI, this will give you: ly. That’s why Mandriva 2008.1 has a special macro named k4 to launch urpmi.addmedia --distrib ↵ urpmi task-kde4 kde4- ↵ the KDE 4 applications. To use it, --mirrorlist ↵ gwenview you just need to open a '$MIR RORLIST' (Menu –> Tools –> Terminal ), and If you don’t want to install Koffice 2 type k4 followed by the KDE 4 appli- Once the Mandriva official reposito- and Amarok 2, then you can use the cation binary name. For example to ries are configured, you just need to task-kde-minimal metapackage ins- launch dolphin, the new KDE 4 file install the task-kde4 metapackage tead. Please note that all the KDE 4 manager, you just need to type: to install most of the KDE 4 appli- applications are installed under / cations like most standard default opt/kde4 in order to not conflict with k4 dolphin KDE 4 desktop applications, but the KDE 3 ones. This means that Here is a list of some KDE 4 ap- plications you may want to test:

kalzium (periodic table and chemical elements details), dolphin (new KDE 4 file ma- nager), (file management and web browsing), (terminal), krdc (VNC and Microsoft Ter- minal Server remote access), ksysguard (processes and system monitoring tool), (new KDE 4 document viewer, notably PDF viewer), system settings (the new sim- plified KDE Control Center), gwenview (fast image viewer).

To have the full list of KDE 4 Figure 4. New Dolphin application binary names,

58 LINUX IDENTITY OFFICE www.linuxidentity.com 59 you can have a look at /opt/ kde/bin directory. So you will be able to launch KDE 4 applications under other desk- top environments like GNOME (see Figure 2). Discovering the KDE 4 desktop Even if you can test KDE 4 appli- cations without starting a full KDE 4 session, they will show their full power when launched from a complete KDE 4 session. So let’s see what the user can see and do when selecting the KDE 4 session. Figure 5. Nepomuk integration in Dolphin with tagging and notation

The default KDE 4 desktop The new application menu is and complicated. For KDE 4 it has – introduction to Plasma based on Kickoff: it should allow been decided to develop a new The new default KDE 4 desktop is to have more informations availa- and dedicated file manager for very simple. At the bottom you will ble from the start, and you can KDE 4: Dolphin. find the new panel which is now a do some search directly from the This file manager comes with plasma container, at the right top menu to launch for example an ap- way simpler interface, while having you will find the plasma applet plication, or open a webpage (see some interesting features dedica- launcher. Some icons are availa- Figure 3). ted to file management like the ble on the workspace, and they ability to display files by group (see are also handled as Plasma ob- Dolphin – the new KDE Figure 4), or contextual hovering jects. As the icons on the works- file manager actions for files icons. pace are handled as Plasma ob- Dolphin is the new default KDE Dolphin features also Nepo- jects, you can apply some transfor- file manager in KDE 4. Indeed muk integration (see Figure 5). mations to the icons just by hove- Konqueror was the swiss knife in Nepomuk is a ring them. KDE 3, cumulating the functions search infrastructure which allows Plasma applets can be added of a file manager, but also of a to tie files and documents together. to the desktop container thanks to . The downside was You can tag them, give a notation the Plasma applet launcher, but the interface became cluttered mark, but also define the rela- also with a right click on the workspace. Plasma applets can be added also to the panel because the panel is a Plasma container just like the desktop one. So applets like the clock, the workspace switcher, the taskbar, or even the menu button can be added equally to both the workspace or to the panel. Thanks to Webkit support in Qt4, Plasma will be also able to display Mac OS X Dashboard widgets. Plasma aims to provide a very simple but powerful API to ease “plas- moïds” development. You can find more informations about Plasma roadmap and design goal on the Plasma homepage: http://techbase.kde.org/ Projects/Plasma. Figure 6. Improved tabs management in Konqueror

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tionship between the differents files. The Nepomuk project is sponsored by the European Commission, and Mandriva is one of the leading society wor- king on Nepomuk development and integration notably in KDE 4. You can find more informations about Nepomuk on the Nepo- muk KDE homepage: http:// .kde. org/.

An improved Konqueror Whereas Konqueror can still be used as a file manager, most of its file manegement features will be handled inter- nally by Dolphin components. So now most Konqueror new features are dedicated to the web browsing capabilities of Figure 7. New Gwenview image viewer in KDE 4 Konqueror. For example, tabs manage- standard actions are proposed like Better files downloads with Kget ment in Konqueror has been rotating an image. In KDE 4, Kget features also may greatly improved with the ability to If an action is applied to an improvements. For example a new list the opened tabs, reopen a image but the image is not saved, web interface has been added closed tab or detach a tab in a then a floppy icon will be displayed which allows to monitor your down- new window (see Figure 6). on top of the image to remind the loads remotely from a web brow- KHTML, the KDE HTML engine user that he needs to save the ser. A plasmoïd has been created has seen many improvements image (see Figure 7). also which allows to begin a file and performances fixed, and On top of that, notifications will download just by a drag and drop. users may be eventually able to be written at the top for each unsa- Last but not least, main Kget appli- switch to the Webkit engine in the ved image. The interface has been cation features pause and resume future if desired or necessary. greatly simplified, and actions support, and thanks to the Oxygen which can be applied to images icon theme has a greatly improved An overview of other are more easily accessible. interface (see Figure 8). KDE 4 applications Konqueror or Plasma are not the only KDE applications which feature some impro- vements. Many applications have improved interface and artworks, but also have some very interesting features. However not all of the ap- plications have been ported to KDE 4, and some may have less features than the KDE 3 equivalent.

Improved Gwenview image viewer Gwenview in KDE 4 has been completely rewritten. Many changes have been done to the interface, and new features have been added. For example when hovering an image, some Figure 8. Kget under KDE 4 with the “Drop Target” plasmoïd

60 LINUX IDENTITY OFFICE www.linuxidentity.com 61 Integrated compositing & 3D effects support in Kwin Presently, to have desktop ef- fects, people are using Compiz Fusion. Whereas Compiz Fusion is great, it is not fully integrated with the KDE desktop and doesn’t offer all the features of Kwin, the KDE window manager. In KDE 4, Kwin will feature com- positing and 3D effects support natively. For example you can have live preview of the window in the task manager (see Figure 9), expose like effect, full transpa- rency and shadow support, etc. As this is the beginning of com- positing support in Kwin, you may expect some bugs, and fur- Figure 9. Compositing features in Kwin with live preview of windows ther performances improve- in the taskbar ments need to be done. However the development is going well, we player: sure, this will increase even menu. As you can see, KDE 4.0.3 may expect many improvements more Amarok popularity. is mainly a technology preview and new features in the future. Pre- Most Amarok 2 features are not release to allow people to have an sently the support is not enabled by mature yet, so don’t be surprised if idea about the evolutions of the default, so you will need to launch most of the functionalities are not KDE desktop. This allows users to the new KDE control center to ena- working yet or correctly. For example comment and give feedbacks to ble compositing features in Kwin. in the future KDE 4.1 release, the in- the developers. So don’t hesitate For this, select System settings, terface has been reworked greatly. to contact the KDE developers or Menu entry –> General –> Appea- read their blogs and add some com- rance –> Style, and then look at the Conclusion ments. You can report your bugs or Effects tab. Many other applications have been your enhancement proposals on improved or rewritten, so don’t he- the KDE bugzilla website: http:// Amarok 2 – toward music sitate to browse the application bugs.kde.org/. player world domination With KDE 4, Amarok has been completely rewritten. One of the most noticeable change is about the interface which has been completely redesigned. Amarok 2 features also impro- ved web music store support, but also Plasma support for some of its components like Lyrics or metadata display plu- gins. Amarok 2 is using the new KDE 4 infrastructures like Pho- non for sound playing, or Solid for devices detection. Last but not least, thanks to the new Qt 4, Amarok will be ported also in order to work on Mac OS X and Windows plat- forms. So Windows users will be able to appreciate a very powerful and easy to use music Figure 10. Amarok 2 in KDE 4.0.3

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