RevieWs KDE SC 4.4 What’s new in KDE SC 4.4 FOUR-IN-HAND fmatte, photocase.com fmatte, Version 4.4 sees the KDE Software Compilation reach a status on par puzzle bench lets you create your own puzzles, giving you a free choice of the with the user friendliness and stability of good old KDE 3.5. On top of number of parts (Figure 3). Palapeli au- tomatically remembers your progress in this, many features are new. BY MARCEL HILZINGER completing the puzzles. You can thus work on multiple puzzles, or new puzzle f you have not looked at an open line feature allows users to compose designs, concurrently. source operating system for a year, postings at any time. iyou probably won’t recognize any- The KDE-Edu educational set includes New system Components thing. Projects disappear and new ones two new programs: Cantor and Rocs. KDE always had an address book, but take their place; a tool or library that is The Cantor math tool (Figure 2) lets you the tool that comes with KDE SC 4.4 is today’s buzz can be obsolete tomorrow. compose math worksheets. By default, practically a new program. Its author is KDE users experienced this situation Cantor relies on the internal KAlgebra KDE PIM developer Tobias König, who is when the desktop warped from version back end, although it 3.x to 4.x. Early 4.x releases showed supports the free Maxima promise, but none could achieve the sta- [3] and Sage [4] educa- Online. Easy. Secure. Reliable bility and versatility of the late 3.x se- tional systems. You can est Praicnetee! ries. The recent KDE Software Compila- use Cantor to compose B All you need to run your home business or small office: tion (SC) 4.4 “Caikaku” release sends simple sums and equa- Guar KDE4 to a new level of maturity that fi- tions, as well as more nally achieves the functionality of KDE complex functions and 3.5. KDE SC 4.4 also comes with a num- animated graphs. Rocs ber of exciting new features. refers to itself as a “Graph Theory Viewer Looking Around Tool.” The application The new KDE SC 4.4 contains a large lets users draw simple number of bug fixes, minor improve- charts and control them ments, and a handful of new programs by means of a JavaScript- [2]. Bloggers will appreciate the Blogilo style programming lan- blogger client (formerly known as Bilbo; guage (QtScript). Figure 1). The fully automated Blogilo KDE SC 4.4 also has a supports WordPress and Blogspot, along new goodie for gaming Figure 1: The Blogilo blogger software is one of the new with several other blog systems. An off- fans: Palapeli. The virtual entries in KDE SC 4.4. 40 ISSUE 115 JUNE 2010 Run A Business, Not An Office KDE SC 4.4 RevieWs Figure 2: New KDE SC has the Cantor software on board for math fans. Figure 3: The KDE puzzle program Palapeli promises hours of fun. also a regular contributor to KMail. The an overview of local and remote address edge of the screen, where it drops down complete rewrite was necessary because repositories on the left, address book en- when you press Alt+F2 and then folds the new address book no longer stores tries in the center, and details of individ- back up when you are done. its information in the standard vCard ual contacts on the right. Like previous To change this setting, you can click format, which was the case with its pre- versions, the new KDE address book can the wrench icon on the left. If you prefer decessor. The new version uses KDE’s handle records in the vCard, CSV, and to have the KDE quick starter back at the own, database-style Akonadi framework. LDIF formats. Additionally, it supports center of your screen, just go to the User From a visual point of view, the new direct import from an LDAP server or a interface tab and select the Free floating KDE address book impresses with a GMX file. The developers have also com- window option. Also, you can reintro- three-panel window view that provides pletely reworked, or rewritten, the duce the Task oriented view style that KAuth authentication framework [5]. first appeared in KDE 4.1 to view the list Why the SC? of available programs side by side as KRunner on Top Around the end of 2009, the KDE com- icons rather than as a drop-down list. munity decided that the term “KDe” The fastest way to launch a program is Clicking Preview helps you select your should apply to the community itself, in- to press Alt+F2 and enter the program preferred view and function mode. stead of being reserved for a single app name in the dialog that appears. When within the growing collection of soft- you press this keyboard shortcut, you Managing Widgets ware tools. So, they chose the term are launching the KDE quick starter, One of the KDE4 desktop’s special fea- “KDE Software Compilation” (or KDE KRunner. In Version 4.4, the developers tures is its use of widgets, or plasmoids. SC) for the KDE desktop [1]. moved the KDE quick starter to the top These miniature programs can be placed Online. Easy. Secure. Reliable est Praicnetee! B All you need to run your home business or small office: Guar Run A Business, Not An Office JUNE 2010 ISSUE 115 41 RevieWs KDE SC 4.4 vice, the KDE device manager pops up in the system tray area of the KDE kicker. Although it looks very much the same, the developers have introduced a huge number of changes to the device man- ager in Version 4.4. When you mouse over a disk or CD/ DVD icon, the device manager displays an additional information bar showing you how many actions are predefined for the device (more details of this later on). Clicking the plug icon on the far right mounts the medium without performing any other actions (Figure 8). This two- click trick takes less than a second – a considerable time savings compared with giving a mount command at the console. Figure 4: The new widget dialog was born at the Google Summer of Code. If you already know what you intend to do with the removable medium (e.g., importing photos, playing music, load- ing a CD, etc.), you can click the entry to display the individual actions. In con- Figure 5: Minor reworking: the default window decorations “Oxygen.” trast to previous KDE versions, this step doesn’t display a separate dialog; rather, on the desktop or in a taskbar. Special SC 4.4. The decorations look lighter than the whole procedure is handled by an Activities – task-oriented groups of plas- their counterparts in previous versions applet with a couple of mouse clicks, moids that act as virtual desktops for of KDE. Additionally, the buttons no lon- thus considerably accelerating the ac- specific tasks – let you create a Mac OS ger look recessed, jut slightly out of their tion. X–style dashboard. The KDE developers frames (Figure 5). The window header is When you mouse over mounted de- also gleaned from Mac OS X when creat- at the center of the title bar by default. vices, you can see how much free space ing the new tool to add or remove plas- The Aurorae window decoration en- is left on the medium (Figure 9). This in- moids. When you right-click an empty gine (Figure 6) adds more variety. Auro- formation is also available in a similar space on the desktop and select Add rae was originally contributed by the form, but without tangible details, in the Widgets, KDE SC 4.4 no longer shows a KDE community and has now officially Dolphin file manager. dialog at the center of the KDE window, made the grade in KDE SC 4.4. You can but instead displays a bar of widgets at enable the engine in the system settings Customized Actions the bottom of the screen (Figure 4). by opening Applications | Configure Although KDE SC 4.4 has a couple of By default, the All Widgets tab is en- Desktop. Under Look & Feel, choose Ap- fairly usable items in the list of actions, abled. To view the current crop of active pearance | Windows and click Aurorae widgets, simply click Running. Active Decoration Theme Engine in the Window plasmoids are also identified by a blue Decoration tab. Pressing Get New Themes check mark. The left and right angle tells it to pick up more themes. brackets scroll through a list of various Besides these purely visual changes, categories. The quickest approach to the KDE SC 4.4 developers also intro- finding a widget is via the search box, duced a new feature: Windows can now assuming you know the widget’s name. be grouped arbitrarily, adding tabbed The changes are not just restricted to browsing appeal (Figure 7). If you fre- visuals: In the new KDE4 version, all ap- quently use the file manager in combina- plets are network-capable. For example, tion with an editor, you can add Dolphin you can export the CPU display for com- to the editor window by right-clicking puter A to the Plasma desktop on com- the title bar and selecting Move window puter B or, in the near future, to a mobile to group. This new feature only works device like the Nokia N800 or some with the default Oxygen theme, how- other smartphone.