Diving into KDE 4.3 – Survival guide for Ubuntu
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Couple of days ago KDE 4.3 was released. Celebration is in order because we didn’t have a stable release of KDE for almost four years. KDE 3.5 was the last stable release of KDE desktop environment and it happened in early November 2005. Before 4.3 release there were some try outs with KDE 4.0, 4.1 and 4.2 releases, but they were far away from being stable. KDE 4.2 was almost there, but not quite yet. I’ve been KDE user from the very beginning, from version 1.0. There were times that I had an urge to switch to Gnome especially with the first release of Gnome Ximian but it didn’t last long.
KDE is by far the most configurable and customizable desktop environment which offers complex integration with its components and other KDE programs. KDE is built on top of Qt widget library and this was quite controversial at first because Qt library wasn’t published under Gnu General Public License. Richard M. Stallman and Debian guys have had a lot of issues with KDE bunch. In a nutshell: first we had FreeQt license which enabled KDE to distribute Qt with KDE. Then KDE and Trolltech signed some papers and legal agreements which made people a little happier. Then, they created QPL and Free Software Foundation said that it is still incompatible with GPL. Then Qt was dual licensed under GPL and commercial license and all was well. Then Nokia acquired Trolltech, and in the beginning of 2009 released Qt under Lesser GPL with a few exceptions that enable you to use Qt in commercial, closed source products.
Read on if you want to know how to install KDE in Ubuntu 9.04 and survive … ;)
So, you want to be a KDE user? If you have time, do a clean install of Kubuntu 9.04. If not (like me), proceed. First, you’ll need to install all the necessary packages for Kubuntu desktop. Open a terminal and run:
$ sudo apt-get install kubuntu-desktop
What you have now is actually Kubuntu and Ubuntu crammed together in one installation. When all packages are installed, you are ready to upgrade existing KDE to the latest release. You will need to add another source to apt. Open the sources.list file:
$ sudo vi /etc/apt/sources.list
And add the following line at the bottom:
deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/kubuntu-ppa/backports/ubuntu jaunty main
Now update your repositories and ignore all the warnings about missing keys.
$ sudo apt-get update
Adding the necessary key to your key chain is not required but it is certainly a wise thing to do:
$ sudo apt-key adv --keyserver keyserver.ubuntu.com --recv-keys 2836CB0A8AC93F7A
$ sudo apt-get update
You should be all set for the grand finale:
$ sudo apt-get -u dist-upgrade
Expect a list of lot of packages that will need to be reinstalled or added, some perhaps removed. You should be alerted if apt-get tells you that hundreds of megabytes will be freed after the upgrade. When you are ready confirm your choice and depending on the speed of your Internet connection, get a cup of coffee or a lunch.
After the installation log out, change your session type in gdm to KDE and then log back in. KDE should welcome you and you can start playing around.
My encountered problems? Just a couple. Sound didn’t work as it should. Ubuntu 9.04 comes with Pulse Audio. I am not sure what Kubuntu is using but after installing KDE 4.3 it was set to use ALSA sound drivers. With Pulse Audio, ALSA configuration should be re-wired to use Pulse Audio which then uses ALSA drivers directly. So every program that is set to use alsa it is actually using Pulse Audio. This for some strange reason didn’t work for me.
I was able to play sounds in KDE and KDE aplications that used Phonon, but not in other applications that used PulseAudo or the other way around, depends who wanted to do it first. Phonon took the exclusive over ALSA so the default Pulse Audio was cut away and sound didn’t work in other non-KDE applications like Firefox1.
This is easily solved by opening System Settings in KDE, selecting Sound and Video Configuration and then put the Pulse Audio device on top of the preferred devices list. Do this for all of the audio outputs. Restart any KDE applications that are using sound and you’re all set.
Did I say a couple of problems? Yes, I did. The other problem, that I still have, is with the Weather Forecast widget. It fails to locate my home town by name. I had to search for Slovenia. ;)
Other than that, KDE 4.3 can be now, just after two days of usage called, a ‘stable release’. All previous version had issues that were noticed in the first five minutes of usage. Panel placement, moving and customizing was horribly slow and prone to produce unexpected results with panels disappearing or being resized to random sizes. Dual screen configuration works as it should and you can setup wallpapers for each screen separately2, you can still remove Maximize button from window title bar and after a restart applications will open exactly where you left them.
In the next few days I’ll be buried in work using KDE 4.3 as my primary desktop.
Screenshots? Pretty screenshots? Packed with eye-candy?Here’s one.
KDE 4.3
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- KDE 4.3 promises polish, polish, polish (theregister.co.uk)
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