openSUSE 11.1 unleashed

Today openSUSE 11.1 was released to the public, so it’s time to say a few words again, already. It feels like 11.0 was released yesterday since this was an unusually short release cycle (6 months vs. the normal 7-9 months). It’s also a special release because openSUSE 11.1 is the code base for SUSE Linux Enterprise 11 (SLE), due out in the first half of 2009. It’s surely not the most polished nor least buggy openSUSE release to date, but at least it looks like we won’t see a repeat of SUSE Linux 10.1*, as some people may have feared. With some online updates 11.1 can become a very enjoyable release.

KDE

As always the impressive openSUSE KDE-team worked tirelessly to make the KDE experience extra pleasing.

KDE 4.1.3 is shipped, with everything which that entails. Additionally it’s enhanced with a lot of backported features from the upcoming KDE 4.2 – such as panel hiding, windows can cover panel, the KWin cube effect, PowerDevil power management, full featured Folder View widget, taskbar tooltips, multirow systray, possibility to hide systray icons and more. A special openSUSE feature is the hidden by default controversial desktop toolbox – the “cashew” (looks like a GNOME logo) in the top right corner.

Amarok 2.0 and early versions of KDE 4 DigiKam, KDE 4 NetworkManager applet, KDE 4 Kerry etc. are available too. As these programs progress, better versions will become available via the openSUSE Build Service repositories.

If you’re a KDE 3 user venturing into the KDE 4 world for the first time with 11.1, hopefully this post and the official KDE4 introduction page will lessen the shock for you

KDE 3.5.10 is available too, on DVD installations – at the desktop selection step, click on “Other” to select KDE3, along with Xfce, text based installation and icewm. This is the last time the KDE 3 desktop will be officially included in openSUSE media. Packages may be maintained by community members on the Build Service for future versions, who knows.

Other stuff

A lot of interesting things actually happened “around” the distro this time – not just in the technology itself.

For the first time openSUSE is built in the openSUSE Build Service for example.

The Contrib repository saw it’s humble beginnings. This repository will let non-Novell employees build and maintain official packages. For users it will mean more packages being available in a single frozen repository – instead of having to use lots of ever-changing, experimental Build Service repositories that cause conflicts and other problems – if you’re not careful.

Exciting strides have been taken in the field of software freedom. Adobe Flash, Agfa fonts etc. have been dropped from the DVD media – this means the DVD media is now redistributable and is licensed under GPLv2 – allowing commercial and non-commercial redistribution. Adobe flash-player will be pulled in as an update, if you don’t want it uninstall pullin-flash-player. Agfa fonts are replaced by Liberation Fonts.

OpenJDK and a web start plugin is installed by default instead of Sun Java, and works very well for many Java applets. A newer and even better version of OpenJDK is already available on the Build Service. Sun Java 1.5 and 1.6 is still available via the official non-oss repository if you need it.

The inclusion of SELinux should also interest a lot of people – even though it’s not very integrated, and it isn’t running by default – AppArmor is.

Have a lot of fun with openSUSE 11.1!

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* The uninitiated may not know that SUSE Linux 10.1 – which formed the base of SUSE Linux Enterprise 10 – was probably the worst release of a GNU/Linux distribution in this millenium due to horribly broken package management.

KDE 4 for KDE 3 users

Since the release of KDE 4.0 11 months ago, there’s been a whole lot of heated debate going on, on blogs, mailing lists, forums, IRC and basically any other media you can imagine. The complaints seem to come in waves though – everytime there’s a KDE release or a major distribution release with KDE 4, a new wave of angry complaining people seems to appear out of the blue, putting forward the exact same complaints other people have already been presenting all over the net for months. It would actually be kind of funny to observe the phenomenon, if only they weren’t so loud and angry.

Since the release of openSUSE 11.1 with KDE 4.1.3 is imminent I thought I’d prepare a little something for the upcoming wave of frustrated people. Many other KDE4 FAQs and introductions already exist, but they’re not invented here. I’ll try to keep it short and broad, since almost all the complaints fall into three basic categories.

It’s different
Yes, KDE 4 is different from KDE 3 in many ways – this was the whole point of KDE 4 from the beginning. It was always intended to be a radical change, since it was decided that incremental improvements would only get KDE so far. This means there is a learning curve and there may be the need to reconfigure some applications from scratch.

However many applications are more or less straight ports, but some components are new and rather different, most notably the desktop and panel (KDesktop and Kicker) were replaced with Plasma, KControl has been replaced with Systemsettings and Dolphin replaces Konqueror as the default file manager.

Over time KDE 4 will become more different than KDE 3, not less, so waiting to migrate later probably won’t make it any easier.

Missing features
Yes, it’s true that KDE 4.0, 4.1 and even 4.2 doesn’t have every exact feature or configuration option that exists in KDE 3. This means you may have to adapt your workflows a little bit, but it’s very unlikely any of these missing features will be critical to doing your work if you think about it.

Nevertheless KDE 4.x already has got lots and lots of features that weren’t in KDE 3, you just have to look.

The missing features are not the result of a new philosophy for KDE, it just happens that porting everything to KDE4/Qt4 was a huge task, and some components were completely replaced and need more time to mature completely, but mid- to long term it’s for the best. If you compared KDE 4.0 with 4.2 (beta) you’d be amazed how many features and configuration options have been added in one short year.

Lack of polish
As mentioned above important components have been rewritten from scratch and even straight porting application wasn’t a walk in the park. KDE 4.1 is still just the beginning of the KDE 4 era, it will become much better in every area very fast. There’s definitely room for improvements regarding optimizations, usability and bugs in KDE 4.1. But it’s not like KDE 3 was bug free either, many KDE 4 components objectively work much better than their KDE 3 predecesssors.

This post won’t do much to alleviate the inconveniences with migration in a practical sense, but hopefully it’ll help some people migrating from KDE 3 to KDE 4 to understand what’s going on and why, and see things in a bigger perspective.

It’s also interesting that generally the most unhappy users are long time KDE 3 users – whereas users of GNOME or Microsoft Windows etc. don’t seem to have all these problems when they try KDE 4. I guess they approach KDE 4 with more of an open mind, intending to try something new and different, instead of expecting to find their former desktop environment++, maybe KDE 3 users can learn from that approach.

PS: KDE 3.5 is included in openSUSE 11.1, for the last time(!!). It’s under “Other” in the Desktop selection step of DVD installations.