Fedora 9 Alpha With KDE 4.0

[dsio]

... Has been released by the Fedora guys.

Notes from AOAFiles:

This is the Alpha release (experimental version) of the Fedora 9 Linux operating system. This version is a LiveCD, it can be burned to a CD, and booted from to provide a snapshot, or preview of the next generation of Fedora. Although it can be installed on a hard disk, AOA strongly recommends that you DO NOT use this for anything other than evaluation or experimentation purposes as this is an alpha quality release and not a finished product.

That said, this LiveCD gives us a VERY exciting preview of what is to come in Fedora 9, particularly KDE 4.0 (K Desktop Environment Version 4.0) which is possibly the biggest new release in many years. KDE 4.0 is a very slick, clean, fast, and attractive desktop environment and will be in the official release of KDE 4.0.

For any Fedora users wanting a preview, Linux users wanting to see KDE 4.0, or even non Linux people interested in seeing exactly what this Linux thing is all about, this file comes highly recommended

Release notes can be found here: Releases/9/Alpha/ReleaseNotes - Fedora Project Wiki

Well worth a try guys, have a look at F9 and more significantly, KDE 4.0 and see how you like it.

Though I've been a GNOME user for years, I'm switching to KDE when this comes out officially in April.

AOAFiles link here:Fedora 9 Alpha KDE 4.0 LiveCD - i686 ISO

[dsio]

Here are a few screenshots of Fedora 9 with KDE 4.0, these screenshots are from the good people at Phoronix.com, so full credit to them.

Damn I love the way KDE 4.0 looks

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[Redroar]

Not too different (in appearance) than KDE 3.5.7, at least in those screenshots. I hear it's much faster 'under the hood' though.

Right now it's released on the repos for OpenSUSE, but there are some stability issues with it currently. Some say it runs better that 3.5, some say it crashes their system and just all-around does not work.

Hopefully the bugs will get fixed, and it will be even better than 3.5, which is excellent.

I expect OpenSUSE 11 will use KDE 4, and I will be first in line to get it.

[Aedan]

Hmm, I can get as far as a blank desktop with it... or no desktop, depending on what I try.

[dsio]

What machine is this on btw? T61?

[chrisbard]

I've downloaded the image, I'll burn it this afternoon and then I'll see how it looks and feels like. Thanks

PS Those windows (Kaffeine player) are awesome I remember seeing them in Win 3.1

[Aedan]

Originally Posted by dsio

What machine is this on btw? T61?

Virtualised environments. Virtualbox and VMWare Server. Virtualbox gets me a blank desktop. VMWare server doesn't get graphical - instead there's an error about missing imports in the graphics driver. I can see why it's an alpha!

[dsio]

I had the same issues with Virtualbox, perhaps its just that the alpha version doesn't like VB.

Anyone downloaded this and tried it?

[ccperf721p]

I'm grabbing it now, I'll boot it up a little later. I was running the svn daily ebuilds of kde4 for a short time, but that was a while back. It looked good and felt good, apart from some functions not being in yet.

Edit: No luck for me either in a VM, but boots from the disk to the desktop just fine, configuration is good out of the box as far as sound and video. I have a couple of spare partitions so I guess I will install it to the drive and report anything interesting.

[dsio]

I really like the direction KDE is going. They didn't make the new revision all about eye candy and frills, though it does have some, but rather they worked on modularity, cleaned up code, and improved performance and memory footprint.

Generally speaking KDE 4.0 uses about 30-35% less RAM than KDE 3.x and load has been reduced slightly as well.

Now there's something new, the latest release is /less/ of a resource hog than the previous.

I know it clearly sounds like I'm having a stab at Windows Vista in this respect, and I am, but Vista isn't alone. Code quality in general isn't what it used to be and efficiencey takes time and effort.

[ccperf721p]

Performance is good with kde4, I'm still trying to get comfortable with navigating the start menu. I've only been using kde for 6 months, always used Xfce until someone talked me into moving to a "real DE". Been trying to get it to be as fast and responsive as Xfce4 every since..

E17 isn't looking too bad either

[dsio]

Yea, I've got E17 on my PS3 and I like the cleanness alot. Gnome and KDE have alot more functionality is the thing though and alot of software is written using the KDE libs.

Up till now, I've liked KDE, but it hasnt been as fast or clean as Gnome. KDE does give you a great deal more in terms of its ability to be customized. With KDE 4.0 I'm almost certain I'm switching to it from Gnome.

[chrisbard]

Well this is interesting, I have no ideea what the hell was with that error but it won't go away and will pop up all the time again and again and again...

[dsio]

Yea, its very unstable, its only an Alpha build.

[ccperf721p]

I wonder if konqueror is having problems handling cookies when running from the live CD and not having disk to save to?

[Redroar]

Honestly, I couldn't tell a difference between KDE and Gnome as far as performance goes on my computer. It might be that since it's only 512mb of ram, both DEs pretty much max it out. And if they both have to hit the swap, there's not much of a performance gain.

And also, I feel that as far as 'cleanness' goes, I don't see why you couldn't make KDE as clean as Gnome. A lot of people crowd it with goofy applets, but you can make it pretty clean looking. It's all personal preference, though.

I'm interested in trying XFCE, but at the same time I'm quite enamored with all of the things that KDE lets me do.

[Aedan]

Neither KDE nor Gnome are as light as fluxbox is though...

[Redroar]

Originally Posted by Áedán

Neither KDE nor Gnome are as light as fluxbox is though...

No doubt. XFCE, Fluxbox, Openbox, etc are great at how efficient they are. I'm thinking about trying them because I only have 512mb of RAM, but if KDE 4's performance increase is as good as they are saying, I may stick with it because I really do like KDE. As it stands right now KDE is still operating well within my tolerance level for speed. Programs all open quicker than they did in Windows, so that works for me right now.

[dsio]

Memory use wise KDE 4 isnt as good as fluxbox, it was previously worse than gnome, its now better than gnome, which is very reasonable, and a 30-35% memory footprint reduction is impressive. I'd give it a go on a 512MB system.

[Redroar]

I know that there's no way KDE 4 is going to beat fluxbox in memory usage. But IMO the tradeoffs in interface design features to performance ratio, I'd probably stay with KDE 4. Still looks a bit buggy, as of yet, but I'm sure it's close to being stable enough to try to install.