KDE 2.2 Release Plan (Revised)

Waldo Bastian, the release manager
for KDE 2.2, has
a revised schedule for the next major release of the KDE core applications
(KOffice is on a separate
). The schedule has slipped somewhat to provide time to add
some major new features to the next release, including such popular
wish-list items as (1) a better printing framework; (2) IMAP support
in KMail; and (3) improved database support with KDE-DB. The schedule
now contemplates an alpha release on April 16, beta releases on
May 14 and June 18, and the final release on July 16 (109 days, but who's counting?).

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by jorge o. castro (not verified)

I'm glad everything got pushed back a little bit. It seems like there has been tons of releases the last few months. This will give us users more time to digest 2.1.1 and give better feedback! Good job KDE guys!

by gjw (not verified)

Some still missing features in KDE

- Add a configuration menu for title bar buttons (like in KDE 1.X)
- Possibility to change the cursor of the pointer device (e.g. mouse)
- colorful pointers (*.PNG)
- animated pointers (*.MNG)
- Enable animated pictures (*.MNG) in all picture (*.PNG) containing components


- Add a popup menu when clicking at menu items with the right mouse button.
-> open
-> open in konsole
-> cut
-> copy
-> copy the link (stored in *.desktop)
-> paste
-> properties

The clipboard:

- Deactivate the autocopy/paste behavoir of X:
-> Marking text with a pointer device (in X) owerwrites all information
cached in the clipboard.

> If you want to mark text to delete it, all clipboard information,
like filenames and text passages, are lost.

System administration tools:

There is lack of administration tools in KDE.
Many people prefer to edit configuration files.
There are also inkompatibilities between different applications and UN*XES,
but many users and admins don't have enough time and skills
to fight through various types of docs and manuals.
There is need of graphical system configuration tools in KDE.
It's difficult for the masses(Win9X/Me and WinNT/2k users/admins) to migrate to
Linux (or other UN*Xes), this has to be changed.

- Toggle between different resolutions, color depth or even X configurations
-> Games often need different resolutions and color depth.

KEYBOARD auto-repeat and RESOURCE management:
Keyboard auto-repeat should be disabled while holding down CTRL, ALT or other special keys.
If the system is out of resources you should be refused to start new apps
until others are terminated. The user needs the possibility to logout at any time.

Hold down CTRL and ESC in KDE2 for some seconds and the whole system gets messed up.
This is caused by keyboard auto-repeat and missing resource management.
Lots of KTOP instances are started until the system freezes and even the X server cannot be killed

If you have any further ideas about how to improve KDE post them or even better start coding.

by Matt (not verified)

I believe mouse pointers are handled by X, not by the window manager, so you can't have colourful ones without rewriting the X server...

I like X's clipboard system!

But MNGs where PNGs can be would be real cool.

by Felek (not verified)

The Kicker upgrade you proposed is a straight way to The Great Confusion. And the current (2.1)version isn't perfect too. When I want to start a program and click on the big K I often get a little plus, drag'n'drop starts, some icons landing on my desktop - God knows what happens, a few mouse moves and I have my desktop reconfigured. This horrible Drag'n'drop should be removed ! The interface design should be very simple and clean. If you want to change the menu start menu editor.

by robert (not verified)

Fancy coloring the mouse pointer is near impossible becuase of X.

by Moritz Moeller-... (not verified)

This was discussed in the kde community. It is of course possible, just not with the current X implementation.

One solution (apart from extending Xfree) would be do just have KDE manage the cursor icon. This can e.g. be seen when you drag a file. The icon is colored as well.

I would not bet on thics being part of KDE-2.2, though, probably 2.3.

by not me (not verified)

Controlling the placement of window buttons over all themes isn't really possible with the new KWin architecture. Instead, what we need are more themes to choose from, because they decide themselves where the buttons are placed.

Animated MNGs everywhere:
I'm not sure that's desireable, or even possible! I wouldn't like it, it would be like Internet ad hell! Flashing, animated thingees everywhere! Besides, that's just asking for bloat, slowdown, and screen flickering.

Kicker menu:
I'm not sure we should go the MS route and make everything in the menu draggable and right-clickable. I think instead we should focus on making the menu editor better. If you want a program opened in a Konsole, simply open a Konsole and type it's name.

I agree that the behavior of the X clipboard is annoying, however, that's a QT problem, not a KDE problem. AFAIK, it will be fixed in QT3. There will actually be 2 clipboards - a Windows style one and an X style one. They will be completely independent, so you can use either one exclusively, or both if you want. Choice is good!

System Admin tools:
I can only agree that there should be better admin tools. However, it is very hard for the KDE team to do anything about this, because they can't single-handedly create and maintain 50 different versions of each admin tool, one for each OS and each distribution out there that KDE is used on. (and it really would require 50 different versions because each distro works differently). The only solution is for distributions to do it themselves.

Resolution/color depth changer:
That's mostly an X problem. A graphical X configurator would be nice, but that falls under the category of hard-to-make admin tools discussed above.

Keyboard auto-repeat:
Auto-repeat should NOT be disabled when Ctrl or Alt are pressed! Think of the poor Emacs users! Many other Linux programs would become much harder to use if KDE did this.

Resource management:
A bad idea. There is simply _no possible way_ to tell how starting another application will affect the responsiveness of the system (or to tell what level of responsiveness the particular user deems acceptable). Any attempt to make something like this would simply serve to frustrate users who ran up against the limits. The obvious solution to the bad situation you describe is to make KSysGuard a unique application: that is, only one instance of it can be running at one time. Running it again would simply bring up the already-running instance.

Also, anytime Ctrl-Alt-Backspace doesn't work is an X bug, not a KDE problem. Badly behaved programs should never be able to crash your X session.


No, don't post them here! Go to bugs.kde.org and file a wishlist item. That's what the wishlist is there for!

Sorry for the long post.

by mike (not verified)

There is a graphical X configurator, in X 4.01, called xf86cfg.

by Raphel Borg Ell... (not verified)

Has arts been excluded from the key important issues ? I remember reading the output of a chat session wherer there was a whole discussion on the topic and how to give a *serious* face lift to the sound server.

Any news ?

by Charles Samuels (not verified)

aRts is part of kdelibs

by jp (not verified)

i wish aRts was optional. i have a sblive that already supports playing multiple sounds through /dev/dsp so i don't need aRts. it just waste alot of resources for me. also some programs (like Jezzball) don't have sound unless you are using aRts. i think this should be an option at compile time to use arts or not..

by Daniel (not verified)

Would it be possible to make the software mixing in aRts optional?

I, too, have a soundcard that supports many (32 on the Trident 4Dwave I think) simultanuous output channels, so it would make good sense to use them.

Lower latency and lower overhead.

Would this be possible, given aRts' structure?


by Mark Hillary (not verified)

I too have a sound blaster live, and would like to be able to not to use srts in anyway at all.

by CP (not verified)

I'm not sure (for I haven't really programmed KDE2 yet), but I think it won't be possible. There had to be a "stub" interface in the KDElibs in place of sRts then, and after all the analog realtime synthesizer supports much more features to the programmers than just mixing into /dev/dsp

by not me (not verified)

Shoot! Since the release has been pushed back, I won't be able to download KDE 2.2 on my cool Ethernet connection here at college using apt-get. I'll be stuck downloading it over a 28.8 modem, at home during the summer. Yuck. And I'll have to use Windows, because I have a winmodem. Double yuck! Oh well, it'll be worth it.

I'll bet I'm not the only one with this problem, either :-)

by E. Sorensen (not verified)

If Your lucky it'll get pushed out a bit further and you can download it next semester ;-)

by James Hood (not verified)

If you run kernel 2.4.2, you wont have to use windows to download the new kde, because its supposed to support them.

by not me (not verified)

Kernel 2.4.2 supports winmodems? I believe you are mistaken. A few isolated types of winmodems do have drivers under Linux, but of course the one I have isn't supported. The vast majority of winmodems aren't supported by Linux. And it isn't possible to make a generic "winmodem driver" because each type of winmodem (each chipset) is different. So it isn't really possible for kernel 2.4.2 to "support winmodems" because it would have to have lots and lots of drivers, one for each type.

Unfortunately, until manufacturers start natively supporting Linux, there isn't much hope for winmodems in Linux, I'm afraid.

by not me (not verified)



by Michael Gaskins (not verified)

Well, Lucent didn't write the drivers for the LT chipset, but they did hire someone else to do it. at least this is showing some interest in manufacturers providing support for Linux.

by Dipl.Ing.M.Schulze (not verified)

Well, you should first use the summer to get rid of Bill Gates, then make your Winmodem running in Linux as I did it on Suse 7.0 on my Compaq notebook. After having done those things FIRST you should be able to download KDE 2.2 without any problems.

by Tom Mutdosch (not verified)

Does anyone know if in 2.1.1 it is possible to have an external (hideable) taskbar like in KDE 1.x? I just upgraded to 2.1 and I thought that I read at one point that they would fix that, but I haven't read anywhere whether they have. Just curious.

by Anonymous Coward (not verified)

Well, you can add an external taskbar, but I am not sure whether it can be made"hidable". Right-click on the "handles" of any section in the main kicker - i.e. verical bars with raised dots - for instance near the clock - select Panel Menu -> Add -> Extension ->External Taskbar..

by James Richard Tyrer (not verified)

Well, I now have a task bar at the top of the screen, but I can NOT find any way to hide it.


by Thorsten Schnebeck (not verified)

I use kicker with auto-hide option and the taskbar-applet only. The standard KDE stuff (clock, page, K-menu...) is on a solid child-panel.
I *think* you need Aaron's patch from kde-devel mailing list to have a instant child-panel after starting (or you have to start kasbar)



by Gunter Ohrner (not verified)

I fear it's impossible although it was the feature most anticipated by me for KDE 2.1. :-(
Kicker currently is far from beeing as cool and configurable as GNOMEs panel which is the Reason I'm using a mixture of KDE and GNOME. (They interoperate nicely, BTW.)
What I's *REALLY* like to see in KDE 2.2 is
* (auto)hideable child panels of an arbitrary
. size,
* corner-aligned panels additionally to the
. default edge-aligned
* _serious_ kwin extensions like configurable
. window borders on a per-app-basis, the ability
. to remember a window's state (like E does.),
. cooperationg with "managed" Wine-windows,
. animated desktop switching, animated shading
. of windows, ...
* or, alternativly, if that is not possible,
. making kjava work with other WMs than kwin so
. I can continue to use my Enlightenment,
. GNOME-panel, kdestop, Konqueror-Environment
. with emmbedded Java applets...

I'm really looking forward to the release of KDE 2.2, anyway! :-)


Gunter Ohrner

by Craig Black (not verified)

Yea this is kinda cool. It seems the releases have been pretty fast. I wonder if the application developers are having a hard time keeping up with all of it.


by jesunix (not verified)

Not really actually
because the API is pretty stable, you usually
don't need to change anything in your app
everything (like menu animation) is done by kdelibs unless you want to use a new feature like kprinter for example.

Now coding in kde cvs is another matter
you have to keep up with the every day changes.
But it is not that hard since the technological choices were usually the good ones:) (like C++/Qt for example)

by Craig Black (not verified)

Thanks i've been wondering about how these people were able to keep up with all releases.


by Bejin (not verified)

Why dosen't KDE use the OpenOffice (Open2D?) printing API, since it's LGPL it could be change to look like the rest of Qt/KDE API very eisly, is there any technical reason this is not done?

Sorry bad english.

by emmanuel (not verified)

If i'm not wrong, the change to the print framework is only about the printer management (adding a new printer, on the network, on the parrallel port, default page size,..).
this is done via CUPS, but the system supports plugins (like LPR, LPRing etc).
KDE does not not (AFAIK) need a printing framework ala open2d (or whatever the name of it is ;o)), QT provides it already (QPainter).

Of course it can also be that i'm misunderstood and that i say garbage. correct me then! ;o)


by Bejin (not verified)

I meant the OpenOffice equivilient to QPainter, I'm also not sure why KDE dosen't use imlib and other stuff, it would be very eisy to make performance good more than now, if some stuff not TrollTech's was used.

by Ross Campbell (not verified)

While it's not really a kde app, I'd love to see qcad included with koffice.


by Dieter Nützel (not verified)

Well, let me vote for the nice CUPS (www.cups.org, cups.sourceforge.net), too.

I have done a package of qtcupts-2.0 and kups-1.0 for SuSE 7.1 and I can tell you that I have never seen a better printing system for *nix (M$, too :-) in my live.


Dieter Nützel
Graduate Student, Computer Science

University of Hamburg
Department of Computer Science
Cognitive Systems Group
Vogt-Kölln-Straße 30
D-22527 Hamburg, Germany

email: [email protected]
@home: [email protected]

by Michael Goffioul (not verified)

For your information, the new KDE print framework _is_ QtCUPS and KUPS together (I'm the author of them), but completely integrated into KDE. This means that all KDE apps will use the QtCUPS print dialog, and there will be a KControl module for print management (like KUPS). The nice thing is that I switched to a plugin architecture allowing to support other print systems as well through the same interface. For example managing printtool printers (RedHat) with a KUPS interface.

by Michael Goffioul (not verified)

Yes and no.
The KDE print framework is not only a print managament tool, but more an intermediate layer between KDE applications and the underlying print system, which provides a nice user interface to control print job. The applications just send their drawing primitives to the system, and the framework takes care of sending the print job to the printer using the selected print system, print options, ...
But this is not a rewrite of a QPainter class. Qt does a good job, and the print framework uses it internally.

by Matt (not verified)

The new SMB kioslave (by Caldera) will be ready in time for 2.2 as well, I suppose? To me that would be major news.

by Julio Alvarez (not verified)

It would be great if KDE had a standard intallation program (untar, unzip, make menu shortcut, resolve and install dependent libraries, etc) for itself or applications that are in apps.kde, for example.

by not me (not verified)

Search the Dot archives - there was an article about an installer that was being worked on. In the meantime, I recommend that you try Debian. You won't be sorry! Here's how I install KDE:

apt-get install task-kde

That's it! apt-get then goes out on the Internet, downloads all KDE packages _and_ dependencies automatically, then installs them and configures them in the right order, while I read a book :-) Upgrading works much the same way, and I usually have updated KDE packages downloaded and installed even before the release has been announced! I can hardly begin to express the complete and utter coolness of apt-get.
And of course, this works for any other program that has a debian package.

Slightly OT: A big thank-you goes out from me to all the Debian KDE packagers - THANK YOU!!!

by Anonymous Coward (not verified)

There is no need to use debian for that...

You can get apt-get for Connective, and Mandrake Cooker/8.0

The latter can do the same thing through urpmi and

by Julio Alvarez (not verified)


by Julio Alvarez (not verified)

Sorry for the 2 posts. Im am at work and i had a problem with IE5 :(

by Dipl.Ing.M.Schulze (not verified)

why don't you use Konqueror??? So its your fault!!!

by Mark Hillary (not verified)

I have a question. What has happened to the ablity to hide the applet handles on kicker, like you where able to do in 2.0. Since upgrading to 2.1 and 2.1.1 I have not been able to find this option anywhere, it seems to have been dropped from kcontrol. I realy liked this feature. I now have to edit the config file by hand when I change to option.

Anyway, I would realy like to see this added back in for 2.2. I did enter a bug report when I first noticed but I never got a reply.

by Paul G (not verified)

In ~/.kde/share/config/kickerrc put FadeOutAppletHandles=true under [General]

Hopefully this gets put back in the configuration, because I like it like that :)

by nadmm (not verified)

Since the 2.2 release has been pushed back, I think it would make more sense to release a 2.1.2 in about 6 weeks after 2.1.1. And even a 2.1.3 6 weeks after that. That way, we don't have to wait till July for new fixes. But then 2.2 will come with its own bug to be fixed in 2.2.1 :)
We need a stable version to go back to. Too much change too fast is bad too. KDE guys should stabilise a release more than they have been.

by Edward Rataj (not verified)

Why not give the next release plenty of time instead of pushing back the schedule. It's beginning to sound like MS and it disappoints many.
KDE 2.1 is excellent and we can survive until the next one is technically superior and reliable. Need a better KOffice to handle MS Word docs and Kmail to handle existing email addresses.
Programming is the best I've seen for any GUI. Kudus to all.

Thanks for a beautiful alternative to MS (Multiple


Hay first off all


i love to work under windows with the "send to" item acitaveted by right mouse click.

Could you add something to the right.mouse.click.window ?

new feature for ark and the right.mouse.click.window (is there a name for that beast ?)

a right click on the file
should bring the option extract to my in current folder (like under win98 with WinZip >= 7)

is it possible to change the mime (?) type - what i want is to use Xemacs for opening tex-files instead of kwrite or ktexmaker

Maybe a few of this features are already configurable and it is me how just do not know that - sorry for that.

Great Work - although the start up speed is a little slow on my cleron 433 with old 4 MB PCI-Graphik-Card - i am using icewm less and less often (previous favorite windowmaker)

One last Question - what about kde 1.X i really loved that for older computers - is there any further devolpment ?

Anyway really good work done.

by Zeitblom (not verified)

KDE 2.1 is very great tu use. It works fine with Debian now. I'm quite happy about it!

I'm looking forward to the nex release, and there's really no reason to hurry. More urgent would be KOffice to be more compatible with MS-Formats, to get really free from booting Windows.