12/2/2023 0 Comments Linux kernel 4.4Hello (creating and) manually editing an nf file, and spending several hours on cryptic X errors.īut the difficulty in using the closed drivers isn’t really the fault of X’s maintainers, and will be less and less of a concern as the open drivers improve. This was… not nearly so pleasant an experience. ![]() To get real hardware-accelerated rendering, not to mention to be able to use my dual-head system at a higher resolution than 640×480 a piece, I had to install the proprietary nvidia driver. And, apparently, GLX was using MESA (in software). Except… for whatever reason, the open-source NV driver appears to allow the multiple desktops of a dual-head system to have a total area of all of 1280×1280. It came up flawlessly, recognized both my monitors, etc. I installed Sidux Linux at work recently. The biggest problem right now is simply the limited nature of the open-source drivers: they don’t provide full functionality on many platforms, requiring use of the closed drivers – which are not nearly so well integrated with X, don’t support many of it’s shiney-and-new features, and aren’t as stable. In fact, many modern distributions no longer include nf files – for example, Sidux Linux 2009.4 and Slackware 13 don’t. It does a pretty good job configuring itself, and you can re-configure it on the fly: mucking about with nf usually isn’t necessary. If you do, modern X is actually quite nice. That is entirely true – at least, if you use one of the open-source drivers. The impatient can build KDE 4.4 from source, but of course, it will find its way to your distribution of choice soon enough. KDE SC 4.4 also starts leveraging Akonadi, which “acts as a transparant cache to email-, groupware-servers and other online resources”. The KAuth framework leverages PolicyKit so that developers can write applications that can easily elevate privileges if the need to so arises – for instance within System Settings. ![]() Under the hood, we see Qt 4.6, which brings with it a new animation framework, support for multitouch, and support for the Symbian platform. There’s also a new timeline view which displays recently used files chronologically. Search is now integrated into Dolphin and makes use of Nepomuk’s semantic framework to help users in finding and organising their stuff. ![]() The file manager, Dolphin, has seen improvements too. Support for scalable graphics in KWin themes has been added, and performance should be increased too – still somewhat of a sore spot in KDE4. KWin can now tab windows together, with the titlebars turning into tabs you can switch between. ![]() Kudos to KDE for implementing these features – whether they come from somewhere else, or not. Just as Apple’s Exposé, Windows 7’s Aero Snap is simply a very handy and sensible feature that ought to be copied simply to make my life as a user easier. KWin has also seen a number of feature additions, which mostly can be summed up as: copy the hell out of Windows 7: move to the top to maximise, move to the left or right to fill half the screen (for side-by-side viewing). “Plasma Netbook shares many components with the Plasma Desktop, but is specifically designed to make good use of the small space, and to be more suitable also for touchscreen input,” the KDE team writes, “The Plasma Netbook shell features a full-screen application launcher and search interface, and a Newspaper which offers many widgets to display content from the web and small utilities already known from Plasma Netbook’s sibling.”Ī lot of work has also been done to integrate social networks and other online services into Plasma, making it easier to manage those via Plasma widgets there’s a widget for posting to various social networks, as well as a widget for following what your friends are doing. One of the major additions is the Plasma Netbook interface, which has been in development for a while now. Major new features include social networking and online collaboration integration, the new netbook interface, the KAuth authentication framework, and a lot more. And there we are, the KDE team has released KDE Software Compilation 4.4, formerly known as, well, KDE.
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