KDE 4.8 released for Arch

[MyWorld]

KDE 4.8 had been released with some improvements all round.

· Kwin optimizations;
· Adaptive power management, integrated with Activities;
· New QtQuick-based Plasma widgets;
· Ability to choose the layout of Plasma's Alt-Tab window switcher;
· Shared password storage was implemented in KSecretService;
· A new splash screen implementation using QtQuick;
· Improved on-screen keyboard;
· Better taskbars and docks with improved support for launchers and nicer context menus;
· Revamped device notifier widget;
· New picture-of-the-day wallpaper plugin;
· Dolphin got a lot faster and more prettier;
· Gwenview offers improved image viewing abilities and better usability;
· Okular has advanced text selection features;
· KMail received lots of performance improvements and bug fixes;
· Kate features a new Search & Replace plugin, a new editor, useful indicators, and more;
· Cantor received support for Scilab and Qalculate;
· Lokalize has better support for XLIFF (XML Localisation Interchange File Format) translation catalogs and TBX (TermBase eXchange) glossaries;
· Marble is now integrated with Plasma's KRunner;
· QtQuick was integrated in Plasma Workspaces allowing developers to easily port widget to QML;
· New Plasma QtQuick components provides standardized user interface elements;
· KDE Telepathy enters KDE Extragear.

http://news.softpedia.com/news/KDE-Software-Compilation-4-8-Officially-Released-248730.shtml

 

[milomak]

Dolphin got a lot faster and more prettier

This caught my eye. made me chuckle. in the way that a changelog is not technical at all.

 

[MyWorld]

Themes are a bit of a mess, stick to simple themes since it messes the whole desktop up pretty bad when you try and go for something fancy. Will have to look into this another day.

 

[fskmh]

One downside is that ConsoleKit is no longer being maintained. It looks like systemd is going to take over, which is going to be a headache for distros that haven't drunk the systemd koolaid yet :-/.

 

[ponder]

systemd will make it into most distros soon. Some already have it, others have it in their 'testing' releases.

 

[MyWorld]

For those struggling with windows themes:

In terminal:
chmod -R 666 ~/.local/share (Check your permissions in this file, should be RW at least, I just 777 mine.)

In System-> Application Appearance -> Style, choose QTCurve and set your theme preferences. (Or the theme of your choice)
Now in System-> Workspace Appearance-> Window Decorations, choose QTCurve and apply, should all be good now. (Or the decoration of your choice)

 

[MyWorld]

After restarting or logging back in all the default widgets are restored, no matter how many times you try and remove them.

For anyone struggling to remove the default widgets/launchers, here is the solution:

Delete those in the config file. Check for

[Containments][**][Applets][**][Configuration][Launchers]

in ~/.kde4/share/config/plasma-desktop-appletsrc

https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=134758