Another update to KDE, it's now on version 4.6. Thinking back to the very first KDE 4.x release, there is no doubt that the KDE team have made a lot of progress to this date.
As a desktop environment KDE provides a modern looking and stylish desktop that feels fast and has plenty of eye candy.
Being a KDE fan I decided to give KDE 4.6 a go with openSUSE 11.3 since openSUSE provides the most polished user experience with KDE. By default openSUSE 11.3 ships with KDE 4.4.4 but the team have provided a stable KDE 4.5 repository which I highly recommend.
I believe plans for a stable KDE 4.6 repository are underway but at the moment openSUSE users have the option of using the Factory openSUSE KDE 4.6 repo. Essentially this provides an upstream version of KDE with openSUSE patches which is in the progress of being tested.
So after upgrading openSUSE 11.3 to KDE 4.6, in comparison to KDE 4.5.x there really isnt much difference apart from the odd visual and application tweaks here and there.
Disappointing?
Far from it, under the hood KDE 4.6 has undergone significant changes, such as the removal of HAL and shift to udev, upower and udisks. Improvements to kwin have resulted in a better performance. Overall I am more happy with the lack of obvious changes because I feel it illustrates KDE 4.x is starting to stabilise and mature into a rock solid desktop environment,
End users such as myself are starting to get tired of drastic changes with each update of KDE, the release of 4.6 makes a nice change and hopefully marks a new stage for KDE. A stage that will perhaps focus a bit more on the end user.
So if you are serious about KDE, get openSUSE 11.3.
Smoke some Tumbleweed
If the excitement of KDE 4.6 isn't enough, then why not try the openSUSE Tumbleweed repository?
As announced not so long ago, openSUSE is looking into the possibility of becoming a rolling release.Simply add their Tumbleweed repository to your system to benefit from more up to date and stable packages.Currently this includes kernel 2.6.37.
openSUSE 11.3, KDE 4.6 and Kernel 2.6.37 at more or less at the click of a button!
openSUSE - http://www.opensuse.org/en/
Would love to see you add a link to a howto document. I ended up here looking for just that.
ReplyDeleteThe openSUSE KDE 4.6 repo is not considered stable.
ReplyDeleteSo there is the risk it make break your system.
If you wish to upgrade openSUSE 11.3 to KDE 4.6, open a terminal and run these 2 commands as root.
zypper addrepo http://download.opensuse.org/repositories/KDE:/Distro:/Factory/openSUSE_11.3/ kde-4.6-factory
zypper dist-upgrade
Actually I just upgraded today from stable or semi stable repos:
ReplyDeleteDisable your old KDE repositories and add the two repos mentioned in http://en.opensuse.org/KDE_repositories#Upstream_release_aka._KR46_.28KDE_SC_4.6.29
* Core packages: http://download.opensuse.org/repositories/KDE:/Release:/46/openSUSE_11.3/
* Extra: http://download.opensuse.org/repositories/KDE:/Extra/KDE_Release_46_openSUSE_11.3/
Add the unstable for extra apps if you wish, but that is optional
* Unstable:Playground: http://download.opensuse.org/repositories/KDE:/Unstable:/Playground/KDE_Release_46_openSUSE_11.3/
After you add them, if you are using yast2, fire up the Software Management and after the repos get autorefreshed go to Package >> All Packages >> Update if newer version available
That did the trick for me.
As I said I just upgraded and it seems to be faster. I only run into a sound card problem, that was resolved by the click of a button. :-)