Monday, July 21, 2008

Sweet Dreams

After not having written for a longer time I can say that I spent the time on a very interesting and usefull matter:

In the beginning of the week I worked on some missing packages for our already some weeks old release 4.0.83 which still is the most recent release before the next major version 4.1. I rebuild kdegraphics and added new packages for kdeutils, kdemultimedia and kdepim. Especially interesting is kdemultimedia as I fixed phonon the weekend before and so KDE windows platform supports sound output now. Kdepim was really easy since KDAB has fixed nearly everything (except the packaging bugs that I introduced;-)).

Then somehow Carlo Segato (_Brandon_) came to the idea that he could take another look again at plasma. I tried this before but I didn't invest a lot of time and so it was still unknown which wonders were awaiting us there. After _Brandon_ came through really well and most of the problems I hit last time had magically vanished (thanks to aseigo probably) _Brandon_ showed me the first picture of the analog clock on windows:



This was just the start and after working for two more days, a lot of plasmoids have been built. The most interesting thing was that even the plasma desktop(the containment) was not very hard to fix and so only two days after we started the first efforts "the world's coolest geek toy(tm)" is available on Windows too:



There is still a lot to do as e.g. the panel is still not at the place where it should be and some of the classes have been simply disabled. Some obvious bugs are existing as well:
Rotating plasmoids doesn't work, some of your favourite plasmoids might be missing etc.
Nevertheless I put up some preview packages for kdebase-workspace(which contains plasma desktop), kdeplasma-addons and kdeplasma-playground (which both contain additional widgets). To get the desktop, simply run plasma.exe from kderoot\bin.

Please keep in mind that those packages are previews; Bug reports in bugs.kde.org are still unwanted!

As this was a really historic moment for me, I want to thank all those Persons that made this post possible for the one reason or the other!

(to be naming some that come to my mind: Aaron Seigo, Carlo Segato, Pau Garcia de Quiles, Christian Ehrlicher and Ralf Habacker, Anne-Marie Mahfouf and Jeremy Whiting, our users and all those of course that didn't came to my mind).

21 comments:

Anonymous said...

Wow, that's really amazing. And one more thing ... does this mean that you can already run KDE panels instead of Windows' ones? Not that I use Windows, but this might be an interesting concept.

Anonymous said...

Nice job!
IMHO the KDE Windows port is currently the most importand construction site.

Anonymous said...

great job!
one question:
does that mean, that it will be possible to use plasma.exe as a windows shell replacement?

Anonymous said...

is that plasma replacing the windows desktop? I can see definite possibilities with how I work in the office where I'm stuck on XP. The idea of being able to use folderviews has great potential

Anonymous said...

Great work, Patrick and the rest of the crew !

Looking forward to see you at Akademy :-)

Alex

Anonymous said...

Wow this looks very cool to me. But how can I test it, are there any prepackaged binarys I can download?

SaroEngels said...

ok, packages are available for the kdewin-installer, see techbase. plasma can be used as a shell replacement but it is far from complete for that purpose yet+I haven't tried it out yet.

Anonymous said...

This is indeed an historic moment :O
I can't believe (and actually never expected) what I'm seeing : the whole plasma desktop on windows O_O.

This is a great achievement. For the kde-win team AND for the plasma team (because this is a tremendous proof that plasma is really well designed)

congratulations !

Anonymous said...

offtopic but... is there any way to globally reduce the size of fonts used by kde4 apps on windows?
btw, congrats for the mayor achievement :-)

Anonymous said...

Any plans, thoughts or dreams to make this true for mac as well? Dashboard is awful.

BogdanBiv said...

"plasma can be used as a shell replacement but it is far from complete for that purpose yet+I haven't tried it out yet."

You suggest that plasma can become a cross-platform desktop shell. Is this true? If so it'll be marvelous!

As I understand it, all components of KDE will be able to run cross-platform. This is a major breakthrough for KDE!

I am an Ubuntu user, but I still like the idea that we will be able to offer KWin composite effects on Windows (2000, XP, Vista...).

If so I am sure a Mac OS X port of plasma & KWin will come close.

wmhilton said...

I never expected Plasma to run on Windows! In fact, I recall it being said specifically that the Plasma desktop would be a *nix-only feature. This is truly a pleasant surprise! Plasma can already run Plasmoids, Mac OSX widgets and Google gadgets... add Yahoo! Widgets and this would be the King Kong of widget platforms! Truly, this is the best thing to happen to Windows since Firefox! Boy, just wait till everybody starts seeing what Open Source software can do. I don't think this will slow Linux adoption, but rather it will get millions more people interested in Open Source. Just make sure the Windows version of Plasma doesn't get cooler than the Linux version!

@zbog: Slow down zbog! Nobody has said anything about the KWin window manager on Windows yet. Don't get your hopes up. I seriously doubt the Windows window manager can be overridden. (Of course, I didn't think Plasma would run either-you never know!)

Brandon said...

@lucian
it shouldn't be a problem to compile/run plasma on mac too, maybe it just need some minor fixes

@zbog
I doubt we will ever port kwin to windows because it should probably be completely rewritten rather than ported like we did with plasma

Anonymous said...

Even though there wouldn't be KWin, having Plasma as a windows shell would be absolutely awesome. It would be great to be able to move between operating systems with only minor changes in desktop environments. Very cool!

Anonymous said...

Nice job guys!
I'll go to try it right away.

Anonymous said...

But how can I install it,test it?
I don't see plasma.exe

Anonymous said...

I knew the Metin2 gold so I always try my best to earn them more and more to make myself strong. I have never played the game before, at the beginning I did not know what is so I went to kill the monsters with the Metin2 yang that I earned with myself in the game. I will duty bound to a friend to help brush the Cheap metin2 yang together with my friends. I spend a good relationship is then fly to tears. If my levels are very high, I can go to Buy metin2 gold more and more and I will not depend on my friends to help me to earn them. I get some Cheap metin2 gold as the gifts to encourage me.

Anonymous said...

The Gameim.com is offering you with Scions Of Fate money and all kinds of cheap game gold. Scions Of Fate gold is sometimes need to pay for in this Scions of Fate game. For example in this game, we have to buy sof gold to exchange premium in order to protect our character. The only part of this game will require you to pay SOF gold but they are optional for you to choose in the premium store. One very common item bought with cheap SOF gold at the store would be a pet.
Once you get through the orientation you will be well on your way to exploring the ways of making linden dollars. buy lindens is the step process and is the required step for our players have to do. I think that it is right and required, because nothing is free and in particular the cheap linden in Second Life game. You do not have to spend second life linden, you can be as solitary as you want to be too. So instead I am going to give you some secondlife money and the tip of the iceberg.

Anonymous said...

I did not know how to get strong, someone told me that you must have last chaos gold. He gave me some lastchaos gold, he said that I could buy last chaos gold, but I did not have money, then I played it all my spare time. From then on, I got some lastchaos money, if I did not continue to play it, I can sell cheap lastchaos gold to anyone who want.
Once I played 4story, I did not know how to get strong, someone told me that you must have 4story Luna. He gave me some 4story Gold, he said that I could buy 4story Luna, but I did not have money, then I played it all my spare time. From then on, I got some 4story money, if I did not continue to play it, I can sell cheap 4story Luna to anyone who want.

Gold Guide for World of Warcraft said...

good post :)

Anonymous said...

czyszczenie sławków dąbrowa katowice chorzów. wyrzynarke meblową z karcher odkurzaczem, jaworzno tanio i śmiesznie cheap. czyszczenie dywanów tanio ale także online odbywa się szybko i dokładnie wow.
Promocje związane z czyszczenie wykładzin tapicerek jest na prawdę tanie pranie.
Czyszczenie odbywa się u klienta. czyszczenie pranie cennik zamówienie minimum 40zł.
Ale dywanów tapicerek samochodowych cennik sosnowiec czyszczenie karcher zamówienie maks 70zł.
rfs czyszczenie tapicerki meblowej dla świeżości cennik galeria z prac pranie zamówienie maks 70zł.
Osobno dywan ale najpierw tapicerka meblowa cennik galeria z prac pranie zamówienie maks 70zł.
Osobno dywan ale najpierw tapicerka meblowa cennik galeria z prac pranie zamówienie maks 70zł.
Zamawiam wszystko do czyszczenia jest krzesło cennik galeria z prac pranie zamówienie maks 70zł.
najpierw tapicerka za darmo meblowa.h