"Around 3 weeks ago, I downloaded the 2nd beta of KDE 3.2 from their FTP site. I've been using this release every day since then. The purpose of my writing this piece is not to highlight KDE 3.2's new features and applications--read the Changelog at KDE's site for that--but to give you a complete picture of how it measures up to its previous versions in terms of everyday use. Does it make me more productive? Is the command line more efficient yet? Or, even better, does it make me use the command line more effectively? Read on...
"The target machine--my only computer--is a Pentium II 266 MHz with 384 MB RAM, with an Intel i810E chipset. The graphics card and sound card are both onboard. There are 3 hard disks--40GB, 8.4GB and 2.1GB, and a 52x CD writer. This machine runs Fedora Core Release 1 (my primary OS), Red Hat Linux 9, Mandrake Linux 9.2, Debian Linux unstable, FreeBSD 5.1, Windows 2000 and Windows XP (whew!). The rpms for KDE 3.2 for Fedora Core1 are available at KDE's FTP site. The entire rpm set, minus the internationalization stuff, is a 192MB download. An upgrade to this beta is a simple matter of 'rpm -Uvh ./*.rpm --nodeps --force' . I performed this upgrade while logged into Gnome. Any other Desktop Environment or even the console would work. It's just that upgrading KDE while running KDE wouldn't be too good an idea, though I haven't been that adventurous. Ten minutes later, I'm logged in to my swanky new KDE 3.2 desktop..."
