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Title says all. KDE 1.1.2 is out for the masses. Press release is here. Please use the Mirrors . (note: ftp.kde.org doesn't have the files yet, but ftp.de.kde.org. have it). Go get it. Try the themes and the new (and very colourful) icons, and enjoy. Update: Currently, it's available only as a .tar.gz, and .tar.bz2, and for Debian (Sparc & Intel). No binaries for most of the distributions yet. (RedHat - please make it faster this time - hint!)

Title says all. KDE 1.1.2 is out for the masses. Press release is here. Please use the Mirrors . (note: ftp.kde.org doesn't have the files yet, but ftp.de.kde.org. have it). Go get it. Try the themes and the new (and very colourful) icons, and enjoy. Update: Currently, it's available only as a .tar.gz, and .tar.bz2, and for Debian (Sparc & Intel). No binaries for most of the distributions yet. (RedHat - please make it faster this time - hint!)

coolo wrote in to say that Caldera has decided to release Lizard under the QPL. Lizard is the installer that they use for their distribution- its fairly nice looking and appears to be exactly what novices need to get over that whole install hump. I've heard a lot of good things about it, so this is a pretty cool thing on their part..

teraflop user writes "The Enlightenment window manager now works with KDE, along with a load of other window managers. If you want to run the same window manager under Gnome and KDE, you now have several choices, including E, Blackbox and WindowMaker. "

Having finally flown back home, recovered from the gain/loss of sleep, time zones, and of course, the obligatory luggage being lost, we're trying to wrap-up the latest installment of LinuxWorld. If you are interested in some commentary and stories coming out of LWCE, click below. The big issue of LWCE was something that didn't occur even in the same state as the show. The Red Hat IPO, complete with lotsa confusion and news went up, and showed that, yes, Wall Street is interested in Linux.

One of the more interesting commentaries brought up the newest Linux Spokesperson-Casper Weinberger. Yes, the former Secretary of Defense is an Open Source guy. Strange. It also brings up the living penguins that were on the show floor. I dunno-it still seems to me that live animals on a show floor has to be tantamount of animal abuse, under some sort of law.

A number of good interviews came out of the show - one with RMS where he talks about the whole GNU/Linux thing, Communism. The interview is done in the inimitable Stallman style, so...be warned. *grin* In a parellel vein, ESR talked with ZD, foretelling amongst other things, the downfall of Microsoft and FUD issues. MSNBC did a nice story on Gnome, giving it some of the props needed. The KDE folks were also at the shows, with some nice displays at their screen in the booth.

We spent almost every waking moment in the .Org pavilion, a scary sort of place with furniture with no back support, and lots of people wandering through. Included amongst these people was no less then three documentary film crews. I think two+ is a sign that a movement has reached commericial mainstream. So, uh, congrats to....someone.

Some great picture shots came in - thanks, as always, to Marc Merlins' wrap-up complete with some good shots. Marc's, as always, is incredible comprehensive. Read it. If you want some shots of .Org pavilion, the Slashdot party (Woo-hoo! Good beer! *grin* ), check out Joey Hess' page. HUGE # of pictures, and still more going up.

The show was fun. Lotsa people who we don't get to see, except at the conventions. The commericial element was stronger then at the last show, but I think it was evident that the companies attending understood that they at least needed to give a nod to the feelings of the Community. This being the 2nd round of a show this size, I think the initial glamour of "Woo! Big Show!" is wearing off, and people are getting to work at these. It makes things a little less glamourous, but what the attendees/exhibitors of the show did see is that Linux is something to be taken seriously. Every major media outlet had people there, warndering the floor, and media like CNN ran pieces about it during the show. With the first IPO under its' belt, the establishment of several major shows, and major vendors established on the scene, I think Linux continued success looks good.

The KDE Development team progress seems very good these days. You can now take a look at some screenshots from the KDE 2 pre alpha. Also, the KDevelop team has announced today the 1.0 Beta 1 version of KDevelop. I must say it looks very promising.

Andreas Pour sent linkage to a page where you can get the KDE mascot in T-shirt form (half the profits go to KDE). Hubert Figuiere sent us pictures from the Paris LinuxExpo if you weren't in France. Brian sent us How Stuff Works. Its actually not bad. cpfeifer wrote in to send us some spoofed book covers including Taking Down the Internet in 30mins for Dummies and IP Spoofing for Dummies. More here. An anonymous reader sent us Prozac Pez if you've been having a rough day. Dwonis sent us a point-form description of Geeks, Twits and Nerds, and the differences between them. aspodf wrote in to show us what happens when Red Meat and Star Wars come together at last. CowboyNeal sent us a link to Career Path which has a Personality Quiz that tells if you are a Jedi Master, or a Sith Lord. I think Neal ended up an Ewok *grin*.

Andreas Pour sent linkage to a page where you can get the KDE mascot in T-shirt form (half the profits go to KDE). Hubert Figuiere sent us pictures from the Paris LinuxExpo if you weren't in France. Brian sent us How Stuff Works. Its actually not bad. cpfeifer wrote in to send us some spoofed book covers including Taking Down the Internet in 30mins for Dummies and IP Spoofing for Dummies. More here. An anonymous reader sent us Prozac Pez if you've been having a rough day. Dwonis sent us a point-form description of Geeks, Twits and Nerds, and the differences between them. aspodf wrote in to show us what happens when Red Meat and Star Wars come together at last. CowboyNeal sent us a link to Career Path which has a Personality Quiz that tells if you are a Jedi Master, or a Sith Lord. I think Neal ended up an Ewok *grin*.

kwak writes "Looks like KDE is getting an Imlib equivalence in the just announced collaboration with the ImageMagick team. This brings improved graphical effects and conversions to the ever expanding KDE code base."

Well, the title says all - a new version of KDE is out with many bugs fixed, better stability, and imporved internet connectivity. Here is the press release and the changelog . You can download the files here (people with Redhat 6.0 Please check this doc). I hope that Linuxberg will have those files really quick.

Well, the title says all - a new version of KDE is out with many bugs fixed, better stability, and imporved internet connectivity. Here is the press release and the changelog . You can download the files here (people with Redhat 6.0 Please check this doc). I hope that Linuxberg will have those files really quick.

Well, the title says all - a new version of KDE is out with many bugs fixed, better stability, and imporved internet connectivity. Here is the press release and the changelog . You can download the files here (people with Redhat 6.0 Please check this doc). I hope that Linuxberg will have those files really quick.

Well, the title says all - a new version of KDE is out with many bugs fixed, better stability, and imporved internet connectivity. Here is the press release and the changelog . You can download the files here (people with Redhat 6.0 Please check this doc). I hope that Linuxberg will have those files really quick.

An anonymousr reader pointed us to this Linux Today story that has the new KDE mascot. Its an unnamed rendered dragon- the lighting on some of the renders looks like it needs a bit of work, and although he doesn't beat the FreeBSD Demon, he's pretty cool. Check out dragon1.jpg, dragon2.jpg, dragon3.jpg, and dragon4.jpg. The server is really slow, so someone post a mirror?

An anonymousr reader pointed us to this Linux Today story that has the new KDE mascot. Its an unnamed rendered dragon- the lighting on some of the renders looks like it needs a bit of work, and although he doesn't beat the FreeBSD Demon, he's pretty cool. Check out dragon1.jpg, dragon2.jpg, dragon3.jpg, and dragon4.jpg. The server is really slow, so someone post a mirror?

An anonymousr reader pointed us to this Linux Today story that has the new KDE mascot. Its an unnamed rendered dragon- the lighting on some of the renders looks like it needs a bit of work, and although he doesn't beat the FreeBSD Demon, he's pretty cool. Check out dragon1.jpg, dragon2.jpg, dragon3.jpg, and dragon4.jpg. The server is really slow, so someone post a mirror?

An anonymousr reader pointed us to this Linux Today story that has the new KDE mascot. Its an unnamed rendered dragon- the lighting on some of the renders looks like it needs a bit of work, and although he doesn't beat the FreeBSD Demon, he's pretty cool. Check out dragon1.jpg, dragon2.jpg, dragon3.jpg, and dragon4.jpg. The server is really slow, so someone post a mirror?

Martin Bialasinski wrote in to send us a press release from Corel which says that future their Linux upcoming Distribution will be based on Debian (Yay!) and KDE.

belbo writes "According to a notice on KDE's news page Redhat is now funding two KDE developers in their efforts to port KDE to the upcoming open-sourced QT 2.0." Indeed KDE 1.1 is apparently in Red Hat 5.9. Furthermore, Moritz Moeller - Herrmann tells us that our ubiquitous friend Kalle Dalheimer announced to the KDE-dev list that " KDE was awarded "Innovation of the Year 1998/99" in the category software at a Ziff-Davis event in relation to the CeBIT fair. The other finalists were Lotus eSuite and Microtest Visual CD. This award is a great achievement of the whole KDE team! Congratulations to all of you! We will provide scanned pictures of the award and other items we got (like posters and stickers) as soon as possible on the KDE web site." Finally, Linux Today has a brand new look and is sporting interviews with people of the Linux community. In one of them, Corel CEO Micheal Cowpland reveals that Corel's open-source GUI will be based on KDE. Please folks, don't let this good news bring on a flame-war. Many people want to choose which desktop suits them best: GNOME, GNUStep, KDE are all worthy contenders.

An anonymous reader wrote in to say that The KDE screenshots page has been updated and now has exciting new screenshots of KDE 1.1. Several nice ones in there showing off nifty new features for future versions of KDE. Quite smooth. Update: 03/08 03:21 by S : Kurt Granroth of KDE wrote in this correction: "None of the screenshots feature advanced or "future" features. All screenshots are stock 1.1 desktops!"

An anonymous reader wrote in to say that The KDE screenshots page has been updated and now has exciting new screenshots of KDE 1.1. Several nice ones in there showing off nifty new features for future versions of KDE. Quite smooth. Update: 03/08 03:21 by S : Kurt Granroth of KDE wrote in this correction: "None of the screenshots feature advanced or "future" features. All screenshots are stock 1.1 desktops!"

erich@wrq.com was the first to tell us that KDE 1.1 is released.Update: 02/07 10:38 by H : It appears that while the annoucement has been made the binaries are not yet availible-should be up any time now. Update: 02/07 02:55 by CT : thanks to Christian Kreibich for the KDE Logo.

Robert Flemming wrote in to say that KDE 1.1pre2 is out. I also noticed that GNOME has 0.99.3 RPMs available now if you're into that. LoCoPuff sent us a link to a CNN article about theWindows Refund that mentions Slashdot and quotes me (cough cough). Nate wrote in to say "Brian Eno's "Oblique Strategies" meet the Everything 2 code in The Oblique Strategies Garden. Indeterminacy=fun. " Robert Dale sent us a parody of Iggy Pop's Lust for Life called Lust For Linux (surprise) For todays Star Wars bits, Alan Shutko sent us a link to pictures of Official Star Wars Legos. And the todays flashback comes from The_Black_Macrame who sent a link to the complete errata list from the original Star Wars. It's an oldie, but a goodie. hangman got bored and decided to trash a DEC 2100 and post pictures. Check it out if you're into computer mutilation. An anonymous reader sent us a link to one image you don't want to see on an ATM. And lastly, jhack sent us a link to a nice little page on painting your mac black if you happen to think that blue color is a bit excessive. The final results are pretty sharp. Now stop reading quickies and go compile your 2.2 kernel.

Well, after yesterday's article about LinuxWorld and KDE, the facts have come to light-it wasn't LinuxWorld at all. The following is a letter from Bernd Wuebben, KDE contact in the USA: "A previously posted news bit on stated that the KDE project was asked to pay $1500 for a booth at Linux World. This statement is incorrect. The truth is that the KDE project was asked by a representative of the Linux _Expo_ (Note: NOT Linux World) whether we would like to have a booth at the Linux Expo. We communicated our interest and were told that Linux Expo would be happy to give us a booth for the price of $1500. While I do not know who 'leaked' internal information in distorted incorrect form to slashdot, I would like to take this opportunity to apologize to Linux World in the name of the KDE project. Linux World and its organizers have been very supportive of KDE and in particulare ask/invited us to attend Linux World.". Whew-that makes a whole lot more sense. (CT: the news bit from KDEs site has disappeared without explanation.)

An anonymous reader wrote in to submit a link to the KDE News Page from which an excerpt follows: "The LinuxWorld organizers indicated to KDE developer Bernd Wuebben that in order for KDE to have a booth in there, a fee starting from $1500 has to be payed. KDE being an Open Source project and being based on voluteer participation, [it] is not likely that this amount of money will be payed."

The German Linux site is reporting that the first KDE 1.1 alpha preview has been released. Now, since I do not personally use KDE, this might only be a snapshot like E DR-0.15 was. However the source files are marked alpha 1. This new release contains more apps, a Mac Style, and an improved integrated web-browser. English speakers can also see the German Linux site in English. German readers might like to participate in the Christmas Quiz (nice prizes).

The German Linux site is reporting that the first KDE 1.1 alpha preview has been released. Now, since I do not personally use KDE, this might only be a snapshot like E DR-0.15 was. However the source files are marked alpha 1. This new release contains more apps, a Mac Style, and an improved integrated web-browser. English speakers can also see the German Linux site in English. German readers might like to participate in the Christmas Quiz (nice prizes).

With all the Word Perfect 8 hype going on (how many of you downloaded that beast yesterday?) an Anonymous reader wrote in to note that there are knew KWord Screenshots Online. Check them out- if the code works as good as it looks, WP8 is gonna be out for some competition.

Booker sent us a link to the KDE website: and a quick quote from it "Our release coordination master, Kalle Dalheimer announced the accomplishment of the second step in the way of the code freeze towards the big KDE-1.1. Since today, the libraries MediaTool, KFile, JScript, KFMLib, Kab, KImgIO and KSpell are closed to commiting until the final release. Only major bugs corrections can be further on operated on this code. Only 8 (eight) days are remaining until the complete freeze of the CVS."

George Russell writes "There is a new QPL draft available. On a less contentious note, Qt 1.42 is out. " It is important to note that the QPL isn't yet finalized, so there's still much discussion to be had. Could we try to keep the flames down on this one, please?

Avus writes "I just checked the new StarOffice's KDE integration and it's really amazing! Drag'n'Drop works perfectly, icons and types are automatically registered with KDE so that kfm can display and handle files correctly. And, they not only upgrade the KDE menu, they even include parts of it into their own startup menu. Very interesting is that the toolkit doesn't play a role here. I'd love to see more of such efforts, let's hope Corel & others are listening. This is how it should be! " The page also contains a news bit that Red Hat while be including KDE in its German version.

Linux Power has a nice interview with Kalle of KDE. In it we learn that Kalle was on the original StarOffice Linux Porting team. KDE already exists in 25 languages, including Chinese. Kalle still believes that Qt is the right library for rapid development (he repeats this often throughout the interview). And while many argue that the price of diversity is less rapid development, Kalle sees it as an incentive to work harder. The key is that both GNOME and KDE are targeted at giving base Windows users an option to move to Linux.

Charlie Stross writes "It's worth keeping an eye on lists.kde.org. If you look here you'll see the internal announcement that KDE 1.1 is imminent. Release is due 14 days after freeze (on October 26th)." After that release, KDE will begin working at using Corba, as well as all sorts of wacky new features. Check it out.

Thomas Muldowney writes "The KDE folks have released static KOffice binaries for download. They are unsupported but worth a look. Details on how to obtain and install KOffice binaries are available here "

Thomas Muldowney writes "The KDE folks have released static KOffice binaries for download. They are unsupported but worth a look. Details on how to obtain and install KOffice binaries are available here "

Kevin Forge has written in with an interesting piece called Lawyers use WordPerfect. It talks about his view on free software vs. commercial software, and especially commercial software on free Operating Systems. Check it out. The following is a feature written by Slashdot reader Kevin Forge Lawyers use Word Perfect Each time even a rumor of a commercial app being ported to Linux is mentioned we get comments that run the gamut from ; "Let's all go buy this to show our support for the platform" to "We can achieve most everything that prog offers by using these open source tools so why should we trust our important work to this propriatery bloatware ?".

"who wants world domination"?

We constantly hear the argument that Linux will achieve world domination or that a significant percentage of all computers will be run on Linux in a few years. However to achieve either goal Linux must be a viable option for people with real business needs now.

This brings me to the lawyers we all love to hate. I am siting in a Lawyer's office waiting to be paid for fixing Windows 95 on 2 PCs ( again ) when a client walks out having just spelled out the details of her divorce ( loud enough for me to hear ). Before she is in the parking lot the laser starts spiting out the 1st page of a 30 page court document for her case.

How the hell could that be done so fast ?

Simple It was already done. The details that change are few and far between. Things like names, addresses and dates. Once these are entered into fields a macro is run that generates your own customized "I can't live with this bum anymore" court filling.

Don't discount inertia

Now you could say it's easy enough to do this kind of thing with a shell script on a Linux system without the added expense of Word Perfect. However it took these people years to tune operations and learn WP to the point where this became a practical time saving prosedure. To move this operation to existing open source software would mean learning all these tricks again.

How important is the cost of changing ? Well these same lawyers buy new PCs preburdend with MSOffice 97 and promptly upgrade to Corel Perfect Office 8 or even 7 in order that they can keep using the same techniques. Sure those features are available on MSOffice and the learning curve from one Windows app to another is tiny compared to moving to traditional Unix tools. However an even lower cost is simply shelling out a hundred bucks for a CD from Corel.

Where does Linux fit?

Well with WP on Linux the barriers to entry become significantly lower for Lawyers. Simply put, a Penguin preloaded and configured with XDM, KDE, WP8 and Laserjet support has the same learning curve as moving up to a Dell with NT4 or 98 and WP8. With the massive reliability gap taken into consideration they could see Linux as a cost effective solution and another group joins ISPs and tech companies as Linux users.

Where does this leave the open source word processors ?

I see no reason to not continue aggressive development of the better GPLed Word Processors. K/LyX is moving well and there is talk of a serious contender from the Gnome camp. Maxwell, which shines among Linux apps has been GPLed with a flat request to "port it to Gnome and KDE" ( It's Motif based ). One of these will eventually become a challenger to WP across the board. By then Word Perfect will be accustomed to maintaining a quality lead that enables them to survive against a free challenger. In other words those without money or who attend "The church of Emacs" will have good WPs and the rest of us will have slightly better WPs.

Telling people to "accept the open source concept" if they want to use Linux or to "GPL all code that you will release on Linux" is completely pointless. Even RMS knows this which is why he wrote the LGPL.

This applies to the SQL people too.

Right now all but 2 of the large database makers are officially supporting their products on Linux. IBM programmers say a port is running in the lab ( I have no reason to doubt this for even a second ) and Microsoft would prefer to pretend Linux doesn't exist (let's return the favor :). Some months ago I argued that Oracle wouldn't ever port to Linux until they saw it as a "port or die" desision at which point they would start selling the DB for Linux they already have running in the labs. The reality is a little more impressive than the speculation. It seems all these vendors will be giving away products in order to establish market share. Is it just me or do other people think they are trying to get a significant piece of the Linux DB pie before it gets big?

Should we all just run out and buy these programs to show our support?

No. That's just crazy. Let the free market have it's say. There are evaluation versions of the better stuff floating around. If you find it's good enough to keep beyond the evaluation period then fork over the dough. That doesn't mean you need to wait out the full period however, just until you know it's a keeper. We should buy them if they are of some use to us. We should buy them if they are good. It's your money spend it wisely, you now have choices.

Bob Bell was the first to write in and let us all know KDE has finally hit the big 1.0! Something that a lot of you have been waiting for a long time, I'm sure. Markus Fleck (aka python) wrote in to tell us that Red Hat has hired Preston Brown, the author of KOrganizer, and a recent volunteer to the Harmony Project. Harmony is the project to provide a free and superior Qt replacement. An interesting turn of events, indeed...

Mark Feathers writes "Apparently KDE has made an official announcement for the pre-release of 1.0. The bummer is, no Red Hat RPM's. They are supporting SuSE but decline Red Hat stating incompatabilities with different libraries and versions. " Update Sirtaj Singh Kang wrote in to explain why there aren't any RPMs: they weren't planning on distributing binaries of pre2 at all. So give up the conspiracy theories people, its getting old.

Mark Feathers writes "Apparently KDE has made an official announcement for the pre-release of 1.0. The bummer is, no Red Hat RPM's. They are supporting SuSE but decline Red Hat stating incompatabilities with different libraries and versions. " Update Sirtaj Singh Kang wrote in to explain why there aren't any RPMs: they weren't planning on distributing binaries of pre2 at all. So give up the conspiracy theories people, its getting old.

Jason T. Collins writes "According to a release schedule posted on the kde developer's mailing list, 1.0pre1 will be released in one week. Existing snapshots are already extremely close to being frozen, and core libraries will be frozen in just over 24 hours from now."

Caldera Inc. recently reduced the price of Netscape Fasttrack for OpenLinux to $49. Fasttrack offers interesting features like server-side Java and Javascript, log analysis and encryption. A quick look at Netscape's online store shows that Netscape itselfs sells the same entry-level webserver for $295 on other unices.
Some other news on Caldera: according to the KDE homepage Caldera Openlinux 1.2 ships with KDE, but I couldn't find details on this. Anyone got more info?

Robert Owens wrote in to tell us to check the Kirc Page for a rant by Aaron Granick, creator of Kirc, who is going through something to many of us have experienced. With a flood of email complaining about problems, and no chance to make any money back, sometimes an Open Source developer can get really burned out. (I wish I had more time to fix all of My Stuff, it really gets disheartening sometimes). He also talks about lack of standardization of X tool kits, as well as the downside of KDE. It's a heartfelt bit that a lot of us can sympathize witih.

max lingua wrote in with the joyous announcement that KDE Beta 4 is now out. Course I can't seem to connect to the FTP server, but I'll just sorta assume that its true. The last beta was fairly stable, I'm tempted to switch to KDE for a few weeks just to familiarize myself with it. And heck, I want to give qtScape a shot too. Wish I had a T1 at home...

max lingua wrote in with the joyous announcement that KDE Beta 4 is now out. Course I can't seem to connect to the FTP server, but I'll just sorta assume that its true. The last beta was fairly stable, I'm tempted to switch to KDE for a few weeks just to familiarize myself with it. And heck, I want to give qtScape a shot too. Wish I had a T1 at home...

Here is something to think about. A friendly war is being waged over what your X desktop will look like in the years to one. Hit the link below to read about the two major contenters, KDE and Gnome, what I think about them, and why they need to work together.

The Battle for the Unix Dekstop is on. It's pretty much accepted that nobody cares about CDE anymore, and the future lies along another path. But what path is that? Two have emerged now. The major contendors for our future are Gnome and KDE.

There are many similiarities between the two standards. Both feature good looking, extensible widget sets. Both provide a unified look and feel accrossed applications. And both have an army of passionate supporters.

But the differences are where the problems lie. KDE has been criticized for it's use of Qt, Troll's popular widget set used in numerous applications. The problem is that Qt isn't "Free" in the RMS definition of the word. People beat on K for this. Realisticly, Qt is 'Free Enough' for all but the most hard core user, but many people are opposed to the tool kits we rely on being anything less than Free. I don't think that this alone is reason to shelf KDE, but it looks like public opinion is headed that way already.

The second major opposition to KDE is the similiarities that it has with Windows. Hard core unix users often use unix to get away from the interface that KDE has tried so hard to emulate. The similiar widgets, and the start-button like cascading menu however are a good start for new users seeking handholding as they adapt to a new OS. I think it's important that the veteran Unix users realize that, and just remember that this interface is for the newbies.

Gnome doesn't have license issues- the G in Gnome stands for GNU, and the whole package is under the GPL. Gnome is the younger of the desktop options, and it shows. While K has a full Window Manager and numerous applications showing off slick integration, Gnome is all rough edges. But these rough edges are being smoothed at an amazing rate as GTK gets closer and closer to one point oh. And don't forget the premiere Gnome Application, The Gimp. A new desktop won't drive installation for many systems, but the Gimp will. And since you already need GTK, why not throw the rest of Gnome on too? This reasoning will drive Gnome forward.

Recently RedHat opened up their Advanced Development Labs and announced that one of their major projects was advancing the X desktop. To that end, they snagged Raster, one of the talented programmers largely responsible for The Enlightenment Window Manager. Soon after, Raster ported E's image library (imlib) to work with Gnome's GDK.

But now KDE has released beta 3, and while the stability is a bit lacking, and there are holes you could drive a family sized sedan through, it is a cohesive product that is getting very close to it's goal of producing a standard X based desktop that looks good, is easy for a new user to adapt too, and is reasonably customizable and extendable. Some distributions have decided that K is already strong enough to ship.

But what now? I wish I had a simple answer here, but I don't. I see 2 groups of people working on amazing software. But I don't want this whole effort to result in the need for every modern unix system to install 2 more sets of libraries to run a few more applications. And I don't want to see programming efforts duplicated by multiple people around the world.

I don't mind diversity, it really is what makes Unix the cool thing it is today, but this time we need to work together. Both KDE and Gnome have a web browser. This can't be efficient! Both will have status indicators, irc clients, panel applications, task viewers and text editors. And each of these programs will have a couple of talented coders hacking away on them.

So I don't know what the answer is. Perhaps a set of C++ wrapper classes that allow KDE applications to compile under GTK? There must be away to bring together these 2 wonderful products in a way that allows both of them to accomplish their goal of a better UI for X in less time.

What do you guys think?

Here is something to think about. A friendly war is being waged over what your X desktop will look like in the years to one. Hit the link below to read about the two major contenters, KDE and Gnome, what I think about them, and why they need to work together.

The Battle for the Unix Dekstop is on. It's pretty much accepted that nobody cares about CDE anymore, and the future lies along another path. But what path is that? Two have emerged now. The major contendors for our future are Gnome and KDE.

There are many similiarities between the two standards. Both feature good looking, extensible widget sets. Both provide a unified look and feel accrossed applications. And both have an army of passionate supporters.

But the differences are where the problems lie. KDE has been criticized for it's use of Qt, Troll's popular widget set used in numerous applications. The problem is that Qt isn't "Free" in the RMS definition of the word. People beat on K for this. Realisticly, Qt is 'Free Enough' for all but the most hard core user, but many people are opposed to the tool kits we rely on being anything less than Free. I don't think that this alone is reason to shelf KDE, but it looks like public opinion is headed that way already.

The second major opposition to KDE is the similiarities that it has with Windows. Hard core unix users often use unix to get away from the interface that KDE has tried so hard to emulate. The similiar widgets, and the start-button like cascading menu however are a good start for new users seeking handholding as they adapt to a new OS. I think it's important that the veteran Unix users realize that, and just remember that this interface is for the newbies.

Gnome doesn't have license issues- the G in Gnome stands for GNU, and the whole package is under the GPL. Gnome is the younger of the desktop options, and it shows. While K has a full Window Manager and numerous applications showing off slick integration, Gnome is all rough edges. But these rough edges are being smoothed at an amazing rate as GTK gets closer and closer to one point oh. And don't forget the premiere Gnome Application, The Gimp. A new desktop won't drive installation for many systems, but the Gimp will. And since you already need GTK, why not throw the rest of Gnome on too? This reasoning will drive Gnome forward.

Recently RedHat opened up their Advanced Development Labs and announced that one of their major projects was advancing the X desktop. To that end, they snagged Raster, one of the talented programmers largely responsible for The Enlightenment Window Manager. Soon after, Raster ported E's image library (imlib) to work with Gnome's GDK.

But now KDE has released beta 3, and while the stability is a bit lacking, and there are holes you could drive a family sized sedan through, it is a cohesive product that is getting very close to it's goal of producing a standard X based desktop that looks good, is easy for a new user to adapt too, and is reasonably customizable and extendable. Some distributions have decided that K is already strong enough to ship.

But what now? I wish I had a simple answer here, but I don't. I see 2 groups of people working on amazing software. But I don't want this whole effort to result in the need for every modern unix system to install 2 more sets of libraries to run a few more applications. And I don't want to see programming efforts duplicated by multiple people around the world.

I don't mind diversity, it really is what makes Unix the cool thing it is today, but this time we need to work together. Both KDE and Gnome have a web browser. This can't be efficient! Both will have status indicators, irc clients, panel applications, task viewers and text editors. And each of these programs will have a couple of talented coders hacking away on them.

So I don't know what the answer is. Perhaps a set of C++ wrapper classes that allow KDE applications to compile under GTK? There must be away to bring together these 2 wonderful products in a way that allows both of them to accomplish their goal of a better UI for X in less time.

What do you guys think?

Mike T wrote in to tell us that KDE has got version 3 out for download. Mike says "They have ecgs, libc6, deb, rpm, src.rpm and tar.gz" so everyone should be happy.

Mike T wrote in to tell us that KDE has got version 3 out for download. Mike says "They have ecgs, libc6, deb, rpm, src.rpm and tar.gz" so everyone should be happy.