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Why is the very old KDE logo still used by slashdot?
http://www.kde.org/stuff/clipart.php

Nostalgia. We're all getting older, regardless of how many teenagers newly sign up.

While I appreciate the efforts KDE programmers have put into making KDE really usable, I wish they (KDE developers), would focus their efforts at reducing the huge number of bugs in KDE 4.x and improve the user experience.

I know KDE is a mostly voluntary effort but in the current situation of over 50,000 bugs, introducing even more features which translates to more bugs does not help at all.

I tried the latest KDE on a 2.4 GHz, 512MB RAM system with an on board graphics card and I must say I was underwhelmed. The system (Kubuntu) was so slow.

Heck...why is it so hard for programmers to make KDE beautiful by default?b Operative word here is "default". Why do the menus and widgets have to be huge...wasting space?

I had to say this otherwise I know I will be castigated for saying what is true and is on my mind.

Why is the very old KDE logo still used by slashdot?
http://www.kde.org/stuff/clipart.php

So I took a look at that Foxit Reader just now on the VM. Yuck. At least it allows you to opt out of the crap it trys to add in.

I will stick with Okular and PDF Edit. Much better, I can read AND edit pdfs.

Okular rocks, and it apparently can run on Windows as well.
My only feature upgrade request would be to have the underlying PDF engine allow for saving of annotations back to the PDF files... I want a digital highlighter pen.

I entirely agree with you. I have proposed improvements on the KDE brainstorming forum, but unfortunately nobody really seems to care, or my proposal is just not good enough... http://forum.kde.org/avoid-password-stealing-t-39488.html

Well, to be fair, the KDE on Windows page does say, in bold,

KDE on Windows is not in the final state, so applications can be unsuitable for day to day use yet.

The installer is far from suitable for end-users as well. I'm not sure why the website would link to the KDE installer without any instructions (there is no installer specific to Okular, or any specific KDE program, yet).

http://blog.adaniels.nl/articles/iphone-amarok/ [adaniels.nl] would appear to indicate otherwise.

That applies to the iPhone not the iPod. Well, technically it applies to the iPod touch, but that's not a normal iPod it's really just a crippled iPhone. Here is Amarok's supported iPods list. You'll notice they're all listed as working, except the iPhone and iPod touch, which work partially.

Unless the information there has become obsolete, you need to manipulate the device (at least the 'touch' generation of iPods) in a way Apple has taken steps to prevent you from doing. Generally I'd feel uncomfortable buying a device which has been designed to restrict how I can use it (even if the cost of the device is subsidised because of those restrictions).

Wait you want to buy a locked phone, restricted to one network by the demands of the network provider. You further want to buy a device that plays video and works with mainstream offerings of that video, but you don't want the provider to implement the DRM required by those selling the mainstream offerings?

The facts of doing business in the US are simple. If you're going to do business with the MPAA and cellphone providers you're going to have your device locked down and that will cause problems for people who want to use it in ways most people don't (installing music without using the software designed to interact with the device). What's interesting is this used to be the case with music and the RIAA as well, but that is no longer true, largely because of Apple's ability to leverage their market influence to that end. (Mind you this was also in their own financial best interest, I have no illusions they did this out of altruism).

My answer for you is simple. If you want a device without restrictions, buy a simple MP3 player like all the models of iPods except the Touch. If you want something that is more capable of other functions, lobby the government to rein in the corporations that require restrictions on devices. Apple sure doesn't want them, since they're making money selling hardware and every restriction means some people wont buy said hardware or will buy it then cost extra money with support calls trying to get it to work because of the unnecessary complexity caused by the restrictions.

And for those who say "but people should just use the GIMP" I say, "perhaps". If folks need a photomanipulation program and don't already have one or know how to use a particular one, then the GIMP might work. But I can't count how many people I've heard talk about how hard to use the GIMP is. I never agreed, but other people think it is challenging to use, while Adobe PS is a breeze. If the person is using the software for personal use, why make them choose the one they consider hard to use?

Krita 2 under KDE4.

http://www.koffice.org/krita/
http://dot.kde.org/2009/02/09/krita-20-host-new-features

Easy to use. Powerful. Free. Enjoy.

More than enough capability for all users excpet perhaps professionals (ie. good enough for 99% of users).

If a person is using the software for personal use, why make them choose one that costs an absolute fortune?

Basket is not quite a OneNote clone, but it's got most of OneNote's features. I personally hate Basket, but many people love it. I have never used OneNote, though.
http://basket.kde.org/

Hate to burst your bubble, but KDE 4 has groundwork in place to work on other OSes (including Windows). Several applications already work.

Linky.

I have my own domain- EVERYONE except family gets a different email address.

I do this too, and Thunderbird's Virtual Identity extension automatically fills in your correct FROM address when you enter the TO address. It's great:
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/thunderbird/addon/594

I have filed two bugs at KDE asking for similar features in Kmail, but the developer's opinion seems to be that this method is too "specialized" and nobody uses it. Please comment on these two bugs to get this built into Kmail:

Use receiving email address on reply (not identity-based)
Store per-contact From address in addressbook and use it in composer

I have my own domain- EVERYONE except family gets a different email address.

I do this too, and Thunderbird's Virtual Identity extension automatically fills in your correct FROM address when you enter the TO address. It's great:
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/thunderbird/addon/594

I have filed two bugs at KDE asking for similar features in Kmail, but the developer's opinion seems to be that this method is too "specialized" and nobody uses it. Please comment on these two bugs to get this built into Kmail:

Use receiving email address on reply (not identity-based)
Store per-contact From address in addressbook and use it in composer

Amarok? Never before heard of it, but it looks interesting, if a bit cluttered. DVD Jon just released doubleTwist which talks to many kinds of devices, though it seems to ape the stupid of the iTunes UI.

That 'Fences' program looks suspiciously familiar. How will that fare when KDE finishes full Windows support?

Right. The GP mistook 3.4 for 4.3. The Release schedule for 4.3 is not yet defined. Just like Release goals. The Feature plan does not list kdevelop/quanta/k3b.

Right. The GP mistook 3.4 for 4.3. The Release schedule for 4.3 is not yet defined. Just like Release goals. The Feature plan does not list kdevelop/quanta/k3b.

Right. The GP mistook 3.4 for 4.3. The Release schedule for 4.3 is not yet defined. Just like Release goals. The Feature plan does not list kdevelop/quanta/k3b.

try this instead: http://techbase.kde.org/Schedules

KDE 4.2.2 will be released in a few days and still it will not contain KDevelop/Quanta/K3B.

All 4.2.x releases only contain bugfixes. They won't include new features, let alone new applications.

There are no dates given beyond KDE 4.2.2.

*kuch* http://techbase.kde.org/Schedules/KDE_3.4_Release_Schedule ..?

This is what I could find... it's not like I am collecting them...

http://dot.kde.org/2008/12/18/kde-42-beta2-canaria-testimony-bug-fixing-frenzy

Thank you very much for this. Please ignore the "it's not like KDE3.5"-morons, but keep on innovating. It's very much appreciated.

you evidently haven't tried 4.2 then, as your complaint is pretty stupid in light of the achievements in that release.

http://amarok.kde.org/blog/archives/862-KDE-Trolls,-eat-this.html

Anyone else noticed the extreme amount of hate & trolling against KDE lately, and especially against KDE 4? I have a special message for you trolls:

You're fucking idiots.

the guy swears like this, and then proceeds to quote Gandhi.

This is what I could find... it's not like I am collecting them...

http://dot.kde.org/2008/12/18/kde-42-beta2-canaria-testimony-bug-fixing-frenzy

Thank you very much for this. Please ignore the "it's not like KDE3.5"-morons, but keep on innovating. It's very much appreciated.

you evidently haven't tried 4.2 then, as your complaint is pretty stupid in light of the achievements in that release.

http://amarok.kde.org/blog/archives/862-KDE-Trolls,-eat-this.html

Anyone else noticed the extreme amount of hate & trolling against KDE lately, and especially against KDE 4? I have a special message for you trolls:

You're fucking idiots.

the guy swears like this, and then proceeds to quote Gandhi.

Which of the major distros don't carry KDE 3.5 any more??

Kubuntu 8.10 and higher and Fedora 10.

Looking at http://www.kde.org/download/#v3.5 there appear to be binary packages for Fedora, Kubuntu, Mandriva, openSUSE

Well those are great if you are running Kubuntu 8.04 or Fedora 9, but many people want to run the latest version of those distros and as such there are no binaries for them there or in the repositories. So this suggestion is pretty much worthless.

Sorry, Linux is just a Operating System and it has not a GUI. You need to check out those Desktop Environments projects or Window Manager projects mailing lists to find out such.
Or if you are looking just CLI, then you can check GNU project mailing list for Bash or other vendors who makes others.

http://forum.kde.org/kde-brainstorm-f-83.html

From there you can find what people suggest for the KDE4 UI.
If you want to know what the Linux Operating System does not get for next release, go to check the kernel.org postlists.

Why is parent modded troll? I've been using KDE since 2001 and although I love the DE very much (and have filed over 200 bugs, participated in over 300 more), the current version completely lacks polish. There are glaring visual bugs, chopped text, and RTL issues all over the places. Worse, most of these bugs are marked as FIXED when they are excused as Qt bugs. The KDE devs don't use the UPSTREAM mark at all. Most of these bugs have tens of dupes, in particular regarding the icons (marked as UPSTREAM in Qt):
https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=158094

While people stop to drool over my KDE 4.2 installation at university, if I show it off for more than 10 seconds I have to start making excuses as to why this or that does not work. That was fine for KDE 4.0 and 4.1 which KDE said was not intended for end users. It is not acceptable for KDE 4.2 which KDE markets as ready for end users.

Because 3.5 isn't available in many repositories anymore and bugs for 3.5 aren't being fixed because efforts concentrate on kde 4.

Which of the major distros don't carry KDE 3.5 any more?? I use openSUSE and it is most certainly available.

Looking at http://www.kde.org/download/#v3.5 there appear to be binary packages for Fedora, Kubuntu, Mandriva, openSUSE

Whilst a lot of effort is going into KDE 4.x, the 3.5 line still seems to be worked on.

Actually, they have a point. It has little to do with KDE, but with the Qt 3.x series, which has been discontinued and is basically unmaintained. Noone has stepped up to maintain it, and thus distributors are loath to carry packages that depends on qt 3.5. kdelibs4 (aka kde 3) are still maintained, but in bugfixing mode.

Furthermore, file management doesn't work well anymore - I was used to being able to move icons in windows but now they all align to a grid no matter what, which sort of defeats the purpose of a graphical file manager.

Here is the feature request for that issue:
Option to not align icons to grid

And, maybe it might not be popular mentioning Windows 7 on /., but I really like the feature in Windows 7 beta where you can drag a window to a screen border and it resizes to the screen height and 1/2 the screen width. I imagine that this would be easy to do as a plugin for KDE, but (so far) I haven't been able to find one.

Here is the feature request for that very feature on KDE's Bugzilla:
Resize windows based on drag location

http://techbase.kde.org/Projects/PIM/Akonadi#Why_not_use_MySQL.2FEmbedded.3F

Why not use MySQL/Embedded?

We tried that as well, there are two reasons for not using it: No support for the InnoDB engine (which we need for transaction support) and poor availability (only OpenSUSE provided usable packages, needed a patched QSQL driver).

Because 3.5 isn't available in many repositories anymore and bugs for 3.5 aren't being fixed because efforts concentrate on kde 4.

Which of the major distros don't carry KDE 3.5 any more?? I use openSUSE and it is most certainly available.

Looking at http://www.kde.org/download/#v3.5 there appear to be binary packages for Fedora, Kubuntu, Mandriva, openSUSE

Whilst a lot of effort is going into KDE 4.x, the 3.5 line still seems to be worked on.

Hmmm. I loved 3.5. 4.0 was kinda sucky, so I switched to Gnome. Having read that KDE4.2 is the only desktop environment to make full use of hardware acceleration, I'm interested again - but info specific to acceleration is a bit hard to find. Do you have any leads?

Here is the 4.3 feature plan:

http://techbase.kde.org/Schedules/KDE4/4.3_Feature_Plan

This distinction between immediate and eventual consistency is deeply philosophical and depends on how important the data happens to be.

Ah, the naivete of youth... These guys clearly have never spent a few weeks debugging a concurrency problem. If your data is important enough to keep around, it's important enough to get it right.

There's nothing deeply philosophical about corrupting the relationships between various data sets because your database doesn't enforce consistency. A certain desktop recently discovered just how bad poorly enforced consistency can make things. Those *young whippersnappers* won't stay young for very long trying to debug that seemingly impossible to find data corruption problem, or worse, a web site which displays garbage pages at random because your data storage mechanism isn't consistent when it needs to be.

Consistency in databases has always been a ground rule because consistency checks are more easily done by a database than an application programmer. Consider, for example, the prototypical record read-update-write operation on a database with strict consistency and enforced locks:

1. Read the record. The database automatically locks it for you.
2. Update the record.
3. Write the record back to the database.

Now consider the same operation with a database which enforces no consistency, or does so rather lazily:

1. Read the record. (Someone else might also read it in the interim, but you'll never know.)
2. Update the record.
3. Read the record again. Has someone changed it?
4. Someone else changed the record. Reread the record.
5. Before updating the record, check to see if you are going to modify any of the fields previously modified by the intervening write.
6. Write the old, conflicting values to a log file for manual reconstruction later.
7. Update the record, and commit it back to disk.
8. Ooops! - someone else read the record while you were updating it and didn't get your latest changes. Maybe the other reader is going to create another invoice for the customer because they read it before you'd committed your "invoice sent" flag back to disk. Or maybe one poster's comment will show up under another's username. Maybe not. Who knows? Anything can happen!

And let's not forget how confusing this is for users:

1. User posts reply to comment.
2. User doesn't see the comment on the page. After a few refreshes, decides to post comment again.
3. Database finally gets around to committing the changes.
4. User looks like an idiot for double posting the same comment, or admin thinks this guy is being abusive because he's posting the same comment twice.

If you don't want a database, you can restrict your web app to a single thread and use flat files. For a lot of amatuers and personal web pages, this is perfectly fine. But don't call it a new kind of database: IBM was using flat files in the 60's. The reason why flat files were abandoned was because they didn't scale well and couldn't handle concurrency correctly. It is not a matter of *size* but of correctness.

It's not just about "locking down" the desktop; this is quite easy in just about any OS, the real issue here is top-to-bottom manageability.

So yes, specific security requirements is part of that.
Now say for example you want to push out the new OpenOffice to all of accounts department only...and assuming no deployment problems, sales, and R&D too.

For Red Hat, RHN will do this for you, though you probably want Satellite. For other distributions, other tools (e.g. Pulse for Mandriva).

Next, patching. Show me all machines that haven't patched $NameOfPatchHere you deployed to the company a few weeks after it was made available to the world (giving enough testing time to be sure there's no reports of anything breaking online first).

For Red Hat, RHN.

Next, branding. The company changes name; merges with another. You want all reference of $COMPANY_X changed to $COMPANY_Y; screensavers, wallpapers, etc, etc. Rebuilding each machine image isn't an option.

You could push a package out to do this, if you aren't using something like kiosktool (specific to KDE).

Next; security. You want to open an incoming port on every local firewall for a new teleconferencing system...but only for R&D.

RHN.

By default all non MS-AD ports are sealed off.

Windows AD does all of this in about 2 clicks per above need. Doesn't matter if you have 5 clients of 5000.

For the desktop cases not covered by RHN and/or packages etc., there is also support for storing KDE settings in LDAP ... which, since KDE configuration is generic enough, can also be used to lock down settings. This feature is covered in this bug report, but Mandriva's KD 3.5 packages had this feature included. The feature was slated for upstream inclusion for KDE4.2, but I'm not sure if it made it.

Mandriva has also been considering allowing msec configuration in LDAP, which would address firewall policies, permissions, and various other security-related non-desktop settings.

kde 3 has kiosk admin tool http://extragear.kde.org/apps/kiosktool/

Together with puppet one really needs to look into Kiosk. This allows you to lock down the configuration of KDE applications, and it's *one* of the reasons KDE is used in enterprise deployments instead of GNOME.

I think the point of the G...GP post was that you can't easily push this out remotely, and on Linux you have to write it, support it and debug it yourself, including all the niggly corner cases.

That's a good point, but the kind of huge organization you mention will have in-house IT people who can that anyway, and I still think the advantage of a FOSS platform outweighs the relatively lack of ready-to-go deployment facilities.

WSUS. Centrally administer the set of updates permitted to clients and servers. Linux version: Maybe set up a repository for your corp distro - but how to sync and manage the updates is what I don't know here.

Any of the major repository systems can be set up in a custom configuration with client machines automatically sucking packages up from a central company repository. Redhat's up2date and satellite systems are especially geared toward this kind of deployment.

SCCM / Zenworks / Others. Roll out an application to user desktops whether they're on-net or not. I can push Office to a machine 500mi from one of my offices

If I'm understanding this correctly, you get application installation automation for free with your centralized repository, perhaps automated with cfengine, puppet, or even ssh-in-a-loop.

Group Policy...

This is hard, and I'll admit Windows has an edge here, though personally, I feel like that's a little bit about North Korea having an edge in oppression compared to the US; it's not necessarily something desirable.

That said, if you must do something like this, there are ways. Other comments for this article address this point better than I do. For starters, there's kiosk mode "KDE's Kiosk Mode, allows a system administrator to configure all aspects of the desktop for an end user and optionally prevent the end user from making modifications to the provided setup."

Gnome also supports a lockdown system.

And as a last resort, you can always patch the software and distribute the patched version to all your machines.

• FoxIt
• Xpdf (win32 binaries available)
• Cool PDF Reader
• MuPDF
• Okular (win32 download)

(yes, there's a ton of good PDF freeware available now)

• FoxIt
• Xpdf (win32 binaries available)
• Cool PDF Reader
• MuPDF
• Okular (win32 download)

(yes, there's a ton of good PDF freeware available now)

QT is planning on including WebKit as a standard feature at some point (they may already). When that happens, KDE will drop KHTML and use WebKit instead.

They have already started using WebKit for certain portions of KDE. From the 'KDE 4.1 beta' news release:

"Developers have been busy enriching the core KDE libraries and infrastructure too. KHTML gets a speed boost from anticipatory resource loading, while WebKit, its offspring, is added to Plasma to allow OSX Dashboard widgets to be used in KDE. "

I thought 4.2 was meant to start using WebKit across the board, but I can't seem to find any references in that regards.

The least you can do is call it by it's correct name dammit, Qt! not QT!! This isn't some acronym, it's a damn word. It's pronounced 'Cute'. Though I've also heard a few different ways, due to language differences.http://www.qtcentre.org/forum/f-general-discussion-10/t-how-do-you-pronounce-qt-11347-post61535.html
Piss off with your horrid promo of Qt. I love Qt4 myself, and unlike you I have used it many times, but you seriously just treated Qt like a husband publicly degrading his wife. Shame on you. VLC wasn't created using "QT" it was created in C++. They took advantage of the "Qt" motherfucker, "Qt" toolkit for its GUI.

Yes, learn QT and help out with KDE. I haven't done much programming with QT, I am confident when I say it's a lovely, powerful and compelling environment to program in. Its cross platform capabilities cannot be under estimated. VLC was created using QT.

So go ahead, learn QT, help out with KDE and make subsequent releases even more formidable.

Thanks.

Yes, learn QT and help out with KDE. I haven't done much programming with QT, I am confident when I say it's a lovely, powerful and compelling environment to program in. Its cross platform capabilities cannot be under estimated. VLC was created using QT.

So go ahead, learn QT, help out with KDE and make subsequent releases even more formidable.

Thanks.

Yanno, Okular runs on Windows and -IIRC- doesn't have all of these stupid issues.
See:
http://windows.kde.org/

What _is_ nice to see is the focus on computers with limited screen space. I suppose that this will only apply to the Gnome based Ubuntu, as Kubuntu is stuck with KDE, which is "not interested" in having optional windows configurations that fit on "vertically challenged" screens:
https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=169043

Even the Mozilla apps have this option, and it is one of the reasons that I use Thunderbird and Firefox over the otherwise terrific Kmail and the getting-there Konqueror.

Or maybe I should give Gnome another try.

You can run Okular and KDE on windows I believe.
http://windows.kde.org/

You can use plain text or formatted HTML to create pages (attachments are easy to add) and it's easy to organize pages into an outline or (surprise!) a course format. Moodle also lets you set up forums, wiki's and so on.

Wiki's are good, but it takes some work to organize the pages. I like to create an "index page" for ease of navigation. You can do this with wiki trails in PmWiki http://www.pmwiki.org/wiki/PmWiki/WikiTrails

In MoinMoin http://moinmo.in/ you can use Categories to group pages.

With Moodle and wiki's, authorized users can edit the pages, including data in tables. which can be handy.

For personal notes,you might try:Tuxcards http://www.tuxcards.de/, KeepNote http://rasm.ods.org/keepnote/(it easily handles screenshots or other images),Jreepad http://jreepad.sourceforge.net/ a plain-text-only outliner, or BasketNotePads http://basket.kde.org/. Like Tuxcards, Basket can export its contents to an HTML tree, which can be posted for others.

If you are adventurous, use a mindmap, such as FreeMind http://freemind.sourceforge.net/.

Unlike everyone who is bitching and moaning, I read the notes about how KDE 4.0 was just a preview, do not use, do not install on production machines, etc ... so I continued to use KDE 3.5 until 4.2 came out.

Oh you mean these http://www.kde.org/announcements/4.0/ release notes? Where it says nothing about 4.0 being a preview or not installing on production machines?

Nice try, but it's not easy to rewrite history that soon. I'm sure the KDE devs appreciate your efforts though. IMO KDE4.2 still isn't ready for use on production machines anyway.

Drawing in the margins, I haven't really seen, though I'm sure it's been done. Highlighters? Just copy/paste an interesting passage into your notes.

Okular does highlighting, inline notes, and drawing in the margins. If you use Windows, look here http://windows.kde.org/ to try it out. If you use Linux, you'll have to install a chunk of KDE 4.1 or 4.2.

That's a good clarification, and was sorely needed after the flames of some less enlightened Ubutu fanbois.

However, I'd like to point out that there are several problems with Kubuntu's implementation of KDE 4.x. You can also check this. Funny thing is, most of the problems people experience with Ubuntu are absent in other distros (e.g., in my box I use Slackware and I haven't seen those horror stories).

That's why I say that Ubuntu is buggy. Ubuntu's QA needs to be better, and the distro layout should be better (i.e., include Flash and Java out of the box, make things stable, and so on).

Ubuntu undoubtedly has potential; but there's something that's killing them. I don't know what it is, but it's making them do releases that are more and more unstable. In this way, they negate whatever advantage they could get. ("Linux? Oh yea, it came in my netbook but I wiped it clean, it never got my screen right and apps crashed every time!").

It's modded funny, but it is accurate. If you don't like Google's policy and they won't change it....vote with your feet. I actually uninstalled google earth because of this.

If you need an alternative, you should look into Marble.