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For people who want to check out the RC without reinstalling KDE (and without risking breaking your existing setup) there's a live CD available at:
http://home.kde.org/~binner/kde-four-live/
Have a lot of fun!

I'd appreciate it if they were to make "hard" clients for all of those (calendar and Reader in paticular) for the desktop.

And all those applications are installed with Windows, like they were with Mandriva? Not to mention that educational programs are much more available and less expensive for Linux than for Windows. You're deluding yourself.

You mean, something like that: http://edu.kde.org/ ?

Not only is Qt dual licensed (proprietary or GPL, you choose) the KDE Free Qt Foundation was set up to ensure that regardless of what happens to Trolltech, Qt, which is the foundation of KDE, will remain available.

Rather ironic that a project like Gnome which was established to create a Free counterpart to what was back then non-Free software has become an antagonist to open source and even to open standards. A small number of Gnome people work against open standards, that hurts both closed and open source projects.

One of these skills is keyboarding, and honestly, how many typing training packages have you seen on 'nix? Or even Mac?

Have you looked?

http://edu.kde.org/ktouch/
KTouch is a program for learning touch typing. KTouch is a way to learn to type on a keyboard quickly and correctly. Every finger has its place on the keyboard with associated keys to press.

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=Mac+typing+tutor
Pick one. There is lots to pick from.

There is more to life than the Windows Walled Garden. Windows is the new AOL. Easy for beginners, is the default, with users under constant attack due to it's large installed base of the clueless.

One of these skills is keyboarding, and honestly, how many typing training packages have you seen on 'nix? Or even Mac?

That is a valid point. The point should not mean every computer capible of running Windows needs a copy. How many copies of KStars have you seen in the science lab? There is no reason to have every computer a clone of each other. A keyboarding class is OK to license some machines to run educational software. The license should not exclude other very fine educational software simply because it is not Open Source. Schools having kids play Where in the world is Carman and The Oregon Trail because it might have some valid history or geography is no replacement for real educational software, much of which does not run on Windows.

There is a place for Kickstart software. There is also a place for Linux chemestry, astronomy and physics software.
http://sourceforge.net/projects/genchemlab/
http://www.redbrick.dcu.ie/~noel/linux4chemistry/
http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2004APS..MARW38008R
http://www.mathlab.cornell.edu/support/m434_support/gap_info/
http://www.mathworks.com/products/matlab/whatsnew.html
http://edu.kde.org/kstars/
http://edu.kde.org/

Some of the above can run on Windows, but it is not a requirement. The valid complaint is the requirement to license all Windows capible machines, even those without Windows, or even needing Windows. It's like getting a pre-paid Texaco credit card for your kid's car and they require you to buy a Texaco license for any hardware you have that is capible of burning gasoline including your weed eater, hedge trimmer, chain saw, your boat, and all other cars. Maybe you want to run Flex Fuel on your PT Cruiser.

One of these skills is keyboarding, and honestly, how many typing training packages have you seen on 'nix? Or even Mac?

That is a valid point. The point should not mean every computer capible of running Windows needs a copy. How many copies of KStars have you seen in the science lab? There is no reason to have every computer a clone of each other. A keyboarding class is OK to license some machines to run educational software. The license should not exclude other very fine educational software simply because it is not Open Source. Schools having kids play Where in the world is Carman and The Oregon Trail because it might have some valid history or geography is no replacement for real educational software, much of which does not run on Windows.

There is a place for Kickstart software. There is also a place for Linux chemestry, astronomy and physics software.
http://sourceforge.net/projects/genchemlab/
http://www.redbrick.dcu.ie/~noel/linux4chemistry/
http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2004APS..MARW38008R
http://www.mathlab.cornell.edu/support/m434_support/gap_info/
http://www.mathworks.com/products/matlab/whatsnew.html
http://edu.kde.org/kstars/
http://edu.kde.org/

Some of the above can run on Windows, but it is not a requirement. The valid complaint is the requirement to license all Windows capible machines, even those without Windows, or even needing Windows. It's like getting a pre-paid Texaco credit card for your kid's car and they require you to buy a Texaco license for any hardware you have that is capible of burning gasoline including your weed eater, hedge trimmer, chain saw, your boat, and all other cars. Maybe you want to run Flex Fuel on your PT Cruiser.

http://edu.kde.org/

For languages:

• Parley - Introduced in KDE 4
• KVerbos - in the Edutainment package of all KDE-based distros
• Rosetta Stone under Wine (gold rated as of 2006)
• Konjue - an add-on, but useful

For Physics:

• eduKator - an hypertext based book for physics instruction with working examples
• Step - a physics particle simulator

For Math:

• KAlgebra - a function plotter with advanced capabilities
• Kalcul - simple arithmetic trainer
• GeoGebra - similar to geometer's sketchpad
• At an upper level, Scilab, Octave, R, QtiPlot, RKWard

For geography:

• Marble - to be released with KDE 4
• KGeography - currently in the KDE Edutainment pack

For music:

• Score Reading Trainer
• KLearnNotes2 - a basic score tutor
• NoteEdit - reads midi files and converts them to scores - also great for composing
• A ton of other audio programs including Audacity, Rosegarden, etc. for composing, editing, multitracking...

For Mind-Mapping:

• Semantik

Klipper completely obliterates this problem. It's native to KDE (and installed by default in Kubuntu) but apparently will run happily in GNOME, or you can check out Glipper. Problem solved.

I'm not positive, but if you ask me the best place to report bugs in Kontact would be the KDE bug tracker rather than Launchpad. I'm not sure that many resources are directed into managing Launchpad bugs, particularly in KDE software that is not part of the Ubuntu core. Heck, I've seen bugs in core elements (such as wireless) that seem to sit unsolved and even apparently unnoticed in Launchpad for long periods.

KPDF? Okular (successor but for many formats not only PDF)

Seems the Amarok developers are one of those that do though, as a Windows port has already been announced, and all the way back in April at that.

You're correct, I just googled this http://www.kde.org/whatiskde/kdefreeqtfoundation.php
Does there exists more open source projects with such agreements?

Jesus. How about they compete with Word first, eh? Calling Thunderbird an "Outlook Replacement" just shows they have no idea what people use Outlook for. Outlook Express replacement, sure.

The great thing about Office is all the damn pieces work together. Excel is friendly with Access, Access is friendly with Word, Everything is friendly with Outlook. To beat Office, you have to have an Office suite that works like that. Not just all the pieces in one package.

There is not one single thing in OO that doesn't have an OSS equivalent stand-alone application that is at least as good. Bundling a mail client with the rest of your apps doesn't suddenly make you competitive, especially when your whole user base could have already installed that mail client if they wanted it.

There are OSS projects that are actually making a push toward doing the things that Outlook does (like Kontact). But Thunderbird is still lagging behind Evolution imho, and neither of them play all that great with any of the groupware servers out there, open or closed.

I used to try and push OO on people, but I've completely lost faith in it. I keep thinking, maybe they'll get their crap together, but then they do stuff like this.

While I can't speak volumes about Gnome and GTK. I can say that you views of KDE and QT do not appear to be based on facts, but more assumptions and preconceived notions.

KDE is NOT simply QT plus bloat, the goals of the KDE library are to provide a consistent API to applications to work well with the KDE desktop. In the grand scheme of things it is actually very light as far as things it adds to QTs very complete API. For example, it will provide a KPushButton which inherits from the QPushButton class to add a few small integration features. Also KDE offers many common widget combinations as a reusable widget in itself, this is good library design as a whole. Making libraries of reusable code is a GOOD THING.

Don't mis-interpret this as KDE zealotry, I imagine that Gnome provides some sort of API to help applications integrate well with the desktop as well.

And what is your general issue with using c++ and moc? I hate to break it to you, but moc IS "real c++". There is nothing wrong with having utilities to generate code, there is huge gain to doing it with moc instead of templates...runtime bindings. moc just hides these details for you, and to be honest, you usually don't even have to worry about it at all if you use the QT build system.

As for what is wrong with GTK + C? Well nothing is wrong with it but it's not the only choice. One thing to keep in mind though is that graphical displays usually consist of conceptual objects "windows", "buttons", "listboxes", "textboxes", etc. These are all "things" which to be honest, creating code to describe "things" is what object oriented programming excels at.

You will never see a port to GTK of KOffice because it would not be a port, but a litteral re-write as the whole code base is built around the KDE/QT libraries.

And why not start with AbiWord? Heh, this statement is a shinning example of a preference not based on the merits of what you want, but instead on an arbitrary dislike for the competition. You are of course entitled to your opinion, nothing is perfect. But you provide no real reason why something built on KDE libraries is inherently bad. Secondly, Abiword is a single word processor application with no integration into an "office solution". KOffice is looking to provide the whole shebang.

I imagine you are going to reply with "KDE is bloated", "KDE is slow". But these generalizations aren't really based on real facts. KDE is actually quite lean (and KDE 4.0 is going to be leaner because QT 4.0 is a vast improvement of 3.0). Its memory usage is nothing crazy, the reason for this is that there is a LOT of code reuse. Using the KDE libraries is effectively "free" as far as memory usage goes because modern operating systems do code sharing of dynamic libraries and the whole damn desktop uses these libraries! There are benchmarks that show that Gnome and KDE are actually quite comparable: http://ktown.kde.org/~seli/memory/desktop_benchmark.html

I'll even not go so far as to say KDE is better than Gnome in memory usage because I know that there are many factors and a single set of benchmarks by one person doesn't really prove much...but it does show that they are at least in the same ballpark.

All in all, I find your argument against using a modern library not founded in facts :(

proxy

Looks like there is already some work done for this:
http://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=67504

I have five different IMAP servers configured in Kmail/Kontact and have never had any problems with IMAP, and it's never lost mail. Granted, I don't have quite as many total messages, especially not in a single folder.

Tagging and attachment removal would be nice, but the single biggest problem with Kmail IMO is lack of fricking IMAP IDLE support!

The IDLE bug has been around since 2003, has 1800+ votes, and basically won't be addressed before Kmail for KDE4.
http://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=67504

Would be my next Linux choice. http://kontact.kde.org/kmail/

.haeger

Use of the word "default" is deprecated. That said, can't a Group Policy change the initial file format that Microsoft Office 2007 applications suggest?

You've just found the show-stopper.

This isn't an isolated incident either. You cannot browse Google Groups in Konqueror. In the bug report they legitimately argue that it's Google's fault for not adhering to standards, but they still lost me as a user, and undoubtedly others also. http://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=140531 [kde.org]

Firstly, this is offtopic and has nothing to do with Debian. Secondly either Google or the KHTML team must have fixed it because I couldn't reproduce the bug in Konqueror.

When you say they've lost you as a user, do you just mean Konqueror? If so, is there anything we can do to lose you as a Linux user as well?

This isn't an isolated incident either. You cannot browse Google Groups in Konqueror. In the bug report they legitimately argue that it's Google's fault for not adhering to standards, but they still lost me as a user, and undoubtedly others also. http://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=140531

My problem with Pidgin is with the rather plain way it looks. Kopete has a killer theming engine and many themes which are far more polished (imho) then Pidgin.

Perhaps he means something that plays well with Amarok? According to their website there are plugins available for various media players... And they claim to work well with "the following digital music players: iPod, iRiver iFP, Creative NOMAD, Creative Zen, MTP, Rio Karma and USB devices with VFAT (generic MP3 players) support."
*shrug* Seems this might be what he meant.

install it with less clicks than it takes to install Windows. Provide apps for it.

Done.

Mainstream a Linux server.

Done.

Mainstream Linux apps.

Done, done, and done.

The point is, make the consumer, a.k.a. Joe Notageek feel comfortable that it is easy to use, that he can buy applications for it at Best Buy, Walmart, Target, or Amazon.

That's the point? That point sucks. Here's the point. Make the user (note my lack of the word "consumer" anywhere in this) feel comfortable that it is not only easy to use, but is a better way. You don't have to go buy shit. It works already, and if you need more, it's a few clicks (and $0.00) away. That's the point.

You mean, "they were added because a significant number of users who were motivated and willing to submit feature requests using the appropriate mechanism, who were technically competent enough to do so and knew that such a mechanism existed requested a particular feature". Which, of course is a flaming great classic example of response bias - the same thing that makes television and newspaper polls useless as an indicator for the actual value of a population parameter.

Yes, there is bias there, but not as bad as you would make it seem. Technical users make requests on behalf of less technical ones as well. And face it, the majority of Linux users are technical users. You can ignore this and not cater to them if you want, but you're targeting users that may never even use Linux. Usability tests have shown that user have just as easy a time doing tasks with KDE than Windows XP. The current desktop is not an impediment to user adoption. Less technical users don't use Linux because of hardware support, pre-installs of Windows, and lack of awareness. Sit down a normal user with Linux (KDE or Gnome) and they won't have more trouble with it than with Windows.

What you have is an bunch geeks and hobbyists - the very people to want extreme, nifty and mostly useless features - in control of functional requirements for KDE.

Face it, that is the majority of your user base. You can't neglect your primary user because of some mythical novice user. They are also extremely valuable, because technical users _contribute_ while novice users just use the software.

Also, what about removing useless features? Does that ever get voted on?

Yes, and features get removed from KDE regularly if they create real problems or can be replaced with a better system. Removing features just because someone is confused by them is not a valid reason. You have to think about it more critically than that.

despite the fact that major usability studies were run on GNOME in 2001 and 2005 and continue in part at betterdesktop.org

So? KDE has similar studies, on that site, as well as http://openusability.org/ and from the KDE usability team http://usability.kde.org/activity/testing/relevantive-kde3.2/index.php and independently http://www.linux-usability.de/download/linux_usability_report_en.pdf

Please, Gnome are not the only ones thinking about usability. They are just suffering from the delusion that less features and less configurability makes for usability, when in fact the problem is much more complex than that. Making simple software usable is comparatively easy to do. The real challenge is making complex and flexible software usable without removing any of the power. KDE hasn't solved that problem, obviously, but they are working towards it without throwing out what makes KDE worth using over something like Windows.

You might want to know that Konqueror was replaced by Dolphin

which feels basically like a Nautilus port. And KDE developers stated they wanted to cut on complexity (sounds like Gnome-speak).

Sometimes (often, actually) when I switch over to a desktop with only one visible window in it, that window will take on the "inactive window" attributes, which in my case makes the window 50% transparent.

Ok, that makes more sense. I haven't seen it myself, but it sounds very similar to this bug: http://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=118062 Unfortunately you're out of luck on it, as it basically won't get fixed. KDE4 tossed that whole component, and transparency is done as one of the effects in the compositing KWin4 (more like Compiz). So hopefully it will work properly in KDE 4.0.

It looks like there is actually a Linux app that will manage your iPod for you -- basically doing this automatically on every sync. Here's the wiki page.

Not quite sure why you'd want to though - if the screenies on the Amarok blog, along with comment about "users with more than 30 tracks in their playlist are stupid", are anything to go by, the devs are on crack. Current interface snapshots I've seen mean I'll be staying on 1.4.x until the current interface is dead and buried.

http://amarok.kde.org/blog/archives/493-Weekly-status-update-II.html

How anyone can think that interface is anything even approaching an improvement on the Amarok 1.4 GUI is beyond me.

If you're an amarok user, please look at the new interface before modding me as a troll. Thank you.

http://amarok.kde.org/blog/archives/496-iPod-Classic-Will-Be-Supported.html

Better suggestion: fix the underlying engines; 16 bit support, proper cmyk, non-destructive adjustment layers, better text handling. While they're at it, ditch GTK for QT for better cross-platform behaviour so that Mac users can ditch X11 and Windows users can have better reliability. The nasty interface can be lived with, and while not Photoshop is better than some (many?) of the alternative commercial packages. Even on Windows, it works pretty well as an image-VI, when you need to quickly whack out a web graphic and don't feel like loading PS.

Alternately, admit that GIMP has run its course, and start porting the interesting bits to Krita

And while we're at it, rename the bloody thing. "The program formerly known as GIMP" would be a step in the right direction, since the average user community thinks it refers either to cripples, or a submissive in a zippered leather suit who's kept on a chain in a box most of the time.

I've got the impression that they would port it to most OSes, like OS X and maybe Windows (?) aswell. KDE for Windows would be awesome.

http://dot.kde.org/1168899755/
http://static.kdenews.org/dannya/vol3_3x_large.png

While we're listing astronomy software: Kstars is great too.

And if you want to use a (web)cam on your telescope, take a look at registax.

Best audio player for Windows ever.

The marketroid mindset is increasingly prevalent in the open-source world these days. Mozilla publishes misleading statistics in their press releases and drops features to meet deadlines. Slackware skips version numbers to "keep up" with the competition. And people abuse the terms "alpha", "beta" and "release candidate" to mean what they want them to mean rather than something sensible.

People who are thinking of labelling something a "release candidate", ask yourselves one question: if major new bugs aren't found with it, would you be comfortable simply renaming it to be the final version? No? Then it isn't a release candidate!

http://amarok.kde.org/blog/archives/2007/09/04.htm l

Posted today. They pulled this guys 3-yo tag of "HornyChinchilla" because, it is assumed, they found it to be offensive.

Their filter suggested "Fingered" and completely accepted "FingeredAnus"

I'm sure that there's a joke in there somewhere about how it feels to use MS products...

I haven't tried it, because I no longer have a functioning headset for my computer. But a quick Google search, and: here it is.

It's not in a usable state yet, apparently, at least not with the Gtalk people -- although there are plenty of other ways to voice chat on Linux. My personal favorite, if I ever bother to setup a server, is mumble, which really should be killing Ventrilo (but somehow isn't).

I've generally found Kopete to have all the features I want, and then some. It also has some issues with its protocol support, compared to Pidgin -- it seems to disconnect every few hours, which isn't a huge deal, because it reconnects automatically, and the conversation window is still open. And it occasionally crashes for no apparent reason -- I'm on amd64, but that shouldn't matter.

But, other than that, it's been great. Even the crash isn't a big deal, because it takes something like three seconds to open again, and it connects to KDE Wallet for passwords, so I don't have to enter a password the second time.

It's not google's job to fill in the gaps. The distro will take care of that. Always has for the thousands of applications already out there for every linux distro.

The beauty of the dynamic linker is that you can have multiple library versions co-exist quite peacefully together. If OpenGL games can run on multiple linux base distros, why can't (of all things) Picassa? Or [insert gApp here]? Worst case, google can link to RPM(s), DEB(s), or whatever they already pre-packaged themself. Binary globs? Do I really need to illustrate the process? Shoot, closed source binaries? I think google can handle it. I think your real argument lies with BSD, not linux.

No *nix desktop runs Exchange + Outlook, nor runs Word.

Not true. You can, in fact, get Office to run on a *nix desktop. You'd just be much better off retraining people for OpenOffice or KOffice.

Word should be trivial to replace, but it isn't. It is hard to make people change, and most managers aren't willing to listen to complains just to save a few thousand (yet most should).

Put that few thousand into a training program. Done.

It would be a much more valid argument if there were still really critical features that either office suite doesn't have, but the reality is, for 99% of what you need to do with an office suite, KOffice is fine. Then, for maybe .9%, OpenOffice will cover you. That leaves .01% that you need Office for, so just make one XP machine and turn RDP on, for those very rare cases.

Exchange + Outlook is even harder, because it not only has a calendar system but also make it available to the network

Gosh, that's never been done before.

Now, if only we had a way to share them...

Trust me, Exchange + Outlook is a solved problem. If anything, the irony here is that I haven't been able to implement any of these at work, as there's not really any other good groupware clients for Windows, other than Outlook -- although most of the open servers can probably talk to Outlook. But if you can get them on Linux, I'd suggest Kontact and probably Kolab as the server.

It's even possible that KDE will be ported to Windows wholesale at some point, from what I've been reading. If that happens, just standardize on Kontact.

No *nix desktop runs Exchange + Outlook, nor runs Word.

Not true. You can, in fact, get Office to run on a *nix desktop. You'd just be much better off retraining people for OpenOffice or KOffice.

Word should be trivial to replace, but it isn't. It is hard to make people change, and most managers aren't willing to listen to complains just to save a few thousand (yet most should).

Put that few thousand into a training program. Done.

It would be a much more valid argument if there were still really critical features that either office suite doesn't have, but the reality is, for 99% of what you need to do with an office suite, KOffice is fine. Then, for maybe .9%, OpenOffice will cover you. That leaves .01% that you need Office for, so just make one XP machine and turn RDP on, for those very rare cases.

Exchange + Outlook is even harder, because it not only has a calendar system but also make it available to the network

Gosh, that's never been done before.

Now, if only we had a way to share them...

Trust me, Exchange + Outlook is a solved problem. If anything, the irony here is that I haven't been able to implement any of these at work, as there's not really any other good groupware clients for Windows, other than Outlook -- although most of the open servers can probably talk to Outlook. But if you can get them on Linux, I'd suggest Kontact and probably Kolab as the server.

It's even possible that KDE will be ported to Windows wholesale at some point, from what I've been reading. If that happens, just standardize on Kontact.

Agreed, but I would say this is not only a matter of performance. On the fuzzy perspective, it's about making the user feeling in control. One of the things that currently make me feel out of control is the numerous times when I find myself out of reach with the OS, due to that SOME application have begun some heavy thrashing, and I can't even regain enough control to kill the application.

What I would like to focus some effort on, kernel-wise, is to
  * Skip IOnice. Process niceness/priority should basically not differentiate between what resource it's trying to access. Either it's a prioritized process, or it's not.
  * Making process priorities inherited, through the resource-blocking-chain. Basically, the effective priority of a process should always be the highest of it's own priority, and all the priorities of the processes that may be waiting on it. In this scenario, put the X-server on top, make sure that background tasks are run through an event post-subscribe-mechanism, and more or less for free, you'd get a system that magically focuses on what the user needs feedback on right now. In a server-setting, elevating the priority of httpd, for instance, will ensure that whatever might be blocking httpd (MySQL, syslog, other background-services on the same host) will always be prioritized over, say, cron-jobs and similar.

In user-space there's tons of stuff to do;
  * Increase parallelism to further utilize resources. (I once did some tests indicating that parallelizing the reading of all the application startup resources in kwrite could cut the worst-case loading time by as much as up to 80%, depending on system, fragmentation and configuration)
  * Decrease memory footprint. (COME ON?!)
  * Take a long serious look at X11, and walk away while we can
    - Revamping most of the graphics subsystem is about time.
    - KGI has some interesting points, regarding parallel sessions. It doesn't matter that your kernel might be running stable, if the graphics card have left you without a working terminal.
    - A completely OpenGL-rendered desktop is about time. Accelerated compositing is nice of course, but hardly a substitute for ubiquitous vector graphics. (Resolution-independent, of course)
  * Hierarchical file systems work only for hierarchical people.
  * Fixing parallel sessions. My computer should be strong enough for several desktop-sessiosn. So why does the current solutions suck in terms of memory-usage, graphics issues, switch-times, desktop-incompatibilities....

On the usability side, there's a ton of stuff to do as well. For instance, you can check out my current pet-project at http://wiki.kde.org/KShortcutAssistant, but there's a lot of other issues to address.