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This point surprises a lot of people, and it has been like that for a while. There is a more in depth analysis of memory usage of Gnome and KDE and explains why KDE does so well. The author is a KDE developer so he naturally favors KDE, but as far as I can tell, there is no obvious unfairness in his analysis, and it is very easy to reproduce the tests yourself.

The OLPC has a LinuxBIOS but it would be able to run Windows as well (and it probably will [1]). If the Linux community was really pushing Linux to gain market share wouldn't you expect a dramatic increase in activity on edu.kde.org by now?

There would also be some larger development projects to be done. (How about some educational games like Genius - Task Force Biologie, Chemicus II - die versunkene Stadt, Mathica for the OLPC, using Wikipedia articles as the knowledge part of the game?)

Of course it probably doesn't matter much if Microsoft offers a more or less free copy of Windows for the OLPC or Linux is used as the OS.

We expect OS to support unicode and various input methods, it would be laughed at if it wouldn't. I think author meant translations and OSX should be ashamed with really low amount of them, there's 15 supported languages (mine is not among them even though over 50 million people use it). Linux is clearly superior in this matter with Gnome and KDE supporting far more languages.

I've often wondered why Python, Ruby, and other popular scripting languages can't be used the same way.

They can. KDE apps support something called DCOP, which is a lot like an ARexx port. Install the dcoppython package, and now Python is ready to do the stuff you used to do with ARexx.

For example, here is a list of how Amarok (a KDE music player) can be manipulated, queried, etc through DCOP. If you have that stuff installed, then go ahead and start up Amarok, load up a playlist, then start a python interpreter and type these lines:

import pydcop
amarok=pydcop.anyAppCalled('amarok')
amar ok.player.play() # don't know why slashdot is adding that extra space
print amarok.player.nowPlaying()

Sure, no writing, but that's why you convert all your drives to HFS+

That's kind of a huge limitation. There are lots of times when you might want to share a drive back and forth between a Windows and Mac machine, and it's not possible or desirable to run MacDrive on the Windows side (and having for format the drive with FAT32 sucks mightily).

Letting the Mac understand NTFS is a good thing, because it provides for more interoperability. The only downside to it, is that it might cause people to think of NTFS as a good inter-operable standard, rather than the disgusting, proprietary, Redmond Albatross that it is.

Plus, being able to use SSH as a filesystem is pretty slick, and will probably get more use than the NTFS part. KDE's implementation of SSH-as-filesystem (called fish://) is darned slick, and I've always thought that Apple was missing out by not having something like it.

They are enamored by the GPL license.

I don't think that's remotely true.

GNOME is LGPL, not GPL. In fact, they consider it an advantage to not use the GPL.

KDE libraries are LGPL, KDE applications are GPL.

XFCE uses a mixture of the GPL, LGPL and BSD licenses.

Enlightenment uses the BSD license.

GNUStep uses the LGPL.

As you can see, none of the major free operating environments use the GPL exclusively, in fact half of them don't use it at all. Hell, GNOME is part of the GNU project, the FSF recommends the GPL instead of the LGPL, and GNOME ignores them and use the LGPL anyway.

it just *looks* clunky (reminds me of AmigaOS). I could never get over the "button-overload" of KDE.

KDE does have Human Interface Guidelines, and has had them since KDE 2. They've elvolved along the way, on the way to KDE 3, of course.

A a part of the development of KDE 4, they are working on new HIGs.

The GNOME people may have been more vocal (and radical) when it came to their HIGs, but the KDE camp was never left behind in any way :-)

Do they have any kind of official roadmap for KDE4 ? Looking at the not-updated-in-agesFeature Plan and yet-to-be-written Release Plan makes me doubt that they plan to ship anytime soon. Are you guys sure that it's going to be "some time this year" as the article states?

Do they have any kind of official roadmap for KDE4 ? Looking at the not-updated-in-agesFeature Plan and yet-to-be-written Release Plan makes me doubt that they plan to ship anytime soon. Are you guys sure that it's going to be "some time this year" as the article states?

This http://ktown.kde.org/~seli/memory/desktop_benchmar k.html article from 2006 shows you how much memory Gnome/KDE use. Even though it is written by a KDE member I can't see why he should have messed with the numbers. As you can see KDE actually uses a bit less (not much though) memory than Gnome.

Also, a similar KDE article is at http://dot.kde.org/1167723426/

Read the comments there as well for some interesting info.

http://edu.kde.org/kstars/

It usually comes bundled in the education package along with some other useful apps.

Most Linux distros don't even have the relevant codecs, and while you can get them, how many people *want* to spend their time that way?

Besides, the multimedia applications themselves are simply not of the same quality.

And this is an evolving area: even Microsoft has trouble keeping up with iTunes (Windows Media Player, for example, has no RSS/podcast support)

and the Linux stuff is nowhere near.

And, of course, iTunes won't run on Linux while it will run on XP.

You think, these days, people want a system that can't play MP3s or DVDs out of the box

a system that can't sync with a portable MP3 player easily?

You think they want to mooch over to YouTube and find they can't watch the vids, because they have't got Flash. (And some geek telling them to install Wine so they can use Flash just won't walk.)

But non-enthusiast home users? No way. Maybe the odd person who only does web and email, but that's not the norm now.

KDE developers are indeed planning big things for KDE4 but that is what they are stuck at. Show me where the results are.KDE's biggest problem is a lack of manpower and financial backing by big companies.

First hit on google:
http://de.kde.org/bilder/visualguide/3.5/konq-acid 2.png

You were saying?

Anyway, as has already been pointed out, it's dead easy to create a khtml-based browser with no dependencies on either of Qt or KDE. What has not been pointed out (and I feel obliged to after your bizarre, off-topic anti-KDE smear) is that KDE is less memory-hungry than GNOME:

http://ktown.kde.org/~seli/memory/

And yes, I know it is written by a KDE dev, but anyone who immediately discounts the hard figures and methodology based solely on the "biased" source is clearly guilty of just the kind of bias they would accuse the report author of. If you think about it, this makes sense: KDE has a history of spinning any code that is used by one or more apps into kdelibs, whereas the GNOME devs want to keep their libraries smaller, leading to re-invention of the wheel where several GNOME/ Gtk apps all implement the same functionality.

Sorry for the off-topicness, but this kind of (wholly unfounded) KDE-bashing really gets my goat.

Unfortunately, Konqueror is tied into KDE. You could maybe wrap the KHTML rendering engine in an alternate skin, but that'd be a huge project. It might be less bother to persuade Opera to open up their source code.

Sorry, but no. Actually, khtml makes it extremely easy. Example.

Having read that list, I don't think any of them are likely to happen to me.

1. Unlikely. If my computer ever crashes, it does so for a reason. The software I am using has been independently audited. I've read the Source Code of some of it myself.

2. Unlikely. I know how to use locate.

3. Unlimited traffic. Static IP. Anything less is not a proper internet connection.

4. Bloody unlikely. I use a web browser, not a virus magnet. That's on top of an Operating System which is immune to viruses, spyware and adware -- by design.

5. I know how to turn off Bluetooth. So does anyone who has to pay for their electricity by the joule.

6. It's right there in the Terms and Conditions of my bank account: We will never ask you for personal information via the Internet. And it means what it says.

7. See 6. Anyway, there are only two ways my bank could add an "internet-enabled" service I'd actually use: let me take a photo of a pile of pound notes and coins, upload it and pay it into my account; or let me print pound notes on my own printer.

8. I don't buy software, I download it using apt-get. What is a CD key?

9. Bit far-fetched. Anyway, if anybody's going to be selling off the toner cartridges, it's me!

10. Unlikely. I don't travel by air anyway.

Personally, I cannot stand the default theme in XP. It's too Fisher Price. The only theme that annoys me more is Keramik. The grey/silver one is decent, though. I always used classic until I found out about the Royale theme (it's from Media Center Edition). That is actually really nice. Now the first thing I do when reinstalling XP is to install that theme.

if you want to run mainstream software that require KDE libraries, you're still hosed.

If the menu bar location really is a "love it or hate it" thing (and keeping it attached to windows is not a pseudo-religious FUD "we're not Apple!" thing), where's that option? It's probably the most requested feature for Gnome. I'm sure KDE is the same.

The option is there in KDE.

Poor ol' Apple. Years late, as always.

Give me a desktop that actually works, and not one that looks like something out of the Land of Drooling Morons (you know, the same place Vista's Aero Glass and, to a lesser extent, the Fisher-Price motif of XP), and I'm happy. OS X has a terribly unintuitive GUI for anyone who's grown up using a real OS, even if under the hood it actually is a real OS, too.

OS 9 didn't waste time trying to be pretty. It was a utilitarian, usable GUI on top of a pretty shallow OS. Windows' old-style GUI was similarly utilitarian. And while KDE can look pretty, it comes out-of-the-box clean and clear.

The only way I'd ever buy a Mac is if I could turn off that bubble-button, whooshing-all-over-the-place nonsense. Steve Jobs is selling a style, and it's about as "deep" as anything coming out of the popular entertainment industry.

You can do this in KDE, it just doesn't look as pretty.

http://docs.kde.org/stable/en/kdebase/kcontrol/des ktopbehavior/index.html

Look for "Menu Bar at Top of Screen"

With a little research, nothing could beat MS-Access with its VB. We quickly had working GUIs integrated with business logic. Things were beautiful. PHP was available but the its abilities at the time were very limited.

Sadly, there is still no real answer to MS-Access' programming paradigm in the Linux world. Gambas http://gambas.sourceforge.net/ comes close. So does RealBasic http://www.realbasic.com/. Other wannabe environments are simply wasting time at present, and do not appear to be serious.

I am meant to understand that Kross http://conference2006.kde.org/conference/talks/2.p hp is progressing well, but was not impressed when I tried it.

Having powerful programming environments that are friendly to newbies is OK, but making them actively hostile to power users on the other hand is insane. Those two items aren't mutually exclusive, but Linux programmers tend to think so - sadly.

While you are correct that the current release of FF does not pass the acid2 test, it is worth noting that the code to correct this is and achieve acid2 compliance is included in the current development branch of FF, and it will be operational in the next release.

The "development branch", the "alpha", the "beta" and the "release candidate" don't count. If you want to compare development branches, Opera, Konqueror, and Safari make Firefox look even more pathetic.

Some resources:
Apple's User Interface Guidelines; adapted from the NeXT/OpenStep Interface Guidelines (PDF).

There's also the Classic "Macintosh Human Interface Guidelines" for System 1 through OS 9 (have to hunt it down yourself), GNOME's HIG,KDE's, and Tog's.

Without reading through them all, I can't point out where they address BPs for reuse, management, etc., but I know it is touched on somewhat (although from a NeXT slant) in Apple and NeXT's guidelines.

I assume you haven't seen KOffice all that well, my friend or more specifically the results of their GUI contest. They decided they wanted a new interface and did what was needed. Wait 'till it comes out. OO.o is not(and will not) be the only competitor to Office.

I assume you haven't seen KOffice all that well, my friend or more specifically the results of their GUI contest. They decided they wanted a new interface and did what was needed. Wait 'till it comes out. OO.o is not(and will not) be the only competitor to Office.

and it is the only way to get an iPod to work.

knitting already in KDE

I'd say make the switch already

P.S.
Don't knock it till you've tried it

Winamp -> XMMS

1. Many Windows don't know what "Winamp" is. They use Windows Media Player or iTunes. Please point people to alternatives such as Exaile (Gnome) and amoroK (KDE).
2. Please advocate something modern. XMMS still uses GTK1 and feels very out of place on a modern desktop. It does not compete with a modern Winamp in terms of functionality. Please point people towards modern Winamp-like programs such as Beep Media Player and Audacious.

I'd use Konqueror, but Firefox has certain things I can't live without.

The general populace cannot properly build a PC. I have experienced firsthand the results of someone trying to build their own PC, time and time again. There are just too many things that can go wrong. But they should not have to settle for Dell if they do not want. That makes it my job to select quality brand name parts and assemble a quality PC, and if a person wants a $300 PC, then that's what I will build for them. If they want a $600 PC, ok. The more you pay, the more power.

Of course, the other great choice to be offered is Linux, or Windows, or both? Dual boot, VMWare Player, or both? I have now 250 customers, many local, a few not, who enjoy their linux PC and receive tech support and software updates from me, free for the first year, or longer if they wish (for extra $$).

Right now many of my customers are enjoying their new 3D accelerated desktops (video!), and hopefully everyone will have this by christmas. Flash player 9 is also going on select customer desktops, those who are comfortable trying out new software which is not official. All of my customers recieve emails describing services from rhapsody.com, emusic.com, abc.com, new features from KDE and related software (amarok!), and other news of interest.

The main theme here is support. It should not be as difficult as it is with Dell. I think it should be more personal, and that is what i hope to offer. That and, of course, a better quality PC than can be found elsewhere. That, above all, is why I entered this business.. working on Dell, Gateway and Compaq etc PCs for years left me wanting something more for my customers, like quality name brand parts, painless and inexpensive hardware and software updates, and of course, personalized tech support.

The general populace cannot properly build a PC. I have experienced firsthand the results of someone trying to build their own PC, time and time again. There are just too many things that can go wrong. But they should not have to settle for Dell if they do not want. That makes it my job to select quality brand name parts and assemble a quality PC, and if a person wants a $300 PC, then that's what I will build for them. If they want a $600 PC, ok. The more you pay, the more power.

Of course, the other great choice to be offered is Linux, or Windows, or both? Dual boot, VMWare Player, or both? I have now 250 customers, many local, a few not, who enjoy their linux PC and receive tech support and software updates from me, free for the first year, or longer if they wish (for extra $$).

Right now many of my customers are enjoying their new 3D accelerated desktops (video!), and hopefully everyone will have this by christmas. Flash player 9 is also going on select customer desktops, those who are comfortable trying out new software which is not official. All of my customers recieve emails describing services from rhapsody.com, emusic.com, abc.com, new features from KDE and related software (amarok!), and other news of interest.

The main theme here is support. It should not be as difficult as it is with Dell. I think it should be more personal, and that is what i hope to offer. That and, of course, a better quality PC than can be found elsewhere. That, above all, is why I entered this business.. working on Dell, Gateway and Compaq etc PCs for years left me wanting something more for my customers, like quality name brand parts, painless and inexpensive hardware and software updates, and of course, personalized tech support.

I don't think you quite grasp the power of using KDE with its enormous set of shared libraries. So I'll give you a link to help you along http://ktown.kde.org/~seli/memory/ Read that, then try it out for yourself if your not convinced. Then, come back, and don't make a fool of yourself next time ranting on how KDE has lots of "baggage".

Actually , Krita can open and edit RAW files

Read the following thread on the Dot if you want more information.
http://dot.kde.org/1161037713/1161068107/

The newer versions of Winamp suck, but at least it still sucks less than the alternatives. However, when I use Windows I usually use iTunes.

XMMS is pretty much deprecated. I mean, it still uses GTK1 . If you want something XMMS/Winamp like, give Beep Media Player or Audacious a try. Both of those support XMMS and Winamp skins, have a good amount of plugins, and are modern.

Personally, though, I think the current best two are amaroK (KDE) and Exaile (Gnome).

Amarok. Linux (KDE) only, but it would alone be a reason to switch for me.
Does all the stuff itunes does (minus the music store) -- podcasting, ipod synching, etc.
Does a whole lot more, including lyric support, tons of plugins, etc.
The killer portion -- last.fm support. I don't use too many playlists anymore -- I queue up a few tracks to set the mood and let it suggest the rest. Kind of like pandora, but only with the music in your library.
If you're looking for new tunes, you can listen to your last.fm neighbour radio.
Great stuff. I discovered it while looking for a replacement for itunes when I switched to Linux. Now I wouldn't go back to itunes if they paid me to.

Under Gnome, click on "Places" and then on "Connect to server". A dialog will now open. Set the service type to "Windows Share" and fill in the "server", "share", and "user name" fields. If there is a domain, fill in the "domain" field too. Hit "connect". You now have an icon on both the desktop and in the Places menu named after the folder. Click on it. It will ask you for a password and it will give you the option to save it in your keyring (it's encrypted, btw). All Gnome applications (including OpenOffice) will show it on the left of file dialogs. It will be there whenever you start the computer.

KDE provides similar functionality, but it's not as easy to find. The tool to set it up do it is in one of the menus but every distro seems to try to hide it. Here is documentation on how to use it.

No editing text files. No plain text passwords. No root privileges required.

"Needing to change options to get the computer to show you short cuts is hiding those short cuts away. Of course, again, your reading comprehension is in question. Because if you can't see it, it is being hidden away."

The steps to access a list of global shortcuts is more or less the same for Windows and the Mac, and in neither case requires changing any options.

In Windows:

1) bring up help.
2) Type "shortcut keys" into the Search window, and hit return.
3) Select "Windows keyboard shortcuts overview" from the "Overviews, Articles, and Tutorials" section.

On Mac:

1) bring up Mac help.
2) Type "shortcuts" into the Search window, and hit return
3) Select "Mac OS X keyboard shortcuts" from the "Support Articles" section.

Given that both of the above require exactly the same number of steps, the Windows ones must also be "hidden away" if those on the Mac are.

"That great method for accessing the menus is completely half assed. the first letter does not always access an option (the "apple" menu has 4 options that start with the letter s, but S will only access two of them), and there aren't any underlined letters to cue me to them."

In the words of Homer Simpson, "Lord help me, I'm just not that bright". Did it even occur to you that, as with Windows drop-down lists (which also don't have lines to cue people in) maybe typing the first _two letters_ of menu entries with the same initial character might work, or are you completely incapable of doing anything on a computer without somebody guiding you through every single step?

"a quick search on my mac for accelerator keys and shortcuts brings up"

You won't find anything about accelerator keys in the Mac help because Macs don't have them, hence the fact that in my last post, I only talked about them in the context of Windows, e.g.:

'Most real Windows power users will know these and many others because they not only require less keystrokes than accelerators...'

and:

'Developers have to tell Windows which character in a menu entry or dialog control's text is an accelerator -- it doesn't make the decision for them automatically (which is IMO a good thing).'

Note however that they are also used in KDE, Java, and various other environments, but _not_ on Macs running Mac OS. You can for example find information about KDE's usage here:
http://developer.kde.org/documentation/standards/k de/style/keys/index.html#accelerator

"By the way, try out firefox. The commands inside the menu's do not have any underlined letters(the menus themselves do) so again, you are wrong about the lack of an underlying implying to accelerator. Just getting you brushed up so you don't go saying that again. Its just false."

What on earth are you wittering about? Firefox on Windows and Linux has underlined accelerators both on the menus themselves and the items in them, as one would expect, while Firefox on the Mac has no underlined accelerators at all because Macs don't use accelerators (so it's again as one would expect). Unless you have your own unique version of Firefox, i can therefore only assume that you have somehow managed to break your copy of it in some strange way, possibly by using a misbehaving theme or plug-in. On my Windows installation of Firefox (and several hundred others that I've seen), typing Alt+F brings up the File menu (which has the F underlined), and this has the following entries:

New Window, with the N for New underlined.
New Tab, with the T for Tab underlined.
Open Location..., with the L for location underlined.
Open File..., with the O for Open underlined.
Close, with the C underlined.
Etc.

The Edit menu:

Undo with the U underlined.
Redo with the R underlined.
Cut with the T underlined.
Copy with the C underlined.
Etc.

Other menus and their entries are similarly endowed.

I suggest you check what plugins and theme you are using, because Firefox on Windows and Linux should have underlined accelerators in its menus, while nothing in the menus is supposed to be underlined in the Mac version.

the UI folks probably just forgot.

For three releases in a row? Well that just shows how much they care about KDE, doesn't it.

What puzzles me is why Fedora can't just take a KDE 3.5 snapshot from the SVN server and leave the defaults as-is? It would be easier on themselves (they wouldn't have to make as many changes), and the vast majority of users prefer KDE's default settings anyway. But of course, Redhat wants to weave users away from KDE and stuff gnome down their throats -- that's why the default apps (even when the user has selected KDE) are annoyingly still gnome.

the UI folks probably just forgot.

For three releases in a row? Well that just shows how much they care about KDE, doesn't it.

What puzzles me is why Fedora can't just take a KDE 3.5 snapshot from the SVN server and leave the defaults as-is? It would be easier on themselves (they wouldn't have to make as many changes), and the vast majority of users prefer KDE's default settings anyway. But of course, Redhat wants to weave users away from KDE and stuff gnome down their throats -- that's why the default apps (even when the user has selected KDE) are annoyingly still gnome.

For the lazy:

Application/ Import/ Export
Abiword/ Yes/ Yes
AmiPro/ Yes/ Yes
Applixword/ Yes/ No
HTML/ Yes/ Yes
KPresenter/ Yes/ No
Hancom Word/ Yes/ No
Magic Point Presentation/ Yes/ No
Microsoft® Powerpoint/ Yes/ No
Microsoft® Word/ Yes/ No
Microsoft® Write/ Yes/ Yes
Oasis OpenDocument/ Yes/ Yes
Openoffice.org Presentation/ Yes/ No
Openoffice.org Text Document/ Yes/ Yes
Palm Document/ Yes/ Yes
PDF/ Yes/ No
Plain Text/ Yes/ Yes
RTF/ Yes/ Yes
SGML/ No/ Yes
TeX Document/ No/ Yes
WML/ Yes/ Yes
Wordperfect/ Yes/ Yes
XML/ Yes/ No

For the lazy:

Application/ Import/ Export
Abiword/ Yes/ Yes
AmiPro/ Yes/ Yes
Applixword/ Yes/ No
HTML/ Yes/ Yes
KPresenter/ Yes/ No
Hancom Word/ Yes/ No
Magic Point Presentation/ Yes/ No
Microsoft® Powerpoint/ Yes/ No
Microsoft® Word/ Yes/ No
Microsoft® Write/ Yes/ Yes
Oasis OpenDocument/ Yes/ Yes
Openoffice.org Presentation/ Yes/ No
Openoffice.org Text Document/ Yes/ Yes
Palm Document/ Yes/ Yes
PDF/ Yes/ No
Plain Text/ Yes/ Yes
RTF/ Yes/ Yes
SGML/ No/ Yes
TeX Document/ No/ Yes
WML/ Yes/ Yes
Wordperfect/ Yes/ Yes
XML/ Yes/ No

From what I understand, this is at least in part a Qt 3.x issue, and will be fixed in Koffice 2.0 with the port to Qt 4.x. The big showstopper for me, and most people, is the lack of Microsoft Word support. See http://koffice.kde.org/filters/1.6/.

That's where you're wrong: C++ is an absolute disaster and has held back desktop and application enormously.

Tell that M$, Apple, Trolltech and every other professional desktop development company in the world. Currently, it's the only language that is capable of supporting highpowered applications like 3D Modellers, multimedia processing programs, and others.

Just because it's not as flexible or forgiving as C#/Java/Ruby/Python doesn't mean that you can't build amazing software with it. Besides, if the developers use a consitant coding format like TT does, you can build very powerful language bindings on top of C++. Just look at SIP and SMOKE and here. I gurrentee that for KDE 4.x, there will be an extremely powerful scripting layer (JS/Ruby/Python) for developing kde applications in. It'll be so powerful that it'll cause major security holes but that's a good thing in my opinion.

Cheers,
Ben

Still KDE is the leaner of the 2 full desktop enviroments around there:

http://ktown.kde.org/~seli/memory/

This is most likely your video card drivers. KDE is plenty fast, but if you dont have acceleration working in X, then everything will seem sluggish. My card is poorly supported (ATI Xpress 200m) and it makes everything seem slow.

Yes, if you mean ridiculously low. Fresh boot, Debian with KDE 3.5.4 on my old box, 32MB of ram used. Start up konversation (irc client) and it's about 45MB. Every subsequent application uses less extra ram, because the libraries are already loaded. Fresh boot on windows xp is at least 100MB, on my laptop more like 150. Most likely you have no idea on how to measure memory usage on linux. Have a look here: http://ktown.kde.org/~seli/memory/

You can find them at:

http://wiki.kde.org/tiki-index.php?page=Performanc e%20Tips

And, according to http://terra.es/personal/diegocg/kde/#DCOP

KDE 4 will use Qt 4.0 which is a big improvement in that field. When Qt designer was ported to Qt 4.0 - only the neccesary changes to make it compile - the "libqt size decreased by 5%, Designer num relocs went down by 30%, mallocs use by 51%, and memory use by 15%. The measured Designer startup time went down by 18%".