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KDE actually does have something of a registry, Sycoca. The main difference being, Sycoca is a centralized read-only search database built out of various config files. The performance benefits of the Windows approach, without the nightmarish possibilities of fatal registry corruption (and yes, I've hand-edited these files before).

And of course, your system is still usable even if your WM is not.

Taiwan appears to be 'Taiwan' because it has its own government, but I could be misreading the situation.

Taiwan appears to be 'Taiwan' because it has its own government, but I could be misreading the situation.

Taiwan appears to be 'Taiwan' because it has its own government, but I could be misreading the situation.

In the event that TrollTech stops developing QT, it will convert (see sections 2 and 3) to a BSD license.

They need simpler design, I look at a standard application like this, and I think, "WTF" I have one that looks just like the shutdown button in windows, a blue arrow pointing right, and a bunch of other stuff that I'd have to look at a tooltip to just try and figure out what all those things do! Everything seems bulky with big boarders too, I like Win2k where everything was thin and space efficient. The taskbar at the bottom sucks too, why do you need so many buttons there, a launcher menu and a clock will suffice, and why is it so tall with big square buttons? Why can't it have have one row of applications, and be less intrusive? I'm not trying to nag here, and I'm sure someone will say, "Get used to it", but before I move from OS X, I'm going to want a little more zen in my applications. KDE always seemed to attempt to make things easy too, but when it gives detailed instructions on how to click something, "click this for the internet!", but then asks you for parameters for your dialup account, and IRQ's, etc, it just gets frustrating. We need tighter integration between the OS and the WM. Like WIndows and MacOS X

thanks for the informative post, but where can these bindings be found? http://developer.kde.org/language-bindings/ does not list any C bindings

Because, unless I am very much mistaken, it would require that almost all of the project be re-written or thrown away and started on again. You can still have a radical change without having to throw away all of the code that's already been written. Also, they are porting the whole of the KDE project from the Qt3 toolkit to Qt4, since Qt4 is not backward-compatible with Qt3, so in a sense, they are changing the toolkit - but they are porting to one that is very, very similar to the one they use now. ;) What's wrong with Qt anyway that might make you want to port away from it? You might say that it's GPL and not LGPL, which might discourage proprietary developers who don't want to fork out for the alternative license, but that's about it, anything else is really just a matter of preference.

The write-up also seemed rather sparse in details, so while I am writing this post I may as well chuck in a few links:

Interesting interview with Aaron Seigo
Another good interview with Zack Rusin
Official site for KDE Plasma, the KDE4 desktop.

Seriously, thanks for gmail though. I wish I would apply the concept of labels to files on my harddisk.

Woah, seriously your OS doesn't have that? Time to upgrade perhaps. :-)

It's not a feature I use (especially since having Spotlight), though I used to rely on it quite a bit when I was using Mac OS Classic. Nautilus allows you to label files though, and KDE seem to have something interesting in the works.

You're in luck--we're looking for UI designers just like you! Please contact us at usability@kde.org.

KDElibs has already been ported as far as I can tell.

http://wiki.kde.org/tiki-index.php?page=KDElibs+fo r+win32

One of the guys behind KOffice has just posted an open letter refuting a few aspects Alan Yates/Microsoft's criticism of open doc.

I did nothing to my software, and it worked just fine before (and works fine elsewhere). Checking my home computer's konqueror, it works fine.

So you're telling me that the Konqueror package on these systems has a perfect implementation of khtml and has absolutely zero known or unknown rendering bugs? I find that difficult to swallow.

When a geek website breaks the version of konqueror that ships with half a dozen major distros (yes, EL4 would be newer, but EL3 isn't that old - it's from when, 2003? EL4 just came out this year, so expecting people in a business environment (where you can't do whatever upgrades you please) to have upgraded everything isn't realistic), its users have a right to complain.

Slashdot can not be expected to be responsible for bugs or feature absence in 3rd party software, I'm sorry to say. If khtml is broken in your version of konqueror on your red hat system, and does not correctly render all css pages, then your problem exists with konqueror and not with slashdot. Konqueror and khtml have changed quite a bit since 2003, for a glimpse just look at the feature plans for 3.3 and 3.4. Notice that CSS 2.1 and 3.0 features are still in the process of being introduced at this point. Did slashdot hide these CSS property descriptions from KDE developers to make Konqueror unable to render Slashdot prior to version 3.4? I doubt it. It seems fairly obvious to me that Slashdot can't be expected to hold off on development of their product to current accepted standards because a few users can't or don't want to use software beyond outdated shipped packages that are unable to comply with them. Web developers already have enough of a problem with IE web standards being an exception to all the rules that we must constantly worry about, Konqueror < 3.3 not implementing a css featureset doesn't warrant another special exception.

I did nothing to my software, and it worked just fine before (and works fine elsewhere). Checking my home computer's konqueror, it works fine.

So you're telling me that the Konqueror package on these systems has a perfect implementation of khtml and has absolutely zero known or unknown rendering bugs? I find that difficult to swallow.

When a geek website breaks the version of konqueror that ships with half a dozen major distros (yes, EL4 would be newer, but EL3 isn't that old - it's from when, 2003? EL4 just came out this year, so expecting people in a business environment (where you can't do whatever upgrades you please) to have upgraded everything isn't realistic), its users have a right to complain.

Slashdot can not be expected to be responsible for bugs or feature absence in 3rd party software, I'm sorry to say. If khtml is broken in your version of konqueror on your red hat system, and does not correctly render all css pages, then your problem exists with konqueror and not with slashdot. Konqueror and khtml have changed quite a bit since 2003, for a glimpse just look at the feature plans for 3.3 and 3.4. Notice that CSS 2.1 and 3.0 features are still in the process of being introduced at this point. Did slashdot hide these CSS property descriptions from KDE developers to make Konqueror unable to render Slashdot prior to version 3.4? I doubt it. It seems fairly obvious to me that Slashdot can't be expected to hold off on development of their product to current accepted standards because a few users can't or don't want to use software beyond outdated shipped packages that are unable to comply with them. Web developers already have enough of a problem with IE web standards being an exception to all the rules that we must constantly worry about, Konqueror < 3.3 not implementing a css featureset doesn't warrant another special exception.

I think it renders fine in my Firefox, but that's neither here nor there.

If you do a Google search with words like: native, kde, osx (and/or "os x") you get various matches. Here's one. The links from here have a bunch of screenshots: http://dot.kde.org/1073009304/

Isn't Kopete adding skype protocol support? That would allow you to check it was encrypting properly.

A native KDE port for OS X has existed since the end of 2003.... http://dot.kde.org/1073009304/

One of the goals of Perl 6 is to make non-trivial projects possible. That's good. The way it's being done is bad. Perl was once a lightweight, extremely flexible language. Now it's become a huge ugly monster. People wanted OO, so a nasty hack was bolted on top to allow some semblance of it. Now this nasty hack is being expanded. Sure, the code's different, but the basic form is the same. Kludge upon kludge upon kludge; I'd much rather have a nice, clean, pure language (and not one with loads of irritating whitespacethank you very much).

The same goes for the syntax. All the switching between $, @ and % is really irritating (ask a newbie how to get at the length of the keys array of a hash inside a hash, for example), and the changes proposed for 6 are just making this worse -- it seems that Larry, in his infinite wisdom, wants to prefix every data type with a different hard-to-type character. Perl was only designed for the three data types, and adding more is a mess.

Perl 6 is a complete rewrite, but it keeps all the mess which has accumulated over the previous versions. This is not good. Sure, my const int $var = 27; may look neat (in the same way that, say, Pascal does), but $var isn't entirely constant, or entirely an integer, it's just a hack which makes it sort of behave like one. It's like Ada all over again! The whole thing is an exercise in pseudo-computer science masturbation with little real purpose except to please the managers who dislike the one thing that makes Perl special.

On a similar note is regexes. I'm an avid fan of regular expressions simply because a nondeterministic finite automata is far more flexible than linear code. However, Larry must have been smoking that cheap $2 crack when he wrote this. Does he want Perl 6 to be flex or something?

I won't be going on to use 6. It's a nice idea, but it's completely unnecessary. It won't make large projects any easier to manage (the language is still, at heart, an almighty hack -- an impressive one, but still a hack). It won't make OO any cleaner. It won't make development any faster. I'd prefer to use a language which has always been pure synthesis of science and engineering, not some half-baked imposter.

Perl 6 will be nice, but I'm guessing it will be the end of Perl. It can't do what it wants to do whilst still being based upon a nasty mess. There are now other options, which provide all of Perl's power and none of the mess. Sorry, but *BSD^H^H^H^H Perl is dying.

1. It's hard to pin down how many Linux installations there are, let alone users (or desktop installs.) But, people are trying.
   
   
2. It's hard to find the fraction of Linux users that play games. Some work can be done to estimate that.
   
   
3. Given some (probably unreasonable) estimates of the above, however, you can figure it out yourself.
   
   
4. Whatever the customer base for a Linux WoW, it has come a long way.
   

I guess it's meant the beta version. KDE versions are always tagged a week or more before the release are announced, making the time of the Qt 3.3.5 release too close.

I think most modules in SVN 3.5 branch already have got the fixes, like kdebase http://lists.kde.org/?l=kde-commits&m=112699238328 835&w=2

Checkout KDE 3.5 Feature Plan

KDE 3.5 feature plan. Green is finished, yellow is in progress, red not started.
Anyone tried the MSN and Yahoo webcam support in Kopete yet?

here you are:

http://www.canllaith.org/svn-features/22-06-05.htm l
http://www.canllaith.org/svn-features/14-07-05.htm l
http://www.canllaith.org/svn-features/17-08-05.htm l
http://jrepin.blogspot.com/2005/07/jlps-kde-35-pre views-part-1.html
http://jrepin.blogspot.com/2005/08/jlps-kde-35-pre views-part-2.html
http://edu.kde.org/development/3.5improvements.php
http://developer.kde.org/development-versions/kde- 3.5-features.html

the complete changelog, along with a tour of all the new features, will be only in the announcement of the final release. this is a beta, it's only for testing!

here you are:

http://www.canllaith.org/svn-features/22-06-05.htm l
http://www.canllaith.org/svn-features/14-07-05.htm l
http://www.canllaith.org/svn-features/17-08-05.htm l
http://jrepin.blogspot.com/2005/07/jlps-kde-35-pre views-part-1.html
http://jrepin.blogspot.com/2005/08/jlps-kde-35-pre views-part-2.html
http://edu.kde.org/development/3.5improvements.php
http://developer.kde.org/development-versions/kde- 3.5-features.html

the complete changelog, along with a tour of all the new features, will be only in the announcement of the final release. this is a beta, it's only for testing!

It's not OSNews, it's KDE Dot, the summary is identical. This happened with the Qt 4 release too, even though I'd submitted a better version. I think the way to get stories approved is to bribe the /. editors.

it was one of the Google Summer of Code projects
http://developer.kde.org/summerofcode/pagedmedia.h tml

it is in trunk, will be in 4.0

Suse 9.3 is using OpenOffice 1.9.79 so it seems you hit an old bug.

http://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=105083

Update OpenOffice.org and it will most probably work.

Take a look at Klik. I think something like this must be the future of Linux packaging. Assume a very small base system, then include most of your dependencies in the package, and damn the inefficiency. People whining about a few wasted MB are holding Linux back. Buy some RAM! If you want to conserve every last byte, then build Linux From Scratch. The rest of us want easy installs that are guaranteed to work.

I have always felt that Linux is a nice operating system (for hobbyists and geeks), but there are some areas where it is seriously lacking, especially when compared to its main competitor, Microsoft Windows.

* File sharing. Windows has long been superior when it comes to making large amounts of files available to third parties. Even early versions of Windows automatically detected and made available all directories thanks to the built in NetBIOS-powered file sharing support. But Microsoft has realized that this technology is inherently limited and has added even better file sharing support to its Windows XP operating system. Universal Plug and Play will make it possible to literally access any file, from any device! I think universal file sharing support needs to be built into the Linux kernel soon.

* Intelligent agents. With innovations like Clippy, the talking paperclip and Microsoft Bob, Microsoft has always tried to make life easier for its customers. With Outlook and Outlook Express, Microsoft has built a framework for developers to create even smarter agents. Especially popular agents include "Sircam", which automatically asks the users' friends for advice on files he is working on and the "Hybris" agent, which is a self-replicating copy of a humorous take on "Snow-White and the Seven Dwarves" (the real story!). Microsoft is working on expanding this P2P technology to its web servers. This project is still in the beta stage, thus the name "Code Red". The next versions will be called "Code Yellow" and "Code Green".

* Version numbers. Linux has real naming problems. What's the difference between a 2.4.19 and a 2.2.17 kernel anyway? And what's with those odd and even numbers? Microsoft has always had clear and sophisticated naming/versioning policies. For example, Windows 95 was named Windows 95 because it was released in 1995. Windows 98 was released three years later, and so on. Windows XP brought a whole new "experience" to the user, therefore the name. I suggest that the next Linux kernel releases be called Linux 03, Linux 04, Linux 04.5 (OSR1),
Linux 04.7B (OSR2 SP4 OEM), Linux 2005 and Linux VD (Valentine's Day edition). Furthermore, remember how Microsoft named every upcoming version of Windows after some Egyptian city? Cairo, Chicago and so on. I think that the development kernels should be named after Spanish cities to celebrate Linux' Spanish origins. Linux Milano or Linux Rome anyone?

* Multi-User Support. This has always been one of Microsoft's strong sides, especially in the Windows 95/98 variants, where passwords were completely unnecessary. Microsoft has made the right decision by not bothering the user
with a distinction between "normal" and "root" users too much -- practice has shown that average users can be trusted to act responsibly and in full awareness of the potential consequences of their actions. After all, if your operating system doesn't trust you, why should you trust it? (To be fair, Linux is making some progress here with the Lindows distribution, where users are always running as root.)

With Windows XP, Microsoft has again improved multi-user support. Not only does Windows XP come with a large library of user pictures that are displayed on the login screen, such as a guitar and a flower, i

I have always felt that Linux is a nice operating system (for hobbyists and geeks), but there are some areas where it is seriously lacking, especially when compared to its main competitor, Microsoft Windows.

* File sharing. Windows has long been superior when it comes to making large amounts of files available to third parties. Even early versions of Windows automatically detected and made available all directories thanks to the built in NetBIOS-powered file sharing support. But Microsoft has realized that this technology is inherently limited and has added even better file sharing support to its Windows XP operating system. Universal Plug and Play will make it possible to literally access any file, from any device! I think universal file sharing support needs to be built into the Linux kernel soon.

* Intelligent agents. With innovations like Clippy, the talking paperclip and Microsoft Bob, Microsoft has always tried to make life easier for its customers. With Outlook and Outlook Express, Microsoft has built a framework for developers to create even smarter agents. Especially popular agents include "Sircam", which automatically asks the users' friends for advice on files he is working on and the "Hybris" agent, which is a self-replicating copy of a humorous take on "Snow-White and the Seven Dwarves" (the real story!). Microsoft is working on expanding this P2P technology to its web servers. This project is still in the beta stage, thus the name "Code Red". The next versions will be called "Code Yellow" and "Code Green".

* Version numbers. Linux has real naming problems. What's the difference between a 2.4.19 and a 2.2.17 kernel anyway? And what's with those odd and even numbers? Microsoft has always had clear and sophisticated naming/versioning policies. For example, Windows 95 was named Windows 95 because it was released in 1995. Windows 98 was released three years later, and so on. Windows XP brought a whole new "experience" to the user, therefore the name. I suggest that the next Linux kernel releases be called Linux 03, Linux 04, Linux 04.5 (OSR1),
Linux 04.7B (OSR2 SP4 OEM), Linux 2005 and Linux VD (Valentine's Day edition). Furthermore, remember how Microsoft named every upcoming version of Windows after some Egyptian city? Cairo, Chicago and so on. I think that the development kernels should be named after Spanish cities to celebrate Linux' Spanish origins. Linux Milano or Linux Rome anyone?

* Multi-User Support. This has always been one of Microsoft's strong sides, especially in the Windows 95/98 variants, where passwords were completely unnecessary. Microsoft has made the right decision by not bothering the user
with a distinction between "normal" and "root" users too much -- practice has shown that average users can be trusted to act responsibly and in full awareness of the potential consequences of their actions. After all, if your operating system doesn't trust you, why should you trust it? (To be fair, Linux is making some progress here with the Lindows distribution, where users are always running as root.)

With Windows XP, Microsoft has again improved multi-user support. Not only does Windows XP come with a large library of user pictures that are displayed on the login screen, such as a guitar and a flower, i

I have always felt that Linux is a nice operating system (for hobbyists and geeks), but there are some areas where it is seriously lacking, especially when compared to its main competitor, Microsoft Windows.

* File sharing. Windows has long been superior when it comes to making large amounts of files available to third parties. Even early versions of Windows automatically detected and made available all directories thanks to the built in NetBIOS-powered file sharing support. But Microsoft has realized that this technology is inherently limited and has added even better file sharing support to its Windows XP operating system. Universal Plug and Play will make it possible to literally access any file, from any device! I think universal file sharing support needs to be built into the Linux kernel soon.

* Intelligent agents. With innovations like Clippy, the talking paperclip and Microsoft Bob, Microsoft has always tried to make life easier for its customers. With Outlook and Outlook Express, Microsoft has built a framework for developers to create even smarter agents. Especially popular agents include "Sircam", which automatically asks the users' friends for advice on files he is working on and the "Hybris" agent, which is a self-replicating copy of a humorous take on "Snow-White and the Seven Dwarves" (the real story!). Microsoft is working on expanding this P2P technology to its web servers. This project is still in the beta stage, thus the name "Code Red". The next versions will be called "Code Yellow" and "Code Green".

* Version numbers. Linux has real naming problems. What's the difference between a 2.4.19 and a 2.2.17 kernel anyway? And what's with those odd and even numbers? Microsoft has always had clear and sophisticated naming/versioning policies. For example, Windows 95 was named Windows 95 because it was released in 1995. Windows 98 was released three years later, and so on. Windows XP brought a whole new "experience" to the user, therefore the name. I suggest that the next Linux kernel releases be called Linux 03, Linux 04, Linux 04.5 (OSR1),
Linux 04.7B (OSR2 SP4 OEM), Linux 2005 and Linux VD (Valentine's Day edition). Furthermore, remember how Microsoft named every upcoming version of Windows after some Egyptian city? Cairo, Chicago and so on. I think that the development kernels should be named after Spanish cities to celebrate Linux' Spanish origins. Linux Milano or Linux Rome anyone?

* Multi-User Support. This has always been one of Microsoft's strong sides, especially in the Windows 95/98 variants, where passwords were completely unnecessary. Microsoft has made the right decision by not bothering the user
with a distinction between "normal" and "root" users too much -- practice has shown that average users can be trusted to act responsibly and in full awareness of the potential consequences of their actions. After all, if your operating system doesn't trust you, why should you trust it? (To be fair, Linux is making some progress here with the Lindows distribution, where users are always running as root.)

With Windows XP, Microsoft has again improved multi-user support. Not only does Windows XP come with a large library of user pictures that are displayed on the login screen, such as a guitar and a flower, i

You could try klik if all the systems have KDE installed, it's a MAC-like system for application distribution/installation:

http://dot.kde.org/1126867980/
http://klik.atekon.de/

It works fine in Gentoo too.

And ohh the KDE guys have done it again. We now have "klik" http://dot.kde.org/1126867980/ that promises to simplify package installation on Linux systems. I have my dissatisfactions though. The biggest are:

the ugly default Linux desktop in most distros,

the ugly fonts (emphasizing the above), and

the seemingly slow response times for Linux apps.

OpenOffice.org Linux's flagship application, encompasses all the above - sadly!

Yes.

Look here:

http://dot.kde.org/1126867980/

Just a few moments ago, I was reading about klik: http://dot.kde.org/1126867980/

It sound just like what you are looking for :)

I disagree.Thats the best thing in life, is to be able to disagree.

We're already there, but without Rhythmbox's clunky interface. amaroK already supports podcasts and iPods, while SharpMusique supports iTMS.

I just read the KDE foundation Trolltech agreement.

Link is here: http://www.kde.org/whatiskde/kdefreeqtfoundation.p hp#updated_agreement

What is says is very, very simple. The KDE foundation is permitted to license the latest QT Free edition under any open source license, explicitly including the BSD license, as long as one of the following three conditions is meet:

1. QT Free edition is not updated for 12 months.
2. QT Free edition is not updated within 12 months of the release of a new QT proprietary edition (i.e. QT4 comes out, non-gpl, no QT4 Free edition)
3. Unanimous consent of the KDE foundation boardmembers.

That's all. No one, at all, should fear that Trolltech can take QT away, or that a large company (say Microsoft) could purchase Trolltech, and take QT away.

The absolute worst that could happen would be Trolltech stopping development. That's it.

With this agreement, Trolltech irrevocably ties themselves to the free software movement. QT is under no threat at all.

actually, they do. It's not part of the GPL (obviously) but it is a separate contractual agreement.

http://www.kde.org/whatiskde/kdefreeqtfoundation.p hp

Hello, meet the KDE Free Qt Foundation, founded in 1998 exactly to prevent this kind of problem. In case Trolltech ownership changes and tries to snatch Qt from under our feet, Qt goes BSD-license by contractual agreement.

This being said, much as I like Qt from an engineering point of view, and have appreciated my contacts with the Trolls so far, I don't know what to make of that IPO. This might be a good time to sit back and watch and wait.

KDE Free Qt Foundation:

The KDE Free Qt Foundation is an organization founded by Trolltech and the KDE e.V. in 1998 with the purpose to secure the availability of the Qt toolkit for the development of Free Software and in particular for the development of the K Desktop Environment (KDE).

Agreement page 1
  2 3 4

The question of course is: what is a new release? Just another version number?

KDE Free Qt Foundation:

The KDE Free Qt Foundation is an organization founded by Trolltech and the KDE e.V. in 1998 with the purpose to secure the availability of the Qt toolkit for the development of Free Software and in particular for the development of the K Desktop Environment (KDE).

Agreement page 1
  2 3 4

The question of course is: what is a new release? Just another version number?

KDE Free Qt Foundation:

The KDE Free Qt Foundation is an organization founded by Trolltech and the KDE e.V. in 1998 with the purpose to secure the availability of the Qt toolkit for the development of Free Software and in particular for the development of the K Desktop Environment (KDE).

Agreement page 1
  2 3 4

The question of course is: what is a new release? Just another version number?

KDE Free Qt Foundation:

The KDE Free Qt Foundation is an organization founded by Trolltech and the KDE e.V. in 1998 with the purpose to secure the availability of the Qt toolkit for the development of Free Software and in particular for the development of the K Desktop Environment (KDE).

Agreement page 1
  2 3 4

The question of course is: what is a new release? Just another version number?

KDE Free Qt Foundation:

The KDE Free Qt Foundation is an organization founded by Trolltech and the KDE e.V. in 1998 with the purpose to secure the availability of the Qt toolkit for the development of Free Software and in particular for the development of the K Desktop Environment (KDE).

Agreement page 1
  2 3 4

The question of course is: what is a new release? Just another version number?

As long as Trolltech continues to make a developer kit so that us less financially inclined can just complile and test software on their platform for free, I will be happy.

On this topic, I'm sure KDE has the right to take the current QT version and call it their's if Trolltech go bankrupt or go 12 months without a QT release, and release it under a BSD-style license. (Correct me if I'm wrong, I'm too lazy to reread the agreement doc)

Some details here

Argh! I agree that many current graphical user interfaces aren't ideal, and I'm writing my own rant about it (plus a design that makes it better, which is why it takes so long). This guy, and also amaroK's Fitt's Corners are just painfully wrong in places.

From the Stone Age blog post:

``After more than 20 years of research, development and competition in the field of HCI, not one single leading operating system developing company has come up with an OS that utilizes the four corners of the screen.''

That doesn't mean that HCI is in the stone age. It just means the leading OSes have it wrong. The GNOME version I am running uses all 4 corners. I don't use any of the functions from the corners on a regular basis, but that's a different story; they are used, and it's obviously because the GNOME team realized their power.

The Fitt's Corners article writes about this:

``why don't any major Desktop Environments exploit the screen corners?

I have a good reason: it's because they are the easiest spots to hit with the mouse.

Setup your OSX box to trigger Expose when you move the mouse to a corner. Now count how many times during the day you nudge the mouse into the corner and trigger Expose by accident.''

This has nothing to do with screen corners, and everything with mouse gestures. It's the fact that just moving the mouse (without any indication that some action is intended) triggers actions that causes these accidents. This is why I always disable mouse gestures in apps that support them.

From the Stone Age:

``2. OS GUI's are Designed for Beginners.
Ooooh. there's nothing wrong with that, as long as you can grow with your user interface.''

Yes, GUIs are designed to make computers easy for beginners to use. For those who want flexibility, there is the command line, or, if you don't want to leave the GUI world, scripting (think DCOP, AppleScript), augmented with macro recording (think Automator).

What's _really_ wrong with respect to GUIs being for beginners, is that many aren't actually easy for beginners to use. What idiot came up with double-click? Do you have any idea how much trouble this is causing?!

From the Stone Age:

``You have to actually drop focus on what you're looking at and move your eyesight in order to find that tiny little resize button of the window.''

What would you rather have, genius? A 1x1 inch resize widget cluttering up the screen? At least with people I know, resizing isnt a very common operation. If you want to temporary get the current window out of the way and look at another one, just throw the mouse to the dock or taskbar (yep, they're at the edge of the screen in all current GUIs) and click the widget for the window you want to look at.

Perhaps it would be useful to be able to resize a window by holding some key and dragging a corner of it (where the "corner" could be up to 1/4 of the total window size - after all, you need to hold the magic key to activate this mode), but then, holding a key and dragging is something very advanced for many users I know.

Or you could do like a number of advanced GUI users I know, and just partition the screen into non-overlapping frames, put your windows inside these frames, and never have the problem of overlapping windows in the first place!

More insights from the Stone Age:

``Situations like these make me feel sorry for the spacebar. So big and strong... He totally rules over the other keys, and yet all he produces is... nothingness.''

Maybe, just maybe, it's because inserting a space is a very common operation? How usable do you think a keyboard would be if the space bar were as difficult to hit as the 'Q' on a Dvorak keyboard (it's where the 'X' is on QWERTY)? For the same reason, the return key and the backspace are (hopefully) larger than regular keys, but smaller than the space bar.

The Stone Age guy also complains about modern GUIs offer

http://amarok.kde.org/blog/archives/56-Fitts-Corne rs.html

Interesting read, I think.

Actually, they have more than that in common: they're not designed for Windows users. Kate and gedit are the editors that GUI users want to be using, and they're clearly superior to anything Microsoft ships with the base operating system.

Since you brought it up, what command line editors does Windows come with for when you need to SSH in to tweak the registry on a default system? See, I can raise new straw men, too.

For starters, why isn't there a shell that emulates the windows CMD? As useful greps / finds / pipe chains are, they can't match the simplicity of a DIR /S. I've been using MS-DOS for more than 15 years, moving to Linux is restarting everything from scratch. Is that really NECESSARY?

Yes, because you're wishing for a one-to-one mapping that simply doesn't exist. I think it could be argued (actually, I know it can - I'm about to do it) that it's better to discard any misleading abstractions and learn a new way of doing things than to doggedly hold on to the old, poor-fitting emulation.

I mean, I used an Amiga from '85 to '98. While it was certainly more Unix-ish than was DOS, it never occurred to me to try to find an AmigaDOS clone. What would it have bought me? Nothing but a false sense of security that I knew what was really going on. I also don't try to write Java in Python, or C++ in Perl (although I try to sneak some Lisp into any language I can), because they're just not the same paradigm.

At some point you have to say, "look, here's what I learned over the last 15 years. Let's see how I can apply them to the new situation at hand." This is not unique to computers, but is the way of cars, jobs, relationships, and the world in general.

[Disclaimer: not a single byte of my code can be found in the official kernel tree, so take my words with a grain of salt. Still, I don't really imagine Linus using mouse for anything but cut&paste]