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With the rich resources of the OSS community, one wonders why rpm dependency hell has no adopted solution.

Autopackage http://www.autopackage.org/ would be a good start but all major distros are not even giving it support!

Next thing is multimedia and multimedia applications. Totem in the GNOME world and Amarok in the KDE world will not play mp3s out of the box, yet there are no licensing restrictions on these formats! These are so many other examples in the multimedia field.

There is a bug/feature I found in Linux that needs attention in relation to how devices are mounted. Remember that we in the Linux world are aiming at domination. So we should attract as many users as we can. The bug is here: http://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=111173. I was surprised that there was a wontfix mentioned. So how are we to attract users if there will always be confusion in how devices are mounted?

The other thing Desktop Linux needs is good fonts. I am yet to find a desktop Linux installation that is beautiful out of the box. Often times, one has to download M$ fonts or could use the script found here: http://vigna.dsi.unimi.it/webFonts4Linux/webFonts. sh to get good fonts for the web.

Next thing is multimedia and multimedia applications. Totem in the GNOME world and Amarok in the KDE world will not play mp3s out of the box, yet there are no licensing restrictions on these formats! These are so many other examples in the multimedia field.

There is a bug/feature I found in Linux that needs attention in relation to how devices are mounted. Remember that we in the Linux world are aiming at domination. So we should attract as many users as we can. The bug is here: http://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=111173. I was surprised that there was a wontfix mentioned. So how are we to attract users if there will always be confusion in how devices are mounted?

Last but not least, we need publicity - good publicity. Right now, Linux is being touted as very good or good enough for the average user. What happens is that folks then have to understand that Linux is just a KERNEL and that there are many implementations associated with this kernel. To many, understanding this is a challenge. So one says "I use Linux at home, it's freely available on the net...try it out..." (and they leave it at that)! What follows is confusion as newbies find tons of distros and incompatible packages. Folks what do you think?

http://wiki.kde.org/tiki-index.php?page=Google+Tal k+support

Personally i take all of this Google "thing" (*paranoid*) with some doubts, the concentration of information (a LOT of personal data) never will be good.

I use Jabber(i use it from centericq, imcom, Gaim, kopete, among others) for a long time ago, and i REALLY try to all my friends start using it, but they still use the (lack of "geek" features and stability) MSN Messenger. I really wait the Google IM program, becouse jabber exist for some time ago, and IMHO doesnt have ANY reason to use the Google servers. The good thing of this news is that maybe with the Google IM all my friends (and everybody) start using a FREE IM protocol (i say that for Jabber)

Until she got her iPod... so now we are buying a new PC

Although I'm not sure how well it would work on a PII, amaroK (media player for Linux) is great for using an iPod with. Also it's interface is top-notch. It got me to switch from XMMS. It has tons of "little" features that make it outstanding (album cover lookup via amazon, good searching for building a media catalog, scripts for things like alarms, catalog search feature, etc). I highly suggest anyone using Linux (KDE) to check this thing out. (Note: I do not work for these guys)

For details check out their site:
amarok.kde.org

http://basket.kde.org/

it really is great and exactly what your looking for.

oh and this and this might also be of interest

Both the Gnome and KDE desktops have assistive technology,as you may find at Gnome and at KDE. Whether either would be of any or sufficient help to you, I cannot say. What's loaded on my Debian system has at least one check-off for terminal/CLI stuff in addition to the graphic desktop. Best wishes to you in your present and future endeavors.
 
  Jim

Here's what you are looking for:
http://dot.kde.org/1075705744/

In particular, we're waiting for
Will "integration" include support for important low level KDE features like the Kiosk framework sometime?
First of all, the KDE NWF and KDE vclplug have to be stabilized. Then I can integrate KIO and KDE dialogs to OOo and continue with further efforts, be it KParts, Kiosk or other KDE features. I am afraid it won't happen before 2005.


Sure, its not gnome, its KDE only. But that's the beauty of KParts and KIO. Click on .odt (or .doc, or whatever OpenOffice.org supports). Load document into the same browser window. KDE-style openoffice.org widgets pop-up. Save directly to HTTP (or HTTPS or anything that KIO supports, including crazy things like FISH).

Experience full KPart integration with Kroupware, and any QT app on your desktop.

Be Happy.

KDE is doing all the network stuff you can dream off, and they are *way* ahead of MS. Just look at the KIO framework. It's fascinating.

You could open/save a document from HTTP://, FTP://, HTTPS://, FISH://, CAMERA://, or any other number of KIO protocols, and you can even easily implement your own.

I'd make you a list of which ones are avaliable on my machine, but its really too long for me to copy and paste easily. Think things like SVN+HTTPS://, SVN+SSH://, WEBDAVS://, or whatever ;-)

EditPlus is nice, but it's still a far cry from UltraEdit.

I just wish there were an open source editor (for Windows or *nix) that came close to its functionality and ease of use. I've come to depend on load/save directly to FTP/SFTP, great column editing, etc. Kate comes close, but not quite close enough...

Actually, they're already working on it. It is called Tenor. http://dot.kde.org/1113428593/.

Not everything for KDE begins with K!

More moronica.

So in other words, you don't give a damn about the truth, Microsoft is eeevil and hence wrong, and anyone who disagrees with you is a moron. What bullshit.

As gnarly as Athena was, it was at least a fully featured GUI.

Funny, http://www.kde.org/documentation/posting.txt doesn't even classify Athena as a widget-library.

It did infact take 10 years for Microsoft to have something that had all the basic features and could actually run reasonably well on common hardware of the time.

Ten years from what? From the first X to the Windows 3.1 was less than 10 years. And when did the first GUI run on PC boxes or the equivalent, as opposed to expensive Unix boxes?

Sure, you could do interesting things with Win3 & 3.1. However, you needed lots of swap to do it with and Win 3.1 wasn't particularly bright in this area. This left Windows of that era quite crippled.

I don't remember that problem. I think it fairly clear that people actually used Windows 3.1, and didn't consider it crippled.

Classic X sans CDE at least could run snappy on a 4M machine.

The computer I bought in 1993 came with 1M of memory, so that's not that impressive. Especially since CDE provides a similar collection of tools as standardly came with Windows 3.1, so comparing X sans CDE and Windows 3.1 isn't exactly fair. (Of course, I gave all sort of checkable facts about when Unix GUIs and Microsoft GUIs appeared, and you dismissed them as "moronica", so I think you're a questionable source for a subjective comparison of the two systems.)

I just said that it was "FTA"... I don't care who wrote what, that particular statement annoys me whenever I hear it... The reason it's in the article is because it's been repeated quite often all over the net.

The KDE and Gnome guys work hard to make our desktop experiences better, and that kind of FUD from MS belittles their efforts. Anyone ever hear of the "KDE Usability Project" or the "GNOME Human Interface Design Guidelines"?

• http://usability.kde.org/hig/
• http://developer.gnome.org/projects/gup/hig/

You missed karbon, part of koffice: http://koffice.kde.org/karbon.

> I dont know of any company that puts money into KDE

You then can learn something at 1, 2, 3 and 4 or in incomplete summary: HP, Intel, Novell, Trolltech, Linspire, Mandriva and countless medium-sized businesses.

> I dont know of any company that puts money into KDE

You then can learn something at 1, 2, 3 and 4 or in incomplete summary: HP, Intel, Novell, Trolltech, Linspire, Mandriva and countless medium-sized businesses.

> I dont know of any company that puts money into KDE

You then can learn something at 1, 2, 3 and 4 or in incomplete summary: HP, Intel, Novell, Trolltech, Linspire, Mandriva and countless medium-sized businesses.

Keep in mind who throws around the world "innovation".

According to the KDE developers, something doesn't have to be new to be innovative.

Here in Lansing, a new cybercafe called Gone Wired opened up a few months ago. It's probably too early to judge whether they are a success or not, but they offer free wifi and judging from the amount of foot-traffic I see, they can't be hurting too badly.

In the end, I don't think free wifi has much to do with the overall profitability of a cafe business. All you really need for wifi are decent broadband, a flexible router, and an access point. Much more important are location, atmosphere, and product quality in that order. You only need to be concerned with table-squatters if the cafe is really jumping AND space is at a premium. At that point, they can probably be ticketed for loitering or something if they refuse to either buy a beverage or leave when asked politely. If idiots are hogging bandwidth with p2p, then simply spend a little extra cash and man-hours to configure a firewall that can penalize bandwidth hogs.

The Gone Wired Cafe offers free wifi, but charges some insane amount if you use their computers. I wouldn't even bother with more than 2 or 3 cafe-owned stations depending on the size of the venue, as I've only ever seen one person use one in the dozens of trips that I've made to the place. (Obviously, it would be idiotic to spend top dollar on brand-new computers when almost any old PC will browse the web just fine these days. KDE in Kiosk mode would be excellent for this, btw.)

Most of your customers are going to have enough common decency to buy a drink before settling down to use your wifi. Our local LUG meets at Gone Wired and this is something of an unwritten rule among us. (We have an agreement with the managers that lets us bring our own pizza, of course.) The drinks are a tad expensive, but free wifi makes up for it. We wouldn't be meeting at the cafe and buying drinks if the wireless internet access wasn't free. And we are far from the only computer-oriented group that meets there.

Bottom line: free wifi will definitely help rather than hinder as long as long as the rest of the business is kept in line as well. I'd recommend telling your business man to give the owners of Gone Wired (linked above) a call. From what I can tell, they're pretty friendly and would probably be happy to lend some advice as long as he doesn't plan to set up shop in Lansing. :P

Opera has native SVG now. Mozilla has it in the latest nightly builds. Safari will also have it soon, courtesy of the KSVG project for Konqueror/KDE.

IE? Who cares? If Microsoft doesn't follow suit, it's one more nail in their shiteware's coffin.

You are a very strange person, you know that?

The default tooltips for the icons in the taskbar in KDE 3.4 surely have NOTHING to do with the ones in XP

The tooltips are very pretty, but they do not make the interface. Things like the XP-ish frame, the XP-ish "Display Settings", the XP-ish "System" icons, etc. make the interface. That's not to say there aren't differences, but that doesn't stop it from feeling like XP.

The trashcan now in the taskbar

Really? Are you sure you're not using a customized version?

There are a myriad other things that XP never had natively, like thumbnails or preview of files (text, video, audio, ...), mouse clics,

1. The Thumbnail previews are in XP already. Just click "View|Thumbnails". It's automatically activated for folders that Windows detects are being "full of images".

2. Single Mouse Clicks can be activated in Windows Explorer by clicking "Tools|Folder Options|Single Click to Open an Item." This was added in the Internet Explorer 4.0 beta program (of which I was a member) where it was made the default. This feature along with a wireframe globe background for Windows Explorer were disabled in the final release due to usability issues they caused. ActiveDesktop and Channel Bar also lived on for a short period of time before being disabled or scaled back.

In other words, sir, you yourself are very, very wrong. If you're going to argue the relative merits of OSes, it's always a good idea to actually *know* these OSes. Or as the military axiom goes, "Know Thine Enemy". :-)

As a Kopete developer I invite you to meet the rest of us at #kopete (irc.kde.org), check out the SVN branch and rethink your opinion about Kopete. You can even elaborate some constructive ideas and tell us them, as we work implementing some neat stuff as video support for Yahoo (implemented) and MSN (in the works).
We really appreciate user input and we're open to suggestions to improve the user experience.

Best regards,

Taupter
http://worldwide.kde.org/

No. KDE 3.5 will not be released before end of October at earliest. And next SUSE version will be 10.0.

I'm still waiting for them to make Kmail compile in 3.4.1 - it barfs on the Outlook Express import filter at the moment, of all things. http://bugs.gentoo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=99643
http://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=106274
Tell you the truth, I've actually moved to Thunderbird + Enigmail now - it rocks.

The KDE website has a list of upcoming features at:

http://developer.kde.org/development-versions/kde- 4.0-features.html

Judging by how many items there are on that list, and that this is a port, not a re-write, I think that KDE4 will be full of features. Though there are some which could go, really minor useless ones.

Someone is working on this, at least the button order.

Please check http://wiki.kde.org/tiki-index.php?page=Secret%20C onfig%20Settings#id362646

There's a setting under 'Change OK Cancel button order'

There are a lot of KDE improvements in the pipeline (well, there *always* are), and never enough manpower, primarily because KDE-fans (like me) don't always know enough about coding to help, at least in any useful fashion.

http://developer.kde.org/development-versions/kde- 3.5-features.html#finished

It's a hidden option in KDE 3.4 and documented here.

Yeah, I prefer the old way (currently using 3.4) - add the Storage Media applet to your kicker, and when you insert a DVD/ USB Pen etc it will appear as a small icon in the kicker, which is nice and unobtrusive. Unfortunately, all USB Mass Storage (include cameras, card-readers etc) devices have the "USB Pen" icon shown. I filed a bug report about this (http://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=109260); if anyone else feels this would be a good idea, please chime in :)

That's a trademark, though. Anyone is still free to use :-(, as long as they don't promote a business with it.

If this patent gets accepted (which I'm quite positive it won't), nobody will be able to include that method of Emoticons in a program they make.

I believe the true goal of this is to stop programs such as Kopete, GAIM, etc. from implementing MSN chat (or, for the examples I've given, to remove it), as they would have to pay Microsoft.

"no one has a real true standard to enforce anywhere."

"A standard way of doing things are key to appeal to a large audience."

Freedesktop standards
Gnome HIG
KDE Guidelines
If I use either KDE or Gnome, I very rarely use applications that don't match the environment. My desktop of choice is Gnome, and I've found it much more consistent than the windows GUI.

Windows User Experience

Office (XP anyway) is really inconsistent. I normally use Microsoft Word, in which every new document opens in a seperate window. However in Excel, the new documents actually open in a new window inside the main excel window, but they create another application button on the taskbar, giving the illusion that it's opened in a seperate window.

Sometimes I've had 1 document open that I've not edited, and 1 that I have edited. I'm used to Office bugging me to save documents even when I've not edited them, so when I hit the big "X" button on the window, and it asks to save, I just click "no" because being a human, I don't read messages that I expect to say something, stupid I know. I lose my work.
I'm not the only person this has happened to either...

I know I'll probably get modded troll or something...

I saw nothing innovative.

The Plasma developers use the Microsoft definition of the word "innovative". I was told that I had bought into marketing lies for daring to point out that innovative meant something new.

Good stuff. Will this include the idea of Restricting mouse in popup menus?

http://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=109179

... I tought that the K in KSVG2 was from KDE, and KDE comes with Linux, BSD and many other Unices (http://www.kde.org/download/distributions.php).

Then I thought that the Adobe SVG Viewer is available for Windows platforms for a couple of years now - and while you consider it awful, it is the most compliant SVG viewer I have ever tried.

Then there is Firefox 1.1 and the beautiful (because of JavaScript) support for SVG in Dear Park Alpha.

So no, SVG was probably not "first addopted" by Apple, but yes the addoption of SVG by Apple will certainly help SVG go mainstream. However, not as much as Adobe did, nor as Firefox will.

The news is ofcourse great. The quality
of the news item is not. The correct KDOM
link is:

http://websvn.kde.org/trunk/kdenonbeta/kdom/

Also Eric is *not* part of the Safari team,
though he works with them often.
Cheers,

Rob.

It's not just Microsoft with the bullshit redefinition of "innovate". Not long ago the KDE guys were doing exactly the same thing. I tried to point out the absurdity, but I was told that I've "bought into marketing lies".

Just my read on the situation. I could of course be wrong.

• ClamAV virus definition distribution model (use of incremental updates, dns txt field checks for new updates, automatic, etc..) -- compare this to the weekly (!) updates of Symantec (or manually updating slightly more frequently) or even some of the "download a big chunk from a centralized location" method of commercial competitors.
• BitTorrent
• So many things in KDE its insane.. (just check out all the awards, including Software Innovation of the Year - CeBit!)
• Plone, Zope, Typo3 - These content management systems lead the way for both commercial and opensource.. so much innovation going on here
• CUPS - While not glamerous, I have setup lots of print servers and the flexibility and modularlity of CUPS (in my experience) is unmatched.
• The spam fighters: greylisting, spamassassin, amavisd, postfix, dnsrbl, etc.. developed under or made popular due to opensource.. I have yet to come across _any_ non-FOSS solution that comes close to the success and accuracy of the OSS tools for spam filtering

• ClamAV virus definition distribution model (use of incremental updates, dns txt field checks for new updates, automatic, etc..) -- compare this to the weekly (!) updates of Symantec (or manually updating slightly more frequently) or even some of the "download a big chunk from a centralized location" method of commercial competitors.
• BitTorrent
• So many things in KDE its insane.. (just check out all the awards, including Software Innovation of the Year - CeBit!)
• Plone, Zope, Typo3 - These content management systems lead the way for both commercial and opensource.. so much innovation going on here
• CUPS - While not glamerous, I have setup lots of print servers and the flexibility and modularlity of CUPS (in my experience) is unmatched.
• The spam fighters: greylisting, spamassassin, amavisd, postfix, dnsrbl, etc.. developed under or made popular due to opensource.. I have yet to come across _any_ non-FOSS solution that comes close to the success and accuracy of the OSS tools for spam filtering

But a completely different project is KDE which is very open to patches and suggestions.

Oh yeah?

If it has to be web based, you can use KDE's fish kioslave and konqueror for remote file access. It's built on top of ssh.

so it seems kget/konqueror isn't going to be the first browser to support bittorrent after all. http://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=57591 I think it is a very nice feature to have. downloading from torrent feels almost the same to an end user as downloading from an ftp or http site. and it saves the hosting server a lot of bandwith. to bad microsoft won't support it natively in their webbrowser.

There are no established guidelines for UI development on Linux, at least none that are stringently adhered to.

This is not true. Each desktop has its own human interface guidelines.

Gnome HIG
KDE HIG

Sure you'll find the odd app that doesn't adhere to these guidelines, but that's the exception not the rule. Almost all the apps I run look consistent. And I bet you've seen the odd app on windows as well. Yes you know which one. The one with these massive buttons and different colors everywhere. :)

BSD or other GPL-incompatible Free Software developers.

The BSD license (at least the one used nowadays) is GPL-compatible.
In fact, there are parts of KDE licensed under BSD-style licenses.

Here's FSF's list of licenses and their relation to the GPL.

Very interesting, and a very nice effect. Is the source for your hairy brush implementation available? I'm currently working on an implementation of Cockshott's Wet & Sticky model for Krita (http://koffice.kde.org/krita) -- Bart Coppens has already got the basics done for a Curtis and Salesin-like watercolor model for Krita -- and I'm looking for some help with a nice brush model. If you're interested in cooperation, please don't hesitate to mail me.

Boudewijn Rempt (boud@rempt.xs4all.nl)

Some software still innovates. For example, some audio players have CUE sheet support now.

This screenshot looks innovative.

Well, I guess Windows users can at least run this :)

http://amarok.kde.org/index.php?set_albumName=albu m03&id=shouter&option=com_gallery&Itemid=60&includ e=view_photo.php

The problem I bet is all the dependencies. I suspect someone will tackle native KDE/Win, but if so it will take a long time, because Windows coders won't get excited enough to help until it's far enough along development.

It'll take a while for Qt apps to get built for native Windows (longer than it did for GTK apps like Ethereal to be ported to Win32 native)

if it'll get amaroK running on windows, I'll certainly try to help with the effort. I've known about it for a long time, but I just recently used it (extensively) for the first time...what a lovely piece of software