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Search for @aldan.algebra.com to find, what I found annoying enough to make a proper bug report.

Gconf from a sysadmins point of view is quite a usfull tool and allows a good degrede of control. Does KDE have a equivalent.

KDE has loads of options for sysadmins, including Kiosk which kan be used to restrict KDE.

KDE, being based on Qt is pretty much limited to C++ and closely related OO crap.

This is completely false. In keeping with your attitude towards the previous poster, I now brand you an "ignorant slut" and a "KDE hating GNOME zealot looking to spread a bit of FUD".

A simple look at the number of language bindings for Qt versus gtk+ shows that the latter is far more portable (or at least ported).

Even if I accept the premise that the number of language bindings is significantly higher for GTK (I think it's a myth), you could just as easily argue that the bindings for Qt are lower because people are happy with C++ and frustrated with C (i.e. there's no need for lots of language bindings for Qt because it's nice enough already).

so far as I know, it is impossible to write KDE or Qt apps in C.

Untrue since 2001.

If one wishes to use a real object-oriented language, there are much better options than C++ (SmallTalk, Objective C and CLOS all leap to mind).

"Better" in what sense? The alternatives you list have nowhere near the developer mindshare of C++, and so will be more of a barrier to entry. In case you hadn't noticed, Free Software is dependent upon volunteers being able to easily contribute.

The free software community contains some of the best hackers in the world: they have judged C++ and found it wanting.

Huh? KDE, the most popular Free Software desktop environment, is based around C++. That's what the discussion is about, so I can't see how you can claim this with a straight face.

It's actually possible to change the button order by editing one of the .css files in your .firefox directory:

Link

It just uses the Gnome order on Linux by default. It would be a problem if this weren't changeable, because the button order on Windows is the opposite of Gnome, for example.

If you scroll down that thread, it's also apparently possible to change the KDE button order with one entry in a config file (just tested it. It works). I wonder if that will ever be possible in Gnome.

KMail works for me, but it should be said that it has a number of long standing and very annoying bugs, including the most hated KDE bug #41514 of all time.

This bug does not affect me because I use IMAP, but then there is my own favorite annoyance.

KMail works for me, but it should be said that it has a number of long standing and very annoying bugs, including the most hated KDE bug #41514 of all time.

This bug does not affect me because I use IMAP, but then there is my own favorite annoyance.

Here are some GNOME and KDE screenshots.

This link is quite informative: https://mail.kde.org/pipermail/khtml-devel/2004-Ju ly/001068.html

From this article it appears that KDE is looking to use the gecko rendering engine (because it does a better job) for "enterprise" environments, instead of putting effort into KHTML.

No, the article talks about SUSE looking to use the Gecko rendering engine since it, unlike KHTML, is supported by companies like SAP. KDE itself will continue to use KHTML, there is no chance KDE will add a dependency to something which after years of promises still isn't separated out as runtime library. Also sadly SUSE is not putting effort either into improving KHTML nor into the Gecko port to Qt/KPart. This Qt/KPart port is done by Lars and Zack, both also KHTML developers, and obviously for shutting down all those people screaming for an "improved" khtml while doing nothing about it. With this port they pretty much outsourced the problem to Mozilla and the distributions while being able to continue their work at KHTML at the pace they prefer (just look how many bugs/wishes in KDE's bugzilla are reported for KHTML/KJS, seems to be about 10% of all reports).

No, KHTML will be used in Safari and it'll mature through Safari.

I wouldn't be too sure about this. Think of Apple's WebCore as a fork of KHTML; they are no longer one and the same.

Once the slashdotting subsides, go to the linked article and search for "So what is happening with Safari Patches?" (can't expand the discussion right now; they've gone static to face the /. horde).

Apple has already changed WebCore enough that backporting changes to KHTML is very non-trivial. As usual, we are starved for developers, especially when the task is simply porting someone else's code, rather than solving problems for yourself. Many devs would much rather do the latter, even if "results" come more slowly.

It's Konqi Konqueror

It's fixed now and will be included with kde-3.3.2 so maybe a patch to get it into current versions by your distro will make it happen sooner. ;)
http://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=83786
http://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=84332

------- Additional Comments From faure kde org 2004-10-06 00:31 -------
I just fixed problems with which made gmail.google.com not able to open the main page. The login page should be fixed too (#84332).
The fix was applied to HEAD and to KDE_3_3_BRANCH (for 3.3.2).
KDE 3.3.1 does *NOT* have the fix, it was released last week.
If you're in a hurry, use anoncvs to recompile kdelibs

It's fixed now and will be included with kde-3.3.2 so maybe a patch to get it into current versions by your distro will make it happen sooner. ;)
http://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=83786
http://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=84332

------- Additional Comments From faure kde org 2004-10-06 00:31 -------
I just fixed problems with which made gmail.google.com not able to open the main page. The login page should be fixed too (#84332).
The fix was applied to HEAD and to KDE_3_3_BRANCH (for 3.3.2).
KDE 3.3.1 does *NOT* have the fix, it was released last week.
If you're in a hurry, use anoncvs to recompile kdelibs

A man who cares about performance on the KDE team? Well if it works out, the result might be something good.

They seem to know something about improving performance. Try a recent KDE release, you'll be surprised. :-)

Heading back to the topic, I've been very impressed with the Nvidia drivers when using SuSE 9.0. Fast, completely stable, and dead easy to install - and that's with the standard Nvidia installer. With 9.1, it's supposed to be even easier...

One of the best features of Ruby is code blocks. I've skimmed through maybe half of that tutorial, and there are no code blocks in sight.

Now you may wonder why should anybody care about this. Well, simple: there are many, many ways of using Ruby's blocks to make code easier to understand. In the case of a GUI toolkit, I can think of two offhand:

1. Callbacks. The quickest, simple way to implement a callback is to pass a block as a closure to the widget at construction time.
2. Representing the embedding of GUI components inside one another. The tutorial code as written works by assigning a variable to a newly instantiated container, then creating contained pieces and including them inside the container by calling methods on the previously created container. All of the pieces occur in the same level of indentation, and the formatting does not make obvious the containment hierarchy of components.

   Creating contained components in a code block passed to the container is no harder at all; in Ruby, just make the container's constructor yield self to its block. And what you gain is much nicer than what most people will give credit for: the code that creates the contained elements is visibly "inside" the code that creates the container. Once you're attuned to this convention, it becomes easier to see the structure of the GUI and the code from the indentation in the source.

Comparing Krita to GIMP and declaring Krita the easy-to-use alternative is really misleading people.

Yet another Paint Program?

...different projects can work towards different design goals. The Gimp isn't designed for the creation of original art; it is an image manipulation application, not a paint application. Krita could become that free paint application that is still missing.

What are Krita's Development Goals?

Krita is primarily a painting program, although it has image processing capabilities. This means that Krita is intended for creative people who desire to paint and draw with computer software as they do with real-world tools in an art studio. If you are looking for a tool primarily to apply effects to existing images or photos, to catalog images, or to view images other software may be more suitable. Ease of use and power as a painting application will always have a higher priority in Krita's ongoing development.

http://dot.kde.org/1096230607/

GAIM is great, because it keeps pushing the boundaries of IM functionality on Linux, BUT that said, I keep switching back to Kopete, mainly because it integrates with KDE. For an IM client, intergration with the desktop is paramount IMHO.

Are you sure it's wise to point people to a browser that's A:) radically out of date B:) slow and C:) no longer supported in any way?

If you're looking for an alternate browser besides Mozilla, Opera, and Safari, there are plenty of better choices such as Konqueror or Omniweb.

• ...like copying Unix

Copying and improving. They are evolving an existing design, a design that hasn't changed in 20 or 30 years. That design hasn't been frozen for so long because it's perfect, but because it's "just good enough" for people to consider and rethink.

• What? Copying Windows? I thought we already were...

Yep. Everyone is copying everyone else. It's the nature of design: for the next generation, always combine the best bits of everything else.

Better tell the fine chaps at KDE to lay off putting K in front of everything too then...

Things licensed as Open Source do better on "just the facts" vs hype. Maybe it's because their audiences would take them to task if they did otherwise, but description of things such as GCC, Wikipedia , the Linux kernel, the GIMP, to name just a few, are completely factual. Not entirely free of marketing but tolerable are the Linux site's description of Linux, OpenSSH, bzip2, Project Gutenberg, and an XWindows organization X.org.

Particularly note Wikipedia and Google. The description of Wikipedia was made and chosen by the users. I can't think of a better testament that what users really want is just the facts. And Google understood that the last thing a person wants to do when anxious to find something quick is be forced to wait for a bunch of pointless graphics and generic ads to load. Really aggravating when on dial-up. Before Google, I got to where I knew just when to hit the stop button when loading Yahoo's main search page so I'd get the text input line and search button and miss all the extra crap they used to put on their main page.

Of course open source isn't totally above marketing. FreeBSD, Mozilla Firefox, KDE, Apache, OpenOffice all lay it on. They can point to all kinds of statistics to justify their hype, but the hype is still irritating when it catches my attention. These are easy to accept in spite of the marketspeak because I've heard from elsewhere that they're good.

Bad though some of those are, Microsoft is worse. Maybe what MS does should be called extreme marketing? In a few moments of searching, I was unable to find even a badly overblown description of just what Windows XP or MS Office is and during the search was wading through hype about MS's latest whatever: "Try the new digital music experience from Microsoft. You'll love it!"

As for throwing out the baby with the bathwater, I will spend a little time trying not to do that, but when it does happen I hope it clues the promoters in to realizing they made the waters too murky. Accepting something in spite of murk is not the way to persuade them to clean up. I like to tell them about it too. You never know when commentary might actually be heeded. I'm sorry if a good thing gets short shrift, but when time is limited, books will be judged by covers. People are often asked to try to word emails so spam filters will pass them. I feel I'm not asking too much of marketing to do the analogous.

Maybe until recently I would have agreed. However, recently I have started noticing projects relating to desktop search: Dashboard, Beagle, DBFS, etc. This is the hot new area of desktop innovation, and at the moment it seems Gnome has an early lead, with KDE looking to start up some related projects too. Off the desktop, Namesys is moving towards related technologies on the filesystem level. To the extent that MacOS-X can be said to be OSS, they have their Spotlight technology. On the other side, well, it looks like we won't be seeing WinFS in Longhorn afterall.....

Nope, no troll.
Icecream is created by SUSE and is based on ideas and code by distcc. Like distcc it takes compile jobs from your (KDE) build and distributes it to remote machines allowing a parallel build on several machines you've got. But unlike distcc Icecream uses a central server that schedules the compile jobs to the fastest free server and is as this dynamic. This advantage pays off mostly for shared computers, if you're the only user on x machines, you have full control over them anyway.

Actually, there is a way to catch buffer overflow for C/C++ programs. Valgrind intercepts the calls to the C library for malloc/new/free/delete so that it can track what memory has been allocated and when it is accessed. Because it knows how much memory is allocated it can see if a program accesses memory and then goes off the end (reading or writing).

(I'm not affiliated in any way with the project, just trying to spread knowledge of a very useful tool.)

* Use of uninitialised memory
* Reading/writing memory after it has been free'd
* Reading/writing off the end of malloc'd blocks
* Reading/writing inappropriate areas on the stack
* Memory leaks -- where pointers to malloc'd blocks are lost forever
* Passing of uninitialised and/or unaddressible memory to system calls
* Mismatched use of malloc/new/new [] vs free/delete/delete []
* Overlapping src and dst pointers in memcpy() and related functions
* Some misuses of the POSIX pthreads API

I've started using KMyMoney (personal accounting program) at home recently. When I was at work yesterday, I wanted to check my bank balance. I ran the app here at the office and opened a file requester to load a data file. In the "location" area, I entered "sftp://homeserver/" and then browsed my filesystem at home to locate the appropriate file. KMyMoney then used SFTP to load the data. When I added a new entry and clicked the "Save" icon, it used SFTP to save the data back to the file at home.

I do web development on a Zope server for a living. I use Kate (the KDE programmer's editor) to read and write files to the server via WebDav. Kate has its own set of bookmarks in the file requester, so I maintain a list of webdav://, sftp:// and fish:// pointers to various locations where I need to edit files.

Kopete (multi-protocol instant messenger) can link entries in its "buddy lists" to KAddressBook. When I'm in KAddressBook, those people have a little icon next to their name showing their current messaging status.

Konqueror uses IO-Slaves extensively. Want to view your POP3 account as a file folder? Browse to "pop3://myusername@mailserver/".

There's a standard encrypted information store called "KWallet". Most KDE apps have migrated to using that to store passwords, form data from websites, or other personal information. I type one password at login to unlock my "wallet", and every app I use has access to its working information. If I lock my wallet, then my information is off-limits.

Want to burn the contents of a directory to a CD? Right-click that directory in Konqueror, select Actions -> Create Data CD With K3b.

It's the million-and-one details like these that define a "desktop environment". In a nutshell, no program stands alone - they all work together to make life more convenient. Mac OS X is the only other OS I've used with this level of integration.

A lot of people dismiss this all as "bloat", and I just don't understand that line of thinking. To me, it seems incredibly efficient to make all of these services available to every application that wants to use them. It would be bloat to add an HTML viewer to every application. It is not bloat to provide an HTML viewing object that any application can use. If KMyMoney natively supported network-transparent IO, then I wouldn't touch it with a ten foot pole. But since the environment provides it, I get a lot of extra functionality "for free" without any extra work by the KMyMoney programmers. Isn't this what Unix is supposed to be about?

If you really want to switch just a window manager, and aren't confusing window managers and desktops, you can do that in KDE too.

Since Adium (can't speak for Fire & Proteus) is nothing but a nicely done GAIM port, for me it IS GAIM on OS X.

What would be interesting, now, would be to get Adium ported to Linux (and, why not, Windows), using Qt, for instance.

GAIM has a real problem of being ugly, has usuability issues, and lacks the general polish you get with Adium. The Kopete project looks interesting, but it's not there yet : missing buddy icons and file transfers in everything but MSN Messenger - and even there, it has issues with NATs and can't display a MSN picture full size (yes, real people want that).

Has anyone experience in porting Cocoa (Obj-C) apps to Qt?

Also bear in mind that Linux was weak areas (eg, games, off-the-shelf software).

I'd actually say that Linux is weak in supporting off-the-shelf games; however, there are numerous fun, high-quality games available Free and/or for free. KDE provides many addictive games and edutainment applications that I can't live without (speaking as a GNOME lover, when using Linux). GNOME also has many high-quality games (my favorites are Mahjongg and Robots). Then there many other favorites like Tux Racer, Frozen Bubble (like Snood), and GL Tron (you have to play this one) among others. Another really cool diversion is Celestia, which allows you to zoom around the galaxy and visit planets, moons, comets, astroids, spacecraft (like Hubble, the ISS, or even Friendship 1). And despite my premise, there are also quite a few commercial games for Linux. There are many fun games that run on Linux - some aren't even available for Windows or non-unix platforms! Check your favorite Linux Distribution for more examples.

The user get used to seeing the buttons in a certain order, and they're happy. That's really all there is to it.

But that's just the damn point. Users of KDE have got used seeing the buttons in a certain order, and Firefox and GTK apps look out of place on a KDE desktop.

Like it or not, the majority of desktop Linux users use KDE, and the button order in Firefox and GTK/Gnome apps is a serious UI inconsistency (regardless of what UI experts say about what the "correct" order should be).

That said, there are hacks available to reorder things in Firefox, but there's not a damn thing that can be done about the Gimp (roll on Krita, I say...)

http://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=13635

Apparently it's a problem with using Konquerer outside of KDE, so I'm guessing this will not be fixed. It's a shame too, because Konqueror is just a nice browser. I'm particularly fond of how easy it is to configure the keybindings/control layout. Konqueror is the only reason I ever install the KDE libraries. I wish the KDE folks cared more about making their apps work independently. Well designed X apps should work under any standards compliant window manager. I think that their strict focus on making one big, unified environment is somewhat myopic. It's really not in keeping with basic unix design standards.

...While they create yet another distro we got HP shipping laptops with SUSE preinstalled and KDE as the main desktop. Today ;)

Amail, Bmail, Cmail, Dmail, Email, Fmail, Gmail, Hmail, Imail, Jmail, Kmail, Lmail, Mmail, Nmail, Omail, Pmail, Qmail, Rmail, Smail, Tmail, Umail, Vmail, Wmail, Xmail, Ymail, and Zmail

Sorry.

The myriads of hackers on KDE and GNOME applications. I'm particularly fond of Kate, KDE's text editor, which is also a component in many other KDE applications.

Ward Cunningham, the creator of the original wiki idea, and Clifford Adams, the maintainer of one of the first usable wiki engines, UsemodWiki.

Rusty Foster, Dries Buytaert and Rob Malda, who created Scoop, Drupal and Slash, respectively, three very powerful weblog engines I use every day.

Spencer Kimball and Peter Mattis for starting the GIMP. Ton Rosendaal and the rest of the Blender team for proving that proprietary applications can become open source through distributed funding.

Anthony Jones, creator of iRATE, for exploring new ways to discover free music.

Dave Winer of UserLand for developing a simple content syndication format (now RSS 2.0), the MetaWeblog API and the XML-RPC protocol.

Keith Packard of HP for his many improvements to X.

Guido van Rossum for creating Python, Larry Wall for creating Perl and the many people involved in making PHP, and making it useful.

And of course, the many other people involved in all of these programs, and those who built the software infrastructure that made them possible.

Perhaps the Beagle folks should have done some research about Gadget, which has been in planning for about a year, and been working for more than four months. Why did they go and implement their own thing when they could have just integrated Gadget into the GNOME desktop.

The original posting which also includes the links to the archived video and audio recordings.

Just FYI: koffice has already switched to the OASIS file format :-)

Wonderful! Now that all KDE folks toot the NX horn since quite some time, a GNOME guy -- at least one GNOME guy! -- is starting to look at that marvellous technology too.

Wonderful! That means the KDE GNOME competition will go into the next round, and that will guarantee the users of both camps vast improvements in their respective favourite desktop environment (hmmmm... can you call the current hotchpotch of heterogenous GNOME apps really an "environment"?).

After reading what the link provides which the parent comment hints at, I could not help but to laugh loud about the author's musings. Here is my sarcastic summary of it:

The document's author is commenting on NX/NoMachine without acturally having run or tested it in action. How daring!. Remarkable about his comments is this:

• The guy who's writing it, is the one building the "Terminal Server Technology" slated for the upcoming Fedora 3.
• He took quite some bits and pieces of stuff someone else has written, re-worded them, took drawings someone else has drawn, re-drew them, etc..-
• Real men never copy others' work, unless everybody else is already doing it....
• Interestingly enough he claims to have found all of this by just looking at the NX code and the documentation as, in his own words, he as not "actually played with NX yet".
• Real men never try it with a woman. They only look at her resume and the eventual shots on Playboy or Hustler

... Apply have announced that their next generation laptop will feature a 600" inch screen, and will feature a keyboard/mouse that can be converted into a futon when not in use.

>Linux will never be as many flaws as there are with windows.
Are you sure ? 8)

You sir are a sad, sad man.

I do remember a story full of idiot KDE flamers

It sure is a pain having to read that garbage isn't it.

Pointing out that the KDE project is full of ignorant, stupid hype-mongers who don't know a debugger from a chisel yet still feel qualfied to comment on technical issues, is a valuable job.

Thats an interesting point of view. More importantly it proves the fact that you are just a troll bent on stirring things up, so I won't reply to any more of your posts. Also, I guess you wouldn't want people finding out about brilliant projects such as this. Pretty good for a bunch of developers that don't know what a debugger is.

And be sure, if you had the courage to post as a logged in user you would be on my foe list for sure. I've read almost half a dozen AC posts along the same lines. Also, do not write me off as a KDE fanboy, I am an enlightenment user and use a mix of GTK/GNOME Qt/KDE apps.

Let's just hope nobody tells my wlan nic, otherwise I'll have to resort to fast ethernet.

I am currently at the kde conference in Ludwigsburg, Germany and working on one of these NX5000 notebooks. Hewlett-Packard was nice enough to sell them for about 580 EUR, which is about 700 USD, to kde developers.
However, our laptop models included the intel wireless 2200BG card, otherwise known as the dreaded centrino card. But what surprise, the driver from SourceForge works. Sometimes a bit flakey though, but it works...

Otherwise I am quite happy with the NX5000. The thing looks quite stable, has mostly supported hardware and sports a pair of superb speakers.

All in all, quite a nifty device for a very reasonable price.

It's a shame when a story is posted as it was published on cnet. This should be a site for nerds and stuff that matters. Some editing would have been necessary, as the cnet story is neither clear nor terribly informative.

Although perhaps it's silly to with that the moderators spent a little more time doing some very basic research (yes, that could be "googling") to find more accurate information. Otherwise, why do they exist ?

Here are two more interesting links, with some more detail about the ideas of the KDE team (don't expect very many details, as it's just vapourware):

http://conference2004.kde.org/cfp-devconf/scott.wh eeler-search.metadata.interface.elements.php

http://conference2004.kde.org/transcripts/scott.wh eeler-search.metadata.interface.elements.php

It's a shame when a story is posted as it was published on cnet. This should be a site for nerds and stuff that matters. Some editing would have been necessary, as the cnet story is neither clear nor terribly informative.

Although perhaps it's silly to with that the moderators spent a little more time doing some very basic research (yes, that could be "googling") to find more accurate information. Otherwise, why do they exist ?

Here are two more interesting links, with some more detail about the ideas of the KDE team (don't expect very many details, as it's just vapourware):

http://conference2004.kde.org/cfp-devconf/scott.wh eeler-search.metadata.interface.elements.php

http://conference2004.kde.org/transcripts/scott.wh eeler-search.metadata.interface.elements.php

This is a classic case of journalists picking up on keywords (Google) and jumping on them. The article had us screaming with laughter here at akademy the KDE conference. The point is just that it is easier to find things on the web than on your desktop. Files and settings should use search because they have outgrown the heirachical setup. However this is just vapourware for now .

By the way the next version of KDE will be KDE 3.4, branching to KDE 4 when Qt 4 beta is available at the end of the year.

Transcripts from all the talks I went to are at http://conference2004.kde.org/sched-devconf.php.

Jonathan Riddell

"KDE goes for IPO selling 145,233 shares at 1059,342euro each giving KDE a higher market capitalisation than Microsoft and AOL combined."

The article in N&T is based on ideas by Scott Wheeler (and Till Adam, and Aaron Seigo and others). See Beyond Hierarchical Data: Search and Meta Data as Fundamental Interface Elements, Scotts lecture on query-based interfaces at aKademy.

"Google like" here means just "searching", but the result will in fact be more like WinFS than Google in that it is using file data and file metadata to index and find things. Interface-wise expect more quicksearch bars like the one in Kmail 1.7 (KDE 3.3.0, Till Adam) and JuK (Scott Wheeler).

See also a Blog entry of mine (german language) in the same vein.

Relevant presentation overviews here and here.