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Sometimes the challenge with Ctrl-S was that you often didn't know if it did anything,

Or you use Kmail on KDE where ctrl-s saves AND closes the message! You have to look for it and reopen it if you want to continue editing it.

The developers keep claiming the bug is fixed:
https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug....
https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug....

But I just checked kmail 4.11.2 and it's not fixed! 12 years!

I don't really care that much anymore since I've long stopped using KDE as a serious desktop environment due to this and many other bugs/annoyances. I've reported a number of them but you can see for yourself how they treat bug reports.

Windows 7 has its annoyances (in aero mode the task button for the foreground/active window is not very distinct from the other task buttons, file search is broken). But for my purposes it isn't as bad as the popular Desktop Linux options (gnome, kde, unity).

Windows 8 on the other hand is an abomination from a Desktop UI perspective.

Sometimes the challenge with Ctrl-S was that you often didn't know if it did anything,

Or you use Kmail on KDE where ctrl-s saves AND closes the message! You have to look for it and reopen it if you want to continue editing it.

The developers keep claiming the bug is fixed:
https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug....
https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug....

But I just checked kmail 4.11.2 and it's not fixed! 12 years!

I don't really care that much anymore since I've long stopped using KDE as a serious desktop environment due to this and many other bugs/annoyances. I've reported a number of them but you can see for yourself how they treat bug reports.

Windows 7 has its annoyances (in aero mode the task button for the foreground/active window is not very distinct from the other task buttons, file search is broken). But for my purposes it isn't as bad as the popular Desktop Linux options (gnome, kde, unity).

Windows 8 on the other hand is an abomination from a Desktop UI perspective.

And with baloo replacing nepomuk, email search finally works - far faster than kmail1 ever was, I have over a 100,000 msgs which it can full text search in seconds.

If you're using 4.13.0 (the first version with baloo), or about to upgrade, here are two things I learnt the hard way:

• When KNotes asks if you want to migrate your notes, say no. The migration process wipes them, and recovering them is non-trivial.
• If you have any virtual machines, make sure you've got limits.conf set to prevent baloo from eating all your RAM

Such is life on the bleeding edge...
But apart from that, Kmail/Kontact works great for me (especially with Kolab).

While kexi is not currently available for Windows (though apparently it does build on Windows), in the meantime you could run it in a Ubuntu vm inside Virtualbox, until it is available again in Windows. When it is, you can download it from http://www.kogmbh.com/download...

See https://community.kde.org/KDE/High-dpi_issues. In fairness, most (in fact, the overwhelming majority) of elements within KDE are resolution independent (hell, KDE has been using SVG icons since well before the KDE4 days), and basically every element can be changed and tweaked as desired, it's just that it takes a shit ton of annoying manual tweaking.

You're right though, it Isn't There Yet (tm). But it is in fact a focus of much of the development; this is generally on the minds of KDE devs, and is being worked towards for Plasma Next, as well as for specific applications; for example, the Yakuake developer is changing the theming engine specifically with resolution-independence and high-DPI screens in mind. So upcoming versions of KDE will be, at very least, closer to supporting high DPI and resolution independence, and I wouldn't be surprised at all if a version or two into Frameworks 5 we get a nice centralized control for scaling the UI.

See https://community.kde.org/KDE/High-dpi_issues. In fairness, most (in fact, the overwhelming majority) of elements within KDE are resolution independent (hell, KDE has been using SVG icons since well before the KDE4 days), and basically every element can be changed and tweaked as desired, it's just that it takes a shit ton of annoying manual tweaking.

You're right though, it Isn't There Yet (tm). But it is in fact a focus of much of the development; this is generally on the minds of KDE devs, and is being worked towards for Plasma Next, as well as for specific applications; for example, the Yakuake developer is changing the theming engine specifically with resolution-independence and high-DPI screens in mind. So upcoming versions of KDE will be, at very least, closer to supporting high DPI and resolution independence, and I wouldn't be surprised at all if a version or two into Frameworks 5 we get a nice centralized control for scaling the UI.

Has anybody actually tried to take the KDE and trim the rarely used and niche functions?

Yep, in fact one such effort was started by some KDE devs:
https://blogs.kde.org/2013/04/...

Then, the presentation layer in that display manager could be swapped out as needed based on the form factor involved.

It's still mostly experimental at this point, but there's ALREADY an active effort to port KDE to Windows as an outright replacement for Windows' native UI -- http://windows.kde.org/

I don't want to spend ages configuring. Glitches included a list of problems I included in a previous thread. Sorry but it does NOT look slick at all, the graphics look dated. I used 3.5, then switched to xfce4, then to Gnome, then to KDE 4.0, then at 4.3 switched to Unity. If it wasn't for the spyware I would definitely be sticking to Unity, it looks very polished and is easy to use. I played with KDE at Christmas and tried shifting a guinea pig family member to it even, but ended up switching all the machines to Linux Mint. So far Mint looks like my target when I reformat, though it's not my ideal desktop.

I love the idea of KDE, it pleases me technically, but take at look at the screenshot (I would like to say screenshots but there is only one): the mess of Dolphin, the Windows95 task bar. Now compare it to Unity (amazing interactive demo, as well as slick looking desktop), or these themes for the still immature Cinnamon and compare it to kde-look.org.

I've written apps using QT, it's very nice. But as a desktop it's got a hell of a long way to go.

Phillip.

If it looks terrible then change it. All I usually do is change everything over to oxygen, but thats just the way I like it......IMO it wasn't really usable until about 4.6 or so but that was a problem the distros/me caused by using a desktop that wasn't ready for what we wanted to use it for. It was my choice to install it. I could have just stuck with KDE 3. If I want to go back I still can in fact.

Try using a media player like SMPlayer for your copying to /tmp woes. That has worked for me. Kaffiene has never appealed. VLC I like, but SMPlayer just seems to be better for me.

Unsure about the kde.org comment. If I want to look at other desktops I go menu/Configure_Desktop/Workspace_Appearance/Desktop_Theme and then click on Get_New_Themes.

As for updating the codebase. Well, if they didn't do that then our desktops would still look like this. Which is fine but I prefer this.

As for usability. I use it every day and I am not a linux guru.

Well, you know, they're trying: KDe HIG --> http://techbase.kde.org/Projec... KDe Viual Group --> http://wheeldesign.blogspot.se... Plasma next would be interesting...

Thanks for checking: 1: What version? Not fixed on the desktop on 4.11.5. 2: Ditto. 3: Reported, including my suggestion for improvement with a mockup for a new dialog. 4: On the desktop? Reported but still listed as "Unconfirmed". 5: Tied to desktop actions being different - a KIO bug 6: Really? What version and what distro? I have been told by others Mint does not do it as the default. Seems confusing to be able to tell someone to use "delete" and have it be move to trash or delete immediately. The menu item, I think, should be "Delete Immediately" and should not have a warning that is so easy to turn off perhaps should only show with shift-key held down. 7: Again, what version and distro? 8: I will make sure to report it 9: Reported. For reports see: https://bugs.kde.org/buglist.c...

It looks like if you don't want to deal with Flash, you have basically two options: Qt's QML for non-web-pages or HTML for web-pages.
Soon though, thanks to QMLWeb, you'll be able to use QML-to-JS in the browser.

Check out KDE's BasKet.

One thing that immediately jumped out is the archaic (i.e. 1980's) method of drawing a straight line. In Gimp, this is super-easy...the last place you were drawing is where the origin of a straight line is. In Krita, it looks like you're stuck having to do it the old-fashioned way of dragging the line from one point to another

I'm guessing this is what you're looking for? http://userbase.kde.org/Krita/...

Yeah and look how well that approach is working for "Desktop Linux"? Compare and contrast with the success of OS X and Android.

The default desktop environments on popular Linux distros are crap enough to make you wonder if the developers were bribed to sabotage Desktop Linux.

I've reported bugs in GUI behaviour but you just get one person (the developer?) testing the changes and saying "I tried it and I didn't like it" or "WORKSFORME". No tests with other users.
And after various bugs are unfixed for years they don't carry the bug reports to new versions/editions even if the same bugs still exist, you have to reopen them. I no longer use their stuff so I don't care enough to reopen them.

Or they mark them as resolved as duplicate even though they are not duplicates and merely related: https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug....
(Not really the desktop environment but you'd have to pay me enough to look further).

Unless things have changed I never paid Qt any attention because it is dually licensed and therefore not truly free software and its ownership keeps changing between commercial companies.
Last I checked Qt is "free" for open source projects but requires an expensive commercial license for anything else.

You last checked about a decade ago, then.

Here's how it works now (and has worked for a while now): Qt is Free. Not "free", but Free. It's under the LGPL. And the GPL.

"But it's owned by a commercial company, and they can just close off the source."

Nope. Still stays open. Back a few years ago, the KDE group got a special concession from Nokia. They set up the KDE Free Qt Foundation; if the commercial owners of Qt (Digia) stop releasing Qt under the LGPL and GPL3, KDE has the right to make the whole thing BSD. Irrevocably. And the agreement stays, even if Digia is sold, bought, etc. Read the link if you'd like to know more.

Basically, Qt is Free. If the owners ever stop releasing it for Free, KDE gets to release it under an even more Free license.

Qt has been Free for a while. Qt is still Free. It will remain Free

I don't care about games, but I would love it when they can adapt this technology to give X magic focus powers.

I already use 'Focus follows mouse' on fluxbox, but too often I am looking at a differnt terminal window when I start typing away, and I had forgotten to move the mouse.

wish: focus follows eyes - note the year this was submitted ...

Because of an 8-year ivory-tower esoteric debate on the subject.

https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=92845

A possible fix, using PAM. Not sure how specific to OpenSUSE this is.

http://linux.eregion.de/2013/10/26/kwallet-single-sign-on-at-last/

You're welcome
http://userbase.kde.org/Klipper

I think it has to do with X specifications, they have different names and stuff.

FWIW,I want to be able to select, Ctrl+X then select somewhere else and Ctrl+V to kill what I've selected (for example copy and paste a URL into and address bar), so selecting editable text should not place into the copy buffer IMO.

KDE has different desktops for laptops & tablets. Plasma Active is their choice for phones, tablets & touch computing devices, like it says in the link you provided, but nowhere do they suggest it for laptops or all-in-ones. For that, they have Plasma Desktop, which is as different from Plasma Active as a butterfly from a moth. (They also have a Plasma Netbook, but looking @ it, it's not obvious how it's more suited to a Netbook than is Plasma Desktop itself)

KDE did this the right way - they offer Plasma Desktop for laptops and desktops and optimize the UI for that, while for tablets, they optimize Plasma Active. That's the right way to do it - no need to pretend that one is the other. Windows 8, Unity and GNOME3, OTOH, try & shoehorn everything into one interface, which is why you have users screaming about all 3.

Anyway, my original point, which the parent conceded - he shouldn't have used GNOME3 as an example of a non-tablet interface and bunching it w/ XFCE, GNOME2 or KDE.

I did a quick google and found that he posted on September 16: http://lists.kde.org/?a=120532466800019&r=1&w=2 So let us hope that the man returns. On a bigger topic, this is the kind of software that would really benefit from having far more contributors. I am not a programmer but I'd think that working on a video editor is rather cool.

You mean something like Plasma Active (http://community.kde.org/Plasma/Active/Devices), which runs on the Nexus 7?

It's probably due in part to the whole KDE Free Qt thing. It keeps Qt free in the event Qt isn't...um...kept free. It's pretty nice.

The upcoming version of the Qt framework has Android compatibility. I expect this will be soon followed by the port of many KDE applications to Android, especially given that it's got to be much easier than porting them to Windows.

You're thinking of the KDE Free Qt Foundation, which didn't come about until June 1998 (source). It was under a GPL-incompatible license until Qt/X11 was released sometime in 2000. (The archived press release appears to have vanished in the transition from Nokia to Digia.) GNOME began in August 1997, and this article from September 2000 states that it was explicitly to work around the non-free status of Qt at the time.

Partial credit for guessing "rocK", it's actually Amarok. Which also became popular, did a major redesign, was forked by people who liked the old way better, and only recently is starting to be as useful as the original version again. The main difference from the GNOME history is that eventually Amarok realized they should reconsider their older version's features, instead of just continuing to ignore community feedback forever.

Its the "we're going our own way" decisions - like Mir instead of Wayland, etc. This leaves you thinking - If I keep with Ubuntu I will be out on a limb, forced to use Unity, etc.

How is anyone forced to use Unity in Ubuntu? There's still Kubuntu, lubuntu etc. And even with straight Ubuntu, you can still install whatever desktop you want, and select it at login.

Will be forced once X is replaced by Mir. You will have to laod the whole of Wayland (or X as a legacy) to be able to run other desktops then - which means that it will be very different from the straight Ubuntu. There are already questions in the kubuntu forum and about gnome ubuntu.

http://www.kde.org/workspaces/

Perhaps a GGPL, greater GPL, should also be written up as a guarantee that it will never be closed.

That's called donating copyright in a program to a not-for-profit foundation that has the free software paradigm written into its charter. Examples of such foundations include Free Software Foundation, Apache Software Foundation, and KDE Free Qt Foundation.

KDevelop3 was a good development environment. It supported many languages. KDevelop4, last I checked, supported C++ and C.

Syntax highlighting for a huge amount of languages is inherited from Kate/KWrite.
For everything beyond that KDevelop uses plugins. These are available:
https://projects.kde.org/projects/extragear/kdevelop/plugins
https://projects.kde.org/projects/playground/devtools/plugins/

KDevelop3 was a good development environment. It supported many languages. KDevelop4, last I checked, supported C++ and C.

Syntax highlighting for a huge amount of languages is inherited from Kate/KWrite.
For everything beyond that KDevelop uses plugins. These are available:
https://projects.kde.org/projects/extragear/kdevelop/plugins
https://projects.kde.org/projects/playground/devtools/plugins/

> I was clear in my post that I was asking a question
If that is your idea of a question, then I'm happy I don't have to deal with your questions more often. For the record, a question would have been:
"I can't imagine the rainbow color highlighting will be useful. Could someone explain how it works exactly?"
That's just the basics of respectful communication.

I have put the highlighting explanation into the manual: http://userbase.kde.org/KDevelop4/Manual/Working_with_source_code#Rainbow_color_highlighting_explained

I also wrote an article about other myths which are being spread here ("kdev3 was far better", "it's not 'framework neutral'", "it's slow/hogging memory"...): http://scummos.blogspot.de/2013/04/for-every-kdevelop-release.html

Perhaps more basic than what you're looking for, but I've been having a lot of fun with my 5 & 6 year old with KTurtle. It's a Logo based drawing program where you have only a few basic commands to make the turtle draw stuff. It has variables, loops, functions and conditionals; not to mention graph coordinates, polygons, etc. It's also localisable... which is really cool.

To start the kid out I basically would make little programs that make shapes or patterns, and he'd then mess around with them... mostly just changing numbers to see what would happen. Over time his curiosity has caused him to explore more, to the point where he now writes his own code quite often. He doesn't really understand a lot of the concepts he uses... but just fiddles around with things until it does something cool... which is fine with me.

The KTurtle web page is sadly entirely non-inspiring. But the program is great, which gets too little love. http://edu.kde.org/kturtle/

KDE Looks like Windows or MacOS. You just click on the big Firefox Icon and be done with it. My mother is using my KDE/Fedora Linux laptop just fine. She is using Firefox, Office and Skype. My mother does not know anything about a computer, except how to type and how to use the mouse (and even then she confuse sometimes the mouse buttons).

See here for an example: http://www.kde.org/announcements/4.3/

Webkit is not GPL. There are pieces in LGPL, and the majority is a BSD license.

That means that changes to the library itself must be open source. However, the program using the library may be proprietary.

http://techbase.kde.org/Policies/Licensing_Policy

Yes. On day one.

http://lists.kde.org/?m=104197092318639

http://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2012/08/gnome-founder-says-desktop-linux-is-dead

I guess this guy could be considered an expert on the subject!

He is only interested in presenting other peoples interest, in how it fills his own pockets, and there is nothing wrong with that. Rock stars do it all the time. Its just kind of ironic that he does this at a time when Linux is growing market share as a desktop, and Apple is devastated with 25% drop is desktop sales. This is him saying OOXML is superb http://blogs.kde.org/node/2985, he is just that guy. I'm sorry is Mono project is looking dead in the water,; I notice Mono is being cut from the Gnome desktop. love the replacement for Tomboy :)

Want to know about Linux...ask me I use it everyday; Its the fasted growing desktop OS in the World.

Just install KDE on your MAC and run it native! Sure, you have compile it from source but think of the satisfaction you'll feel every time you fire up your office suite...

Well you can use scripting of KDE Plasma to setup the layout. See this example and the Plasma Desktop Scripting documentation. Then you can probably create just one script and run it on all systems to set them up.

Second, no GUI toolkit supports such a thing, or ever announced any intention to do so, so you are talking out of your ass.

http://www.kde.org/applications/internet/krdc/
http://sourceforge.net/projects/gnome-rdp/

Surely you meant RFB, as RDP is a proprietary Microsoft protocol, and "most distributions" only include a client for it. As I have mentioned before, RFB is inadequate.

Microsoft publishes the spec:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/aa383515(v=vs.85).aspx

That's bullshit [in reference to buffering] Application programmer does not have to know details of X protocol,

You are reading my comment backwards. In those situations where applications need to control buffering they can't under X11. Obviously applications that don't care about buffering won't have to worry about it under Wayland or X11.

RDP is designed for Windows, and would be suboptimal for any modern GUI toolkit other than Windows.

I don't think so. I think RDP works fine as long as the client (usual meaning, server for X11) has a toolkit capable of responding to high level instructions. So a Qt clients needs to have Qt but not .NET, a Gnome client needs to have GTK...

Authentication, encryption, session management, support for absolutely everything that can be displayed, has to be done once, on one level.

RDP is a secure protocol. Encryption is handled like any other network protocol. Authentication is handled using the security system on the server. Session management is handled by the server.

____

Anyway I think I've shown pretty conclusively that far from vaporware this is going on, this is the direction. It is being implemented, the support exist...

What is broken is that KDE helps you to get things done. OS X is a locked down box with overpriced stylish hardware, computers for hair stylists and other artists. OS X is not very convenient anymore. The relevant operating system is today the browser.

I had great luck with the 10.x series - especially 10.3 stands out as one of my favorite versions ever, including multi-monitor support. On the other hand, I had a terrible time with the entire 11.x series until 11.4. OpenSUSE, like everyone else, started using KDE4 before they should have.

12.1 is my current production OS for my work laptop - nearly flawless but for this one pesky bug that I reported (and developed a workaround for) long ago. Multi-monitor works very well for me with the workaround, but I generally don't undock during the day just to avoid having to reconfigure resolution & monitor layout.

I've read on Slashdot and elsewhere that the KDE guys have completely redesigned the widget they use for multi-monitor support, so it could be great in 12.3 but I don't know. I probably won't upgrade until nature (a disk failure) forces me to.

Here's a simple bug in a simple and core component of KDE. It's been filed several times. This bug has been languishing unaddressed since 2006 or earlier!

Do you really think that Microsoft or Apple would let a simple bug screw up remote desktop access for 7+ years? Would you not be laughing your ass off at them and taunting them?

Meanwhile KDE is now doing monthly updates to push out the latest Plasma-esque brainchild that will screw up God-knows-what again.

And, don't even get me started on Gnome3!

Is your issue Fedora or KDE related? If Fedora subscribe here or if KDE related subscribe here . Personally I have not had many problems with Fedora (I have 18) and even less with KDE although I did switch to Gnome for a few months when KDE 4.0 came out.

Remember this?
http://dot.kde.org/2001/04/01/kdeqt-switching-mozilla-and-javascript-technology

Kind of cool it's actually happening.

--
Andreas

efforts were underway by KDE to port Calligra to Android.

http://blogs.kde.org/node/4521

Just forget about crappy Android apps and write a proper Qt one with Necessitas ! :)

I don't think that the database is the problem. The problem is that Akonadi is about as decent, code- and design-wise, as aRts was. Long on promise, short on delivery -- designed and implemented by people who demonstrably don't have enough software engineering experience. College kids may be bright and hard working, but that's no substitute for a certain amount of experience and understanding of the engineering side of things. Just look at this software engineering "recommendation" to give the idea what's wrong with the project. Give me a fucking break, this is supposed to be C++, RAII has been with us pretty much since forever, and those bastards pretend you need to have manual (and thus usually missing) solutions to problems nominally solved by designing for RAII? Seriously?

I love that people are arguing that KDE 4 is missing a "core feature" that was actually a third-party add-on for KDE 3, but at the same time argue that installing a plasmoid means the feature doesn't really exist.

KDE 4 was designed to be extendable, and supports multiple methods of easily installing plasmoids. Installing content from the internet into KDE 4 was a core underlying technology since 2008.

http://userbase.kde.org/Plasma/Installing_Plasmoids
http://newstuff.kde.org/