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There already is an KDE e.V..

Rather than comment myself, why not hear what Andreas Pour said today?

No, KDE e.V. owns the KDE trademark.

See http://www.kde.org/kde-ev/

You want a comment from Dre:

here it is

The story is just more LinuxAndMain FUD about KDE

On a side note, I've used wxWindows in Python and I must say I was definitely impressed how one wxWindows Python script can display identical windows on Mac OS, Linux, and Win32s. We need more of this cross-platform compatibility.

Precisely, you hit "start" to shut down... On the Apple you used to have to do a "special -> shut down". Fortunately, KDE made it much easier for all of us as they figured just copying and pasting the windows logo and the text "start" would be too obvious so they craftily Cloaked it by using the letter "K" instead. Perhaps they should have labeled it "KO" to intuitively symbolize it will log you off (Is that what the cog behind the K is supposed to be? If that's the case, why would you want to Knock Out your Office or your Control Center? Shouldn't it be a TKO anyway?!?).

The solution is STILL not taking pot shots at Microsoft. For every stupid thing you can criticize about Windows, there are probably about 10 things that a Windows user trying to switch to Linux can criticize about Linux and its many flavors of GUI's. You know what, you're probably both right from your respective points of view.

Unfortunately, Microsoft's "evil" tactics as they've often been called, propelled an industry to sell a ridiculous amount of computers, driving down the price of hardware, propelling an even larger number of less expensive computer shopping (including your home-built computer which didn't cost you an arm and a leg as it would have if PC's had never had their boom) and create an enormous demand for tech. support and computer programmers (who often create more demand for tech. support). I wonder if anyone out there doesn't do or wish they did some form of programming or tech. support or other (no matter what level of the computer industry you're involved in) as your day job.

In other words, before you keep biting the hand that feeds you, try to find a BETTER way to do business and ergonomics than Microsoft and Apple.

Wait. Are you talking about the dot?

Here's some places you can go to if you fancy KDE more than Gnome (hey, tastes differ. Get over it already) :

• KDE-Look dot org - A nice theme repository. Even has GTK themes and icewm themes because KDE can use those too.
• Official KDE art site

[X] Easy to use Windowing system - KDE

KDE is not a windowing system. X is a window system, while KDE is a "graphical desktop environment" layered on top of X.

X sansKDE is easy enough to use, but looks and feels very little like MS Windows or MacOS - X provides mechanism, not policy. KDE and Gnome give you a fancy-schmancy sets of applications that share the same look and feel.

KDE license allows you to pick the code change it as you want end release your new version as long as you release the source code with it.

KDE code don't belong to KDE.ORG, it's free software after all.

I am **dying** to get an open source replacement that I can use in production to replace Exchange...

But if they "slap a pretty administative UI on top" like you say, I won't touch that shit with a 3m pole.

Unless they do some serious design and usability testing on the administrative interface then it will never be useful. Frankly I have doubts based on their early spec for it...

They defined 8 separate "features": 3 for logging, 2 for vacation setup, 2 for server setup, and 1 for user administration. Now I'm hardly familiar with PostFix, OpenLDAP, etc. so I don't know if that's really enough to administer the Kolab server, but I am familiar with Exchange and it looks like there is no way the current spec covers all the configuration options and tools available to an Exchange Admin.

Are there more tools that come with OpenLDAP that they are going to include in the administration?

How do you do things like search all the email on a server/mailbox to find certain text? I vaguely remember reading that all data is stored in separate files instead of a database, so do you use "find" (or whatever the console command is. i am a newbie at *nix). And if so are they going to make that accessible through the php interface...

I sure hope the spec grows a bit more from the inital one they have.

--
Evan (no references)

It's been pointed out to them and they've explained that it's a working name, not a final decision.

Meanwhile, I've tried to suggest that the developers of the Perl/QT user interface compiler choose a less disgusting name than "puic" ...

It's been pointed out to them and they've explained that it's a working name, not a final decision.

Meanwhile, I've tried to suggest that the developers of the Perl/QT user interface compiler choose a less disgusting name than "puic" ...

What is it about message boards that make normally civilized people turn into stereotypical razor-tounged neophytes?.

I read my post again this morning, and you're right - it (and therefore I) was impolite. I apologize for that. There's rarely a good reason for such impoliteness, and in this case there was none. I'll be good from now on, I promise...

I think we both agree that all the desktop offerings available on Linux aren't good enough for human consumption at this point.

I do have two problems with your argument, though: You're basing it on a list of X's shortcomings (bad font support, for example), but then brush aside the solutions available now (XRender, for example) as "hacks", ignoring the fact that applications use those extensions now, and therefore don't suffer from the problems you're basing your argument on.

The second problematic argument is that the extra libraries X applications use are somehow respobsible for KDE and GNOME's bad performance. Having looked at the problem myself, I know that's not the case.

Since KDE relies on separate applications to present the user with a UI (Konqueror to browse the file system, various control center applets to configure things, etc.) it introduces significant delays when trying to do everyday tasks that should be fast. Those delays are caused by having to wait for the system to load the application, and dynamically link it into the many libraries that it needs to do anything. This is perceived as GUI slowness by the user, but is in fact a more fundamental problem. Replacing the GUI and the desktop won't solve that problem, and fixing it will make the overall user experience better. Look here for information on some work being done to address that. To be honest, I don't know how far along any of this work is, and whether it will find its way to people's desktops anytime soon.

You could make the argument that having all those libraries loaded impacts system performance because you have to start swapping sooner. I'd agree, but I won't pick that area as the first thing to optimize.

Even if X imposes a constant slowdown on every call to a graphics primitive, it still doesn't explain why some X applications are so slow, and therefore, replacing X with something that's faster by a constant won't make a difference.

We should keep in mind that there are very few examples in this industry where a clean break with the past and a complete rewrite didn't end in disaster. It would take at least three years for anyone to come up with a compelling replacement for X and its desktop environments, and Linux needs something sooner. That's assuming that whoever is going to take on this enormous task will actually succeed in shipping anything.

Indications? Are you referring to outright statements from CEOs and advocates to get Linux kicking and screaming onto the desktop?

No, I'm referring to actual code I can download and run. RedHat Null is an example. And, I don't think a decent Linux desktop is a single Red Hat beta away - it's more like two major versions away, which is still faster than starting from scratch. It looks like RedHat's next version is going to be OK, for some people, and if they refine it for the next release, it'll be a decent product.

battling environments, ...Get a decent distribution

How is any distribution going to solve the Gnome versus KDE issue? You're not making any sense there.

My mistake - I thought you were referring to the user having to battle the desktop environment when trying to get anything done. Now, if I wanted to weasel out of this one without admitting to making a mistake, I could say that distributions could smooth the differences between desktop environments by having their respective control panels modify parameters of the other environment, so keep things consistent, but I won't say that. Even though it's true.

BeOS, NeXTSTEP, OS X, all fast, modern, elegant, graphical environments: Everything that X and Gnome/KDE are not. It's been done before, it can be done again, and with open source, be done even better.

Assuming, of course, that GNOME and KDE can't be fixed. I believe they can be fixed, if somebody cared enough to do it, and that they can be fixed before a from-scratch alternative hits beta.

It's not that I'm saying it can't be done - it can. It's only code, and we know how to write code (well, at least I do - that's how I make my living). I'm saying that the economics of your propositions won't work. The X/KDE/GNOME combo is good enough for some people now, and is actively being made better for more and more people, through a series of small, low-risk changes. Any alternative you can come up with will be of no use to anybody for several years, and then it will have to fight for acceptance, with no application base to speak of, and with competition from a better X/GNOME/KDE desktop. (better, because I don't think it can get worse...)

And, last, but not least:

I'm sure it was a lapse of stupidity on my part, I apologize.

Just to make it clear: I don't think you're stupid. Now, that' you've read it on Slashdot, you know it's true. :-)

These screenshots of null don't lack developers' names.

The problem is one of themes, not modified about boxes.

I don't know who started the rumor about altering about boxes -- happened sometime in the last submission about this.

The problem is that there's been a lot of bullshit going around about this, and it's been trumped up a lot, and I hate to say it, but I honestly think that some of the people at companies that compete with RH might be stooping to somewhat dirty tactics.

>RedHat is not removing any options. They are
>more or less just creating similar themes for
>both KDE and GNOME.

That is certainly not the case. Mandrake has been shipping desktop environments with their own themes for quite a while; Crystal is Conectiva's own icon set for KDE. If that was all, there would be no major fuss.

The thing is that Red Hat is doing code changes to the environments, to further reduce their recognizability. I don't know what motivation other than this would drive their decision to remove the "About KDE" box from KDE apps.

That is a serious thing, because it might even be illegal, since it effectively removes the copyright notice from the program.

I more like kopete which is a QT/KDE application and supports Jabber/Yahoo/MSN/Icq/AIM etc. Doesnt have a Win32 port but seems sexy :)

See http://kopete.kde.org/

The German government has ordered a full-blown open-source groupware solution for KDE...

Actually they explicitly ordered Free Software groupware. Very rarely in the links you pointed us to does the phrase "open source" appear; far more frequent are references to the older Free Software movement. Please stop attributing people's freedom-minded work to the wrong movement.

Take the time to read the links you pointed us to: The concept is prominently listed as a "Free Software Groupware Project" (and descriptions hinging on "Free Software" run throughout); the KDE mailing list entry talks exclusively about Free Software saying this project will "significantly enhance the available groupware functionality for KDE and Free software in general".

The German government has ordered a full-blown open-source groupware solution for KDE...

Actually they explicitly ordered Free Software groupware. Very rarely in the links you pointed us to does the phrase "open source" appear; far more frequent are references to the older Free Software movement. Please stop attributing people's freedom-minded work to the wrong movement.

Take the time to read the links you pointed us to: The concept is prominently listed as a "Free Software Groupware Project" (and descriptions hinging on "Free Software" run throughout); the KDE mailing list entry talks exclusively about Free Software saying this project will "significantly enhance the available groupware functionality for KDE and Free software in general".

[* is anyone suprised by the name? :) ]

It's only the working title.

Actually, the deadline is only one month away! See e.g. Kalle's Post to the kroupware mailing list.

Korganizer's native format is vCalendar (was anyway). So it is quite likely that these things would be able to talk together. After all they are all internet standards (more about iCal/iCard).

Not to worry.

If you read the post on kde-core-devel, it's going to be a separate CVS branch (still on KDE CVS), but only temporarily and only because the project needs to be finished on a very short timescale. Basically, they don't want to make big changes to the HEAD branch so close to the release of KDE 3.1. Once kroupware(*) is done, they will port the changes back into HEAD.

here is the relevant post to kde-core-devel.

[* is anyone suprised by the name? :) ]

My big chance at karma whoring:
More info available at kroupware.kde.org

You must be new here...
Slashdot is a pro-GNOME site. You will never see an objective look at KDE here (or GNOME either). Every story will have some little (usually untrue) cheap shot at KDE (like this one does). If you want to know what's up with KDE, go read the dot. If you want to hear a bunch of GNU zealots foam and froth about how KDE and Qt are the next Microsoft, read Slashdot.

Not only does this provide KDE with some of the multilingual programmability it initially forfeited by its use of Qt

You mean you are ignoring this ?. I just read David Faure's comment. Is it me or this article is a troll ???

The use of Qt has not been a problem in allowing the use of various languages to program for KDE. There are bindings for Python, Java, Objc-C, C, Perl, and interaction over XMLRPC and via command line tools for shell scripts. C# is just another one of the languages which can now program with the libraries, and presumably, so are any other Mono supported systems.

Interested readers may wish to checkout the KDEBindings package in CVS, which is part of the KDE desktop officially since 3.0. Web CVS

I don't see anything really new about this story. It is simply mentioning Adam Treat's Qt# bindings and work on Mono integration. The Dot reported on this over a month ago.

The story makes the bombastic claim that KDE is switching to Mono as the underlying technology, and shows no proof to that extent. What is happening is that KDE guys are simply adding C#/Mono to the list of bindings Qt/KDE supports. Don't get too excited just yet.

Because the outright public forum blackmail tactic being used by a sub-group inside KDE to demand artistic rights here smacks clearly in the face of gpl freedoms. If the discusion had stayed inside the KDE developer channels that's fine ... they can work on policy issues there. What appears to be happening here is both the main stream KDE developers and FSF/GNU standing idly by while the very vocal group uses some very unethical means to blackmail RedHat into changing it's position.

If KDE isn't willing to take a firm stand on THEIR image, and FSF isn't either, then these noisy little power plays are going to be the poison pill that drives large corporate developers from adopting open source products in their platforms.

The open source community as a whole needs to provide the peer presure that FREE is FREE, for everyone. Those that do not want to play by the GPL rules, clearly need some external presure to modify this childish behavior. In this case, the general distrust of corporate america seems to encourage a hear no evil, see no evil, do no evil response.

and easy-to-use, CDDB compatible OGG CD-rip utilities.

• Lameness filters (It blocks a lot of legitmate posts)
  
• Unnessary posting delays. Hasnt taco learned to touch type? A lot of posts are typed in less than 20 seconds and it is a ANNOYING DELAY! 2 minute ban? Come on, so some are faster then others, big deal, some people have more to say than others
  
• Broken moderation system, The whole point is to sort the gems from the crap, yet a lot of posts designed to make a LIVELY DISCUSSION are MODERATED as flamebait! Come on, not everyone likes X, but just because some one bashes it dosent mean its Flamebait. Flame bait is more useful for DIRECT INSULTS and not legitmate discussions.
  

• Crapfloods, a meaningless flood of random letters or text, which the lameness filter does a crappy job at trying to stop, besides trolls have written tools using the opensource slashcode to generate crapfloods which bypass the filter
• Links to offensive websites, the most common one is known a http://www.goatse.cx, a awful site which shows a bleeding anus being stretched on the front page. Trolls sneak these links in by posting messages that look legitimate, but infact are sneaky redirects to the site. Common examples include rd.yahoo.com, www.linux-kernel.tk, goatsex.cjb.net, and googles "Im feeling lucky".
• Trying to break slashdot, this is actually a good thing, as it helps test slashdot for bugs. Famous examples include the goatse.cx javascript pop-up, the pagewidening post and the browser crashing post!
  

• Linux Terminal Server Project
  
• SEUL for Education
  
• The Open Source Schools Portal
  
• Schoolforge
  
• The K12Linux in Schools Project
  
• The KDE Edutainment Project

I'm going to nominate Valgrind. It's going to greatly improve the performance of Linux software across the board, and puts professional grade profiling in the hands of every MP3 playlist coder on Freshmeat.

What else? Nothing much happened this year. I'd suggest the Mono developers who seem to have accomplished a lot, but won't because I haven't tried it myself and because it's not especially relevant yet (if ever). Mozilla got a lot better, but they did so much bragging up front I'm not inclined to puff them up again now that they've finally accomplished something.

How does this compare the KCacheGrind and Valgrind?

• Lameness filters (It blocks a lot of legitmate posts)
  
• Unnessary posting delays. Hasnt taco learned to touch type? A lot of posts are typed in less than 20 seconds and it is a ANNOYING DELAY! 2 minute ban? Come on, so some are faster then others, big deal, some people have more to say than others
  
• Broken moderation system, The whole point is to sort the gems from the crap, yet a lot of posts designed to make a LIVELY DISCUSSION are MODERATED as flamebait! Come on, not everyone likes X, but just because some one bashes it dosent mean its Flamebait. Flame bait is more useful for DIRECT INSULTS and not legitmate discussions.
  

• Crapfloods, a meaningless flood of random letters or text, which the lameness filter does a crappy job at trying to stop, besides trolls have written tools using the opensource slashcode to generate crapfloods which bypass the filter
• Links to offensive websites, the most common one is known a http://www.goatse.cx, a awful site which shows a bleeding anus being stretched on the front page. Trolls sneak these links in by posting messages that look legitimate, but infact are sneaky redirects to the site. Common examples include rd.yahoo.com, www.linux-kernel.tk, goatsex.cjb.net, and googles "Im feeling lucky".
• Trying to break slashdot, this is actually a good thing, as it helps test slashdot for bugs. Famous examples include the goatse.cx javascript pop-up, the pagewidening post and the browser crashing post!
  

Jabber could be such a protocol. You might be interested in reading about their proposal to get their library into kde as "the standard" p2p protocol for kde.
See here for an interesting discussion.

I for one would greatly like this.

Although I stubornly refuse to work with RedHat after another one of their famous progressive actions, I think this one is from a different nature.
Unfortunately, I just admit, John Doe wants a simular look and feel for all the machines he is working on. Just try to explain the concept of Window Managers, and the layered structure (OS/X/WM).
Most ppl work with a "computer" and start a browser and some office program, they really do not care what it is running (but the sysadmins do). With Mozilla and OpenOffice.org, GNU/Linux finally seems to have mature solutions for this (FS/OS). For the first time in years (ever since the demise of WP), a user has again a choice what software to use for his/her "productivity" tasks with these mature solutions.
The only confusing thing is the desktop which has so many looks and feels. Imagine a secretary, used to work with KDE, working on a replacement machine and needs to start Mozilla in windowmaker
We should not see this as an attack on KDE of Gnome, but as a move to a common interface, at least for the non expert users. For the rest of us, we will keep starting several X servers with multiple window managers and compiling and packaging them from CVS.
I guess it's a corporate geek reflex that we do not like meddling with our software, but is general and widespread use (albeit eclectic with the best of the best) not the best recognition?

Being a KDE enthusiastic I don't see how this could be entirely bad. This only shows the power of KDE and how heavily it can be customized. After all this is how KDE is promoted
And the fact that RedHat finally seems to embrace KDE as a desktop environment for their distribution is also good news.
However, removing the about-box really seems to be a violation of the license if the same information is not displayed anywhere else. Correct me if I'm wrong.

I know I shouldn't be, but I'm stunned that so many slashdotters are so quick to pounce on all KDE developers because of the comments made by a few people. Try checking out more comments before flaming volunteers, eh? Hell, even Gnomers are said to be concerned about the changes to thier environment, but I guess since it's slashdotted no one cares. ( Out of sight, out of mind. )

Personally, I think that if Red Hat:

1) Doesn't violate any licences

and

2) Notes any changes they made to either environment

Then I have no problem with it, and from what I've read on the Dot, most KDE developers seem to be thinking along these lines as well.

So, for everyone making negative comments, quit yer bashing! The very people you bash have probably done more to help the community than you ever will.

All spelling mistakes in this post were on purpose, so bite me.

I know I shouldn't be, but I'm stunned that so many slashdotters are so quick to pounce on all KDE developers because of the comments made by a few people. Try checking out more comments before flaming volunteers, eh? Hell, even Gnomers are said to be concerned about the changes to thier environment, but I guess since it's slashdotted no one cares. ( Out of sight, out of mind. )

Personally, I think that if Red Hat:

1) Doesn't violate any licences

and

2) Notes any changes they made to either environment

Then I have no problem with it, and from what I've read on the Dot, most KDE developers seem to be thinking along these lines as well.

So, for everyone making negative comments, quit yer bashing! The very people you bash have probably done more to help the community than you ever will.

All spelling mistakes in this post were on purpose, so bite me.

Quote:

Navindra Umanee: Can you give me full details on the changes? Have you tried this beta?

Ian Geiser: Mostly off of what I have heard on IRC. I was planning on downloading this weekend...


from http://dot.kde.org/1030073479/1030203696/

So, according to the IRC log, KDE's "liberal licensing policy" has allowed Red Hat to "trash KDE" by putting "Red Hat icons on the desktop," and replacing "Konquerer and KMail by Mozilla and Evolution".

Is it just me, or are these guys even greater control freaks than Bill Gates himself?

How can they put their software under the LGPL and then expect to control its distribution?? These guys have seriously misunderstood the meaning of 'open source'.

Well, the sequence of events goes roughly like this:

• Article about redhat beta 8.0 appears on pclinuxonline, including screenshots
• Articles pointing to pclinuxonline then appear on both gnomedesktop.org and dot.kde.org.
• The gnomedesktop.org article gets a few people discussing how nice/horrible the new redhat desktop looks and a few mentions of how this will threaten Ximian. dot.kde.org, on the other hand, goes completely ballistic. One KDE developer (Roberto Alsina) posts a message accusing RedHat of being like Stalin because they have changed the icons and moved the "About KDE" boxes. the webmaster of dot.kde.org accuses RedHat of trying to "actively destroy KDE", and on and on and on. Scary stuff from a bunch of loonies.
• gnomedesktop.org story: someone posts a link to the dot.kde.org story, and says that this is why he dislikes KDE... they are bunch of clueless flamers - even the developers. Roberto Alsino upsticks and moves to gnomedesktop.org and proceeds to make a fool of himself by claiming that they are violating the GPL (he hasn't read it, the clueless shit-for-brains, details in the gnomedesktop story) - while being unable to post each message only once. Things rattle on for hundreds of messages with Roberto never gaining anything remotely resembling a clue, and still thinking RedHat is a secret organisation dedicated to the eradication of KDE.
• Slashdot posts link to gnomedesktop.org and blatts it out of existence. You can, however (for the moment), still read the insane ramblings at dot.kde.org. Hold your nose though... there is a strong stench of lunacy about the place.

After reading some of the posts it seems to me that the most needed feature for a possible Exchange replacement is the group scheduling and calendaring.
It is already possible to use KOrganizer to fullfil that need, it wont replace an existing Exchange installation, but it maybe all it takes to avoid one :-)
Oh ... and lets not forget that the next version of KMail (in KDE 3.1) will have LDAP support, courtesy of the Aegypten project.

KDE3 debs
Gnome 2 debs (scroll down a bit)

KDE usability. The KDE Usability Project has improved the KDE User Interface Guidelines compliance of almost all applications. Additional usability enhancements were made to the panel (Kicker), the desktop calculator (KCalc) and the screenshot utility (KSnapshot).

This is really cool. They are following very clear GUI Guidelines (see link above) and they have the Usability team checking that every application follows these guidelines. IMHO Usability (more than Features) is the only major missing link in the GNU/Linux desktop. I am really looking forward to KDE 3.1 ...

KDE usability. The KDE Usability Project has improved the KDE User Interface Guidelines compliance of almost all applications. Additional usability enhancements were made to the panel (Kicker), the desktop calculator (KCalc) and the screenshot utility (KSnapshot).

This is really cool. They are following very clear GUI Guidelines (see link above) and they have the Usability team checking that every application follows these guidelines. IMHO Usability (more than Features) is the only major missing link in the GNU/Linux desktop. I am really looking forward to KDE 3.1 ...

> Where does it go now?

See the incomplete KDE 3.2 feature plan. And don't forget to make KOffice the best office suite ever. Think about other missing applications. I don't expect that KDE will create a "new desktop" concept.

The site provides RPMs for Suse, they can be downloaded from

http://download.at.kde.org/pub/kde/unstable/kde-3. 1-beta1/SuSE/i386/8.0/

However, when I check the RPMs I get

error: failed dependencies:
libkviewsupport.so.0 is needed by kdegraphics3-3.0.7-0

Any ideas where kdegraphics3-3.0.7-0 can be found, rpmfind didn't turn up anything useful. I am using SuSE 8 with a full install of KDE3.03, but this has been updated many times since its initial install as SuSE 7.0.

I did get some components working. The panel is much improved, and support for dual head displays looks much better (the panel can now be configured on a per display basis). However, I couln't convince Konq to display any web page, in tabs or otherwise :-(.