Slashdot Mirror

It's not even been announced yet, so please don't take down kde.org by slashdotting it. Use a mirror, list here. I got it from the Norwegian mirror which was very fast for me (I'm in Norway, YMMV, look out your window and check). It's a cool 100 megs though.

Well, I'm writing this with Konqueror/KDE 3.0.0 which I downloaded about six hours before this story got posted here. Ya know, there are some people who just can't wait ;-)

And there won't be a mess, things *might* just slow down a bit. After all, the KDE FTP server is not a homebrewn dial-up server or shit.

I show some freaking respect towards the developers. I like their stuff that much that I couldn't wait a minute to get my hands on their newest creations.

The only thing I dislike about this story getting posted is that there is no link to the mirrors page, which was were I looked first of course. Or a link to download.kde.org which shows there already ARE some FTP mirror sites having the 3.0 release.

You should've pointed towards theses URLs instead of flaming around, IMHO...

Well, I'm writing this with Konqueror/KDE 3.0.0 which I downloaded about six hours before this story got posted here. Ya know, there are some people who just can't wait ;-)

And there won't be a mess, things *might* just slow down a bit. After all, the KDE FTP server is not a homebrewn dial-up server or shit.

I show some freaking respect towards the developers. I like their stuff that much that I couldn't wait a minute to get my hands on their newest creations.

The only thing I dislike about this story getting posted is that there is no link to the mirrors page, which was were I looked first of course. Or a link to download.kde.org which shows there already ARE some FTP mirror sites having the 3.0 release.

You should've pointed towards theses URLs instead of flaming around, IMHO...

Yea, really.

Eds, you really shouldnt be posting a link to their FTP site. It encourages too many people to follow that link. Didnt we learn this lesson with kernel.org? Post a link to their mirror page.

First, Geheimnis is a very good and complete GPG frontend. Then, KMail has integrated gpg/pgp support for signing, signature checking, de-/encryption. I'm sure there are other examples. What is lacking are not good Linux frontends, but good windows frontends, which the german government is currently taking care of (see other posts). BTW, they also plan to extend KMail support.

Tabbed browsing is coming in 3.1.

Every version of KDE i've ever seen has been, well, sort of inherently ugly-- the worst abuses of the motif, windows, and aqua mindsets combined.

You telling me that this is ugly? Or this?

that doesn't change that there seemed to just be very little engineering of details in KDE, and little things-- the relative placement of buttons, layout, fitt's law considerations, stuff you can't skin over

Everyone always seems to whine about fitts law, like knowing what it is automagically makes them a GUI design guru. To be honest, I prefer having smaller buttons/icons and being able to fit more on, and I think you'll find most other people do too - which is why even on OS X, that bastion of largeness, users often make the default dock icon size smaller, and the finder uses 16x16 icons in its default view.

Every version of KDE i've ever seen has been, well, sort of inherently ugly-- the worst abuses of the motif, windows, and aqua mindsets combined.

You telling me that this is ugly? Or this?

that doesn't change that there seemed to just be very little engineering of details in KDE, and little things-- the relative placement of buttons, layout, fitt's law considerations, stuff you can't skin over

Everyone always seems to whine about fitts law, like knowing what it is automagically makes them a GUI design guru. To be honest, I prefer having smaller buttons/icons and being able to fit more on, and I think you'll find most other people do too - which is why even on OS X, that bastion of largeness, users often make the default dock icon size smaller, and the finder uses 16x16 icons in its default view.

Can i have some screenshots? I couldn't find any of version 3 on kde.org.

Right Here. Of course, it's very slow loading now, /. effect in full swing!

Check out the KDE 3.0 Planned Features page.

Screenshots are available for KDE 3.0 here.

These shots go to show that Unix and Linux systems are more than capable of competing with the eye candy UIs of Windows XP and MacOS X.

KDE 3. Wow, is all I can say.

Now, back to the topic at hand. Isn't one of the main premises of the "Linux movement" to prove that Linux is indeed a "better" OS than Windows with the advent of "desktops" such as KDE and Gnome? Well, if it's so damn good, why do the developers of KDE have to copycat everything from Microsoft® Windows(TM)? Give me a break.

If you haven't seen these screenshots yet, look. They prove that KDE 3 is just a blatant Windows(TM) wannabe. From Konqueror's integration into KDE to join web browsing and file management into one view a la Microsoft® Internet Explorer (the common Slashdot mantra of "Let's pretend we hate it, steal all their ideas, integrate it into our own OS, and proclaim that it's better!"), to even the "Open File" dialog box. Holy shit, it looks like someone decompiled comdlg32.dll and recompiled it for KDE. That little "jump to location" panel was circa Microsoft® Office 97, and became a part of Windows' common dialogs later. Nice to see that KDE has finally stolen that one too.

All the widgets have moved to a Microsoft®-style type of widget. The check boxes (or should I say 'boxen'), scroll bars, command buttons, etc --- all a la Microsoft®! The only thing KDE 3 is missing is using Tahoma font for all the dialog boxes -- but I hear that is next on the list.

Hmm, the new "K" menu -- looks exactly like the new Office(TM) XP-style menus. Next thing you know, KDE 3.1 will come in the "Luna" style interface. Why don't you hacks try and come up with your own ideas once in a while? I guess that pretty much sums up the GPL -- "We're incapable of any self-developed ideas, we need to steal some from someone else and modify it to come up with our 'idea'." What a crock.

For all you legitimate Linux users out there --- don't buy into this crap. I suggest you use IceWM. It's small, efficient, and fast as hell. Oh, and it has its own, original interface.

I wonder if the next version of KDE will be called KDE XP?

just curious where you had heard that it's compatible with gcc 3.x? from what i read on kde's site here is that you'll want to avoid gcc 3.x and stay with 2.95 for a while.

the fact that they're pretty much on schedule shows good project management.

here they are, for beta2.

But yes, you're right. In my experience, most users are comfortable with the Windows GUI. They have no particular interest in Microsoft®Windows(TM), computing, or software in general. To them, Linux is a crappy old refurb box that sits under their desktop. They just want to do their work, listen to some tunes, and not have their applications tank.

Users don't really comment much on their Linux box, except to ask how to resize their desktopresolution or use a theme. They don't remember the last time it was rebooted. But they can certainly remember the last time they rebooted Microsoft®Windows(TM).

</offtopic>

But yes, you're right. In my experience, most users are comfortable with the Windows GUI. They have no particular interest in Microsoft®Windows(TM), computing, or software in general. To them, Linux is a crappy old refurb box that sits under their desktop. They just want to do their work, listen to some tunes, and not have their applications tank.

Users don't really comment much on their Linux box, except to ask how to resize their desktopresolution or use a theme. They don't remember the last time it was rebooted. But they can certainly remember the last time they rebooted Microsoft®Windows(TM).

</offtopic>

...having just seen this picture of the recent KDE 3 hackfest.

How many times have you emailed a developer of a GPL'd program for some feature or help, and gotten a reply along the lines of, "You have the source code, you figure it out!"?

Never. Not even once, and I've been on both sides of that conversation, many times. I don't buy your argument that a programmer of GPL'd software has no incentive to support or improve the program beyond what they personally see fit to do. I get a huge kick out of the fact that people use and enjoy my program, and I've made a large number of changes based on user feedback. I think the same can be said for many (if not most) GPL'd programs, including all of KDE.

Which is the web browsing portion of Konqueror (minus bookmark management and various other small UI thingies), which is what we're concerned about here as you point out later in your post. The port to AtheOS proves the portability of KHTML. And Konqueror/Embedded does NOT need KDE, that's the whole point of Konq/E. You wouldn't have to port all of KDE.

Fair enough, but at that point you're getting somewhat less impressive, since you're saying "KDE does more than Mozilla" rather than "Konqueror as a web browser spanks Mozilla", which still hasn't been proven.

Right. These things are all tangential to making a good web browser, as is an HTML editor and mail client and ICQ client and whatever else Mozilla has. I'm not necessarily arguing that Konqueror spanks Mozilla here, either, I'm just pointing out some things.

And as for "It'll be in 3.1", 3.0 isn't even out yet.

Tabs were planned for 3.0 but were too late for the freezes and such, so they got pushed back to 3.1. You can see it on the 3.1 planned features page. Note that David Faure has his name attatched to it - since he's a paid developer he'll surely get it done.

kstars is fun, too. Sometime, I'd like to take one of these planetarium progams and find a way to keep an updated star map as a desktop background.

I need to be able to run it headless, without a GUI, or replace/upgrade the GUI to fit my needs or fix it as needed without rebooting. OS X doesn't give me these things (yet).

So use the Darwin operating system. It's the core of Mac OS X (kernel plus command line tools) minus the GUI. Throw X11 on top of Darwin and install a free GUI. Be happy.

I can't call [Mac OS X] a Mac OS because it's just so damned funky.

I thought "funky" was a compliment.

The *nix underpinnings really aren't like any *nix I'm used to.

Think of GNU-Darwin as BSD mixed with Linux mixed with some unique stuff. You'll get used to it, just as you got used to the other six *n?x flavors you mentioned (Solaris, Linux, IRIX, FreeBSD, NetBSD, and OpenBSD).

Qt, made by the trolls! as used by Opera and The worlds best open source desktop enviroment KDE! Gtk is a crap tool kit and it only lets you write crappy little applications and silly little image editors (GIMP), but you can see what a fucking mess this is!

http://lists.kde.org/?t=101566017800001&r=1&w=2

And specifically, Dirk Mueller's response:

http://lists.kde.org/?l=kde-core-devel&m=101567612 207504&w=2

I'm not saying one side is more right than the other -- merely that there are certainly two sides to this issue.

http://lists.kde.org/?t=101566017800001&r=1&w=2

And specifically, Dirk Mueller's response:

http://lists.kde.org/?l=kde-core-devel&m=101567612 207504&w=2

I'm not saying one side is more right than the other -- merely that there are certainly two sides to this issue.

Alternately, we could modify our mailers to include "encrypt" and "sign" buttons right next to the "send" button.

I recently switched to KMail for exactly this reason. It has buttons for 'encrypt' and 'sign' right on the toolbar. Give it a try. AFAIK, it doesnt run on Windows, though.

It works reasonably well; the only prblem I have is that it runs slow on my pentium/200. From what I understand, GCC generates slow C++ code, compared to other compilers. Anyone want to verify this?

For a while his [Stallman's] desktop didn't have any passwords on it, or at least that's the legend.

HY: In a lecture, you mentioned that you didn't use passwords, and had no
security for your computer.

RMS: Uh-huh. Security might make sense with banks and military facilities,
but in a computer lab, that is a sign of a social breakdown.

HY: (!!!) Social Breakdown?!?!!

RMS: Yes. It's like curing the symptom and worsening the disease. The
disease here are the young people who are cut off from warmth and anything
really worthwhile, who have nothing on their hands that to rebel and get
attention by sneaking into other peoples system. But then the attention
that they get from this is one of total hate and hostility. Security sends
out that message of hostility, and I don't want to be on either side of it.

HY: So, you still don't have security?

RMS: I regret to say that we had to. There was this one person who
repeatedly erased our files and there was no choice. So we made a gateway,
a login server. But since I thought that this was such a sad thing, I
thought I should suffer more from it so I can't log in on that server.

HY: But on the other hand, FSF supports some encryption scheme, doesn't it?

RMS: Well, that's an interesting point. I don't like people who keeps
secret from their neighbors, but you should be able to protect yourself
from the government. That's where encryption comes in.

HY: But governments are, in a sense, an expanded form of a neighborhood,
aren't they?

RMS: Um, no, I don't think of the United States government in that way. No.

That may change. Linux hackers from Germany and elsewhere are working on a Windows-like graphical interface for Linux PCs called KDE (for K Desktop Environment). They expect to release it this spring--free of charge.

Ummm... I thought KDE was already released?

they also seem to have some primitive screenshots of this here.
I mean really, what civilised person would have their desktop like this rather than this.

they also seem to have some primitive screenshots of this here.
I mean really, what civilised person would have their desktop like this rather than this.

> I started using CUPS about a year ago,
> and I really like it.

Good man! ;-)

> I'm running it on RH 7.2,

Bad man! ;-)

Neither CUPS nor KDE are officially
supported by RedHat, so you must be using one
cobbled-together system, poor boy!

> using the gimp-print drivers.

Good man!

> It is incredibly easy to set up printers,
> especially non-PostScript ones

Good man!

> - something that vexed me no end under Linux.

you're not much different to most pre-CUPS
aera linux users....

> The gimp-print drivers are very high
> quality.

Good man!

> The only thing I'm not crazy about is the
> default Web front end for CUPS.

Ever seen KDE 2.2.2 and its KDEPrint stuff if
it is running on CUPS as the print subsystem?

> You might want to do a search on FreshMeat
> for CUPS [freshmeat.net], to see the
> different GUI frontends available.

Hey -- checkout printing.kde.org
-- these guys have some really great stuff published.

> I haven't found one that totally replaces
> the Web interface unfortunately.

So wait for KDE-3 (due to be released in the
next few weeks. The new KDEPrint stuff there
will go far beyond the standard CUPS web
interface!

Take my word for it, I am running the KDE-CVS
and the CUPS-CVS stuff...

I'd recommend looking at what the City of Largo, Florida has done. Mid-summer last year they went live with a pretty big (+400) Linux/thin-client based system.

It's been detailed by all the Linux rags (including Slashdot). Last I heard Citrix and Microsoft paid them a (friendly) visit, but they're still running Linux.

LTSP seems to work nicely from what I've seen, though I don't run a lab, I just played about with it. Seems good though, even supports Debian, Xf86v4 and Linux 2.4.x. The current thin-client poster child of Linux seems to be the City of Largo ... google around for that a bit, but that story basically details some stuff about their implementation. Hope that helped.

Tabbed browsing is planned for 3.1.

• a new clipboard system to satisfy the preferences of all users:
  • KDE continues to offer the standard X-type clipboard; selected text is copied to this clipboard, and clicking the middle mouse button pastes the contents of this clipboard; and
  • KDE also offers a complementary, independent Windows/Mac-type clipboard; text is inserted in the clipboard using an application's cut/copy (or generally Ctrl-x, Ctrl-c) function, and the application's paste (or generally Ctrl-v) function pastes the contents of this clipboard;

"KDE 3 comes out soon. What is the best new advancement/feature found in KDE 3 in your opinion?"

Heheh, screw functionality and "the greatly improved Javascript and DHTML support in Konqueror". What users REALLY want is translucent window backgrounds.

Seriously though, it does look might sweet. :-P

Interesting.. Sun just dedicated a bunch of resources (30-50 hackers, from the email) toward Gnome 2.0. With that many people dedicated to the project, I wonder if they will try to push it toward what /they/ want, rather than what /we/ want?

I'm glad I use KDE ;-)

I understand where you're coming from, although to be honest, my high-end Athlon chip and DDR RAM don't mind KDE at all.

There was a survey at dot.kde.org about users' #1 concerns about the desktop environment. About one out of four said they were concerned with its speed.

That being said, you should definitely read (or at least skim through) this article about C++ applications on the desktop.

Eric Krout

I thought everyone knew... The killer app is here!

Fuck that crappy second rate desktop, it was only created so stall man can masturbate with licences Get this desktop now, before your killed with mono!
It looks SO much better!

That screenshot was posted to kde-look.org by a Gnome troller, along with the comment "no, sorry this is not KDE and i doubt that KDE will ever gonna look like this. well i bet a couple of you people gonna move to GNOME now.".

I'm not sure what the guy thought was unimplementable in KDE. SVG icons will be in KDE 3.1 (the patch already exists, but came too late to be included in KDE 3.0 -- it will be in 3.1, however). The rest seems to be just window/background themes.

Please note that the KDE team makes these packages available from the KDE web site as a convenience to KDE users. The KDE project is not responsible for these packages as they are provided by third parties -- typically, but not always, the distributor of the relevant distribution. If you cannot find a binary package for your distribution, please check again later or read the KDE Binary Package Policy.

--
Evan

Hardly silent.
http://freebsd.kde.org

There's a mailing list available, join it and contribute.

The reason we don't have packages for FreeBSD yet? The machine we use to build them out of CVS is out of action due to hardware issues.

Within another week or two we will have pre-release packages to test, and testers are welcome to help shake out the bugs

As for people who get warm fuzzy feelings from self-compiling, you should understand that the packages *are* the ports, built for you on a big fast build-system, to save you the time.

They're identical to what you'd get from building the port.

Please note that some of the planned items still might not make it and that it is very likely that several items are not yet planned but will pop up in time for the 3.1 freeze which is several months away.

Well, why not read what the debian binary packager has to say on the subject... from dot.kde.org:

" I hope to have the .deb's out soon, but remember: I have a life, too. I have school, work, and more. I also have a gf 220km away, which will take up most of my weekend except for Saturday, because I didn't see her today.

"You'll get the debs when I have time. In the meantime, deal with KDE2.2."

So, that's the reason. There's probably a very human volunteer behind the FreeBSD binaries who is trying to balance a life and doing the packaging - very precision work on a very large package with long compile time. Why don't *you* do it, eh?

--
Evan

Just check out the screenshots!

Since noone else has.
Here is the secret link to the new
KDE 3.0 Beta2 screenshots

You CANNOT honestly tell me that this shit looks better than Gnome 1.4+

I'm simply unmoved

However, such a study doesn't improve usability on it's own, it just states that it has to be improved. You can tell a crappy UI coder that he is just that over and over, he won't get better just because of this.

KDE also has Usability page, but there seem to be more active KDE subprojects...

(Note that I don't want to imply that Gnome has more crappy UI coders than KDE. Both have their share, and both have great ones.)

I'm really looking forward to KDE 3.

No, not because of the move to QT3.

No, not because of the improvements in Konq, KFM, or any of those - not even the multi-key shortcuts.

I just want to be able to use KMail for my Maildir mailboxes. I know there are hacks, workarounds, all that - but I don't want those. I just want to be able to plug in and go. Right now I use Mutt, but sometime in the future I'd like to be able to do some of the things it doesn't - like inline HTML viewing. KMail won't be for regular use, I guarantee it, but it will certainly be a nice complement to mutt.

A very close second is the switching of desktops when dragging a window - that's on the "KDE 3 List" and it's definitely something I miss from E. I don't know if it's going to be in 3, but I also really miss the ability to "walk off the edges" of the desktop and switch to a different virtual desktop. I've got the keyboard shortcuts set up, but it just isn't the same.