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The KDE FreeBSD project is a fairly small, but interesting, site. I still build from ports, though.

First of all, the major reason for KDE3 is QT3. QT3 has several advantages over QT2 for developers, and the KDE project want to use these to their advantage. As an end user, you probably won't be aware immediately of the changes, but developers will, which means that better programs will be coming your way.

Also, look at http://developer.kde.org/development-versions/kde- 3.0-features.html to get an idea of what's being added in KDE3. Then you can decide for yourself whether KDE3 is worth it. :)

:Peter

The Windows box is still a necessity. I have a 4 year old who likes educational games and without Windows, they simply don't run.

• Debian Jr. Project
• GNU and Education
• Schoolforge
• Linux For Kids
• KDE Edutainment Project
• Organization for Free Software in Education and Teaching
• SEUL/edu

When I was a kid I used my father's computers, but he didn't know much about OSes, he was just buying what they told him in the computer store.

As a resuld, when I was still a kid, I used to know the most important functions of MS-DOS interrupts 10h and 21h by heart. When I was about 12, we were writing programs for computers class, some simple calculations. It was boring, so I wrote a TSR, which after taking over the clock interrupt, and after few minutes from ending, was starting some virus-like visual effects on the screen. My teacher phoned my home that night, asking how to turn it of.

My point is that I really mastered the MS-DOS, and everything I had was a DOS box and lots of free time. I often wonder, what if I had Linux when I was 10 years old, instead of DOS? Would I know Bash and Perl, like I knew Command.com and QBasic? Would I know low level Unix system calls, like I new the DOS interrupts? Would I master Emacs and GCC, like I mastered Borland IDE? Unfortunately, I will never know that. But I would have much easier start as a Unix sysadmin, that's for sure.

If Miguel hadn't moved MONO to the X11/MIT license last week, I don't think RMS would be so upset. We're talking about GNOME, the biggest GNU project since HURD being based on an API that is Non-Free-As-In-Freedom, only a portion of NET has been submitted to ECMCA. With the concern the GNU community had over KDE, this would make the GNOME community look like hippocrites (GNOME was started because KDE used to be based on QT, which was not released under GPL.)

FYI I submitted this same story about 5 hours ago. Hmmm.

It works for them, so in theory it could work well for Microsoft or any software producing entity in general.

It works for them, so in theory it could work well for Microsoft or any software producing entity in general.

A tutorial can be found at http://printing.kde.org/documentation/tutorials/qu otas.phtml.

Take a look at the people who built your favorite desktop: lots of Ph.D.'s and masters in a lot of different subjects, but not many of them studied computers. Food for thought...

..that kde and gnome teams are keeping up a very good work. Don't lost your time in sad mydesktop vs. yourdesktop flames, but contribute! ;)

By 'animated mimetype icons' I meant 'animated mimetype icons'. You can now create .mngs to represent filetypes in the Konqueror file browser. These animations will be played as the mouse 'enters' them. This is the new folder icon, for example (I'm not sure how well webcvs copes with pointing to binaries...).

Revamping the arts/KDE video stuff is planned, in fact, there is an IRC meeting this Saturday.

Also on the dot is this discussion which talks about a way to get QT only apps to look and act like native KDE apps.

While I recognise most people here speak English, another important difference to realise between KDE and Gnome is the language support.
Current KDE languages supported
Current Gnome languages supported
Gnome should get Unicode support with gnome 2 which should help even things up alittle.

One thing that I think really needs to improve with KDE is the speed. It is still much slower than Winblows if you ask me. But it's free, and very customizable, so I don't mind the trade-off.

(I sure hope they've fixed the fonts system now. Whenever I try to change the fonts to anything other than default, all my fonts turn into A.D. Mono.) CanadaDave

The KDE release timing has absolutely nothing to do with Gnome. Take a look at the 3.0 release plan -- it's been like this since at least last September. In fact, I wish KDE had got 3.0 out sooner - it was originally supposed to just be a port of KDE 2.2 to Qt 3, but some new features have snuck in. These range from the productive (much faster html processing, better dcop architecture), to the useful (much improved javascript support), to the useful and pretty (better file selection dialog), to the pretty and useless (alpha blending / transparent menus), to the totally useless (animated mimetype icons).

KDE 3.0 has plenty of new features. However, I think they should work on fixing up the Klipboard. That's one thing Windows has I wish KDE had... a good clipboard system. I also hope they don't screw up Konqueror with the Smart "window.open" Javascript policy. Right now, I love being able to turn off those X10 pop-ups.

The best thing about the Tivo is that it runs Linux! Just the other day I booted into Linux (after an uptime of at least 7 weeks) and I noticed that my icons were damaged in KDE. I emailed the developers, and it turns out that there is a new release of mod_widget that fixes that very problem!

Anyway, if any of you have this same problem, just be sure to visit the main site and do a search for "mod_widget". Add the word "+damaged +deuglify +QTSplat" to your search to narrow it down a bit.

This is the Power of Open Source, people!

The German government just get it. First they send 52-page colour booklets promoting open source to all businesses in the country, then they give a large sum of money to add more security and encryption in mutt and KMail, and now this!

http://erik.bagfors.nu/gnome/languages.html
http://developer.kde.org/language-bindings/

This is why it makes sense to write the Desktop Environment in C. Of course, apps are a different story.

I can't tell you how relieved I was to see that the BSA aren't targeting the town I live in (Saginaw, Michigan). With all the pirated software that I must have on my computer, I would surely owe them something. Heck, even my office suite is pirated. My desktop environment is pirated. Let them come on by and audit me...

Sorry, my fault. A view source, as well as a visit with different browsers (lynx, netscape) revealed that you did indeed use the correct "&#xyzt;" Unicode escapes. Seems I've been bitten by Konqueror's Bug 25856. Next time, I'll doublecheck before insinuating somebody is a Microsoftie ;-)

I used to have a lot of trouble in making Docbook work, until I found out KDE's developers documentation.

Install the DocBook parsers and generators:
http://i18n.kde.org/doc/install/

General docbook information:
http://www.docbook.org/

SGML is the ISO standard for stocking information, and Docbook is the standard for writing books/documentation in SGML or XML. IMHO, it's the way to go.

I used to have a lot of trouble in making Docbook work, until I found out KDE's developers documentation.

Install the DocBook parsers and generators:
http://i18n.kde.org/doc/install/

General docbook information:
http://www.docbook.org/

SGML is the ISO standard for stocking information, and Docbook is the standard for writing books/documentation in SGML or XML. IMHO, it's the way to go.

It's not just coincidence that having the menu appear below the pointer is a lot faster, or that buttons along the edge are faster to access because you can't overshoot. This phenomena is an example of Fitts' Law (check out usability guru Bruce Tognazinni's article here ). One of the ways that GNUstep truly thrashes KDE usability-wise is that the GNUstep environment has really large buttons often with text right under the icon. By the nature of their size, these buttons can be accessed with a mouse far faster than the really tiny toolbar buttons you often see in other desktop environments. The labels for the buttons also give a clear indication as to what action the button performs; there is no need for the user to try and decipher what a particular icon stands for.

KDE, on the other hand, blindly copies microsoft's system of extremely tiny, unlabelled toolbar buttons that have extremely slow mouse access times and extremely small and cryptic icons whose true nature can only be discovered by either clicking on the toolbar button and possibly performing a destructive task or painstakingly holding the mouse over the toolbar button for several unbearable seconds to get the tooltip. "But Microsoft spends zillions of dollars on usability research" some say. And they spend tens of zillions on security research with results just as good. Microsoft is by far the most frequent inductee into the user interface hall of shame , and such windows UI shennanigans as multi-level tabs, window in window MDI, and Window XP/2000's dynamic menus have been frequently and harshly criticized in the UI design community. "But Windows users coming to Linux will be familiar with lots of really tiny, confusing, toolbar buttons with slow access times" they say. Windows users are certainly familiar with the Blue Screen of Death--maybe we should put stuff in the linux kernel to make it crash so they'll feel right at home. Yes, I know that there are options in KDE to have icons and text appear together. But this is not done by default. And probably 90% of users end up using the default which is installed with their application/OS. If you don't believe me, just ask Netscape. In the cold, hard reality of end-user desktop UI design, not doing something by default is really the same thing as not doing it.

I challenge the KDE Usability project to, by default, give KDE have large, labelled toolbar buttons that are fast to access and easy to understand. They of course don't have to take this challenge; some people would prefer linux not to get on the desktop.

I saw posted this morning on KDEs Site. It appears as though the dispute has been settled, all injuctions have been removed and SuSE has been forced to make no licensing payments. Check out the posting here http://dot.kde.org/1010560070/. It is good to see that common sense took over and an unnecessary court case was avoided. Question: Is it just me or are companies becoming more and more shoot first and ask questions later than they used to be?

Remember the bad press Adobe recieved over a similar action against an Open Source project, perhaps whoever this is, wants avoid more of the same.

One of the biggest things to happen to KDE in last year has been the rewrite of KDE's printing support, by Michael Goffioul. No-one goes around proclaiming Michael as a coding god, because he just got on with it and produced something very impressive (and that has got even more impressive in KDE 3).

Similarly for the developer(s) of Kate, KDE's text editor. Or the developers of Konqueror, who have equalled Mozilla with a twentieth of the personnel and a thousandth of the money.

Similarly for all the people that don't code, but instead translate KDE into 15 million languages.

KDE is a true team effort and can do without coding primadonnas.

ACK.

One of the major points why I don't like KDE is that they don't make any choices but make everything a user decision. Having the menu bar in the window or on the screen top does not result in having the best but the worst of both worlds.

I'd like to remind all the people working on a user interfaces of this quote from the KDE UI pages:Avoid rampant customisation. .. If a user can, by a few judicious choices, really improve the interface, we probably have done a poor job.

So... go work on Gnome or KDE or something...

Actually, insofar as I know, Kups was subsumed by KPrint... see here.

KPrint's even got its own site so it may worth be checking out. I've managed to set up a printer entirely from its KControl applet in a GUI interface so it's really something. Then again I suppose there's GNOME Print but I dont know too much about that...

Actually, insofar as I know, Kups was subsumed by KPrint... see here.

KPrint's even got its own site so it may worth be checking out. I've managed to set up a printer entirely from its KControl applet in a GUI interface so it's really something. Then again I suppose there's GNOME Print but I dont know too much about that...

A couple of replies to statements made. Let's see if this makes any sense :)

Granted there may be a gui app installed in that particular distribution, but can you guarantee that if you move to a different distro? The consistency is not there.

So if a single distro provided kick ass utilities to tweak on X settings this isn't good enough unless anything labeled Linux has it? Because Suse and Mandrake might do something differently is by no means a hit against it. Is OSX that much less on OS because it put settings in different places than OS9? What about comparing 98 to XP? Settings for all kinds of things moved to entirely new places.

I like this idea, but it means that every single unix GUI setup has different settings and applications, and this is not a good thing for the end-user.

So why not set up a new user on a single window manager and leave him/her there for a while? When you are in KDE, KDE is in control of all aspects of the visual display. Set the newbie up, and leave them there. The paradigm is only different because on Linux a user actually has a choice if they wish. If the user decides they don't like KDE, they haven't far to go to change their environment.

Continuing the old refresh rate theme, what happens if the user's monitor isn't detected properly and the horizontal refresh range is set too high.

Indeed. So what exactly happens if for some reason OSX can't bring up a GUI at all? How about XP or even Win2k for that matter? No GUI, no way to edit the system. Reinstall. With a *nix system a user at least has a chance to correct something gone horribly wrong.

The differences between OS X and Linux are huge: The Linux GUIs are programmed (mostly) for hackers by hackers.

I'm sure the groups who are dedicated to usability issues within both KDE and Gnome might take some exception to this.

They're based on the huge estoteric heap of junk known as XFree. Whether it's the appropriate solution is not the point.

Not the point? Huh? How can you not judge a solution based on whether it was appropriate? Should Linux have used an inappropriate solution?

The point is, it's yet another layer of complexity onto an already complex OS.

Complexity? You want complexity? How about an OS that's got an OS on top of it, a translation layer in the middle, and a low level system that's otherwise unrelated to the other two. Oh, then to get the vast majority of key apps to work under it you have to install it's previous version to ride along side that as well. Every interaction is going through all kinds of translations and emulations on there. OTOH, KDE is running native on this machine here.

And most importantly, it's designed so the user should never see the command line, unless they want to. Oh, and it's bloody gorgeous :)

So are as talking about the pure look of the environment I would still put KDE using Mosfet's tweaks well above what was done with Aqua. I did rather like the notion of drop shadows for windows though. Outside of that, there were a ton of effects that were very cool to look at for about 20 minutes. After that, when it got time to do some work having warped magnifying glass views got real old, real fast.

among others

In no particular order... Chromium, Tux Racer, GLJewel, KShisen, PySol.

Actually, KDE's icons are great in the sense of an icon designer. The key term is usability, not looks. GNOME2 appears to go the same route, and it is looking pretty similiar to KDE2's icons. Compare these two screenshots:

icons of gnome2:
here

icons of kde2:
here

Notice gnome2's new toolbar icons. I think this is a great step in terms of usability. GNOME 1.x's toolbar icons were photorealistic and therefore, quite horrible from an icon designer's perspective.

Another interesting URL, and one that should definitely be included with these type of posts, is the open job list. Many of the jobs require no programming experience or capabilities, so don't let that stop you (though developers are always welcome too :-). If you like KDE, help make it better!

The feature list URL is incorrect. The right one is this

KDE KOffice kword aims to be frames-based wordprocessor, in which you do indeed "drag blocks of text around on screen and have it flow properly".

Unlike Open Office, which is constrained by the desire to be 100% feature (and bug) compatible with MS Office, KDE Koffice is free to try different, better UIs. OpenOffice is probably better for converts to linux from windows, but KDE's offerings are actually shaping up to be nicer for the "never seen a computer before" user - they're not afraid of doing things differently to MS Windows and MS Office, if it improves long-term usability.

KDE X (pun: OS X) and GNOME XP (pun: Windows XP)

That's an interesting pair of comparisons you make. I've always thought that KDE was striving to be the Windows of Linux, and the last Ximian Gnome I tried reminded me strongly of the MacOS interface.

• December 10: KDE 3.0 Beta1 release
  
• January 14: KDE 3.0 RC 1 release
  
• January 16: Gnome 2.0 Desktop Beta 1
  
• January 30: Gnome 2.0 Desktop Beta 2
  
• February 20: Gnome 2.0 Desktop Release Candidate 1
  
• February 25: KDE 3.0 Final release*
  
• March 15: Gnome 2.0 Desktop Final
  

Think of the linux community as being totally fragmented, with each person (or company) working on his or her own project. Linus Torvalds works on the linux kernel for example, but doesn't work on anything else really. A linux distribution ("distro") is basically when someone takes all those diseparate projects and throws them all together as a coherent product.

Depending on the choices that the person creating the distro makes, the distro is geared towards a specific audience. Redhat is one distro, and they're a pretty good all around product, and they're kind of the de facto standard. Debian is another that's a bit more difficult to install, but has the advantage of being totally run by community, rahter than a company, and being very very well integrated. Mandrake is a distro completely geared towards being easy for new users.

As for visual interfaces, think of them as large projects that are still diseparate from the whole. Gnome is one of those, and KDE is another. Both of those would suit your needs, and be fairly familiar. Depending on which distro you choose, one or the othe will be the default, but both should be available to you.

Anyhow, I hope that helped a little. I know it's pretty complex and intimidating, but it makes sense once you start using it.

Fine. Send me a licensed copy of Windows for free. Or, to end this thread and spell it out for you - you pay for it when you *buy* windows. You know - when you slap down your money at CompUSA, or what Dell charges you to cover what they pay Microsoft per computer shipped.

*Sigh*... Plus, as others have pointed out in this thread, MS is even moving away from this, charging seperately for developers for the .NET experience. In the past. they have always charged for documentation, Resource Kits, etc. I've been a developer for ten years, a good chunk of it on Windows, and I have paid quite a bit to Microsoft in that time. Now that MSDN is finally coming together online, they are charging for it. KDE has insanely great documentation for free, and their source is available in CVS, and all their libaraies down to the OS level (and potentially the OS itself) is available for free (and is Free).

--
Evan

Fine. Send me a licensed copy of Windows for free. Or, to end this thread and spell it out for you - you pay for it when you *buy* windows. You know - when you slap down your money at CompUSA, or what Dell charges you to cover what they pay Microsoft per computer shipped.

*Sigh*... Plus, as others have pointed out in this thread, MS is even moving away from this, charging seperately for developers for the .NET experience. In the past. they have always charged for documentation, Resource Kits, etc. I've been a developer for ten years, a good chunk of it on Windows, and I have paid quite a bit to Microsoft in that time. Now that MSDN is finally coming together online, they are charging for it. KDE has insanely great documentation for free, and their source is available in CVS, and all their libaraies down to the OS level (and potentially the OS itself) is available for free (and is Free).

--
Evan

You mean KDE? That's run on Cygwin for a while (as has Gnome) and 2.2.1 was ported a few days ago. It was mentioned here by the way, although I can't link to it as Search is down.

The tone of this submission struck me as funny -- Timothy, and certainly the writer, seem to be under the impression Cygwin isn't ages old. It reminds me of the NewsRadio episode where Matthew discovers Dilbert and insists on doing a story on it.

OBL is trying to build a Muslim empire and take Muslims' land back from the Christians and Jews who have exercised control over it for many years. Both men are obsessed with power and will do everything they can to meet their goal, regardless of the consequences that their abrasion causes.

KDE has been experimenting with this for a while. For example look at the KDE 3 screenshots.

KDE has been experimenting with this for a while. For example look at the KDE 3 screenshots.

KDE has been experimenting with this for a while. For example look at the KDE 3 screenshots.

as not a good idea
creasingly being interested
ot to be confused with the

i.e. noise. The only purpose it serves is to faster identify the window you're dealing with. This has become unnecessary with the invention of the taskbar. Further additions to this concept, like window summarization and application-specific taskbars, make it even easier to use. If you want to view a lot of information simultaneously instead of having everything in full-screen mode, a smart window-manager like ion will rearrange windows automatically in useful tiles. Additional usability can be gained with clever hotkeys for application-switching.

But while overlapping windows are stupid, transparent windows are really part of a vast right-wing conspiracy to stupidify the masses by making computers incapable of displaying information. The next step will be window-spectific screensavers, which turn on after a specific period of inactivity in a single window. Just you wait. Thanks to transparency:

• Information becomes unreadable, especially with unfortunate color combinations.
• Information you think is there is actually part of another window -- have fun editing that picture.
• When two windows overlap with the wrong alpha-blending setting, you can no longer be sure which one is on top without looking at the taskbar or focus (in this screenshot, thanks to additional braindead color gradients in the title bars, this is especially hard).
• Even your calculator will use more RAM than Mozilla ..

If you like eye-candy, you may "drool" over this one and get your brain fucked by the Illuminati. A frontal lobotomy may be a quicker solution though.

Your answer doesn't make sense to me. From the KDE website

General Overview

KDE is a network transparent contemporary desktop environment for UNIX workstations. KDE seeks to fill the need for an easy to use desktop for Unix workstations, similar to the desktop environments found under the MacOS or Window95/NT. We believe that the UNIX operating system is the best operating system available today. In fact UNIX has been the undisputed choice of the information technology professional for many years. When it comes to stability, scalability and openness there is no competition to UNIX. However, the lack of an easy to use contemporary desktop environment for UNIX has prevented UNIX from finding its way onto the desktops of the typical computer user in offices and homes. UNIX dominates the server market and is the preferred computing platform for computing professional and scientists. Without UNIX the internet would not be. But UNIX did not address the needs of the average computer user. This fact is particularly unfortunate since a number of implementations of UNIX (Linux, FreeBSD, NetBSD etc.) are freely available on the internet. All of which are of exceptional quality and stability.

KDE The Desktop Environment

With KDE there is now an easy to use contemporary desktop environment available for UNIX. Together with a free implementation of UNIX such as Linux, UNIX/KDE constitutes a completely free and open computing platform available to anyone free of charge including its source code for anyone to modify. While there will always be room for improvement we believe to have delivered a viable alternative to some of the more commonly found and commercial operating systems/desktops combinations available today. It is our hope that the combination UNIX/KDE will finally bring the same open, reliable, stable and monopoly free computing to the average computer user that scientist and computing professionals world-wide have enjoyed for years.

Doesn't this port go against the ethics and goal of the project? Isn't it porting software to a less stable operating system? Contributing to a monopoly?

Maybe due to all the recent flaws in the kernel and the mass migration from Unix to Windows 2000/XP, the developers are realizing that windows is a better operating system.