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The crossov rplugin has nothing t all to do with KDe... it's a Netscape/Mozilla plugin. It does work in Konqueror, but the KDe team had nothing to do with it.

From the 2.2.2 announcement under the "new features" section:

• added support for CodeWeavers' CrossOver plug-in

... but I still believe Konqueror under KDE to be the best browser for the Linux platform, even though it seems to get less coverage than the gradual development of Moz. I now use it as my primary browser on there - it loads up in under a second, can also be used as a file manager and has excellent stylesheet and improving DOM support. One thing I particularly like is the fact you can apply your own theme to form elements within pages - no more ugly looking SUBMIT buttons and checkboxes! It's also faster than Moz. End of sermon :-)

I don't like the idea that economic renumeration should take the form of micropayments in the OSS model, let alone the FSF model. Fundementally, OSS is about colaberation and the contribution of time and energy to a project. The problem that occurs when people use OSS and don't return to the project is not that they cannot find a way to make payments (which only makes sense if you are attempting to tie the traditional Capitalist structures onto a concept which does not conform to them). The problem is that they don't necessarily contribute to the pool of resources and energy that the community needs to thrive.

The FS (e.g. FSF) movement is even farther from needing payments. Afterall the notion of Free as in Speech is that the work is simple a presentation to the world and our global knowledge. The ideas that are contained in FS are supposed to be given away. The protections in the copyleft are intended to keep them that way. Now there is an implicit assumption that this system works becuase everbody chooses to participate in our global comminity. But I don't have to share my ideas with anyone if I don't want to. The difference is obligation.

As the article mentioned the problem currently is not with the OSS movement but with the companies which are trying to make money through it. The real problem as I see it is not getting payments into the OSS system, but getting companies to understand that the correct response to OSS is the return of energy, resources, and knowledge to the community.

Here is an example of how this could work:
A large organization like the Mexico City or City of Largo (also) and, possibly, City of Turku, Finland (Finnish) can contribute by hiring programmers for to work on the projects which they are using (and relying on). The number of programmers should be proportional to the needs of the organization and the savings from the conventional CSS model. If, for example the savings over a conventional solution over 2 years was $500,000, then the organization could spend $200,000 on programmers to both solve problems that the organization needs resolved (and which would be contributed back to OSS) and additionally provide 50% of their time to contribute to the OSS projects they are relying on (bug fixes, improvements, research). All numbers are merely examples. You get the idea.

A smaller organization could contibute some of the time of its staff and provide some resource (server, hardware donations, software donations, etc.) I am working with many clients who are just beginning to understand how FS/OSS may fit into thier business models. Give them time and help them to understand that correct response to the benefits of using FS/OSS is direct contributions to the community and our world.

But, this doesn't fit into the 'Modern Western World View.' Modern (American) capitalism is a beast whose fundemental tenents no longer bare any resemblance to reality. Informed consumers are not only idealized, but necessarily fictional because there is too much information for any consumer to possibly be informed on all their desicsions. This is what keeps product, techniques and services which are sub-optimal or even harmful (or at the very least no good) in the market. Other forces besides supply and demand control the system: Monopolies, Ologopolies, price fixing, political manipulation through PACs, financial contributions, etc.

Clearly, the relationships between those inside OSS community and those on the outside who adopt OSS can be changed by showing the adoptors that the correct adoption of OSS is not merely the use of the code, but involvement in the community--and by doing this, the question of renumeration becomes irrelevant.

This is the mirror of the actual screenshots page

Thanks for the point to the uk mirror.

Yes, it may be that it will look a bit prettier. But the major change in KDE 3.0 will be the port of all the apps to Qt 3

That seems to be the last major change in the libs for a long time. I think they will try to keep a consistent API for a couple years (after 3.0 is released) to let programmers write apps for KDE. I undertand (from previous discussions in the dot ) that they decided to jump to (the apparently much improved) Qt 3 now, spend a few months in the ports and then provide a mature, solid API. I guess they made the right decision.

Many thanks to the KDE folks,
-- Don Inodoro

Have you ever tried it? Have you seen QT? Yes, the same toolkit as used in the KDE project.

Try it on for size. Browse through the excellent documentation. Do everything from GUI to XML to file and network I/O to all kinds of data containers, cross-platform. QT is probably one of the best examples of GOOD, CLEAN C++. KDE knew what they were doing when they picked it.

I do recommend testing on all environments while developing, but you should end up with one code base (maybe a few ifdef's) by using QT well, barring only serial port routines (not in QT AFAIK) for which you can code the interface into your app and create different implementations for different OS's.

Really, it doesn't have to be this hard. QT is excellent stuff, develop cleanly and you should be just fine.

This isn't a troll, I'm just trying to get a handle on why exactly the HURD exists.

1) Is it because its all GPL?

2) Is it because its a microkernel?

3) Maybe a new, improved microkernel? Not MACH.

4) Security?

5) Performance? Yea right.

6) Ease of use? Isn't that up to KDE and GNOME?

7) Translators, Namespace unification, RPC? Been there, done that.

So, exactly why does HURD exist? What does it bring to the table that hasn't been seen dozens of times before? (Besides allowing non-root users to mount partitions!)

sorry, bad URL : these are kde news

Nope. Check out dot.kde.org/989353453/.

No, it uses the standard GNU linker. It exports a standard ELF program that ld.so links at runtime. However, you couldn't really use it with KDE anyway. Intel C++ has a different C++ ABI than G++ (the C ABI is of course the same) and thus can't link with G++ compiled libraries. Lastly, KDE doesn't even compile with icc yet. Look at this thread on kde-devel.

Stay tuned. KDE 2.2.2 will be released on November 12th. It is a bugfix release for 2.2. KDE 3.0 Beta 1 should be out on December 3rd.

!!!

Sorry, I couldn't resist. Even KDE-2 (which IMO is criminally bloated) is about 1.5M lines of code, while GNOME is over 4M lines.

More significantly, it has shown up as an application workspace paradigm that improved previously crappy MDI implementations in programs like Visual Studio and KDevelop.

KDE, like Windows and MacOS, has user interface guidelines which strongly discourage MDI apps.

I'd post a snippet, but the Slashdot lameness filter is being...well, lame. Go to the URL above.

Perfectly clear and logical.

No, it's neither clear nor logical.

You have to know beforehand that dragging the icon to the trashcan is going to eject it.

The icon change when you get there just helps confirm what you already know. The change is useful for letting you know when the icon has reached its destination (see also ... Fitt's Law) but the dual-nature of the trashcan isn't obvious upfront.

i believe kde 3.0 will include C bindings. not sure how that works out, but there's an article about it on dot.kde.org. it looks like they're also going to be including java bindings for their libraries. kwel...

KOrganizer for KDE
Evolution for Gnome

The future of KDE Personal Information Management applications looks good. Instead of going the "me-too-Outlook-clone" route, they are keeping each application separate (but still connected). The KDE PIM website has info on the various programs in the KDE PIM suite, and this page has a roadmap for future development for 3.0.

The future of KDE Personal Information Management applications looks good. Instead of going the "me-too-Outlook-clone" route, they are keeping each application separate (but still connected). The KDE PIM website has info on the various programs in the KDE PIM suite, and this page has a roadmap for future development for 3.0.

While I realize I may get flamed to a small charcoal briquette for this, what about importing into this (or any other Open Source product, for that matter) your calendar (or messages) from Outlook?

In my office, we use both Win products and Linux/Unix. Windows basically owns most of the desktops in here, while *nix is on many of our servers. I use Linux for my workstation, and many of my coworkers are interested in trying it as well. The big stumbling block? Getting their mail into Evolution/Kmail/Nutscrape/Mozilla as well as all their calendar items.

Outlook Express can export into a format that Evolution will read, but not if it's working from a .pst file. Has anyone found a way to happilly export mail, contacts, calendar, etc. reliably? So far I've tried all the options Outlook 2000 offers into Evolution, Kmail and Mozilla without success. You can send contacts as V-Cards into Evolution, but that's a long and tiresome task if you have over 300 contacts since Outlook has a nasty habit of only letting send about 10 at a time (at least, I've run into problems sending more... is it possible to do?).

Projects like OEone or KOrganizer are great, but it's more difficult to get anyone to try them if it means losing all their old/current data.

While I realize I may get flamed to a small charcoal briquette for this, what about importing into this (or any other Open Source product, for that matter) your calendar (or messages) from Outlook?

In my office, we use both Win products and Linux/Unix. Windows basically owns most of the desktops in here, while *nix is on many of our servers. I use Linux for my workstation, and many of my coworkers are interested in trying it as well. The big stumbling block? Getting their mail into Evolution/Kmail/Nutscrape/Mozilla as well as all their calendar items.

Outlook Express can export into a format that Evolution will read, but not if it's working from a .pst file. Has anyone found a way to happilly export mail, contacts, calendar, etc. reliably? So far I've tried all the options Outlook 2000 offers into Evolution, Kmail and Mozilla without success. You can send contacts as V-Cards into Evolution, but that's a long and tiresome task if you have over 300 contacts since Outlook has a nasty habit of only letting send about 10 at a time (at least, I've run into problems sending more... is it possible to do?).

Projects like OEone or KOrganizer are great, but it's more difficult to get anyone to try them if it means losing all their old/current data.

BeOS developers could definitely help out with these two projects:

KDE usability
Gnome usability.

In fact, as I mentioned in another article recently, if you know of anyone that has experience with usability engineering, maybe it's a good idea to introduce them to these projects. Making linux user-friendly is going to take a lot of work, and unfortunately there are just not enough people to do it.

Currently it seems like only programmers are willing to donate their time to the open source software effort

This not true. Saying so takes away from the hard work being done by many volunteers to make Linux more user-friendly.

KDE Usability,
GNOME Usability.

I hate feeding the trolls too, but here goes.

The icons used in GNOME have NOTHING whatsoever to do with the action that they perform. Most commercial operating systems (Windows, MacOS), and KDE have quality icons in which the graphical representation of the icon actually has to with the action that it performs.

To all GNOME icon developers, I suggest that you read the KDE user interface guidelines here. I think that the lack of proper ease of use in GNOME (perfectly illustrated by the dark and blurry icons in GNOME), are what are causing so many former GNOME users to switch to KDE.

Face it, GNOME is dieing. KDE is winning the the desktop environment war. You may not like it, and there might be a handful of GNOME users in two years (like there are a handful of Netscape users now), but your desktop environment will cease to exist in the future. muahahahahahahhaahha.

Yes, it's a home icon. I agree that it should be an image of a home. The image of a home used in KDE however is bizarre, and it's the quality of these icons images in KDE that I find laughable.

Notice that the top-left of the door in the KDE "home" icon is shiny as if it catches light as it protrudes from the house. The light sources in most KDE icons fail a most basic glance appearing to come from whatever angle needed to make every object have a shiny spot in the top-left corner :)

The zoom (enlarge/shrink) icons are a magnify glass. The search is also a magnify glass (with animal paw prints). The lightsources in all these icons are again just bizarre.

In the shot linked to there's the off-centre stop (X) icon. The ugly reload icon (sorry - unlike the others there's no technical problems with this particular icon, it's just ugly). There are the continuous problems with objects in icons leaving the icon margins (the clipboard icon - the pencil leaving the icon boundary).

KDE's icons are really just insane :)

If you don't want Linux to look like XP, create your own theme/style/icons and behavior configuration ruleset. If you do want Linux to look like XP, do the same.

KHTML's policy is to render valid HTML with a strict parser and quirky HTML with hacks that allow IE-only HTML. Konqueror's user agent can be set to IE for sites that actually check browser version instead of capabilities.

If sites seriously don't work, report a bug for KDE or Mozilla.

Except they can't catch up. It is a losing battle. For every feature Miguel adds to Gnome, the KDE developpers are ten steps ahead.

Look at the IMAP support in Evolution, and compare that to IMAP in Kmail. It's not catchup at all - Evolution is months ahead. For further evidence, look at the statements from the Kmail IMAP author (see http://mail.kde.org/pipermail/kde/2001-August/0002 53.html) - he feels that he's got a useful implementation already.

No flames, but KMail isn't going to have a suitable (for me) IMAP implementation anytime soon - the author just has different priorities. Showing you the unread message counts on your multitude of folders isn't one of them.

From a business point of view: Use "Linux Terminal Server". Yes, get a fat machine to serve all the applications to your users. This way, to modify/update/change/configure.... all the clients means working in a single machine: the fat server.

This is that the city of Largo has done. This is what Linux at schools project is doing.

Actualy, any distribution will do. But I will recommend you to look for a
"support contract" from RedHat, SuSE, Mandarke...

Some links:

Linux Terminal Server Project. You will see that they have packages for any distribution

Linux in Schools. Although it is oriented for schools, school needs are the same as Your Big Comany or Government.

The City of Largo uses Linux as desktop. So it is possible for plain clerks and secretaries to learn and be productive on Linux Desktops.

A worker just needs a working desktop, so he/she can use a word processor and an spreadsheet program. The "configuration and control" must be done byt he Support Team.

And my mom is unable to properly use Windows98. She's not a moronic mom. She is smart. But she has never been trained as computer specialist. But she can use word processing and spreadsheets. Yes, she uses or has used AmiPro, Office, WordPerfect... they are all the same in the end. No FUD about "difficult StarOffice". But when Windows crashes, she enters in panic mode. delete Windows, add Linux and you get no panic mode.

Do not extend FUD.

Use OpenOffice. Fairly soon should be available as a non-beta product.

Easy to use stuff? Try KDE and make it pretty with themes.

Use KDE as the desktop. Easy transition from any user. Install the "Acqua" or "Acqua-Graphite" Theme & "MacOS Loon'n'feel" with top desktop menu for your MacOS users.

Install the Win2000 Theme & "Win2000 Look'n'Feel for your Windows users.

My 2 cents

Well I remember germany sponsering GPG development, and lately encryption extensions to both kmail and mutt. This seems like one giant step forward in this process.

http://www.kde.org/announcements/announcement.html

Of course there are GUI's. There is the Commond Desktop Environment (much too exensive), Looking Glas (not too expensive but not really the solution), and several free X-Filemanagers that are almost GUI's. Moxfm for example is very well done, but unfortunately it is based on Motif. Anyway, the question is: What is a GUI? What should a GUI be?

First of all, since there are a lot of missunderstandings on this topic, what is NOT a GUI:

• the X-Window-System is NOT a GUI. It's what its name says: A Window system
• Motif is NOT a GUI. They tried to create a GUI when they made Motif, but unfortunately they couldn't really agree, so they released Motif as Widget-Library with a Window-Manager. Much later they completed Motif with the CDE, but too late, since Windows already runs on the majority of desktops.
• Window-managers are NOT GUI's. They are (better: should be) small programs that handle the windows. It's not really the idea to hack a lot of stuff into them.

IMHO a GUI should offer a complete, graphical environment. It should allow a users to do his everyday tasks with it, like starting applications, reading mail, configuring his desktop, editing some files, delete some files, look at some pictures, etc. All parts must fit together and work together. A nice button with a nice "Editor"-icon is not at all a graphical user environment if it invokes "xterm -e vi". Maybe you have been disappointed long time ago too, when you installed X with a nice window manager, clicked on that beautiful "Help"-Icon ... chrk chrk (the hard disk)...an ugly, unsuable, weird xman appeared on the desktop :-( A GUI for endusers The idea is NOT to create a GUI for the complete UNIX-system or the System-Administrator. For that purpose the UNIX-CLI with thousands of tools and scripting languages is much better. The idea is to create a GUI for an ENDUSER. Somebody who wants to browse the web with Linux, write some letters and play some nice games.

I really believed that is even yet possible with Linux until I configured my girlfriends Box. Well, I didn't notice anymore that I work with lots of different kind of menues, scrollbars and textwidgets. I already know that some widgets need to be under the mouse when they should get the keyevents, some sliders wants the middle mouse for dragging and some textwidgets only want emacs-bindings and don't understand keys like "pos1" or "end". And selecting some text is different everywere, too. Even the menues and buttons (for exampel Xaw, Fvwm, XForms, Motif) behave completely different.

One word to the Athena-Widgets: Although there are a few nice applications available that uses these "widgets" we should really get rid of them. Thinking that "Athena is a widget-library" is a similar missunderstanding like "X is a GUI". Athena is an very old example how widget libraries could be implemented with Xlib and Xt. It's more or less a online-documentation for Widget-Set-Programmers, but not a tool for application-programmers. Unfortunately, the old Unix problem, a so good online-documentation that people used it for applications.

So one of the major goals is to provide a modern and common look&feel for all the applications. And this is exactly the reason, why this project is different from elder attempts.

Since a few weeks a really great new widget library is available free in source and price for free software development. Check out http://www.troll.no

The stuff is called "Qt" and is really a revolution in programming X. It's an almost complete, fully C++ Widget-library that implementes a slightly improved Motif look and feel, or, switchable during startup, Window95.

The fact that it is done by a company (Troll Tech) is IMO a great advantage. We have the sources and a superb library, they have beta testers. But they also spend their WHOLE TIME in improving the library. They also give great support. That means, Qt is also interesting for commercial applications. A real alternative to the terrible Motif :) But the greatest pro for Qt is the way how it is programmed. It's really a very easy-to-use powerfull C++-library.

Qt is also portable, yet to Windows95/NT, but you do not have to worry about that. It's very easy to use UNIX/X specific things in programming, so that porting to NT is hardly possible :-)

I really recommend looking at this library. It has IMO the power to become the leading library for free software development. And it's a way to escape the TCL/TK monsters that try to slow down all our processors and eat up our memory...

It's really time yet to standarize the desktop somewhat. It's nonsense to load 10 different widgets into memory for the same task. Imagine this desktop:

• fvwm (own widgets)
• rxvt (own widgets)
• tgif (own widgets)
• xv (own widgets)
• ghostview (athena widgets)
• lyx (xforms widgets)
• xftp (motif widgets)
• textedit (xview widgets)
• arena (own widgets)

One may argue that a usual UNIX-Box has enough memory to handle all these different kind of widgets. Even if this might be correct, the really annoying thing is, that all these widgets (menus, buttons, scrollbars, etc.) behave slightly different. And this isn't only an academic example, I've really seen such desktops :-}

I know we couldn't get rid of this chaos at once, but my dream is a coexistance between Motif and Qt. The Kool Desktop Environment (KDE) I don't have the time to do this all alone (also since LyX is my main project). But a thing like a Desktop Environment can easily be cut into lots of parts. There is very probably a part for you, too! If you want to learn some X-programming, why not doing a small, neat project for the KDE? If you know others who like to programm something, please prevend them from writing the 1004th tetris games or the 768th minesweeper clone ;-) Think we also have enough XBiffs yet...

So here is my project list so far. Probably there are even more things to do that would fit great into the KDE. It's a very open project. Panel: The basic application. Run's as FvwmModule (at the beginning). Offers a combination between Windows95 and CDE. I think about a small taskbar at the bottom and a kind of CDE-panel on the top of the screen. The panel has graphical icon menus on the left (similar to GoodStuff) to launch applications, 4 buttons in the middle to switch to other virtual desktops and few icons for often needed applications on the right. There is for example a mail-icon that also indicates new mail, a wastebasket to open the delete-folder (that also indicates when it isn't empty and is capable of drag'n'drop). Maybe a analog clock with date at the very right. Also a nice special icon for exiting the environment or locking the screen. All the stuff is completly configurable via GUI. I'm also thinking about solutions, that only available applications can be installed on the desktop and that new applications appear on the desktop automatically.

I started to work on this panel, but would of course love some help. There are also lot of smaller things to do, like a tool to chose a background pixmap (for each virtual desktop) etc.

Also nice icons are needed!

Filemanager Another major application inside the KDE. The idea is not to create a powerful high-end graphical bash-replacement (like tkdesk tries to be), but a nice looking easy-to-use filemanager for simple tasks. Simple tasks are mainly deleting some files, copying some files, copying some files to floppy disk, starting applications by clicking on a file (for example ghostview for postscript files or xli for gifs, etc).

I'm thinking about nice windows, one for each directory, that shows icons for every file. It should be possible to drag files around (either copy or move), even between different windows. Another important point is the support of the floppy-disk, so that mounting/umounting is done user-transparent.

Dragging of icons should be done in a nice way, that means moving around a special window (see Qt's xshape example), NOT like xfm or xfilemanager by setting another monochrome bitmap for the cursor.

So it will also be possible to put files as icons on the desktop. This is IMO a very nice feature. Since applications are launched by the panel, it's even clear that icons are real data-objects. With fvwm-1 and the FvwmFileMgr it wasn't really clear wether an icon is yet a file or an iconified window.

Drag'n'drop inside a Qt application isn't really difficult. The filemanager is IMO a very nice and not too time consuming project. Who wants?

mail client A really comfortable mailclient. IMO the most comfortable mailclient for X is yet XF-Mail. And the author is willing to port it to Qt when the KDE-project will start! But he asks for some assitance (for example for coding the small popups, etc.)

easy texteditor Very small but important project. An editor that fits the needs of those who have to edit a textfile once in a month and didn't find the time yet to learn vi (and don't have the time to wait for x-emacs to start, and don't have the memory to use a motif-static-nedit, and don't have the cpu-power and memory to use a tk-monster like tkedit,...)

Unfortunatly the Qt multiline-textwidget isn't available in Qt-1.0, but Troll-Tech already announced the beta-testing. So the texteditor can be started in a few weeks, too.

Terminal Similar to the CDE terminal program. A kind of xterm with nice menu bar to set the font, exit, etc. Nice project, get the xterm sources and add a GUI with Qt!

Image viewer The application that will be launced as default from the filemanager for gifs, jpegs and all this. Well, xv is shareware and really needs quite a long time for startup. But there is a plain Xlib programm without any menues or buttons called "xli". Get the sources and make it userfriendly with Qt!

Lots of small other tools:

• xdvi with Qt-Gui
• ghostview with Qt-Gui
• xmag with Qt-Gui
• whatever you want

BTW: There is a Troll Tech Qt-competition (look at their webpages). The best application (not only functionallity, but also design counts. Just porting an existing great application to Qt won't probably be enough :-( ) wins $2000 and a few Qt on NT licenses (worth another $2000). They also mentioned a browser-project as an example. So a nice HTML-browser in Qt, ready in Janurary may be worth $4000 (This includes selling the unneeded NT licenses ;-) )

Window Manager At the beginning, the KDE panel will work as an Fvwm-Module. When this is done, a lot of stuff can be stripped from the bloated fvwm window manager. We don't need anymore fvwm-menus, icon handling and zillions of configurable things. We need a small, realiable windowmanager. So maybe stripping all unncessary stuff from fvwm will make sense in a while. But this may come very last.

System Tools Whatever a user, or you, might need. A graphical passwd comes to my mind. But probably there are a lot more! Maybe this will lead to a small system administration tool someday.

Games We have yet a nice tetris game (an Qt example program). What is needed is a nice set of small games like solitaire (please with nice cards that can be really dragged!). There are several nice card games available for X, for example xpat2. So why not take the cards from them and write a real solitaire games, very similar to MS-Solitaire. I really had to install Wine sometimes just to play solitair, what an overhead! But other games are needed, too. Take xmris, pacman, etc. add a nice GUI. Or write some from scratch. Whatever you want :)

Icons A set of nice icons. 3D-pixmaps are quite a good start (but why should the button be inside a pixmap, if we use a toolkit with buttons???)

Documentation A documentation project is always a good thing to have. But before we should clearify how the hypertext help system should look like. We can then start with documentation pages in the chosen HTML-subset and for example use arean as help browser. Anyway we need some application to document first.

Web-Pages / Ftp Server / Aministration We need a server for the files and webpages that inform about the state of the project. Especially what projects are currently worked on and what projects still wait for somebody to do them. I set up a preliminary homepage on http://www-pu.informatik.uni-tuebingen.de/users/et trich that just contains this posting yet and a few links. I may setup real webpages for the very beginning but I would be very happy if I could concentrate on discussion and coding. So if there is someone out there in the net who likes to design and maintain webpages, here is a job for him :)

Discussion The most important topic :-) If you are interested please join the mailing list kde@kde.org

Subscribing can be done by sending a mail with in *Body*: subscribe [your email address]
to
kde-request@kde.org

Applications When the KDE gets widely accepted, new (free) applications will hopefully be based on Qt, too, to fit with the comfortable and pleasant look and feel of the desktop.

We may for example port LyX to Qt, so that a comfortable wordprocessor is available. But that is still in discussion in the LyX Team.

A nice vector-orientated drawing tool would also be fine. Well, Xfig is a powerful but ugly monster. But there is "tgif", a very powerful, easy to use but ugly program. The author doesn't like the idea of adding a Qt GUI for the menus, icons and scrollbars, since Qt is C++ and he wants to keep tgif plain C, since on some sites no C++ compiler is available. Well, the KDE doesn't really aim on these old and weird UNIX boxes (also I think a g++ is almost everywhere available). But maybe the tgif-author agrees when somebody else adds a nice GUI to tgif (the sources are free, don't know wether this is GPL). Since tgif yet implements its own GUI this shouldn't be too difficult. It's really easy with Qt to access plain Xlib functionality and functions, so not very much will have to be rewritten. Also C++ makes it very easy to include plain C code.

What about an easy to use, nice newsreader similar to knews? Could also be integrated into the KDE. ... and ... and ... and.

So there is a lot of work (and fun) to do! If you are interested, please join the mailing list. If we get about 20-30 people we could start. And probably before 24th December the net-community will give itself another nice and longtime-needed gift.

The stuff will be distributed under the terms of the GPL.

I admit the whole thing sounds a bit like fantasy. But it is very serious from my side. Everybody I'm talking to in the net would LOVE a somewhat cleaner desktop. Qt is the chance to realize this. So let us join our rare sparetime and just do it!

Hopefully looking foward to lots of followups and replies! Regards,

Matthias Ettrich
(ettrich@informatik.uni-tuebingen.de)

BTW: Usually these postings get a lot of answers like "Use a Mac if you want a GUI, CLI rules!", "I like thousands of different widgets-libraries on my desktop, if you are too stupid to learn them, you should use windoze", "RAM prices are so low, I only use static motif programs", "You will never succeed, so better stop before the beginning", "Why Qt? I prefer schnurz-purz-widgets with xyz-lisp-shell. GPL! Check it out!", etc. Thanks for not sending these as followup to this posting :-) I know I'm a dreamer...

BTW2: You might wonder why I'm so against Tk. Well, I don't like the philosophy: Tk's doesn't have a textwidget, for example, but a slow wordprocessor. Same with other widgets. In combination with TCL the programs become slow and ugly (of course there are exceptions). I didn't yet see any application that uses Tk from C++ or C, although an API seems to exist. TCL/TK is very usefull for prototyping. Ideal for example for kernel configuration. And since Tk looks little similar to Motif, the widgets are also quite easy to use. But I really don't like any TCL/Tk application to stay permanantly on the desktop. And Qt is much easier (at least as easy) to program. Check it out!

BTW3: I don't have any connections to Troll Tech, I just like their product (look at the sources: really high quality!) and their kind of marketing: free sourcecode for free software. Original document by Matthias Ettrich,
HTMLized by Matt McLeod

Of course there are GUI's. There is the Commond Desktop Environment (much too exensive), Looking Glas (not too expensive but not really the solution), and several free X-Filemanagers that are almost GUI's. Moxfm for example is very well done, but unfortunately it is based on Motif. Anyway, the question is: What is a GUI? What should a GUI be?

First of all, since there are a lot of missunderstandings on this topic, what is NOT a GUI:

• the X-Window-System is NOT a GUI. It's what its name says: A Window system
• Motif is NOT a GUI. They tried to create a GUI when they made Motif, but unfortunately they couldn't really agree, so they released Motif as Widget-Library with a Window-Manager. Much later they completed Motif with the CDE, but too late, since Windows already runs on the majority of desktops.
• Window-managers are NOT GUI's. They are (better: should be) small programs that handle the windows. It's not really the idea to hack a lot of stuff into them.

IMHO a GUI should offer a complete, graphical environment. It should allow a users to do his everyday tasks with it, like starting applications, reading mail, configuring his desktop, editing some files, delete some files, look at some pictures, etc. All parts must fit together and work together. A nice button with a nice "Editor"-icon is not at all a graphical user environment if it invokes "xterm -e vi". Maybe you have been disappointed long time ago too, when you installed X with a nice window manager, clicked on that beautiful "Help"-Icon ... chrk chrk (the hard disk)...an ugly, unsuable, weird xman appeared on the desktop :-( A GUI for endusers The idea is NOT to create a GUI for the complete UNIX-system or the System-Administrator. For that purpose the UNIX-CLI with thousands of tools and scripting languages is much better. The idea is to create a GUI for an ENDUSER. Somebody who wants to browse the web with Linux, write some letters and play some nice games.

I really believed that is even yet possible with Linux until I configured my girlfriends Box. Well, I didn't notice anymore that I work with lots of different kind of menues, scrollbars and textwidgets. I already know that some widgets need to be under the mouse when they should get the keyevents, some sliders wants the middle mouse for dragging and some textwidgets only want emacs-bindings and don't understand keys like "pos1" or "end". And selecting some text is different everywere, too. Even the menues and buttons (for exampel Xaw, Fvwm, XForms, Motif) behave completely different.

One word to the Athena-Widgets: Although there are a few nice applications available that uses these "widgets" we should really get rid of them. Thinking that "Athena is a widget-library" is a similar missunderstanding like "X is a GUI". Athena is an very old example how widget libraries could be implemented with Xlib and Xt. It's more or less a online-documentation for Widget-Set-Programmers, but not a tool for application-programmers. Unfortunately, the old Unix problem, a so good online-documentation that people used it for applications.

So one of the major goals is to provide a modern and common look&feel for all the applications. And this is exactly the reason, why this project is different from elder attempts.

Since a few weeks a really great new widget library is available free in source and price for free software development. Check out http://www.troll.no

The stuff is called "Qt" and is really a revolution in programming X. It's an almost complete, fully C++ Widget-library that implementes a slightly improved Motif look and feel, or, switchable during startup, Window95.

The fact that it is done by a company (Troll Tech) is IMO a great advantage. We have the sources and a superb library, they have beta testers. But they also spend their WHOLE TIME in improving the library. They also give great support. That means, Qt is also interesting for commercial applications. A real alternative to the terrible Motif :) But the greatest pro for Qt is the way how it is programmed. It's really a very easy-to-use powerfull C++-library.

Qt is also portable, yet to Windows95/NT, but you do not have to worry about that. It's very easy to use UNIX/X specific things in programming, so that porting to NT is hardly possible :-)

I really recommend looking at this library. It has IMO the power to become the leading library for free software development. And it's a way to escape the TCL/TK monsters that try to slow down all our processors and eat up our memory...

It's really time yet to standarize the desktop somewhat. It's nonsense to load 10 different widgets into memory for the same task. Imagine this desktop:

• fvwm (own widgets)
• rxvt (own widgets)
• tgif (own widgets)
• xv (own widgets)
• ghostview (athena widgets)
• lyx (xforms widgets)
• xftp (motif widgets)
• textedit (xview widgets)
• arena (own widgets)

One may argue that a usual UNIX-Box has enough memory to handle all these different kind of widgets. Even if this might be correct, the really annoying thing is, that all these widgets (menus, buttons, scrollbars, etc.) behave slightly different. And this isn't only an academic example, I've really seen such desktops :-}

I know we couldn't get rid of this chaos at once, but my dream is a coexistance between Motif and Qt. The Kool Desktop Environment (KDE) I don't have the time to do this all alone (also since LyX is my main project). But a thing like a Desktop Environment can easily be cut into lots of parts. There is very probably a part for you, too! If you want to learn some X-programming, why not doing a small, neat project for the KDE? If you know others who like to programm something, please prevend them from writing the 1004th tetris games or the 768th minesweeper clone ;-) Think we also have enough XBiffs yet...

So here is my project list so far. Probably there are even more things to do that would fit great into the KDE. It's a very open project. Panel: The basic application. Run's as FvwmModule (at the beginning). Offers a combination between Windows95 and CDE. I think about a small taskbar at the bottom and a kind of CDE-panel on the top of the screen. The panel has graphical icon menus on the left (similar to GoodStuff) to launch applications, 4 buttons in the middle to switch to other virtual desktops and few icons for often needed applications on the right. There is for example a mail-icon that also indicates new mail, a wastebasket to open the delete-folder (that also indicates when it isn't empty and is capable of drag'n'drop). Maybe a analog clock with date at the very right. Also a nice special icon for exiting the environment or locking the screen. All the stuff is completly configurable via GUI. I'm also thinking about solutions, that only available applications can be installed on the desktop and that new applications appear on the desktop automatically.

I started to work on this panel, but would of course love some help. There are also lot of smaller things to do, like a tool to chose a background pixmap (for each virtual desktop) etc.

Also nice icons are needed!

Filemanager Another major application inside the KDE. The idea is not to create a powerful high-end graphical bash-replacement (like tkdesk tries to be), but a nice looking easy-to-use filemanager for simple tasks. Simple tasks are mainly deleting some files, copying some files, copying some files to floppy disk, starting applications by clicking on a file (for example ghostview for postscript files or xli for gifs, etc).

I'm thinking about nice windows, one for each directory, that shows icons for every file. It should be possible to drag files around (either copy or move), even between different windows. Another important point is the support of the floppy-disk, so that mounting/umounting is done user-transparent.

Dragging of icons should be done in a nice way, that means moving around a special window (see Qt's xshape example), NOT like xfm or xfilemanager by setting another monochrome bitmap for the cursor.

So it will also be possible to put files as icons on the desktop. This is IMO a very nice feature. Since applications are launched by the panel, it's even clear that icons are real data-objects. With fvwm-1 and the FvwmFileMgr it wasn't really clear wether an icon is yet a file or an iconified window.

Drag'n'drop inside a Qt application isn't really difficult. The filemanager is IMO a very nice and not too time consuming project. Who wants?

mail client A really comfortable mailclient. IMO the most comfortable mailclient for X is yet XF-Mail. And the author is willing to port it to Qt when the KDE-project will start! But he asks for some assitance (for example for coding the small popups, etc.)

easy texteditor Very small but important project. An editor that fits the needs of those who have to edit a textfile once in a month and didn't find the time yet to learn vi (and don't have the time to wait for x-emacs to start, and don't have the memory to use a motif-static-nedit, and don't have the cpu-power and memory to use a tk-monster like tkedit,...)

Unfortunatly the Qt multiline-textwidget isn't available in Qt-1.0, but Troll-Tech already announced the beta-testing. So the texteditor can be started in a few weeks, too.

Terminal Similar to the CDE terminal program. A kind of xterm with nice menu bar to set the font, exit, etc. Nice project, get the xterm sources and add a GUI with Qt!

Image viewer The application that will be launced as default from the filemanager for gifs, jpegs and all this. Well, xv is shareware and really needs quite a long time for startup. But there is a plain Xlib programm without any menues or buttons called "xli". Get the sources and make it userfriendly with Qt!

Lots of small other tools:

• xdvi with Qt-Gui
• ghostview with Qt-Gui
• xmag with Qt-Gui
• whatever you want

BTW: There is a Troll Tech Qt-competition (look at their webpages). The best application (not only functionallity, but also design counts. Just porting an existing great application to Qt won't probably be enough :-( ) wins $2000 and a few Qt on NT licenses (worth another $2000). They also mentioned a browser-project as an example. So a nice HTML-browser in Qt, ready in Janurary may be worth $4000 (This includes selling the unneeded NT licenses ;-) )

Window Manager At the beginning, the KDE panel will work as an Fvwm-Module. When this is done, a lot of stuff can be stripped from the bloated fvwm window manager. We don't need anymore fvwm-menus, icon handling and zillions of configurable things. We need a small, realiable windowmanager. So maybe stripping all unncessary stuff from fvwm will make sense in a while. But this may come very last.

System Tools Whatever a user, or you, might need. A graphical passwd comes to my mind. But probably there are a lot more! Maybe this will lead to a small system administration tool someday.

Games We have yet a nice tetris game (an Qt example program). What is needed is a nice set of small games like solitaire (please with nice cards that can be really dragged!). There are several nice card games available for X, for example xpat2. So why not take the cards from them and write a real solitaire games, very similar to MS-Solitaire. I really had to install Wine sometimes just to play solitair, what an overhead! But other games are needed, too. Take xmris, pacman, etc. add a nice GUI. Or write some from scratch. Whatever you want :)

Icons A set of nice icons. 3D-pixmaps are quite a good start (but why should the button be inside a pixmap, if we use a toolkit with buttons???)

Documentation A documentation project is always a good thing to have. But before we should clearify how the hypertext help system should look like. We can then start with documentation pages in the chosen HTML-subset and for example use arean as help browser. Anyway we need some application to document first.

Web-Pages / Ftp Server / Aministration We need a server for the files and webpages that inform about the state of the project. Especially what projects are currently worked on and what projects still wait for somebody to do them. I set up a preliminary homepage on http://www-pu.informatik.uni-tuebingen.de/users/et trich that just contains this posting yet and a few links. I may setup real webpages for the very beginning but I would be very happy if I could concentrate on discussion and coding. So if there is someone out there in the net who likes to design and maintain webpages, here is a job for him :)

Discussion The most important topic :-) If you are interested please join the mailing list kde@kde.org

Subscribing can be done by sending a mail with in *Body*: subscribe [your email address]
to
kde-request@kde.org

Applications When the KDE gets widely accepted, new (free) applications will hopefully be based on Qt, too, to fit with the comfortable and pleasant look and feel of the desktop.

We may for example port LyX to Qt, so that a comfortable wordprocessor is available. But that is still in discussion in the LyX Team.

A nice vector-orientated drawing tool would also be fine. Well, Xfig is a powerful but ugly monster. But there is "tgif", a very powerful, easy to use but ugly program. The author doesn't like the idea of adding a Qt GUI for the menus, icons and scrollbars, since Qt is C++ and he wants to keep tgif plain C, since on some sites no C++ compiler is available. Well, the KDE doesn't really aim on these old and weird UNIX boxes (also I think a g++ is almost everywhere available). But maybe the tgif-author agrees when somebody else adds a nice GUI to tgif (the sources are free, don't know wether this is GPL). Since tgif yet implements its own GUI this shouldn't be too difficult. It's really easy with Qt to access plain Xlib functionality and functions, so not very much will have to be rewritten. Also C++ makes it very easy to include plain C code.

What about an easy to use, nice newsreader similar to knews? Could also be integrated into the KDE. ... and ... and ... and.

So there is a lot of work (and fun) to do! If you are interested, please join the mailing list. If we get about 20-30 people we could start. And probably before 24th December the net-community will give itself another nice and longtime-needed gift.

The stuff will be distributed under the terms of the GPL.

I admit the whole thing sounds a bit like fantasy. But it is very serious from my side. Everybody I'm talking to in the net would LOVE a somewhat cleaner desktop. Qt is the chance to realize this. So let us join our rare sparetime and just do it!

Hopefully looking foward to lots of followups and replies! Regards,

Matthias Ettrich
(ettrich@informatik.uni-tuebingen.de)

BTW: Usually these postings get a lot of answers like "Use a Mac if you want a GUI, CLI rules!", "I like thousands of different widgets-libraries on my desktop, if you are too stupid to learn them, you should use windoze", "RAM prices are so low, I only use static motif programs", "You will never succeed, so better stop before the beginning", "Why Qt? I prefer schnurz-purz-widgets with xyz-lisp-shell. GPL! Check it out!", etc. Thanks for not sending these as followup to this posting :-) I know I'm a dreamer...

BTW2: You might wonder why I'm so against Tk. Well, I don't like the philosophy: Tk's doesn't have a textwidget, for example, but a slow wordprocessor. Same with other widgets. In combination with TCL the programs become slow and ugly (of course there are exceptions). I didn't yet see any application that uses Tk from C++ or C, although an API seems to exist. TCL/TK is very usefull for prototyping. Ideal for example for kernel configuration. And since Tk looks little similar to Motif, the widgets are also quite easy to use. But I really don't like any TCL/Tk application to stay permanantly on the desktop. And Qt is much easier (at least as easy) to program. Check it out!

BTW3: I don't have any connections to Troll Tech, I just like their product (look at the sources: really high quality!) and their kind of marketing: free sourcecode for free software. Original document by Matthias Ettrich,
HTMLized by Matt McLeod

Why did you mod him as troll? Trolling is senseless bashing, but this guy has some serious points and backs them with proper information.
For those who discredit Tognazzini or Fitt's law should note that KDE's UI pages refer and link to Tog and Fitt's law.

Kde 2.0 Release Announcement

The announcement that Matthias made that seemed to have sparked off the KDE (and I knew only now that K stood for Kool!) gives the impression that Matthias was onto something big. He was cocksure of KDE's success, confident that it was going to be a big hit (though even Matthias mightn't have expected it to catch on like it has done). Well, thats something that's lacking in the Open Source World 5 years thence. The conviction, that what one is doing is big, and the faith in one's abilities. Guess, there are just too many bloated carcasses floating around with little support/management, and moreover no cohesive force that rallies coders around, whips up their passion into doing something new.

Way to go, Matthias. Now, if only that announcement could motivate me to getting round to completing my assignment in time.. :(

Please read this article. They said that the effort will save around 450K each app and possible more.

KDE teams certainly wanted to squeeze the RAM usage. There IS an effort to do that. Big RAM usage is inevitable for GUI apps, IMHO. Moreover, KDE apps are designed to interoperate -- that's an obvious need for another chunk of RAM.

If you'd like to use as minimum RAM as possible, don't use GUI stuff -- just the bare command line, load only necessary modules. If necessary, you can recompile the kernel and the modules, apps, daemon you use using highly optimized switch of the GCC.

Check out KDE's PIM suite. It's still feature development, but is really shaping up nicely (like much of KDE has been;)

Happy birthday KDE! Five years today (Sunday 14th).

"...on October 14th, 1996, Matthias Ettrich delivered his famous newsgroup posting (also HTMLized), and spawned a new era in the history of desktop environments. I think that a simple look at www.kde.org and all its related sites will show everybody just what has happened in the last five years. Congratulations to KDE, and here's to future growth and success!"

Taken from dot.kde.org

"...on October 14th, 1996, Matthias Ettrich delivered his famous newsgroup posting (also HTMLized), and spawned a new era in the history of desktop environments. I think that a simple look at www.kde.org and all its related sites will show everybody just what has happened in the last five years. Congratulations to KDE, and here's to future growth and success!"

Taken from dot.kde.org

No, they just stole the graphics and ideas from Winamp. It's pretty much in the traditional of many, many, many open source projects.

You thought MS had sort of nazi-esque methods? Well, I will now, in this brief essay, reveal to you the hidden truth of Linux, an joint Finnish-German Nazi conspiration for revenge against the victors of WW2. Let's look at the evidence.

During the second World War, Finland was a close allied to the Third Reich, as is clearly illustrated by this photo of a finnish military aircraft. After the defeat of the Axis Powers, a revantionist urge abounds in both countries.

Linux was written by Finnish stuent Linus Thorvalds, a member of the small Swedish-speaking minority of Finland, well known for it's white supremacist tendencies. In this article Torvalds expresses his enthusiasm and admiration for the German-led KDE project. He also makes some unclear statements about the claims of Richard Stallman for calling the operating system GNU/Linux being invalid. Why is this? Obviously, the Nazi -and therefore Anti-Communist- Thorvalds here shows his support for his German allies against the Communist GNU and GNOME [gnome.org] projects.

But what does this hideous Nazi conspiracy want? We cannot, at this point, know. But what we do know, is that Nazies are up to no good. To stop them from achieving whichever horrible goals they hav in mind, I would strongly discourage any use of the Linux kernel or the KDE. Instead, I would recomend the use of a truly democratic operating system.

Thank You.

You thought MS had sort of nazi-esque methods? Well, I will now, in this brief essay, reveal to you the hidden truth of Linux, an joint Finnish-German Nazi conspiration for revenge against the victors of WW2. Let's look at the evidence.

During the second World War, Finland was a close allied to the Third Reich, as is clearly illustrated by this photo of a finnish military aircraft. After the defeat of the Axis Powers, a revantionist urge abounds in both countries.

Linux was written by Finnish stuent Linus Thorvalds, a member of the small Swedish-speaking minority of Finland, well known for it's white supremacist tendencies. In this article Torvalds expresses his enthusiasm and admiration for the German-led KDE project. He also makes some unclear statements about the claims of Richard Stallman for calling the operating system GNU/Linux being invalid. Why is this? Obviously, the Nazi -and therefore Anti-Communist- Thorvalds here shows his support for his German allies against the Communist GNU and GNOME [gnome.org] projects.

But what does this hideous Nazi conspiracy want? We cannot, at this point, know. But what we do know, is that Nazies are up to no good. To stop them from achieving whichever horrible goals they hav in mind, I would strongly discourage any use of the Linux kernel or the KDE. Instead, I would recomend the use of a truly democratic operating system.

Thank You.

You thought MS had sort of nazi-esque methods? Well, I will now, in this brief essay, reveal to you the hidden truth of Linux, an joint Finnish-German Nazi conspiration for revenge against the victors of WW2. Let's look at the evidence.

During the second World War, Finland was a close allied to the Third Reich, as is clearly illustrated by this photo of a finnish military aircraft. After the defeat of the Axis Powers, a revantionist urge abounds in both countries.

Linux was written by Finnish stuent Linus Thorvalds, a member of the small Swedish-speaking minority of Finland, well known for it's white supremacist tendencies. In this article Thorvalds expresses his enthusiasm and admiration for the German-led KDE project. He also makes some unclear statements about the claims of Richard Stallman for calling the operating system GNU/Linux being invalid. Why is this? Obviously, the Nazi -and therefore Anti-Communist- Thorvalds here shows his support for his German allies against the Communist GNU and GNOME projects.

But what does this hideous Nazi conspiracy want? We cannot, at this point, know. But what we do know, is that Nazies are up to no good. To stop them from achieving whichever horrible goals they hav in mind, I would strongly discourage any use of the Linux kernel or the KDE. Instead, I would recomend the use of a truly democratic operating system.

Thank You.

[All links pulled from google's first page for each letter - sick, ain't it?]

Well, that was certainly vague. I don't like KDE icons, not one bit. But lets get some detail into the argument please? Cut n' paste from a previous post of mine:

Any talk of icons hinges on first impressions and whether it's intuitive - so please take this only as 'first reactions'

This KDE 2.0 screenshot [kde.org]. Notice the styled paper that is never white but instead has an orange smear. Notice the 'home' icon and how the door is shiny as if protruding from the house (!). Notice the green and black reload icon as if part of the icon does something differently (like the forward/back buttons). Notice how everything is shiny and plastic.

Next this KDE2.0 screenshot [kde.org] where in one window a magnify glass is used to show "search" (or something) and in the window right below a magnify glass is used to enlarge font size.

Another bizzare screenshot [kde.org] showing icons to the quality of MS Paint. Notice the multiple selection icons placed alongside others. Notice 'getmoz' with its monitor the length of a desktop machine. Notice a metal trashcan that's apparently on fire. Notice the 'write allowed' icon overlay that dissapears into the ether at the icon's edges (while obscuring icon information).

Notice that KDEs icons aren't anti-photo-realistic charactatures of functions but inconsistant pointlessly-shiny obscure... icons.

Well, that was certainly vague. I don't like KDE icons, not one bit. But lets get some detail into the argument please? Cut n' paste from a previous post of mine:

Any talk of icons hinges on first impressions and whether it's intuitive - so please take this only as 'first reactions'

This KDE 2.0 screenshot [kde.org]. Notice the styled paper that is never white but instead has an orange smear. Notice the 'home' icon and how the door is shiny as if protruding from the house (!). Notice the green and black reload icon as if part of the icon does something differently (like the forward/back buttons). Notice how everything is shiny and plastic.

Next this KDE2.0 screenshot [kde.org] where in one window a magnify glass is used to show "search" (or something) and in the window right below a magnify glass is used to enlarge font size.

Another bizzare screenshot [kde.org] showing icons to the quality of MS Paint. Notice the multiple selection icons placed alongside others. Notice 'getmoz' with its monitor the length of a desktop machine. Notice a metal trashcan that's apparently on fire. Notice the 'write allowed' icon overlay that dissapears into the ether at the icon's edges (while obscuring icon information).

Notice that KDEs icons aren't anti-photo-realistic charactatures of functions but inconsistant pointlessly-shiny obscure... icons.

Well, that was certainly vague. I don't like KDE icons, not one bit. But lets get some detail into the argument please? Cut n' paste from a previous post of mine:

Any talk of icons hinges on first impressions and whether it's intuitive - so please take this only as 'first reactions'

This KDE 2.0 screenshot [kde.org]. Notice the styled paper that is never white but instead has an orange smear. Notice the 'home' icon and how the door is shiny as if protruding from the house (!). Notice the green and black reload icon as if part of the icon does something differently (like the forward/back buttons). Notice how everything is shiny and plastic.

Next this KDE2.0 screenshot [kde.org] where in one window a magnify glass is used to show "search" (or something) and in the window right below a magnify glass is used to enlarge font size.

Another bizzare screenshot [kde.org] showing icons to the quality of MS Paint. Notice the multiple selection icons placed alongside others. Notice 'getmoz' with its monitor the length of a desktop machine. Notice a metal trashcan that's apparently on fire. Notice the 'write allowed' icon overlay that dissapears into the ether at the icon's edges (while obscuring icon information).

Notice that KDEs icons aren't anti-photo-realistic charactatures of functions but inconsistant pointlessly-shiny obscure... icons.

Everyone knows that GNOME is light-years ahead. Fuck KDE.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

KDE Ships Alpha of Third Generation of the Leading Linux Desktop for Developers

October 5, 2001 (The INTERNET). The KDE Project today announced the immediate release of KDE 3.0alpha1, the third generation of KDE's free, powerful and easy-to-use free Internet-enabled desktop for Linux and other UNIXes. KDE 3.0 is scheduled for its first beta release this December and for final release in late February 2001.

This inaugural release of the KDE 3, which follows two weeks after the stable release of KDE 2.2.1 series, is based on TrollTech's Qt 3.0.0beta6. It ships with the core KDE libraries, the core desktop environment, and over 100 applications from the other base KDE packages (administration, multimedia, network, PIM, utilities, etc.).

The primary goal of the 3.0alpha1 release is to provide a framework for developers to start porting their KDE 2 applications to KDE 3 and to solicit developer feature contributions and feature requests before the KDE 3 API is frozen for binary compatibility. In addition, experimental KDE users who would like to try this release can set up a KDE 3 system side-by-site with a KDE 2 system. Instructions for doing so are available here.

Additional information about KDE 3 is available at the KDE website, including a tentative release plan, a KDE 3 info page, and a list of planned features.

For both developers and users, KDE 3 offers substantial improvements and additions compared to KDE 2 (the great bulk of which are, at this juncture, due to the switch to Qt 3):

For the developer:

For everyone:

Most of these improvements result directly from the switch to Qt 3, which has been the focus of KDE 3 code development so far. Improvements to the KDE libraries and applications themselves are planned for the successive beta releases leading to the first stable KDE 3. A list of these planned features is available here.

Since KDE 3 is mostly source compatible with KDE 2, porting applications from KDE 2 to KDE 3 can usually be done surprisingly quickly. The process is substantially easier than it was for porting from KDE 1 to KDE 2, and even very complicated applications can be ported in a matter of a few hours.

Instructions for porting KDE 2 applications to KDE 3 are available separately for the KDE libraries and the Qt libraries. Most of the changes required for the port applications pertain to changes in the Qt API. Although neither the KDE 3 nor the Qt 3 APIs are frozen, few changes are anticipated for the final releases of KDE 3.0 and Qt 3.0.0, respectively.

KDE and all its components (including KDevelop and KOffice) are available for free under Open Source licenses from the KDE ftp server and its mirrors and can also be obtained on CD-ROM.

Library Requirements. KDE 3.0alpha1 requires qt-3.0.0beta6, which is available in source code from Trolltech as qt-x11-3.0.0-beta6.tar.gz, as well as libxml2 >= 2.3.13, available here.

Compiler Requirements. Please note that some components of KDE 3.0alpha1 will not compile with older versions of gcc/egcs, such as egcs-1.1.2 or gcc-2.7.2. At a minimum gcc-2.95-* is required. In addition, some components of KDE 3.0alpha1 (such as the multimedia backbone of KDE, aRts) will not compile with gcc 3.0 or 3.0.1, though the forthcoming gcc 3.0.2 release will most likely work.

Source Code. The complete source code for KDE 3.0alpha1 is available for free download at http://ftp.kde.org/pub/kde/unstable/kde-3.0-alpha1 /src/ http://master.kde.org/pub/kde/unstable/kde-3.0-alp ha1/src/ or in the equivalent directory at one of the many KDE ftp server mirrors.

Further Information. For further instructions on compiling and installing KDE 3.0alpha1, please consult the installation instructions and, if you should encounter problems, the compilation FAQ.

KDE is an independent, collaborative project by hundreds of developers worldwide working over the Internet to create a sophisticated, customizable and stable desktop environment employing a component-based, network-transparent architecture. KDE provides a stable, mature desktop, an office suite (KOffice), a large set of networking and administration tools, and an efficient and intuitive development environment, including an excellent IDE (KDevelop). KDE is working proof of the power of the Open Source "Bazaar-style" software development model to create first-rate technologies on par with and superior to even the most complex commercial software.

Please visit the KDE family of web sites for the KDE FAQ, screenshots, KOffice information and developer information. Much more information about KDE is available from KDE's family of web sites.

Besides the valuable and excellent efforts by the KDE developers themselves, significant support for KDE development has been provided by MandrakeSoft and SuSE. Thanks!