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KDE seems to be all about redoing everything within a single framework and toolkit to give users a Windows-like experience and to compete with Windows. To quote from the KDE web site: 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.

But why? Who actually benefits from this? What is the point of creating a Windows-like environment for non-expert users on top of Linux? If I wanted a Windows-like environment, why wouldn't I just use Windows? And if KDE goes through all this trouble, why pick a toolkit that makes it more expensive for commercial entities to develop for KDE than it is to develop for Windows? And why is KDE embracing an approach, large C++ libraries and dynamic loading of native code, that Microsoft is already beginning to abandon?

The KDE desktop is impressive looking, but I just can't figure out the motivation for working on it or for using it. After giving it a try for about a year (mostly because Konqueror was the best open source browser around until Mozilla0.9.3/Galeon came along), I'm back to using a simple window manager and a desktop menu.

Wrong! HancomOffice has an excellent set of MS Office import/export filters. It looks to be a very complete and mature product and I'm looking forward to seeing what it can do. Especially with Hancom's recent alliance with theKompany, giving it Kivio (Envision), Aethra (QuickSilver), Quanta+ (WebBuilder), and reKall (easyDB) to add to the HancomOffice package (story on the Dot). Of course, I'm still rooting for KOffice though :-)

KOM is based on CORBA as you may see on this slide, but probably thats why KDE is so slow :).

Most current gfx-cards are more 3d-cards with a little 2D-engine as extra and none of them is slow in 2D.
They can render several 10^6-triangles per second, a window has a astounding 2 triangles. So that won't be a problem.

Furthermore it's a open and evolving standard which even supports rendering videos. (aviplay can use opengl to accelerate videodisplay)
It's a well documented and powerful interface to the gfx-hardware with vendor-support and drivers..

Transparency in 2D is nearly unsupported by hardware (at least I don't know of such things).

The 3D desktop is surely not very useful, but you get it for free, and you don't have to use it.

I'm all for MS Windows as a client, to be honest. It works good [enough] for the end user and it's damned easy.

If what you mean is "Windows is easy for a non-technical user to use (with a skilled sysadmin handling the problems of keeping things running).", I think you're wrong. Windows is HARD, and unintuitive. So is KDE. The only difference is that most folks who've been forced to work with computers for a while have learned what buttons to push on the Windows aplications they use regularly, to do the things they do regularly. When a non-technical user gets that same "what button" knowlege on a Unix system, Unix is easy.

The secretaries in the Statistics department here have windows PCs on their desks, and use them largely to run xservers so they can connect to the Unix compute server. After training, they find it easier to get their work done using vi and plain-TeX than using Windows applications. They do use IE for web surfing, since it works much better than Netscape 4.7X. They use other windows applications too, where they find it easier than Unix (it's AIX, when I was there), but much of their time is spent using vi.

If you mean something like: "Windows makes lower demands on non-technical sysadmins", you might be right, though I'm not sure. I have had a hard time getting up to speed on managing my own machine at home, but it works far better now than when I ran windows. The learning time has been well spent, in my case.

I am firmly convinced that, given a competent sysadmin to set things up right and keep them humming, and users with the same level of experience on the system, a *nix system will be at least as easy to use to accomplish useful work as a Windows system. It may well be harder to do the things that you did on a MS system, such as automatically running viruses, but I'm talking about getting work done.

So I'd like to see some follow-up like knowing more specifics such as what company this is, when it happened and such. Who from RedHat can confirm this story?

I also would like to see some specifics, but the City of Largo Adopts KDE 2.1.1 story shows that it is indeed possible to put Linux on the desktop, and the back end, of a fair-sized organization. They weren't switching from NT, but If you wanted to badly enough, I think this shows that you could. I would especially like to find out what Linux support and training are costing them.

Any company is all sweetness and light with a new customer, until you buy. At that point, you're no longer a new customer, you're one of the people who get screwed to subsidise the sweetheart deals for the prospective new customers. MS and Pitney Bowes (and Friden-Alcatel, and Postalia, and ...) can play this game in a particularly mean way, since they get you locked in with a large investment which becomes worthless if you stop leasing (or purchasing upgrades for) their product. The great thing about Linux is that RedHat, SUSE, etc can't get that kind of lockin. If this story isn't true, I bet there's one just like it that is.

Packages are now available from ftp.kde.org/pub/kde/stable/2.2/Solaris/

I have built KDE 2.2 without any major problems on Solaris 8 (and KDE 2.1.1 on Solaris 7). If you want some help, you can contact me. Or if you want some more expert help, please contact the mailing lists kde-solaris@kde.org and kde-nonlinux@kde.org. You can read them at http://lists.kde.org

Good luck!
Mats

Can be found at ftp://ftp.kde.org/pub/kde/stable/2.2/Solaris

Depends on how you count. Strictly speaking, the number of full-time, paid KDE developers is more like 7 -- David Faure and Laurent Montel at Mandrake, Waldo Bastian at SuSE, and probably a few more I don't know about. Browse the developer profiles and see how few paid coders there are.

Even if you include all the guys at TrollTech working on Qt, I doubt if it's close to 100. Eazel probably spent more money and employed more workers than the cumulative history of KDE and Qt togther.

Out of curiosity, where are all these paid full-time Gnome workers? Ximian can't be that big -- are they at Sun? Red Hat?

It's funny how they stress how many paid devs they have. I'm wondering whether you should brag about how many or how few people work on your project...

• Opera
• Konqueror
• Mozilla
• Galeon
• Skipstone
• Netscape

The article did not review a number of browsers. Here are a some more that you may want to try:

• Arena
• Amaya
• Chimera
• MMM
• Emacs/W3
• Lynx (text based)
• Links (text based)
• Debris (text based)
• w3m (text based)
• Libwww (text/line based)
• HowJava
• Express
• Armadillo (was Gzilla)
• Mnemonic
• Kde (file manager with builtin browser)
• mMosaic
• QtMozilla
• QWeb
• Mosaic
• Arachne
• Beest
• Beonex
• BrowseX
• Grail
• Dillo
• NetRaider

And how the disclaimers: The list above by no means complete. The browers above were listed in j-random order. Some browsers are in early alpha stage, some in Beta and others are in full release. Some of the browsers may suck, some are OK and some are good. Your mileage may vary. Sorry If I left out your favorite browser. IE was left off the list for obvious reasons. Good while supply lasts or until Bill Gates takes over. I'm not a member of the FCIA. Void where cast as (void).

I found the KDE Mandrake 8.0 RPMs here with a date of 8/11/01. The announcement wasn't on the KDE site until 8/15/01.

From the changelog:

* KHTML: extended compatibility with IE's parsing and tokenisation fallbacks for really malformed HTML.

This really disappoints me. A web browser needs to follow the spec and do exactly what the web author says, not necessarily what the web author thought he/she said. One reason for this is interoperability: web authors never know which browser people will be using to view their site. For instance, in a few years, many people could be web browsing from their cell phones using "Nokia Integrated Browser" or something. So, web authors must get the idea that the only long term solution is to write valid code -- and having web browsers that "guess" at what the web author "intended" to write in their code doesn't reinforce that.

People who would like to contribute to the KDE development are most welcome to join - you don't have to be a C++ programmer in order to contribute - Graphics artists, GUI guru's, HTML experts and others are more then welcome to join the big KDE famility of developers..

And so are total newbies who don't know anything about computers yet - feedback from those people can be vital. Most of us simply don't notice if something is not intuitive because it's what we're used to.

If you think you can't do anything that would be useful, please check out usability.kde.org and convince yourself of the opposite. We need the feedback...

It's a major upgrade - you probably want to upgrade (or, get ready to upgrade when 2.2.1 inevitably comes out in a couple of weeks).

The release notes are worth reading over.

...j
(jackass has been cancelled. eep!)

Two Words: Get Konqueror It supports HTML, CSS, XML, Javascript, Java Plug-ins, Netscape Plug-ins, Mozilla Plug-ins, and Active-X support is in beta using Wine. Oh- and now you can disable pop-ups and control the browser type it provides to the web server. In three years Konqueror has gone from a curious part of KDE to a killer web browser. It crashes less than Netscape, Mozilla, and IE.

My fonts look great. You need to install the truetype fonts, build QT with -xft, set up your Xftconfig file and they will look incredible. I promise. I even have my LCD screen doing sub-pixel anti-aliasing. See this article detailing how to do it. KDE 2.2 will have the AA more "integrated" (the betas did).

Alright, so Microsoft is trying to strangle out interoperability. And this is new because?.. ;)

Just my two cents, but personally I think that we're barking up the wrong tree here. Even if this new .NET centerpiece causes serious interoperability problems, one has to take note of Microsoft's other decisions; the fact that its currently shooting itself in the foot with licensing for instance. All good sysadmins (yes and MCSEs too) know that you shouldnt jump on bandwagons, .NET wont be seriously pervasive until years after its launch, so maybe instead of going on about how Microsoft is leveraging its monopoly blah blah blah we ought to look at Linux's strengths. Like terminal services for instance. Microsoft didn't invent that as they might have you believe - get a few old P75's, network them together, put an application server and you have a centrally adminstrateable server with almost zero-maintainance cost. Want to do that with Win2K? sure, after you fork out thousands of $$$ for something that isnt much better, if at all. KDE's fast becoming a serious desktop platform, together these two capabilities could really make a decent corporate solution. And if you think this is a pipe dream it seems to be good enough for a whole city to use. (yes I know they still use Citrix machines, but not as much as the KDE boxen hmm?)

And that's just one possible application. Linux seems to be doing everything except making coffee these days (hell, even that) and more and more people seem to be using Linux these days in both client and server space, so screw Microsoft. People dont use NFS or Apache because its compatible with MS proprietary stuff. Learn from history too; OS/2 tried to be an advanced platform as well as being Windows compatible. Don't see OS/2 around much these days, do you?

I'm sure some of you will disagree with me but in my humble opinion the mono effort isnt a great idea. Why not implement an open source .NET? thats what we should have been doing from the start, instead of following behind. That or jump over .NET and do the Next Big Thing, whatever that may be. Or stuff compatibility and instead focus on making a better open UNIX platform, people arent falling over themselves to shell out for MS' latest technology you know. I'm losing my point anyways, so enough karma whoring for one day, but never theless, I suppose this is worth thinking about

No, it's an easily verifiable fact. Check here for a discussion why.

Prelinking, a new(er?) solution to the dynamic linking problem was recently discovered - more info on that here. It seems to be a better solution than kdeinit, but I don't know if it will be included in the final 2.2 release.

Rather than expect users to know VTs and startx -- :1 or xinit -- :1 and other arbitrary concepts, you could just help fix this KDE wishlist item.

If anybody wonders what Fitt's law is, here ya go.

Anyone have screen shots? I'd like to know what my desktop would LOOK like. KDE doesn't seem to have any for 2.2, or even any information regarding it. Thanks.

KDE only releases source packages. Check the KDE Package Policy for more info. So bitch to whoever is doing the RedHat packages, or to RedHat itself to start doing packages. It's not KDE's problem.

There are LaTeX processors for most platforms. A quick Google search can be rather useful.

As for viewing LaTeX files, you can convert them to many popular formats - HTML, postscript, PDF, RTF, DOC... - or use a browser plugin. IBM's TechExplorer (http://www.software.ibm.com/network/techexplorer/ ) allows you to view TeX, LaTeX and MathML documents in IE or Netscape.

LaTeX is much more flexible than any other format I've tried so far. It can do books, articles, reports, and slides - and these are all standard packages. The Comprehensive TeX Archive Network is to LaTeX as CPAN is to Perl - an immensely useful repository of cool stuff. =)

It's not too hard to learn, either. You can pick up the Not-So Short Guide to LaTeX (http://wso.williams.edu/how/lshort2e) or any of the other tutorials on the Net.

LaTeX is beautiful. I haven't had to use anything else for my papers ever since I discovered the joys of LaTeX. <g>

You'll want to start at the documentation supplied with the desktops.

For KDE/Qt, check out http://doc.trolltech.com/ and http://developer.kde.org/documentation.

I found a little tutorial on QT/KDE programming on the KDE-Women site.

I haven't got the time to try it all out, as I'm still struggling with work and exams, it seemed very complete, showing how to use KDevelop, adding widgets, all in a step-by-step-with-pictures sort of way.

they already have dot.kde.org

The khtml hackers are very concerned with standards compliance. Feed Konqueror 100% standard compliance code and it should do exactly what you want, it it does not, please file a bug report.

Supporting a non-standard feature doesn't necessarily break standard compliance. Even Mozilla has plenty of workarounds for broken pages (uncloses table/td/tr's etcetera) which make it more useable.

DATELINE JULY 9, 2001

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Konqueror Embraces ActiveX, Plays Shockwave Movies

July 9, 2001 (The INTERNET). Nikolas Zimmermann and Malte Starostik today announced the availability of reaktivate for Konqueror, KDE's web browser. Reaktivate enables Konqueror to embed ActiveX controls, such as the popular Shockwave movies, for which no native Linux/Unix solution exists. Reaktivate relies on the WINE libraries to load and run ActiveX controls.

With this addition, Konqueror now enables KDE users to take optimal advantage of sophisticated websites that make use of Microsoft Internet Explorer plugins, Netscape Communicator plugins for Linux and Java applets, as well as KDE plugins designed using KDE's KParts technology.

According to Malte, the reason he and Nikolas implemented reaktivate is rather simple: it broadens the spectrum of web sites accessible to Konqueror, and it was possible.

Successes and Limitations

Theoretically, Reaktivate can eventually be used to embed any ActiveX control into Konqueror. Currently, however, not all ActiveX controls are compatible with reaktivate. In particular, the Microsoft Windows Media Player cannot be installed using reaktivate (though it is not known if a player which is already installed will work with reaktivate). Thus it is likely there exist other ActiveX controls which will not yet work with reaktivate. Work is ongoing to increase compatability with other ActiveX controls, including the Apple QuickTime plugin.

So far, however, reaktivate has been successfully tested with the following ActiveX controls:

Note on Security

Install ActiveX controls only from sites that you trust. Microsoft's ActiveX technology has often been criticized for weak security. Those controls are dynamic libraries that are executed exactly like any other piece of code installed on the user's system. This means they have full access to the file system, the system registry etc. As a means to establish the users' trust in the controls a web site wishes to install, every ActiveX control is cryptographically signed and carries a certificate issued by an authority known to the web browser (like VeriSign). A control that has no signature or no certificate or if they are invalid will not be installed.

With reaktivate the situation is similar: the installed controls can call every WinAPI function provided by the WINE libraries and therefore have access to WINE's registry and all files visible to the WINE installation. The current implementation of reaktivate will ask the user for confirmation to install a new control, but it will not check the embedded certificate and signature. This is due to technical reasons as well as limited time. Therefore we strongly advise to install controls only from sites that you trust. To save your files from malicious controls, you might also consider using this feature only from a seperate user account that has no access to your main user's files. Reaktivate will not run from the root account.

Source code for reaktivate is freely available under a Free, Open Source license from the kdenonbeta module in KDE's CVS repository and its mirrors. See the KDE website for information about how to get a module from CVS. You only need the toplevel, admin and reaktivate directories from kdenonbeta. Before compiling, get the latest CVS version of WINE (a snapshot will likely not be new enough). Next, apply all patches from reaktivate/patches-for-wine/ against the WINE sources and build/install WINE. Finally, you can build and install reaktivate.

Disclaimer: reaktivate is not in any manner sponsored or endorsed by, affiliated with, or otherwise related to, Microsoft Corporation.

Thanks to Andreas "Dre" Pour and Navindra Umanee for assisting in drafting this release.

DATELINE JULY 9, 2001

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Konqueror Embraces ActiveX, Plays Shockwave Movies

July 9, 2001 (The INTERNET). Nikolas Zimmermann and Malte Starostik today announced the availability of reaktivate for Konqueror, KDE's web browser. Reaktivate enables Konqueror to embed ActiveX controls, such as the popular Shockwave movies, for which no native Linux/Unix solution exists. Reaktivate relies on the WINE libraries to load and run ActiveX controls.

With this addition, Konqueror now enables KDE users to take optimal advantage of sophisticated websites that make use of Microsoft Internet Explorer plugins, Netscape Communicator plugins for Linux and Java applets, as well as KDE plugins designed using KDE's KParts technology.

According to Malte, the reason he and Nikolas implemented reaktivate is rather simple: it broadens the spectrum of web sites accessible to Konqueror, and it was possible.

Successes and Limitations

Theoretically, Reaktivate can eventually be used to embed any ActiveX control into Konqueror. Currently, however, not all ActiveX controls are compatible with reaktivate. In particular, the Microsoft Windows Media Player cannot be installed using reaktivate (though it is not known if a player which is already installed will work with reaktivate). Thus it is likely there exist other ActiveX controls which will not yet work with reaktivate. Work is ongoing to increase compatability with other ActiveX controls, including the Apple QuickTime plugin.

So far, however, reaktivate has been successfully tested with the following ActiveX controls:

Note on Security

Install ActiveX controls only from sites that you trust. Microsoft's ActiveX technology has often been criticized for weak security. Those controls are dynamic libraries that are executed exactly like any other piece of code installed on the user's system. This means they have full access to the file system, the system registry etc. As a means to establish the users' trust in the controls a web site wishes to install, every ActiveX control is cryptographically signed and carries a certificate issued by an authority known to the web browser (like VeriSign). A control that has no signature or no certificate or if they are invalid will not be installed.

With reaktivate the situation is similar: the installed controls can call every WinAPI function provided by the WINE libraries and therefore have access to WINE's registry and all files visible to the WINE installation. The current implementation of reaktivate will ask the user for confirmation to install a new control, but it will not check the embedded certificate and signature. This is due to technical reasons as well as limited time. Therefore we strongly advise to install controls only from sites that you trust. To save your files from malicious controls, you might also consider using this feature only from a seperate user account that has no access to your main user's files. Reaktivate will not run from the root account.

Source code for reaktivate is freely available under a Free, Open Source license from the kdenonbeta module in KDE's CVS repository and its mirrors. See the KDE website for information about how to get a module from CVS. You only need the toplevel, admin and reaktivate directories from kdenonbeta. Before compiling, get the latest CVS version of WINE (a snapshot will likely not be new enough). Next, apply all patches from reaktivate/patches-for-wine/ against the WINE sources and build/install WINE. Finally, you can build and install reaktivate.

Disclaimer: reaktivate is not in any manner sponsored or endorsed by, affiliated with, or otherwise related to, Microsoft Corporation.

Thanks to Andreas "Dre" Pour and Navindra Umanee for assisting in drafting this release.

DATELINE JULY 9, 2001

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Konqueror Embraces ActiveX, Plays Shockwave Movies

July 9, 2001 (The INTERNET). Nikolas Zimmermann and Malte Starostik today announced the availability of reaktivate for Konqueror, KDE's web browser. Reaktivate enables Konqueror to embed ActiveX controls, such as the popular Shockwave movies, for which no native Linux/Unix solution exists. Reaktivate relies on the WINE libraries to load and run ActiveX controls.

With this addition, Konqueror now enables KDE users to take optimal advantage of sophisticated websites that make use of Microsoft Internet Explorer plugins, Netscape Communicator plugins for Linux and Java applets, as well as KDE plugins designed using KDE's KParts technology.

According to Malte, the reason he and Nikolas implemented reaktivate is rather simple: it broadens the spectrum of web sites accessible to Konqueror, and it was possible.

Successes and Limitations

Theoretically, Reaktivate can eventually be used to embed any ActiveX control into Konqueror. Currently, however, not all ActiveX controls are compatible with reaktivate. In particular, the Microsoft Windows Media Player cannot be installed using reaktivate (though it is not known if a player which is already installed will work with reaktivate). Thus it is likely there exist other ActiveX controls which will not yet work with reaktivate. Work is ongoing to increase compatability with other ActiveX controls, including the Apple QuickTime plugin.

So far, however, reaktivate has been successfully tested with the following ActiveX controls:

Note on Security

Install ActiveX controls only from sites that you trust. Microsoft's ActiveX technology has often been criticized for weak security. Those controls are dynamic libraries that are executed exactly like any other piece of code installed on the user's system. This means they have full access to the file system, the system registry etc. As a means to establish the users' trust in the controls a web site wishes to install, every ActiveX control is cryptographically signed and carries a certificate issued by an authority known to the web browser (like VeriSign). A control that has no signature or no certificate or if they are invalid will not be installed.

With reaktivate the situation is similar: the installed controls can call every WinAPI function provided by the WINE libraries and therefore have access to WINE's registry and all files visible to the WINE installation. The current implementation of reaktivate will ask the user for confirmation to install a new control, but it will not check the embedded certificate and signature. This is due to technical reasons as well as limited time. Therefore we strongly advise to install controls only from sites that you trust. To save your files from malicious controls, you might also consider using this feature only from a seperate user account that has no access to your main user's files. Reaktivate will not run from the root account.

Source code for reaktivate is freely available under a Free, Open Source license from the kdenonbeta module in KDE's CVS repository and its mirrors. See the KDE website for information about how to get a module from CVS. You only need the toplevel, admin and reaktivate directories from kdenonbeta. Before compiling, get the latest CVS version of WINE (a snapshot will likely not be new enough). Next, apply all patches from reaktivate/patches-for-wine/ against the WINE sources and build/install WINE. Finally, you can build and install reaktivate.

Disclaimer: reaktivate is not in any manner sponsored or endorsed by, affiliated with, or otherwise related to, Microsoft Corporation.

Thanks to Andreas "Dre" Pour and Navindra Umanee for assisting in drafting this release.

DATELINE JULY 9, 2001

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Konqueror Embraces ActiveX, Plays Shockwave Movies

July 9, 2001 (The INTERNET). Nikolas Zimmermann and Malte Starostik today announced the availability of reaktivate for Konqueror, KDE's web browser. Reaktivate enables Konqueror to embed ActiveX controls, such as the popular Shockwave movies, for which no native Linux/Unix solution exists. Reaktivate relies on the WINE libraries to load and run ActiveX controls.

With this addition, Konqueror now enables KDE users to take optimal advantage of sophisticated websites that make use of Microsoft Internet Explorer plugins, Netscape Communicator plugins for Linux and Java applets, as well as KDE plugins designed using KDE's KParts technology.

According to Malte, the reason he and Nikolas implemented reaktivate is rather simple: it broadens the spectrum of web sites accessible to Konqueror, and it was possible.

Successes and Limitations

Theoretically, Reaktivate can eventually be used to embed any ActiveX control into Konqueror. Currently, however, not all ActiveX controls are compatible with reaktivate. In particular, the Microsoft Windows Media Player cannot be installed using reaktivate (though it is not known if a player which is already installed will work with reaktivate). Thus it is likely there exist other ActiveX controls which will not yet work with reaktivate. Work is ongoing to increase compatability with other ActiveX controls, including the Apple QuickTime plugin.

So far, however, reaktivate has been successfully tested with the following ActiveX controls:

Note on Security

Install ActiveX controls only from sites that you trust. Microsoft's ActiveX technology has often been criticized for weak security. Those controls are dynamic libraries that are executed exactly like any other piece of code installed on the user's system. This means they have full access to the file system, the system registry etc. As a means to establish the users' trust in the controls a web site wishes to install, every ActiveX control is cryptographically signed and carries a certificate issued by an authority known to the web browser (like VeriSign). A control that has no signature or no certificate or if they are invalid will not be installed.

With reaktivate the situation is similar: the installed controls can call every WinAPI function provided by the WINE libraries and therefore have access to WINE's registry and all files visible to the WINE installation. The current implementation of reaktivate will ask the user for confirmation to install a new control, but it will not check the embedded certificate and signature. This is due to technical reasons as well as limited time. Therefore we strongly advise to install controls only from sites that you trust. To save your files from malicious controls, you might also consider using this feature only from a seperate user account that has no access to your main user's files. Reaktivate will not run from the root account.

Source code for reaktivate is freely available under a Free, Open Source license from the kdenonbeta module in KDE's CVS repository and its mirrors. See the KDE website for information about how to get a module from CVS. You only need the toplevel, admin and reaktivate directories from kdenonbeta. Before compiling, get the latest CVS version of WINE (a snapshot will likely not be new enough). Next, apply all patches from reaktivate/patches-for-wine/ against the WINE sources and build/install WINE. Finally, you can build and install reaktivate.

Disclaimer: reaktivate is not in any manner sponsored or endorsed by, affiliated with, or otherwise related to, Microsoft Corporation.

Thanks to Andreas "Dre" Pour and Navindra Umanee for assisting in drafting this release.

DATELINE JULY 9, 2001

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Konqueror Embraces ActiveX, Plays Shockwave Movies

July 9, 2001 (The INTERNET). Nikolas Zimmermann and Malte Starostik today announced the availability of reaktivate for Konqueror, KDE's web browser. Reaktivate enables Konqueror to embed ActiveX controls, such as the popular Shockwave movies, for which no native Linux/Unix solution exists. Reaktivate relies on the WINE libraries to load and run ActiveX controls.

With this addition, Konqueror now enables KDE users to take optimal advantage of sophisticated websites that make use of Microsoft Internet Explorer plugins, Netscape Communicator plugins for Linux and Java applets, as well as KDE plugins designed using KDE's KParts technology.

According to Malte, the reason he and Nikolas implemented reaktivate is rather simple: it broadens the spectrum of web sites accessible to Konqueror, and it was possible.

Successes and Limitations

Theoretically, Reaktivate can eventually be used to embed any ActiveX control into Konqueror. Currently, however, not all ActiveX controls are compatible with reaktivate. In particular, the Microsoft Windows Media Player cannot be installed using reaktivate (though it is not known if a player which is already installed will work with reaktivate). Thus it is likely there exist other ActiveX controls which will not yet work with reaktivate. Work is ongoing to increase compatability with other ActiveX controls, including the Apple QuickTime plugin.

So far, however, reaktivate has been successfully tested with the following ActiveX controls:

Note on Security

Install ActiveX controls only from sites that you trust. Microsoft's ActiveX technology has often been criticized for weak security. Those controls are dynamic libraries that are executed exactly like any other piece of code installed on the user's system. This means they have full access to the file system, the system registry etc. As a means to establish the users' trust in the controls a web site wishes to install, every ActiveX control is cryptographically signed and carries a certificate issued by an authority known to the web browser (like VeriSign). A control that has no signature or no certificate or if they are invalid will not be installed.

With reaktivate the situation is similar: the installed controls can call every WinAPI function provided by the WINE libraries and therefore have access to WINE's registry and all files visible to the WINE installation. The current implementation of reaktivate will ask the user for confirmation to install a new control, but it will not check the embedded certificate and signature. This is due to technical reasons as well as limited time. Therefore we strongly advise to install controls only from sites that you trust. To save your files from malicious controls, you might also consider using this feature only from a seperate user account that has no access to your main user's files. Reaktivate will not run from the root account.

Source code for reaktivate is freely available under a Free, Open Source license from the kdenonbeta module in KDE's CVS repository and its mirrors. See the KDE website for information about how to get a module from CVS. You only need the toplevel, admin and reaktivate directories from kdenonbeta. Before compiling, get the latest CVS version of WINE (a snapshot will likely not be new enough). Next, apply all patches from reaktivate/patches-for-wine/ against the WINE sources and build/install WINE. Finally, you can build and install reaktivate.

Disclaimer: reaktivate is not in any manner sponsored or endorsed by, affiliated with, or otherwise related to, Microsoft Corporation.

Thanks to Andreas "Dre" Pour and Navindra Umanee for assisting in drafting this release.

DATELINE JULY 9, 2001

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Konqueror Embraces ActiveX, Plays Shockwave Movies

July 9, 2001 (The INTERNET). Nikolas Zimmermann and Malte Starostik today announced the availability of reaktivate for Konqueror, KDE's web browser. Reaktivate enables Konqueror to embed ActiveX controls, such as the popular Shockwave movies, for which no native Linux/Unix solution exists. Reaktivate relies on the WINE libraries to load and run ActiveX controls.

With this addition, Konqueror now enables KDE users to take optimal advantage of sophisticated websites that make use of Microsoft Internet Explorer plugins, Netscape Communicator plugins for Linux and Java applets, as well as KDE plugins designed using KDE's KParts technology.

According to Malte, the reason he and Nikolas implemented reaktivate is rather simple: it broadens the spectrum of web sites accessible to Konqueror, and it was possible.

Successes and Limitations

Theoretically, Reaktivate can eventually be used to embed any ActiveX control into Konqueror. Currently, however, not all ActiveX controls are compatible with reaktivate. In particular, the Microsoft Windows Media Player cannot be installed using reaktivate (though it is not known if a player which is already installed will work with reaktivate). Thus it is likely there exist other ActiveX controls which will not yet work with reaktivate. Work is ongoing to increase compatability with other ActiveX controls, including the Apple QuickTime plugin.

So far, however, reaktivate has been successfully tested with the following ActiveX controls:

Note on Security

Install ActiveX controls only from sites that you trust. Microsoft's ActiveX technology has often been criticized for weak security. Those controls are dynamic libraries that are executed exactly like any other piece of code installed on the user's system. This means they have full access to the file system, the system registry etc. As a means to establish the users' trust in the controls a web site wishes to install, every ActiveX control is cryptographically signed and carries a certificate issued by an authority known to the web browser (like VeriSign). A control that has no signature or no certificate or if they are invalid will not be installed.

With reaktivate the situation is similar: the installed controls can call every WinAPI function provided by the WINE libraries and therefore have access to WINE's registry and all files visible to the WINE installation. The current implementation of reaktivate will ask the user for confirmation to install a new control, but it will not check the embedded certificate and signature. This is due to technical reasons as well as limited time. Therefore we strongly advise to install controls only from sites that you trust. To save your files from malicious controls, you might also consider using this feature only from a seperate user account that has no access to your main user's files. Reaktivate will not run from the root account.

Source code for reaktivate is freely available under a Free, Open Source license from the kdenonbeta module in KDE's CVS repository and its mirrors. See the KDE website for information about how to get a module from CVS. You only need the toplevel, admin and reaktivate directories from kdenonbeta. Before compiling, get the latest CVS version of WINE (a snapshot will likely not be new enough). Next, apply all patches from reaktivate/patches-for-wine/ against the WINE sources and build/install WINE. Finally, you can build and install reaktivate.

Disclaimer: reaktivate is not in any manner sponsored or endorsed by, affiliated with, or otherwise related to, Microsoft Corporation.

Thanks to Andreas "Dre" Pour and Navindra Umanee for assisting in drafting this release.

DATELINE JULY 9, 2001

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Konqueror Embraces ActiveX, Plays Shockwave Movies

July 9, 2001 (The INTERNET). Nikolas Zimmermann and Malte Starostik today announced the availability of reaktivate for Konqueror, KDE's web browser. Reaktivate enables Konqueror to embed ActiveX controls, such as the popular Shockwave movies, for which no native Linux/Unix solution exists. Reaktivate relies on the WINE libraries to load and run ActiveX controls.

With this addition, Konqueror now enables KDE users to take optimal advantage of sophisticated websites that make use of Microsoft Internet Explorer plugins, Netscape Communicator plugins for Linux and Java applets, as well as KDE plugins designed using KDE's KParts technology.

According to Malte, the reason he and Nikolas implemented reaktivate is rather simple: it broadens the spectrum of web sites accessible to Konqueror, and it was possible.

Successes and Limitations

Theoretically, Reaktivate can eventually be used to embed any ActiveX control into Konqueror. Currently, however, not all ActiveX controls are compatible with reaktivate. In particular, the Microsoft Windows Media Player cannot be installed using reaktivate (though it is not known if a player which is already installed will work with reaktivate). Thus it is likely there exist other ActiveX controls which will not yet work with reaktivate. Work is ongoing to increase compatability with other ActiveX controls, including the Apple QuickTime plugin.

So far, however, reaktivate has been successfully tested with the following ActiveX controls:

Note on Security

Install ActiveX controls only from sites that you trust. Microsoft's ActiveX technology has often been criticized for weak security. Those controls are dynamic libraries that are executed exactly like any other piece of code installed on the user's system. This means they have full access to the file system, the system registry etc. As a means to establish the users' trust in the controls a web site wishes to install, every ActiveX control is cryptographically signed and carries a certificate issued by an authority known to the web browser (like VeriSign). A control that has no signature or no certificate or if they are invalid will not be installed.

With reaktivate the situation is similar: the installed controls can call every WinAPI function provided by the WINE libraries and therefore have access to WINE's registry and all files visible to the WINE installation. The current implementation of reaktivate will ask the user for confirmation to install a new control, but it will not check the embedded certificate and signature. This is due to technical reasons as well as limited time. Therefore we strongly advise to install controls only from sites that you trust. To save your files from malicious controls, you might also consider using this feature only from a seperate user account that has no access to your main user's files. Reaktivate will not run from the root account.

Source code for reaktivate is freely available under a Free, Open Source license from the kdenonbeta module in KDE's CVS repository and its mirrors. See the KDE website for information about how to get a module from CVS. You only need the toplevel, admin and reaktivate directories from kdenonbeta. Before compiling, get the latest CVS version of WINE (a snapshot will likely not be new enough). Next, apply all patches from reaktivate/patches-for-wine/ against the WINE sources and build/install WINE. Finally, you can build and install reaktivate.

Disclaimer: reaktivate is not in any manner sponsored or endorsed by, affiliated with, or otherwise related to, Microsoft Corporation.

Thanks to Andreas "Dre" Pour and Navindra Umanee for assisting in drafting this release.

DATELINE JULY 9, 2001

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Konqueror Embraces ActiveX, Plays Shockwave Movies

July 9, 2001 (The INTERNET). Nikolas Zimmermann and Malte Starostik today announced the availability of reaktivate for Konqueror, KDE's web browser. Reaktivate enables Konqueror to embed ActiveX controls, such as the popular Shockwave movies, for which no native Linux/Unix solution exists. Reaktivate relies on the WINE libraries to load and run ActiveX controls.

With this addition, Konqueror now enables KDE users to take optimal advantage of sophisticated websites that make use of Microsoft Internet Explorer plugins, Netscape Communicator plugins for Linux and Java applets, as well as KDE plugins designed using KDE's KParts technology.

According to Malte, the reason he and Nikolas implemented reaktivate is rather simple: it broadens the spectrum of web sites accessible to Konqueror, and it was possible.

Successes and Limitations

Theoretically, Reaktivate can eventually be used to embed any ActiveX control into Konqueror. Currently, however, not all ActiveX controls are compatible with reaktivate. In particular, the Microsoft Windows Media Player cannot be installed using reaktivate (though it is not known if a player which is already installed will work with reaktivate). Thus it is likely there exist other ActiveX controls which will not yet work with reaktivate. Work is ongoing to increase compatability with other ActiveX controls, including the Apple QuickTime plugin.

So far, however, reaktivate has been successfully tested with the following ActiveX controls:

Note on Security

Install ActiveX controls only from sites that you trust. Microsoft's ActiveX technology has often been criticized for weak security. Those controls are dynamic libraries that are executed exactly like any other piece of code installed on the user's system. This means they have full access to the file system, the system registry etc. As a means to establish the users' trust in the controls a web site wishes to install, every ActiveX control is cryptographically signed and carries a certificate issued by an authority known to the web browser (like VeriSign). A control that has no signature or no certificate or if they are invalid will not be installed.

With reaktivate the situation is similar: the installed controls can call every WinAPI function provided by the WINE libraries and therefore have access to WINE's registry and all files visible to the WINE installation. The current implementation of reaktivate will ask the user for confirmation to install a new control, but it will not check the embedded certificate and signature. This is due to technical reasons as well as limited time. Therefore we strongly advise to install controls only from sites that you trust. To save your files from malicious controls, you might also consider using this feature only from a seperate user account that has no access to your main user's files. Reaktivate will not run from the root account.

Source code for reaktivate is freely available under a Free, Open Source license from the kdenonbeta module in KDE's CVS repository and its mirrors. See the KDE website for information about how to get a module from CVS. You only need the toplevel, admin and reaktivate directories from kdenonbeta. Before compiling, get the latest CVS version of WINE (a snapshot will likely not be new enough). Next, apply all patches from reaktivate/patches-for-wine/ against the WINE sources and build/install WINE. Finally, you can build and install reaktivate.

Disclaimer: reaktivate is not in any manner sponsored or endorsed by, affiliated with, or otherwise related to, Microsoft Corporation.

Thanks to Andreas "Dre" Pour and Navindra Umanee for assisting in drafting this release.

Maybe this works better. -P
--

Right, but it's not very easy to use, buried in the conf menu...
In kde 2.2, u'll have a quick and simple User Agent changer (i didn't see it, but i assume it's more or less like Opera's one).

Konqueror is the KDE web browser/file manager.

This release is sooo good, that Windows XP pales in comparison. Stable, only very occasional glitches.

I can't wait for the final, but READ the Changelog (of 3!!!! months). It is incredible:

BTW, this is the SHORT Changelog, for the complete thing read the link at the bottom!!!!!!

Incremental Changelog The following are the major improvements, enhancements and fixes since the KDE 2.1 release earlier this year: KDE has added a new plugin-based printing framework, which features: support for CUPS, lpr and rlpr, though support for other printing systems can be easily added; a Control Center module for managing printers (add/remove/enable/disable/configure), print servers (currently only CUPS), and print jobs (cancel/hold/move); a configurable filter mechanism (for setting number of pages per sheet, etc.); a print job viewer for the KDE panel's system tray; and support for configurable "pseudo-printers", such as fax machines, email, etc.; Konqueror, the KDE file manager and web browser, sports a number of new features: HTML and JavaScript handling has been improved and made faster; Ability to stop animated images; New file previews, including PDF, PostScript, and sound files; New "Send File" and "Send Link" options in the Filemenu; Added a number of new plugins: A web archiver for downloading and saving an entire web page, including images, in an archive for offline viewing; Babelfish translation of web pages; A directory filter for displaying only specified mimetypes (such as images); A quick User Agent changer to get Konqueror to work with websites that discriminate based on the browser you are using; An HTML validator using W3C to validate the XML/HTML of a webpage (useful for web developers); and A DOM tree-viewer for viewing the DOM structure of a web page (useful for web developers); New configuration for user-defined CSS stylesheets; Saving toolbar layout in the profile; A new "Most Often Visited" URL in the Go menu; and Many other enhancements, usability improvements and bug fixes. KDevelop, the KDE IDE, offers a number of new features: Enhanced user interface with an MDI structure, which supports multiple views of the same file; Added new templates for implementing a KDE/Qt style library and Control Center modules; Updated the kde-common/admin copy (admin.tar.gz); and Extended the user manual to reflect the new GUI layout and added a chapter for using Qt Designer with KDevelop projects; KMail, the KDE mail client, has a number of improvements: Added support for IMAP mail servers; Added support for SSL and TSL for POP3 mail servers; Added configuration of SASL and APOP authentication; Made mail-sending non-blocking; Improved performance for very large folders; Added message scoring; Improved the filter dialog and implemented automatic filter creation; Implemented quoting only selected parts of an email on a reply; Implemented forwarding emails as attachments; and Added support for multiple PGP (encryption) identities; New Control Center modules: Listing USB information (attached devices); Configuring window manager decoration; Configuring application startup notification; Configuring user-defined CSS stylesheets; Configuring automatic audio-CD ripping (MP3, Ogg Vorbis); and Configuring key bindings; Added Kandy, a synchronization tool for mobile phones and the KDE address book, and improved KPilot address book synchronization; KOrganizer, the KDE personal organizer, has a number of improvements: Added a "What's Next" view; Added a journal feature; Switched to using the industry-standard iCalendar as the default file format; Added remote calendar support; and Added ability to send events using KMail, the KDE mail client; Noatun, the KDE multimedia player, sports a number of new features: Improved the plugin architecture and added a number of new plugins: An Alarm plugin for playing music at a specified time; A Blurscope plugin which creates an SDL-based blurred monoscope; A Luckytag plugin for guessing titles based on filenames; A Noatun Madness plugin, which moves the Noatun window in sync with the music being played; A Synaescope plugin, based on Synaesthesia, which provides an impressive SDL-based visualization; and A Tyler plugin, which is similar to XMMS's Infinity; Added support for pre-amplification; and Added support for hardware mixers; Added a Personalization wizard (KPersonalizer) to configure the desktop settings easily; Added KDict, a powerful graphical dictionary client; Added KDE-wide scanning support with the application Kooka; Replaced the default editor KWrite with the more advanced editor Kate, which provides split views and basic project management; The window manager now supports Xinerama (multi-headed displays); Improved the file dialog, including mimetype-based file previews; Improved the configurability of the KDE panel; Added IPv6 and socks support to the core libraries; Improved application startup: applications are now placed on the desktop from which they were launched; and startup notification can be configured with a new Control Center module, with options including a busy cursor next to the application's icon; Improved icons and added new 64x64 icons; New window manager decoration styles (quartz, IceWM themes, MWM, Web); Improved the help system, which is now XML-based; Added support for the Meta and AltGr keys for shortcuts; and Made many other usability improvements.

checkout http://dot.kde.org/992627943/

Here is what is says:

A few days ago, Infusion (screenshots) was announced on apps.kde.com. Along with Citadel/UX serving as backend, Infusion aspires to compete with the likes of Aethera, Magellan, Evolution, and yes, Microsoft Outlook+Exchange. Is Infusion there yet? Nope. But from what I've seen, I've certainly been impressed by Citadel/UX, and once I managed to get Infusion compiled, I was able to enjoy some neat functionality. Coupled with the enthusiam of author Brian Ledbetter, it would seem that Infusion is going places. Read on for further details of my Infusion experience and for an interesting interview with the author. Update: 06/16 03:30 AM by N: Art wrote in with some interesting comments on the upcoming version(s) of Citadel.

According to this mail, they have trademark on "Adobe Illustrator". I would bet that Illustrator is too general word to be trademarked. For example Microsoft hasn't been able to trademark "Windows".

Is KDE free software?

Yes, KDE is free software according to the GNU General Public License. All KDE libraries are available under the LGPL making commercial software development for the KDE desktop possible, but all KDE applications are licensed under the GPL.

KDE uses the Qt C++ crossplatform toolkit, which is also released (since version 2.2) under the GPL.

It is absolutely legal to make KDE and Qt available on CD-ROM free of charge. No runtime fees of any kind are incurred.

The Qt Free Edition (version 2.2 and later) is released under the Open Source license QPL, and GPL. The Qt Free Edition may be freely copied and distributed, put on ftp-sites and CD-ROMs etc. Qt Free Edition is provided with no warranty and no support.

Should Trolltech ever discontinue the Qt Free Edition for any reason including, but not limited to, a buyout of Trolltech, a merger or bankruptcy, the latest version of the Qt Free Edition will be released under the BSD license.

Furthermore, should Trolltech cease continued development of Qt, as assessed by a majority of the KDE Free Qt Foundation, and not release a new version at least every 12 months, the Foundation has the right to release the Qt Free Edition under the BSD License.

The level of functionality provided by the bindings vary, from those that only allow you to access a small subset of KDE to bindings that almost rival C++ native code in scope. [Emphasis mine -AJS]

It supports Java, Perl, Python, Php, c, and c++. Personally I think the python support looks especially interesting.

It supports Java, Perl, Python, Php, c, and c++. Personally I think the python support looks especially interesting.

In my experience, the anti-KDE FUD is rarely from the developers, but from a distressingly very vocal minority. I don't doubt that there may have been a stong anti-KDE feeling in the past, but I am hard pressed to try to find it these days. And KDE isn't immune to it either... their loudmouth trolls are just as bad as GNOME's.

As for the comments, if you read the whole thread, people have been spoofing as Miguel, Havoc, and others in the comments to the point where they are getting emails asking, "why would you say that?" I think that some people are against allowing negative opinions, but I would hardly classify that as an official GNOME position or even having consensus. The GNOME developers are pretty reasonable people and will listen (or at least certainly not censor) criticism of their work that is presented in a coherent and intelligent manner. The consensus seems to be to disable comments until someone volunteers to write a nice registration system.

The email to which you refer (From Alan Cox):

That isnt the problem. In fact if gnotices fell down irrepairably it would be a major plus point for the gnome project. Gnotices consists of nothing but libel, defamation and actionable hate speech.

XFree86 4.0.3 does not include Mach64 render code, so there is no anti-aliasing or anything.

While XFree86 4.0.3 does not have RENDER for Mach64, CVS does. I am running right now on this laptop. Used the antialias howto on dot.kde.org -- everything under 8 and above 12 is antialiased, it is sweet. And since I'm on an LCD subpixel antialiasing makes small text MUCH clearer than standard greylevel antialias.

I would love to know how to turn on antialiasing for any italics regardless of size; I tried a few variations of the configuration outlined on dot.kde.org but nothing seems to work. If anyone has any success here, please let me know.

Heh... so is tv://east.hbo.com (RFC 2838), and audiocd:// (in KDE, this gives you a virtual directory tree full of wav, MP3 and OGG files that can be copied anywhere). My original comment regarding the proliferation of localized URLs is here. I can't find the later essay that details several concepts like saving a file to printer://page.png to print a page, or reading cam://image.png or cam://video.mpeg to grab an image or stream from a webcam (and be able to do things like link it to /home/httpd/html/current.png to put it on the web with no code whatsoever). I've been a big proponent for awhile of using URLs and mimetypes at both the user and system level. It's a nice example of a simple, easy to use model for newbies that is also sufficient for most power users if implemented correctly.

--
Evan

Why does it matter that KHTML doesn't render CSS1 correctly? Because on the
Konqueror website it claims to render CSS1 perfectly apart from 3 attributes. It's not being unfair or nasty to point out that this claim is currently wrong. I'm currently submitting all the links he noticed to the
KDE bugs database

Konqueror and KHTML are a perfect advertisment for the open source development model. As you say, it works almost perfectly in 'the real world'... which is why we have to look at these marginal cases of 'features no-one uses' to find problems :). Imagine what the KDE people could have done with 10% of the money that's been thrown at Mozilla these last three years... (mind you, more money can sometimes be a hindrance - look at the Nautilus fiasco).