Slashdot Mirror

I always considered it douchey of kde to name it "systemsettings" anyway. Should have been "kde-system-settings" or something. It sure as hell doesn't handle non-kde stuff properly.

You should mention that here:
https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=199326

[2]

No, really, this is ridiculous

No, really, it's worse than ridiculous. KDE shouldn't be calling their's "System Setting" either:
https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=199326

5 years? That is nothing compared to this KMail bug opened in 2004 : https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=77862

I already have a perfectly fine Pdf viewer, called Okular.

From Okular's web site: "For Windows have a look at the KDE on Windows Initiative webpage for information on how to install KDE on Windows." The download page on KDE Windows Initiative links to detailed installation instructions. I'm not in a position to try it myself because the PC on which I'm typing this has integrated graphics, which isn't enough to run KDE according to a forum post linked from a Google search for kde system requirements.

I already have a perfectly fine Pdf viewer, called Okular.

From Okular's web site: "For Windows have a look at the KDE on Windows Initiative webpage for information on how to install KDE on Windows." The download page on KDE Windows Initiative links to detailed installation instructions. I'm not in a position to try it myself because the PC on which I'm typing this has integrated graphics, which isn't enough to run KDE according to a forum post linked from a Google search for kde system requirements.

I already have a perfectly fine Pdf viewer, called Okular.

From Okular's web site: "For Windows have a look at the KDE on Windows Initiative webpage for information on how to install KDE on Windows." The download page on KDE Windows Initiative links to detailed installation instructions. I'm not in a position to try it myself because the PC on which I'm typing this has integrated graphics, which isn't enough to run KDE according to a forum post linked from a Google search for kde system requirements.

Each application on facebook get's a private API. In FOSS, this key is present in the source code. That is not permissible according to facebook terms of service. In effect, they are blocking FOSS software. An alternative is to use a different key for each user.

More info: https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=276609

Personally, I find KDE to be a much more polished, integrated, and comprehensive suite than GNOME.

I agree--and it's why every time I've tried KDE I've abandoned it and gone back to XFCE or Gnome after a few days.

"Ugh, kmail sucks, I'm gonna use Thunderbird... KOffice still blows, gotta set it to open files with (Open/Libre)Office instead. Konqueror? Fuck no, Firefox or Chromium or Opera, anything but that piece of crap. Amarok is so damn slow and bloated, need to find another player, not many QT options, guess I'll use a GTK solution..."

And so on, until I'm barely using any QT apps and almost no apps at all that integrate well with KDE, and all the while KDE seems to be mocking me for not using its integrated apps, most of which I hate.

If you like its default apps, fine. If not, all that work to make a tightly integrated DE and apps is just a bunch of useless bloat and features that only half-work if you don't do things exactly the way the devs want you to. I don't even like any of its competitors that much, and I really want to like KDE because it looks nice and has a few nice features that the others don't, but it's hard to justify using it if you don't run a single k* app.

My KDE experience usually involves a good number of GTK applications, too. For example, my core browser is Google Chrome or Firefox (both GTK), I use Thunderbird for e-mail, and I definitely use exclusively LibreOffice. KDE is not an all-or-none decision ... you can (and should) pick applications based on how they work, not whether or not they were developed by the same working group.

Now, that said, much of KDE is under active development, and this is the real deal. It's worth retrying KDE applications every now and then to see how they are doing. For example:

• rekonq, a Konqueror-like browser built on Webkit, is actually pretty damned usable. Not compatible enough to be an only browser, but adequate for most things. If browsers weren't so central, I'd probably use it a lot more.
• kmail has made significant integration and feature-set advances in the last three KDE versions. The whole KDE PIM suite has, actually. That team deserves a pat on the back; if I actually used a PIM application (instead of GMail's web interface) I would definitely use it.
• kopete, KDE's IM client, is great. It has definitely surpassed Pidgin for a while in my book.
• The koffice ... er, Calligra Suite team has been doing a tremendous job. It's one of the fastest-advancing open-source product that I know of, and each release brings it more into mainstream. I eagerly await the day they gain the full LibreOffice feature set, as I feel their design choices, UI, and approach are all superior. They just aren't there yet, last I checked.

All of these apps are more or less interchangeable though. You can use them just fine on GNOME. The core KDE experience is (in my opinion) kwin, the KDE Plasma Desktop (and associated Plasma widgets), the Dolphin File Browser, Nepomuk, and the KDE System Settings Suite. These are the core KDE features that one would choose to use. One can use primarily GNOME applications on top of these technologies and still be subscribed to the KDE user experience.

Personally, I find KDE to be a much more polished, integrated, and comprehensive suite than GNOME.

I agree--and it's why every time I've tried KDE I've abandoned it and gone back to XFCE or Gnome after a few days.

"Ugh, kmail sucks, I'm gonna use Thunderbird... KOffice still blows, gotta set it to open files with (Open/Libre)Office instead. Konqueror? Fuck no, Firefox or Chromium or Opera, anything but that piece of crap. Amarok is so damn slow and bloated, need to find another player, not many QT options, guess I'll use a GTK solution..."

And so on, until I'm barely using any QT apps and almost no apps at all that integrate well with KDE, and all the while KDE seems to be mocking me for not using its integrated apps, most of which I hate.

If you like its default apps, fine. If not, all that work to make a tightly integrated DE and apps is just a bunch of useless bloat and features that only half-work if you don't do things exactly the way the devs want you to. I don't even like any of its competitors that much, and I really want to like KDE because it looks nice and has a few nice features that the others don't, but it's hard to justify using it if you don't run a single k* app.

My KDE experience usually involves a good number of GTK applications, too. For example, my core browser is Google Chrome or Firefox (both GTK), I use Thunderbird for e-mail, and I definitely use exclusively LibreOffice. KDE is not an all-or-none decision ... you can (and should) pick applications based on how they work, not whether or not they were developed by the same working group.

Now, that said, much of KDE is under active development, and this is the real deal. It's worth retrying KDE applications every now and then to see how they are doing. For example:

• rekonq, a Konqueror-like browser built on Webkit, is actually pretty damned usable. Not compatible enough to be an only browser, but adequate for most things. If browsers weren't so central, I'd probably use it a lot more.
• kmail has made significant integration and feature-set advances in the last three KDE versions. The whole KDE PIM suite has, actually. That team deserves a pat on the back; if I actually used a PIM application (instead of GMail's web interface) I would definitely use it.
• kopete, KDE's IM client, is great. It has definitely surpassed Pidgin for a while in my book.
• The koffice ... er, Calligra Suite team has been doing a tremendous job. It's one of the fastest-advancing open-source product that I know of, and each release brings it more into mainstream. I eagerly await the day they gain the full LibreOffice feature set, as I feel their design choices, UI, and approach are all superior. They just aren't there yet, last I checked.

All of these apps are more or less interchangeable though. You can use them just fine on GNOME. The core KDE experience is (in my opinion) kwin, the KDE Plasma Desktop (and associated Plasma widgets), the Dolphin File Browser, Nepomuk, and the KDE System Settings Suite. These are the core KDE features that one would choose to use. One can use primarily GNOME applications on top of these technologies and still be subscribed to the KDE user experience.

Personally, I find KDE to be a much more polished, integrated, and comprehensive suite than GNOME.

I agree--and it's why every time I've tried KDE I've abandoned it and gone back to XFCE or Gnome after a few days.

"Ugh, kmail sucks, I'm gonna use Thunderbird... KOffice still blows, gotta set it to open files with (Open/Libre)Office instead. Konqueror? Fuck no, Firefox or Chromium or Opera, anything but that piece of crap. Amarok is so damn slow and bloated, need to find another player, not many QT options, guess I'll use a GTK solution..."

And so on, until I'm barely using any QT apps and almost no apps at all that integrate well with KDE, and all the while KDE seems to be mocking me for not using its integrated apps, most of which I hate.

If you like its default apps, fine. If not, all that work to make a tightly integrated DE and apps is just a bunch of useless bloat and features that only half-work if you don't do things exactly the way the devs want you to. I don't even like any of its competitors that much, and I really want to like KDE because it looks nice and has a few nice features that the others don't, but it's hard to justify using it if you don't run a single k* app.

My KDE experience usually involves a good number of GTK applications, too. For example, my core browser is Google Chrome or Firefox (both GTK), I use Thunderbird for e-mail, and I definitely use exclusively LibreOffice. KDE is not an all-or-none decision ... you can (and should) pick applications based on how they work, not whether or not they were developed by the same working group.

Now, that said, much of KDE is under active development, and this is the real deal. It's worth retrying KDE applications every now and then to see how they are doing. For example:

• rekonq, a Konqueror-like browser built on Webkit, is actually pretty damned usable. Not compatible enough to be an only browser, but adequate for most things. If browsers weren't so central, I'd probably use it a lot more.
• kmail has made significant integration and feature-set advances in the last three KDE versions. The whole KDE PIM suite has, actually. That team deserves a pat on the back; if I actually used a PIM application (instead of GMail's web interface) I would definitely use it.
• kopete, KDE's IM client, is great. It has definitely surpassed Pidgin for a while in my book.
• The koffice ... er, Calligra Suite team has been doing a tremendous job. It's one of the fastest-advancing open-source product that I know of, and each release brings it more into mainstream. I eagerly await the day they gain the full LibreOffice feature set, as I feel their design choices, UI, and approach are all superior. They just aren't there yet, last I checked.

All of these apps are more or less interchangeable though. You can use them just fine on GNOME. The core KDE experience is (in my opinion) kwin, the KDE Plasma Desktop (and associated Plasma widgets), the Dolphin File Browser, Nepomuk, and the KDE System Settings Suite. These are the core KDE features that one would choose to use. One can use primarily GNOME applications on top of these technologies and still be subscribed to the KDE user experience.

Personally, I find KDE to be a much more polished, integrated, and comprehensive suite than GNOME.

I agree--and it's why every time I've tried KDE I've abandoned it and gone back to XFCE or Gnome after a few days.

"Ugh, kmail sucks, I'm gonna use Thunderbird... KOffice still blows, gotta set it to open files with (Open/Libre)Office instead. Konqueror? Fuck no, Firefox or Chromium or Opera, anything but that piece of crap. Amarok is so damn slow and bloated, need to find another player, not many QT options, guess I'll use a GTK solution..."

And so on, until I'm barely using any QT apps and almost no apps at all that integrate well with KDE, and all the while KDE seems to be mocking me for not using its integrated apps, most of which I hate.

If you like its default apps, fine. If not, all that work to make a tightly integrated DE and apps is just a bunch of useless bloat and features that only half-work if you don't do things exactly the way the devs want you to. I don't even like any of its competitors that much, and I really want to like KDE because it looks nice and has a few nice features that the others don't, but it's hard to justify using it if you don't run a single k* app.

My KDE experience usually involves a good number of GTK applications, too. For example, my core browser is Google Chrome or Firefox (both GTK), I use Thunderbird for e-mail, and I definitely use exclusively LibreOffice. KDE is not an all-or-none decision ... you can (and should) pick applications based on how they work, not whether or not they were developed by the same working group.

Now, that said, much of KDE is under active development, and this is the real deal. It's worth retrying KDE applications every now and then to see how they are doing. For example:

• rekonq, a Konqueror-like browser built on Webkit, is actually pretty damned usable. Not compatible enough to be an only browser, but adequate for most things. If browsers weren't so central, I'd probably use it a lot more.
• kmail has made significant integration and feature-set advances in the last three KDE versions. The whole KDE PIM suite has, actually. That team deserves a pat on the back; if I actually used a PIM application (instead of GMail's web interface) I would definitely use it.
• kopete, KDE's IM client, is great. It has definitely surpassed Pidgin for a while in my book.
• The koffice ... er, Calligra Suite team has been doing a tremendous job. It's one of the fastest-advancing open-source product that I know of, and each release brings it more into mainstream. I eagerly await the day they gain the full LibreOffice feature set, as I feel their design choices, UI, and approach are all superior. They just aren't there yet, last I checked.

All of these apps are more or less interchangeable though. You can use them just fine on GNOME. The core KDE experience is (in my opinion) kwin, the KDE Plasma Desktop (and associated Plasma widgets), the Dolphin File Browser, Nepomuk, and the KDE System Settings Suite. These are the core KDE features that one would choose to use. One can use primarily GNOME applications on top of these technologies and still be subscribed to the KDE user experience.

Moving away to design tablet-y interfaces while those apps are still an eyesore is beyond me.

Not the same people work on all apps and interfaces.
The mobile work is mostly done by people paid by Nokia, open-slx, and basysKom.

I don't care about Marble, and I don't think improvements to it should be "release notes".

Pre-release notes are not as detailed as the final notes.
KDE releases three software bundles every 6 months: Plasma Workspaces, Applications, and Frameworks.
In the final release, each bundle gets its own release announcement. Marble in one of the most active KDE Applications and when the devs work hard, they deserve to be mentioned in the (pre-)release notes, be it Marble, Kate, or even some game.

Kate also has significant improvements this update, but no one but Kate developers mention them at all.

Nobody is hindering any Kate dev to extend the release notes draft on KDE's Etherpad instance. It's open to edit for anyone. I look at the draft for the final release announcements at this moment. Heck, even the comments sidebar say that another application than Marble should get spotlight in the upcoming announcement. So far nobody stepped forward with an improved application that was not featured in the KDE Apps 4.6 announcement (even Kate was featured last time http://www.kde.org/announcements/4.6/applications.php )
Looking at http://kate-editor.org/ I see no posts mentioning new features for 4.7. There is a quite extensive one for 4.6 but not for 4.7. There are some articles about current GSoC progress but those won't show up before 4.8.

Who is writing the release notes?

The ones who volunteer to do it, like with any other community project.
Feel free to extend release notes drafts yourself.

So yeah, less effort on Nepomuk/Strigi

KDE is a community project mostly made up of volunteers. You cannot force a volunteer to work on something he doesn't want to. Though you can hire one of the firms that do business around KDE to improve the things you prefer.

that everyone but the main devs seem to hate, at least I haven't read or heard anything positive not coming from a KDE dev

I'm not a KDE developer and I like Nepomuk.
GNOME/Tracker developers also like Nepomuk which is the reason they've adopted it long ago.

more visible, non-refactoring work so people can stop saying KDE sucks every time.

Haters will hate and are the vocal group. I happen to like KDE.

You mean like the one where they write to the root directory, even if you're not root?

See https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=249217.

in my experience, it pulled in mySQL as a dependency. this link seems to suggest that they took out the built-in SQLite (which would have been fine by me): http://amarok.kde.org/blog/archives/812-MySQL-in-Amarok-2-The-Reality.html

i can see how amarok's power could be useful if you have audio on network shares or something. i don't and amarok was slow, buggy and ugly to me. i chalked this up to mySQL, maybe i was wrong.

OR the community will, under the Foundation Trolltech assigned rights to so long ago, to address concerns of KDE developers, promote the continued development of KDE, and clear out doubts about Qt's future free status (vs. Gnome's):

The KDE project and Troll Tech AS, the creators of Qt, are pleased to announce the founding of the 'KDE Free Qt Foundation'. The purpose of this foundation is to guarantee the availability of Qt for free software development now and in the future. The foundation will control the rights to the Qt Free Edition and ensure that current and future releases of Qt will be available for free software development at all times.

All changes to the Qt Free Edition license will have to be approved by the KDE Free Qt Foundation which will consist of two members of Troll Tech AS as well as two members of the KDE project. One of the representatives of the KDE project will have a double vote to be used in case of a tie.

Should Troll Tech ever discontinue the Qt Free Edition for any reason including, but not limited to, a buy-out of Troll Tech, a merger or bankruptcy, the latest version of the Qt Free Edition will be released under the BSD license. Furthermore, should Troll Tech 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.

Qt is actually LGPL now. Furthermore, if Nokia decides to stop developing Qt, the KDE Free Qt Foundation can vote to release Qt under a BSD license.

> "foo n-1 was the best thing ever, new is crap, Windows 7 is shiny." Okay then. Use Windows 7.

To be fair, KDE 3.5.10 _is_ extremely fast. From the end user's perspective KDE 4 seemed to focus on eye candy first and everything else second. Using it on non-current hardware was and is horrible even though performance has increased significantly.

Plus, you can really not blame anyone for being annoyed at KDE 4.0 to KDE 4.3 (ish). No matter what it was announced at, a .0 implies at least "well-working beta" by convention.

Anyway, starting with KDE 4.4 or KDE 4.5, most issues have been resolved and KDE 4.6 has, imo, reached feature parity with KDE 3.5.10. Or will do, as soon as https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=269939 is solved ;)

I'll stop babbling now and I do agree with everything you said, but it's undeniably true that KDE 3.5.10 is faster than KDE 4.x. Which is a pity as I need to run LXDE and Fluxbox on my X31.

I've been using KDE4 since about KDE 4.2.2, and have just upgraded to KDE 4.6.3. For the most part I really like it; it's got a long list of features and a large feature-rich set of applications, and I enjoy the Qt backend, too. There are three major exceptions to the things I like, and one minor exception.

Tthe major exceptions:
1) Strigi
2) Nepomuk
3) Akonadi

Strigi and Nepomuk are what turn most people off to KDE4, because these both cause performance problems. Strigi is a Desktop file indexer; Nepomuk deals with metatagging of files for tagging or rating. Strigi immediately wants to index files on the system as soon as you first log in, and that heavy immediate I/O load makes the first impressions of KDE4 to be poor. Nepomuk is a more consistent performance problem -- last I used it, even selecting a hundred files in Krusader took multiple seconds (and on my old Desktop, more like half a minute to a full minute). The system pretty much has no choice but to perform badly in file operations because inotify has to watch the entire system for file moves. None of these performance problems are discussed in the documentation. >:-| Discussing it with developers is extremely frustrating; it starts with "get used to it, Nepomuk and Strigi are not going away", and ending with dropping the job of documenting the performance problems onto some user's lap.

Thankfully, both Strigi file indexing and Nepomuk metatagging can be disabled within the "Desktop Search" settings. That fixes the performance problems most of the time. Last I checked, disabling these does not clear out the database, though -- on my Desktop system the Virtuoso SQL database grew to be > 2 GB as stored on the filesystem, and I had to clear that out manually. (And as I mentioned, performance was abysmal.)

Akonadi is the storage for personal information (names, email addresses, phone numbers, etc) which uses SQL for storage: and by default it wants to use MySQL server for this. Using a 30 MB MySQL server instance required just in order to hold a few contacts is overkill. There are now several Akonadi SQL back-ends such as Sqlite3, however the configuration defaults to using MySQL and changing the back-end is done on an individual basis within each user's home directory (in ~/.config/akonadai/akonadaiconnectionrc) -- and as far as I know there is no way to change the system-wide default. >:-| That is not pleasing.

See: http://api.kde.org/kdesupport-api/kdesupport-apidocs/akonadi/html/classAkonadi_1_1DataStore.html

So the combination ends up by default being a large SQL database file index in Virtuoso for Strigi and Nepomuk, and a separate SQL database in MySQL for Akonadi.

The last minor issue I have with KDE4 have to do with plasmoid configurability, such as the clock, network monitoring, temperature monitoring, etc. There are always details I would like to see which I cannot get to be shown, such as being able to manually choose rendering font and font size, colors, and whether or not to show a number value as well as a graph. The plasmoid configuration options change between KDE4 versions, sometimes adding features and sometimes removing them. For instance, in the previous version of KDE4 the Digital Clock plasmoid was one of the few plasmoids that allowed changing not only the font used to display the clock, but also the font size... however now in KDE 4.6.3, the font size options have been removed for that plasmoid. ? Weird

I consider KDE4 a great achievement, and I enjoy using it. At the same time, I still don't consider KDE 4.6.3 to be on-par with where KDE 3.5 left off -- KDE 3.5 was a well-oiled machine, and KDE4 is getting close but isn't quite at that same level yet.

While I love new features, the KDE devs should spend more time on polish. The photo featured in TFA makes a good case. The buttons (at the windows bottom) clearly lack the necessary paddings.

You might like this KDE feature request, it asks for exactly this feature in KDE:
https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=169043

Please comment there to get the bug reopened. Thanks!

OK say you are working on a document/email using Unity on Linux, and Unity crashes. What happens to your unsaved work? If you say "just save often", sometimes the GUI devs make it annoying to do so: https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=270800 https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=96901

Years ago I had KDE lock up on me every now and then, sometimes I could ssh in, but I sure couldn't figure out how to save the work done in the GUI. There might have been a way to do it, but how many people in the world knew of it? AFAIK it's the same problem whether it's KDE, GNOME or Unity. There is no easy way to recover your work.

So tell me what's the big fucking difference? Either way you've lost work. Joe Sixpack doesn't care if the network stack is still up and responds to pings/ssh - his work is gone.

My XP SP3 machine has only crashed/hung because of hardware issues - flaky NIC, failing video card.

My Linux machine hasn't crashed much either (and only due to hardware too). But I don't run a GUI on it.

OK say you are working on a document/email using Unity on Linux, and Unity crashes. What happens to your unsaved work? If you say "just save often", sometimes the GUI devs make it annoying to do so: https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=270800 https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=96901

Years ago I had KDE lock up on me every now and then, sometimes I could ssh in, but I sure couldn't figure out how to save the work done in the GUI. There might have been a way to do it, but how many people in the world knew of it? AFAIK it's the same problem whether it's KDE, GNOME or Unity. There is no easy way to recover your work.

So tell me what's the big fucking difference? Either way you've lost work. Joe Sixpack doesn't care if the network stack is still up and responds to pings/ssh - his work is gone.

My XP SP3 machine has only crashed/hung because of hardware issues - flaky NIC, failing video card.

My Linux machine hasn't crashed much either (and only due to hardware too). But I don't run a GUI on it.

I just filed a bug on it:
https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=273674

Well that just reaffirms my concerns then. Ubuntu's UI is in some areas far less configurable than Windows 7.

I suppose there's a reason the Ubuntu web site barely mentions the word "Linux". The traditional benefit of everything being configurable in Linux does not translate to Ubuntu's philosophy, even if there's very little reason why it should not. Maybe Canonical just doesn't have the manpower/skill?

If you want configurability, you will not find it in Ubuntu, old or new. Neither GNOME nor Unity are highly-configurable user experiences. Granted, GNOME is more configurable than Unity...

No, for the Linux desktop, KDE wins the gold for configurability and integration. If you like the rest of what Ubuntu has to offer (bleeding-edge packages, Debian-based repository, etc.), use Kubuntu, an Ubuntu distribution that defaults to the kubuntu-desktop package instead of the ubuntu-desktop one. If you want a heavyweight desktop environment, the only reason to use GNOME or Unity over KDE is a simplified streamlined experience.

The list of changes look pretty minimal. Not really interesting unless you use Kopete. Much as I enjoy KDE 4, Unity looks interesting. Give it another couple of months for KDE to release their next version, and for Unity to shake out some of the kinks, and it could be worth upgrading to Natty.

Phillip.

It's happened before, but very rarely. Notably it happened for KDE 4.1.

Btw, while Konqueror is feature-rich, I think it is too feature-rich to be light-weight.

If you want light-weight and fast browser for KDE, try Rekonq, also developed by good folks and KDE using web-kit.

A win-win scenario :)

Nokia Qt LGPL exception version 1.0: http://www.kde.org/community/whatiskde/images/nokia-agreement-9.jpg

Gnome community (..) a great lack of regard for others over their own projects/groups/goals.

I see the KDE group as entirely different. They work as a team, have the same common goals (in general) and let good ideas thrive even if it violates somebodies pet project or personal goal.

I think GNOME's problem is a result of its heritage. GNOME started as a GNU project (officially it still is but in reality it's not) with a narrow goal: Just be a truly free alternative to KDE1. If one wanted to create something overlapping with GNOME feature, he/she was advised to set up another GNU project (not a sub-project in GNOME).

This means that GNOME does not have a real infrastructure for what KDE calls Extragear: Different applications than in the main Software Compilation -- some applications may overlap in features but if one developer has ideas that work completely against the other devs of one application, he can just set up a new Playground project and if that matures move it to Extragear. Nobody's harmed and while they're at it, they share the same plugin interfaces or frameworks (get this: There are three different KDE accounting applications: KMyMoney, Skrooge, and Kraft. And while they don't share the same goal for workflow etc, they collaborate on back-ends like file format filters to import projects from proprietary accounting programs or agree on icon file names.)

True, there are applications like Banshee which is practically to Rhythmbox what Amarok is for Juk. But that's the exception in GNOME land while Extragear is the norm in KDE. Just browse through https://projects.kde.org/ to see what I mean.

I think the GNOME mindset is still not sure whether GNOME wants to be an independent project that should set up an Extragear infrastructure or be just a narrow-focused GNU project.

Remember, you can't spell One True Window Environment without twm!

The obsession with prefixes was really a dot-com era thing. I'm pretty konfident they've gotten past that now. Really, they've totally kleaned up their act and accepted standard spelling konventions for their application names. Don't believe me? Konsider the evidence for yourself!

http://windows.kde.org/

http://cygnome.sourceforge.net/

because KDE4's new graphical UI (plasma is it?) is CPU intensive and does not run smoothly on old hardware - which is where I usually install linux on.

oh, that and the fact that you cant run a vncserver on kde 4, because once again the graphical UI, looks like crap: http://forum.kde.org/brainstorm.php#idea90400_page1

Here is an example of your two-faced hypocrisy: According to you share means to make a copy of something and give the copy away rather than to let someone else use your copy. Then you complain that the other words I listed have two meanings. To you, share has two meanings as well. So stop whining, you little bitch.

So, you don't believe the copyright holder is entitled to anything. So you have no problem if people violate the GPL right? After all, if the copyright holder isn't entitled to anything, then FLOSS supporters are not entitled to anything either.

Gnome has two important faces. From the user's perspective, it is an integrated desktop environment and application suite.
From the announcement of KDEAn integrated Desktop Environment for the Unix Operating SystemYou were saying, asshole?

Actually, it is you and RMS who are claiming to know the truth, specifically the superiority of FLOSS.

Oh, please, do you have to keep lying? Your mind was made up and will never change because you are too busy drinking the koolaid of RMS. Apparently the only thing that constitutes a good case to you is "It is better to use a crappy tool that I consider free rather than a good tool that will do the job better and easier but I don't consider free." RMS' entire philosophy is based on his own selfishness. He wants something under his terms and only his terms and if he can't have it that way, it is evil and must be denigrated and destroyed. He goes around preaching his gospel to the likes of you, who are too stupid to see what it really is. Then you try to argue how much better FLOSS is and when confronted with the truth, try to change the discussion. You make an analogy and when it shown to be false, you say "That is not what I said". You say something, and when proven wrong you say "That is not what I meant." You point to the handful of moderately successful FLOSS projects, which are invariably backed by corporate interests, as proof that all FLOSS is great and wonderful. And, when it is pointed out that the rest of the FLOSS projects are a vast smoking ruin that no average user would want to actually use, you act as though that doesn't matter. Face it, skippy, you are just a brainwashed fool for whom there would never be enough evidence. For you FLOSS is a religion and you have blind faith in it.

Accessibility is a top priority for GNOME, KDE, Mozilla, OpenOffice and LibreOffice and many other major projects. Smaller projects often lack the resources to properly implement full accessibility. But then, so does the vast majority of smaller proprietary software.

This is probably a stupid question, but have you tried KTTS?

I actually made the feature request to KDE years ago: http://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=121349

And more recently to GNOME too:
http://www.mail-archive.com/usability@gnome.org/msg04993.html

Since nobody in KDE/GNOME was interested in implementing it, I wrote LinkKey (for Windows since I prefer Windows for desktop stuff to KDE/GNOME. FWIW, my home server is running a Linux distro, so I am far from anti-Linux or OSS).

I might revisit Desktop Linux if Windows gets worse. But KDE and GNOME are currently worse and GNOME sure looks like it won't be good for me any time soon.

[1] http://sourceforge.net/projects/linkkey/
I have no idea who did the recommendation (wasn't me!). I think only a few people in the world will find it useful, but I figured I might as well put it on sourceforge.

That is great, thanks! I filed this feature request on KDE:
https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=267781

If you're a Windows user - get Picasa.

If you're a Mac user - iPhoto works great.

If you're a Linux/BSD user - teach her about tar.

Don't you think Digikam (which can upload to Facebook, and download entire albums from Facebook) would be a more appropriate suggestion for Linux/BSD users?

If have one of these problems also.

I'm not sure if this is your distro's bug, but one of mine involves Ubuntu's network-manager over WPAand I can barely remain connected since maverick; prior to that, there were serious problems in just handshaking.

At the time you posted, I was halfway through test-driving the recent KDE 4.6 after dumping Fedora back in 2009 or so. I still had to use my WPA-free network. Back in 2005 the problem was that distros didn't support your wireless card; laptops were fairly new at luring devs to support 'em out of the box. It seems wifi support on Linux is in a perpetual beta, akin to sounds issues that still sometimes resurface after 15 years of being an issue. Intel is working to release microcode to resolve some of the AGN problems.

all slashdot icons got updated with the new design, why the hell you still use that old kde logo? those are the logo you should use http://www.kde.org/stuff/clipart.php

The key word is "abandon". Can we legally compel Nokia to give up Qt just because it's not giving *sufficient* care?

I was looking around the net, and I found this interesting tidbit:

http://www.kde.org/community/whatiskde/kdefreeqtfoundation.php

The Foundation has a license agreement with Nokia. This agreement ensures that the Qt will continue to be available under both the LGPL 2.1 and the GPL 3. Should Nokia discontinue the development of the Qt Free Edition under these licenses, then the Foundation has the right to release Qt under a BSD-style license or under other open source licenses. The agreement stays valid in case of a buy-out, a merger or bankruptcy.

In case MS buys Nokia, or the company goes bankrupt, then there is a choice, but just mere neglect might not cut the cheese.

Also, what does "discontinue development" imply? If Nokia keeps toting out at least one update per year, would that count?

I am not an expert at legalese, but reading that paragraph tell me that there does exist some sort of "fork now!" option. Whether that will be good enough is another question.

Then KDE will be screwed.

Nope.

Hahahhahahaha you seriously believe it don't you... just head on over to bugs.kde.org and you'll see there's 23000 open bugs. A quick search on the Firefox bug tracker shows a little over 20000 open bugs, I don't know of any similar overview for Gnome but no doubt tens of thousands there too. Of course not all of these are valid bugs but there's plenty things that don't work on Linux, extremely rarely the kernel but everything from X and up is not nearly as solid. In particular I find the regression testing poor, quite often I try to upgrade and find something has broken and I don't think all the problems are distribution related. I think it's more the "scratch an itch" mentality of developers that it works for me so I'm happy. If it broke it for somebody else, not really my problem.

I'm not afraid to look, but add me to the always-disappointed club. Yes, KDE is improving every release, but it is still very inferior to KDE 3.5x, at least for me.

For instance, even with Akonadi-Nepomuk-virtuoso-Strigi rat poison enabled KDE4's handling of basic meta-data in dolphin/konqueror is still crummy, especially if a file is not in your home directory (which is the only indexed folder by default). Remember how you could highlight a file in KDE 3 konqueror and get picture's dimensions or mp3's id3 tags? Instead in KDE 4 you get to add a personal tag to a file in the dolphin preview pane (does anyone use this?) I know some KDE developers are not happy about this state of affairs, but the rate of improvement is glacial.

I just hope that by the time Debian Lenny is no longer supported as "old stable" in a year KDE4 will be close to feature-parity with its predecessor 3 years ago.

I hate to be another naysayer in this pick on KDE board so I will mention that it is my primary DE/WM on my primary computer, and that I think Solid is great.

That aside KDE 4.5's tiling window support was not usable.
https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=246153 means it breaks whenever you close all but one of your windows and then try to open more

Also on my system kwin would crash when tiling was turned off.

Those bugs are still open so I don't think it's gotten much attention for 4.6 but I will try this weekend.

I did run into some 'social' subsystem (akonadi or some such) that actually launches a MySQL instance with a 50MiB (and growing) seed database to track one thing or another (or something; I haven't the faintest idea what it's trying to do.)

Akonadi is basically an abstraction layer for all PIM data (e-mail, contact info, calendar, to-do list, etc). As long as you're not using KDE's PIM programs, you won't miss it.

I don't print very much so I hadn't noticed the preview abilities absence in some of those apps. I imagine that would be an inconvenience if you are printing regularly from it. A couple other base KDE4 apps do have the ability and stuff like koffice does, and of course you can always print to a PDF/PS and open with okular and set it's format. Again, that would be an inconvenience but are you really trying to print from kate frequently? I use kate for many things, but not for printing. I can't even remember the last time I've printed code or a script on a piece of paper, but I'm sure it has to be a least several years. For documents that I do intend to print I use a word processor, and KDE4 based or not they seem to have a good print preview.

Looks like print preview is a relatively easy per-app setting in KDE4. I guess there hasn't been a lot of complaints, or it might have been fixed by now.

https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=177542

I can crash kwin at will sometimes.

Then file a bug report! http://bugs.kde.org. If you have a repeatable set of actions that can make KWin crash "on command", then TELL THEM and they'll fix it.

M.

Don't know anyone else who's had this problem but on the 64-bit upgrade X started throwing errors about a missing session - then you clicked "okay" and KDE started normally.

Solution was in this thread - all I had to do was select KDE as a session once.

http://forum.kde.org/viewtopic.php?f=66&t=91936

Also, my panel lost transparency although compositing was enabled. Changing the panel theme and then changing it back solved that.

On the 32-bit netbook which has just about all unnecessary stuff turned off including akonadi KDE's memory footprint went from ~180mb to ~170mb at idle. I use compiz instead of kwin on both machines, though.

Just fine? KDE 4.5 and 4.6 (upcoming) crash on log in with nvidias drivers ver 260.xx.xx (on openSUSE 11.3 32bit?). Many other applications and applets also crash, particularly on 4.6 where krunner, amarok and search and launch activity are amongst the affected ones. This is one of the currently most reported bugs at the moment with a current dup count of 58! As if all this wasn't enough in 4.6 the window manager also almost immediately freezes until desktop effects are automatically disabled.

So basically when you try KDE 4.6 on openSUSE 11.3 with updated nvidia drivers what happens is. You can't login due to desktop crash. If you fix that by removing the offending applets from the config files. On login Krunner crashes and keeps re-spawning and crashing. If you manage to kill it then desktop freezes and if all goes well effects are disabled. And if you get past then you can use it... without krunner, effects, and some of its best applications.

Given how sucky SUSE is a distro that is to be expected. I guess its suckiness is on purpose as part of the Novell / MIcrosoft partnership.