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Except that we do know. If there's an exploit to be found, these guys would also be interested.

LOL! Just in case this wasn't a troll, you can get Konqueror for AIX here , and it comes with Solaris on an extras CD, at least in Solaris 8. Also, you can run Konqueror on your PDA. Try that with Mozilla.

Yeah, I know, the "Free Software" community will keep Mozilla alive. Except where have they been up till now? Mozilla has been open-source for five years, and still almost all development has been done by Netscape employees.

Face it, Mozilla is dead. It's not the standard browser anywhere, except for a few zealots and the small number of people who do everything on Solaris or Irix. Not even Apple backs it.

Mind you, I'm not happy about this. I hate Microsoft being able to ignore web standards. I hate that you can only use SVG in plugin-based "objects". But fighting battles that were lost years ago is not going to change any of this.

Maybe, and I say maybe there is hope for the kHTML engine, which is the basis of Sonqueror and Safari. I've always like this engine, even when it was new and buggy. It's small, it's fast, and every time I look at it, it's drastically better.

I very much doubt if Internet Explorer will ever lose its supremacy. But if you just can't tolerate this, forget the bloated Gecko engine and start thinking about a Windows port of kHTML.

Ah yes, the GIF patent. That stopped any free software using GIFs.

The MP3 patent's licensing terms don't even prohibit legal Free Software implementations - you pay a one-off licensing fee, and you're fine. There seem seem to be plenty.

The reality is, those patents haven't killed MP3 or GIFs. If anything, it's Ogg Vorbis and PNGs which are an endangered species - not from litigation, but disuse. (The MP3 patent, by the way, is Fraunhofer's - a German group, not US.) Patents or no patents, MP3 and GIF are still the format for that application, and supported by plenty of free/open source programs.

So the future for free software is (and this would be fine with me, except that it doesn't promote either fair use or interoperability) a ghetto of free formats like Ogg.

Unlikely. As I said, we've had MP3 and GIF patents for years without this result - the former from a German company, not a US one - without the result you predict. Why would Europe adopting the US system have this result, when it hasn't happened in the US?

Safari is based on the KHTML engine from KDE. See here.

Apple took the KHTML rendering engine from Konqueror and built a browser around it. No doubt they looked at Opera and other browsers while developing their feature set.

KHTML is licensed under the LGPL. Apple has provided many bug fixes and performance enhancements for KHTML. Those improvements are being incorporated into KDE 3.2.

A pity there are no KDE applications using gphoto.

dont you mean konquer the desktop?

Hm, I wonder to what extent this new roadmap is a reaction to Apple's decision to use khtml instead of mozilla as the basis for safari.

Nope. I think the parent meant what he said.

I care more about...stability...which is I why I use Netscape 4.7


HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

<gasp>

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

You may not be aware of this, but Netscape crashing only once a day isn't something to brag about anymore. Practically every recent mainstream browser is more stable than Netscape 4.7x. Some of them are faster too.

... just download Konqueror?

That oughta get the zealots cheering.

KHTML is a big part of Konqueror, KDE's most important filemanager/webbrowser and this program is released under the GPL (as is all of the KDE project).

More info see the Konqueror website.

On an vaguely related note, here's a suspicious screensnap from Konqueror's website. Note the Aqua, fellers... that's where the trouble begins!

The zeppelin symbolizes Mozilla's bloat. The red star is merely Mozilla's logo.

The terrorists would most likely use other browsers

Back a long time ago, I was using OS2/Warp... I had three web browsers... The native Netscape, inside the windows 3.1 emulation, a copy of IE that I actually purchased (what a dipshit I was), and IBM's WebExplorer, IIRC. WebExplorer had a history function that would fill your screen with a tree of visited pages. It was a wonderful thing. I thought it would catch on, but nobody's done it, since. If any of the Konqueror coders are reading, do you do feature requests?

Ask and ye shall receive.

Konqueror has been out for ages already, it's lightweight, and free software. And Qt based.

I don't know if it's tightly integrated into KDE to make it a Qt-only app (I guess it is), but just the browser component of it could be 'stripped out', KHTML is pretty mature. The AtheOS web browser is bassed off it.

I am not a KDE/Qt developer nor a KDE user, so I might be wrong at this. But I think it would be easier to mantain a stripped-down, kde-less version of the browser component of Konqueror instead of trying to keep up-to-date with a Qt port of Mozilla, which BTW is a bit bloated for PDAs (and please don't get me wrong here, I *LOVE* Mozilla).

Works in konqueror, too. Someone must be using IE (motto: "You can't spell 'compliance' without 'liance'.")

As most of you desktop users already know, the KDE Project recently released KDE 3.1beta2, which will be the final development release before KDE 3.1. The good news is, KDE 3.1 is scheduled for release in just a few weeks.

KDE 3.1, the strongest KDE release to date, promises new goodies for just about everyone who gets to enjoy the full KDE desktop experience. Here is a sampling of what is in store for you:

Browsing with Tabs. The many fans of tabbed browsing will be delighted by this new addition to the KDE web browser ( Konqueror ) (screenshot). To simplify downloading a large number of files, a new download manager (KGET), which fully integrates into Konqueror, has joined the network package (kdenetwork). It manages any number of downloads in one window, where transfers can be added, removed, paused, resumed, queued or scheduled. A dialog displays transfer status, including progress, size, speed and estimated time to completion.

Eye Candy. The artistically-inclined KDE contributors have showered us with a basket of new eye candy. As shown in this screenshot, KDE 3.1 will ship with the contemporary Crystal icon set as well as the original new Keramik theme. The screenshot also shows the new drop-shadows. To help manage these stunning themes, KDE will provide a new theme manager with improved theme style and color decoration previews (screenshot). Menus and other desktop windows can also use attractive drop shadows, as shown in the screenshot above.

Personal Information Management. On the PIM front, the email client ( KMail ) has gained several privacy and security enhancements - namely S/MIME, PGP/MIME and X.509v3 support - in collaboration with the Aegypten project, an IT security project sponsored by the German government (screenshot). The calendar / scheduling application (KOrganizer) features a new Exchange 2000 plugin. The address book (KAddressbook) has gained the ability to fetch contact information from one or more LDAP servers. It can also print contact information and import industry-standard vCards.

While not included in the 3.1 release, the next quantum jump in KDE's email / groupware architecture is scheduled for KDE 3.2, when KDE will ship a completely copy-lefted, integrated groupware system. Currently known as the Kroupware Project, it is being sponsored by the German government and will integrate the major KDE PIM applications (screenshot, screenshot). More about this project, and some additional screenshots, can be found on the dot. KDE 3.2 will also feature the ability to use Vim as the mail composer (screenshot).

File Management. The file manager (Konqueror) has a number of new goodies, such as folder icons which reflect a folder's contents, a video thumbnail generator and a number of plugins for providing enhanced- or meta-information about various file types (e.g., images, binary packages, source code). The file search utility can now search file meta-information for searching multi-media files.

Desktop Sharing. For those who switch work stations frequently, KDE offers a new VNC-compatible desktop sharing framework. It enables users to share a KDE desktop across multiple machines (screenshot).*

Enterprise. Enterprises, Internet cafes and similar users will appreciate enhancements to the KDE Kiosk framework (the Kiosk framework provides an easy way to disable certain features within KDE to create a more controlled environment). In addition, the panel (Kicker) now supports fully customized menus.

Multimedia. The multimedia framework (kdemultimedia) has a new video decoder based on Xine. Xine is a video framework which provides support for various video formats, such as AVI, DivX, Cinepak, Sorenson Video, MPEG 1/2 and 4, QuickTime / MOV, ASF and others.

Games. For the playful among us, KDE 3.1 will offer a number of new games in the games package (kdegames), including a golf game ( Kolf ) (screenshot), an Atlantik and Monopoly-type game ( Atlantik ), a Blackjack game ( Megami ). and a Same-like game ( Klickery ).

Ease of Use. A number of other improvements are meant simply to make the desktop easier to use and configure. For example, the application finder (KAppfinder) provides a nice tree view for selecting the applications to include in the KDE desktop menu hierarchy. Two new user notification methods have also been added for providing non-obtrusive informational messages: a passive popup window (KPassivePopup), which pops up next to the application's entry in the panel's taskbar (without stealing the focus), as well as messages which appear in an application's title-bar (KWindowInfo). In addition, the control center (KControl) has received a face lift and better organization (screenshot).

Miscellaneous. Of course work under the hood continues for KDE 3.1 as well. It provides a number of speed improvements, such as Konqueror start-up time, a number of usability enhancements by the KDE Usability Project, as well as almost 1,000 critter fixes.

More information about planned KDE 3 features is available for KDE 3.1 and KDE 3.2.

Some interesting KDE statistics: the KDE CVS source code repository consists of about 2.6 million lines of code (LOC) (for comparison, the GNU/Linux kernel version 2.5.29 consists of about 3.1 million lines of code). The KDE Project consists of hundreds of active contributors, with 300 of them translating KDE into over 70 languages (KDE 3.0.4 shipped in 51 languages). In May 2002 over 11,014 CVS commits were executed. The KDE website has 24 official mirrors in 16 countries and the KDE FTP site has 71 official mirrors in 30 countries.

Have you tried Konqueror? Yes, you need the kde libraries, but if you don't like the desktop then don't use it.

The latest reason to switch to Konqueror.

and easy-to-use, CDDB compatible OGG CD-rip utilities.

What, you mean THIS real browser? It displays in just about any alphabet you want except Elvish, without any stressing about language packs. And there's no "-zilla" in the name, either! Konqui kicks butt.

It is Konqueror and as such not available for Gnome.

However it is possible to run KDE apps from within Gnome if you have KDE installed.

Not when you're using a browser that doesn't come with flash...

It was written from scratch.

There is a little (outdated) bit of information on http://www.konqueror.org/konq-browser.html. Konqueror uses kjs for it's javascript/ecmascript support.

Thought I'd be slick and download the net installer. Guess I was two minutes too slow, because now I can't download it at all! (And the installer offered to delete RC3, which I stupidly agreed to.) Guess it'll be Konqueror for now! : )

Sure. Just about any UNIX desktop environment is as flexible as LiteStep. Roll your own...don't feel like you just need to use KDE or GNOME or something like that. I've got a rather nice desktop with sawfish, the sawfish pager, all status information being shown via gkrellm, and programs launched via the keyboard using xbindkeys. No GNOME or KDE flavoring necessary.

AfterStep is probably the closest in functionality to LiteStep, but I personally prefer Enlightenment if you're looking for flash, Sawfish if you're looking for functionality, and Black Box if you're looking for speed.

Steps in roll-your-own:

Choose a base desktop environment (keep in mind that you can just mix and match bits of them...I used to use the GNOME panel without the rest of GNOME, and a roommate uses GNOME apps with the KDE environment):
None
GNOME
KDE
ROX
foXdesktop
Perltop
Equinox
XFce
Once you've chosen a desktop environment (or the lack of one), and possibly removed the parts of it that you don't like (with GNOME, I wholeheartedly suggest trying it without Nautilus, possibly without anything but the panel), then you get to choose a dock. Your current desktop may or may not include a dock/panel/wharf.

If it doesn't, icedock provides an environment-independent wharf for the afterstep-style wharf system -- swallowing apps.
gkrellm (seems to be currently down) makes for a nice status-monitor style dock.
Or you can make your own impromptu dock...I've built them before by starting xload and xlock with proper geometry arguments to stack them on top of each other, and having sawfish make the windows sticky and slap 'em at the edge of the screen.
Now a window manager. There are so many of these that I'm not going to list them all. I'll mention a few notables:
sawfish is a fairly fast, *extremely* flexible (everything's written in lisp, much like emacs) window manager that uses gtk. Currently GNOME's default. I love this thing, but it doesn't come with a pager, so you either need to use a base desktop environment with a pager or use spager.
enlightenment is, at least until the next major release, still a window manager and not a desktop environment. Lots of emphasis on eye candy.
ion, a novel window manager that's designed to be managed entirely with the keyboard and never overlap windows.
blackbox is what I'd suggest if you needed a fast environment that still looked nice.

Most WMs support launching programs with given key combinations. I'd advise against this. The excellent XBindKeys is window-manager independent, quite capable, allows you to kill off your window manager and still use keys to start programs, etc. Plus, there's a nice benefit to using a different program than your window manager to launch programs. If you never launch external programs with your WM, you can renice -10 `pidof sawfish` or whatever your window manager is. Making your window manager (and X) meaner with respect to CPU scheduling makes for a much more snappy environment when edge flipping or the like. Sure, it might take a sec for the mozilla windows in the background to finish redrawing when I flip to a new desktop, but in the meantime I can do my work without waiting around for them.

The reason you don't want to make your WM meaner if you use it to launch programs is that then all the programs will also be equally mean.

Decide on the Big Four applications of any X desktop. Text editor, web browser, file manager, and terminal emulator.

Text editor:
I can't possibly cover this holy war here. My personal preference is xemacs, which is a bit of a learning curve for new users from Windows, but well worth it in power in the long run. You may want something that meshes more with the rest of your chosen desktop environment.

Web browser:
Just because KDE uses Konqueror and GNOME uses galeon by default is no reason to stick with those. Of course, you also can use either Konq without KDE or galeon without GNOME. You're rolling your own environment!
mozilla is now (after years of work) a good web browser. Big, still slow and still RAM-hungry, but usably so.
dillo Lightweight, very fast, pretty stable, very screen-space efficient...I can't say enough good things about dillo. If you use dillo as your primary browser, be aware of the fact that it has fewer features than the large browsers, that it doesn't currently (without a patch) support SSL, that it uses a UNIXish config-file preferences interface, and that it doesn't lay out nested tables or wrap text around images the same way Mozilla does. I keep Mozilla around as a backup browser, but dillo is so freakishly fast that it's hard to want to use anything else.
There are a few other browsers, but Konqueror, Mozilla, and dillo are (IMHO) the big GUI players on Linux. Amaya is a specialty browser, Opera (thanks to its MDI interface) doesn't seem to have caught on much in the Linux world, and Navigator 4.x is definitely on its way out the door.

File manager:
You may choose to simply use a command-line shell and the standard file utilities (cp, rm, ls) to do your file management -- I do, and I've tried hard to give other things a chance. But if you prefer to use a specalized GUI tool:
Konqueror can be used, even if you aren't using KDE (you do, of course, need the KDE libraries installed). Faster than gecko (the engine in mozilla and galeon) and almost as standards compliant, Konqueror has a lot of fans.
GMC is no longer being developed, but it's a reasonable lightweight interface.
Nautilus, the current official GNOME file manager is big, slow, RAM-hungry, and pretty. Not sure how well Nautilus works outside of GNOME (given that Konqueror can work outside of KDE, I would expect this capability of Nautilus).
ROX filer is a very fast little gtk file manager.
There are a lot of file managers out there, so I won't list them all, especially as I'm happy with just bash and the POSIX tools.

Terminal emulator:
GNOME and KDE both come with terminal emulators -- gnome-terminal and Konsole. I'm not very impressed with either -- they're both very slow and aren't available apart from their associated desktop environment. Konsole supports tabbed terminals, which some people may like. Both of them are fairly easy to configure, and are suitable for newbies to work with.
Multi Gnome Terminal extends gnome-terminal significantly with Konsole-style tabs and a set of other features. If you like gnome-terminal, you should probably consider using this instead.
Eterm is a RAM-heavy terminal emulator that was designed to look nice. For all the tinting and blending it can do, reasonably fast.
Aterm seems to be basically a less featureful, less memory-hungry Eterm-like terminal.
xterm is the reasonably fast not-so-pretty fairly RAM-hungry terminal that's used all over the world.
rxvt is easily my favorite terminal emulator. rxvt uses less RAM than anything else out there, and is incredibly fast. You can compile in only the features you want to use (which can, of course, also be disabled at runtime). Background images are supported, but emphasis is not much on eye candy. Very configurable. The biggest drawback is that configuration is through traditional UNIX methods, which may scare away some -- X resources, command line options, compile-time options.

Whatever you do, choose a set of software that you like, and remember -- your desktop environment is based on Linux, which means it should composed of exactly the parts that you like most. Have fun!

That's right, it's blank.

Now try it in Opera. What a surprise! That's blank too...

OK, try again. What about Mozilla? Blank again.

Last shot, let's try Dillo. No, that's blank too...

Wait a minute. Why hasn't any other Slashdot reader noticed this already? You can't all be using Internet Exploder, can you?

For those who want to really run Qt apps on the console, id recomend Trolltech's QT Embedded, wich allows you to compile and run various programs in a console framebuffer, I've successfully run Konqueror on a framebuffer. If my memory servers me right, there was a story some time ago about it on /., but i cant seem to find a link for it.

I already have written my own web browser, which just happens to have the best CSS2 support out there. It doesn't take any corporate money to produce a superior Open Source product.

I already have written my own web browser, which just happens to have the best CSS2 support out there. It doesn't take any corporate money to produce a superior Open Source product.

• Myth: KDE is more integrated than GNOME
  
  Reality: The oft-heard cry of the noisiest KDE advocates. No explanation is given - the reader is expected to simply grok the wholesomeness of KDE, and the lack of this mystical quality in GNOME. It's nonsense of course. Neither desktop is particularly "integrated" compared to Windows XP, and certainly not compared any version of the Apple Mac.

• Myth: KDE is easier to use
  
  Reality: Again, such nebulous arguments are never explained, and the reader is expected to simply understand the truth. Both KDE and GNOME have user-interface irritations (indeed, all systems do) - but "ease of use" is not a simple thing to measure. What about application (see GNOME apps later) installation and removal: GNOME has the excellent RedCarpet by Ximian , which makes the installation, removal and updating of applications trivial. KDE users are expected to fend for themselves with brutal command line driven systems. GNOME also has the excellent Ximian setup tools to handle various very tricky cross-platform and potentially risky system configuration operations - KDE offers a few small half-assed Linux-only tools, which make no attempt at check-pointing to return to known working configurations.

• Myth: KDE is more popular
  
  Reality: In what sense? Arguably more people use KDE - but it is a close run thing. Most KDE zealots claim the results of online polls as proof of their superior userbase... which is, quite frankly, complete and utter nonsense. Online polls are the joke of the century; it doesn't even require a motivated script kiddie to render then worthless. A single post on a zealot-ridden site can reduce the result to a running joke. Popularity is also difficult to measure when both GNOME and KDE are frequently installed on the same system - and indeed, can co-exist except for certain applications such as panels. Many KDE users actually run GNOME applications for their superior features and stability.

  One of the few solid measures of popularity is the adoption in commercial use - and here, GNOME is far ahead. Both Hewlett- Packard and Sun Microsystems have committed to using GNOME as the desktop for their Unix systems. This ties in with the previously mentioned ease of use - Sun's major contribution to the GNOME effort is in the areas of user/developer documentation, testing, accessiblity and user-testing. Three of the less glamourous parts of desktop development. The arrival of the GNOME 2.x series will see these contributions reach fruitition and allow GNOME to make a quantum leap ahead of KDE in most of the basic computer/user issues.

• Myth: Konqueror is the best Linux browser
  
  Reality: Oh for a penny every time this lie is told in any KDE story! Konqueror is a fine piece of software - it's authors deserve plently of praise - it is, however, quite unreliable and lax in its support of basic web standards compared to either Mozilla or Opera . It is also extremely slow - slower than the latest incarnations of the GNOME Nautilus filemanager/browser.

• Myth: KDE applications are better/more advanced than GNOME ones due to the ease of developing in C++ using the Qt toolkit
  
  Reality: See also: Qt/TrollTech. Easily the most common wail heard by KDE developers - and yet it is easily disproved by looking at the actual applications for GNOME/GTK and KDE/Qt . KDE applications often have larger version numbers than GNOME ones... an old trick played by commerical software developers. Most KDE apps seem to jump for 1.x releases long before they are ready - KOffice being the best example. None of the components in Koffice are worthy of a 1.0 release, let alone 1.1 or 1.2. GNOME applications wait longer and get more testing in their 0.x stages and despite shorter development phases mature more quickly and reach stable featureful release states more quickly: the superb Evolution (groupware/email), Gnumeric (spreadsheet), Pan (newsreader), The GIMP (image manipulation), Abiword (word processing), RedCarpet ,X-Chat (IRC client), XMMS (media player), Galeon (web browser), and for developers: Glade , Anjuta . All of these packages ooze quality, far outclass and are, at least, 18 months ahead of their KDE/Qt counterparts. It's not only in the area of user applications that GNOME is lightyears ahead, with the forthcoming 2.x a number of impressive behind the scenes technology will finally mature: component technology (bonobo ), media (Gstreamer ), internationalisation (pango ). As a developement platform, GNOME 2.x is, frankly, years ahead of KDE. And what's more, it is not tied to a lowest common denominator cross-platform bloat-fest like Qt. Yet despite all this, we are still fed the lie that Qt and C++ makes development easier. Judge for yourself.

• Myth: KDE is faster and/or takes less memory than GNOME
  
  Reality: KDE is written in C++. While this is not necessarily a bad thing, it is when the programmers do not know enough to avoid certain pitfalls that can plague software projects. Stupid use of ++/-- with C++ objects; masses of unnecessary allocations and deallocations of memory, and the most cretinous of all, blaming the extremely slow startup times of KDE apps on GCC. The GNOME 1.x releases were hardly svelt (2.x fixes many of these issues), but GNOME is a fashion cat-walk superwaif when compared to KDE's 500lb fat-momma cheese-burger scoffing trailer trash. One need only look at the recent fuss over ugly KDE hacks (such as prelinking) to see the problem inherent in the KDE architecture and basic design.

• Myth: GNOME development is slower. KDE releases faster.
  
  Reality: Fundamental misunderstanding. KDE releases as one big lump of code due to its use of C++ and the consequent problems with libraries. It bumps the version number of the entire KDE system for the smallest modifications. GNOME, on the other hand is componentized and each component releases on a (almost) separate schedule, bumping it's own version number but not the main GNOME version. Occasional releases of the entire GNOME system are done, and that's when the GNOME version number is bumped (currently it is 1.4). To see this in action, use RedCarpet and you will regular updates to GNOME components. GNOME development is not slower, it is in fact faster and more advanced. Lamers and newbies, however, fail to understand the advantages and just see KDE 1.1.1 followed a few weeks later by KDE 1.1.2. Wow! KDE roolz.

• Myth: TrollTech is a friend of Free software.
  
  Reality: Qt started out as non-Free. KDE developers knew this violated the GPL and are therefore untrustworthy. KDE core developers work for TrollTech. Expensive per developer licensing for writing closed-source with Qt. Labyrinthine licensing nightmare.

• Myth: Most good GNOME apps are actually GTK applications.
  
  Reality: Most KDE apps, such as those from The Kompany are actually Qt apps because they want to port to the more lucrative Windows/Qt market.

• Myth: KDE is attractive/GNOME/GTK is ugly
  
  Reality: Mosfet liquid theme is an ugly and unstable hack. GNOME GTk icons are of a far higher quality than the cartoonish and confusing KDE ones. Qt is basically a Windows-look on a Unix platform.

• Myth: KDE is more integrated than GNOME
  Reality: The oft-heard cry of the noisiest KDE advocates. No explanation is given - the reader is expected to simply grok the wholesomeness of KDE, and the lack of this mystical quality in GNOME. It's nonsense of course. Neither desktop is particularly "integrated" compared to Windows XP, and certainly not compared to any version of the Apple Mac. Whatever "integrated" really means.

• Myth: KDE is easier to use
  Reality: Again, such nebulous arguments are never explained, and the reader is expected to simply understand the truth of the zealots statement. Both KDE and GNOME have user-interface irritations (indeed, all systems do) - but "ease of use" is not a simple thing to measure. KDE has never been subjected to detailed user testing, unlike GNOME [gnome.org], and the claims of user-friendliness are from crazed supporters and not average users. Furthermore, the KDE faithful rarely look beyond simple-minded copying of Windows, and forget that administering a desktop system is just as important as having widgets in the correct place on the toolbar. For example: What about application installation and removal? GNOME has the excellent RedCarpet [ximian.com] by Ximian [ximian.com], which makes the installation, removal and updating of applications trivial. KDE users are expected to fend for themselves with brutal command line driven systems. GNOME also has the excellent Ximian setup tools to handle various very tricky cross-platform and potentially risky system configuration operations - KDE offers none of this, only a few small half-assed Linux-only tools, which make no attempt at check-pointing to return to known working configurations.

• Myth: KDE is more popular
  Reality: In what sense? Arguably more people use KDE - but it is a close run thing. Most KDE zealots claim the results of online polls as proof of their superior userbase - which is, quite frankly, complete and utter nonsense. Online polls are the joke of the century; it doesn't even require a motivated script kiddie to render then worthless. A single post alerting the faithful on a zealot-ridden site can skew the result so much it makes American presidential elections look fair and well organised. Popularity is also difficult to measure when both GNOME and KDE are frequently installed on the same system. Indeed, the systems can co-exist and even run at the same time, except for certain applications such as panels. Many KDE users actually run GNOME applications for their superior features and stability, not realising that by doing so they are barely running KDE at all.

  One of the few solid measures of popularity is the adoption in commercial use - and here, GNOME is far ahead, with both Hewlett-Packard [hp.com] and Sun Microsystems [sun.com] committing to using GNOME as the desktop for their Unix systems. This also ties in with the previously mentioned ease of use - Sun's major contribution to the GNOME project is in the areas of user/developer documentation, testing, accessiblity and user-testing. Three of the less glamourous parts of desktop development. The arrival of the GNOME 2.x series will see these contributions reach fruitition and allow GNOME to make a quantum leap ahead of KDE in most of the basic computer/user issues.

• Myth: Konqueror is the best Linux browser
  Reality: Oh for a penny every time this lie is told in any KDE story! Konqueror [konqueror.org] is not a bad piece of software - its authors deserve praise for the work done in it. However, the sheer amount of orgasmic praise lavished by the KDE faithful is completely out of proportion to its actual quality. It is quite unreliable and even simple standards compliant pages can crash it quite comprehensively. It is also lax in its support of basic web standards compared to either Mozilla [mozilla.org] or Opera [opera.com]. It is also extremely slow - much slower than the latest incarnations of the GNOME Nautilus [eazel.com] filemanager/browser (a target of much KDE FUD during its development).
  .

• Myth: KDE applications are better/more advanced than GNOME ones due to the ease of developing in C++ using the Qt toolkit
  Reality: Easily the most common wail heard by KDE developers, and yet it is easily disproved by looking at the actual applications for GNOME/GTK [gtk.org] and KDE/Qt [trolltech.com]. KDE applications often have larger version numbers than GNOME ones... an old trick played by commerical software developers. Most KDE apps seem to jump for 1.x releases long before they are ready - KOffice [koffice.org] being the best example. None of the components in Koffice are worthy of a 1.0 release, let alone 1.1 or 1.2.

  GNOME applications [gnome.org] wait longer and get more testing in their 0.x stages and despite shorter development phases mature more quickly and reach stable featureful release states more quickly. Some examples of this are the superb Evolution [ximian.com] (groupware/email), Gnumeric [gnome.org] (spreadsheet), Pan [rebelbase.com] (newsreader), The GIMP [gimp.org] (image manipulation), Abiword [abisource.com] (word processing), RedCarpet [ximian.com], X-Chat [xchat.org] (IRC client), XMMS [xmms.org] (media player), Galeon [sourceforge.net] (web browser), and for developers: Glade [gnome.org] and Anjuta [sourceforge.net]. All of these packages ooze quality, and far outclass the KDE counterparts. It is no understatement to say that GNOME is at least 18 months ahead of KDE in applications, and pulling still further ahead.

  It's not only in the area of user applications that GNOME is lightyears ahead. With the forthcoming 2.x a number of impressive behind the scenes technology will finally mature: component technology (bonobo [gnome.org]), media (Gstreamer [gstreamer.net]), internationalisation (pango [pango.org]). As a developement platform, GNOME 2.x is, conservatively, 2-3 years ahead of KDE. And what's more, because it is not tied to a lowest common denominator cross-platform bloat-fest like the Qt toolkit, the lead (as with applications) can only increase further.

  Yet despite all this, we are still regularly fed the lie that Qt and C++ makes application and desktop development easier. Judge for yourself.

• Myth: KDE is faster and takes less memory than GNOME
  Reality: KDE is written in C++. While this is not necessarily a problem, it can be when Visual Basic reject programmers (which the KDE project is overrun with) do not know enough to avoid important pitfalls that plague C++ software projects. Stupid use of autoincrementing operators and iteration with C++ objects, and masses of unnecessary allocations and deallocations of memory, are two of the most common. KDE suffers badly from both problems.

  Perhaps the most cretinous of all problems is blaming the extremely slow startup times of KDE apps on GCC. The GNOME 1.x releases were hardly svelt (2.x fixes many of these issues), but GNOME is a fashion cat-walk superwaif when compared to KDE's 500lb fat-momma cheese-burger scoffing trailer trash. One need only look at the recent fuss over ugly KDE hacks (such as prelinking) to see the problem inherent in the poor KDE architecture and basic design flaws.

• Myth: GNOME development is slower. KDE releases faster.
  Reality: Fundamental misunderstanding. KDE releases as one big lump of code due to its use of C++ and the many problems this causes with libraries. The project bumps the version number of the entire KDE system for the smallest modifications. GNOME, on the other hand is componentized and each component releases on a (almost) separate schedule, bumping it's own version number but not the main GNOME version (1.4, for example). Occasional releases of the entire GNOME system happen, and that's when the GNOME version number is bumped (currently it is at 1.4). To see this in action, use RedCarpet and you will see regular updates to GNOME components. GNOME development is not slower, it is in fact faster and more advanced. Lamers and newbies, however, fail to understand the advantages of this method and just see KDE 1.1.1 followed a few weeks later by KDE 1.1.2. Wow! KDE roolz.

• Myth: TrollTech is a friend of Free software.
  Reality: TO BE WROTE -- IDEAS Qt started out as non-Free. KDE developers knew this violated the GPL, didn't care, stole others' GPL code by porting it to link (in violation of the license) with Qt and are therefore untrustworthy. KDE core developers work for TrollTech. Expensive per developer licensing for writing closed-source with Qt. Trolltech only moved towards the GPL because of the success of GNOME. Labyrinthine licensing nightmare. Gradual migration of features into Qt (and so into TrollTech's IP portfolio), allowing easy porting of apps to the revenue generating Windows world (see TheKompany for a perfect example), thereby making KDE irrelevant.

• Myth: Most good GNOME apps are actually GTK applications.
  Reality: TO BE WROTE -- IDEAS Most KDE apps, such as those from The Kompany [thekompany.com] are actually Qt apps because they want to port to the more lucrative Windows/Qt market.

  Myth: KDE is more than attractive - GNOME/GTK is ugly
  Reality: Mosfet liquid theme is an ugly and unstable hack. GNOME GTk icons are of a far higher quality than the cartoonish and confusing KDE ones. Qt is basically a Windows-look on a Unix platform.

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Anyway, what I want to do is run linux on my k6-2 333 or heaven forbid my p1-100 and still be able to browse the web.

This is what I like the most about open source software; the diversity that is a natural consequence of the open-source model has resulted in a number of browsers:

• Mozilla
• Galeon
• Konqueror
• SkipStone

There are also some proprietary browsers:

• Netscape. All of the browsers can be freely downloaded, and Netscape Communicator will work fine on the Pentium 100 machine.
• Opera

- Sam

Can't it?
http://www.konqueror.org/embedded.html

You have a programming language there at your disposal!

If you stick to the latest HTML specs it wouldn't be that difficult of a task. You could probably even use Java's XML parser to do a lot of the work. You can have a look at Konqueror and Mozilla for some ideas on how to handle things if you are unsure of what to do.

Of course there is always Jazilla (Mozilla written in Java). I don't know how far along it is, but you could use it as a starting block at least.

Actually, Konqueror has a great deal more DOM support than Mozilla does. Most of the current bugs in Konqueror are in kjs, not in it's DOM support, which is indeed, one of the best.

Check out w3's browser listing:
http://www.w3.org/Style/CSS/

and Konqueror's own support table:
http://www.konqueror.org/content/khtml_css2.html"

You are, however, right that Konqueror handles broken pages less than Mozilla does. That is certainly true. But the thing is that Konqueror tries to be as standards compliant as possible, so it does not implement things like the (broken, nonstandard) nobr tag while mozilla does.

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

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

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

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

What Slashdot needs is a mode like Kuro5hin where you can set it to display nested for a few comments
Agreed. Configurability is good.

It might not be possible to submit the form to article.pl; check the source, does article.pl support all the parameters
Thanks for enlightening me, I'll check this out!

Several of the date formats do have the year embedded in them. I use the "%Y.%m.%d %H:%M" format, which does
Amen. Either the date format ISO8601 should be used (e.g. 2002-01-01) or something like "01 January 2002".

Another nice feature would be valid XHTML output, but I think we shouldn't expect that anytime soon!

I use...Netscape 4.77 to browse the web. I do not depend on non-free software for anything.

Netscape 4.x is non-free software. Consider using Mozilla, links, Konqueror (to name just a few) if you want to live completely in the free software world.

Now to your point about what DrinkOrDie was thinking: I don't know. I'm not saying I can defend their actions (I use only free software as much as possiblemy PC's BIOSes are not yet free software, for instance) but I don't know why they did what they did. I don't think what they did is stealing and I'm not convinced the genuine loss in income for the copyright holders of the duplicated software is in the billions because I'm not convinced all the people who have unauthorized copies would have paid for them anyhow. However, I'm still not privvy to why DrinkOrDie did what they did.

Why does a fix to a program that nobody here uses, written by a company that everybody here hates matter?

Second, don't just bitch about IE. If you haven't already, check out the alternatives:

• Mozilla, now in Version 0.9.6, is very feature-rich and fast and the most standard-compliant browser in existence, but not for computers with less than 128 MB of memory.
• kmeleon (Windows) and galeon (Linux) are Mozilla derivatives with smaller footprint.
• Opera, which is closed source adware and requires registration, is a very fast browser that is especially recommended for "information surfers" because of its excellent navigation and caching.
• Konqueror is KDE's built-in browser. Thanks to Qt/Embedded and/or KDE-Cygwin, it might be ported to Windows as well.
• Lynx and W3M are up-to-date text mode browsers capable of displaying most pages which do not depend on images or animations.

How about making a GIMP-based ultra-mini photo studio tool?

I don't think that you'll win this content with anything GIMP-based. GIMP is based on GTK (and GDK), which are essentially concurent products to QT (though not yet as strong in the embedded sector AFAIK). Additionally you'll have essentially rewrite the GIMP, 'cause GTK and QT are quite different (both from design and implementation, not to speak of two different languages). A nice port of Konqueror would be nice, but that has already been done.

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

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

A quick check of the HTML indicates that CSS positioning was used; Nutscrape...doesn't know how to implement CSS positioning. Internet Explorer works properly; Mozilla and Opera should work too

So, you're in agreement: It was a braindead web design. "Use my browser or don't view my webpage" is braindead web design. Period.

It's worth noting that a properly-designed page should render reasonably well in any browser, to the limit of the browser's capabilities. Try calling up the page given here in Lynx, for instance; I wouldn't be surprised if it renders properly in Lynx (sans images, of course).

If your browser doesn't render pages properly, you might want to consider upgrading to a better browser, one that properly implements the published standards.

Konqueror/Embedded should run quite nicely on this one. That wasn't too hard to port, I've heard.

Of course, it looks like the Yopy already has a very nice web browser, Opera (you see the icon?)