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There are bad ones for gnome, but kde on the other hand is bursting with apple stuff

Liquid theme
Window manager
Dock
Menubar
Icon theme
Desktop icon shadows

Put them all together, and you will have something that looks a lot like OSX

Mosfet, creator of many things Unix-wise, well known for his KDE work, wrote this article about file system structure in 2001.

Mosfet, creator of many things Unix-wise, well known for his KDE work, wrote this article about file system structure in 2001.

Its kind of funny, I'm reading a lot of comments like yours. Which is fine, of course. But there is a sort of big push right now for just this sort of thing on Linux desktops. Eye candy, it seems is underrated here?

As a user who has been using the Linux desktop for about 4 years now I'd have to say this is a very exciting project. You should take a look at kde-look to get an idea what types of eye candies are being kicked around. I've been using translucent aterms, Convectivea crystal icons and the Mosfet's KDE liquid module for quite a while now, I love it.

Btw, check out Karamba, its a new KDE extention that suports (fake) transparency, lots of fancy do-dads and themes. Beefs up the candy factor (and some functionality!). Might as well look good if your going to have to use it.

Last one! Check out Slicker. Its a collection of utilities which provide an alternative to KDE's kicker, and looks good. I don't know about you, but I got tired of looking at screen shots of OSX.

I think that my commentary that directly addresses the points made by Havoc Pennington in his "Free Software and Good User Interfaces" paper is a better article than the one linked here. It goes more into technical differences of opinion than this article so I think it's stronger. The article slashdot linked was mostly my opinion, the new one is more technical.

You can read the new commentary
here!

http://www106.pair.com/rhp/free-software-ui.html

In fact, this news submission doesn't even include the rebuttal written by Mosfet two days ago, answering to Havoc Pennington's article, as linked above.

He's got a pretty good rant^H^H^H^H essay on the subject.

My main fear is that KMail and Konquerer won't be good Evolution/Galeon replacements.

No worries. Just keep Evolution and Galeon. I switched from GNOME2 around KDE 3.1RC2 and haven't looked back. If you're worried about consistent look (feel is another story) then you have a couple of options.
You could get the Geramik theme for gtk 1.x and 2.x this will match the default Keramik theme in KDE, and even inherit any color changes made in the kde control center! This is what I did, and now the GIMP, GAIM, and Pan (and mozilla/phoenix) all match my KDE desktop perfectly.
You could also try the Wonderland theme (called BlueCurve in RedHat) from the RedHat Artwork package. It will theme gtk 1.x/2.x and kde consistently.
Another more difficult option would be to use the Liquid theme for kde, and dig up some Aqua[Graphite] themes for gtk. Since Aqua-ish themes exist for everything that is skinnable, you get a reasonably homogenous desktop.

With a little effort, you can have a beautiful and consistent Unix desktop, regardless of which apps you need to run or which desktop you choose.

Funny, I've had talks with 2 guys who run BSD, (freebsd and one netbsd), and both just wanted KOffice, but didnt want to bother with the (their terms) Bloat of KDE. Both came back with the same argument, If I wanted that fluff, I'd run XP.

These guys will spend hours tweaking the the look of window maker and not realize thats EXACT reason why people want KDE.
But KDE goes a step further to offer all the Glueware apps people want, remote desktop control, pim syncronizers, mime type GRAPHICAL file managers, and the other countless useability features they put into the desktop.

BTW, I'm super freaking happy Mosfet is BACK, and releasing a new Liquid engine/theme for KDE. This and the new XFT2 font anti-aliasing, I could do the happy dance. :)
-
Distrowatch

Read this.

I really hope that UnitedLinux will gain ground.

I've updated my web site with my opinion on this. Basically they made KDE a shell for Gnome apps so when you select the "KDE" desktop you don't get the KDE web browser, email client, etc... You get all Gnome apps. This is in addition to removing "KDE" from the KDE "About" boxes. They negated the differences between the desktops by removing much of KDE.

We need Mosfet's Liquid for GTK 1 and 2.

:)

I won't go into why, because I grow very weary of the "My Distro Rocks; Your Distro Sucks mines balls" arguements that seem to permeat the Linux community.

I think the whole Gentoo phenomenon is not the "my distro is better" arguement. It is the "my distro is newer" arguement. The same way Sawfish gets replaced with Metacity in GNOME2, or the way the KDE theme users go "ooh-ooh Liquid!, no wait - Keramic!, no - Crystal!

None is better than the other, people just like the newer one. It is not as cool to keep saying "Debian r0x0r my b0x0r!" for five years. (But it does.)

Try out liquid! It makes kde the REAL WM! And not some shitty motif clone like gnome is!

I'm using os x, and those windows-esque controls look like ass.

What's anybody supposed to do about it? Mozilla developers can't use native widgets because the Aqua widgets do not support the rendering options required by CSS, and Mozilla developers can't use look-alike widgets because of Apple's hard-ass policy against Aqua look-alikes.

Don't like it? Make a skin that looks like KDE Liquid and submit a patch.

Just last night I found a link to Mosfet's High Performance Liquid style theme for KDE3. I installed it and it looks amazing! I went to work trying to find themes for everything else I use frequently to make it match (xmms, licq, etc...).

My desktop looks awesome (who says MacOS can only have such a beautiful desktop?)

I recommend trying this out!

// Here we go, use XRender in all its glory.
// NOTE: This is actually a bit slower than the above routines
// on non-accelerated displays. -- Karol.
void TransparencyHandler::XRenderBlendToPixmap(const QPopupMenu* p)
{
KPixmap renderPix;
renderPix.resize( pix.width(), pix.height() );

// Allow styles to define the blend pixmap - allows for some interesting effects.
kstyle->renderMenuBlendPixmap( renderPix, p->colorGroup(), p );

Display* dpy = qt_xdisplay();
Pixmap alphaPixmap;
Picture alphaPicture;
XRenderPictFormat Rpf;
XRenderPictureAttributes Rpa;
XRenderColor clr;
clr.alpha = ((unsigned short)(255*opacity) << 8);

Rpf.type = PictTypeDirect;
Rpf.depth = 8;
Rpf.direct.alphaMask = 0xff;
Rpa.repeat = True; // Tile

XRenderPictFormat* xformat = XRenderFindFormat(dpy,
PictFormatType | PictFormatDepth | PictFormatAlphaMask, &Rpf, 0);

alphaPixmap = XCreatePixmap(dpy, p->handle(), 1, 1, 8);
alphaPicture = XRenderCreatePicture(dpy, alphaPixmap, xformat, CPRepeat, &Rpa);

XRenderFillRectangle(dpy, PictOpSrc, alphaPicture, &clr, 0, 0, 1, 1);

XRenderComposite(dpy, PictOpOver,
renderPix.x11RenderHandle(), alphaPicture, pix.x11RenderHandle(), // src, mask, dst
0, 0, // srcx, srcy
0, 0, // maskx, masky
0, 0, // dstx, dsty
pix.width(), pix.height());

XRenderFreePicture(dpy, alphaPicture);
XFreePixmap(dpy, alphaPixmap);
}

Where Liquid and KDE3's implementation differed was that KDE3 can optionally use XRender to shade the background pixmap, while Liquid will always use the blending methods I included in KPixmapEffect.

So when you see 2 seemingly contradictory opinions coming out of the community of "Linux Zealots", guess what: they probably aren't both held by the same person! (At least not at the same time.)

Ehm... Cancel that..

From the Mosfet's homepage: "My name is Daniel M. Duley. I'm a 26 yr/old application developer and system admin living in Indiana, USA."... And I who just loves geekgirls... Damn! ;)

Could someone PLEASE answer this for me? I am confused.

Is this what Mosfet looks like? Is this him in drag? Who is that in the picture!?

I mean, if Mosfet wants to dress in drag, that is cool I don't care (heck, I live in San Francisco). I just want to find out what the deal is!

Is this just something the is into? Men dressing like crazy aggressive women?

There are some more pictures in his PixiePlus screenshots.

Anyway...

Kevin

If you think that one's bad, check out mosfet2.jpg.

And the weird thing is, the dude's got m4d skillzZz, but he claims he likes these images!

But the icon may frighten off the readers :-)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

You want really fast image preview, the new Pixie Plus is meant to be the fast one. The author (Mosfet) claims several hundered images in a directory can be previewed in about 1 second. www.mosfet.org/pixie.

Having a large collection of cast photos and such from various theater groups and reenactment groups, running through large directories of images looking for the select few to use for PR or web pages is a pain. A super responsive image viewer turns it into a minor pain.

--
Evan

Well, you can get freekaaaayyy if you want, but you might want to read Daniel's about page first... ;)

a) Although the IO slaves are not a completely spanking new, original idea, I really haven't seen this type of abstraction used in this manner before.
b) galeon: A slimmed down version of Mozilla which still hasn't had a 1.0 release AND isn't an original OSS project. staroffice: Again, not an original OSS project. evolution: The only original OSS project you listed that GNOME can call its own creation. Do you think GNOME would have been this far along if it had been all created for free? I see you forgot to mention Nautilus, which is no more of an original GNOME project than Galeon or Staroffice. I've used plenty of crappy GNOME/GTK+ applications, so get off your soapbox and remove GNOME from the pedestal you placed it on.
c) They are ripping off the Win32 API? How so? Name ONE function call that has the same name (within 75%), does the same function (within 75%), and takes the same arguments (within 75%). The reason that a "COM+ ripoff" was in Qt, was because Trolltech wanted to make it easier to be able for Windows users to have their COM (which isn't a bad thing to have), and be able to port their applications to non-Windows platforms. People were pissed for more than one reason. Some of it was because of the chip on their shoulder, more was because of added bloat when it wouldn't be used, and also because they didn't want that type of component ideology in Qt. Trolltech doesn't have listen to KDE. They surely don't make their bread and butter off of it.
d) I'm sure you are refering to Mosfet. You have no idea what the hell happened there, so don't act like you do. The reason he took his toys and went home was because he has a child-mentality when he doesn't get his way. KDE 2.1 or KDE 2.2 was in the being-released process and had a feature freeze. This means that ONLY bug fixes can be placed in the tree. Mosfet wanted his newest version of what he was working on in their (Liquid). The KDE release coordinator didn't want to add un-tested to code in at that time. They didn't even know that Mosfet had code that was ready until he just popped up with it. He was pissed and left. Simple as that. Now he is "back" again. Not in the KDE project per-say, but as an outside developer. I also think he converted Pixie (very nice image viewer) to Qt from KDE only.
I think you SHOULD spend more than 10 seconds, because you wouldn't be just pulling things from your ass. Stop being such an ignorant GNOME zealot.

Talk about charm, go get the Liquid theme and watch all the pretty widgets and translucent menus. It's a hell of a lot better looking than WinXP's new blue and red color scheme, that's for sure. KDE is just so pretty, the widgets are responsive, and (I don't know why or how) applications written in QT just always seem to be designed better than those in GTK.

come on, will you pay a GUY called "mosfet", who looks like a goth chick?

Their site looks like it's been designed by a group of kids for a school project.

Liquid is very damn cool though, if you don't mind wasting some cpu cycles for your eye's pleasure :)

Try Mosfet in KDE for a beautiful Aquaesque appearance. Quite nice, actually, just a bit buggy in KDE 2.1*...

> and it doesn't quite have the themability that
> E/GNOME did.

That's not true anymore. Try High Performance Liquid for example. Ok, KDE needs more of these themes, but I for once like the plain themes/styles, because eye candy things are really bad for daily work.

> that useful XMMS panel control has no KDE
> equivalent.

Well, it doesn't have to! Just take wmxmms from WindoMaker and load the Dock Application Bar Extension for Kicker (the Panel). Then you can use ALL of you favourite WM dock apps.

> Neither does mini-commander, the box next to
> the clock for entering commands.

I like the Alt-F2 command box from KDE better. No need to take your hands from the keyboard. Plus you can execute su-commands with it.

> And that system monitor? Thats Gkrellm, it
> uses GTK.

Well, granted. There's no spiffy Gkrellm for KDE, but hey! KDE does run GTK apps, too, doesn't it?

although there is nothing like the KDE Liquid theme, with transparent menus, shadowed text, and strippled window backgrounds

I really wish Mosfet hadn't had that stupid little spat with the core KDE developers -- KDE needs people like him who are interested in both graphics and programming. He just seemed to have a habit of checking code in 2 days after the final code-freeze deadlines...

(for those of you new to the story -- Mosfet developed the KDE 2 style engines as well as Pixie. After being told that he couldn't add his Liquid style because it was after a feature freeze deadline, Mosfet decided to remove all his code from the KDE CVS and change the license on it to a form of the QPL. Most of the styles have been readded in the form they were before they were removed, and are now being developed independently. This is a picture of Liquid, which is nice I suppose if you like that sort of thing.)

Look at mosfet's Liquid theme. It's really good looking and really fast! Even on my old machine :-)

I can't remember for sure, but I seem to remember some talk about a possible 2.2.2 - it was somewhere on the dot but can't remember where :(

Either way, I'm happy wiht 2.2.1 :) Its fixed all my favourite (?) bugs and I finally have Mosfet's LiquidEngine working. woohoo!

I can't wait to see if there will be many KDE2 themes around. The lack of them really sucks. If it weren't for the mosfet liquid rendering thing, I wouldn't be so pleased with KDE2's look.

But Mosfet removed that page...in some moment of rage

But Mosfet removed that page...in some moment of rage

For a great visual effect, check out the Liquid style engine which was designed for this version of KDE. I'm running it now, and it looks beautiful:

Yes, that's right. If you _REALLY_ want it to look like Aqua, go get the liquid rendering engine from www.mosfet.org. It's great and looks so cute :-)

Well, actually, there has been a bit of a flamewar on the kde-devel list between Waldo Bastian and Mosfet--mostly about differences in work styles. You can read Mosfet's take on the whole thing here.

-- Shamus

This space for rent. EZ terms!

Both GNOME and KDE are driving toward a set of user interface guidelines. But at this time, they really seem to be focusing on making flexible and powerful toolkits (GTK+/Bonobo and Qt/KParts/DCOP) and interoperability communication mechanisms. If they are going to beat Microsoft and win some users for the Linux desktop, they have to have technology that Microsoft and Apple don't have. A large base of highly flexible, consistent, themable components is important... And the UI guidlines are coming around. I don't use GNOME, so I can't comment on the consistency of its apps, but KDE (particularly KDE 2 betas) seems to follow the standards set by Windows and Mac very nicely. In fact, Mosfet is(was) a huge Mac fan, and has designed the KDE2 theme engine, a number of components, and a number of themes that are somewhat Mac-like.

What I'm really trying to say, is they are both getting there. Mac has a 20 year history, and Windows has like a 15-year history... obviously the developers of those systems developed standards that evolved over the years. KDE And GNOME are both quickly catching up.

"Evil beware: I'm armed to the teeth and packing a hampster!"

Among other things, he talks about pros and cons of both GTK and KDE themes. He also the future of KDE styles up to and beyond the KDE2 release, and gives his take on recent XFree86 developments.

I share your disappointment with Mozilla. But you should ask yourself why is it "whereware" (cute term)? My answer: the developers don't know where to stop. (The commercial predecessor has the same problem.) It's got a zillion features which will never all get finished and which nobody will have time to learn. Which is one reason I'm excited by the simple, elegant KDE web browser.

Why run KDE instead of Win2K? For the end user, perhaps there isn't a lot of incentive -- now. But developers are starting to be disillusioned with that platform. The API is weird, undocumented, full of backward-compatible hacks, and much too big. Worst of all, it's owned by a bunch of bit-twiddlers who think it's OK to make everything you know totally obsolete every other year.

Now in the other corner we have an interesting triad: the Linux Kernel, the Qt library, and the KDE GUI. All three are owned by people who know the importance of an elegant, stable API. Some developers are going to write for this platform just for the pleasure of working in a sane environment!

Any competitor to Windows has to break out of the standard double-bind: nobody uses the platform because there aren't any apps, and there aren't any apps because nobody uses the platform. KDE has a good chance of breaking the circle.

I predict KDE 2 will probably signal the beginning of the end of the GNOME/KDE struggle - its been fun, but KDE appears to be keeping one generation ahead, and is certainly better looking.

Hopefully Konquerer will be ready soon and add another option for browsing.

OK, this is not a troll, just my opinion, BUT... So far, it seems like there is a lot of unwarranted hype about Eazel. Yes, they have ex-HIG members, but I have to say I'm not impresssed with the design that's in the screenshots so far. Granted, they have only begun recently, and given the pace of Linux development, and the talent involved, it may turn out to be something really cool. I hope so. For now, I think that Konqueror is looking a bit more promising. The screenshots at mosfet.org are very impressive - he's got one where he's viewing all sorts of things at once (a .dvi doc, a PostScript doc, a gopher listing, and a FTP site). I don't use the GNOME or KDE panels - I like my Blackbox root menu just fine, thank you - but sometimes I want a nice graphical file manager, and so far I like the way Konqueror is coming along. It is nice to have the competition from Nautilus; I think the reason that both projects are moving along so well is the competition.

As for a standard... I hate it when things are forced on me. The great thing about Linux is choice - your choice of window manager, desktop environment (if you want one), or just a console. Don't force GNOME, or KDE, or anything else on me - I'm perfectly capable of choosing. The need is not for a "standard", but for more innovative interfaces. When you standardize, innovation is stifled. I've yet to see much REAL innovation in desktops lately, in ANY operating system. How about a new desktop paradigm, people? I was hoping OSX might provide this, but I think not. Anyway, just my $0.02; you may feel differently.

I think that you have a good point BUT I do have to point out KOffice and the GNOME-Office suites. Now, they're not perfect by far and maybe they don't offer all of the features of MS-Office (yet) but they have the *ability* to do so via the OpenSource development model that they use. Not only are they nearly as functional, but in some cases they actually work *better* than their MS-equivalents.

Example: PowerPoint only creates presentations that will work correctly with IE4.x or higher; KPresenter creates (albeit static) presentations you can even view with G!zilla and/or KFM, Konqueror, mozilla, IEx.x, NSx.x... any web browser that supports images, basically. I like that.

Also, when was the last time that you saw Explorer embed a Word document? In a frame? How about PostScript or PDF? Spreadsheets? Microsoft is going to have to worry about people wanting these cool features- I already show them to my friends and they drool, because they want a desktop that can do what mine can.

As an early promoter of fvwm, we came across many obstacles in the corporate world
to it - the reason was, usually, that CDE was the standard to which the corporation
had to adhere. However, the inception of KDE (and GNOME) has huge advantages
of the archaic systems that were Motif/CDE. For example, something as simple as
adding an application as a menu item into CDE used to have you looking up the
reference manual (which was not clear on the matter).

KDE and GNOME are a breath of fresh air - they will undoubtedly become the new
"standards" on the desktop for Unix platforms. Developers ignoring these
desktop systems are going to find they've missed the boat - big style.


Having seen some of the developments going on with KDE2 such as the
Neural network window placement policy I'd also stick my neck out and say that
they have a good chance in the next 3 years of making inroads into the NT-on-the-desktop market.

Maybee its just me but that stack of icons at the bottom of the screen reminds me alot of the panels in gnome or kde. And as far as anti alias support its coming along fine in the opensource world. And as far as high color icons and widgets that isn't an apple innovation, thats a tigert/mosfet/gtk/raster innovation. Not to mention all of the fine work of the creators and users of themes.org