Happy Birthday, KDE

KS writes: "Well, today, July 12, 2000 makes exactly 2 years since KDE 1.0 was released. It seems like forever. LinuxPlanet has a nice overview of the event and progress since then." It's amazing how much progress Linux has made in the last few years.

Comments

Getting locked into KDE scares me

[Junks Jerzey]

It is mildly frustrating that both leading GUI efforts are from the Windows school. That is, both are very geared toward fiddly gadgets and customizing themselves rather than having specific usability goals in mind. Note: I know about Blackbox (which I use) and Sawmill and such, but those are raw window managers for X and nothing more.

Now that Kylix seems to be locking into Qt and Corel has chosen KDE, there looks to be less opportunity for something cleaner and more user-oriented to come along. Even if someone were working in a different direction, they have a lot of corporate momentum to overcome. That's why most people are using Windows in the first place, unfortunately.

Re:Getting locked into KDE scares me

[drinkypoo]

We have come a long way since the Xerox GUI Concept.

What you think of as the Windows environment is actually a bad clone of Motif.

If Motif was so great, more things would look like it. The only window managers which are not Motif that look/looked like Motif by default were fvwm, and fvwm2.

On the other hand, they're all basically the same at this point, they just look different. On each window you have a widget that pops up a menu, and some other widgets that do other things to the windows. Some of the widgets sometimes do other things when you click them with other buttons.

Hey, at least it's not trying to be a mac. :)

Re:Getting locked into KDE scares me

[Arandir]

Now that Kylix seems to be locking into Qt and Corel has chosen KDE, there looks to be less opportunity for something cleaner and more user-oriented to come along.

A) Qt is very clean and user-oriented, as much as any GUI library can be. It's up to the developer to craft a decent UI. Qt only supplies the parts.

B) Like it or not, the UI of KDE and GNOME is already clean and user-oriented. Keeping the Microsoft bias out of it, just what is it about the KDE/GNOME/Windows/Warp desktops that is not clean or user-disoriented? Is it the root menu being in the corner of a panel instead of on the RMB that is somehow *wrong*? What?!

C) Do you have a better coherent vision of what a UI should be? If so, why have you done nothing about it? Do you really think that bitching about other people's work does any good?

Re:Getting locked into KDE scares me

[PD]

> I pose the question to you. Is there, somewhere,
> a better, easier and more efficent way to
> present images and information to the human
> brain?

Yes, and it's called text. If you need further proof, try rephrasing this article in the form of icons.

Or, you can think of a word as an icon. The bitmap pattern that forms the following icon between the brackets [courage] is a better graphical representation for the concept of courage than a lion or some such nonsense.

It's efficient too. The bitmap pattern that forms that excellent icon for courage can be compressed to 7 bytes, including the 0 at the end of the string.

Whenever I am forced to use Word, the first thing I do is remove all the default tool buttons and replace them with my own text labeled tool buttons. I find it far easier to use them. "Cut" and "Paste" are simpler to read and use than some goofy icon with two sheets of paper or some scissors or a cartoonish bottle of glue.

gnustep

[mikpos]

Just thought I'd throw in my support for GNUstep. They are working very hard at getting it API compatible with OpenStep, and eventually Cocoa as well. In fact, I understand that GNUstep's NSDistantObject is already co-operating with Mac OS X's NSDistantObject (and there is/was some talk of creating a CORBA gateway for it). Right now, only a small part of AppKit is implemented (though nearly all of FoundationKit is), and what's there is slow, probably due to the poor performance of the X11 PostScript xgps that I'm using (if you're lucky enough to have a fast PostScript engine for your windowing system, such as on Windows or NeXT or many Unices, it may be quite a bit faster).

Anyway, back to the point: if there is any free software written for OpenStep (e.g. NeXT) or Mac OS X, it should be able to run (eventually) without changes on GNUstep. Plus, the API is much cool. Not to suggest that OpenStep is the sole Wave Of The Future, but it is a very nice alternative to GNOME and KDE (or at least it will be once it gets a bit more mature).

Happy birthday and the best is yet to come.

[Forge]

KDE has been fun since the beginning. Even back in the days of KDE-beta1 it was the nicest desktop available for Linux and it has grown by leaps and bounds since then.

I mean how many beta quality apps on Linux have the decency to pop up a dialog box saying "This feature isn't here yet" ? These people have combined the best features of Free Software development ( Bazaar Debugging, Responsiveness to clear and sensible user requests and a willingness to postpone releases until the software works. ) With the best features of Proprietary development ( Competent design comities, detailed stile guides, clear and newbi friendly documentation of everything from Library interfaces to "How to use this help menu" ).

Best of all KDE has been lively and active about building cool software. Through all the flamewars and the license disputes, through all the condemnation, censorship and verbal abuse the KDE team has kept on hacking.

Sure they took the time out to push for greater clarity and yes they made it a point of duty to produce excellent software. The web site asks at the very top; "Is Unix ready for the desktop", The resounding response from this corner of Cyberspace is "Yes, but only with KDE".

Through share quality of code the influence of the KDE team has grown exponentially over these last few years. Grown to the point where they, not Debian but they the KDE core can get vendors to change licenses. It's grown to the point where Borland's new Kylix is basically a RAD tool for KDE apps.

Just goes to show that focusing on making quality free software is the key. As long as it's not all BSD licensed so people can stop it's growth as soon as a coins clink you will be fine.

Here's to KDE-2.0 and the next level of Desktop advancement on my favorite OS. *nix, because Linux isn't the solution to every problem. Given time ( 3 more years by my estimate ) and KDE will supplant CDE as the "standard" Unix desktop. This weather or not it becomes the standard on Linux.

And speaking of that other desktop. I won't, not today, It's KDE's day and I'll save my other glowing words for the other peoples day.

Request for eklarnung...

[Pac]

Please, don't take this as a flamebait, but I fail to see exactly what you are complaining about.

Yes, Windows seems to be KDE's initial inspiration. But then again, the MAc interface was Windows initial inspiration and the things Steve Jobs saw at Xerox PARC were the Mac initial inspiration. For me it is a perfectly natural evolution.

If you are out to develop a new technology, the most useful path is to look at existing technology and try to adapt it and work from there. So, as similar to Windows as KDE may be now (and even this last point may be open to discussion), it will certanly evolve in a different direction (and it will probably be leading the way, as the Mac had before it).

I would also like to know what exactly you have in mind when you say something cleaner and more user-oriented? Which are the specific usability goals you want to see addressed?

"standard desktop"

[jetson123]

KDE is as close to a standard desktop as exists in the Linux world.

I agree, and I think that should be reason for concern. Why? Because it means that any development for Linux for this "standard desktop" inside a corporation, even just for internal use, requires and expensive, commercial Qt license.

If people inside corporations had had to pay $1500/developer to get Linux in the door for trying it out on internal development efforts on it, it would have never caught on as a server platform.

And because the GUI toolkit and desktop is the most important part of a client, desktop OS, having that kind of fee structure for the "standard" GUI toolkit would harm Linux as a client platform.

So far, there are still viable alternatives to KDE/Qt. But every time a free software developer decides to develop a new piece of software for KDE/Qt rather than Gnome or some other free toolkit, KDE/Qt gets the bug fixes, functionality, and increase in user community. There is a high opportunity cost with choosing KDE/Qt for the other toolkits. Those are the network effects that got MS Windows where it is today.

Let's not make the same mistake with Linux that the industry made with Windows. Develop for free platforms, even if the alternatives seem more expedient to you in the short term.

Not to nitpick, but...

[little alfalfa]

June 12th was last month.

Don't you mean...

[Tyrannosaurus]

...Khappy Kbirthday? (does anybody else think this 'k' thing is out of control?)

Who's locking you in?

[deusx]

See subject. If you don't like 'fiddly gadgets', don't use programs with fiddly gadgets.

My stock install of Mandrake Linux has a WM switcher on login. For kicks, I swap between the choices on occasion. All of my programs tend to continue working. Generally, I go back to KDE, because Gnome ends up having too many nagging little things that rub me wrong (no Holy War... rub ME wrong. I don't care about YOU :) )

As for Kylix... Either don't use it, or make enough of a stink (see: Harmony project versus QT) for them to provide a mechanism for alternate CLX visual component sets wrapped around other GUI toolkits. I mean for God's sake, they're API compatible under Windows' GUI and QT on Linux, it can't be THAT hard. Hell, start a project to create an alternate set yourself.

dI don't see Linux being fertile ground for limitations of choice. Generally, if a number of people don't like something, eventually one of them will fix it or start a new project. (again, see: Mandrake Linux)

Anyway...

Motif is a clone of Windows

[cpeterso]

Motif is a clone of Windows. Windows was a clone of the Mac. According to this Windows timeline, Windows 1.0 was released on November 20, 1985 and even Windows 3.0 was released on May 22, 1990. According to the Motif FAQ, Motif 1.1.3 was released in August 1991. How then could Windows be a copy of Motif?

The "Unix Haters Handbook" claims that a "stated design goal" of Motic was to copy Windows. Look at the "Motif Self-Abuse Kit" section of "The X-Windows Disaster".

A stated design goal of Motif was to give the X Window System the window management capabilities of HP's circa-1988 window manager and the visual elegance of Microsoft Windows. We kid you not. Recipe for disaster: start with the Microsoft Windows metaphor, which was designed and hand coded in assembler. Build something on top of three or four layers of X to look like Windows. Call it "Motif."

Re:Improvements?

[Skeezix]

Well maybe you haven't been keeping up with what's really been changing in KDE. There is a profound difference between KDE 2 and KDE 1. And in between there was KDE 1.1. In the Gnome camp similar strides have been made. Look at the changelogs from various files just to get an idea. It's amazing. Large scale free software projects seem to develop slowly from the point of view of outsiders who aren't really involved in working with the code. Mozilla is an excellent example. The developers told us that things were moving right along, but so many people complained over and over about the delays. Come on, folks. It's open source! If you don't like the delays, get in there and help!
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s/Linux/Free Software.

[Anonymous Coward]

KDE is for UNIX, not just Linux.