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Pre-KDE 2.0 Progress Report
Matthias Kalle Dalheimer writes: "Hi,
just wanted to let you know that there is a progress report about the achievements made at the last KDE developer meeting in Trysil, Norway, at KDE.org "
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Beta 3 isn't quite ready yet. It is tagged in the CVS, but we have moved the tag a few times to include fixes for problems we considered serious. It will probably be a few days before it is actually released. There are some test tar balls around, but these may not correspond to the actual beta as some or all of these last few bug fixes are probably missing. Please be patient, it won't be long and I think you'll find it worth the wait.
Where did you get this information? KDE has an integrated file manager/web browser. I have GNOME and find it ridiculously bulky for the very little it does for me.
KDE is indeed bulky and slower than a straight window manager. Both KDE and GNOME are resource hungry but you pay a price for ease of use and quite frankly I have always KDE easier to use.
GNOME is even more difficult to install. I don't know anyone who has figured out what to download to get it working and the only "easy install tool" means you have to foolishly trust an online shell script via "lynx -source" and run it as root.
No thank you! Until good instructions on what needs to be downloaded and what is extra are released I will stick with KDE.
Dave
Well finally people in the Linux world seem to be paying attention to what the "real world" wants from a computer rather than what the open source community does, and this can only be a good thing for everyone involved in Linux. By creating a UI that looks almost as slick as Windows 2000, and without the $$$ spent on UI R&D, the KDE team are making a step foward for Linux's penetration into the non-tech-savvy market.
Whilst I appreciate that the GNOME team are also doing a good job of copying the whole Windows "look and feel", I have to say that what Linux needs is more distinction between its GUI and the Windows GUI, not less. Sure, it should be roughly equivalent to aid in user migration from MS to Linux, but it also needs to be distinctive to aid in brand recognition, and KDE has acheived this.
As a top professional consultant I've worked with a lot of startups in the last few years, and the one thing that is of crucial importance in a market dominated by existing players is a distinctive brand that clearly differentiates the product in the eyes of its customers, whether or not the product is any different! Linux has been moving in this direction with its whole penguin theme, and I think that KDE should become the standard desktop in order to facilitate a distinctive brand and consumer recognition.
As long as there is more than one desktop available a lot of the less tech-savvy out there are going to be confused about what exactly Linux is - I've had people ask whether Red Hat or Mandrake was the better operating system - which means they'll be more likely to stick with Windows, which has a very well realised brand. In order for Linux to succeed, it needs to drop all of the proliferation of choices and focus on a single, distinctive brand image.
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Jon E. Erikson
Jon Erikson, IT guru
Gee, how many errors can I see?
(1) Debian is not a puppet of RMS. For example, RMS has asked Debian not to consider the Artistic license a free license (because of its ambiguity.) Debian disagreed.
(2) RMS doesn't care about what licenses are considered open-source.
(3) RMS doesn't consider the GPL the only free licence. The QPL**, the BSD license, the Netscape Public License and several others are considered free by him and the FSF. Go look at www.gnu.org - they have a nice list there, with explanations.
(4) (IMO) RMS has earned his clout. People listen to him because they respect him, and because he has earned that respect. His opinions are usually well thought out, and clearly explained.
You may want to check this mini-howto as well for more complete info on deuglyfying X, and more specifically Netscape...
;)
Can I get a +1 Informative now, too?
I strongly believe that trying to be clever is detrimental to your health. -- Linus Torvalds
Linux has already succeeded, and because of the proliferation of choices, not in spite of it.
Unfortunately, outside of a small group of people who follow RMS's Open Source creed and support free software, the fact is that Linux hasn't truly succeeded anywhere yet. Sure it is becoming the platform of choice for running webservers, but that is mainly because of the proliferation of small- to medium-sized net startups for whom cost is more of a factor than having a tried and tested rock solid enterprise platform such as Solaris. As these companies die out or grow Linux's share of the server market will once again fall.
Anyway, the desktop market, both for home and business use is where true mindshare comes from. And in this arena Linux has made little headway against the Windows or Mac platforms, both of which cater far better for the average home user than the "RTFM" attitude many Linux users display when it comes to offering advice. And when the only documentation is a couple of man pages (since documentation doesn't get you any "kudos") that is of no use whatsoever.
When the average user comes to set up their Linux box for doing all the stuff they do using Windows they are faced with a bewildering array of choices - which distribution, which window manager, which desktop, which web browser etc etc. How are they supposed to decide on which is best for them, let alone set up and configure these applications?
The only Linux project which has even attempted to make Linux accessible to the average person is Corel Linux, and what did they get for their trouble? Irate Linux gods flaming them for "dumbing down" their operating system and making it more accessible to all.
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Jon E. Erikson
Jon Erikson, IT guru
GNOME guys have this grand vision to produce the one and only desktop that will be everything to everyone. I feel they are trying to take on too much and hence the progress is very slow. I was once on a (commercial) project like this. We wanted to build the ultimate application in the industry, encompass everything and still leave plenty of room for expansion. The project grew enormously before it became usable and the initial "grand design" had to be replaced by something simpler and leaner. I think this stage is still ahead of the GNOME guys. The age old KISS rule will bite them very soon (if it's not biting them already). They may have the great plan and superb architecture but I have my own views on designing architectures before anything uses it. No offence to the GNOME team but a thought from experience. KDE has all the aces their desktop is leaner, more functional and more stable thanks to its simpler design. Bonobo may be great one day but it will take them years to get it going especially if they try to rewrite StarOffice with it.
Netscape*documentFonts.sizeIncrement: 10
This reduces the increment/decrement factor of fonts to 10% from the default 20%, so you don't end up with such tiny fonts.
The icons they show in the filebrowser are really nice looking, crisp with good colours and still identifiable.Colorful but not garish. The same for the toolbar icons. The overall color schemes cried "Aqua" to this observer.
But having mentioned toolbars, the spreadsheet screenshot was ludicrous ! Half the real estate seemed to be taken up by icons and toolbar widgets ! I assume these can be turned off.(GNOME suffers far too much from chunky button syndrome as well). Toolbar buttons are fine for quick shortcuts guys, but they take away space from the application itself.
The most sensible thing in the article by far is the minimum font size in the web browser ! All web browsers should have this. Tiny fonts suck!
Kudos to all these guys for putting all the work in to continually improve their offerings. I don't really go much for the Linux desktop environment thing, but I know plenty of people who wouldn't think of using a computer without one. The KDE and GNOME teams are doing a really important job
My compliments to the graphic design team as well. I think it looks really clean and attractive as I said.
Now please can you sort out the licensing furore ? Thank you.
-- Oh Well
I'm ambivalent about introducing licensing issues into a discussion that's focusing on technical issues, but there's an interesting bit of news that I haven't seen mentioned outside of the kde-licensing list. Here's a post on a Debian mailing list in which RMS offers his view on linking apps to Qt. Basically he supports the view that GPL'd code like KDE, which is designed to link against a non-GPL library, should be considered to implicitly have permission to do so - and thus dosn't require any license modifications.
Now, there is still the issue of GPL'd code from outside sources, but this obviously removes 99% of the problem. So is Debian reconsidering, now that RMS has addressed their primary objection? Not really, as discussed in this kde-licensing thread.
What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
The report focus on a lot of smaller details which have been improved, such as the minimum font size in the browser etc.
These things may not seem very important at first, but many of them, you will be using several times every day and this "stuff" are therefore very important to the overall desktop experience.