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 "

Comments

Re:This looks very good for Linux

[dvdeug]

In order for Linux to succeed, it needs to drop all of the proliferation of choices and focus on a single, distinctive brand image.

That's a Pyrric victory. Give up much of what makes Linux the OS of choice for many of us, so that it can be just another Windows. If you want Windows, you know where to find it.

Nonsense, Linux hasn't succeeded yet

[Jon Erikson]

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

Aesthtics improving

[scrutty]

Looks like they've paid some attention to the look of things this time. An improvement to be sure, as KDE1.x ,in my opinion is butt ugly.

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.

RMS on Qt

[Otter]

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.