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Interview: KDE League Chairman Andreas Pour
Frank writes "Here's a good interview with KDE League chairman Andreas Pour. He talks about the K desktop environment (KDE) 2.1, that will be Hitting the streets on Monday, February 26. He reveals info about some significant advantages over the old 1.0 platform, including a full-fledged browser and the upcoming KOffice suite of business applications."
Yeah, pretty soon we're gonna see GNOME, Mozilla, and Lynx file a lawsuit in conjunction with the DOJ, claiming the KDE is a monopoly.
Interesting.
I've always found KDE for 'weenies', those that really do not want to interface with UNIX the way it was meant: through a command-line interface or via a windowmanager like twm, fvwm or a light modern one like afterstep.
KDE with it's Windows look-alikeness is therefore the solution for those who do not want to bother with 'arcane' CLI's and windowmanagers.
But then, when I was at the OSDEM in Bruxelles quite a lot of 'smart' developers were using KDE, to my surprise. This made me think about it again and I'm now considering installing 2.x just to try it.
--Rogier
Now however, these issues do not exist. So why keep tow different desktops? Why continue to divide out labor on two projects which both hope to achieve the same thing? Imagine how much more polished the Linux desktop environment would be if all effort were focused on just one. Twice as much effort would be expended on it every day. At present KDE and Gnome both have a somewhat beta-ish feel to them, but this would quickly disappear if there was only one desktop environment.
What are the arguments against this? They are as follows:
- Linux needs variety. Having two different desktops environments gives people a choice. For myself, I would say that this does not hold water. It is far better to have one desktop environment that works well, than to effectively repeat the same effort on two different incompatible desktops. Gnome and KDE are very similar anyway - they both hope to achieve the exact same thing. I could understand this argument if they were trying to acheive different things, in a different way, but they arent.
- Incompatibility. One of the desktop environments would become redundant, and all its software would be rendered incompatible with the new one. My problem with this is that it happens already. KDE2 is not especially compatible with KDE1. If instead they had created bindings for the gnome desktop environment, and then joined it, we would all be much better off. It is not even an expecially big task - qt is only some 20000 lines of code, for example.
I think that instead of working on KDE3 and Gnome2.0, we should instead be trying to build bridges, and reunifying this fork which has been scarring the Linux community for so long. It is time to extend the olive branch, and heal these old wounds.The developers may not like it, but it is in the interests of the user and of Linux as a whole.
--
Clarity does not require the absence of impurities,
/* And you'll never guess what the dog had */
/* in its mouth... */
--Larry Wall in stab.c from perl
So what if the browser is integrated with a desktop environment? The issue with MS was that it was integrated with the operating system. There is a big difference.
-- Thrakkerzog
Get it now my friend, the version in CVS is 2.1 FINAL!!! I have it safely on my hard drive, so feel free to /. it now.
The truth about Michael
He reveals info about some significant advantages over the old 1.0 platform
Of course, it wouldn't be as good PR to talk about the significant advantages over the old 2.0 platform, like stability. My best explanation for KDE 2.0 was that it was an olive branch after all the insults Gnome developers took over their "1.0" misrelease. I managed to get konqueror to crash within a minute of using it. I tried both compiling from scratch and prebuilt binaries before giving up. To be fair, I didn't try the 2.0.1 release or whatever came next; the bugs I saw may have been pounced on more quickly than I'm giving them credit for.
Most of the problems seem to be gone now; in the 2.1 beta that comes with Red Hat fisher (yes! beta software squared!) I couldn't make any of the main components crash, and even koffice took some time and work to bring down. I hope the RH7.1 final is delayed long enough to slip KDE 2.1 final in; it's really worth a look now.
At present KDE and Gnome both have a somewhat beta-ish feel to them, but this would quickly disappear if there was only one desktop environment.
I think experience has shown that, for better or worse, throwing more resources (people etc.) at a project doesn't necessarily solve its problems. Same here. I also had the opinion that two huge projects both pursuing the same goals would be a waste, but I think that the "competition" has helped increase the quality of both Gnome and KDE. They make sure that certain features are available, because the others have them already. They study each other's code to improve their own (not everybody, but some). Variety _is_ good!
I'm not enough into this to know whether the efforts to make both projects more compatible to each other, share certain file formats / configurations etc. really worked out. That would be a step into the right direction.
However, whether a single desktop environment would be good or not, I think there's not a chance in hell that one of the groups will drop development to join the other.
GNOME and GTK apps I've noticed ingegrate better
with more window managers than do KDE
apps,and there are a lot more of them.
KDE is the better environment by far, but running all your non-KDE apps in it creates bloat and ugliness.
The truth about Michael
I love the new shell plugin idea. Konqueror has been top-notch stuff, and adding the ability to conveniently execute shell programs and capture them to a terminal just rocks.
I've been using the embedded terminal feature to do this in KDE 2, and having a way to do it without needing to pop open a shell in advance is just nifty. I bit of configuration lets me set up development directories that are extremely convenient to use.
I've been hearing this fiction that KDE is not for serious Unix users, but this is just bull IMHO. Konqueror is easily the most productive programming environment I've ever worked with.
I have never much cared for KDE...(Mainly for my own stupid reasons of the WM portion not being custumizable enough ALA Sawmill or E)...However that being said, I played with 2.1beta the other day and I have to say that it pretty much knocked my socks off performance wise, stability wise, and it "felt" really good....Alas I went back to my Sawmill/Gnome Panel config shortly after -- I just think that some of these cool theme combos (GTK & Sawmill) that have been coming out lately are just DA Bomb...Plus I do not particularly care to launch a bunch of background processes like KDE does....
(+1 Funny) only if I laugh out loud.
For instance, opening a Konqueror window on my home directory takes about 5 times longer than opening a Windows Explorer window (windows key + E).
I'm sure this is partly due to Windows embedding certain GUI stuff into the kernel, but the fact of the matter is that KDE is still up against it.
So, the question is: is there any scope for drastic performance increases in future releases?
- Nick
Did the fix the one major problem with KDE-2, namely the fact that it takes a minumum of 2-3 seconds to start *any* program, no matter how simple? Used to getting split-second response times from even the largest apps under BeOS, KDE-2 is basically unusable for me. KDE-1 was never this slow on my system, so what up with 2?
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
Moderators sould get a clue!
Heidi Wall is a trolling karma whore!!!!!!
and you don't even want to know what she does
with camels!
It isn't going to happen - not for a long time anyway. Both KDE and GNOME are still developing their infrastructures and investing massive resources into their own respective projects. The thought that one project would abandon their work and merge with the other is extremely unlikely, especially considering the past animosity and considerable egos that some nameless core developers have (I won't say which project - I'm no troll).
.NET working with the Linux desktop.
I wouldn't expect to see anything significant until KDE 4.0 / GNOME 3.0. Then we should see two mature component models, a large number of applications that make use of it's respective desktops features and things will have probably settled down a bit. At that point, it might be possible to see some sort of bridge developed between the environments at the object level.
One day we might have a desktop that integrates Mozilla XPCOM, KDE Kparts, GNOME Bonobo, OpenOffice UNO (yeah, I know about the port to Bonobo) and possibly even COM/ActiveX via WINE. Who knows, maybe some people will get
There is obviously a lot of talk here about merging KDE and GNOME. That is not a good idea. There is also a lot of talk to keeping things like it is. Also, not a good idea. The only real way to solve this issue is create a standard desktop API that KDE or GNOME backends can plug in to. I've already espoused the idea dozens of times, and if you want details, look at my back-posts, especially the recent Art of UNIX Programming Thread. If there was an ABI that apps had to follow, then we could open the desktop environment to competition in quality, stability, etc, while still having a consistant desktop, and without fragmenting the application base.
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
64 meg of SDRAM can be bought for ~40.00 from crucial.com
Consider your history. Why are there now two desktop environments for Linux? Well, we have reached this state because of liscensing issues. The Gnome project formed purely because people were unhappy with the KDE qt liscense.
The origin of the projects is no longer important. So if MIT suddenly is given the source code for all the printer drivers in use on their campus, should RMS give up the Free Software Foundation? (click here if that didn't make sense to you)
Why continue to divide out labor on two projects which both hope to achieve the same thing?
Because they plan to do this in completely different ways, also once they are mature the differences willbeself evident.
Imagine how much more polished the Linux desktop environment would be if all effort were focused on just one. Twice as much effort would be expended on it every day.
Anyone who has read Frederick Brooke's Mythical Man Month knows that your statements are a big misconception. Doubling the number of developers on a project does not double the amount of time taken to finish the project because new developers have to be brought up to speed and the layers of communication increase which leads to more errorsoccuring due to miscommunication. Basically there is a certain level of complexity where throwing more developers at a product produces little net gain. KDE and GNOME are at that level of complexity.
KDE is mainly C++, GNOME is mainly C (if you do not realize there is a fundamental difference in these languages then go to comp.lang.c or comp.lang.c++ and state this and see the responses you'll get). GNOME uses all sorts of CORBA stuff while KDE does not. GNOME uses OrBit while the few KDE developers who know CORBA used Mico. Both projects are extremely undocumented and very few, if any, have a complete grasp of the entire system in either case.
Quite frankly,if KDE and GNOME merged the efforts involved in adjusting to the merger would slow down development a lot more than any perceived current lack of developers does. In addition, some functionality that was a part of one or the other system would be lost (because stuff always gets trimmed in a merger).
A better suggestion is for KDE and GNOME to start actively pursing interoperability. Unfortunately this is one place were Open Source may fail. It is unlikely that GNOME interoperability is high on the list of any KDE developer's list of itches he/she wants scratched and vice versa. Thus since they are all simply volunteers they can't be made to do it like would happen in a professional development environment, where a manager can just assign a bunch of coders this task.
Finagle's First Law
It runs. It works fine. The box acts as a firewall/proxy and is also hooked into my brother's main sound system so he can listen to MP3s (that are on a windows share). I can't believe ppl will bitch about speed when they try to run GIMP, KMail, Konqueror, licq, 16 Desktops (all with different backgrounds). Common sense...
That is not what I experience at all... KDE 2 has been nothing but smooth sailing (save a few bugs).
I agree, this sounds like a more useful solution than a single implementation. Is this not also how X11 is defined? Reguardless of the X11 thing, once there is a single foundation, it allows for growth in other areas. We would not be where we are now with different window managers and desktop environments, if there were not an establised windowing system for Unix (ie. X).
Think where the projects could go after there were a standard desktop API.
How do you think the API will be decided upon, though?
The biggest memory-sucker in KDE is a misconfigured QT. Many distros compile QT with exceptions enabled, which almost doubles the size of the library. To fix this, get the latest QT from TrollTech and use "-no-g++-exceptions" to the ./configure command. Then run "make symlinks sub-src sub-tools" to compile the stuff that you need and not the examples or tutorials you don't need. The file libqt.so.2.2.4 should be around 5.5 MB. Adjust the symlinks to point to the new QT and start KDE. I personally find KDE nice and zippy.
Another thing that might get in the way is if debug code has been compiled into KDE, and that can only be fixed by recompiling the whole shebang, adding "--disable-debug" to the ./configure command.
And that'll teach me to post before reading the article.
Too bad I can't moderate myself down, but I'm sure some helpful jerk will take care of it for me...
That could be re-phrased into saying:
:)
Not even do they use C++, they even supply a pre-processor to do the tedious work for you.
Ever wonder how they could "just" write up Konqueror which today is miles ahead of Mozilla in performance and capabilities, with much less effort in much less time ? They use the right tools for the job. Mozilla is also written in C++, but it's not used to it's full potential - far from it. C++ in Mozilla is "extended C", C++ in QT/KDE is "real C++". The benefits from using C++ like it was meant to be used are tremendous - I speak from experience. And, then they have their pre-processor of course
Could someone explain (or point me to) a good explanation as to the licensing issues posed by the KDE and GNOME, specifically, (i) to what extent does the need to link to GLP'd libraries require that applications that use each environment be GLP and (ii) what is the nature of the QT dual licenses?
Sure, let's add _yet_ another layer. No wait, let's not...
Abstractions of abstractions does not solve problems. I don't know why people are so easily talked into thinking this is a good idea. That would be XML all over again, like, "let's define a wrapper that everyone uses, but let's not consider that everyone still needs to agree on what we're actually sending thru the wrapper"
A common API on which KDE and GNOME could be developed is *already* there - it's X11R6 and POSIX. That's why you can start up GNOME *and* KDE on the same machine - clever, eh ?
I don't know why you mention an ABI, maybe it's a typo and you meant to say API ? The ABI is standard already, and it would be a damn hard thing to re-define, and as I see it wouldn't make much sense to do either..
This seems like a reference to Kyle's mom from South Park(American cartoon). She always said what What WHAT when outraged at some minor offense.
treke
I hope KOffice is better than Star Office. I haven't really found a really good office suite lately. I dont' want all the million insane crazy features. I just want a very stripped down, stable, simple office suite that does graphs, spreadhseets, and word procesing. That's it. I hope KOffice Delivers.
The GeekNights podcast is going strong. Listen!
It seems that their corparate ties with Ximian, Eazel and Sun are causing real trouble. Apparently they have lost nearly all of their voluntary work force after the GNOME Foundation was announced. Couple of quotes I saw in gnome-hackers list. These are core developers, not some random guys:
Alan Cox:
"...there are not enough people working on gnome infrastructure/site admin to keep up with the demands of these because most folks are busy working on their rival Ximian or Eazel projects and so the number of effective actual gnome core contributions has dropped massively rather than risen as might originally have been expected."
link
Matthias Warkus:
"Looking at the CVS logs, no one seems to be really working on the core anymore. Pretty much all of the code commits go into Nautilus, Gnumeric, Evolution and Eazel's and Ximian's supporting and surrounding technology and tools.
I think we're at the point where we should ask ourselves whether the GNOME Project can still be considered a living entity at all. And whether it's a good move to, at this point, tie our next release to Nautilus, which, however cool, is essentially a third-party product with the main purpose of generating revenue for Eazel. If we go on "outsourcing" software that way, we might end up with a "GNOME desktop" which is not much more than lots of commercial free software bundled together haphazardly."
link
Is their situation really this bad?
I think he is talking about a layer underneath the toolkit and DE environments where code could be shared. You know, compartmentalized, modularized tools done in the Unix way instead of a multitide of huge monolithic incompatible systems that you need to keep around to run all of your apps.
Your attitude is sort of disturbing: "AT&T and The Open Group has bequethed to us POSIX and X11, and that is where the standard environment ends, now and forever, so sayth the lord". Well, this ignores the fact that commercial UNIX was a profound failure on the desktop, and the commercial UNIX players that devised this whole mess no longer have much interest in desktop computing at all.
The future of desktop UNIX computing is now in the hands of Open Source projects, and they need to either work around the problems and legacy issues with the ancient 'standard environment' (particularly the gap between X11 services and DE services), or they need to move forward with defining an architecture that can maximize the utility of the system for the next 20 years.
(Not to mention that your XML comment is entirely offbase.)
When I hear the word 'innovation', I reach for my pistol.
I'm not Jewish but wtf is your problem? I hope that it is a joke!!! and if it is a joke, it is in vary bad tast.
sombody Mod this guy down so low no one will see this post!!!!
-The American people have overpaid; I am here to ask for a refund.
ummm....do you know anything? peer to peer?
how the fsck would that work?
-The American people have overpaid; I am here to ask for a refund.
Right, I'm bitter. That's why I think that Gentoo Linux is the coolest thing since sliced bread, and that XFS is the creation of god. Get over it. I love BeOS, but Linux has so much potential, its just politics and small minds that's holding it back.
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
I very much doubt this is from a real Caldera representative. What the heck is an "official copy of KDE 2.1"? And related, what is an unofficial copy?
And what does it mean that a distro is "real live"? And what has corporate issues got to do with anything?
--
"Oppression and harassment is a small price to pay to live in the land of the free." -- Montgomery Burns.
For instance, take Gnumeric: the best free spreadsheet available, the one with the most confortable user interface, pleasant to use and only surpased in functionality (but not in usability) by OpenOffice. Guess what? Gnumeric is fully written in Gtk+.
Evolution is another good example: it has a great user interface, but some bits of usability are still not there, and we are working actively to do user testing to make sure we provide a better interface, but this has nothing to do with the underlying technologies (as you like to convenientnly present in your interview). It has to do with matching the "User view" with the application, rather than forcing the application model into users.
OpenParts (KDE's CORBA-based component architecture) failed for a number of things, few of which could be traced to CORBA, I will enumerate the ones i remember, for the sake of completeness:
try {
corba_object->method (x);
} catch (...) {
handle corba errors here;
}
Was actually written like this: corba_object->method (x); Of course you get "unreliable" code if you do not handle errors. (btw, notice that most security holes on BugTraq a few years ago were all caused because people did not handle boundary conditions correctly, nor handle errors from Unix system calls correctly.
Good interview - short and to the point, easy to read in 10 minutes.
Anyway, here's my $0.10:
Andreas Pour has got a good point about the development tools for KDE versus those available for GNOME. Have you guys seen KDevelop? As someone who actually develops GNOME programs, i can tell you that KDevelop does look about 10 times better than GEdit - built in dialog construction tools (a la GLADE), a quick start (read: RAD) wizard, and more!
Shit, i'd kill for this tool in GNOME/GTK...
Moderators need an additional choice: "Karma Whore" for people who cut-and-paste articles as their comments!
Ok so this is getting a little OT, but I had similar problems which I resolved by switching distros... I'd been off Linux for a while - maybe a year or more, and I was ready to switch back. With a new machine, PIII-700, 40GB 7200RPM drive, 256 MB RAM, etc. etc. etc. and a GeForce2 MX to top it off. I tried out several distros: Redhat 7.0, 7.1 Beta, and finally Mandrake (7.2). Mandrake had an incredible performance increase in the GUI over the other two... I guess having everything compiled for i586 makes a difference?
Anyway the point is, a lot of speed issues are dependent on many other factors in between the actual code and your execution of it; especially in the Linux realm where there are so many different versions/compilations/packages/libraries to choose from..
I've been using KDE 2.01 (XF86 4.0.2) combined with kernel 2.4.1 for about a week now, and the combination far surpasses anything I've experienced on Windows or Mac. Its fast and stable (I compiled everything from source...those of you compiling QT 2.2.4, try
I'm really excited about where this project is headed. In my mind, the Windows 'standard' has already been surpassed.
Click here for a DVD on Linux HOWTO
--------------
Is this rock and roll, or a form of state control?
Even if it was integrated into the kernel, so what? I'm sure I'll be labeled as a heretic (what else is new), but the DOJ's emphasis on integrating IExplorer into Windows was absolutely stupid. They could integrate MSOffice right into Windows kernel space and I wouldn't care.
Microsoft's business practices are the problem, not their technology, and especially not their sophmoric attempts to improve it.
A Government Is a Body of People, Usually Notably Ungoverned
Just kidding.
TWW
"Encyclopedia" is to "Wikipedia" what "Library" is to "Some people at a bus stop"
However, if these two projects were merged it would not work. They have many fundamental differences, differences that would nearly require one project to be completely dumped. We all agree that this would not be a good thing.
I am a KDE user, and I am damn proud of it, but many of my friends use gnome, which is thier preference (its too slow for me).
The competition between the two projects has had an effect on each of them, encouraging adoptation of similar ideas, and generation of new ideas, ideas which might not have made it into the source code otherwise.
The competition between kde and gnome is a good thing, even if both groups didn't care about the existence of each other, it is nice to have more than one option.
Those of you calling for a merging of kde and gnome, think about this, what if we merged the linux kernel and a bsd kernel. It probally wouldn't work for a few years. Think about it.
Spring is here. Don't believe me, look outside!
That is a total f*cking ripoff! You can get 256MB of PC133 SDRAM for $47. Checkout prices at www.pricewatch.com , so you don't get jerked around at places like crucial and other name-brand places.
Considering that a stick of 128MB of SDRAM costs around $25, I have no sympathy for anyone who doesn't run a PC based system with at least 128MB of ram. You don't have to be rich to invest $25 in an extra 128MB of memory. Linux will thank you for the upgrade.
Remember, www.pricewatch.com
Well, I guess if the only language you know is Sather, then you'll have to stick with GNOME.
A Government Is a Body of People, Usually Notably Ungoverned
Ensure that the kernel was compiled for i686.
Use hdparm to make your hard drive load faster. This is one of the most common problems. hdparm -d 1 turns on dma which is the most important. also fool with the -m parameter. so man hdparm for details
64 megs of ram isn't that wonderful for KDE or GNOME, but i suppose there isn't much to do about that...
"Recursive bipartite matching"- try it!
That's the poorest hyperlinking I've ever seen. michael doesn't link "a good interview" to the interview, they link the acronym for K Desktop Environment (in parenthesis) and the version number. How much crack do you have to be smoking to think that makes sense?
Sheesh.
-Erik
No, not at all. The exceptions you are disabling are for QT itself, which doesn't use exceptions. KDE programs could still use exceptions if they wanted (usually they don't though). Enabling exceptions does nothing but make the QT dynamic library bigger.
[me@localhost]$ prolog
| ?- god.
! Existence error in god/0
main(c,r){for(r=32;r;) printf(++c>31?c=!r--,"\n":c<r?" ":~c&r?" `":" #");}
nope, I said WM and xterms. That gives me the whole range of unix apps.
If you're going to be smug, you could at least be informed
Perhaps I am smug, but you are foolish for assuming that everyone is not aware of so trivial a point. Of course you can run kde/gnome apps under a different wm so long ans you have appropriate libs installed, a WM is just a vessel through which to view X11 content, if you will.
What I object to is that KDE/gnome are not folling ESR's guide to creating unix apps. One of the fundamental commandments was not to reproduce work that already exists (e.g. a mp3/cd player, why not slap a new skin on XMMS and call it good?).
-ffatTonyNo it is not a ripoff. It is VERY reliable memory that comes with a descent warranty and you know what you are getting. Some times it pays to get the best...
Actually, I think Mozilla's performance is more related to the fact that the browser is actually written in JavaScript. Also, the scope of Mozilla is much, much bigger than Konquerer. Mozilla is its own XML-based development environment. It has its own object model, it's own widget set, etc. Whether this is a good idea or not, I don't know, but that is more of the cause of these problems than language choice. Also, the fact that Mozilla is extremely cross-platform, including its own portability library makes the fact that they've done so much in so little time, absolutely amazing.
Engineering and the Ultimate
I don't understand why this would be such a bad thing. And you are quite incorrect when you said that abstractions of abstractions does not solve problems.
The problem right now is that a program written for KDE will not work with a gnome only system. Your right that X11R6 and POSIX are common API's that Gnome and KDE use, but this has nothing to do with the problem stated above. The problem happens because the apps written for these two environments can't talk with the other environment. A shared API would solve this.
my other penis is a vagina
I guess you either missed the entire case or didn't understand the least bit of it. The DOJ's case was not about Microsoft's practices with IE being bad from a technology point of view, but it was shown that, as you pointed out to be a problem, their business practices were illegal because it was unfair competion to Netscape.
Um, IE wasn't integrated into the windows kernel or anything. It was integrated into the shell/desktop enviroment (Explorer at the time). Explorer just happened to ship with windows. As does KDE (which ships with all major distributions).
It seems likely that in terms of market share, GNOME will eventually outrun KDE -- support from Sun and HP and from the (commercial ) eazel venture almost guarantee this. What I find worrying is the fact that GNOME also benefits from a weird form of "open-source marketing" effect. By exploiting a hazy notion of political correctness, the GNOME folks, with strong backing from Red Hat, have cornered the market on GPL authenticity. As a result, thousands of well-intentioned users dutifully run a crappier desktop thinking they're doing the Right Thing. "Real" developers know the truth: KDE2 is more lucidly designed and implemented, and is miles ahead of GNOME, and nothing in GNOME's current plans will change that. Having written apps for both platforms, I now understand how it was possible for the KDE effort to generate KDevelop and Konqueror so quickly. I encourage skeptics to try Konqueror 2.1. In the end, marketing will likely prevail. Leading to this analogy: kde:gnome :: linux:windows
later
Puh-lease, software bundling for the purpose of trying and kill a competitor only applies if you have a 95% market share.
Moderators need an additional choice: "Karma Whore" for people who cut-and-paste articles as their comments!
In fact, there are at least four or five books either available, either in course of printing about KDE programming (mine being one of them, yes, shameless plug). And there is the equivalent number of Gnome books, too. I don't think you can call any of these projects undocumented, even compared to the highest commercial code standards.
User documentation is completely different from developer documentation. There are dozens of books on using Linux but no one claims that the Linux kernel code is well documented. I know, I've looked and I've had friends who've tried writing kernel modules and gotten exasperated at the lack of documentation.
"i can tell you that KDevelop does look about 10 times better than GEdit"
Apples and oranges comparison. Gedit was never mean to be an IDE, just a text editor.
The biggest difference I can see between Gnome & KDE currently is: One is an open source project that accepts donations of programmers and hardware, the other is an opensource project coded mainly by companies with a large commercial interest.
I'll put it another way; Ximian's core product will either be Ximian Gnome or very dependant on it. Ximian are a company and are out to make money, they will be making profit off other developers work. Is Gnome destined to become another Mozilla?
This is probably the most ignorant piece of flamebait I've ever seen on Slashdot. This is the same kind of garbage that used to be posted about RedHat shortly after their IPO because armchair coders like you were jealous of the fact that not only were these people contributing to open source but they were making money as well.
Just in case you've lived under a rock for the past few years, here's a clue... GNOME is GPLed. Anyone can package it and sell it, just like Linux. Miguel De Icacza founded GNOME and started a company just so he could afford to give away GNOME, and instead people like you who haven't even contributed a 100 line Perl script to open source have the balls to question his motives for trying to make money of a project that is primarily his.
The Mozilla comment is actually appropriate in that just like Mozilla is still mostly written by Netscape employees (meaning it might as well be closed for all AOL cares), GNOME is still mostly written by Ximian employees but the fruits of their labor is available to all.
until X comes with decent drivers for my Radeon 64 DDR Im not going to pay attention to any window manager. To hell with them anyway did you people see athena!! Now thats a window manager XML customization and all.
Yeah man, error checking is for weanies! Us netscape engineers don't care if that pointer that was returned is actually a NULL error code and will crash the whole browser...
"If I removed everything here that I thought was pointless, there would be like two messages here."
woxy.com - Bam! The Future of Rock and Roll
True, but consider this:
gEdit is all we've got outside of GLADE for app development in GNOME... a mere text editor with some authoring capabilitiess (CVS, and the like)
And that's precisely my point - gEdit (which is not a bad program at all, BTW) in no way compares to what KDE developers are using - advanced tools such as KDevelop.
So, like i said before, where are my kick ass development tools for GNOME?
Moderators need an additional choice: "Karma Whore" for people who cut-and-paste articles as their comments!
BTW. Last time I looked at Bonobo it looked much more like COM than CORBA. Sure it uses CORBA's IDL but all the QueryInterface stuff is a dot for dot clone of M$ COM. How much CORBA is there really in Bonobo?
Your pizza just the way you ought to have it.
Yup, KDE has not one but two very powerful IDEs. I've not tried KDE studio but it seems like a very mature product. Besides I think linux needs more commercial software written for it. Way to go guys.
Your pizza just the way you ought to have it.
I love KDE, but I found one thing very disturbing with KDE 2.0. Basically it was this:
Get the idea. With all the processes spawned graphically and named the same when something does go wrong, there is no way to know what to kill!
I do wonder what ever possed them to design it like that....
Oh well, I hope that someone will get it and change it in the future, or that 2.1 has that as an improvement.
From the same thread.
Finagle's First Law
That's the biggest bunch of BS in the world. Wasted memory is wasted memory. I have no problem with Linux using 90% of my memory to cache my disk, but when it has to use 30-40% to cache the 30MB of graphics binaries, that's a problem. The problem isn't that Linux is caching those binaries, the problem is that the binaries are 30MB in size!
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
According to www.kdevelop.org, KDevelop supports creating GNOME applications. Maybe that's your :kick a** development tools for GNOME" right there.
IE has not been and never been in kernel space.
It was loaded and waiting, just so that if you ever did open it...it would open faster than netscape.
Do you even know what kernel space is? Just cause something is loaded doesn't mean it is in kernel space. The explorer loads when you logon, it is now synonmous to IE, therefore it is already in memory. Doesn't mean it is in kernel space. moron.