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OSNews Talks With the Konqueror Team
JigSaw writes: "OSNews features an exclusive interview with the Konqueror team, KDE's integrated filemanager, image/document viewer and web browser. Dirk Mueller, Waldo Bastian, Carsten Pfeiffer and Simon Hausmann are answering questions regarding the future of Konqueror, its portability and the integration with KDE3 and QT3. And speaking about KDE3, OSNews is reporting what's new in the new version: KDE 3 will be based on QT 3.0 and will also feature educational and other apps (like Kompare and KWinTV) as part of the default installation, support for extremely large files, new versions for KNode and KMail, email templates in KMail, advanced Web Shortcuts, S/MIME support, plugins for the KMenu, a graphical Regular Expression app (KRegExpEditor) and much more. A (very early) alpha version is already available."
And now there's already an alpha of 3.0...
I use Konqueror every day, but there are just a few things I feel are missing. The articles didn't mention these, though.
1. I cannot seem to find any way to stop animated GIFs. Is there some buried command for this, or am I SOL?
2. It would be nice if I could put my favorite links on the menu bar, like with Navigator.
3. The bookmarks menu demands that I hold down the mouse button while swishing through my bookmark folders. If I accidentally let go, I end up with the wrong site, or all too commonly, get the "edit bookmarks" page.
4. There is noooo rule four.
5. Konqueror still croaks on various web sites. I don't know if it is the complexity, or maybe something to do with managing the color palettes. (My xterms are fixed - graphics upgrades are impossible...)
6. They did mention the loading time, but I'll still mention that it is slow. Sure, maybe my P150 was not up to snuff, but an AMD 800 with 256 MB of DDR?
Some things I like about Konqueror:
1. Rendering quality and speed are better than Navigator, in my opinion.
2. The conditional cookie and javascript (by web site) feature is awesome.
3. It's free, and has a long life ahead of it (thanks, guys!)
A dingo ate my sig...
In case you haven't already noticed, Konqueror is NOT a web browser. It is an application framework for their KParts technology.
:D
Konqueror is the file manager for KDE, and allows for embedded viewing of any files with KParts plugins (or whatever the correct term is). KHTML is just one piece of Konqueror, so your comments do not necessarily apply.
Additionally, Linux has always been about choice and freedom. There is nothing wrong with the Konq guys making their own HTML renderring engine. In fact, you can even use the gecko engine with Konq if you so desired, but in all honesty I think KHTML has it out-done. Konqueror does so many more things than Mozilla, and much faster too.
A more fair comparison of apps would be Konq vs Nautilus, as both of those have similar functionality.
Anyway, that's my 2 cents
Since when is Mozilla a stable and fast browser?
The last version I tried was 0.9.3 (still current?) and that's the slowest browser I've tried in a long time...
I'm sorry, but Mozilla is not fast...
And not really any more stable than any other browser...
The only way one can get any benefits from the mozilla project is to use the gecko rendering engine with another UI... (like galeon)... but it's still a bit sluggish when opening new windows/tabs...
I'd actually say that for actual browsing Konqueror _IS_ superior...
Ner lbh sebz gur HFN? Gura lbh'ir whfg ivbyngrq gur QZPN!
Don't go blaming Konqueror or other browser projects for Mozilla's problems. I love Mozilla. I use it as my browser. But it has problems and those problems are there in spite of Konqueror, not because of it.
Just because a project is "first" doesn't mean it should get a monopoly on developer resources. Should the same be said for KDE over GNOME?
This is a flawed assumption. The Free Software Community does not exist for the business world or any other world outside that of the people hacking code.
That said, if a project wants to court business, I'm all for it. But don't assume that is the goal of every project.
I'm sure the Konqueror team was well aware of Mozilla when they started. The projects have different architectures and different goals. Mozilla will never be the integrated browser Konqueror is. ioslaves are something Mozilla will not have any time in the near future.
There are lots of duplicate projects out there. I'm thinking of starting my own shortly. Why? Because all the other similar projects don't have the goals I have and their designs are clearly biased toward something I have no interest in. Furthermore, such designs are nearly impossible to "fix" properly to accomplish what I need. These are fundamental, core architectural decisions that can't be patched around. Better to start from scratch and build something the Right Way to accomplish my goals.
Not to mention the complete lack of documentation and code comments. :(
One Word: Arrogance.
Thats the problem with the KDE developers. Since day one they closed they're ears and eyes to reasonable answers. The fact they started with a proprietory/not free toolkit underscores the prevelant 'we dont give a shit about you' attitude the KDE project has.
Qt was always open.
The only difference between the QPL and the GPL is that QPL has some section meant to prevent the forking of Qt into a free project that will compete with Trolltech.
Its a very reasonable license in its opensource terms.
They could never accept a browser like Mozilla for one reason: They believe they are better.
Mozilla has matured into a stable and fast web browser with an unbelievable amount of power. But the KDE project just blows it off and keeps on believing their browser is a superior product.
Again, as someone else said, Konqueror is *NOT* a browser. It is a framework, encapsulating the KParts.
The actual browser is KHTML.
KHTML was usable before Mozilla was, so the question should be reversed, and truly, I believe that Mozilla people *should join the development of Konqueror and KHTML*, which *IS* a better product.
Sorry to break this to you , but Konquerer is a cheap imitation of the real thing.
Immitation or not, Konqueror is *usable as* a fast usable web browser, with powerful and quick viewing of many file formats from anywhere (of which HTML is simply one of), including the local file system, FTP, Samba, etc.
(am I biased ? I dont know. I use KDE for my desktop.. but use mozilla/evolution daily.)
When was the last time you *seriously* tried using Konqueror instead?
Konq being a browser simply results from its use of the KPart for HTML viewing.
Just as it views an image or a PDF file, or a system directory, using the proper viewing KPart.
Its ability to get web pages via the HTTP protocol is a simple result of the HTTP IO slave which is part of the powerful KDE architecture. Konqueror merely encapsulates KDE technologies, which are so powerful, that a subset of them form a web browser.
Why did they have to do an 'exclusive interview'? Couldn't they just do a normal one?
-- Ed Avis ed@membled.com
On a few applications it isn't so bad and helps to keep the enduser aware of the origin of an app. I'm not sure that's worth anything to the enduser, unless he's in the process of expunging all KDE packages from a system. If 'ls
But if it's innoccuous and even "unifying" on the kind of applications you expect to find built-in to a desktop environment like kedit or kpm, when used to prefix dozens of add-on applications the leading "K" becomes rather stupid sounding and I feel sure gives many newcomers an impression that Linux/KDE is bush league & unprofessional. A joKe.
Koffice, Kword, Killustrator --not only are some of these flirting with trademark infringement, they are as names kwite krappy. The hard work going into this software deserves much better.
Imagine yourself doing tech support over the phone and having to put "K" in front of every third word. Kwhat? Many "K" applications begin to confuse the user: is it K-this or k-that? This has already reached the point where it is worse than the legacy of x-this x-that for program names (begun I suppose when it was such a novelty for an application to be written with a xlib GUI that the author just had to insist on the distinction for his program's name -- now it's no distinction at all is it?)
PLease use your imagination when naming your applications, and if you haven't got any, ask a friend. Hopefully there will be 5x the number of kde/qt applications in the near future. Now if they all begin with "K" autocompletion in bash (or Krun) is going to rapidly lose its usefulness for invoking them by name. In other words, NOW is the time to break this bad trend.
Johnny Quest has two Daddies.
Opera has been the fastest web browser on every platform I've tried it on, from a Pentium 90 (Windows 2000) to a Celeron 333 (Red Hat 7.1) all the way up to dual 900 mhz Pentium IIIs (Windows 2000).
Nice post! I showed it to Linus Torvalds and, though it was hard for him, he finally agreed to scrap Linux and work on the HURD. One battle won!
I'm going to talk to Bram Moolenaar next, because I'm pretty sure there was another vi clone before vim.
The evaluation of an action as 'practical' . . . depends on what it is that one wishes to practice.
What version are you using? In 2.2 there's a checkbox at the bottom of the proxies configuration dialog that says Auto Configure Proxies...
.technomancer
Sounds like you want AtheOS.
main(c,r){for(r=32;r;) printf(++c>31?c=!r--,"\n":c<r?" ":~c&r?" `":" #");}
Konqueror exists (in my belief) partly because of GUI toolkits.
KDE is looking to provide an entire host of applications that all look, feel, and interact the same way. They are designed to work together, to complement each other. Easy examples of this include KOffice (Kword, etc), Konqueror, and KNotes. If you apply a theme to KDE, it affects every QT based application. Of course, GTK+ (GNOME) applications work fine, but they don't pick up the look and feel of the rest of the interface. Mozilla does not use QT, and it implements its own themes. Some people like their browser looking and feeling completely different from the rest of the applications they use, but others want consistency. My belief is that the KDE team simply wanted to provide an alternative browser that fit in with the rest of the KDE applications very well.
Konqueror is designed like Internet Explorer was for Windows - it provides browsing, file managing, filesystem-like FTP, etc. Mozilla is a browser/e-mail client/newsreader designed as a standalone application. Konqueror leaves mail up to KMail, but KMail uses Konqueror's rendering engine (KHTML) to render HTML based e-mail (to my knowledge).
So, in the end, users are left with two nice choices for their browsing experience. Konqueror works very nicely if you prefer KDE (I do), but loading up all the QT libraries under GNOME in order to run Konqueror makes it lose some of the speediness that fans of Konqueror enjoy. Mozilla is nice because it is completely standalone, fully-featured (some would say bloated), but most importantly very cross-platform. Mozilla runs very nicely, and looks almost exactly the same, on Windows, Linux, MacOS, etc.
Both browsers have their niche to fill, and I think both projects are quite worthwhile to pursue.
"The universe seems neither benign nor hostile, merely indifferent." --Carl Sagan
He's right. Opera is faster. Both IE and Opera are buggy and quirky, however.
Opera crashes when there are more than perhaps 10 windows open. (I know how difficult it is to believe that a Microsoft product could be quirky.)
Opening a new window in Opera is easier and uses less resources. Opera has gesture control: Go back to a previous page by waving the mouse left. When you return to Opera after exiting, it can load all your pages back to where they were before exiting. Opera saves time, lots of it.
Try Opera for Linux. The version with ads is free.
Other versions: BeOS | EPOC | Solaris | Mac | OS/2 | QNX | Windows
Bush's education improvements were
Mozilla was first? really?
As far as I recall - even KDE 1 beta 1 had some browsing capabilities - I remember when I tried it and then checking with ps if they're running netscape without widgets or something like that - it was quite a surprise to me back then to see a first "competitor" to Netscape in terms of graphics browser integrated so well..
Now - if I recall correctly, KDE 1 (beta) was released at around 1997 with some browsing capabilities - so if I'm not mistaken - KDE was before mozilla..
Please correct me if I'm wrong (give dates or something)
Hetz (Heunique)
M$ has it's name added to the front of a ton of their apps. This doesn't help make a case in favor of it nor against it, but it does show us one possible way of doing things. Instead of Knotes, why not call it "K" notes, "K" word, "K" calc, "K" mail, etc. That way if you actually _need_ to specify that it's a KDE app, you include the K, and if you don't you just omit the K.
What seems to be needed are some regular benchmarks, spanning a whole class of machines (not just your top of the line PIII, or the bottom of the line p-90). There are a lot of different tests that are needed. Some people (like me) don't really care about the load time, since we load it up once and that's it. How about speeds for rendering, accuraccy, conformance to standards, comparison of features, ...
A few weeks back, one such comparison was posted, but was heavily critized by this audence. Perhaps the Mozilla team and KDE can decide on what constitutes a good test, run it will their current releases, and then the users can decide for themselves what is important. This will also let the developers know where their effort is needed.
Actually, many KDE programmers are from Trolltech, and support Opensource idealogy.
Trolltech are open out of:
A) some idealogy
B) it pushes Qt, which strngthens their grip in the commercial world, and allows them to 'show off' samples of running code, such as KDE.
Closing Qt in light of the two is unlikely, as most of their profit is from their closed-source buyers, who pay a Single-fee for Qt, with yearly upgrade fees. No need to pay per-sale
(Knowing this, as I worked for a Qt-using propriarity software company).
Unless they whole business model, they would have to sell Qt to the developers, because buyers don't pay for Qt.
Ironically, many of those developers work in Trolltech, and Trolltech know would never pay.
They also know KDE has no chance of succeeding in a closed pay-per-copy license, in the opensource world.
ok, I'll try to answer your questions...
Why do we need another web browser?
Why GNOME exists? because of some stupidity licensing issue (mind you - even after trolltech relicensed their QT - and I use KDE right now - you still cannot write commercial apps without buying full commercial QT license - so what RMS got from this? and his "forgiveness" to the KDE developers? nothing - cosmetic issue, nothing else)
So do you say ditch GNOME or KDE and lets of them be de facto standard? good idea - try to convince some people - good luck.
Did you ever wonder why Mozilla is continually falling behind schedule? Because people like the Konqueror team decide to go off on their own instead of working for the good of the community
How come? Mozilla is written in C, KDE and Konqueror - C++ - both are totally different creatures - Konqueror beauty is the the HTML rendering is just another plugin - try to do: man:gcc - see the online help in a very beautiful format. try to put an Audio-CD inside your cdrom and type: audiocd:/ - and it you'll be able to rip on-the-fly your audio tracks to MP3 or OGG format - so you see - KDE designers (and developers) wanted to do something very different then Mozilla..
So far, the KDE teams seems to be way ahead then anyone else and it just seems to me that Mozilla and other parts are catching up, they're on the way to KDE 3.0 and they're completing the stuff (like CSS 2) while other KDE developers hiding W3C standards that the Mozilla guys doesn't even dream to do - like the SVG support..
If the free software community wants to make a good impression on the business world (and it may already be too late), we must, at all costs, avoid splitting into tiny, useless factions working on useless, duplicate projects.
Fine - help the Mozilla team to release 1.0. I see the reaction from Windows developers when they see Mozilla, and when they see KDE.. Guess what they preffer...
Here's an idea: before starting your new project, check to see if someone is already working on a similar project. Had the Konqueror team observed this little suggestion, the whole Konqueror fiasco could have been avoided.
Almost agreed - Mozilla is not Konqueror - it's just like comparing apples and oranges..
Hetz (Heunique)
This pisses me off as well, I've heard this crap too many times in the last year, I code for fun and knowledge not for the Business world. My ultimate dream is *NOT* to provide no price software to corporates although every fucking IT "jounalist" seems to think that's all the free software community lives for.
Sorry bad day, better now.
A journey of a thousand miles starts with a brutal anal raping at airport security
KDE is taking even more steps to rivaling the UI Microsoft offers than GNOME is. The one thing I think Linux lacks now is interoperability, despite the openness of everything. Hopefully, KDE 3 will be a huge leap to close that gap.
I think he means the time it takes - and regarding the time - he's right..
One of the features that I like in Konqueror is to open another browsing window which runs on a seperate process - so if 1 konqueror crashes, the others remain running..
Hetz (Heunique)
Thats the problem with the KDE developers. Since day one they closed they're ears and eyes to reasonable answers
Plain not true. The KDE team has always listened to reasonable suggestions from outside.
The fact they started with a proprietory/not free toolkit underscores the prevelant 'we dont give a shit about you' attitude the KDE project has
What else should have been used?
There was not, and still is not, anything that even remotely compares to Qt when it comes down to speed of coding, code readability and speed of learning.
And for the license problems, never forget the KDE Project was writing its own free replacement for Qt (the project just got discontinued when Qt became open source).
But the KDE project just blows it off and keeps on believing their browser is a superior product
Maybe that is because they do?
I've used (and still use) both, and had much fewer problems with Konqueror than with Mozilla (and don't get me started on the speed or the code base).
This message is provided under the terms outlined at http://www.bero.org/terms.html
Peaker,
They had a reason to rewrite it (almost) from scratch - they got a butt ugly code that Netscape programmers added and added and added without re-organizing the code..
Of course - this move costed a lot - its September 2001 and 1.0 is not out...
Hetz (Heunique)
Really??
I would suggest to you to browse the KDE mailing lists and the GNOME mailing lists - see who behaves like amature and see who behaves like a 5 years old kid..
Ego's are on KDE camp as well as on GNOME camp - and thats fine and dandy, if they contribute and help..
Hetz (Heunique)
Why do we need another web browser?
What's the difference between this and asking why we need another Operating System when Linus first introduced Linux instead of working on the HURD or why developers should work on mySQL instead of PostgreSQL? If you can answer these questions then you've answered your own question.
Do you have some problem with Mozilla that we should know about?
Mozilla and the Konquerer are slightly similar projects with different goals. Mozilla aims to be a cross platform all-in-one web development/usage platform while Konqueror is part of the KDE component architecture.
Most people with even a passing experience in software know that all software is a combination of various trade-offs and compromises whether performance vs. correctness, space (use lots of mem) vs. time (use lots of CPU) or even ease of use vs. complete control of the system. Thinking that there can be one true product is the kind of fallacy and naivettè that brought us the Man-Month and "OO is a silver bullet".
Did you ever wonder why Mozilla is continually falling behind schedule? Because people like the Konqueror team decide to go off on their own instead of working for the good of the community. Mozilla was there first, and it deserves the support of the community.
This opinion is so wrong headed and biased I'm almost sure that you are trolling. Blaming Konqueror developers for the fact that Mozilla is behind schedule is like blaming dotcomms and software companies for stealing programmers that could have worked at NASA worked on getting people on Mars by now.
If the free software community wants to make a good impression on the business world (and it may already be too late), we must, at all costs, avoid splitting into tiny, useless factions working on useless, duplicate projects.
Seriously, who gives a fuck what the Business World thinks about Free Software? Dotcomm IPOs and get-rich-quick schemes will come and go but Free Software will still be around as long as there are coders with an itch to scratch. Free Software was here before NASDAQ became a topic of breakfast table conversation and it will be here the analysts and MBAs find a new fad to exploit the masses with be it BioTech or Genetic Engineering.
For some reason you are under the impression that Free Software needs big business to survive which is so far from the truth it's almost laughable.
I understand you meant your comment as a joke, but you are actually closer to the point than you think... Indeed, because of his dominant position, a monopolist has actually less rights than minor players. Acts which would be perfectly ok for a vendor which only has 10% market share are no-no for the 500 pound gorilla. The reasoning is that the minor player does not have the power to do real damage anyways (except maybe to himself...), so why restrict him? The bully, on the other hand, has the power to wreck the market-place, and thus has to be closely watched.
Yes but when will Konq be out for Win32?
:-o
Jeremy
In case you haven't already noticed, Konqueror is NOT a web browser. It is an application framework for their KParts technology.
Well Mozilla is NOT an web browser either. It is an application framework for running XUL applications.
As soon as someone takes the time to do some porting (very little would be required) and compiles Konq-embedded with the QT-Win free edition.
By the smiley you had there, I'll bet you weren't expecting that answer. Really, the only thing holding back a Windows port of Konqueror/Embedded is silly license issues. They're the same license issues that KDE had back in the days before QT was open-sourced on Linux, so they should be surmountable.
main(c,r){for(r=32;r;) printf(++c>31?c=!r--,"\n":c<r?" ":~c&r?" `":" #");}
I messed up. Here is the correct link! here
Why would you call the best browser out there a fiasco?
No, this is the best browser.
On the other hand, I think it would be great if they could put a good interface on it! I could see it being useful for someone who can never remember the specifics of regex syntax depending on what language he's using(like me)and great for people who would otherwise be forced to comb through documents word-by-word to fix - or tag - certain classes of mistakes (like my girlfriend, who will likely be a professional editor in a few years).
Is anyone out there in slashdotland better acquainted with kregexpeditor?
You're a suburbanite.
try it on a modem it seems way faster
Got friends?
why is mozilla creating an application framework when Gnome and KDE are already doing so
You don't see Gnome and KDE applications running on Mac and Win32 very often.
Mozilla is internet application suite, when all anybody wanted from them was a decent browser.
Netscape wants Mozilla to replace Netscape 4, which included an e-mail application and an HTML editor. You may just want the web browser, but other people want other applications. If very few people want to use the mailer, then very few people will work on the mailer, so little time will have been wasted.
The shareholder is always right.
Mozilla is written in C
Er, no it is not. It's very much C++, though crippled to such a degree in the name of portability to compilers more brain damaged than cfront 1.0 that it may as well be C.
I've finally had it: until slashdot gets article moderation, I am not coming back.
Who cares about the fucking suits? Let them eat shit a.k.a. Windows and die. Good impression my ass. This is not a fucking powerpoint presentation. We don't need their stinking money. We are free.
As far as program load times are concerned, they're getting better, but still need work. Mozilla on Win32 does have this preload-on-boot option that loads the libraries into memory when Windows starts up, so starting Mozilla itself is very fast. Both Konqueror & Mozilla need that in Linux. Maybe make a daemon - mozillad or konquerord that is started either on boot or when the user logs into KDE (or his favorite desktop environment) & holds much of the overhead in memory so opening a browser window is very quick.
Meldroc, Waster of Electrons
KDE seems to be all about redoing everything within a single framework and toolkit to give users a Windows-like experience and to compete with Windows. To quote from the KDE web site: KDE seeks to fill the need for an easy to use desktop for Unix workstations, similar to the desktop environments found under the MacOS or Window95/NT.
But why? Who actually benefits from this? What is the point of creating a Windows-like environment for non-expert users on top of Linux? If I wanted a Windows-like environment, why wouldn't I just use Windows? And if KDE goes through all this trouble, why pick a toolkit that makes it more expensive for commercial entities to develop for KDE than it is to develop for Windows? And why is KDE embracing an approach, large C++ libraries and dynamic loading of native code, that Microsoft is already beginning to abandon?
The KDE desktop is impressive looking, but I just can't figure out the motivation for working on it or for using it. After giving it a try for about a year (mostly because Konqueror was the best open source browser around until Mozilla0.9.3/Galeon came along), I'm back to using a simple window manager and a desktop menu.
It's a post about web browsers to a story about a web browser.
This is not offtopic. A troll perhaps, but not offtopic.
To whoever moderated that: get a clue.
> Pages in KHTML are first rendered, and THEN the
> stylesheet is rendered. It happens all at once in
> mozilla, which is wrong.
This is nonsensical. You're objecting to the fact that Mozilla shows you the correct display immediately?
Netscape's code was there before Netscape opened their code, too :-).
Also, unless Trolltech was persuaded to open source Qt for Windows and the Mac (fat chance, in fact I think Qt didn't run on the Mac at all until very recently), KHTML and the rest of the KDE world could not have been an option for Netscape.
In any meaningful way Konqueror isn't complete, neither is Mozilla, and neither of them ever will be. They are both quite usable, however. Your slam against Mozilla "still being developed" completely misses the mark.
The "Chatzilla team" was just one guy (originally not at Netscape) who happened to feel like doing it. Should he have somehow been suppressed? You missed the mark again.
After reading that Mozilla/Konqueror-thread...
What is it with some people? KDE is an excellent desktop that progresses FAST (same thing can't be said for the "other" desktop). They have also created excellent multipurpose application that is the Konqueror. And still some people despise them!
Why? Folks at KDE have done a HUGE service for the Linux-community! They do it for free, they create GPL'ed Open-Source software that surpasses many comercial counterparts. And still there are people who complain! Even RMS got involved with his "You must beg for forgiveness" Bullshit!
You know what? RMS and other complainers can suck it. Suck it long, and suck it hard!
If you hate KDE, then use the Officially-sanctioned-by-FSF-but-progressing-slowl y-Gnome with it's 20 million dollar POS filemanager. After doing that, just SHUT UP! Make KDE a non-issue in your life.
As for me... I'll be using KDE, thank you very much. And no, I'm not going to beg for forgiveness from anyone! Not even from RMS!
Phew! Feels good to get that off my chest. Just use the desktop that you like the best, and let others use what they like
Lesbian Nazi Hookers Abducted by UFOs and Forced Into Weight Loss Programs - -all next week on Town Talk.
It takes time to render graphics, css, font styles and the a like. It's far faster to render the page in a plain-ish fashion (no special colors / fonts / css), and then after that render it with everything (at least with a modem and a slow-ish machine).
> Nice post! I showed it to Linus Torvalds and,
> though it was hard for him, he finally agreed
> to scrap Linux and work on the HURD. One battle
> won!
Hurd development wasn't very open, so that might have been hard.
> I'm going to talk to Bram Moolenaar next,
> because I'm pretty sure there was another vi
> clone before vim.
Plenty, I believe both elvis and vile are older than vim.
Mozilla is still slow here on my machine (AMD 800 Mhz, 320MB RAM, RH 7.1, XFree 4.0.3) with nothing but TWM running on X!
All the extensions that you described above - are already supported by Konqueror, even the SVG one (can be found on the kdenonbeta directory)..
Yes, it's not multi platform in terms of Windows/Linux/Mac - but it's available for all the other Unices - Solaris, AIX, SCO, HP/UX. IRIX - and to all the processors. Ever though you could run KDENOX (Konqueror without X or KDE) on a strongARM processor? SH4 maybe? how about Atari TT? Amiga? All of them are supported (directly and indirectly) by KDE.
I really donno - but 5 people working at their free time without any payment on KHTML vs. 50 people on the Mozilla team (including IBM people), and the people from Eazel who were helping a bit - and still no sign for 1.0..
Hetz (Heunique)
The KDE team does what they can to run on Linux and other unices, read this for example of how KDE 3.0 is planning to support large file systems both in Linux and in 64 bit file systems.../OS's
There are people in the kde-development lists that have other unices that they can use or use mainly - and if something breaks - this tester/developers tell and almost all the times he's getting answer what went wrong and they're fixing it on the CVS - thats happends with Solaris, SGI, Tru64, FreeBSD... Of course - if an OpenBSD hacker would come along just to report problems (or even gives a hand to fix those problems) - this would benefit the OpenBSD community...
Hetz (Heunique)
From my perspective at least, there is a subtle but important difference.
With MS Windows, Explorer "is" windows. With KDE, Konqueror is "the favored interface to all file-handling activities" (i.e. handling files over http, ftp, sftp, scp, the local filesystem, etc.) but it does not feel like it "is" KDE.
It, for me, is purely a "feel" thing, but essentially it is the difference between "tightly and inextricably integrated" and "fits and works smoothly and cleanly with"...
Hacker Public Radio is our Friend
This was one of several comments in this style and I suddenly feel compelled to reply. Curse those voices in my head... :-)
"Who cares about the fucking suits?"I'll say up front that, on the whole, I actually agree almost completely with the sentiment of this post - "we" are not, on the whole, here to sucker consumers out of money so we can buy power and luxuries. (I suspect most of "us" would LIKE to, but aren't entirely driven by it...)
On the other hand, there ARE useful reasons to appeal, at least a bit, to the less clueful "mainstream" markets. Having a bunch of middle-managers running, say, KDE and Konqueror (to keep this post at least a little on-topic for this article) isn't in-and-of-itself useful - but more "mainstream" visibility also increases visibility with, for example, hardware manufacturers and game publishers...and having hardware manufacturers make hardware specifications available for driver-writing because they can SEE that the Linux market is big enough that it can't be ignored outright IS a benefit.
Jokes about world domination aside, I for one will be quite happy when Linux hits the point where it is widely recognized for having, say, 10-15% of the desktop market. That would make it, I think, even more popular in hardware and software maker's minds than MacOS as "the OTHER platform for our products". (I.E. if they're going to work with ANYTHING besides MS Windows, it'll be Linux, rather than MacOS).
On the other hand, though, I strongly agree personally with:
This is not a fucking powerpoint presentation.
Which, in my opinion, exemplifies the difference in focus between Free Software/Open Source software development and commercial software development in general.
Anyway, just a random thought that's been bouncing around in my head lately.
Hacker Public Radio is our Friend
and simply are not viewable in konq. Many times I have to switch over to my VMWare session and use IE, because nothing on linux will work right.
Of course, I wouldn't have to do this is more web designers would write standard, portable html; but that's unlikely to happen any time soon. Broken HTML will always be a reality, which makes the true test of a good browser how well it manages non-standard pages.
Why is it that the proponents of "one nation under God" are so eager to get rid of "liberty and justice for all"?