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KDE 2.2.1 Up
Igloo Boy writes: "The most excellent KDE developers have made KDE 2.2.1 available for download. Please check the mirrors before you flood ftp.kde.org. I will now crawl back into my igloo and warm up next to my Athlon. It gets really hot from all this compiling." Or you could just call out those 3 little letters that make ya feel so good ... a-p-t. I'm installing now. Hope you guys fixed all the bugs I reported!
First I have to say that I am such a HUGE fan of KDE and am ever appreciative of the quality software that their team puts out.
.rpm's, and a seemingly ever-growing list, I gave up. Can you blame me?
Unfortunately, it's been my experience that on Red Hat systems, KDE is impossible to upgrade. I'm not an expert linux user by any means, but I feel comfortable with most aspects of my system. None the less, when installing KDE I seem to find myself deep within the trenches of rpm-hell. Most replies to people with similiar afflictions seem to say, "well, find all the dependancies, it'll be good for you." However, after 50 or so
acm
I will now crawl back into my igloo and warm up next to my Athlon. It gets really hot from all this compiling.
...
Hope that heat sink is on nice and tight. You know what happens if it isn't
Linux is soooo ready for the desktop. I know this comes up every time KDE or Gnome are brought up, but it actually pains me to keep hearing ignorant arguments.
The Windows 98SE desktop (and 2000, XP, etc.) in its default installation is not office desktop ready. There are several confusing or worthless icons that need to be cleaned up, display properties to adjust, shortcuts to create, etc. I've spent at least 40 hours honing my company's system images to get them 'just right'.
I haven't used Gnome at work, and so can't comment on it. But I've set up KDE systems and it didn't take me near 40 hours to set up 'just right'.
And guess what I found out? When I put new employees/users through their mandatory IT training they picked up on KDE at least as fast as with Windows. Most of these users have had very little computer experience.
I wish I had better documented this when I started. But the users were able to use their word processor and spreadsheet, surf the web, check and send e-mail, print, use network storage and printers, and not fuck up their workstation at least as well on KDE 2.2 as on Windows 98SE.
The key here, and the key that seems to be missing in all other discussions on this topic, is that the users were trained to use KDE. I don't know of any organization with a moderately organized IT system that doesn't have a training department or IT training of some sort.
I've found it's easier to teach users Linux than Windows, so here's what all you code monkeys and sys admins need to do: teach the teachers linux. They'll see that it's easier to use and to teach and will back you up when you go to the CTO/CIO.
KDE is great. It is ready for the desktop. Get your training department's shit together and teach users how to use linux. Plan and test the desktop and start menu so your people can use it. No one can figure out how to use a computer by just sitting in front of one, they need to be taught. It's easier to teach if you're the one who's set the system up.
Honing our Windows images has dramatically cut Help Desk calls. I'm sure the Help Desk techs will be showering me with even more free lunches and drinks on them when Linux spreads throughout our organization.
Get to it!
obviously no deficiencies vs. no obvious deficiencies
If I wanted windows, I'd use Windows.
Well, first of all I don't think that my KDE installation really looks like Windows. But even if it would, I think there is more to an OS than its looks. Even if I would think that the Windows look is perfect for my taste, there are still things like stability, free availability, certain programms(e.g. shells) which are good reasons to prefer Linux. So even a Linux installation which tries to mimic exactly the Windows look is IMHO preferable to Windows.
hell, why not come up with a meta-package that will package the RPMs together into one Downloadable fiel that you know will include all the dependancies needed?
Cause then it would "be too much like Windows"(tm). May Linux developers seem to be hell-bent on avoiding even the tiniest hint of 'ease' when it comes to installing their packages (let alone using them). This is not a dig at the KDE folks per se, just my experiences in general. I've had IRC conversations trying to get answers to installation questions where the answer - on more than one occasion - was "if you just want to install something and use it - just go use Windows". The scary thing was they thought that was an insult.
creation science book
Then try this: start Konqueror as a file manager, and select 'Open a terminal' from the 'Window' menu. And there, you have the best of both worlds. Of course, you can drag'n'drop files and directories from the FM subwindow to the terminal one. I still find it a bit rough (as of KDE 2.1 anyway), but it's a nifty feature that certainly has a brilliant future ahead of it!
-- B.
This sig does in fact not have the property it claims not to have.
The problem is only with Red Hat, because they have decided not to provide KDE RPMs to upgrade their released distributions. Those RPMs you see for Red Hat are for their beta. You are expected to upgrade to the still-in-beta Red Hat 7.2 to get the latest KDE.