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Five Years of KDE
Jacek Fedorynski writes: "Looks like KDE is five years old. Five years seems like a lot of time but just look how much they've achieved in this time." I think the hard part is just beginning - KDE has got all the basics down, and now they have to resist adding too much more crap.
In 5 years, KDE has gone from nothing to KDE 2.2, which is an almost enterprise-quality desktop suite, with sophisticated development tools, an included office suite, and hundreds of other tools.
Imagine where we'll be in another five years.
Loneliness is a power that we possess to give or take away forever
One person's crap is another's fertilizer!
I'd say congrats. I mean, they stuck through. They even got packaged with some major selling packages, i.e. red hat 7.1. (I don't know what else, if someone could tell me) They've gone far, and should be an example of what other projects should follow.
Oh, and what's with all the spammers on here tonight?
Key word is "almost." 2.2 is incredible; of course the FUD has always been "OS desktops are about cloning proprietary desktops." We HAVE come a long way, baby. That being said, I hope the K people don't listen to the 486'ers and increase the functionality regardless of how many cries of "BLOAT, BLOAT!" they no doubt hear these days.
We got some
KDE has got all the basics down, and now they have to resist adding too much more crap.
I think KDE team is doing their good job. What do you mean by "adding more crap"? Do you mean adding more apps into the window manager? Well, you can always only download kde-base and other necessary ones if you don't like KOffice, KDevelop, and other stuffs...
Meanwhile, I like the idea to integrating their office suite with KDE. That way, you can get consistencies in user interface so that Windoze users don't get too much shock on migration.
Moreover, they're getting better every release. More stable, speedier, and more usable to users. Five years to develop this brilliant stuff is just unbelievably short. Not even Microsoft can build their lousy Win3.1 to another lousy Win2K, that took them more than 5 years...
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KDE 1.x was okay, but it's the 2.x series which delivered a nice framework with (IMHO) great technologies (DCOP, KParts, KIO). While none of these are revolutionary by themselves, they have definitely matured a lot. While the framework can use continuous improvements, it's ready.
:)
Next step: applications. A lot of development focus of some of the core developers is shifting from kdelibs to KOffice which indeed needs more work, but the differences between 1.0 and 1.1 are a positive sign for 1.2/2.0. With a stable API (porting from Qt2/KDE 2.x to Qt3/KDE 3.x is very little work) KDE 3 should do for applications within KDE what the 2.x series did for the framework.
I doubt much more new features will be added to the core technology of the desktop. I don't get such an impression on the mailinglists or IRC either, so I wouldn't worry too much about that.
Kool Desktop Environment ??? wow you learn something new everday! I take it they droped that. It would be intresting to see some screen shots of some of the first releases of KDE
Snoozer.
Actually, VMS=WNT incrementally.
increment = Pronunciation: 'i[ng]-kr&-m&nt, 'in-
Function: noun
Etymology: Middle English, from Latin incrementum, from increscere to increase
Date: 15th century
1 : the action or process of increasing especially in quantity or value : ENLARGEMENT
2 a : something gained or added b : one of a series of regular consecutive additions c : a minute increase in quantity
3 : the amount or degree by which something changes; especially : the amount of positive or negative change in the value of one or more of a set of variables
We got some
Ah, but just like Linux itself, KDE is under the GPL and thus a cancer, so it will continue to spread.
(for completeness, kdelibs is LGPL)
Isn't it quite amazing to read over that newsgroup post by Matthias Ettrich? It is probably the most ambitious post about a software project (that came true!) I've ever read. I wonder how people took it at first? Most probably laughed. Now look where it has gone. He wanted something to happen, and so he (and all those who joined him) worked towards the goal to _make_ it happen. Kind of like Torvalds and Linux. Truly inspirational!
It feels a lot longer to me.
It must be the dog years phenomena, where 5 years = 30 dog years.
somehow, that feels alot closer to the truth.
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
When will we be able to auto-create pr0n pictures using KDE? That would be a killer app.
adding too much more crap.
Umm, too late? Get XFce
is drag-and-drop between KDE and Gnome apps. I'd like to be able to drag and drop a text document, for example, to my KDE printer icon and have it work. Or, say, a text file or spreadsheet from Nautilus to KOffice, or create a link by dragging a KDE desktop icon to a Nautilus window.
Please read this article. They said that the effort will save around 450K each app and possible more.
KDE teams certainly wanted to squeeze the RAM usage. There IS an effort to do that. Big RAM usage is inevitable for GUI apps, IMHO. Moreover, KDE apps are designed to interoperate -- that's an obvious need for another chunk of RAM.
If you'd like to use as minimum RAM as possible, don't use GUI stuff -- just the bare command line, load only necessary modules. If necessary, you can recompile the kernel and the modules, apps, daemon you use using highly optimized switch of the GCC.
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The announcement that Matthias made that seemed to have sparked off the KDE (and I knew only now that K stood for Kool!) gives the impression that Matthias was onto something big. He was cocksure of KDE's success, confident that it was going to be a big hit (though even Matthias mightn't have expected it to catch on like it has done). Well, thats something that's lacking in the Open Source World 5 years thence. The conviction, that what one is doing is big, and the faith in one's abilities. Guess, there are just too many bloated carcasses floating around with little support/management, and moreover no cohesive force that rallies coders around, whips up their passion into doing something new.
:(
Way to go, Matthias. Now, if only that announcement could motivate me to getting round to completing my assignment in time..
The QT libraries continue to evolve nicely, and thanks to Troll for GPL'ing the code.
Konqueror is an excellent browser product, and I consider it to be on par with the excellent Mozilla product.
KOffice is a competitve, well integrated product for people with moderate needs. I haven't had any problems yet I could not solve with KOffice.
KDevelop is the closest thing the Visual Studio on linux.
Other lesser-known product like Qunata, Kate and KXML are starting to show real promise. I would like Kate in particular to really catch fire like Emacs has over the years - its time for an editor that it totally integrated with its visual environment.
Its the integration that keeps me using KDE over GNOME, which I admit may have some stronger individual programs but just isn't stitched together like KDE is. Its amazing that this entire system is free and has source code available. I look forward to the next five years of this fantastic set of products.
I agree that KDE should resist the urge to add too much nonsense. Tighten up what is there. Keep it fast and sexy. Gnome is still slow and bloated. Don't give in to feature creep.
Otherwise, all you've got is winblows on Linux.
The standard install from the two distributions I have used (RedHat and SuSE) cram all kinds of unusable crap on my boxes. Each new release just adds more. That stupid globe/time zone thing is the worst - I still can't figure it out - I have to kill the process just to rid it from my desktop.
icksnay on hacking my boxsnay.
What crap? KDE is rock'n good stuff. Seems michael is confusing KDE with mswindows.
Jerk.
I remeber the first time I used KDE, way back in 1999 when Y2K was big and I was installing phat linux. I booted into X and boom, there was KDE V1.1. I fell in love with the speed, the un cluttered desktop, the themes, the games, and all of the crapps (useless apps that are cool).
Then I got KDE 1.97 just for artsd in 2000. I thought thatf it was the coolest thing ever, and now I have KDE 2.2.1. Running nonstop for a week on my box, and serving two or three X sessions on other boxes around the dorm.
Of course there are some things that I wouldn't mind added/fixed in KDE. I would like to be able to have seamless windows (ask me for a screen shot and I will email the pseudo theme to ya). Also, noatun needs to be cut down, it is too slow! mplayer won't work with artsdsp and divx plugins for mpeglib still don't work right, but I am trying to hack those in now.
All in all, KDE ROCKS!
Summers
-Wait, I can circumvent the DMCA if I am restricting internet access to minors.
There is nothing wrong with being gay. It's getting caught where the trouble lies.
They still don't label toolbar buttons.
Yes they do.
icons that are so small they don't mean a damn thing.
I don't think 32x32 icons are that small..
You try to tell these people about something like Fitts Law but they really don't want to hear that.
I can't see you complaining about specific violations of Fitt's law on the mailing list archives.
Huh? In KDE the icons are available anywhere from 16x16 to 64x64 -- is 64x64 not big enough for you? And the biggest issue in that article you point to is the idea of the "mile-high" toolbar, where you can slam the mouse to the edge of the screen and click on an icon, which KDE supports with it's taskbar, and has for some time. Maybe you did your 3-minute "this sucks" usability testing on KDE1 or something? It's good to know that people do some reasearch before posting, and don't hold a grudge...
It may not be central to KDE the way konqueror is, but I like to see how frequently Scribus is being updated.
DTP was the killer app for the Macintosh / LaserWriter combination in the mid-80s, and while I know that's a long time back, there still isn't a great Free software replacement for PageMaker / Quark, and Scribus looks promishing that direction. (KWord does too, I must admit, but I like the Scribus look, a lot like the PageMaker I used to like a lot.)
I didn't know it when I began drafting this response, but Scribus now also has a nice new logo and home page design:
http://web2.altmuehlnet.de/fschmid/index.html
and has added more screenshots than were previously available to the KDE Apps page:
http://apps.kde.com/na/2/show/id/1064/ss
With a GPL'd DTP program, many school newspapers could save money by teaching generic, transferable skills that would apply to the Big Name Big Money applications as well, but which they ought not be spending tax dollars on on the basis that "kids need to be ready for the workplace" because the argument just doesn't hold up as a reason to buy proprietary software, at least when anything even plausibly similar exists under a decent license.
timothy
jrnl: http://tinyurl.com/c2l8yr / foes: http://tinyurl.com/ckjno5
I love KDE. I use it all the time. But I have one small Beef with it. It takes too much time to load any kde app. like konqueror, kdesktop, etc...
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Sig? What sig?
Unfortunately it's inevitable. Tomorrow's software will always require more resources than today's. New features means more code and why upgrade from software package A to A.1 (or B) unless its got more features. Each year processors, storage and RAM get faster and cheaper. Without borders (like limited storage or processing cycles) there is nothing to keep feature creep and code bloat in check. Developers have no incentive to write slimmer code since the market doesn't demand it.
And no, open source isn't going to change these facts. Open source creates piles of spaghetti code just like microsloth.
KDE has also come a long way in 5 years but honestly, how much of the GUI has been "appropriated" from Windows? It's really easy to progress quickly if you have something from which to copy.
You are standing in an open field west of a white house, with a boarded front door. There is a small mailbox here.
Sure they do. I don't know what apps you're using, but I just did a spot check on five fairly important apps: konqueror, kdict, kword, kate, and kmail. All of them had their toolbar buttons had tooltips labeling what they did.
The icon size can be adjusted. All the icons, such as disk types, folders, printing, etc. all make perfect sense to me. They look much like what they represent. Which icons are you specifically talking about?
Um... how exactly do you want to apply Fitt's Law? The mac-style option to have a single menu bar that one can easily reach is in KDE. The main menu that you use, the K menu, is in the bottom left corner of the screen by default. And you can set any mouse button you want to pop up your app menu, further minimizing the distance to that option (I love that feature).
All in all though, the KDE team seems to be less interested in providing a desktop that is optimized towards Fitt's Law than in providing one that people are already comfortable with. That's their decision, and if you don't like it, the options I mentioned are there for you, as is the source for you to hack yourself.
"I may not have morals, but I have standards."
lol, that's phuny. How come you didn't think that the "Battle over blocks" article right before this one wasn't offensive? Jeez, get your shit together man...what do *you* think is getting on with life? Sitting in front of the TV and watching afganistan get bombed? I think I am pretty desensitized to that now. I'd rather watch Bebob and have a bowl of shreddies. In fact, I jsut watched the "Pierrot" episode -- session five, episode 2 -- in my jammies. Damn good episode I might add. It's a tragedy what happened in NY, but one can't dwell on it forever right? That'd be too depressing.
...no idea about the leg bit though.
Dude, the worst terrorist attack started last week...
How to contact me - http://www.pervalidus.net/contact.html
bleh
ridiculously small buttons? compared to what? gnome?
personally the size is comparable with that of windows. We can all consider windows to be the defacto standard in desktops (i mean really, it isn't all *that* much different than a mac, purely speaking from the GUI point of view), so for me, and i'd say for many others too, the closer KDE becomes to fulfilling the expectation created by years of windows experience, the closer linux will get *closer* to becoming the desktop some people here can't imagine it to be.
KDE has done more for me (and indeed the linux desktop ideal) than Gnome or any other chunky and less refined window manager ever did, and it has certainly done more to convert me to linux too.
Damn KDE, get something done about icons. Please, they're just embarressing.
No, this doesn't prove. Look at GNOME, American software.
Isn't it appropriate to have all these trolls on this topic? After all, trolls invented the QT library.
Hi Rob. I love uptimed. Nice work. A feature request though. An option to write the reason of the reboot.
What do you expect. These are the people who did it! These people are so adamantly against capitalism and the American way, that they had no problem knocking down the WTC. Now they are sending Anthrax to Microsoft. What is next?
I learned something neat from reading this announcement. LyX existed already at the time of the announcement, which means LyX is now at least five years old as well. Dang, I didn't know that. LyX is my most-used X application and I think it belongs on every X desktop. The timing explains why LyX uses XForms instead of GTK or QT.
Why did you mod him as troll? Trolling is senseless bashing, but this guy has some serious points and backs them with proper information.
For those who discredit Tognazzini or Fitt's law should note that KDE's UI pages refer and link to Tog and Fitt's law.
They still don't label toolbar buttons.
Unfortunately not by default, but this can be set on a per-toolbar basis (right-click and the menu is pretty self-explanatory), or globally (I believe) in the control panel.
ridiculously small buttons [...] icons that are so small
This can also be configured in the control panel, although it again is neither default nor exceptionally easy to accomplish.
While I don't think your examples are necessarily the best ones, I totally agree that there are some serious usability issues present in KDE. Some of these are the result of heavily borrowing from the MS Windows interface (the multi-level hierarchical Start/K menu and the task bar come to mind). Many other issues, such as menu and dialog inconsistencies, are the result of either flawed standards documents or developers occasionally ignoring them.
I'm not sure what the issues are that are affecting usability improvements in KDE. Hopefully they *are* being resolved, and we'll see some improvements in teh next versions.
It's only software!
Most GUIs (XP, OSX) now support up to 128x128, and XP even has some vector icons.
.. is a woman!
From Matthius' original newsgroup post:
"..The idea is to create a GUI for an ENDUSER. Somebody who wants to browse the web with Linux, write some letters and play some nice games.
I really believed that is even yet possible with Linux until I configured my girlfriend's box.
Yes indeed, I would like to thank Matthius and the rest of the KDE team for their enormous contributions to the future of Open Source. But most of all, I'd like to thank the nameless girlfriend who wasn't afraid to complain! (-:
When did they stop calling it "Kool Desktop Environment"?
Since KDE is out of Germany and QT from Norway I was just thinking how much international connection Linux has compared to Windows or Macintosh which are completely US centric.
Linux - Finland
GNU - US
KDE - Germany
QT - Norway
GNOME - Mexico ( Miguel )
OpenOffice - Germany ( Stardivision )
Mozilla - US
SAMBA - Australia
Of course there are GUI's. There is the Commond Desktop Environment (much too exensive), Looking Glas (not too expensive but not really the solution), and several free X-Filemanagers that are almost GUI's. Moxfm for example is very well done, but unfortunately it is based on Motif. Anyway, the question is: What is a GUI? What should a GUI be?
First of all, since there are a lot of missunderstandings on this topic, what is NOT a GUI:
IMHO a GUI should offer a complete, graphical environment. It should allow a users to do his everyday tasks with it, like starting applications, reading mail, configuring his desktop, editing some files, delete some files, look at some pictures, etc. All parts must fit together and work together. A nice button with a nice "Editor"-icon is not at all a graphical user environment if it invokes "xterm -e vi". Maybe you have been disappointed long time ago too, when you installed X with a nice window manager, clicked on that beautiful "Help"-Icon ... chrk chrk (the hard disk)...an ugly,
unsuable, weird xman appeared on the desktop :-(
A GUI for endusers
The idea is NOT to create a GUI for the complete UNIX-system or the
System-Administrator. For that purpose the UNIX-CLI with thousands of tools
and scripting languages is much better. The idea is to create a GUI for an
ENDUSER. Somebody who wants to browse the web with Linux, write some letters
and play some nice games.
I really believed that is even yet possible with Linux until I configured my girlfriends Box. Well, I didn't notice anymore that I work with lots of different kind of menues, scrollbars and textwidgets. I already know that some widgets need to be under the mouse when they should get the keyevents, some sliders wants the middle mouse for dragging and some textwidgets only want emacs-bindings and don't understand keys like "pos1" or "end". And selecting some text is different everywere, too. Even the menues and buttons (for exampel Xaw, Fvwm, XForms, Motif) behave completely different.
One word to the Athena-Widgets: Although there are a few nice applications available that uses these "widgets" we should really get rid of them. Thinking that "Athena is a widget-library" is a similar missunderstanding like "X is a GUI". Athena is an very old example how widget libraries could be implemented with Xlib and Xt. It's more or less a online-documentation for Widget-Set-Programmers, but not a tool for application-programmers. Unfortunately, the old Unix problem, a so good online-documentation that people used it for applications.
So one of the major goals is to provide a modern and common look&feel for all the applications. And this is exactly the reason, why this project is different from elder attempts.
Since a few weeks a really great new widget library is available free in source and price for free software development. Check out http://www.troll.no
The stuff is called "Qt" and is really a revolution in programming X. It's an almost complete, fully C++ Widget-library that implementes a slightly improved Motif look and feel, or, switchable during startup, Window95.
The fact that it is done by a company (Troll Tech) is IMO a great advantage. We have the sources and a superb library, they have beta testers. But they also spend their WHOLE TIME in improving the library. They also give great support. That means, Qt is also interesting for commercial applications. A real alternative to the terrible Motif :) But the greatest pro for Qt is the
way how it is programmed. It's really a very easy-to-use powerfull
C++-library.
Qt is also portable, yet to Windows95/NT, but you do not have to worry about that. It's very easy to use UNIX/X specific things in programming, so that porting to NT is hardly possible :-)
I really recommend looking at this library. It has IMO the power to become the leading library for free software development. And it's a way to escape the TCL/TK monsters that try to slow down all our processors and eat up our memory...
It's really time yet to standarize the desktop somewhat. It's nonsense to load 10 different widgets into memory for the same task. Imagine this desktop:
One may argue that a usual UNIX-Box has enough memory to handle all these different kind of widgets. Even if this might be correct, the really annoying thing is, that all these widgets (menus, buttons, scrollbars, etc.) behave slightly different. And this isn't only an academic example, I've really seen such desktops :-}
I know we couldn't get rid of this chaos at once, but my dream is a coexistance between Motif and Qt. The Kool Desktop Environment (KDE) I don't have the time to do this all alone (also since LyX is my main project). But a thing like a Desktop Environment can easily be cut into lots of parts. There is very probably a part for you, too! If you want to learn some X-programming, why not doing a small, neat project for the KDE? If you know others who like to programm something, please prevend them from writing the 1004th tetris games or the 768th minesweeper clone ;-) Think we also
have enough XBiffs yet...
So here is my project list so far. Probably there are even more things to do that would fit great into the KDE. It's a very open project. Panel: The basic application. Run's as FvwmModule (at the beginning). Offers a combination between Windows95 and CDE. I think about a small taskbar at the bottom and a kind of CDE-panel on the top of the screen. The panel has graphical icon menus on the left (similar to GoodStuff) to launch applications, 4 buttons in the middle to switch to other virtual desktops and few icons for often needed applications on the right. There is for example a mail-icon that also indicates new mail, a wastebasket to open the delete-folder (that also indicates when it isn't empty and is capable of drag'n'drop). Maybe a analog clock with date at the very right. Also a nice special icon for exiting the environment or locking the screen. All the stuff is completly configurable via GUI. I'm also thinking about solutions, that only available applications can be installed on the desktop and that new applications appear on the desktop automatically.
I started to work on this panel, but would of course love some help. There are also lot of smaller things to do, like a tool to chose a background pixmap (for each virtual desktop) etc.
Also nice icons are needed!
Filemanager Another major application inside the KDE. The idea is not to create a powerful high-end graphical bash-replacement (like tkdesk tries to be), but a nice looking easy-to-use filemanager for simple tasks. Simple tasks are mainly deleting some files, copying some files, copying some files to floppy disk, starting applications by clicking on a file (for example ghostview for postscript files or xli for gifs, etc).
I'm thinking about nice windows, one for each directory, that shows icons for every file. It should be possible to drag files around (either copy or move), even between different windows. Another important point is the support of the floppy-disk, so that mounting/umounting is done user-transparent.
Dragging of icons should be done in a nice way, that means moving around a special window (see Qt's xshape example), NOT like xfm or xfilemanager by setting another monochrome bitmap for the cursor.
So it will also be possible to put files as icons on the desktop. This is IMO a very nice feature. Since applications are launched by the panel, it's even clear that icons are real data-objects. With fvwm-1 and the FvwmFileMgr it wasn't really clear wether an icon is yet a file or an iconified window.
Drag'n'drop inside a Qt application isn't really difficult. The filemanager is IMO a very nice and not too time consuming project. Who wants?
mail client A really comfortable mailclient. IMO the most comfortable mailclient for X is yet XF-Mail. And the author is willing to port it to Qt when the KDE-project will start! But he asks for some assitance (for example for coding the small popups, etc.)
easy texteditor Very small but important project. An editor that fits the needs of those who have to edit a textfile once in a month and didn't find the time yet to learn vi (and don't have the time to wait for x-emacs to start, and don't have the memory to use a motif-static-nedit, and don't have the cpu-power and memory to use a tk-monster like tkedit,...)
Unfortunatly the Qt multiline-textwidget isn't available in Qt-1.0, but Troll-Tech already announced the beta-testing. So the texteditor can be started in a few weeks, too.
Terminal Similar to the CDE terminal program. A kind of xterm with nice menu bar to set the font, exit, etc. Nice project, get the xterm sources and add a GUI with Qt!
Image viewer The application that will be launced as default from the filemanager for gifs, jpegs and all this. Well, xv is shareware and really needs quite a long time for startup. But there is a plain Xlib programm without any menues or buttons called "xli". Get the sources and make it userfriendly with Qt!
Lots of small other tools:
- xdvi with Qt-Gui
- ghostview with Qt-Gui
- xmag with Qt-Gui
- whatever you want
Hypertext Help System A complete desktop environment needs a nice hypertext online help. I think the best choice would be HTML (>= 2.0). So a free Qt-based html-viewer would be a great idea. It might be possible to use the Arena-sources, but arena needs very long for startup. Maybe it would be best to start from scratch. Qt offers excellent functions for dealing with different fonts. For a help system HTML 2.0 is more than enough, some nice search function added and that's it. Since it is also possible to convert the obsolete troff man-pages to HTML, we can also integrate the original UNIX help system.BTW: There is a Troll Tech Qt-competition (look at their webpages). The best application (not only functionallity, but also design counts. Just porting an existing great application to Qt won't probably be enough :-( )
wins $2000 and a few Qt on NT licenses (worth another $2000). They also
mentioned a browser-project as an example. So a nice HTML-browser in Qt,
ready in Janurary may be worth $4000 (This includes selling the unneeded
NT licenses ;-) )
Window Manager At the beginning, the KDE panel will work as an Fvwm-Module. When this is done, a lot of stuff can be stripped from the bloated fvwm window manager. We don't need anymore fvwm-menus, icon handling and zillions of configurable things. We need a small, realiable windowmanager. So maybe stripping all unncessary stuff from fvwm will make sense in a while. But this may come very last.
System Tools Whatever a user, or you, might need. A graphical passwd comes to my mind. But probably there are a lot more! Maybe this will lead to a small system administration tool someday.
Games We have yet a nice tetris game (an Qt example program). What is needed is a nice set of small games like solitaire (please with nice cards that can be really dragged!). There are several nice card games available for X, for example xpat2. So why not take the cards from them and write a real solitaire games, very similar to MS-Solitaire. I really had to install Wine sometimes just to play solitair, what an overhead! But other games are needed, too. Take xmris, pacman, etc. add a nice GUI. Or write some from scratch. Whatever you want :)
Icons A set of nice icons. 3D-pixmaps are quite a good start (but why should the button be inside a pixmap, if we use a toolkit with buttons???)
Documentation A documentation project is always a good thing to have. But before we should clearify how the hypertext help system should look like. We can then start with documentation pages in the chosen HTML-subset and for example use arean as help browser. Anyway we need some application to document first.
Web-Pages / Ftp Server / Aministration We need a server for the files and webpages that inform about the state of the project. Especially what projects are currently worked on and what projects still wait for somebody to do them. I set up a preliminary homepage on http://www-pu.informatik.uni-tuebingen.de/users/et trich
that just contains this posting yet and a few links. I may setup real
webpages for the very beginning but I would be very happy if I could
concentrate on discussion and coding. So if there is someone out there in
the net who likes to design and maintain webpages, here is a job for him :)
Discussion The most important topic :-) If you are interested please
join the mailing list
kde@kde.org
Subscribing can be done by sending a mail with in *Body*: subscribe [your email address]
to
kde-request@kde.org
Applications When the KDE gets widely accepted, new (free) applications will hopefully be based on Qt, too, to fit with the comfortable and pleasant look and feel of the desktop.
We may for example port LyX to Qt, so that a comfortable wordprocessor is available. But that is still in discussion in the LyX Team.
A nice vector-orientated drawing tool would also be fine. Well, Xfig is a powerful but ugly monster. But there is "tgif", a very powerful, easy to use but ugly program. The author doesn't like the idea of adding a Qt GUI for the menus, icons and scrollbars, since Qt is C++ and he wants to keep tgif plain C, since on some sites no C++ compiler is available. Well, the KDE doesn't really aim on these old and weird UNIX boxes (also I think a g++ is almost everywhere available). But maybe the tgif-author agrees when somebody else adds a nice GUI to tgif (the sources are free, don't know wether this is GPL). Since tgif yet implements its own GUI this shouldn't be too difficult. It's really easy with Qt to access plain Xlib functionality and functions, so not very much will have to be rewritten. Also C++ makes it very easy to include plain C code.
What about an easy to use, nice newsreader similar to knews? Could also be integrated into the KDE. ... and ... and ... and.
So there is a lot of work (and fun) to do! If you are interested, please join the mailing list. If we get about 20-30 people we could start. And probably before 24th December the net-community will give itself another nice and longtime-needed gift.
The stuff will be distributed under the terms of the GPL.
I admit the whole thing sounds a bit like fantasy. But it is very serious from my side. Everybody I'm talking to in the net would LOVE a somewhat cleaner desktop. Qt is the chance to realize this. So let us join our rare sparetime and just do it!
Hopefully looking foward to lots of followups and replies! Regards,
Matthias Ettrich
(ettrich@informatik.uni-tuebingen.de)
BTW: Usually these postings get a lot of answers like "Use a Mac if you want a GUI, CLI rules!", "I like thousands of different widgets-libraries on my desktop, if you are too stupid to learn them, you should use windoze", "RAM prices are so low, I only use static motif programs", "You will never succeed, so better stop before the beginning", "Why Qt? I prefer schnurz-purz-widgets with xyz-lisp-shell. GPL! Check it out!", etc. Thanks for not sending these as followup to this posting :-) I know I'm a
dreamer...
BTW2: You might wonder why I'm so against Tk. Well, I don't like the philosophy: Tk's doesn't have a textwidget, for example, but a slow wordprocessor. Same with other widgets. In combination with TCL the programs become slow and ugly (of course there are exceptions). I didn't yet see any application that uses Tk from C++ or C, although an API seems to exist. TCL/TK is very usefull for prototyping. Ideal for example for kernel configuration. And since Tk looks little similar to Motif, the widgets are also quite easy to use. But I really don't like any TCL/Tk application to stay permanantly on the desktop. And Qt is much easier (at least as easy) to program. Check it out!
BTW3: I don't have any connections to Troll Tech, I just like their product (look at the sources: really high quality!) and their kind of marketing: free sourcecode for free software. Original document by Matthias Ettrich,
HTMLized by Matt McLeod
Just adding to the MEE TOO croud I guess, but I think KDE's getting close to surpassing the obvious ENEMY(TM). XP is already getting messy, I can't wait until the real fit hits the shan.
Luck favors the prepared, darling.
E-mail is 30!
KDE is 5!
StarOffice is 1!
KDE has its place in the world--something for people who think Windows is easy to use and want a similar environment for Linux/UNIX. I'm not sure it can compete with Windows, because Windows isn't really about quality, it's about complete, detailed compatibility. But that's for others to decide.
I just hope KDE won't become the predominant Linux/UNIX desktop. In fact, I hope no single desktop will become "predominant" on Linux/UNIX--the strength of Linux/UNIX has been its diversity and flexibility. And I hope the KDE developers are smart enough to realize that they can't produce something that satisfies everybody--that would be the same trap Microsoft has fallen into.
Maybe its your machine that is slow, and not the software??
I have gnome 1.1 or something in RH62 and like it better than KDE 2.something in RH71. The terminal for one is better, and it works better as a UI, too.
This is not a flame, not a troll, just the sad truth.
A point that needs to be raised is that all this was achieved in the face of possibly the nastiest episode in the history of free software; the FUD spread by GPL fanatics about the QT licence.
Gnome was founded by said fanatics for one reason and one reason only - to squash KDE, the best thing that had ever happened to desktop Linux. Microsoft must have been laughing their heads off...
And let's not forget that when Trolltech finally GPL'd the QT library RMS in one of the most arrogant pieces I've ever seen graciously granted "forgiveness" to the KDE team for unspecified breaches of the GPL that *may* have happened and then ended with "Go Gnome!.
Five years on KDE continues to bring out with almost military precision new releases. Despite vastly greater resources thrown at, Gnome 2.0x is as far off as ever, and Gnome remains a pretty but unstable desktop with some poorly-integrated GTK apps that have been retrospectively given the Gnome imprimateur.
Ironic, innit, that the only reason Gnome is still going is because the US suits who back it prefer LGPL to GPL - ie our noble FSF clacque who dumped on KDE using the GPL are quite happy to use a less free licence.
Anyway, as a usable desktop KDE is way out of front. Gnome is there for wannabe hackers who can't stomach the discipline of C++ and ideological fanatics. And those who want to stay in the perfection of eternal beta-land.
KDE shows what can be done with limited resources and a proper design and project plan
GNOME shows what happens when large amounts of resources are pissed up against the wall to make up for lack of said design and project planning.
KDE = Konqueror
GNOME = Mozilla
KDE = results
GNOME = vapourware
In six years microsoft have gone from NT 4 to windows XP. It's not a particularly big jump in terms other than hardware support.
It's getting old, really. Can't you think of a better troll?
Why not go all out and just make a KDE Linux distro for everyone out there who wants consistency across the board? I am not much of a KDE user but I do think that this would be the best possible setup for casual users, those new to Linux, and even corporate users. It would also be the end of having multiple apps to do the same thing as KDE seems intent on providing at least a graphical front end to the most commonly used utilities. Seems like a good way to provide a decent system for the less technically inclined out there.
Wanna get high?
Why bother coming up with a new one, when my old one is still getting bites from fuckheads such as yourself?
Imagine KDE without Linux! It seems downright impossible. Coming to think of it, Linux has spawned a large number of new, original open software projects- and helped in the growth of existing ones. KDE was the greatest among them.
The GNU project rose to such a big prominence and fame and an important reason was the popularity of linux! KDE too is the 'reason' for the GNOME desktop environment- the reason officially given was a bad license.
Now all the projects are influencing each other - for eg. KDE being slow has caused thoughts about g++ and GNU linker. In this way all the projects are influencing each other causing better development and this is yet another novel condition created by open software movement.
I read an interview that the name NT actually shorthand used by Microsoft developers for N-10, the codename for the Intel i860 (the RISC CPU for which Windows NT was orignally written).
cpeterso
and if 20 years of hci research is the retard-enhancing MacOS point-and-drool interface then i'll gladly stick with my obtuse environment.
The 2.x series is much better in terms of usability than was 1.x, but it lacks one major thing that 1.x had: stability. With 2.x, I get occasional (much too frequent) Konqueror crashes and Noatun crashes. 2.x is also a little on the slow side. I'd really like to see it slimmed down and optimized. Of course, now that they're already planning the release of 3.x, maybe the 2.x series will just end up as the interim between the great debut and the greatness that lies ahead in 3.0.
Anyway, happy birthday KDE, you're the greatest of the Unix desktops!
You had me at "dicks fuck assholes".
I'm 100% neutral in the KDE/Gnome interface war... "The Pox On Both Your Houses". Linux's problem isn't lack of GUI's. Linux's problem is lack of applications. We need more stuff like Kmail/AbiWord/Gnumeric/Koffice/Openoffice. F*** the gui. I installed Gnome and KDE for the apps, then switched to FVWM2. My screen starts out almost totally blank. I hit {ALT-F10} and a menu pops up. I hit one letter and a program starts up. And without a touchy/feely/draggy/droppy/cutsie/wootsie GUI, Redhat 7.1 flies on a Dell Dimension XPS T450 (yes, 450 mhz) with 128 megs of RAM. Try the latest Gnome or KDE on this machine and it crawls. Or is the slowness part of the attempt to totally duplicate the Windows look-n-feel?
People don't buy computers to run GUI's, they buy computers to run apps. Remember the fate of "real operating systems" whose fans derided DOS as "merely an application loader" ? Well guess what... a secretary didn't need "a real operating system". She needed Wordstar (later Wordperfect). Accountants didn't need "a real operating system". They needed Lotus 1-2-3 (later Excel). Apps are the weapons that linux needs in the battle against Windows.
I'm not repeating myself
I'm an X window user; I'm an ex-Windows user
toolbar buttons>
right click on toolbar, then you can chose text aside icon, text only, icon only, or text under icon.
icons>
kde icons are specially developed for usability, unlike other desktop environments and OS's (OSX's "cool" icons come to mind).
For pure nostalgia, I was wondering if anyone tried the first ever release of KDE? perhaps got any screenshots to brag about?
use objprelink, reduced load time by 30%
use kdeinit, reduced load time, and reduced memory usage
Are you just upset you wasted so much time reading through the threads or are you really upset when people take time out of their busy day to stop and reflect on the simple things in life like Cowboy Bebop, jammies and Shreadies (apostrophes are not used to denote plural.. ever..OK) and the tools with which they work. Point me at a page that tells me how to behave please cause it's not real obvious that what you are doing in thought policing /. is helping anyone.
I happen to prefer more icons than having gigantic 3/4 inch icons. My screen is running at 1600x1024 (and is 19"), so most icons are aobut 3/8 of an inch. And it doesn't bug me in the least.
KDE has got all the basics down
Personally, I prefer Gnome because, despite a lack of some of the "basics", it is much more customizable to my needs. For example, in KDE, I can't rearrange the key mappings to launch a terminal when I press C-A-t. Also, despite what a lot of people claim, KDE is still very much more unstable than Gnome - the panel dissappeared on me twice last time I started a KDE session, and I had to log out to restore it.
Sorry to bitch, but it just seems like while KDE is generally a lot prettier than others, some of the advanced "basics" - the basics that I, as a person who runs Linux and a power user - expect are not there yet. It's too much like Windows or Mac for my taste: it looks pretty and tries to do everything for you.
yeah, all shitty software is from America
GNOME and Windows, haahha
I'm not engaging in /. thought policing. I'm *trolling*, you stupid fuckwad. (By the way, it's "Shreddies", not "Shreadies", you fucking moron. I will adjust my future trolls to fix the catastrophic apostrophe error, however.)
http://www.kde.org/announcements/announcement.html
Seems there is a lot of focus on KDE + Linux here,
lets not forget that KDE runs on most other *nixes.
And it runs damn faster on FreeBSD than it does on
Linux (atleast on by dual boot box).
And I will counter your arguement.:)
Labels and tooltips are two different things. Labels are static text that always appears on or around a widget such as a button. Tooltips are text that pop up around the widget when the user keeps the pointer over the object for a second or two. The first interface device, the label, immediately adds greater clarity to the buttons function the second a user looks at the button and the label makes it faster to access because it makes the button bigger. The second UI device, the tooltip, is good when it is used to complement the label and used to give a more detailed description of the buttons function, but used in place of a label forces a user to wait for an unreasonably long amount of time to get the most rudimentry information about the object and it does not improve the access time of the control by making it larger.
As for the point about turning stuff on/off--The more steps you require users to go through to configure something and the more hierarchical menu levels they have to dig through and options they have to browse through the fewer the users will who actually change something, and the more geeky those users will tend to be. The most commonly used options for the greatest percentage of users will be the defaults. It makes more sense to make options which are most usable the default and let it to those who will have more patience and more enthusiam for customization (i.e. geeks) the option to search for how to choose the less usable options.
As for just about about everyone else who replied to my post by the nature of your responses you have proven my point in my first post far better than I ever could.When someone brings up usability problems in the world of Desktop Linux they are met with denial and flames. Bill Gates doesn't have to worry about trying to kill desktop linux; so many people with such attitudes are already doing his work for him.
It's good to cheer the free software guys. Everyone wants the underdog to win.
The reality, however, is that KDE and GNOME and all these other free desktops for Linux are years and years behind what is mainstream today. Everytime I try out KDE I feel like I am trying to use Windows 3.0 again. It's really quite pathetic.
I have a scanner and a webcam. Why can't I just load up a browser (or explorer or whatever you want to call it) and go to the scanner device and save an image? I can with Windows.
Why can't I ask the computer something like "how do I boldface the title" and have it tell me? I can with Windows.
I know the computer next door has a printer. Why can't I open the previously mentioned browser, find that printer and just start printing to it? I can with Windows.
Why can't the popup menus adapt to the way I use them, prioritizing by frequency of use? That's how it works with Windows.
Why does KDE crash so often? I thought open source software is supposed to be high quality, emphasizing stability. Windows doesn't crash nearly as often.
The reality is that KDE is years behind in terms of functionality, asthetics, stability and user-friendliness. Attempting to generalize the qualities of succssful OSS projects to KDE is a fallacy and it shows. Man does it show.
I think this has already been said, but I'm gonna say it anyway because its a fairly important point.
Microsoft were developing an operating system as well as a gui, and a proportion of what they were doing was original work (althogh it could be argued that a lot was lifted from MacOS and OS/2). The KDE team are only developing half a GUI (they are based on X-Windows after all) and most of the ideas are directly lifted from Windows anyway.
On a personal note, I find KDE an awful GUI to use. It has nothing like the responsiveness or stability of Windows and while it is okay for running odd GUI applications, it is no substitiute for a command line as the explorer shell is in Windows. They have some way to go before they reach that level of usability, and as long as they stick to X-Windows, I doubt they will ever achieve the same level of responsiveness.
Ok, fair enough on the labels/tooltips. However, most everyone knows about the tooltips and they do serve their purpose. Granted, they're not as intuitive as labels, but they are still there.
And on the subject of turning features on and off. Once again, the source is there for you. If you think you can do a better job with it, change it. Just do it. It's not hard to swap in some pixmaps with labels on them. Wouldn't require much at all. Granted, this isn't what most users are supposed to do, but since you are so enlightened (and I agree, making buttons with labels is probably a good thing for the default) then why don't you just do it? They can't stop you, nor would they try to. They may just welcome your work.
Rather than berating people on the nature of the project they create and give away for free, why not actually try and contribute? Offering helpful suggestions is a perfectly acceptable thing to do, granted, but it doesn't guarantee you anything. Do the work. I can't stress that enough. The community thrives on this, and KDE and other projects NEED the help that you can provide. This isn't just in terms of bitching about Fitt's law, it's actually implementing. Go create another default profile with all those settings that you want turned on by default. It's right there on the initial bootup, pick your profile, modify from there.
Seriously, I don't understand your mentality at all. While I do fully understand your feeling that all your insights are met with defensiveness from the community, what I don't understand is this feeling that you can just tell people what to do with their projects and seriously expect them to listen. These people pour their time and energy in to a project that they give away to you, and you just want to stand their and whine about some settings that aren't on by default? Do it yourself. Make the profile. Make your KDE distro. Make your Linux distro. Just do it, but quit bitching. Hell, have you even filed a wishlist bug against this stuff? I don't see any bug filed to get labels in to the buttons.
What I'm trying to get across without sounding too rude is that this not a spectator sport. You play by participating. KDE wants your help, but you've actually got to do something. You have complete power to do what you will with the project (within GPL limits of course) and you should do something with that power. File the bug, or just fix it yourself. That's what the whole idea is, and that's why KDE has made it for 5 years.
"I may not have morals, but I have standards."
It's amazing what you have achieved in such a short time!
One thing that is still missing is the possibility to configure "everything". To make it even more useful than it already is, it should be possible to configure basically "everything" from the control center. I know this is what the different distro's deliver and there is also the "little" problem that KDE also runs on FreeBSD among others and the differences between the distros. All this makes it more or less impossible (well that's what I've heard/read earlier) to create something like that.
Still the fact remains, it would be nice to have. Instead of having to use YAST in Suse and *Drake tools in Mandrake, etc. it would be nice if it was simply available from the control center - it's the same stuff I want to configure, whether I run Suse, Mandrake, FreeBSD on the box and IMHO it belongs in the KDE Control Center, not as a separate tool. It would make KDE an even more Integrated Desktop
As this seems to be up to the distro's to create such tools, I have a little idea, which probably will never be a reality and maybe it is not even possible (warning: I'm rambling now :) ):
What about creating something that works with a LSB compliant distro and is easy to tailor for each distro maker and even for *BSD, etc. to fit the way the different *nix'es is configured.
C++ is very efficient and expressive for "programming in the small": for writing tight inner loops, for writing numerical code, etc. I've been using it for that for about 15 years and continue using it. It's a great language for many problems, and C++, even in cfront days, was never slow if you knew what you were doing.
The problem with C++ comes for programming in the large. C++'s lack of runtime safety means that you often need to use separate processes to isolate components from one another. And C++'s lack of reflection means that programmers often end up duplicating functionality and writing lots of adapter code. I'm not arguing C vs. C++. C is as bad as C++ in these regards.
You will also notice that KDE starts up many processes but that most of those processes are in shared ram (due to the wonderful reused libraries).
I am fully aware of shared memory and shared code. Nevertheless, if you add up all the actual memory used by KDE processes, you still end up with a lot (from memory, 20-30Mbytes for a basic desktop last I checked, but I'm not going to re-install KDE to find out).
The behaviour towards the KDE project has been a proud example of American FSF chauivinism against European hackers.
.NET protocol...
But this being Open Source, the best code has won. Gnome 2 will arrive next summer if at all. By that time KDE-3.x will already be installed on must unices with more and better apps, a stable interface and totally clean and mostlky bug free architecture.
Gnome will not have the thing that kept it alive in version1: Lots of GTK apps. Remember, porting to ftom gtk-1 to gtk-2 requires a quite thorough rewrite. I wonder how many apps will be ported.
Oh and Ximian will NOT be doing this porting with venture capital money, they will be busy trying to chase the MS
I guess gnome will become like enlightenment: Cool, nice, with a few followers and fans who love it. But it will not get the network effects of being THE linux desktop. [OK, maybe they will become THE solaris desktop, WOOOW!]
Well this wasn't Matthias Ettrich's first and only accomplishment. He also gave us the first and only usable frontend to latex.
I (and many other people!) swear by lyx for their scientific papers. It is absolutely great. Only after this did Matthias Ettrich start KDE.
First he created a GUI for the best OS text processing system, then he went on to create the best GUI for the entire unix OS!
Unlike some other guys (Miguel, Bruce, ...) he did not become a poster child of slashdot kids, but he deserves our gratitude for his great work towards a linux (and BSD) for the end user and on many desktops.
THANK YOU!
Moritz
Er... no it didn't. Some applications on it did, but they each implemented it themselves. MS didn't introduce D'n'D support until 3.1
Just specify ao=sdl in your ~/.mplayer/config. This will use SDL for audio output and SDL (newer versions) have artsd support. Voila problem solved.
.... :-)
:-)
Mplayer is really cool. I have never got the divx mpeglib to work, too. WOuld be nice to turn mplayer into a noatun module,
Also missing: Agood music DB, that replaces the playlist in noatun. Apart from that noatun is COOOL.
Moritz
Lyx was also founded by Matthias Ettrich. He left the lyx team, when they decided to stick with xforms and did not want to join into making klyx.
For this reason lyx still looks like SHIT and is a hard sell, when it could look modern. But the klyx port has not stayed current and is all but abandoned. Hopefully the next lyx version 1.2 will have a working QT2/KDE GUI. (It is in the works.)
Moritz
In regards to the alledged "crap" I can only agree. Apps like KPaint is not worthy of being in the standard base of KDE. In fact I can't believe someone would willingly have their name on the list of authors to that program. The program's a joke! When was the last time you saw a paintbrush that sprays in a square and not in a circle?!
This is just an example of one of the crappy apps in KDE tha has to go.
fear my zig!
I assume you are much more familiar with GNOME than with KDE. So you might think KDE is less configurable, but it isn't.
To start any app (e.g. konsole) with a key, right click on the K button. Choose Personal Preferences. Select the application you want to assign a key to (konsole is in System). Then look at the bottom [Assuming KDE-2.2.1, older verions had a second tab labeled "Advanced"]. Select "change" associated keys. Press your Keys or set the default key (if there is one). Press OK. Done.
About the panel, that used to happen in KDE-2.0 maybe, but not in the KDE-2.2 series. Anyways, just hit ALT+F2 and type "kicker" to regain the panel. Also file a bug report if you can replicate the behaviour.
Moritz
An interesting article from a guy who masturbates with pictures of Bill Gates:
Click Here.
Of course, maybe you resell WinXP to hapless companies to support your crack habit.
In the USA, we like stuff watered down, like beer, television, and freedom.
Well written argument for windows: 1
Gimpy badly formatted irrelevant reply supporting *ix stuff: 2
A: Because
In general, because KDE developers aren't interested in competing with Windows. Their attitude is just to 'make a better KDE'(to paraphrase Linus about Linux), for themselves and their users.
Q: do the issues you have listed improve 'functionality, asthetics, stability and user-friendliness'?
A: They obviously do, for you. They don't, for me. You see, I'm quite minimalist about my GUI nowadays: I don't even use KDE (or GNOME) anymore. I can figure out how to make title bold. I know how to bind keystrokes to my most used applications (so I don't even have to touch the mouse) and I prefer to personalize the menus myself instead of having the computer to do it ( computers are notoriously bad-asses at doing human-related activities).
Anyway, this is just me. But then, what you said is 'just you'. KDE is a success because it has a large user base, and they do not seem disappointed. Neither you nor me belongs to this user base: so, stick with Windows XP (or whatever), while I will stick with my collection of oddly-assorted (but highly functional for me) GUI mini-tools.
Ciao
----
FB
I'm not sure if "modular" is the right word, but here is my gripe:
I installed KDE2 for the first time a few weeks ago and I love it. It's a great desktop and everyone who helped in its development deserves thanks. But when I decided that I wanted to upgrade KMail so I could have the new IMAP functionality, I found out that I can't upgrade just KMail. I would have to upgrade my entire KDE2 installation, which is no easy task for those of us who are new to it.
At least I have broadband. Imagine the poor guys on dialup that have to download all of KDE just to upgrade the mail client.
So for now I'm using Balsa which seems to get the job done. But I miss KMail... other than lacking IMAP support, the version I have is great (easy filtering, nice GUI, etc.).
And yes, you could claim that you just need to upgrade the knetwork package. But that requires other ones which require other ones. Following the dependency trail you end up installing the whole KDE system again. Don't you think you should allow upgrades of individual components?
-- null
It's too slow, especially on opening new windows, makes explorer on Windows look good. The file manager that *really* shows how it should be done in terms of speed is rox (http://rox.sourceforge.net/). I also love the concept of AppDirs for programs, which would be neat if everyone used it, could solve a lot of problems that we need packages for. It may not translate as well to libraries, but even there it could have uses. And it's not ugly. I don't care if there is a web browser in my file manager, I just want something that looks and feels nice, while being efficient, unlike Konqueror and Nautilus. Though ROX development is less complex (no extensive toolkit stuff), it provides a good file manager and good AppDir philosophy that should be considered more...
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
In the dawn of time (the mid 80s :), X battled a number of compettitors for the seat of UNIX graphical display interface. There was News from Sun, a system I can't remember the name of from Digital, Domain/OS and its unusual networked display technology (from which CORBA is, oddly enough, the only surviving descendent).
That battle was won by X because its source code was free and because it was so well designed. But, that battle forced the state of the art to improve.
Today there are many desktops for UNIX and UNIX-like systems. KDE really led us out of the dark ages (from systems like CDE, shudder), and GNOME, OpenStep, and others continue to make interesting and innovative progress. One day, one of these systems will probably win out, but until then I'd just like to say thank you to all of them. You are pushing the state of the art further forward than most of us could have imagined 10 years ago!
Many will not remember the days of VT100 terminals and UNIX-as-endurance-test work environments. I do, and I'm very grateful!
and it still looks like windows...
Uuuhh.. I want to get KDE 2.2 working on my redhat...
"KDE has got all the basics down"
Unfortunately it's the last 5% that determines success or failure, and that's the hardest part.
They where clever enough to see the commercial potential. But why do so many people think Apple or Microsoft invent things? They do not.
The whole WIMPy (Windows, Icons, Mouse, Pulldown or something similar) user interface was present in the Graphics Environment Monitor, which was a spin-off from de Smalltalk 77 environment, researched and developed (AFAIK) at Xerox-PARC (Palo Alto Research Center) and available as a separate product for several operating sytems.
My congratulations to KDE developers team and all KDE users!
Just keep it going!
Best Regards,
Vadim Plessky
KDE. KDE Themes. KDE News. Visit http://kde2.newmail.ru
If you did, you'd know that KDE does have
1)proper Drag-n-Drop everywhere.
2) integrated voice activation (that was tied to non-free libs, and the necessity of which is very open to debate)
3) An easy way to script out application action. DCOP makes applications scriptable.
4) XML for everything, and a VERY organized file structure-- This is UNIX, and we use XML where _necessary_
5) display pdf (or postscript). kde has many viewers from dvi to pdf
7) A proper user interface
8) Lots of properly integrated apps
9) A proper application structure that reduces clutter yet is more powerful than any current structure.
9) A lot of other little things that KDE has in plentitude (miscellaneous coolnesses).
We only miss a "4th generation display engine", which means we're not trying to postscript everything yet. X11 is sufficient for now, thank you.
--exa--
I use kde 2.x everyday for about 10 to 16 hours.
I am missing some kde1.x functionality and some other minor details that I would like to point out.
kde2 moved from unix-like to windows-like.
I could use Ctrl-A (ala emacs) to move to the beginning of the line in kde 1.x , but in kde2 it selects all (ala windows).
In xterm Ctrl(right arrow) moves one word back and forward, while in konsole i dont get this functionality (it was present in kterminal though). Anyone know how to get this working?
Also I am a keyboard person, I dont like to use a mose a lot. I prefer to type Alt+F2 ks somemachinename root, which opens an xterm with ssh -l root somemachinename. If I want to do that with konsole I open multiple konsoles, loosing the functionality that I can open several tabs in one konsole.
Is it possible to somehow call konsole with some exec command so it focuses the already open terminal and open a new tab in it?
Or maybe I am just wiered.
By the way, KDE has come a long way. Kudos to all.
This weekend, I tried Mandrake 8.1 (with KDE 2.2.x) on the wife. And then I ended up re-installing Windows 98 about three hours later.
For the past three years, client-side Linux hasn't passed the 'wife' test. My wife is just a regular schmoe who doesn't know a Linux kernal from a corn kernal.
I know that the predominant thought is that KDE/Gnome isn't out to compete with Windows. But SOMEBODY has to if we want to introduce competition into the market in order to have a viable Microsoft alternative.
And right now, KDE (or Gnome) just isn't there. Frequent crashes. The stock browsers are lame. Hardware support is limited. Voice conferencing is next to none. Webcam support is limited -- my Logitech WebCam is the most popular in history -- yet isn't supported without a kernel recompile and makefile hacking. Browser plugins are very tedious to install and get going -- causing crashes and other niceties.
Forget trying to install new software easily. Gnome does this 'vanilla' sometimes, but KDE is horrid. Both environments need their desktop environments to be more in touch with the layout of the OS. Right now, the end-user really has to be a developer in order to make installed software integrate properly with the desktop. Boo. Hiss.
Needless to say, my wife tried it. She tried to install two popular new pieces of software on it (StarOffice and Opera) and failed. Whereas, in Windows, she is pleased that she can install most software without any headache. For a non-computer person to accomplish things on a computer makes them feel good. In this case, it made her feel dumb.
When we were all done, she said the same thing that she has said for the last three years.
"Linux makes me feel stupid. I don't know how to make it work. Put Windows back."
That isn't to say that I didn't see improvements in KDE. I saw some. I just didn't see anything monumental enough where the end-user/easy-to-use experience is concerned.
I guess KDE and Gnome will crawl before they walk. I just hope they don't crawl for much longer. Nevertheless, I will try it again next year on the wife... and see how it works out.
My only problem is the Konquror browser won't integrate with Sun JDK1.3.1_01, thus preventing me from using Java applets...
i've been using gnome this whole time. but after reading about all the stuff that's suppposed to be good about it, i decided to give it a try... i had it installed but never really used it for my day-to-day tasks...
i'm very interested why after 5 years of development of kde there still arent many themes out there... kde.themes.org seemingly never updates, and kde-look.org has a lot of themes but they all require you to compile from source, which is annoying especially if you lack a few libraries and you need to find the right package and download them. cant they package it into something like sawfish-themes so that i can do an apt-get and everything is installed?
my blog
You may not be a troll, as it is possible you actually believe what you say. For some reason, software often tend to activate the tribal instict in nerds. You (and the moderators who scored you up) obviously belong to the KDE "tribe", in which case the defensive instict when the "tribe" is viewed as thretened tend to overrule logic thinking.
Disagrement about a license *is* a perfectly valid reason to choose another product. No reason to make up conspiracy theories about that.
Anyone knowing the history of RMS would know that licenses matter more to him than to almost all other people.
The "tribe" has for a long time maintained that was no legal conflict between the old Qt license and the GPL, so it is not too surprising that the members of the tribe did not recognize the need for a legal forgiveness, and instead chose to take it as an insult. However, the FSF had all the time maintained that they were incompatible (it is a core feature of the GPL), so such an action was consistent with that. No need to invent other reasons, except to protect the tribal myths.
And of course, with "Go gnomes" RMS openly encouraged his own tribe, which of course could only be taken as an attack by the competing tribe, making him fair game.
I agree with your technical comments, though. While I don't care for desktops, I do care about GUI toolkits. I prefer C++ and Qt for technical reasons, and I believe a C++ based design is better than a C + a lot of language bindings.
I did use Gtk-- because it, unlike Qt, was free software, and I wanted my product to be available as free software with no proprietary dependencies on platforms where that is possible. I like the idea of a complete free soystem. When Troll Tech switched to QPL (and later GPL) I switched to Qt, because it was a more stable toolkit.
...and switched back to BlackBox when the damn clock wouldn't even stay set at the time I set it to.
I'm a big fan of open source. No really, I am. Practically everything I produce, about 200K lines of code, is open source and free, under a license similar to BSD. I understand and agree with all the arguments about open source (and by extension, Linux and XFree86 and GNOME and KDE etc.) being more maintainable, with more rapid bug fixes, cleaner, more useful for development, the whole bit. But when it comes to user interfaces, the community process just plain sucks.
Community source projects tend to be by developers for developers. We make stuff that we'd like to see in the system. We hack for ourselves. And as we all have our own style, we code systems in such a way that we can set them up any way we like. And that works fine because we don't mind the exponential increases in complexity. We revel in endless parameter tweaking. It's what we do!
But good user interface design doesn't work that way. An interface isn't just a pretty face. An interface is a environment designed with a very tricky balance of providing power to the user while simultaneously making it easy for him to get his job done and having a reasonable learning curve for the beginner. It is an exceptionally difficult chunk of code to write, and a good one requires programmers to come to a meeting of minds with artists and psychologists and usability experts. It requires testing and retesting and deep consideration.
And it also requires a hegemon. A bully. Someone who can tell the programmers that they must stop designing for themselves and not for the 99% of the world that doesn't program. Someone who can force the different voices to agree on a unified, clean, elegant, consistent interface. Someone who can force the establishment of standard protocols for interoperability. Someone who can dictate that stupid old interface decisions will be yanked out and replaced, rather than kowtowing to the cries of application developers irked that they have to rewrite their Badly Done Application X to work correctly with the new protocols.
Even community-source achievements like the Linux kernel aren't really community achievements. The kernel is the achievement of a closely-knit group of people headed (or at least mentored) by Linus, who wield tremendous power in stipulating the directions in adding core features. And that's why the kernel is as good as it is: there's a benefactor hegemon who stipulates direction rather than a large group of squabblers.
Human-computer interfaces need a hegemon even more desperately, because to be effective they need to provide a uniform environment for human users, and need to have something powerful enough to prevent consensus from producing the lowest common denominator.
Without a hegemon, we get X, KDE, GNOME, etc. X hasn't changed fundamentally in fifteen years. Fifteen years later, and we're still using an interface whose primary form of interapplication communication is select-and-paste. This early example of misdesign (for example) is totally unsuited for large multiwindowed editors and multiple applications, where selecting in one window shouldn't automatically deselect in other windows. As a result, Emacs had to come up with an ugly hack to pretend to select multiple windows but supply only one element to the selection ring. Motif came up with Yet Another Approach. I can count no less than four different hacked-up ways of getting around this, none of them consistent with each other.
Without a hegemon to force things to be Done This Way, a typical X installation has no fewer than a half dozen mutually incompatible interface libraries, all adding new features in different ways. As a result the user experience is nasty. The user must learn multiple ways of doing the same thing. Widget presentations have no consistency, applications interoperate only in little cliques, font handling is by far the worst of any UI I know of, package installation is coomplex and inconsistent, the list goes on. And to top it off, we have no less than two competing, different forks in the X coding effort, KDE and GNOME, with different presentations and libraries, different interoperability approaches, and different interface philosophies. What a mess.
There may be great successes in community source. X is not one of them. KDE is a wonderful example of what the community source effort can't get done in five years, much less fifteen. There's no way that KDE will ever become acceptible to the granny-safe crowd. X programmers have their beanies screwed on too tight.
I don't know about 'most'. But enough like KDE to make it a succesfull project, IMO.
Ciao
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FB
Lunchtimes over...back to work
This line was in Rocky (the first one), said by Apollo Creed in an interview. Ventura probably got it from that.
"The question of whether a computer can think is no more interesting than that of whether a submarine can swim" -EWD
I have an Athalon 900 with 256 MB of pc133 CAS2 ram. Would you call that slow? (It takes just as long to load as it did with my P2 400...)
Sig? What sig?
Thanks!
:) I don't quite have that much time in the near future. (School, work... etc...)
I think I'll wait to rebuild kde though
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Sig? What sig?
Hmmm -- I'm viewing it fine in a new tab in mozilla, just pasted it in straight from my post to check, shows 8 screen shots from Scribus ...
:(
Dunno why it shouldn't work for you, but you may want to look at http://apps.kde.com and scroll down to the entry for Scribus. This too works fine for me in Mozilla though, so maybe you'd encounter the same thing
timothy
jrnl: http://tinyurl.com/c2l8yr / foes: http://tinyurl.com/ckjno5
I totally agree. What the KDE team needs to do now is rip out the internals and simplify them. There's no reason why something like KDE couldn't run speedily on a P200 with 64MB of RAM if it was properly designed.
I'm not saying KDE sucks any more than anyone would say Linux 2.2's VM sucks. Both were good considerng the experience of the programmers and designers, but they both need(ed) revision. There will probably be wailing and gnashing of teeth, but when it's done, it will be worth it.
In 5 years, Microsoft might indeed have gone from Windows 95 to WindowsXP. What they didn't do was go from an announcement published on usenet to a fully functional GUI.
No, your children are not the special ones. Nor are your pets.
I do hope that's sarcasm.