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Five Years of KDE

Posted by michael on from the birthdays-for-everyone dept.

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.

3 of 401 comments (clear)

  1. Re:A great example of open-source at work. by mduell · · Score: 4, Troll

    Or, rather, to use the same 5 year timespan, in 5 years, Microsoft went from Windows 95 to WindowsXP. That is a huge leap in terms of stability and security (both up) and boot time (down).

  2. Re:A great example of open-source at work. by Starship+Trooper · · Score: 3, Troll

    Well, that's not exactly true. The Windows NT (from which XP hails) and WinDOS (3.1, 9x, ME) families were completely different operating systems, being worked on simultaneously. It would be more accurate to say they went from Windows NT 3.1 to XP, which is still impressive of course. But the Windows NT kernel was essentially just VMS force-fitted to DOS-style conventions. In fact, WNT = VMS with all the letters incremented. The "New Technology" line was force-fitted later for marketing :-)

    --
    Loneliness is a power that we possess to give or take away forever
  3. praise and criticism by mj6798 · · Score: 3, Troll
    KDE is a great achievement, it works well, and it looks nice. But I'm still not using it, and I'm certainly not developing for it. Why?

    • C++ is deeply ingrained in the system; I don't believe that's where the future of application programming is going. I also believe that the use of C++ makes KDE slow and resource intensive.
    • A lot of KDE just duplicates existing functionality, but using the Qt toolkit and KDE libraries, all in the name of KDE integration. But often, the KDE equivalents are less functional.
    • KDE consumes huge amounts of resources and starts up lots of processes.
    • The KDE/Qt licenses (GPL/commercial) restrict my ability to create open source software (say, under BSD or LGPL licenses). I think the licenses are also harmful from the point of view of trying to attract more commercial developers to the Linux platform. Toolkits are a commodity these days, and they shouldn't be the major cost when choosing a platform.
    • KDE is replicating an old paradigm--the Windows desktop; I don't think that's where the industry is going.

    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.