Slashdot Mirror
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
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...
--
Error 500: Internal sig error
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"
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.
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.
Please note that KDE is simply a desktop environment/object model/bunch of apps. If Microsoft only changed the interface between win3.x and win2k (or even between win3.x and win95), then that would be a valid comparison. However, the evolutions you refer to involve the core operating system as well (especially your comparison of win3.x to win2k, but even win3.x to win95 included core OS changes, such as the switch to native 32-bit protected mode, using DOS only as a boot strap, rather than being little more than a DOS shell).
KDE is a great product, and I agree that it has come far in a relatively short amount of time, but please compare apples to apples. And don't forget that KDE didn't have to do all the "difficult" research that Microsoft did. 12 years after the GUI became "mainstream" (1984, Apple Macintosh), KDE began their project. Both Apple and Microsoft had gone through numerous iterations, making mistakes on the way, and eventually coming up with paradigms that Just Work. KDE was able to use all this design that came before it. (Note that I'm not saying that's a bad thing.)
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."
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!
Lets not forget more than 5 years, a multimillion corporation and paid employees to only get half of what KDE has done with no corporation, and mostly free volunteer work.
..There's a-dooin's a-transpirin'
.. 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! (-:
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
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.
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.
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
Congratulations, everyone had managed not to turn this into a KDE/GNOME penis size competition until you came along.
I use GNOME but I'm still happy for KDE's accomplishments.
Win dain a lotica, en vai tu ri silota
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".
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.
Maybe the answer to your question lies in the simple fact that KDE and GNOME aren't Windows? Weird. I don't think you've ever used CDE before or else you'd realize where Windows got nearly all of its ideas for not only how the interface ought to act and look but also the sort of features that they ought to include. Both GNOME and KDE came from the concepts CDE originally pioneered not Windows. Only recently have KDE and GNOME been developing Windows-like features due to the increased demand for them. As OSS projects they're also under the philosophy that if you want something you can go ahead and build it yourself. If you want a KDE or GNOME docklet that acts like the Windows Start menu you can pretty easily build your own. As an individual user this may seem like a ridiculous concept but for those with the wil land way this is very beneficial. I can write a GNOME docklet that looks just like the new Windows XP Start Panel (which I happen to like, it reminds me of the *Step panel). I think KDE and GNOME are pretty impressive actually. Windows has been in the works for nearly two decades where they both have been in development for just now half a decade and have pretty incredible functionality.
I'm a loner Dottie, a Rebel.
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."
GNOM...Heli...Ximian already tried this and I don't think it worked very well dispite being a cool concept. The widespread distros like SuSE and RH sort of pack everything onto their CDs which many people find pretty daunting. Windows and MacOS even Be only pack relavant apps and tools with the main OS and let end users install what else they want. It's sort of ridiculous having upwards of 4 CDs on a basic Linux distribution.
I'm a loner Dottie, a Rebel.
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).
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
>. For example, in KDE, I can't rearrange the key
>mappings to launch a terminal when I press C-A->t.
You've not really used KDE then have you - just messed around with it a little.
You use KMenuEdit to assign keys to applications. It uses KHotkeys - which in 2.2.x is unfortunately buggy - as soon as you use Ctrl and Alt keys, it wipes out other keystrokes of the same keys - ie, assigning alt+F1 will produce the same action as pressing F1.
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
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
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!
I'm not a member of the KDE "tribe", but I do prefer KDE. Then Redhat came out with a white paper saying that distributing KDE was illegal. Redhat called me a criminal! I was only doing what RMS told me to do. You see, RMS said that if a friend asked for a copy of software, it would be morally wrong to refuse. A friend asked me for a copy of KDE and I gave him one. I distributed KDE. Evil me.
According to Redhat, I was a criminal. Debian and GNU agreed. I may not be a member of any "tribe", but it's clear to me which tribes only talk about freedom, and which ones actually practice it.
A Government Is a Body of People, Usually Notably Ungoverned
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.
I thought it was 'Windows, Icons, Mouse, Pointer.'
-- Veni, vidi, dormivi