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KDE 3.0 Screenshots
Lawrence Teo writes: "The screenshots of the upcoming KDE 3.x are out! More treats for you screenshot-loving people and I-need-my-desktop-to-look-perfect types. :-)" Frankly, they look a lot like ... previous KDE desktops :) That by itself says a lot about how mature KDE has become.
Oh yes, I totally agree. I don't know how many times I've thought "Y'know, Mozilla is really in the way of my terminal window. If I could just reshape my terminal window so that it resembled a big L that would really help my workflow!" Plus, if we were able to change windows into whatever shape we wanted it would certainly allow for some boasting rights over M$!
I just want to know if X could even be extended to support this.
Ooh! Ooh! You know what ELSE would be cool? If you could have windows that morphed all on their own! We could have Lava-Gnome or Lava-KDE or whatever. The artsy-fartsy types would flock to Linux from their wimpy Macs, and usability can just go fuck itself!
Wow. A whole new world of possibilities has just opened up before us. But would this be a cathedral or bazaar model for development? That's the important quetsion.
- Rev.Personally I am glad that Gnome and KDE are "borrowing" tried and true methods. If the people posting on this topic were left to "innovate" an interface we would almost certainly end up with a Windowing system that consisted entirely of round and triangle shaped Windows with pornographic themes. This interface would, of course, be voice enabled, but it would only accept commands in Klingon. Gnome hackers would be working on a patch that would also allow you to use High Elvish.
It would look cool, but it would be counter-intuitive as vi and as straightforward to learn as Emacs. Every time that Slashdot had a new story it would flash a painful succession of colors.
Personally I tend to use minimalist window managers. The eye candy only gets in my way. On the other hand, both KDE and Gnome should be commended for building a component platform that brings Unix desktop development to the next level. That's the truly interesting stuff. The fact that it looks like Windows is immaterial. The really important fact is that it is becoming possible to script together applications from ready built components (like Windows, except without the myriad downsides).