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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.
KDE 3 provides a database-independent API for accessing SQL databases. It provides support for ODBC as well as direct support for Oracle, PostgreSQL and MySQL databases (custom drivers may be added as well). I am really looking forward to this feature, as I am a SQL junkie. If I could backend everything to a SQL database I would.
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Well, there's not much change.
But that was said beforehand, it won't be the big change like going from kde1 to kde2.
It's more an upgrade to Qt 3, which has as result that kde2 and kde3 are binary incompatible.
Maybe they are lucky (or not) that it is in about the same timeframe as going from gcc2 to gcc3. All c++ binaries will be broken with or without qt2/qt3 in most major distro's.
On kernel-cousin I read that a beta version should become available at the end of the month. Might be interesting.
I just hope that kde 3 will be ready to ship in the new distro's for next year, like Redhat 7.3/8.0 and Mandrake 8.2.
Well, don't worry about that. We can get you back before you leave. (Dr. Who)
[...] and the friendly tips from Kandalf.
:)
"Friendly tips", eh?
Beware... the PaperClip also started like this...
Actually, I understand that one of the most important difference between KDE 2 and KDE 3 is anti-aliasing. Unfortunatly, they only have JPEG screenshots, so it's almost impossible to notice the anti-aliasing because of how JPEG works. JPEG encodes pictures in the frequency (DCT) domain, so it has a normal tendency to slightly blur (low-pass) the image (which is OK in most circumstances), which makes is also roughly what the anti-aliasing does.
However, PNG (or GIF, but if you don't mind the patent issues) would have been a good alternative, as it doesn't have that low-pass effect since it just works by quantizing values (colormap) before a lossless compression (which is the patented part in GIF). Anyone have GIF or PNG screenshots?
Opus: the Swiss army knife of audio codec
I remember way back in the day, I thought KDE was an unstable, showy piece of crap. I think a lot of us did. A lot of us didn't even consider KDE over Gnome on our linux box. And I think it is safe to say, and many will agree, that KDE really has done an outstanding job - and that in a relatively short period of time. The screen shots look beautiful, and I wish continued success to the KDE team.
I think several years ago if I would have placed a bet on which GUI would succeed, I would say Gnome. Now, I wouldn't bet on either - I think both are excelling in their own way. Gnome seems to be the accepted choice that the commercial Unixes are going with, while KDE is doing a fine job of fulfilling the desktop wants and needs, and looking cool at the same time.
Hats off to the KDE team - their contribution is taken for granted every time you login to your pretty KDE desktop. KDE, thank you.
Moon Macrosystems. Sun's biggest competitor.
Can u give us an example of where a triangle window would be of _any_ use other than a visual curiosity?
Until then, I'd prefer that KDE and all other developers out there concentrate on work that is actually useful.
Keep in mind, there isn't much new screen candy in KDE 3.0; a lot of the changes are in the libraries. The biggest change is the port to Qt 3.0, which provides database-aware widgets, improved Qt Designer, bi-di text support, a new regexp class, among other things.
There are also many new applications being added to KDE.
Liberal (adj.): Free from bigotry; open to progress; tolerant of others.
We'll see how long this box can last...
You are in a maze of twisty little relative jumps, all alike.
http://www.uk.kde.org
Enjoy. Actually, it's not much to look at.
Frankly, they look a lot like ... previous KDE desktops :) That by itself says a lot about how mature KDE has become.
Windows 95 looks just like Windows 98. Theres nothing really different, aside from supporting USB. Windows sucks.
Heard Tori Amos on the radio this morning. She had a geat quote: Perspective changes whenever you move. Things always look different from another viewpoint.
Some of the linux zealots need to move around a bit. The view never changes unless you're in front.
Yes, it may be that it will look a bit prettier. But the major change in KDE 3.0 will be the port of all the apps to Qt 3
That seems to be the last major change in the libs for a long time. I think they will try to keep a consistent API for a couple years (after 3.0 is released) to let programmers write apps for KDE. I undertand (from previous discussions in the dot ) that they decided to jump to (the apparently much improved) Qt 3 now, spend a few months in the ports and then provide a mature, solid API. I guess they made the right decision.
Many thanks to the KDE folks,
-- Don Inodoro
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.There are several linux distros that will happily coexist with Windows - i.e. boot off a disk image stored on a Windows partition.
ZipSlack/BigSlack are good examples of this type of thing (http://www.slackware.org)
Just install KDE on one of those and you're good to go.
You might also look at VMWare, which will also achieve the same thing, but will let you run 'KDE-in-a-Window-on-your-Windows-Desktop'.
I think VMWare Express is about $49US.
Hope that helps
I gots ta ding a ding dang my dang a long ling long
I used kde 2 for a while.
Right now I'm using last night's cvs of kde3 called kde 2.9.0.
Not much has changed as far as looks go. Here are some changes i've noticed as i have both cvs and 2.2.1 installed on the same machine:
Not a huge change as kde1 -> kde2 but enough of one that i always choose my kde3 session instead of kde2.
Liberty.
i have mirrored your mirror here
enjoy
Looking good is nice. Too bad these environments get it backwards and always focus on form over function first. I'd rather have OS/2's wps on linux updated to be pretty. IBM was smart and actually got the SOM and DSOM and OOI stuff nailed down properly early. Now, if we had that environment to build on, we could make it prettier. Oh well. Windowmaker and ROX do a very nice job for me for now.
XFree86 supports the SHAPE extension. Have you never tried the round clock, or XEyes? Or any of the fancy-ass skinnable MP3 players? X has had support for that for many years. It has nothing to do with KDE.
--
CPAN rules. - Guido van Rossum
Boy, talk about Freudian slips... :-)
Hacker Public Radio is our Friend
Try M-x dancing-midgets-mode
Don't think of it as a flame---it's more like an argument that does 3d6 fire damage
Maybe it's just me, but KDE sure looks a lot like Windows.
Have you ever seen Windows? Have you ever used KDE? Comparing KDE to Windows is like comparing kumquaats to mangoes. I mean, sheesh, it's another fruit. Can't they do anything original? Here I am tired of kumquaat tarts and what's my alternative? Mangoes! I want something different. How about dead rats?
Most of the features of windows are copied verbatim (ie. taskbar, "start" button, same keyboard shortcuts).
taskbar: GNOME has a taskbar. IceWM has a taskbar. Even MacOSX has a taskbar. Kicker is different though. You get icons (launchers, menus, special), desktop switcher, tasks, applets, etc. You can make it growable. You can even choose not to run it at all (try that with winblowz).
"start" button: Ever see that funny footprint in GNOME? It's called a root menu. Every usable environment has a root menu. Sometimes this root menu is on the RMB on the root window, and sometimes it's on a panel. If you don't like it on the panel, remove it and remap it to the RMB.
keyboard shortcuts: If you don't like them, change them. Use the CDE shortcuts instead, or create your own. The last thing KDE needs is to create a whole new standard. I've been using these exact same shortcuts since OS/2 Warp, and I have absolutely no desire to learn a new set everytime I try a new windowmanager or desktop.
However, it would be nice to see something a little bit more revolutionary in it's design instead of rehashing the same old crap.
The WIMP interface is "windows, icons, menus, pointers." Okay, here's revolutionary: round windows, replace all text menus with animated images, replace all icons with new and improved keyboard shortcuts. We'll get rid of the mouse altogether and make everyone buy a touch screen.
A Government Is a Body of People, Usually Notably Ungoverned
I'm sure with the slightest bit of coding skill and a bunch of patience, Qt and KDE would compile under the Cygwin/XFree86 environment.
:)
I tried the Cygwin/XFree86 thing on my girlfriend's Windows box, and was quickly up and running with a full-screen X Window session, so I could VPN to work and export my XEmacs client from my workstation to the Windows box's display.
I haven't tried compiling anything with it, but the UNIX compatibility headers are all there as well as GCC. All the X headers also seemed to come with the cygwin XFree86 distribution.
Check out this user's guide for an excellent step-by-step document (with pictures!) of how to get the Cygwin/XFree86 environment running. After that just try to run configure then make in the QT source tree and see what happens
Good luck!
That by itself says a lot about how mature KDE has become.
Exactly! now they need to concentrate on other stuff - notably on reducing the learning curve for new (i.e. - Windows) users. Right now, you can't *just* deploy a Linux PC to a former Windows user.
I suggest a minimal, 'less is more' approach. It would be nice to have an 'interface' button that would be common to all KDE (or even all open source desktops) that users could use to change the look and feel of things. Former Windows users could use a 'Windows' preset that would bring the learning curve up to par for these people. A standard set of 'beginner' through 'advanced' would also be nice followed, of course, by customizable and downloadable versions. Sorta like skinning the whole GUI.
Now if they could just come up with a standard, easy to use installation utility, then Linux might be viable for the mainstream desktop. Hell - I saw someone who bought a Mac the other day because they just wanted to "surf the web". Now I don't think that this is any worse than buying a Windows based PC, but they could have paid much less if they did and still retained the functionality desired. The bottom line is that I don't like Windows or Mac but I would be hesitant to recommend Linux to this kind of person.
Sigh...
Life is the leading cause of death in America.
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).
I personally don't care if KDE looks like GNOME, OSX, Windows or whatever. The fact is that people can sit down and actually use it. It helps get alternative OS's [FreeBSD & Linux and others] on the desktops of laymen.
It also has one hell of a cool API if you want to write apps for it and now with language bindings for Java, C and Objective C [Perl? I think] its becoming a better toolkit/framework for application development.
If you don't like it cuz it looks like windows:
1) You must really have a chip on your shoulder about windows.
2) You just want something original.
Perhaps in KDE's future an ultra configurable Window Manager can be setup to do what YOU want. If there is enough interest it will happen.
As far as I am concerned I used IceWM and other Win95 looking Window Managers when I first started with linux to help break me in. I can see the need for more or at least different look and feel. WindowMaker is an excellent example but that is a NeXT "ripoff" if you want to call it that.
The latest versions of Freetype remove a Apple patented method of hinting, which changes the shape of characters to better match the pixels they are displayed on (ensuring that the arms of your `m' character aren't pushed together, for example, despite that at very small resolutions they might render this way).
Most of the recent KDE2 packages are compiled against the newer freetype, whose output is of slightly inferior quality due to the removal of the code for patented hinting method.
>The /single/ thing that keeps me from running kde is that cruddy excuse for a WM they /force/ you to use.
:-).
/only/ advantage of GNOME is the
Not true, KDE's hints support come from NETWM, which is used by KDE 2.x and GNOME 1.4. Any NETWM complient window manager works with KDE 2.x and GNOME 1.4. So far, the only NETWM compliant window managers (that I know of) are kwin, sawfish, and blackbox. WindowMaker's next release should also add support.
> They (trolltech) hired the author of
blackbox, which is a good WM, and I hoped some of his wisdom might flow down to the KDE team... but alas, no sign of that yet.
Kwin is a minimal (like Blackbox), but very extensible window manager. I wrote kbox, which lets you use blackbox styles in kwin. I can tell you that in fact, much of the vector gradient code in Blackbox actually orignated in KDE. Also, some of Brad Hughes (author of Blackbox) "wisdom" would naturally flow down to KDE because he wrote the Qt3 style engine
> KDE developers, please
take note: The
fact that you can choose your own window manager.
Again, I say, you can use any NetWM compliant window manager with KDE 2.x. Kwin is to KDE as Sawfish is to GNOME. It's just the default.
No, smb:// doesn't work. The current KDE smb client won't let you list all computers in the network like Network Neighborhood. All you can do is access computers you know the name of (smb://servername/sharename/filename). There's a lan:/ thingy that is supposed to do this but it doesn't. It's very hard to set up and it doesn't have the same functionality as Windows Network Neighborhood. Here's hoping KDE 3 will include a real smb ioslave so we can forget about lan:/.
main(c,r){for(r=32;r;) printf(++c>31?c=!r--,"\n":c<r?" ":~c&r?" `":" #");}
Totally changed in KDE 3.0 (now you can search your entire network with a "wizard" in Kcontrol in KDE 3.0)
Hetz (Heunique)
Win'95 had (and 9x has) "region window" support. The power toys kit had a round clock included.e nts/WUToys/W95PwrToysSet/Default.asp
i ns.htm
http://www.microsoft.com/windows95/downloads/cont
says that you need OSR2, which was '95a with the plus pack and new IE. I don't have a '95a install to test with, though, so I can't be sure. Oh well.
Learn all about region windows in VB at http://www.vbcodemagician.dk/tips/forms_win32rgnw