KDE 3.0 beta 1 is out

From the development team who tries to break every development speed record (last month they released KDE 2.2.2) comes KDE 3.0 beta 1, with lots of new features, new QT (3.0.1). It is beta 1 so expect crashes. You can find release notes and download locations over . A full feature list of whats planned to be on KDE 3.0 is also available (hmm, quite a big list) and some screenshots are available here. Please read the README files for your favorite distribution before installing the files as those packages are not replacing the KDE 2.2.X binaries (if you have it installed).

Comments

Expect ...

[Xouba]

- The "KDE is trash, GNOME rules" posts
- The "KDE rules, GNOME is trash" posts
- The "Expect ..." posts like this one :-)

Re:Expect ...

[Cheesy Fool]

You missed out two things:

- The "KDE and gnome are both cheap imitiations of the Windows GUI" posts
- The "KDE and GNOME are bloated and slow, use a window manager like WindowMaker" posts

Re:Expect ...

[ralmeida]

He also missed the "You missed..." posts.

Re:Expect ...

[archen]

and insert "Linux is Sooo ready" here post.

Re:Expect ...

[Masem]

And of course:

"Real Linux users use only the console text mode!"

Re:Expect ...

[aussersterne]

I used to use WindowMaker, but moved away when things I didn't like (removal of --enable-single-icon especially) started to happen and KDE got AA text and a working browser.

I could never go back to FVWM or FVWM2 (which I used when I was new to Linux) -- I used to spend entire weekends on this huge crazy .fvwm2rc files that I thought were really nifty... But now the thought of wasting an entire weekend to make my desktop behave the way I want just seems insane.

Feature List URL

[ankit]

The feature list URL is incorrect. The right one is this

Re:Feature List URL

[HeUnique]

Fixed, thanks

Re:Feature List URL

[Spy Hunter]

Another interesting URL, and one that should definitely be included with these type of posts, is the open job list. Many of the jobs require no programming experience or capabilities, so don't let that stop you (though developers are always welcome too :-). If you like KDE, help make it better!

Finally, USB sync...sorta

[ShmuelP]

I believe that this is the first KDE "release" where KPilotDaemon supports USB-based palm devices (such as Visors). Anyone know if there are meaningful conduits using the archeitecture, though?

Re:Finally, USB sync...sorta

[Anonymous Coward]

The "old" conduits are still being ported to the new architecture, so the kpilot from the beta can be used to backup or restore your pilot, but that's all. I suppose we'll get lots of bug reports from people saying "i upgraded to 3.0beta1 and kpilot don't work no more." Well duh. Oh, don't count on devfs to work either.

Had a look at the screenshots..

[Anonymous Coward]

and they look exactly like the KDE2 I'm using currently (minus the bandwidth-eating background pics)
What's the point?

Re:Had a look at the screenshots..

[Anonymous Coward]

It's pretty depressing to see how slowly KDE and GNOME are evolving. As much as I love Linux, I must admit that Windows and Mac OS X have nicer GUIs. Since they're evolving faster than the Linux desktops, I wonder if we'll ever catch up.

Re:Had a look at the screenshots..

[[vmlinuz]]

I have been part of the KDE team for a few years now, and slow development is certainly not something which I have experienced.

Development is not always about graphical updates to the interface - and KDE 3.0 encompasses some architectural and some extended functionality.

We are all (KDE and GNOME) evolving fine, and if you are concerned about it, why not help?

Re:Had a look at the screenshots..

[ankit]

What did you expect? Animated icons? fancy colors? A new task bar?

There is this old saying ... .If it aint broke, dont fix it!

What is wrong with the GUI elements of KDE 2.2? And why should they be changed in 3.0?

Microsoft needs to change the visual appeal with each new version of Windows, because tahts the only thing that catches the user's attention. Its a pity you are comparing the 'eye candy' of every new release with the real work that is done in newer version of Gnome and KDE.

Think about it...

Re:Had a look at the screenshots..

[Anonymous Coward]

Development is not always about graphical updates to the interface...

Be that as it may, when you go to by a car you still make your decision based on its outside appearance. The car may have a perfect engine, and a perfect under body but if it isn't painted and doesn't have a windshield or doors, you're probably not going to buy it.

Re:Had a look at the screenshots..

[Anthony Boyd]

What did you expect? Animated icons? fancy colors? A new task bar?

There is this old saying ... .If it aint broke, dont fix it!

Hmmm. Well, releasing screenshots certainly invites the user to view the 3.0 release as primarily visual. You can hardly fault the original post for that. But I would make two other points. First: yes, the GUI is lacking in some areas, and could stand some fixing. For example, whenever Gnome fans throw up a screenshot of Gnome and say "looky looky, we look lots better" -- well, as a KDE fan, I have to admit that Gnome does look better. But that's only the icons. Gnome has a better artist working for them somewhere, and KDE could stand to find a master artist of their own. That could be part of KDE 3. As an aside, I prefer KDE because KDE has better widgets. Ever looked at a row of checkboxes in KDE? It's obvious what's checked. Now try that with Gnome. It's not at all obvious to me. KDE has better scrollbars, too. Oh! And one other thing: KDE's default titlebars make great use of "grip" (the bumps that you can "grab" to move the object around), but the rest of KDE pretty much ignores grip. It shouldn't. When you resize a window, the bottom right corner should have grip bumps. Any area that you "grab" that has room for grib bumps should use it, it's a useful visual cue.

But there is another aspect to your post that could stand to be responded to. If 3.0 is not going to be about eye candy, and is instead about the underpinnings of the product, then what about the big criticisms that get lobbed at KDE? Will 3.0 find ways to seriously optimize its code for speed/performance gains? I just skimmed the to-do list, and didn't see speed getting much of a priority. What about reliability? I see that Qt 3 is supposed to deliver some of this. What about the built-in database that comes with 3.0? Can that be used to bring some of the BeOS file management features to Linux? And let's merge the GUI stuff with the speed issues: ever moved your mouse around the screen while an app was launching? Notice the very cool animated icon "attached" to your mouse arrow -- the icon of the app, to let you know it's launching. Well, aside from how cool that feature is, it's also slow -- you can move the mouse arrow all the way across the screen, and the poor animated launch icon will be halfway behind. I'd like to see that fixed. In fact, I'd like to see it completely integrated with the mouse arrow, transforming the arrow icon for those few seconds, to make it visually more cohesive.

To sum up: speed, reliability, speed, reliablity, icons, speed, reliability. That's what I'd like from KDE 3.

Re:Had a look at the screenshots..

[xnixnix]

Check out the icons at kde-look.org

Re:Had a look at the screenshots..

[archen]

I agree with you, but I'd still like to see something nicer. Now the people who work on kde probably code because they like to code, and therefore I will assume that they probably aren't all that interested in messing with the aesthetics of the interface, but would rather get it working 'better'. I just wish that a couple people would get together and make a really KILLER default theme. Nothing really has to change, I mean KDE is totally theme-able, and it's not like you can't change it back if you don't like it. when I installed KDE2 and poking around the preferences, I switched to the marble theme(?). Suddenly the widgets looked slick as hell, and I think to myself "why wasn't this the default?".

Re:Had a look at the screenshots..

[dewke]

It's pretty depressing to see how slowly KDE and GNOME are evolving. As much as I love Linux, I must admit that Windows and Mac OS X have nicer GUIs. Since they're evolving faster than the Linux desktops, I wonder if we'll ever catch up.

I'll fall for the troll. It's been a while since I chased one ;)

What great innovations has Microsoft made? Windows 95-2000 looked identical, and although winxp may be different, but to me it looks like a toy and the only feature that they put in that I liked was the item grouping on the taskbar which gnome has (not sure about KDE).

If you want to truly compare who is evolving faster load up a august 95 copy of linux and see what X looked like then, then install a current one, and I think it is should be pretty apparent that the linux desktop has come a lot farther.

dewke

Re:Had a look at the screenshots..

[Anonymous Coward]

Be that as it may, when you go to by a car you still make your decision based on its outside appearance.

Crap. There may be a few people who buy a car based on its outside appearance but I doubt it's many.

The car may have a perfect engine, and a perfect under body but if it isn't painted and doesn't have a windshield or doors, you're probably not going to buy it.

Absolutely. And if it's a vision of sheer beauty but won't go above 10 mph then I also won't buy it. What's more, if there were only 2 cars on the market, one of them being beautiful but immobile and the other fully functioning but ugly then I'd have no difficulty at all in choosing the functional one. Appearance matters, but it isn't top of the list and you're an idiot if you think it is.

Re:Had a look at the screenshots..

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, KDE's icons are great in the sense of an icon designer. The key term is usability, not looks. GNOME2 appears to go the same route, and it is looking pretty similiar to KDE2's icons. Compare these two screenshots:

icons of gnome2:
here

icons of kde2:
here

Notice gnome2's new toolbar icons. I think this is a great step in terms of usability. GNOME 1.x's toolbar icons were photorealistic and therefore, quite horrible from an icon designer's perspective.

Re:Had a look at the screenshots..

[pjgunst]

you mean something like this?my desktop
This is my desktop, with modified iKons. check out KDE-Look for the complete, unedited iKons icon set. You will also notice a poll on the comments page, the author asked if iKons should be the default icon set for KDE3...
anyway; a lot of independent graphic artists are creating stylish, cartoonish and photo-realistic icons.
Regarding your other observations, you can turn launch feedback off if you don't want it. KDE will never be finished, as more and more users demand more and more features. I hope they keep implementing them as optional features. Eye candy is great, as long as it doesn't get in the way. Just turn some of it off, enjoy the speed gains. Try KDE with the preemptible patches from e.g. Texstar if you want more speed. Stability has never been an issue on my box.

Re:Had a look at the screenshots..

[Anonymous Coward]

> I switched to the marble theme(?). Suddenly the widgets looked slick as hell, and I think to myself "why wasn't this the default?".

Because generally, people have a lot of tastes. So a clean and fast theme was chosen as default.

Re:Had a look at the screenshots..

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe your the person to ask. When is the KDE team going to develop a way to install/update KDE easly, instead of having to go though dependency hell? There was a good article in e-week's Pings&Packets (Dec 17/24 2001) that said, and I quote "Most striking in this release, however, is how poor the mechanism for updating KDE continues to be. Whereas users of the GNOME desktop can turn to Ximiam's excellent and pretty much foolproof installer application for GNOME updates, KDE users must download a truckload of packages before installing them in some particular but generally unclear order"

He goes on to say "I've yet to condtuct an update of my KDE system without forcing it's package installer application to ignore dependencies..."

That's the same with me. I've been using GNOME since 1.x, and now up to the newest version. Only time I used KDE 2.x was when I updgraded to RedHat 7.1 and it had it in it. I like what I saw, I liked the speed, and responsiveness, but unless I can upgrade it, I refuse to use it. Although I am coming from Windows, and struggling to learn Linux, that doesn't exchuse the difficulty in installing programs.

If you'd like to respond via e-mail, it's below. Thanks

Shaddock Delaforge
shadwalk AT opera--DELETEME!-mail DOT com

Re:Had a look at the screenshots..

[abigor]

One solution is to use apt. The guys behind the KDE .deb packaging have done an excellent job.

Re:Had a look at the screenshots..

[Lumpy]

I love how you pointed out a few neat features, but I want to add some. The ability to turn everything off. that neat animated applet is launching icon next tothe cursor? I dont want that, I want it turned off. I want a way to make KDE as fast as blackbox or as bloated as XP. if you add a feature it should be mandatory to code in a DISABLE_FEATURE checkbox or function somewhere.

I'm all for eye-candy and coolness (how about rendering the whole desktop in OpenGL with alpha shading and bump mapping? that would look awesome!) but forcing things down peoples throats that are not needed is plain silly, and is a trademarked Microsoft tactic. it has no place in any open source code.

Re:Had a look at the screenshots..

[10Ghz]

"that neat animated applet is launching icon next tothe cursor? I dont want that, I want it turned off."

Then do so: Control Center ==> Look & Feel ==> Launch Feedback

Re:Had a look at the screenshots..

[Anonymous Coward]

great!

now only if I knew that was called that ... (I know RTFM... but no user does that.)

Re:Had a look at the screenshots..

[Anthony Boyd]

GNOME2 appears to go the same route, and it is looking pretty similiar to KDE2's icons. Compare these two screenshots:

I concede that the browser icons in the Gnome screenshot look as sucky as KDE's icons. But look at Gnome's folder icon. Look at Gnome's icons in the task bar (the larger icons, probably 48x48 pixels). They're beautiful. The shading behind the folders, the gradient on the folder itself, these are gorgeous icons. In the words of Steve Jobs, these are "lickable" icons. Don't underestimate the power that beauty has to make a work environment more livable and comfortable. KDE needs this.

Re:Had a look at the screenshots..

[Strick-9]

But that's only the icons. Gnome has a better artist working for them somewhere, and KDE could stand to find a master artist of their own.

I know there are a lot of technical reasons for GNOME and KDE not working together, but to-be-sure the icons are portable if you like them that much! :)

Perhaps it's more of a political thing though...

Re:Had a look at the screenshots..

[Anthony Boyd]

You will also notice a poll on the comments page, the author asked if iKons should be the default icon set for KDE3...

...And my vote, not having seen all the other themes, would be that yes, this should be the default icon set. It's far stronger than the existing one, but it isn't flashy or obnoxiously kewl. It's just great. The real experts (I'm just a guy who cares enough to make a post or two, not an expert on the system) should decide if iKons falls apart as you drill down into obscure areas (are there icons for everything? or just enough to make the desktop look good?). Or, if it really shines all the way through. If so, I'd be seriously considering this "pre-built" solution.

Re:Had a look at the screenshots..

[Anonymous Coward]

> Look at the Icons in the Gnome screenshot look as sucky as KDE's icons. But look at Gnome's folder icon. Look at Gnome's icons in the task bar (the larger icons, probably 48x48 pixels). They're beautiful. The shading behind the folders, the gradient on the folder itself, these are gorgeous icons.

Last time I checked, the KDE screenshot had "the shading"
and gradients.

> KDE needs this.

No it doesn't. Good icon design means keeping icons clean, simple, and easy to use. The thing that seperates GNOME and KDE Icons are that GNOME icons are photorealistic and KDE icons . Both have the shading and eye candy associated with these kinds of things.

Usability design is the #1 issue. Icons needs look the action/object that they represent. GNOME, in it's current state with photorealistic icons, doesn't do this very well, while KDE icons do.

Re:Had a look at the screenshots..

[Anonymous Coward]

I really like the iKons too (they are better than gnome's icons but not as good as the OSX icons) but remember that there are a couple issues with including them as default. First of all, iKons draw really slowly compared to KDE's default icons over remote X. Second, KDE's default icons are easier to use.

So what I think should be done is to include both icon sets with the base KDE packages, and have a option in pick between the two in Kpersonalizer (the app that runs when you start kde for the first time).

Re:Had a look at the screenshots..

[Anonymous Coward]

Well said; it's IMHO the major remaining blot on an otherwise excellent environment.

Re:Had a look at the screenshots..

[Anonymous Coward]

And don't underestimate the power that the pursuit of something that looks kewl has had in tying Gnome up in knots.

KDE is not trying to be some form of interface Nirvana; it is merely a workable, easy-to use environment that is familiar to Windows users.

This difference in ambition is a major contributor IHMO to the comparitive progress of KDE and Gnome, despite the far greater resources applied to the latter.

Re:Had a look at the screenshots..

[Anonymous Coward]

The car marketing analogy doesn't hold up. Cars vary little internally and that's why they change externally (even so - not much over the last five years). Your type of analogy is the coke/pepsi one, where to industry insiders the product is basically the same so you distinguish yourself through adverts and shiny cans.

To fight Gnome or Windows or MacOSX on what are essentially themes isn't a smart choice. By default KDE is supposed to look like Windows to so as not to scare newbies away. This has been decided.

This was a feature release, and an archtecture release, and I think those points are advertising enough.

Re:Had a look at the screenshots..

[Anonymous Coward]

What's with themes.org having no kde themes?

Re:Had a look at the screenshots..

[Anonymous Coward]

Talk about silly visual effects for the sake of it and KDE is the worst! KDE still has obtuse icons that are shiny for no reason (try the door on the home icon).

That KDE apps use the magnify glass for zooming, searching, and enlarging text is part of it.

Gnome icons are gorgeous and immediately useable and they copy more off WinXP than KDE.

Re:Had a look at the screenshots..

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh, and the KDE print icon looks like a tissue box. I forgot that one.

Re:Had a look at the screenshots..

[Anonymous Coward]

I doubt if they could use it. The 'home' icon with the two people is stolen from XP; the trash icon from 9x.

The icons aren't immediately recognisable. Look at the 'staroffice' vs 'internet' or 'mail' vs 'kontrol panel'. The only thing distinguishing them are small elements within the picture (I assume the staroffice one is a briefcase?)

If these become default in KDE I'll move to Gnome.

Re:Had a look at the screenshots..

[Anonymous Coward]

And the movie film floating out is from an old version of MS Mediaplayer.

Re:Had a look at the screenshots..

[Anthony Boyd]

KDE needs this.

No it doesn't.

Umm. Okay. Well, since you posted as an anonymous coward, I have no idea if you're a KDE developer or just some nerd like me who has an opinion. But I'm going to go out on a limb and say that regardless of who you might be, if you really think the best solution is to let Gnome be the superior tool here, well okay. I disagree with you, but you're free to have an opinion.

Good icon design means keeping icons clean, simple, and easy to use.

I don't see any conceivable way you could say that Gnome's icon of a folder is less usable simply because it looks better. That's absurd.

Re:Had a look at the screenshots..

[Anthony Boyd]

The 'home' icon with the two people is stolen from XP; the trash icon from 9x.

Not according to the auhor, although he could certainly be lying. At this page (about 5 screens down) he writes:

Some of my hardware icons are based on the Windows XP ones (read: I got my inspiration with Windows XP, but I did not rip any icons). I've made all the icons myself

If true, then I have no problem with this. Blatant copying is not legal, but "clean room" reimplementations have been upheld in court -- this is what Apple did to Xerox, and what Windows did to Apple.

ScreenShot MIRROR.

[minus23]

I've mirror'd the screenshot page here. Included are also the full size pictures of the screenshots. Enjoy. Mirror Link

Slashdot caches URLs?

[athmanb]

That's what I first hoped. That Slashdot had finally started to mirror URLs they link to, to protect other sites from the rampant bandwidth rape which comes with a mention on /.

Alas, it was only a typo...

Hmz

[Anonymous Coward]

I hope they finally fixed the way the font in Konqueror is unreadable unless the thing is started as root, no matter what I pick in the preferences menu (minimum font size seems to work though).
(Mandrake 8)

Re:Hmz

[Anonymous Coward]

That seems to be a Mandrake-specific bug. It seems to work well for me, in Debian and Conectiva distros.

Re:Hmz

[spencerogden]

This is as another poster pointed out a Mandrake bug. I am running Mandrake 8.1 right now. It has been a while since I fixd the problem, but basically the default version of courier is awful. Try some other versions (maybe load MS tru-type fonts) or try Arial. I don't remember having problems with the changes not sticking though.

Kde Betas and Redhat 7.2

[Anonymous Coward]

Anyone else having weird issues with Redhat 7.2? I build the beta fine, but on startup it dies a miserable death. First kdeinit, then drkonqi, and kded all die, and therefore nothing starts.

Am I alone with this? A friend has the same problems, but neither of us can find any help.

From the feature list...

[tunah]

...
KWin
magnetic borders for window resizing, gallium
...

At last! I'm so sick of gluing my windows in place, and the glue makes the screen blurry.

Hold on, don't magnets make the screen dark and erase the hard drive?

Re:From the feature list...

[tunah]

Whoever modded this up as funny is a flaming cocksucker.

I don't know about sexual preference, but to me it looks like it is you that is flaming, no?

Screenshot link is fine... and helpfull.

[minus23]

No need to worry. (seriously) Sigh.. why is it *everytime* I mirror something an AC comes by and says it's the goatse link? -- At least think of something original.. seriously.. it's been going on for years.

Re:Screenshot link is fine... and helpfull.

[Spy Hunter]

Cause that's what trolls do - and don't worry, the moderators are only rarely fooled, and if they are the error is soon corrected.

I notice that the trolls have already defeated the Slashdot [link.url] thingies though, take a look at the AC replying to your post with the google.com kde.gif link. It fools both Slashdot and IE, if you mouseover it says it's a link to google. Amazing. To discover the trick, you have to use the "Copy Shortcut" command and paste it into your URL bar. Think what creative energies like that could do, if they were turned to the light! Think of the programs that could be written with talents like that! And yet whatever sad person thought that up sits here at Slashdot finding ways of fooling a few people into seeing the wrong website, until the post is modded into oblivion 2 minutes later. It truly is sad...

Re:Screenshot link is fine... and helpfull.

[Anonymous Coward]

Trying to break Slashdot is just our way of testing Rob's adherence to his principles. Lighten up. Worst case scenario: you see an anus. Big whoop. I've seen it so much it doesn't even affect me anymore.

Geek vs geek competition is the driving force behind all the great technology you've come to love. Ever meet a greasy-haired, glasses-wearing nerd who loved to squeal "Actually, my design is much better"? There's a little bit of him in all of us.

On the other hand, wouldn't it be a hoot if that guy really did change his page so it redirects to goatse?

-Roto

Re:Screenshot link is fine... and helpfull.

[yatest5]

On the other hand, wouldn't it be a hoot if that guy really did change his page so it redirects to goatse?

I'm thinking the plan is:

1) Mirror a site (properly)
2) Get up to +5.
3) Set a script up to swap the images on your linked site with the goatse.cx ones and back again every 5 / 10 seconds.

Half the people who visit will see anus, the other half the correct images - consequently no-one will know what the feck is going on!

Further question though - what the hell has that guy done to his ass - drive a truck through it???

Re:Screenshot link is fine... and helpfull.

[zmooc]

Further question though - what the hell has that guy done to his ass - drive a truck through it???

Watch the rest of the series and practice a lot:P

Anyway. I have an ass myself (although it's not that wide) but I have bones next to it. I don't understand how this guy can possibly stretch his ass that far without removing these bones...Or am I the only one that has them? Please check.

Re:Screenshot link is fine... and helpfull.

[ScumBiker]

Actually, I am Jack's server.

Now, to stay on topic, I've been playing with the KDE desktops and I like it. I think Gnome is better looking, in the stock configuration, though.

Re:KDE: doomed to failure

[[vmlinuz]]

Why not join us and make it better then?

And what do you mean by dead technology? Linux? Qt? gcc?

Jono

Is this the one?

[tester13]

I have been very excited about KDE since the latest version (2x) series came out. Can anyone explain what the 3.0 series is going to offer? Some of the technical details of the lists will go over my head.

Re:Is this the one?

[[vmlinuz]]

KDE 3.0 will have a number of additional features regaarding access to databases, multimedia, support for more mime types, stability enhancements and the like.

As with any open source project, KDE will go in the direction that interests those who contribute to the system. Feel free to get KDE 3.0 and submit bug reports though - each helps KDE 3.0 be better all the time.

Re:Is this the one?

[sprouty76]

In addition to the features being added, they are moving it to use a new version of the Qt toolkit (Qt 3) - once that is done, they'll be able to add loads more stuff.

Re:Is this the one?

[Anonymous Coward]

Something that has not been mentionned either here or on www.kde.org: the printing infrastructure has been improved from 2.2.x and because they've switched to Qt 3.0, they can now support bi-di scripts (i.e. your "normal" western alphabets as well as right-to-left ones like arabic and hebrew).

AFAICT, besides the functionality improvements in KMail (and Konqueror, but less obvious IIRC), the ones in the printing system will be the most obvious to end-users.

Re:Google

[Anonymous Coward]

thats pretty clever, though it IS a goatse guy pic

(i always place my hand in front of the screen when following links on /. ... JUST IN CASE)

Re:KDE: doomed to failure

[Anonymous Coward]

Please, don't feed the trolls.
Anyone with a clue knows that with a remote X connection KDE is twice as fast as gnome.

Re:Google

[Anonymous Coward]

I wonder if /. can filter out suspicious links like that.

Re:Hoe gaat het?

[Anonymous Coward]

koffie is een heel goed idee!

Re:moderators on crack!!

[Anonymous Coward]

because the URL is http://images.google.com/imgres?imgurl=kde-beta-1/ images/kde.gif(plus 150 %20's)&imgrefurl=http://www.goatse.cx

Re:Hoe gaat het?

[Anonymous Coward]

voor mij twee graag !

Re:Hoe gaat het?

[Anonymous Coward]

okee. met melk of zuiker?

Re:Google

[Anonymous Coward]

yeah just lameness filter any URL with more than 10 %20's in it... but there will always be ways around the filters

Bear in mind...

[[vmlinuz]]

A few people have been complaining here that KDE 3.0 looks the same as KDE 2.x. I just wanted to clear a few things up:

- First of all, KDE 3.0 is largely an architectural upgrade - we have moved to the new Qt 3.x series, and this needs to be reflected in KDE 3.x. The Qt 3.x series has a lot of bug fixes and additional features such as database connectivity, better handling of data structures and the like - this increased stability is passed on natively to KDE 3.0.

- In terms of interface updates, KDE 3.0 will see some updates but bear in mind that this update was aimed at primarily porting the codebase to Qt 3.x. Any additional interface updates will be added as the need arises - we always like your suggestions and bug reports are always welcome.

- KDE 3.0 is largely about increased functionality - examples include better JavaScript, a more integrated Konqueror, new modules such as the KDE Educational Module, the font installer, kernel compiler etc. These things are really likely to appear in 3.1 and further releases.

- For those of you who are gonna bitch and moan about KDE, GNOME, XFree86, Kernel, Mesa etc...why not just help to correct the things you don't like. You don't need to be a coder to help ny project - *everyone* can help an open source project.

Please be patient folks and keep those bug reports coming in - we value your help.

Jono Bacon

Re:Bear in mind...

[dunstan]

I first used KDE in the pre version 1 betas, and the look and feel hasn't changed much since then. This is A Good Thing, because it means they got it right in the first place. When I first tried out KDE the current state of the art in unix desktops was CDE. When I first saw KDE my view (and that of my then colleagues) was "OK, that's the X desktop sorted, now let's move on". Since then most of the change has been under the bonnet (hood), enabling applications running under KDE to play nicely together, together with new applications which use this functionality (Konqueror, Koffice).

It is a true tribute to KDE that a major version change doesn't look or feel much different.

Dunstan

Re:Bear in mind...

[rseuhs]

It is a true tribute to KDE that a major version change doesn't look or feel much different.

I second that. And because the codebase does not change, it should be a lot more stable than KDE2.0.

I know a lot of people who have tried KDE2.0 and left it because it was quite buggy.

KDE3.0 will (hopefully) be stable from version.0 on, so the large audience trying the .0 version won't be scared away from it.

I think KDE3 will make inroads in the desktop-market.

Re:Bear in mind...

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd like to share your optimism about KDE3 taking a share of The Desktop, but if I can't get a decent printout out of Konqueror (or any other KDE App), one that matches reasonably (sp?) what I see on the screen, I don't see it making any serious inroads.

As long as any *nix desktop environment will usually print out stuff with fonts/graphics twice as big or twice smaller than what is on the screen (i.e.: no WYSIWYG), printing will the the Achille's heel of end-user *nix that will keep it from making any headway on the desktop.

But if they fix this, then YES, KDE3 will make some serious inroads on The Desktop. Especially if Kylix, WordPerfect and other commercial-grade apps./tool are ported to it. Oh, do I hope they port WP 2002 to KDE3 (esp. Paradox)!!!

Re:Bear in mind...

[Arandir]

kernel compiler etc.

Will this work for *BSD, Solaris, or any of the other non-Linux platforms that KDE supports?

Okay, okay, I know the answer: no. So let me follow up. Why is all this Linux-only stuff being put into KDE? Certainly Linux is the dominant platform that KDE runs on, but it is hardly the only platform. IHMO, KDE should keep all the Linux-only stuff out of the base system and put them into a kdelinux package. Such a package would remain part of the "core" distribution, but those of us not using Linux won't have to download it.

This is not a flame!

[powerlinekid]

I'll come straight and say it... it looks like KDE is pulling some considerable distance between GNOME and itself. Look I have a lot of respect for the GNOME people... anyone who donates their time to such a massive complex system such as a user enviroment deserves a round of golf claps. The fact is though is that I used to be a GNOME user. And then one day I accidently* logged into KDE 2.2.X (whatever is with RedHat 7.2) and was blown away by the speed and grace. If linux ends up on the desktop in it's present form (X sucks but thats a different story), then most likely it'll be KDE that everyone thinks is linux. They seem to have the perfect model right now... release quickly and update often. Quite impressive really, considering how much shit goes into a project of that magnitude.

* - About the accident... usually I install both enviroments on my machine so I can use apps from both (I always liked KDE's media player and Kmail).
Basically I just always ignored KDE and then one day was checking out what windows managers was available and forgot that I had highlighted KDE and logged in. The rest is history... haven't gone back since.

Re:This is not a flame!

[Pentagram]

I suppose it's a matter of taste. I've tried to use KDE lots of times, but I find it ugly and unintuitive. Gnome can be slow, but I think Gnome is a lot better than KDE on a high-end machine. Nautilus is great if your box is fast enough to handle it. KDE always feels like a Windows wannabe to me (not a flame, just an opinion.) And maybe I'm just a complete imbecile when it comes to updating things, but I keep breaking apps in KDE.

Besides, I've fallen in love with Galeon. Much better than Explorer or Konqueror (does konqueror have tabbed browsing yet? haven't checked it out in a little while.) I'm currently running 0.11.3, and it's still more stable than Explorer. And on the two occasions it has crashed, it's restored my browsing state. Poetry.

The killer feature

[rseuhs]

Add GUI for configuring "animated gifs", Waldo Bastian

I've been waiting for that for a LONG time...

Unfortunately it's still in the "TODO" group, but I think this feature is worth waiting for.

Re:KDE: doomed to failure

[Anonymous Coward]

fuck GNOME, run DWARF! the GUI you can toss!

Why should an interface keep evolving?

[Baki]

Apple's interface hasn't changed for 10 years (until OS-X). It was just good, people were used to it. The interface doesn't need to change every year (like Windows seems to suggest). On the contrary.

I think the KDE interface is getting near perfect (as far as look&feel is concerned). Making changes just confuses users and adding ever more bloat (like the WinXP themes) is counterproductive.

As for myself, I have been using bare X11/twm for the past 15 years and have no reason to change that. It does the job (for me, admittedly not for everyone), I'm used to it.

It is sad to see how many people even in the Open Software camp seem to be infected by the Microsoft idea of never ending "upgrade" cycles.

Re:Why should an interface keep evolving?

[Anonymous Coward]

The Mac OS interface went through many changes. Sure, the basics stayed the same, but that's about it. Mac OS 1 wasn't even color!

Re:Why should an interface keep evolving?

[rseuhs]

I know I'll lose some Karma for saying this, but the MacOS9 GUI is the worst GUI in wide use.

It's inconsistent (Changing between apps is done through the finder-menu in the up-right corner, changing windows within apps is done using some menu (usually, but not always called "window"))

It's lacking basic abilities every GUI should be able to do (maximize(!), easier resizing)

I bought a Powerbook 2 years ago and I can summarize my experience as following: The software is pretty useless, but the hardware is fine and runs Linux very well.

I only used MacOS to watch DVDs and even that was a PITA (just insert a scratched DVD and see your system freeze -> hard reset)

I did not try MacOS X, but I have yet to hear what MacOS X can do what KDE can't. I won't shell out big bucks just to "try", thank you very much. (Wouldn't probably run very well on a G3/400 192MB RAM anyway)

Re:Why should an interface keep evolving?

[rtscts]

It is sad to see how many people even in the Open Software camp seem to be infected by the Microsoft idea of never ending "upgrade" cycles

New toys = fun. The difference is, a) we have a choice, and b) these upgrades exist primarily for the new toys, not primarily to milk more money out of us.

Re:Why should an interface keep evolving?

[Anonymous Coward]

OS9 does have maximize, the second button from the left. It resizes the window to the size of the document rather than that of the screen. This activity is crucial when working on graphics using multiple windows, one of many reasons Photoshop pros prefer Macs.

Super fast UK mirror

[adders]

If your in the UK and need a fast download of KDE, or just about any other download, try http://www.mirror.ac.uk/ or ftp://ftp.mirror.ac.uk/ http://www.mirror.ac.uk/sites/ftp.kde.org/pub/kde/ unstable/kde-3.0-beta1/ ftp://ftp.mirror.ac.uk/sites/ftp.kde.org/pub/kde/u nstable/kde-3.0-beta1/

Looks like windows

[Anonymous Coward]

For all the advancements, looks like they are trying to copy MS Windows. Where's the new and superior advances in GUI design? When Windows XP came out it was all "eye candy". When a Linux GUI comes out trying to look like the last version of Windows it's inovative, new, and exciting. Just because something ins running under Linux doesn't make it better.

Re:Looks like windows

[Tyreth]

When I first used WinXP for half an hour or so I was really impressed. I though, 'this looks nice, it has more of the stability of win2000, it's really enjoyable to use and well integrated'. Then I actually began to use it properly, and discovered that it makes itself look more powerful than it really is. There are no advanced features behind the pretty GUI. When I'm back in KDE or GNOME I feel like I have a great deal of power - and I do. The options are there to do various different useful functions that just aren't present in windows.

Windows copies other people's innovations and claims it as it's own. Then people like you think that Microsoft came first and claim that linux is copying. I consider KDE more advanced than the windows GUI, not catching up (there are some deficiencies in KDE compared to Windows, but overall it is better).

Re:Looks like windows

[Anonymous Coward]

excuse me, but KDE looked like that far longer than XP and W2K looked like it does.

Microsoft COPIED kde's look. not the other way around dummy.

try and look at doc file and changelogs, you'll see what I speak is the truth.

Agreed

[Anonymous Coward]

I tried Gnome 1.4 recently. I have my computer in another room and use an old SGI Indy with the 10Base-T connection as X terminal. Gnome was so slow I had to dump it altogether. On the other hand, I'm running KDE with the mosfet liquid theme an is perfectly usable. I like Evolution but is so slow over a remote link that I had to dump it as well.

KHTML vs. Gecko

[moZer]

One thing that I really would like to see is a better integration of Gecko in Konqueror. I know it's already possible to switch rendering engine, but it's highly unstable in my experience.

Now here's an example of an area in which many of the largest open source projects (Mozilla, GNOME, KDE) could collaborate, benefit from each other's work and find a common standard - the HTML rendering engine. Imagine the Konqueror, Galeon, Mozilla and Nautilus teams putting their efforts behind Gecko development...it would be one important step towards a more unified Linux desktop. Unified as in common standards and shared components, not unified as in lack of choice.

Re:KHTML vs. Gecko

[brunes69]

I don't really know why you want Gecko so much. KHTML is just as fast, if not faster, than Gecko. For a comparison, try loading this page (which is just straight CSS, no images, so it's a good rendering test) in the latest Konqueror (2.2.2x) and the latest Mozilla/Galeon. You'll notice that it renders much faster in KHTML. Now, I'm not saying this would be true of every page (although it may be!), but I think it goes to show that KHTML can stnd on its own, and there is really no need to use Gecko in Konqueror.

Re:KHTML vs. Gecko

[brunes69]

Oops, sorry forgot to close that link

Re:KHTML vs. Gecko

[Anonymous Coward]

gecko is just miles better at dealing with badly written pages however.

witness the fact that you CANNOT read Bob the Angry Flower with khtml.

Until minor things like that are fixed, lots of people (inc me) are going to prefer the (slower) gecko.

Re:KHTML vs. Gecko

[moZer]

Speed is not everything. KHTML seems to have problems with layers - check this page out. There's supposed to be a scrolling menu on the upper right, which does not show at all in Konqueror. Opera also has problems with that page. It may be poorly written JavaScript/DHTML or something, I don't know.
It's just my experience that Gecko is more advanced than KHTML in terms of standards compliance/technology support.

Re:KHTML vs. Gecko

[Anonymous Coward]

"I don't really know why you want Gecko so much. KHTML is just as fast, if not faster, than Gecko."

I don't know about you, but for me, it's all about compliance. KHTML still has a few miles to go in that arena. I have developed pages that look fine in Netscape6/Mozilla/Galeon, Opera, and even IE, that break under KHTML.

KHTML is still much better than Netscape 4.x. KHTML is, for example, imminently usable, while Netscape Aggravator is complete trash.

Re:KHTML vs. Gecko

[ndogg]

There's a good reason why BSD folks are upset by all this Linux hype. It's a Bad Thing(TM) for there to be a monopoly. There needs to be some sort of healthy competition for evolution to work. There can't be all GNU compilers, or else we won't have a good perspective of what's good or bad in a compiler.

KHTML will allow for some healthy competition to Gecko. Ideas like pop-up control, cookie control, etc. (although, I'm not sure that these are specific to the KHTML component) were first on Konqueror/KHTML before any other browser (and Microsoft says that OSS doesn't innovate.) Now Mozilla/Gecko have these feature as well (well, I'm pretty sure it has the pop-up control.) We need the balance of other HTML renderers to bring in new ideas like these so that evolution can work its magic.

Re:KHTML vs. Gecko

[Anonymous Coward]

That page loads fine in Opera 6.0. It is out as a beta for linux.

Re:KHTML vs. Gecko

[brunes69]

The reason that menu isn't showing is the previously poor JS support in Konq. This is said to be much improved in KDE 3.0, and I will be curious to try this site out under the new Konq.

Re:KHTML vs. Gecko

[moZer]

It does not load fine even in Opera 6.0 tp2. Opera doesn't hide the part of the list that you're supposed to scroll to make visible. Look at it in Mozilla and compare.

Re:KHTML vs. Gecko

[Moritz Moeller - Her]

gecko is less advanced than you think. Try developing a CSS2 based web page and you will see why.

Another reason: Mozilla-0.9.6 can't even show an embedded html file (in an object tag). Incredible.

Opera on the other hand does not aloow setting background pics with CSS. Huh? Hardly wizardry...

The only tag that really fscks konqueror up is iframe and that is deprecated anyways.

Re:KHTML vs. Gecko

[Bert64]

That page (http://www.w3.org/Style/CSS/) actually seems broken under IE6 (as shipped with XP) the floating menu appears at the top left of the screen and doesnt float... Galeon (1.01) displays it fine..
but renders the page noticeably slower.

Screenshots

[tacocat]

OK, I checked out the screen shots. Looks just like my current KDE 2.2.1.

KDE is a good product, don't get me wrong. But why does it have to look just like MSFT's products?

I actually would like to work more on finding desktops/WM's that do not look like MSFT. It's interesting to see what other ideas are out there and to see who's got a fresh new paradigm on this desktop. After all, it's not really a desktop anymore.

Re:Screenshots

[Seli]

> KDE is a good product, don't get me wrong. But why does it have to look just like MSFT's products?

The point is, it doesn't have to, it just can.

Re:Screenshots

[Anonymous Coward]

>> KDE is a good product, don't get me wrong. But why does it have to look just like MSFT's products?

>The point is, it doesn't have to, it just can.

The point is, it has to to be taken seriously

Re:Screenshots

[rseuhs]

The point is, it doesn't have to, it just can.

Somebody please mod that up, that answers about half of all the anti-KDE/Linux FUD out there:

"KDE looks like Windows"
"Linux is recompiled on a daily basis"
"Linux is used from the CLI"

Re:Screenshots

[uebernewby]

But why does it have to look just like MSFT's products?

Because, like it or not, the MSFT products it looks like (i.e. not XP, which out of the box is horrible IMHO) do a really good job at making day to day tasks simple. There's more than 20 years of research behind that (Xerox PARC ripped off by Apple ripped of by MSFT), so why should the KDE-team spend unnecessary time redoing that research?

This is of course not to say that they shouldn't if they feel they can come up with a better solution, but the one they have now works well enough, so ...

Re:Screenshots

[Lumpy]

blackbox
afterstep
windowmaker

just about everything other than gnome and kde look completely different and act completely different.

My favorite is afterstep, small, super fast, and written in C instead of that damned C++ (because I know C and personally Hate C++, actually blackbox is awesome example of how C++ can fly!)

If your window manager is larger than 4 megabytes, it is no longer a window manager, it's an application integration environment.

Re:Screenshots

[Etriaph]

Does this look like an MSFT desktop? That's KDE 2.2.2 using the QNiX KWin client, using also the QNiX style for internal window parts, and the icons are from the Slick iconset. All of this can be found at www.kde-look.org. I can see your concern that it has a menu, and a taskbar, and windows, and icons and stuff, but I think even GNOME has that. ;)

Btw, you can run KDE without kicker, and you would have a pretty non-"MSFT" desktop. Kicker isn't required, you can get a window list from a middle click. With Alt-F2 you can load any software you need (including KControl). It by *default* looks like what's commonly refered to as a Desktop Environment, but so does GNOME by default. Anyhow, KDE is great anyway.

Re:Screenshots

[Arandir]

because I know C and personally Hate C++, actually blackbox is awesome example of how C++ can fly!

That's because Blackbox did C++ right. C++ done right is awesome. C++ done mediocre is really mediocre. And C++ done bad is abysmal.

Unfortunately, the foundations of Qt were made while the C++ standard had not yet been finalized. And it is still portable to non-standard C++ compilers. Because of this there are a few hacks, quirks and workarounds that aren't good C++ and will never be good C++. Qt is a great library, and there are valid reasons for its kludges, but they still remain kludges.

What about speed?

[PastaAnta]

The biggest problem with KDE (IMHO) is the unresponsive feeling - especially when starting up programs. Are there any changes to this in KDE 3.0?

I know it is mainly something about a compiler/linker issue, but what is the progress in that area?

Re:What about speed?

[e01man]

I agree. The speed is very important. If the gui is slow, it doesn't matter how many features it has. That's why I usually run windows NT, because moving windows, resizeing windows and browsing the disc is so much faster there.

Re:What about speed?

[Psiren]

Well that's fine and dandy if all you do all day is move and resize windows and browse your disk. For the rest of us who actually use our computer to do something productive, the choice of OS has a lot to do with the programs that are required. Having said that, there are a lot of NT programs that I could use during my day-to-day admin duties, but Linux and it's associated programs offers me all I need.

Re:What about speed?

[Anonymous Coward]

Gosh. My 600MHz/128M Gnu/Linux/KDE box at home is clearly snappier than my 650MHz/128M W2K box at work.

Re:What about speed?

[cybrthng]

Hmm, have you ever opened an IDE such as Forte or Visual Builder on Linux? Have you ever tried running Koffice and alike and then switched to a Windows PC and seen how much faster it runs??

The "snappy" performance is *NEEDED* if people are forced to use a gui, which is what KDE is!

Re:What about speed?

[Anonymous Coward]

We need to prefect the Windows technique of making an application look like it starts much faster than it actually does. People notice the time between when they start a program and when they get the first visual feedback, they don't notice the time between that first feedback and when they can actually use the program. As long as you get a window or splash screen open a few milliseconds after the program starts, even if it takes 10 minutes get the rest fully functional people will still think of it as "fast".

Re:What about speed?

[Anonymous Coward]

And then have you tried going to BeOS and see how much faster than windows it is?

Re:What about speed?

[praedor]

Horse, dead. Beat.

BeOS is no more and is thus merely a footnote, a "might-have-been". All we can get from BeOS now is rough modeling on some of the things it did well - ROUGH is the keyword since the source is not available.

These pissing contest statements of linux vs windoze are usually silly when no useful content is added to them. Keyword here is USEFUL. There are some things that windoze does that linux distros/GUI developers should strive to copy NOT because they are necessarily the best way to do something, but because they are the way that most people are familiar with. Reduce the steepness of the linux learning curve as much as possible and make the transition from doze to linux as simple as possible.

It must be windoze that we copy in many ways, not MacOS X, nice in its own right, because no one is likely going to switch from MacOS X to linux. They are much more likely to switch from doze to linux. Make it as painless as possible while also NOT making the same mistakes that doze has made AND maintaining configurability for power users.

Re:What about speed?

[Dominic_Mazzoni]

Are you usually connected to the Internet while running KDE? Try turning off networking (ifconfig eth0 down) and see if everything magically speeds up.

For some reason KDE programs want to access the net when they start up - maybe to do a reverse DNS lookup???

Anyway, if that was your problem, try running a caching nameserver - that helped me a lot.

This is of course in addition to the linker issue...

Re:What about speed?

[Larson E. Whipsnade]

Actually, I think it's just trying to get your host name. Try the command 'hostname -a'. If it hangs for 30 seconds or so before finally timing out then KDE will be pathologically slow starting up. Last I checked xemacs behaved the same way. I think if you have a proper entry in your /etc/hosts file then a DNS lookup is not needed to resolve the full host name and KDE starts normally.

Re:Hoe gaat het?

[Anonymous Coward]

relaxen und watchen das blinkenlichts

Themes?

[brunes69]

If you don't like the style, change your style engine. If you don't like the theme, change the theme. KDE is totally customizable.

Re:WARNING GOATSEX LINK!!

[Anonymous Coward]

My God! Inverted meta-trolling!

You're certainly innovative, I'll give you that.

Great, There goes the FreeBSD ports again!

[taozilla]

So when FreeBSD 5.0-RELEASE comes out, the ports system will have three versions of KDE and when you build them you will have moc, moc2 moc3 in the bin directory?

My question is, why does every version of qt break compatibility with the previous version?
1.45, 2.30 and now 3?

Stable Development Cycle

[noz]

"From the development team who tries to break every development speed record (last month they released KDE 2.2.2) comes KDE 3.0 beta 1, with lots of new features, new QT (3.0.1). It is beta 1 so expect crashes.

One argument tending away from Linux and to *BSD is the advantage of maturity. Another important trait is the slow implementation of new features (eliminating many bugs). Introduce two features simultaneously and something breaks, which was to blame?

Re:Stable Development Cycle

[LMCBoy]

Well, if you want maturity and stability, just ignore the new stuff. Distros like debian stable make this really easy for you.

I think it's a clear advantage to have both new, possibly bleeding-edge stuff and old, probably rock-solid stuff available.

KDE and Qt are great. Suggestion:

[smittyoneeach]

Increase usage of Standard C++ STL objects throughout. I am as interested in learning YANSI (Yet Another Novel String Implementation) as I am in learning C#.
Where the STL falls short, go to Boost.
Borland, if you're listening, please make your VCL/CLX libraries work more easily with STL. Still waiting for C++ Builder on Linux, BTW.
The theme of this post is that platform- and vendor-specific implementations are a PITA.

Speed

[kikensei]

Well, I just installed the beta on my SuSE 7.3 workstation, without issue. KDE3 is much snappier, it feels much mpore crisp when opening apps, windows, etc. It has apparently better font rendering. Kpilot, while unfinished, I can tell is much improved in terms of feature and interface, next up is to actually test it with my USB Visor. Konquerer file manager has much more solid support for multimedia previewing/viewing within the file manager window. As a browser, Konquerer still crashed and burned on my Chase banking web site, so Mozill 0.96 is still the way for me. It seems faster as well in KDE3, albeit initial startup is still a bit slow. I've been using Evolution 1.0 for mail, and it still works fine in KDE3. I still cannot cut and paste an URL from an Evolution email into my Mozila browser. KMail looks a bit more fine tuned and launches quicker than before, I have yet to test its use though. KDE3 it seems is primarily an architecture shift to QT3, but the results are impressive in the feel and response. Visually, while a bit cleaner, its the same KDE that you already either like or not.

KDE and stuff

[Anonymous Coward]

I really like KDE, I had switched from GNOME a while ago. But why do the default icons and themes have to look so cartoony? That's one of the major reasons I never used KDE in the first place, it looks childish. I know you can change the look with themes, but the default theme should be more "professional" IMHO.

I do believe if there is a desktop that becomes as popular as Windows, then it will be KDE and not GNOME. One of GNOME's major problems is simply GTK. Gtk sucks compared to QT. QT is way easier to use and is why many of the KDE apps are more functional.

Anyhow, both KDE and GNOME are too damn slow. Log-in/startup speed, ugh... I just recently switched from the full KDE desktop to using Oroborus for the window manager, fspanel for my task bar, and aemenu for my "start" bar. I can still run all the KDE or GNOME apps I want, but it only takes me 2 seconds to log-in because Oroborus and fspanel together are only like 60k.

I want speed dammit. Computers are the fastest they've ever been but we keep adding so much crap that you can't tell. They are never fast enough, why do we keep slowing them down? I love my current setup compared to anything else. It's still too slow, but it's faster than using DOS/Win3.1 on a 800 Mhz PC, which is pretty quick! I want to get work done, fast, I need my computer to keep up with me.

Re:KDE and stuff

[Anonymous Coward]

I forgot to mention that it's also WAY easy to hack Oroborus/fspanel/aemenu to do what you want. They are so simple, the source code is easy to play with and you can recompile the whole thing in like 10 seconds. Sweet. So you just get the features you want.

And they still do everything I need. Window management, task bar, and start bar. And it looks good.

You forgot...

[Futurepower(tm)]

... the "Keep up the Lord's work, deliver us from Redmond" post.

Re:KDE and Qt are great. Suggestion:

[Isle]

STL implementations are of varying quality. The QString is designed to work on all platforms qt is ported to and therefore has more consistent behavior and bugs ;)

As for the rest of STL, most of it CANNOT be implemented effeciently and is therefore redundant. We want to decrease the loadtime in KDE, not increase it (like advanced templetes and virtual functions does).

Woohoo...

[Junta]

I noticed on the list of features that they are going to extend the keyboard shortcut mechanism to support more extended keyboard shortcuts and enable them to make DCOP calls from shortcuts. Why is this so important to me? I have a Gateway multimedia keyboard, which, for the "special" buttons sends 3-4 keycodes per button, the windows key combined with at least two letter keycodes and other modifier keys depending on the button. Until now I haven't seen a clean way of getting these keys to work (the few apps concerned with this are limited to single keycodes...). Now I can bind this to applications. Now, is there a DCOP enabled mixer that supports XOSD, or am I going to have to write one? The KDE mixer should suffice. Can't wait to get off of work and try this sucker out, for this stupid little feature alone.

Re:Woohoo...

[Junta]

Ok, so it is still in the TODO stage, but it still ought to be pretty cool when it is finished...

Re:Woohoo...

[JabberWokky]

Now, is there a DCOP enabled mixer that supports XOSD

I've just started (about 2 hours into it) creating KOSD, which is can display like XOSD, but have information scroll up, fix an information bar on the display, or display information in Kinkatta style OSD. Much of that is "TODO", not in code. It can be attached to by all apps via DCOP, and then you can centrally control (via a paneltray icon)color per app, turn display on per app, how the app will display, and scroll back through old messages.

It's *very* much an idea rather than code at this second, but I'd like to scramble and get it functional asap so the dcop connection works at least. (Hey, OSD status for one off bash scripts running in the background or with long run times would be nice).

If you're interested, email me at slashdot@timewarp.org. Quite frankly, I'm swamped with contract work through to the first of next year, and I'm dubious as to when I can get some serious time on the project, but someone else working on it would be great incentive. :) --
Evan

You should've signed in...

[maroberts]

..then I would've used my mod points to up your comments!

Anyhow, both KDE and GNOME are too damn slow. Log-in/startup speed, ugh...

I love KDE too, but KDE startup and application startup does seem a bit stone aged. I suppose its part of the trade off between being a fully featured GUI and ther limited features which KDE possessed less than 2 years ago. The distance that it has come is impressive. When two things happen I will be giving Windows the boot for all professional work

a) KOffice gets a Word and Excel Input/Output doc filter which works reliably. [Followups mentioning StarOffice will be ignored.]

b) Konqueror speeds up - I loved it and then its startup time seemed to slow down drastically.

Re:You should've signed in...

[Anonymous Coward]

Almost all the startup time isn't KDE's fault: it's the idiotic linkers out there. Fixes are in the pipeline, at a lower level than KDE.

Re:You should've signed in...

[tzanger]

a) KOffice gets a Word and Excel Input/Output doc filter which works reliably.

While I don't have much trouble with Word/Excel doc import (big fancy ones yes, but straightforward ones no), I don't know why straight RTF isn't supported in KWord. Crazy.

b) Konqueror speeds up - I loved it and then its startup time seemed to slow down drastically.

I hear that Konq has totally rewritten their JScript interpreter. I hope the hell they fixed the popup problem... popups normally get a prompt action for me (i.e. "this site is trying ot use a popup. Allow?") but for Flash sites the popup never ever gets prompted, which drives me insane. Especially when 8 or 10 windows pop up because the JScript interpreter doesn't provide the right answer. UGH!

Speedups will be good though. I wonder if they were able to speed up any further than the 2.2.2 and prelinking. Startup time is still ugly for most KDE apps. That is one thing I noticed right away. Every time I start up xchat, it's onscreen almost immediately after I click the button. Konq, KWord, KMail... ~3-5s pause. Prelinked. On a Cel300 @1024x768x24 with 256M of RAM and no swap. Shouldn't be this slow.

Re:You should've signed in...

[Anonymous Coward]

> Every time I start up xchat, it's onscreen almost immediately after I click the button. Konq, KWord, KMail... ~3-5s pause. Prelinked. On a Cel300 @1024x768x24 with 256M of RAM and no swap. Shouldn't be this slow.

Actually, it should be that slow. When GCC's C++ is linked, it should load as fast as the C-only xchat. It's not KDE's fault and they can't do anything about it until the GCC folks do (which they are working on :-P)

Re:You should've signed in...

[be-fan]

Honestly, KDE has few features that aren't present, for example, in WinXP. If Microsoft can make WinXP run as fast as Win2K (which is blazingly so), and decrease their already low app-startup times significantly, KDE must be doing something wrong. It's ironic, though. The Linux kernel blows away the Win2K kernel, especially in terms of process creation/switching times. XFree86 4.1 (with NVIDIA drivers anyway) is just as fast as the Win2K GDI. Yet, the GUI user experience on KDE or GNOME blows in terms of responsiveness. (Don't get me wrong, I love Linux, but I have to wait several seconds for Galeon to pop up a new tab on my PII 300MHz. IE can open whole new windows as fast as I can push CTL-N!)

So what have you done about it?

[RangerBob]

Seriously, what have you done? Have you sent the KDE team any ideas? Have you drawn up any ideas of what you think a superior UI is? Given them a detailed description of what you want and why you think it's better than what they're doing now? No, I doubt you have. But, being a board for geeks, it's all about bitching and not about doing.

The KDE team has always seemed open minded for new ideas, and they're always saying that anyone can contribute. For everyone out there that doesn't like the UI, GET INVOLVED! Shees, people lavish the open source/free software culture and then turn around and show they have no idea what it's about. You don't have to be a programmer to contribute to projects. I mean, if all the supposed UI and human factors experts who post on Slashdot got together, we'd have the most perfect interface possible by next May ;)

To the KDE team members who read Slashdot, I have an idea. Each time a story gets posted about KDE, and people complain about the UI, why don't you start tracking how many people actually submit ideas to you. I'm sure it would be some interesting statistics.

Re:So what have you done about it?

[Anonymous Coward]

I have tried to get involved in #KDE (irc.openprojects.net) but I got ignored and all my suggestions were motive for mockery, because I don't write in C++.

Fuck KDE.

Re:So what have you done about it?

[Anonymous Coward]

Because maybe we hear a bunch of fuckheads coming in with things like "HEY I WANT TO CODE THE NEW REPLACEMENT FOR KONQUEROR IN JAVA AND PEARL U DOODS HAVE TO HEALP ME COCKSUCKERS".

When we hear that kind of thing, we do not kick. We do the ultimate insult back. We ignore you. Thanks, goodbye.

What I'd like to know is...

[7-Vodka]

When are the GCC people and everyone else who is needed to fix it, fix the damn C++ loading problem that slows down every c++ app? All of kde would get a nice speedboost, what was it 30-40%?

Also, it's interesting but maybe the kde folks have been holding themselves to a very high standard *because* of that bug. Maybe it just forced them to write code as slim as possible and when that bug is removed it will really pay off :)

Re:What I'd like to know is...

[Anonymous Coward]

I really don't understand the GCC crowd. This shared object load bug is being ignored while piddly non-features are being added to GCC. You gets what you pays for, I guess. ANd another thing - what's the deal with Ada slowing down the releases of GCC 3.x? Who actually gives a shit about Ada? What percentage of GCC users use Ada? 0.0005%?

Re:What I'd like to know is...

[Anonymous Coward]

You're free to write and submit the features that interest you. I'd suggest you ignore Ada and concentrate on speeding up C++, since that's what seems to interest you. Others are free to do the opposite. Let us know when you've finished.

Re:What I'd like to know is...

[Anonymous Coward]

The Intel C++ compiler is free for Linux use.

There seems to be some funky library linking issues with it though. I don't understand it either. I couldn't link my own ICC compiled project with the FOX gcc compiled libraries (all this in C++).

Supposedly it's faster than the Microsoft compiler generated code.

Re:What I'd like to know is...

[efgbr]

Using GCC 3.1 to build your applications will help.

Right now, you can install Red Hat's rawhide distribution to get KDE 3 built with a snapshot of GCC 3.1.

Re:What I'd like to know is...

[be-fan]

Quick note: The Intel C++ compiler is incredibly good. The other day, I was compiling a simple test application that tested the speed of coalescing memory blocks. The code was basically unoptimized. The ICC compiled app finished about 35% quicker than the GCC 3.0 compiled app. Since stuff like that is done a lot (especially in kernel code) ICC could have some real benifets for linux.

Re:What I'd like to know is...

[Anonymous Coward]

The 0.0005% of GCC users that use Ada are at odds with the 20% of GCC users that use C++. Ada slows down GCC release cycles and unnecessarily complicates GCC. The solution is simple: remove Ada from GCC, fork the Ada branch.

Javascript for a start

[horza]

I don't really know why you want Gecko so much

A number of sites I visit won't work under Konq, but work perfectly under Galeon. That plus the fact when I've got 1/2 dozen browser windows open and the software dies with Galeon it retrieves them upon next boot but with Konq I lose them all and have to start hunting for them all over again. Hence my switch. These two factors oughtweigh by a wide margin any slight increase in speed.

In fact I now prefer Galeon to IE. The first reason is the tabbed browsing option. Secondly, my IE locks up the parent page until its pop-up window has loaded. This makes browsing very frustrating under Windows. Now if only plugins installed automatically...

Phillip.

Re:Javascript for a start

[dfaure]

Javascript is the ONE thing that will have really improved between KDE 2.2 and KDE 3.0, if I had to name only one.
Please try KDE 3.0 beta1, retest those Javascript sites, and I can assure you that you'll be surprised.
It's not all bugfree yet, but it's much much better than what was there before. I see those JS popupmenus in many websites, where they wouldn't appear before.
I haven't completely cleaned up the KJS buglist yet - that takes time, even just testing - but we're almost there now ;)

See also the other posts on how to prevent one crash from taking down all your browser windows.

Tabbed browsing: that will come right after 3.0, stay tuned ;)

Re:Javascript for a start

[revengance]

Now if only plugins installed automatically...

And make it easier for virus/worms writers out there?

Re:Javascript for a start

[Anonymous Coward]

Sweet tabs! Now I can dump Galeon for good.

The true advancements...

[jeti]

Yes. At first sight, KDE looks a lot like Windows. KDE is supposed to make the switch from Windows to Linux easy.

However, there are true advancements. Those are not eyecandy. You won't see them at first sight. But if you begin to use KDE, you'll soon love them.

F.e. there is the kio layer. Any KDE program can load from and save to any file service. Open a script in your IDE directly from a FTP server and save it back to the server. kio accepts plugins. If you write a Freenet plugin, any program can load from and save to freenet.

And this is just one example. Look at how programs and components can be integrated using kparts. Or at how nationalisation is done.

Re:The true advancements...

[Anonymous Coward]

At least you admit that KDE is a rip-off of windows.

Re:The true advancements...

[Chris Burke]

You've got a one-track mind, don't you?

Re:The true advancements...

[Anonymous Coward]

No:

KDE 1.x was a ripoff of OS/2.
KDE 2.x is a ripoff of nothing. It matured.

Memory usage

[snkline]

I also like KDE, but when I first installed it the memory usage was horrendous. I have 512Megs of memory and when KDE would load I would be left with about 50 Megs! (This is with almost everything else shut down, just X/KDE running) Gnome leaves me with alot more Memory, which is good because I hate having to leave X to compile something I just downloaded. Under KDE it will take about 3x as long to compile as under Gnome!

Re:Memory usage

[LMCBoy]

That's funny, I only have 256 MB of RAM, so why doesn't my HD swap when I use KDE?


[jharris@servo jharris]$ free

total used free

Mem: 255516 199036 56480

Swap: 265032 0 265032

Re:Memory usage

[Anonymous Coward]

I used to run KDE on 128MB RAM and it worked fine (now I am on 256MB). In my experience GNOME esp with Nautilus running uses more RAM than KDE does. I really don't know how KDE etc. can be eating up 460MB of RAM. I am only a newbie at Linux but I think that the way Linux allocates memory is that the OS takes nearly all the physical memory when you start up and allocates it as it sees fit which may be why you think it is "using" all 512MB RAM with nothing running.

Re:Memory usage

[Seli]

I also like KDE, but when I first installed it the memory usage was horrendous. I have 512Megs of memory and when KDE would load I would be left with about 50 Megs! (This is with almost everything else shut down, just X/KDE running) Gnome leaves me with alot more Memory, ...

So you're claiming your KDE needs 450MiB memory? Wow, I wonder how I managed to run it on a machine with just 96MiB RAM and 128MiB swap (and a lot of free memory was still available).

Seriously, understanding 'top' or 'ps' output is not that simple as it seems. The formula for computing used memory from numbers given by 'top' is : Used_memory = mem used + swap used - cached - buff . Now go again to measure your memory usage, and if your number is still higher than 100MiB for plain KDE, there's something wrong with your install. For me, the number for a booted computer with plain KDE started is less than 50MiB (I'm not sure how much exactly and I'm not going to close all apps and logout just to find out).

Also, important portion of KDE's memory usage comes from gcc/glibc/binutils inefficient handling of C++ libraries ( see http://dforce.sh.cvut.cz/~seli/en/linking2 ). This is being worked on.

It would be nice if this got moderated up. I'm getting tired of repeating it.

Re:Memory usage

[Anonymous Coward]

Have you tried the lastest version? Chances are that the problem is not with kde; it might be an application that you start up with it, or a kernel bug. KDE runs very well with my 64 megs of ram (but I have to turn most of the special effects off) You should give people a technical explanation of your problem, but only after you have gotten the latest kernel/x/kde/etc versions. the bug might have already been fixed

Re:Memory usage

[Anonymous Coward]

Uhm, that's quite weird. I don't use either KDE or GNOME, but on my machine, with KDE loaded, ALL kde apps loaded at startup+one konqueror app takes only 10 mb more than galeon does itself. according to gtop:

kdeinit (x14)= 78mb
galeon (x4) = 71mb

Re:Memory usage

[Anonymous Coward]

Linux allocates free memory for the buffer cache. The more memory you have, the larger the buffer cache. If you want to get an idea of how much memory KDE is using, you can't look at the amount of free memory. Also, you can't look at the virtual size of the processes either, because that encompases everything that has been mmap()-ed, which includes shared memory (and in the case of XFree86 the entire framebuffer).

Instead, add up the resident set sizes of all the KDE processes, which is the amount of physical memory currently occupied by KDE, and add the amount of swap used, if any.

In any case, I also find KDE to be a bit of a memory hog. It runs great with 256MB or more, runs acceptably with 128MB, and is almost unusably slow (at least by my standards) with 64MB. GNOME without Nautilus runs fine in 64MB. At 128MB with Nautilus, I still notice less frequent swapping than with KDE.

But to be honest, memory is dirt cheap these days. There really isn't any excuse not to be running with 256MB or more.

Re:Memory usage

[Larson E. Whipsnade]

The relevant number is -/+ buffers/cache when you use "free". Basically, Linux considers unused memory to be wasted memory so it maintains old pages in a cache rather than immediately discarding them in case they might be needed again. On my KDE2.2 box only ~63MB is used after subtracting buffers + cache --- and that's with Mozilla running.

Re:Memory usage

[Suidae]

-1 Redundant

Re:Memory usage

[Cro Magnon]

KDE runs reasonably well on my K6 450 with 64 Meg Ram. It's no speed demon, but it's tolerable.

Re:Memory usage

[Anonymous Coward]

Sigh... How many times does this need to be said.

YOU CAN'T TELL HOW MUCH MEMORY A PROCESS IS USING BY LOOKING AT IT'S VIRTUAL SIZE IN PS OR TOP!

Take Galeon for example. Galeon is a multithreaded app, and because of the nature of threads in Linux, each of it's threads show up in ps and top. However, the threads all share the same address space, so the reason why they all report the same memory usage is because they're all using the same memory pages. Konqueror is also a multithreaded app, so some but not all of the kdeinit entries are going to show duplicate memory usage. If any of the processes are using shared memory segments, that memory will contribute to the reported size of the processes too.

Also, the "virtual size" of the process (but not the resident size) includes any resource than has been mapped into the address space by mmap(). For instance, the reported virtual size of the X server is so huge because it maps the entire framebuffer memory on the video card into its address space. Similarly, programs that do a lot of binary I/O typically mmap() the file, so the size of the file contributes to their reported size.

Re:Memory usage

[Anonymous Coward]

Er, something was seriously wrong your end.

KDE2.x ran fine on my PC at home with 128 MB of RAM, and I only upgraded to 256 because StarOffice made it start to swap. This was on a Pentium II.

What architecture were you using and which version of KDE?

Re:Memory usage

[Bert64]

The "free" command present in most linux distributions will give a more accurate representation:

bash-2.05a$ free
total used free shared buffers cached
Mem: 189448 185408 4040 0 1440 40320
-/+ buffers/cache: 143648 45800
Swap: 393576 202416 191160

Meaning, 143648 kbytes memory used, 45800 free, the rest is caching from the hd.

Why is kde.org always so SLOW?

[Anonymous Coward]

Who hosts that thing? Here's a dollar - go buy yourselves some hardware...

Re:Why is kde.org always so SLOW?

[julesh]

Probably you only read it when it's been slashdotted. It's normally fine...

Qt database question

[Anonymous Coward]

Is the Qt database API threadsafe?

Features needed!!!

[uslinux.net]

The screen updates are modest, but look much cleaner - I particularly like the anti-aliased fonts (yes, I know they're in 2.2.x). However, there are a couple thing I and others I've worked with have ALL remarked that KDE and associated apps need:

• Kmail needs LDAP support. At least 2.2.2 on Debian Unstable doesn't include it, and I didn't see it in the list of features (though everything else we needs like SSL/TLS support seems to be making its way into it).
  
• Anti-aliased fonts are great, but there are times when aliased fonts are actually preferable. In particular, I used anti-aliased fonts, but in terminals, I *really* want a regular-old courier font. At 1024x768 in my terminals, anti-aliasing makes it difficult to tell the difference between and m and n or a , and .
  
• Could someone PLEASE make Konqueror stable? It's getting better, but it still crashes on me (or locks up) frequently, more often when I open multiple windows. It seems that if I open 5 or 6, it's bound to lock up, while it can go for days on 1 or 2.
  
• A "smarter" cookie feature. Netscape used to "allow cookies only from originating server". I liked that option. It allowed me to use sites like ebay, slashdot, etc, without having to add them to my list of allowed domains. Right now, I get either "Allow, Deny, or Ask". "Ask" *seemed* like a great idea, but some sites want to add 10 cookies - and it's terribly annoying. I'd be *really* impressed if someone came up with a way to detect useful cookies (like logins or shopping carts) and useless ones (like ones that simply track your visits).
  
• Tabbed konqueror windows. Seriously. I like to open lots of windows so I don't have to keep using the Back button, but if I have several windows open, it's tough to manage them. A sidebar or nav bar tab with an option to open in a new window or as a tab (like the newer mozilla releases) would be really helpful.
  

That's all. Hope I didn't ask too much :-) I'm not much of a C++ coder, nor do I have the spare cycles to help out (unfortunately), but these are things (particularly Kmail) which I've seen a tremendous need for. Thanks for all your hard work, K-team!

Re:Features needed!!!

[LMCBoy]

Have you submitted bug reports/feature requests for any of these (especially konq crashes)? KDE needs your input to fix these things. Complaining on /. doesn't count :)

"Anti-aliased fonts are great, but there are times when aliased fonts are actually preferable. In particular, I used anti-aliased fonts, but in terminals, I *really* want a regular-old courier font. At 1024x768 in my terminals, anti-aliasing makes it difficult to tell the difference between and m and n or a , and ."

konsole -noxft

It's a life saver, since most AA fonts don't render well in konsole anyway :)

Re:Features needed!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

Hooray for you!

Re:Features needed!!!

[Arandir]

konsole -noxft

Stuff like this needs to be put into some *real* documentation. Sure, you can run 'konsole --help', but it's nowhere in the primary documentation. And there's no man page either. When I see a list of command options in the main documentation for Konsole, and -noxft isn't listed, what reason would I have to run 'konsole --help'? I should be able to assume that the two would be in sync.

p.s. I'm not going to file a bug. Once burned twice shy.

Re:Features needed!!!

[LMCBoy]

"p.s. I'm not going to file a bug. Once burned twice shy."

I don't understand what you mean. Isn't the whole point of filing a bug report to let the developer know that you got "burned"? So they can fix it? Or are you saying that you had a bad experience with a previous KDE bug report that you filed?

Re:Features needed!!!

[Arandir]

No, I got burned each and every time I submitted a bug to the KDE project. I was chastised for not searching for duplicates first. I was chastised for not performing a backtrace. I was chastised for not fully characterizing the bug. If I had the time and knowledge to do these things, I would have done them gladly. After all, I used to be a professional SQA engineer. But sometimes I come home from work and just want to play and NOT work. I've learned through experience that if you do not have an hour or two to spend on a proper bug report, don't bother sending it to KDE.

I've given up on submitting bugs to KDE. I've submitted bugs to many other projects with no problems. Some of them even thanked me for the reports. The only thing I can think of is that KDE does not want my bug reports.

I've lived on both sides of the fence now. I've been in SQA and in development, both design and implementation, etc. I've made it a point in my own projects to graciously thank everyone who sends in a bug. Even the trivial newbie bugs that are clearly pilot error. People sending in bug reports, no matter how minor, are the users that care. Treat them as your first tier users.

At the same time, I can't blame the KDE developers for their attitude. They are doing their KDE work voluntarily. I see what they have to go through all the time, but on a much smaller scale. If I had a thousand numbwit bug reports to deal with every day I might get that attitude as well.

Re:Features needed!!!

[LMCBoy]

Wow, that's suprising that you have had such a bad experience with KDE bug reporting; I have found them to be at least polite, and often helpful. I agree that devs should be very kind to bug reporters; you're helping them out, after all.

Anyway, you may be interested to know that I submitted a bug report on the fact that the "noxft" option isn't in the docs for konsole:

http://bugs.kde.org/db/36/36371.html

The interface can easily evolve

[HanzoSan]

SVG Icons, SVG widgets, 60fps animation on widgets and icons, genie effect,motion blur, alpha channeling,morphing animation windows widgets and menus, full use of Gforce special effects on the GUI is how you can help the interface. Theres no excuse why we shouldnt take advantage of graphics cards that can render millions of polygons per second and do all of these effects i mentioned with ease. And when you have 1-2-3-4ghz CPUs and 512-1gig of ram it makes absolutely no sense why you should be worrying about your resources.

Its time to update the GUI, and make use of this new hardware. Why have 80s style GUI and software on 2000+ hardware? Really the GUI and software hasnt changed much since the 80s except for games, development tools and $10000 photoshop like tools.

Re:The interface can easily evolve

[LMCBoy]

"Theres no excuse why we shouldnt take advantage of graphics cards that can render millions of polygons per second and do all of these effects i mentioned with ease."

Actually there's a really good excuse: lack of developers and resources. And perhaps lack of developer interest. Maybe few of the devs care about such gee-whiz features. If you want to see them happen, contribute! That's what it's all about.

Re:The interface can easily evolve

[Patoski]

SVG Icons, SVG widgets, 60fps animation on widgets and icons, genie effect,motion blur, alpha channeling,morphing animation windows widgets and menus, full use of Gforce special effects on the GUI is how you can help the interface. Theres no excuse why we shouldnt take advantage of graphics cards that can render millions of polygons per second and do all of these effects i mentioned with ease.

You're confusing two very different issues. 3d and 2d acceleration are two *very* different and seperate things! Just because a card can render 2mil polys/sec doesn't mean that your 2d performance is improving dramatically. Add to the fact that most business machines (esp for large Co.'s) aren't equipped with even reasonably powerful 3d hardware and your target audience just got a lot smaller. Unless you can find a team to write your whole UI in OpenGL you won't be seeing a 3d desktop as you describe any time soon. Besides, we haven't even been able to perfect a 2d UI and you want to open a whole new can of worms? Yikes! :-) That said I seem to remember someone working on a 3d desktop environment but can't rememeber the name of the project ATM.

Re:The interface can easily evolve

[HanzoSan]

I never said 3d. Just because you use polygons does not mean its 3d. Polygons can be used on 3d GUIs to add special effects like sparkles and morphing.

Re:The interface can easily evolve

[Patoski]

Some things I forgot to mention in my previous post...

full use of Gforce special effects on the GUI is how you can help the interface.

The gaming industry has proven just the opposite of this. The more glitzy and pretty games have become there is an inverse reaction in how original, bug free and innovative the games are. If programmers are busy adding in motion blur, morphing to their UI they are going to spend less time coming up with useful new features, stamping out bugs etc. IMO it would not make GUIs better but worse. Granted more pretty to look at... but less useful.

Theres no excuse why we shouldnt take advantage of graphics cards that can render millions of polygons per second and do all of these effects i mentioned with ease.

Here is where you are really confusing me if you're really just talking about animating sprites in the UI. 3D hardware acceleration rendering a polygon (a triangle really) is soley based on 3D acceleration. If you have a sprite rendering (from 3DS etc) of a polygon you will not take advantage of *any* 3D hardware acceleration. With that in mind why would you even mention how many polys a card can render? Its meaningless in that sense.

And when you have 1-2-3-4ghz CPUs and 512-1gig of ram it makes absolutely no sense why you should be worrying about your resources.

Programmers don't need any more excuse than they have now to be lazy and focus on eye candy over useability... :-)

I never said 3d. Just because you use polygons does not mean its 3d.

If you say 'polygon' to a graphics guys his mind is going to be thinking '3D'. Esp in the context of "XYZ card can render XYZ polygons per second." Renderings of 3D objects would be a more apt description IMO.

Polygons can be used on 3d GUIs to add special effects like sparkles and morphing.

To use true particle effects you're going to need a 3D API like OpenGL or D3D etc which takes advantage of only 3D hardware accel in the case of particle effects.

Nice bindings

[ondelette]

You've got to love the fact that KDE offers Objective C and Java bindings.

People tend to forget but you don't have have java bindings under Windows!!! (Well, unless you want to lock yourself up with MS broken Java implementation.)

Of course, this is rarely used, but the mere fact that it is available is amazing. I don't know about Objective C and windows though... How does that work?

Multiple sessions per user?

[wemmick]

At my desk in a client's office, I have a win2k machine. The magic of VNC allows me to work on an X desktop. But I also sometimes work on my laptop from home. So, I have different VNC sessions going simultaneously at different screen resolutions.

I currently use fvwm2 because kde 2.x doesn't support more than one kde session per user per machine.

Has this changed in kde 3?

Re:Multiple sessions per user?

[RelliK]

I currently use fvwm2 because kde 2.x doesn't support more than one kde session per user per machine.

Huh? that is plain false. You can run as many kde
sesssions per machine as you want

Re:Multiple sessions per user?

[Anonymous Coward]

> I currently use fvwm2 because kde 2.x doesn't support more than one kde session per user per machine.

Huh? I have several KDE sessions on right now in the same machine/user. One is on my Linux desktop. The other The other is running on remote X to my laptop.

I think it's generally 1 kde session per 1 X display.

I've also run KDE successfully on xnest with the same user.

Re:Multiple sessions per user?

[aussersterne]

I run multiple sessions per user, one local and two remote. They all work fine.

You must have a configuration gremlin in your gears somewhere...

Time to stablize

[Anonymous Coward]

Now is the perfect time to stop upgrading KDE and only add bug fixes. When I mean stop, I mean for a few years. The reason MS has been so successful is that its shell or GUI has not really changeed until XP just came out. Even XP is basically very similar to the 9.x Shell. So for 5 years you have pretty much been able to sit down at a MS computer and get your work done. We need the same consistancy for linux. This will also allow more apps to take advantage of QT. Many Many developers did not make KDE 2.x compatible apps and stuck with 1.x compatability. This is a situtation that should be avoided. Keep the basic codebase and the apps will come. Keep upgrading qt and KDE and the linux desktop will continue to be a mess.

Unicode?

[vrza]

What about Unicode support? GNOME 2, based on the new GTK+ will supposedly support Unicode all over the place. Is this true with KDE 3/Qt 3 also?

I recently tried Windows XP, and it offers great support for Unicode. It is time to get the UNIX desktop moving in that way. I know it's not much of an issue for the English speaking world, but it is a very important thing for most of the non-English users.

Re:Unicode?

[dfaure]

> What about Unicode support? GNOME 2, based on the new GTK+ will supposedly support Unicode all over the place. Is this true with KDE 3/Qt 3 also?

Definitely. Already KDE2/Qt2 uses Unicode everywhere internally.
KDE3/Qt3 do this even more, removing the need for applications to worry about font charsets, and offering support for bi-directional editing of text.
Try it out !

Re:Unicode?

[Otter]

Unicode support has been there since Qt 2/KDE 2.

Re:Unicode?

[Anonymous Coward]

> I know it's not much of an issue for the
> English speaking world, but it is a very
> important thing for most of the non-English
> users.

Who cares about non-English speaking users. They don't matter anyway.

- The REAL Anonymous Coward

Re:Unicode?

[Anonymous Coward]

kde has had really great unicode support for many years now. kde itself has many developers who don't have english as their first language, so it was simply a higher priority than GNOME to only do it now.

Linux Fast. KDE SLOW. GNOME SLOW. X SLOW.

[Anonymous Coward]

Well... Linux is pretty darn fast.

KDE and GNOME gets more and more bloated. 20+ hours to compile the whole source. Speed? Even Windows ME is a lightining bolt comparing to KDE. KDE's apps are very slow. Maybe because of X-Windows? Another implementation that developers don't know where they are taking it... Just load KDE without any app running and watch how much RAM the things takes. Same with GNOME. I used to listen that to run "linux" I only needed 4MB of RAM. Not then when you're on XFree96 4.x... 64MB is minimum.

What? Is a distro still better than Windows? Red Hat 7.2 Full Install is 3.5 GB. Windows 98 is 150MB plus all apps I need is 1GB.

Shame on you Linux community.

Re:Linux Fast. KDE SLOW. GNOME SLOW. X SLOW.

[Anonymous Coward]

Perhaps you should rtfm when it comes to installing. A full install gives you more than what you could possibly use and leaves a bloated system. Even Microsoft, as bad as they are, doesn't do this. Perhaps if you recompiled a kernel with specific stuff you need, and learned how to run a system you wouldn't have such problems. I have my system boot up into kde 2.2.2 using only 32 megs of ram.

Don't blame others for your stupidity.

Re:Linux Fast. KDE SLOW. GNOME SLOW. X SLOW.

[jjeff]

Ive never tried this but i'd assume winME would run like a dog if at all on the small p166 (64MB ram) i have here at work which is:
a mail server, web server, smb server, runs 2 databases.
and defaults to use kdm to login (im trying to make it easy for people here to admin it if im not available).
and kde2.2 is really snappy on it.
when kde is starting up there isnt a noticeable speed difference between it and my duron 900 at home.

yes the apps take a few seconds to load but when they are open they are nice and quick.

i did try the same setup with 24megs of ram, and had to turn off Zope for kde to be even barely usable but 64megs is definately sufficient.
i would even say 32megs should be fine as long as you arent running any other heavy processes.

and this is debian install (installed everything from apt-get :-)) only using 1gig this includes sendmail,fetchmail,tpop3d,Zope,mysql,postgresql,GN Ue, apache, perl, python, php ... plus a lot of default games, the entire koffice suite, fontends for the databases.. the list goes on.
i also have a few copies of different kernel src.

i dont see how your setup could need so much in the way of resources.. now ive never installed redhat but im assuming you can select what you do and dont want installed. and i bet it installs a lot of stuff most people wont need. (of course you probably just said install everyting).

Re:Linux Fast. KDE SLOW. GNOME SLOW. X SLOW.

[Anonymous Coward]

Uh, KDE doesn't take over 20 hours to compile.

Here are the times from http://hints.linuxfromscratch.org/hints/kde.txt
:

kdeaddons: 6 min
kdeadmin: 7 min
kdeartwork: 2 min
kdebase: 82 min
kdegames: 21 min
kdegraphics: 11 min
kdelibs: 55 min
kdemultimedia: 31 min
kdenetwork: 27 min
kdepim: 9 min
kdeutils: 18 min
kdetoys: 4 min
kdoc: 1 min
koffice: 55 min

Avoid Konqueror Crash

[wdwoowoo]

There's a workaround for not losing all your Konqueror windows when one crashes. Instead of opening new windows from the Kongueror menus (main or right-mouse) do this: Open the new window from the system menu or panel shortcut (however you launched Kongueror originally). This seems to separate the processes so that each window lives separately. If one crashes it won't take them all down. Good luck!

Re:Avoid Konqueror Crash

[dfaure]

See also the option in Konqueror's configure dialog, which offers several choices for this behaviour.

Re:Avoid Konqueror Crash

[uslinux.net]

That works if konqueror *crashes*, but if it just hangs indefinitely, and requires an xkill (CTRL+ALT+ESC), that kills all the konqueror windows (at least in my experience).

Doc filters

[Anonymous Coward]

I think KDE (or maybe Linux-based systems in general) need something like the BeOS Translation Kit. The idea is that the OS provides a service for data translation that can be used by all applications. If another filter is added, it automatically becomes available to every app that uses the Translation Kit. In practice, under BeOS the kit was used primarily for converting various image formats, but in principle the API could have been used to develop all types of file translators.

MS only sell prety GUI

[Anonymous Coward]

The pretty GUI is MS & Mac strong point. If the GUI weren't pretty, how could they sell their stupid OS???? MS & Mac beauty is only skin deep. Inside the OS you find magot & trash

Get Real... KDE *IS VERY* SLOW.

[Anonymous Coward]

Developers should get real... KDE IS SLOW and BLOATED. Getting MORE and MORE bloated.
It's slow dude... even on a fast computer. Takes so much RAM, takes so much disk space (380 full), and apps generally start at the 15th second of load. You gotta be kidding dude. Something is wrong with the C code or compiler.
This shit is *REAL slow.

Re:Get Real... KDE *IS VERY* SLOW.

[Anonymous Coward]

Umm... Time for you to get real. KDE 2.2.2 loads in all of 32 megs of ram (atlest for me), unlike windoze, and runs faster. If you don't know what you're talking about, don't say anything at all.

Re:Get Real... KDE *IS VERY* SLOW.

[pclminion]

KDE startup times depend heavily on the performance of the dynamic linker. This issue has been discussed at length in the KDE community for some time now. Some solutions have been proposed and put into effect (e.g., kdeinit). Don't blame KDE for these problems. Any C++ application that is dynamically linked to many C++ libraries will suffer the same slow startup times. This is an issue with the dynamic linker, not with KDE.

Solutions to the problem are in the works:

objprelink
ELF prelinking by Jakub Jelinek
See a discussion on why Gnome is having similar problems

Shame KDE 3 won't have anti aliasing

[Anonymous Coward]

Sadly KDE 3 will not have anti aliasing because of a problem with kdeinit and XFree. None of the devs seems to know exactly what is causing the problem but it i disabling XRENDER and other font handling elements, resulting in fonts that are not only jagged, but practically unreadable.

Basically folk, unless you are a developer, you won't have anti aliased fonts in KDE as the fixes for the problem involve XFree CVS, and other forms of voodoo. What is really sad is that the developers don't see too interested in fixing the problem, some have even suggested that the anti aliasing option be removed until a fix presents itself.

Re:Shame KDE 3 won't have anti aliasing

[Anonymous Coward]

This was a problem a few months ago. I am running XRENDER+kde3 on beta1 very happily right now.

Pre-compiled Headers

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, it would be nice if right now -this very instant- there was a binary distribution of the bleeding edge of KDE software that had been compiled with a version of GCC that had every feature that I want. But so what, it's not there yet.

For the time being there is an excellent hint on compiling KDE yourself over at http://hints.linuxfromscratch.com/hints/kde.txt which covers some mods to the compile process to milk the performance out of KDE startups. Sure the hints are for 2.2, but I just compiled all of these yesterday with the 3.0alpha and it works great.

Re:Pre-compiled Headers

[Junta]

Try http://hints.linuxfromscratch.org/hints/kde.txt instead...

Re:Found an even better screenshot on Google

[Anonymous Coward]

OK, here is how this person managed to do this hack: He put a large number of spaces in the url, so the URL is like this:

http://images.google.com/imgres?imgurl=kde-beta- 1/ images/kde.gif%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20 %20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%2 0%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20% 20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20 %20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%2 0%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20% 20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20 %20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%2 0%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20% 20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20 &imgrefurl=http://www.goatse.cx

How to see this: With Mozilla, one will see, when mousing over the link, three dots in the corner. This indicates that the URL has a number of spaces in it.

- Sam (User ID Kiwi, posting anonimously so that people with a threshold of one don't see it)

konqueror java

[lyapunov]

I have yet to be able to render java pages correctly with konqueror. The cnn.com/QUICKNEWS pages never renders the headlines correctly. I would very much appreciate if this was fixed or if someone could tell me what my dumbass maneuver has been. I am using FreeBSD with KDE, and have built the jdk. It still will not use it correctly even though the java option is set correctly in the konqueror options.

Open letter to the KDE team

[Anonymous Coward]

Although this is a redo of a letter buried in one of the responses, I thought it best to repost here so it could be seen, and maybe do some good.

An Open letter to the KDE Team:

All this talk of how much better KDE is, and how it's going doesn't address one major problem. When is the KDE team going to develop a way to install/update KDE easly, instead of having to go though dependency hell? There was a good article in e-week's Pings&Packets (Dec 17/24 2001) that talked of KDE 2.2.2 and said, and I quote "Most striking in this release, however, is how poor the mechanism for updating KDE continues to be. Whereas users of the GNOME desktop can turn to Ximiam's excellent and pretty much foolproof installer application for GNOME updates, KDE users must download a truckload of packages before installing them in some particular but generally unclear order"

He goes on to say "I've yet to condtuct an update of my KDE system without forcing it's package installer application to ignore dependencies..."

That's the same with me. I've been using GNOME since 1.x, and now up to the newest version. Only time I used KDE 2.x was when I updgraded to RedHat 7.1 and it had it in it. I like what I saw, I liked the speed, and responsiveness, but unless I can upgrade it, I refuse to use it. Although I am coming from Windows, and struggling to learn Linux, that doesn't exchuse the difficulty in installing programs.

If you'd like to respond via e-mail, it's below. Thanks

Shaddock Delaforge
shadwalk AT opera--DELETEME!-mail DOT com

Re:Open letter to the KDE team

[Requiem]

thanks, shadwalk@operamail.com!

Re:Open letter to the KDE team

[Anonymous Coward]

Uhm, I use debian, and I pretty much upgrade KDE a few hours after every release happens.

red-carpet, on the other hand, has fucked up my system twice. It's hardly foolproof.

Soo... either bitch at your distro for making KDE hard to install, or just use Debian.

And... gnome itself doesn't include red-carpet. Only Ximian does. That's a third party solution for GNOME, just like apt is a solution for KDE.

Re:Multiple sessions per user? [OT]

[tercero]

You should try TightVNC (www.tightvnc.org). It's OSS, and has more GUI configuration and integration into Win2000. The 'Tight' part is about low-bandwidth.

The real problem is...

[EarthTone]

that XP is trying to look more like KDE ;-).

clean up the desktop / recently used

[mattscape]

This is something I've been seeing eversince I installed my first distrubution.

You click thourgh the installation and say ask yourself wether you need that particular app or not. In the end you install almost all of them.

Even if you don't, the K-Menu (hitting the K-Button) is packed with programms. Which is great !!!
But I would love to see a feature like windo$ has:
If you get to Programs you just see the recently used apps and by hitting a small arrow you get all of them.

And then once again: KDE-Team: I'm impressed !!!
I don't know where you find the time for all this work but WE LOVE IT. keep it up yooo

matt

ps: where can I change the background image for the konsole

Re:clean up the desktop / recently used

[julesh]

Erm; I'm fairly sure my copy of KDE 2.1 has a 'most recently used programs' section at the top of the programs menu...? I don't have it available to me right now (I'm at work) to check, but I think its there.

Re:clean up the desktop / recently used

[Anonymous Coward]

> ps: where can I change the background image for the konsole

Create a schema in KControl/System/Konsole/Schema editor and select it in Konsole.

Re:clean up the desktop / recently used

[Anonymous Coward]

It's optional so they may have turned it off. Check in the panel configuration dialog 'Menus' tab.

Rich.

Wait for glibc 2.3...

[marm]

...or (horror of horrors) compile glibc yourself with Jakub Jelinek's prelinker patches, if you can find them (they seem to have disappeared off the net).

The dynamic linking of libraries is by far the biggest cause of KDE program startup slowness. A big desktop environment has a lot of shared libraries to link to an application at runtime, it's expensive computationally (particularly for C++ libraries), and the way the glibc dynamic linker works right now, it's done every time an application is started or a library is dlopen()'ed (such as when embedding a KPart). It can also cause swap thrashing on machines with limited memory (the entire library must be read into memory to perform the address relocation, only after relocation can the VM drop pages of the library) and obviously, disk contention between this swapping and the application loading can slow things down even further.

What the prelinking patches do (don't get them confused with the objprelink hack which, while useful, is not a long-term or efficient solution) is move the linking time from application startup time to system startup time. A tool runs at system startup, immediately after ldconfig runs, which loads and relocates libraries in its search path, then notes down the relocation addresses. Then, later, when the dynamic linker is asked by an application to load a library, it simply uses the values that were cached earlier. Any libraries that have not been 'prelinked' are simply relocated as normal. The linker also makes sure that non-prelinked libraries are not relocated into the same address space as any prelinked libraries that are not currently loaded.

The next major version of glibc will hopefully include library prelinking by default, but I haven't been following glibc development closely enough to know for sure. Let's keep our fingers crossed. Note that it's not just KDE that will benefit from this, Mozilla will gain a great deal (it, like KDE, is mostly C++ code split into many shared libraries) and even GNOME will benefit a little - doing the dynamic linking on C libraries still costs processor time, although it's much less than with C++ libraries.

The next biggest cause of KDE startup slowness is icon loading - currently every app has to search through the entire set of available icons on startup in order to load the icons that it needs. Not very efficient. Given that KDE has several hundred icons available already and that is likely to increase over time, it needs a solution. Waldo Bastian is apparently working on an icon server for KDE 3.0, which will do that search once, cache the data, and then respond with appropriate icons when an app asks, rather than forcing the apps to do it themselves every time. I'm hoping it also makes it easier and faster to do image compositing (overlays and so forth) with icons.

To sum up: glibc 2.3 together with KDE 3.0 should make a huge improvement to app startup (and KPart embedding) time, and, assuming the KDE guys are tight with their code, may even make KDE 3.0 usable on machines that couldn't effectively run KDE 2.x.

Re:Wait for glibc 2.3...

[julesh]

This seems to be one area where MS have got their OS technically superior. Windows DLLs are by default 'pre-linked' in the fashion you talk about, as they have compiled into them a standard base address. As long as you don't use two DLLs that have conflicting base addresses (and with a centrally organized desktop environment, you can get that right every time) you're fine!

Re:Wait for glibc 2.3...

[Russ Steffen]

Back in the old days of Linux, circa 1994, it was precisely that model that was used for libraries. Back then Linux used the COFF (or a.out) executable format that required libraries be pinned to fixed base addresses, there was also a registry that assigned base addresses to libraries. It was a complete pain in the ass. When Linux moved to the ELF executable format, we got relocatable shared libraries and I don't think anyone seriously wants to go back. The prelinker sounds like a pretty good compromise to me.

Re:Wait for glibc 2.3...

[be-fan]

I don't think its that bad of a problem. a.out had other issues that made people hate it (specifically, shared libraries were a bitch to build and the semantics of shared and dynamic libraries were different). The only problem with prelinking is that on x86 machines, you soon run out of that paltry 4GB address space. On my machine, /usr/lib, /lib, and /usr/local/lib add up to about 460MB. These images become bigger in RAM since the BSS (zero-initialized data) isn't present. On a larger system, you could easily blow the address space with all the libraries (think Microsoft apps!) With 64bit archs, this is a non-issue, however. The good thing about the scheme, however, is that you potentially don't need position independant code, since you could relocate the library once at install time and not have to touch it afterward.

Re:Wait for glibc 2.3...

[scrytch]

Windows DLL's *can* specify a base address, it doesn't *have* to use it. It's a suggestion, but if the address is in use, it will relocate it. Wouldn't be too hard for linux's ld.so to do something similar ... would be nice for the development of ld.so to get a divorce from the pile of smegma that is glibc first...

Re:Wait for glibc 2.3...

[jwhowarth]

Hmmm...a little known fact is that the current binutils and glibc 2.2.4 provide a feature called combreloc which allows glibc to sort the relocations for programs with lots of relocations like qt/kde and speed them up dramatically. That is the reason Debian abandoned objprelink since the same speedup is obtained by rebuilding glibc and all your programs against a binutils with -z combreloc enabled. Fortunately this has been easy for us with Debian sid. I believe RedHat 7.2 has their binutils with -z combreloc enabled and since they rebuild several times before shipping qt/kde should show the speed up. I'm not sure what the situation is with other linux distros. I did some benchmarks on Debian ppc sid using a glibc with hp-timing enabled and saw that the tutorials spent 90% less time in the dynamic loader than without combreloc. Of course when prelink is mature it will reduce this further. I did some benchmarks with prelink and it reduces the same tutorials down to 1% of the original time in the dynamic loader. This is because prelink actually eliminates the relocations. The down side of prelink will be that you have to prelink binaries again anytime one of their support libs have been replaced. This is pretty much what happens on SGI's Irix when you install software and requickrestart is called at the end. Finally as another example of combreloc we just had OpenOffice 641C rebuilt with the latest devtools on ppclinux and found that the coarse load time decreased from 11 sec down to 7 sec. Not bad for just needing a recompile.

reality check.

[Anonymous Coward]

linux desktops make up soemwhere are 0.25% of desktops out there... statistically insignificant... the future of the linux gui is something that noone can guess... it seems most likely the Gnome will pull ahead as time progresses due to the fact that companies like Sun and HP are using it as their desktop. This say's a lot about the growth potential of gnome.

Re:reality check.

[Anonymous Coward]

No, I think that the GNOME project is doomed. In fact, I knew they were doomed the moment that Sun and HP endorsed it.

Why? One word explains it all. CDE.

It was supposed to unify the desktop. Take over the world. Destory Microsoft.
What really happened was that it got stagnant and eventually died.

I already see this happening with GNOME. Just a year ago, I would see new things out for GNOME all the time, whether it be new packages, new features, or what not. Now, I see new things like once every two months.

I've said this before, and so have a lot of other people. But, the momentum of the GNOME project has gone down tremendously. It is going towards stagnation.

This is why I think that KDE will ultimatly succede.

Cookies

[danro]

You can't tell the difference between useful and useless cookies from the clients perspective.
Many sites store the actual info "contained" in the cookie on the server. (this is mostly a Good Thing, since sending to much useful information back and forth in cookis is dubious from a security point of view.)

This means the actual cookie only contains an id so the server can identify the user and find the relevant information.
There is no way the client can notice any difference between this cookie and a useless cookie since all the action takes place on the server.
So, while I agree that it would be a very nice feature, it's just not doable.

Moderators on the cheap crack again

[Pentagram]

What!? Interesting +1, Flamebait -1, Troll -1!?

I'm a troll now for posting an opinion!?

Your asses are going down in metamod you childish KDE partisans.

Mod me down again. I dare you.

You might like to know you've inspired me. My new goal in life is to code day and night for Gnome and destroy KDE! Up the revolution!

---

Re:Moderators on the cheap crack again

[Anonymous Coward]

Mod me down again. I dare you.
You might like to know you've inspired me.

Dude, if that's all it takes to inspire you then I would love to mod you down a couple more times ;)

Re:Moderators on the cheap crack again

[Anonymous Coward]

uh, if you want to post pro-GNOME comments elsewhere, don't do it on slashdot. the slashdot community is pretty much pro-KDE for the last year. Before that, the slashdot community was pro-GNOME.

I suggest that you redirect your pro-GNOME comment to news.gnome.org. most of us on slashdot who use linux use KDE, including Taco, Homos, CowboyNeal, robilmo.

I dunno what kAtZ uses tho, but I'd think it was GNOME.

Forget Gnome vs. KDE, who uses neither?

[BourbonCowboy]

First of all, bothe KDE and Gnome are fine products, blah, blah, blah...

I used to use Gnome and Sawmill(/Sawfish) as my desktop manager, and was always
looking for ways to speed up performance, but had recently found another solution:
don't use a desktop manager.

For the past few months, I've been using Blackbox with a few other utilities
(bbkeys, Rox, etc.) for key binding and those times I want a graphical file manager.
It's great, since I don't have any memory allocated to things I won't use.

I know many/most of you out there aren't using either Gnome or KDE, and was wondering
your opinion on it. What have you missed/wanted from using a DM?

Re:Forget Gnome vs. KDE, who uses neither?

[Anonymous Coward]

> I know many/most of you out there aren't using either Gnome or KDE, and was wondering
your opinion on it. What have you missed/wanted from using a DM?

I think most people use desktop environments these days. Almost 99% of linux newbies definatly do.

Re:Forget Gnome vs. KDE, who uses neither?

[Anonymous Coward]

hi
look at xwc .
Pro: As a file manager it's very very fast.
Cons: the look is very windowish, and the developpement seems to be halted. But I use it regularly and happily.

How far are we from KOffice for Mac OS X?

[brassman]

Apple sent a truly gung-ho demonstrator to the NY PC Users Group meeting after Internet World to put OS X through its paces, and I ended up with my first Mac soon after.

I like it so far, but the idea of dropping half a grand on Redmondware sort of defeats my purpose in buying a non-Wintel machine. Trolltech's site says that Qt3 comes in a Mac OS X version, but I'm fuzzy on how much of KDE is Qt "skeleton" vs C "muscle." Could someone make a SWAG at how much effort would be involved in creating a working KOffice for the Mac?

Re:How far are we from KOffice for Mac OS X?

[Anonymous Coward]

If you want a lightweight set of native office apps for OS X, get AppleWorks. It's nowhere near MS Office feature-wise, but it offers more than KOffice and it's available natively now. If you must have a free office suite, install Fink and then use AbiWord, Gnumeric, Dia, etc. They're also more feature complete than KOffice.

Re:KDE and Qt are great. Suggestion:

[smittyoneeach]

Clearly, Trolltech will do as they wish.

Consider the possibility that marketshare would grow if porting were simplified by greater use of standard components.

Haven't done any benchmarks, so I'll bow to your opinion on efficiency. Today's redundancy could be tomorrow's requirement, though.

Tabbed browsing

[Anonymous Coward]

I find it rather amusing that everybody used to bash the hell out of Opera for using MDI, always bitching about how stupid/evil it is. And now then Galeon does it (tabbed windows are just a limited form of MDI), everybody now thinks it's the greatest thing since sliced bread.

Re:Tabbed browsing

[Explo]

I find it rather amusing that everybody used to bash the hell out of Opera for using MDI, always bitching about how stupid/evil it is. And now then Galeon does it (tabbed windows are just a limited form of MDI), everybody now thinks it's the greatest thing since sliced bread.

What do you mean by limited form? With a true MDI I couldn't have several windows that may or may not contain tabs. With tabs it's really possible to choose practically anything between pure MDI and pure SDI - I can keep everything tabbed inside one window (MDI), not use tabs at all and keep everything at separate windows(SDI) or have several windows with a few tabs in each, for example having 'fun' material (slashdot, comics, miscellaneous sites) at one window tabbed and at another workspace all serious stuff tabbed inside one window. How's that limited or done with pure MDI or SDI? :-o This really gives a nice freedom of choice compared to either extreme.

Re:Tabbed browsing

[Anonymous Coward]

Because with Opera's mdi, you can have two browser child windows open side by side. With Galeon, you must open two top level windows. This is why Opera's mdi implementation is very much superior to galeon's limited form.

Re:Tabbed browsing

[Explo]

Oops. I somehow managed to think that this was about Mozilla. I don't know how I got the misleading idea. ;) Dunno how tabs are implemented in Galeon, so can't really comment about it.

Meanwhile Gnome is still to make a 2.0 release!

[Anonymous Coward]

This is *not* a flame, I use KDE and like it, I would like to try Gnome 2.0 too but it just isn't there yet.

For all the flaming Gnome folk have done of KDE and QT, where is their answer to KDE3, does Gnome 2 even have a scheduled release yet?

DCOP (I think?), and status dock

[Strick-9]

One thing I noticed with KDE is whenever I would try to launch a sound file from Konqueror, if the media player wasn't already loaded, the media player would load, begin to play what was on the playlist, and then a few seconds later it would stop playing that and start playing the song I requested from Konqueror. It's really annoying.

Also there are inconsitencies between the closing action on apps that use the status dock (sometimes it kills the app, sometimes it just hides the app window).

Any fixes on these two fronts before I go and update everything?

i just stopped using kde, why?

[gol64738]

from a few years ago, i wasn't impressed by kde at all. in fact, that was the only 'ugh' i had for linux back then.

i've been using gnome since then, and have been fairly happy. since redhat 7.2 release, i switched to KDE 2.1, and was blown away. wow, so much polish and everything is integrated nicely. good visuals, lots of configuration options, wow wow!

i used kde 2.1 for 2 months, and now i'm going back to gnome. why?
here's why:

konqueror completely and utterly blows when compared with mozilla (i wont use Opera either)
mozilla under KDE cannot do anti-aliasing.
mozilla under gnome has bitchin anti-aliasing. sites look better with mozilla AA than konqueror AA.

graphics under gnome are crispy and clean.
kde graphics are boring and fuzzy.
evolution rocks. kmail blows.
kmail has got to be the most featureless and bugridden IMAP client ever.
kde is somewhat buggy. there has been many times when my kde toolbar just stops working.

kde reminds of me windows in a way. look, i move very very fast inside my gui desktop. my system is a p3/933 512mb. often, kde apps crash when moving too fast in them (at least it's a nice crash with a pretty message).
playing with kde pulldowns too fast will break the app.

gnome never has this problem.

i'm not saying that KDE is crap. KDE and Gnome both have good and bad things about them. it's just using the right tool for the right job, and for me, that's Ximian Gnome.

for my grandma, it's KDE baby.. all the way.

Re:i just stopped using kde, why?

[Anonymous Coward]

LOL, what a troll. Oh well.. let's feed him.

1. You were using KDE 2.1. It has more bugs than KDE 2.2 and KDE 3.0.
2. sites cannot "look better" with Konqueror's AA or Mozilla's AA. They use the same AA engine. That immediatly discredits that statement.
3. Graphics under gnome are NOT "crispy and clean". GNOME has photorealistic icons which tend to be fuzzy and dark. KDE has much more symbolic icons which are naturally much more clear ;)
4. Kmail doesn't suck. Evolution doesn't rule. As of KDE 3.0, kmail's IMAP implementation is fixed. Personally, Evolution looks like a really fugly copy of Outlook. *Shrudder*.
5. Playing with kde pulldowns too fast do not break the app. Wtf? That's like if someone said that "when I click on a scrollbar too fast in any GNOME app, it breaks". Do you expect anyone to beleive you?
6. kde is buggy, however. But, in comparision to GNOME, it is much more stable. That's why there has never been a stable version of GNOME while KDE 1.x was pretty damn stable (my university still has a lab full of Linux 2.2.3 boxes running KDE 1.2).

Overall, I think KDE is way ahead in almost everything :p

Re:i just stopped using kde, why?

[Anonymous Coward]

LOL, what a troll. Oh well.. let's feed him.

1. You were using KDE 2.1. It has more bugs than KDE 2.2 and KDE 3.0.

And you called him a troll? If you're seriously trying to claim that KDE 3.0 has less bugs than KDE 2.1 then you have no idea what you're talking about.

Re:i just stopped using kde, why?

[Anonymous Coward]

> And you called him a troll? If you're seriously trying to claim that KDE 3.0 has less bugs than KDE 2.1 then you have no idea what you're talking about.

Uhh, when talking about the bugs (whether they are real or not), it's a good idea to keep in line with the latest release. This guy did not do this. It'd be like if some guy mentioned in an article about Mozilla, a whole bunch of bugs that were in Mozilla M18 but are not present now. The great-grandparent poster was really just being ignorant. I'm not sure whether or not he was a troll tho like the grandparent poster claimed.

Re:i just stopped using kde, why?

[gol64738]

haha, i was modded down for being honest.

the truth hurts, doesn't it?

Re:KDE and Qt are great. Suggestion:

[be-fan]

Umm, that's total bullshit. The STL (SGI's version anyway) is actually quite fast. It is certainly faster than most reimplementations of the standard data structures. Also, templates often speed up code rather than slow it down. Take, for example, a generic linked list structure. Say there is a Walk() method that lets you iterate over the list. Without templates, you pass a function pointer to the data structure and you incur the cost of an indirect function call for every item you iterate over. If each call does relatively little (as most comparison functions for generic data structures do, for example) then you totally blow code performance. With templates, however, the compiler can inline these small functions into the template, and you get rid of the overhead of the indirect call. As for virtual functions:
A) The STL doesn't use virtual functions. It's template-based.
B) Its just an indirect call. For most non-trivial functions the cost is negligible.

Now, don't get me wrong. C++ can lead to bloated code. However, it can also lead to very fast code. C++ pushes a lot of work on the compiler. The compiler can often do things to make high-level code perform as well as dirty/hackish low-level code. The template data structure I mentioned above is nice and clean. Yet, it is just as fast as writing seperate linked-list data structure for each object type (which even the Linux kernel doesn't do!).

How....

[madenosine]

How does every gnome or kde story result in an absolute kde/gnome brawl? If there is a problem with oss software, the way to fix it is try to get to the root of the problem and fix it, or help someone else fix it; not posting random rants on slashdot at every opportunity. The other type of post i often see on stories like this are posts repeating EXACTLY what is said in the changelog! Really...if you have nothing good to post about, do not post at all!

Re:KDE and Qt are great. Suggestion:

[Anonymous Coward]

One of Qt3's main features is working well with the STL.

However, KDE primarily uses Qt's classes because they are much more standard than the STL. They are also of more higher quality than some STL implementations. Finally, Qt's classes are better for internationalization. Also, Qt's classes are usually much faster than any STL implemenation on Linux.

KHTML is not bulletproof yet

[alder]

try opening JBoss Documentation.

Well, I have not checked the source, but even if we assume that HTML there is not on a par, other browsers do not choke on it...

Re:KDE and Qt are great. Suggestion:

[Anonymous Coward]

The problem with virtual functions in KDE isn't a matter of run time performance, but with load times. KDE relies on a lot of shared libraries, each containing a lot of references to virtual function tables, and as each shared library or application is loaded, you suffer through a lot of memory thrashing as vtables get relocated. There is a good analysis of this linked from the KDE web site.

But, like you said, the STL is based purely on static parametric polymorphism and doesn't use virtual functions. So, if KDE relied more on template usage, it could only help.

Re:KDE and Qt are great. Suggestion:

[be-fan]

You couldn't really use templates in KDE, since the virtual functions are essentially set up as a clean callback method. A draw callback, for example, isn't implemented as function pointer, but overriding a virtual Draw() method in a view object. The two techniques are so similar at the low lever, however (deference a pointer and call the function found there), it should be possible to make KDE's load performance no slower than GTK+ or Xt's.

Re:KDE and Qt are great. Suggestion:

[Arandir]

KDE primarily uses Qt's classes because they are much more standard than the STL.

Huh? Let me read that one again...

That's what I thought you said. Go get a dictionary and look up the word "standard".

Germans don't do art...

[MattBaggins]

They do beer

Re:KDE and Qt are great. Suggestion:

[smittyoneeach]

I would expect similar arguments from Redmond.
Clearly, Trolltech is a serious group of coders; perhaps they could do their own high speed, low drag STL implementation.