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KDE 3.0 Release Plan Updated
loopkin noted that the dot is running a bit about the KDE 3 Release. Here's
the release schedule,
and as you can see, the upcoming weeks will be interesting. I guess
I should figure out why my truetype fonts all broke on a recent
update to debian unstable so that
I can actually enjoy the new releases :)
debian unstable?
Now that Gnome is maturing and releasing 2.0, it looks like KDE is stepping it up to steal some of Gnomes limelight...
Please note that I did -not- pick a side. Lets not break out into religious wars, please...
Good quote, too many chars. Seriously, the slashdot 120 char limit sucks!
KDE 3.0 has plenty of new features. However, I think they should work on fixing up the Klipboard. That's one thing Windows has I wish KDE had... a good clipboard system. I also hope they don't screw up Konqueror with the Smart "window.open" Javascript policy. Right now, I love being able to turn off those X10 pop-ups.
With a small amount of playing around, KDE can be made to look suspiciously like a certain product made by a certain evil empire. Add to that the fact that it's free and you've got a great alternative to an operating system made by a company that charges you more than the price you paid for the OS for every patch. (win95,win98,winME,winXP - all bugfixes for win3.1)
At the risk of being burnt at the stake and getting a troll rating...
I like linux, I use it alot both for work and home use but I am getting tired of the chase for the desktop market. MS, like it or not it, are pretty secure on the desktop market. Where Linux scores is the server room and for that area I personally prefer reliablity, security etc over a fancy GUI front end.
GUI's are nice but not the end of the world.
(And yes I am bored, its late in the day and I've being trying to write requirements doc's all day, my coffee level is on overdrive...)
--- Users are like bacteria -> Each one causing a thousand tiny crises until the host finally gives up and dies.
I love QT because of it's OOP nature and how easy it is to implement. But KDE is too much of a Windows knock off. It's like a copy of a copy of a copy of a copy.
ender-iii
gnomereport
===========
oki what should i use ? kde ? gnome ? normal windowmanager ? these questions are comming up more and more and i am totally fed up listening to these things all the time.
i think that gnome 2 will become a lot more mature than gnome 1 a lot more resource consuming and a lot more buggy not to mention that you all wait another year until the majority of your apps that you use today will be ported.
gnome 2 will depend on MORE libraries than gnome 1, gnome 2 may be ready to use just in time but all your beloved apps won't be ready in time. e.g. evolution, still not yet started beeing ported, gnumeric still not yet started beeing ported, galeon cant be ported to gnome 2 right now because gtk embedded is not yet ported to gtk 2 (work is in progress) now think on all other gtk and gnome apps (some of them may be outdated too) when do you think these will ever be ported ? its not just replacing some lines of code and voila, theres a lot more things to do.
you guys should look somehow behind the scenes, a tad more inside everything before deciding for one desktop. eyecandy is not everything it should also be quick, fast, less mature and simply operatinal. i am working with gnome for some years now and the past months i really feel that i need to get rid of it since i dont like the way it goes, the way things are beeing implemented and so on. i for my own am not willing to install gnome 1 and gnome 2 (which is far more mature) for a couple of time only to use my applications until someone decides to give it gnome 2 support.
also seeing all these deamons running in the background only for one use who accesses the workstation is really unbelivable. also the new windows registry like system that got implemented into gnome 2 starts to suck, it consumes a lot of diskspace for one user than the way things got configured before.
gnome 2 is nice but i dont belive that people who are realy aware of their systems gonna like it that much. even nautilus is still totally unusable even the gnome 2 converted one totally sucks, it takes ages to load and is not that userfriendly to use as e.g. konqueror e.g scanning a ftp tree takes hours with nautilus and only seconds for konqueror. its sad to say but this is simply a fact. i never found myself using nautilus. only started it up once in a time to see what happens but usability NO but thats what a system should be like... simply usable.
not long ago i had a gconf crash for unknown reason while i was leeching some bigger files from the net. after this crash i wasnt able starting galeon and other apps that use gconf as preferences master, no matter what i did, either killing the processes etc. it wasnt possible to get that stuff back running so i was sticked on a nearly dead desktop with 2 decissions, either i reboot my system to get everything working properly again and cancel my download (over irc and in queue) or i continue the download until its finished. well i decided to continue until its finished. well its sure that these minor problems are beeing solved sooner or later but it doesnt make me happy using my system. its a lot of maintainance etc. a lot of things you need to care and you end in a permanent maintainance instead using your system. e.g. if you want to run games like quake, rtcw etc. you always need to keep in mind that a lot of stuff is running in the background. same for evolution e.g. losing passwords every now and then, preferences lost every now and then, long startup times, bad addressbook implementation etc. i belive it will continue and become better and better over time but yes TIME but we want to use the system NOW and not later.
well every now and then i EYE over to KDE and look about all these apps they got. sure the eyecandy is not that nice and the CVS of KDE 3 that i tried every now and then isnt that beautifull (e.g. i also miss some other features that i was used on gnome) but KDE is not only the environment its more. i see the apps like konqueror more functional. more freedom, no need to compile mozilla with its ugly XUL widgetset all the time, no need to install stuff like GALEON and NAUTILUS to have things that i get with konqueror, its faster and more impressive. i thought wow the first time ive played with it. only big disadvantage on kde is, that the packages install things that i dont really want e.g. if i want the seat of a car only then why do need to purchase the whole car? but looking on 3rd party applications i see things that i really would like seeing on gnome but know that they are far away. e.g. cool professional burner software, cool query analyzer like program for sql, a whole complete office suite etc. more and more stuff from 3rd party coders specially programs that i need for daily work and wish to have on gnome myself.
i am also a bit familar with the gnome developers and i came to this resume. gnome may be open source, but the whole community is totally closed. if you talk to them then they act like insane humans and piss you off really fast. well not everyone of them but a lot of them. holy jesus if someone comes into their channels or meet them on open air festivals etc. and one wrong word or misunderstood word. they piss you off to hell. i met a couple of them and well i dont like many of them. they actually are capable people but also kinda agressive people many of them cant decide anymore between trolling and normal arguing.
well finally i say you dont need to keep my words for an end line agreement, please go install gnome see if you like it. look in your homedirectory and subdirectories and decide if you like what you see and then be happy. you really dont need gnome at all for your work and i for my own felt somekinda freedom after i tested a gnomefree environment for some weeks e.g. windowmaker and gtk+ apps only i feelt so much better i then really had the happy feeling to USE my system again. nice aterm, bitchx, xchat, sylpheed, mutt etc. no shit in the background. also a lot more memory for my own personal use and not wasted to e.g. gnomes core. i also ran mozilla on its own and got rid of galeon too (have you figured out recently that they add and remove stuff in one breathe). mozilla is so what faster than older versions now if they soon port it to gtk 2 then i dont see the usage of galeon anymore. its nice with tabs etc. but mozilla offers the same things now and i think over time mozilla will be better. not to mention all the problems caused during compile etc.
besides, nothing has changed in gnome. a lot of new libraries, same utilities
On area I think KDE really excels is with kioslaves, which allow *any* KDE application access 'files' by a wide variety of means.i ma p4*nntp*sftp*tar
*audiocd*samba*filesystem*ftp*gopher*gzip*http*
To list but afew in the CVS.
Plus people's homebrewed slaves:
*shell commands*Nomad Jukebox*Digital camera*deleted files*over ssh
for example.
This can give rise to many useful applicatons. All KDE graphics programs instantly able to grab pictures off digital camera. Ripping CD by just dragging icons in the file browser. Seemless network browsing, just like Network Neighbourhood in Windows (ok, takes abit of setting up to work properly).
Does gnome do anything similar. I know there is gnome-vfs, although haven't looked into what it does in too much detail.
Who cares, isnt this a little like my kid can beat up your kid ????
:)
People bitch about all the libs with gnome , and QT with KDE, The folks over at KDE have a good team a good direction and a good system. I am a gnome user for many reasons, BUT, I wish success to the KDE team, a good plan is always the best start, even if you dont follow it at least it gives you a sense that you have a common goal
We all in the *nix world of course know this not to be true, a common goal, Microsoft has one world domination, many of us *nix people are too worried about little things making it in, some out of ego some out of OUR neccesity.
the KDE team has done a great job all along, whats good for KDE is good for GNOME, if they do it first we can say, well that works nice, or that suck lets not do it that way,
Competition breeds the best, anything less is communism
Sig went tro...aahemmm.....fishing........
One thing that I think really needs to improve with KDE is the speed. It is still much slower than Winblows if you ask me. But it's free, and very customizable, so I don't mind the trade-off.
(I sure hope they've fixed the fonts system now. Whenever I try to change the fonts to anything other than default, all my fonts turn into A.D. Mono.) CanadaDave
WinXP has delivered, and is superior to Linux in everway.
It sure is. Especially XP's implementation of UPnP.
Until... they try to open a Word Document that their mom sent them, or try to set up printing, or try to read the crappy fonts.
I like KDE, it's great, but really, no matter how great it gets, it's got to have the nice conveniences that end-users have grown accustomed to before it'll make any headway against the evil empire.
"Would it kill you to put down the toilet seat?" -- Maya Angelou
yeah yeah, I haven't used KDE in a while. So I was talking out of my ass. I use Black Box. mmmmmm minimalism.
ender-iii
Do you think it's coincidence that the proposed release of KDE 3 is set for a mere 3 days after the Gnome 2 release?
I suppose if you find that type of environment most productive, there is nothing wrong with it. However, I've found that it actually takes a long time to navigate and get tasks done.
At home I use an old FVWM2 configuration I brewed several years ago, and I see no reason to keep updating the look and feel every 6 months. It does what I want it to do, and I am comfortable using it. It is not flashy, and it does not get in the way.
At work I have been using CDE, and I think that it is an excellent all-around desktop environment that is easy enough for newbies to use and yet allows more experienced users quick access to things they need without playing hide-and-seek games.
Sig (appended to the end of comments you post, 120 chars)
I guess I should figure out why my truetype fonts all broke on a recent update to debian unstable so that I can actually enjoy the new releases :)
Oooooh! I know! I know!
Because font support in X is a hacked together piece of shit that supports vector-based fonts extremely poorly?
I know I sure want something better. Display Ghostscript seems like one of the better ideas out there. Also, it'll eventually have it's own display backend (eventually in the works, targetted for GGI).
It and Berlin are the only hopes I can see for a decent, modern, vector-based desktop in Linux.
Dragging people kicking and screaming into reality since 1996.
I am a pretty unsophisticated desktop user. My entire reason to be is to program db apps, and the like.
User interfaces were never a strong point of mine.
In a nutshell, what are anti-aliased fonts? How do I use the million and one fonts that are installed in X, when all I can see are a few in the various apps that use them?
Is there a top down reference for neophytes on fonts. I need a general discussion followed up by X implimentation issues.
I am sure I would be more impressed with who supports anti-aliased fonts, if I'd just understand what they were, and how to show them on my system.
I know it seems like a stupid problem, but I am sure I can't be the only one.
...are working just fine for me with Debian unstable (my last dist-upgrade was last night).
I'm actually posting this from konqueror, which is displaying anti-aliased True Type Fonts quite nicely.
Niko
One thing that has allways irritated me is the inability of most systems to make use of some inherent methods to buid an efficient GUI. I am mostly thinking of Fitt's law here. Do any of you know if there is work being done on this area in KDE now?
Otherwise it's an exellent product, that's getting better. Thanks!
With the recent/upcoming releases of:
XFree 4.2.0
KDE 3.0
Gnome 2.0
glibc 2.2.5 (claimed compatible with GCC3)
GCC 3.0.x
2.4.x Kernel du jour
I sense upcoming releases of next-rev-level distros.
Now if it can only all be made to play nice together.
Learning HOW to think is more important than learning WHAT to think.
Or Linux's implementation of /bin/login or SSH1? Oh wait, there exist absolutely no proven exploits for an unpatched UPnP vulnerability yet, but rooting a box vulnerable to the /bin/login vulneability is trivial.
To add to your ignorance, UPnP is a cross-vendor standard, not just an MS one. Take your FUD to someone ignorant enough to believe your shit. Like Steve Gibson.
Something to do with Linus' stubborness not to write compiler compliant code?
Oh wait, there exist absolutely no proven exploits for an unpatched UPnP vulnerability yet
The fact is the vulnerability exists. So just because you can't find a self installing executable on www.ScriptKiddiesRus.com doesn't mean it isn't a problem.
Well, since KDE is a window manager, it is no more responsible for making sure a user can read a word file than Microsoft is for making sure you can read a psd, pdf, or wpd file in Windows. (Photoshop, Acrobat, or WordPerfect respectively)
It would be the responsibility of the distribution, i.e., Red Hat, Mandrake, SUSE, to make sure that you had a copy of Open Office or the Microsoft Word Viewer+wine combo installed on your computer.
THe need to start working with the GNome team. Together they could over take Microsoft in quality and design!
Yes, it comes with a superior licencing model that greatly surpasses Linux in its ability to farm money for the people who made it.
While I recognise most people here speak English, another important difference to realise between KDE and Gnome is the language support.
Current KDE languages supported
Current Gnome languages supported
Gnome should get Unicode support with gnome 2 which should help even things up alittle.
the increasing use of kioslaves as an underlying KDE technology is great -- even if KDE developers don't use the word, it sounds to me just like Apple's lately hyped vision of computer as "digital lifestyle hub" (or however they phrase it).
...
If the KDE stuff continues at current pace, it won't be lnog until anything with a USB or firewire jack (or any other port that my computer has or will sprout next year) should plug in and be recognized, transparently and as a regular-looking ("hey, there's a file!") entry in directories
Any typical Linux distro comes with superior art tools already (GIMP, Kontour -- superior to anything that comes as part of a Windows or Mac OS install per se, though Photoshop is good for certain things that GIMP Is not), and with lots of tools for converting and listening to digital music. So music and 2-D art I think are pretty much down -- not finished or perfect or static, but already a compelling arguments for the family who wants to create pictures, edit digital photos, and stream music to baby's room.
The big drawbacks now when it comes to the digital hub lifestyle thing to any free system I'm aware of is that both Windows and Apple have available superior codecs for video, and both now come with video editing software. (At least, that's what the silly XP commercials imply; is that true?).
This really isn't a GNOME or KDE thing per se (hey, both are good, differences are wildly exaggerated, and they both live happily on the same machines), but kioslaves are impressive and tantalizing -- just wish there were video apps so I could one day open a window called "FIREWIRE VIDEO CAMERA" and be able to do the things that iMovie on a Mac provides.
timothy
jrnl: http://tinyurl.com/c2l8yr / foes: http://tinyurl.com/ckjno5
Because I can?
Also on the dot is this discussion which talks about a way to get QT only apps to look and act like native KDE apps.
Actually, it doesn't matter what distribution you use, as there really aren't the same apps available anyway. Still, with as much nice things that KDE has, you'd think they'd build in easy, automatic support for tt fonts, include a nice, easy, working print system. Joe Jackass enduser doesn't care if KDE is just a windows manager; for all he knows, since it's what he sees, it IS the operating system.
If the popular desktop environments really want to compete with MS, they have to understand that Joe Jackass Enduser is going to require the same niceties, and is going to assume that what he/she sees IS the OS.
"Would it kill you to put down the toilet seat?" -- Maya Angelou
KDE is not a window manager! K Desktop Environment.
sheesh!
Fair enough...
MS owns the desktop PC market. Who cares, we're all moving on.
.NET programmers will need Win32 desktops, MS owns that.
The notion of a personal computer is from the past. People use their network interface device. Right now it is a PC, in the future, who knows.
Microsoft Homestation is their answer for consumer access. AOL will likely have their answer. Apple seems to be ignoring that market and focusing on people that have money and want digital toys. The new iMac with DVD burning, iDVD, iMovie, and iPhoto aims for this market.
The work environment? You need a system that supports something like Outlook and MS Office. Microsoft owns this market and will for the forseeable future.
What markets are in flux?
Web programmers. As we move for web servers, we need systems for people that program them.
However, Java programmers, PHP programmers, etc., will likely want to consider Unix desktops. Linux can fill a niche here. They still need e-mail, word processing, and printing.
Tablet PCs, open market. Linux based solutions can compete with Windows based solutions.
Television computing... who wants to fight the Homestation? Tivo, you going to step up with Linux? AOL, what are you going to use? These are the markets to fight in.
Sure, the KDE/GNOME desktop may not make it there... Microsoft's Explorer (the Win95 and up GUI) won't either. However, if it is Windows based, COM/DCOM/ActiveX/OLE will be used. If it is Linux/KDE/Qt based, then Kparts will be used.
Developers need a desktop to develop for the target system. If you are doing a Kparts/Qt/KDE/Linux set top box, what makes more sense, a KDE Desktop, an OS X Desktop, a GNOME Desktop, or a Windows desktop?
Welcome to the networked world. We can all pick our platform. The Microsoft monopoly will die... long live the Microsoft monopoly. Alternatives to Windows for the non-PC market is important to stopping the market.
Sure Microsoft will be a player, but they don't need to be the only one.
Alex
For Audio and Video:
There is not yet a standard for Audio/Video.
There are some codecs available, some players, but they all follow their own rules.
Along with Gnome2 there will be a multimedia framework Gstreamer.
It is not really aimed at Gnome, it is meant to be able to build apps on it, so Kde could use it too.
There is discussion planned at Kde about how to deal with Multimedia. Somehow I hope they choose to build on Gstreamer, and support the building of one standard.
Well, don't worry about that. We can get you back before you leave. (Dr. Who)
But they really need to get over the Not-Invented-Here syndrome in so many places. One thing that stands out to me is that noatun is a crappy media player compared to other applications out there. Only video files I managed to get to play with it were MPG video files, and even then it crashed 8 times out of 10 (And this was KDE 2.2.2). In it they use mpeglib, which now works, but I wonder why they didn't use smpeg, which was more mature, from the start, was it simply because the lib was written by the author of kmpg, an older KDE media player? I wonder why they didn't have avifile support, that would be an easy way to play a *lot* more files. Compare noatun to, say, mplayer, which plays avi/asf, mpg, viv, rm (few), and mov, not to mention others. Within a couple of days using smpeg and avifile you can write a better media player than noatun...
.ogg files.. In modern systems there is no reason to use wav anymore, and .ogg gives the KDE team a nice, perfectly legal way of reducing filesize (unlike mp3, which probably would be better for this except for legal reasons, since ogg takes more CPU time to decode still)
On a positive note, it is good to see the widespread planned use of
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
How about:
While chasing Microsoft, let's not forget to stop and smell the alternative roses...
All about me
There's a certain level of finish that commercial products like Nautilus, Evolution and Kapital get that hacker projects never seem to attain. Even if I still prefer Konqueror, KMail and GnuCash.
What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
Anti-aliasing is the process of smoothing the hard, jagged edges of graphics. Graphics can mean images or fonts. Normally this is accomplished by taking the surrounding color values and blending them. In the case of a simple black line on a white background, the edges of the line would be interpolated as an intermediate shade of grey. This gives a softer visual effect that is generally more pleasing to the eye, though too much can render the graphic blurry.
This can best be seen on websites that use GIF images placed over tiled backgrounds. The edges are hard -- you can see exactly where one graphic ends and the other begins. With fonts, which are usually vector based, the problem arises with diagonal lines. For a computer to render a diagonal line on the screen, it makes several smaller lines that are slighly offset. The point where this offset occurs looks like a hard edge. In real-world printing this isn't a problem, because the physical properties of ink bleed edges together. But in the digital world, you need extra software to simulate this softening effect.
One feature which I wish KDE would implement is varying border types. Enlightenment and somewhat sawfish (under Gnome) handle this well. Enlightenment does it the best and Sawfish does a passing job. As a developer having the ability to roll windows up , down, left and right gives me quite a bit of flexability that I would not otherwise have. One of the main reasons I am using Gnome over KDE right now is due to this feature. Of course if Enlightenment would ever get their 0.17 complete....
seSales, Point of Sale software for OS X.
You've got it all wrong.
The question is not when will Linux will catch up to Windows in eye-candy, but when will Windows catch up to Linux in functionality?
Where is windows for Unix? where is windows with network tranparancy, where is windows with any kind of standard appliant application?
Windows is 10 years behind *nix in functionalty, I find it impressive linux is only 2 years behind in eye-candy
Yeah, I use OLVWM at home and I like it and my wife does too. Due to some kind of video problem on an old thinkpad 760LD, I made it the default window manager. It was the only one capable of giving me 16bpp. It was not so hard for my wife and I because we learned how to do things right under GNOME. This supprised me. I remembered my first expereinces at a Sun workstation and thought my wife would have a hard time. Nope, not at all. While it's hard to think back that far for myself, the comment I get when I show people a decent desktop, be it Window Maker or GNOME, is that it's "very windows like". I can tell them that it is, but better in many ways.
"Windows like" can be helpful. GNOME was flexible enough for the Red Hat folks to make it look like the M$ junk I was used to. This was useful while I quickly learned to do things how I prefered. I also learned that good design is much more than skin deep. KDE does this too. M$ will have to make things very stupid indeed to make switching more difficult. Don't put it past the people who hide file extentions of "known types" but how far can they take that?
There you have the power of free software. Peer reviewed design, encouraged inovation, multiple implimentations all growing stronger and building on the strengths of predecesors. Good traits are retained, flakey ones are around for people who want or need them. The KDE and GNOME people are doing great work. The folks at Red Hat have done some realy nice things with that work. The full impact of many small improvements is much larger than their sum, even over six months.
DMCA, Hollings, Palladium. What might have sounded like paranoia is now common sense.
They have. Check out the font installer and kdeprint in KDE 3.
What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
kapital is not a "hacker project"p hp 3
it's closed source, and it's made by theKompany
http://www.thekompany.com/products/kapital/faq.
setting up the audiocd ioslave is still tricky
How so? I built and installed KDE, and was able to open audiocd:/ with no problems at all. I didn't have to "tweak" anything.
you suck
Try them all, or at least all of the ones that sound interesting. Unless you are cramped for disk space, install all of the windowing environments. Then try them out, and see which ones you like. Different people have different preferences.
Black box to keep things really, simple,
etc. (there's a long list).
I, personally, ended up keeping both KDE and Gnome installed. I switch between them occasionally for special purposes (or when I've been really stupid, and damaged one of them badly). And they don't have the same libraries or toolkits. You may find that you prefer one of the desktops, and another for development libraries.
Keep your options open. Thinking of just two is thinking of too few.
.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
When will the Windows development model catch up to the superior models offered by Linux, FreeBSD and other projects?
;)
When will Windows be released with available, modifiable, redistributable source code?
Most importantly, when will we be able to play all our Windows-only Outlook-exploiting viruses on Evolution?!
I guess "condemn standards" was sort of a giveaway, but oh well
timothy
jrnl: http://tinyurl.com/c2l8yr / foes: http://tinyurl.com/ckjno5
Damn, I kept hearing how cool iTunes was. If what you said is true, that's not that great. Hell, I have grip set up to auto-rip on insert, if it's a new CD. It does the FreeDB lookup, rips to ogg and ejects when it's done.... Total clicks = 0.
Itunes rips mp3s alot faster than anything in linux land.
I recently got my old Mandrake 7 partition connected to the web, and am trying to use it more and more. I have KDE and Gnome installed, but the KDE is KDE 1. How hard is it to upgrade to KDE 2? I've seen that there are RPM's and so on, and that I'd need to upgrade QT, but what I am really concerned with is the process itself. Will I hose my whole machine if I mess it up? Upgrading a windowing system seems like a big step to me, but then I'm a Linux newbie. Is it a simple matter of using RPMDrake to upgrade QT and KDE and then restart KDE?
itunes is pretty slick, I admit, but the only MP3s I have are the ones that came loaded on my iBook. My own music collection (too many CDs, an addiction I seem to have conquered) I am slowly converting to .ogg, and iTunes (not to mention hardware devices, the iPod among them) does not do .ogg, while my Mandrake sustem plays them without thinking much about it :)
:)
...
If I had more of my music converted to a nice Fair Use format, I would care more about automatic indexing, adding to playlists, etc. I'm pretty pedestrian in my musical habits, though -- I generally like to listen to complete albums from single artists, so I don't notice playlist features etc. very much.
The application whose polish I *do* wish for actively under Linux is iMovie. Broadcast2000 looked cool for a while, and Trinity was promising, but both of those seem to have faded. Attention developers, I would love to pay you $200 for a freely licensed open source video-editing application with the features of as-of-early-2002 iMovie!
KDE already has kioslaves for a lot of devices (I think there are some 'homebrewed' ones for fireware cams, if not official ones), but once that video is important, there's not much to do with it right now
timothy
jrnl: http://tinyurl.com/c2l8yr / foes: http://tinyurl.com/ckjno5
That pretty much sums it up. You free software people don't seem to have any conception as to what "standard" means. If everybody is allowed to write "their own" standard, there is NO standard.
I can understand that your movement was borne out of wanting to break the Microsoft "standard" which was closed. But your movement is now losing its momentum because it can't generate it's own standard.
You can never hope to achieve deep desktop penetration if you can't figure out a standard widget set, menus and system configuration files/GUIs.
Right away the first screenshot says "block devices"
and gives info about the disks on the system.
This is not user-friendly language.
I would have expected better from a version 3.
Although this might be a minor problem to many of you, I think it is essential for the first impression ...
... In addition to that you often have a gnome entry that has all the gnome menus, with again tons of entries.
What I mean is:
You have to clean up the KMenu. If you hit the K-Button in most distributions you get tons of applications, utilities etc
What about small arrows like Windo$ has, so that you see just the recently used? Or a small, medium, and regular menu?
I mean KDE is THE way to get people from other platforms to Linux. Why show them that "mess" with all these entries ?
Show them a clean menu and give them later the option to add / see more.
You're correct regarding video editing, but so far as watching video goes, nothing -- and I mean NOTHING -- touches MPlayer. It plays stuff that WMP barfs on. The newest release plays everything: Windows Media, DivX, Real, MPEG2, and on and on. It's rock solid, has a neato gui (though it's GTK, can't have everything), is controllable from the command-line for those who want that, and so forth. I simply set my file associations in Konqueror to open it when I click on a video file, and I never have to worry about it (except for QT with Sorensen :( )
Thats odd you say that. In Windows i have complete transparency. Infact on my laptop no matter what network i pluginto my vpn logs me in to work and seemlessly integrates me with the directory server, allows me single signon with every custom application and database and then mounts my shares, printers, and synchronizes my Handheld with notes, email and more custom apps.
I also have the infamous Cygwin kit, which includes every GNU is not Unix application i could ever want to use. I run an XDisplay to two 6500's i manage and also use the kick ass SecureCRT all day long.
And then when i get home i play some UT, Surf the web, jam to Winamp, watch some videos, and enjoy life.
All of this is under WindowsXP. I don't have any less functionality, infact i have more. I have harnessed the best of both worlds.
And frankly, linux can do that just as well. You can boot windows inside linux to get your job done. Just in todays market linux isn't really linux when you can get all the benifet of linux within your exisitng platform (be it Windows, Solaris, HPUX and whatnot).
So in all reality, linux isn't an OS, it is a kernel. Everything that runs under that kernel seems to run great under every other kernel i have ran it under. (NT, Solaris, HPUX, BSDI, blah.. blah). There are ofcourse some exceptions to every "rule".
Windows for unix? havn't you ever seen everything from Wine, to the PC Plugins for Sparcs to Lindows and all the bazillions of variations of remote windows terminals?
Because we that use Linux don't need to worry (eazel, Loki) about business or other minor details that keep society running.
Copying Windows and release it as open source is a brilliant strategy.
Not only will existing Windows users be able to adapt to KDE easily, new users will also able to use KDE because Windows is 'userfriendly'.
All you people are always whining about 'not enough innovation', but let's face the truth: 'innovation' will only confuse users because it's different.
Joe Avarage don't want to learn just to use that one 'innovative feature'.
He just wants something that works.
as a number of ideas are actually from Gnome/KDE/others that Microsoft has borrowed. They all borrow from each other if they see something that looks like a good idea.
Sorry, but that last sentence has disqualified yourself. If you bothered to read the dependency list, then you'll find out that GNOME 2 has LESS dependencies than GNOME 1.
I'm surprise he's modded at 1. I mean, this is about KDE 3 people! Why do we have to get GNOME involved and start a religious war yet again?
I do wish that GNOME and KDE would spend less time on NIH and would think in a true client/server mode.
i.e. konqy/mozilla has there own caching mechanisms built-in. I would prefer to see them use a cache server always like squid. If you need a cache mechanism, there should be interface for server and then a simple default cache should be built.
kwintv is redoing the entire video thing. as is konference. They should work together with server mechanism to avoid overhead. kwintv could use ffmep and konference (and gnomes equivelence) should develop a sip server that both can place on a firewall and use.
kmonop (now kapitalist) is pretty cool, as is friskbut this can be better abstracted. Create a board game server using mercury. Why mercury? It is a logic based lang, like prolog only much faster. and what are board games? simply rules to be obeyed. perfect for a games server. This would allow for the creation of a generic card game server rather than constantly createing full-blown games. Likewise, kmonop,frisk, etc could have used the same server this way. (hey rob, check it out)
Hell, I might move back to Debian if you'd help get something done about it.
Or maybe some of us should just make packages of KDE that aren't split into a million pieces, and instead focus on putting together packages that work.
Stating on Slashdot that I like cheese since 1997.
The fact is, KDE has more features than Windows at the desktop level. It is easier to program. It has a proper themable interface (I am running the gorgeous liquid theme by Mosfet) and it feels more solid.
Shame it has to run on top of XFree really, although it is doing its best, and KDE is making the most use of the extensions available like RENDER.
So the only thing is that KOffice still needs a lot of work to get to the level of Office. The Gnome apps appear to be making good headway in this area though - Gnumeric especially.
er, right. suuure it does. How fast the rip is done depends entirely on the speed of the CD grab and the speed of the MP3 encode. Dollars to donuts a lame on a Linux box on, say, a P4 2GHz beats an iMac 800MHz. Lame is fucking fast, and the best MP3 encoder available. If you are sure the CD is not damaged, cdparanoia with no scratch checking is really god damned quick (but scratch checking is worth it). Stop being a dork.
If you want to talk about Linux and its effect on society and the economy then think about this:
At the moment a very small percentage of the world's population own a very high percentage of the wealth. Everytime somebody buys a copy of windows the gap between rich and poor widens every so slightly as Bill Gates and co get just a little bit richer.
Using Linux instead of buying Windows won't help to rebalance the difference between rich and poor but at least you are not making Bill Gates any richer.
Loki and Eazel failed because they overestimated their market. There will be a big market for Linux games soon, when Linux has more market share. That means that Linux has to be better and more appealing to Joe Desktop Computer User.... and just to keep me ontopic.. that's why developers are working on newer and better versions of KDE and Gnome.
I'm not knocking grip. It's terrific, if you're approaching it from a Unix mindset. (Mine uses cdparanoia to rip and bladeenc to encode as MP3.) But it's not as effortless out of the box as iTunes, and you can't just plug an MP3 player into your Linux box and trivially manage it with grip. Also, as the AC said, MP3 encoding _flies_ on a Mac, I'm guessing because of Altivec.
As long as I'm posting:
AC #1: Reread what I wrote. I said Kapital is _not_ a hacker project but a corporate product.
AC #2: As with everything in Linux setup, YMMV. My Mandrake installs have all required tweaking to get audiocd:/ to work.
What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
At the moment a very small percentage of the world's population own a very high percentage of the wealth. Everytime somebody buys a copy of windows the gap between rich and poor widens every so slightly as Bill Gates and co get just a little bit richer.
Yeah, because people never buy computers to run their own businesses and thereby make money for themselves.
Using Linux instead of buying Windows won't help to rebalance the difference between rich and poor but at least you are not making Bill Gates any richer.
Yeah, and you're not doing yourself any favors either. When you have to make a sales call and you dopn't have Power Point to give presentations to the managers, you're screwed.
An analogy: Britney Spears may be popular, but I'd rather have my daughters grow up to be scientists, thinkers, and engineers... do we really want Linux to grow up and be just like Windows? I hope not!
I use Linux because it's powerful, flexible, and customizable, not because some people desperately want to use it against Microsoft in the popularity wars.
All about me
They might make more money for themselves if they don't have to pay so much for their software...
Yeah, and you're not doing yourself any favors either. When you have to make a sales call and you dopn't have Power Point to give presentations to the managers, you're screwed.
I'm not a sales person, I'm a developer. I have used the presentation tool in open office for my presentations and guess what? It worked!
Just because you haven't got what it takes to learn to use non Microsoft software doesn't mean that its useless. You're just screwing yourself if you "have to use it because everyone else uses it".
Yep, actually, kamera already uses gstreamer2. Remember that out of the two main core gstreamer developers, one works on gtk+/gnome stuff and the other works on qt/KDE stuff.
I really wish there was more cooperation between the two projects with common standards like gstreamer.
I think the next project like this will probably be aRts. It is the KDE 2 sound daemon, but is really not aimed solely for KDE. It will hopefully replace esd by GNOME 2.2.
Its impossible for anyone to compete with Microsoft, so lets all stop innovating and give up.
STUPID!! This isnt about Microsoft and taking the desktop from them, this is about giving the Desktop to Linux users who want a nicer Desktop OS than Microsoft.
Its not about Marketshare, its not about money, its about having a better product than the standard, a good alternative, CHOICE.
As far as KDE, and Gnome, its not so much about marketshare, its about giving Linux a desktop GUI for people who want ease of use. If this ends up being people in Tokyo Japan, China, Africa, Korea, Mexico, and everywhere but the Microsoft controlled dead Desktop Market in the USA, so be it.
You all seem to forget, just because theres no market for KDE in the USA doesnt mean there isnt one internationally.
The Desktop Market internationally is bigger than the settop box / PDA market in the USA.
The Choice of KDE is to target the markets outside of the USA
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
Shame it has to run on top of XFree really, although it is doing its best, and KDE is making the most use of the extensions available like RENDER.
Why is this a shame? X rocks. Just last night I was marvelling at how cool it was that I can easily set up my laptop as an X server and run X clients on a much more powerful machine elsewhere on the LAN, but view them from the laptop itself. All the while having *other* applications running on the laptop itself and the whole thing looking pretty much like a single desktop.
This beats the tar out of apps like PC Anywhere (which is the only non-X remote desktop I've ever seen in action).
I do not have a signature
Just because you haven't got what it takes to learn to use non Microsoft software doesn't mean that its useless.
/. about not making Bill richer*, and flame away at people who don't feel like spending hours searching through .conf files to get their display drivers working properly.
Yeah, to me and every other non Linux-nazi out there, it is useless. MS does everything I, and most other people, need out of our computer and does it better and with less hassle than Linux. That's something that I don't expect you to understand. Just go back to using vi to do your development or whatever, write your rants on
* You do realize that the reason Bill is rich is that he made software that everyone could use, right? Not just uber-geeks who take great pleasure in the fact that vi doesn't require a GUI to run.
That's fine, as long as you don't mind paying for it. You _did_ pay for Windows didn't you?
Yup. And I'd pay quite a bit more for Linux, by the time I paid some guy to deal with installing/configuring it for me, purchased support contracts, bought some books, and spend god knows how long trying to get Star Office or whatever working on it.
Relax, take a deep breath. Stop calling people stupid or morons. This isn't personal. I understand that you're stuck not being in America, but that is no reason to be angry (that was a joke, BTW, bring on the flames).
.NET wins.
This Slashdot dream of taking over people's computer desktops everywhere is a silly one. I'm suggesting that there are people that will have a need for a KDE Desktop, and it doesn't matter that it isn't your mother.
You, however, choose to go ballistic. Relax, it isn't that important.
The desktop PC wars are over. They were fought between Microsoft and Apple, Apple lost.
We now have lots of processing power and lots to do with the machines. It doesn't all need to be general purpose. There is a role for KDE to play, even in a MS desktop dominated future.
OTOH, keeping MS to 95% of the market (or even, joy, rolling them back to 90%) would be huge. Don't let them own the web browser market and you are okay. Keep open protocols. If we are constantly reverse engineering their stuff, we lose,
Alex
Just guessing - Kamera uses gphoto and not gstreamer. I would surprised if any KDE people worked on gstreamer since one of the KDE multimedia developers called GNOME people "truly evil" when gstreamer was announced.
/mill
There are technical problems having to do with the interaction between GTK and QT that make it unlikely that KDE will be able to use GStreamer. Besides, KDE already has their own (non-kde-specific) media framework, aRts. Maybe GNOME should look into using aRts, since aRts came before GStreamer. I have a feeling, however, that KDE will continue using aRts and GNOME will continue using GStreamer.
main(c,r){for(r=32;r;) printf(++c>31?c=!r--,"\n":c<r?" ":~c&r?" `":" #");}
..that kde and gnome teams are keeping up a very good work. Don't lost your time in sad mydesktop vs. yourdesktop flames, but contribute! ;)
Thoughts. G2. Interesting. I've always liked playing around with Gnome. However, for me, while Gnome's nice to visit, I wouldn't want to do work with it.
:)
:)
KDE.. I tried it out. Found it horrible. It's the generic $.99 box of cereal labelled 'crispy hexagons' instead of the $3.29 one labelled 'chex'. It's far too MS-like for my tastes, and the tastes of most people I know. (Many people in my family, my neighbors, etc, use MS Windows. They all complain about the interface.) Still, I haven't had KDE crash at all. And, I suppose it's good for people who are too used to the MS way of doing things.
What the Heck. I'm a minimalist by nature. I like my desktop free and clear of clutter, I like it fast, and I like it pretty. It's why I use Blackbox without any special bars or panels or anything else.
I don't think G2, KDE3, or even a new version of Blackbox will put Linux in the running for the average user's desktop. Sure, Gnome's easy to learn, KDE should be doing those 'We switched Bob's desktop with KDE - let's see if he notices.' commercials, and there's always the option to run a small windowmanager without bells and whistles for those of us who want our GUI to be sleek and sexy.
The thing is - while I run into plenty of people who complain about the MS desktop, they've got no reason to switch. Sure, parts of it can be a pain in the arse, but they've got their applications installed, they've got everything set up the way they want, everything works for the most part.. And they can do things in MS Windows they can't do in Linux.
Desktop-like apps are what will bring users over, not the desktop itself.
But in the meantime, for those of us who can do our work totally in Linux, there's one of the penguin's key strengths - there's something for everyone, and there's almost no end to the various ways you can build a desktop for yourself.
As a reply to the comment on broken TrueType fonts on new Debian versions, I'd like to say that this happens on many other distros. The new RedHat 7.2 exhibited the same lower TrueType rendering quality over 7.1 as the new Debian. This is due to three patents that Apple filed concerning interpretation of TrueType bytecodes that are used for hinting small size characters. The FreeType project introduced in a configuration header a directive to disable/enable the patented bytecode interpreter. It comes disabled by default. Turning it on and recompiling may be considered infringement of Apple's patents if you haven't licensed them.
Anyway, for those who can legally use it (ie. you don't live in the USA or have licensed Apple's patents), I've compiled FreeType with the patented bytecode interpreter enabled and made a RedHat 7.2 RPM which is available right here. This drastically improves the readability of antialiased fonts. Enjoy!
There is no reason Linux cannot be modified so that every program can access every object by name. It is the way Unix was designed (remember what /dev was for?) And there is no reason this basic functionality should be in a user interface toolkit, it should be in the system (or at least in libc) so I don't have to think about it when writing software!
Honestly I expected this sort of interface 12 years ago. Plan9 did it but it seemed to not conflict with Unix. What is taking so long?
There are two clipboards called "Clipboard" and "Selection". When you select a block of text it is immediately copied into "Selection". When you click with the middle mouse button it inserts the current contents of "Selection". When you cut/copy it with a command (such as Ctrl+C) it is copied to "Clipboard" but that is unchanged otherwise, and pasting commands (such as Ctrl+V) paste the contents of "Clipboard".
This avoids confusing Windows users and still allows the drag&drop power of the older X selection and middle mouse click.
However older applications did not know anything about "Clipboard". Instead both selecting text and copy commands changed the value of "Selection", and both middle mouse click and paste commands pasted the contents of "Selection".
The result is that if you have program "New" and program "Old":
Selecting text and pasting (dropping) it with the middle mouse button works both ways between the programs.
If you "copy" in the New program, the Old program will not see it. Attempts to paste will get the last selection (this often is the same as the copied text but not always), the same as using the middle mouse.
If you "copy" in the Old program, if you try to "Paste" in the New program you will not get it, instead you will get the last "copy" from a New program. You need to click the middle mouse button to "paste". This is by far the most annoying incompatability.
Hopefully the "old" programs will vanish over time. I am trying to do my part...
How in the hell did this get modded up?
Acquiescence leads to obliteration
Why? Are you part of it? Do you resent people trying to make making Linux the basis for superior GUIs? Or are you too damn lazy to load a new GUI?...
Acquiescence leads to obliteration
Are you using anti-aliasing? If you are, then here is my answer. If not, I'd be looking at xfs and friends.
Bugs. Yes, filing bugs is good.
-DanielS
Gstreamer has working aRts support now.
The Gstreamer guys would *like* to have more KDE integration and I really think that it would pay off big if both teams worked together.
And if you are KDE's Waldo... congratulations.
Kde rocks!
This is a flame and I make no apologies for it.
Gnome started for one reason and one reason only: RMS didn't agree with the KDE developers' interpretation of the GPL wrt the QT library. Gnome was set up with the intention of creating FUD to delay the uptake of the best thing to ever happen to desktop Linux and to bluff and bully the KDE crowd into getting the QT licencing changed.
Yes, you heard it right, Gnome was *deliberately* started to be "bickering, competing and incompatible" and to stop Linux having a single desktop standard if that standard was to be KDE.
The licence issue is *long* in the past. That out of the way, the Gnome crowd should have had to decency to either scrap Gnome completely (as did those working on the Harmony project, which was developing a GPL QT clone) so we could unite behind KDE or keep Gnome going as a low key longer-term hacker R&D project like Enlightenment. But no, we had to keep the ball rolling didn't we.
Why, given the adverse impact this has had on Linux and other target platforms?
NIH syndrome partly; a lot of big egos (many in the US) were beaten to the punch by a bunch of (mainly) German students.
And the fact that it relies on an existing library means that big egos who want to reinvent the universe can't develop their own object library; they have to do something useful.
But the main reason, irony of ironies, is that it is LGPL rather than KDE's GPL; yes folks, the desktop that began as *THE* GNU free desktop now boasts that it is more commercial-friendly. That's why Sun and HP are putting money into it. Guarantees success? Ah, look at CDE...
Gnome is an expensive, deliberately divisive vapourware project that should have been scrapped after the QT licence changes if the principals involved had any sense of decency or any *REAL* committment to free software. It continues because a bunch of pricks can't admit that they were wrong and continue to put their own giant egos ahead of the development of desktop Unix.
Meanwhile KDE continues to release in its usual methodical fashion while Gnome 2 stays as FUD. ("You may think KDE's kewl, but wait till you see Gnome 2!") Pardon me while I puke...
Gnome and the bastards who've hyped this piece of vapourware and tried to sabotage KDE for the last five years can go to Hell! Who needs Microsoft trying to pull the rug from under the free Unix's when you've got this lot! (Yes, that includes RMS, who is responsible for initiating and encouraging this debacle).
To paraphrase the end of RMS's infamous letter of "forgiveness" to the KDE developers: Go KDE!!!
You're not the first one to point out of the GUI design shortcomings of KDE in regards to Fitts'Law. I've mentioned several times now on slashdot KDE discussions about how increasing the toolbar button size would give faster mouse access times, and how labeling the toolbar buttons we be even better, because it would make the toolbar button bigger and clarify what action the button is supposed to perform (which isn't usually very well clarified by most tiny ass KDE toolbar icons).
Even after I say in the first paragraph of and every one of these posts "yes, I know you can select an option to label toolbar buttons in KDE, but it isn't done by default, and the majority of desktop end users are going to use the default installed on their machine. Just ask Netscape"
I still get morons saying "You clearly have never used KDE. You can select an option to label toolbar buttons." Remind me to send those folks a pack of Ginko Biloba supplements. Some poster who was most likely a KDE developer who went by the username "Duley" (gee, I wonder who that could be...) retorted "That's what you want. That's not what I want" seemingly incapable of understanding that I'm not talking about my personal preference but about a well established human factors principles that has been proven in usability test after usability test.
I get other people saying "the point of KDE is to be familiar to windows users, not to follow Fitts' Law".
I get other people who just shut their ears, their eyes, and their minds and label me a troll for daring to suggest the KDE UI has any shortcomings that might be improved.
I'm not really suprised by this. The linux community in general is extraordinarily hostile towards HCI people. There's this idea of "well, you don't write code. Your input is far less worthy than ours. All you really do is needlessly criticize other people's work."
Gee, I wonder why linux has been having so much trouble getting onto the desktop...
Don't you mean 'fewer dependencies'. You ignorant fuck.
Well said.