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Interview with David Faure of Mandrake & KDE
JigSaw writes: "OSNews features an interesting interview with David Faure, the french KDE developer who works for Mandrake Software. His code can be found on Konqueror, KFM, KWord and he is also the main bug hunter for KDE. David talks about KDE 3's enhancements and speed improvements, the future of KWord, the debugging tools under Linux, and even Gnome2, .NET, MacOSX and Mozilla."
Had to.
DrPascal: Not the language, the mathematician.
Actually I was trying to post to the "chilling effect" story... but maybe I'll be first post :)
I give up, some one get me when Elvis returns...
You should consider suicide a viable alternative to failed FP attempts.
please mod it down accordingly.
This Fifth Post is a failed attempt to post first. Four people have come before me to pave my way. They baptize you with water, but I will baptize you with fire.
Propz to all dead Joanie, my pubes are red with blood.
_________________
EBAY SAFETY TIPZ!
Don't worry, here is googles cached copy ;)
somehow KDE will always be.
GNOME developers are arrogant assholes.
It sucks. It doesn't suck too bad, though, I'm unemployed. I had beer for breakfast.
--
the strongest word is still the word "free"
...between GNOME and KDE. Despite what some Windows fans may claim, I don't think it's detrimental to have two leading desktop managers for Linux. As I see it, the competition is really pushing the two development teams to outdo themselves. Healthy competition -- as long as it does not translate into flame wars on the Internet -- is a good thing, and we're all the better for it. I mean, look at how the UI for Windows has evolved in the past five years (and I'm not talking about eye-candy here - yes, alpha channels are cool, but it does not add any kind of usability)...It seems obvious to me that MS could use a little competition on the desktop before its GUI stagnates further.
(Hmm..."stagnate further"...is that an oxymoron?)
Reminder: find a new sig
I think that the print side of Linux is still very very lacking in ease of use and setup. Theres really no reason for this, especially when I can install Mandrake and have a nice wysiwyg gui ask me a bunch of questions and things just work (for the most part). CUPS should just come with something this powerful itself (and yes, im aware of the web interface, but it lacks.. bad).
Tis better to be silent and thought a fool, than to open your mouth and remove all doubt --Abraham Lincoln
I can see it now, all the best open source including KDE 3.0, Mozilla 1.0, Open office 1.0, and Xfree86 5.0 :). Plus its fast and much better than a broken window :)
this post be amusing be ye says I
Arrrr!
[[Ay fukkand lyke ane furious Fornicatour]]
Hey you've linked to so many interesting stories on osnews lately that I've changed my lynx homepage from slashdot to osnews.
Don't worry, though, I'll still open slashdot every day to *not* read the Jon Katz articles
- Derwen
http://fsfeurope.org/
...she posted that her costs were getting really high, so here's the interview...
;)
:) Let's talk about the development tools then. In addition to the obvious compiler, debugger and text editor, Linux comes with pretty decent development tools such as XEmacs, vim, and kdevelop. On the subject of XEmacs, the KDE developers have been developing some macros (lisp code) that help developing C++ with it, this is available in kdesdk/scripts. For advanced debugging such as memory leaks, kmtrace (in kdesdk) seems to do a good job too. What was missing for a long time was a memory debugger, to detect use of uninitialized or deleted memory etc., such as Purify provides. This is now available thanks to Julian Seward, who developed a GPL tool call valgrind [http://devel-home.kde.org/~sewardj/].
;)
.NET the Framework? Have you had a look to this new API yet? What are your thoughts of dotGNU and Ximian's Mono?
.NET is basically Microsoft's reinvention of Java, with the possibility for any object-oriented language to be compiled into C# bytecode, which isn't possible with Java itself. I'm quite fond of Java, and C# seems to be the same kind of language, but speed has always been a problem with Java. It can be either interpreted or compiled just in time, but none of those beat compiled code. However I realize that's primarily a problem in browsers, native applications written in either of those could be "pre-compiled" to native code, I suppose. But the idea of cross-platform applications written in any programming language is indeed appealing, and goes the right way in the long term. I'm just not too fond of using a Microsoft solution for that, as "open" as they claim it to be. For that reason, DotGNU looks much better to me than implementing Microsoft's .NET, if I understand DotGNU correctly.
.NET or DotGNU, we will, not before". So this might come when there are many .NET applications out there, primarily developed for Windows, and people will want to run those under Linux/Unix, with KDE/Qt widgets. The compiler and interpreter are independent from the desktop or toolkit anyway, so there is no need for developing KDE-specific versions of those. Personnally, I'd rather concentrate on providing the applications people need under Linux, such as a word processor (I work on KWord, part of KOffice). However, others seem more interested in this, and for instance a CLI disassembler has just been started by a KDE/Qt developer (see kdenonbeta/kcli in CVS).
.NET much before KDE. For us and our users, C++ does the job just fine, I don't see us throwing that away just yet.
a ry/l-kparts/] I recently wrote about KParts for IBM developerWorks)... Believe it or not, time is always the limiting factor, even for a paid full-time developer.
;)
;).
:).
:). Personnally, I plan to look at background spell-checking (underlining mispelled words during typing), page size handling, footnotes, double-underline, and then looking at the buglist again to see what else is missing ;)
;), and more focus on stability everywhere - users should never ever have to face a crash. System administration has finally been made rather accessible, especially thanks to the distributor's tools, but this was also a crucial missing point for long, and it surely still needs improvements. As far as KDE is concerned, the portability on all Unix flavours doesn't always make things easy. For instance I have been working on a "share this directory" feature for Mandrake, as a Konqueror patch, but this hasn't been integrated to KDE itself yet due to the numerous differences between Linux distributions, and between Unix variants.
:)
Interview with Mandrake's & KDE's David Faure
By Eugenia Loli-Queru - Posted on 2002-02-25 17:32:22
in OSNews [http://www.osnews.com/]
David Faure [http://people.mandrakesoft.com/~david/] is a well known developer in the KDE & Linux community. His work can be found in KFM, Konqueror source code and he recently also picked up KOffice's KWord [http://www.koffice.org] development. David is also one of the people who have commited in bug squashing under KDE, especially after he got hired by Mandrake Software. Read more for our interview with David regarding Konqueror, KDE object prelinking, Gnome and much more.
1. KDE 3 comes out soon. What is the best new advancement/feature found in KDE 3 in your opinion?
David Faure: I think the most important improvement in KDE3 is the greatly improved Javascript and DHTML support in Konqueror. I'm not only saying this because I took part in the work on Javascript, but also because this was said to be the most important drawback of Konqueror in KDE 2 by many users. The IMAP support in KMail comes to mind too, as an important new feature, for those using IMAP. KDE 3 is not a big architectural change (such as KDE 2.0 was), it is simply a continuation in the work on all applications, adding the features that the user requested, as well as improving speed and stability.
2. Are the KDE people going to do something for the C++ loader problem in Linux, which results on slow KDE loading times? Is the object prelinked method 'safe', or work is being done to the loader itself, to add the needed functionality?
David Faure: You said it all
The linker has indeed been identified as a cause for slowdown when starting C++ applications. Work is being done in that area, though not by the KDE developers themselves. The objprelink method does not appear to be stable enough to work around this problem, it is known to be the reason for crashes in the Javascript engine and in KMail. I'm not aware of the details, but it seems objprelink is rather a "hack", i.e. a quick change that doesn't address the whole issue. On the other hand, rumours have it that the gcc/ld developers are working on prelinking, which is something different, cleaner, faster, and stable.
3. Some people call you the "KDE Bug Crasher". Windows enjoy the presense of some very advanced development tools, like the new VS.NET debugger or Purify/Quantify by Rational. How the Linux developers are coping when they are in need to debug big projects like KDE or Gnome or Star Office? What tools do you use and how they compare to the Windows equivelant?
David Faure: Those calling me that never told me
Although still under development, this tool allows to find many non-obvious bugs in the code. But for the most common types of bugs (wrong code paths etc.) kdDebug() (the equivalent of printf or cout) and gdb do the job quite well
4. What do you think about
David Faure: From what I've seen - I admit I haven't looked very much into the API though -,
Anyway, KDE's stand on the question is that "when we'll be at a point where we need to add support for
Despite previous claims, Gnome is apparently in need for an object-oriented language, much more adapted to develop graphical applications, and this is probably why they are jumping to
5. The two major browsers under Linux are Konqueror and Mozilla these days. However, both are not so responsive, many times they feel sluggish. What do you think about a KDE application that only uses the KHTML KPart to achieve the same goals and speed as Galeon does for Mozilla?
David Faure: The improvements I mentionned in the first paragraph are very related to this. KHTML has been much improved for KDE 3.0, making rendering noticeably faster, and the Javascript engine has been greatly sped up too. I think you are mistaken about Konqueror itself. The fact that it can embed other components than KHTML does not make it slower or more bloated than a separate application using KHTML. All it adds to KHTML is the user interface (menus and toolbars).
On that subject, one area of speed improvement in KDE 3 is that Konqueror's bookmarks are not loaded right away anymore, even when a bookmark toolbar is shown. To come back to the comparison with Galeon and Mozilla: the comparison doesn't stand. Those two are very different, whereas a separate application using KHTML and providing a user interface for it would end up being Konqueror itself! It's all about the same toolkit here, unlike the Galeon vs Mozilla case. Anyway, users should be pleased at the speed and stability improvements brought by KDE 3 - and I expect many more improvements to be done before the final release, since many KDE developers are meeting for a week of heavy bugfixing, in a few days.
6. Have you had a look at Gnome 2? What is your opinion of GTK+ 2 and Gnome 2?
David Faure: I am sorry to say that I haven't had a look at either of those. Users have time to look around and test things. Myself, I have two of the most used KDE applications (Konqueror and KWord) to attend to, and this keeps me quite busy, especially when added to sysadmin work for KDE, helping developers on the mailing-lists and IRC, writing articles about KDE development (see the article [http://www-106.ibm.com/developerworks/linux/libr
7. Where do you see KDE in 1-2 years? What new features you would like to see added to the popular desktop environment?
David Faure: To be frank, I'm not really a "visionary". I have recently realized that all the major changes in KDE which I took part in, were all initiated by someone else, I simply joined in and offered my help, usually doing quite an important share of the work. This made me a bit sad, realizing I'm the man-power behind innovation, but not the innovator himself
I guess it's my rather conservative nature ("better keep what we have and improve it than start from scratch and break everything"), although my work on KWord has been an exception to that
Anyway, I hope to see KDE much more widely used, even more user-friendly, and I hope to see many more developers on KOffice - most people don't seem to realize how few developers are behind KOffice
In the long run, I'd really like to see many more KDE applications being developed, to cover everyone's needs. We are developing the applications that most people need (mail client, file manager, office suite etc.), but what's preventing many people from switching to Linux is the lack of more specialized applications. For instance, 3D modelling, audio/video editing, advanced scientific apps, accountancy apps... I know that there is some development in most of those areas, but at the moment it doesn't look like Linux provides as many specialized applications as Windows does, nor the same level of functionality. The relation with KDE is that it helps the user if all graphical applications have a consistent look-n-feel - with emphasis on behavior even more than on looks.
8. KOffice has come a long way. What is the roadmap for KWord, which is the specific part you maintain? What new features you would like to implement?
David Faure: The story of KWord development is that after KOffice-1.0, the original author switched to other things and no development happened at all anymore. After 6 months, and seeing the numerous requests from users, I decided to work on KWord, redesigning it around a new text layout engine - developed in Qt by the former KWord author, so experience was built upon, not lost. This work, with the help of a few other developers, has led to KOffice-1.1.1, which most people agree is the first useable version of KWord, stable and providing the most important features. Since then, I've been working on WYSIWYG support, frame z-order, and other developers have been working onimproved table handling and DCOP scriptability. Much work is still to be done, the users have requested many features, and that's basically the roadmap
9. There is a lot of talk lately, both camps with good arguments as to if Linux will make it on the desktop or not. What do you think? What should be done on Linux to become easily administrated/maintaned by the average JoeUser?
David Faure: I do think that Linux will make it on the desktop. I think it has already made it to some desktops, and will continue to improve, thanks to user-friendly interfaces such as KDE, "konquering" (pun intended) JoeUser's desktop.
My own family is obviously the testing bed for this, I have my own usability labs in the persons of my wife, her sister and my parents.
I think that what is currently missing for non-technical users is better error reporting (e.g. sending errors to log files is not enough - any CUPS developer listening?
10. What do you think of MacOSX and the way they have wrapped Unix under a pretty and usable desktop?
David Faure: See the question about Gnome. I haven't had time to have a look, but the idea sounds quite nice. Wrapping Unix in a pretty and useable desktop is exactly what KDE is about, but the main difference is that KDE is free and opensource
( Original Story URL at http://www.osnews.com/story.php?news_id=704 )
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Click here
I really like mandrake, but God, why did the French have to make it? I'm so ashamed.
How come that the very first beta of KDE 3 was so nice, and all the following betas are so unstable? :-)
KDE 3: The Windows Killer
Here is an interview that he with linux.org. A little outdated but still interesting.
Click here
CMDR Lamo and friends have changed the default order by to be newest first.....
Cooleo! Now I have the first post!
Linux Buttsex HOW-TO
by Alan Cocks
Introduction
This HOW-TO explains how to perform Buttsex in the Linux Operating System w/Enterprise Resources (LOSER). This HOW-TO assumes basic knowledge of general Linux operation.
Preparation
Most basically, all Linux Buttsex requires is a machine running the Linux Operating System, a penis (also referred to as a "cock" or "dick"), and a willing friend. However, you benefit greatly, especially when starting out, if you posess standard Buttsex tools.
Standard Buttsex Tools
Lubricant - Slippery stuff you smear on your johnson and your friend's manpussy, to ease the transition into Buttsex mode. Vaseline will do in a pinch, but water-based lubricants such as KY Jelly and Astroglide are preferable.
Contraception - Protective barrier between your schlong and the inside of your friend's love canal. Breeders use them to prevent pregnancy, but we queer nancies usually use them to protect ourselves from the deadly AIDS virus. While some enterprising faggots have made do with plastic wrap or masking tape, there is no substitute for a latex condom. Most all condoms will do, as long as they aren't the "extra-thin" type. Some condoms are labelled as beiong superior for Buttsex, but are not necessary.
Step One -- Prepare the Anus
This step is especially important if your friend has never taken a willie in the ass before. Prepare his anus for the width and girth of your manhood with the "finger" command. It is used like so:
% finger [insert your friend's name here]
Begin with your index or middle finger, and then both middle AND index fingers, at the same time. Ten to fifteen minutes should do. If you wish, you may felate him or suck his balls, while you're fingering him.
Step Two -- Entry
Here the fun starts. Have your friend lay prone on the bed, or even better, get down "on all fours". Optionally, place a couple pillows beneath him to make him more comfortable. Now position yourself behind him, and spread his asscheeks. Apply lubricant, generously, to both your sexrod, and his pit of pleasure. It is advisable to stick your fingers partially inside in his anus, to make sure that the entire edge of the entry is covered.
Your penis must be fully erect in order to make a sucessful entry. If you are not already "hard as a rock", you may rub your penis in his asscrack, while tweaking his nipples (or stroking his cock), and saying intimidating things, such as "I am going to make you squeal like a pig, boy. Squeal, like a pig!".
When your sexstick is sufficiently engorged with blood, it is time to being entry. Place the head of your cock firmly against his brown anal starfish. Begin applying firm pressure forwards, optionally using your hand to guide your dick on a true course into sodomy. Your friend is most likely moaning in agony or yelping, and you may either ignore this, or in a snide tone, say "You like that, bitch?".
When your penis is in, move on to the next step.
Step Three -- Hardcore Assramming
This is fairly simple. Move your dick around in his ass, towards and then back, at varying speeds. If for some reason your dick pops out, put in back in, undaunted. Continue pumping and thrusting until you feel you are ready to move on to Step Four.
Step Four -- Orgasm
When ready to blow your load, use this command:
% stdout > ass
This redirects your standard output stream into your friend's pink tunnel of shit. Enter the command, then with one final thrust, placing the entire length of your cock inside his body. Your penis will then eject about a quart of sticky white semen, accompanied by tremendous pleasure.
Step Five -- Cleanup
If you wore a condom, cleanup is simple. Remove the condom and toss it out your window. Then sop up any other jizz, anal juice, shit, or lubricant with Brawny(R) brand paper towels.
If you did not wear a condom, your friend will have a steady drip of cum out of his ass for the next few hours. Tell him to "buck up" and stuff some toilet paper in his underwear.
Afterward
Congratulations! You are now a l337 LUN1X 4$$r4mm3r, just like Linux Toreballs and his gay minions! Celebrate by masturbating to the sensual gay erotica found at http://www.goatse.cx/ .
Troubleshooting
My penis isn't long enough to get past the buttcheeks!
Only Jon Katz has this problem. Jon, I've told you to just get the damned surgery.
I have a really small penis, but it's still difficult to get in in the ass!
Only Jon Katz has this problem, because he fucks little boys. Jon, get the damned surgery, and find a lover over the age of 12.
Do you know where I can find kiddie pr0n?
Please go away, Katz.
I prefer to use Windows simply because the windowing system works at a sensible speed.
Okay, the Microsoft "Windowing system" is hardly full featured, but it works quickly, and it seems to fit well together.
I'm not aware of the details, but it seems objprelink is rather a "hack", i.e. a quick change that doesn't address the whole issue.
I undesrtand what he tried to explain, but I think it gives a negative conotation to term "hack", which already has a bad reputation of meaning "crack" (thanks mainly to the mainstream press).
Given the fact that the audience of the site is not yout typical Joe-AOL dude, the author could have ommitted that i.e. explanation without compromising his answer...
"KDE 3 comes out soon. What is the best new advancement/feature found in KDE 3 in your opinion?"
:-P
Heheh, screw functionality and "the greatly improved Javascript and DHTML support in Konqueror". What users REALLY want is translucent window backgrounds.
Seriously though, it does look might sweet.
--I hate big sigs.
but what's preventing many people from switching to Linux is the lack of more specialized applications. For instance, 3D modelling, audio/video editing, advanced scientific apps, accountancy apps...
This is very true. People talk about Linux 'taking over the desktop' which is good, but there is much more immediate niches to fill in other areas. They are good spot for Linux because the people doing that need a complete system, but don't need it to work with every other computer out there, and aren't worried about being able to buy the latest games etc. Printing is another one which he didn't mention but someone here did. Linux needs a better print system, and whoever is in a position to do it could probably even take a look at MacOS X for some very good ideas. 3D is getting the royal treatment and is a very good place for linux right now with XFS, ReiserFS, PRman, BMRT, Mental Ray, Maya, Shake, Softimage XSI 2.0, Houdini, and all sorts of high end graphics stuff, no 3D production studio is locked into windows or SGI anymore. Video and audio on the other hand, really need work. The video toaster ran on an Amiga for fucks sake, that should be proof that ultimate compatibility isn't needed and a self reliant system can do the job well. This is where I really see Linux taking off, is with distributions specifically made for different niches. They could come with all the libraries needed for the different programs you might run, and of course have all the free ones already installed. It will take a few startups to do something like this, however, and startups aren't in a good position right now.
This Wiki Feeds You TV and Anime - vidwiki.org
Oviously the KDE developers don't think so.
If half the people out there can't read the article because it's Slashdotted, how can you benefit? Would you rather Slashdot not link you at all?
/. tell
/. weenie to tell me what
Gotta love it when dipshits on
people how to run their business.
Me, I'd trust a
I want any day of the week. But I wouldn't
presume to try to convince anyone that
what I thought they needed was actually what
they needed.
You must be a consultant.
I recently set up a epson stylus c60 for my g/f. It works great, but... She is on redhat 7.2, and I used printtool with the latest packages from the redhat site to configure everything.
It looks like when I print plaintext, the printer does a great job, printing using the black cartridge and doing it very fast.
For ANYTHING postscript (ie, web pages from mozilla, or text from abiword), the printer makes black by mixing color, even if there is NO COLOR on the page (hell, even if there is, if the text is black, print it with black ink, dammit!!! (it did this with the redhat postscript test page too). Is there a way around this stupid behavior short of creating a 'black-only' print queue?? Never mind that solution too, since many times I want color, but I want anything black to print using BLACK!
I am using the stp driver for the Stylus 760, since there wasn't a C60 specific driver listed. Would switching over to cups solve my problem? Is there a way to get this working with the current LPRng supplied with redhat?
There is nothing wrong with competition. Its great that you can go and choose from all the different types of cars you can buy. However, incompatibility is bad. It's not like buying a Ford will limit you to using certain roads. Case in point. KDevelop is a far better IDE than Anjuta. Yet, Evolution is nicer than KMail. What to do? I'm not sadistic enough to run apps from both desktops (too un-asthetic), so I put up with Anjuta just to stay with GTK. The KDE/GNOME application landscape is rife with such choices. The base of GOOD Linux desktop applications is too slim to be divided up among multiple desktops. While I doubt there is anything that can be done about these multiple projects, but its a bad state of affairs nonetheless. Of course, none of this would be a problem if the desktop was in the X server, where ALL apps could use the same set of services, but apparently, nobody had heard of dynamic loading (to make the desktop a plug-in to the X server) when X was designed.
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
Gee you can get all of these things right now if you'd just get a Mac, and now you even get a Unix-like foundation under the OS. Computers are a too, choose the right tool for the job. How come only in operating systems do people have to be so rigid in their religion? The major auto companies are not exactly angels, nor are the soft drink companies, etc., but few choose what is obviously an inferior choice because of religion.
or its GUI will continue to stagnate.
will be trapped in stasis?
will keeps on sucking?
* * Always question "the National Interest" - 9 times out of 10 it is a cover for evil
The KDE developers are GNOME-badmouthing idiots. This guy was going off about how GNOME needs to be object oriented, falsely claimed that GNOME was moving to .NET.
Miguel avoided insulting KDE at all when he was interviewed, so why do the KDE people have to be so immature?
I don't understand why people can't deal with printing under Linux. I've used and set up both lpr and lprng and it was a piece of cake, once I managed to avoid running out of memory all the time on the ancient Postscript printer I was using (which is an issue that would come up on Windows or the MacOS as well).
CUPS is supposed to be easy-to-use, unlike lpr and lprng (which is why people are willing to use a piece of non-free software...ease of use). But all I hear about on Slashdot is how people can't get CUPS set up properly. I've come to the conclusion that either CUPS doesn't deserve its ease of use reputation or everyone setting up their printers simply doesn't understand Linux in the least.
I find lpr and lprng to be much easier to troubleshoot than the Windows printing system...we have some plotters and CAD stuff at work, and troubleshooting them is a complete and utter pain. You have no idea what's going on in them.
Subscribe to the mandrake club.
Alot of people claim to support open source but only a few thousand seem to be putting their money where their mouth is. Theres mandrake club, theres transgaming, and plenty of other ways to fund development of open source.
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
Yes, of course. Miguel is a stunning example of maturity.
It's clever, though.
This is a line of text.