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KDE 3.1 Alpha1 is Here
navindra writes: "A brand new alpha of the breath-taking KDE 3.1 development branch has been announced. This release sports everything from wonderful new eye candy to tons of popular new features including new and exciting "easter eggs" (aka bugs) just waiting to be discovered. Remember, this is not a stable release -- those of you concerned with stability should use KDE 3.0.2, whereas those of you who want to help KDE 3.1 be the best KDE ever should use this alpha. Kudos to Dre for writing the announcement and to the tireless Dirk Mueller for coordinating this release. Party!" On a related note, pAlpha writes: "Over the past years a large amount of myths has built up around KDE. Recently Aaron J. Seigo released a page about the KDE myths and facts." Good for convincing the boss.
...is Slashdot the place for alpha announcements?
i'm sure there are plenty of KDE fans here and all, but this isn't even beta yet. if Slashdot announced every alpha release of every decent-sized Open Source project... Oh wait, they do.
Cretin - a powerful and flexible CD reencoder
Aaron J Siego also started up the KDE Usability Project, in order to spearhead work on improving the KDE UI. I was following the list for quite a few weeks, until the traffic grew too substantial to keep up with. But according to the 3.1 alpha release notes, some of their intial work, including work on Kicker, is going to be included in the new release.
This is a wonderful thing. From reading the list, I know that they've painstakingly thought through the work they've done, modeled and remodeled, discussed and argued all the little details to get things as good as they could. Progress has been slow for that reason, but it is substantial, and over time I think it'll bring KDE's usability to something we can all really be proud of.
Features are nice, but I think improving the usability of KDE will help everyone in the long run.
"I may not have morals, but I have standards."
I'll agree that the new KDE *THEME* seen on the screenshots looks a lot like WinXP, but keep in mind that it can be made to look like almost anything you want.
Also, I disagree with "every body knows that XP was just a pretty GUI". Compared to Windows2000, perhaps it was; but most consumers weren't using Win2k, but Win9x. And WinXP is insistently aimed at home users too, touting new, unheard-of features like STABILITY (whoaaaaaa) and stuff like that. WinXP mixes all that stuff.
Finally, WinXP's prettyness can be argued with; i think it looks childish and dumb, but that's just me..
I love Linux on the desktop, and I love KDE, but unless it offers something original, something that Windows and Mac OS don't, then what's the point?
What's the point? Freedom, for starters. You get a first-rate GUI without sacrificing Freedom. Isn't that worth celebrating, even if the GUI is not totally "original"?
Besides, why is it necessarily desireable for a GUI to be completely original? It's been said often before, but I guess it bears repeating. Most modern GUI systems look very similar. They all use "windows", "menus", "icons", "buttons", and "desktops". Does this mean that no one can think of anything new, and it's all about "A copied B copied C copied D! Shame on A, B and C!" ? Perhaps. But it's also possible that the Desktop metaphor just makes sense and it works well. Would you rather KDE make a completely new computing paradigm, even if it meant it was harder to use? Just for the sake of being "different"?
Besides, KDE offers plenty that Win/Mac don't, besides Freedom. Themability, for one. You claim to "love" KDE, and yet it seems you don't understand that the way your desktop looks is largely up to you in KDE. You can make it look very similar to WinXP, or very similar to OSX, or not really like either. The person who took those screenshots chose to have a panel that looks like the OSX dock. Others have an XP-like panel. Mine looks like neither. KDE gives you the freedom to build a desktop that suits your needs and style. How is that copying either OSX or XP?
I guess I shouldn't even bother...there will always be naysayers. I remember when they were saying "KDE will never be as good as Windows or Mac!". Now it's "Ok, KDE is just as good as Windows/Mac...but it's not BETTER, so what's the point?!"
Indeed, what's the point?
Liberal (adj.): Free from bigotry; open to progress; tolerant of others.
It is fully VNC compatible and supports the latest codecs.
It changes. You can put a movie underneath it and watch the movie through the menu. Well... assuming your video driver supports it. The fact that there are no available video drivers that support this feature is due to the newness of this capability in X.
bullshit fakery being passed off as the real thing - the KDE project in a nutshell.
Hang onto your copy of KDE 3.1. When the driver for your videocard supports the new extension, watch a nice DivX and pop a menu over it. Maybe you'll understand the concept of a new API definition requiring the upgrade of existing drivers.
It's a bit like if Doom III comes out running on OpenGL 2, and your video card only supports OpenGL 1.x, and you run around screaming "Doom III doesn't really work. It's all bullshit fakery - Id Software in a nutshell."
--
Evan
"$30 for the One True Ring. $10 each additional ring!" -- JRR "Bob" Tolkien
What about tabbed browsing?
What about multiple desktops?
What about opening new browser windows with the MMB?
What about themes!
What about scrollbar-jumping?
What about the Alt-modifier key for faster window-manipulation?
MSFT copied often enough and is now clearly lagging behind KDE in the GUI area because they still have a lot to copy to catch up.