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What To Expect From KDE 3.1
Moritz Moeller - Her writes "As most of you desktop users already know, the KDE Project recently released KDE 3.1beta2, which will be the final development release before KDE 3.1. The good news is, KDE 3.1 is scheduled for release in just a few weeks. The following page gives a nice overview about what is coming with many screenshots. It will certainly be the best KDE ever."
It's really a shame SuSE wouldn't wait for this release before shipping their product a couple weeks before. It truly has a large number of improvements over 3.0.x. Oh well, perhaps other distros listen to their users' wishes more?
Well, that's a relief. I was worried that the newest version would suck worse than all previous versions. *whew*
AND it looks more like Windows95? Awesome!
"It will certainly be the best KDE ever."
Better than the future releases? Woah, I must download that now.
i really want to thank all kde people for this great work. right now i am sitting here at home and switch from GNOME (cvs) to KDE (cvs). keep up the good work for this professional desktop. it's a cool useroriented, fast and quickly developed desktop. thank you all.
Using it since lunch. Every KDE release seems to get faster and faster. It's actually faster than fluxbox. F' plain window managers if full desktop environments are faster than them. F' twm.
So does hitting ctrl-alt-backspace automatically press the "Submit" button in your web browser?
Please ignore the parent comment and my stupidity to post it incomplete. I'm usually seen going off on a tangent about how horrible XFree86 is, but all facts through and through; given the platform, XFree86, I am really quite impressed by what KDE has managed to accomplish, especially with the more recent betas. I am the one on the front lines complaining about horrible responsiveness is with the X based window managers, but KDE has managed to earn my respect as far as speed and feel go. I hope they release many more successful betas.
Andreas> P.S. Let's please be nice to each other, OK?
well... at least we won't have to wait too long to do a KDE-less install of RH8, then install KDE3.1 and skip the RH mangling part of it...
I hope they don't add just features but that they tune down the whole thing. All new apps in linux are getting more bloat now. Even the kernel has become unusable in older systems ( i know, new features require new hardware)
Open Source Java Web Forum with LDAP authentication
Well, I fell for it. HOwever, if I could I'd mod you up as "funny." Good one.
Is it just me or is the kde.org server extremely slow? Is this related to that downtime I heard about a few days ago?
Anyway, I do have to admit, KDE is one of the more attractive desktop environments - even better than WinXP (with its ugly green/blue combo - it don't work). I would use KDE as my main desktop environment, cause my favorite distro - Mandrake installs the d.e. by default. But I've never decided to use KDE (nor GNOME) because the two are extremely fat and slow on low-end systems. Even on my high end systems, I'd rather give up looks for power and speed.
Now this is looking to be a nice upgrade.. as a bit of an art junky I'm pleased at the nice amount of eye candy they're including.
Roll on the release date, I just hope this nicer front-end will appeal to those non-Linux users... we might have to start doing 'interviews' with people who have switched to Linux, redress the balance a bit!
Are you local? There's nothing for you here!
Well, I'm using KDE 3.0.4 on Debian and it works great. Stuff doesn't load immediately though, but what's the problem with that anyway? It's not like you're going to start a program just to close it in 5 seconds. When I open a link in Konqueror in a new window it appears immediately.
As most of you desktop users already know, the KDE Project recently released KDE 3.1beta2, which will be the final development release before KDE 3.1. The good news is, KDE 3.1 is scheduled for release in just a few weeks.
KDE 3.1, the strongest KDE release to date, promises new goodies for just about everyone who gets to enjoy the full KDE desktop experience. Here is a sampling of what is in store for you:
Browsing with Tabs. The many fans of tabbed browsing will be delighted by this new addition to the KDE web browser ( Konqueror ) (screenshot). To simplify downloading a large number of files, a new download manager (KGET), which fully integrates into Konqueror, has joined the network package (kdenetwork). It manages any number of downloads in one window, where transfers can be added, removed, paused, resumed, queued or scheduled. A dialog displays transfer status, including progress, size, speed and estimated time to completion.
Eye Candy. The artistically-inclined KDE contributors have showered us with a basket of new eye candy. As shown in this screenshot, KDE 3.1 will ship with the contemporary Crystal icon set as well as the original new Keramik theme. The screenshot also shows the new drop-shadows. To help manage these stunning themes, KDE will provide a new theme manager with improved theme style and color decoration previews (screenshot). Menus and other desktop windows can also use attractive drop shadows, as shown in the screenshot above.
Personal Information Management. On the PIM front, the email client ( KMail ) has gained several privacy and security enhancements - namely S/MIME, PGP/MIME and X.509v3 support - in collaboration with the Aegypten project, an IT security project sponsored by the German government (screenshot). The calendar / scheduling application (KOrganizer) features a new Exchange 2000 plugin. The address book (KAddressbook) has gained the ability to fetch contact information from one or more LDAP servers. It can also print contact information and import industry-standard vCards.
While not included in the 3.1 release, the next quantum jump in KDE's email / groupware architecture is scheduled for KDE 3.2, when KDE will ship a completely copy-lefted, integrated groupware system. Currently known as the Kroupware Project, it is being sponsored by the German government and will integrate the major KDE PIM applications (screenshot, screenshot). More about this project, and some additional screenshots, can be found on the dot. KDE 3.2 will also feature the ability to use Vim as the mail composer (screenshot).
File Management. The file manager (Konqueror) has a number of new goodies, such as folder icons which reflect a folder's contents, a video thumbnail generator and a number of plugins for providing enhanced- or meta-information about various file types (e.g., images, binary packages, source code). The file search utility can now search file meta-information for searching multi-media files.
Desktop Sharing. For those who switch work stations frequently, KDE offers a new VNC-compatible desktop sharing framework. It enables users to share a KDE desktop across multiple machines (screenshot).*
Enterprise. Enterprises, Internet cafes and similar users will appreciate enhancements to the KDE Kiosk framework (the Kiosk framework provides an easy way to disable certain features within KDE to create a more controlled environment). In addition, the panel (Kicker) now supports fully customized menus.
Multimedia. The multimedia framework (kdemultimedia) has a new video decoder based on Xine. Xine is a video framework which provides support for various video formats, such as AVI, DivX, Cinepak, Sorenson Video, MPEG 1/2 and 4, QuickTime / MOV, ASF and others.
Games. For the playful among us, KDE 3.1 will offer a number of new games in the games package (kdegames), including a golf game ( Kolf ) (screenshot), an Atlantik and Monopoly-type game ( Atlantik ), a Blackjack game ( Megami ). and a Same-like game ( Klickery ).
Ease of Use. A number of other improvements are meant simply to make the desktop easier to use and configure. For example, the application finder (KAppfinder) provides a nice tree view for selecting the applications to include in the KDE desktop menu hierarchy. Two new user notification methods have also been added for providing non-obtrusive informational messages: a passive popup window (KPassivePopup), which pops up next to the application's entry in the panel's taskbar (without stealing the focus), as well as messages which appear in an application's title-bar (KWindowInfo). In addition, the control center (KControl) has received a face lift and better organization (screenshot).
Miscellaneous. Of course work under the hood continues for KDE 3.1 as well. It provides a number of speed improvements, such as Konqueror start-up time, a number of usability enhancements by the KDE Usability Project, as well as almost 1,000 critter fixes.
More information about planned KDE 3 features is available for KDE 3.1 and KDE 3.2.
Some interesting KDE statistics: the KDE CVS source code repository consists of about 2.6 million lines of code (LOC) (for comparison, the GNU/Linux kernel version 2.5.29 consists of about 3.1 million lines of code). The KDE Project consists of hundreds of active contributors, with 300 of them translating KDE into over 70 languages (KDE 3.0.4 shipped in 51 languages). In May 2002 over 11,014 CVS commits were executed. The KDE website has 24 official mirrors in 16 countries and the KDE FTP site has 71 official mirrors in 30 countries.
The problem is a different people want to code by different ways. W32 world also has many widget libraries from different vendrors (Microsoft itself has multiple ones) which just _look_ the same. Psyche (RedHat 8.0) goes the same - already verified - way.
I don't know if they have fixed any of this yet, but historically kde and Gnome have been to hard to configure due to having too many configuration tools all named similar things.
I have problems getting the correct tool to configure things manytimes on the first try, it's no wonder new users have problems.
-Pete
Soccer Goal Plans
It is kind funny, though, that KDE is integrating a browser with the desktop environment. Back when Microsoft did that with Internet Explorer and Windows, they received a lot of criticism.
Don't get me wrong there - the guys in Microsoft are guilty for their monopolistic efforts to demote Netscape. The deals with the OEM integrators are shameful. But integrating the browser with Windows was a right option made by the IT staff.
Did they finally fix all of the bugs from the 3.0 release? Have they made 3.x a little more backwards compatible from 2.x? I made the mistake of upgrading from 2 to 3 thinking that the KDE would upgrade all of my old desktops, configurations, settings, etc. - I was barely able to get my mail out of KMail, and I lost all of my filters and rules in the process. KDE may have a pretty face, but I think the development work so far ( ESPECIALLY the documentation ) is half-assed at best. At BEST.
Want to impress me? Probably not, but I'll tell you anyways; it's real easy: fix the bugs. Write real, useful, consistent documentation. Set up the KDE so that when the many, many programs that core dump do their usual crash I'm able to automatically send that to the KDE people without having to run a 20-minute wizard. Write your fucking desktop program so that people upgrading can do so seamlessly and painlessly - just because you give me an open source desktop doesn't mean you ignore everything else BUT the source code. bah
"On the Internet, nobody knows you're a dog!" - a dog
Both KDE and gnome are excellent. Perhaps the two large teams of people in some 'competition' is the reason why.
The race isn't always to the swift... but that's the way to bet!
The problem is that that's expected, at least by me. Win98 is considered primitive and crappy but it doesn't take more than a quarter second to load a window on my computer, in general (yeah, if icons are screwed up or you're accessing the CD-ROM drives, it takes longer, but still). I might have a link on my desktop that goes directly to a whole bunch of oggs/mp3s, for example. I wanna open it now and listen to some, then close the window.
I'm not saying that it's essential or anything, but instant gratification, in something even so small as that, is always very nice.
I'm just stating my personal preference. I like windows coming up when I click on them -- as opposed to a few seconds later -- because it simply feels nicer. That's just me, though.
Danish != nationality
That damned distro still has KDE 2..
KDE 3 will be included in Debian at the time GNOME 5 and KDE 9 are being tested, in some 4-5 years (this is exacly the amount of time KDE is not seriously updated in Debian).
I'm not flaming Debian, I [still] use and love it, but I always get annoyed by the lack of updates.
Yeah, it's too bad their servers aren't nearly as fast under the
// file: mice.h
#include "frickin_lasers.h"
i was a long time GNOME user that recently switched over to KDE. i don't want to start a flame here but i think people should know why i changed over. i am one of these persons that had high expectations into GNOME 2 but i was not really impressed the first time i loaded it up. i was following a lot of conversations on *.gnome.org mailinglists and saw that the future GNOME 2.x is targeted the 'untechnical new users'. with other words they target the 'no users desktop'. they are assuming a lot of never confirmed things about their users. things like "the user don't know what a window manager is" or "the user don't know what themes are" and similar things. some of them are sounding really offensive and make you think that the GNOME developer have a bad sense for their users. not to mention that nontechnical users never heard or know what linux is. it's a shame to see how they cripple their own GNOME into a pile of shit. a lot of people that i know of left GNOME in favour to KDE. personally i never thought that this may happen for me too but i recently left GNOME in favour to KDE and i feel really happy now. i finally have the feeling to be productive. i want to thank the kde people so much.
o rg/archives/usability/2002-August/msg00261.html
.php?thread_id=1176218&forum_id=6200
here are some contexts to proof that i don't simply troll around for no reasons:
http://mail.gnome.org/archives/usabili ty/2002-October/msg00021.html
http://mail.gnome.
some people that got really fedup with GNOME 2.
http://galeon.sourceforge.net/g2ui.html
t his is called a GEP. GNOME 2 has a lot of these GEP's read the last paragraph and how they threaten users.
http://sourceforge.net/mailarchive/forum
one of the core developers of GALEON 2 (one of the few remaining ones) left.
Yes. The box in my office at work, a P-II 300 with 196 megs of ram, running Mandrake 9. Mozilla takes about 5 seconds to load. My Mandrake 9 box at home, Athlon 1800+ with 512 megs is quite snappy. I think Mozilla actually loads faster in Linux than Windows.
but my P4 can open StarOffice in about 14 seconds. Mozilla (without the pre-launching stuff configured) takes 17 seconds to load
MS Word takes 2.1 (two point one) secs to load on my P3/1Ghz, WinXP-SP2; I just timed it with my stopwatch.
historically kde and Gnome have been to hard to configure due to having too many configuration tools all named similar things.
I'm confused. Since at least 2.0 (Probably back to 1.x days, I hadn't used KDE then.) KDE has had exactly one control panel app, kcontrol. It's always been in the same place on the default KDE toolbar.
Similarly, Gnome has gnomecc which is one app, and I believe has been around since the 0.40.x days.
Where are these multitudes of configuration tools you speak of?
If you want a fast window manager combo, how about ratpoison+screen?
Open Source Java Web Forum with LDAP authentication
I should also probably add that on the Linux workstations in our labs (which each have a GIG of RAM, mind you), KDE and its associated apps take forever to load. You click in KDE and that little background-flashing-mozilla-dragon cursor will go on and on for about a good 20 seconds.
I've since switched to GNOME + Galeon, which seems a bit snappier. Plus, the fonts, good God the fonts. KDE never seemed to "remember" its font settings, and kind of had a mind of its own. It has this habit of setting the context menu fonts to a cursive calligraphy font, yet no choice exists for that on the font settings menu!
Plus, GNOME, well, I'm impressed at how far its come. It actually looks polished, and has a dab of professionalism on it -- maybe it's the whole Nautilus project, I dunno.
Funny, I've had talks with 2 guys who run BSD, (freebsd and one netbsd), and both just wanted KOffice, but didnt want to bother with the (their terms) Bloat of KDE. Both came back with the same argument, If I wanted that fluff, I'd run XP.
:)
These guys will spend hours tweaking the the look of window maker and not realize thats EXACT reason why people want KDE.
But KDE goes a step further to offer all the Glueware apps people want, remote desktop control, pim syncronizers, mime type GRAPHICAL file managers, and the other countless useability features they put into the desktop.
BTW, I'm super freaking happy Mosfet is BACK, and releasing a new Liquid engine/theme for KDE. This and the new XFT2 font anti-aliasing, I could do the happy dance.
-
Distrowatch
Kinda like Windows 3.1 was the best Windows ever? :)
Here are a bunch of screenshots for your enjoyment while the current server is recovering...
Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum viditur
I wonder who at M$ was the one who decided to buy an ad for this story. Ah well, the sweet irony of clicking on an M$ ad in a KDE story thus generating additional revenue for /. :-).
I stole this Sig
Flamebait?
Quite possibly so but also very true. I love and use KDE but I agree, they need to speed up directory window-loading.
Well, Linux is still the best tool for the job in almost every case. I sure wouldn't run a server from a Windows machine.
And I didn't have to pay for StarOffice either.
Windows just costs too much in Security tradeoffs and actual money. I'll stay pat with Linux.
As much as i like KDE i dont like the direction its taking. Personally i just want a working desktop that i can tweak and turn to my liking. What i dont want is applications and settings scattered all over and 10 ways to do the same thing. Integrating net enabled applications into the desktop is a sure way to bad security and should be avoided. Integrating everything and the kitchen sink has its disadvantage when it comes to bugs that are multi dimensional. They are very hard to find and sometimes impossible to fix without breaking stuff.
Kde should concentrate on doing a great desktop and stop from integrating applications deep down into the core. You can do the same things much more shallow and not at the expence of security. Soon KDE will be its own distribution and that cant be what they strive for.
HTTP/1.1 400
I've got a Duron 850 with 768MB RAM, opening Konqueror takes about 3 seconds. Opening a new window for this reply took less than I can reliably measure though, maybe 0.5 seconds or so.
Yea, I keep wanting to like KDE (and Gnome) and always try out the newest versions, but somehow I always seem to end up back with Window Maker. It's fast, clean, stays out of my way, does what I need. I'm not knocking KDE, it's an impresive piece of work, but that's the great thing about Linux (or BSD) isn't it? You get to use what you want and not what Bill or Steve think you should use.
3.1 is just a stability release, im waiting for 3.2
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
If he doesn't like it, then he doesn't have to use it.
If he has some time, but doesn't know how to code then he can contribute documentation.
If he is not willing to help make the project better then it is better that he shut the fuck up, because his whining doesn't help anyone or anything.
First, I want to say that KDE has come quite a long way. I've used KDE from 1.0 through 3.0 and I really like a lot of the changes I've seen. Many of the changes have been for the good. Opening the code, Konqueror, SMB access, printing, Keramic, etc... The only problem is that a lot of the apps still have arse looking icons. As a rule icons today should be 32-bit color, 128x128 pixels with alpha blending. Some of the icons in Kaplan and Kmail look like they are from Windows 3.1. There are no transparent areas, etc... I kind of wish that someone would come up with a common framework for look and feel that works consistently throughout the environment. The icons in Kicker are awesome! But we need the same quality in the apps for the whole thing to have any real appeal. This is still where GNOME has KDE beat. The icons in GNOME are much nicer looking. Keep it up KDE hackers!! :)
Is another man's usability issue.
I have a gripe regarding the theme used in this screenshot:
UI developers: please stop using curves in widgets and window decorations unless use can use alpha blending to make the edges of the curve look smooth. I'm sorry but monitor resolution just isn't sharp enough to make curves look good without alpha blending and anti-aliasing.
Windows isn't a desktop environment. It is an Operating System and has been since Windows95. KDE is not OS. You can do anything you want on a Linux box without a browser (and KDE). You can't say the same about Windows.
I put up a mirror of the piece on our server at OfB.biz. Hopefully that will help since the promo.kde.org server is unavailable right now.
HTH,
Tim
-------------
"You would not get a high grade for such a design" -- Andy Tanenbaum on Linus' Linux design.
Gnome to KDE: Mission Accomplished, Convert Thrilled
He's slightly right. In the current GNOME, sawfish-ui (the control center for Sawfish) has for some unfathomable reason seceded from the GNOME Control Center.
Win dain a lotica, en vai tu ri silota
Because a GNU/Linux distribution consists of a huge number of independently developed components, there will always be some cool new upgrade to some important package that comes out just a bit too late to make the cut. In many cases, "too late" can mean "two months before ship date", or even more, for any distributor who bothers to do testing before shipping. Waiting doesn't help, because then someone else upgrades their package, and so on. GCC, XFree86, Gnome, KDE, Apache, mysql, etc. all have their own schedules.
In any case, if 3.1 has cool new stuff, you may want to wait until 3.1.1 for the bugs in the cool new stuff to be fixed. This is no shot at KDE, the same is true for all other big projects.
KControl still has some issues. Some of the modules have similar names and functions. For example, there are two named Panels. Both do things related to the panel. Particularly for new users, it could be very confusing if you look at one, and don't find what you're looking for, since you may not assume that there is another module of the same name in another category for what you want. Also, some of the more advanced features still require editing the text files.
KDE 3.2 will also feature the ability to use Vim as the mail composer
But will EMACS 21.3 feature the ability to use KDE as the window manager?
can you browse your files w/ tabs or just web pages?
i would love tabbed based directory browsing, especially if they could do the photoshop combining tabs into windows thing (of course then Adobe sues them)
ah if only my C was better (or any good at all) i'd give it a shot myself...
I'm going to hold off until 'KDE 3.1 For Workgroups' is released. that way I can share my files and connect to a network.
There aint no pancake so thin it doesn't have two sides.
plus its early in the gnome 2.1 development. I'm not so ready to give up.
The best education consists in immunizing people against systematic attempts at education. - Paul Feyerabend
I've noticed two major trends in Linux development lately. First, developers are finally recognizing the power of MS Office file format compatibility and Exchange server interoperability. More importantly, they seem to be ignoring the traditional Linux "what is right" approach of stability and security before features and eye candy. Ironically, it may be the latter that finally allows Linux to win the desktop.
OK, OK, it's a bad pun/joke, but I hadn't seen it yet, and you've got to admit, there are better names they could use.
Comment forecast: Bits of genius surrounded by a sea of mediocrity.
dang. you are right. ROX rocks. it rules my world. It's fast, neat. snazzy. wowzer. HuzzAH!
Who is this Anonymous Coward character, how does he post so much, and why is he always such a whore?
> You click in KDE and that little background-flashing-mozilla-dragon cursor will go on and on for about a good 20 seconds.
What exactly are your system specs? On my athlon xp 2200+, 512mb ram, it takes less than two sections to load anything (abiet KDE itself). If you have comparable hardware, you might have something misconfigured.
I haven't really been following this religious debate, but i'm dying to know: is it the KDE/Gnome developers who are competing with one another or the KDE/Gnome users who are creating this illusion of competition by engaging in some stupid holy war over a GUI...
I guess people will fight over anything these days...
-- Jim
> The interface it totally off (IMHO) compared to RedHat's BlueCurve theme. Buttons and icons need some work so that if feels more sleek.
I'm not a big fan of either the _looks_ bluecurve or keramik. But imho, both are quite sleek. Have you actually tried the KDE 3.1 betas and felt the "feel" of keramik? It's pretty nice, although I still prefer lighter themes. Note that keramik is not actually default in KDE 3.1. It's just an option in kpersonalizer.
> Also, KDE should decide if they want a start menu or a application dock. Having both just doesn't look right.
?? Can you elaborate? Having both seems to be a valid compromise between presenting the user with not enough options, and presenting the user with too many. Anyways, kicker is customizable, and you are free to remove either the k-menu or the "dock-like" features.
> and had one ugly ass kid. I couldn't even begin to imagine a Beowulf of these.
Again, KDE 3.1 is customizable. If you don't like something, remove/change it.
Sometimes pure logic brings us to conclusions that we may find difficult to accept. I know a lot of technically knowledgeable people are uncomfortable with the notion, but here it is: KDE (and other Open Source software, of course) is an enormous act of love.
Open Source software is people working for the benefit of other people. That's love and love is beautiful.
Okay, those who wish can go back to feeling negative or cynical.
KDE just started a forced-upgrade system.
Get the beta now before the forced upgrade system goes into effect. Turns out that they switched to this system after losing a round of poker with a man known only as Bill G. No idea who it is.
You can't judge a book by the way it wears its hair.
Erm, nix that, SP1.
No... Word isn't preloaded, but most of the DLLs that used to load on execution are part of the OS now. So... the old joke that Ballmer used to make about MS Office being the OS is actually true now.
I use XP at work and it is pretty snappy, but it's all sleight of hand. There are no true performance benefits, just an apparent increase in speed at the cost of a larger memory footprint. Linux can be made to do the same things if someone really wanted that.
-"...bad old ideas look confusingly fresh when they are packaged as technology" - Jaron Lanier (Digital Maoism on Edge.o
I didn't mean it to be flamebait. I knew it would happen, but I still didn't mean it like that. I'm just stating my mind.
Danish != nationality
The graphics have the disgusting look of XP.
They look childish, cartoonish.
It looks like it was designed with either little children in mind or simpletons. Probably both.
IF I try it, I will NOT be using the childish looking gui.
I have a serious dislike of M$ products, why would I want my Linux to LOOK like M$???
This is a poor choice in skins/themes and should be deep sixed!!
I've used a number of pre-compiled KDE rpm builds from SuSE over the years. Some of them absolutely fly, some are as sluggish as hell. KDE performance is significantly affected by how good or bad a job the packager does of compilation, and whether or not the options chosen suit your architecture (Intel/AMD). Consequently, I will only trust a speed comparison now between installations that are freshly compiled the same on the same system.
The GNOME folks have made some decisions and have justified those decisions.
So you disagree with them, is it really such a big deal that they aren't targeting their work at you? Does everything have to be about you?
By and large the GNOME folks seem pragmatic and thoughtful about the whole thing. To quote Havoc: Basically I think their approach is sound. They are creating a simple, stable, usable desktop environment. If you want to add complexity on top of that as a user (by choosing a different Window manager, or using a tweakui style addon that manipulates configuration options that are normally hidden) then fine, you can do that.
It is much easier to start simple and add complexity than it is to start complex and add simplicity for those that crave it.
Boffoonery - downloadable Comedy Benefit for Bletchley Park
To simplify downloading a large number of files, a new download manager (KGET), which fully integrates into Konqueror, has joined the network package (kdenetwork). It manages any number of downloads in one window, where transfers can be added, removed, paused, resumed, queued or scheduled. A dialog displays transfer status, including progress, size, speed and estimated time to completion.
Does it come with the required bandwidth?
Since there has been much discussion of the "Linux on the Desktop" issue, I feel that the Kiosk framework will give KDE a real edge!
This is really what I miss when I try putting Linux boxes in an environment with computer illiterate users wanting to poke around. They try fiddling with the settings just as they do on the Windows boxes. Their fiddling around has been great for me as a admin since I've gotten a great argument for upgrading to later (more lockable) windows versions, thus not having to cope with the notoriously unsafe, crashing, generaly sucking Win9x boxes. Now I run Win2k locked down so that they hardly may move the mouse and I long for the day when I can get them to run Linux boxes without letting them fiddle around and come crying about some "lost icons" or something else.
I know I'll get slammed, but with every enhancement, KDE and GNOME become more like windows. New windows type features are added. Perhaps windows isn't so bad, otherwise why copy? If you can't beat them join them. Seriously, though, its good to see it becoming more polished, which Linux needs to gain ground on the desktop, most importantly than anything else, if Joe consumer cant enter a CompUSA and find a linux version for 95% of the software on the shelf, Linux will remain a niche OS forever.
Whoever thought developers from a Unix background understand good UI and design. It will take awhile for these to be hammered out. Thats foreign territory.
not that matters, really, but Linus has submitted a few bug reports to KDE. he apparently uses KDE from CVS HEAD more often than not (from a bug report against a pre-3.0 code base). so Linus does indeed use KDE.
on the other hand, Alan Cox primarily uses XFCE, last I heard. previous to that was a GNOMEr.
*shrug* interesting, but who really cares. =)
this shouldn't be a surprise, but: you can switch from A4 to US Letter size paper in the print dialog or the print control panel. as for the rulers, right click on one and be happy to see you can switch to inches (among other choices).
the defaults may be european, but that might be because the people who wrote those features are in europe.
you may also want to expect your American distro maker to set it up for Americanized defaults.
Name one function that the browser gets from the OS or any other system library that other apps don't get. If you can only answer that "Microsoft keeps it all secret" then just name one thing that the browser can do that other apps can't get to. Look at the import table on iexplore or the IE component shldocvw and try to find something "deep and mysterious." Referring to ghosts without evidence is a meaningless argument.
___
The ends are ape-chosen, only the means are man's. -- Aldous Huxley
How is this flaimbait?
succinctly: no.
Wow am I the only one who read this as: I'm using KDE since lunch and it just seems to get faster and faster. Damn whay does my version of ie do the exact opposite?
Or does this mean that there are new releases of redhat in the few hours since lunch
Hi !
Could anyone enlighten me on the exchange 2000 plugin which is supposed to be shipped out with this release. Just cannot seem to find any information on it...
When will KDE/Qt get Xft & fontconfig support? I recently switched from Debian to Redhat 8.0 only because of that support, fontconfig makes font support/management so much better. Add XFt2/fontconfig to KDE, Mozilla, OpenOffice and you have paved the road to desktop world domination.
One more thing. Windows XP and 2k both profiles application launch. So when you run an application you have runned before, the OS will preload libraries it know the application will ask for during launch.
If we were to do the same, we would have to merge binutils and KDE. (With the current expansion rate of KDE it can't be far off)
~ Sam
What do you mean kde 3.1 is around 10-20Mb?
Okey, so I have activated debugging info, but anyway my installation of KDE takes 2Gbyte!, and this is without the i18n-stuff which totals 800Mbytes.
I guess without debugging and i18n you could get KDE 3.1 down to a few hundred megabytes, but not much less. KDE is huge in every sense of the word.
From the screenshots on that page, KDE has certainly seemed to undergone a much needed default theme upgrade, to bring it in to par with the look of the other 2 modern OS's (windows XP and Mac OS X). The only thing is though that everytime a new KDE comes out I remeber having liked the great new look in screenshots I saw only to find that the look was due to some hard to find (and even harder to install) theme and the theme put on by default was the same out-dated grey, Windows 95 style one. I just hope that THIS time a new stylish theme like the ones in the screenshots is put on by default.
I am very happy with Debian, and I am not writing this to troll, but I don't understand this trend about private repositories. So I was hoping that someone with more insight than me could explain it to me :)
Too bad Red Hat will probably rip the guts out of it, if they even package it at all.
Bero is right. RH 8.0 sucks on the desktop (note: i've no problems with its runlevel 3 type stuff).
Please, please, please, Red Hat, just package the software, don't emasculate it, dumb it down, "Red Hat-ize" it; just package it, and let US make the choices.
I'll be keeping an eye on how things go with 8.1; until then, I'm sticking with 7.3. If this trend continues, it's goodbye Red Hat, for good.
Sadly, I seem to be in the minority. I REALLY don't see how anyone can like (or even use!) the thing though. 8-(
if i'm a grammar nazi, you're an illiteracy nazi.
It's difficult for many people to believe, isn't it? But, do you see any other logical explanation?
KDE Is only that large if install *everything*. Otherwise, it probably can fit in 20MB. Besides, you're 2GB figure is *way* off. I've got a Gentoo install with O3-optimized (read: larger than usual) binaries.
/usr/kde/3.1 gives me 278,468 KB /usr/qt/3.1 gives me 54,452 KB
du --total -s
du --total -s
In total, around 300 MB, not bad considering that this is a full KDE 3.1 install, which includes a browser, mail client, PIM, office suite, two imaging apps, several games, several educational programs, a couple of multimedia players, a dozen utilities, half a dozen network clients, Postscript/PDF viewer, a CD ripper, and an MP3 jukebox!
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
I used to be a devoted KDE guy (and still would use it), but I run a bunch of diskless terminal for my school, and it is way too heavy ( something like 150Mb per client). Instead, I am using ice wm because it rarely even appears on "top" and I can lock everything out of my kids hads really easily:they have six things on the menu and no opprtunity for a teminal. Rocks, and the six terminals run off of one measely Duron 850 with 256Mb
Put identity in the browser.
No, it is not off, it is a fact. But as I said this is with debugging: "-O2 -g" that makes the executables 5-10 times larger.
Your 300Mbytes sounds reasonable, like I said without debugging it would come down to a few hundred megabytes.
On mandrake, I have to chose between:
linuxconf
kcontrol
Mandrake Control Center
Only 3 - but enough different tools
Hmm, debugging shouldn't really make things 10 times larger. Maybe it's some weird GCC/C++ interaction. Either way, what, then is your point? Windows programs don't ship with debugging built in (and only developers should enable it anyway), so it's quite right to say that KDE is rather slim.
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
Someone mentioned in another story that this could be to do with your hostname not being set correctly.
/etc/hosts like:
Try pinging your hostname - if you get no reply, or a long delay or something like that, then add your hostname to
127.0.0.1 localhost MYHOSTNAME
Post back here if it works, so I can help others - thanks.
On SuSE, I have:
kcontrol (contains KDE and Yast2 modules)
Only 1 - seems that you have the wrong distribution.
Joe-Bob says: Check it out. (Your memory, that is.)
Hmm... it's a network managed workstation so I don't have root access, but thanks for the suggestion.
Well I lasted from 2.0 to 3.0, but I'm afraid it is time for me to change from KDE.
My problem is I want a sensible window manager. What I consider to be a sensible window manger is one that allows me to stop anything from stealing window focus.
The whole point of having a window manager is so that you can run multiple windows. If I'm typing something I expect my keystrokes to go to the currently selected window not to whatever self-important application that decides to raise itself and steal the focus.
I don't care if other windows are raised over my currently selected window, I simply want my keystrokes to go the window that I have explicitly focused on.
Otherwise I might as well only run one application at a time to ensure no random keystroke redirection and would hence have no need for a window manager.
You can make a web browser that does everything that IE does and which integrates with the OS in exactly the same way. You can make your own renderer and so on. I don't understand why you think that "file access" qualifies as being part of IE, but if you define it that way then ... yeah you can't build a web browser without "building it on top of IE." So there you go, but it doesn't get any special services from the OS that you can't use yourself.
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The ends are ape-chosen, only the means are man's. -- Aldous Huxley
Isn't yast still proprietry?
I was only arguing against the 10-20Mbyte statement, because kdelibs+kdebase in themselves takes up a significant amount of space.
Clearly YOU didn't read what *I* said. Yes you can do all of those things with your own program. You can replace the shell, you can respond to key sequences that include the "window key," and you can (trivially) replace the IE rendering component with your own and have yours be used throughout the system. Your last example is the weakest of all (eg: anything can browse the file system with a little bit of code).
... so when you get a filesystem view it picks the code that should handle showing filesystem objects, and when you get a web page view it picks the object that should handle the display of web pages (you can also add your own kinds of namespace objects and viewers -- this is what early FTP client developers did to integrate their FTP client software with the shell). If you want to replace this object with one of your own, just make a regular Win32 dll that exports your implementation of an object that supports the necessary COM interfaces. After that it's gravy.
... shells are expected to provide a lot of different services and if you want quick and easy extensions you'll just extend Explorer. Nonetheless, there are shell replacements for Windows that are very popular (in fact, I think that there's a Gnome shell replacement for Windows).
Here's how it works in a nutshell (I infer from your post that you don't know the details): the iexplore.exe file is a stub for Explorer. It used to be an executable on its own, but the "OS integration" changed that. Explorer defines a particular interface type to handle the shell namespace object that's selected in its little namespace explorer (the treeview usually shown on the left). Explorer keeps the CLSIDs of all of the COM objects that handle namespace object views in a particular location in the registry
Now, there is of course another issue in getting around Explorer altogether. This isn't hard in theory, but it requires you to write quite a bit of code (unless you want a light shell). However, this is natural
Let me know if you'd like more details. The documentation for all of this is available via Microsoft's MSDN library on the web.
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The ends are ape-chosen, only the means are man's. -- Aldous Huxley