Corporate KDE

roomisigloomis writes "This article at CNET shows some headway being made in KDE development with aims at the corporate desktop. It's cool that it's funded by the German government."

Comments

German Government?

[PaybackCS]

This is the same one that ousted M$ some time go, isn't it? I like that government... at least on the outside.

Re:German Government?

[RIT Beast]

Proving once again that 'noone who speaks German could be that bad.' Hey, we needed the mandatory simpsons quote... Brendan

Re:German Government?

[Anonymous Coward]

Corporate KDE is an oxymoron.

Re:German Government?

[Gothmolly]

It's actually "anybody who speaks German can't be that bad". Geesh.

Re:German Government?

[RIT Beast]

Sorry, I was typing that one out while the boss wasn't looking, didn't have time to look up the quote, so I shot from the hip...Ah! here comes the boss! Brendan

Re:German Government?

[fault0]

I disagree.. KDE seems very suited for the korporate world.

Re:German Government?

[Anonymous Coward]

German government!!!

"1.3. Is the German government sponsoring/supporting the project?

To be very precise the project is _not_ "funded", "supported" or "sponsored" by the German Government. This would missrepresent that fact that the Kroupware project is a regular commercial business contract after we've won the tender to deliver a solution for the groupware needs of the BSI (compare answer 1.1). The participating companies organise the open development of this Free Software aiming to create the best technical result for the BSI regarding the contract."

Quote from: http://kroupware.kde.org/faq/faq.html#General0

Re:Excellent move

[govtcheez]

>the great Microsoft apps like Office, IE, and Photoshop

The greatness of IE and Office is highly debatable, and Photoshop isn't even made by MS, you moron.

Re:Excellent move

[Rude Turnip]

Your .sig is incorrect - You *do* know that OS X is based on FreeBSD and not Linux, right?

The best socialism...

[PinchDuck]

is somebody else's socialism. Thank you, People of Germany, for supporting my computer updates with your tax dollers.

Re:The best socialism...

[manyoso]

Would you rather your tax dollars were spent on proprietary software that is buggy, insecure and unmodifable? Perhaps, you like that the US government waists an enormous amount of money on useless proprietary software by hiring a bunch of contractors/consultants who digest the government largess like a bunch of bottom fish.

At least this way the software has a chance to be useful to a great number of individuals.

Re:The best socialism...

[ahillen]

Hmm, I see it the other way round. Why should MY government (which is, by strange coincidence, the German government) pay MY tax dollars^H^H^Heuros for commercial software, which doesn't benefit me in any way, instead of funding the development of something which might be of good use for me personally (and, of course, others, but this doesn't hurt me at all).

Re:The best socialism...

[Milo Fungus]

You bring up an interesting point. I'm glad MY government doesn't fund open source projects. Why should MY tax dollars fund development that is going to be used by people who don't pay taxes to the US?

This is just one more thing that the government has no business wasting my money on.

You're probably just a troll, but for all those readers who may be swayed by your amazingly bad attitude, let me explain why governemt funding of open source software is a very good thing.

We live in a global economy. If the U.S. takes an economic plunge, the world feels it. The same is true (although perhaps less strongly felt) for other countries, especially Europe and Japan. IANAE (I am not an economist), but doesn't it make sense that one government's expenses to benefit its own economy have an effect on the global economy? How much money has the U.S. governemt spent on technological research? Doesn't technology benefit the world? What about medical research? How much has government-funded research improved the quality of medical care around the world?

Now consider this: Would you rather the government 1) pay an international tax to some software developer in another country, or 2) develop their own software (which they can maintain total control of and don't have to pay an international company to use) while benefitting their own people by providing great free software and employing software designers?

There was a great interview with Andreas Pour of KDE where he talked about government funding of open source projects. The section is too long to quote here (I hate those super-long comments...) but here's a small chunk:

If you will, you can liken a desktop infrastructure as society's infrastructure, not so different from roads, schools, universities and emergency services. These types of infrastructure are inherently monopolistic since economic (development cost, transaction costs, return on investment, etc.) and "moral" factors (freedom, equality, etc.) are such that the use of taxes for creating and maintaining them is universal.

The most difficult challenge to obtaining substantial financial contributions for FS / OS projects is that the person making the contribution does not, in general, obtain a proportionately larger benefit. So currently financial contributions (including hiring developers or releasing proprietary code to the FS / OS communities) are made mainly when the cost to the bottom line is reasonable (e.g., a company may conclude that releasing a product which it was already distributing for free would reduce its development costs without impacting its revenues, and perhaps also increase market share for the proprietary enhancements). But it is far less likely that a company will on its own fund the development of a widely-used product with no particular benefit to it.

As with roads and schools, however, Governments need not concern themselves with questions of direct returns on investment. Improvements in the general welfare alone justify public expenditures. Rather than seek to reap profits for some relatively small set of owners, the purpose of Government spending is to improve the quality of life for all their citizens. Moreover, a large part of the Government's historic economic role was to spread costs among its citizens where the benefits would be shared largely by all and the economics of development made other forms of construction less practical. Finally, Governments of free nations dedicated to the principles of freedom, democracy and choice have traditionally allocated resources to important public projects that promote or preserve these essential human rights.

Surely any believer in free government must consider this a powerful argument in favor of governemt funding for open source. Would you rather the government pay to fix bugs in MS software? That's being done as well, so stop complaining or CowboyNeal will eat you.

Re:The best socialism...

[zootread]

You bring up an interesting point. I'm glad MY government doesn't fund open source projects. Why should MY tax dollars fund development that is going to be used by people who don't pay taxes to the US? This is just one more thing that the government has no business wasting my money on.

If I remember correctly, software developed by the U.S. government is generally released immediately into the public domain (if licensing permits and there is no proprietary or secret information in it). Do a little research and you will find plenty of free software developed by the U.S. government. Why shouldn't the government open the source on software they develop? They don't stand to gain anything by keeping it proprietary; and they are not a business trying to make money off of software they develop. Governmental agencies develop software (or fund its development) for the simple reason that they need the software. I'd much rather have the government spend money on open source solutions (and preferably free) than proprietary solutions. After all, my tax dollars are paying for it, why shouldn't I be able to use and modify this software?

Re:The best socialism...

[workindev]

I want my tax dollars spent on whatever will allow the government to accomplish their job in the most efficient manner. I don't give a damn if the source code is open or if its "proprietary" software.

Re:The best socialism...

[stratjakt]

>> Would you rather your tax dollars were spent on proprietary software that is buggy, insecure and unmodifable?

You assume that all proprietary software is buggy, insecure and unmodifiable. This isn't the case.

Only a tiny portion of the governments overall IT spending has to do with the desktop. A $200 Win2k liscence is peanuts compared to the half million dollar plus yearly maintanence dispatching systems my company sells, for instance.

So the question as per gov't spending is: would you rather an agency seek out an existing solution, or hire a staff of it's own developers and wait 2-3 years for them to create the custom solution it needs. At least in our niche, the turnkey solutions are orders of magnitude cheaper. And they get source to verify, it's just not 'open source' a la gnu.

KDE vs Windows vs OSX really is a trivial issue. It really isn't about the desktop, MSFT, IBM and RedHat all know that. The money is spent on the boxes in the back room and the client-specific code.

Re:The best socialism...

[Anonymous Coward]

Very good. There's no point in governments paying for most software if their citizens can't take advantage of it.

I do believe, though, that in some situations a private open source application would be better. That is to say, a secure operating system which is based on a regular OSS but which has been modified for use only by the government or its contractor. This improved version would neve need to be released since it is not being distributed and only for in-house usage.

Re:The best socialism...

[Anonymous Coward]

After the treatment Bush gave to Microsoft, I think we can safely call that a government-sponsored company as well.

Re:The best socialism...

[Anonymous Coward]

I agree with the krawt. MOD parent up!! Damn Straight.

Re:The best socialism...

[websaber]

yeah but every dollar on liscenses is wasted. money spent on open source are like a capital contribution to science.

Re:The best socialism...

[Anonymous Coward]

The problem with funding OSS is that the money essentially goes directly to the developers.

When you fund a commercial entitity, that ensures that shareholders get their cut before the developers get paid.

At least that's the way I understand the North American body politic: as long as capital holders (i.e. shareholders) are getting a cut, whatever you do is OK. Anything else is Un-American.

For example, where I live the electricity companies used to be government run and inefficient. So they privatized it, and now they are inefficiently run by a private company. The only difference as far as I can tell is that my bills are a bit higher because the shareholders want a profit, whereas before any profit went to reduce government operating costs, which reduced my taxes.

It's a funny thing, economy.

Re:The best socialism...

[King of the World]

Then you're unlike most people, and most governments, who have to make processes open regardless of efficiency as they're spending other people's money.

Open Source is the only government-like software model.

Re:The best socialism...

[Anonymous Coward]

As someone who has written code for the goverment, I'll let you in on a little secret: Goverment "written" code is not available, and probably never will be. Why? Becuase of a little loophole. You see, while I was writing code for the DOE, it was under contract from a private company, so while I was paid with DOE funds, the company I worked for owns the code and chances are that you won't ever see it. Not a big deal for what I was doing (DOS program that interfaced with ground water contamenation data), but it could be if one felt they needed to see the code.

Re:The best socialism...

[Anonymous Coward]

Well of course if its contracted to a private company they don't own the code, then its not written by them. But governmental agency hiring someone to write code in-house was pretty common about a decade or two ago, and of course in this case they can release at to the public domain. I don't know how often this happens these days, though.

Re:The best socialism...

[eyegone]

How do you know he wasn't talking about SAP?

Re:The best socialism...

[Anonymous Coward]

But thats not completely true. For instance, my father was working for a QA firm that was testing one state's Social Services DB. Despite the developers (all 2yr tech-school graduates or some school and self taught) being completely stupid, it requires mostly desktops in all the social services offices for each social worker.

While I know not all 2yr tech-school gradutes and self taught people are stupid or incompetent, I think a lot are. The problem they were having wasn't completely the developers fault though. But they were knew very little of proper use of algorithms since they used linear searches on VERY large sets of data (that was in DB2). They also would do winner things like add columns to tables just for testing in the "production" DB, heh.

But anyway, for that piece of software, they had a couple IBM mainframes and then they had to deploy thousands of desktops machines.

Re:The best socialism...

[Anonymous Coward]

90%%%% of the tax dollers of most countries go to buy weapons. The money that'd be needed to feed all the homeless of the world would be like 0.01% of the tax dollers.

So "tax dollers" is a buzzword -americans like very much- which is used to justify/excuse actions which are against, human rights, socialism, egality, brotherhood, equallity, etc, etc.

Thank god there is EU.

Re:The best socialism...

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow, way to totally mangle Franklin's quote.

Make software, not war!

[vlad_petric]

Good to know that there are responsible governments who make a lot better use of their taxpayer's money.

Re:Make software, not war!

[Anonymous Coward]

Yea, they're called socialists.

Some people would rather have governments protect them than fund useless software.

Re:Make software, not war!

[StarTux]

Flamebait? Huh?

Re:Make software, not war!

[Anonymous Coward]

Agree, why was that modded as Flamebait?

Re:Make software, not war!

[binford2k]

Why do you call having an affordable alternative to MS Windows and Outlook useless? Just because you have no use for it doesn't mean that nobody else can!

They win on all points, their money stays in their country, they are free to audit the source of every component on their PCs, I am sure this cost less than outfitting all governement PCs with Windows and Outlook would have cost, etc.

Besides, if you want to look at it this way, their government is protecting them. They are protecting them from market lock in, they are protecting them from security events such as Code Red, they are protecting them from forced upgrade costs, they are protecting them from the possibility of intentional backdoors in their software, etc.

I love the fact that the US government is funding some areas of open source development. I wish they would do more.

Re:Make software, not war!

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, the Krauts sure aren't known for waging war.... Try reading about WWI and WWII someday. Germans make good beer, good cars, and good wars.

Re:Make software, not war!

[Anonymous Coward]

Did you forget that the German government has changed in the meantime?

Re:Make software, not war!

[Anonymous Coward]

nothing in this world is permanent, especially not governments. the German government changed after WWI and again before WWII.

Re:Make software, not war!

[Eric Damron]

"Some people would rather have governments protect them than fund useless software."

Oh yes, Ashcroft is really protecting us. By taking away our freedoms!

If he want's to take you out for ANY reason all he has to do is ACCUSE you of being an enemy combatant. You don't get to argue about it. He can put you away without allowing you to exercise your RIGHT to council, a trial by your peers, the right to face your accuser, etc, etc.

We no longer have rights thanks to Bush and Ashcroft. Yeah, these guys are really protecting us!

Re:Make software, not war!

[mi]

Despite the recent setbacks you mention, Americans are still much "freeer" than Germans, who can not even say: "Holocaust did not happen," in public. (Relax, I wouldn't be sincerely saying that either.)

Their taxes are also quite a bit higher, and salaries lower. And -- like it or not -- money helps freedom.

Even the speedlimit-less highways don't compensate for that.

And it is not even "Bush and Ashcroft" -- the whole Congress pissed in their pants on September 12, 2001 (together with the rest of America) and adopted the stupid law, that gave the President this power, which, BTW, he -- so far -- seems to not be abusing.

Re:Make software, not war!

[geekopus]

The irony is that your post is only made possible by the very freedoms that you claim have been restricted. In countries that really *do* operate in the manner that you seem to think the U.S.'s is, /. would be obligated to reveal your IP and the authorities would follow it right to your doorstep.

Please be responsible when you rant. Not everything the government does is a personal, egregious attack directly on you.

Re:Make software, not war!

[yuri benjamin]

The Germans did not start WWI. It was started by a Serb assassinating an Austro-Hungarian duke.

A more critical analysis will reveal that all the colonial powers (Britain, France, Germany, Russia, Japan etc) were itching to have a go at eachother to claim a bigger stake each for their own ends of colonies in Africa and Asia.

Germany may have admitted full liability for WWI at the treaty of Versailles, but this admission was under duress, and did not change the facts. The humiliation of this admission was a contributing factor to the popularity of the regime that started WWII.

The blame for WWI should be equally shared by all the greedy colonial powers that existed at the beginning of the 20th century.

The poor Serb who supposedly started the war was just a spark in an already volatile climate, and if not for him then something else would have started it sooner or later.

One thing never changes - as long as there exist super powers with the ability to hurt each other, eventually mutual fear will drive them to conflict.

If Europe and America did not have the perceived mutual threat of China, they would eventually start to eye eachother suspiciously.

Finally, no country has universal freedom for all of its citizens. Remember the golden rule: Those who have the gold make the rules.

Re:Make software, not war!

[platypus]

Even the speedlimit-less highways don't compensate for that.

Maybe there are other things for compensation:

you can put a bottle of beer into your car and drive around anywhere in germany

that state doesn't think he has a business what sexual practices people do in their bedroom

there aren't draconic punishments for light drug abuse

germans can buy alcohol at the same age they get their voting rights and can get a driving license

there aren't areas in germany only remotely as strict as something like salt lake city concerning nudity (overall, the german state is by far less white-bread in these things than the us of a)

Re:Make software, not war!

[aussersterne]

Yea, they're called socialists.

You say this as though it's an insult...?

Re:Make software, not war!

[Eric Damron]

"Please be responsible when you rant. Not everything the government does is a personal, egregious attack directly on you."

I am being very responsible. Just what part of my post was not the truth??

When our leaders step over the line they need to be held accountable. And holding American citizens in this manner is stepping way the F**K over the line!

You should think before accusing someone of being irresponsible. It is you and all other Americans who are NOT outraged by this flagrant disregard for our civil rights that are being irresponsible. My forefathers shed their blood for these rights and some political asshole with visions of Godhood thinks that he can just take them away?! I think NOT! What is the penalty for attempting to subvert the constitution of the United States?

Re:Make software, not war!

[Anonymous Coward]

Forget it, it was just another yank extolling the infallibility of a system that s/he had no part in creating and in which s/he happens to live by pure accident.

Re:Make software, not war!

[geekopus]

I just don't know what to say here other than I disagree with you.

Can you point to any specific case where this has happened without good reason? I'm not trying to flame, I just want to know what specifically has you wound up so tight.

Our society is a very open one and the way I see it, some measures like this must be taken in order to keep Americans from losing their lives at the hands of people who can move through our country at will.

What would you have our leadership do? Remain inactive and cross their fingers in the hope that terrorists don't attack us again? That is an intolerable situation.

Anyway, that's my take on it. Until I see the policy abused for no good reason (ie., to silence political dissidents just because they're dissidents; I'm talking about something like arresting Democrats just because they're in the political minority) I can't disagree with it. Having meaningful discussion on policy as politicians normally do isn't going to land you in jail. Posting that you want to cause the destruction of America on a message board just might, and maybe rightfully so.

As always, this is all just my humble opinion. Certainly if the policy starts being abused in the manner that I mentioned above, I'll be the first to grab my gun and join the militia. Until then I see no reason to get excited.

Re:Make software, not war!

[Eric Damron]

I understand your point of view. These are perilous times and I'm sure that our government officials are in a quandary as to what to do.

However, if anything in our way of life is sacred it is our rights as laid out in the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. A right cannot be taken away without due process. No one is suppose to be able to come into your home and take you away, lock you up and deny you access to an attorney and contact with the world.

You say that you have seen no abuse. I am telling you that these things cannot be done without an abuse because they are an abuse of power themselves. How do you KNOW that the people who have been detained in this way have committed any crime? Because your government tells you that they are enemy combatants and that's good enough?? They ACCUSE someone of being a combatant and we shouldn't allow this person to say 'Hey, I'm not!' Instead we just shuffle them off. They just quietly disappear never to be seen again! This is okay with you??

I don't know if these guys are a danger to our society or not because the place that we determine guilt is in a court of law but Ashcroft has decided that these guys will not go through our justice system. Ashcroft feels that he can alienate these people from there rights without due process just because HE HAS ACCUSED them.

Make no mistake. If these guys can be made to disappear at the will of this asshole then anyone can be. Maybe these guys deserve to be placed behind bars but if so then they should be put on trial for their crimes.

By God we need to protest this abuse of power while we still can! Today they make citizens ACCUSED of being enemy combatants disappear tomorrow will they have a new buzz phrase? Maybe 'enemy of the state' that sounds like a good one.

When someone steals away our rights, no matter if they do so with the best of intentions, we must fight back. Ashcroft and Bush need to be held accountable for their actions.

Re:Make software, not war!

[geekopus]

At the risk of sounding confrontational, I say again : What would you have the government do?

The status quo resulted in September 11. Obviously the old system of dealing with these people was not working. Sticking with it is the equivalent of doing nothing.

Also, bear in mind that while the Bush administration is wielding these new powers, it was the *congress* that granted them. Your ire should not be reserved only for Ashcroft and Bush. All of the members of congress are complicit in this (and if you're not as jaded as most are nowadays, the constituents that voted those folks into office are also to blame).

One last thing. All of the U.S. citizens that have been wrapped up on the wrong end of this war (John Lindh, etc.) were not, in fact, categorized as enemy combatants even though the government clearly (from a legal perspective) could have done so.

I think it's great that we have folks like you that are questioning the government's actions. Without you, this could easily lead to a new era of McCarthyism. Makes me glad I spent 6 years in the Navy to help preserve it all.

Thanks for the stimulating debate, even though we're *waaaay* offtopic!

Re:Make software, not war!

[Anonymous Coward]

How many wars has America started since WWII?

those crazy germans!

[LinuxCumShot]

ahh....scheisse desktop!

Re:Confused

[Anonymous Coward]

its probably unrelated, someone keeps sending him a virus or something like this one

Yeah, the Germany thing is cool

[Anonymous Coward]

Except for the included David Hasselhoff theme.

kde

[minus_273]

3.1 was very nice. Kplan looks good. But for the love of god could they please drop the name "Kroupware". Its too bad Magellan and what ever that offshoot program was didnt work out the way it was planned. KDE really need evolution. Kplan looks like it might work if only we didnt kmailcool. Yes i know Kmail is mess but why do they expect us to download another app which does the exact same thing?

Re:kde

[pointwood]

That name is just the project name, the server is called Kolab and the client has been named Kontact. Unless I've misunderstood something :)

Kontact is KDE's Evolution. Check the Kontact site which have more info, including screenshots.

Re:kde

[fault0]

> But for the love of god could they please drop the name "Kroupware".

Pretty much it's already been dropped. Unfortunately, all the previous reports about it have been with the name "kroupware", so I expect cnet got it from there. The server's name is kollab.

> Yes i know Kmail is mess but why do they expect us to download another app which does the exact same thing?

kmailcool (and kroupware additions) will eventually be merged into the main kmail branch. in fact, bits and pieces have already been done.

Re:Confused

[Hrshgn]

>I'm no genius Up to that point I totally agree with you.

Reposted from dot.kde.org

[manyoso]

Ingo Klöcker says,

Hi everybody!

The C|Net article claims that "the first elements [of Kroupware] have appeared in the new KDE 3.1"[1]. That's (unfortunately) wrong. As you can check yourself cvs was "frozen for feature commits that are not listed in the planned-feature document"[2] on July 1, 2002 while the Kroupware "project began in September."[1]. So it wasn't possible to include anything from the Kroupware project in KDE 3.1.

In particular the article claims:
"Two elements of the client work are in the new KDE 3.1, released Tuesday: the KMail software can handle encrypted e-mail attachments, and the KOrganizer calendar software can communicate with Exchange 2000 servers."

Both elements are not part of the Kroupware project.
The KMail improvements, i.e. support for PGP/MIME (RFC 3156) and S/MIME, were made by the Ägypten project[3] (which incidentally also was ordered by Germany's agency for information technology security).
The KOrganizer plugin[4] for connections to Microsoft Exchange 2000® servers was written by Jan-Pascal van Best completely independant of the Kroupware project.

Anyway, you can all look forward to KDE 3.2 which will include most (if not all) of the client side elements of the Kroupware project.

Regards,
Ingo

[1] http://news.com.com/2100-1001-982816.html
[2] http://developer.kde.org/development-versions/kde- 3.1-release-plan.html
[3] http://www.gnupg.org/aegypten/index.html
[4] http://korganizer.kde.org/workshops/ExchangePlugin /en/html/index.html

Germany should be Kermany

[StarTux]

Time for a name change, I propose Germany be renamed to Kermany :).

Must send e-mail to the Kerman Kovernment.
StarTux

Re:Germany should be Kermany

[Anonymous Coward]

They already have a K name for Germany: Krautland.

Krautware, anyone?

Re:Germany should be Kermany

[Anonymous Coward]

Let's see: Germany has the Volkswagon. How about calling it Voketija?

Or better yet, something like "great land"... maybe "Allemagne"?

Or ... oh! oh! I've Got it! Let's call it DOICHLOND!

Re:Germany should be Kermany

[freedom_leffo]

Apple being involved and all that would be iKermany, now wouldn't it?

Re:Germany should be Kermany

[Anonymous Coward]

iDontKermany...

Re:Germany should be Kermany

[WindBourne]

And does kraut now become graut (or grout) so as to not slight GNOME?

aethera

[minus_273]

heh they forgot aetherea
which looks like a nice outlook clone

Re:aethera

[Anonymous Coward]

sounds like some kind of respiratory disease

Re:aethera

[minus_273]

compare that to Kroupware.. :-p
if i didnt know better. i would keep my kids away from kde haha

Interesting

[Anonymous Coward]

Hmm, seems very interesting, even though I didn't read the article.

Re:Interesting

[Anonymous Coward]

Humm, I did not read the article either and thing
it wasn't interesting.

Oh Great....

[The1stMentor]

Is KDE feeling their testicles squeezed by Ximian pushing gnome on the Desktop? What does the German Goverment get out of this anyways?

Re:Oh Great....

[fault0]

> Is KDE feeling their testicles squeezed by Ximian pushing gnome on the Desktop?

Hmm.. KDE is not a company. KDE developers (usually) work on what they like to hack on.

> What does the German Goverment get out of this anyways?

Perhaps a complete workgroup solution?

Things like evolution are cool, but it's far from a complete solution. It only provides the frontend. This project provides both the frontend and the backend (servers).

I guess that's what the German Government needed.

Re:Oh Great....

[Anonymous Coward]

Bundesamt für Sicherheit in der Informationstechnik(Federal Agency for security in information technology) funds it indirect as a research project. They also provide Knoppix - CDs. Their goal is to improve IT security.

click here: BSI - english

They also provide Windows-related material, software (chiasmus for Windows), documentation, education but German taxpayers don't like to pay for Software that benefits for one single company and makes oss adoption/diffusion less likely.

Re:Yeah, good try

[govtcheez]

YHBT. YHL. HAND.

KDE IS coming along

[purplebear]

I have tried 3.1 betas and release candidates, and I'd say it's definitely coming along as far as desktop usability. I've been using it as my primary desktop at home for a couple years now.
But, with 3.1, it has been an easy switch to convert my entire household to it. This conversion includes my barely computer literate wife, my 7 year old son and 3.5 year old daughter.
The Kroupware project is what will make it ultimately challenging to MS to compete. Replacing Exchange is the turning point for most corporate uses.

Re:Confused

[Nemith]

Read the article. It's about funding Kroupware, an Outlook like program for KDE. It is for those who are looking for an open source alternative to the MS program. A gap that has yet to be filled.

Futhermore, if you wish to get technical, using KDE would stop viruses via Outlook due to the fact that Outlook can run on KDE (well not without help)

kde with gnome

[asv108]

I love the kde enviroment, I was finally able to get 3.1 to compile yesterday and I was very impressed. I use KDE as my window enviroment, but almost all my apps are gtk. With the notable exceptions of konq, konsole and koncd, all my other most used apps use gtk: evolution, gaim, eclipse. I would imagine that this is the norm for most KDE users. Why bother reinventing the wheel?

Re:kde with gnome

[purplebear]

I think I would consider myself an average KDE user. Most of my apps are KDE. The one thing I don't understand is those who push using GTK apps in KDE. Why reinvent the wheel? Because these wheels look and feel much better. GTK apps are some of the ugliest I have ever seen. Sure, a few, very few, seem to have all the features I may want in an app, but they look horrible, especially intermixed in a KDE desktop.
So, let's see:
evolution - absolutely hate it, kmail (particularly kmailcool) is so much better.
gaim - nice app, but I like kopete better. Heck, I even prefer Psi to it. Just for the integrated look, if nothing else.
Matter of fact, about the only non-KDE app I use on the desktop regularly is XMMS. Haven't tried it out yet, but if they remembered to remove that last lingering debug element from Noatun, I'll be using it from now on as well.
I'm sure gnome and gtk are great for some, but I can't stand the immature look and feel of them.

Re:kde with gnome

[wrenkin]

Why not? I use Mandrake, and everything it KDE-centric. I rarely if ever use gtk apps (apart from my brief daliance with Gnome 2.2... very pretty, but the presence of gtk1.2 apps messed it up). It's just personal preference.

Re:kde with gnome

[manyoso]

Two reasons:

1. Because evolution,gaim,eclipse are not native KDE applications. This means they differ in subtle (but important to some) ways from other integrated KDE applications. One of the great strengths of KDE is the uniform set of application UI's. Even GNOME is trying to make a consistent set of application UI's by adopting clear standards. One way KDE implements uniform UI standards is with the actual API interfaces. This makes for a consistent look and feel across KDE applications with minimal effort on the part of the programmer.

2. The Kroupware is creating a new server for PIM applications called Kolab. AFAIK, this has no counterpart in evolution.

Re:kde with gnome

[JanneM]

2. The Kroupware is creating a new server for PIM applications called Kolab. AFAIK, this has no counterpart in evolution.

It is also not tied to KDE specifically; you can use evolution just as easily as Kmail et al. (or outlook for that matter).

Re:kde with gnome

[IamTheRealMike]

Why bother reinventing the wheel?

Competition bracketed by standards. There are some posts saying that eurgh all gtk apps suck. Personally I think peoples attitudes will change once GTK2 apps become the norm (my desktop is mostly gtk2 but it's also mostly development software).

Anyway, users shouldn't be able to tell the difference between them. Redhat started it with BlueCurve, now there is also Geramik, it can only go forward. So, now there is unified icon themes, soon you'll have to look carefully to tell which widget engine an app is using if you use a unified theme.

Really what's next is for Qt and GTK to get standardised theming plugins, so a theme can be written once and then used for both Qt and GTK, but I dunno if that'll happen anytime soon.

Re:kde with gnome

[ChrisWong]

If you've never used a fully integrated GUI environment, it will be hard to appreciate what KDE is trying to accomplish on the desktop.

KDE's strength is in the integration. KDE is not about being yet another window manager, but was meant as a holistic answer to the desktop problem. A KDE desktop is meant to be a collection of integrated applications with predictable, uniform behavior. You will see the same file dialog (with URLs and bookmarks), print dialog, toolbar editor, font chooser, color picker, help infrastructure, address book, and predictable cut and paste. Sharing of components means familiar behavior throughout, such as the file manager embedded in the file open dialog or the image viewer embedded in the file manager. When you open a file, the dialog remembers the bookmarks and frequently used directories you used in other KDE apps. In other words, the KDE experience provides a uniformity, familiarity and predictability that goes well beyond mere theming or toolkits. This is good for beginners.

What you get when you mix apps is the usual jumble of X apps doing their own thing in their own way. Apps do not remember your favorite colors, your print settings, your favorite directories. It's the familiar X desktop: a Frankenstein collection of apps not quite fitting together. Red Hat 8's superficial skinning does nothing about this. "KDE" is reduced to being an oversized, slow window manager: nothing more. It is not really KDE. Why would anyone want to use that?

I'm under no delusion that KDE is quite there yet. But some day, the major KDE apps will be merely good enough for everyday use. If they are merely adequate, the overall integration will offer a major advantage over non-KDE apps that can put them over the top for all practical purposes.

Re:kde with gnome

[tzanger]

I would imagine that this is the norm for most KDE users. Why bother reinventing the wheel?

I don't have GTK installed on my system, so that means I don't run a single Gnome app at all. KMail for mail, Korganizer for PIM and Klickety for my "waiting for the on-hold music to stop" diversion.

Why reinvent the wheel? That's precisely why I don't run Gnome or anything GTK. I am sick of "We hate C++ so we'll reimplement everything it does (poorly) in C." I got sick of two different desktop feels, fonts and stylings. (I hear RH has really cleaned this up now.) I got sick of running two desktops, so I run KDE. Qt rocks muh socks, Psi's a great instant messenger and anything with GTK I just don't run. It was an intentional decision on my part, and I'm sure I'm not the only one.

Re:kde with gnome

[manyoso]

Very well put. This is the true shining star of the KDE project. I find it funny that RedHat would relegate KDE to a regular window manager when the RedHat developers are very involved with the GNOME usability standards which emphasize the benefits of all desktop applications working and feeling the same way.

Re:kde with gnome

[tjansen]

Then you should wait until 3.2, and then try Kontact (instead of Evolution) and Kopete (to replace gaim). There is currently nothing comparable to Eclipse, but maybe someone ports Eclipe's toolkit to Qt/KDE.

Re:kde with gnome

[fault0]

> Why bother reinventing the wheel?

What's the equivalent to this project in gtk? The closest thing I can think of is Evolution, but it doesn't offer a server.

Re:kde with gnome

[arose]

So you don't yave GTK on your kystem?
I don't have KDE on my system.

Re:kde with gnome

[Anonymous Coward]

With the notable exceptions of konq, konsole and koncd, all my other most used apps use gtk: evolution, gaim, eclipse. I would imagine that this is the norm for most KDE users. Why bother reinventing the wheel?

Hardly. The reason you should avoid using Gtk apps in KDE (and vice versa) is that they do not integrate well into the operating environment. I can copy an illustration made in Kontour into my Kword document but not into my Abiword document. This is why.

Until a common clipboard format emerges, I will use only KDE or Gnome apps, depending on which desktop I'm using atm.

Re:kde with gnome

[Anonymous Coward]

-1?! Fascist Gnome using mods....

Re:kde with gnome

[nitehorse]

You might want to try out Kiwi. :)

Check http://c133.org/kiwi-0.2.tar.bz2 for a preview of what we're working on (Shamyl Zakariya and I are working on this one... we're both doing some improvements that aren't released yet, and we know there are a few bugs, but it's somewhat usable already)

-Chris

Re:kde with gnome

[Anonymous Coward]

> I find it funny that RedHat would relegate KDE to a regular window manager when the RedHat developers are very involved with the GNOME usability standards which emphasize the benefits of all desktop applications working and feeling the same way.

You've answered your own question; not just very involved with the GNOME ui standards, but GNOME as a whole. KDE == 'not welcomed here; we included it to compete with Mandrake and SuSE'.

Re:kde with gnome

[luisdom]

But some day, the major KDE apps will be merely good enough for everyday use.

Honestly, for me, today. With two exceptions:
- upgrade (more to do with the distro)
- koffice (an ambitious project that I don't think will get mature without institutional support)

strange

[Boromir son of Faram]

It seems weird that the government would be funding development of corporate desktops, since corporations and government are so often in opposition to one another (cf. Microsoft vs. the People).

I wonder if the German government is maybe trying to cripple companies by forcing them to use KDE. Not that KDE isn't as good as the alternatives, but in the doggy dog world of business, any restriction of choice is a threat to profit ability.

And though I fear the corporate KDE desktop, I do not doubt that it could be used as a weapon of good.

Re:strange

[tjansen]

The article is wrong: the german government did not fund work on KDE, a t least not directly. A number of companies have been contracted to extend KDE for the government. As the code is GPL, they have to release it to the public.

Re:strange

[Anonymous Coward]

Why is comment modded way up to 5. What does it
matter if the gov't did it or outsourced it?
They still make it happen.

Re:strange

[Anonymous Coward]

I wonder if the German government is maybe trying to cripple companies by forcing them to use KDE.

Oh, you VILL use KDE. Ve haff vays of making you use KDE.

Re:strange

[Skiboo]

A couple of people have said this, but I can't find anything in the GPL that says the code has to be released to the public. It's only if you distribute binaries that you need to also include the code.

Re:strange

[tjansen]

Yes, but this is quite theoretical. While the GPL does not require you to release it, it does not forbid your employees, contractors and so on to release it. Anybody is allowed, and copyright doesnt stop you.

Sneaky Germans...

[waldoj]

KDE...Kraut Desktop Environment?

-Waldo Jaquith

Re:Sneaky Germans...

[Anonymous Coward]

KDE...Kraut Desktop Environment?

makes Konqueror sound more omnious, doesn't it?

govt

[icantremember]

yes, i LOVE things that are funded by the german government...

Very nice...

[MattCohn.com]

Looks very nice, but I'm sure that the comments are going to be flooded with comments claiming that KDE is only trying to be more like Windows. However, what people fail to see is that Linux isn't trying to replace the desktop metaphore, the conventional UI. What I've thought of Linux to be is an open, reliable, stable Windows. One created by anyone with the skill and time, for anyone. Started on the server, it didn't need big buttons and pretty colors. However now that it is being developed for everyone, the way KDE is developing just showes that it's moving in the right direction. Towards an open, stable Windows.

The most stupid app-name in KDE is....

[Anonymous Coward]

..."Kolf", for the minigolf-game. I think the KDE guys have gone too far with the K-naming konvention (no pun intended). Other than that, KDE rox ;-)

Re:The most stupid app-name in KDE is....

[Anonymous Coward]

I nominate KSpread. "Tastes like butter, only better for you!"

Sheesh. Pick a real name, guys!

Open source + government interest = ?

[vano2001]

Does anyone else see the possibility that major OSS and specially the Linux OS will end up being managed (or controlled big time) by governments? The level of funding a government can have surpasses that of copmanies or donations. Will this have any impact on the direction development will take? Can this have any negative impact on the long run? (of course it is all advantage for the forseeable future)

Re:Open source + government interest = ?

[DenOfEarth]

I guess it is possible that a good chunk of development dollars could go into these projects, but I am not sure what kind of bad things you could expect to come out of this. If the software is covered by a GPL-type license, than it doesn't really matter who is directing development in one way or another, as eventually those things that are determined to be generally good will probably stick around in a few peoples distributions or software projects.

Besides, the direction that government takes software development into will probably be good from a human standpoint, as a lot of these countries point to open document standards and the like, such that poublic documents will be readible for a long time to come. This can only be a good thing.

Re:Open source + government interest = ?

[vano2001]

I guess this sheds new light on the three letters GPL. Really it is/will be general *Public* license. Governments contributing to the public infrastructure(software).

Re:Open source + government interest = ?

[inerte]

One problem that I can see is "evil states" using it. The public opinion would not like that, for example, Afghanistan was using a software funded by USA's government.

Re:Open source + government interest = ?

[manyoso]

Would you rather the 'evil' governments used Microsoft software which is heavily supported by the US government?

Re:Open source + government interest = ?

[Malcontent]

You are so mistaken as to be beyond belief. Please read first before posting.

In this case the project isn't "being managed or controlled" by the govt. From the FAQ posted in the Kroupware web site.

"1.3. Is the German government sponsoring/supporting the project?
To be very precise the project is _not_ "funded", "supported" or "sponsored" by the German Government. This would missrepresent that fact that the Kroupware project is a regular commercial business contract after we've won the tender to deliver a solution for the groupware needs of the BSI (compare answer 1.1). The participating companies organise the open development of this Free Software aiming to create the best technical result for the BSI regarding the contract."

It's being developed by commercial companies who won a contract with the govt. In this case the govt and the companies don't mind releasing the resultant product under the GPL.

Win-Win-Win for everybody (except MS of course). The govt gets what they want, the development is done in the commercial sector, the consumers benefit by having access to high quality software.

Re:Open source + government interest = ?

[Anonymous Coward]

The difference between a government and a corporation is:

Governments (at least the decent ones) are covered by Freedom of Information Acts --- this means that you can see the documents and decision making processes.

Corporations (even the decent ones) are usually shrouded in secrecy with very limited public disclosures and almost no ability for the public or even shareholders to review internal documents or meeting minutes.

Governments (at least the decent ones) are accountable to the public at large (1 person 1 vote) who gets to vote at regular intervals on both who is in charge, and often (through initiative processes) on the decisions themselves.

Corporations are almost entirely unaccountable with very limited voting (usually just for boards of directors) where the 1 dollar 1 vote principle applies. Since many if not most shares are held by other corporations (pension funds, mutual funds, etc.) that spend almost no time or energy into studying the larger implications of the vote, this means that except in rare cases, managers never fear what the public response will be to their actions.

When it comes to funding Free Software and directing devekopment, the nice thing is that the results are Free for everyone so it really doesn't matter so much what kind of entity or person is making the contribution. What boggles the mind is that people are willing to use proprietary software that is made by secretive unaccountable corporations for critical tasks!

Nice!!

[rppp01]

the KMail software can handle encrypted e-mail attachments, and the KOrganizer calendar software can communicate with Exchange 2000 servers.

This is huge. At least for corporations that use Exchange (and not Lotus or something similiar). I've been waiting anxiously for these products to appear. I always thought the exchange-outlook component was the hardest one to break for the linux/alternative workstation OS.
I don't use KDE, so let me ask: are Korganizer and Kmail integrated so they can work together- within a same interface? Like that of Outlook?
Also...doesn't Evolution have these capabilities. I remember once reading that it would. I do use Evolution, but our company does not use Outlook, so I cannot test this.

Re:Nice!!

[vano2001]

It would be great for the Ximian people to incorporate the Exchange-compatibility KOrganizer has with that of Evolution. And why not.. it would also be a good idea for someone to make the Exchange-calendar backend for linux also (tie it with IMAP I guess.) I know it probably is not a standard (or an MS one at that) but having an organizer-calendar work in the same way as your IMAP email is really great. (I do miss this functionality say in Evolution when using IMAP. My calendar data is not kept in the IMAP server.)

Re:Nice!!

[Anonymous Coward]

You can integrate anything in KDE into anything in KDE basically because of KDE widgets, QT widgets and Signals and Slots.

Look into the developer documentation from KDE's website developer.kde.org.

(And you though VB was easy)

Re:Nice!!

[GeekBoy]

Why? Evolution has an exchange connector already, but ximian sells it as an add on, so giving one away would cut their profits.

Re:Nice!!

[JahToasted]

the KMail software can handle encrypted e-mail attachments, and the KOrganizer calendar software can communicate with Exchange 2000 servers.

This is huge.

Yeah, really. This will go a long way towards convincing by boss to switch a few workstatioins over to linux. I wanted to put linux on the server (nice dell poweredge system), but since they already spent so much on windows 2000 server + exchange 2000 + office 2000, she didn't want to abandon all that software. Wish I was here before they bought all this.

So, if I put linux on a couple of workstations, people will realise that it isn't so scary, and that will go a long way to getting more people to use it. If all goes well I may be able to convert the entire office to linux (I hope).

Re:Nice!!

[Anonymous Coward]

This is because GNOME has always been about padding the pockets of businesses. KDE is about freedom and individual control.

The arrogant take-it-or-leave-it attitude which Red Hat, Ximian, and Sun have been evincing lately has pissed off a lot of users who suddenly found their favorite features removed. Gnome 2.x is still not feature complete. It'd be better if they hadn't released it as 2.0 since it's not ready for the primetime and won't be as long as assholes like Havoc Pennington are domineering over everyone.

Re:Nice!!

[jjc2222]

I don't use KDE, so let me ask: are Korganizer and Kmail integrated so they can work together- within a same interface? Like that of Outlook?

There is a project called Kontact that is integrating the user interfaces of the various personal information management tools of KDE (KAddressBook, KMail, KOrganizer, etc.). It is scheduled for official release with KDE 3.2, but they have a release available now!

Re:KDE is kGAY - GNOME IS BETTER!

[PaybackCS]

I hate to use such a common statement, but "Or else what?"

*Restriction* of choice?

[PhysicsGenius]

KDE, and by ex tension the rest of Linux, is all about creating choice. When I install KDE on my Mom's old desktop, that's creating choice. When I eventually have a girlfriend, get married and have kids, all of them will use KDE--more choice! And when the German government man dates the use of KDE, once again that's more choice being created in the marketplace.

Re:Excellent move

[Joseph Vigneau]

KDE is cool, but I'll stick with something like OS X for now.

Of course, you can have both.

Don't trust 'em..

[grub]

Don't trust the Germans, they make potato cannons.

Re:Don't trust 'em..

[buzzdecafe]

You really should have included the link to the potato bazooka story.

Re:Don't trust 'em..

[sharkey]

Don't trust the Germans, they make potato cannons.

Don't worry, France is between us and them. There's no way Germany could get past the French, right?

Re:Don't trust 'em..

[The Apostrophe Guy]

Karma whore! :p

Re:Don't trust 'em..

[Anonymous Coward]

Okay, the world should know now where the axis of evil actually is. Germany is rearming again. Free World, don't force us to use our weapon of mass destruction. Surrender now!!

Re:Don't trust 'em..

[Anonymous Coward]

FOR SALE:

Slightly used French firearms. Only dropped once!

Re:Don't trust 'em..

[milkid7]

Das Boot!!!

Re:Don't trust 'em..

[KAMiKAZOW]

OMG! Kartoffelkanone Desktop Environment.....
it starts to make sense to me now.

Re:Don't trust 'em..

[iceburn]

Don't worry, France is between us and them. There's no way Germany could get past the French, right?

I guess that means Suse and Mandrake will duke it out. Very Interesting...

Re:Don't trust 'em..

[Anonymous Coward]

It really shocks me, that I didn't know about this (because I live in germany). - Maybe I should get that TV back.. =)

Re:The german connection to Open Source

[Anonymous Coward]

Was this an attempt to be funny? If so, you failed. Is it flamebait for the sake of flamebait - or just the rantings of a bigoted shit-for-brains moron of a Troll???? Hummm - must be the last.

Re:Excellent move

[diablobynight]

Hate to say this, but on a corporate desktop, I don't want to see linux. windows 2000 is very stable here at work and it is very manageable from the administration end. Plus active directory is something we use so that people from all over the country can go to any other facility, log in, and have everything work just as it did at their desk.

Could run afoul of US Laws

[Anonymous Coward]

People need to be careful here since US trade laws
could be used by MS against Linux with KDE since the product could be claimed to be Govt. subsidized.

There were some reports earlier that MS did exactly
this to put a stop to the NSA adding strong
security features to Linux.

Re:Could run afoul of US Laws

[tjansen]

It is not, since it was contract work. It had to be release since it extended GPL'd software.

Re:Could run afoul of US Laws

[Dan Ost]

Can anyone give some more information on this?

I tried a quick google, but couldn't come up with
anything.

Re:Could run afoul of US Laws

[Anonymous Coward]

Uh, huh. Argue that before a judge and see
if he buys it...

Kent

Re:Could run afoul of US Laws

[Anonymous Coward]

Christ, man.. what is the world coming to when MSFT can boss around the NSA?

Re:Could run afoul of US Laws

[Anonymous Coward]

BS. There are no US laws forbidding govenment funded O/S programs. What happened with the NSA is that much political preasure was put on the department that released SELinux. Because of this the head of the department basicly said he didn't want to deal with it so he would think twice before developing any other project that falls under the GPL. I don't see how this effects software from the German Government.

Re:Could run afoul of US Laws

[tjansen]

If this would be illegal, it would be illegal for the government to release software that it payed for as open source.

Re:Could run afoul of US Laws

[Elwood P Dowd]

Nice, well rounded troll. I'm shocked you got so much attention. You're really pushing the envelope.

MS's arguments with the NSA had nothing to do with the status of the IP after the NSA invested in it, but rather whether or not the NSA should be involved.

Of course, this is the government of a COMPLETELY DIFFERENT COUNTRY, and trade laws had nothing whatsoever to do with their original argument. Somehow, however, due to the brilliance of your troll, you'll probably even get people to start explaining how the GPL and/or the US Constitution works. Bravo.

How come mine has no back button?

[DarklordJonnyDigital]

Mm. I'm liking the sound of this "kiosk mode" that can disallow users of a public terminal to change settings. You wouldn't believe how often I hear someone in the university library complain that their browser has no "back" button because someone's gone and switched it off. Twelve million pounds (almost $20million) on a new library full of free-use machines, and they're all running Win98 *cringe*

KDE still can't get the Desktop menu right, though. *grins*

Re:How come mine has no back button?

[fault0]

> KDE still can't get the Desktop menu right, though. *grins*

What do you mean? :)

thats the way to do it

[JimFromJersey]

If you want to take over something, have the Germans do it for you.

Very nice

[JanneM]

And don't forget that the important part - the server stuff - is of course desktop agnostic; you run kmail or evolution or whatever client you want (including outlook for windows holdouts) that supports the relevant protocols.

That is really the big part of this story; clients we have already, and others are coming along, but a free server for the small to medium organization has been sorely lacking. Let's just hope the devels realize this fully and do not do something silly like tie the server to just the KDE client stuff, or require X and KDE on the server for management.

Re:Very nice

[WickedLittleSlaveBoy]

read the FAQ, looks like you'll be able to run about any IMAP client for basic email stuff, but you're going to need the KDE client or the Insight connector for Outlook. oh well, still cheaper than exchange licensing.

too bad that no one else is working on an opensource server like HP OpenMail/Samsung Contact.

Except that we germans say ..

[Anonymous Coward]

Deutschland to germany. Germanen are just
some very early historic ancestor tribes for us.

Joerg

Re:Except that we germans say ..

[MrEd]

Keutschland?

No wait, I know, it's kDeutschland with a silent 'k', right?

In all seriousness, I am so impressed with Mr. Schroeder's government in many respects. At least from an international perspective he seems to be doing a great job.

Re:Except that we germans say ..

[Anonymous Coward]

In all seriousness, I am so impressed with Mr. Schroeder's government in many respects. At least from an international perspective he seems to be doing a great job.

Presumably an "international perspective" doesn't include the worst economy in Europe getting even worse. But, hey, nothing a little more anti-Americanism can't fix.

Re:Except that we germans say ..

[Anonymous Coward]

Umm, you haven't been following things in Germany very well have you? High unemployment, low productivity, big debt. The prime minister is going to lose in the next election.

Re:Except that we germans say ..

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm German and I'm not impressed, I'm depressed.
Many German people are more and more convinced that Schröder and his party (the SPD) are bad for us.
First he promised to not raise taxes and one week after the election he did it anyway. And one week after the election they "suddenly" knew that we've got much less money then we were told shortly before. Surprise, surprise.
The Euro made the prices higher, higher taxes decrease our money, the amount of money owed still increases and our economy grows just fast enough to be able to say that it grows.
And we still have much more jobless people than he promised to have by now.
He says no to war but wants UN to continue searching, but if they find what they search we cannot do anything because we said no to war. How stupid is that? You can't say that war is inevitable but how can you disqualify war as a counter action before the UN finished searching?

Re:Except that we germans say ..

[Anonymous Coward]

You read too much propaganda from the Axel-Springer-Verlag. Like Bild.

Re:Except that we germans say ..

[Anonymous Coward]

If not reading it is already too much... :)

Re:KDE is kGAY - GNOME IS BETTER!

[Anonymous Coward]

GNOME is for corporate drones now that Ximian, Sun, and Red Hat have utterly seized control of it. They're turning it into a cheap rip of MacOS9, but without any of the features.

Re:Excellent move

[amigaluvr]

You might be interested then to learn of the history of photoshop

An app which was only picked 'up' by adobe due to a contract dispute after it had become succesful

before adobe photoshop 3, Microsoft obtained development of photoshop in versions 1 and 2. You can look it up if you like.

Besides, photoshop was a simple ripoff of dpaint, a program that had been released on Amiga quite a while before. interesting where the real innovations were.

Re:Excellent move

[Zathrus]

windows 2000 is very stable

This I'll agree with... I haven't had any problems with Win2k at my current job.

very manageable from the administration end

Shrug... I'm not an admin, but if you can administer the entire desktop from a remote location it's certainly not apparant to our admins. Otherwise they wouldn't have to login to our PCs to install new software. Frankly, however, most of the TCO studies show Unix requiring fewer admins for a given number of machines, and Unix was built from the ground up for remote administration.

Plus active directory is something we use so that people from all over the country can go to any other facility, log in, and have everything work just as it did at their desk

Wow. Nice to see that Microsoft got that done... twenty years late.

I don't think Linux is ready for the desktop (home or corporate) yet myself (although I'd like it on mine... sigh), but not for the reasons given. Application availability and usability are bigger issues still. The latter is improving steadily, and the former is highly dependant on what you need.

Kroupware

[intermodal]

Now I just need them to release KDE 3.11 for WorkKroups!

*modifies his splash*

Re:Kroupware

[Anonymous Coward]

Suck my Kock you fukking Kweer!

Leave it to germany to find subtle ways to introduce KKK into their government.

Terrorist supporting nazi bastards.

Re:Kroupware

[sirsampson]

I'd be all over KDE 3.11... or KFW for short

Re:Kroupware

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh my god, that is sooo funny! This "KDE 3.11 for workKroups" joke just never, ever, ever gets old, does it?!!

It's almost (but not quite) as funny as the constant blathering about words that start with "k", like changing the name of Germany to "Kermany"! Get it?!! Ha! Ha! Ha!

Mercy, /. certainly is an endless fountain of wit.

Re:Kroupware

[Anonymous Coward]

actually, that was posted in the hopes it would be modded to hell, and thus restore my hope in the world in general...guess not. damn. now I have to admit to living in a world where karma whoring is as easy as looking up the last article on the subject and finding out what was modded as funny or insightful....

Re:Kroupware

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, I'm fucking surprised to only find ONE reference to Nazis in replies to this article!!!

Maybe people are actually getting more mature, but of course we'll always have assholes like this one...

Re:Kroupware

[Anonymous Coward]

Hey, if it's any consolation, I'd have modded you down if I'd had points, man. Good luck with your disillusionment :)

Re:Kroupware

[Anonymous Coward]

Thanks...you're a diamond in the rough, AC

Re:Kroupware

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, we all get the joke. Now be kuiet.

Re:Kroupware

[Anonymous Coward]

What, you mean all other noble aryan nations do not surf the Korld Kide Keb as well?

Kreat :(

[halftrack]

kJetz kÖnnen kWir kEin K kIn kAlles kWörten kPlassieren.

kExcuse kMy kGerman.

The KDE-Germany Connection

[Amadablam]

For a little insight on the KDE-Germany connection, here's a snippet from http://ktown.kde.org/~nolden/kde/README, a readme by Ralf Nolden, one of the people responsible for building KDE for debian:

The main reason to set up this repository is, amongst others, that I'm working at credativ GmbH, located in Juelich, Germany since September 2002. We are contracted to set up KDE 3.1 together with the Aegypten project (http://www.gnupg.org/aegypten/) on Debian GNU/Linux 3.0 (woody) by the BSI (Bundesamt fuer Sicherheit in der Informationstechnik), the german governmental agency for security in IT-technology. The Aegypten project itself is a development effort contracted by the BSI to enable governmental authorities to use S/MIME certifications for email communications with KMail and Mutt as email clients. The graphical user interface for Desktop use is the primary goal behind the project. The same is valid for the Kroupware (http://www.kroupware.org) project, wich implements a groupware solution for KDE with two components, the kolab server as the group-ware server component and KMail, KAddressbook and KOrganizer as client-side components. The Kroupware project is currently under development by the according companies and will be merged into KDE 3.2.

Pick another day for your FUD

[AnonymousCowheard]

Moderators, please be gentle...

You are obviously a troll.
Your post is well-suited for April 1, 2003.

Linux is a platform that many for-profit people have contributed to. Linux is a non-profit contribution that "fertilizes a medium" to allow a for-profit application of any software that operates upon it. Think of Linux as a system where everyone is in different branches of software development and client usage, and people can choose to contribute their software-work to be of benefit from eachothers work: linux is a form of people being KIND to eachother.

I administer computer networks, I use pppd as well as various utilities and tools licensed by GNU and XFree86. Time is an investment; because you see no physical money doesn't mean you see no ivestment. When companies like IBM, Sun, SGI, and the uncountable others begin merely *L@@KING* at Linux, they are actualy *INVESTING* their time (money) into it. Microsoft, I believe, has invested MORE time in Linux than any company alive! Microsoft knows its enemy: it is Linux; and they are studying it for weeknesses and obviously Microsoft has decided to slander and publish libelous documents on Linux because they see it as a verry PROFITABLE MEDIUM for software growth yet it is young in its acceptance of the CASUAL DESKTOP MARKET which is where Microsoft has dominated by monopoly-tactics. Just as Ghandi has prophetized to the world...

First they ignore you,
Then they laugh at you,
Then they fight you,
Then you win (3. PROFIT!)

Re:Pick another day for your FUD

[Anonymous Coward]

Linux is a non-profit contribution that "fertilizes a medium"

That is, Linux is crap.

Corporate should be Korporate

[SimplexO]

Shouldn't the title of this post be "Korporate KDE"?

Re:Corporate should be Korporate

[ice cream koan]

It would have been the title of the article but it wasn't. Those spelling errors are just so random...

remote administration

[diablobynight]

We use profiles and push down programs to users who need them. Or keep MSI installs on the network and use VNC to access their desktop and install the product. Novell is excellent as well, I must say I loved using groupwise and zenworks, but corporate Heads like to use Microsoft. And as far as apps go, their are a lot of Microsoft apps available I must say. Try making a linux network boot disk for proprietary Dell NICs and you'll know some of the annoyances I had with the previous Novell network. :)

An excellent tutorial on the KDE kiosk framework

[manyoso]

Another excellent article that includes a tutorial on the new KDE kiosk framework:

http://www.linux-mag.com/2002-11/kde_01.html

only an idiot wouldn't know that

[SweetAndSourJesus]

and there aren't any idiots on slashdot, right?

Re:YOU FAIL IT!

[Anonymous Coward]

Mod this guy up. He is the only funny troll.

Re:Excellent move

[malraid]

Active Directory?

Maybe I'm too stupid to use AD, but I've found it pretty much useless, irksome, and ilogical. I have worked with NDS (yes, Novell, say whatever you want) and it was actually useful, simplifing the management of large networks (1500+ users), rather than making it worse like AD. Windows 2000 is way better than older versions, but is still years behind in all of the areas you mentioned (except maybe stability) That's my opinion anyway.

Re:It makes sense

[Anonymous Coward]

should be modded redundant.
someone already posted the same comment.

Re:Excellent move

[Anonymous Coward]

Hate to say this, but on a corporate desktop, I don't want to see linux. windows 2000 is very stable here at work

Sorry, but you are a minority. Most people would love to see *BSD or Linux on the corporate desktop. In fact its already there for many of us. Welcome to the year 2003. You've got a lot of catching up to do.

Doubt this person works for a fortune 500

[diablobynight]

Tell me what fortune 500 company is using linux on their desktop. I am very much in 2003. And when you say most people, what experience are you speaking from. If you have evidence of a company that standardized on linux. and they are a fortune 500. Let us know, otherwise, with no data to back up what you say, just shut up.

Re:Doubt this person works for a fortune 500

[Anonymous Coward]

You moron,

The dude said "Most people would love to see". Sounded like a matter of opinion. Probably wrong, but not worth flaming him about.
Nowhere did he saya that it IS being used by fortune 500 companies.

Icons!

[Anonymous Coward]

Would someone at KMail please change the default inbox, outbox and sent icons to match the crystal theme? Or better yet, make them fully themeable? That screenshot on the kontact.org page looks rather ridiculous with the Noia icons for all the folders accept those three. Inconsistent UI.

Re:Icons!

[Anonymous Coward]

What about KRuDmail? Damn straigt. It's more gooder than Fmail.

K Kesktop Kenviorment

[Anonymous Coward]

Now what do we get?

Re:Excellent move

[zulux]

Plus active directory is something we use so that people from all over the country can go to any other facility, log in, and have everything work just as it did at their desk.

Feh...
UNIX has been doing this for years. Correctly. It's called The XWindows System.

Just beacuse MS has finally made their toy OS do somthing usefull, doesen't make it novel. Chances are we've done it before. Like last decade.

I AGREE!

[Anonymous Coward]

I agree with this post!

It is called censorship, baby! Re:lost comments?

[Anonymous Coward]

Important Stuff:
Please try to keep posts on topic.

Re:Excellent move

[benwb]

Nope. Adobe released Photoshop 1.0 in February 1990. It's been there ever since- it was shipped with a scanner from BarneyScan in 1989 (but only about 200 copies) A windows version was not even shipped until April of 1993.

Croup-ware? Oh the jokes!

[ShinmaWa]

Was it really wise to name a project that sounds like Croup-ware?

croup n.
1. The rump of a quadruped
2. a spasmodic laryngitis especially of infants marked by episodes of difficult breathing and hoarse metallic cough

So -- is this software for a horse's ass.. or babies with respiratory problems?

Re:Confused

[reddeno]

What gap?

Re:The german connection to Open Source

[Meowharishi]

The Aryan Operating System Movement heartily agrees with you and welcomes your valuable suggestions and feedback. Our continuing mission in curtailing the online activities of the Lower Races lends Linux perfectly to our task as it is so completely unusable and unsupported. The more Jews and Negroids we establish on the Linux platform the less Spam, Child Pornography, and Drugs will be sold over the InterNet.

Thank you again for your comments.

I challenge you

[diablobynight]

Find me a fortune 500 company that issues unix or linux as their standard corporate desktop OS. And yes, I have used Xwindows and also worked on multiple solaris systems. But never seen it corporately implemented to the standard desktop.

Re:I challenge you

[Anonymous Coward]

How about at Sun? They use CDE on Solaris as a standard desktop, and you can remote-login from any office and have all your stuff.

Is it just me or does that sound like a Mac?

[Kjella]

KDE's strength is in the integration. KDE is not about being yet another window manager, but was meant as a holistic answer to the desktop problem. A KDE desktop is meant to be a collection of integrated applications with predictable, uniform behavior.

Personally, if I thought that was the best way, I'd get a Mac. My impression is that the iEverything apps to that much better, and with their control over code, APIs and hardware they got a lot more control than KDE ever can have.

I mix and match software from a bunch of different companies here on my Windows desktop, I hardly think it'd be any other on Linux (used as server atm). Of course having some common controls and all is good, but I hardly think the KDE group is best at writing *every* desktop software out there. Then again, if they can offer a superior platform and guidelines to build programs on, other programs should follow.

Kjella

Re:Is it just me or does that sound like a Mac?

[HiThere]

I think that you probably aren't understanding things here. (I'm not either totally.)

Remember that KDE isn't the pieces that work with it. KMail is a KDE mail client. There's nothing stopping someone from writing another one. (I know of a couple of KDE editors, e.g., though I suppose that KWrite could be a part of Kate.)

Think of KDE as the implementation of a bunch of APIs that your program can hook into. That's a part of what's going on. So you want an editing pane that does syntax coloring of program text and automatically recognizes Perl, Python, and HTML... so you call the application that someone has already written that does just that. This means that you don't need to write that part. It also means that it acts the same way that it would when it was called from the other places that used it.

Well, that's just the image I got. Could be wrong, as I haven't checked into the code. But if you have a better idea for how some piece could be implemented, write it, and try to convince people that your way is enough better to use it. ... This is a difficult sell, but people do it several times every year. Perhaps the best way is to create an application or so that uses your method, so people can see how it works.

P.S.: I think that Gnome is doing the same thing. No big surprise here, as good ideas tend to migrate from project to project. (I don't even know who had it first... I seem to remember seeing something about bonobo a couple of years ago that seemed to be this kind of thing coming up.)

P.P.S.: Yes, the Mac does this too. So does windows. But in the Open Source community the techniques for implementation migrate rather than being locked away.

KDE 3.1

[oliverthered]

It's great, (took a while to download and install on a clean Gentoo system though).

My only gripes are,
The media players (based on xine) don't seem to work properly, so I use xine.

Ahhhh those horrible buttons and icons , the KDE team should have picked a cleaner default configuration, colours, buttons and window decoration.

I've had a couple of quirky tab issues, but nothing too bad.

No Image editor, I use kio slaves to directly access images from my digital camera, this only works in KDE, so I have to retrieve images from my camera to edit them.

Umm... that's about it.
Quick, come with more apps than I could throw a corporate developer at.

Re:KDE 3.1

[markatwork]

If you are running the gentoo build of KDE3.1 there is a good reason why the media player(s) don't work. There currently is no updated version of the Xinelibs in portage which is required by KDE3.1 Therefor it has been disabled. (See the ebuild file, or forums.gentoo.org for more info.) I was kinda bummed about this, but look forward to when I can try this functionality out.

Re:KDE 3.1

[Repugnant_Shit]

Ahhhh those horrible buttons and icons , the KDE team should have picked a cleaner default configuration, colours, buttons and window decoration..
Gah! I agree 100%.

I've had a couple of quirky tab issues, but nothing too bad.
If by "quirks" you mean "bugs" then *please* report it at bugs.kde.org.

Re:KDE 3.1

[meringuoid]

The only serious downer I've noticed is an interface issue with the new Konqueror. It has tabbed browsing now - great! Trouble is, where Galeon has an 'x' button on each tab and Mozilla has an 'x' to close the current tab on the far right, Konqueror requires a right-click and 'close tab'. Yeah, there's Ctrl-W keyboard shortcut, but I tend to think in terms of the mouse for window manipulation.

Oh, and the Ctrl-T combination for opening a new tab, that's the same in every other browser I ever saw, opens up a Konsole. Ctrl-Shift-N opens a tab. That's only a minor bother, though...

Re:KDE 3.1

[anno1602]

The tab closing button is a wishlst item that's already closed. Just didn't make it into 3.1.

Re:KDE 3.1

[twener]

Call "Settings/Configure Toolbars..." and add "Close Current Tab" to the toolbar and position of liking. Voila, it's like Mozilla. And the "New Tab" shortcut can be changed with "Settings/Configure Shortcurts...".

Re:KDE 3.1

[Moritz Moeller - Her]

Both gripes can be remedied:

1. Go to Settings->Configure Toolbars
   Add the close current tab to the main toolbar, I put it behind the stop button.
2. Go to Settings-> Configure Shortcuts
   Change the shortcut for Open Terminal and Open new Tab to your liking.

This is configurable, you know?

Re:KDE 3.1

[oliverthered]

My two quirks are:
1: why to they scroll of the end of the window, tabs should shrink like moz (though possible more inteligently).
2: The scrole left right arrows are messed up some of the time.

This is not about socialism

[GerardM]

Like with proprietary software, there is a quid pro quo. The German software uses essentially free software, it requires some improvements, it pays contractors (programmers by any other name) to do that. It therefore does what is also the idea with proprietary software; you pay a company to stay in business and to produce next years goods. An essential benefit is that unlike with proprietary software you do not rely on the longevity of one software company. Therefore if the previous company went bust, you find yourself another company willing to do your work. As the starting point was essentially free, you pass on the baton to the next who has additional requirements. As American governmental organisations seem not to be allowed to be open, upfront about contributing to a greater good. How do you call them that only profit? Parasites ??

Group of government interests = good!

[Kjella]

If there was like one government to influence it, I might worry. But all countries have an interest in not letting *any other* countries have control over the OS. In case you haven't noticed, several countries around the world have rattled their sables over not having the source to Windows. Of course it would influence the development, but it's not like old features and tools would disappear. Unlike some Windows programs I miss, that were simply discontinued and won't work under newer Windows versions. With Linux I'd at least have a chance to make it work under new versions...

Kjella

Re:Excellent move

[Anonymous Coward]

Photoshop is a POS. Corel Photopaint is far more customizable and much more powerful. Also, Photoshop looks like hell.

Bits or bombs

[Anonymous Coward]

Interesting that the German gov't is helping to fund this. Instead of guns or butter, the German vs. US leanings are more like bits or bombs. "We can fund a desktop project and help restore competition to the world computer market, or pay for 2 or 3 more cruise missile colonoscopies for Saddam. Hmm... which should it be?"

Arbeit Mach Frei...

[Anonymous Coward]

EOM

You got it, brother!

[AnonymousCowheard]

Linux is a utility; a tool. Use it to the best of your abilities.

To speak in the analogy you implied...

Linux is manure...a verry good manure, the best around. It is also a manure that can be bought for verry low price; only cost of transfer (read the GPL on this statment). Whoever contracts you or I for such work, we spread it on everyone's dead and depleted front and back yards and then install various seeds to grow on it. We're the ones getting payed. After we trim all the other plants back, we install a wrought-iron fence and then a robot that shoots tazers and spazer lasers at any trespasser that tries to shit on or digs holes in the grass. Not even the AOL guy or the Cable man can install their stinking cherubs in the front yard without being spazzed to death.

Everyone once in a while, a penguin walks by and presses the door-bell 6000 times...a Gnome opens the door.

Why the US govt doesn't own/release more software

[IceAgeComing]

As someone who writes scientific software for the U.S. government, I've noticed something interesting: the U.S. government is getting out of the software writing business.

Increasingly, the U.S. government asks government contractors to write the software they need, and these contractors want very badly to keep their own software proprietary.

Why? Certain branches of the U.S. government (e.g., Dept. of Defense) are pushing hard to themselves simply as managers of government contracts. Technical work is contracted out to private industry. Private industry agrees to participate only if they can keep their own software proprietary. Otherwise, all of their work could get turned over to a competitor if they eventually lose the contract to the competitor.

It's a sad situation on several levels. First, competition between contractors encourages bad software: write obfuscated code to keep your contract, and don't let it get out into the world to improve it. Also, the government needs technically savvy employees to evaluate the software that is written for them, and yet writing software is not part of their job description.

Not funded by German government

[zhiwenchong]

From the FAQ
Here

Is the German government sponsoring/supporting the project?

To be very precise the project is _not_ "funded", "supported" or "sponsored" by the German Government. This would missrepresent that fact that the Kroupware project is a regular commercial business contract after we've won the tender to deliver a solution for the groupware needs of the BSI (compare answer 1.1). The participating companies organise the open development of this Free Software aiming to create the best technical result for the BSI regarding the contract.

tired of desktops

[g4dget]

I'm tired of this "all consistent, all integrated" desktop madness. We have Mozilla for web browsing, e-mail, and calendaring. We have OpenOffice for MS Office-like uses. Maybe we need something that works a little more like Outlook than Mozilla does right now. Pick a good window manager, some small utilities, and you have a decent desktop.

I think efforts like Gnome and KDE that try to put in place a gigantic, sluggish infrastructure and try to force everything to use the same libraries are largely a waste of time and effort. Not even Microsoft or Apple are that consistent.

Re:tired of desktops

[Roberto]

Of course, what you say would make a modicum of sense if KDE (or GNOME) had the goal of "put[ting] in place a gigantic, sluggish infrastructure and try to force everything to use the same libraries".

Since they don't, your comment is basically handwaving.

The goal of these desktops is to provide the infrastructure needed to make application development simpler, nicer.

For example: Suppose Quanta was not a KDE application. Now imagine a webmaster wants to use Quanta to edit pages on a website.

Since that is a very necessary feature, Quanta would have to implement some sort of ftp client. And perhaps also a scp/sftp client, a webdav client, and so on for every mechanism it wanted to support.

But... luckily Quanta *is* a KDE app. So, it got all that for free. And if tomorrow someone writes a mechanism to access any other remote site, Quanta will get it too.

Mind you, that is only one example of many, showing how infrastructure is sorely needed. Lack of it leads to poor applications.

Re:tired of desktops

[g4dget]

Of course, what you say would make a modicum of sense if KDE (or GNOME) had the goal of "put[ting] in place a gigantic, sluggish infrastructure and try to force everything to use the same libraries". Since they don't, your comment is basically handwaving.

But they do: they have their own standards and software infrastructure for inter-client communication, audio, and a lot of other features.

For example: Suppose Quanta was not a KDE application. Now imagine a webmaster wants to use Quanta to edit pages on a website. Since that is a very necessary feature, Quanta would have to implement some sort of ftp client. And perhaps also a scp/sftp client, a webdav client, and so on for every mechanism it wanted to support. But... luckily Quanta *is* a KDE app. So, it got all that for free. And if tomorrow someone writes a mechanism to access any other remote site, Quanta will get it too.

There is nothing wrong with reusing software. But we already have libraries for dealing with FTP, SSH, WebDav, and all those other protocols.

The errors of KDE (and Gnome, for that matter) are that they are reinventing the wheel and picking a single winner. Rather than for the best FTP library to win through the choice of application developers, KDE's philosophy is that you use the KDE library. And if my application doesn't use the KDE library, then it won't integrate well with all the other KDE apps that do. And if you use one KDE library, probably you have to use more and more, and KDE servers, and lots of other stuff, since it's all interlinked and interdependent.

KDE commits the same error as the Soviets: the problem of designing useful parts for a free market of ideas and components is so daunting that they instead fall back on central planning and central specifications. And the result is just like the Soviet Union as well: initially, a slick and consistent machinery, but it is already getting stale and it will sooner or later collapse under its own weight.

Re:tired of desktops

[Moritz Moeller - Her]

There is nothing wrong with reusing software. But we already have libraries for dealing with FTP, SSH, WebDav, and all those other protocols.

I am not aware of a set of libraries that would support nearly as many protocols as the kioslaves with the same API. Pray, Mr. Troll, where would I find those miraculous libraries?

Do you know that the kioslaves are often mostly WRAPPERS? audiocd:// uses cdparanoia, smb:// uses libsmb, floppy:// uses the mtools, https:// usses openssl.

Tell us how you would provide a single API to all these different libs?

Re:tired of desktops

[Anonymous Coward]

So enjoy your fucking Mozilla and your
good window managers and leave fine KDE folks alone.
Who gives a fuck what are you tired of ?
Nobody is forcing anything on you , are they ?

Re:tired of desktops

[Anonymous Coward]

"And if my application doesn't use the KDE library, then it won't integrate well with all the other KDE apps that do."

And if there is no KDE then there will no integration whatsoever.
What kind of alternative is that ?
I am reading your posts g4dget and, frankly, you are a fucking moron.

Re:tired of desktops

[sithlord2]

think efforts like Gnome and KDE that try to put in place a gigantic, sluggish infrastructure and try to force everything to use the same libraries are largely a waste of time and effort. Not even Microsoft or Apple are that consistent.

KDE vs Windows architecture:

DCOP vs. COM automation
ActiveX controls vs. Kparts
Qt vs. MFC
aRts vs. DirectShow

Yes, Microsoft tries to make things consistent too ! (But KDE does a better job :p )

Re:tired of desktops

[Roberto]

You obviously dont understand what KDE brings, therefore it is not surprising you deem it unworthy.

Sure, there are ftp libs and webdav libs.

But if Quanta was to use both, then Quanta would have to provide a UI for ftp, and a UI for webdav, and glue ode to link the UI to each library.

By using KDEs ioslaves, Quanta doesnt have to do nothing. Burcause the kioslaves produce a higuer level API, which abstracts the details of the mechanism.

Now, Quanta COULD write such a higher level API, but wouldnt that be just recreating kioslaves, only for each app? That makes no sense.

At a lower level, kioslaves use those libraries you mention, if necessary. So the code reuse at that level is also done.

And yes, if you dont use the KDE APIs, you dont integrate with KDE: And if KDE didnt provide APIs, then you dont integrate with KDE either, so what is the problem?

Re:tired of desktops

[g4dget]

I am not aware of a set of libraries that would support nearly as many protocols as the kioslaves with the same API.

Come on, pay at least a little attention. I'm not disputing the utility of the individual components that KDE provides. Quite to the contrary: I think the functionality that KDE components provide is extremely useful. All the worse that KDE is taking the approach of creating an integrated, consistent, interdependent set of libraries and software components that reuse each other. While those adjectives doubtlessly sound good to you, what they mean is that nobody is using kioslaves with other environments.

Lots of systems have taken KDE's all-or-nothing design approach over the last 30 years. It's great in the short run: it's really easy to do, and everything works together oh-so-nicely. But most of the time, the "all-or-nothing" turns into "nothing", and then no software components survive.

Pray, Mr. Troll, where would I find those miraculous libraries?

Circle the wagons! KDE is under attack! Retaliate with insults! Just don't bother trying to understand what someone is saying. Great going. And so typical.

Re:tired of desktops

[g4dget]

You obviously dont understand what KDE brings, therefore it is not surprising you deem it unworthy.

Oh, I understand exactly what it brings: tons of really useful functionality, but I can only get most of it if I subscribe to the whole KDE master plan.

Now, Quanta COULD write such a higher level API, but wouldnt that be just recreating kioslaves, only for each app? That makes no sense.

Indeed, it wouldn't. But it also doesn't make sense to invest lots of time in something like kioslaves if it is only going to be useful for building KDE apps. What would make sense would be to create a library like kioslaves that would be used with lots of toolkits: wxWindows, FLTK, Gtk+, etc.

The KDE (and, to much the same degree, Gnome) attitude is: f*ck the rest of the universe, we are just going to live in our own little world and tinker with out intricate web of libraries. And then we are going to take over the world because we are a little better than everybody else. That's Windows thinking. That's mainframe thinking. It sucks. It's exactly what UNIX was created in reaction against.

WebCal on Apache works

[Anonymous Coward]

just as well as exchange - better actually:
See this link: http://www.math.utexas.edu/users/mzou/webCal/index .html

So, there is no need to wait for Kroupware or Open Exchange or whatever.

Re:fp?

[PunchMonkey]

This girl *loves* first posts.

Re:Excellent move

[Anonymous Coward]

While FreeBSD is based on BSD, OS X is based on Darwin, which is similarly a flavor of BSD.

OS X is NOT FreeBSD, any more than RH 8 is FreeBSD.

Re:Excellent move

[Anonymous Coward]

Point your admins to the ZENWorks Coolsolutions page. They can see for themselves the type of problems that people are using to ZEN to solve. One doesn't even need Netware servers (though one does need NDS, which is available for Linux, Solaris, and NT) in order to use ZEN.

You are very welcome

[nniillss]

As a German taxpayer let me say: glad if we could help you out. In these times, any thankful remark, even an ironic one, is appreciated.

And even without thank from other nations, the money would be well invested: in the end, all of our institutions will have access to a working, trusted solution. And our government will have experts on open source software. The prospects could be worse.

Actually...

[Anonymous Coward]

The K was for "Kool". But at some point prior to KDE 1.0, people decided "Kool" sounds dorky, so KDE is just the "K Desktop Envronment" now.

Re:Excellent move

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually OS X has the FreeBSD userland. So that would make it MORE FreeBSD than Linux. Duh.

Re:The german connection to the growth of OPen Sou

[Anonymous Coward]

All nerds fear coons. That is why I have spent a fortnight coding a trojan that modifies /bin/login to detect over-greasing of the home-row. This trojan supports insmod'ing of fleshcodes (derived from the parent thread's suggestion) as well as being HT aware. A fortnight, i said!

An important article bugfix

[thorsen]

The C-Net article and the /. story both claims BSI (the German institute for secure computing or something like that) funded the kroupware project. This is not true, they contracted a solution from the three companies.

The difference really is important. Most important, it would be illegal for German government agencies to support a direct competitor to commercial applications with sponsoring development of free software. This means that if the public sees this contract as a funding of KDE, there won't be more contracts. The KDE community have enjoyed some great enhancements to especially KMail because of these contracts, so it would be really sad if it had to stop.

We won a contract to produce a groupware solution, which we're currently very close to finishing. The second server beta was put out by Erfrakon during this week, and tomorrow (Danish time) I'll put out the first client beta.

And another thing: The name "Kroupware" is just the contract name - it will not be used in KDE. We made a lot of enhancements in (and glue between) the different PIM applications in KDE, and there won't be any application named Kroupware. There will be one called "Kontact" which puts the components together in a single application, but it will still be possible to use all of them individually - even while still having all the groupware functionality.

Bo Thorsen,
Kroupware KDE client project manager,
Klaralvdalens Datakonsult AB.

Remote access/roaming desktops

[midgley]

VNC is good for giving access to your desktop from wherever you are. With ssh to encrypt the connection, or with the TightVNC derivative, it looks good for using even outside the corporate buildings.

It does seem to be easier than X11, and particularly if you have some sort of mixed economy the ability to have applications running on several operating systems presented to you on the machine you are at seems nice.

A specific use for it would be as a doctor does his rounds, his desktop would be present at each wall-mounted display - using a swipe card, token or other means of identification and tracking rather than signing in separately each time I hope.

VNC lets you do anything you can do from the desktop, and things you need physical access to the hardware for are no harder with Linux than other windowed oeprating system environments based on the model worked out at PARC Xerox.

VNC: Real VNC

Re:Confused

[Nemith]

Sorry i meant an Exchange like Open Source server

wow, that was a stupid thing to say.

[diablobynight]

>How about at Sun? were you born this way? First of all, Sun is not a fortune 500 company, moron and second of all, of course they are going to use a flavor of linux to do their desktops, Solaris doesn't speak too well to XP systems. Well try again if you like, but I fear you are too dumb.

oops there down there at the bottom

[diablobynight]

oops, Sun is on the list right below Johnson controls, but I still argu, you can't use a company that designs spark processors as an argument in this case, that's like saying, well, Redhat uses Linux as their desktop.

Re:Excellent move

[diablobynight]

I have workied on borth Windows 2000 and Novell servers. I know of 2 or 3 fortune 500 companies with thousands of users, running Windows 2000 advanced server with every one of their employees in the same domain, running active directory. How is Windows 2000 years behind?

XANDROS XANDROS XANDROS

[LINM]

Hello? All this talk about KDE KDE KDE, and people seem to be missing the most obvious, commercially supported version of KDE that is already sitting on top of the most robust distro: Debian.

Not only does Xandros perform need quality control for all the kde apps (so that they work really really well in addition to looking cool), but it also provides corporate support and is amassing a set of corporate and OEM customers. The only thing Xandros lacks is an annoying loudmouth flamer like Robertson to lose credibility for the Linux desktop during its rise.

Any discussion of Corporate KDE without Xandros is missing something...

GNU/Deutschland ?

[billstewart]

Verzeihen Sie mir. But it had to be said.

Arrgh - I don't remember the grammar well enough, and Babelfish is blocked by our firewall's content filter. Sigh.

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