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gDesklets - Gnome2's Karamba
Deusy writes "Footnotes is running an update article on gDesklets, Gnome's answer to KDE's Karamba. I've heard a lot of noise with regards to Karamba (and Super Karamba) and a lot of moans from Gnome users about the lack of a Gnome equivalent. Hopefully this should fill that void and more, as one of the developers comments that gDesklets is the product of "months of planning" and describes Karamba as an "ugly hack"."
A developer calls it "an ugly hack". Well, not quite. It was pretty clearly marked as tongue-in-cheek, and not to be taken seriously.
Looks to me like the submitter deliberately wants to fan any remaining flames between the projects; who knows why.
Instead, we have some pretty good illustrations as to why having two projects is a really good idea. KDE gets Karamba (and SuperKaramba) which takes off like wildfire. Undaunted, some Gnome people sit down and look at what Karamba does and learns from it (what the devels envisioned versus how it is actually being used; awkwardness and mistakes in teh design) and develop something similar, but with the benefir of hindsight from the other project. No doubt will the Karamba people look at gDesklets and in turn learn from it's strengths and weaknesses. THe end result is a set of tools that become far better, faster, than either would have become on its own.
Trust the Computer. The Computer is your friend.
Good to know Gnome is going to have something along the same line as KDE. Having said that however, I'm wondering if the Gnome community can match the number of Karamba plug-ins out there, some of which really do look good (www.kde-look.org) Also, before slamming Karamba for being "an ugly hack", I'd love for them to explain A.) Why they think this is so and B.) Why their version is going to be so much better. I mean, a good explanation might go a long way in converting people over who use KDE just for Karamba (and they are out there).
*Fortitudo, aequitas, fidelitas.*
I guess smarter developer would have ported karamba to gnome. I've had enough of this duplication of every goddamn app in world for both of the systems. What's the use of making everything twice? Waste of talented programming resources, IMHO.
I agree but I would say that the reason is probably because they created a framework for others to make the eyecandy in. They laid the foundation and there isn't much eyecandy to show at this point.. just a big hunk of concrete for others to build on.
gkrellm has been around for some time now, does all the above without the uber-eye-candy. Who needs this bloat anyway? Let us all buy shiny new pentiums with mmx so we can run all the latest desktop fuzz! Great!
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Really, was it really necessary to mention that "karamba is an ugly hack" comment? The project's homepage is very objective and doesn't slam KDE at all. That comment was the opinion of one single person!
Why was it mentioned? Are you trying to slam KDE again? Or are you trying to make it look like as if the GNOME guys are slamming KDE, and start yet another flamewar on Slashdot?
I'm sure I will get modded down for this, but hell, it's the truth! Slashdot should not encourage more pointless desktop flamewars or trying to make either GNOME or KDE look bad.
Obligatory mention of gkrellm ... www.gkrellm.net. IMHO, its smaller, more lightweight... can be extended with hundreds of plugins and doesn't clutter the desktop. I think it's been around a bit longer too, but I could be wrong.
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"Also, before slamming Karamba for being "an ugly hack", I'd love for them to explain A.) Why they think this is so and B.) Why their version is going to be so much better."
There is no "they". There is only "he". This is the comment of one individual, not the entire project.
Slashdot is just trying to start another flamewar. This whole story could be considered a troll just because it mentions that single comment.
Quote: "Footnotes is running an update article on gDesklets, Gnome's answer to KDE's Karamba."
What's the point of summarizing a story, if - by the end of the summary - the reader still has no clue as to what it's even about.
What the hell is Karamba, and why should people care enough to click-through?
This wasn't just plain terrible, this was fancy terrible. This was terrible with raisins in it. - Dorothy Parker
1) Dashboard is written in C#. gDesklets is written in Python.
2) Dashboard is just a fun experiment by Nat Friedman, not an official product.
That's not the point. A custom format tailored to a particular program is always going to be better. XML is supposed to be a standard. It's supposed to make things simpler for people by having a standard way of configuring programs.
Time makes more converts than reason
Of course surveys don't ask every user. You missed to say why you think that those 600 are not representative. Also you fail to see that KDE sees massive absolute growth too.
Copy from KDE, or not, there's one important problem , the same as before with desktop environments: double architecture. Now if you want your app to have desktop indicator support, you have TWO API's to support. This is a major problem for developers, packagers and distributions (not to mention the end user).
I suggest to create a meta-API, one that can use either gDesklets and Karamba. It would expose a common set of functions and capabilities and map them to the current session's API.
Hmm.. Next OSS project..
I've never understood the popularity of "active desktop" style embedded desktop widgets. I for one see my computer desktop about as often as I see my physical desktop, which is maybe once a month when I get one of my rare cleaning urges or have to find some document I printed out awhile back. What the hell do these people do at work, that they actually spend a signifigant amount of time without their deskop completely obscured by other windows?
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