KDE 3.2 Alpha 1 Finally on FTP

An anonymous reader cut-and-pastes from the announcement: "Stephan Kulow finally managed to get the last bits of the KDE 3.2 Alpha 1 codenamed 'Brokenboring' including KDevelop 3.0 Alpha 6 on the ftp server (the mirrors should soon pick it up). There won't be any binary packages for this release because the KDE 'P(a)i' release is coming out soon. Everyone using it is asked to compile it with --enable-debug, so we can get valuable feedback. There is a new unstable version of Konstruct to install it."

Comments

portage woes and fp

[Anonymous Coward]

about time, my gentoo kde might work now

Re:portage woes and fp

[Sir_Stinksalot]

Just curious have you ever used Gentoo? I mean its not just the optimizations, that make gentoo great, its the fact that you can get up to date software faster than the mojority of distros. CVS and experimental software are a breeze. And the fact that you can just type a command and come back later with it working is great. I have a knoppix system install on my laptop and so I am familiar with the apt-get system. It is nice when you set it to use the ultra-unstable software so you can actually use something recent but _I_ still _think_ its a bit more of a pain to use apt than portage. Gentoo is actually faster installing small programs than most distros since I dont even have to know where to get it. And the large stuff like KDE well I just go to bed and at the latest its ready to roll when I get back from work. I am not trying to convince you to use Gentoo just trying to say your statement sounds quite ignorant. And if you use Debian the way it was designed you won't get KDE 3.2 for another 3-5 years.

Re:portage woes and fp

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd use Gentoo but the Gentoo fanboys like you put me right off. Most of you don't even understand the GCC flags you're using, let alone the basic concepts of compiling software from source.

Re:portage woes and fp

[101percent]

http://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic.php?t=82450&hig hlight=cvs

Looks like the obsessive nightly CVS crontab build jobs of many Gentoo users has pissed off some folks.

Too lazy to parse.

Re:portage woes and fp

[Sir_Stinksalot]

I am not a Gentoo fanboy and your right I don't understand all of the cflags I use but I try. I don't push gentoo on everyone I meet. As a matter of fact to a newb I reccomend JAMD or SuSE. Gentoo is for those that want to learn but not go full bore with LFS. I personnally use Gentoo because its easy to install stuff without dependancy probs and I can get up to date stuff. Debian is cool like I said I use Knoppix (installed) on my laptop which is a Debian unstable easy to install and use distro. But at home I have bandwidth and horsepower to spare so I use gentoo which works for me. But please use what works for you. If interested in Gentoo try it but don't give up on it til you got it installed and functioning all the way just like any distro you want to try. But I got to say if you want to run Debian try out knoppix and install it to the harddrive its sweet fast and easy.

Re:So...

[Trigun]

Both, all the boring parts are broken, and all the broken parts are boring.

It's trying to compete with XP for the desktop.

Re:So...

[digitalunity]

You guys are so incredible it's just funny.

You say that useability is the leading cause of failure among adoption, yet KDE brings it and then you say it works like XP. That's a big smack in the face for the KDE developers, and I've been following the CVS. The verdict is in:

It rocks.

Re:So...

[motte_fra]

It broke when I compiled it on xp

Well...

[Anonymous Coward]

Building the alpha version with an unstable Konstruct... I opt for both.

KDE most impressive open source project - ever

[Anonymous Coward]

The progress that these guys have made in 5 years and the sheer volume of quality code is simply amazing. What are these guys doing right as compared to all the other projects? They even stick to their development and release schedules better than most commercial companies. And despite everyone calling for the death of C++, KDE is the shining example of what can be accomplished in that language. I seriously doubt it could have been constructed in any other language and produce as quick and relatively error-free code as these guys have produced.

Re:KDE most impressive open source project - ever

[RoLi]

What are these guys doing right as compared to all the other projects?

In my opinion, the KDE guys are just a bunch of hackers that do it for fun with not much political, religious and legal considerations.

Technical considerations are always number 1 for KDE. As an example, KDE has chosen QT because of it's clean design - despite the license which could have been interpreted as incompatible (or just evil) by some at that time. (Today it's GPLed)

Re:KDE most impressive open source project - ever

[tonyt]

And despite everyone calling for the death of C++, KDE is the shining example of what can be accomplished in that language.

ahem, while leaning heavily on moc.

Re:KDE most impressive open source project - ever

[swordboy]

The progress that these guys have made in 5 years and the sheer volume of quality code is simply amazing.

Yet, it pales in comparison to the accomplishment that "could have been" if they had collaborated with the Gnome team (or verse visa) to create one standard desktop.

Now we have two competing desktops with the users sitting on the sidelines waiting for a winner.

Re:KDE most impressive open source project - ever

[vadim_t]

Yeah, right. You think that somehow C++ and C code written in different ways, and following different guidelines would somehow get merged and turn into The Ultimate Desktop? Hell will freeze over before that happens.

Re:KDE most impressive open source project - ever

[RoLi]

Yet, it pales in comparison to the accomplishment that "could have been" if they had collaborated with the Gnome team (or verse visa) to create one standard desktop.

Which is? IMO KDE delivers a complete desktop without any major shortcomings. Could you come up with an example?

Also GNOME was started because at that time QT was not GPLed and the goal was to replace KDE/Qt.

"Replace" means "destroy" in the software world which isn't a very good start for cooperation.

Re:KDE most impressive open source project - ever

[TomorrowPlusX]

So?

The moc is a hack that brings key c++ functionality to even the most mediocre c++ compilers. What's wrong with that? Sure, the syntax is different, but at least then there's no confusion about what's going on.

Have you ever tried to do *heavy* templated c++ code and have it be cross-platform? Have you written complex code relying on functors and it work on dozens of different c++ compilers? Good luck, chief.

All the moc does is use preprocessor trickery to make sure that functor mechanisms are completely functional regardless of compiler. Sure, it hides string invocation of methods in a SIGNAL() and SLOT() macro. Big deal. It works, beautifully, and between KDevelop and KDE's autoconf scripts, it's all hidden.

If you don't like the moc, why don't you go out and fix all the compilers for all the platforms that Qt runs on.

Re:KDE most impressive open source project - ever

[10Ghz]

Yet, it pales in comparison to the accomplishment that "could have been" if they had collaborated with the Gnome team

Then talk to the Gnome-team. After all, it was the Gnome-folks who set out to reinvent the wheel. KDE was started before Gnome was even a twinkle in de Icazas eyes.

And besides, "standard desktop" on Linux is not possible. People will run whatever suits their needs, you can't force them to run some "standard desktop". Besides, competition between the two desktops is a GOOD thing!

Re:KDE most impressive open source project - ever

[azzy]

Wow, I must be the only one that isn't sitting on the sidelines, and instead picking whichever one to use that I want.

Re:KDE most impressive open source project - ever

[tonyt]

you make excellent points but miss mine. i just found it funny that the original poster would use kde, which leans on the workarounds you yourself outlined, as a reason _not_ to "call for the death" of c++.

Re:KDE most impressive open source project - ever

[Rogerborg]

You're defending moc when your parent was dissing C++. Well done. Tell you what, next time I hear someone slagging off the Windows kernel, I'll explain at great length why Windows Media Player isn't as bad as they're making it out to be.

Re:KDE most impressive open source project - ever

[Rogerborg]

You fool! Go back to the console, this gooey crap will never catch on.

Say, what's this I hear about a version of lynx that does "images"? Do they have those on gopher now?

Re:KDE most impressive open source project - ever

[JimDabell]

Yes, in case people aren't aware, KDE, like most projects that use the Qt toolkit, rely on a preprocessor to do a little of the work. Specifically, the C++ language is extended slightly to cover the concept of slots and signals, which is a very expressive way of coding up a GUI application.

Re:KDE most impressive open source project - ever

[twistedcubic]

Only two desktops? You speak as if KDE and Gnome are gonna have a celebrity deathmatch sometime in the near future. Actually, you're right. And during this fight, Fluxbox will jump in and stomp all over them both, and then we'll FINALLY have a single "desktop".

Re:KDE most impressive open source project - ever

[akc]

Firstly, or course, they are co-operating through freedesktop.org

Secondly - its the challenge that an alternative exists that drives both teams to innovate and make their particular project better. So whats to say that this actually means that KDE (and GNOME) have not got further than if they had tried to fit incompatible technologies together.

Re:KDE most impressive open source project - ever

[Anonymous Coward]

jackass, gcc *does* use lisp.

I suggest you take a compiler construction class, or at least read the dragon book or lcc book. compilers are based on solid mathematical principles. there is a learning curve, but if you know how and why compilers work, it's not nearly as hard to see how gcc works.

consider that a feature. Do you really want some 15 year old that just installed linux on his eMachines to submit gcc patches? (look at gnome!)

Re:KDE most impressive open source project - ever

[swillden]

Yet, it pales in comparison to the accomplishment that "could have been" if they had collaborated with the Gnome team (or verse visa) to create one standard desktop.

I disagree. The two desktops compete (even though they say they don't), trying to keep up with one another, stealing each other's good ideas and enhancing them with their own. The result is much faster progress on both that would have been achieved by either individually.

Further, it's a mistake to think that both GNOME and KDE are drawing on the same limited pool of development talent, for two reasons. First, the set of C programmers and the set of C++ programmers are pretty much disjoint. Sure, the syntax has common roots, but philosophy and approach are worlds apart, and pushing the camps together would just create massive infighting. Second, competition generates excitement, excitement generates interest and *interest* is what drives open source development.

Your statement holds the implicit assumption that if a KDE didn't exist, the KDE developers would have been hacking on GNOME, and vice versa, but I'd be surprised if there would be more than a bare handful for whom this is true.

Now we have two competing desktops with the users sitting on the sidelines waiting for a winner.

Who's sitting and waiting? Both environments are very usable (IMO, both are far superior to Windows), and users are free to pick the one they want. Or, in the case of the newbie or the corporate desktop, have one picked for them.

Re:KDE most impressive open source project - ever

[fault0]

Too bad nobody would develop for it because it was written in objective-C (remember that at that time, Apple hadn't even bought NeXT yet)

Re:KDE most impressive open source project - ever

[Spudley]

Yet, it pales in comparison to the accomplishment that "could have been" if they had collaborated with the Gnome team (or verse visa) to create one standard desktop.

Now we have two competing desktops with the users sitting on the sidelines waiting for a winner.

You're kidding right?

I always thought how great it is to have two major desktops on the same platform. Competition drives innovation, and I think that has been well demonstrated by the pace of development of both KDE and GNOME in recent years.

Put them together, and you'd have had a bunch of squabbling, bickering developers, and a product that wouldn't have been as advanced as either of them actually is today.

As for the users sitting waiting for one or other to win, remember that this is exactly why Microsoft has a monopoly now. There's nothing wrong with having two products in the same market place.

Re:KDE most impressive open source project - ever

[IamTheRealMike]

Which is? IMO KDE delivers a complete desktop without any major shortcomings. Could you come up with an example?

Well, the most obvious one is that's something of an all or nothing proposition. You're either a KDE app (which almost always means C++) and have access to the infrastructure provided, or you aren't. That poses problems for Wine, OpenOffice, Mozilla - not to mention all the desktop neutral software out there like XMMS, Gaim, mplayer and so on.

There are people of course who use KDEs replacements for all those apps, and *only* use KDE software. But I don't know many - typically people want to use the best, and get on with things, not keep a "pure" desktop.

Also GNOME was started because at that time QT was not GPLed and the goal was to replace KDE/Qt. "Replace" means "destroy" in the software world which isn't a very good start for cooperation.

That's one side of it, a valid side. But really, the KDE guys made it inevitable when they chose to give two fingers to the philosophy that had made the free software movement possibly in the first place. Having built an entirely free software platform, there were a lot of people who weren't pleased with the idea that it might be compromised by Qt.

Basically, they knew that would cause problems, but went ahead anyway and they got competition in the form of Gnome. Big surprise. In the process both sides seemed for forget about non-KDE/non-GNOME software, and now people have to slowly pick up the pieces over at freedeskop.org so all the software that isn't affiliated with a project can interop nicely and can fit in.

Re:KDE most impressive open source project - ever

[elvum]

the KDE guys made it inevitable when they chose to give two fingers to the philosophy that had made the free software movement possibly in the first place

Some would say that the confrontation started when the founders of GNOME decided to work on a competing desktop environment instead of a free replacement for Qt. The former was not "inevitable".

Re:KDE most impressive open source project - ever

[IamTheRealMike]

What kind of message would that have sent? That the KDE developers could do what they wanted, and those who cared about free software would have to race to catch up? Qt isn't small you know, and the KDE guys weren't willing to rule out using TrollTechs version.

No. That would not have been an acceptable solution. If you're going to do something as big as a desktop, you need to get your priorities in order, and if there was a need for a toolkit then there was a need and meeting it should have been the first priority. Otherwise, you'd have a desktop riddled with non-free libraries today and lots of teams struggling to clone them and keep up, always two steps behind.

Re:KDE most impressive open source project - ever

[Roberto]

Today, creating non-C++ KDE apps is simple. Just get PyKDE. Loads easier than C++-KDE, really.

Also, it is possible to use KDE's infrastructure without being a KDE app.

For example: ioslaves for network transparency.

Say you want to get a file through HTTP as if you were a KDE app?

Just call

kfmclient copy http://whatever /wherever

and wait() on it.

Want to open a file using the KDE mime-type associations? Just call

kfmclient exec url

Want to make your app use KDE icons for mimetypes and such? This one is trickier, because the helper doesn't exist AFAIK, but it is very doable.

Re:KDE most impressive open source project - ever

[Xerithane]

You're defending moc when your parent was dissing C++.

He was even dissing the variances in multiple C++ compilers. That is the reason for moc. You need moc to make sure that it all compiles no matter what your compiler is. There are still a lot of things that are different between compilers (g++ supports array indexing with unsigned longs, VC6 doesn't, for example) and moc takes care of a lot of those.

It makes C++ easier for doing cross platform development.

Tell you what, next time I hear someone slagging off the Windows kernel, I'll explain at great length why Windows Media Player isn't as bad as they're making it out to be.

The only reason why you would be doing that is because you don't understand what moc does.

moc generates C++ code, sparky.

Re:KDE most impressive open source project - ever

[IamTheRealMike]

Invoking things via shell scripts is all well and good, but to actually integrate with the desktop you need access to the KDE classes, as they are the canonical implementation, and that means linking with kdelibs and Qt. I guess you could expose everything through little command line apps, but that's even lowest-common-denominator than having a C library for it.

Re:KDE most impressive open source project - ever

[Roberto]

Well, system('kfmclient ...') is not a shell script, but I won't hold that against you ;-)

You want a C lib? There is one, too. Of course it means you are linking all of kdelibs to your app, too, and then, why not use it, right?

Re:KDE most impressive open source project - ever

[RoLi]

Well, the most obvious one is that's something of an all or nothing proposition. You're either a KDE app (which almost always means C++) and have access to the infrastructure provided, or you aren't. That poses problems for Wine, OpenOffice, Mozilla - not to mention all the desktop neutral software out there like XMMS, Gaim, mplayer and so on.

Well that is pretty much the nature of the beast: Of course only KDE-aware apps can use KDE-specific features.

But I agree that for example GTK-prgrammers could have written wrappers to use KDE-dialogs etc.

That's one side of it, a valid side. But really, the KDE guys made it inevitable when they chose to give two fingers to the philosophy that had made the free software movement possibly in the first place. Having built an entirely free software platform, there were a lot of people who weren't pleased with the idea that it might be compromised by Qt.

While I agree that the original Qt-license was not perfect, I think KDE has chosen a right balance between being open and getting things done - which also made Linux successful in stark contrast to all the GNU-fanatic projects like the Hurd. So yes, Qt's former license was a concern, but not big enough IMO to stop using KDE.

This kind of I-only-care-about-licenses-if-it-concerns-me and get-things-done attitude is exactly what Linux and KDE have in common and which is to a great part reason for their success.

A similar example are binary-only modules in Linux, which were allowed by Linus but most likely not by RMS.

Re:KDE most impressive open source project - ever

[IamTheRealMike]

I'd be careful with that line of reasoning - the relative success of Linux vs the Hurd has a lot more to do with technical design and leadership, not licensing. The binary only kernel modules thing is interesting but ultimately does not give anybody control over the direction of the kernel, in the same way that building a desktop on a non-free toolkit would have given TT control.

The main problem with depending on KDE for apps like Wine, OO, Mozilla is that they wish to remain desktop neutral - remember the large number of people who use neither KDE nor Gnome. Depending on one desktop is not in their best interests, in many ways and depending on non-free code is definately not.

Some people like to paint it as a black and white "KDE wanted to get things done, the fanatics started GNOME to destroy them", but that's blurring a lot of important details to my mind, and over simplifying the history of those times. I say that as somebody who has not hacked on KDE or GNOME to any great extent, but has worked a lot on Wine and autopackage, both of which have to remain desktop independant.

Re:KDE most impressive open source project - ever

[GooTi]

Only two desktops? You speak as if KDE and Gnome are gonna have a celebrity deathmatch sometime in the near future. Actually, you're right. And during this fight, Fluxbox will jump in and stomp all over them both, and then we'll FINALLY have a single "desktop".

That would be Enlightenment 1.0, thanks.

Uhm.. you said near future... tricky, tricky...

Re:KDE most impressive open source project - ever

[Rogerborg]

Just FYI, so far today I have worked with C, C++, Perl, Python and asm for Win32 NT/2K/XP, WinCE 2002, WinCE .NET, Symbian series 60 native, Symbian UIQ native, Symbian series 60 wins emulator, Symbian UIQ wins emulator, and I'm just about to start on some linux fixes.

But, ooh, gosh, you've used g++ and VC6, so I'd better shut the fuck up, eh, sparky?

Re:KDE most impressive open source project - ever

[Ogerman]

You're either a KDE app (which almost always means C++) and have access to the infrastructure provided, or you aren't. That poses problems for Wine, OpenOffice, Mozilla - not to mention all the desktop neutral software out there like XMMS, Gaim, mplayer and so on.

Hmm.. well, desktop-neutral software is neither an issue for KDE or Gnome, so that point is moot. The likes of OpenOffice and Mozilla aren't really a "problem" either. They both have rather monolithic interfaces not well tied to any desktop environment. And, incidentally, they're both horribly bloated and sluggish applications. Frankly, I think KOffice and Konqueror/KHTML have a better long term future, especially now that KOffice will be using the OpenOffice XML document formats and Apple is helping to develop KHTML for their own browser. OpenOffice and Mozilla are both projects where old, tangled proprietary code was thrown at the community. KOffice and Konqueror, in comparision, are fresh starts.

As others have pointed out, there are methods of interoperability between Qt/KDE and Gtk/Gnome apps. I don't think the separation is as bad as you make it out to sound, however I do think the redundancy is a waste.

Having built an entirely free software platform, there were a lot of people who weren't pleased with the idea that it might be compromised by Qt. Basically, they knew that would cause problems, but went ahead anyway and they got competition in the form of Gnome.

I was one who didn't use KDE during this mess. The old Qt license controversy was a good thing. It resulted in a GPL'ed release and the end of non-free licensing concerns. Now that the situation is resolved, it is pointless to keep bringing it up. Politics are no reason to use GNOME instead of KDE. On the other hand, the apparent technical and usability advantage of KDE at this point does make me question why GNOME still needs to exist as a seperate project. Is there truly a good reason to not roll them into one unified desktop environment at this point?

Re:KDE most impressive open source project - ever

[Xerithane]

Just FYI, so far today I have worked with C, C++, Perl, Python and asm for Win32 NT/2K/XP, WinCE 2002, WinCE .NET, Symbian series 60 native, Symbian UIQ native, Symbian series 60 wins emulator, Symbian UIQ wins emulator, and I'm just about to start on some linux fixes.

Then I guess you should actually know what moc does instead of being an illiterate dipshit? Or maybe you should read what people write before trying to criticize them.

But, ooh, gosh, you've used g++ and VC6, so I'd better shut the fuck up, eh, sparky?

It's better to keep your mouth shut and let everyone wonder if you are an idiot, than open it and prove it.

Just because I posted a difference between g++ and VC6 doesn't mean that's all I've used.

I think you are full of shit though, as anybody who needs to use that many languages/platforms in that short of a time period is bullshitting.

Feel free to prove me wrong.

Because today I've used COBOL, Pascal, Smalltalk, Squirrel, Brainfuck, Perl, C++, C, ASM for x86, on an AS/400, i686, i586, ia64, with Windows, Linux, every BSD under the sun, while making a double latte with a twist of lemon.

Re:KDE most impressive open source project - ever

[IamTheRealMike]

Hmm.. well, desktop-neutral software is neither an issue for KDE or Gnome, so that point is moot.

Maybe not for the KDE or Gnome projects, but the point is certainly not moot for their users, who often wish to use these apps and have them integrate nicely.

And, incidentally, they're both horribly bloated and sluggish applications. Frankly, I think KOffice and Konqueror/KHTML have a better long term future, especially now that KOffice will be using the OpenOffice XML document formats and Apple is helping to develop KHTML for their own browser

That's nice, but my (desktop neutral) project website stats show Konqueror usage to be about 3-4% typically, with Gecko based browsers taking about 60% and the rest being Internet Explorer, so it's not there yet. The hypothetical desktop of the future is nice, but the desktop of today is dominated by Mozilla and OpenOffice, for better or worse.

OpenOffice and Mozilla are both projects where old, tangled proprietary code was thrown at the community. KOffice and Konqueror, in comparision, are fresh starts.

Well, I would quibble with that on two points, the first one being that Mozilla was in fact a fresh start itself, and the code, while not always a thing of beauty, isn't as bad as is often made out (I've written patches for Mozilla). OpenOffice, yes, quite probably, but then again it takes time and effort to accrue all those features and filters, and there's no guarantee that had KOffice gone through years of development and got all the features of openoffice that it too would not be seen as bloated and complex.

On the other hand, the apparent technical and usability advantage of KDE at this point does make me question why GNOME still needs to exist as a seperate project. Is there truly a good reason to not roll them into one unified desktop environment at this point?

Certainly, there are many. For one, not everybody agrees that KDE has a technical and usability advantage. I know quite a few people who find Gnome easier to use, more elegant UI wise and so on, and I know quite a few people who find the KDE frameworks more technically elegant than Gnomes.

More to the point, attempting a merge, or cutting off one project, would lose the community a lot of dedicated and smart hackers, a loss we really can't afford.

Re:KDE most impressive open source project - ever

[be-fan]

First, its "vice versa."

Second, it would be hard for the KDE devs to collaborate with the GNOME devs, since GNOME was started *after* KDE. GNOME was created as a specific response to KDE. There is no way the two could have merged projects at any time. Today, they have very differing goals. People who like the KDE philosophy use KDE, people who like the GNOME philosophy use GNOME.

Re:KDE most impressive open source project - ever

[arose]

Fluxbox? If you want a window manager get Ion.

Re:KDE most impressive open source project - ever

[tyrione]

Are you serious?

It's called COCOA. The Objective-C Frameworks of AppKit, Foundation Kit, WebCore (yes it borrows and gives back to KDE) are a perfect examples to counter that claim of relatively error-free code.

Re:KDE most impressive open source project - ever

[damiam]

not to mention all the desktop neutral software out there like XMMS, Gaim, mplayer and so on.

Although of course they can run on either desktop, all three of those apps are GTK-based, and gaim is quit heavily GNOME-integrated.

Re:KDE most impressive open source project - ever

[chowells]

I think "organised anarchy" would be quite a good description. Can't remember who coined the phrase, but I remember reading it before.

One of the reasons that I think we do so well is the openness with which KDE is developed. There are no ACLs in CVS for the code modules (only for the web site modules), in contract to gcc, gnome, et al which do have strict ACLs. So if you get a KDE CVS account you can commit to any module. You'll get shouted at if you mess things up sure but I think it does help to produce more of a community feel and a feeling of privilege and trust.

I know how pleased I was when I got my KDE CVS account when I was 16 or so :)

I think Qt is truly wonderful, it's so intuitive and nice to program with.

And possibly most importantly, the rest of the team are absolutely wonderful people to work with. I had a thoroughly excellent time in the Czech Republic socialising and hacking with the rest of the time at the recent "Kastle" conference.

Oh, and for those people that complain about the "K" prefixes to programs. Get a life!

Re:KDE most impressive open source project - ever

[Tukla]

I'm impressed! What other techniques do you use to cope with your minute penis?

Re:KDE most impressive open source project - ever

[shellbeach]

Although of course they can run on either desktop, all three of those apps are GTK-based, and gaim is quit heavily GNOME-integrated.

Another point to note is that by staying "desktop neutral" they are also usable by those of us who don't use either GNOME or KDE! I find the concept of installing either GNOME or KDE-specific libraries anathema, even though I easily have the diskspace to do so - I simply do not want heaps of unwanted cruft running on my system which seems to be the end result of any app that uses KDE/GNOME. And I don't really understand why either should be required: the only important aspect of either is the file-open/save dialogue, and that should be provided by the toolkit, not the desktop, IMHO.

Re:KDE most impressive open source project - ever

[damiam]

The open/save dialog is provided by the toolkit, in both GTK and QT. However, the desktop libraries do provide useful features. In GNOME's case, you have gconf (for awesome config management, for both users and developers), gnome-vfs (so you can open stuff over a network), gnome-db (for easy database access), bonobo (for embedding), and gnomeui (for displaying help, parsing config files, using i18n, and other utility functions). All of these are useful, and none are very big or bloated by themselves.

Re:KDE most impressive open source project - ever

[Zork the Almighty]

If there was no Gnome, QT would still be non-free.

This is dead on the money. I think all of us, whether we use GNOME or not, owe a debt of gratitude to the GNOME developers. Regardless of what happened with KDE and QT, they ensured that a major free desktop environment would always be available.

Re:KDE most impressive open source project - ever

[Ogerman]

I bet you haven't even (in your view) dirtied yourself to use recent Mozilla or OO versions, have you?

Nope.. I use Mozilla 1.4 and OpenOffice 1.1beta3 regularly. They're both markably improved, but still terribly sluggish, especially on older machines. OpenOffice is obviously in far worse shape. Using it on anything less than about an 800Mhz. Athlon is torture. That is unacceptable when you consider how much better even the bloated MS Office runs on similar or even far older hardware. Hopefully this will be fixed with time. Mozilla is not as much a problem, but on older machines it's still a dog compared to Konqueror.

Let me explain something: Mozilla is now, by far, the best browser. Konqueror is poor by comparison (and don't quote the Apple bullshit)... it renders pages poorly, and more slowly than Moz... and when you take into account the entire KDE baggage that comes with it, it's a hell of a lot more bloated than Moz.

I never contended that Moz wasn't the best browser right now. In fact, it is the gold standard. I'm saying that once Konqueror reaches Moz's level of standards compliance, it'll become the browser of choice for performance reasons. It is not my experience that Konq. renders slower than Moz, but rather quite the opposite.. especially when certain Javascript is involved. Incidentally, the "KDE baggage" is pretty comparable to Gnome's or any other modern DE.. and it's only baggage if you're not running KDE, in which case you'd just use Mozilla anyhow. Apparently, the option of using Gecko in place of KHTML is also in the works.

It also has more features... KOffice apps are laughably under featured and would have difficult satisfying even a home user.

Once again, I never said KOffice was ready to replace OO.o. But I think it will someday unless OO.o gets in really high gear. (honestly, I've looked at the code and it's barely navigable) Here, I'll turn the tables just for kicks: have you dirtied yourself to check out the latest KOffice CVS lately? It is not the same as 1.2... heh

if you can get Trolltech to change the Qt license from the full GPL, to the LGPL (unlikely, given that they use it to extort large amounts of money from anyone wanting to write closed-source apps)

So you mean people who want to extort large amounts of money by selling proprietary software shouldn't have to pay anything for that privilege?

Proprietary is dead. Get over it.

Re:KDE most impressive open source project - ever

[shellbeach]

However, the desktop libraries do provide useful features. In GNOME's case, you have gconf (for awesome config management, for both users and developers), gnome-vfs (so you can open stuff over a network), gnome-db (for easy database access), bonobo (for embedding), and gnomeui (for displaying help, parsing config files, using i18n, and other utility functions). All of these are useful, and none are very big or bloated by themselves.

I guess I just strongly believe in applications being as "stand-alone" as possible - I don't really want to be fiddling around with heaps of libraries just to compile a simple app that in most cases doesn't even use the libraries in any significant way. That said, if GNOME/KDE provided a single tarball of the basic library source code without any added cruft, and this was less than 10 Meg in size, I'd happily compile it and have it on my system. But I know that GNOME certainly doesn't do this and I doubt that KDE does either.

Re:KDE most impressive open source project - ever

[Rogerborg]

Funnily enough, I'm criticising precisely what you did write, not what you seem to think you wrote. Namely that you're defending the original accusation - about the crappiness of C++ implementations needing moc to fix them - by explaining why moc can fix them. Well, duh.

I think you are full of shit though, as anybody who needs to use that many languages/platforms in that short of a time period is bullshitting

Sure, because there's no technology out there that's already being used by Sony, Panasonic, NTT DoCoMo, and Samsung, plus a bunch of unannounced others. No sirree, you've caught me out all right. Heh, you're cute.

Re:KDE most impressive open source project - ever

[IamTheRealMike]

Gaim isn't GNOME integrated at all, the Gaim guys have a pathological fear of linking against libraries. It depends on GTK+, and that's it.

Re:KDE most impressive open source project - ever

[Tukla]

Hmm, puncture wounds would cause bleeding....

Re:KDE most impressive open source project - ever

[Xerithane]

Namely that you're defending the original accusation - about the crappiness of C++ implementations needing moc to fix them - by explaining why moc can fix them. Well, duh.


I'm not complaning about the crappiness of C++ implementations -- I'm talking about the variances of C++ implementations. And yes, some of them are crappy. This is why you are illiterate.

Sure, because there's no technology out there that's already being used by Sony, Panasonic, NTT DoCoMo, and Samsung, plus a bunch of unannounced others. No sirree, you've caught me out all right. Heh, you're cute.


I'm saying that if you used all of those by the time you posted here, you haven't spent enough time to actually do anything productive. Opening a window with code doesn't count as "working with it"

Next time don't say, "So far today I've worked..." unless it's actually reasonable. Besides, if you are working with Symbian why are you dealing with assembly? And unless you are working with firmware, you are bullshitting about assembly. Since you are working with Symbian, I seriously doubt that you are working with firmware. Or visa versa.

All I'm saying is that while you may work on those platforms on a regular or irregular basis, saying "so far today I've worked on..." is just bullshit, or you don't understand what "work" actually is.

Re:KDE most impressive open source project - ever

[Ed_Moyse]

Personally I use Konqeror exclusively, but it's set to identify itself as IE (I've encountered several sites that complain otherwise).

You've got to be careful with these stats - it might be that it's easier to change browser ID in konqueror, or mentioned more prominently in documentation or something ... Finally, gecko based browsers work on windows, which is going to instantly bump up their percentage.

Re:KDE most impressive open source project - ever

[IamTheRealMike]

True, but ultimately they're the best I've got, and people who rewrite the browser strings are probably a very small percentage of the total users.

Re:KDE most impressive open source project - ever

[be-fan]

Right, because the GPL isn't free? I'm sure RMS would love to hear that one...

Re:KDE most impressive open source project - ever

[be-fan]

Do you mean that error free code can be developed in other languages as fast (duh!) or that KDE isn't relatively error-free code?

Re:KDE most impressive open source project - ever

[damiam]

I don't really want to be fiddling around with heaps of libraries just to compile a simple app

That's what apt/emerge is for. :-)

Re:KDE most impressive open source project - ever

[Rogerborg]

>I'm not complaning about the crappiness of C++ implementations -- I'm talking about the variances of C++ implementations

And I argue that the variance makes C++ as a whole (not "C++ implementations") crappy.

>"So far today I've worked..." unless it's actually reasonable.

Do you know how long I'd been working before I posted that? Do you have any idea what I do for a living? Is it remotely possible that the reason that we disagree is that I know a metric assload more about what I'm talking about than you do, and that I work in an environment with far higher productivity and expectations?

It is possible to work (i.e. actually design, implement and test) on those areas in a single day. That was the same bugfix on multiple platforms (variously C and C++), plus a Win32 asm implementation of memcpy to fix a related multiply defined symbol problem, plus Perl/Python build script fixes on all platforms. If you think that isn't possible in one day, then that says more about your abilities and experience than mine.

You may now have the last word, and again explain why you know more than me while apparently being capabable of achieving so much less.

Re:KDE most impressive open source project - ever

[Xerithane]

And I argue that the variance makes C++ as a whole (not "C++ implementations") crappy.

Name any language that doesn't have variances in it's compilers in some way and you can win this argument. Otherwise you sound like an idiot

That was the same bugfix on multiple platforms (variously C and C++), plus a Win32 asm implementation of memcpy to fix a related multiply defined symbol problem, plus Perl/Python build script fixes on all platforms. If you think that isn't possible in one day, then that says more about your abilities and experience than mine.


So, you don't have any sort of revision control so that you don't have to hop between platforms fixing the same thing? That's odd, my multiplatform code runs from the same codebase and if I fix a bug on one it gets fixed every where.

You may now have the last word, and again explain why you know more than me while apparently being capabable of achieving so much less.

As someone who spends there day chasing the same bugs on multiple platforms, I'll take it as a compliment that you think you achieve more.

Brokenboring?

[essiescreet]

This is awsome, with a name like this how can it be anything other than... er... great, hmmm, what a name.

Re:Brokenboring?

[realnowhereman]

-1 Bleedin' obvious

Do you seriously think the KDE developers didn't notice the broken, boring qualities of the code name. I believe it's a pun on the LOTR place named brockenboring. And with it being an alpha, brokenboring is bound to be apt.

Let's not mod people funny for just paraphrasing a joke.

Re:Brokenboring?

[essiescreet]

Right, sorry, it was early, and I hadn't had any coffee yet. I forgot that the only obvious jokes allowed were for the weekly "New Microsoft Security Flaw Found". Since this is an Open Source project, we must all be chaste and serious when referring to it, and no jokes allowed. Moderators, band together and mod the original post back down.

Re:Brokenboring?

[rRaminrodt]

I think you're right.

In a kde context it might also to refer to this, a new component in the build system.

Re:Brokenboring?

[JamesKPolk]

The name does fits in with other KDE alpha release names, like Krash.

Anyway, Brokenboring comes from a proposal that was made during the KDE 3.2 development cycle. "Brockenboring" was the name given to the proposal, and a detractor quickly turned that into "Brokenboring."

See http://lists.kde.org/?l=kde-core-devel&m=105655450 429442 for the proposal and http://lists.kde.org/?l=kde-core-devel&m=105722962 907440 for some of the criticism.

Re:Brokenboring?

[og_sh0x]

Wow, I was expecting a negative response for such an obvious comment, but that's what I really wanted to know. Thanks, Psychic AC!

Re:Brokenboring?

[arcanumas]

No, that's plain broken.

Re:Brokenboring?

[dusty123]

Didn't you know that Brockenboring is a famous city district in Frankfurt?

... Mal sehen, wer sich an der Nase herumfuehren laesst...

Re:Brokenboring?

[Brandybuck]

Besides Tolkien's trivial use of it in a hastily drawn map of the Shire, it also happens to mean "badger holes". It makes a great name for a Hobbit village. But it's also the name for several real world locations.

GNOME myths

[Anonymous Coward]

"GNOME is a great community project"

Equals:

"Without the backing of Red Hat and Sun, who do almost all of the work, GNOME would be like FVWM or AfterStep -- a few hard-core users but no major developments ongoing. KDE is far more popular, and yet doesn't have massive companies paying programmers for it! KDE is a true community project; GNOME is only surviving because of money. If Red Hat and Sun go down, would GNOME survive? Not likely."

a native port of kde on osx

[Anonymous Coward]

anyone know if someone is working on a native port of kde to osx?

Re:a native port of kde on osx

[Ranger Rick]

Depends on what you mean by "native". KDE is already working with X11 on OSX.

We're still working on making it build with Qt/Mac.

Re:a native port of kde on osx

[JimDabell]

KDE is in Fink.

Don't let the source code compilation scare you!

[nighty5]

The KDE team have done a fantastic job at providing the necessary tools for even a slightly tech savvy user to upgrade to the latest development release.

Checkout Konstruct to learn how to run a simple script to download, verify, compile and install the components to get KDE working on your machine.

Doesn't work for me....

[stephenry]

I try to download it the other day, but my KBrowser was having KTrouble downloading the KFiles from the KFtp.

Re:Doesn't work for me....

[mblase]

FWIW, Apple users have the same reaction to "iAnything". As do Windows users to "Anything XP" (or "Anything 2000", or "Anything95", or "WinAnything"....)

Re:Doesn't work for me....

[fault0]

Wow, you'd think moderators would stop moderating posts that stopped being funny back in 1998.

Re:Doesn't work for me....

[TheRaven64]

Yeah, and think fo the portability problems this creates. If someone wants to make a truely cross-platform port of Foomatic, they'd have to call it kigFoomatic XP, which is just ugly.

Re:Doesn't work for me....

[vadim_t]

Fortunately, Foomatic seems to be Linux only ;-)

Oddly enough, somebody thought it'd be a good name for a set of printer drivers. http://www.linuxprinting.org/foomatic

Re:Doesn't work for me....

[SoTuA]

naaah... the WORST of all the "anything" things is the "anything.net". GAAAAAAAAAAAH!

:: SIGH ::

[xanadu-xtroot.com]

Man, and 3.1.3 finally finsihed compiling on my 233-MMX just yesterday...

O-well...

Re::: SIGH ::

[AkaXakA]

Hey man, it has MMX...should be fast.

Re:Screen shots

[!the!bad!fish!]

Here, that wasn't very difficult you know.

Live CD with this alpha release?

[d-Orb]

I think it would be advantageous to provide a Live CD with the alpha/beta releases, so that people can get into debugging the code straight away (I for instance, cannot download, compile and use KDE easily due to disk space, bandwidth problems. I could however, use a Knoppix version with the alpha release to test around).

Searching around shows the DragOS Project, but I haven't had time to check it. Does anyone know of similar efforts?

Re:Live CD with this alpha release?

[Vexalith]

It strikes me that maintaining an entire Linux LiveCD distribution might be a little too much even for the KDE developers. It could also lead to nasty places, like an "official Linux distribution" for KDE, which is not a place I want to see any desktop environment head towards.

Re:Live CD with this alpha release?

[IceFox]

Have you checked out dragos? What is DragOS? It is yet another distro based on Knoppix, but DragOS features CVS version of KDE.

-Benjamin meyer

Re:Live CD with this alpha release?

[Hieronymus Howard]

Anyone who isn't capable of compiling an alpha release certainy shouldn't be considering using one.

HH

Re:Live CD with this alpha release?

[d-Orb]

True, it is a lot of work, but when 3.0 (not sure about the version) was released, a LiveCD was duly put out to demonstrate the software. It didn't take too long, if I remember correctly.

Maybe an alpha release isn't the best place to do this on, but what about the betas? The more eyeballs you have looking at the GUI, the nicer the background picture :-)))

Re:Live CD with this alpha release?

[BlueLightning]

I don't quite understand. You can afford the disk space *and* the bandwidth for a complete Knoppix CD image, but you can't for the source code of KDE alone?

If you had mentioned time to compile, that would be a different story.

This just in:

[Trigun]

I just heard on the radio that Digitalunity's sense of humor was found dead in his Maine home, at the age of 54.

You know the rest.

It's a joke!
And further, it was a shot at XP, not KDE.

Re:This just in:

[digitalunity]

Wrong side of the country. Same corner, opposite side. But yes, I am still developing my sense of humor as an adult.

Re:This just in:

[Enahs]

And further, it was a shot at XP, not KDE.

I'm not sure I agree with that analysis, but hell, that's okay. ;-D I've not had my coffee yet.

I'm just surprised to see that anyone still cares. With people going all apeshit stupid over GNOME's further crippling of their own system, I thought KDE's feature richness would have killed it by now. Features are hard!

Heh, just had to put in a shot at GNOME. Yeah, yeah; you can use GNOME apps when you're running primarily KDE, and vice-versa...meh.

Rough?

[gilesjuk]

"The code is quite rough in many places"

Hmmm, as many wise developers have said to me, it only takes about another 10-20% longer to write decent well documented code. When you think of how long it will save you debugging it might save you time.

Re:Rough?

[LMCBoy]

Yeah, good thing we do write decent well-documented code, huh?

Re:Rough?

[gilesjuk]

Hey, I use KDE and think it's great. But the language in announcements could be a little more subtle :)

Oh well, it isn't a stable release yet. I just don't want people to be put off KDE.

Lame K name jokes here!

[LMCBoy]

Everyone who's going to post a lame joke based on the fact that many KDE apps start with "K", please post them under this thread.

Here, I'll start: "hey, didja ever notice how a lot of KDE apps start with 'K'?! What's the deal with that? Ha! Ha! Ha! Those KDE guys aren't very 'K-creative' Ha! Ha! Get it??" There, that's about the best one I've ever read, actually.

Re:Lame K name jokes here!

[Cro Magnon]

Hey, at least the damn thing doesn't krash!

Re:Lame K name jokes here!

[LMCBoy]

funny enough, one of the KDE 3.1 betas was codenamed krash...

Re:Lame K name jokes here!

[speter]

Man, you kan't even get it right. :)

Kalm down...

Will this have the Dreamweaver killer Quanta 3.2?

[Surak]

Eric Laffoon recently made comments in his story about meeting Wil Wheaton statements about GUI capability in Quanta 3.2. If, so the 3.2 release could be a very important milestone for KDE, because it will mean that Dreamweaver finally has competition on Linux for those web developers still stuck on using WYSIWYG html editing tools.

Kolab groupware

[esarjeant]

Kolab is looking interesting, and if you combine this with Kontact you could just have the real Lotus Notes killer. With MS Exchange support, the extensibility of Kontact would make it easy to integrate in a Lotus Notes environment as well.

Ostensibly these look to be part of KDE 3.2, has anyone done the download/compile/install yet that can confirm/deny this.

This is great stuff, btw. I'm excited that KDE is tackling these kinds of applications, I may just switch back from Moz once the kinks have been worked out.

Re:Kolab groupware

[brunes69]

Kontact is indeed part of 3.2, however, thought he IMAP support is great for Exchange, and I can import my appointments into KOrganizer vai WebDAV, I have yet to get the groupware parts of Kontact functioning properly (like whne people send me meeting requests, etc).

The guys REALLY need a good HOWTO set this up for Exchange, which I have been unable to find. Kolab is great, but realistically, many people are going to be looking for Exchange compatability.

Re:Kolab groupware

[unborn]

Exchange support is not even in the works (yet):

http://developer.kde.org/development-versions/kd e- 3.2-features.html

It's marked red there still. I can also attest that there are no signs of Exchange support in CVS ( thanks to my distro providing easy compiles, I update every week ).

Re:Good for technically uninclined.

[Vexalith]

Quite the opposite opinion here. KDE is great for those who like to fiddle with settings, but I'm seeing here another release with yet more options to fiddle.

I like the ability to customise, but it has to be said some of the menus in konqueror and konsole and various other core parts of KDE are a bit messy at the moment. I see they're working to improve the situation in konqueror's file management mode but I still think a lot more could be done.

A lot of the options in kcontrol could be better grouped and so be more intuitive and obvious, without removing things completely. If the devs could do this, then I'd might switch, since for me KDE now looks good (with Plastik, hopefully the default in KDE4) and is much faster than it used to be.

Re:Don't let the source code compilation scare you

[Neil Watson]

I've tried Konstruct for each stable release since 3.0 and I think it still needs alot of work. I had problems with libraries for kmultimedia and especially for java support. To spite havings Sun's latest java installed and the environment set, konstruct would never build past java support.

I wonder...

[Gyorg_Lavode]

if it fixes the problems I've had with KDE 3.1. When I right click a menu bar to choose something, (usually move to another desktop), the menu disappears when the mouse moves down over it. And if you click the box on the upper left side, the first time I pull down over it it desappears, (though it stays the second time). Also, though I don't know if it's an X problem or a KDE problem, the GUI locks up with only the mouse moving, (it's not possible to interract with any windows or the kicker). I love KDE but these problems usually arize every day.

Re:I wonder...

[110010001000]

Oh, you wanted it to WORK? I thought you just wanted new features....

Re:I wonder...

[jcupitt65]

On the 2nd problem, what has happened is that some application has grabbed the mouse pointer and forgotten to ungrab it.

You can break the grab by switching to another desktop and back again. So if you're on desktop 1, press CTRL-F2 to jump to desktop 2, then CTRL-F1 to jump back to where you started. Voila! You mouse will work again.

If the app grabbed the keyboard as well, you're in trouble :) but it's usually just the mouse they take.

Re:Follow the money.

[Roberto]

Canopy doesnt fund Troll Tech.

Canopy owns some 6% or whatever of Troll Tech.

Maybe you are not familiar with how corporations work, but usually, the company pays dividends to the stockholders (or not), but the company doesnt send the stockholders the companys bills.

Canopy did finance Troll Tech once, when they bought the shares. Around 1998, IIRC. You know, when Caldera was still a Linux company.

Microsofts Nightmare.

[Qbertino]

I had a close look at post 3.0 KDE at the LinuxTag earlier this year. I'm still very much a windowmanager fan with E, Fluxbox and Windowmaker on my favorites list. But after I had a guy from the KDE booth show me all the stuff that I can change and activate to get KWin (KDEs WM) away from the default of emulating MS Windows crappines and closer to E/Windowmaker/Fluxbox usability features I thougt I'd give a pure KDE enviroment a chance on Debian Woody with KDE 3.1. It o\/\/nZ0Rz nearly every other desktop I've worked with.
The conlusion is that with a proper setup there is no doubt what so ever that KDE kicks MS Windows up and down the street usability wise in every possible detail. It takes me about 30 seconds to get any Windows desktop user conviced that MS days as a monopoly are counted.
Further on: Ralph Nolden showed previews of what brewing with the 3.2 version of KDevelop and some other goodies. Apart from built-in support of something like a dozen and more programming languages there is a lot of stuff that will cause me to migrate from 3.1 to 3.2 asap.

To me it's quite evident: If OSS is the hauting horde of MS executives sleepless nights, the current and future KDE is the chief Boogieman of them all.

Re:Microsofts Nightmare.

[Vexalith]

I don't know how you manage to convince anyone of anything if you use the word o\/\/nZ0Rz in posts...

Re:Microsofts Nightmare.

[twistedcubic]

This sounds interesting. Can you define any sequence of keystrokes to do anything, like in fluxbox, and can it do it just as fast?

Re:Microsofts Nightmare.

[Overly Critical Guy]

Oh, please. Microsoft is busy hardware-accelerating their desktop, adding complete vector scaling, replacing Win32 with .NET, and creating a much-talked-about new photorealistic interface called Aero that nobody knows anything about yet. There are so many revolutionary new features of Longhorn that I can't list them all, from XML scripted modular installs to WinFS (which kicks the crap out of BeOS' pseudo-database filesystem).

I'm sorry, but Visual Studio .NET 2003 is still the absolute best IDE out there for development. The debugging capabilities alone are fantastic. Last I tried KDevelop, it kept crying for the documentation packages, which my distro didn't install because you apparently need the source code to have them. Bizarre.

As a desktop, KDE is very slow for me, so I use GNOME which is only a little better. KDE is too busy adding tons more crappy K-something apps to that mess of a menu while Microsoft is busy implementing the next generation of desktops. Maybe in another five years, KDE will finally catch up. :P

Re:Microsofts Nightmare.

[fault0]

Yes, and in kde 3.2a1, with khotkeys2, you can even define mouse gestures and attach dcop scripting calls, keystrokes, mouse movements, etc.. etc.. to any KDE app.

You could, for example, define a mouse gesture to tell kwin to close the current window. Or, you could define a keystroke a tell kdevelop (or any app using dcop) to open a new project and add a bunch of files to it.

Oh yeah, media keyboard support is also better in this alpha.

Re:Microsofts Nightmare.

[fault0]

> Last I tried KDevelop, it kept crying for the documentation packages, which my distro didn't install because you apparently need the source code to have them. Bizarre.

The new kdevelop in kde 3.2a1 has been pretty much rewritten from almost scratch. It's actually been in development for nearly 3 years.

> to that mess of a menu

The kmenu has also been cleared in up 3.2. Not only does it have a reduced amount of catagories, but it it follows the freedesktop menu standard (with GNOME (2.6?) and others), and it also has catagory headings for usability :)

Re:Microsofts Nightmare.

[Overly Critical Guy]

Rock on. I will definitely be trying the new KDE then (and the new GNOME) because I want to give them a chance. I'm particularly interested in the progress of kicker's replacement, Slicker, which looks to be the first actually innovative, non-copycat desktop feature for Linux that I've seen.

Though someone thinks my parent post is "Flamebait," it's not. Longhorn is due out late 2004/early 2005. It's dangerous to think Microsoft is just sitting on its thumbs as OSS gains ground, and it's silly to think current desktop environments and apps are "good enough." Microsoft is already moving forward into future territory, progressing beyond today's 2D environments that we've had since the 80s.

Re:Microsofts Nightmare.

[LDoggg_]

adding complete vector scaling

Didn't we just see a slashdot that gnome 2.4 does this? And its not vaporware.

from XML scripted modular installs

Not sure what the big deal is here.
I think you mean XML for configuring modular installs. XML is not a scripting language.
For some reason many people seem to think if something has XML in it it must be really advanced. Loki_update used XML 4 years ago for its installer. wow.

Maybe in another five years, KDE will finally catch up.

Hmmm.. strange logic there. If Windows is adding so many revolutionary new features, its kinda of strange that it wouldn't have its own new offering in 5 years.

Re:Microsofts Nightmare.

[alext]

I hope people will take the moderation of the parent as "flamebait" as due warning that hints about Linux desktop platforms being obsolete before they are even finished will not be tolerated.

Remember, here in Linux-la-la-land, Java and Dotnet never happened. C/C++ will always be the means of writing desktop applications.
Why, if VMs like Java were so important corporations would be investing millions into running Java applications on Linux instead of churning out lots of lovely C++!

I hope that sense will now prevail and mean-spirited critics and naysayers such as the parent poster will go to some other forum where they can discuss "portability", "security" and other so-called features without bothering the rest of us.

Re:Microsofts Nightmare.

[be-fan]

Oh, please. Microsoft is busy hardware-accelerating their desktop, adding complete vector scaling
>>>>>>>>>>>
This is the only one the Linux developers really need to work on. 2 years till Longhorn comes out? I wouldn't be surprised if they get beaten to the punch by a couple of months.

, replacing Win32 with .NET
>>>>>>>>>
And everybody is still writing apps in C/C++ :) When Adobe moves to .NET, then I'll be impressed. Except, they won't, since they appear to be moving to Qt :)

, and creating a much-talked-about new photorealistic interface called Aero that nobody knows anything about yet.
>>>>>>>
Right. So in 2 years, KDE is going to get its ass kicked by something "nobody knows anything about yet."

There are so many revolutionary new features of Longhorn that I can't list them all, from XML scripted modular installs
>>>>>>>>
Oooh, XML. Portage (my Gentoo installer) uses a proper scripting language (Python) to do its installs. It takes very little time to port all the packages in Gentoo to an entirely new platform. IIRC, the initial Alpha port was done by one guy in two days. It will be *years* before Microsoft catches up with package management technology in Linux.

to WinFS (which kicks the crap out of BeOS' pseudo-database filesystem).
>>>>>>>>>>>
And Reiser4 kicks the crap out of everything else :) Unlike WinFS, Reiser4 is actually designed from the ground up for this sort of thing.

Remember, it tooks the KDE developers 2 years to rewrite KDE from 1.0 to 2.0. That's about how long they have before Longhorn comes out. Now, they have lots more developers. Microsoft needs to be seriously scared if you ask me.

Re:Microsofts Nightmare.

[ocelotbob]

busy hardware-accelerating their desktop

Oh, you mean like this XRender thing that's been in XFree86 for many years now. Glad to see MS catching up with the times.

adding complete vector scaling,

Vector scaling is already in KDE. Mostly eye-candy right now, in the form of the crystal-svg iconset, but it's still extant, which is more that can be said about windows' current implementation

replacing Win32 with .NET

Wow. replacing the rendering system. Should have been done years ago, to be honest. Hardly revolutionary.

and creating a much-talked-about new photorealistic interface called Aero that nobody knows anything about yet.

Photorealistic interface? I'm sorry, but that phrase is full of sound and fury, but signifies nothing. Photorealistic analog to what? It sounds like the buttons have a higher-color bitmap, which really doesn't mean all too much, if you ask me.

There are so many revolutionary new features of Longhorn that I can't list them all, from XML scripted modular installs

Wow. remote modular installs. Only difference between this setup and systems available on the Unix side seems to be that this is completely buzzword compliant. XML is perhaps the most overhyped phenomena in the past couple years.

WinFS (which kicks the crap out of BeOS' pseudo-database filesystem).

Well, the big issue with BeFS was the fact that it was written in the early 90s, when computers didn't have the clocks to create a database-based filesystem. Were Be to have written their FS a few years later, a database filesystem would have been feasable. Besides, Reiser4 looks to be much a more interesting filesystems than WinFS anyways.

Though I must admit, your post did have one thing going for it. With all the buzzwords flying around, you're certain to have won buzzword bingo. Now, head up to the front and collect your prize.

Yeah but...

[Guiri]

have they developed a tool to konstruct konstruct?

Not so altruistic

[alexhmit01]

1. I love KDE - when we run Linux desktops, they are Mandrake/KDE desktops

2. The KDE project is a quality project, I never liked GNOME's politics. The KDE team had the "harmony" project to create a GPL'd Qt replacement, just in case, the GNOME team could have worked on that instead of going after KDE in a holy war.

3. We have one developer licensed on Qt (triple platform) and one other that is probably being added to Qt development.

HOWEVER

The KDE team was a bunch of Trolltech guys. At least in the beginning, those pushing KDE development were from Trolltech.

The Trolltech team was out to create a cross-platform API and push it. KDE was their way of creating a Unix desktop using their libraries. The whole plan was to make Unix desktops credible (this was in the days where engineers would have a Solaris Workstation for engineering, and a Windows desktop for Groupware/Productivity apps), so that they could sell Qt. This was also before MS Office completely owned the market (remember, Office 95 was their first big hit, and it wasn't until the time of Office 97 that MS had a defacto productivity monopoly b/c Wordperfect died).

The KDE team was formed by Trolltech to create a marketplace for a Unix/Win32 cross-platform toolkit.

In addition, Motif/CDE had an established market. Trolltech was pushing Qt/KDE as a replacement, going after the entrenched Unix market. The goal was to push to Engineering focused Motif/CDE out for a Qt/KDE environment that would do productivity AND Engineering. That would let corporations build their internal applications (where people spent a LOT of time) in a cross-platform manner, for the engineers to be able to use.

Alex

Re:Not so altruistic

[pointwood]

As others have said, the KDE wasn't started by Trolltech people. They guys that started KDE simply made the choice to use Qt, because they found it to be the best available. It is true that some KDE developers have since been hired by Trolltech, but I don't see anything wrong with that. There is no doubt that Trolltech benefits from KDE, but your conclusion: "The KDE team was formed by Trolltech to create a marketplace for a Unix/Win32 cross-platform toolkit." is just plain wrong.

Re:Will this have the Dreamweaver killer Quanta 3.

[mblase]

it will mean that Dreamweaver finally has competition on Linux

That would first require that Dreamweaver be available on Linux, wouldn't it?

Is KDesktop included and working?

[cerberusss]

I'm using Gnome for no apparent reason and I really would like something like KDesktop. Instant sharing, that's useful when developing with people on other physical locations and using other platforms.

Re:Is KDesktop included and working?

[JamesKPolk]

KDesktop is the thing in kdebase that puts up your wallpaper, optionally displays icons, manages the screensaver, and basic desktop services like that.

KDesktop *is* included in kdebase, as always, but it has nothing to do with networking.

Re:Is KDesktop included and working?

[CJ Hooknose]

cerberusss wrote:
I really would like something like KDesktop. Instant sharing, that's useful when developing with people on other physical locations...

JamesKPolk wrote:
KDesktop is the thing in kdebase that puts up your wallpaper [...] but it has nothing to do with networking.

I think what cerberusss meant was "KDE Desktop Sharing". This used to be called "krfb", and it is a pointy-clicky frontend to a VNC server that exports your current X session. You can probably compile krfb and use it with GNOME, so long as you have the KDE libs available. Or you can try the "Xvnc" extension to XFree86, which may actually be faster. Go to groups.google and search comp.os.linux.x for keyword "xvnc" and/or author "Wayne Throop" for further info. HTH,

KDE Developers Anonymous

[ThyTurkeyIsDone]

[This is an update of my earlier post on this subject, which I won't link to because this is much better. Mod me up if you want to protest against the gnaming kraziness; don't mod me down if you're humor-challenged.]

KDE Developers Anonymous

Hello group, my name is Klark and I'm addikted to the letter K... As is the kase with many of you, I've always been krazy about komputers and like many of my fellow komp sci students, I was looking forward to a suksessful kareer in the field of information and kommunikation teknology... but my troubles started when I diskovered open source software and the wonderful kommunity around it and got kwite seriously into KDE development... At first I didn't komprehend the effekt this would kome to have on my life as a koder - it wasn't really konspikuous initially when I started to spell more and more kommon words with a k, sometimes even with a kapital K... But then my kolleagues began to wonder why I kouldn't spell korrektly. They asked me, "Are you on krack? Kut the krap!"... some even went as far as kalling me kompletely krazy! What kould I do? I must admit, I'm a kolerik person, even kwick-tempered you might say... okkasionally I would get inkredibly angry and kuss and kurse at my ko-workers... People should judge me by the kontent of my karakter instead of just kriticizing what they konsider kurious spelling! Other times, I would just retreat into a korner and kry kwietly by myself... However, it wasn't until they kicked me out of my kalligraphy kourse at kommunity kollege and I lost my job on akkount of my unkooperative konduct that I finally realized I had to kome to terms with my problem... so here I am, this is my koming-out... I know my kase is a komplex one, but I do hope it is kurable...

To the whiners about one unique desktop

[vadim_t]

Stop whining. It WON'T happen.

Windows has one GUI because it's made by one company with one central management. KDE and Gnome are different teams, that work in different ways, use different languages and have different ideas. To expect that just because you think one desktop is needed that they'll leave whatever they're doing and start coding your ideal desktop is foolish. Deal with it, most OSS developers work on things because they like working on them, not because they're working for the common good.

Besides, there can't be a perfect WM. I don't want KDE 3 on a P166, there I'd use IceWM or Enlightenment. I don't want IceWM on my dual Athlon either, where I can use that extra power for something useful. I also don't like Gnome, while many Gnome users probably hate KDE.

Heck, how does anybody expect that we can somehow get independent developers to agree on one unique project when the world still hasn't managed to agree on one unique measure system?

It's odd really. In the poll that's here right now the options are in kg, and half of the posts in it is whining: "But where Americans! Why isn't it in pounds?". Then go to a KDE discussion and somehow now half of the discussion is whining about that we need a single standard.

Re:To the whiners about one unique desktop

[TheRaven64]

I don't want one unique desktop. I don't like KDE. It seems cluttered, and has a million different configuration options for everything. I prefer the Gnome 2 concept of making everything simple, and providing nice defaults.

Equally, however, I would not want to see KDE go away, or lag behind Gnome (or the same happening to Gnome). If this did happen then there would be a strong incentive for Gnome's UI complexity to increase, detracting from Gnome's strengths and turning it into an inferior copy of KDE.

What I would like to see, is a standard for themes so that I can't, as a user, tell if an app uses Qt or gtk. At the moment I use the Qt Jabber client Psi. It's the nicest *NIX Jabber client I've used by a long way, but since it's a Qt app, it doesn't look like all of my other apps. If a theme standard existed then other toolkits (and there are so many) could also use it, making other apps also conform. Of course then we get onto human interface guidelines, which can't be standardised between KDE and Gnome, since they have different aims...

Re:KDE's connection to SCO.

[RPoet]

KDE is made by Trolltech, a Canopy Group company.

KDE is not made by Trolltech, but by a network of around 200 regular contributing individuals around the world. Two or three of these work on Qt for Trolltech, and contribute to KDE in their spare times.

(Yes, I've been trolled, so what)

Not true

[Anonymous Coward]

Matthias Ettrich and Warwick Allison (just to name a couple of KDE developers) were open source KDE developers first and only after their great acheivements in KDE were they hired by TrollTech. The same is true for most of their other employees - they cut their teeth on the open source KDE platform first. The original KDE team was pretty indifferent to licensing issues and they only cared about using the best written GUI software platform available at the time, namely Qt.

TrollTech is not the self-serving evil company you make it out to be. They actually care about writing quality code - and it shows in their products.

And no, I'm not a TrollTech employee. I've just used their software in the past commercially and was very impressed by it.

Re:Not true

[JamesKPolk]

Trolltech is also going to go public someday (see the interview with Eirik Eng on kdenews.urg). Once that happens, you can forget about goodwill.

Re:Not true

[JamesKPolk]

Gee, and Red Hat has started patenting parts of linux, and VA has stopped writing free software.

If KDE didn't have the Free Qt Foundation,t he latter would be a disaster.

Re:Will this have the Dreamweaver killer Quanta 3.

[Bullfrog]

>>That would first require that Dreamweaver be available on Linux, wouldn't it?

Only in the same way that MS Office would first need to be available on Linux for there to be any OSS competition for it. Ummmm... I can think of at least one reasonably significant OSS project that competes with MS Office on Linux despite there being no MS Office port to Linux (yet!)

If you find a better thing, switch to it.

For the non-technical

[Telex4]

For those like myself who can't program in C++, but who can install this alpha version, or any other versions before 3.2 final, there is a lot you can do to help KDE:

* Report bugs. If you find something crashes, doesn't work as you'd expect it to, or there's a feature you think is missing, report it at http://bugs.kde.org.

* Submit documentation. Lots of apps in KDE will have out of date documentation, or none at all. If you understand how to use just such an app, consider writing documentation for it and submitting it to KDE.

* Submit translations. If American English isn't your native language, consider translating the text in applications to languages you feel confident with.

More can be found at: http://www.kde.org/support

Re:For the non-technical

[Roberto]

You can also provide money.

But yes, basically all a non-technical person can do is that which:

a) Doesn't need technical knowledge.
b) Those with technical knowledge are not doing.

Your post simply says "It's a shame and discgrace that thpse who are doing all that hard work of writing code and then giving it away are not also doing that hard boring work someone else could do".

Your post is stupid.

Re:For the non-technical

[Telex4]

Your post simply says "It's a shame and discgrace that thpse who are doing all that hard work of writing code and then giving it away are not also doing that hard boring work someone else could do".

Your post is stupid.


Eh?

My post is saying "you can help those who are doing all that hard work of writing code and then giving it away by doing work that you are capable of, freeing those hard working developers up to develop more code".

Moreover, your post implies that developers shouldn't be doing things that non-technical people can do. Why? What's wrong with a developer writing documentation, doing translation work, creating artwork, if he/she wants to?

Re:For the non-technical

[Telex4]

Oh, hang on a sec, I thought you were replying to me... crazy Slashdot hid the troll so it looked that way to me. My apologies :)

Re:For the non-technical

[Roberto]

No problem.

o\/\/nZ0Rz (was: Re:Microsofts Nightmare.)

[Qbertino]

While "o\/\/nZ0Rz" in this context has a little touch of humor to it I actually used it as an very short extremisation of "is better than" or a simular normal english term.
The fact that you jumped to it actually proves that I was right in my choice of words for /.s audience, no?. :-)

Re:o\/\/nZ0Rz (was: Re:Microsofts Nightmare.)

[Tukla]

a simular normal english term

Check it out! President Dubya reads Slashdot!

Re:Good for technically uninclined.

[Telex4]

Kcontrol has seen vast improvements since KDE 3.1, as have a lot of other usability issues.

If you have the time to spare, and good ideas on KDE usability, consider subscribing to the usability mailing list. Even if you can't program C++, you can help discuss usability problems, and so help the developers focus on coding.

Re:Screen shots

[hugerobot]

Does everyone who responds to a request for screenshots, mirrors, bittorrents, or whatever, have to always snidely remark "That wasn't very difficult!"

Yeah, it's the Internet... we know it's not difficult. So what if the guy wanted someone else to do the legwork.

Geeeeesh. After the millionth time, I guess I'm just getting a little tired of seeing that inevitable statement.

I love TrollTech

[alexhmit01]

When did I call TrollTech evil? I am a happy customer, sending them thousands of dollars/year, and using Linux desktops based upon KDE?

They DO care about writing quality code. They also have HEAVILY supported KDE development to create a market for their API as cross-platform.

What about that is evil?

The fact that the resulting desktop is made available for free under the GPL makes it great. They provide for "free," albeit restricted for development, environemtn, to push their product.

What a great side effect of the invisible hand! In their creation of a market, everyone gets free benefits.

The only thing that I would like from Qt is a better RAD environment to work with. One of our project upgrades was going to be moved from Cocoa to Qt, which was cancelled because certain limitations in using Qt for RAD development. I look forward to new versions of Qt, they keep getting stronger.

BTW: as a commercial licensee of Qt, I am REALLY happy that a lot of the KDE core is on Trolltech's payroll. Each version of Qt incorporates more functionality that was handled at the KDE level, and KDE is upgraded to use the new Qt. That makes the features available to those of us wanting Qt's cross platform benefits.

The Qt/Mac GPL release was also great (although, obviously, with Panther including X11 in the OS, they had no choice, as Qt/X11 on Panther would hit the dreadful "good enough" level without Qt on board). I look forward to the Qt/Mac KDELIB port being in the main tree, and being able to install KDE apps under OS X for my power use.

Alex

Re:I love TrollTech

[RogerWilco]

The only thing that I would like from Qt is a better RAD environment to work with.

Have you ever looked at Kylix, the Borland Delphi/C++ cross-over RAD environment for Linux/Win32 ?

You might like it, I do.

Cheers

Re:I love TrollTech

[platypus]

When did I call TrollTech evil? I am a happy customer, sending them thousands of dollars/year, and using Linux desktops based upon KDE?

Indeed, you never even implied them to be evil. But you still got the KDE history wrong. QT existed before KDE and was choosen by the KDE founder(s), none of whom were a Trolltech employee (AFAIK).
Later on, some of the KDE developers got hired by Trolltech, though.
But the reason for KDE's existance was never that it might be a marketing tool for QT.

Re:I love TrollTech

[John Hurliman]

I've been a QT fan for a while, ever since hacking on the MythTV project and realizing the beauty of QT code. Unfortunately I've had to make the switch to wxWindows for the latest project I'm on. This is a GPL project, none of us have QT licenses and so we work with the GPLed QT releases. Unfortunately Trolltech has dropped support for the GPL release on Windows in the 3.x series, so if we design a great new UI in Designer on Linux there's no way it's compiling with the latest release on Windows which as of right now is 2.3.

QT is great when your a) working on the platform(s) that are supported in the GPL version exclusively, or b) you are shelling out money to Trolltech. Otherwise you find yourself relying on their ui compiler, their moc compiler, and their qmake and may find yourself SOL. With wxWindows, you have pure C++ code, and any platform the wxWindows library compiles on will work fine.

Re:KDE's connection to SCO.

[r00zky]

Let me add to your words that:
- QT is made by Trolltech
- QT is GPL'd
- ergo QT can be forked any day

So no problem for KDE here.
If parent.parent has any problem with Canopy owning Trolltech, why doesn't he buy it?

Re:Screen shots

[cerberusss]

So what if the guy wanted someone else to do the legwork.

I think it's pretty rude to ask around whether someone else can do the legwork. I sometimes hung around on IRC on #linux, and you'd be amazed. I thought it was pretty cool of me to give information, but people sometimes almost asked 'Hey I don't feel like doing this. Please can you spend your time because I don't feel like spending my own'.

Re:Hear. Hear.

[RazzleFrog]

Canopy owns 4.1% according to Trolltech. I hardly consider that a significant influence even with one guy on the board.

I tend to upgrade with Mandrake

[DeadBugs]

Now that Mandrake is at 9.2RC2. It looks like my next KDE upgrade will be to 3.1.3

When the next Mandrake release is out I hope to be using KDE 3.2 or better.

But with all this talk about Konstruct I may give that a try on a test box.

With so many applications built into KDE (KOffice, Konqueor, Games, etc.) you could almost have a nice little distro based entirely on KDE.

Re:I tend to upgrade with Mandrake

[fault0]

> It looks like my next KDE upgrade will be to 3.1.3

3.1.4 will be out soon, with bugfixes to 3.1.3.

> With so many applications built into KDE (KOffice, Konqueor, Games, etc.) you could almost have a nice little distro based entirely on KDE.

Lindows? Xandros? Lycoris? Corel Linux?

Re:I tend to upgrade with Mandrake

[DeadBugs]

>3.1.4 will be out soon, with bugfixes to 3.1.3.

Yes, but the next release of Mandrake is going to use 3.1.3 and I tend to upgrade my distro as a whole

>Lindows? Xandros? Lycoris? Corel Linux?

I'm talking about a KDE only distro, many of these others include duplicate apps such as OpenOffice or Mozilla. I think for the standard user a distro optimized for and using only KDE could easily fit on 1 CD and have just about everything they need.

Re:Don't let the source code compilation scare you

[pamri]

Debian Sid users can get the latest kde debs from the cvs here.

Re:Screen shots

[echo]

Ouch! you are killing my DSL line ;)

My first slashdotting, what a rush!

Re:KDE's connection to SCO.

[Rogerborg]

Who cares if they're for or against anything? If they got eaten by rabid marmosets tomorrow, KDE and QT would still be GPL licensed. Until and if the GPL is declared revokable by supreme courts in every nation that used KDE, it's de facto a commons project.

Re:Don't let the source code compilation scare you

[infolib]

Another route is Knoppix with KDE CVS. Never tried it though, YMMV, yada yada...

Btw I don't think KDE should take all the honour for Konstruct. After all it was "inspired by GARNOME" - good to see idea exchange across the major Free desktops.

Re:Will this have the Dreamweaver killer Quanta 3.

[mblase]

You miss my point. "Compete" implies that it's targetting the same audience. It's like saying American television programs compete with Japanese ones for advertising dollars. Linux computers are unable to run Dreamweaver at all (without WINE or a dual-boot, anyway), so there's no "competition" to speak of.

If Quanta were available on Windows, it would be a competitor for Dreamweaver on Windows -- but still not on Linux.

Fine

[Overly Critical Guy]

Stop whining. It WON'T happen.

Fine, then stop whining when Linux gains only miniscule desktop market share as a result.

Re:Fine

[vadim_t]

Heh, I'm not going to be the one who complains about that. I'm perfectly happy with things as they are now. I'm typing this from a Gentoo box.

I don't care much about the desktop part. Linux is starting to replace Win2K on our servers and that's something I like a lot.

Re:Fine

[Brandybuck]

I don't care if Linux only gains a miniscule desktop market share. As a FreeBSD user, I realize that my OS will probably get even less. But I don't care.

You see, if I was concerned about marketshare I would be using Windows. If I was concerned about running the same software my neighbors do, I would be using Windows. But I don't choose my systems that way. I choose to run what I choose to run. It's up to you to deal with it, because I'm happy right where I'm at.

There's this saying that goes "people who hate Windows use Linux; people who love UNIX use BSD". I don't think it's accurate at all. I think it's completely wrong. But every once in a while along comes a post like yours, and I start to wonder. Are you using Linux because you like Linux, or just because you hate Windows?

Re:KDE's connection to SCO.

[spektr]

KDE is made by Trolltech, a Canopy Group company.

If we abandon a great open source desktop environment because evil powers aquired a few percent of the company that makes the GPL'd toolkit on which it depends, then the terrorists have already won!

Re:Screen shots

[!the!bad!fish!]

I'm so sorry.
I hope you recover soon.

Re:Screen shots

[brejc8]

To be fair I did look through all the links on the story for them and only then I asked (partly because other people would be also intrested).

Re:Will this have the Dreamweaver killer Quanta 3.

[manyoso]

Yes, it will be in there and Nicholas is working on VPL support. That is the WYSIWYG functionality that we're all awaiting. Both Quanta AND KDevelop have _drastically_ improved in 3.2.

Also, keep an eye out for Juk (KDE's answer to ITunes) in this new release. It is an incredibly cool jukebox program that has automatic tagging and vFolder playlists.

Just little mistake

[twener]

The Harmony project was about creating a *L*GPL'ed Qt replacement.

Re:Don't let the source code compilation scare you

[twener]

That sounds like you had problems with the tarballs' configure scripts and thus qualify for a bug report at http://bugs.kde.org. Don't expect Konstruct to fix those magically.

Re:Follow the money.

[Roberto]

Venture capital usually has more than 6% of the shares, too.

You say "Canopy representatives". I think it's more "Canopy representative" (I could be wrong).

Troll Tech is not pro-Linux or anti-Linux. Troll Tech is a company, they are pro-themselves. That is what companies are by definition. Ignorance of such obvious thing is a recipe for disappointment.

And I say that even though I actually LIKE Troll Tech.

In another 5 years?

[3.5 stripes]

Well yeah, about the same time longhorn comes out you mean?

Re:Actually....

[botzi]

Besides, there can't be a perfect WM. I don't want KDE 3 on a P166, there I'd use IceWM or Enlightenment.

Actually I prefer IceWM or xfce not because of some old hardware(although sometimes this can be an issue, I'm on a laptop with 800Mhz Coppermine), but rather becasue I really don't have anything against installing all the software I need by myself, thus I'm looking for a Windows Manager not an entire desktop solution.

On the "One desktop to rule them all" rant, I'm certainly not the only one to think that it's not so bad at all to have diversity "even" on the Desktop choice. Yes, some users gets confused, yes, there're compatibility problems(heck, I hate when one really *needs* to run a gtk program on KDE PC or QT one on Gnome station), but at the end I tend to agree with you that people should "deal with it" and adopt one or another. The futur will show if we'll have a "winner"...

Re:Screen shots

[twener]

Just visit the screenshot pages of the major/new applications: Kontact (2, 3, 4), JuK, Kgpg, KAddressbook, KBruch, Kig, Kopete, KVim, KCacheGrind, Umbrello, KDevelop, Plasktik,

Re:Will this have the Dreamweaver killer Quanta 3.

[hamster foo]

The target audience is web developers in this case, not Windows or Linux users. If the only thing keeping a web developer from switching to Linux is a web development package comprable to Dreamweaver, then any such package is indeed competing with Dreamweaver.

Heretic!

[Johan Veenstra]

You kan get kikked out of the KDE Developers Anonymous for talking like that. You write 'ski' with a k, while it obviously should be written with a k, other spelling errors: sourke, krakk, kwikk, kritikizing, kikked, kondukt.

Re:HOWTO: Be an American

[homerules]

Watch abysmal TV We can now that there is BBC America

Re:Hear. Hear.

[RazzleFrog]

5.7% is still insignificant and board members exercise very little control over the day to day operation of a company. The ~65% owner/employees wield far more power. Based on my experience from working for a Big 6 (now Big 4) accounting firm, most board members are just figureheads. Think of someone like Ted Turner. He can bitch and moan and whine all he wants and maybe even a couple of heads rolled because of him but the divisions of AOL TW still do business as they always have.

Either way, why should they speak out against SCO? It's not their code that is being called into question. There are plenty of spokespeople defending Linux. If Trolltech spoke up the best they could offer is another "me too."

Re:Screen shots

[hugerobot]

Sorry, I was in a bad mood this morning. I had 3 beers at lunch and I feel better now. I've spent lots of time helping in #linux too... and was often quick to reply with "RTFM", but if I did help someone, I didn't chime in afterwards with "That wasn't hard..."

Re:Good for technically uninclined.

[standsolid]

To tell you the truth, I don't really use KDE for it's amazingly straight-forward and simplistic user interface that most users (including non-technical) can really appriciate. I don't even use it for it's incredibly nice built-in tools like Kmail for email. Nor do I use it for the fast, lightweight, renounded KHTML engine you find in Konqueror -- the same engine used in Apple's Safari webrowser. Not only do I have KDE users making sure they can open their banking accounts online, but i have the 15 other mac users to do that for me to ( :D joke ppl ). I use Konqeror's KIO Slaves to get my work and play done faster, better and easier. I use karmera:// to get all my digital images, fish:// to get around nfs bullcrap, audiocd:// to rip my audioCDs to ogg quickly.

You know, you may not call me a "technical user", but I do a couple "technical" things. KDE enpowers me to write scripts that interact with my KDE programs using dcop. Quick and easy GUI automation -- even for the "non technical users". Oh and have you EVER programmed FOR KDE? it's simply amazing! Very easy to use and a robust toolkit to use. Much easier to learn than GTK(2) or MFC were.

Now you make call me names and tell me i sould use *box -- but you are missing an amazing featureset using tools that you just happen to pick up and add to your "desktop environment". It might be time for you, oh great master of GNU/Linux, to give KDE another try.

<sarcastic>
it's not that hard to install it, all you have to do is open a "command line thingie" on your uber-blackbox system and type in "sudo urpmi kde"... unless that's for the "real techies" -- in which case you can use Drake's control center
</sarcastic>

dont' call my Desktop n00b, n00b

love, standsolid

Sort by date

[thinkninja]

Is there going to be 'by date' sort anytime soon for Konqueror? There might even be one already for all I know....

Re:Sort by date

[CJ Hooknose]

Is there going to be 'by date' sort anytime soon for Konqueror? There might even be one already for all I know....

Um... since the first version of Konqueror, there's been a "modified" column in the detailed list view when Konqueror is being used as a file manager. Click on the "modified" column heading and the files will be sorted by their last modified date. Click that heading again, and they'll be sorted by the last modified date, in reverse.

Please note that ext[23], ReiserFS, and XFS don't store the creation date for a file. They store atime, the time the file was last accessed in any way, ctime, the time the file last had its status changed, and mtime, the time the file was last modified. atime is usually not useful since doing anything to the file changes atime. HTH,

Re:Sort by date

[thinkninja]

UM...thanks.

Re:undefined symbol: _ZNK7QString3argExii

[nickatkins]

I got that, Googled for it and found a reference to LD_LIBRARY_PATH. It should be pointing to your qt 3.2 lib directory. Anyway, I installed qt 3.2 separately first and then said QT_ALREADY_INSTALLED = yes and it worked (or at least got passed that error). I've got other compiler errors now.

Key sequences in KDE howto

[Balinares]

In the KDE control center, open 'Accessibility', 'Keyboard shortcuts', then double-click on any action you wish to associate a key or key sequence with. In the custom keystroke dialog, check 'multiple keys', and then type in your key sequence.

For example, I've made all my window operations, Ctrl+W+something. "Move window to next desktop" is Ctrl+W then Ctrl+right. Previous desktop is Ctrl+W then Ctrl+left. Maximize and minimize are, you guessed it, Ctrl+W then Ctrl+up and down, respectively. Very convenient!

Apparently the entire system will be replaced in KDE 3.2, as another poster pointed out, though, so you can also wait and see how much improvement that brings. :) Right now it still feels a tad incomplete. You can only bind key sequences to predefined window manager actions or application actions -- no way to open Konqueror (or Mozilla) on Slashdot.org, for example.