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Seven Years of KDE Celebrated
Ashcrow writes "Almost exactly 7 years ago, Matthias Ettrich announced the start of a new desktop environment, originally called Kool Desktop Environment. Check out LinuxFrench's article (English translation) and the news at Dot KDE. Thanks to the KDE Team for a great 7 years!"
Congratulations to the KDE team. Choice is the spice of life, and they've helped provide it!
-Erwos
Plausible conjecture should not be misrepresented as proof positive.
at least it wasn't "kewl d3skt0p env."
though sometimes when seeing the latest junk for karumba I start to wonder..
anime+manga together at last.. in real time.
Kongradulations Kto Kthe Kwhole KDE Kteam!
I was always told that the 'K' in KDE didn't mean anything. It was just picked because it came before L in Linux. Meh... anyway congrats to the KDE team for bringing me a good working desktop environment all these years. If it wasn't for KDE, I wouldn't have switch to linux. Cheers!
I recently built a new box and got to the point where I had to go with either KDE or Gnome (not both, time was an issue). I choose KDE because it seemed that the project has more momentum. Am I way off here? I'd love to hear slashdoters sound off on this one.
In 7 years they have created a wonderful desktop. For some years now we have olny used Linux at home and at office, and my wife (designer) and my son (7 years old) use it comfortably thanks to KDE, OpenOffice, Mozilla et al.
Thanks for a wonderful product, and for demonstrating that a holy war (QT license, QT vs GTK, KDE vs Gnome, etc) should not deminish your efforts.
Life isn't like a box of chocolates. It's more like a jar of jalapenos. What you do today, might burn your ass tomorrow.
The licensing of QT sucks ass, and when Microsoft buys Troll Tech, KDE will be stolen from...
Sorry, was having flashbacks
KDE is my desktop of choice and part of the reason I decided to give linux a go. Congrats KDE guys!
I've got KDE 3.1 with SuSE 8.2 and I'm seriously impressed with it. It's the best version yet! Cheers people! You've got a great product, keep it going... :)
-- Fuck Beta
Kongradulate KDE on them Konquering Konsistantly well Krafted Kontrol Panels and Kapplets
Alright you buncha trolls. Don't even start any of this Gnome shit. KDE is the best desktop available on Unix, period. Gnome sucks so, STFU.
Happy birthday KDE. We love ya.
7 Years and hundreds of developers couldn't do what Apple did with OSX in 4 years.
Thank goodness.
So, which is better... K or G? With spellings such as Konqueror, Kdevelop, Koffice, Kmidi...
KDE is more fun than a barrel of monkeys !
I really had to install Wine sometimes just to play solitair, what an overhead!
So now the real reasoning behind KDE is revealed: To build a non-windows solitaire device.
Yes. You are right. Therefore you should only release WIndows apps that you write and compile with Visual Studio. It completely avoids the whole licensing mess. Alternatively, you could just FOAD.
Kongratulations to the KDE development team. I kan hardly believe that it has been seven years for this krazy and kool environment for linux. There's gno way that Gnome kan katch up with your konstant innovations in application naming! Gnow that I think about it, Gnome's gnot even kapable of kashing in on single-letter usage they way KDE kan! Keep the gnew stuff koming!
I don't know why everyone this OS X is so great. It's not the impression I got from using it for several hours.
Clicking one of the windows in the background brings only that window to the foreground (makes only that window active) and allows the windows that were open in the original application to overlap the windows that are open in the application that is now the active application. If I have more than one window open at a time it is almost certainly a problem because I need to see them all at once in order to be able to do my work. Making only the window that was clicked active rather than all the windows for the parent application seems almost counter-intuitive and always results in having to either click the application in the "dock" or select the windows from the Window menu. Regardless, it's an extra click or three I never had to do before.
Also, what happened to my Apple menu? It may not have been perfect, but please, it was pretty damn close. I know people who have completely customized their Apple menu and couldn't conceive of working without it. I'd love to see the usability justification for this one.
I am embarrassed to tell you how much I spent on my TiBook last summer because as a web developer, it seemed like a really good choice, and it would be if I wasn't constantly waiting for the spinning beach ball or for windows to resize. Some of the sluggishness may be due to the fact that I have a number of background processes running that most users probably do without (sendmail, mysql, to name a couple).
Now that I think of it, has anyone else noticed that the mouse moves MUCH faster in OS 9 than it possibly can in OS X? I guess we need to slow things down when trying to hit moving targets... another one for which I wonder what the usability justification was. And what about keyboard shortcuts? It used to be you could type your way to the desired file by using the Command+arrow combo to get to the folder in question, and then type the name of the desired file to highlight it and hit Enter (or Return) to open it. That was great. It was fast and worked perfectly. That I know of, none of my applications do this properly or without some bugs (when trying this with Word while writing this, Word crashed).
Well, I guess I've rambled enough here. It just didn't live up to its hype. There are a few other annoyances I've noticed with X, but most of them are probably me just being picky with the new UI. *sigh*
Anyone got any screenshots of the earliest KDE?
Get your own free personal location tracker
I'm just a user and this announcement makes me fell really old.
I had alot of fun compiling KDE 1.0 for the SPARC 5 I had on my desk back then - though it was little slower than CDE at the time.
Have you compiled your kernel today??
... and all I got was this free software!
wtf are you talking about ?
The windows version has about the same license term as the X11 version. Except you don't have the option of releasing it under GPL..
Qt was written by Troll Tech and forms part of their business: why would you expect them to let you use it for free in a commercial application? They're already doing more than most commercial companies in allowing GPL use. Write your own toolkit or use Gtk or something else.
In this month's edition of Linux Journal, KDE was rated as the favorite desktop environment by the readers. There's a nice birthday present for you KDE!
WURD!!
Around 1999 I had for a few years been experimenting with Linux but hadn't really ever made the switch for more than a week or two, due to lacking real desktop usability. I discovered Slackware and KDE almost in the same heartbeat and converted....and stuck, finally. KDE was the power behind keeping me on Linux and off Windows. Now I have a great desktop that I use every day for hours on end and love every minute of it.
Good job, KDE, and keep going. Gnome? Don't you boys give up, either, because it gives KDE motivation to keep churning out quality. However, you should buy them a beer or two because they've done some fine work for the *nix world, no matter which side of the fence you like to sit on.
Blog,Twitter
..welcome our new KDE-wielding overlords.
Here's to another seven years of tyranny!
because they are not fat enough to look like Americans ?
seems to me you also have been boycotting intelligence, but I suspect you didn't have much to start with.
Once again, GNOME is behind KDE by a year. No matter how much effort developers put into GNOME, it well never catch KDE in the annivesary department.
yeah...or they have a disease or somethin'...
and wtf's up with that darn yellow skin? i hate vinegar and soya sauce.
Anyone who uses KDE is a big fat smelly vagina.
Reading the original announcement it's nice to see a vision becoming a reality. One can get a bit jealous: in those _old_ :) times it was easy to come up with a good idea, since back then OSS lacked "trivial" applications. Or maybe they weren't trivial at all? Which current underdeveloped application/area will seem trivial looking back from ten years in the future?
I'm not really complaining about Trolltech. Their terms are ofcourse understadable , and its rather admirable of them to actually provide a GPL license for it. I'm more complaining about KDE for using Qt.
Ofcourse one can use another toolkit, but then you can't take advantage of all the nice KDE classes and such. The application also won't "fit" in the desktop environment.
KKK?!?!? uggggghh
looks like someone's trying to shove a square peg into a round hole.
first off, KDE can't do much about the QT license. It's a blessing that they have QT with the gpl license. the article is about kde, and not qt's licensing. next, kde choose the gpl license long before the qt was licensed as such. (recall the kde 1.x days and before when there were massive land and air wars over the licensing in compatibilities? i didn't think so)
next, i'm under the impression that kde itself is under the gpl license. that kinda makes it hard to develop software under a closed source license. if you're developing worthy qt applications, you can afford the 3k per developer to pay QT. if you're a cheep mo-fo' i suspect you can look into using other toolkits for your development (swg, awt, gnome, gtk, etc, etc, etc) there's many many other windowing toolkits with less restrictive licensing.
You'd of thought they would have given up almost immediately.
Thank you KDE, for beautifying my desktop for 5-6 years now.
Matthias Ettrich, you showed it was possible to do something we thought was not possible or did not have the confidence/ability to do. Even Miguel de Icaza was amazed with the potential KDE was showing and we all know that led to GNOME! You started something great, man.
(Please browse at -1 to read this comment.)
It's neat to flash back to the early history of KDE.
Back in early 1998, I was setting up a Linux system with a custom program I wrote to help my church manage ticket sales. It ran a KDE 1.0 beta. The hardware? 486/100 with 16MB RAM. For the most part it ran fine!
One has to wonder why it takes longer now to do anything in KDE 3.1 on a 64MB machine than it did under KDE 1.0 on a 16MB 486.
Eh? KDE is a lot more configureable than Windows is.
If Apple really wanted to be a player in the OS world, they would quit dancing around Micro$oft and go head to head with a PC version of OSX. Instead they hide in the PPC world and tout that OSX is WAY better than Windose. I'm sorry, but KDE/Linux at least (quite successfully IMHO) stands up and makes a run at competition. Otherwise, Apple will remain as an obscure system only taking cheap shots at the PC world. Oh, and picking up cash on the side for programs like iTunes and Quicktime (from the real market... the PC) Besides, what do they have to lose? Office for Apple? Please!
I was going to post a "stupid k-letter jokes under this thread please" comment, but you were too fast for me.
-- Repeat with me: "There is no right to profits".
Yeah, having all these applications held back by the GPL really sucks. Just look at the stifled innovation!
-Malloc___________________ I want to be free()!
K stands for K.. nothing more nothing less..
Damned annoying urban legend..
---- Booth was a patriot ----
..but Gnome is still better, IMHO.
They still can't figure out if 'OK' should be at the left or at the right of 'Cancel'. Although they both improve at open-source-speed (= 1.36 x ludacrous speed*).
But then again, if we both think we're using the best environment, and they are not the same, then that must mean we're just a bit different...
*: see 'spaceballs, the movie'
"It's too bad that stupidity isn't painful." - Anton LaVey
I'm serious by the way. I'm running into corporate fear of even deploying open source on an almost daily basis at the moment, so any insights on this from the "other side" are very useful for me.
UNIX? They're not even circumcised! Savages!
"Almost exactly just doesnt sound right to me... still, big congratulations.
Damn near took her head off too.
I(and a lot of commercial companies) really don't want to release applications for the (KDE) desktop under the GPL OR pay Trolltech.
I beg your pardon? If a company makes money on its software then why shouldn't it pay to Trolltech? And if it releases the sw to the public, it can go GPL.
Aren't you Daniel Lyons by chance?
sounds more like yer beeching that KDE chose to use the gpl license. kde could have paid for qt licenses and then opted to dual license their software or event to make it a closed API.
you want to develop an application that will "fit" into a destop environment without paying tributes to those backs you stand on? go check out the gnome project. they chose to use the lgpl for their desktop librarires. that, or i hear there's not many licensing issues with developing closed source applications on the win32 platform...
I've been so happy with WindowMaker that I forgot about bloatware like KDE and Gnome. To me, comparing which of them is better is like arguing over which of two miniature tricycles is fastest.
All's true that is mistrusted
Exactly the way I feel about KDE. I have no inclination to use it given the restrictions they place on what you can do with it. I know there's Gnome, but given that KDE is the more mature desktop solution - I think that their licencing terms alone are doing more to hurt Linux adoption than anything else.
"Open source is the solution!" they say. For your code.. sure, I'll even occasionally contribute fixes and new features. For mine.. uh.. no. I don't want someone else deciding what I can or can't do with my code. Especially when I don't own some of the code I'm using (because it's licenced).
I can develop commercial Windows apps for less than it would cost me to make KDE ones because of the QT licence. How utterly stupid is that?
See, this is the beauty of the GPL. Commercial companies should NOT be able to profit off of someone else's work without paying for it in some way (either financially or by opening up their own source code). Trolltech provides a very comprehensive, useful, and well-designed class library, and you expect to just be able to use it without cost? Free as in speech software is good; free as in beer software can have dangerous effects on software devleopers' job security.
Your [SHIFT] key obviously works since you used the ( and ) characters. Are they the only characters it works for? Well, I guess it works for the Q and the T as well, so it does work. I suggest you use it.
I'm not a prophet or a stone-age man,
I'm just a mortal with potential of a super man.
(sig)
Shouldn't end your sentence in a preposition!
I've been using KDE at home since late 1998 (I think) and at work since mid 2000. Awesome desktop environment!
The heat from below can burn your eyes out
Yeah, we all know the GPL sucks! Lets get rid of it.
This is your sig. There are thousands more, but this one is yours.
kwitcherbichin.
Nobody is holding a gun (or a 747) to your head and forcing you to use KDE. And I severely doubt that any KDE users give a damn about your anti-KDE position/troll.
Much in the same way that you probably dont care about their position, or my position (we're ALL flamers here! (especially me, Im a lumberjack...I'm OK!)
also, I'm a big blackbox fan. I don't need any frills that larger wm/'desktop environments' provide. It's a personal choice like everyone else has too. maybe they like it all? maybe your a cock maestro.
Seven Years of reinventing the wheel what an accomplishment!
["KDE Sucks! GNOME rules!" (reverse, repeat)] (reverse, repeat)
;)
Both of these projects are so good now, it's great while browsing to run into comments occasionally (going back years) asserting that one or the other would cease to be, or that the presence of both in the world of free / Free software was harmful, because it mean duplication of effort, dilution of attention, etc.
Ha!
Hari Seldon *must* have been involved, to see how much these allegedly self-motivated projects catalyze each other.
However much you like either one, note that KDE now has integrated CD (and DVD!) burning software -- IMO on par with anything I've seen on the commerical side (Nero, etc) whereas before I prefered GnomeToaster to anything else, and GNOME now has a good file-chooser (which had been one of my least favorite points about GNOME apps).
Meanwhile, with the right libraries on your system, the Virtucon-backed fluxbox gives you access to the best of both worlds
timothy
jrnl: http://tinyurl.com/c2l8yr / foes: http://tinyurl.com/ckjno5
No, the Gnome libraries are mostly LGPL, you can write applications and release them under whatever licenses you want.
Elaborate ? I want to be able to write applications for the linux desktop and release them under whatever I want, be it a BSD license or properitary, whithout to many strings attached.
Seven years, and it STILL looks like crap. If I HAD to choose a "desktop environment," it's GNOME. That said, if I HAD to use Linux, it's WindowMaker. That said, I have choice in computers, and it's OS X.
Because I need my computers to work for me. I don't need to work on my computers.
It's funny that you should mention miniature tricycles and WindowMaker together. They seem rather similar to me.
Seriously. If you prefer the featureless WindowMaker that's great. But, obviously, most people prefer a more full featured and integrated desktop environment which is why KDE and Gnome are the most popular of all the window managers. Now, WindowMaker aside, when you compare KDE and Gnome KDE is the obvious choice.
There was an interesting interview with Matthias Ettrich, done in 1998, and available here.
:-)
Amazing to see how KDE grew since then, and a good reminder of all these (past) issues with Qt, and the QtMozilla huge hack...
And by the way, is this "KEmacs" thing a reality somewhere?
Everytime KDE is mentioned, gnome advocates try and convince me why is GNOME is better, when it is NOT! Here is a detailed description WHY GNOME SUCKS KDE RULES!
1) The file dialog.
KDE 0.x ALPHAs had a better file dialog than gnome! Today, the KDE one is the best file dialgog in existance, with influence from all desktops.
2) More apps!
KDE comes with over 150 Apps in the full install, with applications for all fields, plus its sleak integration with non kde apps (eg gimp, openoffice) make things more consistant.
3) Configureable as hell.
The KDE control center has loads of knobs/dials/sliders and boxes to fiddle with, yet keeps things elegent. In gnome, half the options don't exisit and you are rudley told "use gconf-editor n00b by gnome zealots" (not joking about this, telling the truth gets you a -1, troll and footnotes).
4) I-kandy!
The Kde eye candy is really powerful, with styles such as dotNEt, mosfet liquid, kermamik, Crystal and more. Looking at art.gnome.org reveals the same old theme in different colours. Since gnome dosen't provide a colour changing dialog for its widgets most "themes" are just colour changes. The Crystal from CVS is an Aqua killer, your eyes will want to love it.
5) Its development framework rocks.
Take a good look at kioslaves, kparts, dcop, arts and qt and see why KDE is a programmer's dream. Modern c++, wonderful IDE, powerful command line scripting. Gnome gives you obsolete c, with a bunch of kludge libraries such as glib, Orbit, bonobo to hack together a application.
6)The defacto choice on Linux. All major Distributions support it by default. This means Mandrake, SuSE, Xandros, ArkLinux, Jamd, Lindows, Slackware, Knoppix, Gentoo and more. How many gnome ones can you mention (Redhat, sure if you like using server distros as your desktop Debian, nope thats the old 1.4 branch Gnoppix, a retarded knoppix rip off.) Most distributions offer gnome as an unsupported alternative.
Also, the only reason why gnome was created in the first place is null and void. Now that Novell has taken over Ximain you can expect VENDOR lock in. Want groupware for linux? Thats $300 a seat.
Get the new Mandrake 9.2 and see the Quality of KDE vs the Sorry state of Gnome 2.4 (and, they STILL haven't fixed that ****ing file dialog), not to mention they REMOVED ALL THE FEATURES. Gnome 2.2 is probably the only gnome version remotley close to kde, that is, KDE 2.0, not the KDE 3.2. I tried the "brokenboring" alpha of it and when it is released this december it will finally put Gnome out of it's misery and kill it off the Linux desktop.
Interesting take. I use KDE, and Nautilus. To each their own.
I don't subscribe to RMS's GNUtopian vision.
and Apple couldn't have done it without the help of KDE and the whole OSS commuinity.
::whipping noises::
down troll! DOWN!
WTPOUAWYHTTOTWPA
What's the point of using acronyms when you have to type out the whole phrase anyways?
You can do this. Many of the KDE libraries are also under the LGPL. But the fact is that many of the KDE classes that you want to use are actually extensions of QT classes. If you want to use those particular QT classes and the functions that go with them you have two choices, pay TrollTech or GPL. It sounds reasonable to me.
If you don't like the choices then don't use KDE classes and functions. Write your own. The licensing is NOT stopping you from developing your own software for any desktop and licensing that software as you see fit.
You know, in seven years, Apple went from the original 128 K Mac running System 1.0 to System 7.
Tell me again how non-commercial software is better than commercial software?
They are both almost equally populer. (now polls say that kde is more populer but a few years ago it was gnome, and it will switch back again, but who believes online polls anyhow?)
GNOME puts alot of hard work into having a good UI (good usability, no anooying options, etc...).
Try them both for a week, and see what you like more...
I'll bet you're a big 'black box' fan.
You pathetic piece of shit.
The best part of KDE is the way QT/XFS-XTT makes all of the fonts look nice and antialiased. I used to dread using X11 because of the ugly fonts, but now everything is quite nice.
this sig limit is too small to put anything good h
Qt was written by Troll Tech and forms part of their business: why would you expect them to let you use it for free in a commercial application?
Not commercial; BSD. Troll Tech (god, what a name) will only let you release non-commercial software under the GPL. I like free software, so I won't use the GPL. That means I can't use Troll Tech's product to develop my free projects.
And your 'K' stands for 'Kunt'?
I switched over to KDE from Gnome about 2 months ago after using Gnome since 1.4ish (and I used 2.0, 2.2 and 2.4).
I like KDE better. That's really all I can say. Gnome isn't bad, but I spent too much time wondering if Gnome was ever going to get polished. That and Nautilus just sucks.
When I was using Windows I used Directory Opus as my file manager and when I first started to use Linux full time that was the program I missed the most. Then... then I found Konqueror. Life's been good ever since. From that point it was a slow conversion to KDE as a whole.
I'm very happy with it. Koffice included. I'm very much looking forward to SVG support in the next version as well as a few other little bits I've read up on.
Good job guys!
And just a clarification, I like Gnome. I just like KDE better and you know what's cool? I'm not longer stuck between these two choices:
Windows DE or Windows DE.
The french are real intelligent. They are so intelligent that because of socialist policies and wacko islamists invading the country, it is quickly turning into a 3rd world country.
You are not e e fucking cummings. Use capital letters where appropriate, you moron.
The only things I needed to add for her were OpenOffice, Acrobat and XawTV - they all installed without incident.
That means it should have all of my annoyances worked out sometime in 2006!
obviously no deficiencies vs. no obvious deficiencies
Troll?
:-( If they were I think there would be no stopping Qt from taking off. I would actually pick it up and write some more than trivial apps if it were open on windows and mac, besides just linux.
Qt is by a for profit company, TrollTech. They have written a sizeable chunk of code and get to choose the license. If you wrote the code you would get to choose the license.
I think TrollTech was brilliant in many ways with their license. You can either use their code for free, but you have to release your code. This works great to allow people to write code for kicks and popularizes their toolkit so it is used more often. Then their for profit license where people can choose to pay for the license and not have to open their app's code.
The only thing I dislike about TrollTech's license is that their windows and mac implementations are not offered under their open license.
Granted the moc and such is a terrible idea, but a C++ programming env that is so crossplatform is a great thing.
Norris/Palin 2012
Fact: We deserve leaders who can kick your ass and field dress your carcass.
I was about to say... "Gee, I wonder how much longer it would have taken Apple if they had to write their own rendering engine for their browser."
These trolls piss me off too. I fail to see the point of flaming another DE. It's like, okay use what you like and let me use what I like. Is there a point to flaming someone for their choice of tools?
KDE has turned out some fine stuff and the price can't be beat.
Oh yeah... and when OSX runs on more than one platform, I'll be impressed. Windows and OSX can bind you to whatever... but KDE runs not just on multiple platforms, but under multiple OSes and that's something OSX has yet to mimic. (Although... it's not quite the same because this is a DE vs. OS so it's not quite a normal comparison, but I think you get my point.)
Commercial companies should NOT be able to profit off of someone else's work without paying for it in some way
Because "Free" isn't free. Got it.
Now, on a more pressing point, what can we do to get the FSF to change their name? Do you think it would be helpful to get the FTC involved? After all, the government (through the FDA) governs the use of terms like "light" and "fat free" in food labels. It seems only appropriate that the use of the word "free" should also be regulated to keep it from being abused.
If Apple really wanted to be a player in the OS world
They don't.
(Gasp!)
That's right. They don't. Apple is now, and always has been, a hardware company. This is as true today as it was in 1977. Mac OS X doesn't make Apple a dime. Macs do. iTunes doesn't make Apple a dime. iPods do.
Otherwise, Apple will remain as an obscure system only taking cheap shots at the PC world.
I don't know how you define "obscure" friend, but by Mr. Webster's definition, Apple ain't it.
Oh, and picking up cash on the side for programs like iTunes and Quicktime (from the real market... the PC)
The only reason QuickTime and iTunes for Windows exist is to sell iPods. Period, end of discussion.
this is the beauty of the GPL
No, no, no. This is the ugly, ugly side of the GPL. I'm not asking to be able to make changes to QT. I want to be able to make software that works with it.
Anyone can use Linux with no problem in a commercial application without releasing code - so long as the application-specific code is in userspace or in a dynamically loaded module.
So why can't I use KDE in the same way for my apps?
Trolltech charges $3000 a seat to use their toolkit. Three thousand dollars. Even Microsoft doesn't charge for people to use their API. And they have a more consistent platform (you can run X without KDE) and more market saturation. Why would I even look twice at KDE?
KDE is making itself unpopular in the commercial world and doesn't even realise why.
How about, its a big fat smelly vagina with loads of hot semen oozing out of it?
pardon me for biting the hook. macs are more popular than the whole of linux (Mac OS X is the most popular Unix-like OS, including actual Unices), so their attempt at competition has been more successful than kde/gnome/linux/everyone else. second, there are a number of reasons why apple shouldn't run to the x86 platform, including, but not limited to: (1) the inferiority of x86, (ii) the fact that most of apple's money comes from hdwr (and they cant compete on prices like the wintel cloners, while maintaining their r&d). also, and this is now defunct, apple had an agreement with ms for years not to compete on x86s.
Look at the user count, you fucking zealot. I'd use XP over KDE any day! As would most people.
What's the difference between free and GPL?
I thought you were trolling but seems to be serious, so will bite. What privilege exactly you want your "commercial comapnies" to have ? to be able to get some one else's code for FREE without a single penny and be able to SELL it and make money out of it ? What sort of an asshole you are to demand that ? You have 2 very good choices . Either be part of a commnity and make GPLed applications which would benefit everyone or pay money to make money. Its as simple as that.Dont expect to take others code for free of cost and make money out of it
I fail to see the point of flaming another DE.
DE? I don't know what a DE is, but I understand your point nonetheless. Let me explain.
The point of flaming another operating system is simple: people need to be educated. People need to be lifted out of the cesspool of ignorance and brought up into the light of knowledge. As long as there's a single human being out there who thinks that KDE is anything more than the computer software equivalent of a cave painting, the campaign to educate must continue.
KDE has turned out some fine stuff and the price can't be beat.
The price most certainly can be beat. When you buy OS X, you get an operating system that works perfectly all the time (modulo a very small error bar). When you download KDE, you get an operating system that usually doesn't work, and when it does work it barely limps along. Net value: OS X by a mile.
Oh yeah... and when OSX runs on more than one platform, I'll be impressed.
That's a very odd criteria for acceptance. Why do you care what's inside your computer?
Although... it's not quite the same because this is a DE vs. OS so it's not quite a normal comparison, but I think you get my point.
There's that DE thing again. Please don't invent your own terms; please stick to universally understood terms. I'm sure you think you are quite "elite" and very "rad," but in point of fact you're just demonstrating your own ignorance here.
This is 2003. The twenty-first century. Please act like it.
Who cares if he doesn't capitalize the first words in sentences. On the internet, you should expect written text to resemble spoken text more than it would otherwise. Initial capitalization is fairly redundant, anyway. You apparantly easily understood him, so where's the problem.
> seems to me you also have been boycotting intelligence
As indicated by the suggestion that the U.S. "defend[ed] Saddam's regime".And people wonder why Linux has less than 1% uptake? Quit your bitching when hardware manufacturers start ignoring Linux / X.
KDE should be fighting for market share, not keeping developers away with hostile attitudes similar to yours.
fuck you!
Dude, you suck. That was a lousy troll.
Did somebody set the default homepage on some 2nd-grade classroom's PC to Slashdot? Because about all I see around here lately is a bunch of spoiled little kid-sounding troll posts, with no skills and no entertainment value.
"Please don't invent your own terms;" WTF? I mean, seriously - this is what passes for trolling these days?
Set the homepage back to msn.com, and let the big kids play with Slashdot, mmmKay?
Oh, btw - the singular of 'criteria' is 'criterion'. Just thought you oughta know.
its not hat people *expect* TT to change, its just a pragmatic fact. why would small commercial/shareware software shops choose an linux dev environment where they will have to pay just to develope when there is a perfectly good (some would say better, but thats a different thread) option that is free to code for, namely gnome.
Will KDE survive another 7 years with SCO as a majority owner of TrollTech?
It seems like any discussion of the pitfalls of the GPL are beyond the pale on Slashdot.
It has been said 100's of times. Apple is a Hardware companay. They make money by selling Hardware.
...
And they have been very succesfull at that. They own about 3% to 4% of the GLOBAL pc market. That's lots of pc's seriously! They are the ONLY PC/Harware company still a live from the era of the first PC's (before they were called PC's).
Remember Commodore, they it's spinn off Amiga, Atari, Adam (coleco), Tandy, Next
Apple is still with us makeing great products and changing they way people think about Comps every day.
BSD licensed software can't be stolen....
Problem is, Desktop environments are a tricky subject by virtue of their complexity.
KDE isnt something that just sits there and manages and beautifies little boxes for you. It tries to be much, much more. It's a whole "Desktop Environment" and experience. Much like windows explorer is a desktop environment, and a huge OS tacked on. Windows has been around for much longer than 7 years, and their budget is BILLIONS, where open source usually has a budget of exactly zero. Sometimes less. KDE doesnt employ legions of people to specifically make things as stupid-proof as possible, either.
In any event, there are other Window Managers that don't come with the "Experience" of KDE, GNOME, CDE, and others. Such as, windowmaker, afterstep, fvwm, blackbox (/me pimps blackbox) and a HUGE number of others. They work fabulously, quickly, and quite elegantly. As for KDE, I would say they've done fan-fucking-tastic given the budget, free development, FREE product, and so on. They are not perfect, but MS isnt either (remember code red, nimda, Blaster, Klez, and every other cirus on the face of the earth? KDE's "Experience" doesnt include mass propagating internet worms, have you noticed?)
In the interest of not excluding a big guy, MacOS is great too. Mostly because they arent a bunch of Lobotimized numbskulls who push out software as fast as possible, and they employ plenty of Interface Designers.
fuck you alcoholics.
i prefer some nice kind buds. preferably cooked in butter and used in baked goods. the occasional bong hit is nice too.
you all think you are so much better, because your drug is legal.
fuckers.
Troll?
Tech!
Oooo big language.
Zealot? I use Windows 2000, Windows XP and Linux. KDE is much more powerful desktop environment than Windows. Almost everything from Window borders to buttons, taskbar backgrounds can be altered. You can have many dockbars, multiple start menus etc... not to mention a user defineable number of desktop tabs.
Maybe one day you'll be able to use alternative products and offer sensible opinions of them instead of offering childish abuse.
Some simply have different tastes, though.
I cant drink (what I would find in my opinion) crappy beer just to get drunk, because I dont like it.
I dont like garden variety coconut rum after having quite a bit given to me by a friend who came from the bahamas.
I also dont use antifreeze to sweeten my coffee.
Ok, ok... I lied. I _do_ use antifreeze to sweeten my coffee!
The kdelibs (khtml, kjs, kparts, ...) are licensed under the lgpl (even some bsd I think). That's why Apple was able to use khtml and kjs. ...) on the other hand are gpl licensed.
The kde applications (konqueror, kmail,
If only I could come up with a good sig
KDE can't do much about the QT license
No, they can't. But they could choose to not use QT.
So what you're saying is "Fuck the developers, so long as Trolltech gets a check at the end of the day?" That's kind of an anti-thesis to Steve Balmer's "Developers Developers Developers Developers" monkey-boy rant.
Maybe you're right. Maybe trying to escape to Linux to avoid paying fees for commercial development is the wrong thing to try and do. But it does seem as if Linux has no advantages over Windows for commercial developers.
Even Microsoft doesn't charge for people to use their API.
Some Mono nay-sayers have suggested that Microsoft may indeed start doing exactly that, charging for use of its .NET framework by asserting its patents.
Will I retire or break 10K?
plz post them
BSD.
"If you're thinking what I'm thinking, you're right." -
Oh I'm sorry, I missed the last bit of yur post.
...I need me some peaches.
The man is quite obviously an alchoholic, and one who can afford to blow quite a bit more money on it than anyone else would.
I wouldnt ever drink grey goose vodka to get completely smashed, But i would drink it for a little while.
anyhow, the point is, the guy likes his expensive booze. I mean, I could hire a hooker, fondle her breasts, and ask her to pleasure herself for me, afterwards core out a peach and send the lady on her way to save some cash... But I could also just keep her for a night and have a much, much better lay.
The only thing I dislike about TrollTech's license is that their windows and mac implementations are not offered under their open license.
Another Slashdot user informed me that KDE has been ported to Cygwin+XFree86. If KDE for Windows doesn't Just Work(tm) for you, what problems did you run into?
Will I retire or break 10K?
A broken shift-key is comparable to speaking without intonation. It's still comprehensible, but it's annoying and slightly more difficult to understand.
X and KDE consume way too much memory.
Why is his statement trolling ?
Isn't trolling looking to create flames and stupid statements? So.....why is his statement a troll Mr. Moderator ?
I have an old computer and KDE slows it to a crawl.
Does anyone remember all the comments on this website about monopoly's win95 being SLOW and Bloated . Well ???? Do you ????
If I find the moderator that called this post a troll he will be META-moderated and hopefully moderation duties taken away.
I can develop commercial Windows apps for less than it would cost me to make KDE ones because of the QT licence. How utterly stupid is that?
X apps written and compiled with the GTK+ toolkit will run just fine inside KDE. X apps written and compiled with the Winelib toolkit (many of which are ported Windows apps) will run just fine inside KDE. X apps written and compiled with the GNUstep toolkit (many of which are ported Cocoa apps) will run just fine inside KDE. Your point?
Will I retire or break 10K?
yes, yes... "to whom would you speak it?"
The only thing I dislike about TrollTech's license is that their windows and mac implementations are not offered under their open license. :-(
m l
Not true for the Mac:
http://www.trolltech.com/download/qt/mac.ht
I have to admit, when I first saw the announcement (I'm Clayton, #5 in the Matthias's original thread), I simply thought, "What a dumbass; he doesn't know anything about X," and moved on. However, the few times that I've been presented with KDE recently, I've been pretty impressed at what a full-featured and easy-to-use desktop it's turned out to be.
Nice work, folks. I hope you keep it up.
thats a good thing
I'll spring to his defense, since it is clearly made up. How easily riled the proletarians get when they hear about the good life, even when it is clearly a honey pot like this post was. Look me in the eye and tell me you don't want to be sitting in your own library knocking back some likkors when your wife calls you to dinner. He could have taken this one half step farther and described his fine azz Courvoisier snifter and the thong his maid was wearing, but the author seemed to feel that people would see past his obvious troll. Too bad you were caught in the net - why not think for two seconds before falling into autorant mode you idiot.
Eat recycled food - it's good for the environment, and OK for you.
Sorry, but Apple's proprietary system is the ONLY reason Apple is still alive. Yes, they sell quite a bit of hardware, but as Microsoft figured out long ago... Hardware is not where the money is.
well, the same things that give linux the edge, are the same things that make it a pain for commercial development. the succesfull companies doing commercial development in the past and present for linux either release everthing their app needs for the most part, and or require specific versions of specific distributions.
linux offers a lot of flexability and choice about libs, compilers, window toolkits (lack of a wondow toolkit, etc). that's very hard to support. in a microsoft environemt, (nearly) everything is the same.
second, you're not going to get much attention by making a desktop specific applciation under linux. there's that choice thing again, and kde doesn't have a 90% marketshare on the desktop. thus you're better off trying to use either a native tookit or go for the gusto and use a java based one. mozilla also offers an appliation building suite.
you seem so focused on the kde and their horid choice to go with the gpl and qt. when you might want to focus on looking for a toolkit that meeds your "needs".
The closest Trolltech ever came to a Free version of Qt for Windows was Qt 2.3 Non-Commercial Edition for Windows. It was binary-only (for obvious reasons), there was no official TT support, and the license was not compatible with most (if not all) OSI licenses. Trolltech suggested that developers include an exception clause if their License Of Choice allowed it.
Of course, some cheap rat-bastards decided to piss in the pool and use the Non-Comm version for closed-source commercial software, and TT caught them violating the license. Once burned, twice shy, so there's no 3.x version, now or probably ever. And without source or support, the 2.3 version is pretty much abandonware.
This sig intentionally left blank.
Looks left... No apple there. Looks Right... No apple there. Blinks. Lots of pc's? Where? Smiles and falls on the floor laughing.
Funny. I used to use Konqueror in Gnome. (I too hate Nautilus.) But then I just went back to KDE. I love Gnome's speed and overall good looks, but KDE has more features and configurability. So KDE's my env of choice. But the choice was hard to make.
You're right, I wouldn't steal a car. But if it were possible, I sure as hell would download one!
No, "GPL - BSD"
GNUStep is an effort to duplicate the Next environment. WindowMaker uses GNUStep libs so you can say GNUStep is a desktop environment were WindowMaker is it's window manager.
BSD licensed software can't be stolen....
How many times has KDE crashed on me in the past three years you might ask? ZERO
It's funny how people think KDE is easier to use than GNOME is. KDE is great, but it lacks focus. Yes, I've used it for quite sometime now. GNOME's technology is pathetic, but it's useability, simplicity and ease of usage is unrivaled. GNOME is very focused and the standard for entry of GNOME apps are very high. That's why GNOME in my opinion has some of the best apps, evolution and gimp come to mind.
:-D
I agree GNOME is behind KDE. I remember the numerous tools availabe to me in KDE that I now miss using GNOME. And DCOP and Kparts, nothing like them on GNOME. CORBRA is demented. ORBIT is bugy as hell. Metacity isn't as mature as Kwin is. You can't even turn of animations in Metacity. It's the most irritating thing about GNOME.
So why do I use GNOME? Well, as you grow older, you begin to appreciate simplicity and ease of use. Take for example a simple task as changing your backkground or wallpaper. In KDE is would have taken at least 20 steps(hyperbole). In GNOME it takes two. Right click on an image, and select 'use image as background', c'est finis.
GNOME apps are all consistent. What does that mean? It means every GNOME app uses the same shortcut keys, looks, interact and behave in an almost similar manner. Once you've learnt how to use on app, you've learnt how to use the rest. The element of least surprise is upheld to the highest order.
Looks. How many of you have taken a look at GTK2 apps without looking at it again or drooling? Looks. Take a look at epiphany and take a look at Konqueror. Which is visually appealing? Or Xchat and Kvirc. Or Gaim(althought it's not a GNOME app) and Kopete. Although, this understanbly is a matter of aesthetic preference, I have always appreciated the beauty, compactness and KISS style of GNOME and GNOME apps. I even think GNOME looks better than Mac. Yes, I use Macs.
As one matures the benefits of KDE's eye candy, disorderliness, feature centricness and lack of focus begin to weigh in on the user. Don't get me wrong, KDE is rich, but I got burned out. I converted to GNOME about 2 months ago, and I've since then removed any app that begins with K from my system. Oh, that and I had always preferred C to C++.
Trolltech doesn't understand the GPL. They claim that you can't use their GPL'd libraries in a commercial application. Try reading the license, they're wrong. You CAN, you just have to release the source code under the GPL. Legally, there's nothing Trolltech can do to stop you selling your work. Stallman himself says that selling GPL'd software is perfectly okay and indeed he encourages it.
I for one welcome our new KOverlords.
Thanks! You're a genius! Why didn't I think of that?
I think even you will agree that KDE is the best X desktop. I want to use it. I just don't want to write apps for it. If ever there was an example of the GPL having the potential to "infect" closed-source products, this is it and this is the reason why nobody without money to burn will write commercial apps for KDE.
If I use GTK under KDE, I may as well use just Gnome in the first place - but that eliminates any and all point of KDE existing. To switch to GTK is to switch to GNOME.
Some people (myself included) do not like the KDE / QT library licencing. I, and many others like me, will continue to avoid it. There is nothing you can do to alter this, besides changing QT's licence.
Yes, KDE's file dialog is superior to GNOME's. This is the one thing that I find annoying.
2) More apps! KDE comes with over 150 Apps in the full install, with applications for all fields, plus its sleak integration with non kde apps (eg gimp, openoffice) make things more consistant.
KDE comes with over 150 apps that are mostly worthless, really. GNOME comes with most of the same functionality, a nice terminal, web browser, pdf viewer, calculator, etc. GNOME also has the best OS spreadsheet in existence.
As for integration, KDE's "make other apps use KDE colors" hack is disgusting. If you want "integration," -- if by integration you mean widgets that look the same -- use Geramik, Bluecurve, or Mandrake's whatever-it's-called.
3) Configureable as hell. The KDE control center has loads of knobs/dials/sliders and boxes to fiddle with, yet keeps things elegent. In gnome, half the options don't exisit and you are rudley told "use gconf-editor n00b by gnome zealots" (not joking about this, telling the truth gets you a -1, troll and footnotes).
Yes, KDE is pretty configurable -- if by configurable you mean you can change colors, fonts, and keybindings. You can do the same with GNOME, without touching GConf. For some more advanced tweakage, you will need to use GConf, which is pretty easy(not near as painful as windows's regedit).
5) Its development framework rocks. Take a good look at kioslaves, kparts, dcop, arts and qt and see why KDE is a programmer's dream. Modern c++, wonderful IDE, powerful command line scripting. Gnome gives you obsolete c, with a bunch of kludge libraries such as glib, Orbit, bonobo to hack together a application.
GNOME has C++ bindings for everything you need.
6)The defacto choice on Linux. All major Distributions support it by default.
Yeah, and Windows is the defacto OS on x86, what's your point? However, several of those distros also support GNOME, and RH is pretty nice on desktops too.
<snipped the rest of your trolling>
Please stop this nonsense, just stop it.
Fucking kids...
Sticking feathers up your butt does not make you a chicken - Tyler Durden
BSD licensed software can't be stolen....
Tell that to SGI and SCO.
Not only that, but most of the goodness in OS X is much older. Say, 1986, the beginning of Next...
they dont mean you cant, they are taking the assumption (perfectly valid in my opin) that most people wanting to sell their app in fact want to keep it nongpled.
hence the dual license. they also assume anyone wanting to sell their product with the gpl is already beyond what they need to explain.
not everything is a limit of rights
media-burning
GNOME 2.x is utterly failing at the moment in the media-burning area. Sure, there is the Nautilus cd-burning plugin, but that is hardly sufficient to meet even modest home-user needs.
On this point, I tip my hat to KDE for the K3b media-burning application. It is truly impressive; it rivals or bests top home-user proprietary burning applications on the Windows platform.
network share browsing
Nautilus performance for SMB and NFS network browsing is abysmal just now, and most of the GNOME 2.4 reviews do well to point it out.
This is a sufficiently significant shortcoming, that it prevents a Nautilus-based GNOME desktop from being viable in many home-office and small-business environments.
Watching its procedure using tcpdump, it boggles the mind how ineffecient the libs used by Nautilus are here.
Konqueror has Nautilus beat hands-down here.
However, GNOME will improve. With its unmatched HIG, its insistence on including only apps of the highest quality and even removing from future releases those that fail to persist in excellence, its insistence upon support for assistive technologies, and its overall usability, I still believe that GNOME will become the dominant *nix desktop environment.
goodpoint andwhilewereatit wedontreallyneedspacingorpunctuationeither dowe
(Surprised *that* made it through the lameness filter...)
The moderator that me offtopic is an idiot and another example of happy censory moderators that may have a bias towards KDE.
Capital letters, please!
Is that so difficult to understand?
You know, GNOME wouldn't be where it now is if people stopped trying to convince themselves that it's as good as KDE, and just freaking *made it happen*, instead.
And this comes from a former GNOME guy. I'm not gonna rant or correct some faulty assumptions in your post, it's just not worth sinking to that level (however, I'll try to point out some of your good points further down, for the sake of fairness). Besides, there are much cleverer people than I with in depth knowledge of both environments that make a much better job of summing up the issues at hand than I could. Interestingly, this guy too used to think that GNOME would become the #1 desktop environment. That was a few years ago.
This being said, you're right about a few things. There's much more to desktop integration than widget appearance. And GConf is indeed not as bad as the Windows registry, mostly thanks to the absence of CLSID and related codes!
As for the rest, this is Slashdot, so I won't bother. Those who care, already know, and those who don't care or don't want to know, won't stop not caring or not wanting to know just because little guy Balinares is busily opening his mouth.
Additionally, your post misses entirely the number one reason why you should be using GNOME:
Because you -like- it.
That's the most valid reason on Earth to be using anything. So please drop the would-be technical comparisons that GNOME can't and won't win because it's just fucking not designed to, dammit. Go back to writing the freaking best code you can, and let people enjoy GNOME if GNOME is what they enjoy. Blind zealotry turns people -away-, you know?
I just wish the GNOME guys would stop phagocyting third-party apps just for the somewhat awkward "this is now a GNOME app so GNOME rules!" bragging rights... People who like to choose based on technical merits have a right not to have GNOME forced into their apps if they don't want GNOME, dammit. We can bitch all we want about the KDE guys, but when they need an app, they code it, they don't go encyst themselves into neutral apps...
-- B.
This sig does in fact not have the property it claims not to have.
That's odd. Nautilus and KDE.
I was in your boat. I was using Konqueror in Gnome and then just went back to KDE. On my box the speed difference isn't noticeable.
Keep in mind you're not really paying for a GUI toolkit. You can get that anywhere. What you're really paying for is source-level portability. I think that's worth the $1550.00 for the base 1-developer commercial license. If you can't make that back relatively quickly with your first application, are you really sure you want to release at all?
Even a $5,000.00 US per developer license would never keep a software company from using a toolkit. The company I work for just paid $60,000.00 US for a commercial license (albeit with source) for a 3D modelling lib for JUST ONE DEVELOPER. It's not going to hurt a company who wants or needs it.
If you don't like it, just write your own. It's not as difficult as some might say - you just have to understand the windowing system you're using it on.
Hmm.. a company that's been around for more than 25 years like Apple probably should have more market share (which they do, but barely) compare to the handful of hackers that make up the KDE and GNOME teams.
> their GPL'd libraries in a commercial application
By commercial, they assume that you also mean propeitary. which most commercial software is.
For full comic effect your reply should read: "you shouldn't use a preposition to end a sentence with".
Well, I just installed Linux earlier today, and now I'm looking at this page from KDE.
what sig?
You mean minority owner?
Looksie at Canopy and SCO at the bottom of the list. Majority owner is... the EMPLOYEES.. with 65% of the holdings.
You're wrong. Go read 100 pages on the difference between Latin and English on Google.
There are reasons why democracy does not work nearly as well as capitalism.
-- David D. Friedman
Install both, use the panel you like, the apps you like and the window manager you like. I'm happily using applications from both with fluxbox, enlightenment, metacity and even twm - or remotely with CDE, pc-xware or cygwin. One user has the KOffice apps running all the time from the gnome panel, and the bluecurve desktop (and fluxbox on the 8 bit display).
I'm sure commercial companies don't want to pay Microsoft, Borland, RogueWave, etc, either. But they do.
Although I have a few problems with the Qt licensing, I've always found your particular argument to be ludicrous. Is it fair that proprietary commercial companies have to pay for proprietary commercial software? Of course! If you want to argue about the price of Qt, please do so. But don't argue that the Trolltech is wrong for selling their software to people who sell software for a living. Next thing you know you'll be bitching about grocers selling produce to restaurants.
Don't blame me, I didn't vote for either of them!
I want to be able to write applications for the linux desktop and release them under whatever I want, be it a BSD license or properitary, whithout to many strings attached.
Since Qt is not under the GPL, but under a GPL/QPL combination, you can release your application under any Open Source license with no strings attached.
Now proprietary will be a bit more difficult. GNU/GNOME/GTK may be a better choice for you if you want to do proprietary software development. Ironic huh?
Don't blame me, I didn't vote for either of them!
Wahhhh.
Fucking Crybaby.
At least windows moves the help button 2 clicks away instead of putting it on the launcher giving a false sense of hope ... er, help ... no hope.
That was a lousy troll.
Got you, though, didn't he?
So, it boils down to this: "I want others to works for free so I could profit from their work! I don't want to give anything back to them! Not money or source! I want it all to myself!"
Why don't you write your own damn toolkit or use Gtk+? And don't forget: Stop your whining!
Lesbian Nazi Hookers Abducted by UFOs and Forced Into Weight Loss Programs - -all next week on Town Talk.
I hope you guys aren't being serious. In case you are, I was *joking*. Don't be so pathetic.
Disclaimer: I don't care about purity of licenses. I don't care about C vs C++. I don't care about RMS.
KDE is just the most remarkable piece of free software I've ever seen. It's so big, so slick and advances at such an incredible pace. It works perfectly, and just the same on Linux, Solaris and BSD (though I haven't used and BSDs in a while). It's wonderful.
I used to love GNOME, but now, with the best will in the world. I can't take it seriously as a rival to KDE.
Yes and no. I think you mean "WindowMaker is just a window manager because it doesn't set a comprehensive desktop appearance policy". In that sense, yes, *for the most part* all WindowMaker does is manage windows, but that's not *entirely* all it does.
In fact, you can run Window Maker without using its included window manager; in the default right-click menu you have the option of restarting with IceWM or with BlackBox. Window Maker is a desktop, in that it is a layer of abstraction above a window manager.
All's true that is mistrusted
I have been loving the KDE since I got Mandrake 6-something after running Red Hat 4-something. I knew the folks at Uni Tubingen were totally cool! I've used gnome a bit, but KDE still rules AFAIC.
The Kai's Semi-Updated Website Thingy
Flamebait my butt. Someone tells these /. lusers where they can get off - of course they call it flamebait!
But there is not a single untruthful word in that entire essay.