Slashdot Mirror
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!"
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.
7 Years and hundreds of developers couldn't do what Apple did with OSX in 4 years.
Thank goodness.
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
If it wasn't for KDE, I wouldn't have switch to linux.
If it wasn't for UNIX, I wouldn't have switched to Linux. 5 feet uphill in the snow, both ways, etc.
Early Linux blew away Windows 3.xx. It was like, UNIX for your PC. It was great then, and is great now, too.
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.)
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.
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).
Likewise, cutting off your hand is not as painful as disembowling yourself, but I would still rather just eat breakfast. Hence the reason I avoid such crap.
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.
I really don't think looking identical is what is needed for integration. As an example, WinAmp integrates excellently with Windows.
Yes, KDE is pretty configurable -- if by configurable you mean you can change colors, fonts, and keybindings.
I'm guessing he means as in 'every option on the system'. Not that it's that far, but Appearance and Desktop are only the first two minor sections. So, we have panel functionality, backgrounds, colors, themes, feedback, desktops, window behavior, and all that stuff there. Then there's desktop sharing, e-mail functionality, LAN browsing/chatting, web browsing (including all its subsections), personal information, file manager functionality, mime-types functionality, spell-checking, session management, X display, keyboards and mice, printers, sound playback, system notification, boot manager configuration, date/time, font management, linux kernel setup, login management, default paths for many basic locations, cryptography, password feedback, accesibility, reqion settings, and about a dozen other things. And, yes, all of those things are actually configurable by KDE. That isn't just colors, fonts, and keybindings. Actually, I never mentioned keybindings. You can also configure keybindings.
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.
I'm not a programmer very often, but how do 'C++ bindings' equate to 'kioslaves, kparts, dcop, arts and qt' seeing as those do have C++ bindings. Not saying the parent wasn't wrong with that 'Gnome gives you obsolete c' line, but I don't think you exactly refuted his point, either.
Fucking kids...
First, please don't fuck kids.
Second, just because the parent post was rude in several places doesn't mean you need to be derogatory. It just sounds bad, reducing you to their level. And, yes, the original post was too harsh in its responses, but it did have much accuracy in it.