Freedesktop.org on KDE/Gnome, New Goals

fdo writes "OSNews has a long and juicy interview with the freedesktop.org developers regarding many aspects of their project, including interoperability between GNOME/KDE, the new X Server, the new Hardware Abstraction Layer library, accessibility, package management and in general, all things desktop."

Comments

Developers get to play too

[Space cowboy]

Keith Packard: "One thing I have noticed is a sudden interest in video cards with *lots* of memory. GL uses video memory mostly for simple things like textures for which it is feasible to use AGP memory. However, Composite is busy drawing to those off-screen areas, and it really won't work well to try and move those objects into AGP space"

Finally an excuse for even the most die-hard "oh no, I don't play games" programmer to go and get a decent graphics card, and not to use a Matrox G500 because it does 2 screens best :-) ... "but boss, I *need* it for the new application"...

Simon

Don't forget the users!

[gilesjuk]

It's all very well thinking of the technical considerations (and there's quite a lot to consider), but don't forget to consider users and the usability of the desktop. Why do people use Microsoft products? because they're either forced to (at work) or they they find them easy to use (at home). Microsoft spends a lot of time ensuring their products are very usable and open source desktops need to do the same. Usability labs, heuristic evaluation etc.. all should be used (yes I am studying HCI before you ask).

Re:Don't forget the users!

[jjhlk]

Knowledge of the alternatives or not, most people barely care about their operating system, so whatever is installed when they buy it is what they stick to.

Re:Don't forget the users!

[acidtripp101]

I'm sorry, but people don't use windows at home because it is "easy to use."
A person once told me the best reason I've heard that people use windows:
Everybody uses windows because everybody uses windows
If Everybody used any other OS (OSX, Linux, FreeBSD, BeOS, Amiga, etc) for gaming, productivity, media, etc. Then EVERYBODY else would use the same operating system to maintain compatablitiy.
I have yet to hear a casual user say that they love windows.
The honest fact is that 90% of people don't care what OS they use, as long as they can listen to MP3s, play games (in my opinion, a MAJOR obsticle that desktop *NIX has to overcome... I was excited that I could get unreal tournament to run on my gentoo box), and open office (open/star/MS/whatever) documents.
The current state of *nix desktops is wonderful! KDE 3.x is definatly professional grade. XFCE4 is definatly ready for the desktop. Fluxbox is there for people that want the best performance with the smallist footprint. I dare ANYBODY to name something that can be done on a Windows based workgroup that can't be done on a *nix workgroup.
I'm sorry, but the ONLY area that linux is truely lacking is in the gaming department. This includes Graphics acceleration. I don't care if the drivers are closed-source (such as the nvidia drivers, which I must admit, are awesome), or open (the DRI for the ati cards isn't as good, but it's still not bad at all).
I'm willing to bet that if a company like loki got into the market now, with some big name titles, then the ammount of linux desktops would skyrocket. Sadly, the only precident of a comany like this is loki, which dipped it's feet in the water way too soon. Linux wasn't ready then. It is now.
As proof of this, I have at least 3 friends (granted, they are somewhat more computer literate than the 'average joe') that want me to install *NIX on their desktop. A year ago, there is NO way that they would have even THOUGHT about dual-booting.
I just don't believe that anyone can get away with saying that *NIX isn't ready for the desktop anymore.

Re:Don't forget the users!

[gnu-generation-one]

"Why do people use Microsoft products? because they're either forced to (at work) or they they find them easy to use (at home)"

Find them easy to use? Have you ever met someone who's tried MacOS, tried KDE, tried Gnome, tried Windows, and then concluded that Windows was easiest to use, went out and bought a copy?

No? Isn't it more likely that home users were forced to use Windows just as the office users?

If they did truly choose, you could imagine people going into the computer shop and hearing"this is the computer running WindowsXP, this is the same computer but running Windows98, and this is the same computer but running Gnome, which would you like to buy"

Most of the computer shops I've been to say "this is the computer, and YOU WILL buy WindowsXP, because otherwise we won't sell you the computer". Say what you like about building your own systems, or going to an Apple shop, but in most cases, somebody buying a computer is forced to use Windows.

Usability doesn't come into it. Full-page adverts in newspapers and consumer magazines, television adverts, and yes, illegal monopolistic action against suppliers who stock alternatives, is what makes people 'choose' Windows. None of these people do so because they've decided it's easy to use, quite the opposite, many people spend their lives cursing the difficulty of using Windows.

Re:Don't forget the users!

[Joe Tie.]

What I don't like about HCI and so called usability experts is that they seem to want to lump everybody into a single catagory. I don't use a computer the same way my grandmother does, and a system that tries to force me to isn't intuitive for me. Sometimes I want a page of 80 clickable options instead of one wizard that allows a choice of five and a requirement to then go edit a registry.

Re:Don't forget the users!

[myc]

Actually, the reason I use Windows is it is probably the OS that takes the least effort to get working out of the box to a degree sufficient for me to accomplish work on commodity hardware. Sure, just about most everything I do can be done on a Linux box, but it would take me forever of digging through poor documentation, newsgroups, and futzing around to actually get it working reasonably well (I've tried, so don't accuse me of not trying). Even then, usability is generally poor. Sure, linux programs are generally quite powerful and flexible, but the vast majority of us just want to get things done. If that means having to put up with a few idosyncrasies of Windows, so be it. Sure, I've gotten hit with viruses, but with reasonable precautions it's not an everyday occurance, just the occasional annoyance.

The bottom line is, your time is MUCH more valuable than the cost of a windows license.

An umbrella project for standards

[joelparker]

This question stands out to me:

• How do you feel about freedesktop.org
  becoming an "umbrella" project for
  all projects that require communication

I think this hits the nail on the head--
developers *do* need an umbrella here,
one group to push apps toward one goal.

Simple examples are needing copy and paste,
drag and drop, and consistent mime types,
all so apps can coordinate data content.

Havoc points this out, and I hope his team
can push hard for these kinds of consistency.

Cheers, Joel

Try more like...

[Kjella]

Why do people use Microsoft products? because they're either forced to (at work) or they they find them easy to use (at home)

a) It came with their computer
b) It's "free" since it came with their computer
c) They don't know anything else
d) They are industry standards
e) They're the same as at work (familiarity)
f) They've had basic Windows training at work
g) Your poweruser friends likely know more Windows
h) It runs off-the-shelf software
i) It's inherently badly designed security-wise (security vs usability)

Pick any of the above, and I swear it's more of a reason than "easy to use". I bet 99%+ have never tried using a preinstalled, well configured Linux system (like the Windows install that came on their PC) at all. Without knowing the alternative, they have no basis to know that Windows is easier - they just assume so.

Kjella

Re:GNOME _still_ isn't integrated

[AntiOrganic]

Were I still a Gnome user like I was several months ago, I might pass this off as another hapless troll. But you're entirely right -- and the reality is, even with all the usability improvements and Human Interface Guidelines in Gnome, GTK2 is still even more bloated and slow than Qt, despite the fact that GTK is implemented in "faster" C and Qt is in "slow anjd bloated" C++. I can't even begin to explain the difference in responsiveness between my Gnome and KDE apps; even the memory usage of my Qt applications is significantly lower. In addition, I gain many useful abilities: I can save files from Konqueror, KWrite, or any other KDE application directly to my webspace by either FTP or WebDAV. I have a sensible file dialog (yes, I'm still complaining about that). When I drag files from JuK to a project in K3b, they're added. Konqueror doesn't stall horribly when trying to get a directory listing from an NFS share, like Nautilus does. There's so many little things that all the "usability" in the world won't help Gnome catch it.

KDE is so many worlds ahead of Gnome in terms of sensible technology that bringing it together and eventually utilizing Gnome-like human interface guidelines will really be a breeze when all is said and done.

DND functionality and file types

[skagin]

Havoc says "When you add drag and drop to an application you have a list of types that you support dragging or dropping, such as "text/plain". Applications simply don't agree on what these types are. So we need a registry of types documenting the type name and the format of the data transferred under that name."

Isn't this what the IANA media types registry is for? (http://www.iana.org/assignments/media-types/index .html) Why reinvent that particular wheel? Most every system has a file 'mime.types' describing some portion of the IANA media types registry.