KDE 3.2-beta2 - Towards a Better KDE?

JigSaw writes "KDE 3.2-beta2 was released last week for general testing and OSNews offers a preview of what's expected from the 'popular X11 desktop environment' early next year upon its release. The article mentions KDE's new features (faster loading times, Konqueror's Service Menus, Kontact, KPDF, Plastik theme etc), the problems that still plague it (cluttered Kmenu and Konqueror menus, too many disorganized kontrol center modules) and some constructive suggestions on how to get over the bloat without losing the functionality."

Comments

I think

[Pingular]

constructive suggestions on how to get over the bloat without losing the functionality
I think shortcuts are definetly the way forward, for example pressing ctrl+? opens fsck or whatever :)
Much faster, easier, and makes desktops less clutered (as you don't need icons etc on desktop)

Re:I think

[Anonymous Coward]

For some the options are a nifty thing. For others, a headache.

Like how klipper insists on popping up a window everytime you copy a url or email. It pains me to watch people who don't know how to turn that off (should be off by default.)

Re:I think

[molnarcs]

Besides, many linux newbies begin their adventure into linux-land by tweaking the hell out of the UI - for they know that its one thing that it is not 'dangerous' to experiment with.

Seriously, it surprises me that no one mentions this, although I think this is not a negligible aspect - changing colors, widgets, icons, sounds, shortcuts, blah yields immediate and _visible_ results, and a sense of accomplishment (a very small sense, but it still feels like you did something, and it worked, and - gasp! - it was on linux!). I believe this is the reason why so many newbies prefer KDE: they can browse through kcontrol and try out things (and read a lot of excellent description) - and get somewhat confortable with the system.

The main reason for so many people not trying out (or not staying with) linux is simply fear: what if I break something? But playing around the UI won't break any serious things for them. Now try to play around with GNOME: in a few hours you would have tried out everything that is possible in its 'simplified' menus, config tools, options, and then ... what? Switch to KDE of course ;) - that's how it happened with this one time noob (and I spoke to other people who had the same experience).

So, are these options _really_ intimidating/confusing? That's bs. No noob who tentatively tries out 'the other' OS would go like: I want that up button out from the file-manager! The usual rant of Eugenia (it is getting rather old) displays a total incapability of understanding how a newbie might feel before an alien environment ... hence she was never able to explain how, for all its 'terrible' flaws KDE managed to harness the largest user base, despite corporate support for the other DE.

Re:Heresy

[Anonymous Coward]

KDE faster? From one of the dumbest people ever to post their opinions on the web?

Just read back over Eugenia's previous reviews and you'll see that she can't find her ass with both hands. For all we know, she probably had a ray tracer running in the background while testing GNOME -- or more likely, she tried to compile it herself and made a right royal fuckup.

GNOME is faster than KDE -- FACT. Some clueless fucks view the slightly messier redraw under GTK ss "slower"... when, in fact, it is not. It's a point that people have been (justifiably) carping at the knuckle-heads developing GTK+ for years.

Regarding the cluttered Kmenu

[suso]

Perhaps some kind of system that keeps track of how often you run certain programs and when you don't use one for X amount of time then it puts those programs into a submenu or something like that. I think that would be a good feature that Window currently doesn't have (at least as far as I know).

I guess on open source systems, the tendancy is to install most of the software that is available, so you wind up with a lot available to you, meaning that your games menu is full of things like KFoulEggs. ;-)

Re:Regarding the cluttered Kmenu

[Abcd1234]

Actually, ideas like this have been tossed around in UI literature for as long as the area has existed. The problem with these kinds of adaptive UIs is that they can be confusing to a user.

Example: Imagine, I'm Joe Sixpack and, three weeks ago, I fired up The GIMP. But now, I look in the menu, and it's missing... so I look around. Oooh, found it. So, he closes The GIMP. Oh, just one more thing... click on the menu. And it's moved again!

The point is that users rely a great deal on UI consistency in order to remember where things are and how they work. As a result, things like dynamic menus go a long way to making the UI *less* useable, rather than more, since you can no longer rely on your memory. Now, yes, careful design can minimize some of these problems, but the fundamental point is the same: the user expects the UI to behave in a deterministic manner.

Kan't stand it

[Saeger]

Konqueror ... Kontact, KPDF, Plastik ... Kmenu ... kontrol center

If my brain was an eyeball it would be bleeding! Why do geeks think prefixing K (or G) to everything is witty? It's not; it's just annoying and confusing.

--

Re:Kan't stand it

[Tyir]

Acutally that sort of naming scheme excellent, it gives which DE it is built for, and then what it actually does. KPDF is much more intuitive than say, Acrobat.

Re:Kan't stand it

[Poeir]

Especially considering (konsidering?) that pressing the first letter of a menu option goes to that menu option, but when every one starts with the same letter, it makes the feature useless.

Re:Kan't stand it

[Abcd1234]

it is much easier to remember/type into a console kpdf than kdepdfviewer

And who said anything about the menu and the executable sharing the same name? In my menu, I have an item called "Calendar". It corresponds to an application with the file name "gnomecal". So, in the menu, call it "KDE PDF Viewer" and on the command line, call it "kpdf".

My only point is that the KDE naming scheme for their *Menu* items has *nothing* to do with useability and everything to do with the "coolness" factor.

BTW, if the naming scheme is so great for identifying apps, please, tell me, what does Konqueror do?

Re:Kan't stand it

[vadim_t]

Weird, we have WinRAR, WinZIP, Winamp, WinMX, winhelp, winchat, winfax, winmine, winoldap, winsock, winspool, and nobody seems to complain much.

Re:Kan't stand it

[Wolfier]

It's fundamentally different. The "K" apps are annoying because they *CHANGE* a legitimate English word, as opposed to, for example, "Winhelp", "WinAmp", which merely appends "win" in front of an intact English word.

If WinAmp were "Wmp", Winhelp were "Welp", Winmine were "Wine", Winsock were "Wock", Winspool were "Wpool" then you might have a point.

KDE Control Center

[pantherace]

Can Eugenia get it right? Dispite KDE apps' habit of C->K... it is not Kontrol Center.

Not to mention... Kommander's Editor (kmdr-editor) is by no means a bloddy text editor.

As someone on dot.kde.org pointed out (and I fully agree with) the ability to customize thing SHOULD not be messed with, because otherwise you go the GNOME/Windows way. KDE can act like almost any other DE if people want it to, and set it to do so.

Eugenia has in my experence not done very good review, and assumes that less choice = better, which I find fundamentally flawed.

Having used KDE since 1.x (and others for a long time) and currently KDE cvs (built every couple of days), KDE has been for some time in my opinion the best DE of all (including MacOS, CDE, Windows, and GNOME) And the 3.2 just got a big speed boost. (on a cable connection (~300KB/sec max) slashdot load in under 3 seconds, as does just about any webpage except /.ed ones, and el reg (that is throughout the cable company, so something is messed up there, and it has gotten better, so even that is .) Koffice is much better since the last time I used it, and it is faster than openoffice, and quite stable. Juk is just great. Kontact should import kopete as well if it wants to be complete, and the talked about kopete-address book integration... if that's what Eugenia calls integration (essentially a link) then no wonder everyone thinks windows and gnome are decent. (Kopete-address book integration is at this point substandard for KDE.) kgpg is also included.

Re:KDE Control Center

[pyros]

As someone on dot.kde.org pointed out (and I fully agree with) the ability to customize thing SHOULD not be messed with, because otherwise you go the GNOME/Windows way. KDE can act like almost any other DE if people want it to, and set it to do so.

The configuration options don't need to be removed, just slightly hideen. You could have each Control Center applet have an advanced tab with 50K extra options that 90% of the users don't mess with. Then the options are still there, very accessible, and out of the way so as not to intimidate the new users. And it does intimidate the new users. I'm a seasoned user and I find it's mostly just clutter. They could even have that first-run config wizard ask 'would you like to see advanced options in Control Center applets?' and leave them all mixed in. One of the things I think Red Hat did that made a large step in useability was adding the "More Applications" menu on each menu group. You see a small set of the defaults, and have like 5 alternatives in the submenu.

No more Keramik!

[3Suns]

Good riddance! Keramik was KDE's idea of "eye kandy" for 3.1, and looked like someone's poor first attempt at a GUI theme. About as streamlined as a yak. In a word: fugly!

Now they've gone with an off-color ripoff of the Windows XP window decorations (just like Ximian's Industrial), and a QT theme that looks like one of the GTK Smooth variations. Certainly an improvement over Keramik, but not exactly an original look. It seems like they were really sick of people complaining how Gnome is prettier.

Browser integration

[Karamchand]

Just before we read that browser integration is bad (like MSIE into MS Windows) but now this article reports that KDE's Konqueror is integrated better into KDE. That seems strange to me.
Admittedly KDE isn't an operating system as MS Windows is. But still it's a "system near" piece of software. So where to draw the border?

Re:The State Of KDE -- new, improved.

[Archie Steel]

Yeah, but I like KDE better. Should I switch to GNOME because it's got more companies behind it? Following your advocacy, shouldn't I then just switch to Windows?

FYI, Mandrake primarily supports KDE, so does Lindows, and now it seems that Debian and KDE are doing their own Desktop thingy.

There's room enough for both DEs. Enough with the flamewars already...

Re:Kan't stand it : +1 Insightful

[Abcd1234]

That's an *excellent* point.

That's the way to go IMHO...

[Ploum]

I'm really a Gnome fan.
I was thinking that KDE was a bit bloated, a bit ofuscated..
I explain my choice in this Perfect Desktop text

But I must agree that KDE 3.2 seems to be really on the good way and I think I will try it the day of the release. Good Job KDE people. I really like the plastic theme. IMHO, keramik was "fat".

Well, I find this screenshot really interesting.
Don't you think that Gnumeric is more "easy " than Kspread ? There's two rows of icons in Gnumeric : File icons and actions icons.
In Kspread is not so easy, you have icons anywhere.. that's really the bad point of KDE for me and why I prefer Gnome for beginners. Think about it.

Anyway.. Good job guys !

PS : anyway, gnome and KDE aren't anything ! I can't live without FVWM .

Modularized!

[Anonymous Coward]

It's what I hated about windows, and why I came to linux. Windows installed a bunch of things I _never_ needed, I never launched, I never used. KDE is doing the same. There should be some way to choose what you want to install. It's really rediculous IMHO

Your "bloat" are my features

[jopet]

It seems that accusing a software to be "bloated" is the best way to discredit it amont the /. crowd. But there are many out there, including me, that like the choice and freedom offered by KDE. I have used many other DMs/WMs (from TWM, Sun's CDE, MSWindwos, IceWM to KDE and Gnome) and I gradually ended up using KDE most of the time, because it lets me best do my work.

What I really do not understand: why are so many people bitching about how terrible KDE is when they have a wonderful *choice* of alternatives? Most of them free? If you think KDE is bloated and Gnome is not, fine, use Gnome. Or use TWM. Whatever.

Re:Heresy

[molnarcs]

Look, I don't mean to start a flamefest, but GNOME on my system is only faster to start up - KDE is as responsive when it is started as GNOME... And I speak about KDE 3.1.4 ...

Given the fact that they promised optimalisation for 3.2 (when 3.1 was coming out, they said it would be a top priority only in 3.2), I can very well imagine 3.2 being faster than GNOME 2.4.x (don't know about 2.5). Oh, and there is no need to get that angry, after all its only a DE, not a religion (or am I wrong?)

System: AMD Duron 700, 256 SDRAM, TNT2 video.
Output of top while running KDE:

last pid: 860; load averages: 0.30, 0.16, 0.10 up 0+01:30:52 14:35:30 49 processes: 2 running, 47 sleeping
CPU states: 5.4% user, 0.0% nice, 4.7% system, 0.4% interrupt, 89.5% idle
Mem: 119M Active, 53M Inact, 47M Wired, 8600K Cache, 35M Buf, 15M Free
Swap: 491M Total, 491M Free

Re:The State Of KDE -- new, improved.

[Archie Steel]

Oh, I'm a zealot, really? Why, I never...I mean, you're the one foaming at the mouth, while I express a personal preference, therefore I'm the zealot. Makes sense.

Rrrrright!

As far as I'm concerned, the "business users" have chosen neither GNOME nor KDE, but Windows. Some business users have chosen GNOME, others (like the folks at WETA digital) have chosen KDE. More importantly, GNOME and KDE, through the efforts of freedesktop.org, are coming together on common standards.

So, to sum it up: I am a real user who supports both KDE and GNOME and their effort to better integrate (while keeping a personal preference for KDE), and you are a zealot, who makes this KDE vs. GNOME thing into your own personal war. You're like a kid arguing that "the Xbox is waay cooler than the PS2" or vice-versa.

The truth is that KDE, IMO, has more feature, is better integrated and more customizeable - not to mention that QT as a development environment is a thing of beauty (or so my programming friends tell me - all I've done is a QTDesigner tutorial, and found it to be very user-friendly).

Also, K3B 0wnz any GNOME CD- or DVD-burning app, suXorz!!! :-)

Re:Gnome Zealot Translate-o-matic.

[renelicious]

Don't get pissed off at me, but I just wanted to say something about this:

Translation : GPL is freerer than LGPL. LGPL allows corporations like Novell
and Sun to have propeitry forks and lock away their changes from the user. Now
that Novell has taken over Ximian you can expect Gnome to get put under
corpirate lock. With KDE you have the choice, you either PAY UP or pay with
your source code.

I think this is THE one issue that will end up screwing KDE. I think its sad, but its too late to change it. Here's the deal, you can write closed code for both Gnome and KDE, however you can't write free (as in it doesn't cost a company any money to do so) code for KDE. I'm not saying this is good, but just think about it. If you were a big corporation and you could port your code to Linux and pay "not very much" to use QT, or nothing to use GTK, which are you going to pick?

I wish just as much as you do that companies would say, "Hey its not that much money and its a better development environment for our coders, let's spend the extra cash". But that's a dream world. They'll say "Use the free GK++T thingy...its free right?..yeah use that".

I'm not trying to stir up a flamewar, just think its sad that in the long run thats what will probalby make the most difference.

Re:Former KDE user

[mickwd]

From a PIII 450 to an Athlon-XP 2500+ is a 4-5 fold increase in processor speed. Probably a 3-4 fold increase in memory speed (and more of it, too). Disk access maybe twice the speed.

So KDE (your previous desktop of choice) was, say, 3-4 times as fast as before, but this wasn't good enough ?

Oh, and I was forgetting the Gentoo install, so that might speed it up a bit further. If Gentoo optimises things, that includes KDE.

Not to mention that KDE itself has been getting faster and faster since 3.0.

Now you may genuinely prefer XFCE4 - I'm sure some people do, and that's fine.

But I don't believe all that crap about KDE.

Please, if you prefer XFCE4, by all means tell people about it - but let it stand on its own merits.

Speed, Schmeed. Give Me Something New

[reallocate]

Who cares if KDE or Gnome is faster if it is just faster at things I don't want to do?

As far as I'm concerned, both are fast enough. Stop carping on speed and start giving me new and interesting software.

Re:Heresy

[adrianbaugh]

However, if you look at the screenshots she provides it's pretty obvious that she's carping with good reason. The extra spacing between gnome's menus, the soft lines between its toolbars DO make it easier to use. Now it's not a big thing but if it were fixed KDE would be better. Complexity of the configurator I don't care so much about, but again it does present a real problem for some users and ought to be improved.
There's very little point in a reviewer not mentioning flaws they find, unless they're being offered backhanders. Whether you think she's nitpicking or not, Loli does mention the good points too and seems pretty impartial. I'm sure at least the KDE developers will take her criticisms maturely and work towards making KDE3.3 even better.
Long live KDE!

Troll. A good one, but a troll nevertheless

[arevos]

GNOME has always been the commerical desktop of choice. It has long been focussed on getting the basics right and building from there... as opposed to the KDE Project, which is entirely aimed at pleasing the slashdot peanut gallery with pointless eye-candy. KDE features are thrown into the mix with little or no regard for usability, or even good taste. The end result is disasterous, as can be seen by anyone unforunate enough to be forced into using it.

The KDE architecture is a lot further on than GNOME. Whatever the eye-candy, the engine that drives KDE does appear to be more advanced and better put together than GNOME. KDE is very well put together, and like the article says, once you've got that down, it's not too hard to streamline. GNOME will have a harder job getting to KDE's standards then KDE would have imitating GNOME's ease of use. If it even wants to. It's not like there has to be only one desktop for everyone.

KDE is extremely expensive to develop for, unless you intend to produce GPL software. TrollTech, the owners of KDE and Qt, license the X11 version of their Qt toolkit under the GPL. This forces anyone wanting to develop software built on top of it (including KDE), to be (L)GPL licensed -- or pay TrollTech $3000 for every developer you have working on the application to purchase a commercial license.

As opposed to GTK, which is fully LGPL, with no proprietry license. What was your point again?

TrollTech is also vulnerable to takeover by companies hostile to Free software and good corporate lawyers who can blow holes in the laughable FreeQt agreements.

Huh? The current copy of Qt is GPLed. TrollTech cannot retract that, even if they wanted to. If TrollTech stopped developing GPL Qt, then the KDE project would just fork the codebase. As others have said, the GPL is very legally secure.

As for all the other points, whilst I could argue that KDE has made headway into the business environment as well (Lindows, SuSE 9, and so forth), I don't see why I should bother. Open Source software does not need corperate funding to continue. If it did, Linux would never have gotten off the ground. Commercial backing can't hurt, but it's not necessary for a project, either.

Nor does a project die if another overtakes it. KDE is technologically ahead of GNOME, and has been ever since GNOME's creation. Does that stop people working on GNOME? Nope. Because the Linux desktop is a varied thing. Just because Windows gained a monopoly, doesn't mean that there has to be a desktop monopoly. I'd like greater inter-compatability between the two systems, but I don't see a need for there to be only one.

Re:Troll. A good one, but a troll nevertheless

[arevos]

In what way? Your message is nothing but opinion, and not a very sound one. GNOME, among other things, is considerably more advanced in both components, media framework (gstreamer), internationalization and (especially) accessiblity. The latter three pieces are about to be re-used by the KDE project!! So much for GNOME being behind and less advanced.

Pot, kettle, black? You offer little besides opinion as well. A quick google search turns up articles like this. I've yet to find anything touting GNOME architecture over KDE.

That's not to say GNOME doesn't have many good points that KDE should really look into (gConf comes to mind), but having coded for both systems, I know which one looks nicer to me.

KDE developers know the game is up, and are now trying (as the article says) to clean up the filthy mess that is the KDE/Qt interface and make it usable... and at the same time scrabble hopelessly to use the XML, media framework and accessbility systems from GNOME.

The article also says that: "Luckily for KDE, they have the advantage over Gnome. It is easier for them to streamline, strip out and clean up their current interface than Gnome to get that level or architectural quality that KDE today enjoys.", KDE's DCOP, KParts, and better overall integration (compare Abiword and Gnumeric to KSpread and KWord. I prefer the former, but the latter are better integrated).

Huh? My point, if you bothered to read it instead of getting all excited and zealous, is that it costs nothing to write applications (say a word processor) for the GNOME desktop whatever license you choose to use for your app. Unlike Qt, which will cost you $3000 for every developer you have working on it... unless you want to use the GPL for your application.

Um... Yes, you can write any application you want for GNOME, BUT it has to obey the LGPL license terms. You can't choose whatever license you want. LGPL != BSD. Whilst less restrictive than GPL terms, it's still difficult to write proprietry applications on top of it. Qt, however, has a choice between GPL and proprietry. You just have to pay for the latter.

Who is talking about commercial funding? I'm talking about commercial deployment... which is money in the bank + support fees + guaranteed survival.

Guaranteed survival? So no commercial product ever flopped?

I did not say KDE is dead. I said it is dead for business use. No doubt a hardcore of zealot will continue to huddle around the creaky old project, but it has no future in the real world.

Nice wording, but you're not backing it up much. SUSE still uses KDE as it's primary desktop, Lindows does, Mandrake does as well. Redhat uses GNOME but that's the only major Linux distro I can think of.

Again, a statement with nothing at all to back it up. Perhaps you think repeating the same old meme "KDE is more advanced" will make it true.

Um, it is? Just look at the two systems. Compare them side by side. GNOME has many nice features, but it is behind KDE; if you look at them both running, you can see that. There's quite a few internet articles on it as well.

Re:MOD UP!

[be-fan]

Don't give me that crap- I've extensively used both-
>>>>>>>>>>>>
Keyword: "extensively." I use Linux as my only desktop OS. While KDE is my primary desktop, I try the latest GNOME every time a new one is released.

I don't think anything is particularly "killer" under KDE's hood contrasted to GNOME-
>>>>>>>>
KIO, DCOP, KParts, KConfig, XML-GUI, etc. While there are counterparts to most of those in GNOME, they're not really leveraged across the desktop. Its hard to find apps, for example, that really use Bonobo. Abiword-GNOME apparently doesn't use Gnome-VFS. Not many apps use GConf yet, etc. On top of that, the KDE framework libraries are tightly integrated and very powerful. The reason so many KDE apps have advanced features built-in is because it either comes free via the framework (KIO, XML-GUI), or is ridiculously easy to use (KParts, DCOP). Try developing on both systems and see what I mean.

and "default look" is a pretty weak measure of each package as a whole.
>>>>>>>>>>>
You just can't get KDE to look like GNOME. Take something simple like "text next to icons." KDE has an option for it, but KDE apps have so many icons that it makes the toolbar enormous. Same thing for context menus. Much longer in KDE than in GNOME. I mean, you could go and edit all the toolbars and context menus in every KDE app (because configurable KAction holders are built into the framework), but that'd be a development project in and of itself.

And I don't see how you can say they're "completely different"- each of them has a "default layout"- and each can be customized to act roughly equivalent to each other's default layouts-
>>>>>>>>>>
No they can't. Unless you whip up a ton of code and add-back all the features they removed in GNOME 2.x, or heavily refactor all the panel, toolbar, and menu layouts in KDE, they can't.

In my mind they're roughly equivalent in all areas, sure, KDE might do this and that better, and GNOME might do this and that better, but its all details.
>>>>>>>>>>
Let me guess --- you don't use either on a regular basis, right?

Re:The State Of KDE -- new, improved edition

[10Ghz]

GNOME has always been the commerical desktop of choice.

How so? Which distros are GNOME-centric? Well, there's Red Hat and.... That's about it. Sure, there's Fedora, but their KDE-support is alot better than Red Hat's was. Then there is Sun, but we'll have to see how that pans aout. They don't even call their desktop GNOME though.

If we look at KDE, there's SUSE, Mandrake, Lycoris, Lindows, Xandros, Knoppix and Conectiva. I bet I missed few though. Rest (Debian, Gentoo, Slackware etc.) are more or less desktop-agnostic.

To me it seems that KDE is the "desktop of choice"

KDE is extremely expensive to develop for, unless you intend to produce GPL software.

So, let me get this straight: Before, GNOME-fanboys whined because Qt was not 100% free (as in speech). Now that it is, they whine because Qt does not allow them to write closed and proprietary software for free? How's that for hypocrisy!? "I support open source and free software! I want others to give me free tools so I could write proprietary software for profit with them!"

TrollTech, the owners of KDE and Qt

Trolltech does not own KDE.

Qt's/KDE lack of accessiblity

Examples please?

KDE has spent the time making *fake* translucent menus

I have seen similar fake translucency on GNOME as well, so what's your point?

thanks to the fine work of Sun engineers

Those "Fine Sun engineers" that are now working on GNOME used to work on CDE. A ringing endorsement, don't you think?

TrollTech is also vulnerable to takeover

Over 60% of TT's shares are owned by the emplyees of TT. The shares are not publicly listed. So how exactly are they "vulnerable"? And even if they were taken over and GPL'ed Qt was eliminated, Qt would be automatically released under a BSD-style license. Do some research, OK?

OpenOffice v2 -- the only open source desktop capable of satisfying business needs -- is already working on integration with the GNOME desktop

And they are working on integraring it with KDE as well, so what's your point?

Re:This is a horrible review

[MechaStreisand]

There is no need to restrict their ability while browsing a web site...

Yes there goddamn is. If you had every possible action in a context menu, there'd be 20 or so items there and it'd be hard to find the ones that you DO use.

It's something I've always hated about Windows: there are always a whole ton of items in the context menu when I only ever use two or three items. Right-clicking in IE right now reveals 16 items, some of which are actually WORSE than useless: Set as Background, for instance, which kills my current background with whatever I'm right-clicking on. Pretty easy to accidentally hit it when I'm trying to save an image...

The point here is: don't place every possible action into a menu! KDE's menus are bloated! As for this:

However, in the screenshot, which contains 32 applications, only 7 are KDE applications! You can't claim the KDE menu is too blated because of all the other junk on the system...

Do you think she put those applications into the menu HERSELF? If not, how did they get there? She said she just installed the Fedora RPMs. Regardless of whether or not the included apps are strictly a part of KDE or not, they were there in what she had to work with, and a stupidly bloated menu was the result. Nothing unfair in pointing out that it's bad thing in a review of an desktop environment.

Besides, even the K menu is itself too bloated, and there's no way you can say that it's not a part of KDE. My Windows Start Menu has 9 items, 7 of which are useful to me. They all have big target areas and it's easy to get the one I want right away. KDE's K menu has 24 - all of them put there by KDE. It's such a pain that it turned me off KDE when I tried it out. Gnome was a significantly better desktop as far as I was concerned (with the exception of their whole "take effect immediately" guideline - I absolutely loathe it).

Namely this is one of the poorer reviews I have read on OSNews, and that is saying ALOT since they are normally quite bad.

I find it funny how she says "KDE is great" right in the conclusion of her review, and still you find faults with her most sensible objections. I think you'd find fault with ANYTHING bad that anyone said about KDE.

Re:Heresy

[AntiOrganic]

I am in the exact same situation. I'd been an XFce4/Gnome user ever since I switched to Linux full-time over the summer, up until a few weeks ago when I compiled the whole of KDE since I needed a good bit of it for K3B anyway.

KDE seems even more responsive than XFce4 on this machine, and it's the primary reason why Konqueror is now my new browser, KWord is now my new word processor and Quanta Plus is now my new HTML/PHP editor. I, like my sibling poster, still use a handful of GTK+ applications (Evolution, Gaim, Pan, Nicotine, The Gimp) but they certainly do feel noticeably slower than the Qt applications on my desktop right now. I'm running a performance-tuned prelinked Gentoo system, however, so I'm not 100% entitled to say how something would perform on a "normal" binary-based Linux installation.

Of course, this is entirely without taking into effect the excellent design of Qt's derived widgets, the elegance of KDE's kioslaves, customizability of toolbars, common widgets and file dialogs, and so on.

The only thing I can say KDE is deficient in is its user interface, but this is perfectly in line with Eric Raymond's Art of Unix Programming, separating policy from mechanism. Every interface issue in KDE can get sorted out in a single .1 version release. GNOME's going to have a much harder time catching up because they've spent all of their time concentrating on a consistent user interface that's lacking such common sense features as "undo" in a textbox or a usable file dialog.

Ssssssoooo funny !

[jdifool]

Hi,

in our already deprecated world, people lack physical agression, war, violence, exteriorization of human silly desires. I guess this is why you can see so many people arguing about whether Paris is the most beautiful city in the world, whether America or Europe is the best place to live, whether a Kalashnikov or a M16 is better to kill 3-legs sheeps, and eventually, whether Gnome or KDE is the faster desktop. This a replacement for street fighting, for knife fights, for insults and injuries ; at last, I can see no other explanation.

What is this all about ? Why do we all need to take so puerile stances ? Is it worth it ?

The vast majority of people here are so self-convinced of which desktop is best than they are never going to change. We have to face it : we are zealots, each and everyone of us.

But the main thing is that I think too that the vast majority didn't choose a desktop by considering objective facts. In my own case, I chose Gnome 1.4 on Slack 7.0, mainly because I found it nicer, and less Windows-like than KDE. No matter for me if there was a tiny difference in speed ; what a newbie wants is a nice GUI as a shelter aside the black and white scary terminal, a warm place to stay some time, chilling with some music, before getting back to the frightening emacs. After that, this is all about personal preferences. I still use Gnome 2.4 ; I never gave a try with KDE. I guess this is kinda cool, but I have no interest in changing from Gnome, because it fits to my needs. I find it fast (not lightning fast, but fast, and not 3,6 secs to ls 500 items, stop kidding), beautiful (especially with gdesklets), stable (the few times it becomes buggy the restart is almost instantaneous), with well-integrated apps. What can I ask more ? IMO, nothing. I'm not saying that KDE is not good, maybe if I took some more time to explore it (more than 3-4 days in the beginning), I would be writing with Ksomething. This is not the case.

This is really, really strange that in a field that requires correct estimation about what you need (don't you get mad about people buying war machines for making some text processing?), people in here are still competing on milliseconds that kind of stuff. Gnome may release a new version, faster, more stable, maybe a bit less than KDE, maybe a bit more than KDE. Who cares ? Who cares ?

Be happy with your GUI, stop pissing around. Linux is great, and that's it.

Regards,
Jdif

Re:The State Of KDE -- new, improved edition

[ahillen]

The letter itself is 90% P.R. puff, and says very little, other than SUSE will now be shipping GNOME is a reasonable condition, unlike its previous efforts.

AFAIK, SUSE was shipping Gnome so far more less like the GNOME team released it, including application start menues that reflected the installed programs and maybe a background image with the SUSE logo. So I think GNOME was shipped in an as reasonable condition as it was released by the GNOME team. OK, maybe you think that the GNOME team doesn't make reasonable releases and that it takes a distributor like Red Hat or Ximian to make it reasonable... but I don't think so.

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