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

[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.

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.

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.

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...

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 .

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.

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: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?