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

Re:Misspelling?

[Anonymous Coward]

NEW! Revised and updated!
The State Of KDE

We have seen a lot of important news regarding the KDE project over recent weeks, so it is worth pausing to consider the ramifications.

Let us start with the recent acquisition of SUSE by Novell. SUSE was the biggest Linux distributor (though still dwarfed by Red Hat) to use KDE as its default desktop. SUSE has, for many years, neglected to package the GNOME desktop properly or even do basic Q&A... much to the delight of KDE fanatics. Now, however, Novell has purchased the SUSE linux distribution and Ximian, a company best known for the producing the most polished and professional desktop available for Linux (GNOME-based). The obvious conclusion to be drawn from this is that KDE is about to lose its main commercial support.

Let us take a look at some of the reasons why this is so:

• 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.
• 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.
• 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.
• Qt's/KDE lack of accessiblity. Accessiblity is vital feature for a modern desktop. A desktop cannot be sold to the U.S. government unless it supports the features necessary for disabled users to make full use of it. The lack of said feature effectively cuts it off from the biggest software purchaser of all. GNOME has spent the last 18 months and more doing the ground-work and developing/polishing the accessiblity of the GNOME desktop (thanks to the fine work of Sun engineers). KDE has spent the time making *fake* translucent menus to help make impressive screenshots. Over the next few months you can expect increasing numbers of near-orgasmic announcements of weak accessiblity support from the KDE project, as the full extent of their folly and just how far they are behind GNOME finally becomes obvious to them. The end result will be, as with all KDE features, half-assed and broken -- designed only to function as a marketing feature tick-box filler.
• Novell is already engaged in training its engineers in development using GTK/GNOME -- not Qt/KDE.
• Novell introduced a GNOME integration bug bounty scheme, in which hackers can claim a small bounty for performing nips and tucks on GNOME applications making them work together better. No money is on offer for working with KDE.
• Nat Friedman (co-founder of Ximian), recently made a post to slashdot explaining the take-over and future directions. Much has been made of Novell's claims that it will continue to "support" KDE, but this is merely as legacy software. As Nat's post makes clear, the future of Novell is GNOME and the push for a single dominant desktop. Even the letter written by SUSE a manager claiming that KDE has not been abandoned means very little. 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. At no point does it say that KDE will remain the default choice, or that GNOME will not be the main focus

My problems with KDE

[Ianoo]

Another release... another total failure to fix the desktop. Sigh. I'd use KDE if they'd just fix a few things. Honest. Such as:

• Get rid of the random bolded fonts everywhere. I hate bold text. It's distracting and not needed at all. Take a look at the taskbar. The tabs in KSpread. Is there any way to remove the bold? No...
• Cut down settings bloat. Why do applications have a Settings menu at all? Shouldn't all Settings be in the Preferences dialog, which could be put under the Edit or Tools menu?
• Cut down settings bloat (again). Half the options in KControl should be automatic or are useless. There's so much that could be done to improve its structure too. Witness people getting confused over the difference between Themes, Styles, Colours and Appearance. I still do.
• Cut down the context menus. They're still too big, although I have to give the KDE people credit for trimming them in Konqueror. They're still not small enough, however. Make them context sensitive. Hide advanced options in a submenu. Something, anything! Please!
• Cook up a better theme. Is it really impossible to port Ximian's Industrial style over to KDE? Or does QT simply not allow for things like borders between toolbars? If not, why not?
• Fix Konqueror. It's interface is horrendous. Considering it's the application I would spend most time in and almost always have one open (web browsing and file management take up maybe a third of my computer time in total), looking at its menus, toolbars, and that horrid tabbed-icon-thing-on-the-right, I don't think I could cope. Last time I tried to turn them off I couldn't find the right settings...
• Dump Trolltech. Please fork QT and make it a properly opensource project rather than a GPL-behind-closed-doors project as it is at the moment. I wish someone (like Sun) would buy Trolltech and relicense QT under the LGPL or the BSD license instead. It would encourage small commercial developers, at least a little.

I REALLY want to use KDE. But until these problems are addressed I feel I cannot. Maybe someone should do an XFCE to KDE, create a slimline desktop based on QT and kparts, with a less bloated file manager and better human interface rules. Ah, my kingdom for KFCE...

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

[adrianbaugh]

Meh. We'll see who's laughing when all the gnome developers have been picked off, one by one.

Re:This is a horrible review

[/dev/trash]

17 year old hackers who hack on KDE for the hell of it are not Usability experts.