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KDE 3.2.0 Released
Quique writes "KDE 3.2 has just been released. The official announcement is available at the KDE site and the source tarballs are being replicated to the mirrors. There are already binary packages for a few distributions. Besides the usual bugfixes and new features, this release has been highly optimized and runs way faster than previous versions. This is a good opportunity for Windows users to migrate to a free desktop."
Great Job !!
If it still takes some 15 secs to startup even on high-end machines, it'll not be faster enough for me.
XFCE for me...
Being that KDE (GNOME, etc) have different aims than that of XFCE, I think its totally resonable that KDE and friends take a bit longer to load.
Sunny Dubey
I see a lot of foolish comments about not being able to do anything useful with a KDE desktop. the only thing you cannot do just as well with kde3.2 compared to winXP is play games. thats it people, nothing more no arguements accepted. so in the corperate areana windows can put it's head between it's knees and kiss it's ass goodbye
If you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can imagine....
Maybe your purpose in using a computer is running Windows apps, most people want to get their work done.
Let's face it, the only value of an OS or computer is running the software _I_ want to run. And the desktop is little more than a very superficial interface to the OS.
The value of an OS is letting you do what you want to do. That may or may not involve running specific software.
The whole thing is like saying "now, see, we can give you a dashboard for your car that looks exactly like an airplane dashboard." Uh. And the point is? It's still a car, and it still can't do what an airplane does. Nor viceversa.
Huh? KDE is not trying to be Windows, its trying to be a useful desktop. One factor in being a good desktop is being able to look like Windows, so that many people will find it less difficult to switch - but its not its purpose.
The same applies to Linux vs Windows. Repeat after me: putting a Windows desktop manager on Linux, doesn't make it a Windows substitute. And viceversa, putting CDE (or a clone thereof) on Windows, doesn't make it a Unix workstation.
KDE is not a Windows(TM) desktop manager.
A good desktop is a substitute for Windows.
;) That'll do Linux a world of good.
But even if we're discussing desktop makeups: does Linux now have CUA guidelines? Did people start actually sticking to the same behaviour for their widgets? Did people actually start testing their interfaces with 100 dpi fonts? Etc.
In the Free Software/Open Source world - such tests come for free. People use the software with all sorts of configurations and report problems.
Not to mention Qt (And other modern toolkits), unlike Windows, uses pure logical layouts and handles font sizes/etc very well.
Because changing the desktop means very little, when Joe Average's day still involves dealing with 10 different programs, using 6 fundamentally different widget sets, 8 fundamentally different keyboard shortcut sets, and 4 different ways of even persisting his preferences.
That's exactly the purpose of KDE. Creating a consistent GUI to do all those things. KDE is slowly getting rid of the GUI concept of "application", integrating capabilities to run software in contexts of all apps and windows (KPart/IOSlave technologies). KDE also has a very consistent default keyboard shortcut setup.
KDE is not about Gtk+ integration and consistency, but about internal integration and consistency (even though some projects to similarize do exist).
A lot of Windows's or a Mac's appeal doesn't come just from the way the desktop looks, nor from their particular flavour of widgets. It comes from the fact that everything running on it has the same standardized interface.
KDE is now more uniform and consistent than Windows and the vast amounts of inconsistent 3rd party apps. As for Macs, I haven't tried - but its probably hard to force UI guidelines/etc on 3rd party companies as you can force them with Free Software (simply modify any inconsistent application to follow the guidelines).
The way a Windows scroll bar or file open dialog works isn't perfect. (I actually prefer the Motif scroll bars.) But you can learn to use it _once_ and then apply that knowledge instinctively in all programs, from now until kingdom come.
Oh, I haven't seen my KDE scrollbar changing across applications.
Basically what I'm saying is: KDE is good and fine, and optimizing it doesn't hurt, but... IMHO what would really do Linux a world of good is enforcing a consistent interface across _all_ widget sets. Drag the good Qt, KDE, Gnome, Motif/Lesstif, GTK, etc people into a room, and don't let them out until they can aggree on a common interface standard
You can always use themes and such to make Gtk+/KDE look and behave similar. However, you're really supposed to be able to get along with just one of the toolkits - not having to worry about such inter-toolkit consistency.