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Review: KDE 3.2
Anonymous writes "Today I installed KDE 3.2, third major release of the award winning KDE3 desktop platform, on my Fedora box. I have been using KDE 3.2 RC for the past few days and the final version from today. My first impression is 'wow.'"
Wow, sucide by Slashdot.
Philip
Philip
Signatures are broken
...they included screenshots in their review? And then submitted it to Slashdot? Server suicide, anyone?
Mirror of article, other peoples impressions, would be most welcome.
There is no dark side of the moon really, matter of fact it's all dark
Ahhh. I love the smell of fresh rpms in the morning...
Not that KDE 3.2 isn't distributed in other formats besides RPMs. But, man, I love new desktop environments. Gnome is nice and stable, but KDE is quite configurable.
http://github.com/gbook/nidb
What awards has KDE3 won?
I like KDE much better than Gnome, personally, but that's because I like have a well-designed API. When it comes to window programming, object-oriented is the way to go. QT gets this, so does anyone using wxwindows (a good rewrite of MFC/OWL). But the Gnome folks stick to their procedural programming style APIs which are fine for simple programs, but for larger programs it just means that the programmer has to reimplement the OO overhead.
I have been pwned because my
This is not news. Any linux zeolot out there probably has it up and running already or has already uninstalled it.
His second impression was, 'Noooo... my poor server, what have they done to you...'
Now, will you stop lurking and tell us something about the site, you bastards!?
--Leo
Full-sized screenshots that are resized smaller in the HTML! Wonderful!
http://freecache.org/http://fedoranews.org/krishna n/review/kde3.2/
Because of early reports of slashdotting:
KDE 3.2
by Krishnan Subramanian
Today I installed KDE 3.2, third major release of award winning KDE3 desktop platform, on my Fedora box. I have been using KDE 3.2 RC for the past few days and the final version from today. My first impression is "wow".
KDE 3.2 provides an integrated desktop along with various applications to carry out common desktop tasks such as web browsing, email, instant messaging, multimedia, graphics, etc. Some of the impressive features which you will notice include
* Increase in speed evident from faster application startup time
* Improvements in usability and performance
* Better appearance through interface refinement
* Browser performance boost evident through better webpage rendering
Upgrading to KDE 3.2 is a breeze. If you are a newbie and want to learn how to do it, you can refer to my HOWTO. I started my installation and within few minutes I am logged into my new KDE 3.2 desktop.
The desktop is very polished and you can configure it in any way you want by right clicking on the desktop. You can setup your desktop background as a slide show so that the background picture changes at predetermined intervals. The style and window decorations are very refined increasing the overall appearance. I love plastik for style and window decoration. A better icon set is also available. Now that you can find a wide array of themes and icon sets in www.kde-look.org, you can customize your KDE desktop in any way you want. In fact, you can even select the KDE splash screen (which appears when you login) from the available choices.
The K Menu is better organized now. It is grouped into "Most Used Application", "All Applications" and "Actions". Even the applications are grouped in a much better way compared to earlier version.
The new KHotkey feature is really hot. You can create keyboard shortcuts and mouse gestures for various tasks. This comes very handy. People used to such features in Microsoft Windows environment will love this feature. It is really cool to press the "Windows" key in your keyboard and see KMenu pop up in your screen.
The control center is well spruced up and better structured in KDE 3.2. Some of the tabs like background, window decoration, style etc. are redesigned.
Some of the welcome addtions to control center are
* Splash Screen - where you can select a KDE splash screen of your choice
* Wireless Network - where you can configure your wireless network. You can save upto four different configurations.
* Vim Component Configuration - where you can configure Vim to use inside KDE
* KHotkeys - where you can specify keyboard shortkeys and mouse gestures to lauch applications in KDE
* KDE Wallet - where you can configure KDE Wallet to store your internet and local passwords
* Sony Vaio Laptop - where you can configure the hardware for this laptop
KDE 3.2 has more countries under Country/Region. Also these countries are better organized. This is a very positive step in the internationalization efforts of KDE.
Another welcome feature in the control panel is the "Font installer". With this, installation of new fonts is a breeze. This is very useful for people who want to install their regional fonts and other extra fonts (many fonts are available in kde-look.org). The best aspect of the font installer is the instant preview available with it. I feel this is one of the greatest additions to KDE.
Many new applications are added and some of the existing applications have been upgraded. It is quite impossible to discuss all the applications available in KDE 3.2. I will just discuss some of the applications based on my preferences.
Konqueror: This is the central part of KDE environment. it is a web browser, file manager, network browser and so on. Konqueror has finally matured as a web browser. I feel, though many would disagree with me, that rendering of sites is somet
How many roads must a man walk down? 42.
I just managed to shove my clenched fist up my arse. My first impression is 'wow.'
Mods should read this.
This is about the state of SuSE and their kde strategy
This is about Qt and its licence.
This is about the G word
Mod the gnome/anti-qt trolls down before suckers bite!
Now *that*'s funny.
"Times have not become more violent. They have just become more televised."
-Marilyn Manson
Wow! That's it? That's the entire review? No offense slashdot editors, but this is pretty insubstantial. Hell, a Gene Shalit movie review is more insightful. Why not just a link to download the new KDE?
Damn, there goes my already diminishing karma.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
I am a debian user
You should go to a debian rehab clinic...
I always get my KDE for Red Hat (and Fedora) from the kde-redhat project. The project's lead Rex Dieter is doing an awesome job of keeping the latest KDE packaged as rpms that are available via apt-get with all dependencies worked out. Upgrade is as easy as
that during this cold, frigid season that he will be able to bask in fire that is his server after being /.ed
RPM's eh? you sure you're using Debian?
I Love Alberta Beef
The article basically starts off with the _really_ important stuff:
"You can setup your desktop background as a slide show so that the background picture changes at predetermined intervals."
Yes! This was the one missing feature I was waiting for! Finally, I can switch to KDE!
Urgs...
Sorry, I kan't put up with the krazy misspellings rekuired with KDE.
- For the complete works of Shakespeare: cat
I didn't know you had to win awards to be infamous. Anyway, here you go:
it's just a KDE fan boy with screenshot reiterating the change log
This is not a review. It's just a rehash of some parts of the kde3.2 announcement enhanced with a few screenshots and personal comments.
Yes, I could turn off anti-aliasing. But I've used it in Konsole since pretty much always and have never seen this problem.
What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
The most important one : My Very Own Award Given To Whatever Is Useful To Me(TM)
This has been asked before , but I' asking it again ?
Where are the Mandrake rpms ? For us folks who have powerless laptops, compiling is not an option.
I only hope somebody will build it sooner or later.
Yes, I know, 10.x betas have 3.2 beta, but they just wont install fine.
>The style and window decorations are very refined increasing the overall appearance.
That's what KDE has the Gnome doesn't. More appearance, please. I just can't get enough.
If moderation could change anything, it would be illegal.
Add these lines to your /etc/apt/sources.list to get experimental DEBs for Debian Unstable:
./ ./
deb http://people.debian.org/~ccheney/kde-3.1.95
deb http://people.debian.org/~bab/kde-3.2
These packages currently conflict with openoffice and koffice, I would uninstall them first.
Whenver something breaks in Gnome. Since I live on the Debian unstable branch, that's about once every 6 months or so. It's gotten a lot better from the last time I used it. It's a lot faster and doesn't feel nearly as awkward as it used to. Their default window manager also seems pretty smart about focus handling and stuff. It's also very pretty. All in all I'd say I could just as easily go either way on the desktop these days.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
No mention of KJuk being a COMPLETE RIP-OFF of iTunes? Come on...we couldn't have even come up with a different interface?
It's not bad as such, but it didn't help me much either.
Hehe, yea, I'm going to have to leave the 3.2 compile for next week while I'm at work.
Compiling 3.1.5 right now (started last night). The ebuilds for 3.2 are out there, but you need to use ACCEPT_KEYWORDS="x86" emerge kde to install it...
Most people are confused about desktop enviornments and Window managers, thats why you often get people saying KDE is big and bloated, when its not. KDE, does by the way have its own window manager, its just that it is transparent to the user, and in KDE 3.2 it has a really good one.
You will find oozes of new features and fun in the new Window manager, such as kool keys, fat borders, Window below others, and much much more. My favourite one is the abillity to have borderless Windows. But don't worry, you can get them back by pressing alt+f3.
So give it a whirl if you like managing your windows by right clicking any window title bar in KDE 3.2.
Of course, the elegance of the result is still debatable, but fortunately, there are lots of language bindings available.
Programming can be fun again. Film at 11.
In case anyone missed his point, it is probably more appropriate to say "China violates human rights in China".
You mean there are still people programming in low level languages like C and C++? ;)
I use the GNOME libraries from Ruby (via the excellent Ruby-GNOME2 bindings)-- and I've never heard anyone assert that Ruby is less OO than C++. Oddly enough, no one seems to be making Qt or KDE-lib Ruby bindings (probably has a lot to do with the C++-based FOX bindings already existing as free software on both Windows and Linux). And just in case people care: the gtk++ parts of Ruby-GNOME2 work on MS Windows, too, via the Dropline Gtk++ runtime for Windows.
For other scripting languages I can't speak as confidently, but doesn't Python have bindings for both gtk++ and Qt? Not remotely so sure about Perl, since most Perlers seem pretty happy with Perl's forked Tk library.
Now don't anybody get me wrong, I think the KDE project is very impressive and has a lot to be proud of. Especially of note is the wide range of native utility applications.
I do not have a signature
It's only fair since Nat and Miguel started their rumors here to post this. This is big news folks. Apparently SUSE has a much stronger say on the Novell Desktop than what we were led to believe by Miguel and Nat.
(Please browse at -1 to read this comment.)
I'm in the process of downloading a file >2 G. It's amusing to see the file diaglog box at 100% complete (it's not - it's only downloaded a bit over 2 G) reporting the filesize as 16,777,216,0 TB.
Where are the Mandrake rpms ? For us folks who have powerless laptops, compiling is not an option.
Compiling *is* an option for laptops or any other low power machine.
Start before going to bed (or to all-night rave), wake up to shiny new X GUI!
Donte Alistair Anderson Roberts - hi son!
Karma: Chameleon
I've used KDE since 2.0 and consider it miles ahead of the Windows GUI. All the configurability allows me to make it work just the way I want but there is one thing that Windows does better: When you're browsing directories and open a folder that you've already opened but minimized (or hid behind another window) Windows brings that to front instead of opening the same folder again in a new window - Konqueror opens the same folder again in a new window. I've been looking through all configuration possibilities I can find (in 3.14, I'm anxiously waiting for 3.2 ebuilds) and haven't found a solution - does anybody know if this either can be configured somewhere or if 3.2 behaves differently?
Karma. Moderation. Is my
A couple of days ago, I emerged KDE 3.2 on my Gentoo system. Aside from a wierd ALSA bug that I had to fix, the upgrade from 3.1.5 was pretty painless.
Anyway, my thoughts on the latest iteration of my chosen desktop. Let's just say that KDE 3.2 should raise eyebrows in Cupertino and soil pants in Redmond. There are numerous small eyecandy improvements, plus tons of little usability-enhancing features in common areas of the system (for example, Konqueror has a vastly improved file-manager sidebar that gives idiot-proof access to local partitions, printers, and even network shares). Some of the new applications debuting in this release are truly excellent, as well (like the slick iTunes-clone JuK or the lovely multiproticol IM client Kopete). Finally, some rather extensive optimizations seem to have taken place throughout the system, as KDE now seems more responsive than in the past (true, some of these optimizations are "cheating", like the option to keep an instance of Konqueror preloaded, but it's still a nice option to have).
Anyway, congrats to the KDE team on an excellent release, and thank you for proving once again that UNIX on the desktop isn't just a wild fantasy, it's a real-life joy.
Anonymous Luddite: "What do you think of the dehumanizing effects of the Internet?"
Andy Grove: "Not Much."
I dl'd binary tgz's for my slack install. What are you smoking?
"Would it kill you to put down the toilet seat?" -- Maya Angelou
I'm just kind of curious how this will work across different distros and OSes (Linux, FreeBSD, etc)
I understand the need for variety and choice but is there really need to take up so much time reinventing things. I mean Linux already has a gazillion editors and messaging service and all I really see in this is KDE building up their label as opposed to working with others toward a common desktop environment.
I'm impressed how kharma much this MS fanboy manages to generate by simply regurgitating stuff he's read previously on Slashdot.
....
I think he's posted this opinion about KDE at least three times. Minus the little "what awards has KDE won stupidity"...
Of course the next time there's an article about Microsoft we'll all get treated to another +5 inanity post from ObviousGuy
It appears that Mandrake has their distro-specific 3.2 RPMs up as of yesterday.
The bigotry of the nonbeliever is for me nearly as funny as the bigotry of the believer. - Albert Einstein
This review reads like a lot of fanboy reviews of games, sci-fi flicks, and superhero comics: A bit of hype ("award-winning" - Why is this relevant to your review?), overly-broad praise ("you can configure it in any way you want by right clicking on the desktop" - You mean I can configure it to work just like OS X?), and missing-the-point criticisms ("I don't understand the need for three editors" - Maybe it's provide people with the choice of their favorite?).
http://alternatives.rzero.com/
Infamous is when you're more than famous. This desktop KDE, he's not just famous, he's infamous.
Wow. I'm impressed that the entire page actually loaded, instead of just timing out. So the server was able to at least send me a couple bytes every second to keep timing out, that's impressive.
... those "thumbnails" on the review page? They're not; they're just the pics they link to, resized a bit using img width= height= ... I didn't know people were still that stupid, especially given that at least one was full desktop sized.
... they were kind of boring. Everything was of empty windows; a little data to make things look, um, real would have been nice :3 It also hit me that KDE seems to have more K-programs than GNOME has G-programs now, which is just ugly.
I was kind of shocked to see what they were doing with the screenshots though
That having been said, I didn't find the screencaps even particularly flattering; not that I dislike KDE (though I don't use it), but
Is anyone else offering a multiple wireless network configuration tool?
...).
In Windows XP, you can set up wireless profiles,
and switching between profiles is easy. I'm hoping
for a similar feature in the linux environment.
Call me stupid but my current solution is to just
keep multiple configuration files around, and write
a shell script to rotate them when I am at the office
or at home (e.g. change wep-key, essid,
It would be nice if the whole network startup framework in Redhat were smart enough to switch automatically.
I'm sorry, all credibility goes out the window with "award winning". It seems to me there's a whole lotta KDE astroturfing goin' on.
Color me misinformed but doesn't astroturfing usually involve incentive for praise. What would this person be gaining for calling KDE "award winning"?
Can't somebody just be enthusiastic without the conspiracy theories?
Huh? KDE has won plenty of awards.
The Microsoft accusation is also, nonsensical, BTW.
What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
Sticking feathers up your butt does not make you a chicken - Tyler Durden
But the Gnome folks stick to their procedural programming style APIs which are fine for simple programs, but for larger programs it just means that the programmer has to reimplement the OO overhead.
... ... which means it runs on a larger number of platforms than that C++ of yours you only barely stop short of calling a silver bullet. ... and wrappers for other languages can be written more easily.
You don't know what you're on about.
1. Gnome and GTK are both object oriented APIs.
2. C is for Compatability
3.
4.
Gnome developers chose C because it works. Everywhere.
And don't forget stepping up to C++ leaves C developers out in the cold - especially if you make any sort of use of templates. That goes for moc too.
Even wxWindows has a GTK port. Where's the KDE/QT port?
So stop laying shit on the "Gnome folks".
Just a little note about Gnome's file selector:
Though it may not be the greatest, you can always drag and drop your selection from Nautilus which I find kinda nice.
I flip flop between KDE and Gnome. First half of last year, I used KDE, then used Gnome since summer (mainly because all my apps are GTK+ apps). I'm going to give this new release of KDE a try pretty soon because it sounds sweet.
Linux is really shaping up on the desktop. KDE and Gnome both rock!
That's not what infamous means.
it's not OSNews doing the 'reporting'.
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
Feel free to slashdot it!
KDE 3.2 Screenshot
Of note... the wacky font shadows on desktop. The icons are pretty nice.
"Would it kill you to put down the toilet seat?" -- Maya Angelou
My first impression is 'wow.'"
Well if an objective anonymous user who was using the RC versions thinks that highly of the final release, it's good enough for me!
KDE has an article in the Wikipedia. Its got a lot of information about its history and how it works under the hood. It is still mostly 3.1 biased though, so it could do with some updating for KDE 3.2. (A Screenshot of KDE 3.2 for example).
QT is as free as the Linux kernel since they are both under the GPL. In fact, it's even more "free" because you can make closed-source programs with it (even if it means paying someone) while you don't have that option at all with just the GPL.
Now however if you're talking about BSD free, then no QT is not free. But then again under this definition neither is Linux (the kernel), gcc, etc. either. So if you're going to dump QT for not being "free" to be fair you have to dump on practically all of Linux as well.
Ok, so I am not exactly someone who is well known in the Linux community. I am also not exactly the best writer in the world, so this "review" will be a bit terse...
First of all, getting the new KDE was troublesome. Obviously, the prime site - ftp.kde.org - was a touch busy. However, NONE of the mirror sites (in the US anyhow) had it at all. One site had the directory structure for 3.2, but NO CONTENT. The other US sites didn't even have the 3.2 directory structure. In other words, the KDE group was woefully unprepared to actually release the software.
I was finally able to download from ftp.kde.org - at a whopping 7.6k per second. Yep, that means that they were REALLY BUSY. I was on an unloaded T1 so it probably wasn't congestion at my end.
I finally got the whole package set downloaded and installed. That part, at least, was fairly painless. The fact that I'm running Slackware on an old P3-700 laptop notwithstanding...
On starting up the new KDE, one thing that becomes clear almost immediately is that it is MUCH SLOWER at the initial loadup. Probably a 20% time increase. Not painful though.
Things that I like about the new KDE - yes, application startup feels faster. I also liked that KDE recognized an app (Pan) locked up and wasn't responding and offered to kill it for me (when I tried to close the app window).
Some things just simply don't work though. The RDP protocol implementation inside Konqueror doesn't like Windows Server 2003 at all.
When you install the new KDE, it does you a "favor" and resets your media associations to use Noatun and Kaboodle - inspite of the fact that neither of these apps play modern video files very well if at all.
Overall, it's not too awful, but it's not a compelling upgrade either.
Ron Gage - Westland, MI
I'll shut up now.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
Does anyone know a good way to install a binary version of KDE in Gentoo (x86)? I love Gentoo, Portage, and the community, but the three day compile to update KDE is starting to kill me.
Any chance at a kde-bin ebuild in the portage tree?
--
Njovich
I to, have installed KDE today. I also installed it yesterday, the day before, and I probably will still be installing it tomorrow.
Next time I wait for the RPMs.
"oh, by the way, if you want a UI, don't forget to also download such and such at website t46."
You keep using that word. I think it does not mean what you think it means.
WTFmonkey, how old are we that we need 'correction' for this?
OG
Stop spreading FUD. I've got a Taiwan flag in mine. I'm using Gentoo and compiled source straight from KDE. If RedHat removed it like another poster said, then it sounds like you need to stop using RedHat.
Understanding is a three-edged sword. -- Kosh Naranek
Just curious... I'd like to upgrade.
I've been using unofficial KDE 3.2 CVS debs for about 4 months. I'm loving it. For all those who are wondering about Debian/KDE, 3.2.0 will enter unstable when 3.1.5 enters testing. First, however, 3.2.0 will be in experimental. If you can't wait, however, fear not. At the Debian/KDE FAQ there are instructions to get KDE 3.2 whether you be on stable, unstable or (for some fool reason) testing. It only involves adding one or two APT sources and dist-upgrading. If you run into problems, come to #debian-kde on irc.freenode.net and ask around. The folks there are really helpful.
You're probably a troll, but I'll think bite anyway. TrollTech is kind enough to have a GPL version of their library, and offers a commercial license for those that won't/can't open source their code.
GTK may be LGPL, but it'll never contain modern C++ constructs like templates with that license. The reason is quite simple : I can't use template code whithout compiling it. There is a keyword "export" for templates, but I don't think that is supported very well.
I have the feeling that the reviewer hasn't used KDE for ages (or could be using the Red Hat version which has some features taken out)
For example the font installer has been in KDE for ages. I remember using it when the Mandrake font installer decided to not work and this was several versions ago. This was one of the KDE features that Red Hat removed from their version of KDE.
Likewise tabs have been around for quite a while as has the service menu.
I didn't know you had to win awards to be infamous.
What? You missed Alexander's win for Best Macedonian in a Conquering Role of 322 B.C.?
Get with the program.
KFG
I can't believe all the corrections you're getting..
To Anyone else who wants to correct the poster: before you hit "submit", sit down and watch The Three Amigos.
wxwindows (a good rewrite of MFC/OWL)
That's oxymoronic. You cannot get a good rewrite of something so lacking as the MFC, and OWL is hardly better.
Don't believe me? Then why don't MS use the MFC themselves? For they don't - for all practical purposes they've shunned it all along, and with good reason.
I don't really believe the KDE people patterned their work after Microsoft's anyway; and as for 'procedural programming' in Gnome needing C constructs to achieve object orientation - well, if Linus himself says it can be done and done efficiently, then that's two voices who say so - at least.
I am not touting Gnome - on the contrary. And I am not touting KDE by any means - I've seen the code and it gives me vertigo. For you cannot achieve OO with C++ anyway. It's far better to use straight C, and then you don't have the overhead.
Whatever - if you want OO, use Objective-C. It's based on Smalltalk, and that's the only viable paradigm we've ever had (Simula/C++ just don't cut the muster, not by a long shot), and there I'll quote Alan Kay himself, thank you.
Finally, there is never any 'overhead' in OO any programmer has to 'reimplement'. OO is a way of looking at programming assignments - 'organisms' as Alan Kay saw it. It has nothing to do with orientation, or reimplementation, or any of that.
All of which might be too 'developer oriented' for this discussion, but you brought the topic up (and clumsily), not I.
READ the story on internetnews.com they talk to KDE people and SuSe development internetnews.com Here's one of my fav lines in the piece... "KDE 3.2 is very important for many people because it offers a nice set of new features," said SuSE's Schlaeger. "It's not a revolution as it used to be in the early days of KDE, when it brought something completely new to the Linux world that wasn't there, but I think the KDE project is making steady progress."
So we meet up with this "El Guapo" guy, who's probably the biggest thing out of Mexico, and we get rich!
(Note...don't mod down if you don't get the reference.)
tasks(723) drafts(105) languages(484) examples(29106)
I was taken aback by the significant speed improvements. 1st time I've ever done a KDE upgrade and really noticed the changes. The Plastik Style is finally a pleasant, harmless change of pace, the bouncing activity icons are actually cool this time. I still find the file manager far more versatile than the one found in gnome. Overall well worth the install. I just did a wget on a mirror for SuSE 9 RPM's ,removed some of the development RPM's I didn;t need and did an RPM -Uvh *.rpm. Worked great. I'll admit, it's the superficial thinbgs I like and notice, ie better looking penguin icons for the kdm login manager and a cool choice os splash screens, etc.
I'd been running Slack 9.1 for a long while with Dropline Gnome, still the most beeyootiful Desktop environment, but it doesn't have the functionality of KDE. I like both projects thhough, hopefully Novell can give each the room to do their own thing, even if KDE gets the nod as the preferred Novell/SuSE desktop.
PyQT
PerlQT
Sorry not in your language of choice.
Understanding is a three-edged sword. -- Kosh Naranek
I'm sorry, all credibility goes out the window with "award winning". It seems to me there's a whole lotta KDE astroturfing goin' on.
I see. Seems to me there's a whole lotta Microsoft shills that got modpoints, today (parent was modded '5 Insightful' at time of reading).
As a matter of fact, KDE has won numerous awards, year after year. And I wouldn't call it "astroturfing" to express celebration over a release of a new KDE version in an article announcing the release of a new KDE version.
OK. The story is slashdotted, but from my past experience with KDE fans and Linux fans in general, I've learned that their ideas for usability are generally way outside the mainstream.
As a total non-geek GUI user here are my questions on KDE's usability.
1. Have applications been consolidated into an Applications or Programs folder, or do I have to hunt for them scattered all over the place?
2. Can I make aliases, shortcuts or their equivalents by right clicking or modifier key dragging the original?
3. Do applications have a unique icon identifying the executable, so I know what to double-click to launch the program, or what to make the alias from?
4. Can I install an application by dragging an icon of the application to the Applications or Programs folder, or by double-clicking an installer icon that I can download as a single file from a website?
5. Can I add and remove items from the start menu (or whatever KDE calls it) by dragging and dropping to and from the menus? (A dialog box would be an acceptable alternative.)
6. Can I add a directory to the start menu and have its contents displayed heirarchically when I click on it from the start menu?
7. Can I use a file browser aka Windows Explorer or the Mac OS X Finder instead of a stupid web browser window to find files on my computer?
8. Are home directories put in a Users or Accounts folder off the root so that I can find them easily?
9. Can I find Windows networked computers by double-clicking a Network neighborhood icon or its equivalent?
10. Can I set up sharing on my computer, define workgroups, etc. using a configuration tool like Mac OS X's Network and Sharing preferences pane and the Directory Access utility?
Which of these can the 3.2 version of KDE do?
You can tell a great deal about the character of a man by observing those who hate him.
"KDE features are thrown into the mix with little or no regard for usability, or even good taste."
:-)
That's it, in a nutshell!
It's my new permanent desktop. And this is coming from a minimalist who's used and loved Windowmaker for seven years. And like everyone else on the planet, I promptly loaded up as many Aqua-clone themes as I could find. :) (Aquafusion and Acqua are sweeeeeet.) Even with all the eyecandy turned on, it's so damn fast and stable. I can't get over the improvements since I last tried KDE, back in the 3.0 days.
I do have one minor problem. I can't figure out how to globally set the background image for the file manager. I know how to do it on a per-directory basis, but not globally.
QT was released under the GPL as of version 2.2. Just click here to read about it with the official announcement: http://www.kde.org/whatiskde/qt.php
I think it looks better than Windoze - classier, a polished, consistent look - but it's still a Windoze lookalike.
Get rid of that Teletubbie thing...
Microsoft has used MFC for the Visual Studio suite since it was hatched. They also use it for other smaller system utilities like Notepad and several of the administrative tools.
Just because you don't have a clue what you're talking about doesn't make what you say true.
Someone mod this parent down, they linked to goatsex!
One of the things I like about gnome is the panel-drawer, where you can then launch other apps that you've defined, instead of from an icon on the desktop of from the main menu. Is there something similar in KDE? I've looked (admittedly not all that deep) and haven't found anything like it.
this is my 3.2 desktop:
screenshots
As far as I'm concerned, we're way past the time where C developers should be left out in the cold when it comes to UI programming.
I don't care if the OS and Kernel stuff is written in C for speed, whatever, but don't force an obviously OO concept (UIs) to be implemented in a procedural language...
---- It puts the lotion on its skin or else it gets the hose again. It does this whenever it's told.
The review is rather crappy IMHO. Half of the stuff he talks about already existed in previous versions of KDE. Like tabs for web browsing and file management... umm, yeah knoq already did that in 3.2. And the Font installer, again, was already there, just not in RH/Fedora. Also, kwrite is slow to open???! I dunno, maybe he just runs a really slow comp or something, but most all KDE apps open in about the same speed on my system, all of which are pretty speedy. And I haven't used 3.2 yet, but I have used 3.1.95 and I have to say that in my experience knoq's rendering of webpages was doing WORSE that it was in 3.1 on many pages. Nothing major, but some things didn't seem to line up right when they did in earlier versions of knoq. I hope they worked this out before the final, but I was suprised to hear any praises on that just yet.
Anyway, the review was poorly done and not entirely objective. I use KDE too but I will be the first to point out flaws and places that need major improvement as well as the things I love about it. This just read like a guy that prefers KDE writing a quick page without doing too terribly much in the way of examining the new desktop.
I'm by no means a pacifist. In fact, I think that people who go around calling for peace are criminal. There must be JUSTICE for ALL and then perhaps peace will follow. Peace alone means surrender. "Why can't the Palestinians be peaceful? Boo hoo hoo." Translates to why can't they just surrender to injustice.
Slashdot is populated by geeks, yes, and geeks have many varying philosophies: liberal, conservative, libertarian, etc. What we have in common is a certain tendency toward egalitarianism and the strong tendency to question everything. We don't accept what's told to us as fact (no matter how mundane or "common knowledge" it may be) without making our own minds up. We may reach different conclusions, but we tend to do so after some thought and analysis and mulling things over. Even Geek Common Knowledge (eg Microsoft Sucks!) is open to constant reexamination (yup still scucks, today), reevaluation, exceptions, etc.
For example, you bring up WWII and I am reminded of well-meaning people such as Tom Brokaw who wrote about "The Greatest Generation." Excuse me? The greatest generation may have had a lot of good people in it but it still had a segregated military and segregation and oppression at home. Yes, I know a lot of really sweet old folks who came of age during WWII, but I also know a lot of people who are more like the father (Buck) in the movie "Monster's Ball." Had African-American soldiers turned against White America would you have been as supportive of their "fighting for peace?"
What's one of the worst insults for geeks? Sheeple.
You think you had it bad? I lived in a cardboard box in the middle of the motorway....
:-)
OK, the real story
When I first got into Linux, I started on a miserable 486DX33, with less than 1GB for disc space. Yet still I managed to compile and develop complete Linux applications.
Donte Alistair Anderson Roberts - hi son!
Karma: Chameleon
it does contain bush, i'll give you that...
He installed KDE 3.2 earlier today and already have a review ready? How is it possible to get an impression of such a big piece of software as that so fast, and still have time to write a review?
A piece of advice for future reviewers: Being fastest isn't the point with reviews -- thouroughness and being informative on behalf of the customers is.
Why did they do it in C when there is a object oriented C++ right available?
Several reasons:
- At the time of gnome's creation C++ was slow (wrt compiled code) and unstandardised (wrt source). Well, there were standards, but the popular compilers didn't pay all that much attention to them, and in fact, the MS compilers still don't pay much attention to them. As a result, a C++-based project had an immediate speed and portability hit.
- There was and still is no C++ binary abi. When you upgrade to a new compiler, you have to recompile all your libraries just to compile a new app with it. This is ugly.
And finally and most importantly:
- The gnome programmers were all C fanboys. They didn't know C++, and didn't want to learn it. Better to go with the devil you know than the devil you don't.
It doesn't really matter nowadays. GNOME uses hacks to implement OO in C, KDE/Qt uses hacks (the metacompiler) to implement signalling in C++. Both are a bit of a kludge. And both work well. Though generally I find KDE's architectural design cleaner and easier to get into. But then clearly either can be learnt and learnt well.
Given the ubiquity of bindings for either of these libraries (KDE/GNOME) to higher level languages (and not just OO, but also procedural and functional languages), I think the real question is why one would write in either C or C++ any sooner during development than necessary in the first place?
I do not have a signature
What platform doesn't have a c++ compiler today?
I mean the same people trumpeting C because "it works everywhere" also have no shame in writing scripts in novelty languages like ruby.
Maybe if it was 1993 or something C++ would be all new and scary....
And here's a screenshot of my desktop (dual display Xinerama with different sized displays :) )
http://members.arstechnica.com/subscriptors/x/mono /monodesk.jpg
Erm, there are things like Gtkmm which is quite a bit better designed than the QT/moc hell.
Although QT is pretty nice, KDE has an insanely bloated, bogged down feel to it. Like when it starts up. GNOME doesn't feel that way.
QT works betters on all platforms. Gtk is still mostly an X11 toolkit (eg. it's slow on Windows and looks funky on OS X).
Don't get me started on wxWindows. Ugh... might as well write a native version of your app for each platform and #ifdef it yourself (really not much different than wxWindows but more flexible).
The kicker for me is the price of QT. Too much, as much as a Universal MSDN subscription which includes every damn thing MS makes. And the "free" version isn't really free because I can't release anything under a non-GPL license (like a BSD type).
The ratio of people to cake is too big
Don't be an idiot -- wxwindows was designed to be very similar to MFC for portability reasons.
All I have to say is, wow, someone is actually using Fedora?
Here's a mirror, folks.
People, when you mirror things for Slashdot, your home cable modem probably won't work very well....
|/usr/games/fortune
Yes. People most certainly ARE that stupid. In my College networking course, the TA in charge of the class pictures did that. And they wondered why the machine needed so much bandwidth. Idiots.
Umm, the GNOME APIs are very well-designed and extremely object-oriented. As far as raw speed goes, gtk signal propagation is many times faster than QT's signals and slots mechanism.
Gnome/Gtk apps are not procedural. They are event-driven and object-oriented, just like QT. There are many apps written in the C++ bindings of Gnome. The idea that Gnome is fine for small programs but not large programs is false, if not stupid. Please do your research before posting such an obviously unresearched opinion.
As for overhead, C++ is, in many ways, simply syntactic sugar. As I said, there are awesome C++ bindings for Gnome and the Gnome object model (implemented in C) is very good. Programming overhead to do objects in C is minimal and there are great tools for generating objects. Also the switch to using XML primary to describe the guis makes Gnome GUI generation very easy and in just a few lines of code. In my experience your argument about reimplementing the OO is largely moot.
Also wxWindows is hardly a great example of an OO gui api. It's very much like MFC, which uses a event message mapping system, unlike QT and GTK which use signals and callbacks that can be dynamically created and conneccted together. I've never liked MFC, and I don't like wxWindows. I do like QT and GTK, though, particulary GTKMM.
This is exactly it.
The original poster is an idiot and the moderators that modded it up are morons.
The Kernel and GCC are not in the same class as a GUI toolkit. I can compile something with Linux plus GCC and release under a BSD license. Not so if my app uses QT.
Sheesh... too many morons
but according to kde.org 3.2 is pretty nice, and is a mayor improvement over 3.1... but i will have to imagine the review ...cause the site is already /.ed!!!!! .... sniff
<question type=silly>BTW how is that slashdot is never slashdotted? i wonder... </question>
Someone submits an article to slashdot. It gets approved. When it gets approved, a low-bandwidth slashdot mirror of the article is automatically generated, and URLs in the article point to the mirror.
I Installed it and I (old one was 3.1.4). Takes longer to load and the fonts are ugly, again!. Everything else seems much the same except Konqueror which ROCKS! Starts really fast and does not crash as much as the old one (not that it was that bad). I Have not tried Kontact yet. I hope it's good as the review says because I do not like Evolution.
Everybody has their own El Guapo. For you, your El Guapo is a big scary guy who wants to kill you.
ok kde-istas, here's a test for your windows-integration skills.
I've been using konqueror as a file manager on my gnome desktop on occasion, but there's one thing that makes me give up on it after a while, and that is that I can't find any way to change the default behavior of "drag and drop a file" to be like windows (i.e., "move" if it's on the same file system).
I know about the shift-drop shortcut so don't bother with that, it's horrible because a) it's not a default so it's annoying and b) there's also a shift-select that selects surrounding items when you click, and it's hard to do shift-drop but not shift-click.
If anyone can help me with this, I would love to use konqueror as my default file manager for those times when I really don't feel like typing or when I need to move pictures, etc.
microsoftword.mp3 - it doesn't care that they're not words...
OS X has had this ability since release. It's bad enough KJux is a complete rip-off of iTunes.
I don't get it. Where are the fresh ideas?
With all that said, KDE roolz Gnome Droolz
.. soon there will be NATIVE (not X11) KDE for the MAC.
So , no contest
Gnome really does suck , I hate the time it takes me when i setup a Fedora machine that it takes to de-Gnome it.
And then it has a crippled KDE anyway.
Setupp Debian with real KDE and it rocks,
Oh
No contest
Cheers
* Carthago Delenda Est *
Let's just say that KDE 3.2 should raise eyebrows in Cupertino and soil pants in Redmond.
It won't.
It's chock-full of bugs, seriously...I'm grappling non-stop with problems. 3.1.4 was a FAR more stable release...I'm sorry I upgraded. Buggy, buggy, buggy. It really breaks my heart to see KDE at this phase...I have such high hopes for it.
Which is why the Ada95 binding to GTK uses a license that specifically allows templating.
Ada generics are the most analogous thing to C++ templates, because instantiating a generic requires copying part of the code and compiling it for the specific types involved. At least that's how most implementations handle it.
GtkAda uses a modified version of the GPL called the GNAT-modified GPL which allows instantiating generics by closed-source programs. This way the library code stays open while you are free to *use* it as you please. This license was pioneered by the Gnu Ada Translator project for their library components. It seems to be fully in the spirit of gcc and the GPL, because it is the GPL.
I'm not usually a licence zealot, and I've never actually bothered to comment about these sorts of comments before, but there is something I just don't understand. I'm sorry if you think this is a troll or flamebait - it's not, I just get frustrated when I see uninformed opinions of this nature.
The above complaint also applies to the Linux kernel and we are all perfectly happy to call that free (as in speech and beer). The same applies to QT - free speech and beer if you abide by the terms of the GPL. In fact, a large amount of open source software is exactly the same, but apparently some people have redefined "free" to mean something different.
So you can't use the free version of QT to make proprietary software. Big deal. Get over it.
Rant over.
I agree, doing object orientation by ideom is really ugly. But there is something called gtkmm that puts a true objectoriented wrapper around the gtk libraries. That ought to improve the situation. Gtkmm uses pure C++ instead of some language extensions requiring preprocessing like QT.
But even so, I feel more at home using QT, but that is perhaps just me.
Anyway, I wish that the KDE people could get their act together on usability. As they
clearly have a technical edge over Gnome this is
really sad they they doesn't do better in this area.
Look at the navigation toolbar of Konqueror and compare that to Epiphany or Mozilla. In KDE the toolbar looks crowded. Some icons are very similar to each other. E.g. they use looking glasslike symbols for both search and zoom functions. Why not use a pair of binoculars for the search function instead.
The icon for changing fonts is an image of two T:s close together that looks like an antenna. Of course the T stands for text. But in how many countries is text called something that starts with T? I would guess that a picture of an "A" would be better as it have a more distinctive form, and it is also used in many other desktop environments to denote font changing facilities.
It would also make it less likely that the symbol with the two T:s close together refers to true type fonts only.
If the toolbars are crowded, the context menus are even worse. E.g. in the right menu button menu of the konquerer file manager you have both a "Move to trash" and a "Delete" item. Wouldn't it have bin better to just have a "Move to trash" item, and then configure the trash to perform the correct action this would have bin more in line with the desktop metaphor. On the your normal desktop you put things you don't want in the waste basket, and then you decide when to empty it.
Even if most things regarding usability is as bad as they used to be in KDE, there is at least one major improvement in KDE 3.2. The menu that pops up when you drop a file over a folder now gives you the alternatives "Move Here", "Copy Here" and "Link Here" and "Cancel" instead of "Copy Here", "Move Here"... This great since move is a much more common operation than copy for most people.
A positive side effect on changing the order in this menu is that the lack of icon for the "Move Here" item doesn't look so bad on the first item as it did when it was the second menu item.
The menu still have a dominating red cancel button. That button is probably the first thing the user sees when he drops a file over a folder, and the menu pops up. To me its somewhat unclear why this menu needs a cancel button in the first place, all other menus seam to be able to do without it. And second why does it have to be that eye catching. After all in most of the cases "Cancel" is not what the user is most likely to do.
So, if you need a lot of functionality but doesn't care about usability KDE is for you. In a way this is in true Unix tradition, there is no limit to what you can do, if you just could find out how. In my opinion there is few if any desktop environment that can rival KDE in configurability and number of functions.
Even though the usability could have bin better KDE 3.2 contains a lot of improvements and it is well worth the trouble of upgrading if you run some previous version of KDE.
God is REAL! Unless explicitly declared INTEGER
Now *that*'s funny.
;)
Not only that, it's just plain awe-inspiring; which implies the question for the ages: how many fscking slashbots exists anyways? I've seen numbers like 25 million, but *cough*, that would mean we're still too few to fill the insides of Leonardo DiCaprios ego!
Please, some SlashPope or entity with 2 or 3 digits UID, give us, thine unwashed peers, that holiest of numbers: the Fist of God - ye cruel scythe of innocent servers, blah blah lalala... Well, you get the idea
"The only clear view is from atop the mountain of our dead selves." - Peter Carroll
Someone who agreed with the grandparent HAS to be a "Microsoft shill"...
Thanks Anonymous Coward, that explained a lot. And good points about if the Nazi's had won, and also about African-American soldiers had turned against White America. I tend to try to question things a lot too (whenever I can step out of my sheeple-ness), so maybe I'm more of a geek then I thought. I guess I'm an introspective geek today... take care,
Try aterm. It does pseudo transparency as well.
Quack, quack.
So you can't use the free version of QT to make proprietary software. Big deal. Get over it.
Eh? Read what I wrote. I want to write some open-source free software and release it under a BSD-like license. Can't use QT without a commercial license...
Read it again if you have to.
The ratio of people to cake is too big
Sure it was a great movie, but there were some awful plot holes there. I really thought I was the only geek out there who loved this movie.
Three Amigos Plot Holes
1. Have applications been consolidated into an Applications or Programs folder, or do I have to hunt for them scattered all over the place?
I'm not really sure what the hell you mean here. Binaries are in the usual places. The K-Menu contains launcher icons in a similar fashion to the Windows Start menu
2. Can I make aliases, shortcuts or their equivalents by right clicking or modifier key dragging the original?
Drag a file icon somewhere, release. A menu pops up under the cursor with three choices, copy, move, or link (as in symlink, or shortcut in your terms)
3. Do applications have a unique icon identifying the executable, so I know what to double-click to launch the program, or what to make the alias from?
Eh? What? Either you need to explain this one a bit more or at least just look at a screenshot. App launchers have uniquely definable icons. You can change the icon by right click, Properties, click on the icon button, and choose the replacement for that file/App launcher. What I'm assuming you mean is how win32 exe's have an embedded icon in the executable itself, which IMO is ass because later down the line, that icon looks HORRIBLE in comparison to the rest of your new fresh XP icons. The icons for Red Alert and HexWorkshop look like ass on my XP desktop in comparison to the other icons.
4. Can I install an application by dragging an icon of the application to the Applications or Programs folder, or by double-clicking an installer icon that I can download as a single file from a website?
No. This has nothing to do with KDE. It has a package manager/installer, though, so you can install packages made for your distro pretty easily, such as RPM or slackware packages.
5. Can I add and remove items from the start menu (or whatever KDE calls it) by dragging and dropping to and from the menus? (A dialog box would be an acceptable alternative.)
6. Can I add a directory to the start menu and have its contents displayed heirarchically when I click on it from the start menu?
No. Personally I'm glad it doesn't, maybe some people like that and that would be a nice feature. But the menu is customized by right clicking on the menu icon (the big K), and selecting "Customize Menu".
7. Can I use a file browser aka Windows Explorer or the Mac OS X Finder instead of a stupid web browser window to find files on my computer?
What? "stupid web browser window"? What the hell do you mean? The file manager is just like Windows Explorer in that it is simply a container app, that can either display files or html or text or whatever. Just like in explorer I can enter a web address in the bar and it displays that page.
8. Are home directories put in a Users or Accounts folder off the root so that I can find them easily?
Have you ever even USED linux? I'm not even going to answer this. This has to be a troll. No, I will answer it, in linux home directories are located in /home off the root directory.
9. Can I find Windows networked computers by double-clicking a Network neighborhood icon or its equivalent?
Yes KDE has a LAN browser
10. Can I set up sharing on my computer, define workgroups, etc. using a configuration tool like Mac OS X's Network and Sharing preferences pane and the Directory Access utility?
Yes. The tools are there. I'm tired of doing this. You haven't even looked at a linux desktop before, so you are either trolling or, err no you are trolling. If you put any effort forth I would be happy to answer these questions. But you haven't, and I've already wasted enough time responding to this.
C Pungent
The work the KDE team has done is great, but... (*deep breath*)
Before you go off and mod this a troll, stop and think about the idea. Why are we mimicking Windows? Or anything, for that matter? By mimicking Windows, aren't we simply reinforcing bad habits that Redmond introduced 10 years ago? If we all agree that Windows' GUI is sub-optimal, why are we expending so much time and energy attempting to replicate it, point for point?
I'd be sort of interested to see the point in KDE's history where this debate took place, if it ever did.. It certainly should have.
It's just frustrating to see so much work go into being the desktop equivalent of an Elvis impersonator, when we could easilly challenge (or even trump!) the real Elvis.. We've built an enterprise-class OS from scratch...You'd think that a good GUI would be trivial.
Anyway, as far as I know, neither GNOME nor KDE's team offer a skunk-works forum to discuss and develop new and different ideas. Quite the contrary. New ideas tend to be ridiculed and quickly dismissed. It's sort of odd, given how many truly creative people there are working on these respective projects.
Bowie J. Poag
> $Revision: 1.51 $ $Date: 2004/2/6 14:22:15 $
Don't pretend that this is accurate or up-to-date. You have been pointed several times at wrong facts, like the Qt pricing, and didn't correct it.
I want drag-n-drop folder support, or give me my money back!!
Seriously, though--kde is fantastic! I love it; it's convenient and pretty. When I need CLI, it's there, too. When my wife wants to use the linux box instead of her W** lapotp, she has no problem.
GREAT JOB, KDE TEAM!!
"Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, it doesn't go away." - Philip K. Dick
I switched from the spartan Flux/Blackbox a while ago, and I really like KDE as a WM, plus the panel. However, I much prefer Mozilla to Konq, OpenOffice to Koffice, and the same goes for any category of software I've tried (multimedia, graphics, editors,...).
What it looks like, there's no way of installing a diet version of KDE, without hundreds (ok, dozens) of programs I'll never use. Should that be necessary? I'm using Debian packages, but this doesn't seem to be much different if you compile it yourself. In this regard, KDE takes "bundling" to a new level, whipping Bill Gates' ass!
Switch to Gnome? Unfortunately I don't like that environment at all.
--
Evan
"$30 for the One True Ring. $10 each additional ring!" -- JRR "Bob" Tolkien
In fact, the MS compilers still don't pay much attention to them.
Their most recent compiler (VS.net 2003) is much more standards compliant than you give it credit. Besides compiler limits, there are only five noncompliant aspects of their compiler. Most complaints that people had with the lack of compliance in VisualC++ were fixed in the 2003 release.
GCC 3.3 isn't fully standards compliant either. Reading through the 3.4 changes it looks like they've been working on some of the same issues. C++ in general is a very complicated language. There are very few compilers that implement every aspect of the language. It's generally more important to fix the compiler bugs that affect real code than to implement the aspects of the language that are very rarely encountered.
Boy, now I'm going to take their review *very* seriously!
They're obviously experts!
I'll never use KDE or Gnome or E or the like ever again. If the "features" and bloat are getting you down, may i suggest Ion?
And there are Qt bindings for it. Plus you can code for OSX.
--
Evan
"$30 for the One True Ring. $10 each additional ring!" -- JRR "Bob" Tolkien
I think you misunderstood. He means "awards that matter".. bragging about winning "Best desktop in the http://www.linuxd00ds.com web poll 2003" doesn't count for much.
You can download a powertoy for Windows XP: Virtual Desktop Manager It lets you keep 4 virtual desktops organized from the taskbar. I find it only semi-handy, though.
Check out http://www.kde-look.org/.
Good even if you don't use KDE, they have lots of Linux related wallpapers for instance.
One app I have fallen in love with is
SuperKaramba, a clone of Windows XP Samurize. It enabels easy Python scripting of widgets on the desktop, enabling such things as weather forecasts, system information, Mac OS X style dockers on your desktop, or even some very beautiful themes complete with new toolbars, XMMS skins etc.
Being bitter is drinking poison and hoping someone else will die
The above complaint also applies to the Linux kernel and we are all perfectly happy to call that free (as in speech and beer).
Remind use again how much it costs to write a closed-source application that runs on the Linux kernel? What's that... nothing... and how much does it cost to write a closed-source app on Qt? What's that... about $2500 dollars, per year.
Hmmm... some mistake surely.
I love Gnome, but even on a fresh install of RedHat 9 it is crash city. It almost always recovers, but it also almost always crashes when I click on desktop icons like home or preferences.
KDE just gives me "unknown error" on about 25% of settings I try to change, fresh after a rh9 install on any box. Settings like some clock settings, or my favorite: changing the shell. The first time you try to change it: unknown error. The second time: unknown error followed by an unknown error. The third time... you get the picture.
The error is caused by a network setting, but I certainly didn't find that out from the error message.
Yes it is.
(I'm not sure that that's a canon link. Ruby bindings are now in official KDE CVS, I've noticed. This may be a project predating that).
--
Evan
"$30 for the One True Ring. $10 each additional ring!" -- JRR "Bob" Tolkien
I stand corrected. Thank you.
The QT pricing is correct, and every point raised has been addressed.
Full-sized screenshots that are resized smaller in the HTML! Wonderful!
Well Duh!
That way the user doesn't have to download two sets of images!
From now on, KDE reviews should be posted by Gnome users and vise versa. This is likelly to generate more balanced and useful reviews
Actually, since the expression 'wow' rhymes with 'POW', the poster was imprisoned under some loosely mis-quoted words from the Patriot Act. And thus the second impression was there-by censored by the FCC and later trademarked by SCO who is now seeking retro-active royalties for use of the term in all recorded video and written material. SchoolHouseRock legal expert BILL, has already introduced a counter suit to protect their own "Interjection Wow!" dude.
- soupmaster
Hey, look, someone on slashdot can think for himself! I'm sure you'll be re-introduced to the GroupThink soon enough...
there were some awful plot holes there
Those aren't plot holes, as they don't affect the plot.
The plot is the sequence of events that the story relies on in order to proceed. The link you gave would be filed under "goofs", or (IMHO) were actually intentional (it is a comedy.. I mean, come on - you have a movie that features an invisible swordsman, and a plant that sings folk tunes, but it's not realistic for a town to be able to rebuild in a couple of days?!??!)
The gaffes listed don't affect the plot of the movie, so they're not plot holes.
Now, if you wanted to see a movie with a goatse-sized plot hole, watch "Die Hard", and tell me how the mechanical doors on the vault open after the bad guys get the power disconnected. Emergency power?!?!? (Yeah, that would make sense.)
This is a plot hole because the plot of the movie relies on it.
God, I hate that about Windows. If I ask my computer to open two windows of the same folder then it should do it! Windows assumes what I want and tries to second guess me (oh, you don't really want to open that folder again, do you?). KDE does what I tell it to do, which IMHO is what a computer should do. It is not the computers job to read my thoughts and try to figure out what I "really" mean.
So why don't you go to Folder Options and tell Windows to open seperate windows for each folder? It's as simple as clicking a checkbox. This was actually the default behavior in Windows 95.
For all the "configurability" Linux desktop users are always going on about, they sure do ignore those same features of Windows...for whatever reasons.
Oohh.. nice wallpaper. Where did you get it?
Being bitter is drinking poison and hoping someone else will die
Your sarcasm is interesting, considering a very large percentage of Slashdot's articles come from OsNews.
El Guapo, I know I do not have your superior intellect or education, but could it be that once again you are mad at something else, and looking to take it out on me, Jefe?
Open Source Identity Management: FreeIPA.org
QT is so very good, and so very easy to program in, that there is no point to port any kind of different toolkit (like wxwindows) to QT. Even if somebody did port it, there would be only two people that would use it: guy who ported it and the guy in the previous post. QT just works, deal with it!
I don't believe that the parent post was intended as flamebait, saying that KDE has won no real awards, but that he may have been saying that it doesn't matter if any awards were won--it is a useful piece of software, and that is what matters.
Considering the GW Bush has been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize, can you really take many awards seriously?
Computer Science is no more about computers than astronomy is about telescopes. --E. W. Dijkstra
With all that said, KDE roolz Gnome Droolz
If you watn any proof that KDE zealots are a bunch of fucking clueless wannabe-l33t n00bs... check out the parent getting an "informative" mod.
Specifically, having tried many times to use Sun's (vastly faster then GCC) compilers to compile KDE and found that it's impossible due to a combination of GCC specific extensions or at least syntactic laxity and other GNUish bias I've had to give up.
:-)
I'm forced to compile the whole thing with the highly sub-optimal (for SPARC) gcc/g++.
I wish that programmers wouldn't depend upon the lax syntax of the world's favourite compiler and optimise their code specifically for systems which are already fast enough not to make much difference when it degrades performance on those which absolutely need the greatest acceleration to make them usable.
Sorry for the rant.
My compile of KDE 3.2.0 at work on the Sun Ultra 10 has been going for a day already and I've just got QT, arts and kdelibs compiled. I should have a working system by the middle of next week, assuming I don't find any show stopping Linuxisms (which I usually do during KDE builds).
Agrajag: "Oh no, not again!"
Infamous is when you're more than famous. This desktop KDE, he's not just famous, he's infamous.
I'd say that KDE has a plethora of Options.
Yes the big boys probably aren't going to port to Linux any time soon anyway. And if they did the license wouldn't really bother them much. But for smaller coders hoping to recoup some of the development costs this will make a difference. So you are left primarily with Opensource zealots doing development. That's working, of course. So I can't criticize too much. But Linux is missing a lot compared to other platforms.
You say "costing $3000* for every developer", it's 1550$. You say "10 developers: $30,000", true is $14100. You say "If you want to develop for the Mac, Linux and Windows the amount reaches a staggering $6000 per developer.", true is $3320.
> and every point raised has been addressed.
Let's test it with some random points: Proof for City of Largo switching to (rather than evaluating) GNOME? Or let's pick "Nat Friedman is currently in charge of desktop development at Novell/Ximian/SUSE" - http://dot.kde.org/1076022020/ lists recent SUSE press releases telling the opposite.
Why copy Redmond with UI design? I think that's a simple question to answer - if you want your mom, uncles, and non-industry friends to use Linux, you need to make it as easy to use as the Win9X/XP stuff they're exposed to. Like it or not, MS has market share and exposure. If the UI of the new Linux system you want to give them is too far removed from what they are used to using, they won't like it.
I've fought this battle with my spouse when we moved from DOS to Win9X, and from 9X to 2K and XP. Every change I introduced to keep current sent her into a tailspin, as she now had to learn a (slightly) new way of doing what she wanted to do.
If you don't like the UI shell's provided, you're always free to write your own on a new paradigm.
...and you run and you run and you can't stop what's been done...
1. Gnome and GTK are both object oriented APIs.
... I know the arguments about how OOP can defined in a variety of ways are wide and varied. But C doesn't fit any of the definitions unless you just require it to be written in a programming language. The argument that gtk/gnome code is OO is just a bunch of C programmers feeling left out of the OOP craze.
Balderdash! C doesn't provide encapsulation, polymorphism, inheritence,
Not only that, but their approximation of OOP code is more painful than listening to Al Sharpton screaming his tripe in my ears. Horrible, horrible code.
--
http://cheeser.blog-city.com
I compiled the new KDE 3.2 but the kcontrol opens with no entries to select. :
The following messages appears
kcontrol: WARNING: No K menu group with X-KDE-BaseGroup=settings found ! Defaulting to Settings/
anyone have a clue how to fix this ????
Gnome developers chose C because they didn't know how to program in C++ but were too egotistical to admit it. That is all.
What do you care about which language the GNOME guys use to do their thing? If you just want to write GNOME apps, you can use C, C++, Python, or whatever.
One of the major reasons the GNOME guys chose C was to make it as easy as possible to use other languages to write GNOME apps. It's pretty easy to write language bindings for a C API, and much harder for C++. With C, it's easy to know what symbols the linker will see when you export things from your API. With C++, the compiler does "name mangling" and it's much harder to know what the linker will see -- and different C++ compilers do name mangling in different, incompatible ways, so you might have to modify your bindings for each platform you support.
And anyway, I don't buy the whole "C can never do OO" idea. The language doesn't natively have OO idioms, but you can write OO code in C if you want to; it's just not as pretty.
C++: foo.bar(a, b, c)
C: FooBar(&foo, a, b, c)
C++: foo1 + foo2
C: FooAdd(&foo1, &foo2)
You can still have a nice, tidy FOO object, with nice tidy operations you can perform on it. That's what OO is about.
steveha
lf(1): it's like ls(1) but sorts filenames by extension, tersely
Anyway, I wish that the KDE people could get their act together on usability. As they
/always/ been more useable than GNOME,a nd still is. So they haven't published a fancy guideline manual with all kinds of rules everyone has to follow. Big deal! The apps work, and importantly "just work", intuitively and as expected. The interface is cleaner and more consistant than GNOME.
/like/ GNOME, and I preferred it to KDE up through GNOME 1.2. After that it seemed that they started removing features for no reason, or little reason. Topical example: Right click the Epiphany toolbar. Nothing! What I EXPECTED is to get some contextual options. Right click the Konq toolbar: Aha! A menu. Low and behold! It allows me to configure what's on the toolbar! That makes sense! AND SINCE NORMAL USERS WOULD NEVER HAVE CLICKED, IT IN NO WAY DEGRADES EASE OF USE TO HAVE THE OPTIONS THERE. Options hidden in plain quickly-accessed sight is GOOD.
/really/ pisses me off.
/seperate/ "MOVE to trash" and "DELETE" options.
clearly have a technical edge over Gnome this is
really sad they they doesn't do better in this area.
II keep hearing this complaint, but I just don't see it. KDE has
Reading the rest of your post, I think I see the problem: You and GNOME people seem to equate "Useable" with "Feature-starved". Just because GNOME's epiphany can't be configureed does NOT mean it's more useable! I don't know who first introduced this "No options is inherently superior" doctrine, but I don't like it, and it is just plain wrong.
I used to
This "Too many small icons" arguement doesn't hold water. Maybe there are for YOU, so right click and change them! For GNOME, they've decided being able to suit your environmnt to your needs is BAD, so they give me what is acceptable to the LOWEST common user skillset. That's fine! But since they've also decided that users shouldn't be given options, I CAN'T CHANGE IT!
I really prefer C to C++ for a lot of reasons. Some things about KDE annoy me. But GNOME
Functionality != hard to use! Get it right, people!
If the toolbars are crowded, the context menus are even worse. E.g. in the right menu button menu of the konquerer file manager you have both a "Move to trash" and a "Delete" item. Wouldn't it have bin better to just have a "Move to trash" item, and then configure the trash to perform the correct action this would have bin more in line with the desktop metaphor. On the your normal desktop you put things you don't want in the waste basket, and then you decide when to empty it.
No. On SOME people's desktops "trash, then delete" is the norm. Most people, however, when they want to delete something, they want it GONE, not hanging around and taking up disk space. Thus the very-clear, understandable, and
And, incidentally, being "in line with the desktop metaphor" is NOT a valid reason to configure a GUI one way or another. The desktop metaphor is merely a minor convenience, I practically guarantee that it is not how most people actually think of their computers. The technical people think differently because they know better, the nontechnical people don't think about it enough for it to make much difference whate metaphor s being used. If the goal is being easier to use, then the GUI should make things easier, not conform to a model which might, maybe, we HOPE, be easy to understand and relate to for some office workers.
The menu still have a dominating red cancel button. That button is probably the first thing the user sees when he drops a file over a folder, and the menu pops up. To me its somewhat unclear why this menu needs a cancel button in the first place, all other menus seam to be able to do without it. And second why does it have to be that eye catching. After all in most of the cases "Cancel" is not what the user is most likely to do.
The reason that the Cancel is in big and red is not that it is the most LIKELY thing the us
I want my Cowboyneal
I have been using the release candidate from http://kde-redhat.sourceforge.net/, on Fedora FC-1, since it has native mp3 support.
It is very fast.
I managed to crash Ktouch (Typing tutor program) once, but couldn't reproduce the crash. I haven't found other bugs.
Konqueror now seems to offer integrated spell checking when writing on forums such as slashdot, which is nice, since English is not my native language. I think A-spell is used, so many languages are availably.
The "kde-wallet" is a very nice, and seemingly secure way to store on-line passwords and forms.
All in all, I like it a lot.
I can't imagine that C++ is harder to learn for a C programmer than some OO-workaround.
...by "mimicking" the tried-and-true operating system design concepts of UNIX.
Its not as big of a prob with Gnome now like it was before, but I hate KThis or KThat app naming, or GThis or GThat. Ugh. MS doesn't call everything WinThis or WinThat, though Apple must call near every damn thing iThis or iThat. I just find it annoying and despite massive leaps forward I can't help but think we'll never really be taken seriously with these stupid freaking names. At least Gnome seems to be moving away from it... I don't mean to troll! I think this is a legitimate complaint. Naming aside, KDE 3.2 looks great. So there, see, no troll!
On FreeBSD Unix, I portupgrade or install from the ports. On Slackware Linux, I slackpkg.
:-)
KDE 3.2 is available at your local FreeBSD and Slackware Linux mirrors. (As always)
From the main site:
What is FedoraNEWS.ORG?
NOTICE 2004-02-05 11:00 AM
Sorry, we've been slashdotted. No new articles will be posted for next few days except "Security Alerts"
FedoraNEWS.ORG is a non-commercial, non-profit organization to serve Fedora Community with useful and helpful information. It is not sponsored by Red Hat but privately funded by Linux enthusiasts like you. The goal of FedoraNEWS.ORG is to create a public community news information site for Fedora Users.
This site is always a work in progress and if you have a good idea how we can improve our site for Fedora Users, please let us know.
I'm new to debian. Does this mean that debian packages for 3.2 aren't available yet, and I add the above to apt/sources.list if I want to check out 3.2? Which also means uninstalling openoffice/koffice, which may break (jre?)?
I should just wait for the unstable unexperimental package right?
And other than continually trying apt-get or synaptic from my normal sources, how best to find out when the unexperimental debs are available?
Patrick Volkerding doesn't remove Taiwan's flag on KDE.
You say "costing $3000* for every developer", it's 1550$
Enterprise + support comes to near as dammit $3000,
Let's test it with some random points:
Random? I think not... now who is telling lies.
Proof for City of Largo switching to (rather than evaluating) GNOME?
Largo has already dumped KDE. It never made a big effort except to run some trials... no links yet.
Or let's pick "Nat Friedman is currently in charge of desktop development at Novell/Ximian/SUSE" - http://dot.kde.org/1076022020/ lists recent SUSE press releases telling the opposite.
Nat Friedman is still in charge of desktop development. The ex-SUSE boss is running Novell Europe, with extra responsiblity for the desktop. the ex-SUSE is not a developer, nor is he pro-KDE particularly. All desktop development is under the control of Ximian. Quite how this invalidates the Friedman posting, or all the other evidence that there is no long-term future for KDE at Novell is a mystery.
The Kicker is REALLY REALLY buggy and slow for me, with it occassionally just freezing and I have to Alt-Tab to something else to get focusing to work properly again with it. It's driving me nuts enough to the point that I'm thinking of downgrading back to 3.1.x...
Yes, you can do OO in C... they've been doing it with XWindows for decades. That's not the point. I just think that wrapping up your objects into a nice OO layer makes UI development much easier. Of course the underpinnings are going to be in C. I just don't want to see it.
---- It puts the lotion on its skin or else it gets the hose again. It does this whenever it's told.
The FreeBSD team don't remove it. So, it seems it's a Red Hat-only issue. What about Fedora? No Taiwan's flag?
This isn't the whole story wrt. VC++.Net 2003 (phew!). It still accepts many non-standard constructs (its treatment of typename appears rather odd), allows various pieces of invalid syntax, has very aggressive name resolution (namespaces, what namespaces, it'll find something) and does some things that violate the std (allowing non-const refs to temporaries for instance). This leads to all sorts of pain when trying to port code originally developed with VC++ to other compilers. It's a lot better than it used to be however and the next one will likely be closer again.
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
You are sure everyone needs the Enterprise edition? By taking the most expensive product and obmitting the Professional version you're lying. Also the $1550 (or $2500 for Enterprise edition) includes one year of support and maintainance. So it's $2000 for two years support and maintainance for Professional Edition (or $3270 Enterprise) and not $3000 per annum as you say!
> Random? I think not... now who is telling lies.
I can expose more of your points if it interests anyone. Such as the stupid stuff that China has committed to deploy nearly 200 million GNOME desktops.
> Largo has already dumped KDE. It never made a big effort except to run some trials... no links yet.
So it's an unproven claim with the project manager telling the opposite on Newsforge.
> Nat Friedman is still in charge of desktop development.
Reference? Something better than an old Slashdot comment of him before SUSE aquisition?
> All desktop development is under the control of Ximian.
Someone then must have forgotten to tell the SUSE employees who're are still working on KDE. ;-)
I'm currently writing a wxWindows app under FreeBSD, but it compiles cleanly under MinGW (for Windows) as well. I haven't really had any problems up until now.
I'm curious to know what problems you had with it so that I can try to avoid them.
-- Joe
So, Gnome is written in C AND it is object oriented?
The Gnome developers coded objects/classes with C?
Thanks in advance for the info
Steve
If I'm not mistaken, neither the GPL or the QPL make any difference if you want to write software under a BSD license. In fact, there are modules in KDE which are BSD licensed.
No, you can't write for-profit software with Qt Free Edition (well, you can, as the GPL doesn't forbid that, but the moment you go distributing it, the receiving party has the option of giving it to anyone they want, so it's rather moot), but the GPL places no restrictions on using another license as long as the license doesn't place any restrictions on the software above and beyond the GPL.
Dogma: Dead (mostly because your Karma ran it over)
Right click the Konq toolbar: Aha! A menu. Low and behold! It allows me to configure what's on the toolbar! That makes sense! AND SINCE NORMAL USERS WOULD NEVER HAVE CLICKED, IT IN NO WAY DEGRADES EASE OF USE TO HAVE THE OPTIONS THERE. Options hidden in plain quickly-accessed sight is GOOD.
Ok. Lets say you're right about this.
This "Too many small icons" arguement doesn't hold water. Maybe there are for YOU, so right click and change them!.
And that's a good reason why it's good to think about what can be configured. What you say have this form:
1. Many options that are hard to access for normal users are good, because they make the advanced users happy.
2. If you don't like how the desktop works, configure it.
This seems to leave the normal users in the cold. Because, as you say, they don't know how to access the configs. That's a good reason why you should think about what you put like options, and most important, think about what you have as default.
Is there any truth to this?
Steve
The review really doesn't make justice to KDE 3.2.
;o) KDE 3.2 is a download away.
That said, probably no review could bring across how exactly KDE 3.2 feels. Screenshots mean nearly nothing. Textual descriptions mean very little. Only a hands-on triout will do.
The good news is: KDE 3.2 is free, and you all know that the best stuff in life is free
Sigged!
We've built? Bowie, I thought you only did some pictures and stuff like that?
Is now gimping a background enough to say you wrote an operating system?
Or is it because you tried to make Red Hat pay you for those backgrounds?
I can't imagine that C++ is harder to learn for a C programmer than some OO-workaround.
You obviously misunderstood. The parent was refering to the widespread phenomenon of language fanboy zealotry. To put it another way: C++ was harder to learn than a C-based kludge because C++ isn't C.
Two days ago I installed KDE 3.2 and decided to give it a try (in fact I turn irritated with Gnome opening 15 nautilus and 12 xemacs windows after login, saving the session will probably work some day as one can expect...). Since then, my main tool is http://bugs.kde.org where I report different bugs and annoyances.
But ... KDE made me to write down those bug reports, just because it gives so much promise that I would like to keep using it. After all, for the very first time, to use some truetype fonts on Linux I had to open some tool and do a few clicks - instead of guessing where to copy them, editing xfstt and XFree config files etc. And the idea that konsole can remember the working dirs is fascinating for the programmer...
You wouldn't know humor if walked up and bit you in the ass.
Heh, after much searching, I actually have a PS/2 keyboard without the Windows key.
I just think that wrapping up your objects into a nice OO layer makes UI development much easier.
So do that. www.gtkmm.org
Just because gnome is written in C, doesn't mean there aren't C++ wrappers for it.
Sorry, but your post makes no sense. If you were talking about QVWM, I'd agree, but KDE isn't QVWM. It strives for a lot more.
KDE takes the _accepted_ popularity and understandability of Windows, but sugar coats it and adds new features. Virtual desktops are the most prominent. It's not emulating Windows per se; it's providing a familiar environment with more usability goodies on top.
Again, your point is totally valid for QVWM (or perhaps FVWM 95), but not KDE.
This is not true either. If you distribute your software FOR MONEY, that is when you have to pay Troll Tech. You can write all the closed source applications you want, Troll Tech doesn't care. You can give them away, if you want. It is when you sell the app, open or closed, that you have to pay.
Come on people, let's think in terms of free beer here.
"I am a patient boy. I wait I wait I wait. My time is water down the drain..." Fugazi
Ya know, there's retarded, then there's that special kind of retarded. You are that special kind of retarded.
(I try not to feed the trolls these days, but the odor eminating from that one was overwhelming. Infact, I passed out at least 3 times before I managed to get to the last line, and hit Reply.)
Troll,
I've done a number of things besides Propaganda, all of which are free for guys like you to use, and enjoy. I'm glad you at least remember some of it. Considering it's been like 2 years since i've made any concerted effort to make more "pretty backgrounds", the fact you remember them makes me think you like them. Thats cool. You're welcome to use and enjoy them.
I have never written an operating system. By saying "We wrote an entire enterprise-class OS from scratch", i'm referring to the entire Linux movement, et al. From the kernel maintainers to the app writers, from the documentation guys to the guys who paint icons. Out of curiosity, where do you fit in, exactly? Or are you one of those people that just sponges off everyone? You know, the ones that contribute nothing of value in return?
As for your allegation that I tried to "make Red Hat pay me for my backgrounds"... (Heheheh, God, where do you guys come up with this stuff!?) I never asked Red Hat to pay me cent. The images were then, and are now, free...Free as in beer. How could I have charged them for something I was giving away for free? Or charge anyone else, for that matter?
I was happy enough knowing Red Hat had an interest in my work..Interestingly, I didn't even approach them about including my stuff in their distrib. They were the ones who approached me, back in May of '98, asking me if it was OK to include Volumes 1-6 in their next release. I was shocked they even heard of me. I was very honored, both then and now, to be included. Infact, I remember buying a bottle of champagne that night, and uncorking it on my balcony with a few friends to celebrate. It made me really happy to know that somebody felt my work was good enough to include, and that tons of people were going to use and enjoy my stuff.
Does that answer your questions?
Bowie J. Poag
Well, there are a couple of good reasons (and I *do* wish that KDE followed Windows a wee bit less closely, a la GNOME).
* First, Windows has become ubiquitous in the past ten years. Everyone knows Windows. That's how they expect computers to operate. This has produced a barrier to entry for anyone that chooses a different method.
* Second, the approach is pretty good. Remember that Microsoft themselves chose to use Apple's design. It isn't perfect, but there *have* been significant improvements made in the KDE projects (some degree of accelerator rebinding functionality provided to users, though less than GNOME provides, tearable panes, support for multiple viewports...)
* Third, if nothing else, this can be treated as a transitional system to get people onto a platform where new ideas *can* be implemented.
May we never see th
crap, I've got 4 in my UID making be a mere Slash-cardinal.
kashani
- Why is the ninja... so deadly?
Let's put it that way:
Each time I select/middle click in Windows and nothing happens, or move the pointer over a window and roll the wheel and another window scrolls, or when I middle-click on a link in IE and Bad Things happen, I curse Bill Gates. I much, much prefer X-based GUIs.
But that's me.
I guess you must be so much used to Windows' idiosyncraties that you don't notice them anymore.
I used GEM and the Workbench before I used Windows, and I never got used to it. To me, Gnome and KDE feel much more like what a GUI should be, but again, that's me and you've got a right to differ.
As good as Windows? I'd say they're better. But mostly, they're different.
Reminds me of when Gorbachev won it, after he violently put down a small uprising in Lithuania. Then, I think, Andrei Sakharov's widow returned his Nobel Peace Prize. It's already been cheapened to mean nothing.
Slashdot: Failed Car Analogies. Amateur Lawyering. Anecdote Battles.
When it comes to window programming, object-oriented is the way to go.
Man, I hear this a lot from MFC programmers. GNOME/GTK's lowest level API is not in C++. It is written in C. However, there are well-supported C++ bindings, which I have written code with and been happy with. This is particularly funny, since you're talking about MFC as being an example of what you want -- and the same thing is true of Win32 (C) and MFC (C++ sitting on top).
Not *only* that, but even the C-level code is object-oriented. It's not "half assed" object orientation either, as I see a lot of claims of. I have the ability to use either, and I'e chosen to use the C-based approach. Really, the only people I know of who yell and scream about the fundamental GNOME/GTK API are those who (a) program most of the time in Java and don't like using C and simply complain at the sight of it or (b) program most of the time in C++ (frequently ex-MFCers) and don't like using C and again complain at the sight of it. All this is *doubly* funny since there are a *ton* of language bindings. If you like a language, support is probably there in at least GTK. If you want to use Java to write your GNOME apps, if you really feel that you need a language that requires you to use OO interfaces (which C++ is *not*), then by all means, go ahead and do it.
Come to think of it, I don't believe I've used a procedural style GUI API since coming to UNIX. Actually, no, there's Tk. And I've used Xlib.
May we never see th
Kerry is so vague, canned, and partyline. He's taken special interest money. I wish more people would vote for Edwards.
as a conservative who is upset with his party (notice my sig), i find it rather funny that kerry's biggest appeal is his "electability". (war hero status aside, given clinton's war record, i'd say it's a non-issue, really) you are right. will it be too late for the democratic party to stop him. he will not appeal to other than the party faithful and a few particularly leftist states, like my california. sadly, the democrats threw out lieberman without so much as a "thank you". while i don't agree with him on many things, he would make a good president. the rush to dump dean didn't result in the best choice. edwards is still too young. and his two americas speech is somewhat disingenuous (as well as incorrect). but, he would pose a much bigger threat to bush than kerry does. good observation.
My problem? I was perfectly gruntled, until some numbnuts came by and dissed me.
It doesn't change the fact that you are lying about Qt... it is in a very different position to the Linux kernel. You do NOT have to pay to write apps that run on the Linux kernel, no matter what license you choose for it. This is not true of Qt -- and all the bullshit in the world won't change that fact.
This is not true either.
What's not true? You have to write closed-source apps that use Qt, or that you don't have to pay to do the same with the Linux kernel.
You my friend, are seriously ignorant or a fucking atrocious reader.
From their FAQ:
"Some parts, such as the gnome-vfs, and Bonobo wrappers are not yet mature."
Reading the rest of your post, I think I see the problem: You and GNOME people seem to equate "Useable" with "Feature-starved". Just because GNOME's epiphany can't be configureed does NOT mean it's more useable! I don't know who first introduced this "No options is inherently superior" doctrine, but I don't like it, and it is just plain wrong. I could not agree more. Feature starvation do NOT mean usability, just as little as many features do. The more features you add, the more you will have to care about usability issues. And KDE 3.2 doesn't make it. Configured correctly KDE is quite easy to use. But that doesn't make KDE usable as you should not have to configure it to make it easy to use. It should be configured that way by default. One example: KDE is configured to use single click mode by default. I have done usability studies on this, and so far I haven't found a single user new to KDE that is confortable with this. They tend to activate/open/view things by mistake. One could easily think that this is only because they are used to using windows or MacOS, but not so. Even users that only have had access to web based interfaces, where single click is the standard, have problems. Why? In the web interface they base their doings on a cognitive model based on navigation. While in a desktop oriented system like KDE they act like if they are handling objects on that desktop. They pick up objects and do something with them. If you use single click users do not figure out how to pick the object up. Still the new KDE 3.2 is better than previous versions, so they are moving in the right direction.
God is REAL! Unless explicitly declared INTEGER
Those last ones make goatse look like church! Some crazy things on this there internet.
Sig: I stole this sig.
I could not agree more. Feature starvation do NOT mean usability, just as little as many features do. The more features you add, the more you will have to care about usability issues. And KDE 3.2 doesn't make it. Configured correctly KDE is quite easy to use. But that doesn't make KDE usable as you should not have to configure it to make it easy to use. It should be configured that way by default.
I agree completely. I am not exactly pleased with KDEs defaults, but I am so happy about being able to change them that I try not to complain,
One example: KDE is configured to use single click mode by default. I have done usability studies on this, and so far I haven't found a single user new to KDE that is confortable with this. They tend to activate/open/view things by mistake. One could easily think that this is only because they are used to using windows or MacOS, but not so. Even users that only have had access to web based interfaces, where single click is the standard, have problems. Why? In the web interface they base their doings on a cognitive model based on navigation. While in a desktop oriented system like KDE they act like if they are handling objects on that desktop. They pick up objects and do something with them. If you use single click users do not figure out how to pick the object up.
Indeed. I've never done any studies, but I've generally found the same thing. This is one area in which KDE are just copying WindowsME for no reason. Very annoying... but again, I can change it, so I try not to complain.
I want my Cowboyneal
I'm all for sensible defaults, which I'll admit KDE does not have in any great abundance.
I am not for making the options hard for normal users to access. I said I like having options hidden in plain sight, meaning right at your finger tips if you bother to try.
It's perfectly possible to have a ton of options and at the same time not "overwhelm" the 'normal' user. The answer is good configuration dialog layout, and access to options in an intuitive way. (For example: Desktop properties brings up a background config app, which means that the user isn't confused by kcontrol layout. It in no way helps to have this app be unable to do things a reasonable set of users might want.)
Repeat this mantra: More features does not mean harder to use. Easier to use does not mean fewer features.
When you target the lowest common denominator you are likely to miss, (darn 'em, they just keep gettin' lower!) and while you're aiming everyone else will have moved on to something else.
I want my Cowboyneal
And all this from a guy who spells "Crumb" with a "K"
Interesting...
KDE (unlike GNOME) can be compiled without gcc/g++.
In fact its already been done on IBM's AIX operating system.
Click here for more info
Sunny Dubey
You don't have permission to access /krishnan/review/kde3.2/ on this server.
Apache/1.3.27 Server at fedoranews.org Port 80
1) C++ is *** unfathomably *** complex compared to C. Don't take this the wrong way; C++ is a great language. But consider that it's possible for a reasonably intelligent person to read the ISO C '99 Standard, and understand most of its implications in a fairly short time (even while holding most of its definitions in your head simultaneously), assuming some prior knowledge of C. With the ISO C++ 2003 Standard, you will die of old age before that happens. If you think this is an unfair assessment, try reading the 2003 ISO C++ standard and then get back to me.
C++ is very good at *hiding* complexity, which is one of the reasons why it can be so much more powerful. But it's arguable that with C, you have a better chance of really understanding your program. All of this leads us to:
2) Compiler support: C++ compiler writers really have their life's work cut out for them. The major vendors have mostly implemented the 2003 Standard. But there are many year's worth of bug fixes left to go before before we see the kind of industry-wide uniformity of behavior from vendor to vendor that we have with modern C compilers.
And remember: GNU C++ is implemented in C. Consider that, despite the youth of the Mono project, they have a fully functional C# compiler implemented in C#.
3) Heavy use of templates in large projects can cause an explosion of code size. This is important because the larger your code, the more likely/often your code will undergo a cache miss. It's a significant performance hit. Now, in the future, it's possible that compilers will be able to handle this problem more gracefully. But it's one reason why templates are out of the question for many embedded projects, for example. And templates count for one of the biggest reasons to use C++ over C.
Despite all of this, C++ really is a great language, and should be carefully considered when you choose how to implement your next program.
encapsulation
Static variables. In fact, I think static variables are a better way of handling private data within a 'class' than C++ where you include private data IN THE CLASS INTERFACE.
How McFucking stupid.
(btw don't get me wrong, I love C++ and would personally choose it for application development)
polymorphism
It can be faked by replacing a pointer in a data structure. This is actually more powerful than the polymorphism in C++ in some ways because the implementation of a method can be pluggable. In C++, it's only classes that are pluggable and even then you have to make sure they support the correct interface.
inheritence
Go read the GTK+ 1.x or 2.x API docs.
Correct. And it's actually a lot less tricky than it sounds.
Likewise with the original Quake source (and I imagine the later Quakes too).
As opposed to Trolltech?
and No, I don't mean that familiar=good, but if everyone knows windows, then everyone can easily learn KDE.
Don'ty misquote, I never said your backgrounds were pretty.
/., where everyone laughed at your sillyness, since you had already released it for free.
If you say "we wrote" it is only fair to assume you wrote some fucking piece of it. You didn't. You are not part of that we. Stop being a lamer.
As for the trying to make Red Hat buy your so called art, I still have a copy of the emails you sent. Do you?
Yes, Red Hat contacted you. And then you asked them to pay you for it. Ring a bell already? That was even posted here on
I see you are no longer a gimper, you are now a retired gimper.
Stop trying to pretend you did stuff, your contributions amount to nothing.
While I agree that we shouldn't be mimicking Windows, what do you mean by this:
"You'd think that a good GUI would be trivial."
When in fact, it's not. Very rarely are UI engineers actually have any background in human factors, when they should be experts. UI engineers are more often software engineers, and may or may not have any knowledge of human factors or user interface design.
I assume that you do know that by mimicking Windows, these projects can get more traction with existing Windows users ? I really don't think that you're suggestion that both the GNOME or KDE teams should focus entirely on building a new and non Windows-like (or Mac, for that matter) UI....are you ?
Anything programmed in C++ can be programmed in C. That being said, anything in C can be programmed in Assember...... and so on... or is this a fallacy?
I notice that distributions are picking up this release of KDE quicker than previous versions.
konstruct also worked ! Wow
C++ is C with structures for classes built into it.
How do you make objects and classes with C?
Did the gnome developers just make "class libraries" of struts?
Can you get all of the OO goodies with "homemade" C objects......polymorphism, data hiding etc etc?
I'm not being a jerk, I'm just curious
Steve
Yeah, I noticed the nature of the changes in both VC++ and g++. MS fixed a lot of things that were incorrectly flagged as syntax errors. The g++ changes were mostly disallowing improper constructs. I think MS was trying to make sure libraries for other compilers (particularly ones that made heavy use of templates) would work with VC++. Restrictive changes are mostly useful to make code work for other compilers as you said.
Well, C is a procedural language. No hiding that.
/* interface */
/* implementation */
/* interface */
/* implementation */
... but that would really be pushing the C/C++ hack ;)
However, it is possible to get most (all?) the benefits of an object oriented programming language using C constructs.
What you're looking at in GTK+ is a hierarchy of Abstract Data Types. Data/information hiding is achieved in C via static variables in source files.
(I noted in a post elsewhere that I feel this is better than C++, where "private" data is stored in a rather public manner. As a result, it's necessary to #include headers for data types that have NO relevance to the public interface of your class. Draw your own conclusions, but I think this sucks.)
Polymorphism and inheritance are both a little more awkward (generally involves pointers to functions) but possible.
Remember that C++ methods are (speaking at a high level) C functions with a "this" parameter explicitly passed in.
e.g.
C++:
class Something
{
public:
void set_name( const char* name );
private:
std::string name_;
};
void Something::set_name( const char* name ) {
this->name_ = name;
}
C:
typedef struct _Something Something;
void Something_set_name( Something* this, const char* name );
struct _Something
{
char* name_;
};
void Something_set_name( Something* this, const char* name ) {
this->name_ = strdup( name );
}
As you can see, in the above example there's just a little sugar in the C++ version.
The only major advantage I feel C++ has over C (other than automatic destructors for stack objects) is templates. Templates rock.
But then you could argue you could get around that using macros
typedef struct {
/* stuff */
/* private data */
/* public data */
/* stuff */
} BaseObject;
typedef struct {
BaseObject parent;
struct FooObjectPrivate *priv;
} FooObject;
in the src file that implements the FooObject class, define struct FooObjectPrivate and only that c file can access that data because it is the only code that knows the structure of that data... tada, data hiding (aka 'private').
because BaseObject is th first member of FooObject, you can cast a FooObject to a BaseObject... tada, inheritance.
it's really all quite simple.
of course, that example is just the basics... GObject actually has a lot more features, I suggest you read them...
I kinda liked Epiphany when I first installed it. I was like, "Hey, this is nice and clean and much quicker than Mozilla. I think I even like this look better than Gaelon... now let's see here, I'll just right click the toolbar and get rid of these unnecessary text labels. I'm so close I can almost taste the web." *click* *click* "Errrr... I'll just right click the toolbar and get rid of these unnecessary text labels." *click* *click* "WTF? Okay, I'll open up the preferences and... and... WTF?"
root@binarypaladin portage # emerge unmerge Epiphany
root@binarypaladin portage # emerge MozillaFirebird
On the other hand I can't count the number of times my dad has accidently "customized" something with a right click and a context menu and he's not a control freak about his desktop like I am. Honestly, I like Gnome. I just found myself using so many KDE apps (I love Konq as a browser and a file manager and an FTP client) and launching that stuff inside Gnome got to be a pain.
I think that both had their place and while *I* like a lot of options, I know that among many people I do work for, less is better. That's just one less thing they can screw up. I've said it before and I'll say it again... this is why choice is a really, really good thing.
What would really be nice (and I realize I'm replying by myself) is an initial setting for:
1. Gimp mode. (Secretaries, Parents of Geeks, Sales Reps)
2. Advanced Mode (People that aren't afraid to RTFM.)
"So you can't use the free version of QT to make proprietary software. Big deal. Get over it"
[Switching to "get over it" mode]
I'm now using GTK and GNOME, or did you have some other version of "get over it" in mind?
I completely agree with you on the object oriented point.
I started using wxWindows two years ago, and it made all my coding orders of magnitude easier. I don't know why people often omit it when considering toolkits, maybe because it isn't endorsed by a company and until recently it didn't even have its own Software Foundation. wxWindows has gotten a little publicity with the Borland switch to wxWindows, but who knows how long that'll last...
I would have used Qt, but I wanted a toolkit that I could use for commercial as well as open source apps, and only the linux version of Qt is GPL.
TerraIM - my pet AIM client project.
Mimicking. You mean "innovation". Open source is the source of all innovation. That's why it's still playing catch up.
Get it?
"Balderdash! C doesn't provide encapsulation, polymorphism, inheritence, ... "
Neither does assembly. Can we rant about that now?
Anyway OOP is a concept, independent of implimentation. I can have OOPs in any language I want, depending on how badly I want it.
I really dug the part where it said, " /krishnan/review/kde3.2/ on this server.
Forbidden
You don't have permission to access
Apache/1.3.27 Server at fedoranews.org Port 80
"
It's so true!
--
Internet Explorer (n): Another bug -- that is, a feature that can't be turned off -- in Windows.
http://www.arslinux.com/~jorge/Dual_Neuron.jpg Not my image hosting so can't guarantee it'll last.
My own simple and quick review (tired)
Ran Konstruct overnight last night, and so far (about 4 hours of testing every app I could find) it hasn't crashed. That's refreshing.
It also recognized my original Knoppix install and included the apps in the menus.
I haven't found "juk" in the menus yet.
An additional warning about cdrao (I'm running kernel 2.6.1) - in addition to the "needs ide-scsi" I got a "cdrao needs to be run as root" warning. CDs burn fine, otherwise.
More notes later, I'm going to bed, working the weekend.
SB
It's old. The more humans I meet, the more I like my cats. At least they are honest.
I'm a relative Linux newbie, but I've managed to build the Linux kernel before, managed to sort out various and sundry RPM dragon-eating-its-own-tail dependencies. *laugh* I didn't know what I was in for when I tried to build KDE3.2 on an ol' Red Hat 7.3 desktop.
Those in the know can imagine how many packages I needed to upgrade :) Probably on the order of 45, all told, and I think I was getting off lightly. zlib, freetype, fontconfig, libart, the gnu utilities, etc. etc. etc. Even that was fine :)
Not wanting to screw up the source code installation, I pulled down a copy of Konstruct to have it download and appropriately build things. I RTFM'd, I set it up, and watched it for the first little while. It was merrily getting files, so I went off to work.
When I came back home, all was not well. It couldn't find qInitImages_designercore(void) in the Qt 3.2 designer compilation. I couldn't resolve that one, even after I figured out the odd directory configuration (and it is odd - trying to locate the source for things libtools was running on). libdesignercore.a (I think that was the file) had the identifier in it, and Google didn't help me out. So I'll avoid the designer for now - I just want to get this compiled! So, out comes the // comment gun and bye bye to the extern reference in the two problem files.
Onward the compile went, just dandy (while I lazily web browsed and mahjongg'd in the background), and then spew out comes a list of errors in the (IIRC) librtld compile and screech goes the compilation. Ages of Googling later (how on earth would I do this without Google?!) I find out that Konstruct will inappropriately build the config.h file in that particular circumstance. My autoconf package had not been the right version for this, so off I upgrade again.
I got a clue from the discussion that it was the config.h and config.h.in that were problematic, so I look into trying to auto-configure things on my ownsome. Reading the man pages for autoheader, it seemed the right man for the job, so I autoheadered the kdetools directory, autoconf and ./configure (it takes a little longer than last time, so I think it's making progress :), then make clean && make. Doesn't make it five seconds before encountering "unparseable tokens" in the config.h file (which looks just utterly fine, on visual inspection).
I then came across something on the 'Net which claimed that automake Makefile.cvs was something which could cure cancer, stop SCO in its tracks, and help people out of makefile conundrums. Off I upgrade again :) - the Makefile.cvs won't have anything to do with my current automake.
(It is nice that Linux is pretty good about facilities to make sure that you can be warned about obsolete versions, but I'm startled at how quickly libraries and programs are deprecated.)
automake, true to its word, runs through and sorts out the mess. Takes a goodly long while to recompile things (I was most of the way through kdetools when the error happened in the first place), but I'm happy to be off and running!
Some time else in the middle of all this was another configuration error, complaining that KDE couldn't continue compiling because my 'current version of aRts was too old'. Given that aRts is included in the distribution, that seemed pretty weird, GnoRPM and I resolved just fine. What a truckload of avoidable warnings, though - g++ was having a hissyfit! I thought errors in template files in VisualAge/C++ were mysterious and threatening, but <yoda>no candle to this did they hold</yoda>.
Hours later, it coughs up its lungs again. What's it this time? A g++ internal floating point error (147). Aaaaaaaaaaaaaa! (I was sensible enough not to pull out my own hair
Binary geeks can count to 1,023 on their fingers
So [KDE] haven't published a fancy guideline manual with all kinds of rules everyone has to follow. Big deal!
And people wonder why linux has had such terrible trouble getting a foothold on the desktop. It seems ridiculous that linux folks are so worried about external threats like SCO preventing mainstream adoption when the people within their own community have done a far more excellent job of doing this.
II keep hearing this complaint, but I just don't see it. KDE has
More usable, huh? More consistent, huh? Then why for the past seven years did they use the word "Directory" as opposed to "Folder?" If KDE was really more usable than GNOME, then why did they have such trouble matching the metaphor with terminology? I won't bother going into a long-winded rant about this, since I've already done it in my pre-faq.
(To be fair, GNOME also made this ridiculously stupid design mistake for the first several years of existence. As the people who made that stupid decision back then are still the people running GNOME now, I have just as little respect for GNOME usability-wise as I have for KDE. I don't defend GNOME, I only attack stupidity.)
After that it seemed that they started removing features for no reason, or little reason.
The good thing GNOME did was realize it was superemely jammed with clutter in every part of the user interface, severely hurint the user experience and began a campaign of making things cleaner. Unfortunately, to somewhat corroborate the parent post, GNOME seemed to remove options without thinking about what they were really removing, sometimes removing something just because it was an option.
AND SINCE NORMAL USERS WOULD NEVER HAVE CLICKED, IT IN NO WAY DEGRADES EASE OF USE TO HAVE THE OPTIONS THERE. Options hidden in plain quickly-accessed sight is GOOD.
Anyone who has any background in either cognitive psychology or human computer interaction (two fields especially related to the science of making usable user interfaces) will tell you that the more things objects you put in front of the user, the longer it will take them to visually scan all those objects for the things they want. There is also something called Hicks' Law, which states that for every choice available, the time it takes for the user to make a choice will increase. So when you jam a menu with 6 zillion options, what you are in effect doing is making it more difficult for the user to find the things that they need and longer to make choices about things they want to select.
This "Too many small icons" arguement doesn't hold water. Maybe there are for YOU, so right click and change them! For GNOME, they've decided being able to suit your environmnt to your needs is BAD, so they give me what is acceptable to the LOWEST common user skillset.
Again, longer visual search times. In addition, Fitts' Law (another usability person metric), states that the time it takes to hit a visual target (i.e. something like a button) decreases with the size of the target. In other words, the larger the button, the easier it is to hit and the fast you can hit it. So really small buttons are really hard to hit fast (and accurately).
The technical people think differently because they know better, the nontechnical people don't think about it enough for it to make much difference whate metaphor s being used. If the goal is being easier to use, then the GUI should make things easier, not conform to a model which might,
And, incidentally, being "in line with the desktop metaphor" is NOT a valid reason to configure a GUI one way or another. The desktop metaphor is merely a minor convenience, I practically guarantee that it is not how most people actually think of their computers
Usability is all about creating one consiste
Ergonomica Auctorita Illico!
Repeat this mantra: More features does not mean harder to use. Easier to use does not mean fewer features.
I can think of three cases where it's bad with more features, and in which cases fewer features means easier to use.
1. Features that does something it would be better if another applicationd did: I have a filemanager. So I make it possible to use it to play tetris. This is way out of what you're supposed to do with the filemanager, so that's really making the program less usable.
2. Options added that no one wants to use anyway: I create a webbrowser. Then I add a feature for configure the name of the different files the cache is saved in. This is just a stupid option that no one wants, and because of that it makes your program harder to use.
3. Something is broken, so you add an option where you can choose between the different bad behaviours: You have a program which loads of big widgets that's placed in a row. Because of that, the default size of the program is 1400x300. You add an option for not displaying some of the widgets, which makes the program 600x300, but much harder to use. That's making the program hard to use, because the right thing to do would be to change the layout so the program is usable in a normal size from the beginning.
I'm sure gnome had a couple of all this cases, which they saw. That's why they choose to remove features. Now KDE may or may not have many of these problems. I haven't used it that much, but I think it's a good DE, and I'm sure I would like it if I tried it. But sometimes I get the feeling that people are defending many options just because it's fun with many options. The question should be, is the options in KDE (or Gnome for that matter) options that makes the desktop harder to use, and I've given three examples for how options can do that.
Wow, you're a particularly bitter troll..
Bitter about what, precisely, I don't have a clue.. I'm trying to understand why you could possibly be angry over something you were getting free of charge. It would be different if you were paying money for my stuff, but you're not. Not only are you complaining about something you can have for free, but you're complaining about the person who took the time to make it available to you for free!
"I still have a copy of the emails you sent. Do you? (...) Ring a bell already?"
No, because a) such an email doesn't exist, and b) If it "exists" then I sure as hell didn't write such a thing. Feel free to post it here, though. I'd be interested to see a fake email I supposedly wrote 6 years ago, that I sent to a single person at Red Hat. BTW, do a good job on it. I'd imagine a good forgery takes time......Speaking of which, why would you even claim to posess an email written by me 6 years ago? That's kind of..sick, in a way. Am I really that important to you?
As for my "contributions that amount to nothing", my contributions to Red Hat alone amount to about 5-10MB of every distrib they have released since 1999. But that's just Red Hat. Debian, Mandrake, Slackware, Gentoo, and most of the other major distribs also have my work in them. It's something i'm pretty proud of. It makes me feel good to know other people like my work enough to include it with theirs.
Again, i'm trying to understand why you have such a venomous hatred of me. All i've done are make some nice pictures for people. All the work i've done was done without expecting a penny to come of it. I've done nothing but offer you things for free, things that you and others continue to consume. So why all the anger? I'm a real person, just like you. It hurts my feelings in a way to get spit on and scoffed at, when all i've done is give things to people for free. It's not like it's being forced on you.
I'd actually like to answer whatever questions you might have; But lobbing bizzare accusations at me and expecting me to answer them isn't the way to do it.
Bowie J. Poag
For what it's worth - KDE has, by default, been a single-click interface since before KDE 1.0 was released.
If anybody was doing any copying, it was Microsoft. (Not that it was a terribly intuitive idea - I mean, come on...) I think it's worth pointing out, too, that double-click is more "intuitive" to people who are used to Windows simply because it's what they're used to, not because it's more intuitive. My grandmother doesn't understand why you should double-click some things and single-click others. Most people who haven't been trained on Windows are the same way. So "intuitive" is all in the eyes of the beholder.
But we did do it first, and we did it desktop-wide. RedHat, and maybe other distributions (I think Lindows too) have changed the default desktop setting to use double-click - this is something that distributors are free to do, of course. We make it easy for them to do so, as well.
Hi Smitty,
:), one of Pogo's features got his attention. It had merit to him. I don't know if he'll end up incorporating it or anything, but..I can't help but imagine how many other people's ideas would find their way into KDE or GNOME, if they were simply given a sandbox and a little encouragement. It would make KDE and GNOME that much better to have a skunk-works to draw from, thats all.
"I really don't think that you're suggestion that both the GNOME or KDE teams should focus entirely on building a new and non Windows-like (or Mac, for that matter) UI....are you ?"
Oh, certainly not. Whether I like it or not, Windows is "the standard" right now..and in order to attract users to the platform, it's important (for now, at least) to play by their rules, visually. It should look and feel like Windows. The days of suggesting that KDE or GNOME create a radical departure from "the standard" are long, long gone. Such a thing would actually be a bad move at this point. Very bad. So, to some degree, I can understand their reluctance to even examine new and different ideas.
However.
Considering the resources and mindshare that KDE and GNOME have developed over the past 8'ish years, I see no harm in at least providing an area for developers to experiment and find newer/better ways of doing stuff. Who knows, some of it might actually make it over the fence into the "main" development arena, if the idea were good enough.
Here's a good example. I had a really nice conversation with a guy from over in the KDE camp maybe a month ago. He was (at least, partially) responsible for Kicker. He had an interest in a project I was working on (Pogo) and expressed an interest in adopting some of Pogo's ideas into Kicker. My apparently crappy code aside
Cheers,
Bowie J. Poag
"(..Windows GUI became the way everyone should do things..)when they captured 90% of the desktop market."
That reason really doesn't hold water.
There was a time when 90% of the bicycle market was dominated by a design that had an enormous 10-foot-tall wheel in front, and a tiny little wheel in back, where the rider was perched a good 10 feet off the ground.. And hey, learning to ride one was as simple as watching some other guy get 10 feet up off the ground on a giant metal bike with a huge wheel in front.
Times change, designs improve.
In my mind, Windows GUI is the design equivalent of an 1890's-era bicycle; Not the standard we should be looking for, but a design to consider along the way.
Cheers,
Bowie J. Poag
Please read what the OP said. He was referring to a context menu pop-up which IS NOT VISIBLE, and therefore isn't a distraction to a normal user because (s)he never sees it.
Your post is correct as far as it goes but it misses the point the OP was saying about dumbing down the desktop FOR EVERYONE, versus leaving in the advanced features for the advanced users when those features are unobstrusive (like context menus which are only visible with a right-click).
As for the intelligence of the users, some end users are idiots, but that really isn't the issue, the issue is who do you aim your product for? The lowest common denominator (which ends up being those idiots), the middle ground, or the more demanding advanced users?
All of which just goes to show its impossible to design an interface that suits everyone. The one that appeals to the "majority" will be the dumbed-down, idiot-proofed version that irritates and annoys the advanced users. This just makes me glad I'm using an OS that lets me *choose* my interface, which BTW, is neither Gnome or KDE. I've tried both and prefer KDE because its so customizable, but unlike a lot of others apparently, I never found any of the KDE apps to be essential, or "killer", apps. So as long as I continue to use apps that are desktop agnostic (I didn't choose them because they were, but it turns out that all the apps I do use are generic X11, or just GTK/QT based), all the heavy plumbing that both these UIs bring to the table is just wasted on me.
Within a day, the tune has changed at the link.
/krishnan/review/kde3.2/ on this server.
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Apache/1.3.27 Server at fedoranews.org Port 80
If you recall, this was what nautilus originally had. Before the new GNOME philosophy took over, there were three 'difficulty' settings for users of different skills.
It was supposed to be desktop-wide, eventually. Too bad...
I want my Cowboyneal
None of thse three are the kind I object to losing. I have been annoyed many times by options which are in the categories you reference.
/basic/ features, for no good reason.
GNOME people are removing/hiding a lot of
I want my Cowboyneal
I don't recall simply because I started Gnome using Midnight Commander and by the time I'd started using it again... it was using the "new" Gnome philosophy.
I don't so much mind because I have a lot of choices and, to be honest, I really, really liked Xfce4 and would probably still use it if it's file manager wasn't pure ass.
Konq is the primary reason I use KDE. I really, really like it and it's a pain to use in other environments.
More usable, huh? More consistent, huh? Then why for the past seven years did they use the word "Directory" as opposed to "Folder?" If KDE was really more usable than GNOME, then why did they have such trouble matching the metaphor with terminology? I won't bother going into a long-winded rant about this, since I've already done it in my pre-faq.
/because/ it does not work. People don't think in the desktop metaphor.
/actual/ 'desktop' model in users heads, adhering to it does not inherently help. Discarding things which do not fit the model does not help.
There is no need to say "Folder" instead of "Directory" as long as you are consistent. As I will argue (again) below, the metaphor is useless.
More consistent: In KDE apps, most of the time, toolbars and menus are all the same. Editing toolbars and menus is all the same. Contents of standard menus (eg Help, Settings) is consistent. Interface layout is (from my experience) very consistent. I could go on.
I think consistency leads to usability. It is, perhaps, the primary component.
Usability is all about creating one consistent model that operates the same way in every single situation. I agree with the idea that a new way of doing things needs to be developed and that the desktop metaphor needs to be replaced, but if you do that, you better damn well toss out everything from that old desktop metaphor and completely throw out folders, the desktop, and all the other cruft while you're at it. As KDE and GNOME still use the desktop metaphor, it makes sense to toss out something that doesn't fit into that metaphor. The only thing worse than a really bad user interface is a really bad user interface with half-assed "improvements". If KDE and GNOME are going to have anything that resembles a desktop, then they damn well adhere completely and totally to the desktop metaphor.
Bunk. The so-called "desktop metaphor" is not in any way a consistent model. It sort've goes together and sort've makes sense in some situations. It provides no real value
And BTW, saying "Because they know better" sounds like your calling end users idiots. If you're going to do that, just be honest about it (and while you're at it, don't bother lobbying governments to put replace their windows machines with linux). Come out and call the end users dummies who can't use computers; don't try to hide the unix geek interior that we all know exists anyways.
But that is not what I'm saying. I, a technical user, don't think of my computer as a "desktop" with "files" and "folders" and trash cans and such. I know enough about my computer that I think in a different way, a way closer to its actual behavior. The non-technical users are not "stupid" as you claim I am saying, but non-technical. They don't think about the computer the way I do, because they don't know enough to do so. This is not a comment on their intelligence, just on how much about computers they have learned. They also do not think of their computer as a desktop, at least not really. If you called the "desktop" the "floor" and "folders" "buckets" and "files" "books" (or something) then most people would not have a problem, and would find it just as easy to understand as the desktop metaphor. They are not THINKING of their computers as "dsktops". They are using our 'easy' terminology outside of any metaphorical context. We may say that a menu is a "drawer" and they may use that word, but it's NOT because they asre thinking "Desks have drawers, this is my desk top, so my file smay be in my drawers." It is because of totally arbitrary terminology imposed by the likes of you and I, who are trying to make things simple. There is nothing inherently "desktopy" about the mental model average users really use.
Because there is no
I know exactly what you mean, though recently I've found other avenues for this frustration than Slashdot.
Your link seems broken.
I want my Cowboyneal