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Ars Technica: Deep Inside KDE 3.2
binner writes "Ars Technica features an article 'Deep inside the K Desktop Environment 3.2' written by Datschge and Henrique Pinto. After introducing KDE and the project's structure the authors present some new applications of KDE 3.2. After that they explain the key KDE technologies KParts, DCOP, KIO, Kiosk and KXMLGUI and give examples for code reusage and an overview of efforts to integrate non-KDE applications. For developers Umbrello, Cervisia and Valgrind with KCachegrind are introduced and of course KDevelop 3.0. An examination of licenses precedes the positive conclusion."
This series of articles I wrote with a friend might also be of interest.
:-)
It outlines some practical nicities that are a result of the technologies like KIO slaves mentioned in the Ars Technica piece, including:
Managing web sites (handling content without an FTP application, web gallery creation)
Extending Konqueror with view profiles (replace FTP/Samba applications with Konq, and browse Google easily)
Using KPrinter in any app
Enjoy
Kirst Kost
I just read up on it from Ars, and it certainly looks interesting.
I'm currently using Fluxbox, but at the moment I'm emerging kde...should take a good long time to compile everything...but I'm going to give it a run-through and kick the tires a bit.
If I don't like it, there's always 'emerge -C kde'
"Music is everybody's possession. It's only publishers who think that people own it." - John Lennon.
fan of gnome who always stayed away from kde and then evanutally dropped gnome in favor of fluxbox. I have to admit, that I tried the 3.2 release an I'm hooked. I will still run flux on machines that just can't hand;e KDE's needs but KDE has come a *very* long way. My suggestion to others now is to run kde if their machines are fast and flux if it is slow (like my old p3 500).
One of the nicer things about KDE is the plethora of language bindings.
There's another pointer to the Ruby bindings - and a place for feedback and such-like - here.
The Army reading list
Deep inside KDE sounds very TRONish. I was hoping for a detailed look at Master Control Program. Oh well, the article must have been posted by a NULL unit.
Are you Corn Fed?
The biggest thing for me is that KDE doesn't treat users like idiots. All the configuration options are out there if I want them, easily accessible via the menus. The GNOME people seem to have decided that ordinary users are too moronic to be allowed to configure the look and feel of their own desktops. That and all the gratuitous UI changes like exchanging the places of the OK and Cancel buttons.
Besides, with the theme set to plastik/plastig I get the same look and feel in gtk apps even when I do need to use them. At last, a consistent unix desktop.
I think it's quite obvious you missed the point of this article entirely. It refers to the nifty new features that KDE has to offer over all of the competition and it's giving you the reasons to run KDE over Gnome. I know it's tough reading all of those big words, but every now and then you should try it out.
The original generic sig.
"Deep Inside Katey Pt 3" had some of the hottest...oh, wait, I misheard. Never mind.
I used the unofficial debs from kde.org to upgrade from 3.1.4 to 3.2. Some of my favorite changes:
- Konqueror now has sane tabs - before they would have a scroll bar of sorts. I still sometimes instinctively keep only 3 or 4 tabs in Konqueror, while I'm used to several times that many in Mozilla.
- KDEwallet, once I get it properly set up, could prove quite useful for managing passwords.
- The ability to make one's taskbar transparent (I don't use this at the moment) and not the entire width of the screen (I do use this). Kicker as a whole is becoming more and more refined
- The debs I got have some nice icons, making me want to keep my taskbar bigger instead of ~Win2k sized
- I seem to notice a marginal speed increase. It's a nice trend that continues for recent KDE releases.
And now for the bad news. Some things that appear broken with my Debian setup, but I will wait to confirm with a Fedora-based install to determine if it's a packaging or KDE problem.
- One website that formerly rendered fine in Konqueror now doesn't use its pull down menus correctly. Probably a javascript issue that I haven't looked too closely at
- KMail has been a little flakey with one of my higher-traffic POP accounts, but this may not be KMails fault, just a coincidence.
- For whatever reason, my desktop occasionally gets switched to a Firefox virtual desktop I often keep open. Probably due to some javascript/focus thing with Firefox, but I hadn't noticed it before. Of course, somewhere along the line I upgraded Firefox, but I don't have the problem on a RH 8 system.
- I was really looking forward to Juk. Unfortunately, while it appears to work fine for mp3/ogg files, my install will simply not play FLACs until I try playing an OGG or mp3 first. Even then the application has crashed on me, and I stopped trying to use it and went back to xmms. I'm _really_ trying to be rid of xmms (and use something semi-full screen, preferably qt based). noatun has also been somewhat unstable for me, but that's true of every version (I think it was a problem with one of the "skins" this time). I haven't spent enough time with these to really track things down, so YMMV.
For me, the tabs in konqueror alone were worth the upgrade. The problems I listed above may very well be other applications or the packages, and none are showstoppers. After I get my new desktop set up (still haven't finalized a distro, could be Debian, Fedora, or Gentoo), I hope to be able to report any reproducible bugs.
"The universe seems neither benign nor hostile, merely indifferent." --Carl Sagan
Hmmm. Seems your right. A hexdump of the file header hints at its history:
Wow, that's a nice copy/paste from KDE Dot News...
Anyways, a really nice article. It's absolutely refreshing after the thousand and one "reviews" of KDE we've seen lately ("oh, look that ugly pixel in the right bottom corner"). We need more of these technically-targetted reviews.
Cause not everyone likes Gnome. Choice is the key.
I'm wondering if maybe kde might be or might become the killer app for Linux? I know that anyone who happens to glance at my 3.2 desktop always asks, "Wow, what's that?". It's no longer, "Hey is that a mac?" or "How did you get XP to look like that?". I think KDE has something going that no other desktop has. It has features that are all it's own, that aren't simply attempts at copying features of other desktops.
>>> For commercial development of closed source software, the licensing fees for Trolltech are generally accepted and favored among KDE developers since this ensures support for KDE/Qt in both ways: either someone contributes code to the open source community, or he pays the developers of Qt, both which directly benefit KDE in the end.
The problem with the closed source software fees is that they are outrageous. Shareware developers need not apply, which happen to make the Windows platform what it is today. Shareware developers should not be underestimated in their importance.
To get a license for both Windows and Linux for QT you would have to pay 2500 USD minimum. Gee for that I can get a universal subscript to MSDN, which gives me an IDE, OS, Office, Windows, Windows Server, etc,etc. And what do I get from Trolltech? And SDK! Gee, yippee...
My point is that shareware developers are not against paying money. Contrary they would pay money, but reasonable amounts!
"You can't make a race horse of a pig"
"No," said Samuel, "but you can make very fast pig"
As a long time Gnome user, and as someone who will go on record as disliking Trolltech and their business model, I must say I am extremely impressed with KDE 3.2. Whilst I still think there is some tidying to go WRT options dialog boxes, this release strikes me as a massive leap forward. The new features and the improvements to Konqueror and the Kicker and so forth are really impressive. So much so, for the first time ever I spent the day working in KDE instead of Gnome and actually enjoyed it, rather than being constantly frustrated by inconsistencies and the general looks of the desktop.
Plastik is the first theme I've seen that makes KDE really start to look like a professional desktop rather than a mish-mash of poorly concieved applications. The underlying framework (KParts, kioslaves) and QT have always been superior to Gnome's, that much I'll admit. I still think it's a shame that QT is licensed under the GPL rather than a BSD-style license, but I guess I'll live.
I might even switch permanently if KDE 3.3 brings as many improvements.
Sense 3.1 a lot of applications have been ported to use the KConfig_XT system (more will be ported before 3.3). One of the great features of this is that if you go into an applications settings it only stores those settings that you actually change. This way your home directory doesn't get filled with a zillion 1K files that are nothing more then the default values because you happen to look at the settings one day. And if you change the settings back to default it will even remove the file! Also you will notice that the configure dialogs (that use KConfig_XT) look and feel the same. :)
.netscape and .netscape6 directories in every users home directory that happens to run it?
-Benjamin Meyer
P.S. Along the same topic why the &%$* does Open Office make a
Do you changes clothes while making the "chee-chee-cha-cha-choh" transformation sound?
Is it me, or are there way too many links in that article. Do we really need seperate links to the source code download, binaries download, release notes and system requirements pages?
If someone has done a study on the most effective text to link ratio, I'm sure they'd find that this Ars article is about 10x higher.
Expect KDE 3.2.1 to be released in two weeks, the changelog is still incomplete but growing till then.
I switched from blackbox to KDE 3.1.4 and ugh, talk about visual clutter. after tinkering about with it for a while I made my desktop actually usable, but it took far too long.
ok, I can understand the need for AA-fonts, but just what exactly are those shaded AND animated menus for? what's the point of the applet that just has a fish going across the screen? a clock, cpu display, network monitor, date display, and timezone applet? why is this all on by default? I use like 1% of kde's features and now it's pretty usable, but you need to know how to customize kde, and many newbies don't.
I can definately see where the misunderstanding that KDE is slow and bloated comes from, a shame that it's for such a trivial thing..
Number 10 convinced me! Yiiiii-haaa
Does anyone know when Debian Unstable will include KDE 3.2 packages? I know there are unofficial packages but I want to know when I can get the offical ones straight from debian!
This post has been brought to you by the Chairman of the Neo Trolling Group
The GNOME changes have nothing to do with assuming users are idiots. They have to do with cleanliness. I'm a developer, and I understand what just about any GUI option you throw at me does, or am quite capable of figuring it out. That doesn't mean I want to wade thru page after page after page of options which have no relation to what I want to do to find the one option I'm looking for.
:)
The GNOME changes are not dumbed down, they're cleaner. Advanced users are still quite capable of changing a plethora of options, using advanced methods. Only the very commonly changed options are placed in the menues and config panels, which makes it dead easy for both novices *and* experienced users to tweak the common things.
So far as the gatuitious UI changes, there are clear advantages to the way GNOME has chosen to do things. The dialog button order is a favorite thing of people who wish to bash GNOME, and thus serve as an excellent example. The new button order is *easier* on people both physically and mentally. (location of button wrt mouse movements, location wrt eye movements, etc.)
Additionally, there are no "OK" buttons. If you find one, it's a bug. Which is great. If you see a dialog, what the hell does "OK" mean? You have to read the whole dialog. And deal with the fact that in some cases, "OK" is the safe option, while in others it's the dangerous option. Different apps would pop up dialogs with different OK/Cancel meanings for the same dialog action. (like quit without saving - does OK mean "OK, Save" or "OK, Quit" ?) GNOME solves the problem by mandating that you don't use OK, but put the actual action as the button label. "Save" or "Quit". Much, much harder to accidently click OK when you meant Cancel because the meanings for two apps are different.
Granted, the last bit can be done even with the Windows/KDE button order (i.e. [Save] [Cancel] vs [Cancel] [Save]), which is something I really wish both Windows/KDE would do. The GNOME/Mac ordering however makes for consistent button location, however, since the "positive" (most commonly used) button is always in the same location in the dialog, which (as mentioned above) is both easier and more efficient physically and mentally, for both novice and experienced users. KDE having the ability to change button orders (as I've been told it does) is definitely cool; it would be great if they defaulted to the more human-friendly GNOME/Mac order, and let users who refused to learn switch back to the classic order.
Lots of users and developers think the GNOME/Mac button order is "weird" because they're used to the Windows' way, but that kind of thinking doesn't ever foster improvements. Thankfully, GNOME, OS X, KDE, and most other modern desktops are willing to break the mold and do things differently, even at the risk of "confusing" users, for the sake of moving the GUI experience forward, and not keeping us all locked into Microsoft's (and others') design mistakes made a decade or more ago.
I don't claim that GNOME has things perfect. Far from it. Simply explaining the reasoning behind certain 'controversial' changes. Hopefully useful.
Oh you mean instead of new features like the wallet, which saves passwords for websites and kopete, providing the same functionality of Mozilla? Or perhaps you mean instead of new features like Kontact, which has your mail, addressbook, calendar and user-set rdf news feeds all in one place, and opens so fast you don't have time to view the splashscreen? Perhaps its just me, but I am quite pleased with new features, not to mention the speed.
Wouldn't that be Master Kontrol Program????
One of the best and most unappreciated features of KDE is it's inherit troll value.
I'm sorry to post such a blatantly inflammatory gripe, and please don't reply to it in kind. Just be aware that the whole KDE vs. Gnome conversation is quickly degrading to the same sort of drivel that existed in the vi vs. emacs, gui vs. cli, X vs. Y debates.
Both KDE and Gnome are reasonably good programming environments (meaning I can program in both without requiring corrective surgery or extreme pain) and they both do a good job of managing, unifying, homogenizing, and (whatever) of the desktop.
If they come from two licensing lineages, so be it. I'm not worried about the environment / license you are going to choose, I'm going to choose the one I feel most comfortable with and has licensing (at cost or otherwise) that allows me to use it as I need. I'll assume you will do the same.
Less "better than Gnome!" or "worse than Gnome!" and more "it's really great that it has cleaned up feature X" please.
I apologize for such a rant, thank you for putting up with it.
There are quite a few programs that are officially not part of KDE but are excellent KDE based programs nevertheless. For example KPlayer is a superb mplayer based media player I use on a daily basis, and I heard good things about Kaffeine as well (but that one is xine based).
Yes, the KDE developers really should concentrate on creating a plain, steril interface that looks like IceWM, Blackbox, Sawfish, and every other WM out there. Because everyone knows attrative interfaces are "useless" and are impeding Linux's growth into the desktop market.
where the comment ends and sig begins
I'm with you, I love the underlying technologies of KDE. But I dislike the desktop implementations of them.
I always end up going back to Gnome because the interface is cleaner and more elegant. 2.6 is due out in March. I just run Gnome and run KDE apps inside Gnome when I need to. If I had to make a poor analogy, I would compare KDE to Windows and Gnome to MacOS--one has the wider support for technologies and applications, but the other actually feels like a GUI should.
I find it interesting that Mandrake that is supposed to be one of the major players that supports KDE doesn't have a package there. Nor can I find it in PLF's (Penguin Liberation Front) packages.
Anyone know what's up with this?
You are not entitled to your opinion. You are entitled to your informed opinion. -- Harlan Ellison
I think you're getting KDE mixed up with XPde.
KDE - rad kool 1992 Acura Integra with huge wing, go-fast stripes, bumblebee muffler, NOS, tinted windows, butt-jiggling subwoofer
Gnome - 1999 beige Toyota Camry sedan
(*I drive a Camry and I use Gnome)
This installment in the series is NOT as good as the last "Deep Inside" volume I checked out.
--
"Outlook not so good." That magic 8-ball knows everything! I'll ask about Exchange Server next.
"opens so fast you don't have time to view the splashscreen"....
Isn't the fact there's a splashscreen on something as simple as a contacts accessory a bit of a problem? You don't see your average calcultor or text editor equipped with splash screens, do you? All I'm saying is that it sounds a bit immature.
...I've found that most of the smaller tools, that are typically shareware in Windows, is GPL'd in Linux anyway.
At least when it comes to hobby projects that grew into a "shareware" size project, it's very convienient to grab some GPL code here and there - and then you don't have much choice but to GPL it all, if you want others to use and enjoy it.
Shareware makes Windows what it is today? Huh? If I look at my programs they're usually either a) Free (as in beer, not speech) or b) Full-blown commercial. What's shareware? Mirc and a few other, not much.
Unless you count those that are "trial" or "evaluation" versions, but they are typically what I'd consider full-blown commercial, stuff like e.g. Paint Shop Pro doesn't strike me as standard "shareware". That'd be more like Mastersplitter or some such tool someone whipped up on a slow day.
If anything, it is the lack of shareware that makes Linux what it is. Somewhere around there's this tool that'll do what you want, or reasonably close, and it's free. And you can tinker with it until it *does* what you want.
What I really miss on Linux is the juggernaughts... when you *know* GIMP etc. just won't cut it, but there is no real powertool available, no matter what you're willing to pay.
In addition, you can take the "the market knows best" position. Trolltech is a business, trying to maximize profits. Issuing shareware licences would cost them basicly nothing. Since any company would want free profit, why aren't they offering one? Either Trolltech is irrational, or there simply is no interest, no volume.
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
imo the KDE people should take a step back and see what they're doing. all those pretty menus and shiny lights and a multitude of buttons and applets. neat, but useless. instead of new features (which KDE has enough already) they should focus more on the interface and how to make it more efficient.
:-)
If you were to read the article, and read the press announcements that came with KDE 3.2, and indeed try KDE 3.2, you'd find that they have done just that, as well as provide interesting new features. For example:
- KWallet, a new feature but one that makes using passwords and secure form data anywhere in the system much more efficient
- Cleaning up of lots of right click menus
- Cleaning up and improving kmenu
- Improving tabs in Konqueror
- A new universal side bar, which apparently is a lot more efficient for some people
- Even better integration of existing KDE technologies like klipper and kio_slaves into many KDE applications
The list goes on and on, but mostly they are small changes so you either have to use it to notice, or read through CVS changelogs. Next time I suggest you check before making loud statements like that
I'm a Gnome user, but I decided to give KDE 3.1.5 a try about a month ago. I wanted to like it, but I felt the interface was too ornate. I eventually gave up without giving KDE a truly earnest go of it, but I will probably give 3.2 a try on another box. The main reason I gave up was because I had to repeatedly minimize and maximize Konqueror to get the main scroll bar on the right to reappear. It would disappear whenever I opened a new page. Still, I was impressed with Konqueror's quickness.
In a nutshell, I like Gnome because of its simple interface. I use the default theme in 2.4.2.
The splashscreen is unnecessary. Splashscreens exist for apps that take time to load, providing feedback to the user that the app is loading. Kontact is not in that category of app.
false. (unless they edited this too) the power plug in is on the right side if you are looking at towards the LCD screen.
Trust me, I do this professionally, they probably did edit it. If it looks better to mirror an image so the computer dude is on the left side rather than the right, we WILL mirror the image.
Shockingly enough, ad photos of telephone operators usually have on unplugged headsets, and I think they are still using glue instead of milk on the front of breakfast cereal boxes.
With all the big talk about QT being GPL if you right GPL software it really isn't as free as it should be. You can not write GPL QT software for Windows! There is not GPL versionf of QT for the latest version of Windows.
The other problem has to do with commercial software. The QT commercial product is pretty expensive. If Linux takes off on the desktop and KDE becomes the standard then every commerical developer will have to pay the Troll toll.
KDE is a good desktop but I would really like to see it liberated from QT.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
What's next?
GNOME - Pre-teen midgets gone wild XXX?
Sorry, *tired*.
Evolution has a splash screen. One with loading icons! Kontact is an aplication that compares to Evolution in features. So, if you don't know what you're saying, why bother saying it? (Also, as a side note, Kontact with all it's Kparts is a lot less in source code numbers than Evolution - just a short comparison between KDE and Gnome frameworks - remember, less code means less bugs)
I'll do the stupid thing first and then you shy people follow...
Steve
Kontact is not a contacts accessory, it's functionally similar to Outlook and Evolution. it includes email, calendaring, contact management (inc LDAP support), RSS, news and a rather nice plugin system for extensibility.
(one might think learning about one speaks of FIRST before making public statements is a good idea, no?)
Evolution provides an e-mail client. It needs to handle my fairly massive collection of mailboxes. I know what I'm talking about... They compare in features about as well as you can compare a moped to a chopper.
4 years ago: "Bahh, KDE is too much like Windows, it sucks, real men use Gnome because it can use all my 3 different windowmanagers!"
Now: "Bahh, KDE isn't enough like Windows, it sucks, it doesn't even have a registry-knockoff, you should use Gnome because it's even more dumbed down than Windows XP!"
It doesn't matter what KDE does, there will be always the KDE-haters who will hate it by heart.
Also the anti-KDE retoric seems to depend more on Gnome than on KDE itself, it changed by 180 degrees in the last years.
Evolution provides an e-mail client.
So does Kontact, you fool.
I know what I'm talking about.
You clearly don't.
I must say I was 100% gnome forever... mostly because it just "looked and felt" better. I found myself switching to KDE when I reformatted (to get rid of windows for one and for all, not because I had to) since 3.2 was around the corner. And although I agree that integration is excellent, quality is amazing, and the "look&feel" has come a lon way, especially with plastik imho, the feel still isn't quite Gnome-ish (or Mac-ish, which is how I perceive Gnome). Also it was still a little bloated/slow on my pretty nice laptop (Centrino 1.6Ghz). It uses massive amounts of ram even when idle, applications take a few seconds to pop up. Also, Konqueror ain't perfect, and it ain't that incredibly fast either... Also the Panel is god-awful. It's not so ugly itself anymore, but the dockapps are still icky. Try the weather monitor.
So over the weekend I said "what the hell", trashed KDE completely, and installed Gnome 2.5.5. And although it's buggy as all hell (they're transitioning to gtk 2.4 so mass breakage) it just "feels" better. The only real killer app that I can see from kde is K3B, which is a fantastic piece of software. I disagree with someone above that kopete works better than gaim. I guess it depends what IM program you were used to before.
But in the end, I still *love* the amount of choice I had. While I was switching desktops, I was running kahakai and openbox. My friends tried to use my computer and were like "how do you start that desktop thingy?" and I was like "this is my desktop thingy!" And of course they'll be more confused when my desktop looks unmistakably different...
Nautilus is alot nicer in 2.5.x btw... Konqueror-style speed and previews, and MacOS finder-style (opens a new window for each folder, you can disable this though, i thought i would hate it but it's pretty nice once you get used to it).
In the end, my advice is just to Enjoy Linux (TM)
War is peace!
Ignorance is strength!
Kontact makes no bones about using another component, Kmail, for the e-mail ... but forget this, I said what I said, and stand by it. I see even LESS of a reason to use splash screens in this sort of structure, as there should be little or no wait for the framework and basic interface to load first, with status of components such as KMail (loading up and sorting however many gigs of mail one might have on their machine) displayed in a message bar of some sort.
atleast they got rid of noatun or whatever that crap that KDE media player was. Good god! was it awful. :)
You dont know the pain of being a kde user and having to run XMMS!
oh well i use itunes on OSX now
The war with islam is a war on the beast
The war on terror is a war for peace
No, Kmail is a component used by Kontact. I hate analogies, but saying Internet Expoler supports SWF is completely different than saying you can view SWFs in Internet Explorer by installing the Flash Player plugin.
If KDE guys want to brag about the fast loading screen in Kontact, fine. Just don't go comparing it to a loading screen used by a production-use e-mail client that needs to prep tons of mail prior to loading. Then again, I'm not even sure how much a loaded-down Kmail would obliterate the pro-kontact arguments.
How long till they get shut down by Microsoft then, huh?
About installation ease of use, I guess.
I've read a lot about KDE and KOffice, enough to try and get it to work on my little Cube (mac). For a couple of weeks I've tried a number of approaches.
- First, install Yellowdog on my main machine. No Go, unless they'll get the Boot from Firewire Disk problem resolved. I'm not convinced I have the skills to install this on my main computer on the main hard-drive.
- Next: installing the OS X "native" alpha, which indeed installed nicely but managed to do exactly nothing.
- Finally I've tried the X11/fink route which was very entertaining (if you're into that kind of mind-numbing fun) but in the end - despite following lots of advice I didn't really get from faq/help/manuals/fora, it managed to do just the same: nothing.
Now why would I share this with a bunch of geeks who can do this with their eyes closed?
Not to be humiliated by you, I'm already quite used to "you're stoopid, zat's ze problem" comments.
But to make you aware that a no-nonsense/no command line/no "first install this, then that, then go through the manuals, then ask help" installer should be highest priority in every project that tries to bridge the gap between superhuman users and regular users.
Of course I'm stupid. But I'm also quite adept on my own platform, I've been using it for the last 20 years (god, I'm old).
Let's wrap this up and tell you what I'm now considering, and please remember that I'm not a regular patient. I'm one of those people who still wants to use something even after being told he's actually too stupid to even install it. The normal reaction - I think - would be to feel better about ones own OS and think less of the one that doesn't want to be friends with you.
My next options are:
- waiting a couple of months until I can safely install Yellowdog on a Tangerine iBook I still have here, but which is still needed as backup machine for me and my wife in case our computers blow up.
- waiting a couple of months until the "native" darwin version of KOffice is out. I think they take installation ease of use very seriously. Although ultimately useless, the installation process was painless. That at least is pleasantly reassuring.
What I'm not going to do: tinker and tinker until I get KOffice to work under the X11/Fink setup. It's just too much of a hassle. There's no joy, and in the end I already have everything I really *need* to enjoy my computer. Curiosity can kill some other cat.
Rant over, have a nice day!
I think, therefore I am...I think.
i've been using kde3.2 for a while...
..
Today this rather wonderful dialog popped up just after I clicked to send an email in Kmail...
Attachments?
Often its the little things that really make the difference.
nick
Electronic Music Made Using Linux http://soundcloud.com/polyp
Well not entirely, but enough of one that it wont make such a difference in which one someone chooses. KDE has shown that it does do a supurb job with its applications. There are many window managers, but not all are actively maintained. It is nice to see KDE / GNOME being maintained and rather than the two arguing over which should be 'the' desktop, realizing that the whole purpose of the desktop is for the end user experience, and that working togeather in these ways it makes it a better experience for the end user. You will have to have lots of libraies on your system though, but I'd imagine that most distros will take care of this for their users.
Only 'flamers' flame!
Does slashdot hate my posts?
yes, it uses it as a component, but that doesn't magically make the overhead go away. when i open contact it opens to kmail, and it still opens extremely fast. using components is a clever, clever way to speed up start up time for an app that is functionally equivalant to slower monolithic apps while ALSO giving the user the option to use each component separately.
as for the need for a splash screen, the end user does not perceive "components" they perceive an entire app. if the app is set to open up to your mail (because that's what you last had open) then it had better have whatever is necessary provide user feedback while it loads the mail support (in this case a component), which means loading all your email.
I would love to see some of the lower-level KDE features made available to gnome through some kind of thunk layer. For example, blending gnome-vfs modules into the KIO subsystem, or blending KIO slaves into the Gnome VFS subsystem would be very very useful to me.
Theming integration is also cool. Right now there is a gtk theme that uses the current KDE theme engine to draw the widgets. I would love to see a QT theme that uses the current GTK engine to draw widgets. Then a program like KDevelop might actually fit into my desktop.
Another pipe dream that is slowly being worked on is a way to call methods on objects from the Gnome framework to the KDE framework and vice versa.
awoieawe gggwoienxcxvc,mbrewitr
it doesn't obliterate it, because it takes it into consideration, at least for me where kontact starts up with kmail as its first loaded component ... kmail starts up quite fast, and the fact that Kontact has found a good way to provide a quick loading interface (on-demand loaded components) for a full featured groupware app doesn't lessen the argument, it underlines it.
No, Kmail is a component used by Kontact.
That's irrelevent to the discussion. Let's review:
afd8856: Kontact is an aplication that compares to Evolution in features.
You: Evolution provides an e-mail client... They compare in features about as well as you can compare a moped to a chopper.
Me: So does Kontact, you fool.
Now whether Kontact does this by loading a component, or whether it's hardcoded to do it is irrelevent. It still provides the same features to the user.
Just don't go comparing it to a loading screen used by a production-use e-mail client that needs to prep tons of mail prior to loading.
You are insinuating that Evolution users are the only ones with "tons of mail" and that use it in a production environment, just so you'll have a comeback? That's pretty pathetic. Just admit you don't know what you are talking about or ignore the replies, it's a lot less embarrassing.
The issue is not that the free software community dislikes Trolltech. Trolltech has shown itself to be well meaning thus far. I think we all welcome their contribution. But what will happen to Qt when Trolltech is acquired, or liquidated. The GPL insures that vital source code, like Qt, is not tethered to the fortunes of its creator.
an ill wind that blows no good
... whether GNOME has it right or not is not the issue. It is quite annoying to keep remembering to click the LEFT button instead of the right and vice-versa simply because it is comfy the other way round. And these dumb-ass icons take up my coveted personal space.
Or, as Ken would gently put it:
"Bullshit! Utter bullshit!"
xander
The tabs in the new Konqueror are indeed much better than before, but still not as nice as the tabs in Mozilla.
As with many KDE widgets (toolbars, the file list browser in konqueror), the tabs seem to flash a lot before settling down. Maybe it's my slow PII-233 processor, though it seems like KDE3.2 finally got the app load time down to a reasonable level even on this box, so I think the processor's not the problem.
I think the problem with the Konqui tabs is that they are sized based on their label data, but the label data isn't available until the page actually gets loaded. They then do a sort of cute animation to expand or shrink the tab as necessary, but in the meantime the thing gets painted umpteen times.
Mozilla just seems to use equal-sized tabs, all shrunken as needed to get them all to fit. In a sense this is less elegant, but it works beautifully. No flashing, plus you get a nice animated 'downloading' indicator on each incomplete tab.
I've always been a KDE fan, but I took a look at a recent GNOME release (2.6? MDK10.0 beta), and GNOME seems to have no redraw issues. I don't particularly like the way GNOME looks, but it still seems more 'solid' on my slow processor due to this level of attention to detail.
Probably, widget redraw problems are in TrollTech's court. But with kde3.2 (and the beautiful Plastik theme) solving most of kde's aesthetic issues, it'd be nice if somebody put the screws to TT about widget redraws. (don't lots of kde programmers work for TT?).
Posted from my Android phone. Oh, I can change this? There, that's better...
Sounds like a porn fick...
Jesus, that was a serious fucking question. Konqueror has always been crash happy in my experience, I was wondering if they had improved that.
dumbass mods.
Well, I'm glad to see that I'm a troll. What exactly do you have to say before people understand that you
1. Like KDE.
2. Use KDE.
3. Think GNOME looks like a lame Mac0S/7 clone.
4. Think kuickshow is as close to picture-album browsing nirvana as you can get (though I'd like a simple 'crop' tool built in).
And...
5. Still think the QT widgets tend to redraw a lot.
No, I'm not trolling. Yes, I have a (somewhat) slow, old processor, but enough memory that my KDE desktop works reasonably well.
And, damn it, Konqueror redraws the file directory window 50000 times while it's building thumbnails even after all the visible thumbnails are there, while (believe it or not) Nautilus doesn't seem to do this.
And yes, the Konqueror toolbars and tabs on my MDK10.0 beta don't redraw as many times as they used to under KDE3.1, but they still do redraw enough to be jarring.
Would that alone make me switch from KDE to GNOME? Not on your life. Does it make me wish KDE/QT were better? Yep.
Posted from my Android phone. Oh, I can change this? There, that's better...
Jesus, that was a serious fucking question
And you asked it like a serious fucking jackass. Do you want your Money back?
I'll answer your question, though. Konqueror isn't perfect, but neither is the rest of KDE. I use Debian/KDE exclusively, and while I love the new developments in 3.2, I've noticed that there are almost as many bugs in the "stable" release as there were when I was tracking CVS HEAD. I'm not sure why that is. I've talked about it with the Debian maintainers for KDE quite a bit, and some of them think that a feature freeze period before releases may help. As it stands now, new features are allowed into KDE right up until the release. This obviously goes against most other serious OSS development project methods (cases in point: GNOME and Linux itself). In the short run though, I'm told that by KDE 3.2.1 things will be a lot less buggy overall.
Anyway, Konqueror is more stable now than it has been. It also renders much better, thanks in part to Apple. I still get random crashes every once in a while, but it works a hell of a lot better than IE6 with the latest updates on my girlfriend's XP box.
Nice.
Abuse: Unpopular opinion moderated as "Overrated".
It's an odd story for me. I was a long time GNOME advocate, it was fun and I never really got into KDE or wanted to. My first disitrbution was Redhat, as often seems to happen, you fall in lvoe with your first distro ;p
It had its problems, I did not sue Redhat 7.2 as my full time desktop, Windows to me was a better desktop, but I still liked to ocassionally play around with it etc. and I was always on Linux and GNOME related websites even though I did not use it so much.
The more time pased, the more polished Redhat got, and than out of nowhere it seemed, GNOME 2.0 came, I was throughly dissapointed. Never had I thought that a project could go backwards so fast, I am not speaking about the architecture, amybe that was better, but from a user's point of view it was a nightmare. It crashed more often than Windows by a longshot, it was very very slow, and too many features were removed. I am all for simplifying the user interface, removing redundant options, and options nobody uses, but just too many good features were removed which could have simply been implemented better. I would rather have 3 more items clog up my menu and have the features I need instead of some haughty developer telling me what people use and making me lose 3 hours.
I did not like the new attitude of the GNOME project, it felt elitist and it was no longer fun, it didn't feel like it had a personality of it's own, it was rather molded into whatever IBM, SUN and Ximian wanted it to be, no longer what the loyal users wanted.
But, I stuck with it, I was afterall still a GNOME zealot. That is until Redhat 9 came about, I liked it, it was an improvement as a system, but GNOME felt very much the same, I didn't even notice any new features, just a lot fo bugfixes, optimizations and a few UI fixes here and there, but I expected more. So, I decided to give KDE a whirl and see how it improved since the last time I tried it which was at version 2.2. WOW, it felt a lot faster than before, even though GNOME started up faster, KDE was faster to use and it had many of the features I wanted in GNOME before, but it was also lacking soem I liekd in GNOME, such as drawers, emblems, more attractive thumbnails, and shadowed text. I liked it and I decided to spend more time with it, after spending 2 more weeks switching between the two I was using KDE more often than GNOME and I started being interested in the community. I noticed that it felt like an OSS project, like GNOME once was, it had the sense of spirit, hope, joy and passion I admired in GNOME before. Best of all, it was not in the least bit elitist, I could submit whatever I wanted to websites like KDE-LOOK and my only judge was the community, not some high and mighty elitist judge.
With KDE 3.2, and after following it's development, I am switched on it. I do not use KDE 3.2 full time as Fedora does not ship with it yet, but I did try it in a recent Mandrake Beta and I liked it very much, lots of improvements everywhere as the authors mention. THe KDE releases are meaningful, they are feature absed, not time based, that's why KDE 3.2 took a year to get out the door, due to the delays. The developers are very dedicated and made sure when they released it that it was what they wanted it to be. GNOME, since their new attitude change has made no delays, they would rather release a buggy product rather than delay it for their users.
I also like that KDE is much more moderate. GNOME is all or nothing when it comes to many issues, such as the UI. It's either remove all features practically which are not used by 80% of people or remove none, KDE carefully examines what they remove and will not remove what they don't feel is essential because they don't screw their users. They are improving their UI rapidly, NOTE IMPROVING, NOT REMOVING EVERYTHING so there is nothing to improve. The way GNOME handles it reminds me of Win2k3 which instead of improving secuirity and fixing vulnerabilities simply sht down all services with exploits.
GREAT SOLUTION GUYS!
I've never understood this criticism.
How do you mistake "Ok" for "Cancel", unless when I dialog pops up you just randomally "swat" at the lower right corner of the window where you expect the "Ok" button to be?
I've been using mouse GUIs since Windows 3.1 was first released like most people here, but I had absolutely no problem adapting to GNOME. I had never even thought about the button placement issue until it was mentioned on Slashdot.
And GNOME doesn't even use "Ok" and "Cancel" whenever it is possible to provide a better description of the action that will be performed.
Just READ the fscking button text. And once you have become familiar with the application, you will no where to click, or if all else fails just hit the spacebar for the default action.
Is this really an enormous issue for people? My goodness, you can identify the button text in several milliseconds if you just look at what you are clicking on.
It's lists settings for your system broken down by application and desktop.
Just as you would in KDE's control center, you select the category of settings you want to edit. In this case, we seem to be talking about editing client application settings.
So, we locate our application on the left, and select it.
This brings up a list of options represented by text, radio button, and checkbox widgets.
Selecting any option causes a description of the option and example or possible values to be displayed prominently.
You then select or key in the desired option value. And if you have the daemon running, conforming applications will update on the fly.
Have you tried this? Locate a GNOME application you would like to configure in a more advanced way, and you should have no problem locating its settings panel.
Tell me, how exactly is a list of checkboxes, radio buttons, and text fields so dreadfully arcane compared to in any other case an application slopping a bunch of miscelaneous or uncreatively grouped options into a gui panel?
It's very rare that I use gconf-editor. I only bring it up when I am trying a new application and wonder whether such and such a configuration option is possible. Once I set the option I want, generally I never have to go back to it.
And speaking of options and settings, I find Konqueror to be absolutely maddening. I really want to use it for the KIO slaves, but it drives me fscking made with all of those meaning less menus of meaningless options accross, as compared to the beauty of Epiphany.
I tried to get used to Konqueror because Nautilus so far as I am concerned is just a play-thing in its present state of development. But I just couldn't figure out how to do anything with it other than type in URIs.
There were just endless menus and options and submenus and I just threw my hands up in the air and went back to using Openbox, WM dock apps, and XTerms.
If only I could have KIO slaves in my xterm, I think I would be a happy man.
You've just described how GConf and thus GNOME applications work! The application programmer makes a .schemas file that describes the various configuration values with both short and long descriptions.
You can then edit the configuration with a command-line or graphical tool. Gconf Editor works almost exactly the same way as you described the "advanced options". And the changes are applied instantly because of the built-in notification framework.
GConf is really, really hot!
Is this really an enormous issue for people? My goodness, you can identify the button text in several milliseconds if you just look at what you are clicking on.
Yes, it is an enormous issue. I'd ask back that if it wasn't such a big deal (button order) why did the gnome team feel such a big need to make the change in the first place? Obviously it meant enough to them to do the opposite of what 80-90% of the computer-using population is accustomed to.
creation science book
Deep Inside Devon...
MMmmmmm. Troll bait!.
;)
So, when you buy a new keyboard you look at every key on it before buying, right? I mean, you wouldn't just see if it has the numberpad/arrows/etc. features you want, you'd actually verify that the whole qwerty layout was correct, right? Because, heck, it's not that hard to verify, you just have to look at them; so why should a manufacturer worry about getting all the letters in the "right" place? The users just need to pay attention and get used to using that keyboard!
OK, now it's time to go find somebody complaining about how they're used to doing it that way and don't want to change and compare them to somebody who doesn't want to learn Linux because, sure it's better, but they've been using Windows every day for 7 years and they're used to it; and Linux should be backward compatible and just like Windows because the user base is so much larger and all those people would have to learn a new way of doing things...
FRIST PSOT!!!!!!!!!!!!exclamation pont
and some random stuff to fool the filter.;