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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."
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
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 would, but an empty wiki page doesn't do anything for me
Maybe fixing this might help:
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
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.
KDE is not slow. Only those who have not yet tried 3.2.0 could make such a statement. I understand why this meme is out there, since I myself wouldn't touch KDE with a 10 foot pole in the 2.x days. It was slow as molasses then. Do remember, Apple distributed the changes they made in KHTML back to Konqueror. The difference in speed is amazing.
As far as bloat, KDE is as bloated or as svelte as you make it. DO_NOT_COMPILE is your friend. For those on binary distributions, try Debian, which lets you pick and choose exactly which KDE apps are installed, allowing just as much choice as DO_NOT_COMPILE.
You can run KDE even with other window manager than KWin, as long as that window manager has decent support for the EWMH (aka NETWM) specification. Which I'm afraid AfterStep or WindowMaker don't.