Slashdot Mirror
Announcing the KDE Quality Team Project
Quique writes "The KDE Community is pleased to announce the launch of the Quality Team Project, a community of contributors who will serve as a gateway between developers and users in the KDE Project, and as a new way for people to begin contributing. KDE is a very attractive project, offering high quality software and is freely available. There is a lot of people who feel the urge to give something back, but stop in the middle of the way, frustrated by the steep learning curve. The aim of the project is to reduce these barriers by welcoming these potential contributors, and by offering documentation, support, and even guidance if requested. The objective is to support the new contributors, (programmers, documenters, testers, artists...). Have you ever wished to help KDE in some way, but never knew how? Keep reading!"
the KDE Kuality Team?
QA? Testing? This is what open source needs!
Allow me to use Slashdot as an example. Wednesday nights = push development into production. Anyone on the slashteam want to tell me what regression testing tools and system testers they use? Sure, usually (not always) there isn't a crash-and-burn build, but occasionally there is annoyances and such that are just 'thrown into' the build that people didn't know was coming and other things.
Granted, this is Robs code, let him do what he wants with it, but with a 'QA' step it just makes for a better product.
Good quote, too many chars. Seriously, the slashdot 120 char limit sucks!
What abbreviation will this project get? KDE-Qt?
--- Sigmentation Fault - Comments Dumped
I've been waiting for this. Last time I filed a bug report with KDE I got some snotty reply from some programmer who said I was wrong (the bug got fixed in the next release and was listed in the changelog).
bash: rtfm: command not found
i still haven't got the newest KDE 3.2 to work on my RH 7.X boxes..There's a sourceforge project called KDE-Redhat that's supposed to fill the gap but... it sure would be great if this new effort made it easy for lazy admins like me.
This seems like it's follwing on ESR's remarks on CUPS the other day but it's not. They've put a lot of planning into this including how to maintain your own CVS and which part of KDE to target for improvement first (KDE PIM).
I'd like to see some of the numerous UI critics take part in this. You know, the ones who write scathing reviews of widgets and fonts like Eurgenia?
This guy is way out there
Just stating MY opinion, but i prefer KDE over GNOME. KDE is pretty stable, although i do still have problems with (seemingly) random crashes of Konqueror, etc. This program sounds like it will make already great software even better. Sort of like the customer comment card at resturants, although i dont think they read those.
It's Kuality, damn in, don't pollute the brand.
KDE Kuality Projekt
Everytime KDE is mentioned, gnome advocates try and convince me why is GNOME is better, when it is NOT! Here is a detailed description WHY GNOME SUCKS KDE RULES!
1) The file dialog.
KDE 0.x ALPHAs had a better file dialog than gnome! Today, the KDE one is the best file dialgog in existance, with influence from all desktops.
2) More apps!
KDE comes with over 150 Apps in the full install, with applications for all fields, plus its sleak integration with non kde apps (eg gimp, openoffice) make things more consistant.
3) Configureable as hell.
The KDE control center has loads of knobs/dials/sliders and boxes to fiddle with, yet keeps things elegent. In gnome, half the options don't exisit and you are rudley told "use gconf-editor n00b by gnome zealots" (not joking about this, telling the truth gets you a -1, troll and footnotes).
4) I-kandy!
The Kde eye candy is really powerful, with styles such as dotNEt, mosfet liquid, kermamik, Crystal and more. Looking at art.gnome.org [gnome.org] reveals the same old theme in different colours. Since gnome dosen't provide a colour changing dialog for its widgets most "themes" are just colour changes. The Crystal from CVS is an Aqua killer, your eyes will want to love it.
5) Its development framework rocks.
Take a good look at kioslaves, kparts, dcop, arts and qt and see why KDE is a programmer's dream. Modern c++, wonderful IDE [kdevelop.org], powerful command line scripting. Gnome gives you obsolete c, with a bunch of kludge libraries such as glib, Orbit, bonobo to hack together a application.
6)The defacto choice on Linux. All major Distributions support it by default. This means Mandrake, SuSE, Xandros, ArkLinux, Jamd, Lindows, Slackware, Knoppix, Gentoo and more. How many gnome ones can you mention (Redhat, sure if you like using server distros as your desktop Debian, nope thats the old 1.4 branch Gnoppix, a retarded knoppix rip off.) Most distributions offer gnome as an unsupported alternative.
Also, the only reason why gnome was created in the first place is null and void. Now that Novell has taken over Ximain you can expect VENDOR lock in. Want groupware for linux? Thats $300 a seat.
Get the new Mandrake 9.2 and see the Quality of KDE vs the Sorry state of Gnome 2.4 (and, they STILL haven't fixed that ****ing file dialog), not to mention they REMOVED ALL THE FEATURES. Gnome 2.2 is probably the only gnome version remotley close to kde, that is, KDE 2.0, not the KDE 3.2. I tried the "brokenboring" alpha of it and when it is released this december it will finally put Gnome out of it's misery and kill it off the Linux desktop.
Now if the Gnome project (and quite honestly every large project) would make a quality team, we could get some serious usability issues ironed out.
Karma whorin' since 1999
The KDE project itself doesn't do any packaging at all; they only release source-code tarballs. kde-redhat is an independent project.
Liberal (adj.): Free from bigotry; open to progress; tolerant of others.
What was that open source code auditting thing that DARPA set up, but noone showed up to do the gruntwork?
Sounds like KDE is looking for folks to come along and do all the thankless, boring shit. Spellchecking help files, testing obscure check boxes, applying different themes. Of course, all the cool design work and programming, and artistry, etc, will be done by the core team - who will, of course, accept all the credit.
Noone wants to do the monkey work. I don't want to test constantly, read bug reports, track down insignificant bugs in code thats unused 99.9% of the time. I only do so because it's my job.
Which is a shame for open source in general, because it's that QA step, all the thankless hours of gruntwork, that make the final product what it is.
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
Oh yeah...
Tom Smykowski: Well-well look. I already told you: I deal with the god damn customers so the engineers don't have to. I have people skills; I am good at dealing with people. Can't you understand that? What the hell is wrong with you people?
For 20 years the Desktop Linux user experience. . .
I don't mean to be snide, really, this time I don't, but I do feel a bit compelled to ask which particular alternate universe you're living in?
KFG
I think this is exactly what open source needs. It's one thing for programmers, sysadmins and advanced users to contribute to open source projects, but there's often no easy way for the average user to help out.
With ideas like KDE Quality Team, the developers get to hear from the users and integrate features that they would like to see, as well as providing a means by which the average user can contribute. That's why Wikipedia works so well - it is possible for anybody to contribute. It's great to see the "anybody can contribute" idea extend to open source where up till now it's really only the advanced users who can contribute easily.
My operat~1 system unders~1 long filena~1 , does yours?
Linux version .01 was launched in September 1991. (timeline) Try 12.5 years.
... then I think you've underestimated that figure by a few decades.
Rather, if you mean the relative amount of time it seems that I've been thrashing around in the 'quirkiness' (to be polite) that is the linux desktop
Personally I think this is a very good idea. My programming skills are limited to simple BASH scripts so Im no use to most devel teams. But I do have good documentation/bug hunting skills. I do this as part of my job. So it is a good oppurtunity for those who do want to give something back to the OSS community but fall short in the programming area. Good Idea KDE.
right you are - but should it be that way? for newbies and technophobes -packages are the way they get stuff onto their machines
For fostering a community unlike any other. www.kde-look.org has been my first stop to see modern ideas on desktop design for years now. I am not nor have I ever been a KDE fanboy (I'm a Blackbox user) but they have managed to form a remarkable bond with the graphics design community (and the graphically inclined). They should be a model for more OSS projects and this is something we should look at as a community as a whole. There is more to good software then 1's and 0's.
Quack, quack.
Seriously I hear all kind of good things with KDE but the thing still looks way too kluttered for the average Joe.
What don't they read Slashdot? I thought we were the Quality Assurance!!
Quack, quack.
Use Konstruct (you don't even have to be root) or use a distribution that can be used on the desktop. (Like SuSE or Mandrake)
Post corrected to 10 years
:)
Ah, well, welcome back to our universe then, if not necessarily our reality.
KFG
GNOME has had the Human Interface Guidelines for over a year and a half now. The whole project is dedicated toward usability. Don't get me wrong, KDE has some inovative technologies behind it, but even 3.2 is miserably lacking in terms of usability and style. IMHO, this "Quality Team Project" looks more like an after-thought or a lame side project than a redirection of the whole project.
Life is offtopic.
yes, but it is up to the distros what packages they want to provide; KDE shouldn't have to hunt down every distro they like and provide packages
This sounds like a good idea for an Open Source project. However, it's funny to me, because not long ago my boss was tossing around the idea of dividing the development group I work in into "The Stability Team" and "The Feature Team". Luckily the silliness of this sunk in and the idea floated away into Dumb Idea Heaven. We still joke about it though because nobody wants to get stuck with the crap job on the Stability Team, where you have to answer all the phone calls and fix the bugs in everyone else's code.
One bad monkey spoils the whole barrel.
The positions pay nothing. There's this thing called "open source software", in which software is largely developed by a community of volunteer contributors. KDE is such a project. You may have heard of some others, such as GNU and the linux kernel.
Liberal (adj.): Free from bigotry; open to progress; tolerant of others.
2-3, depending on how you want to count. It's good to see KDE catching up.
IAAL,BIANLY
We're sorry, but these positions pay in karma only. Thank you.
One bad monkey spoils the whole barrel.
I'm sure the KDE people simply consider that their time is better spent on writing the code. The distributions already have lots of people who do packages, and could take care of that just fine.
I wrote this article for Newsforge, looking at the productive, social, political and spiritual aspects of the Quality Teams Project.
:-)
Some people might find it interesting...
Gnome has a quality assurance team and has had one for a long time. See http://developer.gnome.org/projects/bugsquad/.
Elijah
> Hmm. That's not the GNOME that I've seen at all for the last
> year and a half (the amount of time that I've been following
> GNOME events). I've found people very helpful, very kind
> and patient with me as I've learned, and very willing to help
> me on my level.
That depends in what ways you participate to GNOME and with what kind of people you had contacts with.
I for my own speak about (well they know who I mean... to not namecall them here). I for my own had very bad expiriences with some individual people who made the entire GNOME project more than disgusting. I can tell you where some of these people where publicly namecalling me, slandering me, and simply caused a bad reputation around me.
Not just me also others. Some of them left GNOME others still silently participate to it. I think with one year and a half you didn't participated well enough with those I had to deal with.
GNOME is a big project there are a lot of people participating to it, from different countries, with different skils, with different well whatever. Some of these people who claim themselves to have some sort of 'god' status are more than ***** assholes (to name it the way it is). I feel sorry for all the people who want to do something good for GNOME and join the gnome-love channel for becoming part of GNOME but the only aim of this is to rip them off because the GNOME 2.6 release is close infront of the door and some urgent things should get fixed.
None of these people will ever reach a status where they can shape GNOME or participate in a way to it so they get the feeling to be actually PART of it or their work being honoured.
I sometimes really wish that there are more people within the GNOME community who stands up and let the world know what's really going on rather than keeping shut and have the stuff continue the way it currently continues.
Well if you want more information I do reconsider emailing me I will forward everything required to you to make you understand me and get an own impression about what GNOME really is.
In case anyone is seriously interested, please grab CVSGnome as script and dig out the eMail address inside and write me. I will forward everything that confirms what I say. It's hard to explain everything. Showing facts is what may help people understand.
I understand what your posting. But take a look at Kde-look. Its a very different thing, slightly OT, but its a working community site that *encourages* non-developer interaction, something I believe KDE has pioneered with some success here. Everyone has a bugzilla site (which can be pretty intimidating to newer users) but KDE has succeeded in fostering a peripherial community in kde-look and I think its an important and sometimes (often) over looked thing. We need to encourage more participation from the non-developer community and I think they have something of a good track record (Kde-look has a good design that encourages new ideas).
Quack, quack.
Did you read my link at all? We've been having online bug days and a bug channel for 2 1/2 years, where people get together on a daily basis to discuss bugs, help new bug volunteers, etc. And like I said, mozilla was doing it before GNOME was. Creating such a community is not new, and it's not rocket science.
IAAL,BIANLY
THE NAME.
r y ...and pretty much anything else obsessively beginning with "K" for absolutely no reason. Thank god Gnome isn't like this.
KDE is an awful name, as are:
KOffice
Killustrator
Kougar
Kroupware
Kalle
KTetris
Come on guys, KDE has a LONG LONG way to go to match the precision, power, beauty, quality, and technological sophistication of Mac OS X. You're getting pretty close to MacOS 7. At this rate, maybe in 10 years or so you'll match the first beta drop of OS X.
I believe that companies contribute to community anyway. But being paid to write open source code or/and contribute to open source project is just not the way to do it
The first criticism a UI critic would make is that KDE should have brought in UI critics and seriously listened to them at the inception of KDE in 1997, before any major code had been written. Decent usability requires that user interaction be considered from the beginning before any major code is written, not put in as an afterthought or as damage control. Once something has been released and had some history behind it, programmers are going to be damned reluctant to change it.
/dev/null.
Yes, they might form QA teams and say they want to make it more usable--up until the the point where you tell them that to fix all the usability problems and provide something consistent with a truly integrated feel they have to throw out half their codebase, rewrite 5 million lines, and send 30 years of entrenched Unix culture to
Designing UI before writing code is not The Unix Way, which is why so many Unix desktops tend to fail.
Ergonomica Auctorita Illico!
Being a 10 year veteran of QA/Testing and holding a CS degree, I have long wondered where QA would fit into OSS. And by "QA" I don't just mean testing, there is a lot more to it than that. Here are some topics that would need to be addressed:
What is the development process? Is it documented?
What types of estimation procedures do you do?
What is the SCM process? Is it documented?
What is the review/inspection process for all artifacts?
Are there software requirements? Are they inspected/reviewed?
Are there development plans/design docs? Are they inspected/reviewed?
Are there code reviews?
What are your defect escape rates?
What is your plan for alpha/beta testing?
What is your release schedule?
I think I could go on, but you get the idea. If you want solid, defect-finding, QA people who can improve your product, you'll be asked questions like these. If you just want someone who will run a few regression tests against your product before you put it on a website, then you are looking for some software testers. I am not saying that all of those things are necessary, but they might be. Maybe all of this stuff is archaic and applies only to the proprietary model, I don't know. I know that is what I have worked in for the last 10 years. I don't know if anyone has asked these questions of an OSS project, or done any research into if they need to be asked.
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
I got tired waiting for kde 3.2 rpms for Mandrake 9.2. they were not available in the Mandrake-club, despite numerous votes for it. (Rant : Made me wonder what is the point of paying money for the club & voting for RPMs../rant)
Anyways, downloaded Konstruct, told it where I want it to install, and
cd meta/everything; make install
that is it! The download/patch/compile/install went for 2 days!! And now I have a shiny kde 3.2 desktop to play around with.
I didn't have to delete my stock Mandrake kde rpms (too much hassel with all the dependancies).
Given how much trouble we have @ work on getting builds to work, I have gained enormous respect for Konstruct; it makes installing KDE a snap (okay a 2 day long snap:-)
I like your idea about hosting seminars with KDE users bringing friends that have never used KDE before. Another idea would be to check with your local mall and see if they'll let you walk around with a laptop or setting up a machine on a table and just inviting random shoppers over to use it. If bugs come up, you're watching. This would also allow for the general public to become more aware of KDE or any other project, for that matter and would give them a chance to submit their own feature requests and usability complaints/compliments.
This gives a few, possibly stupid/uninformed questions:
1) Are there groups out there (aside from large companies) that are doing focus groups and similar research aimed at the general public? If so, are they publishing this information and where?
2) Is there any kind of tool for submitting bug reports? I hate using Microsoft as an example, but when my Windows machines crash, there is an option to send Microsoft a bug report. What's contained in the reports, I have no idea, but I bet it's got more pertinent information than any general user would be able to give.
Ouch. I did. But I think its too inaccessable for less technical. I think this is somewhere KDE has had success. Not knocking Gnome. I think its a paradigm thing.
Quack, quack.
newbies and technophobes -packages are the way they get stuff onto their machines
For any sane human being, packages are the way to get stuff onto a machines. If you can't find a package that works for your distribution, you should roll your own package.
The alternative is to do a make && make test && make install and hope like hell the make uninstall works the next time you want to upgrade. (Yeah, right).
Slashdot is jumping the shark. I'm just driving the boat.
Evolution, Abiword, and even Gnumeric (still better). Of all the apps on my default Gnome menu, only about two start with G.
I deal with the CUSTOMERS, so the ENGINEERS don't have to!!
Well, I guess I'm asking for ideas here. In an open-source proj like this, you obviously want people to choose what they want to do or how they want to contribute. When you do that, one of the biggest problem is that, there are some parts of the project that everybody tries to avoid.
I've tried to manage a project, in a similar way, on a very small scale though (~30 people). Everybody wanted to own the coolest parts of the project. What I eventually ended up doing is tying cool parts with not-so-cool parts. So, if you choose the cool part, you automatically also own the corresponding not-so-cool part.
I'm looking for more ideas. May be some brainstorming would help here.
My other dog is a Wienerschnitzel.
No, for them, it needs to come with the distro they use... which it will.
-DB-
E-mail is like a prison: a prison with no walls... and no toilet. -Strong Bad
I read your article before posting (I saw the link on another website, so I knew all about it before the story appeared on Slashdot), but I'll go back and reread it. It is a good article, by the way.
That makes sense. I guess my misunderstanding was that these Quality Teams would be average end users, when in reality I think it more likely that they will be people like me: medium-to-advanced users with no programming experience*, who have a passion for Free software but who have never been involved in a serious open source project before. I've been looking at KDE for a while as something I might want to contribute to, but I'm still not sure if I can commit enough time. If I can find a nice small module that I can hack on and stress-test a couple hours a week then I'll sign up. Well, no time like the present I guess. *goes off to find out more about KDE Quality Team Project*
* Well, I lied. I have programming experience, because that's my day job. But I have little or no programming experience on non-Windows platforms, except for one measly little university project.
Showing facts is what may help people understand.
As long as you show *all* facts, Ali. Your years trolling lists, forums and even bugzilla don't speak very well for you, and justify your reputation much more than any reaction from gnome developers.
You cause your own problems, you're not a victim, even if you want to look as a martyr.
This is the cleverest troll I've ever seen.
After 14 hours you should have some minutes left for prelinking.
KDE has User Interface Guidelines since more than 4 years. These guidelines are a bit outdated, but they are followed by almost all applications within KDE. This is one of the reasons why KDE applications are quite consistent with each other. KDE has been dedicated towards usability since its foundation, but usability was never the only goal. KDE was never perfect, but its usability has been constantly improving every version. Compared to most other PC software, KDE has always been doing reasonably well in terms of usability.
True. The GNOME project made a good decision when they introduced HIG, even if many GNOME users were very angry at the time. Removing functionality was one of the main methods of solving GNOME's early usability problems, which should only be done if there is really no other way to solve usability problems.
Most people complaining about KDE's usability are suggesting the same strategy for KDE. I don't agree with this. Solving usability issues in other ways is more difficult and takes more time, but the end result will be better if we stop telling others "I know better than you that you don't need this". But anyway, I agree that having good user interface guidelines is important.
My impression is very different. The Quality team idea has been greeted with a lot of very positive responses among the KDE developers. There is a lot of interest in this within the KDE project.
Please don't abbreviate it to KDE-QT, it's a nightmare of confusion waiting to happen! Of course if everyone spelled Qt correctly (lowercase t) it wouldn't be so bad. That's not likely though... thanks!
Reading through the site, I realize that two important elements of QA are missing. They won't be as fun to do, but it would be great if someone did them.
1) Requirements and specifications. Also known as what you need before you start coding. Otherwise known as the official arbiter of whether the program is doing what it is supposed to be doing.
This is thankless gruntwork, but it is very valuable. Some KDE apps already have some, but all need them. Take an email client for example. Go grab all the RFC's relevant to POP3, IMAP, etc, and distill them down into a set of requirements stating what the program is supposed to do. Open Source is informal enough that we could get away with combining requirements and specifications into one document.
2) Test procedures. Now take that requirements document and write a comprehensive test procedure. Include regression testing. Now anyone can take this procedure and simply execute it to find out if the program follows its requirements. If a step fails, log a detailed bug that states which requirement is not met.
Not only would these two things aid the the developer in creating and improving the application, they would also improve the quality of bug reports. Instead of bug reports saying "it doesn't do what I think it should do", you get bug reports saying "it does x but the requirements say do y." If the applications still doesn't do what you want it to do, examine the requirements yourself, and if they aren't complete, propose a new one.
Requirements are your road map, and test procedures are the person in the passenger seat reading it to make sure you take the correct exit to Albuquerque.
Don't blame me, I didn't vote for either of them!
I am the one who is currently putting the most effort into the KDE Quality Team implementation, so I am qualified to speak for the project:
Let's start by making something clear:
The main idea is not to build a QA project inside KDE. The main idea is to support and embrace new contributors with any background, and help to organize their efforts. For instance: Any doubts about the docbook? We are glad to help. Do you want feedback on your work? We are happy to provide. Looking for guidance? Hop in!
We don't want to point what is good for you: we try to present you with a long list of things one can do to help, and organize these efforts.
The recommended approach for non programmers is different from other projects: it is more like the project manager in a company than of a task specialist. In other words think of acting upon the whole of Kontact instead of acting upon the context help for the whole KDE project. We recognize that the main tool for helping an application is knowing it well. A quick look at the activities list, presenting the requirements for performing the tasks, is sufficient to prove that.
http://quality.kde.org/develop/modules/
Yes, the activities include QA. But this is just one of the activities. Hope this helps to avoid confusion with GNOME's bugsquad (also nice, but not related: it is a different concept).
Because time after time, people point out how 100% stupid the naming scheme is, yet it never changes.
It will never be taken seriously with a name like "KDE" and 100 apps all starting with "K."
People mention Gnome apps, but like I said, only a few on my Gnome menu start with G. Everything else is Abiword, Evolution, Epiphany (or Galeon), etc. ACTUAL NAMES.
Maybe the CEO of IBM can kick in some of the $51.5 MILLION DOLLARS in bonuses and options he received last year to compensate these people. What do you think of that idea?
That's totally up to the CEO of IBM, I guess.
isn't that how its supposed to work in OSS land? The corporations benefit from this work and therefore offer financial support?
No, absolutely not. Believe it or not, some things are orthogonal to traditional economics. As John Nash said, "Adam Smith needs revision". Anyone is free to benefit from OSS software, whether they are a corporation or not (as long as they play by the rules). That's the whole point. Part of "playing by the rules" for the GPL means that any changes they make must be contributed back. *This* is how companies can best support OSS: by *joining* our communities, not simply paying us off.
Liberal (adj.): Free from bigotry; open to progress; tolerant of others.
Will QA testing fix:
* The 5-10 second load-time for KDE apps
* The 4 second load time just to open a folder
* The cramped and embarrassing K menu, with a 100 different groups and completely illogical redundancies like "Preferences," "System Settings," and "Control Center"
* The poor naming scheme that--despite close to five years of bitching--hasn't been changed in favor of something sane
* The convoluted Control Center that is an example of poor interface design with 3,000 items and subitems, grouped together under a cursor that for some reason won't stop changing to the hand icon
* The fact that the cursor changes to a hand icon when it moves over taskbar buttons (cursor changes are confusing, disorienting, and annoying to newbies and power users alike)
* The fact that when you tell KDE to put application menus at the top like MacOS, it defeats the whole purpose by not registering a click if you have the cursor all the way to the top--apparently, there is a pixel of space between the top of the screen and the menu. Mac users are used to slamming the cursor all the way to the top and clicking, which is faster than slowing the cursor and pinpointing a menu in a floating window like in Windows
* The seeming need for every new version of KDE to add five more sidebars, buttons, and features to KPanel/Konquerer/anything else beginning with K, instead of cleaning the interface and making things faster
I could go on and on. I don't get why it is so slow. Windows XP does NOT take so long to load, say, a window. And I despise Windows in general. Yet Windows gets bashed for being bloated, and yet KDE is readily accept despite being slower and more bloated than Windows itself. It's the double-standard, and though some may label me a troll for pointing it out, nonetheless it is my opinion and you're welcome to disagree.
I did read his rant. It was focused on things not in KDE. KDE cannot fix Fedora, other than recommend you not use it. (A drastic step that isn't warrented)
I'll grant there are problems with KDE, and we need to fix them. I hope someone on this project helps us do so. However no matter how good KDE gets, if a distribution uses something outside of KDE there is nothing KDE can do to make it work.
The GNOME Quality Team Project
None of that matters when it takes 10 seconds to load anything, and 5 just to open your Home folder. Not to mention 25,000 items on one K Menu all starting with K, and 100,000 items in Control Center.
Gnome works just fine and--gasp--is actually responsive and snappy. KDE wants more sidebar buttons with every release, because when you look at the code, there is a lot of unoptimized C++ going on.
IIRC mac OS7 was released about 1992. First Mac was 1984. KDE was started about 1997. So that gives about 8 years (after release, not start of development) to get mac OS7. KDE is at year 7, and by your own words really close to OS7. About 10 years after that to get OSX. Sounds like KDE is right on track, maybe even a little ahead.
However that assumes you are correct. However, you obviously do not remember OS7 very well, because it wasn't that good everywhere. For instance the multitasking worked, but poorly you really didn't want to run two applications at once with it (part of this is the CPUs of the time, but not all). And it was slow, at least in the early versions I used, most of my machines dual booted to OS6 when they could because OS6 worked better. (Which was a trick in itself as apple didn't design those systems to dual boot) Not to mention it obviously looked like it was designed for a black and white screen, even when I had a color screen[1]. I remember many times reading a book in front of 3 macs, all with their hour glass on the screen, and the interface locked from other input while some work was being done. (desktop publishing work, a CPU bound problem in those days)
Yes KDE has some work to do, but OSX has a lot to do too. I believe KDE is better. My opinion though.
[1]Mental note: example KDE on a black and white monitor and make sure there is a scheme that looks good.
Well, maybe not that exact guy, but one just like it. When I was testing our product, I would find a bug and Tell hime about it. He'd say I was a moron and didn't know what I was talking about. He'd tell me to try it again, I'd walk back into my office and retry. It would usually work, because he would jump on the network and replace my exe file. Suddenly, I had a different build and creation date.
Well.. maybe. Or Maybe not. But Definitely not sort of.
I've seen this posted before. Hell, the last paragraph talks about some sort of alpha of Gnome and a new version that's going to be released in "December." Gnome 2.6 is due out this month.
I'm sure we could all come up with the same kind of list for KDE. Both projects have endless usability issues.
Documentation, usability problems, etc. *are* bugs.
I love KDE 3.2 - it seems as usable and intuitive as Windows 2000 but without the downsides. But KDE has a serious liability that needs to be addressed. It's that whole thing with using K in plade of other letters. I don't know if people know this, but in the South this was frequently done as a code to reveal a company's KKK affiliations. I know some smart people who will not use KDE for this reason. For them, it's like having to deal with a UI full of swastikas. My wife is one of them. Painful though this might be, they need to lose the Ks. It can still be KDE but Konqueror needs a name change. It sounds like a synonym for Hitler.
The flag just makes more sense than the constitution. - Judas Gutenberg
"Koala" is the name of the Java binding for KDE.
I have discovered a truly remarkable sig which this 120 chars is too small to contain.
God how I wish other open source projects like Mozilla and the Linux desktop would focus on this. I've been following and using both for years but I have no idea who or where to talk to when I create a cool skin or a better help guide, etc.
Giving back shouldn't allow for the pollution of a program but there should be some deviantart or wiki-style free-for-all that then gets narrowed down into a manageable soil of good graphics, plugins, ideas, and more so that core project developers never have to wonder what else can be done.
Here's my solution, in this case a Wiki for Mozilla and Mozilla FireFox. Feel free to add!
Why the hell does every single KDE or GNOME thread have to devolve into name calling between the two camps or attacks on the free Desktops? To save late comers time, most of the comments below are:
-Gnome sucks, I used 1.4 or 2.0 for five minutes and KDE 3.2 is much better
-KDE sucks, it's slow and non-free. Oh yeah, I only used it for five minutes. version 3.0_beta1 on a p-166.
-Windows/OSX is better because they fix bugs. OSS is always buggy.
Desktop environment isn't a religion. This is a story about KDE trying to make its development team more inclusive and improve its quality.
Did you read his link at all? kde-look.org is not a bug team, it's a theme site. The user community that has grown around making kde art is very different from bug days.
It is recommended that companies spend 10% of their development budget on researching the usability of their products. Every dollar that is spent on usability saves $100 in support costs.
Red Hat has spent over $700,000,000 buying out a compiler company and a few silly dot coms. They recently sold $500,000,000 in bonds. Their programmers tell me the reason why their software has so many usability problems is that they "can't afford to hire HCI people".
SuSe was bought out for $200,000,000. From what I have heard from other user interaction people, the usability of YaST is an absolute disgrace. Doesn't seem like SuSe is spending money for a usability dept either.
Both of these companies claim to be making desktop software that is perfectly usable and perfectly fit for a grandmother or a secretary. They are both going to try like hell to replace everyone's Windows desktop with Linux. Many of the desktops they are currently looking to replace are those in businesses, where the end-user won't have the "don't want to use it, don't choose it" recourse that most linux zealots claim people have.
Both these companies already spend wads of money hiring people like kernel hackers and web server programmers. To ask these companies to spend equivalent amounts on usability is not, in my opinion, is perfectly justified. If they feel that only "important" technical fields like kernel hacking deserve funding, then should at least have the decency to pay to switch their existing desktop customers back to Windows.
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Ergonomica Auctorita Illico!
Well in all honesty I now use Gnome 2.4. Basically for the same reasons. Very snapy. Click "boof" done. Although KDE 3.2 wasn't to bad; it still didn't do it for me :)
Nah, that's already taken by the Japanese KDE Quality Team. /b
[Please type your sig here.]
Actually, packages *should* be maintained by the project authors, not by the distribution. Does Microsoft package all Windows applications? (something actually sensible about windoze) It makes a lot more sense for a group of programmers to make 3 or 4 packages (force RPM-distros to become compatible) than for each individual distro to package all 1000000 applications that can be run.
Luke-Jr
Why?
A distribution is a compilation of software. It appeared because somebody thought that they had a good idea about how to put some software together. People who create them don't go and email software authors "Could you package your program in this format I just came up with, and with this directory layout?". On the contrary, a distribution is what results when somebody takes a lot of software written by other people, and organizes it in some way.
I don't see why would it be the KDE project's responsibility to seek every distribution that could include it, and make packages for them.
If you're going to make such a vague statement of: the thing still looks way too kluttered for the average Joe.
Please give us an *EXAMPLE* of what it is that sucks. Blanket terms like the above do Nothing to help, nor are they in any way informative.
Sunny Dubey
Paying you off? I am not saying they should pay you off and take the code and not "give back". I am saying they should kick in a bit of money into OSS so the projects don't need to ask for Paypal donations to survive.
Also, you are confusing OSS with the GPL as usual.
Kde or any other standard linux desktop environnement should have in common a really high level and *simple* programming language.
Many not-so-skilled programmers are developing thousands of apps usefull-for-enduser under windows with visual basic.
No one should underevalutate the number of VB-only coders.
Maybe VB is not the most used language in big windows based apps projects, but some programmers begin with VB and eventually learn C and/or C++, ASM, Java.
Even if the big projects arent coded in VB, there is actually a couple of good programs sold by vb coders.
If there was an easy to use and learn language like VB under the linux desktops, the open source community could profit of many more (begginers)coders, which is good.
i dont think it could be an enormous differance for the moment if we think about the linux desktop solution popularity, but it could for sure accelerate this solution visibility at middle-term, which is good.
What do you think about it?
I am participating to GNOME since 1999/2000 and was responsible for quite some work such as on Balsa, Galeon, various Patches for GNOME in general, CVSGnome and Atlantis. I've been an active GNOME Foundation member and even member of the german GNOME co-operation.
In the past years there have been very ugly people showing up working on GNOME, well most of the people are indeed very fine persons but a few people are really people one should avoid.
Most of the problems began around 2 years ago or so where I wrote Atlantis Webbrowser for GNOME and had to deal with a handful of people who were totally disagreeing with my way of licensing it.
The first to show up making very big trouble were Iain Holmes (known as Iain on IRC) who publicly made a huge mess out of it on gnomesupport.org giving really shitty comments about it and so on.
I was really offended by him and that was one reason why I temporarely left GNOME (after a few years of actively contributing to it). In the meanwhile I participated to KDE and I found a lot of new cool friends there. But Iain and a few others (Mike Hearn, Jeff Waugh, Iain Holmes, Thomas Vander Stichle) (also known as the GANG in GNOME, a bunch of people who glue together like pattex) have been following my steps on KDE and continued made a mess whenever I wrote something on public places. You can be sure that I didn't had a big opinion about GNOME that time due to all these people who were permanently complaining.
One day a Textfile showed up called Armageddon GNOME or something like that. I was not responsible for writing it but then this text somehow shown up on gnomesupport and gnomedesktop (I found out about it months later) where I was publicly namecalled by people like Iain Holmes, Thomas Vander Stichle and Jeff Waugh. They didn't even took the time contacting me asking me whether I was responsible for that mess or not. They simply started to write my name under every comment that gave negative feedback about GNOME be it written by someone from italy, japan, germany, uk, australia it doesn't even matter.
You can be sure that it took me quite a lot of time fixing all these issues by contacting STRO from gnomedesktop.org and gnomesupport.org to have these things corrected (well he simply deleted the messages or replaced my name with X'es) (See attachment).
I then came back to GNOME because I wanted to forget all the problems these few dumb people caused on my name but it was hard to get through all this because these few people were responsible for the huge damage they caused on my name. Other people who never heard about me started making foolish jokes or simply jumped on the wagoon for no reason. Anyways I ignored it and continued participating to GNOME.
Different Scenario. Over the years I was working on CVSGnome and Jeff Waugh the guy who maintains GARNOME (but never ever written anything) is known to be a hard ass in the GNOME world. All he did in the past was slandering people. Pissing people like Alex Duggan (Aldug), Roman Beigelbock (Star) and Dr. Frickle (someone from IBM) totally off. The results we see today, Dr. Frickle left GNOME (a long years contributor) and Roman Beigelbock (Star) simply left GNOME some weeks ago because he couldn't stand all the stress anymore. Furthermore is Jeff a Hardheaded person who under really strange circumstances got a position in the Board (The GNOME Board and the Release coordinator Board). Maybe he managed it because of his better english since we here in germany are not all familar of best english. Anyways when I wrote CVSGnome Jeff did everything to simply IGNORE CVSGnome, have it leave out of announcements, ignored my requests (even via email) to have CVSGnome included etc. Sure he saw some sort of 'competition' project into it. Not to forget that I for my own have written CVSGnome from scratch while he has done nothing special.
To say the truth, besides dictating people, commenting every freaking email he has done NOTHING for gnome. there is just to much hype around him
Well, I have a Ph.D in comp sci, lots of publications in AI, and extensive software reviewing experience. When you compare Desktop Linux to Mac OS X (which is sold for $100) it is so bad most users won't take it even if you give it to them. Of course people like me or you use it daily for our work, but we are *techies*.
I guess anyone who says anything negative about Linux is a troll. No one listens to the, so the Linuxuser experience, which could be cleaned up in 1 year of hard work, never improves.
This is not a signature.
There is a difference between software written by employees for a company, and software written by volunteers on their own time.
There is also a difference among software written by one person, software written by a tightly-knit group (all at one location), and software written by a loosely-knit group.
Software (OSS or otherwise) written by a large, loosely-knit group of people who are employees for a company (and, thus, presumably, writing a commercial product that has deadlines) needs "useless bureaucracy" to (try to) keep things on schedule and going in the right direction.
Software written by some guy/gal in his/her spare time may need very little "useless bureaucracy".
My own personal stuff doesn't require process documentation, estimation procedures, release schedules, etc, but even I use the occasional design document (even if it's just scribblings on a piece of paper).
OTOH, KDE is a big project, and may possibly profit from using some or many of the methods suggested by the G.P. (if it isn't already using them).
"Use the right tool for the right job.", I always say.
(Well, I don't always say that.
Sometimes I say other things.
And, sometimes, I say nothing at all (especially when I'm sleeping).
But "Use the right tool for the right job." is something that I frequently say, or, at least, that I have said on more than one occasion.)
Those who sacrifice security to condemn liberty deserve to repeat history or something. - Benjamin Santayana
> the ones who write scathing reviews of widgets and fonts like Eurgenia? Hum, when will she finally earn the acronym of ELQ?
---
All my submissions to Slashdot rejected... and proud of it!
This news was not quite new to me - I can't provide the link, but there was nice explanation on KDE traffic (i.e. digest of several KDE mailing lists).
First, they were not sure about the name at all. They needed some "department" that will improve communication between users and developers. Some sort of people who know both sides, but who are not programmers. And they did not know how to call it. As I read now, they choose Q.T.
For an OSS project, KDE is really well documented, you may really easily contact their programmers, support community seems to be nice and usefull; this should be "final touch".
This team reminds me to my last position in my old company - I was kinda liaison officer between two teams. My team needed some stuff from them, and we needed someone to force them to make it work. It is much easier to have someone who is familiar with both products, than to depend on existing QA dept (maybe it was problem that we had poor QA team).
Anyway, this new team seems like great idea. No matter that I like programming, it would be really hard to me to become so familiar with Qt/KDE enough to be usefull KDE programmer. But even at this stage, I believe that I already could be KDE QT member. So, there must be other people like me.
Thus, KDE will be even better.
No sig today.
Boy, you seem really upset by this.
Flying Moose Systems (creators of 3D HOOPS) found that its sales increased dramatically after it changed its name to Ithaca Software.
Those who sacrifice security to condemn liberty deserve to repeat history or something. - Benjamin Santayana
You have never been to Europe have you?
You could also stop driving your gas guzzling SUV and use a more fuel efficient car. If you cannot use all that engine power anyway, why lug it around in your car that is too big anyway?
Ride a (push!) bike.
Stop whinghing that you want to pollute more cheaply.
This space is intentionally staring blankly at you
kde-redhat is a load of crap if you ask me.
I tried to upgrade to kde-3.2 with their repository, but it failed on dozens of unmet dependencies. (just do a apt-cache on it, you'll see) I had to do some serious remove-reinstall moves with apt-get to get back to my previous install.
Building the fedora-src.rpm's that would not install and installing those that would was a lot easier. If I knew how, I would not mind sharing these rpms.
If you pretend to maintain packages for some distro, you should not update the buildhost with all sorts of alpha quality software that has not been packaged correctly. KDE-redhat just stinks!
This space is intentionally staring blankly at you
I'd hate to be the sap trying to sell "Guh-nome".
Why is my post a troll?
I told them I compiled KDE, and then I said it takes 4 seconds to open any folder.
Then I expressed my desire for the new control center.
Someone's targetting me.
I'm afraid I don't know anything WRT the hosting issue.
The better alternative is to do make && make test && checkinstall make install and have it be in your RPM database.
As someone who has written a KDE application, I don't think the existence of user interface guidelines is as important as the fact that the KDE libraries make it easiest to let them do all the boring work... incidentally causing all applications to follow the same guidelines since they aren't reimplementing the file save dialog box.
User interface guidelines are for those who reimplement the user interface in every application.
They that quote Benjamin Franklin on liberty and safety deserve neither.
er, change "on usability is not, in my opinion, is perfectly justified" to "on usability is not unjustified".
My bad.
Ergonomica Auctorita Illico!
Here's a newsforge article posted by the first comment to the kde quality team article.
My Gawd WTF...
If you want people to use your program, you should be willing to package it so they can install it easilly.
If you want to start a new distro, you should either use an existing popular package format or if you have good reason to make a new one, be willing to package things yourself (or convert others) until your distro is popular enough for program authors to care about support.
RPMs, DEBs, and Ebuilds are popular enough, IMO, that programs should take over packaging them.
Luke-Jr