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KDE 3.2: A User's Perspective
Karma Sucks writes "In KDE 3.2 - A User's Perspective (mirror), W. Kendrick gives an incredible visual overview of some of the lesser known features of KDE. Together with a recent article on GNOME, it's become clear that the Linux desktop has all but surpassed proprietary alternatives."
Here is a collection of screen caps showing more of KDE's little features. Very nice. These two articles are the kind of things that MS users are going to look at and say, "wow, cool" before they decide to take the plunge. Good show.
I think you misunderstand how the phrase "all but" is used in everyday speech. Its literal meaning is different from its commonly understood meaning. As used here, it's an intensifier.
The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
Don't know for sure, but OOo and Gnome both use libfreetype, which is quite often compiled without aa (for patent reasons), that might be the problem (put it this way, I don't have it, my KDE is sweet :))
Ask 8 slackers a question, get 10 awnsers (a citation, but I can't remember from who)
have multiple desktops, as many as you like
Desktop Manager, free as in beer and as in speech
unlimited customizability in appearance
I have never seen a linux desktop appearance that I would take over the default OS X look.
Windows XP Pro and Windows 2k3 Terminal Server Edition allow multiple users to log in for console or GUI sessions. The others have been covered by other posters.
Centralization breaks the internet.
Pardon ? You are repeating the ancient FUD about X. When did you check the facts last time ?
ad 1) - dumb trolling on a stupid typo by the article poster
ad 2) cut&paste works fine, even with images and spreadsheets. Did you try OpenOffice or Koffice ? Probably not. If your Gnome has problems with it, that does not mean that *all* X-based UIs have problems with it. I guess that it works right even inside Gnome (although I do not use it myself), the standards for drag&drop are in place for very long time already. Interoperability between different applications could be better, but that holds for Windows and Mac as well. If you paste something from Excell into Photoshop, you are going to get less-than-stellar result too, because the application just does not expect that kind of data.
The bull about unix sockets is so ancient FUD, that I am not sure, whether it is even worth commenting on. Yes, even local clients use unix sockets, because you know what ? It is equaly fast or faster than anything else available (even shared memory). That something runs over socket does not inherently mean that it is inefficient. Not to mention the advantage, when you really need to run something over a network. Windows nor Mac are unable to do that without a costly 3rd-party add-ons (OK, XP has RDP now, but that is hardly the same thing).
Current X UIs are plenty fast, in many cases a lot faster than the Apple or Windows UIs, even though the latter run localy, direct on the hardware. How could that be true ? Could an application design be the issue ? No, let's just bash X instead, because it can do many things I do not use, so it has to be bloated and slow ...
Actually, if you feel that the application is slow, in 99% it has nothing to do with X, it is a bug or sloppy coding in the application.
And the remark about rendering images off-screen in order to display them - are you sure, you know what are you talking about ? Any graphic engine has to unpack the image into a buffer somewhere. And most (if not all) UIs have nice libraries, which do this for you without having to bother with X pixmaps. Windows and Mac just hide this one step from you, but it happens anyway.
How the parent could have been moderated insightful is really beyond meJan
Well, there's no reason why you cannot run VNC under Linux. See here for one implementation.
The (unstated) benefit is that you can get a windows client to connect to a Linux VNC server (and vice-versa).
Use checkinstall.
As long as you are on a RPM based distro, or on Debian, it should enable you to uninstall the stuff you compile with minimal effort.
x0rfbserver let's you do this. It allows a VNC client to connect to your currently running X session, but unfortunately the project seems to have died. A quick google search found x11vnc which seems to do the required.
If my experience is any indication, Windows users are not ready for the Linux desktop. I recently sat a Windows user down in front of my fairly stock Gentoo/GNOME 2.6 installation, and she could not, even after being shown where the Web browser was, figure out how to open a Web site - or even find the Web browser icon again!
How am I supposed to fit a pithy, relevant quote into 120 characters?
Anti-aliasing is switched off for some reason in those shots. I don't know why.
With AA fonts, QT and GTK2 look, very, very nice.
Example 1 (GTK2)
Example 2 (QT)
The font is Bitstream Vera Sans, with AA and subpixel hinting enabled (they might look a bit 'off' on a CRT).
Much better font rendering than Windows, IMHO.
Eat the rich.
http://libvncserver.sourceforge.net/
It comes with x11vnc (forwards the X11 console),
and also with LinuxVNC (forwards the text console).
Also, at least with RHEL3 I've notice their X is compiled with a VNC X11 extension that does the same thing as x11vnc without a separate application.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
For the hard disk stuff: your distro should have used LABEL=/ instead of /dev/hda in your fstab, and avoided this problem.
Of course if you do that, and you add another disk with the same label, things get dicey.
As for the DVD: if you want a data DVD, why are you formatting it as a CD? DVDs are supposed to be UDF, not ISO9660.
In fact, it's a miracle Linux mounted that disk. And a minor one that some app bothered creating it!
>Is there a way to make eveything default to Firefox instead of Konq? or at least the random web links I can click various places?
Go to the Control Center (somewhere in your Start Menu), then Components, then File Associations and change the settings as you like.
Linux has been desktop-ready since 1991, it's just that the majority of users haven't been ready for it.
Uh...I'm pretty sure that Linux couldn't run any X11 system in '91. It *definitely* was not exactly trivial to install Linux in '91.
If you said "since 2002", I might buy into that.
May we never see th
It is available. AA was turned off by the author as he decided that he prefered it off. I believe freetype is used.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Huh? What are you talking about?
p ec
1. Start gedit.
2. Type in something. Select all and click Copy.
3. Start kedit.
4. Click Paste. It works.
The standard is clearly defined here: http://www.freedesktop.org/Standards/clipboards-s
QT 3.0+, GTK 1.2+, Mozilla, OpenOffice, Motif, and probably a lot more other apps and toolkits out there all comply to this standard (though Mozilla has a few bugs). These apps and toolkits cover 99% of all apps that Linux users use today.
My school runs Citrix MetaFrame XP. It works nicely -- until something crashes. If a client crashes and reboots, you have to wait 10 or more minutes before you can login again. Internet Explorer crawls when scrolling. If you encounter one of those sites with animated ads, you're doomed - the client will freeze in an infinite loop trying to redraw the ad over and over. And the most annoying thing of them all: YOU CAN'T ALT+TAB BETWEEN WINDOWS!
Have you tried X with NX compression? It makes X usable even over a modem connection.
I just wanted to point out an area where KDE kicks the crap out of Microsoft's best OS. File management.d .org/pr esentations/kde-user-persp/thumbnails.html
Looks at the pictures here.
http://static.kdenews.org/mirrors/www.lugo
Look at the way the thumbnails pop up to a useable size. In XP you can still see what the thumbnail is but having it double in size on mouse-over allows you to get a much better look without having to launch a seperate application, namely Windows Picture and Fax viewer.
Also look at what happens when you copy or move a picture file. Instead of "Do you want to overwrite xxx.jpg with xxx.jpg" you actually see what your doing. And people say Linux desktops don't innovate...
The tools and applications that are now included with KDE by default are vastly superior to the ones that come on XP. When will Windows get such full featured scanning/ocr software by default? How about a decent cd burner app? Heck KDE even has XP beat on creating something as basic as desktop snapshots. For those people who are willing to make a go of it using Free software KDE makes for a nice upgrade from XP once you realize all the great features that come with it.
If you wanna get rich, you know that payback is a bitch
Microsoft does have a 'multiple desktop' doohickey. Only four desktops, yes, but the feature is there.
/ In stall/2/WXP/EN-US/DeskmanPowertoySetup.exe
http://download.microsoft.com/download/whistler
This is not a difficult feature, but have you considered that they may not have it integrated it because they simply don't like it? It is NOT that easy for a new user to use; windows do get lost in different places on different windows. Yes, its nice for power-users; and for them, they have multiple options to get it..
Its unfortunate. I was looking over that list of features that KDE 3.2 has, looking for ways it may have surpassed what's available in XP. There's really very little.
I just tried this (even though I can't think of any reason for anyone to possibly need this feature) on my copy of Excel 98 and Photoshop 5.5 for MacOS 9. Now, remember these pieces of software are both *old*, both purchased in 1999 I believe. Here's the result It does exactly what anyone would expect it to do! Since Excel data can't be formatted into data Photoshop can edit, it pastes it as a bitmapped image into the Photoshop image. If I paste the exact same cells into Word 98, it'll use the editable version and format it as a table.
Note that Excel and Photoshop aren't made by the same company... this is all governed by the OS and I'd get the exact same results if I pasted into, say, Corel Painter or Aldus Superpaint 3.0 (released 1991.) (In fact, out of curiousity I did try Aldus Superpaint 3.0 and, indeed, it works exactly as expected again.)
This is how copy and paste should work. When Linux can do this, I might consider it.
Comment of the year
In KDE:
;-) since around 1998
Alt+F2
Want to start an app? start typing its name, and it autocompletes
Want to open a URL? Type it
Want to search in google? type gg:whateveryouwant
Same for a few other dozen search engines, translate between languages, and more.
Has been there (couldn't do all this
From: torvalds@klaava.Helsinki.FI (Linus Benedict Torvalds)
Newsgroups: comp.os.minix
Subject: Free minix-like kernel sources for 386-AT
Message-ID:
Date: 5 Oct 91 05:41:06 GMT
Organization: University of Helsinki
Do you pine for the nice days of minix-1.1, when men were men and wrote their own device drivers?
Look at that date, October 1991. That's incredible. It was ready for the desktop since 1991, according to you.
Not according to this site, http://ragib.hypermart.net/linux/
And I quote: "By December came version 0.10. Still Linux was little more than in skeletal form. It had only support for AT hard disks, had no login ( booted directly to bash). version 0.11 was much better with support for multilingual keyboards, floppy disk drivers, support for VGA,EGA, Hercules etc."
So basically, in 1991, LINUX DID NOT EVEN HAVE A FULLY FUNCTIONING FLOPPY DRIVER OR EVEN EGA SUPPORT, and it was "ready" for the desktop? You have taken mindless Linux evangelism to a brand new level of insanity.
Ever since I started on Mandrake 8.2 I've been able to change the screen resolution to whatever was supported by simply using drakconf. Now if something breaks the GUI then editing the XF86Config-4 is still an option, but if your GUI is broken then you've got other things to worry about than resolution.
I don't know if the same function was always present in Mandrake, but I know it's been there since 8.2.
And the muscular cyborg German dudes dance with sexy French Canadians
Erm, one can copy/paste from 15 year old apps on Windows/Mac without a problem. You make it sound like these issues were just fixed this year, which means it will take a long time to shake the reputation.
Your post is strange. The complaint about Linux is that stuff *OTHER* than text does not work. The numbers in your spreadsheet will cut and paste just fine. Try it. Cutting & pasting images does not work, and this is entirely on the brain-dead "pure" design the original ICCCM people did back when Unix design was being dictated by the OSF and other buracracies. (basically the problem is that although the design is almost identical to Windows, the ICCCM said "here is where you put the number identifying the type of data, but we won't say what the numbers should be because that is not our job", while at the same time Microsoft said "hey if you put a 14 in there it means a .BMP file" (note the number is not correct, but that is the idea).
Also, I challenge you to find any modern program that does not use Ctrl+X and Ctrl+V for cut and paste (yes the middle-mouse stuff works as well, but that does not mean the Windows shortcuts don't work).
If you say "Emacs" or anything like that, I would like to point out that cut & paste don't work in Emacs on Windows either. I mean MODERN programs, ie written after Windows 98 came out, which is when all the programs you are comparing to on Windows date from.
> I'm certainly not going to condemn Bill Gates or the KDE folks to long prison sentences for their colour scheme, however depressing it may be.
;^)
:^) The slides seem to be getting the point across that KDE can do a ton of stuff, and has been generally well received. (I can even still stay that after reading a bunch of slashdot comments!)
Hey! For one, the color scheme is MINE, and not simply KDE's. KDE has a TON of color schemes, and you can obviously make your own.
Secondly, I often use my PC late at night, and find that darker tones are WAY better on my eyes.
On the other hand, I did get sick of the gloomy backgrounds, and since putting together these slides have switched to some nicer ones; then decided my color scheme didn't match, so now I have a pale-blue-ish one with grey.
Some people suggested I should have shown off the various themes you can use in KDE. The point of my slides was really to show the KDE stuff that so many people were unfamiliar with. I imagined most of the non-KDE-using folks in my LUG, and figured they would be neither surprised, nor impressed with the fact that KDE has themes. They already KNEW that!
Anyway, while I have gotten a few comments about my choice of theme and color scheme, and now see them being picked apart here on Slashdot, it still really doesn't matter.
I'm very glad that my work on this has gone far beyond the ~35 people who made it out to my real, live talk. I initially felt like I was 'copping out' by doing slides, but if I had done a live presentation, I would have (1) easily gone past the allotted time, and (2) noone else would've been able to see any of it after the fact!
(In a John Stewart voice: "Kudos, to me!")
-bill!
The day someone can come home and stick in a CD and install a printer driver for their new HP Laserjet
I don't know about HP Laserjets, or their corresponding CDs, but when I used Fedora I plugged in my Lexmark Z25, booted up and it said "New Hardware Found - Lexmark Z25 Printer"
No CD required. So, I guess what's needed then is to require the CD?
Note: not all distributions will automatically detect hardware, but newbies shouldn't be using advanced distributions anyways.
Have you tried Linux yet?
Unfortunately, I hadn't turned on AA before I had to put my slides together. One of my HDDs started 'clicking' recently, and I did a fresh install of Debian Woody and KDE 3.2. I haven't done any extra configuration to my XFree86 setup to enable things like AA text, 3D accelleration (if you can call a Voodoo 3 2000 accellerated these days ;^) )
You do not know what you are talking about. On Redhat you have apt and yum, for managing, installing, updating, and removing software. For Debian you have apt and comprehensive standardized repositories. Manrake, Gentoo, and Suse also have similar standardized software package management utilities and repositories.
To be fair, that's not even the default look for 3.2 anyway. This is (although I changed the window decoration to a Be style).
// file: mice.h
#include "frickin_lasers.h"
now, if I can only get rid of the stupid "K" menu
1. Right-click on K-menu
2. Select "Remove Start Applications Menu"
3. There is no step 3.
I guess IHBT'd, and I will now HAND. Thanks!
Liberal (adj.): Free from bigotry; open to progress; tolerant of others.
Check out the Previews & Meta-data tab of the Konqueror Configure window. You can turn off the thumbnails.
Liberal (adj.): Free from bigotry; open to progress; tolerant of others.
the lesson continues :)
You can press Alt+F1 anytime to invoke the application menu, even if you don't have the actual "K" button in your kicker panel. Alternatively, you can use Alt+F2 to open the "Run Command" window, where you can type the name of any program you want to run (you can also type a URL here to launch your browser to that page). Another alternative: you can add an "Application Launcher" applet to your kicker panel, which is essentially the "Run Application" window, but always available.
On my desktop, I have the application launcher applet on its own panel anchored to the upper left, and set to auto-hide and size-to-contents. So instead of Alt+F2, all I have to do is throw the mouse to the upper left and type an app name. Very cool, IMHO.
So, everyone, let's be a little less hasty with the "KDE sucks" nonsense. There's some really cool UI stuff in there that can be tweaked to suit you personally. And if there's something you don't like about the default UI, I can almost guarantee it can be easily turned off or changed.
Check it out, you'll be glad you did.
Liberal (adj.): Free from bigotry; open to progress; tolerant of others.
"2.4. Requesting a Selection"
"A client that wishes to obtain the value of a selection in a particular form (the requestor) issues a ConvertSelection request,
"2.6.2. Target Atoms"
"The atom that a requestor supplies as the target of a ConvertSelection request determines the form of the data supplied. The set of such atoms is extensible, but a generally accepted base set of target atoms is needed.
ADOBE_PORTABLE_DOCUMENT_FORMAT
APPLE_PICT
BITMAP
(etc...)
Now to prove that this does actually work I did the following: I opened a blank document in Kword (v 1.1.92), then I did Insert->Picture and inserted a
So now, we need to gather up a common table of data type atoms (larger than the table in the aformentioned ICCCM spec), and applications need to support conversions to useful data types. E.g. give font and style information along with text selections!!
The technology is there, it's not X11's fault.