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."

Comments

"Is Linux ready for the desktop?", part 7549245

[Anonymous Coward]

Stop asking that question. It's the wrong question. The correct question is "Are Windows users ready to use Linux on the desktop?". Linux has been desktop-ready since 1991, it's just that the majority of users haven't been ready for it.

Re:"Is Linux ready for the desktop?", part 7549245

[GoofyBoy]

>Linux has been desktop-ready since 1991, it's just that the majority of users haven't been ready for it.

Thats a great attitude. "Its not confusing, you just don't understand it."

Do you also think that the mouse is a lazy's mans crutch?

Users are where they want to be. Software is the part that needs to go to the users, not the other way around.

Re:"Is Linux ready for the desktop?", part 7549245

[praksys]

Really there isn't just one question to ask. You could ask any of the following.

1. The one that usually gets asked: "Will Windows users who switch find Linux easier to use than windows?" This is obviously a loaded question. making this the standard pretty much ensures that Windows come out ahead.
2. A little better: "If first time users are plunked down in front of a bunch of desktops, which one will they find easiest to use?" This is at least a fair comparison, but given that few users are first time users, the answer isn't very interesting (and I think OS X wins).
3. Better still: "After users have learned to use a bunch of different desktops, which one do they find easiest to use, and most useful?" This is a fair questions, and the answer actually matters. I use Windows, OS X, and Linux (Gnome usually) on a daily basis and I think Linux wins this one.
4. Best: "Which desktop combines a managable learning curve, and is most useful onced learned." This is really where Linux runs into problems. For some people the learning curve on Linux is still too steep. If they learned how to use it they would find it more useful, and even easier to use, but getting to that point is still too hard for some people.

Re:"Is Linux ready for the desktop?", part 7549245

[Knacklappen]

Linux has been desktop-ready since 1991, it's just that the majority of users haven't been ready for it.

God, how I hate reading this. It's people like you with arrogant statements like your's above that give the OpenSource community a bad reputation.

Face it: What is revolutionary about GNU/Linux is its model of development and distributuion. Technically speaking, for a typical Joe User there is little or nothing new. Regarding the GUI, we mostly take the best (or what we perceive to be best) from other OS, like Windows, MacOS, Irix, AmigaOS etc. Nothing wrong with this approach, but it's not that the Linux GUI is constantly 5 years ahaed of what users can grasp.

Re:"Is Linux ready for the desktop?", part 7549245

[sisukapalli1]

Let me play the devil's advocate... I feel strongly about the opensource philosophy that someone would be able to label me a "zealot."

However, I think there are some things that are still not "there yet" with linux. Here is something that happenned to me yesterday. I added a new disk on my dell optiplex, moved the primary IDE cable to secondary (long set of wrong experimentation to get the bios to recognize the disk). The windows (xp) side booted off fine and said new devices were added, blah blah...

The linux partition made me go crazy. It decided that the original hda is now hde (the disk was a SATA disk, so the ide cabling change shouldn't have messed the configuration badly). Anyway, the system "paniced" and the only way to get it back was to use a linux boot disk, run rescue, mount the partitions, edit /etc/fstab, change all hda's to hde's, chroot to that partition, run lilo, and reboot. This would be a nightmare for someone that is not familiar with the details of linux.

It is not just a question of "are windows users ready". It is a question of, "do things fail gracefully"? Or, "do simple things get reconfigured automatically in a decent manner?"

Same thing with CD/DVD burning. The options are a bit un-intuitive, and I couldn't get a DVD burned on linux to mount on any other system (though it is an ISO9660 -- may be a problem with the options I provided, but as a person that dragged a bunch of files and burned onto the DVD, I would expect that the program defaults are going to be decent).

Anyway, the system I have is Mandrake 9.2, and 10.0 beta. DVD issues were with 9.2 version.

S

Re:"Is Linux ready for the desktop?", part 7549245

[Anonymous Coward]

I think the (valid, somewhat) point he makes is that Linux as such is a very viable desktop OS. However, most people don't want a desktop OS, they want to use what they know - MS Windows. People are trained to use Windows, and other desktops, while good alternatives, are still different.

Re:"Is Linux ready for the desktop?", part 7549245

[Henk Poley]

Do you also think that the mouse is a lazy's mans crutch?

My personal opinion about keyboard and mouse is that they are arcane ways to communicate with. I know quite a few people for which these HID devices are either physical (slightly) unusable, or plain difficult to grasp (talking about the mouse here).

Re:"Is Linux ready for the desktop?", part 7549245

[Herr_Nightingale]

hey, I think that Linux makes a sucky desktop for normal users.
Does your distro detect 5-button mice? Mine doesn't either. Can't choose one during install. I have to manually edit xfree config files to get it working. That's not user-friendly, I think.
Can't copy/paste pictures or even a lot of text, because X's crappy clipboard only does ASCII. That's kinda gay, but I live with it because I know it will someday work, and my OS is free. Normal users don't seem to care about whether things will work 'someday' - they want them right away. I think Windows has had a working clipboard since 1995.
Another thing: automounting sucks. It doesn't even work in Mandrake, WhiteBox or Libranet (my three standards) so I'm guessing it doesn't work right in most other distros either. Show me one that does, and that has five-button support, and that's got a universal clipboard that's not toolkit-dependent, and I'll agree with you that Linux is desktop-ready.

Until then, no dice. It's ready for me, but not for the masses.

Re:"Is Linux ready for the desktop?", part 7549245

[NanoGator]

"For the hard disk stuff: your distro should have used LABEL=/ instead of /dev/hda in your fstab, and avoided this problem."

It takes explanations like this to solve these problems, and you guys think Linux is ready for Joe Sixpack?

Re:"Is Linux ready for the desktop?", part 7549245

[Codifex Maximus]

> People are trained to use Windows

Most people don't know how to use Windows. And what they do know can be directly applied to most windowmanagers for Linux today. They doubleclick an icon, use a start menu, click on the file menu or click toolbars, they enter data into text fields or use drop down boxes, click the X to close the window, resize windows. It's all the same really.

It's not what people want really though; it's what they *think* they want. They go into a computer store and say, "I need a computer to run MSWord or MSExcel." Instead, they should say, "I need to do wordprocessing or spreadsheets." Linux can accomplish these tasks quite admirably.

All BUT surpassed?

[zerocool^]

has all but surpassed proprietary alternatives.

Comment 1: Haven't we been here for years, now? "Linux is almost ready", "We've all but surpassed windows", etc.
Comment 2: We won't have a desktop that can compete with windows until we still fix the stupid things that are inherent to x-windows WM's. All I want in life is to be able to cut-and-paste reliably between applications. Text, and pictures, mind you, and in a perfect world, spreadsheet data. You know what else would be nice? If it were faster - i.e. didn't have to go through unix sockets to do anything. Or if it didn't have to render all image files into bitmaps offscreen to display them.

No, we've still got a long way to go. I do really like a good gnome desktop running ximian, it's true, and it's getting better. But, sorry, we're no where near the "it just works" of apple / winxp. //asbestos armor on.

~Will

Re:All BUT surpassed?

[mgkimsal2]

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.

No, it does not 'work fine'. The Excel/Photoshop analogy is poor. Cut a number from a cell and I can paste it in anything in Photoshop which expects text. Consistently, between versions of Windows and versions of Excel and PS. The same is not true of Linux apps.

So, you don't use Gnome - not even any GTK apps? But you're qualified to say that a cut/paste problem doesn't exist on the Linux desktop?

I can consistently reproduce cut/paste problems all the time on various Linux distros and between various apps. There are still 2 major ways of cut/paste, and they don't interoperate with each other. That's all there is to it. When/if that'll get fixed, I don't know. To get something 'fixed' generally means people have to agree it's a 'problem' in the first place, which it seems a majority of people *don't* in the Linux/Unix world.

Re:All BUT surpassed?

[ajs318]

I think the suoeriority of MS Office will be seriously undermined when somebody releases a set of MS Office macros for exporting perfect OpenOffice.org or KOffice files {MS would add their own OO.o export over Ballmer's dead body, though OO.o import would be good for persuading Open Source users back}. Right now, the main -- even the only -- stumbling block against wider-spread adoption of OpenOffice.org is the imperfect file import. So thinking laterally, we can fix it at the other end {the MS Office macro language is better-documented than the save formats, and the OpenOffice.org and KOffice formats are well-documented}. In fact, KOffice will be moving towards OpenOffice.org file format compatibility in a future release.

On the server side, what I think is needed is for a few hardcore Linux-using organisations to release their own little in-house developed solutions to the wider community; where they will be mercilessly tweaked and improved, eventually to merge into something that will absolutely wipe the floor with Microsoft.

Re:All BUT surpassed?

[Martin Blank]

Except the workplace is what drives the suite. I remember when a lot of people were using WordPerfect at home simply because it was what they used at work, or they used MSWorks because they didn't have a computer at work. At school, we got a copy of Word 5.0 for the Mac, and I kind of liked it at the time, but I thought it was too bulky in comparison to the one I was using, which fit on a floppy disk (and for which I can't recall the name for the life of me... It was a Mac program, and had a logo of a sort of mythology figure with a muscular arm bent upward... GRAH!).

Anyway, Microsoft got a foothold, and started getting Office to be the dominant office suite. This led to people wanting Office at home because it meant using what they knew. I know people happily sticking with Office 97 at home because it works for them, but at the same time, I know an awful lot of people using later versions simply because it's used at work.

Re:All BUT surpassed?

[Jadrano]

I think with things like Sharepoint, this is similar to the situation with hardware support - it's not that MS Office is inherently better suited for collaborative systems and content management, but because it is used more widely, there are more such systems developped for it (e.g. Openshare). But I think it is already beginning to change, a smaller company I know that offers content management and intranet system has switched from Windows to platform-independent Java. When OpenOffice.org and StarOffice are more widely used, there will probably be collaborative systems that interact with them - probably this is even easier to do than with MS Office because of the use of open standards and the availability of the source.

Re:All BUT surpassed?

[Brandybuck]

I'll ignore the crack about "desktop linux", since I use KDE on FreeBSD instead, and assume that you mean "Free Software desktops for Unix and Unix like systems" instead.

I understand that there are legitimate grievances and complaints about KDE, Gnome, XFCE, etc. But those projects do not have unlimited development resources. And even if they did have an infinite number of code monkeys bashing away at workstations, those legitimate grievances and complaints are often contradictory. Some complainer wants more buttons on title windows to allow screenshots and mac-style maximize, while another wants them all removed except for min, max and close. Who do you please?

But the solutions to this are easy.

1) Write up good bug reports. No defect in KDE or Gnome was ever addressed because someone bitched about it on Slashdot. Personally, I hate writing high quality bug reports. So I make it a point not to complain about something without first logging it as a bug (or seeing if one exists). If it's irksome enough to me, I'll log one. Otherwise I keep my mouth shut because it's not important enough.

2) Code it yourself. Seriously! A lot of these complaints don't take much coding effort, merely an attention to detail, a thorough understand of the implications of the change, and the will to plow through the political resistance to change.

3) Get someone else to code it for you. Cash, beer and gift certificates to ThinkGeek are excellent motivators to get a developer to code something up for you. I have done this myself, on both sides of the transaction.

4) Join a quality team for a desktop.

In summary, it's up to YOU to do something about it. This isn't Microsoft where we give billions to Bill and hope the next Windows won't be WinME Redux. These are community projects that are written by and for the community. If you're not involved in the community no one is going to listen to you.

Re:All BUT surpassed?

[bjhonermann]

I just tried the same thing in same thing on my Mandrake cooker laptop. Here's what happened:

First, I copied a number of cells from an excel document (opened in OpenOffice) and pasted them into a Gimp 2.0 text box. (Note: simply hitting paste outside of a text box in Gimp didn't do anything. I had to intentionally create a text box and paste the cells into there). Gimp kept the formatting and everything worked as a normal text box after that. I also tried pasting the cells into kpaint and that read the paste as a bitmap.

Next, I selected the whole image in Gimp and pasted it into a new OpenOffice document. The clipboard pasted what I expected, an image file.

Lastly, I selected the cells again and pasted them directly into an OpenOffice Document. OpenOffice does not paste the cells into a table, instead it creates a small spreadsheet embedded within the rest of the document. Admitedly, the embedded spreadsheet is a little clumsier than a simple table, but it is a lot more powerful too (it will keep formula functionality instead of pasting all the information as simple text).

All-in-all the copy-and-paste worked about as I would have expected. I think it would be nice if OO had a "paste special" for pasting cells as a table for very simple information but it's sort of irrelevent to me. Hope that's informative.

-Brian

Missing it again.

[Twirlip of the Mists]

The second item on the first page of examples includes a note that you can copy-and-paste error text from alert boxes. The sample includes an alert that says

Could not start process Unable to create io-slave:
klauncher said: Error loading 'kio-audiocd'.

A truly desktop-ready operating system would never display an error like that. I mean, hell; is it so much to ask that if an error has to be cryptic, it should at least be grammatically correct?

Re:Missing it again.

[MobyDisk]

I disagree. This is an above average (but not perfect) error message. Error messages should state:

1) That an error occurred. This part should be clean and readable to an end user.
2) The program, process, or whatever caused it.
3) The condition that caused the error.
4) The target that was being operated upon.

This error has #2 (klauncher) and #4 (kio-audiocd). It almost has #3 (Could not start process, unable to create io-slave). The only problem here is that it is not entirely helpful to say what you were not able to do, you must say what condition was not met. For example "Unable to open file foo.txt" is not helpful. But "File foo.txt does not exist" or "File foo.txt does not have write access" tells us exactly what we need to change to fix the problem. Similary, "Could not start process Unable to create io-slave" is not great. At least we know why the process could not start: it is because it could not create the io-slave kio-audiocd. Better might be "io-slave kio-audiocd reports access denied" or "kio-audiocd not found" or "signal 11 from kio-audiocd"

Anyhow, the point of an error message isn't to be pretty or grammatically correct. It is to provide the information necessary to identify and solve the problem. Better to have a cryptic message with all the info you need, than a long wordy grammitcally correct message that doesn't tell you anything. With the above error message, someone can call a technician, or a geek, or post on a forum, and the message is unique enough that they can get a relevant response. That is what is most important.

Re:Missing it again.

[fzammett]

And as the original poster stated, you people STILL don't get it...

I shouldn't have to post on a forum for a bunch of geeks to solve my problem. The error message should give me enough information to solve the problem on my own, as previous responder correctly points out.

Yes, there SHOULD be an Advanced button, or something akin to that, so that I CAN post on a forum for the geeks to solve the really sticky problems, much like Windows does.

This is NOT a ringing endorsement of Windows error message by the way because they are usually severly lacking in any useful information too. My point however is that the Linux community as a whole generally does not get this concept, but Microsoft is at least attentive to it, even if they fail in the implementation. Linux is simply NEVER going to be any kind of significant threat to Windows until these types of things get through everyone's head.

Re:Missing it again.

[noewun]

A truly desktop-ready operating system would never display an error like that. I mean, hell; is it so much to ask that if an error has to be cryptic, it should at least be grammatically correct?

I noticed that. I also noticed the plethora of information on the screen describing the resolution/bit-depth of the display settings. What immediately went through my head was, "too much information!"

One of the things I have done to make money in the past is provide tech support for Joe and Jane Computer User. Not power users. Not Photoshop geniuses. Not people who program for the fun of it or who have a favorite Linux distribution. The most important thing I learned from dealing with people like this is that they're not Slashdot readers. They're not MacNN or Windows site readers, either. They don't care about which OS is better than the other, or which graphics card gets the most FPS. They think of their computers as toys or tools, much in the same way they think about microwaves or TVs. And what they want, most of all, is for their machines to work, period. If they work - get email, surf the web, play games and display porn - interest ends.

Concerns about usability and GUI design aside, the greatest barrier to wider acceptance I see in the Linux community I see is a sense of elitism to which some members of the community seem to be attached. Now, I want to make it clear I am not talking about the Linux community as a whole, nor am I attempting to start some silly OS flamewar. I have, however, seen a consistent trend of elitism and a defense of elitism in posts here and elsewhere. The elitism takes the form of an attachment of importance to certain technical and/or obscure areas of understanding and an assumption that the understanding of these metrics and their concomitant languages implies the speaker is part of the Linux community, as opposed to a member of another group.

Fr'example, how many threads here evolve into minute discussions of thread scheduling, micro- versus monolithic-kernel structures, memory subsystems, etc.? And, more importantly, how many of these threads include comments which attach a larger importance to these topics - if you don't understand how much better the journaling capabilities of Linux are when compared to Windows or OS X then you're obviously an idiot and should go on using your stupid Windows box!

I bring this up because, in my opinion, this is the exact wrong focus needed to help Linux gain widespread home usage. My experience with Joe and Jane Computer User is that they don't care about any of this shit. And, more importantly, they are right not to care about any of this shit. This is the crux, because it is here that the idea that superior technical knowledge means one is correct runs headlong into the reality of the marketplace, which is that superior technical ability isn't nearly as important as the ability to gets one's message across to people who see their computer as just another home appliance. Mention the name of Steve Jobs here and you're asking for a fight, but one thing he understands possibly better than anyone else in the industry is that you have to give average people reasons to use a computer which have nothing to do with better journaling and everything to do with fitting the machine into their lives. Dell has done this by making the computer another commidity. Apple has done this by elevating the computer above the status of beige-box-tool. The Linux community, as a whole, can't seem to decide on a way to do this.

I know I am not describing the Linux community as a whole. I am describing a particular subset of the community, a subset which is extremely vocal. I also know that this zealot mentality exists the Mac and Windows world's as well. However, as both the Mac and Windows world's have significant market and mindshare penetration into the home market, the zealot communities are mediated by those who understand the need to present another front to the average user. I

Re:Missing it again.

[Wavicle]

I disagree, the error is well below average:

Could not start process Unable to create io-slave:
klauncher said: Error loading 'kio-audiocd'.

What process was supposed to get started?
What is an io-slave and why were you trying to create it?
What is klauncher?
What is 'kio-audiocd'?
Why was there an error loading kio-audiocd?
What are the likely causes of this error?

I'm not sure what it was the error dialog was in response to (even the mirror is slashdotted now), but here's what I think would be a better error dialog for the average user:

Could not play CD. There may be no CD inserted or the disc may be scratched.

Then go ahead and add a small "debug info" button that has the previous information of use to developers. End users have a pretty fair chance of solving this one. The 5% of those who have some other problem can then use the extra information and google for it.

Re:Missing it again.

[sploxx]

IMHO, you're right. Partly. Partly, because there *ARE* still the power users, nerds and developers out there who want a functional desktop and like much information and like being able to tweak the desktop to their needs. Don't annoy these. That's really important. For example, do not remove dialog undo buttons from a widely used linux desktop environment because (it is assumed that) the avg. user is too stupid to use them!

So, yes, I'd like to switch off many fancy things for my grandma/-pa. But I also want to use the rarer features. And the command line.

What I'm trying to say is: Computers are complex. More complex than saws, screwdrivers, pencils, sheets of paper etc. You can't hide all that complexity behind an interface that fits everyone.

what's missing

[nycfoobar]

1. UNINSTALL! Maybe I am a moron, but I find it impossible to cleanly and completely uninstall non-packaged stuff. 2. Build interface. That is, I can build most non-packaged software with configure, make, make install, but of course I am too lazy to check where the stuff ends up by default and to pass the appropriate configure parameters. KDE is for lazy people like me, so where is the mechanism that keeps my machine clean even for non-packaged software? 3. While we are at it, I am tired of recursively finding out from configure what the dependency chain is. If I want to install something, I want to install the dependencies as well. And no, I don't want to RTFM. 4. A complete equivalent to M$ Money. 5. I shouldn't have to care whether an app is a GNOME app or a KDE app. 6. Other than that: looks great, when is it out packaged for Fedora?

Applications more important than a great desktop..

[Knacklappen]

"After users have learned to use a bunch of different desktops, which one do they find easiest to use, and most useful?" This is a fair questions, and the answer actually matters. I use Windows, OS X, and Linux (Gnome usually) on a daily basis and I think Linux wins this one.

I think, while this may be the case, it's actually the applications we should look on. To me, a desktop on you computer is like the physical desktop at work: Sure, some come with nice drawers and others com with tables that can be lifted electrically, rather than by cranking. But it's the tools you use for work that matter, not how neatly they are sorted.
To me, any improvement on Gimp, OpenOffice, (etc) is more important than some new feature in KDE or Gnome. Because the desktop is just a way to get to the applications I do my work in.

Yikes!

[arvindn]

I wish reviewers would choose a nice theme before making screenshots. Antialiased fonts have been available for at least a couple of years! I know, I know, this review is for showing off the functionality, not the looks, but newbies looking at it might get the wrong idea... Its definitely difficult for new users to grasp the level of configurability of the UI. My LUG did a "linux demo day" a while back, and one of the questions a visitor asked me was "all these desktops seem look different. what does linux look like by default"? I didn't have much luck telling him there wasn't one, and that it was distro and even version specific. So again, it would be nice if reviewers paid attention to these little things.

It's the apps, stupid

[simetra]

KDE is nice and cool, I like it. However, "REAL" users need apps. For geeks like us who just admin, play with graphics, etc., things are dandy. There are even nice games that come with KDE. But there's a long way to go before Linux will ever be a realistic replacement for Windows.

Key points being...

• Apps users want and need
  
• Apps users can install and uninstall without tracking down every bloody dependency ad infinitum
  
• Standard UI across apps
  
• A printing system that works AS EASILY as Windows
  

Until those things become standard across all distros, Linux taking over the desktop will be a sad joke.

Re:All this functionality in KDE is nice, but...

[Anonymous Coward]

Where have you been? The KDE developers have been doing a YEAR of usabillity studies and have activley cleaned up the menus for good defaults. See the kde usabillity mailing lists and see that they have cared, but they can't satisfy everyone.You can send your complaints to the KDE developers. Or, you can click Settings, Configure toolbars and configure things to your liking.

AND REMEMBER! Microsoft is so big because of the monopoly! My brother has difficulty reading, yet he figured KDE out before windows because of the easy to under stand colorful icons that KDE uses.

GNOME 2.6, which you OBVIOUSLY haven't used has a lot of device management intergration. KDE as well with the Kinfocenter program.

Either get informarmed or modded troll!

Better documentation. Much better documentation.

[zogger]

Better documentation can fix that learning curve better than ignoring the docs and adding new features as fast as possible, IMO. As soon as a new learner has to go hunt something down on the net to fix some problem or to help them get to speed in using whatever app is bothering them, it starts to blow chunks big time for them. If the built in help system was way more extensive and written in non geek and used very little arcane acronyms, it would help. And the format needs to be such it's easily transferred to dead tree copies for reference.

I'd like to see an (obvious to newbies) automatic update for documentation for the successful bug fixes and patches, click a button, all the latest fixes in clear precise language get updated to the on machine data base. A fix won't work if even one step is non clear, and can actually make it worse if the newbie tries to implement the fix. Don't leave new adopters hanging is the message I am saying. And it needs to be realised that traditional man pages aren't enough, too cryptic for new learners mostly, they were designed for experienced sys admins and developers, and are swell for that purpose, but for other people - the other 99.999% of the people out there- they create a big "WTF does this mean?" in their minds.

Re:"all but surpassed"

[Twid]

Actually, I'm an OSX user, and I find the Finder on OSX mostly annoying, but it's perfect for the average user. I think most "power" OSX users ignore the Finder and use a tool like PathFinder, QuickSilver, LaunchBar, or the good ol' command line to get around.

Personally, I use QuickSilver. Basically, it let's you pop up a menu (command spacebar) and then just type the first few letters of something (or a predefined shortcut) to launch an app or a bookmark or a file or a google search. LaunchBar is the same. It's a really nice application and the Linux world could certainly use something like it, dunno if it exists.

KAppfinder

[Wolfier]

KDE needs to stop calling non-KDE apps "legacy" applications. This word used to be an euphemism for "old" (thus, "worse") and due to overuse, the word itself has become derogatory.

To this day I have not seen a KDE editor that is better than GVim.

The word "legacy" embeds some negative attitudes you don't really want to associate yourself with - so grow up - just call them what they really are: "non-KDE" applications.

Re:"all but surpassed"

[IntlHarvester]

Looking at those KDE screenshots reminds me a lot of this old cartoon.

Showing off pictures like this or this just shows that people don't quite get it -- it like they just managed to reinvent Windows 95 plus a couple extra features.

Meanwhile the modern Windows user is used to looking at stuff like this. Totally different user experience to what you see on 'last generation' desktops. (Of course, all the Windows users on slashdot turn off this fluff, but after watching a totally new user play around with XP a bit, you realize that "task-oriented" features are actually helpful.)

I'm not saying that KDE isn't a good "power user" desktop, but the proprietary folks keep raising the bar, and having a "Start Menu" isn't enough to cut it anymore.

Re:Applications more important than a great deskto

[Vancorps]

KDE and Gnome have both been intuitive for users to get to applications for quite some time. Especially after people started standardising on GTK and QT.

I think you're right, improvements to OpenOffice have a much more powerful ability to bring users to the platform. Getting some big accounting software makers to create a linux version would also help a lot. Right now the average user has no reason to switch to Linux because the software they know runs on Windows.

So Linux needs two approaches to successfully gain steam on the desktop. The first approach being a continued evolution for existing desktop products. I'm sorry to say but the Gimp still can't compared with Photoshop. Then the second approach, I still can't get Avid for Linux, or Dreamweaver

easy install still missing

[Rashan]

When you can install an application with out spending hours or days tracking down various RPMs, wrestling with dependencies and conflicts, or having to update gtk2.0+-0.2.2.1 or some other "obscure" thing, then it'll be ready. It's fine for people who like to do this kind of thing, but all people in the "real world" want is to be able to install an application and have it work correctly the first time. When you can download a file and install it in one click... then linux will be ready for the average user's desktop. All the rest of this stuff is just eye candy. Pretty, but not what's really needed.

Copy-Paste does not really work!

[Asdex]

Huh? What are you talking about?

> 1. Start gedit.
> 2. Type in something. Select all and click Copy.
> 3. Start kedit.
> 4. Click Paste. It works.

Ok, that works, but what about:

1. Start gnumeric
2. Type in something. Create a chart. Select the chart and click Copy.
3. Start OOo Writer.
4. Click Paste. It works *not*!

Copy and paste of "Text" is trivial. But there is more to copy and paste than unformatted "Text".

Let's face reality.

Re:"all but surpassed"

[daviddennis]

I suppose I'll be modded down for this, but I have karma to burn.

There's something about those screenshots - maybe it's the font, or perhaps it's that gloomy gus gray look that should have gone out the door with Windows 2000 - that practically screams "amateurish"!

I'm not saying that the KDE folks haven't done a pretty cool job on the guts, and I'm not saying that a lot of hard work hasn't gone into what I saw in the screen shots ... but guys, take a look at MacOS X to see how it should really be done.

Yes, I know you can't copy MacOS X, but you might think about using colours that strike a nice balance between Gloomy Gus of Windows 2000 and the Clippy-style forced cheer of XP.

And get rid of that awful wanna-be Helvetica font. The first time I saw it, I knew it wasn't love. Now that I've sat through several pages of screen shots with it, I darn well know it's not love, and I know why a really good font designer is well worth his paycheck.

You're getting a lot closer than you were a year or two ago, and that's great. But don't say you've surpassed the commercial alternatives until you can beat 'em for looks, because that's what we're staring at 10 hours a day.

It's a lot less trivial than it, well, looks.

D

Re:Some really nice features you won't find on XP

[FFFish]

When will Windows get such full featured scanning/ocr software by default? How about a decent cd burner app?

Er... isn't it true that when Microsoft included a full-featured browser by default, there was a terrible outcry? Isn't it true that when they included a full-featured A/V package, there was a terrible outcry? Ditto the hard drive defrag?

I thought the big thing here was to decry Microsoft's tendency to put good software in the package with its OS!

The Gnome article makes no sense whatsoever

[stiller]

Is this man insane?
Not to be advocating any particular OS (I've used Win and Linux for years, Mac recently), but this guy tries to prove the superiority of Gnome by saying that a lack of options equals a good GUI design. This is clearly untrue, a good GUI should only show the NEEDED options, but ommitting half of the functionality only means simplifying the design obstacles for the developers.
As an example, he shows screenshots comparing the 'save as' dialogs, where the Gnome version is missing current directory contents, then says this is a 'cleaner' interface. Sure, but it also misses the main advantage of having a GUI; contextual views. Then he compares the Epiphany settings screen with that of IE. The first has only the 'home page' option, where the latter has some more. But that's a functionality choice, not a usability one! Maybe Epiphany users never need to manage their history and cookies, but these would seem to be the only other periodical actions for browser settings, so their placement in the IE screen would actually be a better choice. Finally, he calls the iTunes screen bloated and shows it, displaying a 30+ songs playlist and with additional equalizer screen (who uses that?) besides Muine, sporting a playlist of... 5 songs!
Wow, well, that's indeed much smaller, congrats. He states that iTunes has an inconsistent GUI and non-standard widgets. Which ones, exactly? Does he mean the play, stop and shuffle widgets? Very non-standard indeed. He muses about Muines ability to scan folders and whack everything in one giant playlist, which iTunes also does, apart from providing 'smart' playlists and album/artist/style browsing. Really, simply ommitting functionality does not equal good GUI design, it's just easier.

Have you tried knoppix?

[Anonymous Coward]

Its just want youre looking for. Just insert the CD when your computer boots, then in just 1 minute you have a complete desktop, surfing the web, office suite, music player, GAMES, graphics software and even development tools all ready to go!

Try knoppix today, you won't be disappointed!

Huh?

[Anonymous Coward]

Linux desktop has all but surpassed proprietary alternatives.
If so, why do the fonts look like crap?
If so, why does the desktop look like a cheap copy of Windows 98?
If so, why does ... I could go on forever.

Re:Huh?

[dpete4552]

Well if you use a better theme (the screenshot shows the default theme for KDE) it wont look like a cheap copy of Windows 98. If you enable anti-aliasing the fonts wont look like crap either ;). http://kde.org/screenshots/kde320shots.php

Re:The theming, IT BURNS!!

[Quattro Vezina]

[Just a little warning...this post has nothing to do with the author's theme, so it's not on-topic with this sub-thread. It is, however, on topic with the article..it's about a rather cool feature of KDE that the author didn't mention]

Posting my above post csused me to remember another cool feature of KDE that I don't recall seeing in the screenshots: the ability to force the titlebar button order the way you want to regardless of the current window decoration.

For example, I used to use Laptop window decorations. It had an esoteric button order that I grew to really like--IMO, it was very intuitive (for one, the close button was on the far left, not the right). Then, I switched to Glow, which had the common Windows-like button order, which I now dislike. What did I do? I set KDE to force the titlebar buttons into the same order as Laptop.

It worked seamlessly--I'm still using the forced button order, and there's no way to tell it's not the normal button order for my window decoration.

Can I do this in any other GUI, even other Linux GUIs? I don't think so. I like my close button on the far left--in KDE, if it's on the right, I can just shunt it over to the left and it'll act like that's the way it was always supposed to be. Can I do that in Gnome? In Windows? Don't make me laugh.

Re:"all but surpassed"

[arkhan_jg]

I have to admit, those screenshots are just nasty. My kde hasn't looked that bad since the 2.2 days.

I've no idea why he has AA turned off (ok, some people don't like it in the 9-14pt range, but you've gotta be insane not to use at the higher pts), and kde supports any fonts that X does, i.e. TTF for example. Personally, I use the microsoft fonts (verdana etc) off my doze games rig, but the free bitstream vera ones are also very nice.

Combine that with the ugly colours, scheme and windeco, it looks like something from mid 90's.

If you want a good example of some kde styles, you've got plastik (included by default in 3.2), style and windeco

baghira, a mac clone

knifty, new, my current favourite

and of course, luna if you just luuurve the windows look.