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Deep Inside the K Desktop Environment
Lemmingue writes "Ars Technica published a very good article about the KDE architecture. It's a essential read for anyone wondering how Konqueror can open documents in the same window or just understand the license issues regarding the Qt use.
The article describes most of the technologies behind the KDE (Qt, KParts) and how the project is organized.
The article is full of links, screenshots and diagrams."
From TFA:
In addition to DCOP, the upcoming KDE 4 is expected to also support D-BUS, which was designed using DCOP as a model but with the added advantage of having no dependencies,
Thank $deity! KDE would in general benefit from ridding the application programmer from dependencies to GPL'd stuff. KDE "needs" (to the extent any piece of software needs anything) to be able to render Gtk-applications with native LAF, so that the application developers can choose their license freely. I'm not aware if the dependency problem with DCOP relates to Qt, however. Without GPL (and QPL), KDE could have been embraced as the standard Linux desktop environment ages ago. So far it only has the most users, but that's not enough if it's not "strategically viable" (if you work for Trolltech/KDE: please spare the lecture about corps affording $1500/dev/year, we've all seen it).
KDE could really collect the jackpot by allowing development of native KDE apps via Gtk/other LGPL'd lib. I assume QtGtk isn't up to the task yet?
DCOP, BTW, is a very sweet and underadvertised technology. We need DCOP-like scriptability for all the applications. It has a very transparent feel, just like a good Unix methodology should.
Save your wrists today - switch to Dvorak
Yes, we published this several months ago, and have made no recent revisions to it. If you're going to link us up (which we always appreciate!), why not do it to our new article on the Future of Prescott?
As a regular Windoze user, I love looking into KDE from time to time. I first tried it out in '99 on my Pentium 133 laptop and was somewhat happy. (It was certianly better than the X-win system on our Sparc 5 workstations.)
I now have Mandrake 10 and am very pleased with the progress, integration, and ease of use. Since I use NT 5 here at work, I am almost excited to get home and work on my system running KDE.
Good job, Mattias!
See, being from Tübingen can be Kool!!!
The Kai's Semi-Updated Website Thingy
Well, I don't really like juK... I use amaroK.
Gaim sucks. Kopete's better.
Evolution is slow. Kontact is fast.
All these programs, though, use KDE technologies that made them a *lot* easier to develop and a pleasure to use.
I guess the real question is: Why not?
I'm rather curious, how well does ArsTechnica handle a Slashdot story? I'm asking this, since most people view getting a story on slashdot as a bad thing server wise.
Thanks.
/^[A-Z0-9._%+-]+@[A-Z0-9.-]+\.[A-Z]{2,4}$/i
My first experience with KDE was this weekend.
I finally decided to put my money where my mouth is (so to speak) and installed mandrake 10.
Brilliant, I must say. But, I only have one concern. I was a bit taken aback that the install ran slower then windows 2k on my celeron 400.
When i say slower, i mean that browsing the web took longer and programs took longer to load and execute. Windows took longer to move around the screen. Menus took longer to "pop up." Basic stuff, really.
Functionality-wise, I am not complaining, I really like how things are working so far. I just need to familiarize myself with a few more things (navigation, program location, ect) and ill be fine.
I admit though, I was looking forward to a slight speed increase. I was a bit taken aback that things actually slowed down.
no
Konqueror was named I believe as a reference to the "Navigator" and "Explorer" paradigm. I've seen the slogan around (though it may be unofficial) "After the Navigator and the Explorer comes the Konqueror." (and the K is obligatory for many KDE based projects ^_~) And I seem to recall KDE having the slogan "Konquer your desktop" so I would say Konqueror fits.
And did you ever think that perhaps some of the names are acronyms or are meaningful in other languages? Take Kate for example, what on earth does the name Kate have to do with text editing/programming? Well nothing until you realize that it's an acronym that stands for "KDE Advanced Text Editor". And I recall a class or project or something that had a name that was meaningful in German but I don't recall what it was off hand.
I can't say for sure, but I would imagine that K3b stands for "KDE 3 Burner" or something similar.
And let me ask another question. What does Mozilla have to do with web browsing? That name is only meaningful to those that know its history. That it was Netscape Navigator's code name because it was the browser that was going to eat Mosaic. But I digress, what about Emacs? How would your non "l33t" hackers know what that program is used for?
Furthermore, you make your statement as if it were the rule and not the exception, but going through my kde 3.3alpha menu, I count.....15-16 or so apps that are part of kde that do not have first glance meanings in English (excluding the games menu) and that's out of....well over 100+ apps that come bundled with KDE. And if that were not enough, the KDE menu displays the generic names for the apps on the menu as well as the program name *by default*. So I don't think this problem is as great as you claim.
* Ideological issues. Many developers and users move to Linux to avoid being under the control of a single company -- Qt is an attempt to change all that.
Funny you mentioned that. The GPL is actually *more* ideological than the LGPL under wich GTK is liscensed.
Trolltech could never dominate KDE or Linux. 'Cause if they would start doing that, KDE can easely fork Qt and continue on it's own. Even if Trolltech would ceise to exist there is no problem, because the current Qt would then become public under a BSD-liscense.
If you don't like the Qt liscense, feel free to develop with GTK. The current integration work will probably make it easy to do a KDE app with GTK in the future.
"Propietary", and I'm not trying to be flippant.
Well, yes, but proprietary is a very large umbrella term -- it can refer to everything from the Windows source code to the patents Apple holds on TrueType kerning. I meant a way of distinguishing between software that is free-as-in-beer to use and distribute, where source can be downloaded and learned from with no NDAs or registrations or anything being signed and the rest of the body of what we generally would call "non-Free", "non-OSI-compliant" software.
They would be wanting to use millions of man-hours of work without contributing back to the pool, and I don't think that's a reasonable position to adopt.
It is certainly less efficient, but not all software of this class is like the NPL, where the original author of the work gets special rights to improvements. Povray or xmame, for instance, have non-OSI-compliant licenses, but do not grant special rights to anyone. I guess that I can agree that it might be rather nice if everyone had intercompatible licenses, but I don't agree that the GPL is the "ultimate" license or that it's a good idea to try to force all GUI desktop software for the premier hobbyist OS to fall under a particular license (or pay a penalty fee for not doing so). I'm just not comfortable with it.
Povray's kind of a disappointment. I completely understand why they can't release it under an open license, and I certainly don't hold those reasons against them, but it's sad that the (best? only?) source-available raytracer still has so many strings attached. Here's to hoping that they can get it all resolved.
There are a number of GPL-compatible raytracers. It's not really all that hard to write a raytracer -- I did one for a class project once. YafRay is GPLed, CoolRay is GPLed, and Blender has an integrated raytracer (as well as other renderers).
May we never see th
like, the first usable Linux GUI ;)
Good thing that wink is there, cuz otherwise that statement would be pretty funny!
Usability problem # 3452: You a see dialog with "Apply", "Reset", and a close button on the window. You want to change some settings and then make sure they apply now as well as in future sessions. Quiz: what sequence of button presses will accomplish this? Answer: who knows! it's not clear from the interface. Now, you want to apply them for the current session only. Common sense says, they apply as soon as you make the changes to the controls in the dialog box. But do they? No, clicking controls does nothing except update the control, but then that Apply button beckons you.. do you press it? But doesn't that save them forever? That's what it did last time.. in THIS app at least!
Yow! Let's play Press 'n' Guess!
"I'm convinced--the editors absolutely do not read Slashdot. "
Do the executives at Proctor and Gamble use Tide on their laundry?
Actually I didn't intend to wink, that was supposed to be normal smiley. I think KDE was the first usable Linux GUI, and keeps being the best. YMMV
As for the usability problem, if the dialog has 'apply' button, then common sense says the settings will be applied after you click that button. I don't see any problem with that.