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."

Comments

Rockin! Maybe in a few months...

[Hannibal_Ars]

...you guys will link up my new Prescott article that went live this morning!

(Looking back at this post with the preview function, I'm thinking, "is this a troll, flamebait, informative, funny, all four, or none of the above?" I post, you decide.)

Re:Rockin! Maybe in a few months...

[Hannibal_Ars]

Believe it or not, our article web pages are statically served. It may be low-tech, but it's cheap, scalable (for our volume of output), and the server can take a licking and keep on ticking. So the server doesn't even bat an eye at the Slashdot crowd. Now when a major Mac article comes out and the entire online Mac community is trying to load the page at the same time... well, that's the one time when we're maybe thankful for Apple's small market share :0)

The news on the front page, on the other hand, is served dynamically by a CMS.

Dependencies

[ultrabot]

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.

Perhaps you meant to link to this article

[ArsEric]

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?

Re:Why does KDE always reinvent the wheel

[ultrabot]

Regarding the subject: probably because someone among the KDE people thinks s/he can do better than the author of the original app. As far as apps like kopete and kontact go, they actually did do better. Konqueror is still primarily a file manager (excellent browser too, but I guess the "standard" browser will be Firefox in the near future), and significantly better than nautilus as far ergonomics and features go. It also preceded nautilus chronologically.

Re:Why does KDE always reinvent the wheel

[yokem_55]

The idea is to have software the integrates and takes advantage of everything the kde environment has to offer. There are two ways of doing this. 1. Pull your hair out trying to cajole existing applications originally created off of an entirely different framework, to take some, limited advantage of what kde has to offer. 2. Start from scratch with an environment that makes fast development very easy and very quick, without massive quantities of hair left in your hands.

Not only that, it's a dupe.

[bonch]

Slashdot posted it when it came out.

I'm convinced--the editors absolutely do not read Slashdot. The last straw was last week when Michael duped a story from three hours earlier that was still on the front page.

What's the next article?

[Anonymous Coward]

Gnomes Gone Wild?

Offtopic

[Space_Soldier]

Everytime some one posts a Deep Inside article makes me think of Deep Inside Devon, or some other Deep Inside .

Re:Why does KDE always reinvent the wheel

[sirReal.83.]

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?

Re:Why does KDE always reinvent the wheel

[Seli]

Actually Konqueror/KHTML and Kontact are not really reinventing the wheel.

The work on KDE's filemanager and HTML engine dates back to the days when the only usable *cough* browser was Netscape4.x and Mozilla seemed only like a great failure.

Kontact is basically an aggregation of long time existing KDE applications like KMail, KNode, KNotes etc., pre-dating e.g. Evolution.

That said, this question about reinventing the wheel is stupid anyway. First, there are many things about KDE that KDE has had first (like, the first usable Linux GUI ;) ), and second, everybody is reinventing the wheel all the time anyway, so what?

Naming for normals?

[otis wildflower]

Has it occurred to anyone that supporting non-l337 g33kz using KDE as a primary desktop will be made more difficult just because it's impossible to keep track of all the dopey names for things?

How does 'kopete' relate to 'chat' or 'instant messaging'? How does 'Konqueror' relate to 'browsing the web'? How does 'Apollon' apply to p2p? How does 'K3b' apply to CD burning/ripping? KMail works. KControlCenter works. Easy for someone to figure out what it does by its name. That is what A NAME IS FOR. We're not dealing with hungarian notation here: The whole idea of a UI is that it needs to be completely descriptive at a glance, and anything that is counterintuitive or obscurantist needs to be fixed or replaced. Normals expect this, they don't think it a crutch, and they're not expected to know better (as developers who take issue with HN may argue other developers _are_ expected to).

At least Apple (and even M$ to a lesser extent) uses prosaic names like iPhoto, iChat, Mail, DVD Player, iCal, Address Book, which makes it easier for mortals to understand their metaphor (Safari being the most egregious exception). KDE ware names seem purposefully opaque, and if you want to make a dent in the GUI you either have to hope for great icons and forget the names, or you have to do more work than you should have to do.

I love KDE, I think anyone from 3 to 103 could use it comfortably, but I shudder to think about all the help calls I'd get from people just trying to find shit in the interface.. It took me an hour of googling to figure out what the hell Apollon was! Anything that can or should be in a base KDE release (or a bundle, like kdemultimedia or kdenetwork) should have a simple, descriptive name, even if it means stepping on the toes of obsolete projects or capricious developers.

(OTOH, maybe you don't give a damn about condemning your less technical friends and/or family to a life of M$ hell. Oh well.)

Re:Naming for normals?

[standsolid]

I present, for your edification, a screenshot of what a KDE Menu looks like.
If you have any questions to what a "Music Player" is, then there is little hope for you, yet.

Hell, This menu didn't comfuse my grandmother, and you're still complaining about supporting users.

Re:Naming for normals?

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:License Issues with Qt

[Seli]

"Qt is GPLed, and as such, prevents FOSS developers from using any OSS licenses that are not compatible with the GPL. Ironically enough, XFree86's license is not compatible with the GPL, and hence XFree86 could not include a Qt configuration utility."

Your first statement is wrong. Should I bother reading the rest?

http://www.trolltech.com/developer/faqs/license_gp l.html#q19

http://www.trolltech.com/developer/faqs/license_gp l.html#q114

Re:my first experience with KDE

[nusuth]

You can use the personalizer (kpersonalizer) to quickly turn off eye candy. Or you can fire up the kde control center (kcontrol) and go over all appearance & themes stuff one by one. Don't worry, you can't break your install from kcontrol unless you try to do just that.

IMHO, the best theme for KDE is plastic but almost all themes are "low-impact". Only a few used to use fancy ways to render their widgets, I don't know if any survive.