International OSS Desktop Conference aKademy 2004

Torsten Rahn writes "The KDE Project is pleased to announce the successful completion of the KDE Community World Summit ("aKademy 2004") in Ludwigsburg (Germany) taking place from August 20th to 29th. With more than 230 KDE core developers, usability and accessibility experts, translators, editors and artists participating, the event is expected to have a huge and lasting impact on the next major releases of the leading Linux and Unix desktop environment. In addition, 270 visitors from the KDE user base and from other Free Software projects brought the total number of attendees to 500. The international participants, coming from 5 continents, took part in 65 talks, 10 full-day tutorials and numerous BoF-meetings over the course of 10 days. Thanks to this huge turnout and the numerous activities, the event evolved into the largest conference ever held that focused on a single open source desktop environment."

Comments

WOW!

[donscarletti]

Wow, one post and this still hasn't degenerated into a gnome-kde flamewar, I am impressed.

Re:WOW!

[Anonymous Coward]

what's to argue about? gnome is faster. who wants graphics over speed? stupid kde users.

Re:WOW!

[Anonymous Coward]

But Gnome looks so primitive. The graphics look like they belong on some machine running a 386, not a modern computing platform. Keep your smelly feet to yourself. KDE all teh way!!!

Re:WOW!

[Anonymous Coward]

'xcuse me, but it takes more than one person to start a flamewar. It doesn't matter--I'll end it here: KDE sucks and gnome sucks. e17 all the way, baybee.

Re:WOW!

[Gentlewhisper]

I think gnome looks like macOS.

I like macOS.

My next machine will be a mac.

Re:WOW!

[Temporal]

Weird. Way back in the day, when I used to use Linux as my primary desktop OS, KDE was the fast one and GNOME had the eye candy. That was about three to five years ago... Haven't used either one since. Ah, how things change.

Re:WOW!

[be-fan]

Except for startup-speed, KDE is faster than GNOME. Poor resize and redraw plagues GNOME apps.

Re:WOW!

[0racle]

It doesn't.

Re:WOW!

[Anonymous Coward]

This is such a pointless arguement. If I wanted speed I wouldn't even install X, I'd use the console the whole time.

Features that YOU want should come first, speed should only be a concern if it actually has a major affect over what you are trying to get done, which really isn't the case on modern hardware. After all, some people are happy using Windows XP.

So what if KDE is slower than Gnome and uses more memory? (That's just an example, I have no idea what the actual case is here) That's why you have the hardware, it's there to be used and abused to get the results you want.

And for the record, Gnome runs just fine here, fast enough speeds everywhere. I obviously don't have the 'plague' on my system...

Re:WOW!

[AuMatar]

Yeah, it does. Which is why I use KDE- I find MacOS to be the worst GUI I've ever used, and that includes the old dinosaurs Solaris used to ship with (CDE?)

Re:WOW!

[be-fan]

You probably do, it's just that you're so used to it that you accept it as being normal. I've got a 2.0GHz P4. Using GNOME for me is very hard, because it feels "heavy." The heavy feeling comes from three major places:

1) Menus are displayed before icons are loaded, so the first time you use a menu, all the icons get loaded from disk, and you have a blank menu for about a second until the loading is done.

2) Window redraw and resize is handled poorly. Even the simplest GNOME apps (eg: Gedit), can't resize smoothly without the content area lagging behind the window frame. Moving or resizing a window above another window causes all sorts of ugly effects as the toolkit takes it's sweet time handling the expose events.

3) The lack of multithreading causes the UI of apps like Epiphany to lock for several seconds when loading/rendering complex pages. This is a major no-no. I don't care if the app is simulating the universe --- the GUI should always respond immediately to the user.

Yes, most of these things are cosmetic, but cosmetic things can have deep psychological impacts. The redraw problems, in particular, make it seem like the computer is having trouble keeping up with my workflow, and destroys the otherwise solid feel of the GNOME desktop. The lack of a solid feel, in turn, makes the desktop irritating and tiresome to use in the long-run.

PS> You're "if I wanted speed I wouldn't even install X" comment is bogus. I like lynx a lot, but I'd rather surf Slashdot with a graphical browser, thank you very much.

Re:WOW!

[timmarhy]

if you want a fast desktop which is completely usless and painful to do anything in just go the whole hog and use twm. the rest of us who want our desktops to be useful and a pleasure to use will stick to kde

Re:WOW!

[Anonymous Coward]

1) Menus are displayed before icons are loaded, so the first time you use a menu, all the icons get loaded from disk, and you have a blank menu for about a second until the loading is done.

Do you prefer not to see a menu at all for a second? I'd find that even more anoying.

2) Window redraw and resize is handled poorly. Even the simplest GNOME apps (eg: Gedit), can't resize smoothly without the content area lagging behind the window frame. Moving or resizing a window above another window causes all sorts of ugly effects as the toolkit takes it's sweet time handling the expose events.

It has become a lot better. But I agree it is still noticable. Although it doesn't bother me.

3) The lack of multithreading causes the UI of apps like Epiphany to lock for several seconds when loading/rendering complex pages. This is a major no-no. I don't care if the app is simulating the universe --- the GUI should always respond immediately to the user.

I don't use Epiphany so I've never seen what you mean. But most major GNOME apps are multithreaded.

Re:WOW!

[mailtomomo]

Xfce is pretty fast, too ...
(fast anough to show my old celeron 500 as fast as my xp1700+ running Gnome)

Re:WOW!

[farnz]

In answer to point 1; I expect the application to load its UI on startup. I'd rather lose an extra second when I'm already waiting for the application, than lose a second when I'm trying to do things.

In this case, the application should load its icons when it loads; then, when the menu comes up, it's instantaneous. Load time is meaningless to me when I work in (maybe) 5 or 6 applications that are left running all the time. Render time when I click on a menu is important.

And don't try and argue that loading all the icons is going to push me into swap; even if it did, swapping applications back in takes far less than a second, even though I don't go into swap.

Re:WOW!

[renoX]

Personnaly it is 3) that bother me the most in many applications: Mozilla also freeze way too often when it opens a new page, which of course reduce the "user's experiment" of having several tabs or window at the same time (BeOS was great in this regards: very responsive)..

Changing applications to use more multithreading to improve "user's experiment" is unfortunately a very big job, which won't happen soon, but I hope that with the multi-core CPU coming soon, perhaps developpers will be more receptive for using more threads in their application..

As for 1) if the menu you're talking about contains only icons, I don't think that there can be much things to do:
- if you wait until all the icons are retrieved before displaying the menu, it feels slow.
- if you display an empty menu, then it feels slow too.
- the only solution would be to preload in memory the menu, but this would lead to too much memory usage IMHO.

Now if the menu contains mixed entries: icons and text, then there is a good solution which is sometimes used: display the menus with the text and a generic icon on each entry and then replace as retrieved the generic icons with the correct one.
Of course the menu should be fully functionnal even if some icons are not retrieved yet..

Re:WOW!

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm the coward above :)

Funny, I made a weird hack a while back in that on system startup all icons were copied into /tmp/ (which is a tmpfs on my computer) and made gtk only look them there. It was a nice speed bump.
But if something like would be done everyone would complain again that gnome is a memory hog .. blargh.

Re:WOW!

[FooBarWidget]

Loading time is certainly not meaningless. Research has shown that users will usually choose the product which loads the fastest. In order to achieve that, you have to load as many stuff as possible during runtime, not startup.

Re:WOW!

[RdsArts]

Psuedocode:

main()
load_needed()
show()
start_icon_load_thread()
event_loop()

How does that affect your start time? Not at all. How does it affect the app's percieved speed? Dramatically.

Re:WOW!

[Tim C]

After all, some people are happy using Windows XP.

2.4GHz CPU, 1/2 gig of RAM... yes, XP runs perfectly smoothly, as do Java GUI apps, etc.

As you say, on modern hardware, for 90%+ of applications resource usage is a non-issue.

Re:WOW!

[Cthefuture]

Gah, it's probably your video card and/or your settings more than anything else (make sure GDK_USE_XFT is defined in your environment).

nVidia is the only way to go on Linux. Sorry but everything just works so much better with nVidia.

GNOME starts up hella faster than KDE. It feels a lot better, the fonts look better, I like the consistant button placement, and after getting used to the GUI OK-button-always-on-the-right I wish everything was like that. KDE feels "clicky", I don't know how else to explain it. Little things popping here and there like it's got sharp corners. Konqueror is a good example, it feels snappy but it renders many pages incorrectly and just plain doesn't work on a lot of sites that Firefox has no problems with.

With that said, I use KDE as my desktop. I do this for several reasons but there is one main reason. GNOME's ass panel. After many, many years it continues, to this day, to rearrange the applets on the panel. No matter what locking you do or whatever, it still does this. That is so annoying that I can't use GNOME. That and GNOME lacks a decent calendering application like KOrganizer (don't even mention that piece of crap known as evolution).

Nautilus is tons better than Konq also. At first Nautilus sucked but it has gotten really good lately.

Re:WOW!

[Sandmann]

> of ugly effects as the toolkit takes it's sweet time handling the expose events.

Please explain why this doesn't happen on xfce. It uses the same toolkit.

Re:WOW!

[be-fan]

It does happen in XFCE. It does for me, anyway.

Re:WOW!

[be-fan]

Gah, it's probably your video card and/or your settings more than anything else (make sure GDK_USE_XFT is defined in your environment).
It's not my video card or settings. It's been the same on every Linux distro I've ever used, and I've used a lot of htem.

nVidia is the only way to go on Linux. Sorry but everything just works so much better with nVidia.
I've got a GeForce4Go running the NVIDIA drivers.

GNOME starts up hella faster than KDE.
Who cares how long it takes to start up?

It feels a lot better,
Arguably, yes it does, but not in terms of performance and responsiveness.

the fonts look better,
The fonts are identical. Both render Freetype via Xft. KDE doesn't have a GUI yet for controlling the Xft.hinstyle setting, however, like GNOME does, but you can put it in your .Xresources file manually.

Nautilus is tons better than Konq also. At first Nautilus sucked but it has gotten really good lately.
Nautilus still can't, as of 2.6.2, browse a fraction of the protocols Konqueror can handle. That alone makes it useless to me.

Re:WOW!

[be-fan]

Do you prefer not to see a menu at all for a second? I'd find that even more anoying.
I'd prefer it if the app loaded it's icons when it loaded. A 32bpp 16x16 icon takes up 1kb of memory. The average app has maybe a couple of dozen menu icons. Epiphany, for example, has 33. That's a trivial memory overhead.

It has become a lot better. But I agree it is still noticable.
It's still not nearly good enough. With the XSYNC patches, Qt/KDE is at the "transparent" point on my system, where I can't notice any lag except on the most complex windows (Konqueror browsing the QApplication documentation, for example). Yet, even the GNOME help viewer can't resize without lag. Gedit with a large (thousands of lines) file loaded is slow enough to be nearly unusable.

I don't use Epiphany so I've never seen what you mean. But most major GNOME apps are multithreaded.
You'll see the same problem in Firefox too. If a website takes a long time to respond, or a page takes a long time to render, the UI will lock up in the meantime. Most GNOME and KDE apps do not run the UI in a seperate threat. For example, start up Epiphany and go to "Edit->Preferences." The menu will dissapear, and for about a second, the toolbar underneath won't redraw because the thread is busy loading the dialog.

Re:WOW!

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd prefer it if the app loaded it's icons when it loaded. A 32bpp 16x16 icon takes up 1kb of memory. The average app has maybe a couple of dozen menu icons. Epiphany, for example, has 33. That's a trivial memory overhead.

As long as it doesn't slow down application startup I wholeheartly agree. Best thing would be IMHO if the icons are preloaded into memory _after_ the application is already fully loaded.

Gedit with a large (thousands of lines) file loaded is slow enough to be nearly unusable.

Wow I just loaded a whole directory of sourcecode into it. Uhm I agree ... even files in other tabs slow it down ...weird... never noticed that. But to its defense it is not really meant for heavy duty work. From the info screen:

"gedit is a small and lightweight text editor for the GNOME Desktop"

Although why it has Sourcecode highlighting then is beyond me.

You'll see the same problem in Firefox too. If a website takes a long time to respond, or a page takes a long time to render, the UI will lock up in the meantime.

Never noticed anything with slow responding sites but when I load the glibc manual (4mb html file) into firefox it isn't what I'd call responsive for a few seconds but scrolling and switching tabs is still possible.
That doesn't have anything to do with GNOME though it's a slowness in the Mozilla rendering engine.

Re:WOW!

[Brandybuck]

Now if the menu contains mixed entries: icons and text, then there is a good solution which is sometimes used...

Or why not use the Qt/KDE solution? Create the icons the same time you create the menu and keep them in memory. This will cause a slight delay in loading the application if you load icons from the filesystem, but it doesn't bother me nearly as much as the delay at the point of menu display.

KDE 4?

[osho_gg]

So, what exactly, if anything, was decided about KDE 4 at aKademy? Osho

Re:KDE 4?

[AresTheImpaler]

maybe this can give you some info

Re:KDE 4?

[MarkoNo5]

Yeah, go ahead, make pyramid frauds more popular by advertising for them. Way to go !

HELLO OFFTOPIC, GOODBYE KARMA

[Anonymous Coward]

looks like somebody forgot to check the "Anonymous" checkbox

flamewars? doncha have something better to do?

[3seas]

KDE may be the most popular but its not the best that can be done.

getting to the best may just require siome stepping stones, like kde, gnome, your favoirite desktop, etc..

But I think it is amazing how there is still a lack of a standardized general user accessible IPC port so that users who so chose can automate some things on their own.

Free software will never be free until it is easy enough to create that most anyone with a basic undertsanding of software concepts can create software thru the use of general automation tools. Be it that they use such tools to do simple scripting or complex programming.

But one thing is for sure. A standardized user accessible IPC port is required to reach that level of computing usability.

Flamewars? I'm sure there is plenty better to do..... Or are you all waiting for MS to show you via "software factories" of which they are pursuing.

Re:flamewars? doncha have something better to do?

[Slashbot Hive-Mind]

We are the Slashbots. Lower your threshold and surrender your karma. We will add your biological and technological distinctiveness to our own. Your dissenting opinions will adapt to agree with ours. Resistance is futile.

Re:flamewars? doncha have something better to do?

[mrchaotica]

You want IPC? On UNIX? Have you heard of little things called "pipes" and "shell scripts"? : )

On a more serious note, this sounds like a job for freedesktop.org. You might find the bit about CORBA (the first bullet on the page) interesting...

Re:flamewars? doncha have something better to do?

[Anonymous Coward]

DCOP?

Re:flamewars? doncha have something better to do?

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't know why you call it a "port" but KDE has a standard IPC system called DCOP that is integrated into every KDE app and is intended for easy scripting. There's even an script editor based around DCOP and shell scripts (with GUI builder and everything), called Kommander. It's already all there. If you aren't satisfied by DCOP, the good folks at freedeskop.org are working on dbus, which is much like DCOP except that it will probably be adopted by both GNOME and KDE in their next versions, and used for system-level tasks such as hardware configuration as well. So quitcherbitchen.

Re:flamewars? doncha have something better to do?

[latroM]

Free software will never be free until it is easy enough to create that most anyone with a basic undertsanding of software concepts can create software thru the use of general automation tools. Be it that they use such tools to do simple scripting or complex programming.

Free software is free already. You don't need to know how to program to use your freedoms, like you don't have to be a carpenter to build your house.

Re:flamewars? doncha have something better to do?

[kalpaha]

If you think KDE is lacking a standardized general user accesible IPC port, you obviously haven't heard of DCOP, which can be used to control programs from the command line (with the dcop utility), python or perl scripts, C++ programs, etc. and is easy to add support for.

Some command line examples of dcop in action:

dcop kmail default checkMail

tell KMail to check for new mail

dcop kwin default setCurrentDesktop 4

switch to desktop 4

dcop kmail default compactAllFolders

tell KMail to compact all folders

dcop kdesktop default logout

logout

dcop konqueror default openBrowserWindow www.kde.org

open new konqueror window with www.kde.org

I am _not_ new here, but it never ceases to amaze me how people are so eager to flame away without any factual support for their rants.

Re:flamewars? doncha have something better to do?

[3seas]

to those comments refering to dcop and dbus...and even corba

Yes guys, I'm aware of these, however neither are standard in the general scope of linux or FSF software but are instead desktop specific or to complexicated, and this only helps the divide of flamewars.

for whats it worth I even have a bounty set up for anyone who wants to create a bridge between linux and AROS (Amiga Research OS -- a FOSS project on sourceforge -- that can run hosted on linux. bounty thru Team AROS) via such existing projects as dbus ... or dcop... or hell, a bridge that will allow communication to/from AROS to linux IPC whatever used.

but ease of use and ease of adding to existing open source applications (this IPC port) and documentation of what functionality is accessible thru the port in such applications, is needed.

perhaps there is something to be learned from how Amiga did it, and it became standard, easy to impliment and use and generally the apps include documentation of accessible functionality.

dcop only deals with a small percentage of available packages... and dbus currently even less, but not even a handful of apps.

Standard doesn't mean having numerous and obscure way of doing it (IPC at the user level), as that is quite the opposite of standard.

So.... there are better things to do than flamewar over destops... as such is only a non-productive distraction.

its important, I cannot stress that enough, given what MS is up to in teh direction of "software factories" methodology --- their book has missed two publishing dates so far but they are doing what they do instead.... collect feedback on the scope of this direction via shorter articles, websites dedicated to software factories, etc...

google on - software factories MS book - and if you really understand what they are up to, then you too will realize the importance of getting an easy to use and impliment standard IPC in use. ... shrug...

Maybe that will be dcop or dbus.... A plan, good, fair or poor, is better than no plan at all. Being destop specific is not a plan for the bigger picture or scope of FOSS packages.

Re:flamewars? doncha have something better to do?

[JohnFluxx]

From your post, it seems you're not aware that both gnome and kde seem to be moving towards using dbus.

I can't say for sure that kde will use dbus, but if I was a betting man, I'd say it will :)

Re:flamewars? doncha have something better to do?

[3seas]

I'm aware of the goals of dbus. Its these goals that inspired me to name it in the AROS bounty I mention above.

I am also watching with interest DragonflyBSD, as not only does Matt Dillion seem to understand a direction towards simplicity but also wrote a C compiler for Amiga. He also was the originator for csh on the Amiga, which interestingly enough provided a way to send and receive messages via the Amigas IPC ports typically recognized as AREXX ports, however... AREXX didn't need to be running in order to use this csh facility and some software (ie. ImageFX and some of the video toaster) also didn't require AREXX to be running for their IPC functionality to be accessible.

But as you said, I too realize KDE may not embrace dbus as well as some would like..

Re:flamewars? doncha have something better to do?

[Anonymous Coward]

You want IPC? On UNIX? Have you heard of little things called "pipes" and "shell scripts"? : )

Have you heard of little things called UNIX domain sockets? They're for IPC between long-running programs.

Re:Free Gmail Invites...

[p2psecure.com]

Yeah, it'll go public... ...and then still be in BETA a year from then. ;)

still 10x slower than BeOS

[kad77]

Forget flamewars... How about some efficiency standards?!?

Why is it that this candy-coated windowmanager runs like a *DOG* when it's just moving windows and drawing text on a 512mb 550MHz PIII system, and BeOS 4.0 (pre)release could run multiple video streams effortlessly without lag (may as well mention almost instant boot) on a 166Mhz PPC 604 with 128 MB RAM? 5 years ago.

Maybe getting paid for your work and quality go hand in hand in some products?

Re:still 10x slower than BeOS

[AresTheImpaler]

I don't know anything about BeOS. So can someone enlighten me why BeOS used to kick so much ass (supposedly) but it's not in production anymore? I read several posts in slashdot about it being really good so I want to know more about it...

Re:still 10x slower than BeOS

[Anonymous Coward]

*Sigh*
Hm, I'm running KDE on a PIII 700 with only 256mb of ram and it runs like a charm. So there may be something wrong with your setup.

I don't know if you are refering to slow redraws in your rant, but that is mainly not a kde problem, but an X problem. I'm running a beta of the new xorg-x11 xserver with composite enabled, so now the desktop is double buffered and the problem is gone.

Anyway, how can such an obvious flaimbait be modded insightful?

Re:still 10x slower than BeOS

[mrchaotica]

They didn't have enough marketing clout to get a real foothold into the market. They couldn't get PC makers to ship PCs with BeOS because of Microsoft, they didn't have the established reputation to get distributors for their own hardware like Apple, and they weren't giving away their stuff for free like Linux.

Also, it's possible that it was too expensive (I don't really know, though).

Re:still 10x slower than BeOS

[mrchaotica]

Maybe it's not flamebait because it's true for people not running experimental Xservers? (not claiming it is true, since I don't use KDE -- but the truth isn't flamebait)

Re:still 10x slower than BeOS

[be-fan]

Well, the first thing to remember is that good technology doesn't ensure success. Indeed, the general rule is that the first product to be "good enough" is the winner, not the "best" product.

Now, there are a couple of reasons why BeOS was so great:

1) It was pervasively multithreaded. Each window had it's own rendering thread that ran independently of the application logic. This allowed apps to be very responsive, even under heavy load. It's sad that even on my 2.0GHz P4, Mozilla still blocks the UI for several seconds when certain pages take too long to load or render.

2) It had a phenomenal scheduler. It wasn't comparable, in many ways, to Linux's O(1) scheduler (it wasn't very scalable), but it was wonderfully optimized for interactive use. It's interactivity estimation was lightyears ahead of what's in the O(1) scheduler now.

3) It's multimedia subsystem was very good at moving data around the system efficiently.

4) It's toolkit was well-coded with respect to smart redraw and resize behavior.

Interestingly, the OS wasn't all that structurally different from Linux. It had a fairly POSIX-complient modular kernel. It run it's video and audio subsystems as a seperate process (like X, aRts, and Jack). It was just very well-implemented with an eye towards a fast and elegant UI.

Of course, the OS had it's darksides. The toolkit wasn't font-sensitive and layout-based, the VM was antiquated, I/O and network performance was only decent, etc. However, for the average desktop, this really wasn't a big deal, and not something that couldn't have been fixed had BeOS survived to today.

Re:still 10x slower than BeOS

[robotoverflow]

It's Desktop Environment (or something similar, I'm not even quite sure either). I'm sure that the devs behind KDE would love nothing more than to have a media friendly, zippy desktop, but as Daniel stone mentioned; the state of X is a mess, and since that's what KDE libs are built upon there isn't really much that can be done to speed up past a certain point. With X currently being optimized and maybe even modularised we'll see noticable speed gains in the future.

Re:still 10x slower than BeOS

[LnxAddct]

Check it out here: BeOS Max Edition. It's freeware now and has a pretty good selection of apps. It has BeFS which is everything WinFS wants to be but never will be, and BeFS has been around since 1996. There are some really great things about the OS, but the lack of supported hardware, and afew other things are reasons why I don't currently run it anymore (although that may change). Linux is great and if tuned right, performs really well. If you want fast boot times, there are a few articles about making linux boot faster, or you can try FreeBSD which has always booted extremely fast for me. There is a whole world of operating systems out there, if I were you I'd try each one because each one seems to excel where no others do. Lots of different interesting ideas implemented. SkyOS is another good example of an interesting OS, its damn near all written in Assembly, and it was all pretty much written by one man. The major flaw with SkyOS is that it is closed source. ReactOS is really cool too. I could go on, but you'd probably be better off just hopping on google and trying out a few.
Regards,
Steve
P.S. If you don't feel like installing each OS on your computer, use qemu, it runs every OS I listed just fine.

Re:still 10x slower than BeOS

[kad77]

Thinking back, I was asking that rhetorically. However, I am really glad that someone else that used/uses this wonderfully designed and very well thought through OS decided to recite some specifics that made it so.
That's why we come back to Slashdot!

I'd also like to point out, that in the interest of fostering development, once I signed up with the company, without cost to me they sent pressed OS releases very often, updated MetroWorks compiler and toolkit releases, and even some clothing!

Would Be, Inc. be influencing linux to become more modular, multi-threaded, and bulletproof (like QNX) if they were still around, given many popular linux apps would be running on it today?

Re:still 10x slower than BeOS

[renoX]

Changing of Linux applications to become multithreaded is obviously a *huge* task (3 and 4 are also complicated), but I wonder why the point 2 hasn't been solved yet?

Has someone tried to replicate BeOS scheduler on Linux? Is BeOS's scheduler described somewhere?

Re:still 10x slower than BeOS

[IamTheRealMike]

It's worth pointing out that the pervasive multi-threading of BeOS was arguably as much a weakness as a strength.

Multi-threaded coding is hard and don't any coding jocks tell you otherwise. It is significantly harder to do 100% correctly (and nothing less than 100% correct will do) than single-threaded coding.

Indeed, according to one of the ex-Be engineers one of the things that hurt BeOS was that writing software for it was quite tricky, it basically meant writing robust thread-safe code even for a simple text editor. There's a good discussion of it here.

Anyway it's sort of academic. One of the main uses of multithreading in BeOS according to be-fan was to do window rendering in a separate thread. Linux will get something very similar within a few months when X compositing lands. OK so it won't be a thread inside the same app, it'll be a separate process which is rendering the entire screen at once but the effect is the same - no matter how busy the app is, you won't be able to "rub out" the contents of the window.

Re:still 10x slower than BeOS

[MrHanky]

But one reason why BeOS was so snappy was because apps also took advantage of its pervasive multi-threading and the scheduler. This was, AFAIK, because the API sort of forced you to write multi-threaded. So Be had a lot of small, snappy, but crappy, applications that you could use to show off its responsiveness. But most of the serious apps had to be ported, and then the advantages just disappeared.

Have you tried running Mozilla on BeOS? I mean, not a rotten old port of M18, but a recent build of Firefox. Yes, it's still being developed, and it's been getting a lot better. But its responsiveness is a lot worse than under Linux (not to mention the font rendering). Even when comparing a 266 MHz, 64 MB Powerbook running Linux to a 1.4 GHz, 256 MB Athlon XP running an RC of Zeta.

But no, the PB can't run multiple videostreams. It has problems running just one. But video codecs have become much more demanding since the sub 200 MHz days. And so has computer use in general. Net+ was a small and simple browser, but it's practically useless these days, like all small and simple browsers are. You need features to do stuff, and stuff takes up space. That's why a small and simple OS is hopelessly outdated, and big and bloated environments like KDE (500 MB for a basic install?) and OS X (~2.5 GB for a basic install) are the future.

Re:still 10x slower than BeOS

[renoX]

I agree that multithreading is hard, but it depends also of the problem: let's suppose you have two totally independant task to complete, firing two thread to do it won't be complicated whereas if you have two closely related task a synchronisation nightmare is in order..

I'm not convinced that X composition will be as good as the multithreading of BeOS, it may help a little but if your application is busy doing something complex the UI will not be responsive even if the window won't be "rubbed out".

Now how complicated it is to put in separate thread the UI handling and the real work, only BeOS programmers can tell..

Re:still 10x slower than BeOS

[Anonymous Coward]

The Linux scheduler has been better than BeOS for years. Just search back to the originial low latency work done on the Linux kernel. This was even before the O(1) scheduler.

The difference is in the apps, that guy is just talking out of his ass.

Re:still 10x slower than BeOS

[Anonymous Coward]

If you want anyone to take you seriously, try learning the difference between "it's" and "its," Rayiner.

Re:still 10x slower than BeOS

[be-fan]

Don't be a moron. I never said that the BeOS scheduler was all-around better than the O(1) scheduler. I pointed out that the O(1) scheduler is *way* more scalable. However, the O(1) scheduler also has problems with interactivity estimation --- ie: figuring out what apps are interactive, and thus should get faster response times. That interactivity estimation is what made the BeOS so good for desktop workloads.

There is a reason why Andrew Morton is experimenting with different CPU schedulers in his -mm tree.

Re:still 10x slower than BeOS

[be-fan]

Well, Con Kolivas has his staircase scheduler patch that's trying to get better interactivity, and recently Nick Piggen also has a scheduler patch designed to get better interactivity. See these kerneltrap.org stories:

Nick Piggen's scheduler patch

Con Kolivas's scheduler patch

Re:still 10x slower than BeOS

[be-fan]

Well, the complexity of multithreading depends very heavily on your synchronization model. The "locks around shared resources" model is a great deal more complicated than the message-passing model. The message-passing model tends to be avoided, because it has inherently more overhead, but with multicore hyperthreaded processors becoming more common,, it might be the case that the overhead of message-passing is outweighed by it's ability to let the code utilize the extra processors.

If you consider that kernels are inherently multithreaded (each process shares the kernel memory space), you can see a good illustration of this. FreeBSD and Linux have very complex fine-grained locking models, while Dragonfly BSD is trying to move to a much simpler message-passing model.

Also, X compositing will remedy one problem of non-multithreaded apps (specifically, expose lag), but won't fix other problems. For example, it'll do nothing to fix an app that blocks display updates and input processing for long periods of time while doing I/O and computation. So the user will be able to see the window (well, as long as it's not resized), but not be able to interact with it.

Re:still 10x slower than BeOS

[be-fan]

The biggest problems with multithreading came from apps (like Mozilla) that were designed for single-threading. The Be API was also part of the problem, because it didn't force a seperation fo model and view, which would have made it easier to put each in it's own thread. It's interesting to note that Longhorn will run each Avalon window in it's own thread, since Avalon has a much better seperation of model and view.

Re:still 10x slower than BeOS

[Sinner]

Why is it that this candy-coated windowmanager runs like a *DOG* when it's just moving windows and drawing text on a 512mb 550MHz PIII system, and BeOS 4.0 (pre)release could run multiple video streams effortlessly without lag (may as well mention almost instant boot) on a 166Mhz PPC 604 with 128 MB RAM? 5 years ago.

Yeah, and why is that my laptop can't render Shrek-quality 3D, when my pocket calculator could draw 2D graphs 10 YEARS ago?

Maybe getting paid for your work and quality go hand in hand in some products?

Forget flamewars... how about some trolling?

neat

[NanoGator]

" the event is expected to have a huge and lasting impact on the next major releases of the leading Linux and Unix desktop environment."

I personally hope they are all having a good hard look at Apple's stuff. The main reason I'm not running Linux is that there's a lot of choice out there, and it shows. I hate running to Google every time I want to do something simple. Despite my many years of using Windows, I had no trouble using a Mac when the need arose.

Anyway, sorry if that sounded like a rant. I'm just hoping some of the work that comes out of this gathering deals with the end-user experience. I'd love to get away from Windows.

Re:neat

[Justin205]

You said you'd used Apples. And didn't mind them.

So why not use them? OS X is easy to use, sure, but it's BSD under the hood, so it has more than enough to play with. ;-) Believe me, I know -- OS X user for almost a year (Linux was my main OS before that - I still use Linux for a small IRC server and some other minor projects).

Re:neat

[mrchaotica]

I second Justin205 -- you should just use a Mac then! The only thing worse than a Mac fanboy is a Mac fanboy who doesn't actually have a Mac! (just kidding, really! I like my Mac)

Re:neat

[NanoGator]

"so your a stupid fuck that can't think themselves out of a problem?"

Heh. What am I supposed to do, clench my fists, bang my chest, and defend myself? Maybe I just don't want to deal with it. Maybe I just don't think that being able to compile a program is a bug f'ng deal. Maybe I just don't think that I should have to sift through Google to figure out how to edit the .CONF file to make my dual monitor configuration work. Maybe I'm just a dumb fuck that feels that the time I'd gain with stability shouldn't be spent having to look stuff up that I didn't need to on my Windows boxes.

You can call me stupid or whatever, but that doesn't excuse programmers from writing stuff that is a pain in the ass to use.

"does that mean you were using the command line or there pretty GUI? cause if you can run mac from a command line, you can run Linux."

I never needed to touch the command line. Apple was kind enough to automate where it could and ask simple questions with easy to determine choices. For example, I set up my cousin's Airport. As soon as it was plugged in on the network, his laptop popped up a message saying "would you like to talk with this?" Moments later I was up and running, *with* encryption and everything all set up. I never had to read a manual. I never had to look up anything. I didn't even have to deal with some of the silly things that Windows requires when setting up a wireless router.

"if you are talking about the GUI, then try to remember LINUX IS NOT THE GUI."

Don't bother calling anybody a fucktard if you're going to be so nitpicky to make a non-point. The only way Linux is going to be a success on the desktop is if the GUI for it is useful. Divorcing Linux from the GUI isn't making me any more of a fucktard, but it is showing your lack of perspective on what I said. Only on Slashdot would I get flamed for saying "I hope they make improvements so I don't have to work as hard to use a computer."

Re:neat

[0racle]

Yea choice sucks, I mean who would want to choose what works best for them whether its a Mac, Windows, Linux running whatever, Solaris..., yea choice is the bane of software.

Good thing you made your decision, getting away from Windows to Linux, just can't wait till someone shoe horns Linux into what you want, something like OS X it seems, if only there was something that you wouldn't have to wait so long for.

Re:neat

[NanoGator]

"So why not use them? OS X is easy to use, sure, but it's BSD under the hood, so it has more than enough to play with. ;-) Believe me, I know -- OS X user for almost a year (Linux was my main OS before that - I still use Linux for a small IRC server and some other minor projects)."

I have given that a lot of thought, and I'm actually fairly close to it. There are a couple of hurdles, though:

1.) My main machine is a TabletPC. I use it for drawing. To the best of my knowledge, Apple hasn't moved in that direction yet. (If they made one that had better resolution that 1024 by 768, I'd be all over it.)

2.) Upgrading my desktop machine can be done in small phases. New processor here, new video card there, you get the picture. A Mac would be a considerably larger expenditure to switch. When s'more money comes in, though....

Funny, my other reasons are dying. Nearly all the software I use is there on the Mac. Most of the plugins I use now for Lightwave are being more respectful to the Mac. My job has even focused enough that the extra stuff I use Windows for isn't necessary. If my computer were to magically turn into a Mac overnight, I wouldn't be anything but happy about it.

I guess I've finally reached that point where I don't want to mess under the hood anymore. Windows 2k/XP have been kind to me. I have stable machines. It doesn't get in my way. It does what I want it to. But even the "re-install every 6 months because of registry rot" problem is too much for me anymore. If there was a such thing as an appliance for the work I do, I'd buy it in a heartbeat.

Re:neat

[mrchaotica]

Re. 1: Do you need to draw while standing around away from a desk or table? If not, you can just get a drawing tablet and a regular Mac desktop or laptop. Drawing tablets work with Macs too, you know -- and they have the best handwriting recognition also.

Re. 2: They say Macs are usable longer than PCs (I haven't had mine long enough to find out yet). Also, when you get the urge to upgrade a component, stick the money you would spend in a jar (or an interest-bearing savings account) and then once you've accumulated money for each different upgrade, you should have enough for a new Mac.

Re:neat

[NanoGator]

"yea choice is the bane of software."

That's not quite where I was going, but actually yes, it can cause nasty problems. If there were 10 browsers (heh there probably is, good thing Firebird seems to be the de-facto default) for Linux all specialized at doing their own thing well, would that be good or bad? Well, let's see, web developers would have a hard time writing pages that'd conform to all of them, and there'd be a lot of noise on the web to the tune of "Which is best?!?!?" Choice good until there's so much noise that nothing can get done. Lots of you are all mad that most web-sites are IE only, but the flip side is that 10's of millions of IE users out there don't complain about websites not working.

"Good thing you made your decision, getting away from Windows to Linux, just can't wait till someone shoe horns Linux into what you want, something like OS X it seems, if only there was something that you wouldn't have to wait so long for."

Yeah yeah, damn me for saying that Linux isn't good enough yet. Constructive criticism is such a bad thing for the underdogs to hear.

Re:neat

[mrchaotica]

Please, don't feed the trolls.

Re:neat

[NanoGator]

"Re. 1: Do you need to draw while standing around away from a desk or table? If not, you can just get a drawing tablet and a regular Mac desktop or laptop. Drawing tablets work with Macs too, you know -- and they have the best handwriting recognition also."

I moved from a tablet to a TabletPC for a couple of reasons:

1.) I wanted to be able to dry right on the screen. The only device I've seen that does that is a Wacom Cintiq, and those cost $2,500. Plus, they only run at 1280 by 1024. My TabletPC cost $2,000 and it runs at 1440 by 1080. (Toshiba M-200, not a bad machine at all.)

2.) I like being able to draw from places other than my desk. The couch, for example, is where I do a good deal of my work. (My back is aching right now while I write this. Heh I need a new chair.) This thing goes to work with me sometimes. My studio is very small and cannot afford to buy me all the neato things I think I need, including a TabletPC or a Cintiq, so at least I can take this one with me.

3.) This doesn't happen too often, but just the other day I handed the TPC to my boss so he could make a minor refinement to my work. Not the biggest deal in the world, but I suspect this'll be a more popular feature down the road, especially when we make presentations to higher-ups.

"Re. 2: They say Macs are usable longer than PCs"

This was true a couple of years ago. Lately, though, this hasn't been the case. My big bottleneck isn't my PC, but the time I have in getting my work done. Faster computers buy me faster rendering, but they don't do much to help me model or paint. My TPC is only 1.5 ghz, and despite the fact that my main machine is a dual 2.0 athlon, it isn't significantly slower. I haven't made major upgrades to either machine in a very long time.

You've got a good point, don't get me wrong, but should I decide to upgrade my desktop, I'm not going to be out much more than $500. (maybe $1,000 if I go dual again.) That's at least a year or two away.

Maybe in a year or two if Apple has a stylus-based laptop, I'll make the switch. I'm not trying to talk myself out of it. It's just a bigger leap than I can handle right now.

Re:neat

[NanoGator]

"My TPC is only 1.5 ghz, and despite the fact that my main machine is a dual 2.0 athlon, it isn't significantly slower."

Oops, I didn't clarify this very well. I meant that from a getting-work-done point of view, it isn't significantly faster.

Sorry, I'm really bad at expressing myself sometimes.

Re:neat

[mrchaotica]

Well, okay, but I still think you should consider an iBook or PowerBook -- after all, tablets aren't that big or heavy (right?); you can stack it on top [of the closed laptop] and take it with you.

Re:neat

[l3v1]

You can call me stupid or whatever, but that doesn't excuse programmers from writing stuff that is a pain in the ass to use.

As others above has said already: if you don't like it, don't use it. Saying that in YOUR opinion it sucks will only anger people to war, no matter it's YOUR opinion you're talking about.

I don't understand one thing: if one has found his way and is happy with a solution (i.e. Mac&OSX) than why's the need to spread that linux sucks ? You just have too much time to spare now that you don't compile your softwares ? Baaah.

Anyways, we have some choices for OS's these days which is a very good thing. You stick to yours and help it evolve if you wish (most guys who talk like you don't do that, just talk) and be glad that you don't _have_ to choose MS, because there are other options, like Debian which is my personal favourite for ages now, and like OSX which you'll be very happy with.

Instead of trolling other people's favourites, you could just tell the best of your favourite without bashing the others. That would be a nice way to go. Very few people are following that.

Re:neat

[NanoGator]

"Well, okay, but I still think you should consider an iBook or PowerBook -- after all, tablets aren't that big or heavy (right?); you can stack it on top [of the closed laptop] and take it with you."

Hehhe. The problem with stacking them is that it'd interfere with my tablet's configuration. It has two modes. Laptop mode and slate mode. I can either use it like an ordinary laptop, or flip the screen around on top so it looks like I'm carrying a small monitor. (and yes, it's very small.) Adhering an iBook would be painful!

Nah, I'm happy with what I got this time around. XP really isn't that bad despite the negativity it's recieved on Slashdot. At this point, switching to a Mac would be kind of like getting heated seats and leather upholstery in my car. It's not like I'd be able to drive double the speed limit, if you know what I mean. ;)

Re:neat

[NanoGator]

"As others above has said already: if you don't like it, don't use it. Saying that in YOUR opinion it sucks will only anger people to war, no matter it's YOUR opinion you're talking about."

Ah dammit. I didn't write that very clearly. I didn't mean to say that Linux was a pain in the ass to use. I meant any given program. But I wasn't clear, so I'm sorry. I've been bad about writing my points clearly these days.

However, even if I did mean it the way you interpreted, seriously, grow a thicker skin. (That's directed at everybody, not just you specifically.) What I said was a far cry from 'something sucks'. "Pain in the ass to use" is more constructive than 'sucks'. Anybody who's ever had to look up on the web how to use a command knows what I'm talking about.

As for the comment that I should just use OSX, easier said than done. If Linux was suited for me, (maybe SuSe is... haven't checked in a few months) it's just an install away. OSX is new hardware for me.

Re:neat

[mrchaotica]

Naw, what I meant was just to take the drawing tablet along with the iBook, and set it next to it when you want to use it -- I didn't mean for glue to be involved! I just meant that a drawing tablet doesn't take up much space and you could put it next to the laptop in your bag.

Re:neat

[NanoGator]

Oops sorry. Can ya tell I'm a little foggy tonight?

Unfortunately, I'm not sure what that'd buy me. I'm at a point right now where the OS is pretty much invisible to me. At least for the next 6 months until I need to reinstall. ;)

Don't worry man, next computer purchase I make, Mac'll be seriously considered.

Re:neat

[RdsArts]

That's not quite where I was going, but actually yes, it can cause nasty problems. If there were 10 browsers (heh there probably is, good thing Firebird seems to be the de-facto default) for Linux all specialized at doing their own thing well, would that be good or bad?

Good. Guess what, not every app is a swiss army knife. Most shouldn't be. Users are different. This is why you have 2000 computer types and, wait for it, 2000 different type of people buying them. People's wants and needs differ. If there are 20 or 30 browsers, maybe one, MAYBE, will be what the person wants to use.

But even with that said, you'll note that of the handful of browsers out there most use Gecko or KHTML. So they share backend code, which is good, but can do different things for the user, which is... Oh, ya, good.

Re:neat

[Anonvmous Coward]

"But even with that said, you'll note that of the handful of browsers out there most use Gecko or KHTML. So they share backend code, which is good, but can do different things for the user, which is... Oh, ya, good."

I like how you're agreeing in a disagreeing tone.

Re:neat

[RdsArts]

Top poster said there should only be one browser. (Firefox) I said there should be only few backends. Two entirely different comments.

Unless Galeon, Firefox, Mozilla, Epiphany, Stepstone, Konqueror, Safari, gnuWebCore, et al suddenly merged.

Re:neat

[farnz]

Like choice is the bane of television?

Does it really cause people nasty problems that there are over ten different manufacturers of NTSC decoding circuits, and over 100 different combinations of NTSC decoder and display device? Do people really find it difficult to produce content that conforms to all the combinations of NTSC receivers that exist?

The problem in software is simply that we're not very good at producing software standards, or at keeping to them. If we had good standards properly implemented for the WWW, the user's choice of browser would be a non-issue. It doesn't bother people that there's more than one different DVD player, or TV set design. Each still does the same thing from the content provider's perspective; it's a reflection of how immature software is that we can't do the same with things like web browsers.

Re:neat

[Tim C]

I don't see him saying that Linux sucks, I see him pointing out that it still has some flaws, especially compared to other OSes. You may or may not care; that's your perogative. However, the collective entity that is the slashdot readership seems to want Linux to succeed on the desktop; if so, then these flaws will have to be addressed.

(I understand there are lots of different opinions here, not everyone wants that, blah blah blah - the impression I get from having read this site for the last few years is that the majority want Linux use on the desktop to spread; that's what I mean when I talk of the "collective entity")

why's the need to spread that linux sucks ?

Same reason people say that Windows sucks, or Java, or perl, or C, or vi or emacs or Intel or AMD or NVidia or ATI - it's just something that some people do. Maybe they're reassuring themselves that their beliefs and choices were right, maybe they're trying to show other people the error of their ways, maybe they're just trolling. Whatever the reasons, it happens on all sides of all debates; thankfully, most people grow out of it eventually.

Re:neat

[Anonvmous Coward]

"Top poster said there should only be one browser. "

No, he didn't. If you actually understood what he said instead of arguing with what he didn't say, you'd find you're both pretty much on the same side. Your goal here is to argue, not to discuss.

Re:neat

[RdsArts]

If there were 10 browsers (heh there probably is, good thing Firebird seems to be the de-facto default) for Linux all specialized at doing their own thing well, would that be good or bad?

From the top post. Direct quote with emphasis added. If me and the poster agree, rocking, it's just another post I've made that people can ignore. IMHO, we've one sticking point in that they want one browser and only one browser AFAI understand what they wrote, and for that to be the "standard." Which seems to be a common stance in regards to how to make apps "interoperate" today; "hey, it's the only app, so everything has to work with it." That's all I said, and that's all I'm saying.

Re:neat

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't. It would mean a million clueless fucks. All I want is for it to be allowed interoperate. That means: no software patent impediments for parsing files or writing programs, no "anti-reverse-engineering" laws for hardware, etc. Unfortunately, in the Corporate Reich of America, that's not going to happen, and the EU seems determined to screw up in a similar manner.

Skip the flamewars, what about organisation?

[Anonymous Coward]

From the GUI, OS, Drivers, Firmware, Hardware. Organisation is key to modularity. In case people haven't noticed, we've been slowly losing both in almost all technology nowadays.

Also, the lack of modularity leads to more proprietary technology, which only increases the difficulty of defeating evil, evil DRM et cetera.

Oh, it'd be nice if someone could point me to a good open source perfect 1:1 CD and DVD copying utility. CD protection is pissing off my ideas of Fair Use (I actually AM creating backups, God Forbid!) Road trips aren't conducive to the status of the average digital medium.

Re:Skip the flamewars, what about organisation?

[Anonymous Coward]

In the linux environment, you could try (using the cdrtools package):

readcd -v dev=/dev/hdc timeout=1 -noerror retries=0 speed=4 f=outfile.iso

Substitute /dev/hdc, but keep the read-speed low. It will skip any errors without retrying. Then burn the iso with cdrecord.

Re:Skip the flamewars, what about organisation?

[Anonymous Coward]

k3b, wait a second , linux just ignores cd-protection in most cases anyhow.

Re:Skip the flamewars, what about organisation?

[EdMack]

cdrdao is a nice one, here's my wee script for copying from drive to drive on the fly:

cdrdao copy --source-device ATAPI:0,0,0 --source-driver generic-mmc --device ATAPI:0,1,0 --driver generic-mmc --on-the-fly
eject /dev/cdrom
eject /dev/cdrom1

Krap...

[Anonymous Coward]

...i missed it :-(

Kause people are Ksick

[geekoid]

of the damn K. Stop putting in front of everything.

Re:Kause people are Ksick

[m1chael]

OK, eekoid...

Re:Kause people are Ksick

[Anonymous Coward]

No, people are sick of people complaining about the K. Stop it already.

Besides, a lot of those K-names are proper spelling in other languages.. Not that it really matters, lets just dropped making bad jokes and whining about the Ks people.

Re:Kause people are Ksick

[polyp2000]

WinAmp,WinZip,WinRar,WinDVD,WinaXe,WinAce,WinCopy, WinEdit,WinExpert, WinTheListIsEndless

Gimp, Gaim , Gkrellm, Gnuisletme , Gnumeric, Gnomoradio, gwavegen, grip, gstreamer, GTheListIsEndless

Konqueror, Kmail, Kopete, Kview, Kruler, Ksnapshot,KTheListIsEndless.

Listen friends Every desktop has its fair share of annoying prefixes, so live with it!

Re:Kause people are Ksick

[Anonymous Coward]

Uh no dummy.

How about the vast majority of the world just keeps on ignoring KDE until they grow the fuck up.

It isn't funny.
It isn't cool.

It's just fucking lame.

Re:Kause people are Ksick

[maskedbishounen]

A lot of the G* items don't stand for "Gnome", but a good number for "GTK" or "GNU". Specifically, I'll point out GIMP from your list. Just what toolkit do you think Gnome uses in the first place, any why it came about to exist? ;-)

Re:Kause people are Ksick

[k98sven]

A lot of the G* items don't stand for "Gnome", but a good number for "GTK" or "GNU"

At least that means the KDE guys the benifit of consistency.. A GTK application IS a Gnome application. You don't see very many KDE apps with "Q" for Qt though.

Re:Kause people are Ksick

[Anonymous Coward]

Sure , remember though that gnome stands for
"GNU Network Object Model Environment" so there is a higher level generic name "Gnu". Gimp of course stands for GNU Image Manipulation Package, which uses GTK (GIMP Toolkit)(you already know what gimp stands for.

The G* stands for GNU in most instances, so you can still group all those G* names under the same header.

Nick ....

Re:Kause people are Ksick

[be-fan]

Don't forget iPhoto, iTunes, iMovie, iLife, iCal, iDisk, iTheListIsEndless.

Re:Kause people are Ksick

[Brandybuck]

The 'G' in both GTK and GNOME stands for "GNU". Therefore all of G* items stand for GNU.

Some predictions on where this is heading

[Anonymous Coward]

Now there are of course a lot of interesting things on could talk about. For example the integration of NX technology into kde, the new search feature, better integration between gnome and kde, the changes Qt4 might bring, etc.

But unfortunatley these things won't be discussed on /.

So, what can we expect?
Easy, on one side we will see the old gnome vs. kde flame war.
People will tell us that kde is bloated (of course without telling us what bloated means), that only gnome gets it right, etc.
And some people will of course react in the same kind, telling us that gnome is unusable, that all the gnome devs are bad people, etc.
For good meassure there will of course be someone telling us that anyone using anything with more features then twm is no real man and that real man only need the command line anyway.

And of course there will be a lot of posts claiming linux isn't ready for the desktop.
We will here that they had never had any problems with windows, that their XP install has been running happily on their PI 100 for 5 years now and that linux just doesn't cut it.
And we will for sure see some expert telling us that it isn't ready because photoshop doesn't run on linux, as if everyone needed or even wanted photoshop.

I could go on and on of course and people never cease to surprise me with the stupid topics they can come up with, but what annoys me most is that a lot of these incredibly boring and dumb posts will be modded interesting and insightful.

Now there will probably be a lot of people filing me under linux zealot who can't stand anyone critizising his religion, but that is not the point here. There are of course a lot of things that could and should be better and yes, these things should be discussed, but that is something entirely different from the flaimbaits we can expect here.

Re:Some predictions on where this is heading

[Anonymous Coward]

Why use Gnome or KDE when you can use XFCE :D

Re:Some predictions on where this is heading

[Anonymous Coward]

And we will for sure see some expert telling us that it isn't ready because photoshop doesn't run on linux, as if everyone needed or even wanted photoshop.


You're exactly right. My sister needed a machine for a design course, and insisted on photoshop. It took a few days with GIMP and she was up and going much further than she had done before with photoshop.

Re:Some predictions on where this is heading

[kad77]

Hell, even your carping was predictable!

Link to the original posting

[twener]

The original posting which also includes the links to the archived video and audio recordings.

Elegance vs features

[Hal XP]

I personally hope they are all having a good hard look at Apple's stuff.

The Gnome folks appear to be doing just that. I suspect Gnome is an attempt to clone the Mac UI (elegance over features) and KDE an attempt to clone the Windows UI (features over elegance).

Take a look at the difference between Nautilus (the Gnome file manager) and Konqueror (the KDE file manager-cum-web browser).

Nautilus is easier to use if all you want is to copy a file from one local "folder" to another. But if you want to copy a file from an ftp site, Konqueror lets you perform the operation without resort to a dedicated ftp program.

Re:Elegance vs features

[Anonymous Coward]

Thanks for the info!

I made a couple of notes to explore Gnome next time around.

Just wanted to let you know I read what you said.

--NG

Re:Elegance vs features

[Anonymous Coward]

But if you want to copy a file from an ftp site, Konqueror lets you perform the operation without resort to a dedicated ftp program.

Nautilus can do that too. :)

Re:Elegance vs features

[Anonymous Coward]

I would have to disagree about aiming to "copy" a particular desktop.

For Example

I've found a lot of improvements in kde3.3 it seems nippier, fonts are rendered beautifully, and the desktop couldnt be more configurable. In my experience it seems to me that KDE is taking the best parts of everything, but its Desktop behaviour wizard gives you the ability to change your Window manager to behave like any number of environments. In addition you can even create your own custom behaviours.

nick...

Managed code for next KDE?

[Anonymous Coward]

Since it seems that Gnome 3 (from what I've heard anyway) is going to be coded mostly in C# via Mono does anyone know if KDE has any plans to move to a managed code solution?

I'd like to see a natively compilable Java solution myself.

Re:Managed code for next KDE?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd like to see a natively compilable Java solution myself.

Are you insane ?

Re:Managed code for next KDE?

[Anonymous Coward]

Coding everything in C# would be ultimately stupid. I'm not sure if Miguel was misquoted there. I'd like to think that he's intelligent enough to understand how big a mistake that would be. I've been a GTK+ and C fan for years. Only recently I've started doing some application coding with Qt and C++. Boy, what a difference. The UI code was about half the size of the equivalent GTK+ code. I know you can use glade these days, but it should tell you something.

Back to the KDE/Gnome thing, in my experience KDE is more responsive, and their core libraries are still ahead of the game. Call me when all Gnome apps are bonobo compliant.

I love GNOME, but I respect KDE...

[Pecisk]

because it has done many good things. Really, KDE and GNOME is for different user groups, so I really hate those all flamewars. I love GNOME and you love KDE. That's all and great - because it's all about choice. Someone else uses OS X, and someone else - some BSD flavor...

What I really love to see that freedesktop.org starts to really matter for developers. I love that colobration stuff that we can share easily data without breaking each other goals.

Remember, colobration and easy data migration between platforms is the key to the future of Linux *mainstream* destkop.

And yes, kudos KDE team as always for superior translation tool - KBabel.

KDE 4 Graphics System?

[gregski]

Am i right in thinking that kde 4 will start to use real transparenceny and shadows etc ala its own composite manager? since the current xorg manager is only proof of concept. I'm sure with a little time they can think of some innovative uses that don't just copy apple. any suggestions?

i also think i heard that qt4 may be opengl accelerated which would be rather nice.

Re:KDE 4 Graphics System?

[p2psecure.com]

Yes, actually I do believe you're right about the transparencies and shadows. I've heard word as well. As undesirable as Apple's childish interface is, it has brought them moderate success from a niche of users. I think Linux is in desperate need of a little boost in this area...

Re:KDE 4 Graphics System?

[Illissius]

AFAIK, KDE4 will use Cairo, which is a freedesktop.org 2D standard thingy that can render to OpenGL or any number of other things. Memory fuzzy though :/

Re:KDE 4 Graphics System?

[EdMack]

The OpenGL bit is an X thing, but that'll be here in not too long. Cairo usage throughtout the stack will be interesting.

Re:KDE 4 Graphics System?

[Ralph Yarro]

Am i right in thinking that kde 4 will start to use real transparenceny and shadows etc ala its own composite manager?

It will use real shadows but you'll have to use your real hands in front of a real lamp to form the real shadows when prompted to do so by the OS.

Real transparency will only be available if you have a see-through monitor. Failing that you'll have to make do with some form of virtual transparency.

Re:KDE 4 Graphics System?

[be-fan]

KDE4 will probably not use Cairo. Qt has it's own painter API with OpenGL backend.

Re:KDE 4 Graphics System?

[delire]

i took your advice while shooting crack into my iris. i eventually found my Peaches, my Peruvian Goldfish in /var/log/chrony. terrible..

Here is why...

[Bulln-Bulln]

...it's not in production anymore (Cache)

Re:fuck your auction

[Anonymous Coward]

I KISS YOU!

K K and K!

[Anonymous Coward]

Why the hell the K has to always be Kapitalised?! FucK! I just Kan't stand it!

Kalm down!

[Anonymous Coward]

Ket a krip!

Re:Kalm down!

[Anonymous Coward]

No, seriously, it reminds me Ku Klux Klan! For that reason alone, I am strongly against using K--K this K that--everywhere in Kde.

Re:Kalm down!

[Anonymous Coward]

Very true. Please mod parent up.

VFS

[EdMack]

Gnome's vfs lets you open local and remote filesystems identically, and copy between them. In Computer you can set up permanent connections for speed too.

This has nothing to to with Konqueror

[brunes69]

It has to do with KDE's superior underlying IO subsystem, that Gnome is just starting to try to duplicate with VFS.

The fact is with KDE you rarely would every *have* to copy the file over, since every KDE app can just access the file as if it was local anyways. You can edit a KWord document on an FTP/SFTP/WebDAV server just as easily as you can in your $HOME.

Re:This has nothing to to with Konqueror

[Anonymous Coward]

It has to do with KDE's superior underlying IO subsystem, that Gnome is just starting to try to duplicate with VFS.

You're a fucking moron. GNOME VFS has existed as long as KDE's stupid and broken KIO slave concept.

Re:Free Gmail Invites...

[Anonymous Coward]

I have some gmail invites, how do I go about getting the url from it? Do i just invite myself 6 times and get the urls?

the K stands for Krap

[Anonymous Coward]

KDE = Krap

Umm Old News...

[nurb432]

Lets see, you have 'pipes', 'dcop', 'shell scripting', 'scripting in kde', 'kparts'...

All these allow for what you are talking about..

Perhaps kde is not the best that can be done, as you put it, but it does what you are asking for... today...

A tad bit of research before you toss in the pro-MS line might help your credibility..

where's the research for -Re:Umm Old News...

[3seas]

I'm not pro MS and you would know this had you read my response above. which BTW does address your points.

somehow it just doesn't seem to be research, for you to simply have read it. The research would come in what you would find in the mentioned google search.

Gnome == Gnob-rot

[Anonymous Coward]

So there!

Konsole already has it

[brunes69]

Konsole already has true transparency if you compile it under the X.Org experimental server.

Expect other KDE apps to follow suit I imagine.