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

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: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...

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.

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.

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.

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: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!