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!

[be-fan]

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

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!

[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!

[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!

[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!

[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:KDE 4?

[AresTheImpaler]

maybe this can give you some info

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?

[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?

[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.

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

[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

[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

[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

[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

[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.

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

[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

[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

[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

[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.

Krap...

[Anonymous Coward]

...i missed it :-(

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.

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.

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: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!

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: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? ;-)

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..

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.