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eWeek Reviews Gnome 2.8 And KDE 3.3
prostoalex writes "eWeek Labs reviewed the latest editions of GNOME and KDE desktop environments, and for all the criteria that eWeek uses for evaluating the software products ranked 'good,' while usability, capability and reliability for both products ranked 'excellent.' The online version is missing the screenshots and ranking tables that the printed version has, but eWeek likes Evolution (for mail), Konqueror (for file management), Samba and Kopete. They dislike GConf (still complex and a hassle to use) on GNOME and KMail on KDE."
Are you dissatisfied with GNOME ? Then take your chance to participate to Project GoneME.
What's to dislike about KMail? I think it's great.
I haven't RTFAed yet, but Kmail is my favorite email app for commodity x86 hardware. Simple, clean, stable, fast, basically everything that evolution isn't.
Here are some GNOME and KDE screenshots.
I run KDE 3.2 but have various GTK/Gnome stuff installed. It drives me batty to find "gconf" and "orbit" directories automatically created in my home directory. If there's a way to change that, I'd love to hear it but that one little bug is enough to make me warn people away from Gnome and on to KDE.
You'd be looking for XFCE then.
XFCE is a powerful but lightweight UI for both older systems and 'power-user' implementations.
Both Gnome and KDE lead the way for moder UI implementations on *nixes and as such require modern hardware to go with them (in general).
Having said that, I've just installed KDE on a second user 1.7GHz Celeron M laptop with a piddling (by modern standards) 128MB ram and it positively flies! - No complaints here.
Ripping an new rectum in the fabric of spacetime.
...like I'm going to listen to eWeek.
I've got "MyYahoo" set as my homepage and their tech news stories are particularly disgusting. There was an exploit tool that was to be released under the GPL so the headline was " Open-Source Exploit Tool: 'Point, Click, Root' ". Mind you the tool attacks Windows and OSX machines, not Linux. But since it was released under the GPL, Open Source==Bad!
FUD! Just like when IDG reported the "double-free" CVS flaw in a story titled: "Search finds new holes in open source tool" (Notice, they reported this in July of 2004). After a little looking around I noticed that CERT released an advisory Feb. 2003!
Get your Unix fortune now!
the .gconf and .orbit are directories that get created automaticly when you run Gnome apps. They don't just hold information about gconf, but most Gnome apps use them.
.mozilla directory.
It's not a bug. It's not even a small bug.
It's the same thing that happens when you run mozilla and it makes a
kind of always been partial to kde...
now and then i read a writup that causes me to install gnome but i have never "switched" or even kept both...
All the torrents you could want.
I am starting to like the simplicity of Gnome these days. You may notice the menu insanity of KDE (eg konqueror 'other tabs' menu when you have websites with long titles...). But unfortunately neither completes me and I switch between the 2 all the time. Just to keep things even the thing I dislike about Gnome is it GUI slowness. A new kernel + staircase or nick's scheduler does help though. Strangely it is fine with plain nv drivers, but who the hell would use those.
I know you are psychotic, but please make an effort.
GNOME, KDE Aim at Windows
September 24, 2004
By Jason Brooks
KDE and GNOME, the open-source software projects that together form the face of most Linux installations, have undergone revisions that boost their usability and enterprise readiness--advances that build the case for Linux as a viable alternative to Windows on mainstream corporate desktops.
Some of the biggest changes in KDE 3.3 and GNOME 2.8 lie in the projects' respective e-mail and collaboration clients, Kontact and Evolution. Both applications are well-integrated into their desktop environments and cover a full range of groupware functionality, but eWEEK Labs found Evolution to be more refined and pleasant to use.
PointerCheck out the eWEEK Labs Executive Summaries for KDE 3.3 and GNOME 2.8.
We tested both desktop environments on systems running Fedora Core 2. We compiled and installed GNOME 2.8 using Garnome, a script that automates the lengthy process of downloading and compiling the GNOME source code in the proper order. The Garnome Project Web site has been overhauled and now contains much better documentation than before.
We tested KDE 3.3, released last month, using precompiled binary packages downloaded from Red Hat's development repository. We also tested with Konstruct, a download-and-compile script that works the same way for KDE that Garnome does for GNOME.
You can use Garnome or Konstruct to install these desktop environments on any of the systems they support (both run on all Linux distributions, as well as Solaris and most other Unixes). But the best way to obtain KDE or GNOME is through your Linux distributor.
PointerClick here to read ExtremeTech's preview of the Ubuntu Linux distribution.
GNOME 2.8, released earlier this month, marks the long-awaited Version 2.0 release of the Evolution groupware client, which for the first time ships as an integrated part of the desktop environment.
Evolution 2.0's new spam-filtering capabilities are impressive. The application connects to SpamAssassin in the background and, during tests, let us move messages to a junk folder for verification.
Evolution 2.0 also let us teach SpamAssassin to better classify e-mail by manually marking messages as spam or ham (valid mail).
PointerThe IETF recently pulled the plug on the MARID anti-spam group. Click here for the full story.
Evolution's support for Novell Inc.'s GroupWise groupware server and for Microsoft Corp.'s Exchange Server 2000 and Exchange Server 2003 distinguishes it from competing Linux e-mail products, including Mozilla's Thunderbird 0.8 and KDE's Kontact. Now that Novell has released its Exchange plug-in under the GPL (GNU General Public License), we hope to see Exchange compatibility spread to Thunderbird and Kontact.
eWEEK.com Special Report: Enterprise Wars: Linux vs. Windows
Kontact, KDE 3.3's answer to Evolution, is a groupware application that combines the e-mail, contact and scheduling applications from KDE into a single client. We've panned Kontact in the past for its lack of interface polish, and while the latest version is slicker-looking, various quirks remain.
For one thing, when we were using the down-arrow key, Kontact insisted on scrolling downward through the current message in the preview pane, rather than through messages in its message-list pane.
We also had trouble with Kontact's spam filtering, which, as with Evolution, can connect to SpamAssassin to automatically classify mail as spam as well as train SpamAssassin to better detect spam. In our tests, the wizard with which we created spam-handling filters allowed us to select a folder on our IMAP server as the site to dump unwanted messages, but the filter seemed to work only with local folders.
Another thing that annoyed us about KDE's mail handling was the way it dealt with HTML messages. By default, every HTML message appears in source view, with a security warning and a link to render the HTML for viewing. We could opt instead to have
what linux needs is a desktop environment that uses a fast toolkit, and does what is needed without the extra bells and whistles.
For light desktops that aren't just pure IceWM or *box window management your best options are XFCE (which uses GTK+, but is still surprsingly light and fast), and E17 (if and when it eventually arrives) which uses pretty much all its own technology (of which there is a lot, and its all quite impressive).
Realistically E17 is stacking up to the "other" desktop given how much functionality the E Foundation Libraries offer. I'm not trying to dis IceWM or Fluxbox here, but realistically those are mostly Window Managers, while the new E is looking to have more of the "core libraries" approach of GNOME and KDE, providing its own widget toolkit and what have you. We're still to see whether people will actually pick it up and develop with it...
Finally you've got WindowMaker, which is a very nice window manager and integrates in with GNUStep to provide your widget toolkits and other core libraries. The downside here is that while Window Maker is great, the amount of developer uptake for GNUStep has been fairly limited, so you won't exactly see a lot of GNUStep apps.
There are some good options though, so don't go complaining too much.
Jedidiah.
Craft Beer Programming T-shirts
Another poster remarked that they're both bloated. Well, that's not entirely fair. Both use a very plug-and-play software development scheme, so there's really no need to install/use components that you don't want.
I'll agree that there are probably more layers than you'd ideally want for a desktop (eg: KDE -> Corba -> Underlying KDE stuff -> QT -> Xlib -> X11 client -> X11 protocol -> X server) but it's not horrible and most of the problem is caused by X11's design, which is very much a concept of layers on layers.
Alternatives to X really haven't gotten very far. I am unaware of any distros which use Berlin / Fiasco, for example. I've not even seen any announcements for it for some time, and am unsure if it's even under active development still.
Lighter-weight graphics drivers for X don't seem to have progressed well, either. GGI and KGI aren't nearly as well-developed as I'd have expected at this point. One can only assume that there just aren't many people who feel that particular itch.
The growing use of networking systems such as CORBA is also not helping much. CORBA is fairly bulky, and if you're running the processes on the same machine, then you really don't need the capacity to run objects on remote systems. I don't even know if those CORBA applications for GNOME or KDE even support a distributed environment of this kind. It's certainly not obvious as to how you'd go about creating one.
Also, CORBA implementations are not as interchangable as they should be. You can't just pick up an application that has ORBit in mind and use it with MICO, TAO or some other CORBA engine. This does start to get a little heavy, as it means that any software not designed for the CORBA engine your GUI is set up to use is going to have to have its own CORBA engine installed. That's plain ugly. It's also a design problem of CORBA, and NOT a problem with the design of Gnome or KDE.
Personally, I think the whole concept of the "desktop environment" is archaic. It stems from the time of the "paperless office", which never materialized. I think we should be looking to see what people actually want to do on their computer, because it's very clear that 80s/90s thinking was wrong on this point.
If the desktop metaphor is the wrong one to use, in the first place, then no implementation of that metaphor - however good it may be - will ever satisfy users. Since the metaphor is also almost wholly owned by certain corporations hostile to FOSS in the first place, changing the battleground would seem wiser than trying to compete in an area users might not even be wanting.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
Yup, I agree. See my post...
Tell the truth and you won't have so much to remember.
oGalaxyo, I think you should seriously just post using your username, rather than hiding behind anonymity.
The complaints about gconf seemed pretty useless to me. What gconf is really about is providing a nice library to encapsulate preferences storage/updates. the Gconf editor is not meant to be something that you use on anything resembling a regular basis.
Declaring it difficult to use, compared to the alternative (your text editor of choice) seems a strong enough claim that it should have been backed up by more description.
-Mark
IceWM is still my favorite, it has all the basics, window management, task switching, task bar and application launcher. Then you get the Anti-aliased fonts support with gnome/kde hooks.
Gnome and KDE are more than just desktops, they include functionality for the OS, auto-mounting drives, smart interaction of programs with data sharing. They try to simpifily the whole interaction experience. You shouldnt have to work to get a task done. It should be a click away. This is why they include lots of applications, its easier when applications work with the desktop.
One thing KDE/GNOME has over MS Windows, no front priority windows (pop ups). Nothing pisses me off more than applications that have its status window pop up and take focus when I'm typing.
Typing code, and all the sudden you have some Dialog box in your face.
Gaim is really bad about this on windows, even with the option to turn off popup messages, the split second it pops on the screen takes focus.
I remember desktops before the taskbar, I'm not giving it up.
I've found that KDE is quite a bit more responsive than Gnome, especially running applications remotely, it's difficult to tell when KDE apps are remote but performance wasn't mentioned. Has this changed for the latest versions?
Deleted
It's basically the same API as the Mac OSX so apps written for GNUStep should build relatively painlessly on the Mac, though I'm not sure it implements enough of the API for the reverse to be true.
Deleted
I'll never understand the religious wars about these issues. It's technology, folks -- use whatever works for you.
Freedom is predicated on the availability of diverse choice; we need different philosophies and approaches.
For day-to-day work, I use KDE, though I prefer Thunderbird to KMail (or Evolution, which is overkill for my purposes). I've run Gnome quite a bit, too; my Opteron system has both Gnome and KDE installed, and I spend about 90% of my time in the latter. I can live with either one, though I prefer the customization available in KDE.
Gnome and KDE both have high overhead (disk space and processor use) as compared to XFCE, which is the GUI for my dusl 600MHz Pentium 3 and 300MHz Sun Ultra 10.
My Pentium 4 box dual-boots between Gentoo/KDE and Windows XP. I find XP limited in many (many) respects, but some things (games) just work better under Windows.
Competition is a good thing.
All about me
I prefer the window-list myself. I don't need a constant reminder of what program are running. That's a waste of screen real-estate IMO.
I'm glad OS X used this approach to window management. It works out very nicely.
My other car is first.
If they like better Outlook-style mail clients, why they didnt evaluate Kontact instead? It uses kmail as its email engine, but also integrates notes, tasks, calendar, etc like Outlook and Evolution, "embedding" other KDE applications.
Granted, it's an article about KDE and Gnome, but where are the MS trolls? :) Sure, MS hasn't offered any real feature improvements since 2001 or so, but that doesn't mean there's no flamebait to be offered. Then again, who would admit to using Exchange (and all but beg to be compromised).
:)
j/k--sorta.
Microsoft has just released their much anticipated hands-free cordless mouse. Warning, it may hurt a little at first.
I think that the AC actually got a point here, sort of. What Linux needs is a ultrastable vm that comes with all Linux distros. A vm that just runs and get you what you need to get started. Right now they are not stable, not compatible with anything and full of crap.
We've been hearing from the Gnome camp for a while? What is technically good and what is good for the user is not always the same thing. In fact, sometimes their quite different.
And I belive ALL feedback is important, even if you have to work to translate it into something useful.
99% of all users wont care about libraries or how they are supposed to use something. They've got babies, family, car payments and jobs to worry about.
Quack, quack.
None of these options hold a candle to Rat Poison. Nothing is as simple or minimal as it.
I had never compiled and installed KDE from the source, it just felt too huge and complicated. But I gave it a shot this week and it turned to be a brainless exercise with konstruct. You just run this script and it automagically downloads, de-compresses, compiles and installs everything!!
:)
Three cheers to the KDE team
Actually, I think eWeek has been surprisingly generous in their Linux coverage and support over the years. I remember 3+ years ago when I was trying to get a few experimental things switched over to Linux from Windows in the workplace, eWeek was one of the few publications I could almost count on to at least say something positive about Linux in a given issue.
Granted, they've never been an especially "technical and in-depth" source of news. Rather, they seem to target more of the middle management and CIO types, trying to give them a "cliff notes" version of what's going on in computer technology. But to claim that eWeek thinks "open source = bad" is way off the mark, IMHO. It sounds more to me like someone was just trying to be creative with story headlines to get the maximum amount of attention.
We will not listen to anyone's opinion on random downloaded software unless they wear a white blouse.
Maybe you meant a white lab coat? Or perhaps your mind was on schoolgirls after all? I know mine always is!
Uh, I mean...
KMail (and therefore Kontact) does provide "sanitized" HTML mail support. The KMail docs claim that sanitized is the default, but it is an easy change regardless. The check box is located in: Configure KMail -> Security -> "Allow messages to load external references from the Internet". It seems they didn't look too hard for the option that is default anyway.
As far as the warnings before rendering HTML messages, this is just a question of how paranoid you'd like to be (or, how important the integrity of you system is). HTML parsers/renderers are very complex software, and therefore they may have bugs. Look to the recent JPEG exploits for bad bugs in seemingly innocent software. If there were a bug found in the HTML renderer used by your mailreader, reading email messages might present a threat to the security and integrity of your computer.
Like the documentation in KMail says "Displaying the HTML part makes the message look better, but at the same time increases the risk of security holes being exploited"
An interesting article has shown up on OSNews.com. Slackware is up to drop GNOME due to its bugs and bad maintainance. First companies are dropping GNOME (HP left) and now distros start dropping GNOME.
Sadly, the version, released with KDE-3.3, continues the poor tradition of features over bug-fixes. I understand, that adding features is usually more fun, than fixing bugs -- especially, someone else's, and a volunteer project will always be skewed towards the former, but other projects (inside KDE even) manage to impose discipline somehow...
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
None of these options hold a candle to Rat Poison. Nothing is as simple or minimal as it.
Screen on a console surely. Why bother with all that nasty Xlib library overhead?
And then there's always just the console and ALT-F1 through ALT-F12 (what you don't use 12 virtual consoles?)
But really, who wants all that clunky overhead of actually loading a shell? Far too bloated I say.
Jedidiah.
Craft Beer Programming T-shirts
I run fluxbox. I use KDevelop and I launch it from a gnome-panel. Then I write a letter in KWord, and bring up gnome-terminal to edit something in /etc with SciTE.
This ability to choose is why I like the OS. There's nothing about KDE that precludes Gnome or vice-versa.
REM Old programmers don't die. They just GOSUB without RETURN.
Well, I thought that XP was a bit limiting until a fellow /.er pointed out the Windows XP Powertools. Now, with MS Virtual Desktops and the x-windows style mouse over focus stuff, and the cool alt_tab tool, I don't know what else KDR or Gnome could offer me...
I don't respond to AC's.
Screen on a console surely. Why bother with all that nasty Xlib library overhead?
There is a lot you can do from the console (just about everything actually), but console ONLY is a bit too minimal for my taste. I've toyed around with the idea a few times, but I find using a lightweight window manager to be more efficient than virtual consoles, personally. Plus I've never been a fan of browsing the web with lynx/links/links2.
I began reading this review, as I don't use either KDE or GNOME, but am occasionally interested in seeing what they are up to (I use pekwm as a WM and no "desktop environment").
Click here to read about pekwm.
I thought perhaps there would be some insights as to what they were up to, or at least some screenshots, but I was disappointed.
Click here to read about screenshots.
So, on the whole, I must give this review a low score.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
I have continually looked around at alternative e-mail clients to Kmail. Apart from Outlook, I have yet to find another mail client that has a key piece of functionality - the ability to clear out old messages from a mail folder automatically.
I read a lot of mailing lists - some such as Debian-User with several hundred messages a day. I filter each mailing list into its own folder, and then set purge dates on the folder to delete messages.
I tried evolution, thunderbird, balsa and a few others - none of them have this function. Why doesn't this lack of ability to clear unwanted mailing list messages worry anyone else?
Okay, I read the web page you linked to.
#1. The size of an HTML email versus plaintext is irrelevent now. You want to crusade? Crusade against spam.
#2. Get rid of Outlook, which is the first tool in any virus writer's toolbelt, and most of the other objections go away.
#3. Yes, HTML sucks on listservers. That's a real problem for about 0.017% of the general population.
Put it to bed.
--Richard
GNOME, KDE Aim at Windows
They wish! Both GNOME and KDE are a whole lot better than Windows, just by the looks! I'm not even talking about the underlying OS, ability to run on older hardware (both GNOME 2.8 and KDE 3.3 run like charms on a P333 with 128 MB RAM), and customizability.
It's rather Aqua that has to be afraid; Windows has long lost out and can hardly fall any further.
Please correct me if I got my facts wrong.
I've been using debian with KDE for nearly 2 years on my PC at home but GNOME seems to be getting really cool. I really like the automount thingy they have and the interface seems simpler which is great since that my main machine now is an iBook.
I think when I get home (in about a year), I'll give ubuntu a spin.
"The Humane Environment", by Jef Raskin. It's a new metaphor for user interface, together with "Zoom World".
Singularity: a belief in the "God" idea with the "demiurge" relation inverted.
You're a geek, get over it. I'm 28 and have never kissed a girl, and never had a girlfriend. I spend weekends hacking free software and contributing to the open source community. Get over it, dude. Happiness is not about having a girl just because society expects you to, it's about doing what you enjoy.
Well, if the tool was open source, the e-week headline seems accurate to me. The fact that it was open source merited inclusion in the headline precisely because that has been a rare event. That's the newsworthy part of this story, not the fact that yet another Windows exploit is out there.
e-week has no reason to sugar-coat and bias their reporting in order to hype open source. If you want that, there's Slashdot and its corporate brethern or The Register, etc.
-- Slashdot: When Public Access TV Says "No"
In my experience KDEPim 3.3 is still rather unstable. Sometimes it crashes, sometimes the IMAP-ioslaves just hang, sometimes the message list of an IMAP folder remains empty,... It has certainly lots of potential, but there's some stability work needed...
I actually like gnome because it's simple and looks neater than kde in spite of the fact I really missed some of the features of kde when I made that switch full time. But I can't stand looking at kde all day and I think of it like this: it's easier to add the stuff I want to gnome than it is to make kde look good. The 2.6 version, now that it's starting to move toward the "open" methods of handling things like mimetypes, is nearing the point I miss none of those kde features.
What I find odd is how many people talk about all the apps written for kde. Konqueror is the absolute worse web browser I've ever used (yes, even worse than NS3 on 1996 vintage hardware - hit a webpage with a 2000 line form field and see how many days it takes to render), the download manager for kde is a dog that hasn't been touched in years (important if you're on a dialup or need to move tasks between machines), there's no irfan-like porn (er, image) viewer, the newsreader absolutely sucks for binaries - about the only things that have any real refinement besides kate and the slick eye candy shell are the dialer and the file browser. Between d4x, pan, Evolution (yes, I prefer Evolution, thanks) and Galeon, gnome has a dynamite "web" interface. Throw in gedit and gqview and you got a pretty nice desktop (so long as you don't need an office app). About the only thing I find lacking in gnome is that damned file browser. Gnome with a file browser like konq would rock.
Oh yeah... the irony. I find gnome running koffice apps is still faster and easier to use than gnome using the OOo apps that the gnome folks are trying to "integrate." I swear I don't get why OOo gets so much press... god that thing sucks.
I've seen this repeated twice in this thread. I call bullshit. I had a system with a decent Via motherboard, Ati videocard and 1GHz AMD cpu and with 128MB of ram the thing ran like shit. Oh yeah, you could "use it" - so long as you only opened one app at a time. Anything beyond that you had about a 70% chance of the process just dying - no error message, no warning, nothing.
You can make blackbox or ice dance with 128mb, but a late model gnome or kde desktop with only 128mb ram is about one step above useless.
By your definition all *desktop environments* will be "bloated".
Having all those integrated features, libraries, tools, etc that define a project as an 'environment' come at a price. ( features which most of us that actualy do something productive on a daily basis with their systems DO want )
Remember too, that most default KDE installs also includes a large collection of applications.. That can be stripped down to just the bare minimum of support libraries, so its not quite as bloated as most people think it is...
What you want is a simple *window manager*. And simplistic encapsulated apps to run with it... ( i.e., things that will often look totally different, and not interoperate, again the price one pays... )
---- Booth was a patriot ----
slackware is going to quit including Gnome, i hope slackware keeps GTK for application compatibility, but i wont miss gnome as trying to customize gnome's menu and desktop was about like trying to polish a turd anyway...
I thought this looked familiar. Look at the article's date: September 24, 2004. I read this weeks ago. Took me a few paragraphs to realize it. Anyone read anything new lately?
But testing KDE and GNOME on other distros means you'll be using a desktop environment modified by the distributor. KDE on fedora looks different than on Suse or Mandrake. However, when you install a desktop environment on gentoo, it's just the way GNOME or KDE intended. And since they compiled it for Fedora anyway, not that much different from emerging. I'm not sure if that meant that they got a vanila gnome, but if they didn't then their review is not the fairest it could be.
This is really just a nitpick, but I think to review software like this, they should use stock versions because the distros do modify the look and feel to their content which some users don't like.
I've had to use XP at work for a few months when I started a new job back in march. This was the first time I had used windows since about 2000... I discovered the virtual desktops and x-windows style mouse over stuff with TweakUI and Power Tools, but they are NOT like their X11 counterparts.
The virtual desktops are limited to 4 max (can you even change it at all?), and its very slugish switching desktops. The manager routinely forgets the display order of the windows, and when an app from another desktops has a dialog, I have to spend 5 minutes hunting it down because its fairly random where it appears. Other windows will also randomly resize themselves to no size (not minimized), and focus for inputting text in apps also seems to randomly dissappear from time to time. And try moving a window to another desktop.. you cant.. you have to enable the 'shared taskbar', then go to the desktop you want to move it, then click on it in the taskbar to bring it back up, and then disable 'shared taskbar' again.. icky stuff..
As for the focus-follows mouse stuff, it's ALMOST the same. But, I suspect this is tacked on like the virtual desktops are, and because of that I get the occasional weirdness where I have to click to raise/focus a window.
And then there's alt+tab... once again.. ALMOST the same, but not quite. If you have a systray app running (like say a jvm icon), the alt+tab shows that in the tasklist even though its not really an app with a window.. so I have to press alt+tab twice every time to move to one app.
So glad the company finally switched me over to their kde-build:)
*Makes 'L' sign with hand and slaps it on his forehead*
this is a pretty weak "review". How about a side by side comparison of all of the pros and cons of the UI itself - performance, appearance, usability, polish, features. And then the same for each and every bundled app that comes with each, followed by some thoughts on how non KDE apps work under KDE, and same for gnome ... How about a review that gives some insight into the design philophies of each and where each is going ...
Not to sound like a cynic, but this is more like a weak version of a story from Wired (which I do generally like as a side note) which implies that there are some sort of differences. or something. It's like they opened up the mail clients, sent out a couple of emails and looked for spam.
HTML doesn't have to mean that the sender has exclusive control over styling. Think out of the box a little. If a lot of people start using HTML email you'll be able to do cool things like 'only show heads in this message', 'only show quotes', 'don't show images', etc with user style-sheets.
.doc attachments which people send just for styled text. Again, with a user style sheet you could make BIG RED LETTERS disappear if you wish.
Granted, this isn't the kind of thing you can do right now, but it has a lot of possibilities that haven't yet been touched upon, from searching for metadata (all links from Joe etc, etc etc) to greater control over formatting for the end user. It could even stop the glut of
Yes HTML email has dangers, same as surfing the web has dangers, and clients should do an awful lot more to pre-empt those, by stripping out javascript and not downloading remote resources from unknown senders, just for example.
Imagine the web with plain text and no formatting, would you prefer it that way too?
"But testing KDE and GNOME on other distros means you'll be using a desktop environment modified by the distributor. KDE on fedora looks different than on Suse or Mandrake. However, when you install a desktop environment on gentoo, it's just the way GNOME or KDE intended."
Slackware does not modify KDE. In fact, I'll bet Gentoo patches it more.
If I want to burn a DVD in kde using k3b I open k3b (even if it's right click, "burn this directory" I still have to open k3b) then use the whizbang tools to "burn the cd." If I want to burn an iso, I open k3b then use the whizbang tool to "burn the iso." And then I have to close k3b if I want to burn another iso, or do a buncha clicks to clear this one out and select another. To burn a DVD it's, again, pretty much the same process.
In gnome, I right click an iso and select "burn." I get no whiz-bang interface, I get a simple popup with a "start" button and a couple of drop down dialogs (which I still don't need but they're less intimidating - and quicker to launch - than k3b). When it's running I also have an "abort" button (or some sort, I can't recall right now). If it's a DVD iso or a CD iso I don't have to tell it this, nor do I have to select any "projects" - I just right click and select "burn to cd." If I want to burn a group of files I just open a nautilus window (or right click and copy my files), click the bookmark to my "burn" folder, paste the files there and press a clearly labelled "burn to cd" button. I don't have ten thousand options via an app that takes thirty seconds to load because 99% of the time I don't need that - it simply couldn't be simpler. It's elegant, and that's why I like it.
I don't know how you have emacs configured, but if it's like most defaults I've seen it's not terribly burdensome. I do know the mdk10 system I described would absolutely NOT open a mozilla based browser in kde if you had it online via the "winmodem." Sure, kill the modem and it might have enough resources to launch mozilla - but if you were online it was pretty much konq or nothing.
I used a 333 mhz thinkpad 600 with 128mb of ram at the uniy for downloading stuff. Yes, I could actually open kde and login and download. Using a pcmcia 100mbps ethernet card it would blast data in at all of 200kbps on the university uber-pipe so long as you didn't do any browsing. Click a page and that datapump drops to a trickle until the page renders. Meanwhile, open blackbox and try the same thing and see jack run. Still not a demon, but much closer to what one would call "usable."
Yes, kde or gnome with 128mb of ram will work. It will also suck.
I run applications, not desktops.
Something that many people seem to miss. You *CAN* run GNOME/KDE applications *WITHOUT* the corresponding desktop. Install *BOTH* GNOME and KDE and a lightweight Window Manager like BlackBox.
I have a Dell Dimension XPS, 450 mhz PIII, and 128 megs of RAM. It's over 5 years old. If my only options were Windows XP, or Linux with GNOME or KDE *DESKTOP*, the machine would now be sitting in the local landfill. The GNOME and KDE *DESKTOPS* are *PAINFULLY* slow on it.
Instead, I installed GNOME and KDE and BlackBox. I use BlackBox as my UI. I can still run KOffice (KMail, KSpread, etc) and useful GNOME apps like AbiWord, Gimp, gqview, etc, because the GNOME/KDE base libraries are installed.
In the next couple of years, MS will be bringing out Longhorn. Have you read the hardware requirements on it? Absolutely ridiculous. Instead of a contest to prove that Linux desktops can be just as fat and bloated as Windows, we should be working on a lean+mean GUI. When Longhorn comes out, businesses can have a choice between
- throwing out their old PCs and paying for brand new semi-mainframes to run Longhorn, or
- they can switch to a lean/mean Linux with useful applications, and not have to throw out all their current desktop hardware.
This will be our golden opportunity to push for a large switchover from Windows to linux. Please don't throw it away by dragging down linux's performance with useless eye-candy.
I'm not repeating myself
I'm an X window user; I'm an ex-Windows user
But I just tried what you mention and I see no easy way to do it using the method I use virtually 99.9 percent of the time to make CDs. However, it's quite easy to fire up k3b and drag a folder of music from nautilus to the project window... I mean, if I ever needed to do that sort of thing.
What if girls are what you enjoy?