Slashdot Mirror
KDE's future: Plasma & SimpleKDE
A reader writes: "KDE continues to grow. Early screenshots, mockups, and developer blogs show that the new Plasma Project (KDE 4.x branch) will bring innovative approaches to desktop computing. On the other hand, the very first screenshots of SimpleKDE, an unofficial fork of KDE, were meant to be a response to those who criticise KDE as being overbloated."
The fact of the matter is that both of these cater to different users with different tastes, and it is better to have both developed than one version that tries to be everything to everyone.
Voice your opinion!
One of the aspects of the Macintosh that keeps users coming back is the overal simplicity of it. The interface is mostly blank until users work with it and then it reflects them and their usage and their data. Having a minimalist yet fully functional mode could be important not only for appeal but sorting out the system as a whole.
(Disclaimer: I'm GNOME fanboy)
This is looks really cool and useful. Both ideas are very welcome. And for those who asks why Linux doesn't have one desktop - this is the reason - Innovation.
user@ubuntubox:~$ stfu This server is going down for shutdown NOW!
Oh boy, who comes up with that crap? Some people actually can handle a mouse and aim less erratic than a drunk spastic. NEVER ever move my mouse cursor unless I moved the mouse in the same direction. NEVER ever change my mouse speed and acceleration settings. I mean it. The instance you do any of that, your program parts with my system. Even if the program is the key to finding a cure for cancer, if it touches my mouse settings, it's history.
Humans have a very intuitive grasp of motion. Don't mess it up by arbitrarily changing the action-reaction coupling. It's bad enough that people have to use mouse acceleration because they use mice with insufficient resolution.
I'm a Gnome developer (librsvg) and longtime user. It was meant as a joke, have a sence of humour about it.
When Argumentum ad Hominem falls short, try Argumentum ad Matrem
Well, I think this KDE fork is going to die very quickly. Why have the developers of Simple KDE not contacted KDE developpers and have spoken with them of their usability and noob-ness concerns ? I think it's not a serious fork. To maintain such a large project, it needs a huge team (see the KDE one). Just imagine the translations, if the UI changes a bit, even with a good merging tool (svn for instance), it will be impossible for Simple KDE to follow. They should better have cooperated with KDE team which is very open ...
Bonjour !
Slashcode should append ANY link with ".nyud.net:8090", that's what I think. Problem solved once and for all.
"Good news, everyone!"
I'm sorry. I saw nothing innovative. It doesn't mean KDE 4.x won't be innovative, it's just that none of the links hint at this. It was slashdotted, but all I saw mirrored was
- animation of a calender built into KDE
- Contacts grouped together with a pop-up (I assume it's a mouse-over effect) saying how many people I'm talking to and who the latest person was.
- Search bar built into the taskbar and results are shown in a pop-up.
- A dedicated button to profile information in the taskbar.
- A dedicated button to computer settings (including a shut-down option)
- Digital or analog clock option
- Taskbar can change colours
- Taskbar can show icon or icon and name of the file (along with pop-up summary cut off to avoid it being too large)
- A start button
- System alerts appearing above the taskbar
- Dedicated buttons in taskbar can be customised
- Dedicated weather button
Grabbing existing programs and building them into a desktop is not innovative, so #1 isn't innovative (it allows pop-ups to be grouped or split, I assume so you can keep it on your screen. Useful? Yes. Innovative? No. It's just grabbing stickies (present in ICQ in 2000) and using them).#2 Microsoft already sort of does, and I have found it annoying, rather then useful. They've added a tiny bit more information (which can be indicated with flashing), but isn't innovative. Useful though? For some perhaps.
A program does #3 for Google Desktop, so even if it is innovative, it wasn't KDE's innovation.
Dedicated buttons are not innovative, and it's really just what Microsoft does with the icons displayed next clock in Windows. So #4, #5 and #11 aren't really innovative.
#6, #7, #9 and #10 is already done either by KDE itself or Windows.
I have no idea why weather buttons are so popular (I prefer the method of sticking my head out the window), but they are. I'd hardly call it innovative though.
So perhaps the blog has this innovation talked about in the summary? Well, no. It mentions pulling a bunch of things (to be reworked I presume), the only thing it mentions on adding is:
we'll have a new clock applet in plasma
I hardly think that's innovative.
With Windows barely changing since 1995, I was looking forward to finally seeing some innovation in desktop interfaces. Unfortunately this article on KDE and plasma didn't include anything that could be remotely called innovative.
The only innovative thing I've heard about that comes to mind recently, is Apple's Spotlight and a filing system that uses labels rather then folders (is Apple going to be doing this? Or is Microsoft? Or is no-one and I'm only hoping someone eventually will?).
I do hope KDE does bring innovation into the desk-top. I hope someone, ANYONE brings it. But I've yet to see any indication anyone will be anytime soon.
Actually most feature bloat should show up as an increase in memory requirements and not CPU.
One of the "problems" with KDE and Gnome is that they are too configurable. They could be much smaller and lighter if they had less options. I am afraid it is a case of you can not have your cake and eat it too.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
SimpleKDE seems like a good idea at first but they've gone too far. I'm looking at the screenshots and seeing them removing things like virtual desktops. I don't mind them reducing the amount of settings and configuration required for the newer computer users but these are some brilliant features that increase organisation and productivity here that they're removing.
No, I'm not just flaming for the sake of flaming, it really is a giant step backwards in appearance.
Plasma may well be a massive technological advance but its appearance here is horrendous. The monochrome color scheme is awful and, as if that wasn't bad enough, the icons are so vague and artsy-minimalist-cryptic that they make it harder to figure out what they mean or do and therefore will impair productivity.
I realize that these are mockups but, I really hope that this doesn't go any further as it would make the best looking desktop look like ass.
Also, lets not forget that we don't want to go with too radical a change all at once. KDE is supposed to be a mature product at 3.x & 4.x release and it should not be necessary to retrain the users because the GUI changed so drastically from the previous version that they can't recognize anything. Change and improvements are good but, if they are too drastic their effect will be a detriment.
As more and more features get implemented, some of them constantly eating performance, the ressource usage of the system increases.
That's all stupid, just like the "arguments" saying the problem with kde is its high configurability. I only speak for myself here, but I have to tell you my current kde 3.3.2 desktop with superkaramba is the best desktop [in functionality, usability, speed and niceness] I've had for years, both on highly customized windows versions and on earlier kde/gnome/xfce/e versions. Since I know kde fairly well, it took me about 10-15 minutes to configure all the available options from looks to behavior, from menu items to mime associations, to suit my needs. And no, the availability of the many customizable options doesn't make it more resource hungry, bad configuration does.
At some point you need a freaking 3GHz GPU just to run a text editor.
Also, highly and badly stupid. [And I'm not surpised you get a 5 Informative for that, either.] One just needs to know the neighborhood before moving in. I could in this moment show you quite normal [i.e. fast enough, no unnecessary wait] launch times for kate, kwrite, kedit, kword and even oo.org writer.
I am putting myself to the fullest possible use, which is all I can think that any conscious entity can ever hope to do.
I believe that one of KDE's design goals is to emulate Windows 'enough' that is should be easy for switchers to come to KDE.
Keep in mind you can modify KDE for behavior you find more appropriate.
Also consider enlightenment; that sounds like something you might prefer. One of the nice things about Linux is choice; you don't have to use KDE. Many distributions come with a wide selection of Window managers, and enlightenment is often on the list (it is for SuSE).
None of these are as 'integrated' as KDE, however, but I do not think you can fault the KDE project for acheiveing their design goals, especially because I consider their goals admirable (think, for example, of the recent Novell switch to desktop linux. Do you really think it would have been possible without Windows-like KDE and Gnome?)
I understand that you acknowledge this, but the political motivation really *does* make a lot of sense, especially when you consider that many of the KDE 'developers' work for or in conjunction with the 'ties to IBM, Redhat, (Novell)' that you speak of.
WhiteWolf666 an exBush supporter. All you new-school,compassionate,save the children Republicans can rot in hell
Don't get me wrong, but we are in 2005 and the "Linux desktop" is still behind the 10-years-old Windows 95 desktop in terms of consistency and usability. The situation is really scary given that Windows 95 interface (as well as its 98, 2k and XP derivatives) is actually a piece of shit. But, at least, it didn't make basic mistakes:
- Fonts are readable and well aligned inside widgets
- Spacing was consistent between elements of the interface
- Contrast between what the user has to recognize/interact and backgrounds/empty areas/decorations is quite high
- Widgets, colors, fonts, decorations, etc. all look the "same", without major discrepancies in style or form
KDE (and Gnome) make *all* the abovementioned mistakes, shamefully. It's amazing how these problems still persist and *none* seems to care about them, energy seems to be used in the creation of stupid themes and wallpapers as opposed to real, obvious issues (look at the fonts issue, for instance, if you don't use ttf fonts stolen from a windows install the desktops look really bad). I should stop my flamebait here, but it's obvious that Apple is going to put the last nail in the "Linux desktop" coffin, for good.No. "Bloated" is geek slang for spreadsheet programs whos programmers decide to add a flight simulator game as a secret feature because it doesn't increase program size or resource usage much, relatively speaking.
"Bloated" also refers to programs which grew by constantly adding new features to sell each new version, with very little concern about how those features affected the whole. As a result, a bloated programs interface has 100+ buttons, menus need their own management system, and actually using the program is nightmarish since you always have to wonder if one of the 1000+ automatic features will suddenly decide to reformat the document, save it and delete every previous version, destroying all your hard work in its zeal to be helpfull.
"Bloated" also means delivering help texts in the word balloons of an animated paperclip (and providing a programming API for making additional helpfull characters). It means having a spellcheck running in the background constantly, giving the program a vaguely heavy and unresponsive feel. It means setting parts of the program to be loaded during operating system boot, since starting the program would otherwise take too long. And it means integrating a Web Browser with both kernel and shell just because you can. And supporting automatically executing scripts embedding in text documents.
In short, "bloat" in programs is similar to clogged arteries in human beings.
Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.
Gnome too configurable? You must be talking about Gnome 1.0... not anymore.
Ironically, GNOME is no less "bloated" than KDE in terms of memory usage in a typical desktop session. In my experience, KDE is simply more efficient. Both environments require a relatively modern machine to perform well, but KDE gives you far more features and configurability in the process.
If you're asking me, it's because KDE is less driven by politics and more by what users want.
"No. "Bloated" is geek slang for spreadsheet programs whos programmers decide to add a flight simulator game as a secret feature because it doesn't increase program size or resource usage much, relatively speaking."
Office 2000 SP1 removed the flight simulator from Excel. It is not present in Excel XP or Excel 2003.
"Bloated" also means delivering help texts in the word balloons of an animated paperclip (and providing a programming API for making additional helpfull characters)."
Agreed. Office assistant sucks. You don't have to install it, though. Microsoft Agent has essentially been dead for years.
"It means having a spellcheck running in the background constantly, giving the program a vaguely heavy and unresponsive feel."
That's the stupidest comment I've ever heard about Word. Wavy-underline-spell-check is one of the most useful features to *ever* be added to Word. I don't know what you're talking about with "unresponsiveness", but Word 2003 uses about 14MB on my system and uses less than 5% of the CPU while I type.
"It means setting parts of the program to be loaded during operating system boot, since starting the program would otherwise take too long."
Not true since Word XP.
"And it means integrating a Web Browser with both kernel and shell just because you can."
Trident ("Internet Explorer") has not, is not, and - to the best of my knowledge - will never be a part of the Windows kernel. It is a series of libraries (mshtml.dll, showdocvw.dll, and some others) - not unlike Gecko ("Mozilla"), KHTML ("Konqueror") or WebCore ("Safari").
"And supporting automatically executing scripts embedding in text documents"
Word documents are not text documents, first of all. And, second of all, macros have not executed by default since Word 2000, and in Word 2003, you have to go through a multi-step process to even see the dialog that lets you execute them. Macro viruses are essentially dead.