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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."
As opposed to underbloated?
Plasma screenshots, mockups, developer blogs and Plasma Project homepage.
SimpleKDE screenshots and homepage.
All links courtesy Mirrordot.org.
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!
Many people think "hey, wouldn't [Feature] be nice to have?" and implement it. As more and more features get implemented, some of them constantly eating performance, the ressource usage of the system increases. At some point you need a freaking 3GHz GPU just to run a text editor. That's what they call bloat, inappropriately high ressource usage.
Justice is the sheep getting arrested while an impartial judge declares the vote void.
This story hadn't even been live for 5 minutes and we'd already brought down the majority of the sites in the story.
Good job, people. We're getting good at this game.
I was going to link to the story on Mirrordot, but it appears that even Mirrordot couldn't get 'em fast enough...
Colin Dean Go a year without DRM
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.
I can vouch for the simplicity of the new KDE:
All I see are a white page and my browser's loading animation!
(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!
Who modded this offtopic?? I've almost missed my only chance to meet a girl, you bastards!
Look like they're plasma right now.
with the monochrome kicker? There's a reason why I have cones in my eyes!
Unpretentious Sydney reviews by unqualified Sydney reviewers
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.
http://mirrordot.org/ has some of it already cached. Try this link: http://mirrordot.org/stories/352335d7edc4f5541c0e9 bfc28ab7cd0/index.html
Plasma somehow reminds me of Slicker. It was a great idea for replacing Kicker, and IMHO was a nicely innovative one too. I mean, look at these nice mockups.
:)
Unfortunately, these are just mockups, and it seems the project has stalled for more than a year. Slicker could use a little attention, don't you think? So if you have some spare time and a love for moving the Linux desktop in cool directions, how about giving it a try?
PS: I'm totally unrelated to the project, just disappointed that this cool idea is rusting
Misleading titles? Inflammatory blurbs? Keep in mind that Slashdot is a tabloid.
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 !
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.
Jesus, those are just mockups by one artist of his ideas. There are 2 or 3 other artists that regularly post on kde-artists.org, and a whole bunch of other people also contributing ideas.
Calm down a little and don't jump to conclusions. Do you really think that Plasma will only have one theme, and that single theme will be pure monochrome? Making judgments of the final product based on one guy's preliminary ideas is ridiculous.
I've come for the woman, and your head.
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.> but its appearance here is horrendous
;)
seeing as nobody's seen it yet, that's an interesting statement to make
right now we are working with a large number of artists who are all throwing ideas and concepts for different parts of plasma into a pot. i, and a few others from the project, go back to the artists with feedback, questions, critiques and the cycle starts over.
we've done perhaps 1 or 2 cycles thus far and have a few months more to go. the final look and feel is by FAR not decided upon. in fact, in august we'll be getting together with the artists doing Oxygen (a new theme and icon style in quiet development that is aiming to be the default in kde4) while at aKademy and banging out some hopefully hi-octane work then.
> lets not forget that we don't want to go with
> too radical a change all at once
yes, i couldn't agree more!
when working out how plasma might work, i ended up at some rather radical concepts. but as you note, we can't drop some totally new way of doing everything on people.
it needs to be introduced step by step.
thus plasma will be familiar enough in its default configuration for people to transition without really noticing it from KDE3, Windows or Mac... but it will introduce subtle new concepts that will allow us to start edging in a direction that gets us out of the WIMP-jail.
the first concept is that the desktop is not a file manager view, but harmonizes with your panels.
the second concept is that the desktop and panels are meant to be first class citizens that actively enable your workflow.
i'd love to say more about it, but i don't particularly like talking about things which i can't let people play with right now (aka "vapourware") even though development is going forward at a terrific pace. i also don't like it when people snag ideas and run off with them, as has happened a few times in the last couple of years. =/