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Preview of KDE 3.5
tr_x_data writes "There is a quite interesting KDE 3.5 preview with screenshots on JLP's Blog. I thought there wouldn't be so much improvement to KDE 3.4 since everyone is working on porting KDE4 to QT4, but obviously there are quite a few changes. Look forward to "Storage Media Notification", "Adblock" for Konqueror, new Tooltips, better Workspace-Pager, and so on. Read for yourself."
KDE's default theme is a little XP-esque, but there are plenty of alternatives to choose from. Sadly, the clutteredness (is that a word?) seems to be inevitable: the consequence of squeezing in many good ideas, without really thinking hard about how to organise things so that the environment becomes intuitive.
Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. - Voltaire
Personally, I've noticed an interesting trend in KDE. When KDE started, it was something of a Mac/Windows Fusion design that tended to make both users comfortable. After stumbling around on design for awhile, KDE has decided to be more XP-like. The newer the version of KDE, the more it feels like XP. 3.4 is especially guilty, as the window frames are damn near an exact copy.
Not that I'm complaining. 3.4 is an awesome release, and makes KDE feel a lot more solid.
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If OSS wants to become a widely used desktop, then it needs to be better than the status quo, rather than a copy.
It needs to come up with something more useful before the other OSs come up with it. If people see that Windows pops up with a window notifying them that their SD card is now ready to be read they will expect that everywhere else.
People don't consider it an "interruption" they expect that window to appear and if it doesn't it's not acceptable.
.. but I still wish they would just bite the bullet and improve the button layout to the way MacOS (and Gnome) does it.
First of all, KDE is still ridden with [Ok][Cancel]-buttons. These are sooo 1992-like and should be replaced with verbs, like they have correctly done with [Add to panel] in one of the screenshots. This should all be changed, and no new dialogs should be accepted until they confirm.
In addition the most common action should be on the far right where it is much more visible and obvious, thus:
[Don't Save][Save] rather than [Save][Don't Save]
The importance of this becomes far more obvious when there are three or more such buttons, and the default one often is "hidden" in between less likely buttons (See the [Configure][Ok][Cancel] in the Autoplay dialog, here Ok is the most common choice).
Politics I guess is the main reason for not doing this, that is pleasing the hard-core crowd who wouldn't notice progress if it bit them in the ass.
My last problem is the underscoring of file names, which looks unprofessional. Making it an option to turn it off is a typical example of geeky "unbreak me" options.
Otherwise, KDE has a very nice "crispness" to it, with nice and clear icons and a nice solid feel to things.
People who say that Gnome or KDE are bloated need to be slapped, because they invariably have no idea what "bloat" means.
Both DEs are designed around a functional, reusable framework. In essence, every single thing you see is like a shared library. This allows the end-user applications to have a huge amount of functionality with little work, and is almost the antithesis of bloat.
If KMyMoney had code to allow me to load and save my accounts over an SFTP (or IMAP or webdav) connection, I'd agree with you. However, it simply uses the kio-slave features of KDE to support that automatically (as does almost every other KDE application). It's not bloat to include an excellent programmer's editor in every application when that editor is written as an embeddable object. It's not bloat when Konqueror can view PDFs because KPDF is written as an embeddable object.
I really don't think you have any idea what you're talking about. Writing the same code individually for each application would be a tremendous waste of resources. Designing the system from the ground up to lean heavily on reusable objects and a featureful core system is nothing but good.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
Why?
:)
;) The Mac is quite pretty and quite nice to use, but whenever I use it I always find myself wishing I was back on one of my Linux machines.
1. You are locked into a single vendor
2. Want to upgrade your desktop? That'll cost you. Thanks very much
3. What if someone produces a better desktop GUI? I switch GUI's every few months as improvements are made. Sometimes I just want something small and sweet like Fluxbox, othertimes KDE for some eye candy
4. Not all development work requires a GUI. Even if it does, the logic should be seperate, not built into the GUI itself (Visual Basic anyone?). This allow the choice of GUI to become a seperate issue. You can use web, cli, GUI.... whatever
5. Your window manager won't start? Thats a tradgedy under MS Windows as well as a Mac (OK, not as bad on the Mac). Under Linux I can just choose another window manager until I sort my problem out.
6. Bah... thats enough for now.
I encouraged my Fiance to get an iBook as her latest machine, mainly so there wasn't a MS machine in the house. We still don't have *any* MS machines
You might like the Mac, thats fine by me. Choice is good thing as it helps drive improvement. Competition improves the breed. Myself... I like the flexibility to have my machines the way I want them, not the way some company wants them.
Who cares?
I do. If you like MacOS X, want to pay for it, make Jobs even richer and use it, great. I OTOH really like the ability to "tune them to world's end", plus the overall flexibility of Linux.
I would agree that the Linux GUIs (kde, gnome, whatever...) are not perfect - probably not as good as the MacOS X GUI, but they are constantly changing and improving. If you don't like it, don't use it, but don't disparage those of us that still value freedom and choice.
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What "bloat" are you referring to? Could you give some real examples? As to speed.... I find KDE to be fast enough.
Here's a news-flash for you: you are not required to go through all the settings. But if you want to change something, they are there. But you could use KDE just fine without ever touching the settings at all.
Windowmaker is a windowmanager, not a desktop environment. So you are comparing apples to oranges. It's like comparing Microsoft Edit to a full-blown office-suite. But hey, if Windowmaker has the features you need, whereas KDE does not, then by all means use Windowmaker. KDE-developers are not required to satisfy your whims. Instead of making demands, why not thank them for spending their time to give you this kick-ass piece of software for free?
Lesbian Nazi Hookers Abducted by UFOs and Forced Into Weight Loss Programs - -all next week on Town Talk.
What you call bloat, I call very useful features. KDE 2.0 just wouldn't cut it for the day-to-day work I do now. Konqueror alone, with all it's features since 3.0, plays an integral part of my everyday work.
For example, I want a file manager that can do sftp, ftp, smb, nfs, etc. I'll agree that those elements make the code bigger and possibly slower, but I make use of them. I know a lot of other people do as well.
I also find that dcop plays a very important role in messaging between apps and KDE. Sure, it's another app that sucks up some RAM, but maybe some people like me use it.
Considering that most elements in KDE are embeddable objects (eg. Kate, Kedit and Kdevelop all use the same editor), I'd say bloat is cut down a lot. Nobody is implementing three different text editors when one will do the job.
I, and every other reasonable person, expects KDE 3.x to be larger and have more features than KDE 2.x. Such is the nature of software. That's not because coders are lazy or don't care if their program is bloated, but because hardware is catching up to their dreams. Programmers are able to implement things today that they couldn't do a few years ago.
If you don't want those features, then run Blackbox.
Personally, I don't think you know what 'bloat' is -- you seem to think that because 3.x is slower than 2.x it must be bloated. I think you've just heard that term so often that you repeat it to sound knowledgable.
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Oh, thank you. I hate all the whining about "bloat". If you want to use a minimalist WM and everything, you have dozens of options. Use them and stop whining. I'll keep using KDE with Amarok, KDevelop, etc. It's fast, and it has a hojillion useful features and a great UI. That's not bloat.
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Bonus points: name an OS - any OS - that only includes one application framework. Windows has MFC and .Net. Mac has Classic, Carbon, and Cocoa. Solaris had CDE and OpenWindows. Amiga had Gadtools, MUI, Reaction, etc.
Somehow, though, it all boils to "KDE and Gnome are bloated", even though every single widely-used system ever invented went through (or is currently in) the same situation.
Besides, I disagree on principle that this indicates bad design. KDE and Gnome seem to have fundamentally different approaches to several core functions. It's not fair to refer to them as redundant because they're really not once you get below the surface.
At any rate, the top poster's position was that KDE is, by itself, bloated. Your point addresses a different non-issue altogether.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
1. Yes, you're locked in. This is both good and bad. It is bad in the sense that the hardware costs more. It is good in two ways however. Firstly, when you sell it three or four years later, you actually get back about half what you paid. Some box I built myself will be worth nothing (as new ones are so cheap). Secondly, everything works. I never have to configure anything when I get a new Mac. I put it on my desk, plug it in, and press the on button.
2. Upgrading will cost you? I can go buy a hard drive, ram, video card, etc, from all sorts of 3rd party vendors. The only thing I can't upgrade is the processor, and that's only on the new G5s. Sucks, yes.
3. A better desktop GUI than OS X? Well I suppose you either love it or you don't, but I personally am confident that it will be the best thing around for awhile. Besides, I can always run KDE or Gnome if I really want to. Plus you can always dual-boot.
4. Xcode is fantastic. There is no reason written in stone that "everything should be separate". If an integrated solution works best, then use that.
5. I've never had a Mac where the "window manager" wouldn't start. There's only one window manager, and hence there is no configuration files to go bonkers or anything to worry about. If it isn't working for you, it isn't working for a lot of other people too.
6. Mhmmm.
I would like to build my own boxes, yes. But as I said, the resale value negates much of the initial expense of buying a mac, and Apple certainly makes good hardware. The Mac is the best solution for what I do (art-related dsp and opengl work), so that's what I use.
He wasn't comparing KDE to WindowMaker, he was saying that he used WindowMaker. Perhaps all WindowMaker by itself does is manage windows. But it does so in a neat and clean way that makes it (running WindowMaker without any other desktop environment) a compelling alternative to KDE for many users even if they aren't similar at all (with its easy configuration, that desktop paperclip thing, and a few choice dockapps many users get all the functionality they want, and choose that functionality on an opt-in basis; the downside is that they're on their own to find it).
Thanks to the fact that KDE is open source he probably is running some KDE code most of the time in the form of libraries and applications... I know I am, despite using Fluxbox for all my window managing/desktop needs. KDE is much bigger than a window manager and improvements in KDE will affect most desktop *nix users. I think that's important to remember for people that "don't use KDE".
so you are comparing a desktop of one hardware family to a laptop of another desktop family running two wildly different versions of an operating system ... and figure the difference is the desktop environment that runs on top of all that? heh.
2.0 was hobbled and very slow in many ways compared to 3.4. put them side by side for work tasks and the improvements are pretty obvious.
but for your measure here, i'd suggest loading KDE 2.0 on your IBM laptop, or 3.4 on your Ultra 1 =)
It seems to me that the Linux community doesn't have a creative bone in its collective body when it comes to GUI design
Interesting. It seems to me that the "Linux community" that produces applications are programmers, who will probably treat GUI design as secondary. It also seems to me that the "creative community" is not really interested in *sharing* their work the way programmers do. Maybe if a few graphic artists and GUI folks were less self centered they would contribute to some of these projects. In the commercial world, they are paid to.
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More than that, the unchangable UI things need some improvement. KDE has really bad right-click menus in almost all cases. The options availible there need to be pruned down, moved into sub-menus, or "hidden" as accelerators attached to clicks.
I'm a big fan of the "hermetic interface", where simple commands are availible from the menus, buttons, and so forth, but really powerful commands are "hidden". They don't clutter the UI, the newbie doesn't care about them, and the old-hands will find out how to use these features.
Now I'm just the opposite. I like having all my options available in my menus and was quite surprised to see "Delete" disappear with my last upgrade. If I want a file gone, I want it gone. But hey, at least they left a way to put it back in the control center and config.
Time is what keeps everything from happening all at once.
What the Open source community doesn't have are Art Directors. We have very capable coders, some good testing courtesy of Sun, but no Johnathan Ive. For reasons explained better elsewhere, without people like him it's very hard to transcend the "cool tech gizmo" and achieve the "great usable interface". Beagle might be a great tool, but if the usable interface is not there (and it might be, I don't know) it won't succeed.
The second point I will make, the most repeated one, is that Apple and MS do things for a reason, and spend a lot of money on usability tests. Sometimes it pays off to wander into the unknown, other times it pays off to offer a new user exactly what he's expecting.
The third point I'll make has also been stated by others: KDE and GNOME aren't the whole thing on Open Source Desktops. Multiple alternatives are there, exploring many things. Check enlightenment (yes, they could do a release before hell froze over), check Croquet before thinking "open source doesn't innovate".
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