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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."
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.
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.
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.
The global economy is a great thing until you feel it locally.
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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