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KDE 4 Promises Large Changes
HatofPig writes "As the dust settles from aKademy 2005, the annual KDE conference, it's a good time to take a look at what the KDE developers are working on. Though KDE 3.5 isn't even out yet, developers are already working on KDE 4. Plenty of work has already gone into porting existing code to Qt4, the GUI toolkit upon which KDE is based, and KDE developers are working on projects that could radically change how the world's most popular free desktop looks and works."
These need to be the main focus of KDE now. There's tons of features but it needs to be faster and more rock solid.
It's a nuisance when Windows Explorer on an average Athlon is slightly more responsive than Linux and KDE on an AMD64 x2. Also Konqueror struggles with some pages, rendering them really slowly.
I would really love(not that i don't now) a KDE thats lightweight and as functional. Not the memory hog that it is now..
If there are any KDE devs reading this:
PLEASE PLEASE OPTIMIZE FOR MEMORY USAGE!
Its really sad that Windows with all its services and stuff uses 1/2 the RAM of KDE alone.
LL
Nice try... but the last article even close to this was here, which just introduced the concept of KDE plasma and plugged SimpleKDE.
Silicon & Charybdis McLuhan Kildall Papert Kay
"The most obvious application of Tenor would be desktop search, giving KDE an analog to GNOME's brilliant search tool Beagle. But the Tenor project's chief architect, Scott Wheeler, wants to go further, asking, "how can we make it easier to work with the data we accumulate on the desktop?" So rather than just making it easier for users to search for documents, Tenor will provide application developers with data that can transform their interfaces. For example, the KDE Control Center, which currently organizes the configuration modules into a confusing hierarchy, may provide a search interface with results that show related items and learn from usage patterns."
Cheers,
Ian
Erm, aren't they changing to Qt 4? Which, from a review I read in a mag just yesterday, promises to be quite a major upgrade from the Qt 3.x line.
Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. - Voltaire
KDE 4 Promises Large Changes
And what about quick changes and spare changes?
Gandhi loses karma here, but its a cool read: I think change is a good thing. I am told, though I don't rightly recall, that I was seeking change just about an hour after being born and have been on a quest for it ever since. Change is good, if it is good change. But not all change is good change. Some change is spare change, or short change or quick change. Rodney is trying to sell us his quick change version of improvement with the spare change he's found in Maria's cushins and we are being short changed by the effort. Everyone loses but Rod! He even discusses that his change is substandard and too fast when he says, "although it may seem that we are "changing the tires while the car is moving."
It'll be like a second Christmas!
Silicon & Charybdis McLuhan Kildall Papert Kay
Parent Is a copy/paste troll .. Incase anyone missed that fact and moderates it insightful again.
What linux needs for the desktop market is an easy to use, and simple desktop. The problem with this on current installs is the lack of communication between desktop and kernel etc.
:|
For example, Sometimes, sound on linux can be an absolute bitch to get going. Even something as trivial as playing an AVI caused me *way* too much drama. Not that I couldn't get it to work, but then if I wanted sound to work with other things, I need to use a sound daemon. Fair enough, thats not too hard - but then the audio/video sync was out because of the latency in the sound daemon.
The point is, that as long as simple issues like playing a video become mammoth tasks, then the average person will just stick with something simpler. Hell, 90% of the time I can just install Windows and everything will work right out of the box.
This is what needs to be worked on. While all the technical side of things on Linux just rocks, I doubt that many people have worked on the 'end user experiance' because at the moment, it just sucks.
There is a reason Apple is gaining market share - as well as mind share - and it's the OS that does it. I can do the majority of things I can do on a linux system (console and X side), and have a nice, pretty and *FUNCTIONAL* GUI for everything else. The end user experiance is second to none. This is what Linux should be looking at - not making 'sweeping changes' that you still need to spend a week on getting to run just right
Sendmail is like emacs: A nice operating system, but missing an editor and a MTA.
No! For christs sake, no! KDE is nice being C++- and Qt-based. Switching to GTK, that would be horrible....
This sig does not contain any SCO code.
I don't think there'd be much point in switching to C at this point, they'd only have to rig an object model on top of it. They'd probably be better off switching to C# or Java, something which would actually bring tangible benefits.
Albeit, Slashdot isn't quite the place to be pushing KDE and *nix if you want it to get seen by Joe Sixpack.
Actually, a friend at school was messing around on my laptop, and was amazed with all the stuff that KDE 3.4 could do and it's bundled apps. His jaw dropped at Amarok (auto lyric downloading, Wiki entry on the band, smart playlist, native iPod support, etc.) and was even more amazed when I told him about stuff like K3b's built in DVD ripping, KAudioCreator CD ripping, Kopete supporting all those protocals in one window, and plenty of other stuff. It's worth showing to people.
-Clinton
Silicon & Charybdis McLuhan Kildall Papert Kay
if KDE had a C interface we could code KDE applications in C which is the defacto standard programming language on unix so it would get a lot more use. And it could maintain the current C++ interface as a wrapper around the C interface so there wouldnt be a problem with compatibility.
Because, unless I am very much mistaken, it would require that almost all of the project be re-written or thrown away and started on again. You can still have a radical change without having to throw away all of the code that's already been written. Also, they are porting the whole of the KDE project from the Qt3 toolkit to Qt4, since Qt4 is not backward-compatible with Qt3, so in a sense, they are changing the toolkit - but they are porting to one that is very, very similar to the one they use now. ;) What's wrong with Qt anyway that might make you want to port away from it? You might say that it's GPL and not LGPL, which might discourage proprietary developers who don't want to fork out for the alternative license, but that's about it, anything else is really just a matter of preference.
The write-up also seemed rather sparse in details, so while I am writing this post I may as well chuck in a few links:
Interesting interview with Aaron Seigo
Another good interview with Zack Rusin
Official site for KDE Plasma, the KDE4 desktop.
*Insert ASCII goatse here*
Just getting bigger not better is my first impression. My PC is often faster and more responsive under W2K then under Suse/KDE. It only can get worse with even more gimmicks.
And, where is the problem with writing a wrapper for a C frontend?
You do know that there are C wrappers for DirectX, for ODE....?
No need to switch the ENTIRE PROJECT to C.
This sig does not contain any SCO code.
If you feel that they shove it in your face, don't read or use it.
That's the beauty of open source: nobody is forcing you to do a goddamn thing.
That looks really nice, but the main problem with kde is the time it takes to do things. Quite often I wonder why I'm loading so much into memory on my precious laptop battery when Window Maker is sufficient.
You notice how much is going on when dragging a window across the screen.
Why UNIX?
I guess the acid test for KDE 4 (as for KDE 3) will be KBear, then - the strangely named fpt client with the strange user interface that seems to come with each release whether you want it or not.
Will it run this time? Or will it revert to its lovable self and crash shortly after starting up, taking the kicker down with it?
Madames et Messieurs, faites vos jeux!
Las qué passoun
tournoun pas maï
that could radically change how the world's most popular free desktop looks and works.
Good! It's about time that they move ahead, and I so hope that they finally abandon the "let's copy everything from windos" meme, which is not a winning strategy. If you want to copy, at least do it from the original (MacOS) and not another already crappy copy (windos).
#1 reason I'm not using KDE: It looks and works like windos, and windos usability is rock bottom.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
KDE has C bindings which are just a wrapper around the C++ interface, which accomplishes the same thing as what you're suggesting. Guess what, no-one uses them, because C++ is far nicer to program in than C. If you really want to, you can program a KDE application in C. On the saner side the API also has bindings for perl, python and java, and probably more.
I am trolling
Man have you seen a real new user try to use a windows installation package. They get to about the second or third next and freeze... You would be suprised at how many times I get asked to do this task or how many (real) mum and dad users don't install because it is too complicated. The interface for most Linux installers is way too intimidating.. I use synaptic and its great for experts but I would not put in front of a new user. From an interface perspective its hard to go past klik (or the MacOSX disk image packages) It is a very promising technology that I am sure will catch on in the near future. Also the Khotstuff mentioned in the article is very cool... As for QuakeIII: I seriously don't remember having to do any of this when I installed Quake3... Except for making the installer executable. But you have identified a few key issues. I would go a little further and say what is natural and easy to Windows users is definately not what regular people concider easy and natural. Its probably easier and more natural than linux but it is not easy and natural by any stretch of the imagination. It's something that most users have difficulty realising you were taught windows at school or from friends. Yes I am a linux zealot. I also take teach people who have had NO contact with computers before.
Is it just me, or does 'Appeal' sound a whole lot like 'Apple' ?
Exercise caution when modding this message up: the author acts like a jerk when his karma is excellent.
Qt is written in C++ - not C#. KDE is built on top of Qt. Changing that is akin to re-writing all of KDE.
LL
thanks for the informative post, but where can these bindings be found? http://developer.kde.org/language-bindings/ does not list any C bindings
In other words, if you want to prevent Linux marketshare from dropping to below 1%, make it as unusable as possible.
I don't quite understand why this should work, but hey, I've got some great ideas on how to decrease the usability of Linux!
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
NX (or maybe 6, as in FreeNX, but I digress...)
In Windows I use TortoiseCVS/SVN. It absolutely rocks. Using Cervisia after using Tortoise is anything but pleasant. I don't want to offend the Cervisia devs with this, but I would be glad if a new Cervisia release would integrate in Konqueror like Tortoise does with Explorer.
This sig does not contain any SCO code.
Have a look at www.simplekde.org
Fedora's installer is just as good as Windows', from what I remember. Most of it's pretty much the same - select "Desktop installation" or whatever (we were talking about beginner users, yes?), provide the same network settings and a root password, and click "Go". Swap a few CDs, reboot (ONCE!), et voila!
Now installing applications, that's a different matter...
Why not just be honest and say "Hey, guys! I just ripped this news off from NewsForge and submitted it to slashdot"
6 16206.shtml?tid=130
The original post was made by Tom Chance one of the members of the NewsForge team here: http://software.newsforge.com/software/05/09/19/1
Clinton, next time try and credit the original writers...
My other sig is crap too
I'm aware of this. Did something I say seem to contradict that?
List
Wonder if he's being paid for this or if he's just a dick.
Justin.
You're only jealous cos the little penguins are talking to me.
That would be unbelievably stupid. Gnome is in the middle of culture wars over trying to move into this century's technology - either Java or C#/mono, because most on the project realize how high the costs of sticking with C are.
2) Work with GNOME, Trolltech and Free Desktop and produce a common widget theme engine. I don't care if an app runs QT or GTK, I don't care if it's part of KDE or GNOME. I do care that the average Linux desktop looks severely schizophrenic and unpredictable from one app to the next.
Please not. GTK is horrible. Right now, I am writing some classes that astract the same behaviour for GTK and KDE
n ew(),"text", i,NULL);e _new(),"active", i,NULL); //Dangerous cast!h eckBox),this);
Here is the KDE version for adding the columns to a table widget:
table->insertColumns(0,cols.size());
QStringList names;
for(size_t i=0;isetColumnLabels(names);
Short,nice,readable,whatever you want. If I make a mistake, the compiler will tell me.
Here is the GTK version:
for(size_t i=0;icols.size();i++){
GtkTreeViewColumn *col=0;
GtkCellRenderer *ren;
switch(cols[i].type){
case ListBox::ColumnDef::StaticText:
col=gtk_tree_view_column_new_with_attributes
(cols[i].name.c_str(),ren=gtk_cell_renderer_text_
break;
case ListBox::ColumnDef::CheckBox:
col=gtk_tree_view_column_new_with_attributes
(cols[i].name.c_str(),ren=gtk_cell_renderer_toggl
g_object_set_data(G_OBJECT(ren),columnkey,(void *)i);
g_signal_connect(ren,"toggled",G_CALLBACK(toggleC
break;
}
gtk_tree_view_append_column (treeview,col);
}
It is twice as long, is not type safe, checkboxes won't toggle aunless you add a callback, and the documentation is very twisted: Look at example for "active": "active" gboolean : Read / Write
The toggle state of the button.
Default value: FALSE
If you read that, do you understand that you have to set "active" to the column number of the checkbox column? On the PARENT of the cellrenderer object?
Notice how the KDE version does not mention what the column contains. The GTK version does. In both cases, I have to specify it later, when I set the column data. Why do I need to tell it twice to GTK?
And this is not an unfortunate choice, but the general case. FOr QT/KDE, I read the docs, and I implement. For GTK, I read the docs, delve trough examples until I find something similar, crash atthe first trys because all the casts make compiler typechecking useless, and the resulting code is in general twice as long.
Please, kill the ugly beast that is GTK.
Well, the fact is that KDE has a larger user base then GNOME. I wonder why ? maybe because GNOME ("we-what-preferences-you-want") just sucks ?
Please don't feed the troll. He's been cut-and-pasting that exact script anywhere vaguely relevent for a while now.
Cheers,
Justin.
You're only jealous cos the little penguins are talking to me.
Guess what, no-one uses them, because C++ is far nicer to program in than C
No it's not. For a C++ programmer, C++ is nicer, but for a C programmer, learning C++ just to write KDE programs is a waste of time.
Guess why noone uses them. No, not because C++ is nicer, but because C programmers *avoid* KDE. Why? Because noone knows that there are C-bindings for KDE. When the choice is between learning C++ or not writing ones program to run on KDE, the program won't be running on KDE.
Why does Gnome have so many people working hard to make it the best desktop? Because of the license? No, that's been solved years ago. Because they are *C* programmers, and as long as they think that KDE means being forced to learn/use C++, they will go with Gnome rather than KDE.
If more people knew about those C-bindings, more applications would be written for KDE.
Bugger, the forum mangled the code, even in 'plain old text' mode. Imagine some lesser than's etc in it, and fill in the missing blanks. Even then, the comment stays valid.
FACT: Using KDE/QT restricts your choice of language to C++... unless you like experimenting all the time and constantly rewriting your app.
The parent made a very important point: anything has to do with the desktop, because the desktop must provide an interface for it. So, the filesystem has to do with the desktop. The font system has to do with the desktop. And so on.
What is called tenor here is already existing albeit in a very rough state as kate.
It isnt really very functionnal yet, but it will be included in Mandriva 2006, which you can think of as a mistake from mandriva or as a gesture of trust and commitment toward that application and what it will become:
http://kat.mandriva.com/
Personnally, I removed it, but I'm also glad my favorite distribution is doing this kind of choices. After all, they included KDE by default when it wasnt very popular to do so, and it was quite a good choice in the long run.
When I see the kind of interactions that will be done later with a good data miner engine behind the desktop, i understand why they did that.
They final get rid of 'artsd'. It has been a huge wart on KDE since the day it was inserted. Let's face, sound support in your typical freenix distro already has some fundemental limitations http://www.undeadly.org/cgi?action=article&sid=200 50901024119 and artsd only makes things worse (much worse).
I think you'll find that the desktop search tool Beagle, was in development long before Spotlight was even announced. So, if at all, it would appear both Spotlight and Tenor took their cues from Beagle.. not that it matters at all, of course.
They're generated by kalyptus which is the only thing you'll find in cvs but I think releases include a generated set in kdebindings/kdec, kdebindings/qtc and kdebindings/dcopc
I am trolling
You don't need to learn C++ if you don't want to, you can just write C and classes - and learning c++ classes is no harder than learning gtk's object system. KDE isn't a particularly big user of templates etc., there are template and stl-compatible classes if you want them but you don't have to. I can't talk about other differences between c and c++ because I simply don't know about them - the only things I've learnt are classes and templates, and these are ample to write kde programs with no difficulty.
Why does Gnome have so many people working hard to make it the best desktop? Because of the license? No, that's been solved years ago.
Gnome is still spreading FUD about it, if you look at kde stories here you will still find people claiming kde is non-free. In general, I think the main reason people write gnome programs is because they use gnome themselves, that's what makes the difference. Also, gnome makes it hard to write kde programs (no kde support in anjuta for example) but the reverse isn't true.
I am trolling
A good programmer knows how to program in more than one language. Saying that you're a C programmer and not willing to try out another platform simply because of the language it is written in is just a giant cop out. Often as a programmer you'll be forced to write things in languages you don't prefer, but these languages teach you more about how to write good flexible code in different paradigms and styles. Also there exists the gtkmm C++ bindings which are popular enough to be used by VMware and many other GTK/Gnome based projects.
What tangible benefits? No, really, I can't think of any tangible benefit that switching to either C# or Java would net.
I've been running KDE on Fedora 4 for a while where it was rather slow.
Recently I changed to the beta/rc from Suse and can't complain anymore on the speed/responsiveness of KDE. This improvement is definately not caused by the 'later' version (3.4.0 vs 3.4.2) on Suse.
Note that in Fedora I disabled all eye candy, while on Suse I'm using the default settings.
My machine is an 800 MHz AMD with 300MB mem.
I was a little frustrated with Gnome when I saw the "use Gnome"-answer from the gp poster. Gnome is nice sometimes, and sometimes it sucks. Which desktop doesn't? However, my experience with GNOME and KDE always led me to prefer KDE in the past. Maybe its because of the work I do (I browse often with a file manager in my fileserver, and so far Konqueror always outperformed Nautilus). Also, I always felt Gnome to be more sluggish than KDE, as if the latency was higher. But yeah, I should have written an "IMO" there.
This sig does not contain any SCO code.
Right on target... if you are going to use GTK+, it's best to use one of the wrapper libraries (GTKMM or GTK#). GTK from C code is a total pain.
But Spotlight is more than a desktop search tool, and that's what's being hinted at in the KDE descriptions. You could also use it to search through control panels, for example. Or music libraries - iTunes uses it. That's the point.
It's not to knock Beagle that I made the post, it's more to point at the lack of creativity in the KDE plan dressed up in "but our developers are already thinking further"-type language. They're not thinking further. They're cloning Spotlight. A bit more honesty about that from the article wouldn't have gone amiss.
Cheers,
Ian
that it was the most popular? No this isn't a troll I'm just finding it funny how so many people start saying things like that. On what basis do they deem they are the most popular?
You're right in general that Qt is higher-level than GTK+, since Qt is a C++ API. Of course this has disadvantages too; for example language bindings for Qt are much harder. Gtkmm is worth a look: it's at the same level at Qt (in terms of abstration), but doesn't need MOC. And it plays nice with the STL too.
Switching to C# or Java makes nearly as little sense as switching to C. When you combine C++ with Qt the difference to C# or Java become minimal, and the most noticeable thing you gain are the need of a VM. A telling sign are the Java bindings for KDE/Qt, they have been actively maintained and considered stable since something like KDE 2.2. And nearly no one are using them. On the other hand even more high level language bindings are much more popular, like Ruby and Python.
What tangible benefits? No, really, I can't think of any tangible benefit that switching to either C# or Java would net.
... I'm sure theres more but I got to get back to work.
Vast array of common libraries, multi-platform compilation, better API documentation, automatic garbage collection, more developers,
There's no place like ~/
Looks like we're in for some treats in a years time then! Having tried many desktops (such as Mac OS X, Windows 2000, Windows XP, Gnome, etc) KDE is by far the best in every aspect. It is much faster, more stable, easier to use and basically a joy to work on. Rather than becoming annoyed and aggrivated with something like, say, the Microsoft Windows desktop, using KDE is just a much richer and more pleasurable experience.
Innovative and intuitive window management, a wealth of icons and themes to allow customisation to the way I like things. Tabbed applications extended beyond the browser bring a more complete integration of the way things work. A wealth of applications such as Kword and Korganizer extend KDE beyond any other desktop available. Its all there and its all great!
I'm really looking forward to KDE4 - as I'm sure many of you are!
That this is basically the development model for Linux and _some_ it's desktop enviroments and applications -> Add features, add features, some innovation, add features, some optimization and bug fixes and then add more features...?
I use GNOME on top of GNU/Linux (Debian/Ubuntu) everyday and GNOME 2.12 is such a delight to use, but I would rather see more integration of bugfixes of the different frameworks such as gstreamer rather than more half-worked features.
Let's get the basics out of they way, first. I do not have many problems with my install and user experience, but let's make it easier for normal users to do things such as mounting and using hardware (video cards, USB drives/mp3 players, USB mice/keyboards/cameras, and )
It seems to me that we reinvent the wheel and reproduce too much effort in the FLOSS community.. there needs to be more sharing on security and bugfixes across the platform. Thanks!
That was kind of my point, in some ways. People were arguing towards porting it to C, but I think it would be fair to say that the actual real-world benefits would be fairly minimal (desktop apps – the things that would use the framework – really do not benefit from the efficiency of C, and suffer from its shortcomings). Since Qt4 is considered fairly stable, there'd be little benefit, although the benefit of using C#/Java when developing it as new would be to reduce development time, and the potential for memory bugs and problems.
The main point, though, was that porting to C serves little purpose.
All they can do is mod down dissenting voices. Read the article linked in parent, and then comment. Just because somebody doesn't agree with you doesn't mean that they're a troll.
Thanks for that, you saved me a bit of explanation. Now I better get back to work.
Add some mem, 512 meg is OK, 1 gig is better.
I would read the article, but site appears slashdotted right now. All is get is Connection refused.
to the future, to the next version. Never their mind on where they were. Hmm? What they were releasing. Hmph. Bells. Heh. Whistles. Heh. A Guru craves not these things. You are feature driven.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
If you had read the article, you would know that the link you just posted was the same link that was submitted as news here.
Stop naming every new application with a 'K'!!! Open the task bar menu, oh look 20 separate application items all beginning with 'K'. Kan't they thing of anything better??
http://www.gnustep.org/
Write code which should pretty much just port to OS X without too much trouble.
I've always wondered why KDE and Gnome get so much attention.
Deleted
Every time I've tried to use KDE it swaps out my 512MB workstation. And I run a basic workstation with nothing that should be considered out of the ordinary for some home development. But to use up that much RAM is just crap. I don't care who you are or how F/OSS you are or how fanatical your supporters are. That's crap.
When they come out with something that doesn't take minutes to load and wipe out all my RAM then I'll be interested in it. It sure does have a lot of eye-candy and twiddly features, but the cost in performance is prohibitive.
Sure hope they can actually improve this in KDE4. They sure haven't done that in the last 5 years. On the contrary, they have made it progressively worse.
On both windows (only ever tried it at home with XP) and of course linux it makes a huge difference. Neither does it have to break the bank. You will be suprised how many old dell P3's are are dual ready. Just buy 2 of them second hand, canabalize them and voila, high mem, big HD, dual CPU desktop that is far more responive than the fastest single cpu machine.
I do now only use linux on my dual machines, since I only keep windows for games and that is mostly single CPU until recently, but I tried XP for about a month and found it amazing stable. XP on a far faster P4 was far less stable, having those all to familiar freezes when explorer hangs on something and takes the entire desktop with it.
I think the most important elements of a good desktop are dual cpu, lots of memory, fast HD and only then the speed of the actual cpu. Lets face it, the days when your cpu wasn't fast enough to handle that mp3 are long gone.
Dare to buy second hand and enjoy stable, low heat dual cpu goodness.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Perl would allow the ultimate in tangible benefits, especially when drunk.
presents
Whether language bindings are harder or not, is not important to you, as a language bindings user. (It's not true that bindings are harder for C++, but let that rest). So, if you want, you can code your application in Python, Ruby, Perl or Java -- and the Java can be compiled to native code or run on a jvm. I only mention these bindings because they are complete: there exist other bindings, but those are not complete -- just like most of the bindings to GTK are not complete.
Actually, the bindings maintainers for Qt and KDE are a bit surprised at the amount of manual work the GTK bindings people seem to have to do.
PyGTK makes it abit more of a snap.. heh.. although its Python not C/C++
irritant
What about SuSE? Novell seems like a big commercial company.
Eh? WTF?
Sitting here, now at a 512Mb (actually 448Mb after the onboard graphics steals it's RAM) 1.2GHz machine with a PCI (PCI, for god's sake, there's no even an AGP slot on it) graphics card. Absolutely no swapping. Some apps take a little while to load but the only thing that actually MAKES my computer swap is if I run Word through Crossover Office.
This is the same computer that swaps like mad whenever I run XP on it, only other OS that doesn't swap too badly on it is 98.
I dunno what you are doing to make your machine swap but I'd point the finger at the machine or the config, not KDE. For reference, Slackware 10.2 plain install with KDE 3.4 (previously 10.1 with 3.3 and no problems then either), default settings except for the NVidia driver.
This is my primary desktop, runs Dreamweaver MX, Word etc. on top of Crossover plus all the OS-goodness I can find and still swapping doesn't get in my way. I have an extremely loud ATA66 hard drive that I could hear any swapping and a big red light for drive activity and yet most of the time, once a program is loaded, that's it. Maybe a small twitch when switching between tasks. Dunno what you're doing wrong but there's nothing there that's specifically KDE's fault.
Lovely article, that doesn't say huge amounts of anything other than marketspeak.
One of the main points I use when talking about Linux to non-techies is that you don't need to buy new hardware for each new release, the way you do for WinDoze. What are they doing about size and speed (e.g. the Firefox model)?
Further, how much of what they're doing is anything more than eye candy - what actual *functionality* does it need, when at least 75% of everyone uses their computer to email, Websurf, and maybe text message or play games?
Why does it need still more crap?
mark
Hey, pass her ("hot, blonde") the contact data of the FreeNX developers too, will you? See here:
FreeNX Project Members
These guys have achieved brilliant things. They deserve some female distraction. Especially pipitas, I think.
No, it isn't. Just as Mandriva isn't, nor is Knoppix or Kubuntu worthy of mentioning. At least in GNOME fanboy's mind.
Seesh.
Don't try to reason with GNOME fanboys. They're just like GNOME developers - no work, just running around and trying to convince everyone that GNOME is the only politically correct choice, without even bothering to check the facts first. And badmouthing KDE every chance they get.
Vast array of common libraries
OK. But Qt is already very extensive, and has the advantage that Trolltech's implementation is GPL'd. Only a small percentage of Java/C# libraries have Free implementations.
multi-platform compilation,
Qt does multi-platform at least as well as Java. C# is only sorta cross-platform, if you stick to the Mono project's supported API, and if you trust that Microsoft will never sue Novell over their C# implementation.
better API documentation
Qt's documentation is exceedingly good.
automatic garbage collection
OK. But Qt child widgets automatically get cleaned up when the parent is destroyed, so there is not a lot of fussing around with memory management in a typical Qt application.
more developers
More developers than C++? Questionable.
So why should KDE switch to C# or Java again? Is it for the increased memory usage? Or perhaps it's the desire to run on a non-Free VM with patent-encumbered libraries? Maybe it's just the masochistic desire to rewrite millions of lines of perfectly functional code?
STOP DRINKING MS AND SUN'S KOOL-AID.
No way! This is my machine running KDE + firefox + a few things in the background.
total used free shared buffers cached
Mem: 514728 165464 349264 0 7344 84360
-/+ buffers/cache: 73760 440968
Swap: 0 0 0
How does dashboard compare? http://www.nat.org/dashboard/
That's being reimplemented as part of Beagle.
... would load a Commodore 64 binary file named SIG from device 8, the first 1541 drive.
Completely non-portable, you insensitive clod. Still, those of us reading Slashdot from a C64 might be tempted to load and run your binary SIG, thus potentially spreading a virus.
At least you could do:
10 DOPEN#1,"SIG"
20 INPUT#1,S$
30 DCLOSE#1
40 PRINT S$
Just as non-portable, but would actually work and not cause a security nightmare from running untrusted binaries. We 64 users have enough trouble with CSS not to have security issues on top of everything else.
sigs, as if you care.
This may be interesting as an example, but not insightful.
Actually, I find it rather stupid, to ask for the death of GTK because you have problems implementing this in C. What's stupid is not to have chosen a bad case as example (this is, at worst, unfair), but to stick with C if you don't like the consequences. Just use C++, C#, python...
GTK is a wonderful toolkit, which lets you choose whether you prefer C++, C#, etc. and the syntax simplicity that comes with these languages, or C which has its own advantages (compilation speed, portability...).
Only a small percentage of Java/C# libraries have Free implementations.
What are you talking about? You're free to use all of the standard java libraries without paying a dime. There are 3rd parties that sell libraries, but thats not limited to Java by any means.
Qt does multi-platform at least as well as Java. I think its the other way around
ROFLMAO! Good one!
Maybe it's just the masochistic desire to rewrite millions of lines of perfectly functional code?
re-writing code is #1 reason not to convert it over. But I wasn't answering that question.
STOP DRINKING MS AND SUN'S KOOL-AID.
SUN's Kool-Aid is great! Drink up!
There's no place like ~/
It seems to me the problems GNOME devs have with the Java/mono stuff are rather:
Should we allow Java apps in the official distribution although Java is not Free and there is no complete Free replacement (yet)?
AND
Should we allow mono apps in the official distribution although our beloved Havoc Pennington says there are concerns which prevent Red Hat from shipping mono?
If there was no such problem, I guess you would have both Java and Mono, just like you have Python now. Most devs agree that the foundation (GTK, GLib, core libraries) stay in C. The question is which language to allow for official end-user applications.
On how much RAM should it work then? 256MB is the absolute minimium these days, with 512MB being the standard on computers.
True for folks who have newer hardware, but not true for everyone. Not at all.
Case in point: my largest box at home (out of seven boxes) is a 256MB PPro, but the rest of my machines vary between 64MB and 192MB, with most of them still sitting at 64MB.
The *only* platform I use that has a desktop which seems to require more RAM than I have on many of my machines is Linux.
On 64MB hardware, OS/2 Warp 4 absolutely flies, Windows 95B/98/NT4/2k varies from very fast (95B) to fast enough to not cause impatience issues (2K), and BeOS 5 Pro flies. Solaris 7 and 8 are also fairly fast (tho I hate CDE). My current Linux distros using lighter window managers (or older versions of KDE such as 2.2) are also quite fast.
A 64MB PPro box running any of the above platforms is perfectly capable of running a browser like FireFox 1.0.7 very quickly, can listen to/burn/rip CDs, can run graphics programs, play low-res videos, and run just almost any general application you care to name including the latest incarnations of OpenOffice (though some swapping will occur depending on platform), and it can also run a number of interesting games including a fair number of once fairly popular titles (UT, Tribes 1, Quake 1/2/3A, SC, TA, AOE I/II, Homeworld, NFS 2/3/4, Madden 2001, etc.).
Because of the above, I've really seen very little reason to upgrade my desktop boxes except for playing newer games, and I'll be doing that on a separate game system when I finally get around to building one.
Newer versions of KDE seem to growing (in terms of resource usage) at a very fast rate, and the desktop looks like it's gaining all kinds of visual candy, but I still can't get as much functionality out of KDE as I could out of OS/2, and its WorkPlace Shell was quite usable on a 16MB machine!!! One wonders, quite frankly, where all that space is going. Eye candy?
Mainframe/UNIX Bit Twiddler and long time Windows/Linux Hobbyist.
The Theorem Theorem: If If, Then Then.
I end up saying this every time this comes up on Slashdot, but...
I submitted my first talk on this topic a couple weeks before Spotlight was announced. I'm not sure that Beagle had ceased to be part of Dashboard at that time and become Beagle, but at the very least it was far from functional.
And standard mantra -- Tenor is more about relationships between data than content. "Contextual Linkage" vs. "Searching", so to say. Granted, at this point both Beagle and Spotlight are looking in that direction, but they're building context on top of indexing rather than indexing on top of context.
I guess that he's either trolling or had the system on forever and doesn't know how swap is used in linux.
Good link - thanks.
Cheers,
Ian
Who do you mean by "users"? People who run more than one GUI? This is a big part of why Linux isn't mainstream. Technogeeks can't look at things from the perspective of the mainstream computer user who isn't going to use multiple GUIs and just wants to use e-mail, write documents, browse the internet, and have new applications install with a simple click.
They need simpler design, I look at a standard application like this, and I think, "WTF" I have one that looks just like the shutdown button in windows, a blue arrow pointing right, and a bunch of other stuff that I'd have to look at a tooltip to just try and figure out what all those things do! Everything seems bulky with big boarders too, I like Win2k where everything was thin and space efficient. The taskbar at the bottom sucks too, why do you need so many buttons there, a launcher menu and a clock will suffice, and why is it so tall with big square buttons? Why can't it have have one row of applications, and be less intrusive? I'm not trying to nag here, and I'm sure someone will say, "Get used to it", but before I move from OS X, I'm going to want a little more zen in my applications. KDE always seemed to attempt to make things easy too, but when it gives detailed instructions on how to click something, "click this for the internet!", but then asks you for parameters for your dialup account, and IRQ's, etc, it just gets frustrating. We need tighter integration between the OS and the WM. Like WIndows and MacOS X
Sig: I stole this sig.
Well that's not quite fair. At the same time, you're also comparing two different programming languages.
If you want to compare c++ interface with c++ interface, you could look at gtkmm.
Malike Bamiyi wanted my assistance.
GTK Troll...
Ofcourse it is easier to work with objects than the old way. QT is just a nice toolkit for C++ programming. I still prefere something more highlevel, like Delphi or C#, but that is just my problem...
Perhaps I should have spelled it out more clearly in my above post. The fact is C#/Java will not give any, or minimal reduction of development time compared to C++ with Qt(It's with Qt, not pure C++). The difference in lines of code will be minimal, the biggest difference will most possibly be reduction of compiletimes(aka very little real world gain). And use of the Qt memory model helps reduce the problem of memory bugs too. If you are interested in reducing development time with KDE/Qt use Ruby or Python where you get real measureable reductions. And in most cases not any significant performance hit either. As most of the heavy lifting are done by the C++ libs.
Well, yes, you seem to be largely agreeing with me. I mentioned C#/Java simply because they are more suitable languages for the job than C, and yet it seems strange to most people to switch to them. From this it can be seen that switching to C probably isn't the wisest of moves.
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The guy is called ClintJCL: one of his posts. You can find the same post in his blog, but he says, that he just copied it fromThe problem here isn't Gtk+. It's C.
And you cheated by writing the Qt example in C++, but the Gtk+ example in C. If you want to make them equal, write the Qt example in C, too -- oh, wait, you can't even use Qt from C!
Everybody I know writing GUI apps uses a higher-level language. Why you'd write a GUI app in C or C++ is beyond me.
Take Python, for example. Try writing the same code in PyQt and PyGTK -- both of which are very popular for writing apps these days. PyGTK is very Pythonic; PyQt requires you to write C++ method signatures to bind any events.
The first step in writing a program is to write it at the appropriate abstraction level. Writing a GUI app in C is just dumb; use something like Python. Of course, the Qt folks seem to think C++ is correct for *everything*, so even if you use Python you have to use C++.
Gtk+: You can use any programming language you want, and it feels like a native library anywhere.
Qt: You can use any programming language you want, except C, and it feels like a C++ library anywhere.
There are desktops trying to do their own thing and you know, all of them are quite unpopular because it's not familiar.
Poke around the Internet for Gnustep based applications/environments. There's another guy doing a mozilla-based desktop environment where he's stuffing menus in the corners of the screen.
Things that humans must re-learn mean change, and change is not something most people thrive on.
I can be very critical of KDE on a detailed level. But overall, it's very good. What I grow most tired of is people that lament a lack of innovation while they don't do much to experiment or contribute to innovative things.
http://www.maxineudall.com/2010/02/should-economists-be-sued-for-malpractice.html
Novell is GNOME company, or hadn't you realised that? All their business development is with GNOME.... perhaps you should do some checking. As for the other posters hilarious claims about Kubuntu and Knoppix... bwhaha. Ok, commercial... yeah... if you say so. And Mandriva is a near-bankrupt dead duck.
Those stats are usually user polls, and asking the power geeks what they like most has almost no bearing on actual usage considering that there are now millions of non-geek users at libraries, schools and offices.
to counter your list:
- Suse is on its way out as a desktop, these days Novel is pushing Novel Linux Desktop, which is a gnome centric distro.
- Sun uses gnome in JDS.
- Ubuntu uses gnome only.
- Fedora and Redhat are both default to gnome.
so yeah, its a tossup which is really "in the lead"... which make such claims like in this story laughable and basically FUD.
Compared to SuSE or Debian, Fedora is a lousy distro. I ran into numerous problems with it, too. Indeed, as you found, things often run far better under SuSE, Debian, or basically any other non-RedHat/non-Fedora distro. While your machine isn't the most powerful beast, it should be more than sufficient for a decent KDE experience. It's unfortunate that RedHat/Fedora failed you so badly. At least you were able to get a solid SuSE installation working.
It bothers me that Fedora is often recommended to new Linux users, yet it is often nothing but problematic. Its low quality probably does more to turn users off of Linux than anything else, which is awful because most other distros are far superior to Fedora.
Cyric Zndovzny at your service.
people want a fast, simple and reliable desktop, not an ugly and slow one.
]]Only a small percentage of Java/C# libraries have Free implementations.
What are you talking about? You're free to use all of the standard java libraries without paying a dime.
This kind of free. (Don't read Slashdot much, do you?) Kinda lame to spend thousands of man-hours building a Free desktop only to have it depend on non-Free software, no?
]]Qt does multi-platform at least as well as Java.
ROFLMAO! Good one!
Glad I gave you a laugh, but I was actually serious. Java is riddled with platform- and VM-specific issues that pretty well kill the "write once, run anywhere" mantra. Qt generally ports pretty well.
]]STOP DRINKING MS AND SUN'S KOOL-AID.
SUN's Kool-Aid is great! Drink up!
For philosophical reasons, I only drink Free beer.
(Also, Sun is clinging to a failed business model and would be dead already if it didn't have so much cash in the bank. If it's board had any sense, they'd dissolve the company, sell off the assets, and return the money to investors. Their kool-aid sucks.)
What makes you think hes a KDE developer and not a troll? Nothing I read there made him look like he was really a KDE developer.
Every time I've tried to use KDE it swaps out my 512MB workstation.
Not it doesn't so stop lying. That's just a lame anti-OSS troll.
I use both Slackware/KDE and Mac OS-X.
Eye candy is always nice, but I think the most important things are smart design and ease-of-use.
As an adaptation:
Easy things should be very easy. Difficult things should be smartly convenient.
I'm not seeing much reason to go with their findings over my own. Are you thinking that most of us who prefer Linux haven't used both Linux and Microsoft Windows enough to make informed decisions?
Why do you, AC, call this a GTK troll?
I think GTK is a nice toolkit for C++ programming. I think it's a nice toolkit for C# programming. So I think it's just a nice toolkit. So I think it doesn't deserve death.
Java is under the Sun Community Source Licensing (SCSL)
Executive Summary
Community Source creates a community of widely available software source code just as does the Open Source model, but with two significant differences requested by our licensees, as follows:
* compatibility among deployed versions of the software is required and enforced through testing
* proprietary modifications and extensions including performance improvements are allowed
These important differences and other details make Community Source a powerful combination of the best of the proprietary licensing and the more contemporary open source technology licensing models. Java source code is available. Ok, so you can't take the source code for java.. re-work it.. and release it again as a brand new programming language. (Although a certain company tried that once.. *cough*MICROSOFT*cough*) But you are welcome to tweak up the code and submit it for possible integration.
Java is riddled with platform- and VM-specific issues that pretty well kill the "write once, run anywhere" mantra. Qt generally ports pretty well.
Tell me.. How exactly is Java platform specific? I can take a java source file. Compile it on a Windows machine. Take that compiled class file, and run it on a Linux machine. it already is capable of handling different widgets, different file systems, etc. The reason being, of course, because it is not running on linux or windows...its running on a VM. Sure, you may have to deal with 1.5. code not running on a 1.2 VM..But thats like trying to compile source code with new QT calls using an old QT library.
QT(C++), on the other hand, runs natively. This means, of course, that it must be compiled seperately for each platform it is to run and not only that, the source might need to be updated to handle platform specific issues. (AKA "Porting") I am well aware QT applications are available on both KDE and Windows. So it is definately do-able. But saying its just as easy or even easier just makes me laugh. You have 1) different source and 2) a different executable.
For philosophical reasons, I only drink Free beer.
You're free to drink all the Free beer you want. In my world, beer costs $$$'s, so I'll have to write code in what ever language my employeer wants me to. In addition, until Madden 2006 will run on Linux, I'll have to keep my home machine a dual boot.
(Also, Sun is clinging to a failed business model and would be dead already if it didn't have so much cash in the bank. If it's board had any sense, they'd dissolve the company, sell off the assets, and return the money to investors. Their kool-aid sucks.)
I'd put my money on SUN staying around longer than Trolltech.
There's no place like ~/
Everytime I see all the work that's happening on KDE I wonder what's the point of having an OSS desktop thta relies on the proprietary Qt from trolltech. What a shame. I wish all the effort would've gone on something truly free like Gnome.
Qt is GPL -- it provides more guaranteed freedoms than Gtk+, which is under the Lesser GPL! In fact, a major complaint in the Gnome camp seems to be "damn them for choosing a toolkit [Qt] with a viral license!". Makes one wonder who actually cares more about freedom...
"On a LAN with X remote you can't tell you're not working on the local machine, it's that good."
Oh, dude!
I'll read it to you:
"She told me that she wanted to use a remote client to work on her work machine from home."
Does this sound like "LAN" to you??
And I'll read you some more:
"She told me that windows xp did it so significantly faster that she dumped linux because she could not stand the wait."
And I tell you one more thing, from experience: She is right. She's absolutely fscking right! Repeat after me, three times:
Remote X over a DSL dialup link is unusable for work. Remote X over a DSL dialup link is unusable for work. Remote X over a DSL dialup link is unusable for work.
And FreeNX over the same DSL link is blazingly fast. You can hardly tell the difference of FreeNX-over-DSL from a local session. And it is nearly as fast over a dialup modem or dialup ISDN link.
FreeNX beats Windows RDP out of its pants.
Well, Beagle might be a nice and working implementation (I never used it much and haven't read the code, so I can't tell), but it is not exactly what tenor aims to be. Tenor's primary goal is not about search, but about linking related desktop resources (a resource can be a file, a website, an email, a post-it note, an abstract idea, a person in your address book). So you get a "web of context" which makes it possible to present the user the information is actually interested in in his current context. This is beyond what beagle does: collect metadata, build an index, search it via search string. That is not rocket science, and was there on the web for a decade now. Also, it's limited, it can't find the picture my friend sent me via IM yesterday. Beagle is good because it already works, and tenor is still a concept, but from the idea behind it, Tenor is more compelling IMO. And it's not a Beagle clone by no means.
No. In many nations that would make the developers an accessory to a crime:
An accessory to a crime is any individual who knowingly and voluntarily participates in the commission of a crime.
If all it takes is a disclaimer to make legal troubles go away, many of my favorite NES rom sites would still exist!
Open Source Sushi
2005 is about to end and the best GPU work done on Linux (xcompmgr) is over a year old with no development. People with old computer have options like XFCE, but those that want a stable/accerated high end Linux desktop have none! Xorg is ready. Nvidia has the drivers. And no one wants to pick up the ball....
(Sorry if I sound like Mr. Smirl, but often I think he is correct!).
Open Source Sushi
One of the most common and most severe security holes is buffer overflows. C++ is one of the few languages that does not make buffer overflows impossible. When open source developers start to take security seriously, they will have to rewrite all of their code in another language any way.
I realize there are plenty of developers in denial that switching to another language will help. Yet the simple fact remains that buffer overflow errors result from common bugs that developers generally never even see when they are testing. We are not going to eliminate the very frequent buffer overflow exploits until we stop using C and C++.
And to those who complain that checking bounds all the time is too slow, you're part of the problem. Buffer overflows exist because people don't check their bounds! In order to stop buffer overflows, software needs to incur the overhead of checking bounds anyway.
Finally, those who complain that switching to another language is pointless because there are plenty of other security holes, those security holes are rarely as significant and they are far less common. Buffer overflows account for nearly half of all security holes. A move away from C and C++ would instantly make your desktop twice as secure. Furthermore, another language could take measures to reduce the likelihood of other security holes at the same time.
Switching away from C and C++ may not instantly make your desktop secure, but it is certainly an absolute requirement on the road to achieving that goal.
Indeed, he may very well be a troll.
Cyric Zndovzny at your service.
I have been using mandrake since shortly after it started. I have nothing but fast response time on it from konqi. In addition, this is where I did all of my development, until about 1 year ago, where I took a job that required both Linux and Windows. When I started, I was on Xp with MSIE. It was dog slow compared to konqi on Mandrake. But recently, I have gotten tired of Mandrakes lousy quality, and then they switched to doing a .x rev back (i.e., they installed 3.3, when 3.4.2 was current). So I finally switched to Suse and was shocked. The system is overall more stable. I see far less bugs. In addition, I have the newer KDE that I wanted. But it runs a great deal slower. In fact, I assumed that 3.4 was slow. But I upgraded one of my mandrake systems (not all are converted yet) to 3.4.1. And the speeds are much faster than Suse. Much faster. And much less memory. And yes, it does run faster than MSIE, while the suse version does not. Sadly, the Suse system is my biggest system.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Number one. As a gentoo on sparc user for some time if notcied what he means about java. Java works on Solaris/OpenSolaris on sparc and x86, but java only works on Linux on x86, java on linux sparc is very questionable. Proof point.
:)
And as for suns buisness model yeah its so loosing money. Sun is a good company as is Trolltech. if i had moeny id invest it in sun. but thats my choise not yours.
And as for the freeness... open source is not always "open source"
CCDL != GPL
and personaly im just happy their both open soruce OSI aprooved
XML - A clever joke would be here if