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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.
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.
Amen brother. Gnome people -- that goes for you, too.
Athletic Scholarships to universities make as much sense as academic scholarships to sports teams.
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
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
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
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.
The overall memory usage is not that high. On my system a huge part of the used memory is cache. Even if it shows that my memory is almost full I can easely run a game that takes up atleast half of my RAM without problems.
I can run alot more applications at the same time on my machine when im in KDE, than I can when im in winxp.
And yet the #1 reason lots of other people won't use KDE is because it doesn't work exactly like Windows. The KDE developers are stuck in a catch-22 situation - if KDE resembles Windows in any manner, people flame them for just copying a poor desktop, and if they try and do something new, people flame them for doing things differently to Windows. Either way, they can't win. Even the compromise they have now - default to Windows-like and offer the ability to configure it differently - isn't enough for some people.
Bogtha Bogtha Bogtha
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.
so instead of using the already existing framework of beagle, they are creating something completely new and redundant, so that users now will have to index their drives 2 times for each application.
sounds retarded to me.
It's only fair to compare KDE 4 to Windows Vista when they come out.
Wait.. what? In that case what is it only fair to compare GNOME to? Let me try my best to explain something to you; in the computer world, the only thing a version number tells you, is how new the product is (now pay attention to this part) in relation to itself. That's right. KDE 4 means that it's the 4th iteration of KDE. Thus, if you want fair comparisons, you have to go to features.
Now, since a feature set hasn't been frozen for KDE 4 yet, any comparison is simply "speculation", and thus, it's completely and totally fair to compare KDE 4 to KDE 16 to Aqua circa OS X 10(.0). Of course, these comparisons don't mean jack, because you can only speculate on what's going into it, whereas on the other side of the equation, you have a list of what's there, and what isn't.
As for the current generation of desktops, comparisons are completely valid there too (imagine that)! Simply take a list of features that both desktops have, and look at both of them, noting what's the same, and what's different. This is what we call "comparison". Thus, if I want to compare or contrast KDE to the look and feel of Windows 95, that's perfectly valid. My conclusions based on that comparison may or may not be correct, and you may or may not like them, but the point remains that the comparison is completely and totally valid.
The Open Source world needs to be apt to be compared if they refuse to innovate. The reason why so many Apple products are awe inspiring is simply because there is nothing available yet to compare them to, and that's what drives a lot of appeal and dislike of Apple; people have to build their conclusions as they see it, as they use it for the first time, instead of drawing the knowledge from what functionality already exists. (Of course, I'm simply using Apple as an example here, there are a lot of companies out there that are perfect drop in replacements for them, but they're the easiest to think about, and Slashdot readers can probably relate better to a computer company than a speed boat company).
Now, lastly, the points that you make about KDE can be made about practically any modern desktop environment, that's right, every single point you made (well, perhaps not the Windows Explorer one, but then again..) can be used to describe practically any DE existant right now. I can't tell you the last time I installed a DE that didn't come with a desktop, file manager, instant messaging, mail, address book, calendar etc. But I can tell you the features which exist within those applications, and I can tell which ones are exclusive to which DE/Application.
Please, comments in praise are great, but you really need to give reason why that praise belongs there, and draw valid conclusions with your arguments, or else you're just talking out of your ass like 98% of slashdotters.
"Victory means exit strategy, and it's important for the President to explain to us what the exit strategy is." G.W.Bush
And yet the #1 reason lots of other people won't use KDE is because it doesn't work exactly like Windows.
Yes, you have a point there. If you copy something, then any difference to the real thing will be noticed more, the closer you copy. Essentially, you can make a 100% clone, or you can make your own thing, anything inbetween will be perceived as bad.
The way KDE does it, nobody is really happy with it. I figure it's "good enough" for a large share of people, and since many of them are ex-windos users and have grown up to live with "good enough" being all they should ever expect - it kinda works.
5 years ago, there was much hope for the Linux desktop. Today, even I seriously consider buying myself a Mac. And that's after my main machine has been a Linux machine for over 10 years now.
Either way, they can't win.
Learn a lesson from the real leader in computer desktop UI. Copy the Mac or come up with your own alternative. Do things because they are good things and not because windos does them.
Ah crap, I tried convincing the Gnome UI group when it was formed (and I was an early member) and couldn't. Now we have two badly copied windos-like UIs for Linux. And we all pretend to be surprised that it's not making as much progress taking over the desktop world.
Hello? You can't overtake anyone if all you ever do is drive slipstream.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
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.
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...
The 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.