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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.
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
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.
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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
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.
1) is correct, but also pretty ironic, given that there are so much zealots who say exactly this (too much prefs stuff in the control center) and then say "edit bla.conf" when anyone asks how to get sound working (provided the zealots don't quit with a "RTFM"). The advanced options shouldn't disappear completely (like GNOME did). Instead, they should be hidden behind an "Advanced options...." button. For example, the Windows desktop settings behave this way; the most common options are visible immediately, but for editing graphics driver options or setting the monitor refresh rate etc. one has to go to the Advanced Options part.
2) There is already something for GNOME/KDE integration: a GTK theme engine based on Qt. Thus, GTK apps look like Qt/KDE ones. Of course, its only useful if you use KDE...
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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 are right with aRts. Unfortunately, there are little alternatives. esd has serious sync problems (just ask the Ubuntu devs). dmix is nowhere near stable. I hope something better comes, like a new sound daemon, or a stable dmix.
:) ). What I would like to see: for example, User X gets a MPEG-4 AVI. gstreamer doesn't know how to handle this, so it starts to look for a codec with the matching FOURCC. It doesn't find one. Result: gstreamer-based Kaffeine shows a message box "couldn't play video because playback software is missing." And then, under "Details": "no installed codec is able to play video with the FOURCC 'DIVX'." Yes, thats Kaffeine and not KDE itself, but Kaffeine is often bundled with KDE desktops, so this setup would be very nice.
About streaming capabilities: a desktop absolutely NEEDS a multimedia infrastructure like gstreamer. OK, its not KDEs job to install it, nor handling the infrastructe (after all, gstreamer already exists). It doesn't even have to be an integral part of the desktop.
But what is actually needed? A way to configure the damn thing! I mean something like an easy way to change the sources & sinks with the control center, having a list of all installed codecs, maybe with an "Install new codec" button for easy install and so on. This would actually be a BIG advantage of a Linux desktop over Windows, since DirectShow isn't easy to configure, and if it gets messed up with broken codecs, you better get prepared for a full Windows reinstall. gstreamer is in many ways better than DirectShow (except seeking, this works more reliable with DShow), so we shouldn't miss the chance of using this advantage.
In a Nutshell: KDE shouldn't require gstreamer, but it should include optional support, with autodetection for gstreamer presence, thus enabling all gstreamer-related stuff when its there.
Why gstreamer? Why not xine or mplayer? gxine is very nice, and xine-based Kaffeine rocks, yeah. But there are legal problems. Anybody remembers the MPEG-4 license problems? gstreamer is much safer, since the plugins can be binary, closed-source (useful! for example, DivX could exist as a binary codec, and Cyberlink could create a DVD decoder - finally, watching DVDs without cracking them).
The problem with most package managers is that its not easy to find out what codecs are needed. Hell, most users don't even know what a codec is. In Windows, the media player automatically tries to download a suitable codec, and if there isn't any, it prints out an error message (which is not very helpful
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