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KDE 3.5 Released
WhiteFoxBR writes ""The KDE Project is happy to announce a new major release of the award-winning K Desktop Environment. Many features have been added or refined, making KDE the most complete, stable and integrated free desktop environment available." Here a Visual Guide to new features, including build-in ad-block for Konqueror and support for MSN and Yahoo! webcams in Kopete. "
You speak as though Linux developers want to make it easy. Some do. Some don't. Some don't care. You can't really talk as though Linux is a cohesive business, for it is neither.
I'm a big KDE fan, and KDE has really improved since 3.4 when the new series just gelled. 3.5 promises to be more awesome. I especially look forward to konqueror improvements, as it's my browser of choice. I really appreciate its speed, especially on lower-end systems. Plus, it uses the KDE file picker that I find easier to use than the gnome one with firefox.
What I didn't see was much change in KDE's horrible default settings. The desktop is very configurable. Why does it have to look like some terrible pudgy windows clone? And what's with two toolbars on every app? Why not save some screen real estate for the body of the application? That toolbar for konqueror could easily be paired down to one row of icons with the location bar along side. I'm sick of a print icon on every application. I print things rarely enough off the web. That should be left to a menu, or just alt-p.
Still, if you're willing to configure KDE a little bit, it's awesome. The good news is that much of the configuration is easy, right-click kind of stuff.
Use the Firehose to mod down Second Life stories!
Wow, that's a lot of FUD in one post. I'm impressed.
Not true; there are several alternatives.
Not true: QT3-X11 is available under the GNU GPL; QT4 is available under the GNU GPL even for windows. In addition to that, QT is available under proprietary licenses; this has no effect on the GPL release whatsoever.
QT already is open source.You should really do some research before you start spreading FUD. People like you give people like us a bad name.
"Call me a troll"
Consider it done...
Let's have one desktop/widgetset/toolkit be the standard for X on Linux
You don't need a "single widgetset/toolkit" to make a great "user experience".
Windows actually has several widget implementations. Access has its own widget set (don't remember the link, sorry), IE has its own widget set, office has its own widget set (noticed how the scrolling bar in office is like windows 98 instead of looking like in the XP theme? The same happens for messenger BTW)
They don't have a "single" widget implementation - they just have several widget implementations which LOOK THE SAME. In the same way, you don't need gtk OR qt - you want a way to make them look the same (the usability guidelines like menus etc are another matter). Implement the same theme for both desktops and make kde swwitch to a different look when you change the gnome theme and viceversa and you're done.
Really. I love Linux, have been a user since the early 90's, but some of the language conventions just vex me. "Stable" for instance. Yeah, yeah, I know what is meant by it in this context, but it never fails to make me contemplate what an "unstable" desktop would be like, and the vision has nothing to do with BSODs. "Stable" is for relationships and isotopes, and is valid only in the context that most examples in kind are given to falling apart. It's part of the "I was happy to hear you are no longer beating your wife!" phrase family that achieves a "positive" slant only by dragging the listener through scary negative spaces. Linux deserves better than this.
It also deserves better than having its major graphics package called "The Gimp," but that's a discussion for a different day...
Yes, it is.
Are we creating Free Software for the users? or the developers of commercial software? Personally, I'd rather have freedom, and a wide array of options than a wide array of commercial (and most probably non-free) software. I don't care if commercial software developers have a hard time fitting in. Some will make the effort, and some won't. Either way, I won't use their products if they restrict my freedom to do as I like with it.
All software doesn't need to be free. But conversely, all software shouldn't be non-free either. Each user should be able to choose from a wide variety of options to best suit their own needs. And in my opinion, Free Software cares more about the user than non-free software. What good would wide "linux" adoption be if all the "linux" users were saddled by hundreds of non-free software package licenses? I care about the adoption of software freedom, not your interpretation of "linux".
It sounds as though you're a software developer who hasn't got a real handle on the Free Software/Open-source development model, and therefore you're finding it hard to become rich and famous... Or perhaps you submitted a patch and have had it rejected, or something. Anyway, your OP seems like ax grinding.
Join in the fun, or use a commercial (non-free) OS. But don't try to reduce the choice that other's enjoy.
Because the Acid2 test is totally and completely worthless in pretty much every conceivable way? I can't even begin to imagine how it's managed to obtain so much currency - seriously, passing the Acid2 test doesn't make a browser better in any way shape or form, except that it now passes the Acid2 test!
Sigh... The problem with your reasoning is that you see "Linux" as one big project and a single community. That's not true at all. Hell, Linux is not even an operating system, it's just a fucking kernel, and all those projects you mention aren't part of Linux at all, it's just the most popular platform to run them on.
Projects like KDE and Gnome have different communities, and different developers and sponsors with different goals and ideas. You can't just "pick one". That doesn't make any sense.