Slashdot Mirror
KDE 4 Screenshots
carlmenezes writes "Screenshots of the upcoming and much talked about KDE 4 have appeared at Planet Diaz. They include screenshots of the control panel, system tray, tabbed views, music and mail views, plus a mockup or two. I don't know what the Gnome guys are up to, but KDE is starting to look seriously cool."
Can anyone tell if there are any actual screenshots in that bunch? I'm having a bit of trouble finding them.
I think that trying to judge a book by its cover is probably the worst way to determine the utility of a window manager. One ought not be swayed by high resolution backgrounds and pretty fractal images. Then, of course, we live in an age where Mr. Britney Spears has a hit album, so I don't really have much confidence in the general public's ability to discern quality products from glitter-encrusted dog shit.
Oh...Shiny!
BTW, the link is Schiavo.
Coral Cache for the curious:
have
appeared
(that first one was working for me, but I haven't been able to get the second to load yet)
--Nycto
- Link1
- Link1
I hope some dayNot when the website has been /.'d :).
Even without seeing the screenshots i can tell you that i care about the functionality/speed FIRST and the Looks Second. In my opinion KDE looks fine ATM they just need to refine it some more add some more interesting features and keep speeding it up.
KDE makes me want to log out of Linux, but that's just my opinion. Here's some of the better pictures from the forum post that seems unresponsive atm. Gogo google-cache.s 31jm.png
1 3ke.png
i .jpg
s etup7wv8km.jpg
n 1co.jpg
http://img460.imageshack.us/img460/2962/component
http://img460.imageshack.us/img460/707/possibleui
http://img460.imageshack.us/img460/5343/fake5bo6p
http://img460.imageshack.us/img460/2605/fakepanel
http://img460.imageshack.us/img460/8478/desktop1v
I don't need this, I've got a Master's Degree in folklore and mythology!
Since the Slashdot effect is working it's magic, here are (unfortunately only three) other screenshots: http://garret.wordpress.com/2006/01/30/kde4-screen shots/
Can you please be more specific? I have been using KDE for what is now more than 8 years and I don't have any (major) usability issues with it. Also, are you really talking about KDE (the desktop suite) or about KWin. The latter seems more likely as you are comparing it to a window manager. Well, surprise there, you can use KDE with any window manager you chose, you are not limited to KWin.
I'm talking about the complete environment, which is why I was comparing it to Gnome. KDE has more issues than I can get into right now, but if that's all you've been using for eight years, you probably don't see them. I think they're glaringly obvious if looked at from a non-KDE user perspective.
:-)
I'm posting because I'm genuinely interested in what is being done for the sake of usability. I do not wish to debate what the current problem are... I don't have time for that right now.
Lately times have been changing.
I still think GNOME is ahead in terms of "look and feel." KDE is usually touted as being eye candy, but you just can't convince me that GNOME doesn't look better. GNOME still feels comfortable to me, so what about it drove me to use KDE, my preferred desktop at the moment?
Functionality. Sometimes I get sick of looking at KDE, but I keep on using it because it does everything I like. I get to have windows that snap together as I resize them, a set of graphical tools that can actually be configured, a file manager that isn't almost useless, etc.
My largest complaint against GNOME right now is their philosophy that more features means less usability. Even if that were true, I don't see how that justifies dropping features to improve usability. Give me something slightly more challenging to use but does everything that I want.
I suddenly feel a strong urge to hug my Mac running OS X.
Well done.
Simply calling KDE a usability nightmare is not only inaccurate, but also is a clear indication that all you are looking for is to start a stupid Gnome vs. KDE flamewar.
Improving usability has been one of the major concerns in KDE developement for some time now, as you would know had you actually used KDE recently. Just look at all the KDE devs working together with openusability.org.
That said, there are of course enough areas where usability can and should be improved in KDE and from loosely following some developement discussions, making KDE more usable is one if not the major goal of the upcoming KDE 4 release.
The parent asked for you to be specific...You could have saved a whole lot time on your post if you just wrote one word: "No." :)
It's hard to know if there is anything being done about what you consider usability problems if you refuse to describe even one of these problems. People are supposed to divine what you percieve to be a problem?
FWIW, the current Gnome file manager is very usable. Just tick the box so it uses the browser and not the spatial mode. The browser is minimal, but is has all of the necessary features and works very well. As for configuration, both Gnome and KDE have the critical options in place. KDE just has a lot more that seem useless to me (focus under mouse, focus follows mouse, focus strictly follows mouse, etc). KDE also has lots of insane UI issues, where the taskbar preferences you get from right-clicking the taskbar aren't *exactly* the same as the ones you get when picking it from the "control panel", etc. It just doesn't feel polished at all. To be honest, it is fundamentally *bad*, and needs a complete redesign on the UI level.
Am I mistaken or is everybody posting KDE 4 screenshots all of a sudden? Also what I would like to know is how certain is it that these are screenshots of what is actually going to be in KDE 4 ( vanilla maybe ) and not some concept that a dev is working on? Seen a lot of the latter ones so it is a fair question. Other than that KDE 4 is shaping up to be a fairly large step up so I think I like it.
Of course not, but a list of things being done to address usability issues is what I'm looking for. It is okay if they're not *my* usability issues. I don't need or want a point by point rebuttal to my complains... I just want some inside information on what is to come.
Ok, those -DO- look sweet, but the actual graphics are really the least of my concerns for a window manager. I would rather see it be very fast an responsive, clean, easy to understand, and setup up intellegently so that even my mother or grandparents can use it.
Oh ya, let's hope they ditch the two part windowsish looking start menu thing. First thing I did in XP was disable that... Instead lets see smart toolbars / menu's / buttons / etc.
Scott Swezey
Well, you mentioned wmii as your alternative. :-)
During that 8 years, I have also used Gnome and Windows 95 to XP (at work). I always come back to my KDE which I find most productive.
Anyway, I don't want to go into a discussion of what KDE does or does not. I reacted because there are always loads of people who think KDE is a window manager (I now see you are not one of them) and then compare it to some obscure window manager (no offense meant) which might be super and lean but cannot be utilised by KDE (it would not suit its target audience).
Let me reassure you that there is a lot of work being currently done to address usability/stability/speed. AFAIK current status is that there is no KDE4, KDE3.5 is being ported to QT4, refactored, cleaned up... all on kdelibs level. In parallel people are preparing the interface, piling up ideas but KDE is far from reaching 4.0.
For the record, I'm very aware of what KDE is. I didn't mean to compare it to wmii -- I was saying sometimes I want a simple window manager, and sometimes I want a full environment (Gnome, KDE).
:-)
Wmii is great though. Try it.
If I see one more post about the /. effect on the site I will start screaming!
As for things like "focus follows mouse" and the like, I used to be an avid user of features like that. Not in KDE, but in GNOME and every other window manager. They can be quite useful, but I kind of got over that and settled into "click to focus." But whatever other people prefer is cool with me.
I think nautilus is pretty good, but for some reason I'm not very fond of using it. It seems to get in my way, and I don't like that feeling, but I do believe you when you say that I can change settings to fix it for my tastes. Of course, I still maintain that konqueror is a fine file manager in its own right.
Also, I find that you complaint about the configuration menus and whatnot valid. KDE takes a bit of customization, but I usually just sit down with a new install and go through the control panel until I'm satisfied. Most users shouldn't have to do this. So far the way the options are grouped together and how they present themselves in the UI is a bit of a mess. The latest incarnation of control panel suits my tastes less than the original idea, but hopefully they sort that out.
mirror mirror on net!
;)
I can't access this site yet!
Its hard for me reply because I don't see what you are driving at. Are you saying we should all run OSX?
I know a few Linux people who also own an Apple laptop. I recomended one to my sister as well. But people aren't abandoning Linux, unless they are non-technical people satisfied with an alternative.
I run NetBSD on my web servers because I can update the OS without having to totally rethink my own configuration. I run Ubuntu on my laptop because Gnome gives me a nice desktop, provided you don't want it to stay up for months. I run fvwm on fedora on my main workstation because it really does stay up for months.
An improved KDE will attract more people to *NIX. That's a good thing as far as I am concerned.
http://michaelsmith.id.au
let's be honest. You've probably heard the quote, "BSD is for people that love Unix; Linux is for people that hate Windows." The sad truth is, it's true. Many Linux users have no particular loyalty to Linux and would just as soon use something else. While we may protest that KDE or GNOME are better than OS X, the collective orgasm when Apple announced an OSx86 show that free (beer) beats free (speech).
More than a few people from my local LUG have installed a bootlegged copy of the OSx86 beta. One of our members showed off his toshiba laptop running OS X, which was quite popular, even among the old school unix types.
It doesn't really matter what features or eye candy KDE or GNOME add, because OS X does it better. Flame me if you will, but I've been using Linux and BSD for over a decade now. An OS is a tool, I want one that works, and I think most people feel the same way.
Wow, it's startling to me how many words you can use and say nothing.
First off, both KDE and GNOME will run in *BSD, making your distinction between users mostly irrelevent. Second, the links in this story are mockups of KDE. KDE. Not OS X. So let's break down the actual content of your moderated "insightful" post, shall we? It says (1) BSD and Linux have different users (2) your friends have installed OS X on x86. (3) OS X is better. (4) You want an OS that works...whatever that's supposed to mean. I guess we can distill your comments to something like "Hey, I like OS X better than KDE or GNOME!" Okay...
"Offtopic" isn't exactly right for your post. Neither is "troll". If only there were a "insipid", "bland", or "uninsightful".
Let's be honest. If there is any value to your post, it's that hopfully some of the mods can learn something about what not to mod up.
And even quicker.. they have disappeared.
What's that idiotic quote about Linux vs BSD users got to do with KDE? KDE is *not* a Linux desktop, it's a Unix deskopt (i.e. Linux, *BSD, AIX, Solaris etc.) I don't understand why *BSD users continuously whine about how Linux is 'trying to emulate Windows' when GNOME and KDE are *their* desktops, too.
By the way, I started with Linux in 1992. I started with Linux in 1992 because I loved Unix and wanted it on my PC.
Oolite: Elite-like game. For Mac, Linux and Windows
Anyone notice these are almost a month old?
While waiting for the smoldering heap of plastic at planetdiaz to recover, I looked a bit around, and noticed the new "Related Stories" widget. Is this filled in automatically? If it is, it will become seriously funny when a dupe shows up.
An OS is a tool, I want one that works, and I think most people feel the same way.
No, I want one that makes me feel cool, intelligent and fuels my eliteist, I-wanna-be-the-minority emo mind while being able to talk about words that people don't understand like GPL and FOSS while running programs with names that have no intuitive meaning like Gaim and Gimp and Evolution while showing off Glossy purdy Icons and Opac Docklets. If I just wanted one that works I'd stick with Windows 95.
I love humanity, it is people I hate
these images at BEST are mock ups
i talked to siego at SCaLE and he said there wont even be anything close to a beta until summer
You know Slashdot is american based when you read all the negative comments about KDE.
Over here in Germany it's enormously popular.
Must be some kind of clash of civilizations...
I'm using it, too, as I like the integration of apps and window manager. On the negative side, the high level of integration can be security problem as Windows shows.
-DBS
Sigs suck!
Yes.
Lesbian Nazi Hookers Abducted by UFOs and Forced Into Weight Loss Programs - -all next week on Town Talk.
Anyone know of an estimated (stable) release date?
It does seem that the photos disappeared as quick as they appeared.
Get your Unix fortune now!
There are so many KDE 4 screenshot archives about at the moment and none of the seem to share much similarity, so I'm not inclined to believe any of them are the real deal. Personally I think KDE still suffers from bloat (particularly options bloat) and could it please drop the K-this and K-that names - it's childish and unprofessional.
FWIW, I'm fine with an option for focus follows mouse. But what is focus strictly follows mouse? What is focus under mouse? There is no description of any kind, and it seems rather superfluous. Perhaps I'm missing something.
i hope they get rid of aRTS so i can have full duplex sound w/ non kde apps and kde won't continue to take /dev/dsp hostage.
How about the stupid kwallet and multiple email accounts? Add some account settings and kwallet doesn't know about it because you've closed it? Oops, can't get email for that account. Quit kwallet - can't get email for all the accounts. AND the passwords are all permanently gone. Nice "feature."
Or in kontact - try to change the folders so that it saves mail to another folder with the same name but somewhere else in the folder hierarchy - for example, instead if /accountname/inbox/sucker to /inbox/accountname, and the changes take effect .... sort of ... (if you don't delete the previous folder, you now end up with multiple copies of your mail ... and what's worse, those copies both end up in the same folder ... which is either the old one or the new one, at random.
Not as bad as the showstopper in ThunderTurd - manually select part of a message to quote, and if the quote goes all the way to the last character, and you do a Ctl+C for copy, it quits. Cute.
Or the KDE su dialog - checking the "keep password" box doesn't.
Or how, when you select one multi-screen method (stretch across screens) and try to change it to something else (dual screens) it craps out, over and over, for weeks at a time. Finally, give up, use gnome, check KDE every few weeks ... nope, still crapped ut, nope, nope ... hey it "fixed itself". Guess another bug got scotched.
These aren't big problems in the scheme of things, since we have options (unlike certain other people), and KDE has its uses. But you did ask for specifics ... so here are a few.
The real problem is it's slow ... even in comparison to Gnome.
It does? I have Mac Mini with OS X, and I have been using it for about a year now. I also have a tower-PC running KDE and Linux. And while OS X does have all kinds of nifty eye-candy, and I used it exclusively for few months (to find out what the noise was all about). But after that time I noticed that I simply enjoy using KDE more. It does what I want it to do, and it does it in a way I want it to be done. In OS X, I have to adjusts my workflow and expectations to meet the OS, in Linux and KDE it's the opposite. I can change the GUI and the system to meet my expectations.
OS X is a nice OS, no question about it. But it's not the Holy Grail of OS'es or GUI's (despite the fact that some people try to claim that it is just that). For me, OS X does NOT do it better. I do love the hardware, and I'm planning to install Linux on that Mini.
Lesbian Nazi Hookers Abducted by UFOs and Forced Into Weight Loss Programs - -all next week on Town Talk.
I don't know about KDE, but Gnome seems very much platform dependent to me (as does much modern open-source software, sadly). It runs perfectly on Linux, but on my Mac there are lots of problems.
Cleanly written stuff that doesn't make lots of assumptions about what platform it runs on wouldn't have that problem.
(I think KDE used to be more portable than Gnome, and would even run on *BSD when Gnome wouldn't. Hmm, maybe I should install KDE on my Mac to compare...)
.... gnome!
Am I the only one seeing odd similarities between KDE4 and Gnome screenshots? Well, isn't all that important to me, as I use KDE not because of its optics, but because its tech is so much better than Gnome's. I mean, kioslaves vs. gnomevfs, konqueror vs. nautilus etc. (Also, I don't know if a gnome counterpart to KParts exists). The underlying systems are much better integrated and designed. The UI itself is a matter of taste.
This sig does not contain any SCO code.
I hate to rain on your parade guys, but these are NOT "screenshots" of KDE4, and I have no idea why the admin of those forums (who posted the pictures) claims that they are. These pictures are mockups. Not screenshots but mockups. Many people have ideas what KDE could look like, and many of them have created mockups to demosntrate their ideas. There are many KDE-related forums/websites that are full of such mockups.
There are no interesting KDE4-screenshots to show because there's nothing to show really. The work on KDE4 is going on at the library-level at the moment. The actual GUI (if you could get it work that is) would propably be almost identical to KDE3.5.
Move along, nothing to see here.
Lesbian Nazi Hookers Abducted by UFOs and Forced Into Weight Loss Programs - -all next week on Town Talk.
KDE 4 will probably be released in the end of 2006 or beguining of 2007. But it could take even a bit more time!
;-). (But that's just my opinion/feeling)
So please people don't get confused. There's yet no single KDE 4 screenshot at all, because they're still working in the base libs which are getting ported to Qt 4 and developed. All those screenshots are just MOCKUPS from KDE users who want to contribute to the brainstorm...
If you want to see KDE 4 screenshots, keep an eye on dot.kde.org and who knowns, maybe around summer you will see something interesting
I believe it's actually an old unix standard, rather a KDE specific thing. As I understand it, the implementation is as follows:
focus follows mouse - window focus is whichever window the mouse touched last, but can be 'stolen' by explicit actions such as opening new windows, popups etc (if you launch a shortcut etc)
focus under mouse - window focus is whichever window the mouse touched last, and cannot be stolen.
focus strictly under mouse - window focus is whichever window the mouse is hovering over, and if the mouse is not touching a window, no window has focus.
Remember kids, it's all fun and games until someone commits wholesale galactic genocide.
But in the first release after the switch, they wouldn't even give you that tickbox.
The browser is minimal,
Erm, no it isn't. It's just as slow and bloated as the KDE one.
KDE just has a lot more that seem useless to me (focus under mouse, focus follows mouse, focus strictly follows mouse, etc).
Personally I couldn't live without the ability to switch to focus under mouse. There are options that seem useless to me, but I'm sure they're vital to others. I'd rather have ten options I'm only going to use one of than not have the option I want.
KDE also has lots of insane UI issues, where the taskbar preferences you get from right-clicking the taskbar aren't *exactly* the same as the ones you get when picking it from the "control panel", etc.
I've never experienced anything like this.
I am trolling
I've installed Kubuntu on the powerbook I'm using and it just works. To be honest, OS X works also :-)
"People who are willing to sacrifice essential freedoms for security deserve neither freedom nor security."
B F
I like kde behavior on kde the best but change some colors to keramic white. The K application with a SERIOUS issue now is K3B . The cdrdao on some distributions does not burn data dvd+rw 's that others can read while drawing data from my vfat ie w98 partition . Some distributions are shipping final versions where the k3b does not tell you this feature is missing - look for older versions with the burn button in the lower left corner - the older versions are good . And this problem keeps showing up on newer distributions .
FWIW, focus follows mouse, focus under mouse are available under KDE, in Control Panel, Window Behavour, Focus. Sorry if you already know that, but your post was a little unclear as to whether you just did't use it KDE, or didn't think KDE had it....
I'm with you on KDE. Personally, konqueror is the 'killer app' for me; being able to have an sftp tab, samba share, local file and several browser tabs open in one window really rocks, and something I really miss in my day job on Windows.
Should be interesting to see what happens with KDE 4, i believe tidying up the control panel and making it a bit more sane (without removing functionality) is a primary goal.
Remember kids, it's all fun and games until someone commits wholesale galactic genocide.
Gnome does run fine in any *BSD* with a "standards-compilance" X server. That of course means, that the Apple X11 will not be able to run it, not probably KDE. But FreeBSD, or OpenBSD runing the stock xorg do run gnome flawlessly.
If you choose to use a closed-source BSD with a propietary non standard X server, it's not BSDs or Gnome fault, but Apple's.
Actually I wasn't talking about Linux on my Mac (but I've successfully tried the Ubuntu Live CD on my mini), but about Darwinports running directly side-by-side with other Mac applications.
;)
It's just cool when your full-screen X11 environment is only a click away
With respect I'd much rather see them make things like that optional. For two reasons. Firstly someone who is trying something other than Windows for the first time might like it, or find it more comfortable, and that's no bad thing if it helps people migrate (I totally agree with your 'mother can use it' comment). Secondly, as long as it doesn't turn into bloatware, why not have choice rather than the enforced views of what other people think we should be looking at. Calling for stuff to be ditched really just pushes that agenda.
The point is, a lot of people are going to be very turned on by Vista/Aero Glass, simply because it looks nice. If moving to an OS like Linux means downgrading your aesthetics, it's just another thing that's going to stop it becoming more mainstream.
Keep on dreaming, USA-twat.
It's not treated as premium beer in most of europe, and certainly not in countries where they DO have taste. In fact, Belgium, the quality-beer country par exellence, rightfully despises it!
It's been said before, but Gnome would do well to at least make available easy access to more advanced tweakability via an "expert" mode toggle (which is always-on in KDE).
e.g. To make best use of screen realestate in KDE, I set my kicker panel to "allow other windows to cover it", and to "raise when the pointer hits the bottom of the screen" -- something which isn't even possible in Gnome, afaik.
Power to the Peaceful
http://img399.imageshack.us/img399/8529/1079108511 1010841086108213du.png. png
http://img460.imageshack.us/img460/1358/screen8qt
Not that exiting yet.
The cdrdao on some distributions does not burn data dvd+rw 's that others can read while drawing data from my vfat ie w98 partition .
eh? My mother language is not English, so please can you explain? Do you mean something like "if I burn a data dvd+rw with data read from a vfat partition, the resulting dvd+rw won't be readable by other operating systems?"
And, is it a K3b or a cdrdao issue?
-- Patent no.123456: A way to personalize
Don't get me wrong I don't hate KDE, and I don't personally care what is more open or that one has a more restrictive license or whatnot, all I care is to get my job done. One of the biggest problems that prevented me to get the job done, was believe or not, too many options. I tried once to change some window behavior and it took me such a long time to find the right submenu in the Kontrol and try to sift through help files that I eventually gave up. That happened other times with KDE itself and/or other KDE application. According to UI best practices, the configuration options should be kept at minimum. There is a trade-off between configuration power and usability.
Actually if you ask me, I think that the best/more functional/easier to learn interface is that of Mac OS X. Apple has invested more into the usability research than any other company and it payed off. I think it is mainly because of it, that it managed to sell underpowered and overpriced machines (when compared MFlop for MFlop and $ for $) for quite a long time now. On the Linux desktop side, I think GNOME is closer conceptually (not visually perhaps) to OS X than KDE is, and that I why I choose GNOME.
So it's sad that open source software does something only fairly well that Windows or OSX software doesn't do at all?
www.planetdiaz.com @ coral cache
Well not if you're looking for actual screenshots.
These mock ups and their kind have been appearing on kde-artists.org for months now and are the work of artists trying to concenptualise ideas the devs could be working on.
AFAIK the developers haven't gotten up to doing anything remotely visual for KDE4 yet and are still working on the underpinning libraries.
L.
For me, OS X does NOT do it better.
Better than what?
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
Um, no. You miss the point. What is horrible about Windows, aside from the GUI, is what is under the GUI... So basically the whole thing. When you use Windows you have no *choice* about what Window manager to use. When you use Linux (or whatever) you have *choice*. If KDE ever emulated Windows too much, I'd switch too something else. I seriously dislike the Windows desktop.
Choice is something I hate to be without, and it is for exactly this reason that I left MS a long time ago. Its their way or the highway.
I think the fact that KDE even exists means that Gnome shouldn't try to be more "advanced" (bloated).
So people like the advanced options, the glimmer and the numerous widgets. Those people pick KDE. Some people just a basic, day-to-day desktop environment. Those people pick Gnome.
The availability of both seems ideal to me.
I totally agree. Only thing interesting in these is that they're open source. They look like OSX / windows, they act like OSX / windows: there's no innovation there besides the openness of the source code. Everything is a copy of something that already exists. In fact, it amuses me how Linux is _now_ starting to look like windows xp. Only a couple of years late. Still, it's good to have the sources available if you need some stuff for your own ideas, etc.
You can spend a couple of bucks on your OS or spend hours on compiling it, finding & fixing the bugs. I have an illusion of actually having a life, so I'll settle for my OS to be precompiled and worked on by people other than me.
And here are some GNOME mockups for those who prefer it:
8 /
http://www.flickr.com/photos/gamehack/sets/150665
http://desplesdadotcom.nfshost.com/?p=75
JACK (Jack Audio Connection Kit) is the most lowest latency audio mixer out there. DMIX isn't there yet with latency issues (especially when you're burning a CD, your MP3 player ends up sounding choppy.)
If we can get Firefox (last holdovers) to support Jack Daemon, then my audio platform is sweet and complete.
Nothing like multiple channels being independently mixed using a patch panel.
When I want my KDE artsd-fartsdy sound daemon on LOW, I don't want MPLAYER volume slider to suppress KDE sound or FSCK the other application sound level.
Each application SHOULD have their own volume settings. Its the only way to deal with everyone's gripes (personal preferences).
BOOOM! YOU GOT MAIL (Argh!)
As many have said, I think simpler is better. Ideally I would like to have a switch to switch to expert mode if I need to, but for now I'll just stick with GNOME. Adding more visual bling (WOW transparent rotated 3d windows with alpha channels and SVG and stuff and stuff) to KDE is not going to make it more appealing to me personally.
These are good-looking shots, but as they are only mock-ups it's a moot point as to what the final dish will turn out to be like.
Half the posts on this thread are redundant. KDE is entirely voluntary: no one has to run it. If it doesn't do what you want, use another desktop environment, or no desktop environment. On Linux at least, we are spoiled for choice in this respect.
In addition, some of the comments about eye candy are misplaced. Good design is extremely important: good design helps me do what I want to do with elegance and simplicity but it is never intrusive. If good design is what the KDE4 team are after, which I think they are, then kudos to them. Criticizing something because it has "pretty colours" is just showing off. Plenty of folks want to run a modern, full-up Linux desktop and leave the 1970s where they belong - in the past.
Las qué passoun
tournoun pas maï
You're the exception.
I work with people who work with Linux all day. About 85% of us use OS X as our OS of choice. There's still just too much fray in KDE or Gnome to consider them.
When I get home, the last thing I want is to figure out why my network card isn't working after the latest upgrade. I'm not interested in finding out that I need to upgrade 15 different libraries before I can upgrade KDE--because I've been doing it all day long. I just want to get on my computer and do what I've got to do. That's the difference. "Customization" usually means petty UI skins, and as much as I've used KDE I've never seen much that was really customizable that wasn't customizable in OS X (except UI skins).
Don't get me wrong KDE is awesome. Believe me, if KDE provided everything that OS X does, I'd be there in a heartbeat. But it's not about a pretty GUI, it's about the fact that everything "just works." I don't need to figure out how to cut and paste out of this particular application, or the quirks of any individual application, for that matter; that's because they all work the same. Maybe that's not a boon to you, but I just want to get stuff done. I don't have time anymore to screw around with quirks and idiosyncrasies of a desktop environment that is just incomplete.
Notes From Under *nix: blas.phemo.us
...you are not alone!
The real problem is it's slow ... even in comparison to Gnome.
:-).
I might have took you somewhat seriously. Until you came up with this
that free (beer) beats free (speech).
I have to disagree with you. It has been my experience that free beer when consumed in prodigious quantities tends to encourage free speech.
Only to idiots, are orders laws.
-- Henning von Tresckow
I don't know what the Gnome guys are up to
I suspect they don't either.
"The real problem is it's slow"
No, I think the real problem, is all those stupid sound effects. Enough with that already. They suck.
Uhm, sorry to tell you that, but you are wrong. KDE *is* a linux desktop, because it works with linux.(So it is a BSD desktop, MS Windows desktop etc.)
In my experience (on my mini-mac) it not quite as rosy as this... I've had problems mounting windows shares where the share doesn't appear in the finder but is listed when you run the mount command in the terminal... A reboot fixed the problem, but still. I also dislike the fact that when you run the software update, when it completes the only choice you get is shutdown or reboot, no reboot later. I want to reboot when it's convenient for me, not the mac, and I hate odd windows floating around on the desktop, while I work. I also find the finder to be unresponsive.
To be honest, sitting here working in KDE I cannot think of a must have feature of OS X that I miss when using linux/kde.
So for me, OS X is nice, but it doens't 'just work'. It does some things well, it does some things not so well.
oops...
At least you can turn them off. But there isn't ANY way to turn off the idiotic gnome file dialogs, even when running gtk apps in another window manager.
The Farewell Tour II
I think you need to turn on the Joliet file settings...
Bob
Listen to my latest album here
Am I? What makes you think that? In that case my wife is an exception as well. She has been using the Mac more than I have, and she's getting fed up with it as well.
So, because your personal experience says something, it must be universally true?
Um, no it doesn't. Sure, you can change the icons, style and the like, but it can go a lot deeper than that.
Really? Can you change the number of virtual desktops in OS X? Can you get rid of the menubar on top? Can you replace the Dock with something better? No, no and no.
Well, I don't really care what you decide to do. I'm not trying to say that everyone will love KDE or Linux. There are personal tastes and needs. Some like KDE, others like GNOME, while some others prefer OS X. What I AM disputing is the claim that "Everything KDE does, OS X does better. Period. End of discussion". For lots of people OS X simply does not cut it. I tried it out, and it simply did not work the way I wanted it to work. If it works for you, great. But just because it works for you, does not meant that it's universally superior to everything else.
Lesbian Nazi Hookers Abducted by UFOs and Forced Into Weight Loss Programs - -all next week on Town Talk.
...And disappeared again.
http://slashdot.su/
That sound was the sound of you totally missing the point.
Oolite: Elite-like game. For Mac, Linux and Windows
Gnome runs just fine on Solaris (the first time I used Gnome, it was on Solaris). It isn't particularly platform dependent. It even runs on Windows. I've not really used it on my Mac (why would I bother, the OS X desktop is just fine).
I've run KDE on OpenBSD as well as Linux. It seems to run just as well on OpenBSD.
Oolite: Elite-like game. For Mac, Linux and Windows
I have Mac Mini with OS X, and I have been using it for about a year now. I also have a tower-PC running KDE and Linux.
Just curious, but have you been trying out OS X's implementation of X11 to run applications remotely? I mean with the application running on the Linux box, using your Mini's GUI as a front-end. From what I've read on the net, I was under the impression that X11 on OS X can't handle it, but I'm really not too sure about that. I may have completely misinterpreted what I read. I'm very inexperienced with X servers and I've found all the information confusing.
I have a PowerBook and a Linux box, and I want to use the Linux box as a network appliance, running applications on it through my PowerBook's GUI. However I can't seem to find any clear instructions on the net on how to do so. I have found instructions on how to run KDE on OS X in a fixed-size window. I suppose that would allow KDE on OS X to work as an X server, with remote applications running within the Xnest window. But I would prefer to be able to take advantage of the entire OS X desktop for remote applications rather than have them isolated within a window.
But what is really important is what is under the hood.. Look and feel is only part of the importance of KDE. It can look as pretty as a rose, but if its garbage underneath it wont matter much. ( not that it is garbage underneath, just making a point )
---- Booth was a patriot ----
AFAIK Apple's X11 is a fork of XFree86, and of course it's standards compliant and runs all X apps flawlessly. But that doesn't prevent Linux apps from running less than optimally on BSD. A few years ago there wasn't even Gnome for OpenBSD, and on the Mac it doesn't run too well: system monitor doesn't show anything, and other problems.
It has nothing to do with X11, i.e. the graphics layer, but with how deeply reliant Gnome is on the specific operating system.
I don't know about what proprietary X stuff you're talking or about what closed source BSD. Apple's BSD core is all open source, and has been for many years. The Aqua GUI and the Cocoa framework are proprietary, but these have nothing at all to do with X11 or the Unix base.
On Windows? Wow.
I only remember that some years ago there was no Gnome on OpenBSD, and KDE didn't run too well; but at least it did. By now I'm sure that things are much better, and even Gnome works to some degree on the BSDs.
Of course the Mac isn't too well supported, because as you say the native GUI is good. But when I'm working with X apps sometimes, I'm annoyed by the Quartz WM, so I prefer to run it as a native full-screen X environment.
No. You just missed the point of my reply. You tried to proof your point of view with wrong assumptions. That just makes no sense at all.
Could you be more specific? What does open source do well? What don't Windows or the Mac do at all?
My post was - if you read it - about me being able to run a full Unix/X11 environment right there on my Mac, with one click. If I want back to the Mac GUI, it's just another keypress.
Unlike Linux, the Mac OS supports all hardware. If Gnome doesn't fully run on the Mac, that's as I already mentioned, due to its reliance on Linuxness of the system. Other software runs on the Mac without any problems; because it's *100% portable*. Unpack and compile, that's it.
but let's be honest. "You've probably heard the quote, "BSD is for people that love Unix; Linux is for people that hate Windows."
Okay, I'm being honest. I actually never have heard that before. I hate Windows and MS because my first computer came with Windows ME and I feel that I was totally screwed. If I'd wanted a Mac I'd have gotten one.
"Many Linux users have no particular loyalty to Linux and would just as soon use something else. "
Funny, but I've been thinking the exact opposite, that too many of them are rather blindly loyal to their distro of choice. Mepis retail will require a serial number to update soon, for example, and the serial number is tied to the MAC address of your computer. This means that you'll have to fill out a form to update if you switch computers and that they can refuse to allow you uto update. It also means that you can only use your copy on one machine; even Linspire lets you use one copy on up to 5 computers in your home IIRC. We *nix users have been telling people for years that you don't have to put with this kind of treatment from MS but the Mepis folks are loyal enough to think this is a good idea for Mepis for some reason, even though Mepis has been known for some time as having problems with bug-squashing. As I posted at Distrowatch, why bother with this when there are other distros that are more stable and free? But the Mepis people are loyal.
Much the same can be said for the Libranet people; Libranet was more stable but it was also expensive, and the only original code the developers came up with they've refused to share with the Linux community even though their product was over 90% based on Debian's GPL code. Now that Libranet has been discontinued the adminmenu has remained closed-source. Why the lead developer's son refused to share with the community their product was based on, I don't know. But the Libranet users have remained quite loyal to them. And don't get me started about Mandriva.
"More than a few people from my local LUG have installed a bootlegged copy of the OSx86 beta. One of our members showed off his toshiba laptop running OS X, which was quite popular, even among the old school unix types."
Why they bother is beyond me. Oh wait, I do know - bragging rights. That's what a MAC is apparently all about as Apple fanboys spend so much time bragging on how great it is. One would think if it was so perfectly functioal they'd spend more time using it. "Plus I have a system that everyone envies!" was one post I read at Digg. C'mon, admit it- we all know that's really why people want a Mac.
"While we may protest that KDE or GNOME are better than OS X, the collective orgasm when Apple announced an OSx86 show that free (beer) beats free (speech)"
Really? I don't remember having an orgasm over OSX. I have had plenty of orgasms since it was released, but my thoughts at the time had nothing to with OSX (or even computers, for that matter). The media and people at Digg have been fawning over it and they seem to think that everyone in the world wants a Mac. They're wrong; give me a Mac and I'll sell it and use the money to upgrade my AMD running Linux, thank you very much.
"It doesn't really matter what features or eye candy KDE or GNOME add, because OS X does it better. "
I disagree. I don't like OSX's cluttered UI and I don't like vendor lock-in. With KDE I can remove the icons and have everything on auto-hide if I want to. And sometimes I do; if I wanted all this junk on my dekstop why would I bother using a wallpaer? Plus it's convenient to get everything out of my way when I'm multi-tasking. Apple has a lot of great eye-candy if you don't mind it being in your way, but I do mind. And when I want eye candy KDE has plenty enough of it to satisfy me. Plus I want freedom of choice, not what Apple chooses for me. Kde lets me choose when I wan the eye candy, how I want it to look, but only when I want it.
I dream of a better world... one in which chickens can cross roads without their motives being questioned.
You're missing Shift+F1 the universal way to get context sensitive help in KDE. At least in 3.5 the resulting tooltip should answer all your questions =)
Don't think of it as a flame---it's more like an argument that does 3d6 fire damage
I'm another. I prefer KDE over GNOME, OS X and XP. Given that KDE is one of the largest open source projects in active development, I suspect myself and the grandparent poster aren't alone in prefer KDE over the alternatives.
For me to hear the sound effects, I'd have to first bother to configure aRTS. Frankly, I just can't be fucking arsed; where are all the kick ass media players for KDE that need aRTS? There arn't any. XMMS, mplayer and RealPlayer can all use ALSA directly, so bollocks to mucking about with yet another daemon.
2006: The year of Linux on the desktop! *cough*
Let's draw some KDE cartoons!
...is that you claim people drink Budweiser in the land of the Reinheitsgebot.
Victims of 9/11: <3000. Traffic in the US: >30,000/y
No matter what anyone who is a big fan of open source development says, KDE and Gnome will continue to look half-baked for eternity. The big reason for that is that no decent artist worth his paycheck is ever going to bother to work in a Unix environment for free. The very idea is insipid. Gnome will continue to be this dark world where geeks have Matrix themed desktops, and KDE will continue to look like it was made from cheap plastic. Microsoft can afford to make the artists sell their souls, and the Apple world just snaps their fingers to get the best art in the world. The stuff that makes up Linux desktop GUIs is always going to be made by the second-hand artist who is not good enough to work for MS or Apple. Thus, the desktops are doomed to mediocrity.
okay kde developers log this:
A great deal of kde users are heavy shell users (xterm,konsole,whatever)
I wish some kind of terminal apps could be held as a widget on the desktop showing
the actual text being displayed in the terminal (shrunk but visible and legible) and upon clicking or roll-over restores itself.
And here's the kick-ass feature.
a F-key expose that gives you all your terminals with the actual text displayed in real time and a history scroll bar that scrolls the history a typed commands not the displayed text. You roll over the terminals on expose and the take over the whole screen for 1 second and if you keep moving the mouse, returns to expose, if you stop moving the mouse the terminal remains in full-screen mode, if you right-click the terminal stays in full-screen mode. You press F-key and return to expose.
wait wait wait, when you select expose, the terminals are displayed and take over the whole screen from left to right top bottom in chronological last-selected time (like alt-tab) and you press anoter F-key and all terminals show the last 10 commands executed with the return text ALL IN SLOW MOTION!!
Now you picture this: You arrive at 9 AM with your coffee and your bagel all grogy, sit in front of your screen, log-in, press terminal expose, press history and voila! you get to see a little movie of all the crap you were doing the night before..kewl eh?
You got all that!! Now go tiger! go!
- these are not the droids you are looking for -
"I might have took you somewhat seriously. Until you came up with this :-)."
Actually, his comment is quite accurate. KDE is much slower than Gnome on every system I've ever tried it on. I know this may come as a shock, but it's the most bloated and cluttered window manager around by far. Even the developers have admitted that the interface is far too cluttered and they've made that a prime focus for KDE 4.
Have you ever even looked at the KDE codebase and compared it to that of Gnome? Or are you just making assumptions based on what a small subset of KDE developers have told you? I would bet the latter.
XGL and Compiz
(Yes, I know XGL is not Gnome specific, but a lot of the "Gnome guys" have been working on it, and the demos show the Compiz window manager working with Gnome.)
All that we see or seem is but a dream within a dream.
This is good news for Linux/BSD people out there, but wait until Enlightenment E17 is released! E17 WILL WIPE THE FLOOR WITH OS X! Apple fanboy faggots will never recover.
How dare you imply that I'm not a lord of the universe? Elitist scum!
(deem enclsing sarcasm tags implied)
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
Well, sure that Apple X11 is an XFree fork, but that's all.
It don't run all X apps flawlessly (gnome,xscreensaver ?), not uses the same rendering subsystem.
The apple X11 implementation is as closed source as it can be. Some "improvements" (the bulk of them apple says) have been opened and donated to XFree, but some other are "closed". The "source code" that they offer you to download lacks the window manager and some libs (where the "dark stuff" happens).
But if you don't believe me, just try it. Install xorg or some recen XFree package and run gnome. Even the commercial XDarwin. See the difference?
...but the main images are served from a MySQL database, which, big surprise, has been smashed flat by the unexpected and overwhelming load. I'm impressed that it even manages to produce a good error message. (-:
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
I want my features to be clean and easy to use though...
The real problem is it's slow ... even in comparison to Gnome.
I just don't believe that anymore. Gnome has become a memory and CPU pig: There're reasons why gnome 2.13 has so many performance improvements. KDE used to be a memory pig, but then gnome catched up and their memory usage went trough the roof. By the way, porting applications to QT4 (no functionality) improves the memory usage percentages with double-digit numbers, so there's a chance that KDE 4 eats less memory
The top post also asked "I don't know what the Gnome guys are up to". I wish to know that aswell. KDE is actively developing KDE 4 but Gnome 3 doesn't exist at all today. Some Gnome developers seem to think that gnome 3 shouldn't be developed because gnome 2 is already feature complete and that doing small improvements which don't break compatibility it's a beter option. That sounds good, but I'd say it looks scary: KDE people is actively developing a KDE version which will rock in many ways and Gnome doesn't seem to have nothing to compete against it, except that Fedora now includes mono and more C# apps can be developed. Noveel seem to be the one place where cool things are being done with gnome.
This terminology seems a bit confusing to me, especially the difference between "follows" and "strictly follows"
I'd imagine they're tearing out yet more useful functionality and burying yet more useful options in their pathologically misguided quest for "usability".
Actually, his comment is quite accurate. KDE is much slower than Gnome on every system I've ever tried it on.
ROTFL.
I know this may come as a shock, but it's the most bloated and cluttered window manager around by far. Even the developers have admitted that the interface is far too cluttered and they've made that a prime focus for KDE 4.
And how is that related to speed? That's an accusation that is always levelled from Gnome people every single time. Ordinary users (without a desktop preference) don't care about accusations of clutter, even when they use both. They just simply like KDE. Can it be improved? Yes, of course. Goodness, I really wonder what you're going to have to complain about with KDE in the future.
Have you ever even looked at the KDE codebase and compared it to that of Gnome?
Hmmm, and how would you get an idea of speed of the desktops from the codebases themselves, apart from the fact that KDE actually has an infrastructure and architecturally is much neater? It actually has an architecture.
http://www.planetdiaz.com.nyud.net:8090/forums/ind ex.php?showtopic=141
While out-of-the-box KDE installs do not fit my 1024x768 laptop screen, I stay with GNOME (this is especially the case, if I use Russian language interface, where words are longer, but the same happens even with English).
While KDE's keyboard-layout switching applet just does not work for a number of releases (it does not recognize shortcuts for switching layouts), I stay with GNOME or modify my xorg.conf.
I try fresh KDE in average once a year. KDE remains unusable. This is what they should be working on.
I think nautilus is pretty good, but for some reason I'm not very fond of using it. It seems to get in my way, and I don't like that feeling, but I do believe you when you say that I can change settings to fix it for my tastes.
/usr/share/pixmaps or a directory with your digital camera photos, it's really "fun" and "usable". And the image formats that will be previewed are the ones supported by the pixbuf GTK plugins: only the formats in in /usr/lib/gtk-2.0/2.x.0/loaders/*. Forget about things that have sense, for example video thumbnails, something that has a LOT of sense if you're going to open a video file in a video editing program.
.swfs with totem-gstreamer + libswf but the decided to go with this completely useless file selector. Compare it with the KDE file selector, where I even can watch the video. Great things like kparts make the desktop feel different. That image is from a page I wrote about "why KDE rocks"
In my case it's not the file manager, but the file chooser. Gnome developers decided to develop the GTK file chooser. That's nice, but gnome has many other needs that gtk doesn't. Using the file chooser is PAINFUL. You just have the name, and the "modified" field and a list of favourite locations. You can't even order things by SIZE.
You don't have different "views" at all in fact. You can't get a view where all the images are show a small thumbnail instead of a meaningless icon. You have to select EVERY file to get a preview at one side - try that in
The funny thing is that nautilus can do all what your need and will give you even thumbnails of videos and even of some
When on X use the middle mouse button.
Each environment has problems - gconf and the single user non-networked mentality behind it (try moving your home directory guys - no window manager on startup and no way to edit the settings to get it back) gets me with gnome, but people are working on fixing that, as with problems in KDE.
Most people don't know they can use a different window manager (fluxbox, enlightenment etc) with gnome and KDE apps and panels -that can fix a lot of the speed problems.
fish rocks.
smash.
I run: Windows, OS X, Linux, FreeBSD. Just because you have a hammer, doesn't mean everything is a nail.
Dont Worry Build KDE inside of OS X. You can say free 'beer' v. free 'speech' all you want. I like my iApps nothing beats the apple 'Pro' apps (like Final Cut Pro and such) but when I have to choose between 'Warez (MS Office \Adobe CS and Starry Night ) and running KDE concurrently with OSX the answer is simple.
Nobody is forcing anyone to not run a Linux Desktop just follow a basic Mac idea. 'I use it because it works' or 'It just gets out of my way and lets me get the job done' KDE inside of OS X rawks!
--Shaddup and support your local PBS station Plan for it
Don't forget this one: It's a doozy too... Can't display Big5 and GB characters sets at the same time.
This means you can't read chinese from the mainland and HK or TW with the same settings. Want to read you aunts blog in TW in Big5 change the settings, then want to read the latest economic news from the PRC and you have to go in twidle your settings back. This is especially VERY annoying when you are getting emails from different people who use the different encodings.
Apparently this is a big in QT because someone just decided that "Chinese" was all the same so having Big5 selected as your preference automatically wipes out GB and vice versa. I don't remember the exact detail since I haven't used KDE in a long time due to this bug, and yes I check occasionally to see if it's fixed (it isn't) so I'm stuck with gnome. Gnome isn't so fantastic but since I can actually read my email with it that means it's what I'm going to use.
When on X use the middle mouse button.
I hate using the mouse. Period. Mice are for wimps (pardon the pun :-)
You know, there is no winning this argument. If Gnome or KDE applications follow the UI design standards of Windows or OSX, they are damned for "not being innovative". If they *don't* follow the Windows/OSX way of doing things, they are damned for being "too unfamiliar" or "Joe Sixpack will never understand it". In the end, KDE/Gnome/Linux, etc. simply are what they are: an alternative. In some cases superior, short of the mark in others. The truly important thing is that you are not forced to use either one -- just pick the one you like and get back to work.
While I like using my iBook (mostly because all the harware works flawlessly and it has good battery life and it was a fairly cheap laptop), I too find my KDE workstation to be *way* more comfortable to use than the Mac (or Windows although I can't say I use it beyond repairing it for friends every now and then).
The virtual desktops, the KIOslaves and the sloppy focus are a few examples that make life much easier. The Mac may have a few more polished gadgets but I certainly miss my Linux box when I'm stuck with it.
May contain traces of nut.
Made from the freshest electrons.
The real problem is it's slow ... even in comparison to Gnome.
I'm not sure about that. I used KDE heavily up until the 3.5 release (I now use Enlightenment DR17 + Gnome), but KDE has always felt so much faster. Windows seem to open faster, when I hit Alt-F2 the dialog opens instantly, when I click a menu I don't have to watch it draw itself, etc. I kept trying Gnome but always ended up frustrated with it until I replaced Metacity with Enlightenment (before switching to Gnome I was using just Enlightenment). Using the Gnome parts still feel sluggish, though (OpenSUSE 10 and Fedora Core 4).
"It ain't a war against drugs.it's a war against personal freedom" --Bill Hicks
Strictly follows means that window under mouse is always focused, in other words, you cannot use the keyboard to change focus at all (aside from warping the pointer, which IMO sucks since the physical mouse cannot be moved)
This is the classic mwm, fvwm behavior.
A better way is to change the focus only when the mouse actually moves to another window. This allows you to use the keyboard normally.
(I use click-to-focus only)
I've been a huge GNOME fan in the past, I hated KDE every time I used it for quite some time. I also was never too happy with some of the developers' blatant disregard for licensing problems, which didn't go away until the controversy essentially forced TrollTech to release a GPL-licensed version of Qt so that the only major application using their toolkit could be used legally.
Unfortunately, thanks to the likes of idiots like Havoc Pennington who claim to be gods of user interface design but don't actually have ANY real credentials in terms of human interface design, and obtain their rationales from other sources who have no actual credentials in the area of human interface design, GNOME has become completely unusuable for me. I simply can't live without basic productivity features such as edge flipping. After years of people bitching about the GNOME file selection dialog, what did the GNOME devs do? They made it WORSE. How can anyone justify having to hit control-L to type in a file path in the name of usability? Yet that is what they did - in order to actually use the new GNOME file dialog, you need to hit a key combination that is basically undocumented.
So I've switched to KDE. It's far less polished than GNOME and has quite a few more bugs, but it isn't as buggy as the workarounds needed to get decent usability out of GNOME such as brightside (which crashed on a regular basis but was the only way to get edge flipping to work reasonably well in GNOME. The day GNOME changes broke brightside is the day I switched to KDE.)
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
Hang on a minute! It looks like Windows! That can't be right -- all those free software folk hate Windows, don't they? Surely they wouldn't just be copying the Windows L&F?
Ceterum censeo subscriptionem esse delendam.
Agreed. At least it's easy to fix, though:
Open Kcontrol, expand "Sound and Multimedia", click on "System Notifications", click the "Apply to all applications" checkbox, and click on the "Turn Off All" button. Problem solved. Or just kill the PoS Arts.
"It ain't a war against drugs.it's a war against personal freedom" --Bill Hicks
I used KDE for years before the dual-monitor fiasco ... switched to Gnome, and was surprised that I can have a ton of stuff open and it works much better than KDE did ... heck, I even stopped ranting against the UI in the GIMP and the "backwards" placement of the dialg box buttons ...
The BIGGEST change when switching to Gnome - I no longer have to close firefox every 6 hours or so to reclaim memory. Now I'm not knocking KDE - even with its weirdnes, I' still using Kmail to poll 11 email accounts every few minutes.
i speak for myself and those who like what i say.
In my sort-of-usergroup , lots of people, me included have Apple laptops. The reason is simply that we wanted a Unixy laptop that worked, had decent battery life and was cheap. Unfortunately getting everything to work with Linux on a laptop can often be an exercise in frustration, especially since it's not easy to know beforehand which version of each component you're going to get.
When I chatted with the other "apple users" during our latest reunion, nobody cared much about the Apple OS. The consensus was that everyone would switch back to a proper system the minute they felt laptop support was decent enough.
And yes, I know you can more or less get a laptop to work in Linux. However it's not seamless as it should be. You should be able to close it and let it go to sleep, you should have proper battery management, etc. Currently while you can sometimes get these to work, it's typically not worth the hassle. We no longer have weeks to spend on getting a piece of kit to work (and I know you can get lucky and have it work out of the box, it's not what usually happens though).
May contain traces of nut.
Made from the freshest electrons.
No intuitive meaning.. How much more intuitive do you want? :-) {Yes that's a joke} )
GAIM = Gay Ass Instant Messaging.
GIMP = Good Image Manipulation Program
Evolution = A step up the ladder from it's nearest mail competitor.(Yes it doesn't really mean e-mail/calendar, but neither does Outlook.. Would be nicer if it was named Kmail, but that was taken by an evolutionary dead-end.
And by your criteria of selecting Win 95, I'm guessing you really should be using an abacus. It just works. And it crashes less then Win 95... Well unless you're afflicted with palsy.
where are all the kick ass media players for KDE that need aRTS?
amaroK. Try it, it is awesome. I personally cannot stand using Arts. The good thing is that amaroK has different output plugins, including Helix, GStreamer, and Xine (the best, IMHO).
"It ain't a war against drugs.it's a war against personal freedom" --Bill Hicks
How does garbage like this get modded up? Anyone that answers a comment with virtually no more substance than "ROTFL" deserves to be modded down into oblivion. And if you can't get an idea of the performance of a code base by looking at the source code you clearly aren't a very good programmer.
"ROTFL" can basically be translated into "I'm a retard". Which, by looking at the parent posters comment history, seems to hold true.
I want the apps that *I* want, and nothing else. I don't want KDE deciding for me. I don't want all that useless cruft. I don't want multiple apps that do the exact same thing. I don't like a "K" in front of everything. I don't want to have remove all the appls I don't want.
Until then, I'll continue using IceWM.
www.litestep.org
www.objectdock.com
etc etc
Search google for "Shell replacement"
Just because you're ignorant of its existance, doesn't mean something isn't there.
--- Stop the world! I want to get off!
This means you can't read chinese from the mainland and HK or TW with the same settings. Want to read you aunts blog in TW in Big5 change the settings, then want to read the latest economic news from the PRC and you have to go in twidle your settings back.
Not having those problems myself. Using Mandriva LE2005 I can browse various webpages with various encodings from the PRC, HK and Taiwan. Didn't configure it manually, so can't really comment on how that came to be. Input is via SCIM (can input simplified and traditional characters over a variety of input methods, including 'Cantonese pinyin' which seems quite a bizarre Romanisation based on an outdated accent, but that is a little OT). Infact the main reason I'm now using Mandriva is because Ubuntu 5.10 screwed up Chinese input (SCIM) very very badly (crashing Symantic, file browsers, etc), it only works in 5.04 unless extreme pains are taken in the 5.10 install. KDE was a pain on the Ubuntu release but it works fine on my computer with Mandriva. KDE on Mandriva is also considerably more responsive than GNOME was on Ubuntu, but this pulls in many many different factors.
How about trying the latest 'Mandriva live' CD?
I think you have some good points, in fact, it reminds me of a Slashdot article a while back that basically said that the more complex an interface is, the more intimidating it is to most people. If you have a zillion widgets to click and boxes to look at, people tend to get lost and give up. In the comments of that article, several people made good points. For example, putting common tasks in the front and hiding the advanced stuff in another tab or window with a button to access it.
I think one of the key issues surrounding KDE is choice: you choose to run KDE, or you choose not to. Unix-based systems give the user/admin the choice of which window manager to run. Don't like KDE? Try a different one. Hell, you can even contact the KDE team, report bugs, and give feedback. While most large OSS project teams are busy as hell and aren't always the most receptive to outside communication, they are a lot more receptive than, say, Microsoft. Think it's too damn complex? Give constructive criticism to the KDE team. The other beauty of it is that besides the KDE core, a lot of "KDE" applications are third-party software that is just written for KDE and follows a specific set of guidelines. Odds are for some of the problems people have, they can contact a lone developer who has less to worry about and can dedicate more time to each problem.
24 beers in a case, 24 hours in a day. Coincidence? I think not!
When I get home, the last thing I want is to figure out why my network card isn't working after the latest upgrade.
Have you even used Linux in the last 6 or so years? I use Linux on three machines at home, and manage several dozen at work. The only problems I ever had with hardware not working after an update was with propreitary drivers (nVidia). And that's not even an issue any more thanks to Livna.
I'm not interested in finding out that I need to upgrade 15 different libraries before I can upgrade KDE--because I've been doing it all day long. I just want to get on my computer and do what I've got to do.
Yeah, running "yum update" is the most difficult thing in the world to do (or use the default nightly update). Are you using a souce based distro or something? If you using something like Fedora, Suse, Mandriva, Ubuntu, etc the dependecies are handled automatically.
"It ain't a war against drugs.it's a war against personal freedom" --Bill Hicks
They have some screenies here too:t =5
http://vladoboss.softver.org.mk/mg2/index.php?lis
It works, but you have to use SSH forwarding and launch it from xterm. Ie:
ssh -X <host> quanta
I do that on my laptop (PowerBook w/ Tiger) fairly regularly.
"It ain't a war against drugs.it's a war against personal freedom" --Bill Hicks
Did KDE ever fix their menu editor? This was always my problem with KDE. It just didn't work for almost everything I needed. That and most distro's tendency to do half-assed QA on their KDE builds really hurt KDE. I like KDE, certainly over Gnome, but when companies like Novell leave menuitems that do nothing on the default install it leaves much to be desired.
Unlike Linux, the Mac OS supports all hardware
But... Mac OS still refuses to work in my ACER Laptop
Hmmmm.... Maybe Acer is not hardware...
My wife uses Gnome because it's simple and straight forward. I like KDE because I ... must... tinker... constantly! I would look forward to a new release of either. They're both fantastic for completely different reasons. Viva La Linux Desktop!
Personally I'd rather be sober than drink that shit.
"It ain't a war against drugs.it's a war against personal freedom" --Bill Hicks
I know I post this every time someone touts lack of options in OS X making it easier to use, but I think it's worth mentioning. In OS X you cannot control mouse speed and accelerqation independantly. This makes using a touch pad on their laptop very difficult, bucause my finger does not move at a steady rate. What this does to me is cause the mouse to move real slow (low acceleration) or jerk between reasonable and fast (high acceleration). Mac users seem to think that eliminatin choices that many computer users have taken for granted for a decade accually makes the computers easier to use, but it is just not true. By completly hiding that functionality away and not even having an advanced option, it makes the computer a nightmare.
This may be a nit, but it is a bigger problem then window behavier (I am sure more non-power users adjust the mouse than the behavier).
The thing I like about KDE is that it forces you to copy, link, or move with every drag and drop. The choosing which to do behind the scenes is semi-random to the average person.
Wow, sent an e-mail as suggested when clicking on "use classic" banner, and got a fast response that addressed my msg
It was your higher up post I was responding to, sorry.
GNOME, and open source apps in general being platform dependent is not sad (or true, but that's another argument). GNOME apps running at all in your Mac environment is no small feat. Closed source are completely platform dependent.
Many of the people on Digg are Mac fanboys, due to the fact that Leo Laporte, Amber Macarthur and many other people associated with Kevin Rose and Digg all praise Macs very highly.
Also, weird: all this time I thought I couldn't post as myself in an article where I had already modded someone. Guess it's the other way around, can't mod in a thread I've already posted in?
It's a collection of disjointed hacks. KDE has always been a better desktop. The only reason gnome still exists is because of Qt licensing issues on KDE way back in the day that allowed gnome to get a head start in community support.
You simply cannot compare the refined look, feel, and behavior of KDE to gnome, which is slightly better than CDE.
I applaud all those who toiled over gnome, but their individual contributions far outweigh the sum total of their efforts.
This is great, you'll have almost duplicated what Microsoft had 5 years ago, just in time for Vista to come out. Leave your parent's basements and go buy XP for $80
To provide some alternate perspective:
Screens:
Screen1
Screen2
Screen3
Videos:
Vids taken with a video camera
New window manager video (long)
Conceivably some of these goodies could be merged into KDE. Given the blatant sexiness of this handful of technologies, I'd expect it will be happening reasonably soon.
And I believe that everywhere you see "Search", it is a beagle indexed search. WinFS eat your heart out.
I don't know why Gnome would LOOK better. On Apple's X11 it looks great, and X11 is only about the screen and keyboard and mouse. It only doesn't work in some areas where Gnome obviously accesses hardware in some way.
And don't get me started about Mandriva.
I'd quite like to get you started on Mandriva. I use it and I have no problems with either their licensing or their software - what's your objection?
I have never had that problem. Kwallet is happily running in the system-tray, managing my passwords and such. And I have never had any problems with it.
Haven't tried to do something like that, so I can't comment. But you DO know that you can use some other mail-client with KDE? Or do you think that if some app in KDE has some esoteric problem, it means that KDE as a whole sucks?
Have you filed a bug-report?
Huh? each release as been faster than the one before it. On my box, startup takes few seconds, apps appear in fraction of a second, and everything is nice and fast. Memory-consumption is pretty low as well. Now, I have a somewhat fast machine (A64 3200+), but I have used it on slower machines as well (800Mhz Duron, 400-500Mhz K6) and it worked just fine there as well.
I did do a comparison to GNOME last year. And the speed was more or less the same. IIRC, KDE started up 1-2 seconds faster, and that was the only major difference between them. Other things (apps etc.) were more or less the same.
Lesbian Nazi Hookers Abducted by UFOs and Forced Into Weight Loss Programs - -all next week on Town Talk.
Off topic, and all that, but...
You _cannot_ mod a topic in which you have already posted. Period.
You _can_ post in a topic that you have already moderated--but *only* if you are willing to have your mod points wasted. Posting in a topic you have moderated results in the moderation being removed--and you don't get the mod points back. This is to prevent abuses.
It is a reasonably safe system.
"We don't know what we are doing, but we are doing it very carefully,..." Wherry, R.J. Personnel Psychology (1995)
Wmii is currently a usability nightmare from my perspective.
Not often I see something as crappy as wmii. Good luck!
If you mod me down, I *will* introduce you to my sister!
But is right clicking the taskbar supposed to give you the same preferences? Indeed, should right cling the task bar give you preferences at all? On my KDE setup, right clinking the taskbar allows me to add and/or remove applications. Should that be done in the Control Center? Also, right clicking the taskbar, clicking Configure Panel, and then clicking the taskbar icon gives me the same window as Control Center -> Desktop -> taskbar.
"Plus I have a system that everyone envies!" was one post I read at Digg. C'mon, admit it- we all know that's really why people want a Mac.
Amazing that this trolled was modded +5 Insightful. I wonder if posting "we all know you only use KDE to prove your leetness" will garner a similar response.
If you were serious, well I agree that KDE has many advantages, but simplicity and lack of irritating distractions is probably not one of them (many KDE users would agree that it has a multiude of unnecessary menus, icons, toolbars and overlapping settings). If you really need an austere desktop to get work done, why not use something like Fluxbox?
You're a saddo....get over yerself.
And stop saying "I" so damn often.
Score:5, Insightful - what a joke! You're too young to have any insight into user interface usability and too hooked into the outcome that everything from Apple must suck.
Slashdot triumphs again..
BEOS Forever!
I guess that I'm exceptional too :-)
I greatly prefer KDE to any other desktop including OS X.
God is imaginary
We all know that MS does not like linux. So, wat they did was start a GNOME project , funded by them. This way making sure , that any user who uses GNOME ,switches back to windows ,since he cant do a damn thing in it.
Hell, you can go to google images and get results for kde5, yeah /five/.
You've probably heard the quote, "BSD is for people that love Unix; Linux is for people that hate Windows."
Uh...I'm going to say "no" on that one.
BSD is maybe less usable as a desktop, but Linux is awesome because it's a really, really good Unix replacement. The GNU POSIX utilities beat the hell out of the traditional Unix utilities, and Linux is fast. More people are hacking software for and testing for Linux than BSD.
Linux is nothing amazing as a drop-in Windows replacement. If you just want an OS that lets you double-click on an icon and start up your office applications, if you have no interest in scripting or software development or running servers, then you can use Linux, but it's hardly going to revolutionize your world. Linux is maybe more stable and faster than Windows, but that doesn't mean that the same is true of all the productivity-type apps, and that doesn't affect a productivity application user all that much. You save the price of Windows and commercial software, but have to learn different applications and have fewer commercial-style games. Octave instead of MATLAB, Open Office instead of MS Office, Gimp instead of Photoshop.
I'd never substitute a Windows box for my Linux desktop, but that's because I use Linux like a Unix, not like Windows. Aside from a web browser, almost everything I do is in an xterm. If you've got the time and technical knowledge to learn Unix, I think that it's a damned incredible environment to work in, and a very worthwhile investment for anyone involved in the tech world. However, all that doesn't matter much if you just want a tool that lets you delete files and launch your office application.
Actually, the same goes for Mac OS X. If all you want is an application-launching shell with icons, then it doesn't really matter all that much whether you're using Mac OS X or Windows. Mac OS X has more alpha fading in the shell, and Windows has more commercial software. [shrug] Big deal.
Besides, most of the good Free software that you'd use under Linux if you wanted to just use Linux like a Windows is also available (in my experience, usually in a somewhat slower and less stable form, but still available) under Windows. Firefox, GIMP, Open Office, etc.
Any program relying on (nontrivial) preemptive multithreading will be buggy.
At least you can be confident that with KDE 4, your crashes will look very pretty.
"/etc/rc.d/rc.sysinit is a gimp plugin and must be run by the gimp in order to be used."
SuSE has always been KDE-centric, and Red Hat always GNOME-centric.
Red Hat is the most popular distro in the US, and SuSE the most popular in Germany.
I would expect that there are more German KDE users and more US GNOME users.
Of the graphical apps I use, all are gtk+, but my desktop doesn't have the GNOME bar, icons on the desktop, etc.
I *do* dislike SuSE, which is rather less ideologically Free than the other major distros. To be fair, Red Hat is rather less Free than Debian...
Any program relying on (nontrivial) preemptive multithreading will be buggy.
Wow, this is weird.
I like arTs. and dcop. and KDE. They're designed with some sense of... well, sense.
Seriously, for applications written for KDE, KDE is fast (even on my PoS 500MHz Dell). The file dialogs actually work well (unlike GTK's), the virtualized filesystem is so nice that its something I'd like to be ported to bash's userspace (ie: ftp://, smb://, media://, etc ), Konqueror is crap compared to Firefox, but make the world think it's Safari and it works with anything Safari works with (not to mention, I like to use KMozilla rather than KHTML).
Yeah. It's cluttered. So either clean out your K Menu or start with a distro that has only the essentials (like Slax).
By the way, what's KWallet? I never installed anything like that.
110100 1101000 1101000 1100110 0 1101111 1101000 1100011 1
What's the problem with them? Granted, they still need some work (my biggest beef is the difference between typing '/' into the window, and any other character (like '~')), but I don't find them to be *that* bad, and I have some pretty complex directory structures in my homedir, too.
http://outcampaign.org/
KDE is doing some great things and I'm glad to see the amount of development going into making the Linux desktop as polished and feature rich as possible. I would encourage everyone who's used KDE to donate a small amount of money to fund this project. They deserve it.
ConsultingFair.com
That's funny. The Linux distributions that I use are precompiled and worked on by people other than me. Linux is starting to look like Windows XP? I hope not! Does Windows XP have native multiple desktops yet?
As for everything being a copy of something, what's so original about OSX/Windows?
Just to add my 2 cents. I started using KDE fulltime becuase of home slow gnome ran for me at the time.
"Thanks for all the money you paid to us. We've used it to buy off ISO among other things" -Microsoft
How about an artsd that doesn't freeze every 45 minutes? The last stable version I found was in 3.2. I'm not sure what "more interesting features" could be added since KDE already seems to have everything, but doing this will only make it less stable and slower.
Ah. Thanks for the insight.
As a C++ developer I wanted to love Qt/KDE, but with version 4 they have lost me.
I believe in writing code that is portable and can be shared, so I believe in standards. TT is now attempting to undermine these things. QT4 introduces their own version of the STL. So, while other libraries, such as wxWidgets go out of their way to move towards the standard, TT moves away from it.
Yes, I'm sure they have excuses. I'm sure that, by designing their own standard containers they managed to come up with something that works even better for them. But standards have a purpose and everyone has to sacrafice a little to make standards work. TT and MS are two companies that prefer to lock-in developers and their code, and I don't want any part of it.
Well, for a long time I was using sub-1Ghz Celeron laptops for work etc with little to no video capabilities. Back in those days, I used IceWM with iDesk to keep my system up and spiffy.
When I moved to my new job, and got a better laptop, a lot of people here were running KDE, so I switched over. Here are some of my opinions/impressions:
a) The "K" spellings of everything are rather annoying
b) KioSlaves are the shiznat: Fish, FTP, and other integration simply kicks ass
c) File browser is very nice, the ability to hover-preview documents has actually done rather well by me
d) Sound system=annoying at times. System notifications are sometimes useful, but I wish there were a way to "suspend" it while running apps that need my soundcard resources (without timeout) without using eSound. Actually this is partly a linux sound issue though... OSS/ALSA apps tend not to play nice with multiple sources
e) Some eye-candy features are rather nice for me. I enjoy a nice desktop wallpaper, and rather appreciate the ability to have it autochange at various intervals. This should please those 'webshots' windows users as well. One request: Let me point it at a directory so I can just delete/drop files from it as I wish without adding them to the wallpaper rotation
As I've been using KDE, I've slowly traversed versions. Generally I've been impressed, though as a user of Debian/Unstable I've sometimes met clashes with the 'unstable' part of things:
a) My touchpad simply died in KDE for a certain period of time. Could not be reconfigured, and worked until KDE loaded
b) The hover-over descriptions are rather nice for some windows, such as my IM client
c) Pager window previews are useful
d) Brushed stell look is very appealing (from KDE in debian/stable to unstable is a big leap)
e) HalD+Storage Media config=Joy or pain, depending on how well configured
f) Would SOMEBODY tell me a good system for input of Asian characters (Chinese, etc) in the GUI, similar to the many windows apps that exist???!
> I just pine away for the old GNOME
Indeed. If I could make Gnome 1.4 my desktop but still have the Gnome2 libraries installed for apps that require them, and expect everything to _work_ with that setup, that is what I would be using. Since 1.4, every successive version of Gnome is objectively worse than the one before, in terms of features. As for "usability", that's much more subjective, and as a high-end power user I find that my needs are *very* different from those of the kind of low-end end-user that current Gnome versions seem to be targetting.
For all that, I still use Gnome, because it still (for now, anyway) has the one killer feature it has always had that led me to prefer Gnome over KDE in the first place (back when both of them used Netscape 4 as their default browser): panel drawers. I consider this to be an essential feature, because on the one hand there's not room on one panel for all the launchers that I want, but on the other hand it's *not* acceptable to have to dig through 3-5 levels of menus for things that I use on anything resembling a regular basis, and it's *certainly* not acceptable to have to minimize all my windows and use desktop icons as launchers. As far as I'm concerned, panel drawers are the greatest thing since tab completion, and any system that doesn't have them is just not an option.
I *would* switch to KDE if it got panel drawers, because in every other respect I *hate* the direction Gnome has been going since 2.0.
> As for things like "focus follows mouse" and the like
Focus follows mouse is terribly inconvenient for those of us who are heavy keyboard users. Frequently we just want the mouse pointer _out of the way_ for extended periods of time. I personally tend to park it in one corner of the screen and just leave it there for a while. I couldn't do that if I had "focus follows mouse" turned on.
However, it doesn't bother me that "focus follows mouse" is an option. Frankly, it wouldn't bother me even if it were the default. (Defaults are for end-users. Power users go systematically through the options when we set the system up, then we promptly forget what the defaults even were in the first place, because we know how *we* want the system to behave.) With that said, I don't think traditional "focus follows mouse" would be a very good default, because it would likely confuse the everliving bejeebers out of new users. *If* you could get keyboard focus to follow the mouse not just from window to window but to each widget, *then* it might make a sensible setting for some end users. Maybe. I wouldn't roll it out to a wide group without first watching half a dozen normal end users trying to use it, though.
> I think nautilus is pretty good
Yeah, I think the complexspiral demo is cool, too.
Oh, you meant the file manager? I haven't used a graphical file manager on anything resembling a regular basis since I discovered tab completion. I have no opinion on Nautilus versus Konqueror, because I view them both as strictly end-user stuff. I personally have Nautilus exorcised from my Gnome session, because not having it in memory saves RAM. This means my wallpaper doesn't get set, but that's not important to me. (As noted above, I use panel drawers, so I don't need to keep icons on my desktop, so I don't need to compulsively minimize everything all the time; consequently, I haven't *seen* my background in weeks. Usually when I do see more than a small section of it, it's because I'm closing everything in preparation for logging out, e.g. because I've upgraded some ports and want to move to the new versions.)
> Also, I find that you complaint about the configuration menus and whatnot valid. KDE takes
> a bit of customization, but I usually just sit down with a new install and go through the
> control panel until I'm satisfied. Most users shouldn't have to do this.
Right, this is the difference between defaults versus options. Defaults are for end users, and most users, be
Cut that out, or I will ship you to Norilsk in a box.
Exactly. Kde could look like WinXP and I would still like it once it had kio_slaves.
"Thanks for all the money you paid to us. We've used it to buy off ISO among other things" -Microsoft
I had a mac. i spent most of my time wondering why i couldn't get a particular behavior to change. the other half the time i was trying to find some mundane piece of software that would do something all my windows pc's could do with about 100 different products, some of which would be freeware (i still have gps-software nightmares).
then my windows pc's all had over double the specs, and cost on average about 1/2 as much.
and everyone is always touting mac hardware. all i can say is i have never had such a fickle wireless device in any machine ever. whenever i went somewhere i had say a 50/50 chance that the laptop would connect to it. i even had one d-link product that connecting the mac would actually crash the router. in fairness i don't know if that was apple or the routers fault, but every single windows machine i threw at it worked fine. so regardless of who's fault it was, i can tell you who's fault i perceive it to be (how can all my other pc's be wrong?).
windows used to have problems, but those days are long past. everyone releases windows versions of everything. i can dual boot to any OS but OSX (and now even that is changing). i can run virtual machines if i really need something unixy and don't want to dual-boot.
if someone tried to sell me a car that only ran on OSX roads (of which there were say 4 nation wide), had no features, and was incompatable with everyone else's gas pumps, roads, tires, etc... i'd tell them to take a hike. why is your computer any different?
they managed to sell you a slower pc that doesn't run lots of standard software for more money than any x86 vendor could dream and you smiled all the way home. THAT my friend, is marketing at it's finest.
How is this flamebait? I happen to agree with him, and I use KDE exclusively on my desktop. KDE has some really neat, cool features (like ioslaves) and is miles ahead of Gnome in many areas, but you just can't beat Gnome's simplicity and clean look. KDE's cluttered, disorganized interface is annoying. It just feels more sluggish, too, though I'm not sure why.
I *would* switch to KDE if it got panel drawers, because in every other respect I *hate* the direction Gnome has been going since 2.0.
Well, you might try this...
Right click the panel and add, special button, quick browser.
Point quick browser to a directory containing links to your favourite
applications, or images etc.
Perhaps it isn't an optimal solution since you'll have to create a directory with the links/shortcuts you want, but it will work as a panel drawer in KDE.
I like XFCE's way of doing it though. When you put an icon on the panel, if there are other applications of the same type [or not if you wish] you can add a launcher menu to that icon [a little arrow to the right of the icon] that will pull up a panel drawer with whatever other apps in there you want. Kind of the best of both worlds. For instance 90% of the time I use Nautilus as a file browser so I have a Nautilus icon on the panel, but if I want to go ahead and use xffm or konqueror, I can quickly pull those up without having to go through the main menu.
Nothing to see here
I think the fact that KDE even exists means that Gnome shouldn't try to be more "advanced" (bloated).
KDE and GNOME have a nearly identical memory footprint and overhead. Given the fact that KDE provides more real-world functionaity for that same "resource bloat" which one has the better features/bloat ratio?
So people like the advanced options, the glimmer and the numerous widgets. Those people pick KDE. Some people just a basic, day-to-day desktop environment. Those people pick Gnome. The availability of both seems ideal to me.
There is absolutely no reason why people can't have both. That is the ultimate fallacy of the GNOME HCI philosophy. Include options and features, but hide them intelligently so they don't get in the way until needed. Create rich widgets but allow the user to customize them. Have glimmer but let it be easily turned off. This is the direction KDE4 is going and GNOME needs to follow if it is to remain relevant. I certainly hope it will, because other non-UI elements of GNOME are very promising.
It should also be noted that if one is to err in either direction, most people prefer excess features to excess simplicity if those features help them get their work done faster. That's why most people prefer KDE today. Neither is ideal, but it gets the job done.
I like arTs. and dcop. and KDE. They're designed with some sense of... well, sense.
I like KDE very much, eventhough I'm now primarily using Enlightenment. I don't like arts though. It would be decent if every app I used it, but most don't. I keep arts running but I have it release the device after 5 seconds so it doesn't lock out my other programs from sound.
Seriously, for applications written for KDE, KDE is fast (even on my PoS 500MHz Dell).
I agree. It's very fast compared to GNOME (in my experience, anyway). But if you think it's fast, you really need to try Enlightenment or IceWM. Those are blazing, even with Enlightenment's eyecandy.
the virtualized filesystem is so nice that its something I'd like to be ported to bash's userspace
That is a feature I love, though it would be better if other applications (OpenOffice for example) could make use of it. I use fish:// pretty heavily. (Kate is my editor)
Konqueror is crap compared to Firefox
What I like about Konqueror is it doesn't crash all the time like Firefox. Ever try to use myspace.com with Firefox?
"It ain't a war against drugs.it's a war against personal freedom" --Bill Hicks
What's bloated about the browser? Do you mean in terms of features, or just the GUI?
I rember this EXACT SAME post WORD for WORD on another KDE v. GNOME article.
Canned posts suck, but only half as much as the people that post them.
I am. Lower your shields and power down your weapons, they are useless. Your biological and technological distinctivenes
on KDE4. Interesting stuff. http://www.linuxdevcenter.com/pub/a/linux/2006/01/ 12/kde4.html
I've actually kinda had the opposite experiance. I've experienced plenty of annoying little bugs in Gnome, such as the network config utility not actually keeping my settings when I hit "ok", or Nautilus crashing at odd moments. And KDE seems, at least to me, to run a little faster. I think what it comes down to is which desktop's bugs annoy you less. I personally find that KDE does what I need with the least amount of annoyance. Others find Gnome, or IceWM, or one of the other myriad options work best.
I'm not sure what you're on about. I've used KDE for a few years now on multiple machines. I've used Kmail as the client quite often, and have never had to interact with KWallet ever. I can't think of what to use it for actually...never had to, and the few times KWallet has prompted me for something...I just dismissed it and shut it down.
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
> My largest complaint against GNOME right now is their philosophy that more features means less usability
Actually, that's a bit of a misconception. That was the attitude in GNOME 2.0 developers, but it has become a lot more nuanced as GNOME 2.4 and later evolved. The current attitude is that features are great, but it only makes sense to add them if you can find a good place to put them and only if you can come up with sensible defaults. It's possible to quickly slap together an interface that gives you all the fine grained X11 features or all the low level audo features of ALSA, but then that would be a nightmare to navigate and a nightmare to support. Despite KDE's cry of "give me all the features now", even they don't provide that level of power. Few people want it.
The key difference between KDE and GNOME on this front is that GNOME simply wants to take the time to do it right the first time using standard technology, while KDE would prefer to get the features now even if they have to make up their own technology and then evolve that to a right solution.
Both approaches are okay and your choice of GNOME or KDE says more about you than the desktop environment. Personally, I like GNOME's measured and polished approach. If I didn't have GNOME, I'd likely move to XFCE instead of KDE, since feels and works better for me. I'm guessing that many KDErs would likely move to Enlightenment instead of GNOME if KDE was unavailable for precisely the same reason.
I'd say making incremental improvements is the way to go. Why spend a lot of time adding features I'm only going to use a couple of times because it looks cool and then ignore once the novelty wears off?
I don't know about KDE, but Gnome seems very much platform dependent to me (as does much modern open-source software, sadly). It runs perfectly on Linux, but on my Mac there are lots of problems.
Every now and then, someone pops up in freenode ##gnome with OS X problems, and almost every time it turns out they are using fink, and the problems are because fink "unstable" has an awful mess of packages from plethora of different gnome versions (2.6, 2.8, 2.10 and 2.12). It shouldn't be a huge surprise that GNOME 2.6 apps don't work very well with 2.12 libraries and vice versa, but it doesn't necessarily have anything to do with the platform.
Well, I run Darwinports.
$ port installed | grep gnome
gnome-applets @2.12.2_0 (active)
gnome-backgrounds @2.12.2_0 (active)
gnome-desktop @2.12.2_0 (active)
gnome-desktop-suite @2.12_0
gnome-doc-utils @0.5.3_0 (active)
gnome-games @2.12.2_0 (active)
gnome-icon-theme @2.12.1_0 (active)
gnome-keyring @0.4.6_0 (active)
gnome-mag @0.12.3_0 (active)
gnome-menus @2.12.0_0 (active)
gnome-mime-data @2.4.2_0 (active)
gnome-panel @2.12.2_0 (active)
gnome-platform-suite @2.12_0 (active)
gnome-session @2.12.0_0 (active)
gnome-speech @0.3.9_0 (active)
gnome-system-monitor @2.12.2_0 (active)
gnome-terminal @2.12.0_0 (active)
gnome-themes @2.12.1_0 (active)
gnome-utils @2.12.2_0 (active)
gnome-vfs @2.12.2_0 (active)
gnome2-user-docs @2.8.1_0 (active)
libgail-gnome @1.1.2_0 (active)
libgnome @2.12.0.1_0 (active)
libgnomecanvas @2.12.0_0 (active)
libgnomecups @0.2.2_0 (active)
libgnomeprint @2.12.1_0 (active)
libgnomeprintui @2.12.1_0 (active)
libgnomeui @2.12.0_0 (active)
Now that the site has been thoroughly slashdotted (and was crawling earlier when I tried to view it), is there anywhere else we can see these screens?
120 characters for a sig? That's bloody useless.
>I don't know what the Gnome guys are up to...
Well I'm sad to say that in my experience they're too busy trying to reinvent the file open dialogue, force the bloody awful spatial browsing idea on users and generally emulate 1980s operating systems to get on with anything useful.
And this is from someone who loves Ubuntu, uses Gnome as his desktop, and would desperately like to use it as his day to day OS but simply can't do so due to the hideous drop in productivity when compared to using bloody Windows.
e.g. I can't search for files in Nautilus by using the keyboard because pressing "F" takes you to the first item that stars with "F". Pressing "F" again does precisely NOTHING... In Windows explorer pressing "F" repeatedly cycles round all the files/folders that start with "F".
And WTF do they keep changing the file open dialogue for ? Why have they replaced the address bar in Nautilus with that stupid locations crap ?
Why do they treat their users like chimpanzees ????
It's even more infuriating since the given reasons for doing anything even remotely like what they did are so fucking ridiculous (the basic apple "it's easier for people who have never used a computer before", only more-so) AND it affects applications that have no reasonable alternatives on Linux for the majority of Linux users who a) don't run gnome, and b) don't like how gnome works.
The Farewell Tour II
mmmm no. I think Gnome is far closer to Windows than KDE is. Both thinks users are too stupid to know how to configure their work environment and that developers know far better what users need than the users themselves.
:-)
BTW, if I couldn't use KDE I'd go back to Windows. It's as limited and braindead as Gnome, but at least Windows it's fast and has good native applications
You just single-handedly brought down kde-look.org
Why DoS attack a server when you can just post a link on Slashdot?
Nobody's gay for Mole-Man.
You Sir, have never tried to use it with any real conviction.
just putting up with windoze's interface at workplaces. I recently contracted with a couple guys who also use Linux at home, but we have (had in my case) to use windoze xp or 2k at work. Two of us just cannot fathom how geeks in windows land put up with the xp/2k windowing interface. It (the stock version) is so limiting and so downright uninspired.
.war-making archiver.
I have been using KDE since 1999 off and on, and then regularly since about mid 2000 up to 10-15 hours a day when my computer is on. I surf in it. I file manage in it. I archive pages via the
I LOVE being able to minimize, roll up, and shade KDE when IIIII feel like it. I like being able to Alt-RightDrag a window to resize it. I can't DO those things with windoze or stock windoze. I utter recoiled in fury when in the past ms' bizarre logic told ME I could not resize the canvas to see dialog in the bars and in other places.
KDE might be a memory hog and chew up 50MB per instance, but I sometimes have 7 instances of KDE open and two of them have 3 to 15 tabs running.
I wish book mark management from the menu bar were improved...I have sloppy bookmark management and now my entire desktop is blanketed with folders and bookmarks--mostly folders. It would be nice if it could sense your screen resolution and desktop space and then offer up a "re-org" dialog for dragging and dropping stuff. But, that's an individual user issue, I admit.
I TRIED using Gnome/Nautilus a few times. I used Enlightenment, mainly to show off the cool/snazzy window effects to observers. I used ICEWFM and Blackbox/Fluxbox. Why'd I stop? Well, Kicker and Kasbar are TWO main reasons. I LOVE Kasbar's snapshot/preview. When the preview icon setting is large, it looks KEWL.
Also, I LOVE chewing up RAM with 1 desktops, each virtual desktop cycling thru dozens if not up to 100 different images. I only have 256 MB RAM on a 900 MHz celery processor FIC computer case I built into a home-made machine. It's quiet. Actually, the hard drive is quieter, but I am thinking of putting a spare laptop disk on the connector vice the 5.25 inch disk. The machine is virtually silent with the laptop drive. It's also virtually silent with the Seagate "Barracuda 7200.7 160 Gbytes" disk (it's got some special bearings or fluid mounting system going on in it...)
Yeh, I LOVE KDE, even tho in this Mandriva 2005 LE it blows up and locks up my machine (or, there's some trojan/rootkit I need to hunt down...). Yesterday, it crashed when I killed Firestarter via a button on the title bar vice killing it via the Firestarter menu. Was the first time KDE locked up THAT way for me. Since I don't have a serial connection, I had to reboot. Sometimes when I run Win4Lin, Amarok or KSCD, and have Etherape, Firestarter, and 10 different terminals and KDE sessions going, it's inevitable that I'm thrashing disk and swapping RAM like crazy. Then, BING. KDE goes flashes out like a failed star (minus the gravimetric and light show effects), I see a black desktop, and have NO keyboard response. I definitely should go to Mandriva 2006 (full-distro) AND go to 512 MB or more, but I'm NOT going past 900 MHz unless there is a compelling reason. I don't play games, so so far I don't have such a reason...
Previously: "Linux... Toward the Sunrise..." Now: "Linux... Toward the-- No, now, part of Every Sunrise"
Responsiveness, and "feel", which I know is a terrible thing to quantify. But it feels slow.
I am trolling
(although in all fairness, it being slashdotted doesn't help).
Yeah, looks like when they were listed on Slashdot, they took it up 'Diaz'.
What would you suggest?
http://outcampaign.org/
*This* is why I laugh when people tell me Linux desktops are getting better. Ummmm, since when does more colourful/transparent/3D/whatever mean more productive? Why is it that anyone gives a shit about this? Where is the improvements that stop annoying applications stealing focus, force windows to behave nicely, etc? LMAO, literally. Same shit different day.
It's OK Bender, there's no such thing as 2.
"This Account Has Been Suspended Your account at StackedTech Hosting Solutions has been suspended because of breaking the Terms of Services or going over bandwidth limit. UPDATE: If your account was suspended and you don not know why then it is probaly because of our recent server outage. We are checking all accounts for viruses/ or users that are attempting to hack our server. If this is the case then your account will be unsuspended in a few ours. Contact support@stackedtech.com for more information on your account. Please include username and domain. Thanks"
Hell, even *I* could code that "interface".
- If we aren't supposed to eat animals, then why are they made out of meat? - Steven Wright
and that's where it should stay!!
I don't need this shitty bloatware clogging up my trusty, AMD K6-III system,, and
we sure as fuck don't need a W.I.M.P. interface to appeal to the stupid proles who don't even DESERVE to use a computer.
This is what I found when following the link for the screenshots:
"This Account Has Been Suspended
Your account at StackedTech Hosting Solutions has been suspended because of breaking the Terms of Services or going over bandwidth limit. UPDATE: If your account was suspended and you don not know why then it is probaly because of our recent server outage. We are checking all accounts for viruses/ or users that are attempting to hack our server. If this is the case then your account will be unsuspended in a few ours. Contact support@stackedtech.com for more information on your account. Please include username and domain. Thanks
Please contact support as soon as possible."
Poor guy. So much for his website!
Yeah I'd agree. Someone spent a long time making it a lot more responsive, but it can still be a bit annoying. I don't have any problems however on a machine with a lot of memory.
In future, I wonder if it would be better to term it unresponsive then. Saying bloated is so ambigous.
"I use fish:// pretty heavily."
Really.. I use ssh://. What the hell does yours do?
Fish does SSH. Heh, I didn't even know ssh:// worked.
"It ain't a war against drugs.it's a war against personal freedom" --Bill Hicks
> Point quick browser to a directory containing links to your favourite
> applications, or images etc.
This has been suggested to me before, but I am highly skeptical about whether it will do what I want. Among other things...
Panel drawers, when they pop out, contain launchers that are just like the ones on the panel itself, i.e., their size is configurable, and so forth. In particular, they are pretty close to square, *not* vertically shrunken and horizontally wide like the items on a menu. This is good, because it makes them very easy to hit quickly.
Panel drawers may also contain panel applets, e.g., if I for space reasons don't want to keep the volume control applet on my main panel, but I do want it around for occasional use, I can toss it in a drawer. This is not a deal-breaker, but it sure is nice.
When my panel fills up with launchers and I need to make some space, it's easy to just grab one of the least-used items on the panel and drag it into a drawer. Along the same lines, creating a new launcher in the drawer is the same as creating one on the panel.
Basically, panel drawers are a designed-in feature of the interface. What you seem to be suggesting as a substitute is that I try to make do with a completely dissimilar feature that's inherently not designed to do what I want. It's not that the feature you're talking about is *bad*, but I think it's fundamentally not the same feature I was talking about.
Yes, I'm picky.
Cut that out, or I will ship you to Norilsk in a box.
And just what do you do when the application that you need to install isn't in your distribution's binary repository?
compile.
And what do you do when you when the application you need to compile requires versions of libraries that aren't distributed?
"yum update" is just not an option.
Notes From Under *nix: blas.phemo.us
Alright flameboy.
Your arguments against the Mac UI are purely personal preference. You like blue better than red, you like menu bars on bottom, you like 28 virtual desktops... who cares. It's your decision.
Sorry, but screwing around with the "look and feel" of my desktop just isn't something I have time for; if that's really important to you, then you may be able to think hard enough to find applications that do the things you've said you "can't" do.
Keep trying to figure out the best "look and feel" for your desktop. The rest of us just have better things to do.
Notes From Under *nix: blas.phemo.us
And just what do you do when the application that you need to install isn't in your distribution's binary repository?
Use the AutoPackage. If there isn't one, request one from the developers.
"It ain't a war against drugs.it's a war against personal freedom" --Bill Hicks
Compiling isn't the problem, it's when the application you're attempting to compile requires later versions of the libraries than you have installed & your vendor prefers to patch older versions than provide new versions (read RHEL).
AutoPackage, that's cool. I hadn't seen that before. But it seems to me that requesting modifications from developers is not a very stable way of ensuring that you get what you need.
Notes From Under *nix: blas.phemo.us