Plasma: The Next-Generation KDE Environment Review

slashy writes, "MadPenguin has taken a quick look at Plasma, the next gen. KDE environment. 'Plasma is an ambitious project being pursued by the KDE 4 team which aims at providing a workflow-sensitive design of the user interface that improves productivity of an average KDE user. The focus is on improving the clarity and reducing the clutter present in today's desktops. The plasma development will bring together key contributors, such as the visual artists, usability experts, technology experts, programmers, and enthusiasts at a very early stage during the development process. This will enable them to create a new desktop environment that meets the requirements of novices and experts alike.'"

Comments

Reducing clutter

[betterunixthanunix]

Let me start by saying that I have been waiting for KDE 4 since it was first announced, mainly because of it's lower memory requirements.

Having said that, I have found that most people will clutter their desktops regardless of what the software tries to do. Remember XP's desktop cleanup wizard, which attempted to help people remove things from their desktops that they didn't use often? I still see the majority of people with hundreds of icons and files haphazardly arranged. When I helped my friend migrate to Linux, it only took him a week to turn KDE into an icon pile. Add Firefox into the mix, which drops downloads onto the desktop by default, and the battle is completely lost.

Re:Reducing clutter

[tolan-b]

I think they mean UI clutter rather than clutter of the desktop 'surface'.

Re:Reducing clutter

[Anonymous Coward]

mainly because of it's lower memory requirements.

You can't possibly believe that a newer version will ever have lower memory requirements.

Re:Reducing clutter

[joe 155]

I agree, it's pretty much always the user who creates these problems, I use GNOME but I have at most 4 icons on my desktop. I used to use KDE and think I had a similar number. I wonder what they could take away which will not reduce productivity, I mean I need the computer, home and wastebasket (and my external HD is just handy to have there)

They could stop people creating icons or files on the desktops but that will really annoy people because some just like it there.

Shame I couoldn't get to the article, maybe they explained it, although the summery was light on details...

Re:Reducing clutter

[Eideewt]

That's why I say we get rid of the damn thing. That's what your home directory is for; there's no reason to put stuff in a useless place like the desktop as well, where it will be obscured whenever you actually start doing things.

Of course, I don't think they were talking about desktop icons in TFA. I just wanted to throw in my anti-icon rant here.

Re:Reducing clutter

[LLuthor]

QT 3's internal data structures are quite bloated and require a lot of memory. In QT4 a lot of bloat has been removed or trimmed, and a number of things can now share memory where previously they had each their own copies.

Simply re-compiling a trivial GUI app from QT3 to QT4 will give noticable performance and memory usage improvement (even if you do not change the code at all).

Not to mention the other improvements in things like MOC which make debugging and testing easier.

Re:Reducing clutter

[nostriluu]

I think the metaphor for the "desktop" is, ahem, a "desktop".. an intermediate place with stuff you haven't put away yet, or are actively working on, resides.

Just putting everything in your home folder /would/ be a disaster.

Of course, it's nice to have multiple desktops, so when you're working on a different task you can just go to a different desk.

Hmm.. doesn't seem like you can change the Mac's desktop on the fly.

Re:Reducing clutter

[justkarl]

Remember XP's desktop cleanup wizard, which attempted to help people remove things from their desktops that they didn't use often?
 
Maybe you're not familiar with the functionality. The desktop cleanup wizard removes icons that are used often.

Re:Reducing clutter

[TommydCat]

Simply re-compiling a trivial GUI app from QT3 to QT4 will give noticable performance and memory usage improvement (even if you do not change the code at all).

# emerge --update --newuse world

...and the Gentoo crowd goes wild!

Re:Reducing clutter

[davFr]

AFAIK, there is no way to compile directly Qt3 applications to Qt4. The Qt4 does not support all previous Qt3 widgets, and their is no automatic and efficient way to transform Qt3 code to Qt4. That said, Qt4 is certainly more memory efficient than Qt3, as it was the main development goal. My 2 cents.

Re:Reducing clutter

[cp.tar]

There's still the issue of a desktop cluttered with icons.

I rather liked a gDesklets applet with a circular launch bar... you could create sets of launchers by theme or whatever and switch between them.
Everything neatly organised, and the desktop remains completely free of clutter.

Re:Reducing clutter

[Zach978]

In KDE 3 there is an option to disable icons on the desktop, that's what I have been doing for a while...

Re:Reducing clutter

[Anonymous Coward]

# emerge --update --newuse world
...and the Gentoo crowd goes wild!

Well, they have plenty of time to go wild now.

Re:Reducing clutter

[SevenHands]

Are there people who actually have used this functionality? I have not used this features once yet. Features like this and the "Hide inactive icons" in the system tray seem like they may end up doing more harm than good possibly getting rid of certain needed info or hiding an unwanted automatically started process.. For me, I like to see all of my system tray Icons, including the "inactive" ones, just so I have a partial idea of what's running in the background without having to go through the process listing in the task manager.

Re:Reducing clutter

[Psiren]

The Qt4 does not support all previous Qt3 widgets

There is a Qt3 support library in Qt4. It does look like some renaming of classes will be required, but I'd imagine any small codebase could be converted reasonably quickly.

Re:Reducing clutter

[Jesselnz]

My friend's desktop: http://img166.exs.cx/img166/673/sp3220050209200910 7hz.jpg

Re:Reducing clutter

[Breakfast Pants]

I'll settle for a middle ground: it just randomly picks things.

Re:Reducing clutter

[Zantetsuken]

somebody said in another post somewhere beneath the top of this thread:

"toss in firefox which automatically sets downloads to the desktop, and the battle is lost"

maybe it would help if in firefox's initial setup wizard, it prompted where you want downloads to go to - somewhere like My Documents\Downloads for Windows, and somewhere like /home/username/downloads/ for Linux with the option to change directories...

Re:Reducing clutter

[Not Anonymous Coward]

Oh! Your! GOD! And I thought my Desktop was cluttered...

Re:Reducing clutter

[czehp]

Holy crap! I looked at that and all I could think of is "Where's Waldo?"

Re:Reducing clutter

[Anonymous Coward]

You can't possibly believe that a newer version will ever have lower memory requirements.

Of course you can. Don't you think that KDE 3.5.4 uses less memory than KDE 3.0.0?

Re:Reducing clutter

[cp.tar]

maybe it would help if in firefox's initial setup wizard, it prompted where you want downloads to go to - somewhere like My Documents\Downloads for Windows, and somewhere like /home/username/downloads/ for Linux with the option to change directories...

It is possible to change the default download directory rather easily... and there are extensions which help you filter and sort downloads so you can send .mp3 to ~/music, .mpg to ~/video and .doc to ~/trash.

AFAIK downloading everything to desktop by default is a feature, not a bug: most users download something, then get confused as to where the bloody thing went. This way, they only have to search their desktop.

Therefore, no initial setup is required... do it after installing; you know where to find it, and you don't confuse the (l)users with complexities.

Re:Reducing clutter

[nuzak]

> maybe it would help if in firefox's initial setup wizard, it prompted where you want downloads to go to - somewhere like My Documents\Downloads for Windows, and somewhere like /home/username/downloads/ for Linux with the option to change directories...

Why prompt? Just create it. The folder itself should probably be on the desktop just for ease of finding it, but at least you'd have one icon and not dozens.

Me, I still can't figure out why firefox can't download a file or a page when I drag it from a browser to the desktop. If I wanted a bookmark, I'd have used the bookmark function. Konqueror has no problem doing it.

Re:Reducing clutter

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm setting that as my wallpaper! :)

Re:Reducing clutter

[nschubach]

It's nice to see someone publicly displaying the use of cracks, roms and serial numbers. Oh, I suppose he owns all that software...my mistake.

Re:Reducing clutter

[nschubach]

That's the only reason I run Active Desktop at work. One icon. The Recycle Bin. The only reason I have that there is to remind me to empty it every night. If only I had a trash can icon on my garage door.

Re:Reducing clutter

[Chop]

Haha, that looks like my boss' desktop. I routinely get calls consisting of "I just dowloaded something and I can't find it"

-- Chop

Re:Reducing clutter

[mrchaotica]

Hmm.. doesn't seem like you can change the Mac's desktop on the fly.

Why do you feel the need to insert a random offtopic troll into an other wise perfectly good discussion?

(sigh) Nevertheless, I feel compelled to feed it anyway; hopefully this will be the end of it:

• It's not as if changing your virtual desktop changes your icons anyway (at least it hasn't on any system I've used), so it's irrelevant to this discussion.
• Macs have Exposé instead of virtual desktops.
• The next version of Mac OS will have virtual desktops (apparently, in addition to Exposé).
• If you really want virtual desktops on Mac OS, you can get them as a third-party add-on now.

Re:Reducing clutter

[DaveWick79]

The funniest thing about this is that he has a "Unused Desktop Icons" folder on the desktop. These are just the icons he uses all the time, the rarely used ones are sitting in that folder...

Re:Reducing clutter

[baadger]

you forgot --deep you n00b

Re:Reducing clutter

[nostriluu]

Hey, I'm all for trolling.

I (ab)use Virtue Desktops, I believe Desktop Manager is dead in the water.

To this point:

# It's not as if changing your virtual desktop changes your icons anyway (at least it hasn't on any system I've used), so it's irrelevant to this discussion.

I wasn't speaking about existing desktop managers, I was referring to a feature that would allow Desktop contents (not application views) to change when moving between contexts (personal, project a, project, b, etc). I believe I've seen a few implementations of this. Maybe it will be in Apple's official desktop manager (which rudely doesn't acknowledge other implementations), but I doubt it.

What I tried doing was mv ~/Desktop ~/D2; mkdir Desktop; touch Desktop/foobar, but nothing happened.

Re:Reducing clutter

[cp.tar]

I notice that there's some empty space left... Couldn't he find anything to fill it with?

It looks so... empty.

Re:Reducing clutter

[Lu]

What's with all the unused space in the lower righthand corner?

And were you as disappointed in the search results for "muffin paradise" as I was? I was really hoping it would be something else . . .

Re:Reducing clutter

[Knuckles]

Remember XP's desktop cleanup wizard, which attempted to help people remove things from their desktops that they didn't use often?

Oh yes, very well. It is among the worst pieces of idiocy created in the name of helping inexperienced users I know. Apparently it is purely date-driven and disregards the existence of actual user sessions during the time span it waits until moving the user's files from the desktop into a subfolder. The result was that my mum, who often does not log in for a month and more, called me everytime she did log in, saying "I don't know what happened. All the files I created last time are gone." That is, until I visited and disabled it of course.

The fact that this hopelessly thoughtless implementation did not help users to be more organized is no proof that users are hopeless.

Re:Reducing clutter

[zapp]

I don't think firefox should follow that trend. My Documents has enough crap automatically created in there already (the My* folders, etc).

It saves to the desktop so users that don't know where files go automatically can find them easily. Hiding it in an automatically created folder, whether it is My Documents\downloads or c:\program files\Mozilla\Firefox\Users\Default.asdfk23o4u\dow nloads ... is just arbitrary, confusing, and dumb.

Place the files where users can see them, or ask the user where to put it.

Re:Reducing clutter

[Combatjuan]

I'm all for people using their computer in a way that is more efficient for them. As for me, I despise things being stored on the desktop. But what I wanted to comment on was the idea of the desktop metaphor.

I use my computer desktop the same way I use my physical desktop: as a place to do work, not a place to store things. I put my documents in the file cabinet. I put the tape dispenser in the drawer (since I seldom need it). My critical documents and passport go in the safe. I use both my physical and virtual desktop as a place to /do/ work. Therefore for me, to keep lots of crap and downloaded files on the desktop is the abuse of the metaphor. Not keeping it clean. Nevertheless, to each their own.

Re:Reducing clutter

[nostriluu]

Firefox has an option to let you specify where you want to download all, or each, new file. Problem solved!

Re:Reducing clutter

[Anonymous Coward]

Remember XP's desktop cleanup wizard, which attempted to help people remove things from their desktops that they didn't use often?

Get this. So I have admin logons at various PCs at work here. I jump into admin on a hapless user's PC to fix something. There are two icons on the desktop. They are Trash and a Firefox shortcut. Desktop "Wizard" pops-up and offers to "clean up my desktop". For shits'n'giggles, I let it. It puts the Firefox shortcut in a new folder (coincidentally on the Desktop so I still have two icons - same as before) and leaves the Trash icon. The cleanup wizard is every fucked up thing about MSFT, AOL, and crapware in general. Note to KDE: you're not the boss of the user and don't even try.

Re:Reducing clutter

[snoyberg]

Sure... sure.. you "friend"

Re:Reducing clutter

[tvon]

YouControl Desktops allows you to have different icons on different desktops.

Granted, it's not free, and VirtueDesktops is.

Re:Reducing clutter

[thinsoldier]

not being able to find c:\downloads\my momz crap\virus.exe
is just as frustrating to them as not being able to find virus.exe on a desktop with over 300 files.

Usually with people that have over 300 files on their desktop, they gladly pay attention when I explain that the desktop is actually a folder where you can sort files by many criteria and can scroll through the painfully long list of files quicker and easier than looking at the desktop.

Think of it as teaching a child to tie their shoes. It may seem difficult and complicated at first but once they at least learn to tie at least some sort of knot to keep their shoes on, they're better off.

Would you let someone work in your shoe store who couldn't tie their shoes? Didn't think so.
Would you let someone drive your car if they didn't comprehend the importance of the door locks at night, windshield wipers during the rain, or the parking brake when parking on the side of a steep hill? Ok then.

Just like I don't let people touch my computer if they don't even halfway understand (or make an attempt to) how to use the thing.

Re:Reducing clutter

[thinsoldier]

really? All it ever did for me was lock up my system. And my neighbour's system. And my Aunts. And my uncle's. And my Uncle's neighbour. And my cousin's 2 systems. And ..... etc...

Re:Reducing clutter

[thinsoldier]

I have lots of similar files.
But in my world:

My Documents = F:/thinsoldier/ (windows will FUCK OVER your My Documents folder EVERY TIME. DO NOT USE IT FOR IMPORTANT FILES!
DON'T!)

All those important installation files = F:/downloads/
Other unimportant trial installation files like quicktime go in /Desktop/TEMP/

everything else

e:/games/quake3/
e:/games/quake3/bats/ (i've got like 40 q3a bat files for many reasons long forgotten)
e:/games/gta3
e:/games/emu/
e:/games/emu/genesis/
e:/games/emu/genesis/emus/
e:/games/emu/genesis/roms/
e:/games/emu/snes/
e:/games/emu/snes/emus/
e:/games/emu/snes/roms/
e:/games/emu/gba/
e:/games/emu/gba/emus/
e:/games/emu/gba/roms/

f:/audio/mp3/
f:/audio/mp3/rap (/raggae/, /RnB/, etc...)
f:/audio/wav/
f:/audio/ogg/
f:/audio/cooleditsessions/ (now know as adobe audition)
f:/video/
f:/flash/
f:/iso/

d:/art/projects
d:/art/psd/
d:/art/ai/
d:/art/maya/
d:/art/max/
d:/art/zbrush/

d:/stockpile/ (ever image I ever downloaded is in here and categorized as much as possible)

And thanks to run's autocomplete I can open anything anywhere in like 2 seconds. And have quick access to 50X the number of files than can visibly fit on the windows desktop.

Re:Reducing clutter

[thinsoldier]

sad thing is, before you can teach someone this sort of system as one of the many options to better manage your data, they must first understand C: D: E: and F: and somehow some people can't seem to grasp it!

btw, my destop is also full of icons. I use them as a sort of 'to do' list. Everything on my desktop I'm supposed to do something with or to it. Sure some stuff has been there since last october, but it's still on the active 'to do list'. (mostly 'to delete')

Re:Reducing clutter

[Jesselnz]

I find that very insulting...

I wouldn't want to be seen dead using Windows.

Re:Reducing clutter

[adewolf]

LMAO slashdotted already

Re:Reducing clutter

[Eideewt]

I understand the metaphor. I'm just not quite sure why it would be a good idea to mimic the worst part of working on a real desk (clutter) rather than using the organizational advantage that computers can give us.

Re:Reducing clutter

[jamarsa]

Ahem, calling KDE codebase 'small' seems somewhat inexact, at least.

Re:Reducing clutter

[Tarlus]

Well of course it's cluttered, that frog icon is way too huge for such a tiny screen res.

Re:Reducing clutter

[mrchaotica]

I wasn't speaking about existing desktop managers, I was referring to a feature that would allow Desktop contents (not application views) to change when moving between contexts (personal, project a, project, b, etc). I believe I've seen a few implementations of this. Maybe it will be in Apple's official desktop manager (which rudely doesn't acknowledge other implementations), but I doubt it.

I call that "opening file manager windows." However, actually changing the desktop is an interesting idea...

What I tried doing was mv ~/Desktop ~/D2; mkdir Desktop; touch Desktop/foobar, but nothing happened.

Have you tried moving the files inside the directory around instead?

Re:Reducing clutter

[gardyloo]

I used to have almost a hundred icons scattered all over both my Windows and linux desktops. Finally I just gave up, hid all those icons, and installed Launchy http://launchy.net/ (on Windows) and Katapult (for some of the linux WMs). I don't know that I'm more efficient now, but I'm much happier.

Re:Reducing clutter

[snoyberg]

And *I* wouldn't want to be caught dead having a FRIEND that uses Windows ;)

Re:Reducing clutter

[richlv]

is the automatic download really a good feature ? most users expect the software to ask where to save a file, so just tossing them all on a desktop is quite silly...
at least create Desktop/Downloads or "Firefox Downloads".
cluttering the desktop seems to be one of those misunderstood usability "improvements"

Re:Reducing clutter

[Anonymous Coward]

Please post a mirror of the picture!...

Re:Reducing clutter

[Gnulix]

I think the metaphor for the "desktop" is, ahem, a "desktop".. an intermediate place with stuff you haven't put away yet, or are actively working on, resides.

Great comment, it's good to see that someone remembers the definition of "desktop"!

It should be up to individual users how they use their desktop, it shouldn't be mandated by a committee of self-appointed usability gurus.

Personally, I never use any desktop icons, but I can see how other users find them useful.

Re:Reducing clutter

[Gnulix]

The funniest thing about this is that he has a "Unused Desktop Icons" folder on the desktop. These are just the icons he uses all the time, the rarely used ones are sitting in that folder...

But the important questions are; is he satisfied with his desktop? Does he feel productive?

If he likes it, who are we to complain?

Help Me Beth!

[Dog Chapman]

I'm in a Mexican Prison and I can't get out!

A quick look?

[ledow]

A quick look is somewhat understating the review - not a single screenshot and 8 paragraphs of next-to-nothing except what "will" or "should" be in Plasma.

Useful content: 1%

Like the "Buy a Link Now" on the article itself... I think someone just bought themselves a link from Slashdot.

Re:A quick look?

[LWATCDR]

I do have to wonder what that review was? Wouldn't preview be a better term. I mean to review something it has to exist, which KDE 4 doesn't yet.
I can honestly say I like BOTH gnome and KDE. I prefer to work in gnome but KDE is prettier and frankly more fun.
With KDE I created a totally useless script that pulls down a few images from some websites using wget. I then set the KDE desktop to use a slide show background. So now have a wall paper that rotates through two hi resolution webcam shots of a local beach and the weather radar.
Like I said fun but useless. To get Gnome to do the same I am thinking of writing a desklet.

Re:A quick look?

[Ed Avis]

8 paragraphs of next-to-nothing except what "will" or "should" be in Plasma.

Can you spell 'vapourware'?

Er, wait - nobody answer that...

Re:A quick look?

[Krondor]

Can you spell 'vapourware'?

Sure, no problem. Vaporware.

(Yes I had to)

Re:A quick look?

[Anonymous Coward]

Vapourware would be considered the correct spelling for people using the English dictionary (Britian, Australia, New Zealand for starters). It is obvious the poster and modder are only aware of the American dictionary.

(Yes I had to)

Re:A quick look?

[Flame0001]

Maybe you should look up the definition of "whoosh". You have no clue what just happened.

Re:A quick look?

[Eythian]

Can be scripted in Gnome without too much trouble. I have a bash script to give me random desktop pictures. The magic command is:

gconftool-2 -t str -s /desktop/gnome/background/picture_filename $file

that immediately changes the desktop background.

Re:A quick look?

[LWATCDR]

Thanks for the tip. I will have to try to write it up in python. I might try and make a python desklet to make it easy to configure.

huh?

[MustardMan]

I can't get to the article (naturally), but the summary looks like a bunch of marketspeak buzzwords. The summary seems to be a whole lot of "whats" and not a shred of "hows". Has anyone actually been able to RTFA and see if there is any actual content, or just a bunch of empty promises?

Re:huh?

[ledow]

Content: nil
Useful information: nil
Reviews of implemented features: nil
Screenshots: nil
What it "will" be: 8 paragraphs spread over two pages for no other reason than to increase advertising revenue.
How they're going to do it: nil
Useful links: nil

Re:huh?

[MustardMan]

Redundant? I was the first one to post anything even remotely like this. God damn do you mods fucking suck.

active desktop

[Anonymous Coward]

The desktop will no more be a static entity with a fixed set of icons. Your desktop will be capable of providing different kinds of items and services as and when you need them.

Active desktop?

Re:active desktop

[LeRandy]

No. SuperKaramba will be built in (think Apple OSX Widgets). So your calendar, inbox contents, local weather, PC stats, whatever can be displayed on your desktop. Active Desktop was IIRC just a way of putting HTML or Animations on the desktop - they weren't programs per-se, that could tell you useful stuff.

Re:active desktop

[peterpi]

AKtive DesKtop

Re:active desktop

[morgan_greywolf]

No. SuperKaramba will be built in (think Apple OSX Widgets). So your calendar, inbox contents, local weather, PC stats, whatever can be displayed on your desktop. Active Desktop was IIRC just a way of putting HTML or Animations on the desktop - they weren't programs per-se, that could tell you useful stuff.

Right. But aren't these things just combinations of XML and Python code? IOW, the grandparent's comment about ActiveDesktop really isn't too far off the mark.

Re:active desktop

[Sqwubbsy]

Active Desktop was IIRC just a way of putting HTML or Animations on the desktop - they weren't programs per-se, that could tell you useful stuff.

Excuse me, but what's the difference? OS X widgets are just HTML, granted with stylesheets and javascript, but still.
And sure, it's not right on the desktop, but callable by a hot key, but really, what is the difference? And where are the 'programs per-se' in OS X and whateverKDEwillfinallycalltheirwidgetengine?

Re:active desktop

[cp.tar]

Active Desktop was IIRC just a way of putting HTML or Animations on the desktop

Don't forget the JPEGs.

Want a .jpeg on your desktop? Sure, enable Active Desktop.

Re:active desktop

[Yvan256]

Actually, since I'm using Win98SE on my old Thinkpad 760XL (P166-MMX, 64MB RAM, 10GB) I've hit that limitation a few times. However, you can open the JPEG in Internet Explorer and then "Save as..." a BMP. Not that I use MSIE for anything else, though.

Re:active desktop

[cp.tar]

Oh, yes, that's a very good idea... if you've got spare RAM.

A .bmp of a large .jpg tends to get can't-fit-on-a-floppy big. Not good.

Then again, what do I know... how much RAM does Active Desktop take?

Re:active desktop

[Yvan256]

I don't think Win98SE keeps the compressed JPEG data in memory to use it as a wallpaper. Then again I also don't know how much memory active desktop use because I've never used it.

I do agree that BMPs are a good way to waste storage though, but it's the only way to use a wallpaper in Win98SE without active desktop.

Re:active desktop

[miyako]

I don't think using a jpeg for a wallpaper as opposed to a bitmap is going to save any ram. a bitmap is uncompressed, a jpeg is compressed. If you set a jpeg as a wallpaper, it still has to uncompress that jpeg to display it. Worst case is you are now using the same amount of ram, but for the jpeg you are also adding the processor cycles to decompress it.

Re:active desktop

[cp.tar]

Well, since JPEG is a lossy compression format, I'd think the picture gets smaller anyway.
Ah, well... who cares, really...

Re:active desktop

[lewp]

Apparently you care, since you brought it up.

The in-memory representation of your desktop background is going to take up the same amount of space no matter what format it's in. Compressing your wallpaper only saves space on disk, because ultimately the image has to be decompressed and rendered into the equivalent of a bitmap for it to be displayed on the screen.

Re:active desktop

[Spikeles]

Ewwww.. SuperKaramba? I found it buggy, slow, and took up 15% of my cpu when everything else was idle, WHY would i want it builtin to my desktop?

And secondly...

just a way of putting HTML or Animations on the desktop - they weren't programs per-se, that could tell you useful stuff.

You're kidding right? The same way the web dosn't tell you usefull stuff? Nah.. i couldn't embed a flash/javascript/activex program into HTML and put it into my desktop, that's way too hard.. and they couldn't tell you any USEFULL stuff anyway.. not like all the cool apps here http://www.microsoft.com/windows/ie/ie6/previous/g allery/default.mspx like J-Track Satellite Tracking. That's not usefull to astronomers??

What about being able to embed your favourite ctrl-alt-del into your desktop.. or your corporate intranet site?

Oh and btw, superkaramba widgets are just done in XML anyway(although they can link to external libs).. so really all SuperKaramba provides is just a way of putting XML on the desktop - they aren't programs per-se, that could tell you useful stuff.

Re:active desktop

[Anonymous Coward]

So KDE is finally attempting to achieve enlightenment.

Re:active desktop

[drsmithy]

Active Desktop was IIRC just a way of putting HTML or Animations on the desktop - they weren't programs per-se, that could tell you useful stuff.

Active Desktop let you embed ActiveX controls in your Desktop (hence the name...). Since ActiveX controls - as everyone who loves to hate them knows - are just win32 programs, this effectively let you embed whatever the hell you wanted into your desktop.

However, given the specs of the average PC back in 1997, for obvious reasons it never really took off.

New Project - Redo X-Windows

[neonprimetime]

How about a new project called Redo X-Windows? Just a thought.

Re:New Project - Redo X-Windows

[Anonymous Coward]

amen to that.. we should ditch X-windows altogether. there's really no demanding need, at least in the linux world, for X-windows. sure, one could argue that it's a must in thin-client setups, but the overwhelming majority of linux boxes are not thin clients.

Re:New Project - Redo X-Windows

[LLuthor]

And do what differently?

Care to point out some deficiency in the X codebase?

Re:New Project - Redo X-Windows

[Andrewkov]

Yeah, let's replace it with DirectX running under Wine.

Re:New Project - Redo X-Windows

[Anonymous Coward]

stupid config file?

Re:New Project - Redo X-Windows

[cortana]

That's an implementation detail.

Assuming you are talking about the Xorg server, it's going away for X11R7.3, hopefully.

Re:New Project - Redo X-Windows

[settrans]

It's called dsywindows.

Re:New Project - Redo X-Windows

[neonprimetime]

And do what differently?

Make it always display Pretty Pink Ponies.

Care to point out some deficiency in the X codebase?

I'm living in the past

Re:New Project - Redo X-Windows

[Doctor Crumb]

I will give you the benefit of the doubt and assume your problem is with the xfree86 server implementation, which is being replaced by the xorg implementation by pretty much everyone. You *have* heard of it, neh?

Re:New Project - Redo X-Windows

[Xabraxas]

we should ditch X-windows altogether. there's really no demanding need, at least in the linux world, for X-windows. sure, one could argue that it's a must in thin-client setups, but the overwhelming majority of linux boxes are not thin clients.

If it ain't broke, don't fix it. X is being overhauled as we speak (modularization, GLX implementations, etc), but one thing that is staying is the client/server architecture of X. There is nothing wrong with the way it works on a local computer, and it has the added benefit of being able to work across a network. A myth in the FOSS world is that the client/server architecture of X is one of the biggest problems with Unix.

Re:New Project - Redo X-Windows

[backwardMechanic]

So you don't use it. I'm currently logged in to two remote machines (one of them being my linux box at work), and making good use of the graphical environment.

But I think you're right, we do need a clean up. I've never used your computer, and really see no demand for it. I propose we ditch it.

Re:New Project - Redo X-Windows

[the_greywolf]

Care to point out some deficiency in the X codebase?

I don't know about anyone else, but I find myself frustrated by the poor network performance. SSH doesn't compress it well, and applications like the ones based on Mozilla make so damned many X calls (and so many pixmaps!) that trying to use any of my common applications over an SSH tunnel quickly slows to uselessness.

X11 is great. it does everything. It works extremely well on local sockets. Hell, I don't think I'd use anything else - if there was anything else to use.

But X has gotten too big for networking. Either we need an X12 protocol that is more light-weight or things like Mozilla and Evolution need to slim the fuck DOWN.

(I have further complaints about Firefox's poor performance, QT's excessive pretty-ification, and Evolution's and KDE's memory-inefficiency, but that's for another discussion. And wow, that KDE4 review was... pointless.)

Re:New Project - Redo X-Windows

[ArsonSmith]

Fonts, cut & paste, printing. Would be a good start.

Re:New Project - Redo X-Windows

[FrostedChaos]

Have you ever programmed with X?
I mean, not with QT, or GTK, or some toolkit, but actually with X?

It takes ~200 lines of code just to get a reasonable hello world program.
Some X functions take like a 9 or 10 arguments, all of which are crusty old structs where you might only care about one or two values-- at most.
That should be your first clue that something is wrong.

Some more clues will occur to you when you realize the amazing amount of useless stuff that was put in back when color displays were exotic rarities. Things like 8-bit b&w bitmaps for dithering. The bizzaro font and rendering models. The lack of useful drawing primitives.

Seriously, someone should redo X with a more modern focus. And then write some backends for all the toolkits. Really, what you want for something like X is an object-oriented language like C++. (Of course, there should definitely be some kind of plain-old-C interface exported.)
More likey, though, people will continue to evolve the code we already have.

Re:New Project - Redo X-Windows

[Anonymous Coward]

Which is why so many programmers use higher level functions and libraries rather than the base system. Most of the code you are comlpaining about has nothing to do with the X architecture and changing anything else won't be seen by the users, only the developers. Who would have a mammoth task.

You gonna help?

PS Yes, I have written X programs and it was OK.

PPS what about where you don't have a 24-bit display? OR don't want to waste bandwidth on unneeded colour?

Re:New Project - Redo X-Windows

[Anonymous Coward]

Try NX.

Re:New Project - Redo X-Windows

[jaavaaguru]

I wholeheartedly disagree with that. I use "ssh -X" to connect to X displays on Linux and Solaris boxes on an almost daily basis - and they're desktop systems, not part of some big thin-client setup. I'm sure I'm not the only person who notices that X gives better performance than VNC on some networks.

Re:New Project - Redo X-Windows

[Spikeles]

http://pepper.idge.net/disaster.html

Re:New Project - Redo X-Windows

[Anonymous Coward]

How about getting X to release pixmaps properly? See http://people.redhat.com/berrange/olpc/performance /epiphany/ for details.

Re:New Project - Redo X-Windows

[Xabraxas]

I hope you're joking considering how old and outdated your reference is. I have a copy of the UNIX haters handbook and it's funny how most of the issues outlined in it have long since been fixed and a lot of the other ones are a joke.

Re:New Project - Redo X-Windows

[Spikeles]

Dammit, an educated person on slashdot who actually reads thing? go back to where you came from!!... :P

Re:New Project - Redo X-Windows

[Des Herriott]

Have you ever programmed with X?
I mean, not with QT, or GTK, or some toolkit, but actually with X?

I presume you're asking if anyone's programmed using Xlib directly ("X" is an alternative term for the X Window System, or possibly the "X" Protocol). Yeah, I wrote a simple Mandelbrot generator with it for educational purposes when I was first learning about X11, back in 1994 or so. It was instructive (taught me about event-driven programming and how to write an event loop), but the next thing I did was learn Motif (which I won't try to defend here :-)

If you're not actually trolling, your example is really, really, stupid. Nobody writes real applications using Xlib directly, just like nobody would write a Windows app using only the GDI.

Seriously, someone should redo X with a more modern focus.

Okay, so you are just trolling. X is being continually redone with a modern focus - that's what X extensions are for. You get nice things like Fontconfig, GLX, compositing, etc. for free when you use a toolkit such as KDE or Gnome, which are quite capable of taking advantage of such extensions.

You think you can do better? Put up or shut up. People have tried and failed - ever heard of Y-Windows or Berlin? So good luck to you. Meanwhile I'll happily continue to use something I know works just fine.

Re:New Project - Redo X-Windows

[Bertie]

Can it do non-rectangular windows yet? That's a fairly serious limitation for doing clever stuff with windows.

Re:New Project - Redo X-Windows

[LLuthor]

Ever used xeyes? It even comes with the X distrbution, and is built and installed by default (in the monolithic package). It was written around 1988. I am not sure when the SHAPE extension came about but it has existed for at least 10 years now.

Sounds to me like a rip-off of Vista

[rhartness]

Which, in many ways, is a rip-off of OS X.

Re:Sounds to me like a rip-off of Vista

[kypper]

Are we really going to do the rip-off route?
Let's just go all the way back to Xerox...

Re:Sounds to me like a rip-off of Vista

[BushCheney08]

Are we really going to do the rip-off route? Let's just go all the way back to Xerox...

I really wish someone would "rip me off" by giving me millions in stock.

Re:Sounds to me like a rip-off of Vista

[kypper]

Given that your nick is BushCheney, I'd say that's already happened ;)

Re:Sounds to me like a rip-off of Vista

[Anonymous Coward]

Only if you're a Macfag using one of your Fapple Crapintosh machines.

Re:Sounds to me like a rip-off of Vista

[Bralkein]

Insightful? The parent poster didn't even give a reason for their opinion. That's probably because the amount of concrete information about KDE 4 is so low that it's very difficult to find a reason for having such an opinion. They're either clairvoyant, or being an ass. I'd suggest the latter.

Re:Sounds to me like a rip-off of Vista

[MightyYar]

Is fag still an insult? I think society has moved past you. Keep it relevant and call him an Islamo-Macfascist. Crapintosh is pretty good, but what the hell is a Fapple? That sounds like a flavor at Starbucks.

Re:Sounds to me like a rip-off of Vista

[rhartness]

The reason why I made such a post was because the article expresses the idea that the KDE 4 team is coming up with something innovative and new. Sure, I'm excited about it myself because I am a KDE fan. That doesn't change the fact that I get pissed at any company who touts new features for their upcoming software as 'original' when it's already been done before.

Any computer geek who is remotely interested in the history of modern computing knows all of the big rip-off stories of the past thirties years. This is a practice that has come to be all but excepted. I just wish, however, that the developers of such projects would be a little more honest in their presentation of their ideas. They could just have easily said that 'We like the direction that many OS environments are going in the PC industry and we think we can improve on them from within the KDE.'

Why is that so hard?

Re:Sounds to me like a rip-off of Vista

[Bralkein]

That's fair enough, but if you don't qualify your opinions, you end up coming across like a troll. I don't mean any offence, but your initial post just looks like you're writing it off without giving any real reason, which annoyed me.

Still, I think maybe you are being a bit cynical here. Of course, lots of people promise that they are going to do lots of new and innovative things. Some of them are lying, but some of them are not. KDE certainly is doing a bit of catching up here, but that's inevitable. Yes, things like accelerated desktop have been done before, but I don't think it's about that. What I've always understood from what Aaron Seigo et al have been talking about is that the exciting thing is not the accelerated desktop or desktop widgets or whatever, it's what they are going to do with this new technology once they have it in place. From what I've read, the KDE developers have a genuine interest in trying out some cool new things here, and I don't really see their motivation for making a lot of hot air over nothing. Nobody's going to be pre-ordering copies of KDE 4. It's free software, remember? If they hype KDE 4 up to the rafters, all that's going to happen is they're going to look like a bunch of idiots come release day. As far as I know, the reason why we haven't seen anything particularly innovative coming from the KDE team yet is because they're still pretty much putting the technical groundwork in first; i.e. they're converting everything to Qt 4, adjusting kdelibs, implementing their cross-platform stuff, etc. Once that stuff is all pretty much out of the way, I am expecting to see a bit more exciting stuff coming along.

Anyway, I guess we'll have to wait for the beta. That's when we'll find out who's right! ;-)

Re:Sounds to me like a rip-off of Vista

[nick.ian.k]

Given the lawsuit-happy trigger fingers of many large software companies, I'm not at all surprised that no one says anything along the lines of what you're suggesting. Yes, it would be better, but it's not a realistic option for any developer or group of developers that don't want to face time in court.

the grass is always greener

[rayde]

(i am not trolling here, this is just my observation) i think most linux fans fall into one of two camps. Those who want Gnome and KDE to stop doing parallel efforts and instead concentrate on a unified GUI for linux... and then those who appreciate having more choices and want KDE and Gnome to push each other.

I fall into the former. I think it's a pain when you see some cool feature or eyecandy or whatever appearing in the desktop environment you aren't using... but it isn't enough to make you totally switch your current desktop. And just when you do go and switch, your old environment will come out with some sweet feature and you're back to square one.

i realize it's a complicated issue, and neither KDE nor Gnome is about to fold and allow the other to take precidence... but I still look forward to the day when everyone is working towards a common goal, and when a new user interface element is implemented, everybody can benefit from it.

Re:the grass is always greener

[Shadyman]

You've got a point. Gnome and KDE follow totally different philosophies, and I think that is more of a hinderance than a help when it comes to merging.

Gnome follows the less-is-more philosophy, while KDE follows the More is More philosophy

Re:the grass is always greener

[Eideewt]

Don't forget the camp that considers them both bloated and forgoes them for something else. The Ratpoison/wmii/dwm/Ion/TWM/PekWM/*box using crowd.

Re:the grass is always greener

[orasio]

I don't think the same way you do.

Right now, what you are talking about is actually happening.
UI stuff is not a matter of implementation, but one of design. When the KDE project does something nice, and it happens to work in practice, it's much easier for the Gnome team to add it to Gnome.

But there is a difference between Gnome users, and KDE users.

I see KDE target as people who want the latest features, and the most configurability.

Gnome seems to be about having good features, even if they take a lot of time to be integrated in the desktop, and the best default configuration, even if things are not that easily configurable.

I like Gnome better, and I don't want it to be more like KDE. I believe KDE users wouldn't want KDE to be more like Gnome, and lose configurability and features.

Of course, this is only my interpretation, it was like this the last time I checked KDE in Suse 8.2, maybe they have converged now to a point where the difference is irrelevant.

Re:the grass is always greener

[lawpoop]

I used to think that 'duplication' was just a waste of effort. Wouldn't it be better if we all put our effort together in harmony and came up with the Next Big Thing? United we stand, divided we fall?

The problem is, when your working on a huge monolithic project like that, people really don't work together. There are arguments and disagreements. Energetical people with radical, new ideas will encounter old farts who want to do things the old way, become disenfranchised and give up. Productive old workhorses will be frustrated by young upstarts trying to pull them in 100 different directions at once, selling a bad idea from 10 years ago as the latest, greatest idea. The project will proceed on the lowest common denominator, implementing vanilla ideas that are promoted simply because nobody could find a reason to reject them.

Would you like it if Apple and MS got together to make a unified desktop? Don't you think that the bureaucracy and organizational overhead would stymie the project and ultimately water down the end result?

Instead of waste and duplication, think of it as parallel development teams, developing, implementing, and polishing the latest new ideas as a presentation to the larger mindshare market. Those ideas might need to re-developed or re-implemented, or they may be ready to be included in larger projects, like KDE or Gnome. It's a very effective and efficient way to harness human motivation and inspiration and deliver new ideas to the masses.

Re:the grass is always greener

[cp.tar]

All in all, it's a good thing we have a choice.

A single, unified desktop environment would be great for making Linux more accessible to new users. Which is all fine and dandy, but given all the conflicting UI philosophies people adopt, merging would only lead to everyone but the newbies rather dissatisfied.

All in all, I used to be an avid Gnome user, but grew dissatisfied with it. I still use it, though, because KDE is just not there yet, and certain Gnome applets are just way too useful. With Plasma, KDE might get there and I might switch.

Then again, maybe E17 becomes a bit more stable so I can switch to that.

It can be a pain, but all in all, choice is good.

Re:the grass is always greener

[Yvan256]

Except that in the eyes of many (me included) it totals up to four different operating systems:
- OS X
- Windows
- Linux/KDE
- Linux/Gnome

BSD? Nah, it's dead. ;-)

Re:the grass is always greener

[fyoder]

At home I run windowmaker, but also have kde and gnome installed so I can use their apps. At work I use kde, but also have gnome installed for the apps. Switching/switching back wouldn't be difficult. I also run windows under vmware. Rather than making absolute choices I prefer 'all of the above'.

Re:the grass is always greener

[kfg]

Those who want Gnome and KDE to stop doing parallel efforts and instead concentrate on a unified GUI for linux...

And all you'd have to do is get the other few dozen GUI projects on board as well. In the meantime you can work on unifying Apple and Microsoft, a much easier task.

KFG

Re:the grass is always greener

[alexgieg]

What I really want to know is why, oh, WHY, both Gnome and KDE waste so much usefull screen space.

I'm serious. Now and then I install one or the other in a VM in my XP box, set to the same resolution as XP itself, and watch the state of the default menus, menu items distance, drop-downs, font sizes etc. For some reason I can't grasp, they're always bigger and more wastefull than what Microsoft made with XP. And as a result, I always feel my CRT had just lost one or two inches.

I wonder whether you all who use these system feel the same thing, but in reverse, with XP's screen objects seen as too small.

PS.: I've never tried MacOS, but that bar of big buttons I see in screenshots spells trouble for me. But if those who use it love it so much, then I guess that either my CRT is too small, I'm a screen-space maniac, or both. Who knows? :D

Re:the grass is always greener

[urbanradar]

KDE and GNOME merging would be a horrible idea. First, for technical reasons: GNOME is constructed on GTK, mostly in C (and, lately, C# / Mono). KDE is built on QT and mostly C++. If both projects somehow merged, you'd either end up with having to throw one of the toolkits out of the window, or you'd end up having a desktop environment that requires two toolkits. Yes, you might argue that most modern Linux desktops have both toolkits installed already anyway. But a desktop environment that is built on more than one base just wouldn't make a lot of sense and would most likely be cumbersome to develop for. The fact that you'd have two programming languages (albeit related ones) probably wouldn't help that much, either.* And as for just dropping one of the toolkits and languages - you'd have to more or less re-write roughly a gazillion applications from scratch just to fit into the new scheme. Hmm. I've heard of better ideas. You could say the same about Human Interface Guidelines. You'd definitely need to throw one set out of the window, and make non-trivial changes to the interfaces of countless programmes. * Yes, I do know that other languages are occasionally involved, and some projects already do mix C and C++ in some ways. I'm simplifying things a bit here on purpose. Then, there's the fact that the two projects follow a completely different design mentality. Now, me, personally, I've never liked GNOME much. There's some elements I like and it's definitely "tidier" than KDE in many ways and there's lots of delicious eyecandy, but there's also tons of stuff I dislike. I hate that stupid menu bar at the top, I hate the awful file dialogues, I hate the way preferences are dumbed down, I consider Nautilus to be useless both in spatial and in browser mode, gEdit is a sorry excuse for a text editor in my eyes. KDE on the other hand - I love the way I can set it up just the way I like it, I find it much more usable than GNOME, IOSlaves and the high degree of integration between the different programmes have made my life much easier, JuK is a nice little jukebox, Konqueror a gorgeous file manager and web browser, Kopete is much nicer than gAIM nowadays, Kate is the best text editor I've ever seen - and so on, and so on. Remember, that's just my personal preference, I'm definitely not trying to start a flamewar. Because for everyone who agrees with me, there's someone who prefers GNOME for his own personal reasons and hates KDE. And that's OK. Choice is one of the best things about FOSS. Somehow merging GNOME and KDE would destroy much of that choice. So, do I advocate the Linux desktop being fragmented forevermore? Actually, I don't, even though I think a KDE/GNOME merger would be terrible. I think what we need is not one unified desktop, we need standards that most Linux desktops adhere to. We need the different desktops to be as interoperable as possible. To a large degree, they already are - I can run gAIM or GIMP under KDE just fine. And things are getting better still. If you haven't heard of it yet, you should check out the impressive desktop standardisation work of The Portland Project. To sum it all up: A merger would be near-impossible to pull off and a crappy idea because it requires lots of re-writing, destroys choice and makes things more difficult for developers. However, common standards are extremely useful. IMHO, the Linux desktop is already heading the right way as it is, no matter whether you use GNOME or KDE or something else!

Re:the grass is always greener

[Ash-Fox]

Now and then I install one or the other in a VM in my XP box, set to the same resolution as XP itself, and watch the state of the default menus, menu items distance, drop-downs, font sizes etc. For some reason I can't grasp, they're always bigger and more wastefull than what Microsoft made with XP.

I've never seen anyone stick with the defaults in Gnome or KDE. If the person using the computer is computer illiterate, I imagine the big menus and such are generally good.

Re:the grass is always greener

[Itchy Rich]

I think it's a pain when you see some cool feature or eyecandy or whatever appearing in the desktop environment you aren't using... but it isn't enough to make you totally switch your current desktop. And just when you do go and switch, your old environment will come out with some sweet feature and you're back to square one.

I agree with other posters in that competition is a good thing in this sort of environment. Ideally it'd be made easy to transfer your data and applications from one environment to the other (much like moving your laptop, notepad and pencils from one desk to another) although I appreciate that it's more complicated than that.

Re:the grass is always greener

[nawcom]

I have always been frustrated with the direct link from Linux to X-Windows. Using Linux as a desktop is understandable, but what about the other operating systems? FreeBSD? Solaris? Many unix operating systems can and usually use X-Windows as a GUI. If one has Linux, one may have X, but if one has X, it doesn't mean they are running the Linux kernel.

My usual window manager always seems to be based off of blackbox (fluxbox, openbox, etc)

Re:the grass is always greener

[Quasar Sera]

I think it's a pain when you see some cool feature or eyecandy or whatever appearing in the desktop environment you aren't using... but it isn't enough to make you totally switch your current desktop. And just when you do go and switch, your old environment will come out with some sweet feature and you're back to square one.

Let's say for argument's sake that Gnome and KDE are the only GUI choices for Linux and that they are (magically) totally merged tomorrow. Of course, by definition, the problem you outlined above is never going to occur -- there is only one environment. But that doesn't remotely imply that you're going to get twice as many cool features and eye candy. It doesn't even imply that you wouldn't get, overall, 1/16 the amount of cool features and eye candy. I don't have data to back this argument up, but it seems to me that the existence of competing (but fairly compatible) standards is one of the major forces driving innovation in Linux GUIs. How much have Gnome and KDE changed in the last few years? How about the Windows GUI? Just something to consider.

Re:the grass is always greener

[Anonymous Coward]

Your screen DPI will be set wrong. I had my screen set to 100dpi, (21inch at 1600x1200) and it looked pretty damn nice, nice clear easy to read menus, but no more real screen space than Windows at 1280x960. Just the other day I changed it down to 72 dpi, and now all the fonts and stuff are smaller, actually the same size as the Windows fonts would be at 1600x1200.
 
  I actually prefer it smaller, feels like I have a bigger desktop.

Re:the grass is always greener

[1010110010]

Then again, maybe E17 becomes a bit more stable so I can switch to that.

I've had e17 (recompiled every other month) running stable as hell for a while now. (read: more than a year)

Re:the grass is always greener

[cp.tar]

I've had certain problems, but I might give it a try...

Re:the grass is always greener

[ElleyKitten]

Those who want Gnome and KDE to stop doing parallel efforts and instead concentrate on a unified GUI for linux... and then those who appreciate having more choices and want KDE and Gnome to push each other.

I'm in the latter. Competition is good for almost everything. Without the competition, why would they bother to innovate (think about IE6)? Also, being separate, KDE and GNOME (and XFCE, and Fluxbox, and...) will innovate in different directions, so you have options and are not herded into what "most people" like (if you liked what "most people" like, you'd be using Windows XP anyways).

Anyways, it's trivial in most distros to install and use both. In Ubuntu, type sudo apt-get install kubuntu-desktop, and KDE is an option in the options menu on the log in screen. Consult your distro's wiki, and try a different desktop just for fun.

Re:the grass is always greener

[bhalo05]

Actually, only KDE has a choice of philosophy. For Gnome it's the only way since they don't have the technology to follow KDE's steps and compete with them on those grounds.

Re:the grass is always greener

[thinsoldier]

You know what would be great for making Linux more accessible to new users.
Having a user friendly distrobution that actually worked on almost any hardware.

I've tried knoppix and ubuntu on 2 systems over and over again for the last year and a half (new distro releases and new hardware along the way) and had some friends try other distros on my main machine and none ever work. :(

Is there anyone out there who I could pay $(whatever the cost of vista is) to get ubuntu running on my system with xgl and full hardware 3d accelleration and load me up with emulators and whatever it is I need to play windows games and run photoshop and make my wacom tablet work?

I'm serious. I can probaby only afford to ship my system to Florida. So if you know anyone there (Ft. Lauderdale especially) let them know.

Alternatively, if anyone living in FL would like a free boat ticket to the Bahamas with a free motel room (nowhere near the beach) and 1 day scooter rental for getting Linux to work for me, we could probably figure something out.

Re:the grass is always greener

[thinsoldier]

OS X is an annoying piece of POO. I've used it all day every day for like 2 years now.
But you can make it really tiny if you want.

I actually got an older version of knoppix to boot for me a couple times and really the size of things didn't bother me. For the most part I wouldnt say "wasted space", more like "breathing room". But since I don't USE it like I USE XP or OS X I can't really say how it may or may not interfere with my work flow.

Re:the grass is always greener

[dbIII]

Hmm, a common desktop environment - let's call it CDE! Please look up CDE and you will see that people did not want a common desktop environment for a wide variety of reasons. In the small office I work in there are people that use gnome, kde, cde, fluxbox, enlightenment and twm (fvwm was also used a year ago) as well as MS Windows with hummingbird exceed. Even if everyone wanted an identical gnome desktop it would be very time consuming to implement due to the single user non-network aware and obfiscated registry design of gconf - you can't export the settings and have to click the mouse a lot to change the gnome panel (Note: Sabayon may change this when it is finished) - plus gnome metacity does not handle remote applications well at all and tends to hang EVERYTHING when one application is slow to respond on a different machine.

Re:the grass is always greener

[Trelane]

What I really want to know is why, oh, WHY, both Gnome and KDE waste so much usefull screen space.

If you don't like it, it's Linux--you're not forced into any one particular system. Many people like other window managers, like WindowMaker, FluxBox, IceBox, xfce, FVWM, and even TWM. They will provide you a much more minimalistic setup.

Additionally, you can shrink things down. It's under the panel properties under GNOME (right-click on the panel, Properties, change the "Size" setting).

I wonder whether you all who use these system feel the same thing, but in reverse, with XP's screen objects seen as too small.

Actually, I don't usually find that; I have my panels down at the minimum, and it's likely smaller than XP. Although things that I find most immediately annoying are the ugly icon set, lack of useful applets and panels, and particularly the lack of virtual desktops. Oh, and the Start Button. I like how GNOME has split it up. Oh, and the lack of Beagle. And the lack of thumbnailing of things like PDFs. I'll stop now; it's starting to sound zealoty. Thank goodness I don't have to use Windows that often. :)

Re:the grass is always greener

[strider44]

Agreed.

KDE and Gnome are quite different now - each of the desktop environments (including XFCE, Fluxbox and even Enlightenment) serve their own purpose and have their own set of advantages and disadvantages. For KDE and Gnome, Gnome is more user friendly by default. It lets a new user just pick it up and use it as it holds quite a good intuitive interface. Lets face it, it's not the flashiest environment you'd ever use, but it's functional and easy. KDE on the other hand is a bit heavier since it tries to accomodate enormous amounts of customisation. It's more for the people who want to mould everything how they want it. This is definitely reflected in the system options - you have options for pretty much everything in KDE, because why wouldn't you want to change exactly how the curser behaves in kwrite?

Personally I use KDE on my desktop because I use it quite often and I enjoy customising the little details. I'm getting a new laptop soon and quite probably I'll be using Gnome on it. I'm not schizophrenic, I'm just perceiving that KDE and Gnome have their own advantages and trying to take advantage of them.

Re:the grass is always greener

[Anonymous Coward]

You sir, are a troll.

It is a well-known fact that GNOME has a superior technology and that KDE is only catching up now with Qt4/KDE4. The ongoing effort for Plasma is very similar to what was done by GNOME more than a year ago.

Re:the grass is always greener

[alexgieg]

Yes, I know that (I've been configuring the X-Window System since before either KDE or Gnome existed). I was talking specifically about a default installation of both systems, which a new user will find if purchasing a Linux box. When this default is compared to the default XP theme in a new Windows box is when we notice the difference in available screen space.

I really think MS got this right, probably because they had in mind that most of their users would be using Windows in budget hardware (my case), while Gnome and KDE developers set the default to look nice in their own CRTs and LCDs, which are, I wildly guess, above average in quality, size and resolution.

Actually, even at the time I used bare-bones X, things were big, probably due to those gigantic workstation CRTs that other, non-ia32 UNIXes, used at the time. Maybe X wasn't thought as something one would use in a 14" or 15" CRT...

Re:the grass is always greener

[Yfrwlf]

I would have to agree. I think it's completely possible for a program to do everything that a user wants and to do it in a way as to not be cluttered. I know there are more differences between KDE and Gnome than just graphics, but in reality, it's mostly the layout/functionality that separates the two. I think it would be cool to see a layout switcher built into KDE or Gnome that would allow you to have the same layout as the other via a simple option change. If this was done, I'd guess there wouldn't be TOO much left to separate the two communities and they could work together. Sure, you can't agree on everything, so there will always be more than one program. Does anyone else think the differences between KDE and Gnome are mergable via layout customization options? I'm sure the KDE group would like the Gnome group helping them to finish KDE 4.0. :)

P.S. Actually, come to think of it, maybe one day in the future if hard drive space and internet bandwidth ever become trivial, you will only download The Program, and then tell it how you want it to be, and it'll do it, because it will be able to do anything! =D

Re:the grass is always greener

[Yfrwlf]

Luckyyyyyyy! Where I work we're forced to all have XP with the extremely boring solid blue background and to use only the standard retarded default XP programs. The problem: too many teachers thought my Suse KDE dual-monitor desktop with alternating screensaver images was amazing and wanted to have it and so complained to my boss. =P

Redundant

[Spad]

The K Desktop Environment Environment, you say?

Re:Redundant

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes. It's like Bob. He works at the button factory factory. They make button factories there.

Re:Redundant

[Soothh]

Just like "Built on NT Technologies" or NewTechnology Technologies...

or DOS Operating System, which is DiskOperatingSystem Operating System.

my favorite "i chat on mIRC" uhhhhh its IRC morons! :)

Re:Redundant

[scuba_steve_1]

I would respond with a clever retort, but I need to head out of the office early so I can stop by the bank on the way home. I need a little extra time since I frequently have difficult with my ATM machine. I can never remember my dang PIN number. Friggin financial AIS systems! Grrrr.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

The article

[Anonymous Coward]

Poor poor CMS, the "article" is just some text, full c&p below:

It has hardly been a few weeks since the release of KDE v3.5.4, one of the most popular desktop environments for Unix/Linux/FreeBSD operating systems, and the KDE development team is already hard at work. They have a dream of revolutionizing the concept of desktop by providing an array of innovative features aimed at improving both the looks of the desktop environment as well as the productivity of end users. In this article, we will look at one such component called Plasma that promises to change the look and feel of a conventional desktop.

Plasma is an ambitious project being pursued by the KDE 4 team which aims at providing a workflow sensitive design of the user interface that improves productivity of an average KDE user. The focus is on improving the clarity and reducing the clutter present in today's desktops. The plasma development will bring together key contributors, such as the visual artists, usability experts, technology experts, programmers and enthusiasts at a very early stage during the development process. This will enable them to create a new desktop environment that meets the requirements of novice and experts alike.

One of the immediate goals of plasma is to provide a better looking desktop. The team is cashing in on the improved graphic capabilities of X server (namely COMPOSITE) and Trolltech's Qt application programming interfaces (APIs) to mesmerize you with those stunning looks. Although a great looking desktop will be a welcome step, the KDE team is not assuming that everyone will have the latest version of X server installed. Thus, care is being taken not to make such looks integral to the functioning of the system. Plasma is being designed in such a way that even people with older versions of X server will be able to effectively use their desktops without the unnecessary frills.

Plasma will be divided into four distinct components. They are:

- Desktop: In plasma, the role of the desktop will be much more than a place where one keeps beautiful looking icons and immediately required files. In fact, it will be a place for the user and the computer to interact with each other. The desktop will no more be a static entity with a fixed set of icons. Your desktop will be capable of providing different kinds of items and services as and when you need them.

- Applet: Applets are small programs, such as clocks, weather notification and application launchers (to name a few) that will help you better manage your work. The aim of the plasma team is to make them easy to develop as well as easy to distribute. They can be authored in a plethora of languages including C/C++, Java, Python and Ruby. The team is currently in the process of developing the Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) that will expose the functionality of libplasma library. After developing the applets, they have to be packaged together with all the artwork, HTML and other resource files into a single archive file. This archive file can then easily be distributed over the Internet.

- Panels: Panels are basically containers for other plasma element. They will be responsible for providing a way to connect applets together.

- Extenders: Extender is a standard graphic element that provides a plasma element to temporarily grow in size (through some sort of animation) and reveal a larger usable space whenever one clicks or hovers over them. This helps to group related widgets that need not be visible all the time and take up important desktop space. Instead, whenever the user invokes them by means of clicking or hovering, the extender provides a mechanism to reveal the extra information.

The KDE 4 desktop aims at revolutionizing the concept of a desktop by providing not only an eye-candy look but also a workflow sensitive design. With full support for newer frameworks such as KHotNewStuffs , it will become extremely easy for applications based on KDE to search and download new plugins, extensions and updates from the Internet. According to Zack Rusin, a prominent KDE developer, "Plasma will blow you away. Nothing you've ever seen or will see in the coming years will come even close to what you'll experience with Plasma. And that's a promise." We agree.

...an icon pile?

[NotQuiteReal]

So?

I thought the whole idea of personal computers was to allow people to work they way they wanted to?

You may like clean desktops while others like cluttered desktops.

Let's start a holy war over how many icons can dance on a screen.

Re:...an icon pile?

[TheDreadSlashdotterD]

When the desktop is so cluttered that I get called because the person can't find IE or Firefox then you know it's gone way too far.

Re:...an icon pile?

[betterunixthanunix]

It has been shown that efficiency decreases when the number of icons becomes sufficiently large -- and you would be surprised how often this actually happens. When you are at home, this may not be a problem, but when talking about an office environment, being unable to find a document because it is buried somewhere on the desktop is a bad thing...and I see it happen all the time. I have seen it get so bad that icons begin getting placed on top of each other, even so bad that people can't even remember whether or not they created a file because it is so difficult to sort through everything.

Re:...an icon pile?

[xtracto]

Let's start a holy war over how many icons can dance on a screen.

I agree. I myself dont like having more than the minimum of icons in the desktop, I almost never use them. I have a
panel (self hiding) on the right with icons of the applicacions I use often (konsole, firefox, kalc, kedit, eclipse, jabref, evolution). On my windows laptop my start menu/bar is also on the right side. It is a bit bigger than the the length of the "start" button, I have some submenues [folders which you can make cascade with a registry option] with applications like Audio, Internet, Office, Video, Software and Hardware. On those folders I put shortcuts to the apps in the start menu, personally I also cant stand the START/PRGRAMS/ALL PROGRAMS/MY PROGRAM/PROGRAM mouse movement, and I dont like the way the programs menu gets clutered after you install all the applications so I have the same submenues there.

Having said that, I have seen people that use the desktop to group their programs. I certainly remember when I was using a friends computer who had all the icons in the desktop arranged in certain way (which for me seemed nonsensical), and i remember his frustration after I selected the "arrange icons automagically" haha...

Re:...an icon pile?

[Ajehals]

Couldn't agree more - I too have a panel and the usual K menu auto hiding across the top of my screens and on my desktop I keep a few superkaramba widgets for date time and system status and news etc.. but no icons. Icons are great for sorting / viewing data files etc.. in folders but I don't see the point in having them clutter the desktop for applications - I never store any files on my desktop anyway... (each to their own I know). The one thing I cant get away from is hitting alt+f2 and launching the application from the run dialog, seems nonsensical in a GUI but it means I know where to find everything, especially with a run history and auto completion!

Re:...an icon pile?

[Vexorian]

Is that enough reason to disallow me, who can find firefox cause I use the menu to launch programs, from filling my desktop with my files if I personally really find that to be the most efficient way to work in a computer? Also your guys would end up calling you for many other dumb reasons anyways.

Re:...an icon pile?

[thinsoldier]

open the folder that contains the desktops contents and it's much easier to sort through. And while you're at it, organize some stuff into folders.

20 organized folders on your desktop is way better than 200 files.

Re:...an icon pile?

[injury0314]

That's what I use the command line for.

In windows I always make sure all apps are directly runnable from the command line. And as for linux, well that's the default.

It eliminates the need to hunt for icons.

Re:...an icon pile?

[X0563511]

Click on something, then type the first few letters of the file. Examine what happens.

Re:...an icon pile?

[Gnulix]

It has been shown that efficiency decreases when the number of icons becomes sufficiently large

Where has this been shown? Do you have a reference to a study? Or is it just your gut feeling?

That penguin is pissed!

[Anonymous Coward]

Cujo the rabid penguin is timing out at me!

Mirror

[sidepocket]

http://www.mirrordot.org/stories/253c28d1a4b1d6d7b a107421629ff464/index.html

So KDE is...

[intangible]

So KDE is turning into Gnome?

Re:So KDE is...

[splutty]

Knome Desktop Environment, right?

Re:So KDE is...

[Anonymous Coward]

No, its turning into OS X from 5 years ago. Only with more bugs, less security, and the usual insipidly bad usability. Linux sucks, and the sooner you dumbasses figure that out, the sooner you can save up to buy a real computer. Think different. Think better. Think Apple.

Re:So KDE is...

[andersa]

Sure hope not. I don't like Gnome. I think it is much slower than KDE (it was everytime I tried it). And I just can't get to grips with the way they seem to have all dialog buttons reversed. Usability experts my.... The button you use most should be on the left. At least in the west, where we read from left to right. I don't get why they want to switch them around.

Flame on.. :)

Workflow-sensitive?

[TheWoozle]

The average user can't figure out how to organize their *own* desktop to accomodate their workflow better than "this pile of icons is for this, that pile of icons is for that", and these guys are going to come along and have the *computer* decide what's best?

Sheesh, have we learned nothing from Microsoft? Having the computer decide what things a user can interact with and how the user can interact with them based on a set of hidden, unchangeable rules is counter-productive at best; at times, it can be murderous-rage inducing.

How about we actually help people become better-organized by, oh, I don't know...teaching them some useful organizational skills?!

Re:Workflow-sensitive?

[hamsjael]

heer, heer never understood the "icons and menus magically appearing" idea

Re:Workflow-sensitive?

[paulpach]

If you have to teach people something, you have already failed. Users Don't Read the Manual. So if your interface expects them to do so, your interface is probably flawed.

They are not trying to guess what the users might do, they are doing some serious research on it. As a result, they have come up with some great improvements such as kickoff. And their new HIG

It is not about the computer deciding what is best, quite the opposite, on usability you are supposed to empower the user. The link is from what will become their next HIG. It is pretty safe to say that KDE has allways done well in this particular area.

Re:Workflow-sensitive?

[Sentry21]

How about we actually help people become better-organized by, oh, I don't know...teaching them some useful organizational skills?!

Having recently taken a job where I'm forced (yes, forced; I'd rather not) to use Linux on my workstation, and having tried various desktop environments, window managers, etc., I don't think this is the problem.

Rather than 'teaching [me] some useful organisational skills', how about designing a desktop environment that just gets the heck out of my way and lets me do my work? The biggest complaint I have about XP is that it seems as though there's always something jumping up in my face saying 'Hey, let me help you!', which kicks me out of menus, steals my focus, or blocks the window I'm trying to read. Moving to Linux, I've found that the new iterations of GNOME and KDE (which I haven't used since version 1.x and 2.x respectively) are adopting the same attitude.

KDE's annoying little yellow notification bubbles that get sent up by apps like Kopete just get in my way, and I have to click to get rid of them, which takes focus away from what I'm doing. Then I have to click back on the app I was working on so I can get back to work.

So to the designers of desktop environments, be ye GNOME, KDE, or Miscellaneous, I say this: Make software that stays out of my way until I ask for it, and gets out of my way when I'm done with it! Give me notifications that I can ignore, alerts I can shrug off, apps that stay put, and dialogs that don't pop up. If you're going to try to be a commercial UI, be OS X, not Windows.

Re:Workflow-sensitive?

[SoapDish]

I understand you're issues with windows, and other GUIs always interrupting you. I have the same issues, but that's actually why I use KDE. I don't know what it was like back in the 2.x days, but I'm really happy with it at 3.5, and I'm looking forward to KDE 4.

A couple ways I've gotten the system to leave me alone are:
a) don't show desktop icons (desktop behaviour);
b) set focus to follow mouse (window behaviour) - no more clicking on windows to get back to them.

There are other features in KDE that I find really useful too. The most useful has to be what they've done with the maximize button. Left click= maximize. Middle click=maximize only on vertical. Right click=maximize only on horizontal. And they're all reversible at any time. It's perfect for larger screens and multitasking, or copying from one app to another.

A half hour exploring the control center can save much stress and frustration.

Re:Workflow-sensitive?

[Narishma]

You can disable all notifications if you want, you know? Or only the ones you don't like.

Re:Workflow-sensitive?

[thinsoldier]

sounds like a plan.

The super users need to show the hopeless ones how to become competent users. Then you can dazzle them with intermediate/super user workflows. Honestly if more time (and money from trees) were spent educating users about alternatives and how to use them, more and more home/small business users would have dumped windows somewhere between winME and winXPSP1.

I try switching to linux every couple of months but it just don't work cuz I don't know how to make it work. If I could replace all I know about windows with an equal amount of linux know-how I'm sure I'd have no complains but that just aint happening.

Re:Workflow-sensitive?

[thinsoldier]

you brin a little homeless kid to an orphanage.
Kid never had shoes and was always hungry.
Give the kind some food and a pair of shoes.
He's smart enough to figure out how to put on the shoes (left/right same difference).
You EMPOWER him to run around the back yard like a normal kid without worrying about slicing his foot on junk on the ground.
However, the kid and all his new orphan friends repeatedly trip over their shoe laces and bruise themselves.
This happens all day, every day, and since they are all falling together, they think it's normal. They think there's no better way to run around and incompetent bastards who run the orphanage don't care to watch the kids during recess or teach them anything.
None of the kids stop wearing there shoes but eventually more than a couple stop playing during recess.

Finally 2 or three kids show up who actualy know how to tie their damned shoes. One by one they TEACH the other kids how to tie their shoes. Now they can run faster, jump higher, kick harder and are MORE EMPOWERED to explore their environment and the limits of their own abilities.

What I want, part deux

[MasterC]

You know, I had a thoughtful and insightful list of maybe half-a-dozen things/comments about KDE I would want as a power user. Then KWin seg faulted on me and I had to restart X thus losing my comments.

My list now consists of one things:

• Fix KWin from seg faulting

That would be super!

Re:What I want, part deux

[Verunks]

you don't have to restart X just switch to a text console with ctrl+alt+fn and do export DISPLAY=:0 (or whatever display you use) and start kwin

Re:What I want, part deux

[Mad Merlin]

Why wouldn't you just start kwin again?

Re:What I want, part deux

[Anonymous Coward]

Are you sure your KDE installation is not corrupt? It's been a while since last time kwin seg faulted on my machine.

Re:What I want, part deux

[DarkProphet]

Ouch!

If you have a beefy, supported graphics chipset, you could replace X/kwin with Xgl/compiz. Its kind of neat. Much to my surprise, I haven't had to restart X once since I set it up... like 2 months ago.

Re:What I want, part deux

[Anonymous Coward]

um....I'm not entirely sure you have any idea of what you're talking about.

I prefer to design my own desktop

[rueger]

... which aims at providing a workflow-sensitive design of the user interface that improves productivity of an average KDE user

My experience with both Windows and OS X is that anytime the OS tries to "help" me it makes life more difficult.

For me the holy grail of desktop design is one that allows me to place what I want, where I want on the desk top and have it remain exactly where I put it.

Even better, when I switch from the 12" laptop to the big flat screen on my desk, allow me two desktop settings that make best use of the different real estate available.

OS X widgets seem like great idea, but I find that the need to pop up or drop into the widget level, and then wait for the actual widgets to load up and begin functioning is a pain in the butt. I'd rather have things like calculators or weather or currency converters right on the desktop and immediately available.

Apple's solution just seems to add more clicks and more time to do routine tasks.

If KDE goes the route of trying to guess what I want, please give me the option of turning that guessing game off.

Re:I prefer to design my own desktop

[Anonymous Coward]

OS X widgets seem like great idea, but I find that the need to pop up or drop into the widget level, and then wait for the actual widgets to load up and begin functioning is a pain in the butt. I'd rather have things like calculators or weather or currency converters right on the desktop and immediately available.

If you had RTFA, this is exactly one of the things KDE is doing with plasma (Actually, it's already been implemented with Superkaramba, they're just integrating it into the system)

Re:I prefer to design my own desktop

[amRadioHed]

For me the holy grail of desktop design is one that allows me to place what I want, where I want on the desk top and have it remain exactly where I put it.

Amen to that. I can't figure out why XP on my work laptop is always rearranging my desktop. I've got about 20 different icons on my desktop, is it too much to ask that they don't move around at random times? From what I can tell it looks like when the icons move they are going back to some previous configuration, but I'm not positive. Either way, it's a pain.

Re:I prefer to design my own desktop

[PitaBred]

You're not the only one that gets that. Part of it is because I use an external monitor about half the time with my laptop, in conjunction with the laptop screen, and the rest of the time I don't.

Re:I prefer to design my own desktop

[John Nowak]

OS X widgets seem like great idea, but I find that the need to pop up or drop into the widget level, and then wait for the actual widgets to load up and begin functioning is a pain in the butt. I'd rather have things like calculators or weather or currency converters right on the desktop and immediately available.

Just for the record, this is already possible in OS X. You just need to enable "developer" mode with an app like Tinkertool (or using the 'defaults' command). You can then place as many on the desktop as you like.

Whaaa--...???

[Anonymous Coward]

...Redesign the *DESKTOP* you say...??!!!

So, are they going to get it right this time? What with all the artists and all, eh?

Or, are they just dicking around again, and in 5 years they'll wind up redoing the entire thing because whoops, whoah, that thing we did in 2006? Whoah what a piece of crap THAT was, who thought THAT would work, sheesh.

Sorry I woke up on the wrong side of the bed. But come on what the HELL people blah blah blah desktop blah blah blah redesign blah blah blah usability blah blah blah icons blah blah blah.....and all it ever amounts to is some kids playing a shell game with menu items and toolbars. The result? I gotta do 3 more clicks to open my document and now I get to my email this way instead of that way and wow the control panel is over here now and gee there are 20 more options and 4 more tabs on this "Options" dialog box and I can choose between "fade-in" and "slide" for all right-click menus and would you look at that I can do URLs right in the file system browser now and oh yeah I can FINALLY make all my windows 63% transparent. I've been *waiting* for them to get around to that! Yeah baby, look at this, *THIS* time, we got it right! No fooling this time! Really!

That's life in the mass produced modern world I guess. It's just bits on a hard drive somewhere, you don't like 'em, wipe 'em out and start all over again, engage hype machine, tinker around for a few years, and then down the road decide new version was just another piece of disposable crap, wipe out the bits and start over again. Total cost: $0.00. Total worth: $0.00.

I hope you folks are happy with it.
Me, I'm already bored to tears.

Ha-ha, my vword:ashman

PS not trollin on KDE. Could easily do a search+replace KDE-->Microsoft-->Apple-->Insert-your-pile-of-crap -software-here.

Re:Whaaa--...???

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow. Jaded much?

Am I the ONLY ONE who thought this was about TVs ?

[JoshDM]

Honestly. I'm looking for a good Plasma TV and I thought they were going to talk about the next generation of Plasma TVs. I'm thinking of getting a 42" Panasonic.

3D Desktops

[aersixb9]

Are there any good 3D desktops for linux or windows? (Maybe as a replacement for explorer?) I guess a 3D desktop could be something as simple as 3D models for icons instead of 2D bitmaps, 3D accelerator support for fast rendering, a 3D background object, and maybe some rotating or zooming virtual desktops. It might be nice to have built in scaling for all programs too, rending the programs' 2D images onto a 3D polygon, then allowing the user to scale that polygon at 1:1, or at a different ratio (such as a 'zoomed out', or even a 'zoomed in' mode), and the zoomed out mode would be useful particularly when there were multiple windows on the screen, and fine detail wasn't too important...

Are there any practical 3D desktops around, or other desktop alternatives? These new desktops are just more of the same, heck some people still use the old version of the desktop, the 'shell'.

Re:3D Desktops

[Down_in_the_Park]

I'm not sure if you're just trolling or haven't followed *nix desktop development. But there is a really cool 3d-desktop called xgl based on opengl

See here: http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xgl

Re:3D Desktops

[Anonymous Coward]

http://honeybrown.ca/Pubs/BumpTop.html

Re:3D Desktops

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually even XGL won't be needed after a while, aiGLX is already integrated into the newest(7.1) Xorg and supports all the same effects without the drawbacks of XGL(lack of xinerama support for instance). It works currently if you have a opengl capable card with open drivers, otherwise you'll have to wait 'till nvidia/ati release drivers with the right extensions. nVidia's drivers should be released this month, though.

Re:Am I the ONLY ONE who thought this was about TV

[speckledpig]

I thought the same thing...until I read the rest of the subject line... :-/

Re:Am I the ONLY ONE who thought this was about TV

[Anonymous Coward]

If you seriously read the title of this article and thought it was about tvs then perhaps you don't belong at a news for nerds site.

Not Redundant...

[tygerstripes]

Recursive!

This is GNU/Linux we're talking about, after all :-)

I found that

[Anonymous Coward]

Most of the above posts are entirely off. Plasma won't "do things for you" and get in the way.

I'm very excited about KDE4!

Vlad

Mod Parent Up!

[TheNinjaroach]

I agree whole heartedly with the parent. To add my $.02 I believe the competetion is great because when one team comes up with SuperSnazzyFeature2.0 the other team recognizes it as a great idea and implements it. Would be ashamed if everyone was working on one project and SuperSnazzyFeature0.3beta was killed because too many team members rejected the idea.

We have to re-invent ideas between the two desktops but they make great proving grounds for new UI adjustments.

Corral Cache damn you guys

[fire-eyes]

http://www.madpenguin.org.nyud.net:8090/cms/?m=sho w&id=7553

Really, this should be default when posting a story... or automated or something. No it's not responding yet but it iwll eventually.

Re:Corral Cache damn you guys

[Anonymous Coward]

No it really shouldn't. Always see people post the nyud.net mirror then make some damned comment about how it should be default to use that link (blah blah), when you know what? Not everyone who is reading Slashdot at work (which is most likely a LOT of people) can get to ports like 8090 from behind their corporate firewall.

Re:Corral Cache damn you guys

[jaavaaguru]

Everyone knows to look at the mirrordot article
when the site stops working. Yeah, I agree the link should be included automatically though.

Re:Corral Cache damn you guys

[Doug Neal]

I don't think so - Coral Cache is a nice try but let's face it, half the time it just doesn't work!

Projectors are way better

[themishkin]

Plasma is overpriced; a real nerd would get a 119' 1080p projector!

The headline couldn't be more appropriate

[Anonymous Coward]

Back then we had a drinking game where we sat with mugs waiting in front of the TV while Star Trek:TNG was showing. We would toss our mags back as soon as we heard the word Plasma, or whenever we saw Jean-Luc straighten his uniform.

Going off KDE

[ajs318]

I think I'm going off KDE.

It's nice on a fast machine, but tediously slow on anything under 2GHz. I do like Window Maker. It's a bit different than you probably were expecting, but I think it's a bit truer to what X used to be like before everyone started trying to turn it into Windows.

Re:Going off KDE

[Anonymous Coward]

No TWM, MWM, and OLWM was what a lot of older machines had for a windows manager ( I still like Motif, call me old fashioned). WindowMaker, Enlightenment, FVWM, and the like are more like middle aged :)

Re:Going off KDE

[Anonymous Coward]

Excuse me? Let me use this poor 5 years old AMD Duron at 800 MHz, with only 320 MB of ram to disagree...
Things like Xfce have their place, too. Like the machine right next to me, Pentium at 133 MHz with 32 MB ram. I don't even know how old it is (I would have to reboot it to look at the BIOS, a thing I haven't done for months...)

Re:Going off KDE

[IntergalacticWalrus]

Don't give up yet! KDE4 is actually going to be less ressource-intensive than 3, due to major cleanups and enhancements in both Qt4 and the core KDE4 libraries.

Re:Going off KDE

[digitalhermit]

I use Fluxbox... It works well on minimal hardware (runs on a 233MhZ Intel MMX). I always customize it, but for the most part, copying the ~/.fluxbox directory is all that's needed. Versus KDE or Gnome which can take up to twenty or thirty seconds, the window manager is ready for use in about two seconds after I press [ENTER] in the xdm/gdm/kdm login screen.

Re:Going off KDE

[Anonymous Coward]

Good Lord!! Back in my day, 320M of anything (hard drive space, addressable memory, etc) would be considered enormous. My P100 has *only* 64M and it runs nethack just fine. It used to calculate multi-variable integrals and ballistics trajectories. When it was retired, we re-made it into a router that routed traffic for fifteen machines. Now, it still runs Zork and Enchanter. You young people, growing up thinking CPU cycles are free. Sheesh.

Re:Going off KDE

[SCHecklerX]

I agree. Windowmaker is quite nice. I try gnome or KDE every now and then, but always go back. Using it in combination with Rox-filer's pinboard is a nice combination.

Two things I like about windowmaker:
1) the ability to create dynamic menus.
2) the nice UI config, even though everything is stored in plain text files on the backend.

Things that could be better:
1) more window management control. Like the ability to tile or cascade based on a selection from the "F11" menu.
2) support of more than 3 mouse buttons and a scrollwheel. I'd love to be able to use my thumb button to close windows, or change desktops, for example.
3) same as 1) above, but with selected windows instead of via the "F11" menu.

Re:Going off KDE

[bhalo05]

In my experience, with enough RAM anything over 1Ghz is more than enough to run KDE comfortably. And now, we even know KDE's memory requirements are not so high as many claimed them to be:

http://ktown.kde.org/~seli/memory/

Re:Going off KDE

[ajs318]

Ah, OLWM. I remember that fondly ..... OpenWindows on a Sun SparcStation was my first experience of Unix + GUI, in about 1991 or 92. Having already used first VAX/VMS (nice but verbose) and then Unix without a GUI (powerful but cryptic), I could appreciate exactly how the GUI layer was sitting on top of the OS.

Was that actually X or some bastardised proprietary fork?

XGL?

[sarcasticfrench]

Here they are, talking about using things from the latest version of X server, various APIs, etc. to achieve the visual effects they want. But there is no mention of XGL! XGL has so much to offer in the realm of visual effects, I think it would just be stupid if they don't even have an option in the installer to install an XGL version.

Re:XGL?

[SanityInAnarchy]

Read it again. What they are talking about will almost certainly use XGL, it just doesn't mention it explicitly.

Re:XGL?

[chroot_james]

From what I've read, XGL is barely in alpha stage. Maybe I'm wrong...

Re:XGL?

[bcmm]

Presumably the composite stuff mentioned will be able to use a number of compositing systems, including the existing extensions and XGL.

However, I do agree that it would be nice to see integration of KDE with XGL/AIGLX, especially in window management. A KDE equivelant of compiz, or even just of gnome-window-decorator, would be nice.

Re:XGL?

[DarkProphet]

Actually, you can use Xgl/compiz" with KDE. This works on SuSE 10.1/KDE 3.5.4, but you can probably coax your distro-of-choice to play nice without too much trouble.

The only thing that sucks is the lack of a GUI configuration window (to my knowledge), so you'll have to edit the compiz config by hand.

Re:XGL?

[bcmm]

I know; I use it myself (not on SuSE). But that isn't an example of KDE actually using Compiz/XGL features, that's just Compiz doing the window management while KDE continues to do everything it does with a normal X server.

In any case, get Quinnstorm's patched Compiz, which has it's own GUI configurator (not to mention exciting new plugins); or if you want to use stock Compiz you can still use gconf-editor, which is a pain but is at least GUI.

My solution in Windows

[toadlife]

My solution in Windows was to give myself read-only access to my desktop folder. After the first few access denied messages it became habit to put stuff somewhere besides the desktop.

2 screens! 2 mouses (mice?)!

[splutty]

Get a graphics card (or 2), and attach two screens to your compu :) Now use either a nice mouse util that let's you switch the input, or use 2 mice (mouses)!

Oh. And of course I don't have to explain that you attach gnome to one desktop and KDE to the other, do I?

What About ToPaZ?

[ClamIAm]

Hmm, searching Google doesn't yield much of anything either. Some blog mentioned the "lack of information" on Plasma, and an image search only turns up a few pages. The best page I found is written in Czech (I think).

But aside from that, I think it's probably a good idea to mention Gnome ToPaZ (AKA TPZ, or Three Point Zero). I think it was originally supposed to be a plan from Gnome 3.0, but it's turned more into a brainstorming session for a "next-generation" desktop. Some of the ideas on that page are pretty lawl-tastic, but one very cool one is "lowfat". I strongly suggest checking out the video.

./ style

[aristolochene]

anyone know if it runs on linux?

Plasma is still in the design phase

[vdboor]

The whole concept of plasma is still in the design phase. I was pretty amazed someone managed to get a review of something that hasn't got a GUI yet. The 'plasma' folder in KDE SVN consists of data-handling classes only. I'd rather trust the lead developer (Aaron Seigo, aseigo.blogspot) to provide the first sneak preview of plasma rather then MadPenguin.

Redirect the flow...

[Anonymous Coward]

If I can change the new workflow to point up my ass, at least I could get an enema from this new change to KDE!

Nothing like a plasma enema to make you feel fresh!

Posted anonymous, because I referenced enemas and ass in this post.

WTF is Clippy... I mean GNU/Clippy?

[Dareth]

Where is GNU/Clippy?
Gnu/Clippy: It appears you are trying to run Gnome?
If so, please bash your head against the monitor until you are dead.
Was this not helpful?

OS covers....

[Nichole_knc]

Not to start a debate but as it is my understanding KDE has been for a more "eye-candy" look and Gnome for a more "clean-minimalist" look. I am one of those minimalist types when it comes to the GUI-OS interface. I used Gnome for years on BSD then in Slackware. When Pat dropped Gnome (understand the build issues) I started using KDE with much fuss due to the "clutter". I have hense learned the finer points of advance customization of KDE in much the same way as I had Gnome. And that is my point.. When the KDE crew builds a new UI as long as they maintain advanced user customizable features go for it, it is a good thing. Like any Linux flavor the UI should be customizable in all regards. That is, as many here know one of its appealing aspects.

Plasma is just one part of "Appeal"

[mounthood]

http://appeal.kde.org/wiki/Appeal

If you use Ruby, check out http://appeal.kde.org/wiki/Korundum

coral cache link for madpenguin article

[sid77]

http://www.madpenguin.org.nyud.net:8090/cms/?m=sho w&id=7553

Re: Fix KWin from seg faulting

[DrJimbo]

We're working on that but there have been some problems, we are sorry for any inconvenience this may have caused you.

The KMechanical arm is able to access your RAM chips but all the credit cards in your KWallet have been maxed out so we've been unable to purchase new RAM chips for you.

Please help us help you by putting a valid credit card into your KWallet so we can proceed with the purchase.

Thank you for your time and consideration. We're glad you've chosen to fly KDE. Have a nice day.

Mod Parent up informative

[Transcendor]

It really tells some details. And BTW... MIRROR anyone?

Vaporware

[protomala]

Plasma is the biggest vaporware open-source has ever producted. For now, it's just a vague idea, they didn't even created some conceitual images to guide from when star programming.

Don't take me wrong, I belive plasma will be great, I want to some presentations from Aaron Seigo and liked what he said... but I DOUBT it will launch with KDE4. Probally the interface will still (mostly) be the one used on KDE3. You know, we should learn from Microsoft mistakes, they ditched a lot of things (WinFS, most of interface, etc) from Vista because changing a lot of code at once isn't a good thing (TM).

There will be always be a 4.1 or 4.2 release where the new interface can be inserted.

Re:Vaporware

[bhalo05]

"Plasma is the biggest vaporware open-source has ever producted"

Really... obviously you don't remember the times when things like Bonobo or Orbit were supposed to revolutionize the free desktop. Then came KDE2 along with Kparts and DCOP technologies, making true what others had only hyped. I don't expect it will be different this time, since the KDE project has a tradition of delivering what was promised. The only thing I fear it will not be in KDE4 will be Tenor, since Scott Wheeler has already stated he doesn't know if he will be working on it, but I bet Plasma will be in KDE4.

today's desktops?

[drinkypoo]

The focus is on improving the clarity and reducing the clutter present in today's desktops.

You mean, the clutter found in KDE? If you compare the preferences tools (for example) in KDE and GNOME, KDE has about nine trillion more widgets per window.

This is like Microsoft starting an initiative to reduce anticompetitive behavior.

Re:today's desktops?

[Anonymous Coward]

This is like Microsoft starting an initiative to reduce anticompetitive behavior.

Hmmm, acknowledging a problem and working to solve it... Wouldn't that be a good thing?

Re:today's desktops?

[drinkypoo]

Hmmm, acknowledging a problem and working to solve it... Wouldn't that be a good thing?

Well, I guess you totally missed my point. Either that or you just feel a need to put your cowardly two cents in.

KDE is directly responsible for the clutter on the Linux desktop, because it's the worst example thereof. Thus they clearly know nothing about reducing clutter, but more importantly they make it sound like they are the cure when in fact they are the disease. You don't thank an unwanted house guest for leaving; you tell them not to come back. They're talking about the clutter on the modern linux desktop like it was just some phenomenon that cropped up and they're going to do something about it (by jove) but in reality, all they have to do is unfuck themselves to make the biggest contribution. Not fucking it up in the first place would have been preferable.

No joke

[radu.stanca]

Yes but does it run on Windows?

Since the Qt4 license is less restrictive it shouldn`t be a problem...right?

Holy war?

[Lost Penguin]

May your icons "die in a fire"!

/hard to have a holy war while giggling.....

//Do you think the Muslamics giggle when off camera too?

Vista Improves on this

[friedmud]

Vista is coming down the pipe... and it includes a "Downloads" directory in the user's directory (which is pretty much like the /home/user directory in Linux) by default... and IE is set to download to it by default.

I'm sure that Firefox will similarly be set to download to it by default by the time Vista comes out.

The whole restructuring of the User directories in Windows is one of the best improvements in Vista... by default you get: Contacts, Desktop, Documents, Downloads, Favorites, Links, Music, Pictures, Saved Games, Searches and Videos... which will all go a long way towards helping people deal with the clutter. If apps are set to use these folders by default then I predict things will improve...

Friedmud