A Sneak Preview of KDE 4

An anonymous reader writes "In recent times, a lot of discussion has been generated about the state of KDE version 4.0 and as Linux users we are ever inquisitive about what the final user experience is going to be. This article throws light on some of the features that we can look forward to when KDE 4.0 is finally released some time this year. The article indicates that the most exciting fact about KDE 4.0 is going to be that it is developed using the Qt 4.0 library. This is significant because Qt 4.0 is released under a GPL license even for non-Unix platforms. So this clears the ideological path for KDE 4.0 to be ported to Windows and other non-Unix/X11 platforms."

Comments

Memory

[Anonymous Coward]

"For instance, Qt 4 is designed to save lots of memory and will perform faster."

They need to work more on that cause thats the reason why I'm not using KDE. I like the UI but KDE is just to bloated so I use Gnome instead, even though I hate most of Gnome's UI.

Re:Memory

[Frekko]

This http://ktown.kde.org/~seli/memory/desktop_benchmar k.html article from 2006 shows you how much memory Gnome/KDE use. Even though it is written by a KDE member I can't see why he should have messed with the numbers. As you can see KDE actually uses a bit less (not much though) memory than Gnome.

Re:Memory

[jcupitt65]

Here's an update written by a GNOME person:

http://spooky-possum.org/cgi-bin/pyblosxom.cgi/kde vsgnome.html

tldr: they have (essentially) the same memory requirements.

Re:Memory

[diegocgteleline.es]

So wait - all this hard work that the gnome guys did during the last year to improve gnome resource usage only was able to bring it at the SAME level than KDE?

Unimpressed...KDE 3.X is in a "mainteinance" state because most of the KDE guys are working in KDE4, still gnome only was able to "catch up". And one of the reasons to use C instead of C++ (besides the "easier to make bindings" reason) wasn't that C++ was more "heavyweight"?

Re:Memory

[Cat Tank]

C++ is a superset of C. You can use C when it's more efficient, but sometimes it's a better idea to use polymorphism to cut down on how many things you have to instantiate. If functions are being built at runtime you'd save some overhead, I'd think. In C you'd have to declare scads of similar functions for different data types, and they'd all wind up in there at compile time, all copied into memory later on whether you need to use them or not. Maybe I misunderstand some of the whole debate, but I thought that was one of the selling points of C++.

Re:Memory

[JabberWokky]

I've had it running on my Libretto 110CT. That's a 233Mhz machine which has a maximum of 64megs. It's slow, but it works fine, chugging along and getting work done. Normally that's primarily a "carry everywhere" emacs terminal (it's the same size as a Moleskine notebook, for comparison). I can launch Konqueror "by itself" (which loads a chunk of KDE) with little problem.

--
Evan

Re:Memory

[Azarael]

There aren't an infinite number of places where you can improve memory usage. It may be that both Gnome and KDE have reached a point where improving memory use any further would require more effort than it's worth for the expected gain.

Re:Memory

[vhogemann]

Indeed,

I own a PIII Sony Vaio with 128MB RAM. Kubuntu Dapper run just fine, as long as you don't open anything like OpenOffice and Firefox. I use Konqueror and KOffice, and it has been a nice experience so far.

Re:Memory

[swillden]

It may be that both Gnome and KDE have reached a point where improving memory use any further would require more effort than it's worth for the expected gain.

Except that KDE devs expect KDE4 to significantly reduce memory usage. Again.

Re:Memory

[Azarael]

Exactly my point, that is for KDE 4, not 3. That's where the more trouble than it's worth comes in. Doing a significant rewrite of a big peace of code to improve performance can be a huge job, but if you're rewriting the whole thing for a new major version it's not much more work to optimize your algorithms and data structures along the way. For the same reason, the next major version of Gnome may very well also have improved performance.

Re:Memory

[swillden]

And one of the reasons to use C instead of C++ (besides the "easier to make bindings" reason) wasn't that C++ was more "heavyweight"?

Only among those who don't know what they're talking about. There's nothing in C++ that's inherently "heavyweight". Object-Oriented code often tends to be a little heavier because the tools make it so easy to generalize, and OO developers often end up writing code that may be needed someday, but isn't now. C programmers are less prone to that particular error.

However, the flip side of that focus on generality and reuse is that if it's used well it can actually reduce the code size and memory footprint, as well as making development faster and easier. You can, of course, obtain the same level of code reuse in C, but it's more effort to write and much harder to debug, so it doesn't tend to happen.

My impression of the KDE and GNOME situation is that, at present, KDE provides a richer set of libraries with more tools to make application developers' lives easier than GNOME does, and KDE does this with about the same, and perhaps a bit less memory usage. And this is *because* of C++, not in spite of it.

C++ is a bitch to learn, but once you do, it's a very pleasant language to work with, in every respect: expressiveness, power, efficiency, compactness. IMO, C++'s only practical failing is that C++ programmers are too hard to find/create (back to that learning curve). Note that I'm not saying the language can't be improved upon -- I'm comparing it to the other widely-used options, not to some theoretical ideal.

Re:Memory

[metamatic]

I did my own experiments, comparing Kubuntu, Ubuntu and Xubuntu. Same result--KDE is already less bloaty than GNOME. XFCE is less bloaty than both of them, of course.

And I'm currently running GNOME, but planning to switch back to KDE now that Mono is part of GNOME.

Re:Memory

[Jeremi]

Except that KDE devs expect KDE4 to significantly reduce memory usage. Again

Just like Microsoft's Longhorn devs expected their SQL filesystem to revolutionize data storage. The moral: don't believe any claims nade about vaporware until you see it for yourself in the shipping product.

Re:Memory

[NekoXP]

Not only are they rewriting stuff to reduce footprint they're using more and more system components that everyone has (DBUS) rather than KDE-specific things (DCOP for example). Qt4 definitely uses a lot less memory as a whole than Qt3 but it's not backwards compatible.

What you will see is KDE4 by default using a huge glob less of memory, but if you run an old KDE3 or Qt3 app, suddenly memory usage will kind of go up when the compatibility libraries load.. disk usage will go up too because of them. But in most systems, 90% of the time the CPU is fairly idle and memory usage is the most important performance factor; not just memory-limited systems, on huge multi-GB desktops too.

What I really want to see is KDE4 running on Qt4 directly on the Linux framebuffer; get rid of X. Then something like MythTV running on top of it; bringing requirements down by removing some of the extraneous cruft (X no longer has magic mouse and keyboard drivers since the USB HID system does most of the work, would be one example) is a good goal too and KDE4 is also doing some of that.

I'm not sure what direction GNOME is taking, but at least there is a lot less ability to do so with GTK; they pride compatibility without compatibility libraries, and new functionality comes with new applications and rewrites of applications which never made the grade (Ubuntu Edgy had a bunch of them) - it seems to be a more pronounced, feature-rich development cycle with less chances to sit down and optimize something old. Both environments seem to be focussing on simply PROVIDING user experience than optimizing it. However KDE has a lot more baggage; components like the browser, office suite are all part of the KDE offering, which GNOME doesn't have an encumberance on. Optimizing KDE gives more results for less work. Optimizing GNOME seems harder to justify considering very few things will benefit but the toolkit and desktop itself. Maybe I'm wrong though... :D

Re:Memory

[UnknownSoldier]

> C++ is a bitch to learn

No it's not. All the concepts you can do in C++, you can do in C. C++ just makes the syntax SO much cleaner.

Perhaps you meant, its hard to learn to use it _correctly_, when you have multi-paradigm language support via: procedural, oop, & template programming. Which is why we have books like:

* Modern C++ Design
* Effective C++, More Effective C++
* C++ Tip-of-the-Day
* C++ Gems, More C++ Gems
etc.

Cheers
--
When is C++ going to step into the 21st century and
* support literal binary constants, i.e. 0z11101011010
* support literals for +/-Inf, and NaN
* support a _real_ null pointer, that doesn't call the func taking ints
    void foop( int )
    void foop( int * p )
* treat arrays of different sizes differently
    void f3( char a[3] )
    void f4( char a[4] )
* support type aliases that are the same type, and typedefs that are a _new_ type
* proper macro support that is type safe

Re:Memory

[Spokehedz]

Would it be possible for you to send me pictures of the power supply? I belive it is the same as my Libertto 100CT but I would like to make sure. I would love to turn this into a rinky-dink terminal too, I just need a power supply.

Re:Memory

[swillden]

Perhaps you meant, its hard to learn to use it _correctly_,

Obviously. I don't consider learning just enough to get by "learning" a language. You don't know it until you know how to use its features correctly.

support literal binary constants, i.e. 0z11101011010

What's wrong with 0x75A?

support literals for +/-Inf, and NaN

Hmm, I suppose. I've never had a use for those, though. I've always written numerical code to *avoid* such values.

support a _real_ null pointer, that doesn't call the func taking ints

I can see where that might be a problem, in theory. In practice, I've never had a need to overload a function in that way. Of course, I tend never to use naked pointers at all, preferring always to use a smart pointer class, which eliminates the issue.

treat arrays of different sizes differently

Don't use builtin arrays, except inside of collections. You can easily make array classes that are parametrized on size, and then overload for specific sizes to your heart's content, while still providing fully generic functions that handle all the non-specialized cases. There's actually some very powerful things you can do with that approach. Check out "Scientific and Engineering C++" by Barton and Nackman.

proper macro support that is type safe

What would you want to do with this macro support that templates can't already do in a typesafe way? With the addition of templates, the proper role of the C preprocessor was reduced to little more than #ifdef conditional compilation. Making the preprocessor (nearly) irrelevant was a key design goal for the template system.

It looks to me like you still have lots to learn about C++ -- see what I mean about it being a bitch to learn? Templates, in particular, take years to fully grok. But they are extremely powerful, and have negligible run-time cost when used correctly.

Re:Memory

[swillden]

Except that KDE devs expect KDE4 to significantly reduce memory usage. Again

Just like Microsoft's Longhorn devs expected their SQL filesystem to revolutionize data storage. The moral: don't believe any claims nade about vaporware until you see it for yourself in the shipping product.

But the bulk of the expected improvements come from Qt4, which *is* a shipping product, and the KDE devs have lots of specific, tested benchmarks to prove it. You can try them yourself if you want.

Not only that, the KDE developers have a history of promising and delivering on speed and memory footprint improvements.

Re:Memory

[Klivian]

don't believe any claims nade about vaporware until you see it for yourself in the shipping product.

But this is not about vaporware, since you already can run pre releases of KDE 4 and see for your self. And even more important, the reason for the expected reduction of memory usage. Is based on improvement clearly seen in the underlying library used by KDE, Qt. And Qt 4.0 was released 29 June 2005, so you can hardly call that vaporware.

Re:Memory

[HiThere]

Your list is considerably different than mine would have been. However, I am shifting over to D (Digital Mars D, http://www.digitalmars.com/d/index.html ) as something that fits more closely with what I think C++ should have developed into.

Re:Memory

[ClamIAm]

But in most systems, 90% of the time the CPU is fairly idle and memory usage is the most important performance factor; not just memory-limited systems, on huge multi-GB desktops too.

This is what I really hate about modern "desktop" systems. When I was a kid, my family's first computer was Mac that had a 33 MHz processor and 4 Megs of RAM (eventually upgraded to a fat 24 MB). This machine could run a graphical interface that's really not all that different from what we use today. It could also run a web browser with support for things like DHTML and Java applets (think Yahoo games).

Why do I say all this? Because I'm perplexed as to why I need so much damn memory to run GNOME, KDE, OS X, or any of the recent "desktop" versions of Windows. Sure, higher-res graphics require bigger pixmaps (and faster processors), but even minimally-graphical applications use ridiculous amounts of RAM.

For example, some of the GNOME applets sitting on my panels use like 3 Megs each. I read something by the applets maintainer saying the problem is legacy code dependencies or something that will be removed in the future. That's great and all, but for now my system eats 15 MB just to give me the bare-minimum utility applets.

Re:Memory

[belmolis]

Why on earth would you want to be forced to treat arrays of different sizes differently? The fact that in standard Pascal arrays of different sizes were of different types, which is presumably what you want, is well known to have made standard Pascal unusable. That is one lesson I thought we learned a long time ago. Or do you mean something different?

Re:Memory

[some guy I know]

What I really want to see is KDE4 running on Qt4 directly on the Linux framebuffer; get rid of X.

Spoken like a true home user. You have no idea how essential X really is

Then run an X server on top of Qt4 when it's needed.
X's big claim to fame is that it can run graphic apps over a network.
Relative to network speeds, any slowdown that is due to the extra overhead of running the server on top of Qt4 would be small.
The X protocol is over 20 years old, and is showing its age, despite more recent enhancements.

Re:Memory

[NekoXP]

I actually work for an embedded systems company so.. I'm not a desktop home user at all (I run Windows anyway on my laptop :)

X isn't really essential unless you are desperate for a full, desktop "desktop". If you have a small system that is fairly low power and rather ridiculous performance (say, 400MHz in these days of 4GHz processors) then you need to cut back in places. If you just want to run web, email and do a little bit of word processing do you really need a full X to do it?

You do, because X provides all that right now, but it does mean that for a more memory-constrained system, you are running out of memory already.

Take something like the current crop of games consoles; they don't run X for their front ends, and in the example of the Wii, they have a competant (desktop-class!) web browser too. OLPC uses X, but wouldn't their WM and apps run just as well on an accelerated framebuffer without the X legacy (I see nothing in the OLPC specs that says it must act like a full Linux desktop, it is merely for ease and speed of development)

Re:Memory

[NekoXP]

I never said it should be the main direction, I said it would be nice to see.

You could get KDE into a lot more places (maybe EmbeddedKDE to replace QTopia? :) if it had a more embedded slant, and also reduce the system requirements needs of a lot of devices earmarked to run Linux for operation.

Okay so it wouldn't be any good for you as a desktop user who wants to use major chip design tools, but for the vast majority of people who buy eMachines and Dell boxes not for games, not for huge amounts of work, just for email, maybe VoIP phoning and webcam, or just browsing YouTube..

Tailoring a system for embedded use is a good way of identifying those parts which are "non-essential" or can be optimised for memory or performance on low powered devices. If it runs better on low-power devices, it will run better on high-powered ones too if the components are being worked on to that end.

great

[mrsev]

Ooooh... Kreversi, KMajhong.... both essential components of my desktop experience. The article is a little thin to say the least.

Re:great

[PatrickThomson]

As a 6 month gnome user and semi-power user who's recently switched to KDE, I can actually say that the desktop games are about the only thing that I feel was superior. Probably reflects the way that gnome is going, I suppose.

I'm not picking sides, it's just that KDE is genuinely better *for me*. I'd of course stick parents, mac converts, etc on gnome in an instant. And I won't recommend what I don't use, so I guess I'll be spending half and half from now on...

Re:great

[noigmn]

I'd have to agree (even if sarcasm :)). They are far more preferable time wasters than the Microsoft games. And they have quite good AI players which is the important part. Nothing is more frustrating than owning the AI after a few games and finding there is no more challenging setting. I played reversi on the last aeroplane I was on and the AI was bad enough that the only fun way to play it was try to win outright by running the AI player out of pieces. In linux from memory I think beating the hardest level of AI borders on impossible.

Re:great

[noigmn]

KDE games run in Gnome, you know?

Re:great

[noigmn]

oops...if you meant Gnome games were better, same deal applies.

Re:great

[PatrickThomson]

Got it in one. I know they do, but they load slower :(. Anyway, point is I'm in the KDE user demo, so I *don't* play toy desktop games very often. I'm usually wine-ing up steam or deus ex or firing up UT2K4, you know?

Re:great

[ctzan]

yes, iagno.

and neither the kde nor the gnome drones were able to write a decent tetris clone,
that does drop & shift, like the original Pazhitnov's.
or a terminal emulator (just try kterm, gnome-terminal and xterm on a remote X11
session, through a ssh channel).

kde/gnome are good for presentations - to show that 'linux' is 'like windows'.

they're unix tools in fact - they do one thing well (look like Windows), and JUST that.

Re:great

[Simon (S2)]

a terminal emulator (just try kterm, gnome-terminal and xterm on a remote X11
session, through a ssh channel).

wtf are you talking about? they work like a charm with X11 forwarding over ssh.

Re:great

[CastrTroy]

I agree with you about Tetris. The best tetris I've been able to find for the PC is the Nintendo tetris, run on a emulator. It's kind of sad that nobody makes a good tetris game for the PC. It's such a simple game, you'd think it would be easy to program it well.

Re:great

[ctzan]

I said 'remote'.

Compare a xterm/X11-classic application to a kde/gnome-thing on a connection with
latency > 20ms and small bandwidth.

Of course, everything works like a charm with the display on a laptop in my bathroom
and the apps on a machine in my basement :)

Re:great

[gfxguy]

So do it.

Re:great

[SiChemist]

You should try FreeNX. I can access my home desktop from work over my home's dsl link with excellent responsiveness. It can't control a session that's already open, however. You can also set it to run apps remotely (like X does) instead of the whole desktop.

Re:great

[drinkypoo]

do you mean the nintendo tetris made by nintendo? If so you should try the tetris for NES made by Tengen - it's dramatically better, especially if the arcade version is what you measure by, and it should be :D My second favorite is Blue Lava's tetris for java mobiles, which comes in several different versions which are all good. You could play them on Motorola's Java SDK-bundled emulator if you managed to get your hands on the jarfiles.

Re:great

[koh]

on a laptop in my bathroom

In your bathroom? Do you use Sony batteries or something?

Re:great

[ardin,mcallister]

Oddly enough, I do the same thing. I have a laptop running wireless down in the bathroom, vnc set up on the windows box, and ssh with forwarding set up on the linux box. wierd? yes, but I can watch movies while taking a dump.

Performance

[bcmm]

It should also be pointed out that the port to QT is expected to very noticeably improve performance.

When was the last time a new version of Microsoft Windows came out with a faster user interface?

Re:Performance

[eclectro]

When was the last time a new version of Microsoft Windows came out with a faster user interface?

When you bought the new computer?

Re:Performance

[urbanradar]

It should also be pointed out that the port to QT is expected to very noticeably improve performance.

Maybe it's a typo, but just to clarify: KDE is already based on QT. It's just that KDE 4 will be using QT 4, whereas the current KDE uses QT 3.

Re:Performance

[bcmm]

Sorry for typo. Obviously, I meant the port to Qt 4.0.

Re:Performance

[bcmm]

Heh. You beat me to it.

Re:Performance

[zlogic]

Uhm, Vista runs the GUI faster that WinXP if you have a decent GPU. Just like QT4's Arthur, it uses hardware to do rendering, which is great because even when the system is under heavy load you can still do basic tasks like moving and minimizing windows. The system feels much more responsive.

Re:Performance

[andypflueger]

Exactly! If you want to see bloated OSes, check our Windoze. :)

LOVE the sig, btw. My RAM has llamas too. Oh yes, I just HAD to try to run the command, LOL.

Re:Performance

[richlv]

obviously, you meant port to qt 4.2 :)
summary is wrong.

Re:Performance

[bcmm]

When KDE is ported to windows, I wonder if they will simply make kdelibs work so you can run KDE apps? Or will they let kdesktop run as an explorer replacement (explorer replacement are possible in XP. Dunno about vista)? That would go a long way towards making windows work at usable speeds.

Of course your RAM has llamas. You viewed a webpage with my sig in then typed it into a terminal.

However, it's worrying how many llamas can't be explained that way, isn't it?

Re:Performance

[diegocgteleline.es]

It's not about "using the GPU", QT4 is just much faster and eats less resources.

"When Qt designer was ported to Qt 4.0 - only the neccesary changes to make it compile - the libqt size decreased by 5%, Designer num relocs went down by 30%, mallocs use by 51%, and memory use by 15%. The measured Designer startup time went down by 18%"

Now try to imagine the savings for the whole KDE desktop

Re:Performance

[Jugalator]

When was the last time a new version of Microsoft Windows came out with a faster user interface?

Huh? I've never seen the Windows UI being "slow"? I don't really know what you mean...
You saying there's a difference in e.g. Windows XP compared to Windows 95?

Are you really talking about the Windows USER32 and other such subsystems or rather simple application requirements?

Re:Performance

[archen]

It will be interesting to see if all the bugs blamed on QT3 are really bugs from QT. I know QT3 is cited as being the bane of Kword for instance. I doubt it is to blame for the crappy spell checker though :)

Re:Performance

[ajs318]

No, no, no! You should NEVER* pipe a cat! It's not

# cat /dev/mem | strings | grep -i llama

it's

# strings /dev/mem | grep -i llama

That way, you save a process table entry, you save some RAM (perhaps enough to make the difference between swapping and not) and it runs faster.

* O.K. One exception I can think of is piping ps, or other commands which try to format output for a TTY, through cat to remove the formatting effects.

Re:Performance

[swillden]

Huh? I've never seen the Windows UI being "slow"? I don't really know what you mean... You saying there's a difference in e.g. Windows XP compared to Windows 95?

Go run both on, say, a 300Mhz PIII. To make the difference even more extreme, only put 64MB of RAM in it.

There is a noticeable speed difference even on modern hardware, but some people are more sensitive to it than others. If you don't notice it on modern hardware, you'll definitely see it on old hardware.

Re:Performance

[Cereal Box]

Windows 95 and Windows XP were both designed several years apart and thus the "baseline" PC configurations were much different during the 95 and XP's development. I don't know where you work, but where I work, we take into consideration the general computing power available at the time and base our design decisions on that. I.e., we might do things in our code today that would've been thought too costly several years earlier. So it doesn't surprise me that XP runs worse than 95 on the same hardware -- duh! I'm sure the XP developers were doing the same thing just about every other software company does: if there's more computing power available, take advantage of it.

I don't understand this geek obsession with "XXX Mhz and YYY MB of RAM are all you should ever need, if you need more, your code is bloated." Honestly now, time marches on and computers become more powerful. Software evolves to take advantage of it. What once took too many cycles is a drop in the bucket today. Why not take advantage of it? Hardware is cheap. The rest of the world seems to understand that, but stubborn geeks think that 300Mhz PC they bought should be top of the line forever.

BTW, you might try comparing KDE 1.X to the latest release on your 300Mhz PII with 64MB of RAM. Tell me which one performs better.

Re:Performance

[leuffi]

If you upgrade your computer to Core 2 Extreme QX6700, you can enter the Olympics! w

Re:Performance

[MBGMorden]

Very few true geeks are sitting with all that REALLY old hardware, it's just that we want to use the increased power of a PC to it's fullest potential. A lot of software that we have today does NOTHING that couldn't be done with an equivalent program from 10 years ago. They just write the code using "quicker and easier" methods and you get the same result. The hardware makes up for the sloppiness, but since the code got slower and the hardware faster, there's not real net speed gain.

When I get faster hardware, I wanna compress video faster. I want to be between windows with no slowdown. I and to be able to click to do something and have it complete in half the time. That's what faster hardware is for; we actually want to USE that hardware, not just have it be an excuse to create programs with no real value over what I could have gotten 10 years ago.

Re:Performance

[nuzak]

Yeah, because SHELL SCRIPT is the language of choice for hyper-optimization. cat makes it easier to replace with something else. Like another pipeline. I just do it these days in the hopes that people who get apopleptic about it will have that aneurysm and stop yelling at me about such trivial nonsense.

Re:Performance

[swillden]

Software evolves to take advantage of it.

Software that takes advantage of it is fine. Software that wastes it to no advantage is not.

Re:Performance

[mabinogi]

No, no, no! You should NEVER* pipe a cat! Why, will the world end? Will god kill a kitten?

How on earth did a tip like "you know, you could save yourself a few keystrokes and a process by not using cat", turn into a desperate plea to end one's wicked ways before it brings on the apocalypse?

If the most inefficient thing someone does in a day is a useless use of cat, then they've had a pretty productive day.

Re:Performance

[WilliamSChips]

I have llamas as well. Mostly from said commands but also from a fortune file about lllamas and some random Spanish text.

Re:Performance

[WilliamSChips]

More RAM was used by that diatribe than by useless use of cat, and more time was taken up by his reading of it than useless use of cat.

Re:Performance

[CargoCultCoder]

When was the last time a new version of Microsoft Windows came out with a faster user interface?

When was the last time Microsoft Windows needed to come out with a faster user interface?

Having spent plenty of time in wowsers, text editors and other such exciting applications on Windows and in KDE, I can assure you that while Windows has its issues, speed when doing basic things like toggling tabs in applications, and switching between windows is not one of them, particularly not in comparison to KDE or any other Linux desktop I've touched. I can easily outrace KDE with the keyboard; not Windows unless the box is bogged down by some stupid CPU-hogging app.

Re:Performance

[bcmm]

Why was the fortune file sitting in RAM?

Re:Performance

[bcmm]

The difference is tiny. However, not everyone knows what strings does. Everybody knows that cat isn't a utility to write random data all over the file you give it. People are more likely to try it written this way.

Re:Performance

[bcmm]

Maybe when the kerning stuff is fixed so that it's actually worth using kword, people will be more interested in fixing other stuff...

Re:Performance

[bcmm]

Try XP versus 2000. The big diff is the extra graphics. The UI in XP is always less responsive than 2000 (on the same hardware), unless you turn off the theme engine in services. Then it looks like 2000 and reacts only a bit slower.

For example, for want of anything better to do in a programming class years ago, I once wrote a program that scrolled text like a ticker applet across it's window title (so one can minimise it and watch the text move on the taskbar). Watching it in the taskbar didn't work in XP at anything but very slow speeds, while it worked fine in 2000. XP just wouldn't redraw fast enough.

XP in this case was on much better hardware.

There is a good reason for this. The basic code for interface drawing has not been modified much, and not at all with speed in mind, in between, while a lot of extra (mostly blue and arguably a bit tacky) stuff has been added. Of COURSE it's slower. There is simply more stuff to be done. Trolltech has actually looked into how to do things it already does in faster ways, using time they could have spent on extra features. I prefer software developed like that.

Re:Performance

[bcmm]

I want hardware like that.

Re:Performance

[Workaphobia]

Well, I presume that the speed benefits would be comparable among all the other QT/KDE programs, but if you're implying that the memory benefits will stack, keep in mind that a ton of the memory used by those apps is shared, so I think the 15% only applies once.

Re:Performance

[geminidomino]

cat /dev/random > yourimportantfile

Perfectly harmless. *whistles innocently*

From dot.kde.org

[strider44]

I monitor dot.kde.org pretty closely and there's a few things notable here. Firstly if you look at KDE at the moment it doesn't look much different to KDE 3.x. This is because the frameworks are currently being finished and polished - the interface will be the *last* thing to be finalised - remember guys tip of the iceberg - there's a whole lot more code that you don't see than you do see.

Also, with this article specifically, a few of the graphics are temporary, most notably the background that's pretty obvious in ksysguard. Yes it's horrible for that app, no it won't be there in the finished version. It's a temporary background being used in several apps at the moment for a placeholder.

Also, the start menu isn't finalised yet from anything I've heard, that's the start menu designed specifically for Suse - it's been on Slashdot before.

KDE looks like it will be coming together quite quickly and quite soon. Several major components are pretty much complete and are being polished now. Looks like pretty fun stuff - don't believe anyone who says it's vapourware.

Re:From dot.kde.org

[strider44]

Also, a similar KDE article is at http://dot.kde.org/1167723426/

Read the comments there as well for some interesting info.

Re:From dot.kde.org

[Wanderer2]

Also, the start menu isn't finalised yet from anything I've heard, that's the start menu designed specifically for Suse - it's been on Slashdot before.

Glad you mentioned that before I posted! I was about to rant about how much I hate the look of that start menu. It looks too similar to the Windows XP, expanding-to-fill-the-screen-with-icons-all-over-t he-place one which drives me mad. That said, I do occasionally have trouble finding seldom-used stuff within my KDE start menu (is $APP under Settings, Utilities or System?), so I know my current set-up isn't brilliant either.

Re:From dot.kde.org

[It'sYerMam]

Settings/Utilities/System seem to be placed without rhyme or reason. I thought I'd worked out something logical, but apparently not, because there's always something that bucks the trend. I also don't like the WinXP style "change where everything lives every two seconds because $THING knows best." If that's not If I can't turn that off, well.. it'll be a big turn-off.

Re:From dot.kde.org

[richlv]

i've tried the one in opensuse 10.2 - it does not expand all over the screen :)
i didn't like that tabs were switched on mouseover instead of a click, and applications were 'sliding' instead on click of opening on mouseover (makes navigation much, much slower).
but, on the other hand, you customise your favorites list, which is most you ever need - and for other things you can use search bar at the top.

suse linux upto opensuse 10.2 (i think 10.0 and 10.1, maybe others) had a classical start menu with a filter field at the top. writing in this field would filter the start menu, shading out menu an program entries that would not correspond to what you had entered. a really great way for finding that ksnapshot, kcalc or superkaramba entry :)

i'm still not sure which one i would prefer in a long run. if i could get tabs on mouseclick and applications popup on mouseover like in the classical menu (even if they pop out of that start menu window), i would seriously consider the new applet (named kickoff, by the way).

for now, i'm on slackware with the classical menu without filtering capabilities ;)

Re:From dot.kde.org

[Novus]

FYI, right-clicking the OpenSUSE 10.2 SUSE menu and choosing "Switch to KDE Menu Style" changes it back to the way it was in 10.1 (as far as I can tell).

Still not there yet..

[FrostyCoolSlug]

Although the 'titbits' are nice, I'm still waiting for some full screen shots go as far as eye candy goes, but I get the feeling that along with the eye candy comes overcomplexity, I hate that 'Start Menu' design, it lacks intuitiveness, and seemingly ease of use. (It also has the SuSE logo all over it).

I don't care about how the internals of my GUI work, all I care is that it's fast, intuitive and easy to use. It looks like KDE are finally working on the 'Fast', but as far as the others, I'm going to reserve judgement at this point.

Re:Still not there yet..

[rucs_hack]

Funny how everyone says 'SUSE' these days to rhyme with 'traitorous scumbags' :-)

I'm a new convert to KDE, after years of predominantly fluxbox usage, with the odd dabble into Gnome. This is mainly because I principally used Linux over VNC or ssh, so KDE was out of the question, too slow over the network.

Now I have the novelty of a fast local Linux box, and decided to try out these fancy Graphical Desktops a bit more. The new Gnome is good, but I must say I am becoming more and more impressed with KDE as the days go on. I still like my fluxbox though, simplicity does have it's appeal sometimes. Can KDE ever be that fast though, I doubt it. Not that I care much about load times on KDE, 99% of my computer usage is text editors and the console. Those are two things that run fast on any system.

KDE on windows? Sounds interesting. Windows is just a games environment or dumb terminal into my linux cluster for me normally, I'd love to have KDE on XP. A fast KDE frontend for Vista might actually make me consider buying that heap.

Re:Still not there yet..

[Maelwryth]

I am using that start menu at the moment (openSUSE 10.2) and it's......ok. The main adjustment I found was that I had to know where everything was before I could find it. I am quite used to it now but I don't think someone who wasn't used to the KDE menu groupings would find it very easy at all.

10.2 is the best distro I have used so far. It is solid, easy to use, and has a nice interface. My only complaint is that it mapped my SATA drive nvidia_bcfceabd for reasons I haven't ascertained. But I haven't had much time to look into that yet.

Re:Still not there yet..

[Aladrin]

If by KDE you mean 'KDE, all the apps hosted on the KDE site, and all the features of KDE like the FISH protocol' then I am -so- with you. If apps like K3B would run also, nothing could stop me from buying it.

But if you mean just the window manager and such, and not Quanta/Konqueror/Konsole... I'd have to pass. KDE is useful to me. It's not about looks.

Re:Still not there yet..

[Sax Maniac]

I've run KDE for years a while in a VNC. If you make sure to turn off opaque window resize and turn on opaque move, VNC does quite well. Go a step further and turn your display depth down to 16 or even 12 (some apps don't like this), and turn off anti-aliases and using regular fonts.

Note you can't do this in GNOME. They have a stupid "reduced resources" which assumes that wireframe move is always faster.

Actually, I've moved over to xfce for VNC sessions. Very nice. Running two copies of KDE one box is tricky; I've never figured out how to make some settings apply to the VNC display but other apply to the real display.

Re:Still not there yet..

[flyingfsck]

Have you ever tried running KDE on a local X-server?

With modern distros, it is easy to start a second login session - select the 'Failsafe' or whatever it is called login, where you only get an Xterm for the new user. Then do ssh user@remote.computer.address and once logged in, do 'init 3' (if X is running there, to kill it) then 'startkde'.

The result is KDE and X running on your local computer and only the xclient data travelling over the network - sweet.

Re:Still not there yet..

[rucs_hack]

no, I haven't considered that. To be honest I've not gone beyond tunneling vnc with ssh, I'm not that adventurous. I was so pleased to get it working at all that I stopped there.

I'll give it a go.

Re:Still not there yet..

[marcosdumay]

It probably means everything that can be compiled with DevCpp. That means everything that doesn't use some weard library or command line utilities. So no Amarok and K3b for us (playing music and burnning CDs on Windows will still suck)...

Maybe those will be ported too, but it takes extra effort and will surely take some time.

Re:Still not there yet..

[rucs_hack]

pretty much, yes, the whole KDE suite, or as much as will fit. Then I get the nice KDE stuff still available when I want to play games in windows.

Most of my windows tools are ports of linux stuff anyway.

Less of the kitchen sink would make KDE better

[DrXym]

KDE is a very slick desktop, but it doesn't seem to know when "less is more". The control center is probably the worst, most confusing configuration application of any desktop I've ever seen simply because the options that 99% need to get at regularly are mixed in with options that only 1% / nobody ever needs to touch. Then you have various K apps such as Konq or KMail where you might have up to SIX different preferences menu items to choose from to configure the app.

I wish they'd follow GNOME or Firefox and realise that overloading the senses with tabs, buttons and checkboxes does not make for a pleasant desktop experience. I'd be happy if all KDE 4 consisted of was a rationalisation of the menus and prefs to slash out most of the crap, or at least move it into an advanced mode where only masochists could see it.

Re:Less of the kitchen sink would make KDE better

[strider44]

It's funny that that's the reason why I detest Gnome - for some reason they got the idea that removing all the options that only 5% of users use is a good idea. Of course all the other options are used by a different 5% each time so in the end you've got the majority of users upset because the option they want has been removed. Note: Put to the side with an unknown and unguessable key combination counts as removed.

But that's OK because Gnome isn't for me.

Please, Gnome is a slim pick up and go desktop for new users, KDE is a customisable and flexible desktop for power, business or techie users. I like it this way, it gives everyone a desktop that they are comfortable with. As a techie, I want KDE to stay the way it is, please don't try to change it to something it is not.

Re:Less of the kitchen sink would make KDE better

[Psychotria]

Less is not more if there is no option to view more detail. This is Gnomes worst "feature". Apps are able to fail and get away with displaying error messages like "Application Failed to Load". How is this helpful?

Re:Less of the kitchen sink would make KDE better

[DrXym]

Please, Gnome is a slim pick up and go desktop for new users, KDE is a customisable and flexible desktop for power, business or techie users. I like it this way, it gives everyone a desktop that they are comfortable with. As a techie, I want KDE to stay the way it is, please don't try to change it to something it is not.

No it doesn't give everyone a desktop they're comfortable with. If you put twice as many options in a user's face than they would reasonably expect or ever require they are going to get confused. They'll be scared of even opening prefs or menus for fear of trashing their app or desktop. As I said, if somebody in the minority absolutely needs all those options, create some tool for them to get at them or implement an advanced mode that shows them. For example, I can type about:config into Firefox and fiddle with all the options, without inflicting them on regular users. And Windows has TweakUI and regedit.

There is a very good reason that the likes of Apple, and to a lesser extent Windows & GNOME hide options - it makes the desktop more accessible, more productive and easier to use for everybody. Expecting the vast majority to wade through crap makes for a terrible user experience. Regardless of what advantages KDE might offer over GNOME in other ways I know which side my money would be on in a usability lab.

Re:Less of the kitchen sink would make KDE better

[Godji]

I understand your concern, but on the other hand, KDE is right now the only desktop which allows me to customize EVERYTHING I could ever want to customize WITHOUT going into config text files or the source code itself. This is exactly what I like most about it!

Have you ever had the feeling that "this program is awesome, but there's this really annoying tiny thing I wish I could easily change"? I had a couple of these with GNOME last time I tried it, and I've never had this with KDE 3.x.

GNOME is already a good, clean desktop. KDE is the good, customizable desktop. It's better to have one of each, rather than two of the same, don't you think?

Re:Less of the kitchen sink would make KDE better

[DrXym]

If there is indeed an app in GNOME which says that, it sounds like a bug that you should be reporting. I strongly doubt that the HIG requires apps to report "Application Failed to Load" when a more helpful, descriptive message might say what the issue is.

Re:Less of the kitchen sink would make KDE better

[strider44]

I don't think you read my message very closely. KDE's not for everybody. Neither is Gnome. That is a good thing since people are different. If you want to change KDE to be just like Gnome then that would defeat the whole purpose of the choice of difference desktop environments.

Your solution, especially for Windows, involves huge difficulties for me as an advanced user. You're actually suggesting that if you use Windows and want to do something the least bit advanced then I should buy a new program or use a piece of shit like Regedit? I like KDE making it easy for me to do advanced things. You don't. As I was saying before, it's OK that Gnome hides advanced options since I don't use it. You obviously don't do many advanced things with your computer, but that's OK - KDE's obviously not for you.

Re:Less of the kitchen sink would make KDE better

[DrXym]

I don't really give a damn about the deskop. To my mind, the desktop should be something which is easy to configure, let's me organise files'n'stuff and run apps. It should do this with the minimum of fuss. I might want to set it up with some applets, change the locale, mouse speed and a few other bits and pieces, but other than that it really should sink into the background. Every second I waste trying to configure it, is a second lost doing what I bought my computer for. Every second I waste changing weird default behaviour is a second lost doing something productive.

A classic example from KDE - A while back I installed SUSE 10 and it defaulted to that stupid "single-click-launches-apps" behaviour - a behaviour so roundly savaged back in 1996 when MS introduced it that they promptly dropped it but still apparently favoured by KDE. So I spent the next 30 minutes trying to disable it since I knew there must be a way. After rooting around a morass of settings under desktop, themes and various others places I EVENTUALLY discovered that single-click behaviour was under the mouse panel. WTF? I wasted 30 minutes to disable a broken click behaviour which shouldn't even have been turned on in the first place.

It's not just the desktop. The same laissez faire attitude affects Konq and KMail where there can be up to six menu items all starting with "Configure" under one menu item. If Firefox can manage a single "Options..." with context sensitive "Customize..." for toolbars I fail to see why Konq needs to inflict pain and suffering on all those who choose to configure it.

It's just sloppy and probably the reason that KDE is losing mindshare to GNOME. KDE apps are arguably nicer to use than GNOME apps in various ways. QT is arguably more sophisticated than GTK. But GNOME is putting serious effort into usability and it is paying off in spades. I occasionally hear people bemoan GNOME being favoured over KDE in enterprise. I expect that usability has a hell of a lot to do with it.

Re:Less of the kitchen sink would make KDE better

[Octorian]

Windows doesn't hide all the advanced options. Many are still easily accessible from the GUI. MacOSX, however, hides them so deep that you need to drop to the command like to tweak them. (Heck, Apple's complete hiding/elimination of options is why I ditch Apple's packaged apps whenever I find a suitable alternative, even if I used MacOSX every day at work)

Likewise, GNOME hides the options so deep as well, that only a poweruser spending the day on Google is ever going to even figure out how to get to them.

At least KDE (and Windows) put the options where you can find them using just the normal flow of the GUI.

This whole "assume the user is a drooling moron or an ubergeek, with *nothing* in-between" really puts off a lot of "competent" Windows users.

Re:Less of the kitchen sink would make KDE better

[DrXym]

I'm not saying KDE should be like GNOME. My original message said I'd be happy if they only thing changed in KDE4 was to simplify it.

Re:Less of the kitchen sink would make KDE better

[strider44]

But the usability guidelines are the main thing that differentiates Gnome and KDE. I'm sure most Gnome users think that KDE is a bloated piece of crap, while most KDE users think that Gnome is a toy system that lets you do fuck all. Simplifying KDE will make it more like what current KDE users hate about Gnome.

Re:Less of the kitchen sink would make KDE better

[RzUpAnmsCwrds]

It's funny that that's the reason why I detest Gnome - for some reason they got the idea that removing all the options that only 5% of users use is a good idea.

Those options aren't gone, they are just exposed in GConf. People who complain about a lack of configurability in GNOME haven't figured out how to use gconf-editor.

Please, Gnome is a slim pick up and go desktop for new users, KDE is a customisable and flexible desktop for power, business or techie users. I like it this way, it gives everyone a desktop that they are comfortable with. As a techie, I want KDE to stay the way it is, please don't try to change it to something it is not.

GNOME is for system administrators, general users, and anyone who doens't want hundreds of preference screens. KDE is a support nightmare because there are so many ways to screw with it (GNOME unfortunately isn't great in this regard either). Everyone has their damned KDE desktop configured differently - it's always fun when I have to adjust to someone's desktop because they changed the focus behavior or the positions of the window controls.

GNOME releases regularly and gets new features out into general use quickly.

Don't generalize about GNOME, capitalize it correctly, and learn how to use GConf. KDE is a fine desktop in many regards. But don't assume that GNOME is as "dumbed down" as you think.

Re:Less of the kitchen sink would make KDE better

[xtracto]

Please, Gnome is a slim pick up and go desktop for new users, KDE is a customisable and flexible desktop for power, business or techie users.

Just a clarification here. While i agree that Gnome is a good desktop for new users I need to make clear that not everyone who preffer Gnome are new users. I am not a new user and I preffer Gnome against KDE any day of the week.

This reminds me of the time when someone on slashdot told me that I should not be using XUBUNTU because it is for people that is supposed to know "what they are doing"... Xubuntu's objective is to have a slim desktop or from the xubuntu.org page: "It is lighter on system requirements and tends to be more efficient than Ubuntu with GNOME or KDE, since it uses the Xfce Desktop environment, which makes it ideal for old or low-end machines, thin-client networks, or for those who would like to get more performance out of their hardware.".

Similarly, Gnome follows some specific guidelines. There are some newbies and some hardcore geeks that will like or dislike the guidelines but it does not make you a noob (or a 1337) use one or another.

Re:Less of the kitchen sink would make KDE better

[Chris_Keene]

"Please, Gnome is a slim pick up and go desktop for new users, KDE is a customisable and flexible desktop for power, business or techie users."

Disagree.

I use Gnome because I have a million and one things to do and so long as the interface isn't annoying, looks ok and doesn't get in the way, then it's good for me.

Don't get me wrong, I'm a power, business and techie user. When KDE 1 came out I spent loads of happy minutes changing every setting just to how i liked it on my home PC. Partly because I could and partly because I found the default kde setup annoying.

I now use Ubuntu (at work) and have never felt the urge to change a single option. Now, the techie in me wants to do cool things at a PC, not change how the taskbar looks.

Re:Less of the kitchen sink would make KDE better

[value_added]

It's funny that that's the reason why I detest Gnome - for some reason they got the idea that removing all the options that only 5% of users use is a good idea.

I agree, and I don't doubt that opinion is widespread. I tend toward installing Gnome for others because it gives the appearance of simplicity and it's generally less annoying looking than KDE (I think the operative word kids use today that would describe it is less "gay"). But dear Lord, Gnome is as dumbed down and featureless as Windows, if not more so. The documentation/help system consists solely of instruction of what to click and where, and the configuration options are limited at best. And gconf? I'd rather deal with the Windows registry; at least it has features. Things do generally work, however, so I guess it's appropriate for the average user. That said, I do understand why others may consider KDE the better choice.

Me, I couldn't stand to use KDE, and Gnome, well, when it occurred to me how much of a pig gnome-terminal really is (among other things), I just threw up my hands and installed Fluxbox and went back to using xterms and screen. What more does anyone need, right? ;-)

As for KDE on Windows, that should be regarded as an interesting but slightly bizarre concept. I could be wrong, but I guess the thinking is that it will be used to replace the Explorer shell (Windows term for the desktop, taskbar, systray, etc.) a la LiteStep and similar shell replacements. If that's the case, then I can tell you from years of experience that doing so can be a bitch, and one can never trust Explorer to go away and stay away like you told it to, or even that things will work normally. Getting a functional pager on Windows wouldn't hurt, though.

Whatever the situation or one's opinons, it's good to see continuing development and the accompanying buzz for KDE. A refreshing change from the onslaught of stories about Vista.

Re:Less of the kitchen sink would make KDE better

[dbIII]

Gnome is good in very many ways. Gconf in my opinion is not one of them.

People who complain about a lack of configurability in GNOME haven't figured out how to use gconf-editor.

Have you used it? Have you been on the gconf mailing list? Have you read the docs that exist? It doesn't work very well, is very poorly documented and can't really be used to import and export settings - the Sabayon project is an application designed to meet the import and export problem - so it won't always be like this. The current gconf people are doing a decent job with something I consider was originally a truly stupid implementation of a bad idea from a guy that thought a registry must be fantastic becuase Microsoft use it - then abandoned the whole thing to try to copy .Net leaving others to sort out the mess. I can also only assume that many in the gnome team also have an ideological opposision to the *nix idea of manual pages and the gnu idea of info.

Flat text files such as in KDE and many other applications make it trivial to move a user to another machine or to apply the same setings to other users. Gconf is the twenty minutes with a GUI for every user solution.

Re:Less of the kitchen sink would make KDE better

[Mjlner]

"I wish they'd follow GNOME or Firefox and realise that overloading the senses with tabs, buttons and checkboxes does not make for a pleasant desktop experience."

Hear hear!

You're so right! I wish the KDE team would realise that a pleasant desktop experience involves editing .gtkrc-2.0 by hand and adding stuff like

binding "gaim-bindings" {
bind "Return" { "insert-at-cursor" ("\n") }
bind "<ctrl>Return" { "message_send" () }
}
widget "*gaim_gtkconv_entry" binding "gaim-bindings"

This is Clearly preferable and more easily understandable compared to having to click a check box, as you had to do in the bad old days of Gaim.

Re:Less of the kitchen sink would make KDE better

[BecomingLumberg]

At the risk of getting a bbq'd ass, I would say that this is one area that both GNOME and KDE could learn from how Windows does interface. The 'Advanced' tabs in Win make it easy to segregate the options that should be left for the last 5%.

For that matter, I would like to say that the major drawback I found in KDE is not that the options are too complex, but that there are so many different ways to get to the settings from Kicker. Changing the windowing settings could lead me to three different interfaces, many of which would duplicate results but would always have a few different buttons to press. As a new user, I found this frustrating, since I had to remember which windowing settings configuration I needed to go into to stop doing the stupid thing i was futzing around with earlier. Admittedly, I have only tried KDE in suse 10, and gnome in Ubuntu - I do not know if KDE is cleaner in other distros (I don't know why it would be though).

Re:Less of the kitchen sink would make KDE better

[DrXym]

I have never hand edited a .gtkrc file in my life so I really don't understand your sarcasm. But if I did have to do it, you've shown how easy it is to do even in the remote likelihood that I would ever want to.

Re:Less of the kitchen sink would make KDE better

[aussersterne]

Um, if you like the way GNOME does things, you should be using GNOME. Leave KDE for those of us that like the way KDE does things, including the control center (which I like very much, since my KDE is heavily customized, and I didn't have to edit a registry to do it).

Re:Less of the kitchen sink would make KDE better

[FishWithAHammer]

-I don't care how GNUbots want GNOME to be capitalized.
-gconf sucks. It's terribly documented and half of it doesn't work right.
-You say GNOME isn't 'dumbed down'? Two words. File dialogs.

Re:Less of the kitchen sink would make KDE better

[Chineseyes]

I have been a KDE user since 2000 and you do have some good points but the KDE team can very easily solve this problem by having a novice/advanced toggle button in kcontrol.
Don't want to be flooded with every option available? stay in novice mode. Want to tweak every part of kde till you are blue in the face toggle advanced mode? What would be even better would be if this novice/advanced option could be made global and not just local to kcontrol so that if you were in global novice mode all kde apps from konqueror to kmail would only show novice options if you were in global advanced mode options all options would be shown in every kde app you have installed. The beautiful part of this is that coding it would be easy. The ugly part would be choosing which options should be novice in each and every single application and which options should be advanced.

Re:Less of the kitchen sink would make KDE better

[TheLink]

Heh sounds just as crappy as the windows registry editor to me:

http://linux.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=215184&c id=17471896

With gnome you need to press Ctrl-L or something just to get an address/location bar on nautilus.

And the devs say they think about usability. How usable and easy is that? That's just _stupid_. That's vi/wordstar "usability".

With Gnome, the devs tend to hide things away if they can't figure out where to put them.

I can _tolerate_ KDE's clutter, at least I can use the features while they are figuring out where better to put them later.

KDE still has a long way to go. Even after years of using KDE I still have difficulty distinguishing the KDE application icons in the taskbar - and it's not because they all start with K ;). Somehow they aren't very distinct. Whereas on windows, the apps all look very very different - the email app looks different from notepad, which looks different from IE, which looks different from the various different IM clients, the ssh client etc.

And the way KDE orders tasks on the taskbar sucks- vertical then horizontal, they should do it the windows way- horizontal then vertical.

Re:Less of the kitchen sink would make KDE better

[DrXym]

Just because you like every setting under the sun in your face doesn't mean everyone or even a significant minority of other people do. Basic everyday settings should not be buried in amongst uncommon rarely used (if at all) settings. This is usability 101. There is no excuse for KDE being the way it is even taking into account people like yourself since it could implement an advanced mode or supplementary "power tools" if necessary.

As for my desktop preference - I really don't care what desktop I use. I just want the damned thing to be reasonably simple to configure, have sensible defaults and let me do what I want to do with a lot of extraneous noise and hubris. So at present I use GNOME because it does those things but I wish for the day when Linux users neither have to know nor care what their desktop or widgets are running on since it is an irrelevance to regular users.

Re:Less of the kitchen sink would make KDE better

[marcosdumay]

I also don't give a damn about the desktop anymore... I spent something like 2 hours of my time customizing it a few years ago, and use almost the same settings (I get tired of the wallpaper sometimes, and transparent task bar is new) untill today.

During that time, I've used those settings on 6 different computers (counting networks with shared home as 1 computer), and for a time, I started to evaluate different distros, so those settings passed trough dozens of different enviroments. Not a big investiment, and my desktop runs exactly the way I want it to run.

Now, if you think that a system with non portable settings is better... Go ahead.

Re:Less of the kitchen sink would make KDE better

[dhasenan]

gconf is a concise, organized method for arranging and storing settings. It is not a friendly method, mainly because there's no documentation with any option. If you had a few lines of comments explaining each option and its possible values, and had a way to search, then it might be reasonable.

EXCEPT -- you're modifying applications with a system-wide configuration tool. It's not logically connected. All options should be available from the program that handles them.

gconf is acceptable for more arcane options affecting metacity and GNOME itself. Maybe even applets. But not gedit or rhythmbox, for instance.

Re:Less of the kitchen sink would make KDE better

[kimvette]

KDE is a support nightmare because there are so many ways to screw with it (GNOME unfortunately isn't great in this regard either). Everyone has their damned KDE desktop configured differently - it's always fun when I have to adjust to someone's desktop because they changed the focus behavior or the positions of the window controls.

But isn't that one of the major benefits to open source in general? You have choice and configurability and extensibility, along with all of the source code for the product?

One of the things I truly hate about Gnome (and I used to LOVE Gnome and abhor KDE) is it takes huge steps backwards; it removes power and flexibility from the users (gconf? Come on, this kind of thing is exactly what people hate about Windows). Sure, if you want to spend days reading incomplete documentation for Gnome (or asking what should be RTFM questions because there IS no FM to R) you'll discover that gnome has a lot of wonderful control panels/applets to control nearly every facet of the system, but once you find those apps, you're not done - oh no, not by a long shot! Now you also have to read up on text settings you need to type into those applications (gnome's session settings is a perfect example of this. Want to enable Compiz? Have fun! Thankfully some kinds folks involved in the project bothered to write up some documentation on how to make it work).

Not everyone has time or ambition to read through the source to discover how everything gets configured. KDE centralizes it all - and while some distros modify the control center and do a better job than others, KDE is never so crippled that one can't get up and running, desktop FULLY customized within a couple of hours, tops.

And then there is the craptacular gtk File dialog. Even the Windows file dialogs are vastly superior to that crippled widget.

Re:Less of the kitchen sink would make KDE better

[aussersterne]

So (and try to LISTEN this time), let the "significant majority" of people use GNOME which is exactly what you claim to want. Your totalitarian impulse to make sure that nobody has any choice but the one you want is not welcome here. I like KDE, so naturally you tell me that I'm wrong and you wish I didn't have it, even though you already have a desktop that you like. Well excuse me, but fsck you and all you GNOME trolls who post to every KDE story with "KDE MUST BE STOPPED! USERS MUST NOT HAVE CHOICE! IT IS NOT ENOUGH THAT GNOME TAKES IT AWAY; WE MUST REMOVE IT FROM ALL OTHER SOFTWARE PRODUCTS AS WELL! YOU POWER USERS MUST BE FORBIDDEN FROM HAVING A DESKTOP THAT YOU LIKE!"

Re:Less of the kitchen sink would make KDE better

[darkwhite]

Stick with Gnome and Firefox if you need the comfort afforded by cutting functionality from programs. "Less is more" has brought Gnome and associated applications to a point where I cannot use them without disgust. KDE always seems to have lived by the principle of "more options, better organized" when preferences are concerned, and what it needs to do is expose even more, and organize better. There are applications where prefs dialogs are organized poorly. Does that mean those options need to be hidden? Hell no. Just reorganized.

Re:Less of the kitchen sink would make KDE better

[darkwhite]

Do you even realize how moronic you sound?

You are defending a crutch of an application, created for a grievously misguided library whose main motivation appears to have been that "if Windows is doing it, it must be good enough for us", to expose options which are not user-configurable because of an inability to organize the applications' GUIs. Then you go on to complain that an environment that avoids all these problems is a support nightmare. I have news for you: Microsoft Windows is even easier to administer if you want your users to have a minimum of options in completely disjointed applications with idiotic facilities for adjusting functionality that didn't make it to the UI.

GNOME releases regularly and gets new features out into general use quickly.

Yeah, and KDE devs hold all their features back for themselves. WTF does this have to do with anything? The Gnome and KDE point releases occur at about the same frequency.

Re:Less of the kitchen sink would make KDE better

[nuzak]

I'm fine with Gnome hiding the obscure configurations. What chaps my hide is that these days the belief has gone to making them not configurable AT ALL. Don't like the way Metacity uses the middle mouse button for resizing windows? Tough, it's hardwired in, you're recompiling it (assuming you can find it, because it's basically undocumented).

Re:Less of the kitchen sink would make KDE better

[disasm]

I can't believe I just heard someone claim to be a techie and use KDE... What has this world come to, is every desktop whore now considered a techie? Real techies use command line config files, and possibly on occasion very lightweight wm (fluxbox/ratpoison/wmaker)... Oh, and we don't use transparency, that's another stupid frill. On that note, I think gnome is more everyone friendly. Almost everyone of those quirky options only techies would touch can be found in a config file somewhere on your system, as for me I'll stick with fluxbox. As other people have mentioned the thing managing your windows whether it be a full blown desktop or a nice window manager should be a tool that doesn't get in the way. Fancy 3D animations and sounds to go with every click of a mouse doesn't make a usable interface, and having the knowledge to enable these frills doesn't make you a techie. And, if the wm requires a mouse to navigate around efficiently, there has to be something wrong. That device is supposed to be buried behind the desk because it keeps getting knocked off from not using it. So I would appreciate it if you stop calling yourself a techie. You make the rest of us true techies look like desktop whores, which is what you are.

Let the flamewar continue...

The Fine Print: The above post is satire and not meant to be taken seriously. Sorry if you didn't laugh, I have a very dry sense of humor only other REAL techies could detect (and since when did we start referring to ourselves as techies? I always thought it was chief geek or the generic term, linux user)

Re:Less of the kitchen sink would make KDE better

[squiggleslash]

It's an interesting irony that KDE's supporters really spend most of their time defending the system on the basis of its customizability.

The fact is, if KDE was any good, you wouldn't have to spend time customizing it.

It's not as if you can just arbitrarily go in and make it the perfect desktop unless it's what KDE developers think is reasonable to begin with. Want to remove toolbars from your file windows? Congrats: you no longer have them in the webbrowser either. Want to enable spacial browsing? Well, you can't, but you can have double clicking on a folder causing a new window to open, because the KDE team doesn't really know what spacial means, but they do hate Macs, and that was one of the things about the Mac they hated, so it's got to be the same thing, right?

KDE is a poor clone of Windows designed with the usual attitude that putting in lots of knobs and levers is a valid substitute for putting thought into a UI and making it work.

Is it worth spending 30 minutes trying to get KDE to look like Mac OS X or GNOME, then adding the extra fixes that supposedly cure all the problems you ever had with those two platforms? Well, no. (a) because you can't. And (b) because GNOME and Mac OS X are already good UIs. Why switch to KDE? To fix that slightly annoying problem you have with a file dialog while facing hundreds of new niggling problems?

You heavily customized your desktop not because KDE was superior but because it was inferior. Because it was bad. Because the decisions made by the people who put together KDE and configured it on your machine were so entirely antithetical to what you wanted, that it was worth your while hunting through GUI options to get the buttons you want, to get the single click/double click behaviour you needed, because the icons were stupid, because the... you get the picture. Had it been superior, you wouldn't have needed to customize anything beyond changing the wallpaper and selecting a colour scheme and/or theme.

BTW I really, really, wanted to like KDE when I switched back to GNU/Linux last year. I mean, I'm a "menus should follow Fitt's law" type guy. KDE allows that. But, for all of its faults, GNOME is a good system at last, while KDE just plain sucks, and KDE could do with a lot of examination of both it and Mac OS X, and some introspection of the "How can we apply to same decisions concerning usability to our own DE? Why are we failing at the moment, and how can we fix that and come up with a better system than the others?"

Re:Less of the kitchen sink would make KDE better

[aussersterne]

"The fact is, if KDE was any good, you wouldn't have to spend time customizing it."

Sorry, but this is just silly. What you are suggesting is that all computer users are identical and have identical needs, and that there is thus an "ideal" desktop that, once achieved, will simultaneously serve all users ideally, out of the box.

That's just nonsense. The "ideal" desktop is the most customized, not the least customized. An editor, a photographer, and a sysadmin all should have radically different computing desktops that look almost nothing alike one another and that behave in very different ways. If they don't they're not working at peak efficiency. Fine for some, but I want my desktop to match my workflow as closely as possible.

How about this: I don't spend any time customizing GNOME or Mac OS X. But that doesn't mean they're ideal for me. It means they're nonfunctional for me. They can't be made to do what I want them to do, and therefore I don't use them at all. I do use KDE. Why? Because (even if you think this means its imperfect), I can get it to do what I need it to do without installing lots of 3rd party hacks or descending into registry editing.

And that's what. Period.

And yes, I have used GNOME, including recent versions (Fedora Core 6 in fact, I administer a number of FC6 desktop labs) and also Mac OS X 10.2.

Re:Less of the kitchen sink would make KDE better

[chromatic]

The fact is, if KDE was any good, you wouldn't have to spend time customizing it.

I suppose it's a failure of automobile manufacturers that I let back the seat, tilt the steering wheel, and adjust the mirrors every time I rent a car.

Re:Less of the kitchen sink would make KDE better

[squiggleslash]

Here's an idea:

As KDE is so customizable, add whatever's left that's required to make it possible to work exactly the same way as Mac OS X or GNOME (I don't mind which. Personally, I prefer OS X, but I'm aware of the legal issues and such so GNOME is fine.)

Now, once you've done that, set it up by default with those settings and have a switch somewhere that "turns on" the configurability.

That way you'll have the best of both worlds. A desktop that was actually designed, rather than bodged together by people who don't really have any idea about usability issues and thus promote the use of checkboxes and radio buttons as opposed to "figuring things out" and "doing the right things" instead, plus some way to make it crap again for the "advanced" users who want to spend all day playing with Lego and Tonka cars. I mean, GUI options. Sorry.

Re:Less of the kitchen sink would make KDE better

[squiggleslash]

No, it's a success of the automobile manufacturers that when you enter your car, you don't have to move the steering wheel from the back of the car to the front (which is easy to do in CarDE, that's why it's so great!), replace the iron, spike lined, seat with a spongy one (just a simple click in CarDE's Seat Options, I mean, that's why GNOMetro sucks, they force you to use leather seats, you don't get any choice unless you go to the command line with a screw driver), select the see-through windows in favour of the wooden boards (hey, at least CarDE gives you the choice!), decide which order the pedals should go in and move them around (my wife prefers the gas pedal on the left, I prefer it on the right, if we used Car OS X we'd be forced to have the gas pedal on the right all the time, can you believe that?) and CarDE gives me the choice between five different reverse gears, whereas with GNOMetro it just has one! That's dumbing it down too far I think!

GNOME and Mac OS X allow you to customize the things that need customizing because they differ on a user-by-user basis. What neither does is go overboard, and both make intelligent decisions to begin with.

KDE doesn't. Any GUI you have to spend significant amounts of time customizing is, frankly, awful. KDE lacks a usability and design emphasis.

Re:Less of the kitchen sink would make KDE better

[pointwood]

The KDE developers are working a lot together with OpenUsability.org and I have no doubt that you'll be able to see that in KDE4.

Re:Less of the kitchen sink would make KDE better

[SiChemist]

-You say GNOME isn't 'dumbed down'? Two words. File dialogs.

I couldn't agree with you more. I use KDE but I like Firefox for web browsing. The only thing I don't like about FF is that it uses the god-awful GTK file dialogs. I wish there was a way to replace them with the KDE file dialogs, but I'm not that much of a coder.

Re:Less of the kitchen sink would make KDE better

[DrXym]

Stop being so elitist. Why should someone who likes KDE for other reasons be told to use GNOME simply because KDE developers and certain recalcitrant users can't or won't admit how confusing and complicated the configuration system is and won't do anything about it. If your attitude were representative (and I surely hope it isn't) then KDE is doomed to failure simply other desktops actively address obvious usability issues while KDE just appears more interested in Kewl Eye Kandy rather than fixing the fundamentals.

You claiming that it takes power away from you is utterly absurd. There is nothing to stop KDE supporting a normal and advanced mode and keeping everybody happy.

Re:Less of the kitchen sink would make KDE better

[Brandybuck]

I tried turning off images in Thunderbird this morning. It's email, it doesn't need images. If I want to see the picture someone sent me, I'll click on it.

But I couldn't do it. I can't find the option to turn it off. Maybe it exists, maybe it doesn't. Maybe there's a hidden option I can type in to turn it off. I don't know. What I do know is that I'm not going to waste my time searching online for it!

I'm really pissed that Thunderbird thinks I'm so stupid I can't handle a "don't load images" option. This isn't good interface design, it's arrogant elitism. If you don't want to clutter the inteface with lesser used options, then put a damned "advanced" button in the dialog! Don't REMOVE that functionality just because you think it's too advanced for your Aunt Tillie!

Re:Less of the kitchen sink would make KDE better

[Brandybuck]

But if I did have to do it, you've shown how easy it is to do

Now it's YOU who is being sarcastic!

Re:Less of the kitchen sink would make KDE better

[SoapDish]

It sound's like you've never really used KDE.

All the options are tucked away in Control Center, or the settings menu -> configure (for individual apps). There are very few radio buttons and checkboxes. Most of the options are clearly labeled and controled with combo boxes, sliders, or lists.

I spend about 1/2 an hour upon installation to configure it how I want. If you want to change more stuff, it'll naturally take longer.

All the excess buttons in the apps are just tools, and can be removed fairly easily in the settings dialog.

The "configurability switch" would be selecting "command center" from the menu.

Re:Less of the kitchen sink would make KDE better

[smash]

How DARE they put mouse-click behaviour under the mouse control panel!?

Re:Less of the kitchen sink would make KDE better

[hamfactorial]

If you're sore about the CTRL+Enter to send option being removed from the GAIM preferences, perhaps you should send your grievances to the GAIM developers. They're in a much better position to consider your issue than the GNOME developers and the general unwashed slashdot masses.

Re:Less of the kitchen sink would make KDE better

[BillyBlaze]

As one of the few people who doesn't get confused and scared and curl up in a fetal position and cry if a control panel has too many options, I say, screw those people who do. Let them use Windows or Apple or Gnome, if they're so bent on catering to those people. But in 20 years they'll all be dead, just like the idiots who can't program their VCRs are dying off now. In the meantime, can there please be at least a little software that isn't designed for the lowest common denominator?

Re:Less of the kitchen sink would make KDE better

[strider44]

This is pretty old, but I see no reason why it wouldn't still work:

http://www.kde-look.org/content/show.php?content=1 4785

Re:Less of the kitchen sink would make KDE better

[WilliamSChips]

Try Xfce. It uses GTK+ like Gnome does but it doesn't make all the same fucking stupid mistakes that Gnome does. It also doesn't try to imitate Windows like Gnome and KDE do, something which is counterproductive to people coming from Windows(it fucks up their muscle memory) and annoying to those who don't like Windowsisms. It also has less bloat than either major environment.

Re:Less of the kitchen sink would make KDE better

[colinrichardday]

But what about all the time I lose from having to manually shut off my monitor because I can't configure the screen saver in GNOME? KDE may have more configurations, but how often does one have to set them?

Re:Less of the kitchen sink would make KDE better

[squiggleslash]

It sounds like you've missed the point.

KDE is crap.

Spending 30 minutes configuring a desktop is 30 minutes wasting time.

If KDE came with a decent configuration out of the box, it wouldn't be necessary to reconfigure it. And as such, the ridiculous number of options wouldn't be touted as an "advantage" by KDE fans who see no irony in their advocating what amounts to the biggest sign KDE isn't usable by default.

It's like a promoter of cardboard houses who points out how each home comes with unlimited duct-tape, you don't get that with concrete block!

Re:Less of the kitchen sink would make KDE better

[WilliamSChips]

It's not the customizability that's the problem. The problem is that the majority of customizable systems don't know what a reasonable default is. Xfce seems to be an exception in that although it has extensive configuration, I've only had to use it once and that was to make selection follow the mouse, which is something not very many people want.

Re:Less of the kitchen sink would make KDE better

[WilliamSChips]

I don't know about Thunderbird but Firefox has about:config.

Re:Less of the kitchen sink would make KDE better

[KozmoStevnNaut]

Go to about:config and change "ui.allow_platform_file_picker". It should disable the GTK file picker and give you the much saner old-style picker.

Re:Less of the kitchen sink would make KDE better

[Brandybuck]

about:config is a HORRIBLE user interface!

First, only experts know it's there. Second, the interface itself is a laundry list of name/value pairs. Are these names meaningful to the user? NO! They were named by developers, the very SAME people we're told who shouldn't be put in charge of user interfaces. It's the GUI equivalent of an uncommented text configuration file.

That's the problem with GNOME and FF/TB: they either treat you like an idiot who can't even tie his own shows without falling down, or they expect you to be such an expert that you know the meaning of several hundred poorly named undocumented settings. There is no in-between user allowed!

This isn't usability, it's a freaking insult!

Re:Less of the kitchen sink would make KDE better

[DrXym]

Your sarcasm is unfounded. The single / double click launch behaviour of the desktop is clearly a desktop setting, and certainly not something that anybody would expect to be in a panel which controls mouse behaviour for all applications.

Re:Less of the kitchen sink would make KDE better

[drinkypoo]

I'll give it a shot sometime, but right now I'm on the Beryl+AIGLX train...

Re:Less of the kitchen sink would make KDE better

[squiggleslash]

Sorry, but this is just silly. What you are suggesting is that all computer users are identical and have identical needs, and that there is thus an "ideal" desktop that, once achieved, will simultaneously serve all users ideally, out of the box.

No, you're overstating that as a reason for allowing the KDE team to build a desktop that doesn't suit anyone. The vast majority of people have similar needs. Pretty much everyone benefits from certain decisions being made even if at first they don't like them. The fact is KDE starts out as crap. If it didn't, you wouldn't be spending the time and effort you are "customizing" it, because it would be usable out of the box.

You're putting the cart before the horse. You're assuming that KDE is good because it's customizable, not that it's customizable because it's terrible. You're assuming that your 30 minutes customizing leaves you with a desktop that's significantly better than the GNOME or Mac OS X desktop that you'd have spent five minutes customizing, without recognising the fact that GNOME and Mac OS X are pretty close to "right" already.

The "ideal" desktop is the most customized, not the least customized. An editor, a photographer, and a sysadmin all should have radically different computing desktops that look almost nothing alike one another and that behave in very different ways. If they don't they're not working at peak efficiency. Fine for some, but I want my desktop to match my workflow as closely as possible.

Again, stop overstating the case for customizability. GNOME and Mac OS X are customizable. You can choose which applications appear on your dock/launchbar/equivalent-there-of, windows are resizable, you can choose colour schemes and other things that seriously effect your distraction level.

KDE goes beyond that and allows components to be customized not because they need to be but because the developers have no idea what the right decision is. Why is there a choice of whether to have a fitts-law menu or not? There is a right answer, sometimes an answer that's affected by context - ie where is the user expecting it? Is there a better control object that the user would benefit more from being in the fitts-law area that's KDE specific? etc. But it's a right answer that's not user specific. It's either a good idea or it isn't. Why make it configurable?

Why make the buttons on the top of each window configurable? There are buttons that need to be there, and buttons that don't.

Why is Konqueror a mess? Why is a decision about toolbars going to affect both web browser and file management windows? Why is the "Open in a new window" option non-spacial?

These are customizable not because they're supposed to be but because the KDE developers have no idea what to do. They give you the option because they don't know what they're doing. KDE's weakness is inherent in that it needs customizability. And the best customized KDE desktop couldn't match, for me, slightly tweaked, no visit to the command line needed, GNOME or Mac OS X desktops. Why? Because the KDE developers do not know what they're doing. They're not building an integrated desktop, they're throwing features out there and hoping people will shut up when they say KDE is crap. "What's spacial file management? Oh, you mean like when a new window opens when you click on a folder. I hate that! Anyway, KDE does have it, click on "Folders open in a new window", you see, that's why KDE's so good. What, you don't want a huge toolbar to appear? You can turn that off, just... oh, you want it in your webbrowser? Dude, why would you want it in your web browser but not in your..." (continued ad-nausia. Yes, I said nausia.)

But it doesn't address the criticisms, because the developers don't know what they're doing. Your thirty minutes appear productive because you've turned a pigs ear into a canvas cloth, but most of us still don't want to blow our noses in it.

How abou

Ooooo eye candy!

[EmbeddedJanitor]

What a crock. Eye candy is completely pointless for its own sake. I'd rather that people fixed some real bugs than put on pointless makeup..

You should not have to wory about how your GUI is built, but it does matter that it works better (which just happens to be achieved by building it differently).

Re:Ooooo eye candy!

[kimvette]

Not entirely true; having the environment look attractive does help to defer boredom from setting in while you work.

You know that...

[OpenSourced]

... a software package will suck when the most exciting fact about it, is its new license.

Re:You know that...

[strider44]

Only when it means Amarok on Windows and Macs. That's a good feature of KDE 4.

Re:You know that...

[RLiegh]

....only to people who run windows or MacOS. KDE 4: "giving you less reasons to use Unix"

Didn't anyone learn from OS/2's mistake? Don't make your OS irrelevant!

Re:You know that...

[dascandy]

If you can make a software interface that doesn't annoy the hell out of me, you don't even have to replace the license to make it loads better.

Re:You know that...

[swillden]

Didn't anyone learn from OS/2's mistake? Don't make your OS irrelevant!

A few KDE apps being available on Windows won't make Linux or the *BSDs irrelevant. And it may very well help people switch to Free apps so they can later switch to a Free OS without pain.

Re:You know that...

[arifirefox]

rather KDE is the OS and KDE becomes more relevant. Especially if it's not going to be default on most linux systems....it's the way to go for them

Re:You know that...

[hritcu]

Macs come with iTunes, which leaves you as the only person who would want to run Amarok on a Mac. Seriously now, what would be the point?

Re:You know that...

[roastedMnM]

Let's begin by looking at the feature set of iTunes and compare that to Amarok. In most areas they are capable of the very same music management and playing activities. They do things in different ways, however, and this commonly means that different activities are easier or harder based on the implementation of the given feature. This means that (imho) Amarok deals with smart play lists in a more rational manner. This also means that iTunes deals with podcasts in a more rational manner. From these two examples it might become obvious that depending on the users 'workflow' in listening to music either one player or the other would be more appropriate.

In my own case this means that I listen to music differently when I am on my (OSX) laptop than when I sit down at my desktop (SUSE 10.0/KDE 3.5.5).

If I could I would have both programs on both systems but I think the point of this was to show what the point was for having Amarok on the Mac and beyond the above I would point out that having a choice is almost always a good idea (almost).

To each his own.

KDE4 will be the turning point

[MrSmileyJr]

I dunno about the rest of you windows users, but it looks like kde4 will be the time when I finally switch to linux. I have always wanted to, but the ugliness has always made me hesitant. After doing some research I found that it can be made much nicer, but still, I really don't want to spend tons of time tweaking to make it look nice. If kde4 delivers, it might even be good enough to get lots of people to switch. If its so good that it looks awesome without any tweaking.... well then it might be good enough to compete with Mac's "just works, looks awesome."

I can't wait.

Re:KDE4 will be the turning point

[MrSmileyJr]

the smooth edges of winxp defenitely make things look nicer than what linux has generally been until recently. Regardless, win xp is nice enough on the eyes to keep you from running away from it, and linux just isn't appealing enough in terms of eye candy in order to make you switch. - as an example - mac os is actually cool looking enough to get you thinking....

Re:KDE4 will be the turning point

[Arcanis the Rogue]

To any Windows users weary of using Linux because of its looks - worry not. I started using KDE around version 3.1 and was humbly surprised by how nice it looked. Many of the default screens don't do it justice. If you want to give KDE (or GNOME, for that matter) a new look you can hop over to KDE-Look or GNOME-Look respectively. For the users who prefer a more minimalistic interface you could always try out Enlightenment, a fantastic looking window manager.

That being said, I have no doubt that KDE 4.0 will make everything good looking and functional I love about KDE much better, so there is always that to look forward to.

Re:KDE4 will be the turning point

[uujjj]

Dunno if you've noticed, but since GM bought Daewoo more and more Chevrolets are Korean cars.

Windows port ?

[Meltir]

My god, people wait a minute.
Sure - the gui lib will be gpl'ed.
The rest of kde is and will remain opensource too.
But i can not comprehend someone actually rewriting all of the system to make it run on windows.
There are just too many *nix connections in kde to make it run smoothly on windows.
MacOS ? Sure, its based on bsd.
Linux ? Sure, thats where they designed it (thou im sure some of the kde dev's use macOS or just *bsd too).
But windows ? Code can and should be portable.
But when you work on such a large scale - things tend to break.

Besides - by the time kde4 will be ready vista will actually be rolling out.
Nobody has the full specs for that system yet.

So - do they port it to XP ? Maybe. How long will it take ? (...)
How long will it take to make a vista port ?...

And no - i dont consider cygwin a real solution here.
Imagine the overhead of running a DE on top of a layer on a already blated OS.

The real news here is the new features of kde4 which look nice.

Re:Windows port ?

[Anonymous Coward]

Er ... KDE4 already works on Windows. Sure, it's not 100% complete, but it's nowhere near the Herculean task you're making it out to be. KDE has always been extremely good at the Once-And-Once-Only rule, so most of the changes required are localised and very little "rewriting all of the system to make it run on windows" was required. And no, KDE4 is and will be native - no cygwin required.

http://people.mandriva.com/~lmontel/screenshot-kde 4/images.html

Re:Windows port ?

[mrchaotica]

Perhaps you're unaware of the fact that QT, the API that KDE is based on, has always been cross-platform. The only thing that ever stopped KDE from running on Windows or Mac OS before was licensing -- it wasn't GPL'd on platforms other than unix/X11 until QT 4.

Re:Windows port ?

[mgiuca]

I'm not quite sure about this statement (so I pose it as a question): but could it be that they're excited about running individual KDE apps (like AmaroK) on Windows, as opposed to the whole environment? That could be a lot easier and useful for some apps.

I'm not a huge fan of AmaroK but... KATE :) Woo.

KDE on MacOSX

[hritcu]

I can hardly wait to be able to run KDE apps on MacOSX without having to start an X server, and have proper copy-paste support, correct window stacking and native look an feel. There are KDE applications like Krusader for which there is hardly any alternative on the Mac.

KDE vs. Gnome

[Psychotria]

At the risk of being labelled a troll, I have a few obversations to make. I yearn to return to Gnome (I made the switch from Gnome--which I'd been using for 3 years--to KDE about a year ago. I'm not sure if it's a "feature" of Gnome, but when Gnome apps (at least on my systems) fail, they don't even give a reasonable error message. This may be a design feature, to make it "easier", but, in fact, makes things stupidly difficult. If something fails, then I want to know WHY (at least give me the option of more detailed error messages). KDE is consistent. Gnome isn't (yet). 3 years ago, I would laugh at KDE users, because I knew that "Gnome was best". These days I take a more pragmatic view. Ideoligally, Gnome may be better. In practice, KDE takes the cake.

Re:KDE vs. Gnome

[kfg]

This may be a design feature, to make it "easier", but, in fact, makes things stupidly difficult.

Troll or not I think you have just pegged the perfect Gnome slogan:

"So easy it's stupidly difficult."

KFG

Re:KDE vs. Gnome

[RzUpAnmsCwrds]

If something fails, then I want to know WHY (at least give me the option of more detailed error messages).

No you don't. Application "failures" are almost always memory protection errors. There is no useful error message to provide unless you compiled the app with debugging symbols - and then, you're probably going to be working with the corefile anyway. Looking at an out-of-bounds memory address isn't going to do you any good.

Re:KDE vs. Gnome

[JohnFluxx]

Unless you do what kde does - put the debug info in a separate file that can be loaded when needed (i.e. when it crashes).
That way you can have a useful backtrace without using up memory when the program is running.

Re:KDE vs. Gnome

[ebichete]

You know what would be really cool? When an application crashes:

- the system collects a stacktrace of the process and the libraries (including version numbers) it was using
- compiles this with extra possible relevant info about your state at time of crash
- (after asking your permission) connects to an online database of crashes and compares your
stacktrace to the database, looking up the debug symbols automatically
- if your stacktrace matches a previously known crash it shows you the bug entry for that crash
- if your crash is unique, it allows you to file a new bug for the developers to look at

That would really be a step forward in improving the stability of free desktop environments.

Maybe someday someone will do this

Re:KDE vs. Gnome

[deepestblue]

I've always used KDE and have never even tried Gnome. Why's GNOME ideologically better? And why do you yearn to switch to Gnome?

Re:KDE vs. Gnome

[a.d.trick]

Funny, I always thought it was the opposite. The KDE users always seem to come around proclaiming their C++ code is so much cleaner than Gnome's C code. But after trying KDE I eventually gave up because of all the UI bloat. I'm not saying that the programs themselves are bloated, just their UIs. Way to many buttons and menu's and I spent ages trying to find out how to do stuff. I've only had a few problems with things failing in Gnome, and that's normally when I'm running unstable versions of Gnome. These days I take a more pragmatic view. Ideoligally, KDE may be better. In practice, Gnome takes the cake.

Re:KDE vs. Gnome

[Brandybuck]

Ideoligally, Gnome may be better.

Nonsense! GNOME may certainly be more ideological, but that does not mean they are ideologically better. I will assert that the optimistic pragmatism of KDE is far superior to the ranting idealism of GNOME.

GNOME is the desktop that tells you what to believe. It tells you want to believe about programming languages, software licensing, configuration dialogs, application names, etc. All to the way down to the level of telling you what to believe about the order of buttons on dialogs. These aren't mere technical policies to promote project coherency, but actual belief systems.

Re:KDE vs. GNOME

[Elsan]

I like unholy stuff, some of the sins more specifically! ;)

Re:KDE vs. Gnome

[fiddlesticks]

er, run it under strace, gdb, etc?

mv your .gnome* out of the way?

add a new test user and see if it works with that?

gnome apps shouldn't (don't) 'fail') - what's going on with your setup/distro, etc?

Re:KDE vs. GNOME

[logixoul]

it just *looks* clunky (reminds me of AmigaOS). I could never get over the "button-overload" of KDE.

You are not alone in this observation. I tend to agree. Less is more.

Re:Hmm , let me guess...

[strider44]

I like it when trolls say they're not trolling. If you've never used KDE before don't bother commenting on it. I made a comment before showing a screenshot of KDE looking exactly like Windows XP then another one showing KDE looking exactly like Vista then another one with KDE looking exactly like Mac OS-X. I don't think I'll bother here.

Re:Kstill Ktoo Kmany Koptions

[kfg]

Is it really so hard to strike some middle ground between no options and so damned many you can't find the one you're looking for?

Yes.

KFG

Enough of the waffle

[Epeeist]

Show us the numbers.

Let's see your results for the same scenarios or, if you don't think his scenarios reflect usage, some other typical usage patterns.

Re:Hmm , let me guess...

[El Lobo]

Oh, so much innovation! I'm speechless!

Re:Hmm , let me guess...

[Viol8]

"If you've never used KDE before don't bother commenting on it."

Thats right I never used it in the 2 years I had it as a desktop in my last job. I love it when people karma whore but pretend they're making a valid counterpoint.

Question: When will it be released?

[hritcu]

Do they have any kind of official roadmap for KDE4 ? Looking at the not-updated-in-agesFeature Plan and yet-to-be-written Release Plan makes me doubt that they plan to ship anytime soon. Are you guys sure that it's going to be "some time this year" as the article states?

NOOOOOO.......

[advocate_one]

Plasma will provide the next generation desktop experience in KDE 4.0. It is planned to integrate three separate applications namely the Kicker (Panel), KDesktop and Super Karamba (Widgets) into a single application. And the surprise of all things is that it will be possible to run the beautiful Dashboard widgets of Mac OSX in KDE 4.0.

I like things as they are with separate applications. If Kicker hiccups and falls over I can relaunch Kicker, if Super Karamba falls over, then I can simply restart Super Karamba, if the desktop falls over then I can restart the desktop... if the "all in one app" Plasma falls over, than what??? do I have to restart KDE? I don't want flaky Super Karamba widgets threatening the entire desktop... and I only want to run Super Karamba if I want to, not by default...

Re:NOOOOOO.......

[oliverthered]

This wouldn't be so much of a problem (but still a problem) if they ran each app in it's own thread, or even better process.

Re:NOOOOOO.......

[advocate_one]

Super Karamba gets taken out by buggy widgets. If you get a well written widget then Super Karamba can run for days on end... but some widgets fall over if you try to run them for days on end... I've usually found that those that regularly change their background (like weather apps) fall over if they're changing the background while KDE is changing wallpaper (if you've set it to regularly change or just happen to be applying a new wallpaper at the wrong time)

Re:NOOOOOO.......

[TheLink]

Oh that sounds bad then. I doubt popular widgets will be that reliable/stable. Some might even be exploitable...

Re:NOOOOOO.......

[N7DR]

Super Karamba gets taken out by buggy widgets.

1. Right. It is also true, as you say, that it "can run for days on end"... but even running a simple bug-free widget set, it rarely runs for a week without spontaneously crashing.

2. The threading model in SK is fundamentally flawed. All widgets halt while one is updating. So if for some reason one takes a long time (network connection is down, it performs a heavy calculation, etc.) the entire SK portion of the desktop simply freezes for a length of time.

3. There is a fundamental design flaw in any system that is designed to contain objects, but which can be taken down by a buggy object.

I love the idea of SK. And I run it all the time. Right now I have 11 themes (widgets) on my desktop simply because over the course of the past few years I have found desktop widgets to so useful. But I sure hope that's it's vastly improved in KDE 4. Right now, I get embarrassed when I talk to OSX or Windows users when it comes to the subject of desktop widgets.

Some criticism of gnome mostly past

[dbIII]

I hate gnome due to the cretinous idea of implementing an obfiscated MS Windows style registry on what was at the time a non-portable linux environment - and having one of these registries per user spread over multiple files named after the three stooges and others (not kidding) in a form where you cannot export the settings to another user let alone another computer. This has been fixed to a degree, not everything needs gconf anymore and with Sabayon many of the settings can be exported. However it remains an environment where a user can render their laptop unusable via a screen resolution applet which sets stuff in the weird registry instead of in the X windows configuration files where it belongs. Try fixing that over a bad mobile phone link to a remote area some time. Cretinous behaviour like making things executable without permission also occured at one time, but I believe was fixed rapidly.

Fortunately the people that wanted a version of MS Windows that they wrote themselves running on linux (only) but not understanding the features of the platform have moved on - leaving us with two fairly decent environments with just a few remaining flaws.

Re:Some criticism of gnome mostly past

[Sri Ramkrishna]

You're going to hate where X is going with more autoconfig stuff being written, you'll not be seeing much of the xorg.conf file. This is probably especially true with the open source intel graphics drivers. So in the future, you're not going to see a lot of config options in xorg.conf.

sri

Re:Some criticism of gnome mostly past

[SilentUrbanFox]

FUD. Gconf is just XML. Editing it by hand with vim/emacs/nano is fairly trivial, and Xforwarding gconf-editor is possible if you can't get that bit figured out. I kinda agree it's a transgression against the general UNIX conventions of storing things in simple text files, but other than that, it's hardly bad. Also, I've never had problems copying gconf information to a new user, and DEFINITELY not to a new system.

Kool!

[glavenoid]

KNow,if Konly Kthey Kwould Kstop Kalling Keverything KSomething or Kother!

Re:Kool!

[Stevyn]

I GNOw what you mean

Re:Kool!

[WindBourne]

geah, gthat gis gsuch ga gpain.
MSPerhaps, MSthat MSshould MSstop MSeverywhere.
.netof .netcourse, .netI .netbe .netwrong.
ior imaybe iyour igrip is inothing.

Re:Kool!

[Sneakernets]

Speaking of that, I had the wildest thought that the KDE devs had a secret team dedicated to making names with K in them. I mean, Kopete? Konversation? Konsole? Sounds all Deutsch to me.

Re:Kool!

[mwlewis]

jI jdon't junderstand jwhat jthe jbig jdeal jis.

Re:Kool!

[urbanradar]

Speaking of that, I had the wildest thought that the KDE devs had a secret team dedicated to making names with K in them. I mean, Kopete? Konversation? Konsole? Sounds all Deutsch to me.

Well, not all. From Wikipedia: "According to the Kopete FAQ, the name Kopete comes from the Chilean word Copete, a word to refer to alcoholic drinks."

Re:Kool!

[jjohnson]

HaHAAAAAAAAAA!

That's friggin' hilarious! I love it! Until now, I'd never seen a /. thread about KDE where someone made a joke about everything starting with a K!

MOD PARENT UP!

Re:Kool!

[arifirefox]

I Gnu you'd say that

Re:Kool!

[stud9920]

MSPerhaps, MSthat MSshould MSstop MSeverywhere.

You mean "Windows Live Perhaps, Windows Live that Windows Live should Windows Live stop Windows Live everywhere ?

Re:Kool!

[KayosIII]

Actually the K naming scheme is dead as of version 4.... All new components are given decidedly unKish names like oxygen and solid and plasma and many of the older components will be renamed....

Personally I don't think much of somebody who is put off by something who is put off by something as petty as a name... a lot of the software is good and that is the best reason to use or not use it

Re:Kool!

[WilliamSChips]

Now I understand. It's what the Kopete developers were drinking when they created that horrid program.

Re:Kool!

[geminidomino]

Personally I don't think much of somebody who is put off by something who is put off by something as petty as a name... a lot of the software is good and that is the best reason to use or not use it

Unless you try to launch it from a kterm with tab-completion... 'g' is just as bad. Then it's not petty, it's a usability KPITA.

Just a bit of a windows bashing...

[xtracto]

At least KDE (and Windows) put the options where you can find them using just the normal flow of the GUI.

Yeah you bet, every advanced option you can imagine is on plain view for you to change your GUI based
REGISTRY EDITOR
KEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\Curren tVersion\Explorer\Advanced
in the registry and add the following DWord value
CascadeFolderBands and set it to 1.

Re:Just a bit of a windows bashing...

[TheLink]

Hey that sounds like Gnome and gconf to me!

See here for someone saying how it's good(!):

http://linux.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=215184&c id=17471744

Just substitute gnome for windows and gconf for regedit ;).

For more look here: http://www.gnome.org/projects/gconf/

Sure KDE isn't perfect, but it looks like the devs are actually trying to head in _useful_ directions. Put most of the features where we can see them, then start arranging them in order of most used.

There are still a number of things I find easier to do in windows than on KDE, and done better by Windows (esp UI ease of use) than KDE but there are other things KDE does better (fish:// is nice :p ).

But I think you get the worst of both worlds with Gnome.

Mod parent up!

[Xolotl]

Exactly. I'm getting tired of this 'Gnome is for newbies, KDE is for power users' argument that gets trotted out over and over again. I'm a 'power user', I've tried every KDE version to date and always gone back to GNOME, because it just works the way I want it to without having to change anything, and stays out of my way. KDE 3.3 and beyond are much better than older versions, but still I prefer Gnome. But then I always preferred MacOS over Windows.

Sometimes, I get the impression that the bulk of KDE fans are the same sort of people who load up Windows with all sorts of extensions, cursor animators, funny fonts and the like, which to me are just distraction.

... don't like Oxgen

[Qbertino]

I don't like the Oxygen Icons. To many look tacky - probalby on purpose. How that is supposed to be a 'new user experience' I can't tell. I think we've got enough rull-color range Iconsets by now. They should put the work into refining and variation of what's there.

Both ways?

[douglaid]

The article says that Qt4 can be used under Windows. Will that make it easier for Windows viruses to migrate to Linux in a double-boot system?

Re:Both ways?

[DivineOmega]

No.

KDE is going to run natively in Windows, it will be just like any other Windows application.

Re:Hmm , let me guess...

[dbIII]

I'm sorry , in what way does the above differ from the main features of the windows desktop? Stop kidding yourself that KDE is anything other than a windows rip off.

CDE - the common desktop environment as seen on Solaris is so old now that the above poster cannot be accused of being a clueless newbie - just a loud idiot talking about something they know nothing about. KDE got it's name from the similarity to CDE - which I believe predates Windows95. It is not original but is certainly not a MS Windows ripoff - there are many differences and the similarities are seen in a lot of desktop environments.

Abstract handhelds

[spectrokid]

Apparently, they will be doing a lot of work on PIM data. I, for one, look forward to the day where mobiles and handhelds will be hardware abstracted, just like printers. Instal your Nokia whatever driver, and it synchronises agenda, contacts, pictures and music, in exactly the same way as your iPod and your Palm.

Re:Abstract handhelds

[Gothmolly]

Good idea, but how is that at all related to the upcoming KDE4? Surely your problem is an application one, not a desktop widget one.

Is KDE 4 really based on Qt 4.0?

[Tanuki64]

Hope not, a bit outdated this version. The stable version is 4.2, which is much superior to 4.0. Gentoo currently uses a 4.1 version.

Re:Is KDE 4 really based on Qt 4.0?

[Bootvis]

From TFA: > But the biggest change is going to be inside the hood so to speak. KDE 4.0 will be using Qt 4.2 library which brings with it its own extensive set of improvements.

Re:Hmm , let me guess...

[ErroneousBee]

Stop kidding yourself that KDE is anything other than a windows rip off.

Actually its a CDE ripoff.

CDE predates win95, and was based on the many desktop WIMP environments around in the late 1980s, such as HPs VUE.

A lot of the things you imagine are Windows interface paradigms are actually basic HCI stuff (Fitts law, Roman language left-right convention, and whatnot) that pretty much dictate colour schemes, icon size, icon behaviour, left to right conventions, etc.

The only thing I can think of that is a Windows thing is the position of a main menu button in the bottom left, its easier to mouse to the top of the screen than to the bottom because of the way the muscles in the hand/arm work. In truth the KDE button can be located anywhere, its just the default themes that just happen to position it there, cos that's where most computer users look to find a central control.

Re:Hmm , let me guess...

[mrchaotica]

then another one with KDE looking exactly like Mac OS-X

Okay, but did it act like OSX? And do you have a link to some instructions on how I can configure it that way? Out of the four major desktop environments (Windows, OSX, Gnome, KDE) I like OSX the best, but my new computer isn't going to be a Mac so I'll have to switch...

What is thin about it?

[WindBourne]

It shows some graphical pics of games that have been converted to SVG (nice to say the least). Then in the article, it talks about the various projects that are working on core libs. Once those are fleshed out, then more apps will come into focus. I would say that this is actually a pretty good preview of very unsettled work. As to the desktop, well, there will be more.

Re:What is thin about it?

[urbanradar]

It shows some graphical pics of games that have been converted to SVG (nice to say the least). Then in the article, it talks about the various projects that are working on core libs. Once those are fleshed out, then more apps will come into focus. I would say that this is actually a pretty good preview of very unsettled work. As to the desktop, well, there will be more.

The thing is, though, that nothing about this, other than the pictures of the re-vamped games, is new. They're basically just repeating the KDE roadmap. It's probably an OK sum-up for those who haven't been following the KDE project's plans, but a news article this is not.

Re:What is thin about it?

[ClamIAm]

It shows some graphical pics of games that have been converted to SVG (nice to say the least).

Whoa, there's actually a feature that GNOME had first! Holy shit, the great desktop war now has some new ammunition...

(also, GNOME revamped its sys-monitor graph-drawing-doohickeys first as well, using Cairo)

Gah!

[Explodicle]

FTFA:

The start menu is going to be redesigned.

*%&^&$! It's the K Menu! Even Windows doesn't have the Start menu any more!

Re:Hmm , let me guess...

[Cat Tank]

You can get pretty close with Beryl. A lot of what OSX does that's neat isn't handled directly by the desktop environment, but is dependent on the window manager itself. Most of what KDE and Gnome do (and please correct me, I know I'm missing some nuance with regards to my understanding of where the window manager ends and the desktop environment begins) is just calling simpler windowing functions and provide tertiary applications to make navigating a little easier, connecting higher-level apps to the lower-level graphics stuff, but Compiz and Beryl seems to unify a lot of that and make the whole experience a little more seamless. Beryl provides a 3d-accelerated desktop that has live window previews on all functions (like task switching) and provides something stunningly like expose. If you like OSX I'd advise giving it a go. It's getting easier to set up every day thanks to a bunch of really clever folks working on it.

Re:Hmm , let me guess...

[mrchaotica]

Err... I was talking about things like using OSX keyboard shortcuts, not having a Start menu, etc. mostly -- eye-candy is not my biggest concern. I would use GNUStep, but that project seems to be in rather poor health and I'd end up having to use GNOME or KDE apps anyway...

But yeah, Compiz and Beryl are definitely things I'm interested in, especially since the new laptop will have a well-supported GPU for once (an Intel GMA950).

KDE 4.0 to be ported to Windows

[maroberts]

So we're runniong one GUI to run an entirely different one? Does this seem ever so slightly perverse? :-)

Re: KDE 4.0 to be ported to Windows

[kiddygrinder]

I would assume it would just replace the explorer.exe shell, which does the desktop icons, the taskbar & start menu etc. There's already a bunch of apps that replace this, it prolly wouldn't require too many running apps to have duplicate functionality

Bloatware?

[whitroth]

So, will KDE 4 be:
      - smaller than 3?
      - lighter weight, with fewer programs running in the background just to *run*
              the damn thing?
      - faster?

      mark, who went to IceWM years ago, since *it* comes up in under 20 seconds, as opposed to a minute or more for KDE.

Re:Bloatware?

[KozmoStevnNaut]

What kind of hardware are you using? A minute or more for KDE to start up is not realistic on even semi-modern hardware. It takes less than 15 seconds on my P4 2.6GHz from KDM to fully running KDE 3.5 desktop.

Re:Hmm , let me guess...

[LiquidFire_HK]

Wow! Amazing, you just listed most characteristic features of any modern desktop environment/OS. Let's see now...

• Start button/menu: Win: Yes, KDE: Yes, GNOME: Yes, two of them, OS X: No
• Control panel: Win: Yes, KDE: Yes, GNOME: Yes, OS X: Probably*
• Task bar: Win: Yes, KDE: Yes, GNOME: Yes, OS X: Yes, dock
• Clickable icons: Win: Yes, KDE: Yes, GNOME: Yes, OS X: Yes
• Icons line up on the left by default (??): Win: Yes, KDE: Yes, GNOME: Yes, OS X: Probably*
• Implements icon grab in the same way (???): Not really a Yes/No, but all four implement dragging in the same way (with a few exceptions for OS X), provided this is what you meant
• Right click for desktop properties: Win: Yes, KDE: No (or you have not explained this point clear enough), GNOME/OS X: Probably*

What do we have, then? Almost all of the features you list are matched by Windows, KDE and GNOME, many by OS X as well. This does not make KDE a "Windows clone", and you are just trolling.

*Probably = haven't used it enough, but I find it highly likely (and my point still stands if it's untrue)

Debug info doesn't use memory

[warrax_666]

when a program is running, at least not on any reasonably modern kernel. Most (all?) current operating systems only load pages from executables on demand. If it doesn't get used it doesn't get loaded into memory.

Thank God.

[pizzach]

I'm so much happier now that qt4 is more portable. At least now I can use my KDE games in GNOME. I can't wait until the whole desktop is ported.

It will auto restart

[brunes69]

If your kicker in KDE 3.4+ dies, it's supposed to be auto-restarted (by kdeinit I think), just like Windows Explorer does in XP. I have never had kicker crash and not auto restart. Plasma will likely be the same.

Whee... the first....

[KillerBob]

to mention XFCE. Time to done a flame retardant vest....

I tried Gnome, and hated it. As others have said, it's designed to be simple, but I found it aggravating. Haven't used it in years, and have no intention of ever trying it again. KDE was alright, but it was slow as molasses. I still haven't figured out why the default is to dump debug information to console... if I'm running in X, I don't need to see that, and every call to stdout() slows down the system. It's a lot faster if you go into the source and comment out all of those calls before recompiling, but you shouldn't have to do that. Ultimately, I switched to XFCE and have never looked back. It's lightweight, it's fast, and the eye candy is easily there. Especially if you turn on the compositor (I leave it off, because it affects my performance in Cedega, but Linux-native games aren't affected by it).

KDE is all well and good, but I find that neither it nor Gnome are viable options. I like the idea that you will be able to run KDE on a Windows platform, though. It means that I can install KDE as a replacement for explorer as the first step in migrating somebody away from Windows. Show them the desktop, and let them get used to it early in the shift. Change them over to KDE before you start changing them over to Abiword, or OpenOffice.org, that way by the time you're actually ready to change them over to Linux, you can do it without them noticing any change at all. It's a good thing. But I'm going to stick with XFCE on my system. Call me when they port that to Windows, and I'll be beside myself.

Re:Whee... the first....

[DaMattster]

Yeah, I am not fan of KDE or GNOME either. But KDE 4 looks like an improvement. For now, XFCE rules. I use it myself.

Re:Whee... the first....

[WilliamSChips]

Xfce is awesome.

No, no, no

[ajs318]

This is significant because Qt 4.0 is released under a GPL license even for non-Unix platforms.

Stop spreading this bollocks. Qt 3 was released under the GPL. GPL is GPL, and platform restrictions would contravene Paragraph Six. There's nothing to stop you from porting Qt to Windows, VAX/VMS or even the ZX81, if you were so inclined. The only reason that earlier versions of Qt were never ported to Windows is simply because most Windows programmers don't want to work on Open Source code for the benefit of Society At Large. They'd rather write closed-source software, distribute it in a crippled form and extort money out of users wanting to get the full functionality. Or viruses, trojans, spyware and adware. Or crack the lame "protection" schemes on crippled software.

Re:No, no, no

[Jeremi]

There's nothing to stop you from porting Qt to Windows, VAX/VMS or even the ZX81, if you were so inclined

Right, but as you said, nobody was so inclined. The difference with Qt4 (as I understand it) is that Qt4's Windows-specific back-end is also released under the GPL, so nobody needs to "port" Qt4 to Windows at all -- TrollTech has already done so and GPL'd the result. Thus, we now have GPL'd Qt for Windows (as opposed to just having the theoretical possibility of GPL'd Qt for Windows)

Re:No, no, no

[ajs318]

My point entirely. I'm just saying that nobody has the right to blame TrollTech that there was never a Windows version of Qt. The code was under the GPL all along -- what was lacking was the inclination. When you think about what the Free Software movement have had to do -- often from scratch, without documentation and for little or no payment ..... well, it just goes to show who has the inclination, doesn't it? Windows programmers just can't be bothered to get off their fat, lazy arses and modify some existing code a little bit (unless it's BSD-licenced and they can chain it up, or they get paid cash to do it).

Re:No, no, no

[Keith Russell]

First of all, there were two efforts in progress to port Qt3/X11 Free Edition to Windows: One based on Cygwin, the other a native Win32 implementation. Both projects have faded from view since Trolltech released Qt4.

Second, why should Windows developers have re-invented Trolltech's wheel? Qt3 for Windows existed all along. It just wasn't licensed on a platform-equitable basis. Those ports were, essentially, reverse engineering around Trolltech's artificial barrier to the market.

Third, next time you get the urge to engage in a bit of broad-brush slander, feel free to hop on a plane, fly to Pennsylvania, look me up, and say it to my face.

Re:No, no, no

[ragefan]

I'm just saying that nobody has the right to blame TrollTech that there was never a Windows version of Qt.

There has been Qt/Windows available for a while from TT. They just never made it available without licensing as a free license,even for GPL projects. It was only recently that they have changed this.

From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qt_(toolkit):

The first versions of Qt had only two flavours: Qt/X11 for Unix and Qt/Windows for the Windows platform. The Windows platform was only available under the proprietary license. In the end of 2001, Trolltech released Qt 3.0 which added support for the Mac OS X platform. The Mac OS X support was available only in the proprietary license, until June 2003, where Trolltech released the version 3.2 with Mac OS X support available under the GPL license.

Re:No, no, no

[spitzak]

I think you are missing the fact that there was *already* a (non GPL) Windows port from TrollTech. This kind of discouraged anybody from porting the X version to Windows. Some people who would want to just bought the Windows version. Others quite likely decided that a fork like that would be a bad idea, since the two Windows versions were unlikely to be compatable. A lot of possible programmers did not like the idea of doing the work to write something that already existed. There may also have been fear that somebody would insert code from the Troll Tech version (you could get the code easily even though it is not GPL) and violate copyrights.

I suspect that if Qt did *not* have a Windows port but just a GPL X version, there would be a GPL Windows version already, probably several years ago.

Re:No, no, no

[Elsan]

Stop spreading this bollocks. The Mac OS X and *Nix versions of Qt were GPLed, just not the Windows ports. As simple as that.

To program in Qt under Windows, you needed a license from Trolltech. Just check the Wikipedia article.

Re:No, no, no

[ajs318]

The GPL says:

2. You may modify your copy or copies of the Program or any portion of it, thus forming a work based on the Program, and copy and distribute such modifications or work under the terms of Section 1 above, provided that you also meet all of these conditions:
[snip]
6. Each time you redistribute the Program (or any work based on the Program), the recipient automatically receives a license from the original licensor to copy, distribute or modify the Program subject to these terms and conditions. You may not impose any further restrictions on the recipients' exercise of the rights granted herein. You are not responsible for enforcing compliance by third parties to this License.

"[M]odify[ing] your copy or copies of the Program ..... thus forming a work based on the Program" would seem to include porting it to run on another platform. "You may not impose any further restrictions" would seem to include arbitrarily restricting an application to specific platforms. As I understand the GPL, it would have been entirely legitimate to port the existing GPL version of Qt to Windows (of course, it would stay under the GPL; thus -- very properly IMHO -- denying its use in closed-source software).

Whatever was stopping anyone from doing that, it certainly wasn't licencing.

Re:No, no, no

[Elsan]

ANYONE could've done Qt under Windows starting for the GPLed versions of Qt for Unix and Mac, it just would've been too much work, that's all. In fact, there was a project for that but Trolltech already had the Qt-version of Windows under a proprietary license for commercial use, they just released it as GPL for Open-source applications recently. That's why.

So yes, it was possible to port it to Windows but it was taking lots of time.

Re:If no shred cmd in Konqueror its good fer nuthi

[chill]

The shredder is part of KGPG.

Re:Regedit

[norminator]

Go to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Desktop and change MenuShowDelay to a lower number
Now, it seems so fast! ;)

Crap! Mine was already at 0!
:(

Performance Improvements

[norminator]

When was the last time a new version of Microsoft Windows came out with a faster user interface?

Huh? I've never seen the Windows UI being "slow"? I don't really know what you mean...
You saying there's a difference in e.g. Windows XP compared to Windows 95?

Are you really talking about the Windows USER32 and other such subsystems or rather simple application requirements?

On my P4 2.6 GHz laptop, Vista (RC1) runs like a pig, while KDE, Gnome, and Windows XP are all fine. Vista RC1 is much better than Beta 2 was, but it still crawls. And Vista can't even run the Aero Glass effects, whereas the same hardware has no problem with Beryl/XGL in Gnome.

The GP has a point. From what I understand the Mac OS X releases get faster with each release, Gnome had a release recently that improved performance, and KDE is going to do the same thing with their next major release. That's one advantage to having more frequent release schedules... When you only release every 5 years, you put so much effort into big huge features to try to wow everyone, those features take more resources, and there's no room for performance improvements. All of the other Desktop Environments are all working constantly on making things better for the hardware that's out there right now... I'd like to see the release build of Vista running on hardware that was available when Vista/Longhorn was announced. It wouldn't do so well.

Pardon my ignorance...

[camperdave]

Why are they McNamed (I'm coining a new word. McNamed: Named in such a way as to be associated with an organization, entity, or product) anyways? Aren't applications written to run on any desktop. I seem to be running gnome, because there is an "about gnome" item on my system menu. However I have several "K" applications, such as kpovmodeller, that run just fine. Clearly they don't rely on KDE, so they must be written to some generic desktop standard. So, why the mcnaming? (They can't all be written by the same people who are writing the desktop software, can they?)

Re:Pardon my ignorance...

[darkwhite]

Clearly they don't rely on KDE, so they must be written to some generic desktop standard. So, why the mcnaming?

They do rely on KDE, namely kdelibs, which relies on qtlibs. Have you ever used a KDE desktop? All applications use a massive amount of environment-wide services like the prefs engines, dialogs, helper apps, kioslaves, text editing libraries like Kate/Kwrite, services, etc. No other desktop environment can touch the degree of integration and most importantly, consistency afforded by this code reuse.

This ease of development and consistency is what makes KDE so powerful, and why I'm a huge fan of the KDE development model. The people who design kdelibs really understand what it takes to provide a tightly integrated desktop environment.

Re:Pardon my ignorance...

[arifirefox]

iHave no iDea.

Re:Pardon my ignorance...

[camperdave]

Yes, I have used KDE, gnome, and windows (I have no significant Mac experience yet.) I don't see any significant difference between them... from a user's point of view. It seems to me that 90%+ of the widgets that the desktop environment provides to the applications are identical (color chooser, file chooser, minimize/maximize/close/resize window, menu bars, etc). If they are 95% identical, why are apps written as if they were written for specific environments? Or is there no standard for what and how a desktop environment must provide to an application?

Re:Pardon my ignorance...

[darkwhite]

No, there is no standard. If there were one, you would be hearing a lot about it, and people would routinely be up in arms over what it should provide and how. (Freedesktop is making a lot of progress on this front, though.) As it is, if you want to write a GUI application, you must link to one of many different UI toolkits and associated libraries, and life will be a lot easier for you if you program your app according to the conventions of that desktop environment.

If you've used KDE and haven't noticed that all applications have a lot of recurring components and common structure, you haven't looked hard enough.

Re:Pardon my ignorance...

[CAIMLAS]

Short of the long of it: the k* applications use Qt (the foundation of KDE, and also made by the same people as KDE, iirc) and the g* applications are made using GTK+, the toolkit used for GNOME. Not sure why we're still doing it, but it was a naming convention which caught on years ago when library requirements were a bit less auto-detected by package management, and people often had to compile the requisite library just to get a g* or k* application to work.

I've not used a desktop distro in a while, but the last time I did we were getting really close to Qt and GTK theme engine visual duplication working seamlessly. In other words, about 3 years ago, we were pretty close to there being a negligible visual difference between Qt and GTK through an intermediate mechanism. I imagine that seamlessness is pretty good now that the process has been refined (it was beta software when i last tried it, something which had no package but had to be compiled myself).

Re:Pardon my ignorance...

[a.d.trick]

They are similar, but not identical, and there are a number of important differences. There is a library called wxWidgets that tries to provide a cross-platform UI library. Gnome and KDE are fairly similar and are based off of standards created by the freedesktop.org project, but OSX and Windows don't really follow any stardard (i.e. the implimentation *is* the standard).

Even with Gnome and KDE there are some differences. Gnome tends to be pretty religious about minimalism, KDE is exactly the opposite having menus and buttons all over the place in various directions. On prompts Gnome arranges the buttons in the order [No] [Yes]; KDE, [Yes] [No]. Little things like that can get your users confused when they expect a button to be in a particular place. Most of us are vary meticulous in our reading. Gnome has a fairly large document called Human Interface Guidlines that Gnome applications ought to follow. I don't think KDE does, but it really ought to because standarization amount one desktop makes life much easier for the end user.

Re:Pardon my ignorance...

[WindBourne]

I am guessing that you are not a coder. So, think of this in terms of cars. A Chevrolet Camero and Pontiac Firebird share the same frame, but some slightly differing eye candy on the outside (likewise the toyota highland/Lexus SUV, etc).

KDE and GNOME are the exact opposite. The share similar eye candy, but the underlying frame is radically different. In fact, KDE and Gnome used to look radically different and the eye candy could not be changed. Now, the exterior eye candy is easy to change, so they are made to look like each other.

Re:Pardon my ignorance...

[KozmoStevnNaut]

KDE does have Human Interface Guidelines, and has had them since KDE 2. They've elvolved along the way, on the way to KDE 3, of course.

A a part of the development of KDE 4, they are working on new HIGs.

The GNOME people may have been more vocal (and radical) when it came to their HIGs, but the KDE camp was never left behind in any way :-)

KDE vs. GNOME

[realmolo]

KDE: An unholy marriage of Windowws 98 and AmigaOS 2.0

GNOME: An unholy marriage of Windows 98 and MacOS 9

Personally, I prefer GNOME. The interface feels more polished (reminds me of MacOS 9). KDE does everything, and has more features, but it all feels like it's been slapped together. Plus, it just *looks* clunky (reminds me of AmigaOS). I could never get over the "button-overload" of KDE.

GTD Anyone?

[soloport]

Agreed. Hard to understand what people are even talking about when it comes to "bloat". Gnome, KDE, Windows -- with today's hardware it's not like one has to wait for minutes for an application to load any more.

I use KDE for the sheer convenience and ease of use. Windows seems like it's virtually stood still in time for the last four or five years. KDE has far surpassed it, ease-of-use-wise. Gnome is still such a joke. I don't get it. How is it that Firefox, Thunderbird (at least on Linux) and other packages have to emulate Gnome when it comes to: finding files (GIMP and Firefox try to be so Gnome-like -- sucks!), the whole "Would you like to do this? No? Yes?" anti-natural-language (but oh-so geek-orthodox) OK / Cancel thing. Why do so many distros (Red Hat, Ubuntu) have Gnome as the default? Makes no sense.

I'll trade a little "bloat" for "getting things done" any time.
/rant

Re:GTD Anyone?

[soloport]

Guess what I'm saying is, the whole "bloat" argument used to be so pro-Gnome. Today, it's just a tired, out-dated argument. Can we at least get a better one going? ;-) I think the Gnome as distro-default makes sense from a political point of view. It's probably the case that more Gnome developers know Red Hat, GIMP, Firefox developers than do KDE devs. But from an end-user's perspective, I still can't understand Gnome's popularity.

It's like the Motorola 68020 architecture and Assembly instruction set vs Intel's convoluted silicon / Assembly instruction set. Why, oh why did the Intel processor have to become the most popular?! Well, back in the day, when board layout and Assembly code mattered, it mattered, OK? ;-)

Re:GTD Anyone?

[HiThere]

I don't know the current relative status of Gnome vs. KDE in ram limited machines. OTOH, I can definitely state that when KDE2.(0?) came out, I was forced to shift one of my machines from KDE to Gnome. (Later Gnome also fattened up, and I had to revert to an earlier system. Red Hat 6.0, I believe.)

There was definitely a period of time when KDE was considerably bloated WRT Gnome. Admittedly, that says nothing about current relative sizes, but it would have sufficed to establish a belief that might well persist. (I still tend to believe that Gnome is smaller. [It had better be, given it's relative lack of friendliness.])

That said: As an end user I prefer KDE, but as a developer I prefer Gnome. Partially this is licensing. (I find myself offended, and can't say why, that if I start developing a program with the GPL version of Qt, I am forbidden to later switch it over to the commercial version. This is clearly stupid, as:
1) I can't imagine being in circumstances when I would want to make that switch, and
2) With Gnome there ISN'T a commercial version to switch to.
Nonetheless, I find that it repels me from developing with QT.
What ought to be more important, but is actually secondary, I don't like depending on linking C++. I want to be able to link C code (and more importantly, from other languages that use the C calling conventions).

So, anyway, as a developer I prefer Gnome, even though as an end-user I prefer KDE. This means I have a HUGE install on my systems, but in recent years that hasn't been a significant problem.

Re:GTD Anyone?

[mathispower]

I think the Gnome as distro-default makes sense from a political point of view.

Take it from someone who preferred KDE 1.x/2.y to Gnome back in the day. I would expect Linux distributors to target business desktops. If I were trying to sell a business desktop, I would not present a pastel-colored Windows wannabe desktop. The colors and effects can be changed, but it seems that the focus of KDE is on the Kandy Krayola looks, which is a little too feminine for many users. Think of a company trying to sell a cool cellphone that only is available in hot pink. I wouldn't buy it, and I wouldn't try to sell it to my business customers. I admit I haven't used KDE since 2001, but I wasn't using Gnome either until recently, and I can tolerate it.

Re:GTD Anyone?

[WilliamSChips]

Gnome and GTK+ are LGPL rather than GPL so you can write software under any licence and dynamically link to it. LGPL is my favorite license because it keeps my code free without dictating the requirements of your code. Although I haven't used either Gnome or KDE for at least a year--my current favorite is Xfce, which uses GTK+ and is by default less bloated than even a stripped-down Gnome/KDE configuration. It's the most pleasurable interface I've ever used.

Re:GTD Anyone?

[ThatFunkyMunki]

Why not just use the BSD/MIT license?

Re:GTD Anyone?

[WilliamSChips]

Because I don't want you making my code proprietary.

Re:GTD Anyone?

[ThatFunkyMunki]

It's not proprietary if you host your code somewhere, that's a total non-issue. It just isn't distributed in source form by whoever's distributing it.

Re:GTD Anyone?

[Workaphobia]

> I find myself offended, and can't say why, that if I start developing a program with the GPL version of Qt, I am forbidden to later switch it over to the commercial version.

Then are you also offended by the GPL itself? You can start developing a fork for your favorite GNU project, but you are forbidden from switching over to a commercial license. It is no different for QT - like it or not, linking with its libraries makes your code a derivitive work.

> 1) I can't imagine being in circumstances when I would want to make that switch, and

Uh, I don't understand why you draw a distinction between "switching" to a commercial license and using one to begin with; you're in the same legal trouble either way.

> 2) With Gnome there ISN'T a commercial version to switch to.

That in itself is useless to you. If there weren't a commercial version of KDE to switch to, you would have no way to produce a commercial KDE application, so you are no worse off with the existence of a commercial version. What you may have meant to say was that you are *able* to use the same license of Gnome for both commercial and non-commercial purposes, because Gnome uses the LGPL instead of the GPL.

Gnome was originally developed as a free alternative to QT/KDE, because QT was not under the GPL at the time. Now that it is, it still apparently isn't good enough for a lot of free software lovers.

DCOP vs D-Bus

[Sloppy]

So, what's the deal with D-Bus? Is it really better? I have to admit I've become a bit fond of DCOP (Python+DCOP reminds me a lot of what I used to be able to do with ARexx on the Amiga) and know nothing about D-Bus, so this is a little bit intimidating.

Re:DCOP vs D-Bus

[bensch128]

DBus is an evolution of dcop. Basically, all of the guys at freedesktop.org saw dcop and said "We want to use this for our entire platform!" (Aka a common messaging protocol for the UI system) So they generalized dcop a bit and came up with dbus.

dbus works very similar to dcop, has an EXTREMELY clean method for defining message parameters and looks extremely well designed. Qt liked it so much, they've made it part of qt4.2+ which means that it'll eventually work on MacOS and windows if anyone ever bothers to write a dbus server for those platforms. (Maybe we'll see a COM+ dbus proxy as well) The interesting bit is that gnome is also using dbus so there's the glimmering possibility that the backend services (aka CUPS) will expose a common dbus interface and gaim/kopete will have common dbus interfaces so manipulating them will be identical. This assumes that the developers can hammer out a common spec.

Cheers
Ben

Re:DCOP vs D-Bus

[Sloppy]

Sounds like I should be happy rather than intimidated. Ok. :-) Thanks, Ben.

Starting the shutdown procedure.

[camperdave]

I never understood why people hated the Start menu. It seemed perfectly reasonable to me to call it "Start", even if you were shutting down the computer.

Obligatory...

[o'reor]

Now try to imagine the savings for the whole KDE desktop

- And a Beowulf cluster of... [BANG!]
(Whew, got him !)

What's The Deal?

[mpapet]

I've got a bunch of good apps on kde.

Recent builds of Amarok + engine are great

Twinkle is an excellent sip phone. (there's kphone too, but I like twinkle more)

Eventually these apps will make it over to kde4. Why do they need new projects? How about promoting/assisting the ones that are already out there?

Re:What's The Deal?

[Narishma]

What are you talking about ? Phonon and Decibel (the projects I'm assuming you're referring to) are not replacing the applications you mention. In fact they will be used by those applications once they are ported to KDE 4.

Re:Hmm , let me guess...

[dkf]

CDE predates win95, and was based on the many desktop WIMP environments around in the late 1980s, such as HPs VUE.

A lot of the things you imagine are Windows interface paradigms are actually basic HCI stuff (Fitts law, Roman language left-right convention, and whatnot) that pretty much dictate colour schemes, icon size, icon behaviour, left to right conventions, etc.

Actually, both CDE and Windows derive from the CUA work by IBM from waaaay back. There have been other GUI paradigms about (Macs are the most well-known example, but there were others, including the Athena widgets from ancient X11 (not that you ever want to use them) and RiscOS) which worked in different ways.

It's rather lonely in here!

[LordPhantom]

Am I the only one that wants a WM, not a Desktop? I'm still using a rather heavily-customized version of E16, and anxiously awaiting E17. Sure, I use a bunch of stuff from the KDE project as drivers (arts anyone?), but I would love to see more options built into the "eye candy overhead" of KDE (i.e. turning off components, etc) to increase perfomance.

That said, the main reason I avoid KDE and GNOME is performance - most of the stuff it does is just overhead I don't need (and why does KDE -not- use the xscreensaver interface instead of their rather....useless wrapper?!!), but if they were able to improve the reliability of KDE, and make it possible to lower it's footprint to something that is, say, just -slightly- more than your average WMW I might consider it.

Re:It's rather lonely in here!

[alphamugwump]

Am I the only one who finds it odd that an enlightenment user is bitching about "eye candy"? I thought that was pretty much the whole point of E17.

Though, I agree that it does perform better.

Re:It's rather lonely in here!

[LordPhantom]

Indeed, having a WM with eye-candy is to some degree what E17 is about. Nothing wrong with it if it isn't a resource hog. My complaint (albeit poorly worded pre-coffee) was more that it has always felt like KDE sacrificed a lot of performance to get there, and I'm more about performance over pretty when it all boils down.

Re:It's rather lonely in here!

[Brandybuck]

The reason there is a higher "footprint" for a desktop than for a window manager, is that a desktop does a LOT more stuff. It's not just a bunch of apps with a similar look and feel. It's not even just a bunch of apps sharing a common framework. Instead, it's a bunch of apps that integrate and interoperate with each other to a high degree.

In order to do this you need a certain amount of overhead. You need various daemons and utilities running in the background (dbus, kded, etc). You need internal infrastructure to support a component model (kparts). You also need support drag-and-drop and mime types, application settings, widget and font palettes, file watching, common dialogs, etc.

KDE is more desktop oriented than any other desktop. Much more so than WinXP or Mac OSX. To a lot of people this is wonderful. But if all you want is an application launcher and something to slap borders around your windows, then stick with a window manager.

Re:It's rather lonely in here!

[bensch128]

I agree. KDE's stack is much better then gnome or enlightenment. Maybe because it's using C++ (allowing for cleaner OOD) or maybe the kde devs are being more careful about interface design. I know that the kde APIs tend to be excellent and well thought out. And they seem to be documented too!

Cheers,
Ben

Re:Kstill Ktoo Kmany Koptions

[TheLink]

"Is it really so hard to strike some middle ground between no options and so damned many you can't find the one you're looking for?"

Yeah, it's like compression BUT with the restriction you have to try to compress things (options) in a pseudoconsistent way, consistent enough so that people can remember it, but at the same time allow things to be added later on without breaking stuff.

You don't list out all the possible options in a single list. You try to put the popular ones first, then less popular ones in sublists and so on. BUT also try to maintain some consistency amongst popular apps.

I prefer KDE because it seems like if the devs can't figure out where to put some option, they often still just leave it visible (causing clutter). Whereas I hear GNOME devs would rather just _hide_ it away and force you to use gconf or some key sequence to enable it.

Re:Hmm , let me guess...

[chrisv]

As far as OS X goes - there is a "Control Panel", it's known as "System Preferences". Icons line up on the right by default, which can be a wee bit of a pain when your primary display is the one on the left, but the same is true if you're in KDE or such and your primary display is the one on the right. As far as "desktop properties" go, if you're talking about the primary thing people care to change about their desktop (the background), then yes, you can right-click to get the desktop properties, but desktop resolution is configured elsewhere (System Preferences -> Display). And, of course, the whole thing with using an Apple mouse - it's not specifically a "right click" so much as it is ctrl+click, mostly because the mouse only has one button unless you've replaced it.

i dont understand

[weierstrass]

why are you opening a remote terminal emulator using X11 forwarding, when you could just open a terminal in your local terminal emulator window using a normal ssh session ???

Differenct icons on each virtual desktop?

[daybyter]

Is there finally an easy way to have different icons on each virtual desktop? Under 3.x it's an ugly hack...

Re:Regedit

[Trigun]

I switched mine to -2 and now my computer opens the menus before I can even click on them. It's like it just knows what I'm thinking about opening.

Re:A common meme but in error

[swillden]

I'm not seeing that happen. There is no evidence that it is happening. None, zero. All I see is open source apps give windows users a further excuse to stay on windows.

That's because you're looking in the wrong place, as evidenced by this comment:

That and the gaming excuse are doing more to hold back full OSS adoption than anything else.

OSS on the desktop in a big way isn't going to start with home users. It's going to start on corporate and government desktops. Rather, it *has* started in those environments. But in order for that to work, it has to be possible to migrate people without too much disruption, and if you look at the big migrations that are in process, all of them approach it by moving the apps first, and then the OS.

Dynamically created menus sucks

[hamsjael]

I am really looking forward to the next release of kde. Got one gripe though: dynamically generated menus is a really STUPID idea. I have never really understood the idea "now you see it, noe you don't" wtf is the point of that. I want to know where the menu points are. imagine doing support on dynamically created program groups !!?? "eerhh... which applications do you use the most ??" Microsoft pioneered this bullshit with office, and i can imagine a developer getting all worked up with dicking around with the algorithms to generate those menus. Maybe if people only ever used the one desktop it would be great but people have to use: their own PC, their laptop, the pc at work and maybe others. menus with the entrys at a fixed position mekes a lot more sense. exsqeeze my english

Amarok already runs on OSX

[bigtrike]

Version 1.4.3-1021 is already available through Fink. But after having countless problems with amarok linux builds, I'll stick with iTunes.

Re:Regedit

[eneville]

I switched mine to -2 and now my computer opens the menus before I can even click on them. It's like it just knows what I'm thinking about opening.
i did the same and it shut down

Re:Sorry, but why do we need 'KDE' at all?

[smash]

1. if you are a newbie and just need a windows replacement, use Gnome. only MacOS has better GUI than Gnome.

Funny. When i'm using gnome, compared to KDE (or even Windows) i feel like my legs have been cut off and part of my brain has been removed. A "better" gui is a crock of shit. The "better" gui is the one that allows me to get my work done quicker and more comfortably.

Gnome has nothing to compare to KDE's ioslaves or kicker.

if you are nerd, why do you need a desktop environment at all?

Need? Why do you need X at all? I run it because I can, and it has a few cool features I like. I'm willing to trade 5% of my RAM for it. You realise Linus runs KDE right? :D

Why install a piece of crap when all you need is a bunch of cool apps?

This goes for gnome equally (more in my opinion, but opinion is divided). Personally I'd rather be running openstep (I'm wanting to play with GORM when I get some free time), but it's just not quite there yet.

if you a serious user worried about memory etc, use xfce or other light weight desktops.

If you're a "serious user", get out of your parent's basement, get a job, and spend the $50 on some more RAM if it's that much of an issue.

The real question is:

[feranick]

Will we ever see Gnome 3.0?

Re:Hmm , let me guess...

[Cat Tank]

Well, with support of SuperKaramba in KDE and better integration of SuperK and the Kicker, I think you could turn the Kicker off and use a widget in its place. As for keyboard shortcuts, I think you can configure those in KDE. If you can do it at all in Linux I'm pretty sure KDE would let you.

Have you actually looked at the config for gpanel?

[dbIII]

How did your export and import or editing of gpanel entires go? If it worked and you actually can do it they need you on the gconf mailing list or working on Sabayon - becuase you would understand things more than others who work on gconf daily.

If it really was trivial I would not have written the annoyed rant above, and would just be editing unobfiscated well documented XML files when I want to add links to terminal windows for 30 machines per user - but in the end it's easier for me to write a launcher.

Re:Hmm , let me guess...

[dbIII]

None of those features? It's OK if you have never seen CDE - but pretending to know about it and getting it wrong on all counts just to win an argument by repeating garbage is annoying and is not OK even if a lot of people do it.

It is true there is nothing with "start" acutally written on it even if the menu comes up from the bottom from each panel button - but many of the things you are talking about here were even on the first mac with a few small differences.

Remember - KDE gets criticism for looking different enough from MS Windows to confuse people, and a lot of this behaviour comes from CDE.

Re:A common meme but in error

[BillyBlaze]

Firefox becoming popular is one of the best things that could have happened for Linux. If IE were the only browser in Windows, then Firefox would be unfamiliar to users, and more websites would be IE-only. Now, if someone wants to go to Linux, it's "Sweet, I can still use Firefox", instead of "So now I have to use Firefox, and I can't visit my bank's website?" If it's true that Linux adoption has slowed, it's more likely because the operating system is now less important than the browser, so there's less reason to use the better OS instead of the one you already have.

Even if artificially restricting software to Linux would be good for Linux's popularity, I don't think it should be done. Microsoft doesn't port their software to Linux because they're greedy bastards. Isn't open source supposed to be above that?

KDE's system has better docs --now. Does KDE 4?

[KWTm]

Funny, my first experiences with KDE (3.0.x) were like your complaints with GNOME: error messages dumbed down, and help messages unhelpful beyond the obvious. "KApplication cannot save the file," one message might say without further explanation. The manuals were a regurgitation of the menus. The section entitled "Settings > Froopy-froop" would obtusely explain: "This menu item allows you to modify the Froopy-froop settings." No shit, Sherlock!

I saw KDE gradually improving, not just because I became more familiar with it, but because lots of other people did, too, and more tutorials and HOWTO's appeared on the web. People in IRC became more knowledgeable and helpful. I learned where KDE hid all the config settings, how to Autostart KDE programs, etc. --probably info that had been floating around *somewhere*, but it became a lot easier to find.

I suspect that this infrastructure of documentation is more of an advantage in KDE than in GNOME, because of greater consistency and integration within KDE. Yes, GNOME has its Human Interface Guidelines, but with KDE, it seems that the consistency extends beyond just the interface to how things actually work behind the scenes. Learn something about one KApplication, and you learn just a bit more about how to anticipate how KProgram #2 works.

This is why one improvement I'm a bit worried about is DBUS, which replaces the DCOP interface. DCOP is what lets you control KDE's GUI applications from the command line, giving script files the ability to manipulate the program almost as if you were directly clicking on the GUI dialog boxes yourself. But now that DCOP is being nudged out by DBUS, will I still know how to use it?

Note that I'm not disputing whether the new DBUS is better than the old DCOP. I'm sure it is, and apparently GNOME already uses a variation of it --something about "CORBA" and "Bonobo", but I'm not sure exactly how they relate. What I am wondering is whether the new DBUS will be better *for me*, and that includes the availability of documentation on the web to tell me how to use it. If the infrastructure isn't there, I can't take advantage of it no matter what wonderful features it has, and I'm not about to plow through KDE source code to figure things out.

The same applies for the rest of KDE 4. Despite being a self-styled geek, I'd rather be a slow adopter of new technology and follow the well-trodden path to minimize my own effort. (Hacker Rule #2: no problem should ever have to be solved twice.) That's why I plan to stick patiently with Kubuntu 6.06 Dapper until the bugs in the newer versions have been worked out, and why I'll happily play with my KDE 3.x while minds smarter than mine go experiment with KDE 4.

Re:Hmm , let me guess...

[Viol8]

CDE looks nothing like Windows, stop pretending it does. Its been years since I used it but from what I remember it had 4 screen switch buttons in the centre of a large control bar on the bottom and had menus thagt scrolled up from said bar when you clicked on the icon underneath. So tell me , how is that anything like MS Windows??

Re:Hmm , let me guess...

[dbIII]

had menus thagt scrolled up from said bar when you clicked on the icon underneath

Now we are getting somewhere. Compare that to a "start" menu. Now look at the other things you were talking about one by one, like icons lined up on the left and being able to select several icons at once in the same way on many different systems - you see that sort of thing in just about every GUI from the mac and atari ST on.

Re:Regedit

[eneville]

So Windows did exactly what you wanted? indeed, for once. then again, it closes things randomly anyway, so this was not that unusual.

GNU/Re:Kool!

[BlueYoshi]

GNU/I GNU/think GNU/I GNU/understand GNU/your GNU/Ppoint GNU/of GNU/view GNU/.

Porting will be bad

[It's a thing]

If KDE4 is ported to Windows, many users will think "Hey, I can have the same thing as GNU/Linux, so why would I switch?" and they'll keep running nonfree software.

Re:Porting will be bad

[geminidomino]

If KDE4 is ported to Windows, many users will think "Hey, I can have the same thing as GNU/Linux, so why would I switch?" and they'll keep running nonfree software. I give you my personal guarantee that no one who refers to it as "GNU/Linux" is doing that kind of fence-sitting.

Re:Porting will be bad

[It's a thing]

You're totally missing the point. Anyway, what if they've only talked to one person a little about GNU/Linux and that person called it GNU/Linux?

Re:Porting will be bad

[geminidomino]

Then they've been living under a rock. Hell, even Dave Chapelle mentioned Linux on his show (the kinko's bit).

Re:Hmm , let me guess...

[bensch128]

Hi,

things like using OSX keyboard shortcuts
There is Control Center->Region&Accessibility->Keyboard Shortcuts. You can select the "Mac Scheme"

not having a Start menu
There is KSmoothDock and its forks. Or you can try kbfx for a twist on kicker.

Cheers
Ben