Slashdot Mirror
Is KDE 4.0 the Holy Grail of Desktops?
An anonymous reader writes "With KDE 4.0 being expected some time this year, expectation runs high in the linux/unix users camp and the media read a lot between the lines of what the KDE developers say and do. In some ways KDE will provide a standard as to how a desktop should look and behave. This interesting article wonders whether KDE 4.0 will become the complete desktop which will meet the needs of a wide cross section of computer users. One of the common complaints that some Linux users have over KDE is that it is too cluttered. And by addressing this need without putting off the power users, the KDE developers could make it an all in one Desktop. Keep in mind that KDE 4.0 is based on Qt 4.0 and so can be easily ported to Windows and other OSes too which makes this thought doubly relevant."
Because if they did, they might notice that blog post talks more about Dolphin than anything else, and has virtually nothing to say about whether or not KDE 4.0 is the Holy Grail of desktops.
Hope they get some click-throughs from the traffic though.
The Southern Baptist Convention has creationism. On Slashdot, we have porn.
I'm not quite sure what the parent is talking about... Highlight some text, go to another app and press the middle mouse button, and presto, copying has occurred. Am I missing something?
Why would you run another desktop on top of Windows? Wouldn't you take a performance hit for running two desktops, in essence?
Say you want to transition your office or whatever to use all Linux and OSS. You can get them used to open office, but they still be a bit put off when you make them switch to KDE. This way they can get used to "linux" while still having access to their favorite windows apps. I think it'd be a great idea for preparing people for a transition.
If you are about to mod me down, keep in mind that this post was most likely sarcastic.
Ok, I recently switched from Gnome to KDE 3.5 and really have no plans to go back, but saying something which isn't even close to finished is "most-bestest" would seem to be jumping the gun.
I'm sure we can find as many blog entries about how Vista is most-bestest, or Gnome, or Xfce. Of those, I'd only ever buy the Xfce argument but to each their own.
I also hope that this release will make KDE fonts look sharp, crisp and beautiful by default. It is unfortunate that many times, we in the Linux community have to seek Microsoft's help on fonts in order to have a desktop that is a pleasure to look at.
It's not about running a whole new DE, it's about running KDE applications on other platforms.
Hardly.
Don't get me wrong -- I'm a huge fan of KDE. KDE is the project that made me think "yes, I will eventually be able to learn to use Linux" -- that was back in its 1.0 days. Now I use Linux full time (I still consider myself a beginner though). KDE is a good desktop -- it's knaming konventions are a klittle kstrange, but it's still a good desktop that makes basic Linux use a lot easier while not actually preventing you from getting into the guts of everything. It's my desktop of choice (I use Kubuntu).
But the Holy Grail of Desktops? There is no such beast, and there are too many opinions about what such a beast would be. There are too many people who want too many different things in their desktop. For my part, I want to see some desktop incorporate all the OO elements from OS/2's Workplace Shell... I've yet to see it happen. That's my "Holy Grail," and I expect if it were ever implemented it would be anathema to someone else.
The very thought that it might be able to "meet the needs of a wide cross section of computer users" would automatically make it fail in the eyes of some. I know and have spoken with some usability nuts who claim that there is One True Path to usability, and anyone who wants to do things differently is simply doing things WRONG, and that they need to learn the One True Path and experience how much better it is. "Acommodation" would be a design flaw from that perspective.
All that aside, I'm looking forward to KDE 4. One thing I've come to expect from the KDE developers is that everytime they release a new version of KDE I wind up liking the new version significantly more than the older version, and I think that's the most realistic expectation you can hope to have about software...
Eviscerati.Org: All Hail the Eviscerati
That's mostly true. Aren't good cross-platform toolkits spiffy?
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
As far as I'm concerned, the perfect desktop is Windowmaker.
I use it on OpenBSd and Linux and it works nearly perfect.
He means a copy paste functionality ala COM/Windows. Where you can copy and paste from any browser windows then paste it into any email client/word processor and keep the format. Or it can translate the data depending of the COM filter ..
... etc
... as they/we spend our whole life using computers only as tools not for development issues ... I am not working in programming anymore and my only issue with a comp that I have at the office is that it can sends emails, cut time spent in my daily tasks, and in my job, Windows is, for now, better suited for that.
It is quite nifty in an office environment to copy paste a screenshot, the content of a browser window, application data
You see, alot of people whose job is not IT related need these kind of functionalities
I am not a pro-windows guy nor a MS employee, refrain from modding me from what I stated above, which is only my own and personal opinion, and, you are, of course, allowed to disagree with me.
Don't you know it is now both immoral and criminal to think beyond the next quarterly report?
KDE looks so tinker-toy with all its icons and crap.
Though, they both seem to have issues with me customizing them. Yeah, it's possible, but the options I want are always hidden in some gconfedit.cf.conf.1.3 bullcrap file somewhere.
I don't want a new window every time I click a folder. I like to store my files heirarchically, and nest directories. I don't see how this makes me a bad person. Don't bury the option to turn that shit off. It was annoying in Windows 3.1, it's just as annoying on a linux box.
And KDE really needs a "lite" checkbox somewhere, to turn off all the bling blang for those of who choose not to "keeps it real".
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
SIGSEGV caught, terminating
wait... not that kind of sig.
Right! They should behave like the serious folks in Microsoft calling everything with the full beautiful "Windows" before the app name instead of a little "K": Windows Mail, Windows Firewall, Windows Media Player. Or Apple, using a slick, minuscule "i" instead of a boasting "K": iPod, iTunes, etc. True, big companies really HAVE grown the fuck up!
[sarcasm mode off]-- Patent no.123456: A way to personalize
Well, you can call it broken by design or working by design, but there are (last time I checked) two separate ways to use a clipboard. The Linux way that you just described (select and middle-click), or the Windows way (Ctrl-C/Ctrl-V). Those two are completely separate, you can't copy one way and paste the other. This can work one of four ways:
1. Disable Linux clipboard. Hell breaks loose.
2. Disable Windowsish clipboard. Hell breaks loose.
3. Merge clipboards. Hell breaks loose as Windows userrs have their clipboard contents "mysteriously" replaced.
4. Keep it as is and have slashdot trolls complain about the copy-paste system.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
So you're saying that merely doing everything Windows does it not enough, it's got to be MUCH better.
1) Nobody said anything about Windows. Why are Linux users so unable to let Linux stand on its own? You never see Mac users constantly comparing everything about OS X to Windows, instead they judge OS X on its own merits and criticize it for its own failings.
Have you ever seen those cartoons with the bulldog who's constantly being circled by the annoying yipping puppy sucking up to him? Linux is like the puppy. It's irritating.
2) If Linux wants to gain users, yes, it has to be much better than Windows. I would think that obvious.
2. cut and paste between ALL applications.
KDE does this. See a thread above.
Only for text. Try copying (say) spreadsheet cells and pasting them in a bitmap graphics program. Or try copying a few seconds of a video file and pasting it in a word processing document.
3. Applications must ALL be uniform in operation of common functions..
I assume you mean dialog boxes. Windows doesn't guarantee it, and neither does KDE. It provides the same (and more) functionality that Windows does, though.
Not just dialog boxes, but also:
* Keyboard shortcuts
* Menu items
* Contents and ordering of contextual menus
* Open and Print dialogs (which you mentioned)
* Button labels
* What the "Home" and "End" button do in text fields
etc.
5. Easily customizable..
You might have something here... Too bad KDE is MUCH more customizeable than Windows, especially straight out of the box.
He didn't say "more customizable" he said easily customizable. If you don't know the difference between those two statements, you really have no business critiquing a UI.
But why KDE would rule the market by only beating Apple, which doesn't rule the market, is byond me.
It would only rule the market if it:
1) Beat Apple's OS X
2) Beat Microsoft's Windows
3) Was compatible with, or had feature-complete equivalents to, all software that runs on OS X or Windows, including custom-developed programs
4) Ran on affordable hardware and was itself affordable (both in monetary cost, and in support costs)
Right now, no Linux environment (KDE included) is even remotely close.
Comment of the year
[Sorry for the bad formatting, this is the same thing again. That'll teach me to use preview first.]
As current Linux user that mixes everyday Gnome, KDE, and desktop-agnostic apps at home and work, I can assure you the "clipboard hell" issue has not been fixed at all. And I'm not anti-Linux trolling, I'm a Debian fan and used to be a package maintainer there. But you should be able to admit where Linux is just weaker than Windows or OS X.
Here's an extract of the various "clipboards" or "yank buffers" or whatever they're called I deal with on a daily basis:
- The venerable X11 buffer - select and middle click. This works great BUT if you happen to select something by mistake whatever you had in the clipboard before has gone. This is especially annoying if you select a link from somewhere and want to *replace* the URL in the address bar of Firefox. What you intuitevely do is the following:
1. Select the link in some program
2. Alt-Tab to Firefox
3. Select the link currently in the location bar (in order to replace it)
4. You just lost because the second selection replaced the first.
- Then there is the Gnome Clipboard (I believe that's what it is called). This is the Control-C, Control-V clipboard which works like in Windows - with one subtle difference. If you close the program you have cut/copied from, the content of the clipboard is *gone*.
1. Select and copy some text in some program
2. Close the program
3. You just lost
- Then there is the vim yank buffer. Yes, you can have multiple yank buffers and probably program them and whatever. But it is totally separate from the other clipboards. Vim even stores it when you close and restart vim. Thus you can:
1. Open vim, yank some text (that's "copy" for non-vimmers)
2. Reboot your machine
3. Log in from another machine with ssh
4. Paste it back. You win!
BUT of course it doesn't work across multiple concurrently running instances of vim. Don't tell me that I should use only one vim for multiple files and splits and all that crap. I want to be able to yank and paste across vims. Which you can't.
And if you use gvim (the vim with gui) then pasting from the Gnome clipboard is as easy as...pressing (no joke)
ESC : " g P
They must be out of their mind.
- And then there's the Emacs buffers (I believe it's called the "buffer ring" or something like that) which are again similar to the ones in vim. I hope I don't offend any emacs users here since I'm not that familiar with it, but I know that they are again incompatible with everything else.
What Linux needs is ONE universal clipboard. Just ONE. It shouldn't be part of Gnome, KDE, Xfce or even X11. It should be a system service. So you can copy and paste LIKE A SANE PERSON in ALL PROGRAMS. Just like on Windows. Or a Mac.
You could throw in persistence across reboots. And maybe across different sessions (say, local X11 and remote SSH). Then it would even be better than everything else. I'm actually thinking of implementing something like that - maybe even with X11 and Gnome clipboard bindings to "unify" them finally.
There should *definitely not* be multiple buffers, rings and crap like that. 99% of the time they are just confusing.
If a program *really* needs multiple buffers - and most do not - they could still implement that ON TOP of the universal clipboard. It's ok if *that* is not compatible across programs.
Greetings from one who loves, and loves to works with Linux but just *HATES* its clipboard functionality.
Try Krusader. Dual pain MC like file management chock full of KDE goodness. Best File Manager Ever.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
You call it a bug, I call it a feature. People make the same complaint about the Linux kernel, GNU readline, and so on. If you want a proprietary-friendly OS, go use Windows or OS X.
Though it would have been nice if the effort expended on GNOME had instead been expended on a BSD-licensed Qt replacement... Or improving OpenStep... or pretty much anything except developing a third desktop environment and stuffing it with Microsoft patented technology.
GCHQ Quantum Insert installed. If only our tongues were made of glass, how much more careful we would be when we speak
I think it's great.
They are modern day Robin Hoods, except legal!
Bogtha Bogtha Bogtha