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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."
Why would you run another desktop on top of Windows? Wouldn't you take a performance hit for running two desktops, in essence?
http://bgcommonsense.blogspot.com
Ever since Windows 3.1, and even today, you do not have to run "Explorer" as your desktop.
A lot of people don't realize this, but the whole of the windows "desktop" - the task bar, the icons, the menus, the right click on the desktop, all runs under a single instance of the "explorer" process.
Via the registry you can change your shell to anything - including the old progman.exe from Windows 3.1 if you have it lying around (heck it even shipped with Windows until Windows 2000). I have switched my shell to Afterstep many times.
There is no logical reason you couldn't switch to KDE as your desktop environment after it had all been ported to windows. It would not have any kind of a built-in performance hit.
Until KDE exhibits the following:
1. standardized operation for ALL applicatation.
2. cut and paste between ALL applications..
3. Applications must ALL be uniform in operation of common functions..
4. Uniform operation of input devices (mouse)..
5. Easily customizable..
6. Standardized behavour on any local or remote environment..
7. Some kind of direct video support (games, etc...).
And, don't tell me that these are all true. I have to use a linux GUI desktop and KDE is the best choice but lacks all of the above.
Athiesm is a religion like not collecting stamps is a hobby.
It sure won't be the ultimate desktop without this. I use ubuntu (I know, gnome based) a lot, but the font rendering in linux drives me nuts.
BTW, cleartype costs about US$1 to licence per desktop.
For one, the KDE 4.0 development snapshots are using Qt 4.2, and by the time KDE 4.0 is released in a few months, Qt 4.3 will probably be released and used as well.
Another gripe is that KDE 4.0 is the base KDE 4 release; that is, it will contain the foundation for all KDE 4 applications along with its "core" applications all updated to use said base. KDE 4.0 (like KDE 3.0 and presumably 2.0 and 1.0; I'm not that old a Linux user sadly) will be more of a "proof of concept" release that updates all the KDE 3.5 applications to use Qt 4 along with the new "Pillars of KDE" (check the Dot for articles about it). However, it is expected that KOffice 2.0, Amarok 2.0, KDevelop 4.0, and several other key applications will be released with KDE 4.0, and those are major upgrades beside the typical updated usage of KDE libraries, Qt 4, and all the other things updated with KDE 4.
What I'm getting at here is that KDE 4.1 and beyond are the Holy Grails if anything; at this point, the developer interest in KDE should spike to above KDE 3 levels (especially due to the new platforms it supports: Windows and Mac OS X) and the new applications and innovations will begin. Just look at the major differences between KDE 3.5.6 and KDE 3.0 for example to see how much a major revision tends to change over time and include new programs. Basically, KDE 4.0 is the beginning of the quest for the Holy Grail (not to mention all the Python usage in some KDE distros like Kubuntu), but the Holy Grail itself will be a future release of KDE 4.
If you speak from a developer's standpoint, KDE 4.0 can be argued to be the Holy Grail, but not from the user's standpoint.
'Yes, firefox is indeed greater than women. Can women block pops up for you? No. Can Firefox show you naked women? Yes.'
Personally, I find the defauly Windows XP GUI patronising and completely unusable - I much prefer the Windows "Classic" desktop, the only thing missing from it is a proper dual pane file manager that shows one directory in the left window, another in the right window and a number of easily accessible commands for working with files beneath each window (a la Midnight Commander or Directory Opus).
KDE is also nice but far too flashy and bloaty for a power user like me - given the choice between KDE and Gnome, I choose Gnome but even then with some reservations about the wasted screen real estate with Gnome.
But if I need a GUI enviroment that just allows me to have multiple shells or apps running, without too much need for filetype integration (so that when I double-click on, say, a JPEG image icon, a viewer application opens the image for me) then XFCE4 is a good compromise for usability and speed.
I can see *ABSOLUTELY NO NEED* for 3D file explorers on 3D desktops unless you simply want a fashion accessory just to show off to friends. Unless you use a PC for gaming (which admittedly I do quite a lot), then everything else you do on it is about productivity and using an application to get a job done quickly and easily - if any desktop effects do not make that productivity work any faster, then they are a complete and total waste of time.
Gentoo Linux - another day, another USE flag.
I've actually tried this before (for a PC-Gaming center configuration). something about Half-life as the Shell disallowed it access to the registry, thus the application key stored therein. When the PC booted up into Half-Life, it would prompt for the CD-Key.
Every time I start to have faith in humanity, I ruin it by driving to work between 7 and 8 am.
In theory, aRts is going away in KDE4 and being replaced with Phonon, which should hopefully be a lot more streamlined, stable and not require as much babysitting as aRts, and will let the other backends such as Xine or Gstreamer (POS that it is) just deal with the media. All the mixing and such can be done in ALSA any more, which kind of gets rid of the one useful feature of aRts.
My blog. Good stuff (when I remember to update it). Read it.
I like krusader too (in fact, it's my main file manager), but honestly, konqueror has more features and is far more configurable than krusader. The main reason I use krusader is because its dual-pane mode is much better than konq's. Actually, konqueror's dual-pane mode isn't even really "dual-pane". I think it's neat that you can have an arbitrary number of panes and have arbitrary things in each of them, but that's not really what I'm looking for in a file manager.
The snapshot given in the article shows the same crappy, retarded default font which KDE has been using for at least five years.
You might say it's a minor issue, but nonetheless it is indicative of something. Why hasn't it been changed? It is those apparently-minor issues which contribute greatly to the initial reaction of new users. Retarded fonts give an unfinished and unprofessional impression, and new users are likely to dismiss the system right of the bat.
No doubt people will respond by saying, "just change the font." Of course, they will have missed my point entirely.
If we're going to have a "universal" clipboard, I'd want it to work in BSD and OS X (GUI and command-line) and Cygwin and Windows too. Therefore, even being a system service isn't enough; it needs to be part of POSIX!
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
I can't drag an image from anything to PowerPoint, for lack of PowerPoint on my linux machine. I can, however, drag an image from Konqueror to OOImpress, and from Opera to OOImpress. Firefox "works"... except that instead of getting an image in my presentation, I get a text block containing REAL useful guys. But evidently Firefox's bug.