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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."
You can pass a switch to disable explorer as a shell. That is why things like LiteStep are called Shell Replacements.
"I use a Mac because I'm just better than you are."
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.
Because QT 3 isn't available under GPL for Windows or Mac, while QT 4 is. Next question?
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
I think I must have got the wrong article from that link. The one I read said that there may be a replacement for Konqueror called Dolphin but that Konqueror would still be available if people wanted it.
Was the one about KDE Being The Holy Grail Of The Modern Desktop anymore interesting ?
what-does-that-make-gnome-then
The Holy Hand Grenade
Comment removed based on user account deletion
You realize what you've done right? You've encouraged geeks everywhere to switch their XP to Windows 3.1 desktops for the day! I would, if I could find the "ding..ding..ding" noise to go with it.
Saskboy's blog is good. 9 out of 10 dentists agree.
Cool. Now we can ask Dell for windows boxes running KDE :-)
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
For instance halflife.exe is a good shell for windows.
©God
That's not how you spell GNOME.
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.
Whereas KDE policy is "If you disKover some empty spaKe, add an useless feature or somethinK very very irritatinK. The iKon must be shiny, rotatinK, and Kontain at least one K.", the GNOME policy is the opposite: "If you find a feature, it might confuse a user, so remove it." [1]
Ok, but CAN it do that?
-matthew
"THERE IS NO JUSTICE, THERE IS ONLY ME." -Death