KDE 4 to Be Released on January 11th

VincenzoRomano writes "It's official! KDE 4.0 will be released on January 11th of next year. The release itself doesn't sound very firm, as 'the developers are confident to be able to release a more polished and better working KDE' and not the long awaited prime-time release. At the very first Alpha release on march 11th, the release date had been forecasted to October 2007, and then shifted to the end of the year with the second Beta. Despite this, the promises for the fourth version are quite interesting and maybe deserve a 'stay tuned'."

Comments

Birthday for me?

[Asm-Coder]

My birthday is the 11th, are they giving me a present?

Re:Birthday for me?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm a GNOME user, so I didn't know much about KDE4. Here are some interesting links I just found while researching what KDE4 is going to include:

KDE 4 promises radical changes to the free desktop

KDE 4.0: Well worth the wait!

KDE 4 is almost ready to go

KDE 4.0 Alpha 2 features new shell

KDE 4: some reasons for design decisions

I don't think I'll switch from GNOME, but KDE4 sounds like it will have some cool features.

Re:Birthday for me?

[rubycodez]

the only reason I use KDE rather than GNOME is the memory footprint on my older gear. I've seen rumblings in the forums that KDE 4 can be set to have less footprint than 3 with compositing turned off, hope it's true.

Re:Birthday for me?

[HappySmileMan]

It's also supposed to be faster than KDE3 since QT4 will be a lot faster than 3. I can't say for certain whether it will be, but the LiveCD seemed faster than the Kubuntu LiveCD using 3.5 by a good margin so that's at least some confirmation. (But obviously ifferent LiveCDs will have different services running)

Re:Birthday for me?

[antdude]

Same here. I noticed many people have this day as their birthdays. Weird! :D

Re:Birthday for me?

[jlarocco]

Qt 4 has been out for a long time now, and it is quite a bit faster than Qt 3. In fact, they're already to Qt 4.3

Re:Birthday for me?

[JackieBrown]

In fact, it requires QT 4.3

http://techbase.kde.org/Getting_Started/Build/KDE4#Qt

Re:Birthday for me?

[ATMD]

My friend, you are misinformed! Thanks to SVG support, you can make GNOME's footprint as big or small as you like, with no loss of quality whatsoever!

Re:Birthday for me?

[CastrTroy]

So wait, they're adding a bunch of features, making it multiplatform (via QT4) and it's going to be faster. Maybe they can pass on some programming pointers to Microsoft. I'm amazed how quickly Compiz Fusion runs on my discount laptop, I only wish Vista would run as quickly. Flashy doesn't have to mean slow.

Re:Birthday for me?

[CmdrGravy]

It's your birthday, we can have cake and a nice party with all your friends. Won't that be nice.

Re:Birthday for me?

[SigmundFloyd]

Not that weird... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Birthday_problem

Re:Birthday for me?

[antdude]

Too technical for me, but thanks. :D

Re:Birthday for me?

[marcosdumay]

Well, I don't plan to switch from KDE 3 until KDE 4.1 is out. Or at least until Debian is known to work properly with it.

But I want to install KDE 4.0 at work (Windows) as soon as it is available.

Sounds familiar

[TBerben]

Sounds like the Vista launch, pushed back a little further with each test version. Maybe its better for the KDE team to set a date like July 2008 and surprise everybody when they are ready to release it in January?

Re:Sounds familiar

[CarAnalogy]

That's not really correct, IMHO.

The difference with Vista is that the KDE team really has some major interesting new technologies now, though most of them are rather invisible from the common user's perspective. This will change over time. I assume KDE 4.1 will be more about applying/improving those underlying technologies, rather than introducing them.

Aside from the desktop itself, a large number of applications have also vastly improved.

Re:Sounds familiar

[Verunks]

well i think that kde 4.1 would be more suitable for the end user because a lot of great kde applications like k3b aren't yet ported to qt4, but kde 4.0 should be released soon so developers could port and test their apps in a stable kde4 desktop

Re:Sounds familiar

[Joe Jay Bee]

The difference with Vista is that the KDE team really has some major interesting new technologies now, though most of them are rather invisible from the common user's perspective.

So did Vista. And Leopard, for that matter.

Re:Sounds familiar

[jotok]

...most of them are rather invisible from the common user's perspective.

As a common user, I care about
1) eye candy
2) rendering times

The last time I tried to use SuperKaramba was a joke and most of the eye-candy features seem to be designed to crash KDE more than anything else. If it now "just works" then I'll be happy. Most of the real improvements are entirely Greek to me.

Re:Sounds familiar

[Anonymous Coward]

Close. KDE 4 was set to be the next Vista. What happened was that right when KDE 4 was first being planned, they hyped one particular aspect, Plasma, as being as revolutionary as icons were when they were first introduced, before any code was written. Unfortunately, this technology was MIA for a long time, and it was introduced at a very late stage. The real problem is that it replaced lots of stable code that is absolutely critical to the user experience - the panel, desktop, etc. This really shouldn't have happened, but it was a core developer's pet project. The result is that it's still unfinished, despite them already having released a "release candidate" (which everybody else expected to be basically finished). And anybody pointing out how screwed up the release schedule was got attacked by fanboys.

So it was set to be the next Vista. But thankfully they actually managed to keep their egos in check and put off the release until the code is in a better state. This is a positive thing. I was seriously considering switching to GNOME until I heard about this.

Re:Sounds familiar

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, that might work, except that the KDE release date is set through open discussion on public mailing lists, so they wouldn't be fooling anyone. In fact, they would be as likely to fool their own developers as the media, which would make it hard to do the release on time...

Re:Sounds familiar

[diegocgteleline.es]

Well, yes. The difference is that Microsoft is a company that gets 50.000$ millions per year and shouldn't need to delay projects. If KDE 4 had the resources that Microsoft has, it would have been released before 2008.

Re:Sounds familiar

[Skeith]

I agree that Plasma should be a lot farther along than it is right now. But Plasma seems like a very necessary change even though it will cause a few headaches in the beginning.

Re:Sounds familiar

[w000t]

Nope, KDE 4.1 would be more suitable for users because it will be a lot more polished and it will introduce features that couldn't be included in the 4.0 release. However, KDE3 apps would be able to run on KDE4, so you won't miss things like K3B.

Re:Sounds familiar

[lbbros]

For heaven's sake, don't spread FUD! That "stable code base" you talk about was a mess to mantain (note that Aaron J. Seigo, the Plasma lead developer, was also kicker's mantainer) and to add new features you broke others etc. Plasma it is not by any means aseigo's pet project: there are quite a number of developers involved in developing and polishing it. It matures at an amazingly fast pace, even.

The "fanboys" you talked about were people rightfully ticked off by the constant, uncostructive and negative attitude on the part of the complainers, which did not bring any improvement and only demotivated the developers. Those people did not even bother testing later revisions (right now there's a daily VM image floating around), report bugs or even offer *constructive* criticism.

Re:Sounds familiar

[w000t]

what a load of crap... the early release of KDE 4.0 was meant to provide a stable API for people to start porting their apps. it obviously had nothing to do with developer egos, which would be completely ridiculous (why the heck would they insist on releasing, according to your own view, a shitty product?).
i thought anonymous cowards trolling and talking from their asses weren't supposed to be moded +5 informative...

Re:Sounds familiar

[nurb432]

Personally, id rather a company push back a product release data if after a test release shows its not yet ready. And with something this complex, its bound to happen.

The alternative is they release garbage, and piss everyone off.

Re:Sounds familiar

[Anonymous Coward]

"right now there's a daily VM image floating around" Here, in fact:

http://dot.kde.org/1195829316/
http://etotheipiplusone.com/kde4daily/docs/kde4daily.html

Re:Sounds familiar

[Anonymous Coward]

For heaven's sake, don't spread FUD! That "stable code base" you talk about was a mess to mantain

It was a feature-complete, stable mess to maintain. Sure, it's a good idea to replace it with a better design, but not immediately before a major release when the rest of the desktop is pretty much finished and not if you can't finish it on time.

The "fanboys" you talked about were people rightfully ticked off by the constant, uncostructive and negative attitude on the part of the complainers

Those negative attitudes didn't come from nowhere. The initial criticism was reasonable, but it was met with stone-walling and blowing people off. Then they kept releasing beta after beta that didn't work right, continually telling people to wait and that they were trolls for complaining. It is that which really kicked off the flaming you see today.

which did not bring any improvement and only demotivated the developers.

If you're echoing the complaints that people aren't "constructively" criticising, I think you're wrong. When you take something that works and totally breaks it, it's your responsibility to fix it, and you shouldn't complain when people point out it's broken and want it back the way it was. There really isn't anything more to elucidate on when you tell somebody that they just fucked everything up and you want it back the way it was.

Those people did not even bother testing later revisions

Can you blame them? "Here's a beta". "But it's totally broken!" "Stop complaining, it's not finished yet. Here's another beta." "This one's broken too." "Stop complaining, it's not finished yet. Here's a release candidate." "Nope, still broken. Aren't release candidates supposed to be at least feature-complete?" "Stop complaining! It's not supposed to be ready until 4.1!"

When you continually feed somebody shit, eventually they are going to realise that the next spoonful isn't going to taste any better. Not testing later betas is completely understandable in light of how the stability has been misrepresented. The devs already know what they need to work on, they don't need testers to tell them. The real WTF is that if they already knew what the problems were and that it wasn't finished, why did they tag a "release candidate" that had absolutely no chance of becoming 4.0?

Re:Sounds familiar

[xtracto]

As a common user I care abouy:

1) Stability

The last time I used a KDE based distro (Kubuntu 7.10) it was a joke. Applications crashed (Konqueror, amaroK, RKWard, among others) very often and the system overall felt fragile compared to Gnome and yes... even to Windows XP.

I hope the KDE developers get it right this time and make KDE 4 stable. It is really shameful that when you are showing someone how "cool" amaroK is, it suddenly crashes after playing the play button without any reason (after having played other songs in the same format)...

For me, KDE has always seemed as a fragile and buggy desktop environment. Since the days of Mandrake Linux 5. It keeps crashing on me even in 100% Linux tested computers (which work very well in Gnome, XFCE and IceWM).

Re:Sounds familiar

[Anonymous Coward]

> The "fanboys" you talked about were people rightfully ticked off by the constant,
> uncostructive and negative attitude on the part of the complainers, which did not
> bring any improvement and only demotivated the developers. Those people did not
> even bother testing later revisions (right now there's a daily VM image floating
> around), report bugs or even offer *constructive* criticism.

TOP SECRET - EYES ONLY

MEMO

From: Steve
    To: Bill
Subj: How To Knife The Baby - Again, and again, and...

The above excerpt from a recent slashdot posting is a PERFECT roadmap showing how easy it is to delay, derail and (hopefully) destroy ("demotivated the developers") any open source software development project we might wish to target. All it would take is a few well-placed agents provocateur ("complainers") stirring the pot at the just right times and...poof!

Re:Sounds familiar

[Kjella]

The rendering times should have improved, so has the potential for eyecandy but IMO that's minor. The area where KDE is improving the most is when it comes to the framework. For example, take Phonon which is a multimedia wrapper API for backends like xine, mplayer, gstreamer etc. What does that mean for you? Well, it means the application developers will spend a lot less time dicking around getting sound and video working and instead provide more end-user features. It means that if you got it configured right once, a different KDE app won't work because it's trying to use some other backend that doesn't work. It's not like it's going to rock your boat, I mean having this working is pretty basic right? Well, for the most part KDE is about making the basic things simple. There's a lot of "basic" functionality that can be really complex and waste application developers' time with few tangible results. It they still can't manage to make something flashy and cool with all the time that's freed up, well that's not really KDE's problem.

Re:Sounds familiar

[Anonymous Coward]

You guys are all pretty funny to read. Mayhaps you should read the dev blogs more carefully. There is a lot of stressing that people have constructive criticism. Plasma was late in the game for many reasons, and it is shaping up incredibly well. Aside from that 4.0 is not the end-all release everyone is imagining it to be. It will set the stage for KDE 4's life-cycle. I have read that in numerous places, just like I'm sure everyone else on /. has.

In regards to the childishness, I want you to think back to the last time someone attacked something you worked on laboriously every day. These are people who are making a major contribution to everyone for FREE. Give them a break. GNOME people may not be as vocal, but I bet they, like everyone else on earth have issues.

Long live KDE.

Re:Sounds familiar

[Anonymous Coward]

Your problem is NOT KDE. It's Kubuntu, as half the interwebs know.

Re:Sounds familiar

[Anonymous Coward]

I was thinking the same thing as a long tome KDE user.

Re:Sounds familiar

[JackieBrown]

The port for K3b is in extragears.

Re:Sounds familiar

[McDutchie]

I was seriously considering switching to GNOME

But... but... but... ::gasp:: I thought GNOME was supposed to be completely unusable, with every new release having fewer features than the one before it?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!111?!/!11

Re:Sounds familiar

[Ash-Fox]

The last time I used a KDE based distro (Kubuntu 7.10) it was a joke. Applications crashed (Konqueror, amaroK, RKWard, among others) very often and the system overall felt fragile compared to Gnome and yes... even to Windows XP.

I use Kubuntu 7.10 heavily (I'm a power user), everyday. So far, I can only recall Konqueror crashing once. Nothing else has crashed on me since in KDE and I've been using Kubuntu 7.10 from the day it came out.

Are you sure something else isn't wrong?

Re:Sounds familiar

[Crazy Taco]

The difference with Vista is that the KDE team really has some major interesting new technologies now, though most of them are rather invisible from the common user's perspective.

That's not a difference between KDE and Vista. Actually, KDE and Vista are very much the same in this regard, and the main point of Vista is a slew of new changes under the hood that aren't immediately visible to end users. In fact, that's the main reason users are griping; they don't see too much difference between XP and Vista except for some eye candy. However, anyone who actually develops programs for Vista is not complaining about it or jumping on the anti-Microsoft bandwagon that seems to be so crowded right now. WPF, WCF, DirectX 10, and WF are all very useful for developers, and the programs we can write using them will be very cool, and will ultimately impress end users. But it will be a while before some of these new features in Vista are fully exploited, and until then, the common user gripes. Don't mistake their griping for knowledgeable critiquing though; most are clueless, and what you just said about KDE applies equally well to Vista.

Re:Sounds familiar

[stilborne]

> but not immediately before a major release when the rest of the desktop is pretty much
> finished and not if you can't finish it on time.

so, we didn't do what you shouldn't do ... good.

> when people point out it's broken and want it back the way it was. There
> really isn't anything more to elucidate on when you tell somebody that
> they just fucked everything up and you want it back the way it was.

hm. see, here's the issue. you think nobody was aware of the regressions at any given point in time? so to have people annoyed, in your face and even asking the same questions several times a day with no real constructive input when there is complete awareness of the situation is not only galling, it's a waste of time. thanks for playing, but unless you have something useful to add to a conversation ... go find someone who isn't me to have it with.

i know how counter that is to the way those raised on slashdot have come to think about interacting with others online. it's also common sense.

the worst part was that at every stage as we added things that needed to be there ... approximately zero people who were the endless whingers about that specific thing would take any note. they'd just settle into the improvements silently at best and whinge about the next most obvious thing (often which we were already working on) at worst. criticism is fine; heck, one could view every patch that changes something fundamental in your code as a "criticism" of the existing code if one was petty enough. what makes criticism bad is when it is empty of content that moves the process towards the goal lines.

dealing with the skewed mindset of many of the users of free software is probably the most horrific thing about working on something in the open. it's amazing to me how so many people see it as some sort of right to be able to make developing in the open as difficult, demoralizing and time consuming as possible.

so i finally just said, "i've had enough, you people start showing some basic responsibility as participants in this process, communication being part of that process. otherwise, you can go somewhere else because i'm not going to take part in that abuse of the process."

i wish more developers would do the same. maybe then the fanboi whingers (on all sides, around all projects) would start to smarten up just a wee bit and we could get on with a much happier development cycle.

Re:Sounds familiar

[cheater512]

I'd assume your experience is Kbuntu's fault rather than KDE's.
KDE isnt inherently instable.

Re:Sounds familiar

[Anonymous Coward]

you think nobody was aware of the regressions at any given point in time?

Then how come you tagged something as "release candidate" when you knew it wasn't working?

so to have people annoyed, in your face and even asking the same questions several times a day with no real constructive input when there is complete awareness of the situation is not only galling, it's a waste of time.

Until now, "complete awareness of the situation" included the fact that you were headed to releasing 4.0 like this. Now that you've delayed the release, the complaints should significantly quieten down.

dealing with the skewed mindset of many of the users of free software is probably the most horrific thing about working on something in the open.

If it's the attitude of users that is the problem here, how come this attitude is totally different for KDE 4.0 than all previous versions of KDE? Something has changed here, and I don't think it's the general attitude of users.

Re:Sounds familiar

[SigmundFloyd]

As a common user, I care about 1) eye candy

I often wonder if I'm the only desktop user in the world who couldn't care less about eye-candy. Given the current trends, it sure looks that way. For me, nothing beats the sheer elegance of the Motif window manager. I just love that classic 90's look!

Re:Sounds familiar

[bcmm]

If you think Kicker was a stable codebase you don't use KDE.

It was great once, but it's been modified so much since KDE 2 without any real cleanup or rewrite, and is now a bloody mess, especially in not threading the applets.

It's the program that crashes most on me.

Re:Sounds familiar

[andersa]

Sending out a release candidate thats obviously broken is not very clever. Just tell people the truth. Say, "Look, we would really like to send out KDE4 with this and that feature done and working. We will not be able to do that within the current release schedule, therefore we are delaying the release of KDE4 for an unspecified time. It may be half a year, it may be a year. In the mean time please test our work and provide constructive feedback. Thank you."

See.. Not difficult.

Re:Sounds familiar

[Anonymous Coward]

I can't remember Kicker ever crashing on me. In fact, the only crashes that I can recall in the past year or so have all been KMail.

If you think Kicker is unstable, what on earth must you think of the current state of the Plasma-based panel?

Re:Sounds familiar

[darrinallen]

I am looking forward to the new KDE 4, I may switch from using Gnome. I really lke Gnome, I will have to take a look at the new KDE

Re:Sounds familiar

[GooberToo]

I have to agree. This squarely sounds like the developers are the problem. They seem to be subscribing to MS' broken policy of software releases; which is to say, prematurely. A beta is software which is feature complete but lacking polish and may still have bugs to fix. "Stop complaining, it's not finished yet.", certainly sounds like development is very active. The way you describe it, it sounds like they are very much alpha, in the middle of development, still lacking features. That's a far, far, far, far cry from being "beta" software.

This a fair assessment? If this is accurate, the developers need a good flogging and need to base their release cycle on one which works; which is not based on Microsoft's policies.

Re:Sounds familiar

[Mad Merlin]

I think Ubuntu simply may be stretching their resources too thin. It's quite clear that they put a *lot* of customization into the packages they ship (including KDE), but IME Ubuntu feels a lot less stable than Mandrake (many versions ago, my first Linux install) or Gentoo (my current Linux installs). The customizations clearly add value, as most people seem to prefer Ubuntu, but I shy away from it for my own use as it strikes me as unstable (and I much prefer Portage to Apt).

My KDE sessions normally last until the next version of KDE is released (and then I upgrade), and that's the way I like it.

Re:Sounds familiar

[marcosdumay]

Don't use Kubuntu. Install KDE at Ubuntu if you want to use it, and install compiz if you have 3D acceleration.

AmaroK was also quite unstable until shortly ago. Now it seems much better, but I did not widely test it yet.

Re:Sounds familiar

[thegux]

But isn't gstreamer already a wrapper of sorts? I know it doesn't do mplayer and xine so this is slightly different, but isn't writing a wrapper around Gstreamer sort of making Gstreamer pointless? I would've thought that the point of Gstreamer was to basically eliminate (the need for) the use of things like xine and mplayer as backends with a more modular system, not to complicate things and create the need for yet another multimedia wrapper/framework.

Re:Sounds familiar

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe you should educate yourself on the new technologies Vista has brought to the table. arstechnica might be a good place to start.

Re:Sounds familiar

[gilboad]

.. You do understand that it's their -right- to send out KDE4, as unfinished and/or as unstable as they see fit.
You may and may not agree with their decision - but unless you're willing to pitch in and do some coding, your vote will be ignored.

- Gilboa

Re:Sounds familiar

[orcrist]

They seem to be subscribing to MS' broken policy of software releases; which is to say, prematurely

Man, you are soooo right; I mean "Release early, release often" is practically the motto of Microso... ummmmm....
Never mind.

Re:Sounds familiar

[ConceptJunkie]

The difference with Vista is that the KDE team really has some major interesting new technologies now, though most of them are rather invisible from the common user's perspective.

Except for "interesting" this seems to describe Vista exactly. It doesn't do anything new, but because of all the "new technologies" it runs at a small fraction of the speed of XP. Plus there's eye candy.

The difference, I realize, is that KDE's new technologies will allow it to do new things, something I think Microsoft has completely given up on, except for Microsoft Research, but none of their stuff ever gets used.

Re:Sounds familiar

[CarAnalogy]

The "interesting" was meant to be emphasized. I was a bit careful not to start a flamewar though. Maybe I should be more clear in the future :)

Re:Sounds familiar

[ncc74656]

The last time I used a KDE based distro (Kubuntu 7.10) it was a joke. Applications crashed (Konqueror, amaroK, RKWard, among others) very often and the system overall felt fragile compared to Gnome and yes... even to Windows XP.

KDE has been stable enough for me for the past few years on Gentoo. It's my primary environment on my notebooks, home desktops, and MythTV boxen, and the machines in my office at work dual-boot between it and WinXP (lately, I've kept one booted into Linux and the other booted into Windows). These are running a mix of x86 and AMD64 hardware (mostly AMD64 these days). Maybe it's your choice of distro that's at fault.

Re:Sounds familiar

[Ilgaz]

Sounds like the Vista launch, pushed back a little further with each test version. Maybe its better for the KDE team to set a date like July 2008 and surprise everybody when they are ready to release it in January? As a person watching the process list on OS X Leopard (which costs,unlike KDE) and being amazed at syslogd hitting 100%, games perform half as fast, I like to congratulate KDE team for showing the professionalism which MS and Apple lacks recently.

I think this will pay off in long term. Everyone (including companies,IT pros) will know they release the stuff when it is truly ready. Not just "if it compiles, ship it" or they are effected by Digg etc. community at all.

Re:Sounds familiar

[ConceptJunkie]

Oh, I don't think you said anything unclear, I just love a chance to bash Vista. I think KDE is very exciting, and although I've moved back to XP because I was having just too many problems with Linux on my laptop (hardware issues), I'm very excited about the fact that KDE4 will offer official support for Windows. I think Konqueror is vastly superior to Explorer, and is a decent web-browser to boot, although Firefox is my browser of choice. If KDE4 has birth pangs it seems to me it's because it's a little too ambitious, but I'd rather see that than the minor improvements that you see from many whole number increments. On the third hand, overly ambitious plans gave us DOS 4, Windows 95, Netscape 4 and host of other software that was huge, bloated and/or overly unstable.

Regardless, it's exciting stuff and I wish the team well.

Re:Sounds familiar

[darrinallen]

I was looking on the KDE website. They say it was released Nov 2007. http://www.kde.org/

So what makes this better than 3?

[Anonymous Coward]

Anyone have a link handy to a list of new features?

Re:So what makes this better than 3?

[JamesTRexx]

Here's a list of the major changes and the reasons behind them.

Re:So what makes this better than 3?

[X0563511]

My thanks! Seeing the (good) reasoning behind some of these changes really cooled off my steam. While things might be ugly/atrocious (my opinion anyways) NOW, doesn't mean they will on release, and further on the flexibility caused by these changes will outweigh it by orders of magnitude!

Re:So what makes this better than 3?

[pherthyl]

Keep in mind these are only the controversial features that people have whined about the most. There are tons of new features in the individual KDE apps that aren't mentioned there.

Re:So what makes this better than 3?

[Almahtar]

The most noticeable difference to me is that it's built on Qt 4, which is much faster, uses less RAM, and has stellar Windows, OSX, and X11 compatibility.

Most Qt4 programs (all that I've written for that matter) don't need a line of code changed to work on OSX or Windows.

Re:So what makes this better than 3?

[stilborne]

that's a fraction of the changes, though some of the more controversial ones.

What are the main differences between KDE & Gn

[Anonymous Coward]

I've used both, but I'm curious about what people think sets them apart in terms of design philosophy and usage.

A fixed release date is not a good idea

[iminplaya]

First, it can put undue pressure on the developers causing a release of faulty code. And missing it looks embarrassing. Plus it just provides vital information to the enemy.

Re:A fixed release date is not a good idea

[Professor_UNIX]

First, it can put undue pressure on the developers causing a release of faulty code. And missing it looks embarrassing.

On the other hand, not having a release date can make your project into a massive vaporware joke... for example, Duke Nukem Forever.

Re:A fixed release date is not a good idea

[iminplaya]

offtopic
      WOOOSH!
/offtopic

Re:A fixed release date is not a good idea

[CarAnalogy]

Last I heard was that DNF was to be released around 2010.

They're not yet sure what they'll do with it though. Maybe it's hypervisors, maybe a new user interface paradigm for consumers, but it will certainly be more user-centric.

Re:A fixed release date is not a good idea

[cygtoad]

Ever hear the old adage: "Work expands to fill the time alloted." I suppose you could also say work compresses to fill the time allotted and that could lead to poor quality. I believe this is your point. However, if you have no deadline at all, development tends to languish and that negatively impacts quality as well.

Re:A fixed release date is not a good idea

[iminplaya]

I agree. Deadlines are okay. I just don't think we need big, hairy public pronouncements with the trumpets blaring, lights flashing, etc. It sounds too much like a Microsoft campaign. These aren't the things we should emulate. I take Linus's attitude. It will be ready when it's ready. I don't want to see another repeat of Vista, like what's happening with Leopard.

Re:A fixed release date is not a good idea

[iminplaya]

(Score:0, Redundant)

Hmmmm Maybe I should quit posting until the freaks use up their mod points. Maybe somebody can point out where it's been said before? Under this article?

Re:A fixed release date is not a good idea

[LighterShadeOfBlack]

Calling it "redcrap" really makes your point seem considered and well thought out. And who's this "we" you're referring to?

Then again I don't know who the enemy in the GP's post is supposed to be. I guess I'm one of those ignorant fools who thinks that open source software development isn't a war to be won, but rather about providing the best possible software for users.

Re:A fixed release date is not a good idea

[iminplaya]

Then again I don't know who the enemy in the GP's post is supposed to be.

It was a "setting a date to withdrawal from Iraq" joke. Jeeze, you guys. Do I have to explain everything? :-)

Re:A fixed release date is not a good idea

[Krishnoid]

On the other hand, not having a release date can make your project into a massive vaporware joke... for example, Duke Nukem Forever.

I don't think you have to have a release date -- couldn't a list of milestones with expected and actual completion dates be enough to get a sense of progress? Consider Debian's dependency toplist, as an example of something that doesn't project out release dates, albeit with Ubuntu's twice-yearly releases as the counterexample.

But does it run Windows?

[Anonymous Coward]

In all seriousness, is this the version of KDE that's meant to bring the K desktop a K apps to Windows?

Re:But does it run Windows?

[Phyrexicaid]

Yes, with Qt4 we should see KDE apps on all, Mac, Windows, and obviously, Linux. It will be nice to see some of the apps I use on a day to day basis (like Kile) ported to Windows. If someone starts using KDE apps, it'll ease the transition should they ever choose to switch to Linux.

Re:But does it run Windows?

[lord_rob the only on]

Yes, just google for kde 4 windows. You'll see that a Windows port of KDE 4 is ongoing. See this Wiki.

But for the moment it's just a project so if you are really interested in seeing KDE 4 ported to Windows, jump on the boat and help !

Re:But does it run Windows?

[abigor]

I've actually run early versions of certain apps on OS X natively. Strange to see my old favourites like Kate, for example, with the Mac UI. Once KDE4 is released, I'll hopefully be using these apps regularly again.

Re:But does it run Windows?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, this is exactly what Windows users want - a clone of the Windows desktop, written for Unix, back-ported to Windows.

Next up: Stardock is planning to port their "Mac OS X" theme to the Mac.

Re:What are the main differences between KDE &

[Joe Jay Bee]

As I see it:

KDE aims for a Windows-ish philosophy of "everything should be configurable". There are options for just about everything, so you can tweak your desktop to be just the way you want it. This can be intimidating for newbies, but then KDE can also be configured to be very newbie friendly, and indeed many distros already do configure it that way.

GNOME, on the other hand, aims for a Mac OS X philosophy of only presenting to the user what they really need to use to get the job done, with some options hidden and others nonexistant. This is designed to be easy for just about anyone to pick up easily (probably why the Ubuntu team chose it) but it absolutely sucks for configurability.

To summarise: KDE is for end users but can be for power users, GNOME is aimed specifically at end users and noone but.

KDE File Manager

[Drasil]

Konq was the killer app for me, I have to confess I'm a little worried about Dolphin becoming the default file manager. I've not used Dolphin much yet, but it will have to be pretty damn good to match what Konq could do. Will I still be able to have terminal, web and file panes all within the same tab? How about dragging images from a website to my /home within a single window, or middle clicking a file or link to open it in a viewer in a new tab? Konq allowed me to keep the amount of open windows to a minimum. I guess time will tell and I should start playing with Dolphin.

I should note that I bloody hate Dolphins (my ex loved the damn things). They aren't as cute as you think, they smell of fish and have attempted genocide on porpoises and even attack humans. Why is it that every crystal swinging hippie who lives 1000 miles from the sea wants to be a marine biologist? Dolphins!

Re:KDE File Manager

[abigor]

Konqueror isn't going anywhere, and it will still be the preferred file manager/etc. for power users. Dolphin is included as a simpler file manager with a different design philosophy, that's all. But you don't have to use it if you don't want to, as the same old Konq (KDE4'ified, of course) will still be a click away.

Re:KDE File Manager

[Seumas]

I'm not a konqueror fan, because it doesn't feel right, to me. I'm a fan of one excellent tool to do one thing extremely well. Not one giant kitchen sink of a tool that does a thousand things.

Of course, I also don't prefer Konqueror as a web browser, so it could be that I'd appreciate it all much more if I weren't fused to firefox.

Of course, I use krusader anyway, so it doesn't much matter to me. Dolphin presents some things in a bit of a krusader style, but with far less functionality.

By the way, anyone who remembers that one Appl II game from grade school will remember that Dolphins will some day rule the country as our president.

Then again, monkeys already do, so that's not a leap of imagination.

Re:KDE File Manager

[pherthyl]

Will I still be able to have terminal, web and file panes all within the same tab?

Terminal, yes. Web, no.

How about dragging images from a website to my /home within a single window, or middle clicking a file or link to open it in a viewer in a new tab?

Dragging images will still work (AFAIK). Dolphin does not have multiple tabs. Of course Konq still does.

Re:KDE File Manager

[Jambon]

I should note that I bloody hate Dolphins

Come now. You're just jealous because they're smarter than us.

Re:KDE File Manager

[Anonymous Coward]

"A click away"? That doesn't sound like the KDE I know and love.

It should be exactly 17 clicks away: menubar -> Preferences -> Options -> Settings -> File Manager Settings -> ... something about a platypus ... scrolling list of Latvian surnames ... -> ah, the Dolphin/Konq switch.

Usually we don't get the tiniest little feature without 49 new checkboxes to control every last aspect of it. If they manage to add a whole new file manager, but allow you to switch back with *one* click, they've already lost. I might as well use GNOME.

Re:KDE File Manager

[seandiggity]

Well I happen to like dolphins and hate conquerors. I mean, if you wanna talk about genocide and attacking humans...

Re:KDE File Manager

[Anonymous Coward]

Been using konqueror for a few years, didn't had a popup blocker back then. With very few exceptions every website would render perfect. Lately, there are a lot of major ajax powered websites, that run very buggy though in other browsers (let's say.. safari, or even opera) work very well. Could be just me, but it seems rather neglected. The weekly kde commit digest does show some kthml improvements once in a while, but they just don't seem to stack up.
How fast does safari render a page compared to konqueror ? How fast does anything(<!--insert any maintained browser here -->) render a page compared to konqueror ?
Not necessarly trolling, just a few thoughts.

Re:KDE File Manager

[pwizard2]

In its current stable build, (the one released with Gutsy) Dolphin is simply not ready to replace Konqueror. Dolphin lacks basic things like tabs and tree view, essential in any serious file manager. I also really miss the "copy to" and "move to" features that are on the Konqueror file manager context menu, but not the dolphin menu. The new bookmarks pane in Dolphin is currently useless to me because I can't move files around by dragging to it (dragging a file onto the home folder icon, for example, does not copy the file to the home folder but instead adds it to the panel), and without tabs, it just isn't that useful.

I used Dolphin for about a month before I went back to Konqueror as my file manager. Nautilus is also good if you like a simpler interface, but in terms of features, Konqueror is one of the best file managers that human civilization has ever created.

Re:KDE File Manager

[DoofusOfDeath]

I should note that I bloody hate Dolphins (my ex loved the damn things). They aren't as cute as you think, they smell of fish and have attempted genocide [wheelock.edu] on porpoises and even attack humans [scotsman.com].

I'm confused... are you talking about dolphins or about your ex?

Re:KDE File Manager

[pherthyl]

The dolphin in KDE4 is vastly different than that in KDE3. Although I actually like the KDE3 dolphin, it really is not at all the same as what will be shipped in KDE 4.0.

Re:KDE File Manager

[Anonymous Coward]

What You have against Latvian surnames? I like mine :P

Re:KDE File Manager

[ajs318]

I should note that I bloody hate Dolphins (my ex loved the damn things)

Glad to know I'm not the only one who thinks cetaceans are massively overrated.

Re:KDE File Manager

[HeroreV]

LOL Options? In GNOME? That's a good one.

I'd rather have a hundred new options thrown into a sea of millions of options hidden a dozen layers deep, than to not have those options at all.

No need for a hard KDE ship date

[EmbeddedJanitor]

KDE is already great. There is no burning business need to release an update. No shareholders to let down and start a class action.

For me, KDE is already good enough. I'd rather wait until KDE4 is really solid than ty get it out on some arbitrary ship date.

Re:No need for a hard KDE ship date

[Anonymous Coward]

Amen! Release it when it's done.

Re:No need for a hard KDE ship date

[ByOhTek]

But KDE4 has one major advantage over 3, or will have...

I will be able to put it on any windows machines I have without much effort.

Re:No need for a hard KDE ship date

[JohnFluxx]

Actually there is one reason.. applications.

There's quite a few authors of kde3 applications who won't start porting their app until kde 4.0 is out and people are using it. After all, why port your app if nobody is using it?

So it makes sense to release 4.0 as a sort of 'release candidate', have people port their applications, and then have 4.1 as the usable release.

Re:No need for a hard KDE ship date

[Mad Merlin]

But KDE4 has one major advantage over 3, or will have...

I will be able to put it on any windows machines I have without much effort.

That assumes that you have Windows machines, of course...

Re:No need for a hard KDE ship date

[ByOhTek]

And plenty of people do have Windows machines. (I have one dedicated, and my notebook dual boots)

And I have to use Windows at work.

The rest? FreeBSD

Re:No need for a hard KDE ship date

[Mad Merlin]

And plenty of people do have Windows machines.

*gasp*

release it when it's done

[diego.viola]

just release it when it's done

Re:release it when it's done

[Anonymous Coward]

I.e. never?

Re:release it when it's done

[backwardMechanic]

Rasterman, is that you?

Re:release it when it's done

[sqldr]

I'll answer this question when I'm ready.

I find the introduction of Dolphin interesting.

[PaulGaskin]

It seems Konqueror is losing position in favor of a more simple, lighter file manager. Myself, I'm pretty happy with Gnome on my GNU Linux machine. I don't feel restricted by Gnome. Much of the extra functionality of a more configurable desktop can be achieved through a text-based interface, if one is so inclined.

Re:I find the introduction of Dolphin interesting.

[Phyrexicaid]

Well, Dolphin is nice for first-timers. My girlfriend uses it, and can't really tell the difference between Konqueror and Dolphin. She doesn't use the extra features of Konqueror. Myself? Maybe I'm stuck in my ways but I had to change back to Konqueror. Split pane is not a replacement for tabs, for me at least.

Re:I find the introduction of Dolphin interesting.

[Burz]

Dolphin and Konq both drive me crazy.

Though Dolphin nicely allows you to set your default view type (I choose Detailed List), and seems to mimic the OS X Finder left-side bar, it has problems. First, the left-side bar isn't matched with a top-side 'shelf' like Finder has... so your ability to quickly place/remove custom locations in the UI has no counterpart for placing custom tools. Second, you can't drop items onto folders in the left-side bar to copy them; Dolphin will simply add all those items to the bar! That it encourages users to split the window vertically is no help for novices sense of confusion either; I have recommended Dolphin to other users for the last time.

Konq has no setting for default view type, and it defaults to thumbnails. Ugh. Even worse, Konq's identifying icon changes to whatever you're viewing at the moment, so it shifts from default to folder to web page icon, etc, leaving me unable to find windows in a busy task bar. Finally, Konq's tree view is generally un-helpful: Its difficult to know when it will follow your movement to another dir (and its rare) and the categories that I must constantly shift between ('home' and 'services') just to move files between home and external drives are asinine. (Also: the Printers category doesn't play nicely with CUPS, Network is useless for samba shares, and don't get me started on the KDE dir properties dialog that sets up samba shares guaranteed not to work).

Though Konqueror has great abilities WRT protocols like ssh and sftp, it doesn't make up for the fact that NONE of the FOSS file browsers can match the balance of usability and (non-broken) features in OS X and Windows browsers.

Re:What are the main differences between KDE &

[the_B0fh]

You forgot the other thing. IANAP, but from all reports, KDE's internals is very clean and neat, and easy to get into.

GNOME, otoh, is freaking spagetti bullshit.

I remember trying to build gnome from source years ago - oops, this needs version 12beta2 of that. but that needs version 13beta3 of this. can you spell circular dependencies?

Never understood the attraction of that POS gnome.

Sweet!

[Anonymous Coward]

On my birthday!

Re:What are the main differences between KDE &

[gardyloo]

KDE aims for a Windows-ish philosophy of "everything should be configurable". There are options for just about everything, so you can tweak your desktop to be just the way you want it. I realize that you needed a good Windows/OS X dichotomy with which to compare KDE and Gnome, but you call Windows configurable?!? I've worked extensively on KDE, XFCE, and Enlightenment, and some with Gnome, and you're right: KDE is exremely configurable, far moreso than Gnome. But Gnome is on par with, if not considerably MORE configurable than Windows. Windows is essentially locked as it is, even with those "power users'" tools.

      I'm highly looking forward to being able to use KDE as a WM for Windows systems, without the added cruft of a Cygwin environment.

Re:What are the main differences between KDE &

[stew77]

I still wonder who or what that mythical power-user is, because I don't think I ever met one in person. The skript kiddie that spends 6 hours per day hunting themes and posting screen shots to forums? Some of the most knowledgeable and experienced developers I know barely change anything in their computer's configuration, even keeping the default OS X desktop image.

But that means

[joeflies]

That it will miss the all-important Christmas Shopping season! Just think of all those disappointed kids who wanted KDE4 from Santa.

Re:But that means

[SoapDish]

I'm one of them :(

Re:But that means

[Kingrames]

At first, I was thinking "Wow, it would be cruel if that was all you got for christmas..."

But now that I think about it, this would make a great gift for the whole family, and would be rather cheap. Thanks for the suggestion!

Re:But that means

[Anonymous Coward]

That was the one kpresent from ksanta for Kristmas that I was really looking forward to.

Re:But that means

[darkwhite]

aww... I'm one of them too ;_;

Re:What are the main differences between KDE &

[jackuess]

I get the impression that the KDE devs are simply aiming at delivering the best DE possible, with no particular user group in mind. Besides, I think thats a common dominator for most FOSS, since market share is secondary to good design (maybe a bit exaggerated but still), at least when compared to the proprietary world. Further more I would like to believe that KDE resembles OSX more than Gnome, at least from a developers point of view, with it's rich and structured dev platform. KDE is more than just a DE, it's a platform!

Re:What are the main differences between KDE &

[Anonymous Coward]

The noobies of today are the end-users of tomorrow. The end-users of today are the power-users of tomorrow. KDE provides a path for this evolution. Gnome is a dead-end for users.

Sheshh, Gnome doesn't even let you adjust the screensaver because the Gnome developers seem to think that the average user is to stooopid to choose between 4 jumping cows and 5 jumping cows in the screensaver!

I'm really not a KDE fan either. I'm all for lots of configurability but I find having the configuration items presented two different ways (together in some tabbed thing and each one separate) with at least four different ways to get at them very confusing. Also, it is very confusing having user preferences mixed in with administrative settings mixed in with system settings. Plus all the KDE themes look like a Saturday morning anime cartoon. How about a theme that doesn't make me look like an otaku in the boardroom?

Sigh, maybe we need a third full-featured desktop environment?

Actually, it IS 1 tool, concept

[WindBourne]

Konqi is pretty much one tool that does 2 things. Its job is to work with filestreams OR allow plug-ins. Of course, the filestreams utilize a plug-in approach approach as well(KIOs). Think of the KIOs as being similar to unix FS drivers in Unix's VFS. All of our common unix tools use a filesystem, but of course, the FS could come from a number of places (100's of different filesystems mapped onto either blocks or streams). Likewise, the plugins for Konqi are varied. In particular, Konqi includes by default the KHTML Library for a HTML handler.

Re:What are the main differences between KDE &

[Anonymous Coward]

KWin is pretty well tied to X11. It is unlikely that it will be ported to Windows afaik.

who might slip the release date?

[icepick72]

the release itself doesn't sound very firm, as 'the developers are confident to be able to release a more polished and better working KDE' and not the long awaited prime-time release.

One simple question: Why can Microsoft not slip release dates without getting flack, but it's okay for open source projects? Both are slipping for the same reasons.

Re:who might slip the release date?

[miscz]

Because those people would be marked as Gnome trolls. PS I hate KDE as a DE with a burning passion.

Re:who might slip the release date?

[3p1ph4ny]

Why?

Re:who might slip the release date?

[jackuess]

Because people at /. are simply much more enthusiastic about KDE4 than Vista. Hell I even bother to compile KDE4, and Vista: well I'm not even prepared to pirate it! That's by the way another explanation for peoples forgivingness: you can at any time check out the svn and try it (discovering that it's not ready for release yet). People who are enthusiastic about KDE get full insight, Vista enthusiast get/got mostly nothing.

Re:who might slip the release date?

[Ramble]

Are you sure it wasn't Reiser?

Re:who might slip the release date?

[chromatic]

Why can Microsoft not slip release dates without getting flack, but it's okay for open source projects?

Microsoft developers waste more paid development time checking e-mail and chatting around the water cooler in a week than most F/OSS projects ever have.

Re:who might slip the release date?

[R15I23D05D14Y]

What says KDE isn't catching flax off this? I haven't heard many people being happy about the first 'release candidate' for KDE4 being closer to a beta than a release.

They look to me like they are eating into their karma of being a big open source project - not that the eventual release won't be good, but there will be more grumbling and complaints than usual.

Re:who might slip the release date?

[ragefan]

the release itself doesn't sound very firm, as 'the developers are confident to be able to release a more polished and better working KDE' and not the long awaited prime-time release.

One simple question: Why can Microsoft not slip release dates without getting flack, but it's okay for open source projects? Both are slipping for the same reasons.

Care to take a stab at the number of Full-time salaried developers are working on each project? Open source projects get a pass because most of the time there are few, if any, paid developers working on them, (especially developers whose primary task is to work on said project).

Re:who might slip the release date?

[Ant P.]

KDE is optional. If you don't like it, you can upgrade to the newest something else or leave it as is.
Windows is not. If you don't like it, too bad, cause your company's already paid the full price for that 5 year contract.

Re:who might slip the release date?

[pembo13]

You pay Microsoft. You don't pay KDE.

Re:who might slip the release date?

[Anonymous Coward]

You, KDE...
    My name is Íñigo Misczdoza; you killed my father, prepare to die.

Re:who might slip the release date?

[wizardforce]

Why can Microsoft not slip release dates without getting flack, but it's okay for open source projects? Both are slipping for the same reasons.

first, Microsoft slips by years not months. second, the fact the KDE developers choose to extend the time until release has to do with fixing bugs which is all alround a good idea. They are not getting flak for making the right decision rather than releasing a half-assed version of KDE4 to the scorn of all. third, the reason Microsoft gets flak for slipping on its release date for Vista is that it took them 6 years to create... Vista... DRM support baked in, unnecessary and some say down right idiotic design changes, a basic requirement of RAM that is mind boggling for little in return, buggy or even non-existent drivers [broken compatibility] and a poorly copied security device called UAC which for the most part, is only annoying, etc... you get the point

Re:who might slip the release date?

[stilborne]

but ... it has only 5 fingers on both hands.

(i love that movie)

Re:who might slip the release date?

[icepick72]

If anything the paid project should get the pass if the company is willing to hunker down and dish out the extra cash for the wait. Aren't the unpaid people supposed to be more passionate and therefore not want/need the cash or something like that? If they're that passionate they're not getting a pass from me because I expect a higher standard from open source people compared to some paid Microsoft drone (tongue in cheek).

Re:who might slip the release date?

[vally_manea]

Yup, that's a fair comparison, KDE doesn't even have 1% of MS resources and anyway they only slipped a few weeks.

Re:who might slip the release date?

[miscz]

The killer had also 5 toes on his foot. This rules out Gnome.

oh boy

[zonker]

can't wait for the kde vs. gnome debate to stir up. again.

Re:oh boy

[Anonymous Coward]

funnily enough this is the only reply on the subject after hours of posting the article...

thanks for bringing it up anyways. jerk.

Slippage

[Tony]

Simple: because most open source release schedules slip by weeks. Microsoft often slips by years.

Re:Slippage

[zlogic]

I remember that in early 2006 KDE 4 was promised to be released about the same time as Vista, or even earlier. But at least the KDE team didn't spend three years writing stuff and then completely dumping it and starting from scratch!

Re:Slippage

[Kjella]

Except Debian sarge, which slipped by a year and a half and Vista is an exception too. And if you want to talk about roadmaps slipping and features being pushed to later release, try this one: "For the future it is planned to base GIMP on a more generic graphical library called GEGL, thereby addressing some fundamental design limitations that prevent many enhancements such as native CMYK support. Implementation of this plan was continually put off from 2000 until October 2006, when developer Øyvind Kolås demonstrated a limited working version of GEGL, including a new graphical interface, that had been developed by Sven Neumann, Michael Natterer, and Kolås." Personally I think we'll see WinFS before GEGL.

At any rate, most open source software make releases just as much to get alpha/beta testers as to get end-users, I've definately seen some releases that would be in the "are you kidding me?" end of the scale had it been a commercial release. Not to mention a tiny point release that might be a new patch but hardly a new version of something. Ultimately the bar for making a release is considerably higher the moment you ask people to fork over money. OSS: "Yeah, uh huh, I see it's a work in progress, I'll stick with the old stable version until it's a bit more usable". Commercial: "You expect me to PAY for this bug-ridden crap?"

At any rate, for a distro a short release cycle is good anyway - during any six months many applications won't have changed noteworthy, but certainly many have too so there's really no direct comparison to Vista, no distro ships just the OS/WM. I guess maybe the closest thing you get is major kernel revisions like 2.4->2.6 and huge GUI rewrites like KDE/Qt3->KDE/Qt4. And finally, "when it's ready" means you can always say your release is on time because you have no schedule...

Re:Slippage

[ozamosi]

I remember that in early 2006 KDE 4 was promised to be released about the same time as Vista, or even earlier. But at least the KDE team didn't spend three years writing stuff and then completely dumping it and starting from scratch! ...yet.

Re:Slippage

[Rod Beauvex]

..to our knoweledge....

Time well spent

[Anonymous Coward]

I guess they spent the last year thinking up cool names for all the changes. Now they've got six weeks to code them.

Re:What are the main differences between KDE &

[Anonymous Coward]

KWin/Plasma are not going to be ported to windows. Only certain apps will be ported.

Re:What are the main differences between KDE &

[Anonymous Coward]

Gnome is way less configurable than anything else.

Can you configure the screensaver in Windows? Can you add your own MIME-types (filetypes, associations, icons, etc)? Click, click and it's done! I guess that would be 'Klick, Klick" in KDE, heheheh!

Gnome can't do these things without resorting to hacking text files.

Choices...

[Anonymous Coward]

Apparently the developers needed extra time to adds a few million more options...cuz, as we all know, linux is about choices...And since it is about choices, KDE devs should make damn sure that all 3.7 million choices for how to close a window are available to the users.

Re:What are the main differences between KDE &

[White Shade]

If I had mod points, I'd definitely mod you up...

I agree completely; most people I know who are "hardcore" linux users spend time tweaking their systems, but it's usually just to the point of getting all their hardware working, and then maybe glitzing it up a little bit, usually by downloading a theme they think looks cool. The thousands of fancy customization options usually get left behind, and completely reconfiguring how applications look and run is totally beyond what they care to do. The linux users want to *USE* linux, not waste hours and hours digging into arcane details to reach some potential "perfect setup".

Windows can be tweaked too, but definitely much less-so, and there isn't much support about it either. I don't know anything about tweaking MacOS, other than the fact that i've never seen anyone using a recent version of MacOS that looked like it had been customized any significant extent.

Still slooooooow...?

[flyingfsck]

I don't use either KDE or Gnome (if I can help it), since they are both so damn slow. My systems mostly run IceWM with Rox Panel and Konqueror as the file browser and of course Firefox as the web browser.

KDE can do whatever they like to their system, but if they don't improve the window manager, then it is all still a waste of time.

Re:Still slooooooow...?

[Anonymous Coward]

KDE runs better than fine on any modern computer, you should really upgrade your machine if icewm and such is the only thing usable, hardware is cheap.

Re:Still slooooooow...?

[FudRucker]

do you really mean that rox draws the desktop (icons & background and/or wallpaper)? why have rox panel too when ICEwm has a panel? unless you need/want two panels. i use ICEwm & rox to draw the desktop too as they make a great combination...

i do keep KDE installed to for friends & family to use, the KDE-Games package is a favorite of mine...

Re:Still slooooooow...?

[BrentH]

What do youy mean by damn slow? I can work pretty fast in Gnome I think, and KDE4 is also said to be the fastest KDE yet. What am I supposedly missing out on?

Re:Still slooooooow...?

[SCHecklerX]

I love rox. I wish it were the default FM for all of the environments. Why KDE and GNOME require so much crap running in the background is beyond me. Rox is elegant, and does all the GUI stuff you'd like a file manager to do (XDND, XDS), while giving you flexibility to interact with pretty much any program, even those that don't use any special communications pipes (ie, your selected files all go into the cut buffer automatically). The really nice thing is that you can very easily script the thing (for example, it's very easy to write a mail checking type script that can change a rox icon for a biff type program), and the fact that it adheres to the 'everything is a file' *nix philosophy. The mini buffer is great, as is the ability to do 'command line' type selections and filtering.

Rox + windowmaker makes a nice environment for me.

Re:Still slooooooow...?

[Falladir]

It's really nice to have one taskbar with apps from the current workspace, and another taskbar with apps from all workspaces. You can do this with kicker and also with gnome-panel. I run both kicker AND gnome-panel, for no good reason, really (there used to be a reason, and now it's inertia), and a few things break. One is that apps tend to spontaneously fire off those flashing look-at-me alerts if you tab around a lot.

Re:Still slooooooow...?

[sowth]

Try running it while you are raytracing an animation, converting a video to high def Divx, doing updatedb, compiling the kernel, playing the latest Unreal Tournament, doing a particle simulation of the universe, all while simulating a virtual girlfriend! Then you will value a small and efficient system.

Re:Still slooooooow...?

[stilborne]

you do know you have been able to do that with kicker (multiple taskbars, different configs, as you noted) for ... years?

Re:Still slooooooow...?

[Falladir]

Really? When I made the post, I *thought* it was possible, because I had successfully added a second taskbar to my kicker panel, and it listed six windows while the original one (which only showed the windows from current workspace) showed four. Right now I'm repeating the experiment, and I'm unable to get them to use different configurations. Change one, and the other changes too, consistent with the fact that the taskbar configurator is the same as "kcontrol > Desktop > Taskbar". Is it possible through the gui, or do I maybe have to edit some text config files?

Thanks for taking an interest.
Lanken (my Freenode nick)

decent control panels?

[Anonymous Coward]

will there be (or is there already) some sort of control panel to view installed media codecs, and add/remove/test them?

Is there and 'add new hardware' control panel. I recently bought a TV card that was supposed to 'work out of the box' on linux. But as usual I had to fuck around with config files telling kernel modules to load.

Re:decent control panels?

[arcade]

will there be (or is there already) some sort of control panel to view installed media codecs, and add/remove/test them?

No. Linux isn't unified in this sense. Each program determines what format it wants its codecs in (of course). Thus, each program has to come up with its own way. It's the same way in windows, really, except that you've got some 'standard' codecs.

It's a matter of taste, really. Personally I don't want a control panel for it, I just want to drop the codecs in a specific directory and then I want it to be used. Others want it differently, of course.

Re:decent control panels?

[SanityInAnarchy]

Is there and 'add new hardware' control panel. I recently bought a TV card that was supposed to 'work out of the box' on linux. But as usual I had to fuck around with config files telling kernel modules to load.

Well, to be entirely fair, "add new hardware" is fairly irrelevant most of the time.

Stuff that works out of the box tends to be autodetected, even if it does require those config file tweaks. Stuff that doesn't or can't work out of the box wouldn't fit very well with the standard Windows "add new hardware" dialog -- it's not as if there's going to be a driver CD -- although I believe there's a similar option for adding in support for various disabled-by-default binary kernel modules (nVidia, for example).

Re:What are the main differences between KDE &

[Anonymous Coward]

what the heck are you talking about? GNOME has gui for all those, you can use gconf-editor preferences not listed in preferences windows of applications. GNOME philosophy is to use best defaults and not to confuse users with every little option. Running gconf-editor and setting things are very easy to understand with schema descriptions.

KDE vs. Xlib/Unix

[BritneySP2]

What, as a programmer, can I do with KDE/Qt that I can't do with, say, Xlib and Unix APIs? I mean, why do we need all this bloat, all this added complexity, all this cruft? I understand that Qt is portable, but so are Xlib and POSIX, that, too, have been ported to (for example) Windows. How much better off we programmers have become now that we have access to the multitude of non-standard development environments, libraries and tools?

As sort of a disclaimer, I can say that do not find the desktop metaphor useful; an environment consisting of openbox/xterm and a text editor is all that I need most of the time.

Re:KDE vs. Xlib/Unix

[the_humeister]

I don't think Xlib is very easy to program with.

Re:KDE vs. Xlib/Unix

[Anonymous Coward]

What, as a programmer, can I do with KDE/Qt that I can't do with, say, Xlib and Unix APIs?
Make it look tolerably good? Your app may be the greatest in the world but if it looks like crap very few people will use it.

Re:KDE vs. Xlib/Unix

[conares]

"As sort of a disclaimer, I can say that do not find the desktop metaphor useful; an environment consisting of openbox/xterm and a text editor is all that I need most of the time."

Well then it would seem you are NOT the target audience for KDE, just STFU and move on...

Re:KDE vs. Xlib/Unix

[niteice]

Qt is portable in the sense that ideally, the application developer will simply recompile for each target platform. Of course there will probably be some API differences that need to be rewritten, but for the most part you can simply ignore cross-platform issues. It's possible with Xlib and POSIX standards, yes, but would you rather ship with your application a complete X server or a few DLLs?

Re:KDE vs. Xlib/Unix

[domatic]

Your app will be trivially portable to OS X and Windows for one. IMHO, the most exciting design goal for KDE4 is to completely abstract the X and Unix APIs away. KDE4 for Windows and OS X won't include Workplace features like kwin and plasma but it will include the dependencies necessary to run apps like Koffice, Konqueror, Amarok, and K3B.

Re:KDE vs. Xlib/Unix

[Lemming Mark]

If you like the paradigm QT provides, then it's very very nice to program with, simple and powerful. KDE adds some infrastructure on top of that.

Functionally there's nothing your QT app will do that you couldn't make an Xlib app do; but functionally there's nothing you can make an Xlib app do that you can't make assembler running on the bare hardware without an OS do either... A large part of the "bloat" in QT/KDE is in implementing library functionality and abstraction layers for you so that you don't have to reinvent the wheel or open code common operations.

On top of that, the KDE libraries in particular add a load of powerful stuff, some of which is desktop-related; if you don't want to program desktop apps then you may as well just use QT.

I've played with QT from C++ and from Python and it was very pleasant in both languages. Python + QT is an awesome rapid development environment with the full power of Unix behind it.

Re:KDE vs. Xlib/Unix

[Tweekster]

Why use a moped when you can drive an audi a5?

Linus Torvalds on Gnome vs KDE

[PaulGaskin]

https://lists.linux-foundation.org/pipermail/desktop_architects/2007-February/001127.html

"I did something better than any Gnome user has apparently ever done: I actually wrote the code to fix the thing." - LT

Does he really think he's that much smarter than every Gnome user and developer?

"I want something very simple: I want to configure my mouse button window events. That doesn't sound so bad, does it? Everybody else can do it, gnome does not." - LT

You already have that with KDE. Gnome developers can do what they want. It's really a design choice. "And I find it *offensive* how Gnome people can never just admit that they can't do something." - LT

How absurd. Sounds like a really simple UI feature. Does Linus really think Gnome developers are incapable or is he just trying to taunt them?

Torvalds posted on the GNOME-usability list that "I personally just encourage people to switch to KDE."

http://mail.gnome.org/archives/usability/2005-December/msg00021.html

This, I find kind of odd. If he feels so strongly that KDE is the best, why attack Gnome incessantly?

Why should he try to make Gnome into KDE when KDE already exists? I guess this is a turf battle and he's pissed that Gnome has more market-share. He seems kind of ambitious beyond the scope of merely making his Kernel the best it can be.

Re:Linus Torvalds on Gnome vs KDE

[VENONA]

"This, I find kind of odd. If he feels so strongly that KDE is the best, why attack Gnome incessantly?"

Uh, maybe because he "feels so strongly that KDE is the best," if I accepted how you're framing the question. Unfortunately, I can't. I'm aware of a couple of comments he made, over a time span of several years, about his desktop of choice (and most people will make an occasional remark of that type, that started a retarded uproar on Slashdot. What's the man supposed to do, never make a comment on the desktop he sees for long periods, every day? Would you accept that sort of restriction, or feel a bit chaffed? It seems to me that he has the same right to an opinion as anyone. Sniping at him about it sounds like you expect him to STFU, develop kernels, and say nothing negative about some random user's desktop of choice. You might have some basis for that expectation if you were signing his paycheck. But you're not.

"Why should he try to make Gnome into KDE when KDE already exists? I guess this is a turf battle and he's pissed that Gnome has more market-share. He seems kind of ambitious beyond the scope of merely making his Kernel the best it can be."

I don't see it as a turf battle. He's not a desktop developer. Last time I did a comparison, KDE was better for *what I needed to do*. I thought Gnome was dumbed down. So I tend to agree with his post, as shown in your first link, which apparently got you all fired up.

Other users will have other opinions. Some people will find minor points of annoyance in either system, configure their way around it as far as possible, and write extensions via .Desktop files to take care of at least some of the rest. For instance, I needed cryptographic hashes from the file manager. Done, and should be portable. I've my own opinions about why market share numbers look the way they do. They'd probably bother you, and are beside the point, in any case. But I'd be the first to agree that there is room for both KDE and Gnome.

The really *annoying* bit was, "He seems kind of ambitious beyond the scope of merely making his Kernel the best it can be."

I've no problem with ambition. I do have a large problem with your definition of 'mere', unless you've demonstrated more ability on a project of equal scope. I'd also doubt that Torvalds regards the kernel as 'his', though I wouldn't presume to speak for him.

This isn't a fanboy thing. I don't do 'fan', and I'm way too old to be a 'boy'. I've never personally met Torvalds, and have no desire to, as I suspect I wouldn't much like him. I just think you're wrong.

Re:Linus Torvalds on Gnome vs KDE

[JackieBrown]

"If he feels so strongly that KDE is the best, why attack Gnome incessantly?"

Have you read have the posts here on this aricle?

Re:Linus Torvalds on Gnome vs KDE

[PaulGaskin]

"What's the man supposed to do, never make a comment on the desktop he sees for long periods, every day?"

But he doesn't use Gnome, so he doesn't see it for long periods every day.

If he's so confident that KDE is so much better, why not just let the "market" decide?

Also, he doesn't just criticize, he heaps the Gnome developers with scorn.

Check out these three examples:

"I did something better than any Gnome user has apparently ever done: I actually wrote the code to fix the thing." - Linus Torvalds

"And I find it *offensive* how Gnome people can never just admit that they can't do something." - Linus Torvalds

The following comment isn't so bad except for the fact that he goes trolling in the Gnome usability list to evangelize KDE.

Torvalds posted on the GNOME-usability list that "I personally just encourage people to switch to KDE."

You said: "I've my own opinions about why market share numbers look the way they do."

Care to elaborate? I figure Red Hat would select the desktop which suits them best, rather than playing favorites.

Re:Linus Torvalds on Gnome vs KDE

[VENONA]

Good arguments. Far be it from me claim that Torvalds wouldn't go trolling. As I said, I probably wouldn't like the guy, if I met him.

I'm *assuming* that he talks to Gnome users, or installs Gnome now and then, and kicks the tires. Yes, I know the old adage about assuming. :) I don't install it much any more, myself, being steered by popular articles, etc. So, in a sense I'm arguing that he's probably doing something I don't do myself. In my case, it's lack of time, of which he may have less. So I presented a flawed argument.

However, my overall impression is that the Gnome folk are most interested in things being simple for mass users. That impression was probably first formed with Spatial Browsing, which seemed *to me* more useful to people who didn't have a large need to maintain a deep file hierarchy. I've also heard a lot of complaints about config options delivered directly through the GUI going away. In my experience, KDE has remained fairly constant in that regard.

OK, WTF is that opinion worth? Maybe nothing. To answer your question about my take on why I think market share numbers, I think it's about decisions that major distros made some time ago. History and inertia, more than a current state of affairs. For instance, HP once loudly announced that HP-UX would go with Gnome, vice the age-old CDE. They were silent when they bagged the idea. Sun have done the same, but stayed with Gnome. But commercial Unices can't switch desktop support on short notice. They have to provide support, training, etc.

I see Red Hat, for instance, as being in the same position. When you're advertising seven years of support, changing desktops is a Big Deal. There was a moment in time when Novell bought SuSE, but went all Gnome. I think part of that was that KDE was German in origin, there were issues with the Qt libs, etc. At about the same point, HP and Sun were just climbing on the non-proprietary bandwagon, and announcing Gnome.

Be reminded that this is just my opinion, which is what you were asking about. Someday, a historian will probably lay out a timeline, and do things like lay out when the Evolution crew were acquired, and form conclusions about what effect that may have had. I just hope they do a better job than Eric Raymond and others did in announcing the death of MPE (a retarded time-sharing OS) well before it's official EOL, when it was still running large financial systems, handling (literally) billions of dollars in transactions, and supported to the level of four hours until a service engineer appears on-site.

Raymond from _The Art of Unix Programming_ (2003) "Most (Multics, IS, DTSS, TOPS-10, TOPS-20, MTS, GCOS, MPE, and perhaps a dozen others) are so long dead that they are fading from the collective memory of the computing field."

MPE EOL was originally announced to be 12/31/2006, and it was promulgated well before Raymond wrote his bit. Limited support now looks like being available until 2015. So there's one clueless historian.

Sometimes you get things wrong, even if you're trying to pay attention. But IMHO, GNOME seems most interested in adoption by the mass (as opposed to the traditional Linux technical) market, major vendors are trapped into supporting this by previous support commitments, and wouldn't change if they could, as they see it as a possible mass-market play. The one play I see Gnome making in the technical market is about capturing developer mindshare with de Icaza's fixation with .NET. Which, IMHO, which I do not regard as a good idea, even if you disregard his relationship with Novell, and the Novell/Microsoft partnership.

Re: Dolphin Attacks

[Anonymous Coward]

Do the researchers believe the attacks were porpoiseful?

It gets worse

[Anonymous Coward]

There's been a particularly heated exchange going on in the developer's blogs which started with someone describing the new desktop/plasma as "useless crap." Aaron Seigo (the above mentioned core developer) then replies in the comments "i'm tired of this shit".

Now, one of the complaints leveraged was the lack of familiarity a KDE3 user would have with the alien and unfinished Plasma desktop due to a lack of migration path from the familiar kicker/kdesktop/kmenu. After a few more exchanges (which are displayed in all their sordid glory on Planet KDE, Mr. Seigo then announces that he already had some code written to implement a more traditional menu system, but in light of being pissed off by people pointing out some pretty glaring flaws, he will not work on it anymore. Classy.

The whole thing is just childish and immature on both parts and doesn't really fill me with confidence, especially in light of the unfinished and buggy RC.

But again, the only problem with the KDE4 platform so far seems to be Plasma, and it's unfortunate since the project as a whole really seems ready to shake up the Linux desktop. Unfortunately the most visible part of it isn't up to snuff.

Re:It gets worse

[pherthyl]

Always easy to snipe on the sidelines... Developer time is limited. If Aaron spends time getting the traditional menu in shape, then it is at the expense of other, more important features. What part of that do you not understand?

Re:It gets worse

[stilborne]

urg, first, please just .. .aaron. not "mr." i hate that.

however, you missed the point of why i said what i did. it was, quite specifically, to not reward negative community behaviour. if i was a "take my ball and go home" sort of guy, i would've been gone with a lot more than a menu a long time ago.

i'm sorry you (or the grandparent poster) don't like how plasma has come around. i wish it could've gone a different way. perhaps when you try to do something really interesting that's a non-trivial amount of work that tends to push at pretty much every boundary in the frameworks (from x on up) we can have some fun story swapping sessions. until then ...

Re:It gets worse

[mattcasters]

Sometimes you just have to roll the dice. You will probably take a lot of heat for it. There will be bugs, there will be criticism and Anonymous Cowards spouting vitriol on Slashdot. That's just the way things go.

In a year from now, nobody will remember all that and I'm sure everyone will blow smoke up your ass for how well things have turned out to be and how visionary you were. Keep up the good work Aaron.

Matt

Re:It gets worse

[Anonymous Coward]

" Aaron Seigo (the above mentioned core developer) then replies in the comments "i'm tired of this shit".

He should shut the fuck up and keep coding. Talk about a cheap version of Theo De Raadt...

And yeah, KDE4 *IS* fucked up right now. Will it be in six months? Who knows. Who cares?

Re:It gets worse

[HeroreV]

The only thing that really bugs me about Plasma is that I don't know it's being done. I've never seen a rationale section or anything about why it's being created. When you initiate a massive project like this, you need to be clear about why you're doing it. I can't really see any reason for it; it just seems like a massive waste of time reinventing the wheel.

I'm sure there's some mailing list archive or something where the reason for implementing this huge change is fully explained, but for the average person it's not easy to find.

But I appreciate your work and I look forward to KDE4.

Re:It gets worse

[logixoul]

the highlights, in short: - desktop applets (SuperKaramba, Dashboard) and panel applets (kicker) are now interchangeable. in fact the notions of the Desktop and the Panel are not set in stone anymore. - it's easier to make and distribute those applets. there's mechanisms to ensure they're consistent and integrated. - new technology (QGraphicsView for one) allows hitherto impossible features such as rotating and scaling applets.

had been forecasted to October 2007

[Anonymous Coward]

putted, tooked

try "had been forecast for"

Past tense doesn't mean nail 'ed' to everything.

Re:What are the main differences between KDE &

[Anonymous Coward]

Gnome can't do these things without resorting to hacking text files.

On the other hand, that makes you 1337 lol...

Excellent news for old-farts.

[B5_geek]

I love the KDE backend (dcop, kio-slaves, et al.); {I am a little worried that it might provide an avenue for malware in the future a-la Windows}.

Good news: the memory footprint of 'Strigi' is supposed to be lower then Beagle
Great news: You can install/use KDE4 without 'Plasma' (KDE 4 eyecandy)
Awesome news: KDE-based apps should work on Mac & Windows (properly ported)

Firefox has done an awesome job of weening people off Internet Explorer as "The Internet", as more killer-apps (Amarok I am looking at you) become available on Windows it will be easier to get folks to switch.

I use Fluxbox as my WM with KDE-base and KDElibs for my backend. Conky is as fancy as it gets for my eyecandy. I look forward to KDE4 because of all the good stuff that I can make use of. I just hope to $deity that they keep the eye-candy as optional. I am not looking forward to their whole concept of active-desktop/"its where you work dude"/make it an experience that people can interact with.

Rule #1) The DE/WM is HOW you access your programs, and should be invisible to the process.
Rule #2) Just because the median processor/ram is 42-times more powerfull then it was x-years ago does not mean that your programs can be 42-times more bloated.
Rule #3) Keep everything optional. Just because you think that everybody on the planet is stupid for not wanting something, does not mean everybody actually does want it.

Re:Excellent news for old-farts.

[Mazin07]

Awesome news: KDE-based apps should work on Mac & Windows (properly ported)

Properly ported, I hope. GTK libraries in Windows meant GTK apps could be ported to Windows. Awesome, right? Well look at the mess we have now. Every GTK app brings its own libraries to Windows, and the libraries may or may not be compatible with other GTK apps (Gaim/Gimp conflicts). Other programs like Radiant and Inkscape just dumps them all in its own folder. None of them integrate well with Windows, and they suffer from poor performance and odd GUI bugs.

Since KDE is built on Qt, I'm hoping that these problems can be avoided. Also, some kind of collaboration needs to be there, so we don't get twenty different copies of the KDE libs all over our computer. It doesn't matter how good the apps are if they don't integrate well.

Re:Excellent news for old-farts.

[pherthyl]

Yeah it's not the same thing. GTK is pretty garbage on windows. Qt has been running on windows for ages and is properly integrated with the native environment.

Re:Excellent news for old-farts.

[giantsfan89]

I use Pidgin and Gnucash on Windows, and don't have any issues with how it integrates into the desktop environment. GTK2 seems to work very well.

Re:Excellent news for old-farts.

[pherthyl]

The file open/save dialog is one example of lacking integration. That might fly for something like Pidgin, but I could never deliver an app with a GTK file dialog to a customer on Windows.

Re:What are the main differences between KDE &

[Carewolf]

Maybe with configuration, but look at features in stead. Windows has way more features than GNOME. For instance just a basic thing like "Open with" in explorer. In GNOME you can not open files with applications isn't officially GNOME sanctioned to open those files, and there is no way to change that, even though the have an editor for changing fileformat bindings, it doesn't allow you to add new programs. It basically goes on like that in every GNOME application. Windows is simple much more powerfull and usefull than GNOME.

Re:END MODERATOR ABUSE

[Anonymous Coward]

I agree. "Funny" can never jump to +5.

Re:What are the main differences between KDE &

[Billly Gates]

The differences has changed so much between the 2 over the past 8 or 9 years.

At first KDE beta1 was the cool! It was the only real desktop for unix. A windowmanager does not integrate different apps together with com/dcom, ole, or dbus. KDE was supposed to be more than a filemanger and be a real development and desktop environment similiar to macos and windows.

Then gnome came into existence because Miguel back then was anti capitalist and a gnu zealot. Kde was not gnu.

Gnome was designed as just an environment that ran on another wm. Enligthenment with redhat 6.x was typically used. It sucked and offered no integration. If you ran x from the startx command (as was common those days) you would see many error messages.

Then kde2.x and gnome 2.x came out. Kde 2.0 was terrible and crashed. Then 2 years later gnome 2 came out wiht its own window manager and finally it became integrated with nice menu's and became a full desktop environment. Now kde has become bloated and its interface is no longer consistent.

KDE 4 supposed to catch back up and surpass Gnome again as it now follows the freedesktop spec and the menus have been redone. Gnome is more simplstic now but its fully integrated which was not the case until recently.

Re:What are the main differences between KDE &

[Anonymous Coward]

Alright, I'll byte! Show me where in Gnome's gconf-editor you can add/delete/edit the MIME types. (Hint - It can't be done)

I guess something that is available and working (and used by Joe Average) in every desktop environment since Windows 3.x must be too confusing for Gnome's users!

END MODERATOR ABUSE

[Hucko]

Most people's disagreement with a matter is because they believe there is a more intelligent way of dealing with the problem. How could they mark something insightful that they don't agree with, unless it changed their way of thinking? Which of course means they agree... Maybe they disagree with what you call truth? On a side note I personally favour Interesting . And your rant was completely off-topic and didn't add anything to the intelligent conversation making you a troll. By the way, I have no problems with the IQ test idea, I'd probably not pass but have no problems with not being responsible for moderating.

Re:What are the main differences between KDE &

[Kjella]

Powerusers, like other users, prefer to use the defaults when they're sane and appropriate. But the 1% that I do change are the things that annoy the hell out of me, and that 1% isn't very different. Think of it this way, you can get into any car and drive. But, you may want to adjust the mirror up, down, left, right and that separately for the one on the left side, right side and center. And don't get me started on adjusting the seat, or hanging up a CD cover on the sunscreen, or adjusting the fan or the air conditioning or change the radio frequence, volume etc. Do I use them? Quite rarely. Would I get really annoyed if I learned it was bolted down and not changable? Yes. I'm a great fan of easy setups - this is what you must do to use it in a meaningful way. I'm also a big fan of "advanced"/"expert" settings, where the user could seriously bork the application. Gnome is too much either safety scissors or scalpel. I'd rather have a swiss army knife - looks rather complicated but it's not worse than finding the one function you do need.

Re:END MODERATOR ABUSE

[Anonymous Coward]

same post different link, chaining back to an original troll post...

if the parent wants good karma post something interested, informative, insightful and a winge about moderators abusing mod points just for disagreeing with a view point isn't insightful.

we know some mods, mod badly but also meta moderation takes care of the worst abuses. Only an inexperienced moderator would mod the parent up. We cant all be experts but think before posting is your post just more noise?
redundant posts do not need down modding just ignoring... timing is everything :)

I love k3b

[Atticus83]

This isn't exactly about KDE, but I have seriously considered moving to linux simply for the K3B CD/DVD all-in-one application. There just doesn't seem to be any real substitute in Windows. The best you can hope for is to use several programs in combination with each other.

Re:I love k3b

[Ash-Fox]

This isn't exactly about KDE, but I have seriously considered moving to linux simply for the K3B CD/DVD all-in-one application. There just doesn't seem to be any real substitute in Windows. The best you can hope for is to use several programs in combination with each other.

I think Nero comes pretty close to it in functionality. Unfortunately the application itself can be of a resource hog in comparison.

Re:What are the main differences between KDE &

[asabjorn]

And there is a reason for why these developers don't change that much in their computer's configuration; they spend that time being productive in their chosen specialization which is probably why they are where they are today.

Re:What are the main differences between KDE &

[Coryoth]

In GNOME you can not open files with applications isn't officially GNOME sanctioned to open those files, and there is no way to change that Yes, there is. Select a file, right click and select Properties. In the Properties window there is an "Open With" tab which lists all the programs that are currently registered for that file type, and lets you select the default program. At the bottom there is a button "Add". Click that and it will bring up a list of applications, as well as a little expander for "Custom command" which will allow you to enter absolutely any arbitrary command you wish to run. Stick whatever program you want there, hit okay, and lo and behold that program will be in the "Open With..." options for files of that type from then on. Not that hard really.

Re:What are the main differences between KDE &

[Ruie]

I still wonder who or what that mythical power-user is, because I don't think I ever met one in person. The skript kiddie that spends 6 hours per day hunting themes and posting screen shots to forums? Some of the most knowledgeable and experienced developers I know barely change anything in their computer's configuration, even keeping the default OS X desktop image.

In between these two extremes there are people who actually use their computer. You don't have to change everything to make yourself more comfortable.

Here are a few things that I tweak/use regularly:

• Window manager: sloppy focus for the mouse, no autoraising or anything. If I want to raise a window I'll click on it, thank you very much.
• Decoration: I drag close icon to the left, with the right being sticky/minimize/maximize.
• Desktop: new desktops come with big widescreen monitors. I usually remove taskbar, put the panel in bottom left corner and put KasBar in the top right. this way the space on the left is completely free - and is the size of the regular 4:5 monitors. Great for VNC, reading papers or having a big terminal.
• On my notebook I changed desktop background to be a slideshow that changes every 20 minutes. When you concentrate on something you will perceive these to go by much faster - after 10 or 20 it is likely time for another meal.
• Konqueror !! The first thing I chased down on Kubuntu Gutsy is how to switch away from Dolphin. Doplhin is fine manager if you don't have many files. Konqueror is the best thing after the shell tools - with the order being reversed when you have images. Right now I have a window open, with several tabs open in different simulation runs, some showing particular documents and this all mixing transparently the documents on my local systems with those on remote systems (using sftp://). And if you are writing a webpage you can have local source in one table, destination public_html in another and a test display in yet another. Just drag files from local to remote when you are done editing and click refresh to display the results !
• Konsole - the first thing I do is kill the menubar and everything else that uses up space, though I now keep the tabs. There is much misunderstanding about terminals. What they are is the perfect (and only) way to display a matrix of symbols with perfect control of individual elements. If you make an image you can squeeze more info into it, but you cannot tell which exact pixel is that dot unless you use a magnifier and kruler. And, of course, you can dump output from find/grep and see it align visually.
• Sessions in Kate are wonderful if lists of files you are editing extend way past screen.
• I set my default viewer to gwenview - so I can change files by using a scrollwheel. If you have many similar files rotating the wheel makes an animation (I could just make a real animation - but why bother typing)

I think this is about it - does anyone else has tricks to share ?

Re:What are the main differences between KDE &

[Anonymous Coward]

Easy definition: A power user is somebody who looks through the control panel to see what options are available. You don't have to mess with themes continually. For example, I put the close window button on the left-hand side. Only power users would do something like that, not because they are smarter or know more, but because they are the only ones that would find this type of option, because they are curious about the system.

Display bug kills my KDE experience

[slapys]

I really don't care about any new features in KDE. It is already fast and packed with enough power to get my work done. All I want is for the KDE team to fix one annoying bug that has been in Konqueror for years. If you use the most compact view available, listing the icons from top to bottom, long filenames are drawn incorrectly, leaving artifacts all over the window. To reproduce the bug, use the small icons (from top to bottom) or list mode of Konqueror or Dolphin, navigate to a folder with lots of files/folders with long names, and scroll to the right. There is no way that I can use a file browser with a bug like this. The fact that the bug happens identically in Konqueror and Dolphin indicates that it may lie in the QT libraries. In any case, it's been listed as a Konqueror bug for years. I'm using Thunar in Xfce for now; Thunar puts more space between icons than I would like in its Compact List view, but at least it renders everything correctly. Once the KDE team decides to get around to fixing this, I'll start using KDE and recommending it to my friends.

Re:Display bug kills my KDE experience

[Ash-Fox]

All I want is for the KDE team to fix one annoying bug that has been in Konqueror for years. If you use the most compact view available, listing the icons from top to bottom, long filenames are drawn incorrectly, leaving artifacts all over the window. To reproduce the bug, use the small icons (from top to bottom) or list mode of Konqueror or Dolphin, navigate to a folder with lots of files/folders with long names, and scroll to the right.

I agree... That is a annoying bug. Do you have a bug link where we can vote on to fix it?

Re:Display bug kills my KDE experience

[slapys]

I agree... That is a annoying bug. Do you have a bug link where we can vote on to fix it?

I do now: http://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=153316

Re:Display bug kills my KDE experience

[Tweekster]

Fellow TT member?

Re:Display bug kills my KDE experience

[42forty-two42]

That screenshot is of dolphin, not konqueror. Additionally, it's not the KDE 4 version, so the bug may well already have been fixed.

Re:Display bug kills my KDE experience

[slapys]

1) I mention in the bug report that the bug occurs in Konqueror as well as in Dolphin. Should I post an additional Konqueror screenshot up there? 2) I downloaded and burnt a Suse Live CD of KDE 4 and the bug is still there.

Re:Display bug kills my KDE experience

[slapys]

Of course. I saw Armin live at Monster Massive in LA recently...amazing set

Re:Display bug kills my KDE experience

[Ash-Fox]

I do now: http://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=153316

I've given it 20 votes (maximum a person can give). Hopefully some other Slashdotters will vote it up too.

Re:Display bug kills my KDE experience

[slapys]

The bug currently has 100 votes! Thanks everyone! I also posted a screenshot of the bug happening in Konqueror.

Same experience

[amightywind]

I have been using Qt for the last 4 months and come to the same conclusion. Many of the Qt classes don't destruct properly. The toolkit is far too reliant on dynamic allocation, which is S-L-O-W and error prone. It also relies far too much on inheritance rather than composition. It doesn't use the c++ stdlib. Why QString instead of std::string? I found Qthread and friends to be more difficult to use and have fewer useful features than simple pthreads. The slot and signal event mechanism is archaic and disgusting. Templated slots and signals have been around for years. The horse is out of the barn, but the world would be better off without C++ and with more emphasis put on good C design.

Re:What are the main differences between KDE &

[Curien]

Using gconf-editor, for all intents and purposes, *is* hacking at text files.

Re:What are the main differences between KDE &

[ianare]

That's weird because on my default ubuntu 7.04 install I can right click on a file or folder -> 'open with other application' -> select from list of applications OR 'use a custom command'.
I can also right click -> 'properties' on a file or folder, there is an 'open with' and there I can add, remove, and select which application open that type of file.

Re:What are the main differences between KDE &

[Curien]

At first I agreed with you two, but then I started thinking.

o My wife spilled water in my keyboard (which I love, so I don't want to replace). The left control key doesn't work, so I have X configured to rebind the capslock key ask control.
o I have tons of non-standard apt repositories configured for different programs that I want to keep up-to-date automatically.
o I configured a 32-bit chroot environment so run WINE and Opera work with a 64-bit OS.
o I have a few locally-compiled apps, some of which I've added shell support for.
o I've customized the keyboard shortcuts, albeit mostly to mimic windows. I prefer Win+R to Alt+F2, so shoot me.
o A buncho of UI adjustments (mainly the Kicker)

OTOH, I do still have the default background.

Re:What are the main differences between KDE &

[Sigg3.net]

No MacOS customization? ...but that's because I have Yellow Dog 5.

Re:What are the main differences between KDE &

[onefriedrice]

> I don't know anything about tweaking MacOS, other than the fact that i've never seen anyone using
> a recent version of MacOS that looked like it had been customized any significant extent.

Yeah, it isn't very configurable. I'm not sure about Leopard, but in every OS X I've used there are only two sanctioned "themes," aqua and graphite. Aqua being the most common and graphite being nearly the same thing as aqua but using grey instead of blue. There is no sanctioned way to change to custom themes and there are no event sounds. You can manually change system files or run a 3rd-party app to try to do it, but I don't trust that. When it comes down to it, OS 9 was considerably more configurable than OS X in this sense.

But I agree with this discussion in that, it is plenty configurable enough for me. When I was a kid, I thought it was cool to change everything and make it look like sci-fi or whatever, but those days are past. Now that I'm older and a developer, I've found that beyond changing the desktop picture, positioning the taskbar or dock how I like it, and perhaps optimizing some menus to my workflow, I really don't change the default configuration all that much. Most things that I change relate to making me use the computer faster (get stuff done) rather than on aesthetics.

Re:What are the main differences between KDE &

[Darfeld]

I use Ubuntu and I have no problems doing that... When was the last time you used gnome aniway?

Re:What are the main differences between KDE &

[Goalie_Ca]

And this is why i currently prefer to use gnome over KDE. I find less clutter = less to learn. I use way too many different applications on a day to day basis to ever bother learning any of them. I try to stick with applications that work everywhere like vim and firefox. I find KDE3 is a little insane in terms of buttons and options. How come there is an add printer button in the file->print dialog?? There are a million other buttons and options that "waldo" (as in where's waldo) what i'm looking for.

Re:What are the main differences between KDE &

[Mistshadow2k4]

Hello, nice to meet ya. I'm no script kiddie nor do I spend time posting screenshots. I do, however, spend about 10 minutes with a new KDE installation to configure it and I change practically everything. I change the size of the taskbar and add a new one on auto-hide along the left side of the screen for applets and my favorite shortcuts. I remove all icons off the desktop and use the trash applet instead. Of course, I also change the wallpaper and select a screensaver. Then I pick out a theme, colors and window decorations. No, not all power-users are script kiddies or any such nonsense, some of us just like to have control of our system, right down to the GUI, to make as usable as possible. If that costs an extra 10 minutes every couple of months or so, no big deal.

KOffice on Windows?

[g8orade]

When will KOffice (supporting ODF) run on Windows?

Re:KOffice on Windows?

[z0M6]

It is Qt4 that makes KDE cross platform. The Koffice that is in development (v2) uses Qt4. So Koffice on windoze will be when it is done. (devs said something about during the spring)

Re:KOffice on Windows?

[g8orade]

Thanks. I saw where someone had made a successful port of KWrite as a demonstration, but have yet to see a schedule or alpha download for Windows testing. et. I'll keep an eye out.

Re:KOffice on Windows?

[Falladir]

I love KDE, but Koffice 1.x is kind of a steaming pile. Like, not even close to being able to compete with OpenOffice or Abiword+Gnumeric. (If I were to elaborate, I'd talk about the responsiveness of mouse actions in Kword, the cluttered look of the grid in a *blank* Kspread spreadsheet, and the horrible text rendering in both programs. The presentation/slideshow program is wretched too, for similar reasons. Krita is tolerable, but I far prefer GIMP).

I don't know how much will have changed in Koffice 2.0. An alpha release came out a week and a half ago. Maybe I'll test it out in a VM or something.

Re:KOffice on Windows?

[o'reor]

Well, the text-rendering issues will be mostly cured in Koffice 2.0 due to the migration to Qt4.x. And honestly, when these issues are cured, you will have no more reason to compare Abiword+Gnumeric to the whole Koffice suite and its 14 apps...

Re:KOffice on Windows?

[Falladir]

That's good to hear.

Is 14 an exact number? I only see 12 listed at www.koffice.org. Personally, I find the number of apps in Koffice more embarrassing that impressive, but if a lot more of them are mature in 2.x than they were in 1.x, that will really make it less embarrassing.

Re:KOffice on Windows?

[ajs318]

QT3 (which was GPL) could have been cross-platform, but nobody could be arsed to port it to Windows. Which goes to prove my point: Windows developers only care about releasing closed source crippled shareware, spyware and viruses.

Re:KOffice on Windows?

[marcosdumay]

As far as I know, there is a huge difference between Koffice 1 and 2. The development team made a contest to create a different UI (aimed at inovative interaction) and started to rewrite stuff.

But I also didn't see the alpha release. I don't want to spoil the surprise :)

Re:What are the main differences between KDE &

[GreatBunzinni]

I don't know about power users but KDE's philosophy of letting everything be configurable to the extreme brings wonders to the end user. For example, I'm no power user, at least according to the colloquial definition but nonetheless, thanks to KDE, I was able to tweak the desktop environment so that it helps me be more productive. For example, in my laptop, which has a small screen, I configured KDE so that the panel is placed vertically along the left side of the screen, automatically popping up and hiding whenever I want. I also configured KDE to add a second horizontal panel in the bottom of the screen that only shows the application tabs. In my desktop, which has a 19'' 1440x900 screen, I tweaked KDE so that the KDE panel to automatically hide/show whenever I want. Then we have the window behaviour teaks. When I double-click the window's title bar the windows maximize and I tweaked KDE so that some windows, like my IM client's chat windows, stay always on top and are shown on all desktops. Last but not least, we have the windowing features like the "maximize only vertically" and "maximize only horizontally" that are invaluably useful, along with the "always on top" window flag. Simply great stuff.

If we look at those individual tweaks, the first thing we realize is that the KDE options which made them possible may sound whimsical. I mean, an option to define where and how a precise window of a certain application is shown when it is displayed? Yet, what we realize when we think about it for a moment is that no one in their right mind expects anyone to tweak all those options. On the other hand, what KDE's vast tweaking potential does offer is a way for each and every user to be able to adapt KDE to their particular use pattern instead of being forced to adapt to whatever default behaviour was configured by someone. It may take a single tweak for a user to feel perfectly confortable with KDE but what we must understand is that not everyone likes the same thing. So, in order for each and every KDE user to be able to perform their single tweak, KDE must support a whole universe of configuration options in order to support whatever feature every single user may wish.

On a side note, the users aren't the only people tweaking KDE. All distros perform their fair share of customization. The difference between KDE and some desktop environments like the windows shell or GNOME is that in order to customize them, the developers will have to break out their compilers and write their own features. With KDE it only takes a few strategically placed mouse clicks.

Re:What are the main differences between KDE &

[FooBarWidget]

Why would I want to add my own MIME types? I shouldn't have to. If I don't have to then I won't need a MIME type editor GUI.

And this is exactly what GNOME's doing - there's a sensible default database of MIME types. I've never felt the need to edit the MIME types, nor should I have to feel the need. This applies to other areas of GNOME as well.

Re:What are the main differences between KDE &

[zsau]

Most things that I change relate to making me use the computer faster (get stuff done) rather than on aesthetics.

And it's really in this regard the fact that Windows and Mac OS X are unconfigurable becomes obvious. (For my part, I don't usually even bother setting a desktop wallpaper. The limits of my visual customisation is just to make the colors less garish.) They're both "take it or leave it" for the most part. Do you find the taskbar irritable, or the application-centred focus unusable? Then you can't use Windows or the Mac.

For the first five years I was using GNU/Linux and FreeBSD I was one of the people trying to configure their system as much as possible. But about five years ago, I came up with a system I largely liked and since then I've never made any large changes and stuck with them --- so I rarely make changes at all. (Once every now and again I think, "I wonder what [KDE/Enlightenment/WindowMaker/other thing I used to use] is like nowadays" and I give it a try during free time, but I never expect to stay switched.)

Re:END MODERATOR ABUSE

[Anonymous Coward]

There is an even easier way: get rid of the moderation system altogether. Actually, I don't even see what it's appeal is. The moderation of any given message often has no correlation to its value to the discussion, and the great majority of messages which complain about moderation are childish and tedious. This means that filtering is useless. Slashdot is *already* a system where people may post comments; having the moderation metadiscussion adds nothing to its value.

Re:What are the main differences between KDE &

[Anonymous Coward]

hmm,
opens a folder in nautilus, right clicks on file, clicks properties,
selects 'open with' tab, presses +add, picks other app from the list (or clicks 'use a custom command')

works for me.

Re:What are the main differences between KDE &

[Fireflymantis]

For instance just a basic thing like "Open with" in explorer. In GNOME you can not open files with applications isn't officially GNOME sanctioned to open those files, and there is no way to change that, even though the have an editor for changing fileformat bindings, it doesn't allow you to add new programs. This is downright incorrect. Right now on my desktop I have a mp3 file. I right clicked on it and there is a "Open with" sub menu. In there I have a nice list of apps that can open mp3s. At the bottom is an item "Open with Other Application". If I click that, I get the big list of apps available on my system, or alternately I can type in a custom command at the bottom of the dialog.

After opening with custom command, it will thereafter show up in the "Open with" sub menu. If I want to make that program the new default, I can go into the properties dialog of the file and go to the Open With tab. Can select there what app you want to use with mp3s.

Re:What are the main differences between KDE &

[Anonymous Coward]

Funny. My memory of it was that back in the Red Hat 6 era, KDE was mediocre but Gnome 1.4 was a great highly configurable desktop which you could easily use with a beautiful/feature-filled window manager like enlightenment. Then Gnome 2.0 came out, removing all the option for the sake of being "user friendly", and tying into the boring and mediocre metacity, and I was forced to switch to KDE and never look back.

Re:What are the main differences between KDE &

[cecil_turtle]

Agreed. From a fresh install of Ubuntu I actually spend more time configuring Firefox than I do the OS/desktop itself. Gnome gets out of your way and allows you to work, that's why I like it. From a fresh Windows install (XP or 2k3 Server) I spent most of my configuration time turning off stupid user warnings and un-hiding the useful information. Vista hasn't gotten any better in that regard, arguably worse.

Re:What are the main differences between KDE &

[nurb432]

I would also tend to agree, most power users want to get WORK done, and fooling around with icons and magical settings doesn't really help that happen, its all about the applications not the desktop, or OS underneath..

Re:What are the main differences between KDE &

[marcansoft]

The point is not to change everything. The point is to be able to change everything. If you look at my desktop, it isn't much changed from the default. I have an extra kicker panel on top with a few useful applets and I use the Polyester style, but other than that I haven't tweaked things much.

However, there are dozens of little tiny obscure features that I use and love, and that wouldn't exist if KDE weren't so configurable. Examples: I have a "stay on top" button on the window titlebars, which I use fairly often, I have several windows configured with custom settings through "Special Window Settings" (to make them show up on the right desktop, for example), I've disabled icons on my desktop altogether, I've tweaked my keyboard shortcuts and configured the extra keys on my keyboard for common actions, and a whole bunch of other little things that I've added over the years. These are less than 1% of the available options, but the point is that they're the 1% that I care about.

Re:What are the main differences between KDE &

[onefriedrice]

> And it's really in this regard the fact that Windows and Mac OS X are unconfigurable becomes obvious.

Both Windows and Mac OS X may be less configurable in this respect, but I would just emphasize that it doesn't decrease my efficiency at all, and it probably increases the efficiency of many other users. Here's why:

Tools contribute a lot more to efficiency than many things that would be configured in the window manager. For this reason, it is possible for me to be very efficient anywhere, even in Windows as long as I install a decent shell and terminal, install some vital command-line gnu tools, and install one or more script runtimes (I use perl). I also am dependent upon vim for efficiency in many things, but that's just me. Once I've got that, I don't care about much else that has to do with configuring the window manager. I just need it to switch me between processes and that's about it. Each window manager or desktop (Windows, aqua, kde, gnome, or even fluxbox) does things a little differently, but honestly the differences won't contribute to or degrade efficiency on a large scale: it's the availability of the tools that is important (and fortunately, the important tools are available on any platform, although it's too bad Windows doesn't come with any). A lot of people try to argue that a window manager is better than another in terms of workflow efficiency, but it's nonsense. You can learn and get used to any modern window manager and use it just about as effectively as someone using a different window manager, but if these vital tools are gone you're hosed.

Now I'll tell you why OS X is probably better for new or casual users in terms of efficiency: casual users don't know how to write perl scripts to perform mundane or repetitive tasks, and they don't know how to use grep or the other tools that make us more experienced users effective, but Apple has succeeded in creating smart gui front-ends to these tools or features that really work well. The three things I am referring to are AppleScript (which has been around a very long time), Spotlight (which also has comparable implementations on Windows and other platforms), and Automator (which is like a front-end to AppleScript which lets you do repetitive tasks without knowing any scripting at all). Even I use these tools sometimes; they're dead simple to understand and they certainly increase efficiency more than window manager options.

Re:Why bother?

[One Childish N00b]

Yes, because the licence and terms of a product's code is directly related to it's quality. Oh wait.

Re:What are the main differences between KDE &

[ozmanjusri]

Windows is essentially locked as it is, even with those "power users'" tools.

Windows is infinitely configurable by power users, often remotely.

All you need to do is persuade the regular users to click on the right web link or email attachment, and you can do what you want with their box.

Re:What are the main differences between KDE &

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm sorry; you seem to have confused "knowledgeable developers" with "mac users."

Re:What are the main differences between KDE &

[Ash-Fox]

There are options for just about everything, so you can tweak your desktop to be just the way you want it.

Here is one of my favorite options in kpdf.

Re:What are the main differences between KDE &

[Ash-Fox]

does anyone else has tricks to share ?

• kpdf has a checkbox to stop obeying DRM.
• Yakuake is a awesome Konsole based terminal, it works similar to how Quake's terminal pops down when you hit tilda.
• I use fish:// for file access over SSH instead of SFTP.

Re:What are the main differences between KDE &

[dbIII]

Unfortunatly the gnome stuff broke bits of enlightenment (paticularly cross-platform compatibility) and the lead gnome developers of the time did not work well with others or even see that cross-platform compatibility was a good thing. This all changed but by then enlightenment had moved back to being it's own project.

OPEN source software

[Bill, Shooter of Bul]

We know whats going on, If you want to see the state of the code, they have nightly builds. They discuss the progress warts and all in public forums. They can't just lie about a release happening in six months, pretend its going to happen until a month from the finish. You just don't get that kind of visibility with Microsoft. Which is a shame, what they do is very difficult. Its all a big ball of mud system, everything can affect anything. If it doesn't play nice with any of their technologies, they get yelled at. I'm really just amazed Vista works at all. Not going to use it, but its interesting in the same way the duesneburg was.

Summing up the responses....

[jjohnson]

Bah! What do I need Plasma for? I arrange small rocks in a grid and emulate xterm myself! My refresh rate is up to 0.00006 Hz! It's good enough for me, it's good enough for anyone!

Christ, what a bunch of e-peen waving. So you don't use KDE. Don't piss on all the users who like it and the developers who put so much work into it.

Re:What are the main differences between KDE &

[yanyan]

o My wife spilled water in my keyboard (which I love, so I don't want to replace).

Which, the keyboard or the wife?

Re:What are the main differences between KDE &

[Anonymous Coward]

Aparantly I am one of these mythical creatures. When I get a new setup I like to spend about an hour looking at what options are available and choosing the ones that best suit my workflow.
I do this with Apps too.

With KDE that means setting up the toolbar on the left side of my screen (I find this less painful on a widescreen), Adding a nice Wallpaper. Setting the colours to a nice dark neutral theme, adding an always on top button to the top of every window, setting up a keyboard switcher with the keyboard languages I use with a global switch & keyboard shortcuts to switch between layouts. Assigning all my most used applications to the multimedia keys on my keyboard. They are simple things but things I prefer to have and given the choice between not having them and having to wade through some extra configuration options I will definately take the former.

While I agree that good defaults are essential there is a place for configuration options.... I would dare say that most of your friends have not used a system where there is much to be gained from customising it terribly. Take "always on top" for example - you don't want to enable it by default - it is way too easy for somebody to shoot themselves in the foot with it if they don't understand properly how the feature works. Use "always on top" & "maximise" together to see what I mean. However it can be oh so useful - Suppose I am creating a 3d model & I want to use a 2D image as reference... Typically with "always on top" I can bring up my image collection program - locate the image open - the image in its own window and put that "always on top"... while placed in a corner of the screen that I am not using I can work with my modelling app "maximised" and still see the reference image. This is a big time saver.

Secondly I think a desktop system should be flexible and accomodating... If I have previously worked with Mac Workstations I should be able to configure my desktop so that the buttons on the tops of windows are where I am used to them being, I should be able to have most of the system shortcuts to what I am used to having them... This requires configurability and I think is something to be praised.

Re:What are the main differences between KDE &

[Ruie]

I use fish:// for file access over SSH instead of SFTP.

I used fish myself a lot - it is great if one only has SSH shell. However, in some places (like University of Michigan), there is too much information in the welcome message which confuses it. I also believe that sftp is somewhat faster - when both source and target are on 100 Mbit or faster network.

So now I try sftp first and then type fish if that does not work.

Re:What are the main differences between KDE &

[Curien]

>> My wife spilled water in my keyboard (which I love, so I don't want to replace).

> Which, the keyboard or the wife?

Yes. :-)

Re:What are the main differences between KDE &

[Anonymous Coward]

Er....I don't think *anyone* can foresee all filetypes, file extensions, executable associations, or MIME types.

Right now I need to be able to add MIME types for files that Gnome doesn't know about (*.S, *.s, *.asm, *.hex, and a bunch of others).

So, yea, it really does help to be able to customize MIME types.

Goodbye KDE

[Anonymous Coward]

As a long-time KDE user, I have to say that this is the end of the line for me. It looks to me like someone over at KDE thought "let's implement shiny widgets and a new menu since that's what Microsoft did!" At this point, KDE 4 resembles nothing so much as a failed clone of Vista. And I don't put much faith in Novell's supposedly "scientific" survey that "proves" the benefits of Kickoff. I find a tabbed menu system that's shoved into a little box counterintuitive.

But that's just me. I don't pretend to speak for any community or any kind of user (new/old). Some people should stop acting as if they are.

Not quite...

[jensend]

To be on par with GNOME history (ah, the heady days of 1.4->2.0) they'd have to give you the buggy and less functional http://www.gnome.org/projects/nautilus/>new filemanager as default and then kill the maintenance of the former filemanager so your option of using it soon disappears. After all, choices are confusing to users, so the correct thing to do is to make all the wrong choices for them so they don't have to make any wrong choices themselves.

Sounds great, but does it...

[SanityInAnarchy]

In KDE -- in ANY KDE app -- I can type KIO URLs. What this means is that Unix paths are a subset of what I can open and save to.

Other examples: zip:/home/sanity/foo.zip/bar.png -- throw it in Gwenview and, rather than unzipping the gallery somewhere, I just view as-is. Or kate zip:/home/sanity/foo.odt/content.xml -- apparently, it's read-only, but still pretty damned cool. Konqueror and Dolphin tend to discover these kinds of things on their own -- clicking a zip doesn't open file-roller or ark or anything similar in dolphin, it just opens it as a folder, transparently switching to the "zip" interface.

Or the ssh access. fish://user@host/ and it's as if I've mounted their filesystem. I mean, sure, I use ssh itself most of the time, but there's something almost beautifully blasphemous about using GUI editors and tools on a remote machine, especially when they don't have to know they're doing it. (Obviously Kate works, but so does KWord, Krita... like I said, any KDE app. Imagine that -- KWord fish://root@webserver/etc/apache2/httpd.conf)

And that's just what I've sort of picked up casually, with things like tip of the day.

I don't mean to disrespect Rox, nor am I completely defending the idea of software bloat, but we do actually use some of that "crap in the background" -- and once you get past the boot time, KDE 3, even, is pretty usable on really pathetic hardware. (Also, I may have to use Rox a bit to know if it can do what I want -- I tend to use the commandline for 90% of my file management, and Dolphin/Konq for 10% (including just showing off how freakin cool it is.)

You mentioned scripting? Looks like KDE 4 is planning that, if there isn't EcmaScript (JavaScript) all over the place already.

I forget whose sig it was, but it fits beautifully: "We do what we must because we can."

Re:Sounds great, but does it...

[David Gerard]

KDE wants MEMORY. Pathetic CPU is fine, memory needs to be 384MB to be happy IME. As far back as 3.0.

Re:Sounds great, but does it...

[SCHecklerX]

You are sort of missing the point. The beauty with rox scripting isn't that it's built in. It is that it uses the stuff already on the OS using just file conventions. Bash, Perl, Whatever. Because it does its gui stuff via standard filesystem conventions (put this icon in the directory to make it the icon for the directory, put this xml file in the directory for context menu stuff you can do with the directory), there is really NO learning curve, and you have the flexibility to use any number of system tools to achieve what you need to do as a system admin or user (ie, you don't need to be a programmer with in-depth knowledge of the filemanager and how it wants you to do things).

I'm guessing that's the Linux release date...

[r_jensen11]

so when can I run it on Windows?

Sorry to have to disagree

[John Jamieson]

I don't know of anyone who has purchased MS office and uses more than 10% of the total features in the suite.
Does that mean most features should not be there? No, someone needs them, just not many. That does not make them useless. For the one percent of people who need them they may be make or break features.

P.S. Yes, I have mod points, but modding you down because we don't see eye to eye would be just wrong. And modding your parent up would also be wrong as I don't agree. (why does it seem that the stories that you could mod properly are also the ones where you just feel you have to reply to as well? lol)

well, it all depends...

[Anubis350]

...on what you're doing. When I'm coding, all my WM (be it OSX aqua, xfce, whatev) does is act as a manager for my shell windows, a text editor, and the occasional browser window. OTOH, I use my computer for more than just coding, and when I'm *not* coding, it gets used for quite a bit more, and having something more than a screen full of terminal windows is kinda nice :-)

GNOME fanboy

[fozzmeister]

Wants to know why I should pay attention to this? I switched fully to GNOME in nineteen ninety something because of all the UI crack. I'm wondering whether I should look again at KDE now?

Re:What are the main differences between KDE &

[Anonymous Coward]

KDE aims for a Windows-ish philosophy of "everything should be configurable". There are options for just about everything, so you can tweak your desktop to be just the way you want it. This can be intimidating for newbies, but then KDE can also be configured to be very newbie friendly, and indeed many distros already do configure it that way. Most distros configure KDE to look and feel like a very bad rip off of Windows and also somehow compile KDE to make it about as stable as Win95. Compiling it from source makes a massive difference, so it's definitely the distros fault.

GNOME, on the other hand, aims for a Mac OS X philosophy of only presenting to the user what they really need to use to get the job done, with some options hidden and others nonexistant. This is designed to be easy for just about anyone to pick up easily (probably why the Ubuntu team chose it) but it absolutely sucks for configurability. GNOME is very configurable. Much more so than OS X or Windows. In the last two years of Gnome usage after six or so years of KDE usage before that, I haven't felt the need to tweak much. The defaults for the most part are good. I've yet to come across a program where I wanted to configure something there wasn't an option for it.

When I used KDE I'd spend days configuring things and still be tweaking settings months later. When I install Ubuntu, I only have to do two things: Get rid of the brown (Clearlooks-classic+Tango) and set the toolbars to text beside icons. After that I just don't feel the need to tweak anything.

Re:What are the main differences between KDE &

[Anonymous Coward]

In the same sense as using Windows' registry editor is hacking at text files. In other words, there's a passing resemblance. For example, both involve using a computer.

Re:What are the main differences between KDE &

[Anonymous Coward]

Every single one of the above mentioned tweaks is available in GNOME as well. No compiler required.

Re:What are the main differences between KDE &

[bcmm]

I seriously doubt KDE will be usable as a WM on Windows, because I don't think there is any way to replace the existing WM.

It would be feasible for it to be a shell replacement though (that is, use it instead of explorer.exe). However, I have no reason to believe that the devs are implementing this. Can anyone shed any light on this?

If they did, it wouldn't be a straight port of plasma/kicker/dolphin/konqueror anyway. A Windows shell needs to fill a number of the windows-specific functions of explorer if it's going to be at all useful, not least such stuff as working as a Windows system tray and so on.

Re: oh, and btw..

[Anonymous Coward]

..GET OFF MY LAWN!!!

Re:What are the main differences between KDE &

[ByOhTek]

I would be one. I typically make things gentler on the eyes, but easier to spot.

It takes me about half an hour to get the Windows XP/2K desktop to look good IMO, and have as much functionality as it can provide. It takes me about 45 mins for KDE, but it ends up looking quite a bit better than Windows IMO, when I'm done. I only download one custom component for each: Microsoft's Virtual Desktop Manager for Windows, and the Crystal window decoration theme for KDE.

Aside from that, enlarging the fonts, setting the anti-aliasing settings to values I like, changing the colors to be more gentle on the eyes (text fields with the powder-blue in the Windows pallet instead of the harsher white, etc.)

Most defaults tend to either try to catch your eye, or be harsh on it. I tend for the relaxing "eyes glide across it" feel, that doesn't draw your attention, or look harsh.

Dolphin is neat, but unKDEish

[Random BedHead Ed]

I'm excited about most of these changes (if only because of what will be done with them once the developers are used to them) but when I installed Kubuntu Gutsy I got an early glimpse of the KDE 3.5 version of the Dolphin file manager, and it's a bit of a letdown. It's neat for what it is, and very easy to use. In fact, it's simplified in a rather smart way, with some neat utilities cleverly docked on the left and right sidebars. But the thing that has always drawn me to KDE is Konqueror. About 90% of KDE users will echo that.

Heck, I even use Konqueror when I'm in GNOME sometimes. I've never had a file management app that can access so many protocols in such a standard way (URLs, so smb:// for a Windows share, sftp:// for and SSH share, and it can even speak POP, IMAP and a wide range of others because of a subsystem called KIO). Yet Konqueror's perfectly simple to use. If you didn't know the advanced features were there you could use it like a simple Windows Explorer or Finder interface and be happy, so I'm not sure why the developers thought Dolphin was needed. Why not outfit Konqueror with a way to lose its address bar and have some sort of Simple Mode?

At any rate, to turn Dolphin off, go into your System Configuration and find the File Associations. Under Inode and Directory you need to change the order of Konqueror and Dolphin. Fixed.

Re:Dolphin is neat, but unKDEish

[Krishnoid]

In fact, it's simplified in a rather smart way, with some neat utilities cleverly docked on the left and right sidebars. But the thing that has always drawn me to KDE is Konqueror. About 90% of KDE users will echo that.

Unless more users are drawn to KDE in part because a simpler file manager is available, in which case that 90% number would go down, wouldn't it?

Re:Dolphin is neat, but unKDEish

[Random BedHead Ed]

I don't think it's likely to have that effect, since Konqueror's advanced features never really got in the way of basic file management. The really big things that could attract users are the results of the re-architecture. Getting nifty widgets without having to install Superkaramba will be a big improvement (if you like nifty widgets).

GNOME - Simple Desktop Environment

[Anonymous Coward]

In breaking news, the GNOME project has announced a name change. "The GNOME project will henceforth be called SDE for the Simple Desktop Environment. We have determined what choices will be available to the user and have found that our user base prefers little to no choice and bows to their new SDE masters. Really, simpletons want simple choices. We give it to them as well as including a sophisticated File dialog and snappy icons. Our new name will position us to counter the threat from the KDE camp who attempt to confuse their highly intelligent users with way too many choices. We expect that the release of KDE 4.x will finally overwhelm them and they will come rushing home to us. Besides, we don't use that problematic QT toolkit. Who needs cross platform support? Again, too many choices. Ubuntu and SDE are all anyone could ever need. Honest. Trust us. We use scientific principals and stuff."

Re:What are the main differences between KDE &

[marcosdumay]

"Why would I want to add my own MIME types? I shouldn't have to. If I don't have to then I won't need a MIME type editor GUI."

There is a big jump in that. Yes, you SHOULDN'T have to edit MIME types. Now, that doesn't mean that you DON'T have to.

C++ vs. hand coded assembly

[Mad Merlin]

What, as a programmer, can I do with C++ that I can't do with, say, hand coded assembly? I mean, why do we need all this bloat, all this added complexity, all this cruft? I understand that C++ is portable, but so is hand coded assembly, that, too, has been ported to (for example) Windows. How much better off we programmers have become now that we have access to the multitude of non-standard development environments, libraries and tools?

Re:What are the main differences between KDE &

[marcosdumay]

Thank God somebody gets it. I can't live with Windows focus system, so I always change it. I may lose a few seconds every time I am on a new system and can't access my home disk, but it pays on a matter of minutes.

Some people have differen tastes, so they'd prefer to change some other obscure setting. They'll also spend seconds changing it, but it you take the setting away from them they'll be less pleasured about the system (and probably less productive too). All this people together add up to the entire KDE userbase :)

Now, excuse-me where I find out where do I activate that "stay on top" button.

available on XP

[HeroreV]

WPF, WCF, DirectX 10, and WF are all very useful for developers Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF), Windows Communication Foundation (WCF), and Windows Workflow Foundation (WF) are part of the .NET Framework 3.0, which is available for Windows XP. No matter how nice they are, they're not going to convince anyone to move to Vista.

correction

[HeroreV]

That should be: "The only thing that really bugs me about Plasma is that I don't know why it's being done."

Why is it that Digg allows users to edit their comments for a few seconds, while Slashdot doesn't, when Slashdot is more oriented towards computer geeks and programmers?

Not so much.

[SanityInAnarchy]

I'll agree that it's a poor design to require so much memory to boot, but give it some swap and you're good. I've found that on very old hardware, once it's properly booted and a good chunk of things swapped out, it performs decently enough.

Re:Not so much.

[David Gerard]

I must admit this was running OpenOffice and Mozilla in 2002 in KDE 3.0 on FreeBSD 4.6, in 192MB memory on a PII-400. Everything was MUCH happier when I took the memory up to 640MB. The box in question is still the household server.

Re:What are the main differences between KDE &

[compro01]

changing the WM (shell) is just a single registry edit, on XP and earlier anyway. no idea if this works for vista.

change the "shell" value at (HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE or HKEY_CURRENT_USER)\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Winlogon so it has the path of the new shell (C:\newWM\newWM.exe for example) rather than explorer.exe

wikipedia has a short list of some of the current alternative WMs for windows (link)

Re:What are the main differences between KDE &

[HeroreV]

I love having thousands of options covering the smallest of details. I only ever change a small percentage of them, but I really really want to have those options, and other people are going to want different options. If I have to choose between "only a few options, and not many of the ones I want" or "tons of options, including the ones I want", I'd definitely choose the tons of options.

applications

[HeroreV]

What kind of bizarre version of Windows are you running that comes with even one third of the applications that KDE provides?

Re:What are the main differences between KDE &

[orcrist]

I would also tend to agree, most power users want to get WORK done, and fooling around with icons and magical settings doesn't really help that happen, its all about the applications not the desktop, or OS underneath..

That's a good philosophy. That's why, when I'm on the command line I don't bother with bash or job control or any of that shit - it's straight sh for me, all the way. Aliases? Who needs'em. The $PATH variable? Why muck around with shit like that... it's about the *applications* man, just type the whole path to each app you want to execute, and don't give me any tab-completion either: it just gets between me and my apps. Pipes? WTF for? I can just type the output of the last application into next one...

Re:What are the main differences between KDE &

[RAMMS EIN]

I thought "power user" was somewhat generally understood as a very demanding kind of user. The kind who has made a significant effort to set up everything just so (things like small icons to fit many of them on the screen, lots of eye candy, etc.), but who are still Users and thus stop short of taking matters into their own hands, instead complaining to system administrators and developers when something isn't right.

Relevant to this discussion is that power users will have memorized many of the obscure settings, menus, and perhaps keyboard shortcuts and applications that normal users don't know about. Thus, if KDE changes these, power users will be more affected than pretty much anyone else - normal users will probably only really notice a few changes, and, generally, people won't care much, because the desktop environment is just a tool they use to get work done. But power users, having spent a lot of time to get the desktop just the way they want it, and being proud of the work, will see a lot of their work undone or messed up...and that hurts.

Re:What are the main differences between KDE &

[FooBarWidget]

Oh yes it does. In the past 2 years I don't remember having the need to add my own MIME type. And I just installed Ubuntu (with GNOME) 2 months ago. GNOME already provides a very extensive database of MIME types.

Re:What are the main differences between KDE &

[bcmm]

A window manager is not the same thing as a desktop shell.

Re:What are the main differences between KDE &

[ESqVIP]

Ah, what would be of Slashdot without car analogies :)

But as far as this analogy goes, you are describing what every car allows you to customize (i.e., these are the settings even Gnome and OS X allow you to change in their respective Preferences areas). KDE's extensive options (and tweaking apps for any environment) would be more about offering lots of unusual changes. Extending the analogy, overly long menus would be similar to giving the user an instrument panel that looks more like a huge cockpit, making even the most commonly used features hard to find and requiring a longer learning curve.

There's your problem!

[SanityInAnarchy]

Neither OpenOffice nor Mozilla are built on the Qt framework, so you're running two separate GUI libraries.

That, and both OpenOffice and Mozilla are just about the most bloated choices you could make there. I don't know what it was like in 2002, but Konqueror and KOffice are damned good now, and Konq in particular is MUCH lighter than Firefox where it works.

Re:There's your problem!

[David Gerard]

2007 isn't 2002 ;-) OpenOffice was EVEN FATTER than it is now - and it didn't actually work on FreeBSD, so I used the Linux binary under emulation - Firefox/Firebird/Phoenix was still called "mozilla/browser", and KOffice was a barely functional toy and Konqueror wasn't much better. These days OOo is slimmer and faster than it was five years ago (it's gone from "morbidly obese" to merely "grossly obese"), KOffice is actually usable and Konqueror is my file manager of choice and not at all bad as a browser.

Heh,

[Anonymous Coward]

January 11th is my birthday.