Interview with Sebastian Kuegler, KDE Developer

invisibastard writes "Linux Tech Daily has an interview with KDE's Sebastian Kuegler. Sebastian talks about the KDE 4.0 release event, goes into detail about how KDE has improved its processes and much more. '[...] there are many easy ways to help. The most obvious is helping people installing KDE, answering questions on forums, IRC and other media. Lately, we're getting also an increased amount of requests for speakers. Often local LUGs are interested in talks by KDE knowledgeable people. It might sound a bit scary, representing KDE in your local LUG, but it's really what KDE is about. Everybody comes from a local community, that is where our grassroots are. People often don't think that they are entitled to represent KDE, but that's just not the case at all. In fact, the marketing and promo team have a hard time finding enough speakers for all events. Slides are usually available, so it doesn't need all that much preparation.'

Comments

New processes

[Anonymous Coward]

Sebastian talks about the KDE 4.0 release event, goes into detail about how KDE has improved its processes

You mean like their new and utterly silly KDE 4.0 Release Process?

KDE should split the codebase into the "Framework" code and the "Environment" code. Then at least they can have separate releases and versions for each, allowing them to avoid the utterly ridiculous 4.0 non-release release fiasco.

Re:New processes

[oever]

Personally, I was skeptical about the KDE 4.0 release too, initially. But given the scope and size of the project it was unavoidable and did not turn out bad at all. You should compare KDE 4.0 with Linux 2.6.0. There too, the problem of chicken (stable finished code) and egg (large userbase) caused delays which led Linus to make a release. The label '2.6.0' finally got distros to shift to the new release and accelerated stabilization.

We are now seeing the same for KDE. Before the schedule became so strict, people were working on the libraries mainly. Since last November progress towards stable and compelling applications went very fast and currently KDE 4.0 is not complete in terms of ported applications, but is a very nice environment to develop for and is perfectly nice to use. This desktop has high potential for the well-integrated sexyness that is the hallmark of KDE.

Re:New processes

[dlevitan]

Personally, I was skeptical about the KDE 4.0 release too, initially. But given the scope and size of the project it was unavoidable and did not turn out bad at all. You should compare KDE 4.0 with Linux 2.6.0. There too, the problem of chicken (stable finished code) and egg (large userbase) caused delays which led Linus to make a release. The label '2.6.0' finally got distros to shift to the new release and accelerated stabilization.

dWe are now seeing the same for KDE. Before the schedule became so strict, people were working on the libraries mainly. Since last November progress towards stable and compelling applications went very fast and currently KDE 4.0 is not complete in terms of ported applications, but is a very nice environment to develop for and is perfectly nice to use. This desktop has high potential for the well-integrated sexyness that is the hallmark of KDE. Unfortunately releasing 4.0 like this makes KDE look bad. I really doubt distributions will include it as a default option until it becomes more polished. Granted, I never used KDE much before 3.0, but IIRC, 3.0 was a big improvement over 2.0 in functionality and elegance. No, it wasn't perfect, but it was much more polished than 4.0. The problem is that KDE did so well with the 3.5 branch that no users except for developers are going to want to switch over to something that is not as stable or as polished.

That's one of the same problems that Microsoft messed up with - how do you take something that people mostly liked (2000 and XP) and make it better? Microsoft came out with Vista (which is worse) and KDE came out with 4.0 (which is worse than 3.5 feature and polish wise). Now, in a year 4.1 and 4.2 will probably get close to the 3.5 branch, but I'm just worried that KDE's reputation might suffer in the mean time. Granted, I would rather see KDE 4.0 than Vista (at least 4.0 has a lot of very cool features that will make the desktop much better when they're actually finished), but I wish they had at least stated that 4.0 was a developer release and that users should not switch until 4.1 - it would make things much smoother in my opinion.

Re:New processes

[pizzach]

To summarize: The closer something is to perfection, the easier it is to screw it up when trying to improve it.

Re:New processes

[junglee_iitk]

Oh come on! Open early, open often is the mantra of open source, remember? All the problems with KDE 4 being "unprofessional", "incomplete" etc. are only coming from people who expected that KDE 4 will be awesome and revolutionary. Although it has a lot to do with marketing (the same kind of marketing that is being discussed in TFA), but also the fact that KDE is THE desktop environment for Linux newbies.

Or do you want them to follow enlightenment release cycle instead? "Until everything is finished" - tada! They even have different release cycles for libraries and applications. And they have yet to release 0.17. I mean, at this rate, even Duke Nukem Forever will get released before they reach 1.00

Re:New processes

[Kjella]

Since last November progress towards stable and compelling applications went very fast and currently KDE 4.0 is not complete in terms of ported applications, but is a very nice environment to develop for and is perfectly nice to use. Well, the "very nice environment to develop for" is because Qt4 is something like 2+ years old. Qt 4.0.0 was rather terrrible, the current version is great (kde libs on top or not). As for nice to use, that's not what I heard. I'm sure it'll get there, and I think the design goals are vastly superior to GTKs, but it's not quite there for the end user yet. Unless Nokia really screws up Trolltech, I think QT will be the dominating toolkit for Linux very soon.

Re:New processes

[RiotingPacifist]

but also the fact that KDE is THE desktop environment for Linux newbies. While i am a linux newbie, is this really true?
i switched because i found that gnome limited me too much (although this was before i was confident with the CLI) and xfce was well ugly ( having tested it recently i realise that this isnt true but i still think that kde looks nice *disclaimer* for me *disclaimer* )

also i recently suggested kde over gnome to a newer newbie and he felt that gnome was better, i think its not a question of newness but taste. ( although stupidly i said that xfce probably wasn't worth trying, should have encouraged him to try everything like i did)

I have tried a few light DE/WM and found that fluxbox was nice but i never spent the time to set it up, maybe id like it more if i was a 'pro' and had set it quickly?

Re:New processes

[pherthyl]

IIRC, 3.0 was a big improvement over 2.0 in functionality and elegance

You're looking back with rose coloured glasses. KDE 3.0 had a hideous default look and wasn't terribly stable. The only reason it was reasonably featureful was because not a lot of the core changed from KDE 2. But then it turned into a great series, just like KDE 4 will eventually.

Re:New processes

[Anonymous Coward]

All the problems with KDE 4 being "unprofessional", "incomplete" etc. are only coming from people who expected that KDE 4 will be awesome and revolutionary.

The KDE developers themselves have flat out stated that KDE 4.0 is not intended for end users as it is incomplete.

Or do you want them to follow enlightenment release cycle instead?

No, I expect them to be honest with their release processes. The reasons stated for releasing KDE 4.0 in an incomplete state was that the framework was complete and that it gave developers an opportunity to complete development of their code on the new frameworks. If that is the case, why not have separate version numbers and releases for the "Framework" and "Environment" components? They could have released "KDE Framework 4.0" while "KDE Environment 4.0" waited until it was complete. No confusion, no problem, no mucking with version numbers and endless rubbish where they bluff and try to redefine the words "stable", "release" and "Beta". It isn't that hard.

Enlightenment is a strawman. It's problems stem from lack of manpower and an anal retentive development model. Why is it so hard to understand that perhaps a middle-ground between the KDE and E release processes might be best?

Re:New processes

[Kjella]

One thing is release early, release often. Another thing is trying to bluff that this more stable and complete than it really it. I saw many wonderful cases of rationalization going on when KDE4 was released. If you want "KDE 4.0.0 final" to mean "somewhat working compile" then that's fine, Microsoft does it all the time. Just don't ever blab about Microsoft's or Google's devaluation of "beta", "release candidate" or "release" if we're going to be worse ourselves. It's the inverse of crying wolf, it's crying stable and people will eventually go "pfffffffft installing a x.0 version, are you crazy? I'll at least wait for x.1/SP1". Just be honest about what you're really delivering, perfect or not.

Re:New processes

[KugelKurt]

Unfortunately releasing 4.0 like this makes KDE look bad. I really doubt distributions will include it as a default option until it becomes more polished. KDE 4.0 was not intended by the KDE team to become the default desktop in any distro (AFAIK the next Fedora-KDE release ship with 4.0 as default).

Granted, I never used KDE much before 3.0, but IIRC, 3.0 was a big improvement over 2.0 in functionality and elegance. No, it wasn't perfect, but it was much more polished than 4.0. KDE 3.0 was mainly a port of KDE 2.x to Qt 3. In KDE 4.0 major components have been rewritten. That wasn't the case with KDE 3.0 -- with one (AFAIK just one) notable major exception: KDevelop. KDevelop 3.0 wasn't released until IIRC KDE 3.2.
KDE 4.0 can better be compared with KDE 2.0 and GNOME 2.0.

Now, in a year 4.1 and 4.2 will probably get close to the 3.5 branch, but I'm just worried that KDE's reputation might suffer in the mean time. Does GNOME's reputation suffer because of the 2.0 release?

Re:New processes

[Bogtha]

Open early, open often is the mantra of open source, remember?

The full quote is "Release early. Release often. And listen to your customers.", it's directed at getting code out there in the open rather than waiting until it is perfect before letting anybody see it. It doesn't mean that you should label anything you can compile as a stable release, just that you shouldn't do all your work behind closed doors until it's perfect. Not to mention the fact that the advice was garnered from the Linux kernel, something significantly smaller than KDE and not anywhere near as directly exposed to end-users. And if that advice is so useful, how come the KDE project doesn't follow two-thirds of it? They have very long release cycles, ignored anybody who told them that it wasn't ready to be called 4.0 and told anybody asking where the missing features were to wait until 4.1.

KDE is THE desktop environment for Linux newbies.

I'm a KDE user myself, but I would not go so far as to say that. KDE is for power users, and almost all the distributions default to GNOME, which is quite a bit simpler.

Or do you want them to follow enlightenment release cycle instead?

The problem is that they are too much like the enlightenment release cycle. KDE tried to do too much in one go. I remember when KDE 4 was supposed to be a short release cycle that was nothing but a straight port to Qt 4. Somehow they decided to totally rewrite everything important and invent major new subsystems that everything critical is based upon — while porting to Qt 4 at the same time! There is simply no way a step that large is compatible with "Release often" or "Listen to your customers", because it's an incredible amount of work just to remain where you are.

Re:New processes

[Anonymous Coward]

I think that they made this very clear when they released KDE 4.0 that it wasn't a final release. However, they couldn't release it as KDE 4.0 Beta or KDE 4.0 RC1 and expect a large enough shift in userbase to test the software out. The distros know it isn't ready to supplant KDE 3.5 and KDE 4.1 is the target to "work" for everyone and not just Bleeding Edge geeks who are willing to sacrifice system stability for "the new hotness"

Re:New processes

[cp.tar]

Does GNOME's reputation suffer because of the 2.0 release?

Yes. It does.

I loved Gnome back in the days of 1.4, which was the last good version in my book.
Ever since 2.0, Gnome has started turning into a confining environment, restricting more choices with every release.

First they made a new window manager; I'm sorry, but until this day I don't see what Metacity has that Sawfish did not. But I immediately noticed all the options it did not have.
Then they started dropping options from various configuration dialogs, basically turning applications from tweakable tools to one-size-fits-no-one crap.

I know I'm not the only one who hates what Gnome is turning into, and while I do keep trying out different UIs (and I'm very partial to E17, BTW), KDE 4 may prove to be interesting and comfortable enough for me to convert.

Then again, I'm less likely to mind the "yeah, sorry, we haven't had the time to implemet $OPTION properly, but we'll have it in the next version" attitude than the "it was confusing some users, so we removed it" one.

Re:New processes

[erikdalen]

but I wish they had at least stated that 4.0 was a developer release and that users should not switch until 4.1 - it would make things much smoother in my opinion.

KDE developers did state that.

Quote:
# KDE 4.0 is only expected to be used by early adopters, not every KDE 3.5 user (and IMHO KDE 4.0 shouldn't be pushed onto other user types like planned for Kubuntu ShipIt [btw said to have only 6 months support for its packages]).
# KDE 4.1 development will not require the same amount of time as the big technology jump 4.0, expect 4.1 later this year.

Re:New processes

[RiotingPacifist]

They have very long release cycles, ignored anybody who told them that it wasn't ready to be called 4.0 and told anybody asking where the missing features were to wait until 4.1. To be fair this is what end users have come to expect. Also any new project can either release 0.9 releases or has a userbase that will test thier beta enough ( e.g firefox) but KDE has a large scope but few users are going to switch there DE to a beta. They didnt lie they didnt say it was a finished DE.

KDE tried to do too much in one go. I remember when KDE 4 was supposed to be a short release cycle that was nothing but a straight port to Qt 4. It makes alot more sense to have the 4.0 release contain all the major changes instead of doing:
4.0 to port, 4.1, 4.2 to stabilize, 4.3 major rework, 4.4 -4.6 to stabilize
For end user products it makes more sense to have a change, and stabilize model (what kde have done) than a constant change model (kernel), so given that big changes are a must its best to fit them into this model instead of wedge them in to produce a never finishing product.

Re:New processes

[junglee_iitk]

I personally haven't tried Gnome much. Everytime I wanted to use it, I felt like my productivity is being hindered.

All my friends have used KDE exclusively. Those who know, install kde as first thing when they get Ubuntu. Those who know more, install kubuntu.

Ofcourse there are people using Gnome, and rise in Ubuntu means a lot for Gnome users, but look at these results from linuxquestions.org:
1) http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/2006-linuxquestions.org-members-choice-awards-76/desktop-environment-of-the-year-514945/
2) http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/2005-linuxquestions.org-members-choice-awards-69/desktop-environment-of-the-year-409028/
3) http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/2004-linuxquestions.org-members-choice-awards-62/desktop-environment-of-the-year-272100/
4) http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/lq-suggestions-and-feedback-7/2003-linuxquestions.org-members-choice-award-winners-133391/
5) http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/linux-general-1/2001-linuxquestions.org-members-choice-awards-winners-15903/?highlight=LinuxQuestions.org+Members+Choice+Awards

KDE all the way.

Re:New processes

[garvon]

Are you saying I am not the only one who feels that way? I liked gnome 1.4 It could be configured to how YOU wanted it as a desktop. It also played nice with most window mangers (at that time). I wonder if the code base could be updated.

Re:New processes

[pherthyl]

Then again, I'm less likely to mind the "yeah, sorry, we haven't had the time to implemet $OPTION properly, but we'll have it in the next version" attitude than the "it was confusing some users, so we removed it" one.

That's the key right there. Features missing in KDE 4.0 aren't there because although the devs tried their best, they just didn't have time to add everything. Most of these features will be added back in due course.

Re:New processes

[junglee_iitk]

Their naming convention for version numbers is know, and has been discussed to death on Slashdot everytime someone says KDE 4.0

I am no fan of KDE 4.0 myself. I have been hearing the hype about it since what, end of 2004? That is 3 years ago. They had something on kde-look.org where users will be posting mockups of what they want and other users would look and say, wow, KDE 4 is going to be so great. They promised Kopete which will have proxy support (WTH is it not a priority for Thiego is something I could never understand. Long time ago he said he has already written a report. One time he scolded another user to write the code himself...). Oxygen was something so "secret" than looking at it would destroy your experience!!!!111!!

But the thing is, they are still following their release cycle, much the same way enlightenment is following its own. They did this when they released 3.0. Until they changed the process for 4.0 specifically, you cannot blame them.

But I kind of agree to you. They are hell bent on marketing for some reason, and getting the bugs fixed for core libraries is just a PITA even now.

Re:New processes

[arodland]

I've got to agree... 4.0 really disappointed me. I guess it's a balancing act -- do you delay the release and risk people losing interest, or do you release unfinished product and risk people getting a bad impression? Personally, I wish they would have waited. I looked at 4.0 and there's some cool stuff in there, but it's definitely not good enough for me to use regularly. I would have gone to check out 4.0 even if it came out in January of 2009 instead of January of 2008.

Re:New processes

[Anonymous Coward]

Since last November progress towards stable and compelling applications went very fast and currently KDE 4.0 is not complete in terms of ported applications, but is a very nice environment to develop for and is perfectly nice to use. This desktop has high potential for the well-integrated sexyness that is the hallmark of KDE. Except for the fact that KDE looks and always has always looked like ass. Not hot Jessica Alba ass, but more like Goatse ass.

Plastik was by far the nicest theme they had, but then Clearlooks did that better. KDE still hasn't caught up. The new theme in 4 looks awful, like a very bad attempt at ripping off Vista. Don't get me wrong, I like KDE, but it just looks too awful to be able to use it. KDE really needs to hire a few people with a sense of style and make a desktop that's easy on the eyes.

Re:New processes

[cp.tar]

That's the key right there. Features missing in KDE 4.0 aren't there because although the devs tried their best, they just didn't have time to add everything. Most of these features will be added back in due course.

... which is why many people here bitch about them releasing the 4.0 version.

While I do understand the sentiment, I feel this release was kind of jumping in the cold water — not very pleasant, but now it's done, it had to be done either way, and let's please move on. The product is here, bugs are being taken care of, features are being added, just keep swimming... You had been warned anyway.

Re:New processes

[gnud]

Well, the move to qt4 was the perfect opportunity to bring change, all the apps had to do a rewrite anyway.
And the KDE4.0 release _is_ stable, for the core libraries. As the developers have said again and again.

Re:New processes

[cheater512]

Its the libraries which are mostly finished.
The actual bits of the UI are actively being developed.

I like being on the bleeding edge and its stable enough for me.
Few graphic glitches and stuff like that but nothing really bad.

Okular makes it all worth while. ;)

Re:New processes

[setagllib]

A similar thing happened with FreeBSD 4->5. FreeBSD 4 was at some point the fastest, most stable and most administratively sane operating system for the x86. Linux 2.4 was already ahead in SMP scalability, but since this did not affect many users back then, not many people cared.

Then FreeBSD 5 was planned to include a major architecture shift to modern parallel programming, which required changing almost all of the kernel code sooner or later. FreeBSD 5 was downright unusuable until the 5.3 "stable" release, which was tolerable but still performed a lot *worse* than FreeBSD 4 for many workloads because it was half way between the very well optimized uniprocessor code and the very raw and experimental multiprocessor code.

FreeBSD 5 was looking so bad even early on, that Matthew Dillon predicted (incorrectly) that it would become unmaintainable and fail to modernize to new usages. He forked FreeBSD 4.8 into DragonFly BSD, and developed it with more clever, innovative and forward-thinking designs.

However, FreeBSD 6 and finally FreeBSD 7 polished things up to the point that a slightly reconfigured FreeBSD 7.0-rc1 will compete with and often outperform Linux 2.6.22 for database throughput, with comparable responsiveness to CFS in 2.6.24. FreeBSD 7 is stable and fast, and still includes as many features as the old FreeBSDs did, including running well on old hardware. FreeBSD 7 humiliates the current DragonFly (and in fact, all of the BSDs) in throughput and scalability alike. Here, have some numbers: http://www.slideshare.net/sim303/7020-preview/

An exceptionally bad 5.x branch did not kill FreeBSD. So I don't suppose KDE 4.0 will kill KDE either, or even significantly reduce its mindshare. Especially if 4.1 comes out by the end of the year and improves significantly, KDE might gain even more adoption than it has now in 3.5.

Re:New processes

[kamatsu]

Mod Parent Up! Mod Parent Up!

I used to love KDE (v3 this is) but I found myself constantly redesigning and reworking my desktop layout, themes etc. because I could be happy with what I had.

After a while I figured out that KDE itself just lacks any artistic style at all, and no matter how much work you put into it, it doesn't look good.

There are a few reasons for this:

1) Everything is too big. Way too big. GNOME is the master of unobtrusive interfaces (which is exactly what an interface should be), but KDE give me a 64 pixel high bar at the bottom with all sorts of gizmos attached. When you shrink these down to a sane size, you quickly discover that KDE does not scale well to small sizes, and many of the applets begin to look cramped or strange. Fonts, buttons, widgets and icons are also, by default, too big. When I have a 1280x1024 screen I don't want most of it taken up with non-application content.

2) Menus, menus, menus, menus - Practically all the functions for an application can be found in huge menus that take up most of your screen. A couple of additional toolbars or maybe some dialogs would help in the application design.

3) Widget Spacing - No GNOME app ever seems to have difficulty with this, but KDE seems to fail horribly. GTK has default settings that allow you to space widgets not only evenly, but also with decent amounts of padding and spacing that remain even across the application. Qt must lack this sort of thing because Dolphin, Konqueror and amaroK (for example) lacks sufficient widget spacing.

4) Whoever made their icon theme was on crack - Everaldo's Crystal theme was (in my opinion) ugly as hell, and shiny for the sake of it (I much prefer matte icons), but at least it was consistent. Oxygen just sucks.

5) All the Qt skins suck, and I think we should be blaming Qt itself for this - hell, even Klearlook doesn't look as good as GNOME's Clearlooks, despite the obvious thematic similarity.

GNOME offers clearlooks (and its derivatives), tango icons, and a decent set of theming. Post-2.0 it has become alot more configurable (in fact there is little that I can't change in GNOME that I can in KDE3, and my GNOME is more customizable than KDE4)

Remember: I want my computer to be good and functional, and its interface needs to unobtrusively shift into the background while I'm working - I don't want to be distracted by this cool new skin or these fancy icons or desktop widgets. KDE had this simplicity in 2.0, and they've gone downhill ever since.

It is, as a friend of mine called it, "programmer's work". They have taken a perfectly decent looking DE and turned it into something only a programmer can produce.

GNOME is a dream by comparison.

Re:New processes

[TeacherOfHeroes]

Stats are a funny thing. For example, the 2007 Desktop Linux survey showed more people using GNOME than KDE.

http://www.desktoplinux.com/news/NS8454912761.html

I know way more GNOME users than KDE users (I prefer GNOME myself (I guess I don't know :P)), so I can't really put a lot of stock in your anecdotal evidence, either.

Meh, just use whatever you prefer.

Re:New processes

[RicardoGCE]

The "release early, release often" mantra is great for developers, but potentially terrible for end users.

If I evaluate KDE 4.0 with developer's eyes, I see a ton of potential, and I KNOW it will be incredible in a year or so. But as an end user? It's appallingly incomplete.

This should have definitely been marked "for developers only", but the KDE team were so eager to make their already-rescheduled deadline that they seem to have said "fuck it" and released anyway. When your release comes with "reviewer reminders", you know something's wrong.

Re:New processes

[cp.tar]

Maybe you should get work done instead of masturbating with your desktop environment. Other than changing the background image and window color scheme, how much more diddling do you need?

Why, have I just been honoured by a reply by Miguel de Icaza himself? Looking at your profile, I'd guess not, but a nice troll anyway.

FWIW, if backgrounds and colour schemes were all there is to desktop environments, we'd all still be using fvwm, which I recall as being way better than Metacity.

And while I haven't used Gnome in quite a while, I don't recall being able to put different background images on different viewports, which is a very quick and convenient way of telling them apart visually. Not since 2.0, anyway.
Thanks for reminding me.

point oh

[Anonymous Coward]

"The fact that the definition of stable varies widely within our userbase and the expectations of everyone doesn't make it any easier."

Unless your userbase consists of no one but fanboys, I would expect the userbase to define "stable" as not crashing every 20 minutes. Shame on KDE for redefining the meaning of a point oh release. I realize they want more people to test their beloved product, but misleading them into doing it was a mistake. In fact, the tradition in open source is in the opposite direction - not calling it a point oh until it's acquired the targeted features and destroys no data.

Re:point oh

[RiotingPacifist]

The article agrees, he believed that it should have been called a point-oh-oh release. But your completely wrong claiming they are redefining the meaning of a point oh release, the practice of releasing early and releasing often, is completely normal. They've got a development cycle quite similar to that of the kernel, only because kde is an end user "feature" they have to compromise with the distros and have a more ridged release cycle. I do however encourage you to go the the LKML and convince Linus that they should really wait longer between release and that 0 bugs/regressions should be the target of any release!

OR instead of arguing about the usefullnes of release often, and release early look what happens when you dont, Vista, the beryl split, etc.

Ive tried KDE4.0 on a low end system and it ran fine, it did have some stuff crash but it was a beta. Unfortunately the style of the system wasn't to my liking, im quite disappointed by plasma as i feal that kicker was fine ( i say fine it does have a to fast timer and a few other bugs but aesthetically its where I FEAL it should be), but i supose that sort of thinking is what leads to people insisting CLI/CDE/other old system, is far better than the modern alternative. I supose that apart from bug fixes they're wasnt much left to be done on the 3.x branch?

The article suggests that 4.0 was a framework release that allows bugs to be fix in the core, and programs to be fixed ontop of it and to that end it was a definite success.

Keeping in mind his comments on KDE vs Gnome, i do wonder what the gnome development process is like?

Re:point oh

[pherthyl]

Shame on KDE for redefining the meaning of a point oh release.

This gets tiring quickly. Gnome 2.0, PHP 5.0, Apache 2.0, Linux Kernel 2.6.0, etc, etc

None of those releases were completely stable or polished, or had all features from the previous series. That's how .0 releases for large projects are, no matter if they are open source or proprietary (Vista, OS X 10.0).

That doesn't mean we shouldn't strive to do better, but it's not like KDE 4.0 is an exception.

Re:point oh

[Jurily]

Yup. Plasma is a big disappointment. Give me an option to keep kicker and I'll help test the rest of KDE4.

Re:point oh

[garvon]

The difference is that they where complete at the time they hit .0.0 they may have had bugs but they had the features that they said that (2.0 or 2.6 o 5.0 pick one) was supposed to have. kde 4 is loaded with features that are not there yet not buggy, nonexistent . You don't usually have a big release party for Development version but a release should be feature complete..

Also can someone tell me what is with those cartoonish windows around every icon?
Is there any way to get rid of this butt ugly "improvement"?

Re:point oh

[pherthyl]

The difference is that they where complete at the time they hit .0.0 they may have had bugs but they had the features that they said that (2.0 or 2.6 o 5.0 pick one) was supposed to have.

Same with KDE 4.0. They said not all the features would make it into the .0 release.

kde 4 is loaded with features that are not there yet not buggy

Not there yet not buggy? That's the easiest software to write :)

You don't usually have a big release party for Development version but a release should be feature complete..

And feature complete means what exactly? Gnome 2.0 was lacking a lot of features compared to 1.4. PHP 5.0 was lacking support for just about all the extensions out there, same with Apache 2.0. For someone relying on those extensions, those products were also not feature complete.

Also can someone tell me what is with those cartoonish windows around every icon?

They are an artifact of broken icon support. They will be fixed as soon as possible

Re:point oh

[Joe Tie.]

Apologies if you're already aware of this partial solution, but figured it was just far enough out there to be worth mentioning. As long as you have kde3 still installed, its kicker should run fine in kde4. Just remove the plasma panel, and everything feels fairly normal. Even the effects for kwin minimization seems to run fine with it.

Re:point oh

[digidave]

Nobody expected KDE 4.0 to be completely stable, but as of this moment Konqueror can't use the ctrl-tab shortcut to switch browser tabs because that shortcut crashes it. Kate can't properly save a new file (or save as an existing file) when using the fish protocol because it always saves into the root directory. Also try setting the alt-d shortcut in Konqueror (focus address bar to make it behave like Firefox) and a bug will actually reset all your shortcuts to their defaults instead of creating the new shortcut. These bugs includes 4.0 and the nightly snapshots I test about twice a week.

What I most hate about KDE 4.0 is that there are lots of very elementary bugs that should have been fixed. These bugs are even worse than releasing Plasma, which is so lacking in features that it resembles a pre-alpha release. It can't even set wallpaper to tile properly (though fiddling around can make it work).

Re:point oh

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm sorry but that's bullshit. Vista was far from a speed demon and had its annoyances, but already since the first day was solid, stable, and feature complete.

Re:point oh

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm a Gnome user (because I value simplicity a lot), so naturally I'm less into reading about KDE than people who care more, but I think I've seen this pointless discussion 1000 times. Devs say exactly why they released 4.0 relatively early. And for every such statement there are 10 whiners who keep saying "but x and y are broken, it sucks", skipping everything the dev said.

TFA mentions the reason, too. But you'll keep saying, that your fucking keybinding is broken.

Please, oh please go back to 3.5.x and shut the fuck up already.

Re:point oh

[Anonymous Coward]

If you couldn't accept using software that was not bug free and feature complete, why did you install it? They have gone out of their way to warn people that 4.0 still has rough edges. I'm on KDE 3.5, and I plan to stay there until Ubuntu 8.10 comes out with KDE 4.1. There's no reason to upgrade now.

I feel your pain on the wallpaper issue though. How are you going to get any work done without properly tiled wallpaper?

One thing that bugs me about KDE

[teslatug]

I've been using KDE for a long time and I really like it. There is one thing that annoys me though, I'll find a bug and try to report it, only to be told that I'm not on the latest version. I'll need to upgrade and see if it's still a bug. Well, as much as I'd like to help make KDE better, I'm not going to upgrade my entire OS just to test a bug. They're not very receptive to bug reporting.

Re:One thing that bugs me about KDE

[Reivec]

agreed, I have had this problem as well.

I am really looking forward to the OS X and windows ports for KDE 4 when they become stable. I have actually been looking forward to this for years. This would allow me to use all the same stuff in windows and linux and make everything uniform. The only reason to boot to windows will be to play games I want to play though. This could also help linux adoption. First people switch to firefox and pidgin and maybe even openoffice, then they see someone using KDE on windows and want to try that. Then the switch to full blown linux distros seems very minor.

Re:One thing that bugs me about KDE

[Anonymous Coward]

Sooooo they tell you a way to fix most bugs you're going to report, in your older less supported version, the one that's already been bugfixed, by upgrading to the new version, and you refuse...

and that's a KDE problem?!

ffs. seriously.

Re:One thing that bugs me about KDE

[pembo13]

I've been using KDE for a long time and I really like it. There is one thing that annoys me though, I'll find a bug and try to report it, only to be told that I'm not on the latest version. I'll need to upgrade and see if it's still a bug. Well, as much as I'd like to help make KDE better, I'm not going to upgrade my entire OS just to test a bug. They're not very receptive to bug reporting.

Well... KDE isn't an entire OS, as big as it may be. Besides that however... the bug may be of the kind that was likely fixed

Besides that however, have you ever submitted a ticket and got that as a response? This wouldn't be a good thing, but not specific to KDE either

Re:One thing that bugs me about KDE

[Kjella]

Well... KDE isn't an entire OS, as big as it may be. Besides that however... the bug may be of the kind that was likely fixed Have you tried updating *one* KDE application? In my case it pulled all of KDE out of stable for 450MB of downloads. You're right, it's not an entire OS... but it tends to replace everything BUT the kernel!

Re:One thing that bugs me about KDE

[Robert The Coward]

Simpler Fix report it to you distro. I have reported issue in Fedora many times. People who do the porting look at find the issue a either back port the fix or fix it and send it upstream. Either way they are the best way to fix many thing.

Thanks
Robert

Re:One thing that bugs me about KDE

[Anonymous Coward]

openSUSE has a backports repository that has the latest patched KDE apps which work with the older (shipped) kdelibs. This means you really do only have to download one rpm for the latest and greatest version of your app and keep using the older base. (http://download.opensuse.org/repositories/KDE:/Backports/)

Re:One thing that bugs me about KDE

[Penguin Programmer]

Well... KDE isn't an entire OS, as big as it may be.

What distribution do you use that always has the latest KDE in the current version repositories? It's unreasonable to expect users to update a major package like KDE (and quite likely all the arcane dependencies it has) just to verify a bug.

The point is, the developers _are_ running the latest version and, assuming the bug report has enough information in it, they should be able to verify the bug, or verify that it's been fixed in the latest version. Putting that onus on the user isn't going to get them anywhere.

Re:One thing that bugs me about KDE

[chromatic]

The point is, the developers _are_ running the latest version and, assuming the bug report has enough information in it....

That's a big assumption! My wild guess is that maybe one out of four bug reports have enough information to reproduce the bug.

Re:One thing that bugs me about KDE

[mgkimsal2]

No. If you read the post, you'll see that the poster was saying the KDE team was telling him to upgrade to see if it's still a bug.

"the bug is fixed - upgrade" is wholly different from "upgrade, then tell us if it's still a bug".

Re:One thing that bugs me about KDE

[techno-vampire]

It doesn't surprise me, though. When I decided to try Linux, I examined the popular desktop environments before installing, to see which one I wanted. When I went to the KDE website, all I could find was advocacy; there was a lot about how wonderful it was and how happy I'd be to use it, but no details. I sent them an email asking for details and got back a reply full of more advocacy. Not one detail. No information about just what's so great about KDE. When I installed, I did not install KDE. After an experience like that, seeing the developers expecting you to upgrade just to see if a bug's been fixed or not sounds just about like what I'd expect. I'm sure there are many people out there using KDE and loving it, and I'm glad for them. I'm not saying it's bad, just that it never sounded like anything I'd want personally.

...Kuegler? This has gone *too far*!

[thesymbolicfrog]

Let me guess, his name was Quegler before he was a developer, but he had to change it due to naming conventions....

Linux as just a Kernel / Platform

[pembo13]

I like the dudes comment about KDE not neing a Linux desktop but just an open source desktop environment.

Re:Linux as just a Kernel / Platform

[mwlewis]

Well, duh. It runs on *BSD, of course.

Re:Linux as just a Kernel / Platform

[corychristison]

I'm with you there.
Everything seems so big and lollipop-ish. Since learning about enlightenment DR17 I always wanted to use it. But it's been in development for too long.
I gave up hope on e17 and moved to XFCE.

Re:Linux as just a Kernel / Platform

[corychristison]

Wow... totally clicked on 'reply' for the wrong topic!

How? I'm not sure. :-)

Re:Linux as just a Kernel / Platform

[MrCopilot]

I like the dudes comment about KDE not neing a Linux desktop but just an open source desktop environment.

He isn't kidding the Windows Port is coming along nicely. Can KDE Save a Dying Windows Platform?

Re:Linux as just a Kernel / Platform

[Ilgaz]

While replying to your comment on Omniweb/OS X, I also have Kopete 0.2.17 running as my Leopard OS X instant messenger. Zero issues, in fact, it also remembers its window position on OS X desktop unlike many "native OS X" programs.

People yet doesn't get what Kopete.exe or Kopete.app running on Windows/OS X means. I am close to experience it since Leopard comes with rootless X11. Now imagine a native OS X/Windows application. It will really change things.

As Nokia didn't pay $150 M for nothing, now imagine Kopete (or any KDE app) running natively on Symbian/WinCE/iPhone. That is the plan.

get ready for the flamewar...

[debatem1]

Let me preface this by saying that I just downloaded and built KDE 4. I didn't get a prepackaged one, so, your milage may vary.
Having said that- is it just me or does KDE 4 look cartoonish? I mean, I love the K apps- Ktorrent, Konversation, and K3B, which is probably the best burner software anywhere, and now looks great to boot, but KDE itself looks like mickey mouse and mario got together over a few powerups and decided to bang out some code. I can't really recommend it to clients anyway- even the KDE team says its not ready for prime time- but I think I'd feel a little weird doing so even if it had all the kinks worked out. Am I way off base here?

Re:get ready for the flamewar...

[Psychotria]

Ahh, the penny drops. That explains the latest poll.

Boots: the boot process
Kape: the desktop effects
the evil side Kicker: kicker
the doomsday devices: the device manager
fighting heroes: gnome vs KDE
the super villainess: plasma
the infamy: ?
the evil laugh: the new sound effect when a program crashes

Re:get ready for the flamewar...

[MrCopilot]

Having said that- is it just me or does KDE 4 look cartoonish?

http://aseigo.blogspot.com/2008/01/lca-and-fluffy-bunnies.html

I don't know what you are talking about.

Re:get ready for the flamewar...

[poopdeville]

I haven't been following KDE4 very much, but if what you say regarding Mickey and Mario is true, I'll have to build it at work.

No news on Nokia?

[Markos]

Really, what happened to Slashdot. I'm surprised there hasn't been any mention of Nokia buying Trolltech. Pretty big news, I think. http://dot.kde.org/1201517986/ Maybe it's been posted, but I haven't seen it.

Re:No news on Nokia?

[RedK]

Really, what happened to Slashdot. I'm surprised there hasn't been any mention of Nokia buying Trolltech. Pretty big news, I think. http://dot.kde.org/1201517986/ Maybe it's been posted, but I haven't seen it.
So because you haven't seen it, you automatically assume something is wrong with slashdot ? The only thing wrong here is you :

http://mobile.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/01/28/136204

Re:No news on Nokia?

[buttle2000]

Yeah, but any old excuse is good enough for some Vista bashing. So why not use any old KDE headline to get on the 'KDE is doomed' bandwagon?

Re:...Kuegler? This has gone *too far*!

[Anonymous Coward]

Correct. Originally we asked him to change the name to "Kuekler" (for a full KDE upgrade) but he claimed that he'd have problems getting a sufficient amount of groupies then.

KDE4 question: Why is my menu bar so fat?

[Anonymous Coward]

Does it need to exercise or something? Did it eat too many Doritos? Seriously, there is no way to make the menu bar at the bottom smaller, which is kind of crappy if you run at 1024 x 768 or smaller resolutions. The K "bar" takes up a sizable chunk of screen real estate and a left click...middle click...right click...double right click...there is no way to fix it.

Re:KDE4 question: Why is my menu bar so fat?

[KTheorem]

This has already been fixed: http://vizzzion.org/?blogentry=806

Re:KDE4 question: Why is my menu bar so fat?

[Anonymous Coward]

this was covered at the release event keynote. The program that modifies plasma's bar at the bottom did not make it to feature freeze and will be fixed in 4.1.

Re:KDE4 question: Why is my menu bar so fat?

[JackieBrown]

I have been using Debian's experimental packages.

I miss being surprised by new features like this after a daily compile.

Re:KDE4 question: Why is my menu bar so fat?

[Epsillon]

The program that modifies plasma's bar at the bottom

Indeed. To paraphrase that shape-shifter from ST6: "Not everybody keeps his panel in the same place." Mine sits at the top, is 90% of the display width, 38 pixels deep and has been that way for five years. Before anybody starts, it's nothing like the MacOS X look'n'feel. It just feels more natural up there to me. It was this ability to personalise the desktop, along with sensible defaults and no assumptions made that couldn't be altered, that made me settle with KDE. That, and Kioslaves.

That said, as Sebastian points out, expecting feature parity in a point zero release is hardly justified. We shouldn't delude ourselves into thinking we'll know our way around immediately, either. For example, dragging and dropping widgets onto the panel after removing one too many was non-obvious to me at first, but the elegance of it becomes one of those all-too-familiar epiphanies that makes you wonder how you managed to get confused at all. I'm still undecided on the new Kickoff menu, though. I can see me removing that and putting the traditional K menu launcher in its place. Fortunately, that functionality is there in the initial release. Oxygen is stunning, Dolphin looks promising (but I'll be keeping Konq, simply because it's what I'm used to) and even little things like the default wallpapers seem well thought out.

All in all, not a bad point zero at all. Certainly, given the complexity of KDE, a success in anyone's book.

New desktop shell for Windows (XP/Vista)?

[Anonymous Coward]

When I first heard about KDE4 on Windows I was excited that I could replace the Explorer desktop shell with KDE's. But then it seemed that wasn't being ported. The KDE applications are nice but I have applications, and I just want a more convenient shell.

But now it sounds like Plasma will be able to handle that task. Maybe it won't manage the Windows taskbar and system tray to begin with, but hopefully someone will write an applet.

Re:Too bad

[Anonymous Coward]

*blink* What did you say?

I used KDE once...

[Doug52392]

I just didn't like it. When I used OpenSUSE Linux, I installed KDE. Right when I started using KDE, I noticed how cluttered everything was. Instead of a nice bar at the top with 3 items, one for Applications, one for Places, and one for System, you must navigate through endless start menu items to get to where you want to go.

The file manager for KDE was also a little quirky. By default, single clicking a file opens it? And the icons weren't that good either...

GNOME has much more to offer...

Re:I used KDE once...

[Anonymous Coward]

GNOME has much more to offer...

No, GNOME has a lot less to offer, which is a very large part of the reason why GNOME is less "cluttered" than KDE.

Re:I used KDE once...

[Anonymous Coward]

When I use Gnome it feels like somebody took KDE and broke it.

Please be objective.

Re:I used KDE once...

[RedK]

When I use Gnome it feels like somebody took KDE and broke it. The most ironic part of that statement and of the OP's post is that the most successful commercial fork of Gnome, the Java Desktop System, was made to look more like KDE than GNOME.

Re:I used KDE once...

[westyvw]

Gnome has a lot LESS to offer. I tried gnome once...You have to click twice to open a file? WTF you want carpal tunnel? So you want a bar on the top with 3 items like Ubuntu Configured Gnome? No problem with KDE, just set it up. KDE doesnt have to look like OpenSuse, and Gnome doesnt have to look like Ubuntu, but KDE gives you greater flexibility and more contextual menus then Gnome, along with their awesome KIOSLAVES (well with KDE 3.x anyways). BTW you can double click in KDE and Single click in Gnome, if you want to.

Re:I used KDE once...

[nguy]

That's a pretty ironic statement, too, because you're saying that Sun really wanted KDE but had to settle for Gnome. Why do you think that is? I think it's because of licensing issues.

Re:I used KDE once...

[abigor]

It's also because Sun's compiler couldn't deal with C++ name-mangling issues, if I remember correctly. I don't recall Sun coming right out and saying Qt's GPL licensing was a problem, but that's entirely possible.

Re:I used KDE once...

[RedK]

That's a pretty ironic statement, too, because you're saying that Sun really wanted KDE but had to settle for Gnome. Why do you think that is? I think it's because of licensing issues. Yeah, the GPL did work in this instance. Sun doesn't get a high quality product it wants if it doesn't want to play ball and keep the source open. Instead, they're profiting off GNOME's back.

Re:I used KDE once...

[cbart387]

tried gnome once...You have to click twice to open a file? Edit > Preferences > Behavior > Select 'Single click to Open Items'

Re:I used KDE once...

[nguy]

Sun doesn't get a high quality product it wants if it doesn't want to play ball and keep the source open. Instead, they're profiting off GNOME's back.

But Sun has been playing ball and keeping the source open. They have also open sourced Java. See, the KDE/Qt license sucks even for companies that support open source and that "play ball".

Re:I used KDE once...

[nguy]

It's also because Sun's compiler couldn't deal with C++ name-mangling issues, if I remember correctly

I don't understand. Are you saying that KDE and Qt rely on specific name mangling algorithms?

Re:I used KDE once...

[abigor]

No, if I recall (this was years ago), Sun's compiler had troubles with standard C++. Another problem I recall was const correctness - it was picky about that. I can't remember all the details now, but early versions of KDE3 wouldn't compile.

At the time, Sun claimed they picked Gnome for technical reasons, mainly the use of CORBA. Of course, now that Gnome officially discourages the use of Bonobo, that doesn't seem so smart. I remember a Register article that claimed that senior Sun execs were appalled at the horribleness of Gnome's code, and felt that a buyout of TrollTech and a subsequent opening of Qt would have been the smarter route. But that's the Register, so who knows really.

Anyway, there was never any mention of licensing that I can recall. I could be wrong though.

Re:I used KDE once...

[nguy]

and felt that a buyout of TrollTech and a subsequent opening of Qt would have been the smarter route.

That probably would have been the best thing for everybody.

Anyway, there was never any mention of licensing that I can recall. I could be wrong though.

Well, you just did: if Sun felt that opening the code was important, then they weren't happy with the license as it was. Since Gtk is under the LGPL, its license was fine.

But this is a problem with Qt's dual licensing: people choosing a platform are basically putting the future and commercial control of their platform in Troll Tech's hands. If anything, this has gotten worse with the Nokia buy-out; as long a TT was running the show, at least you knew that their livelihood depended on supporting desktop platforms well. For Nokia's bottom line, the success of Qt on the desktop simply doesn't matter.

Of course, now that Gnome officially discourages the use of Bonobo, that doesn't seem so smart. I remember a Register article that claimed that senior Sun execs were appalled at the horribleness of Gnome's code

Well, Gtk and Gnome have improved since, and discouraging Bonobo is one indication of that :-)

Kernel vs. DE

[mindwanderer]

From TFA:

Should it matter to the user if he runs Linux or BSD on his machine? Not at all. It only matters because things just don't work so well (mostly caused by to driver problems, often a matter of ignorance on some vendor's side).

The term "Linux" serves more or less as a buzzword, but I think calling KDE "The Linux Desktop" is harmful.

So is calling GNU/Linux, Linux, yet he doesn't seem to care. Also, no mention of Qt at all. Was this interview done before the Nokia acquisition, I wonder.

More excuses

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm sorry, but I am totally fed up with KDE people blaming everybody but themselves for KDE's problems.

The most striking misconception I saw in the review is that people don't really get what KDE is. I saw quite some bad press that didn't go any further than "The panel lost some features", but without really having a look at what changed. The Panel, belonging to Plasma is a completely new component. As that, it's not exactly surprising that it has not yet reached feature parity. It's quite a pity though to see that some journalists don't look any further than that.

Well if this were an academic exercise, perhaps coursework for a university project, that would make sense. But this is actually meant to be used by end-users! At the end of the day, if the features end-users want aren't there, then nothing else matters. And reviewers are totally right on focusing on that aspect. Users don't use source code or components, they aren't impressed that you took away working code and replaced it with something with fewer features and more bugs.

It may make sense for you to sacrifice features temporarily to rewrite something, but don't be a complete arsehole and blame anybody but yourself when you inevitably get complaints that it doesn't work as well as it used to, especially when you mislead people into believing it is more stable than it really is.

Some people stood up to take this responsibility, a mailing list was set up and the release team started its work. Most important aspect was to get on the release train towards KDE 4.0. It turns out that this Release Team works really well.

Not as far as anybody outside of the KDE project is concerned, the KDE 4.0 release was a disaster.

Looking into the past, KDE had a pretty steady release rhythm where we released a new feature version (3.x) at least every 8 months. Unfortunately, this was found to unpredictable by some external parties

This makes no sense. A steady release rhythm every 8 months is unpredictable? From the rest of what he says, it sounds like they wanted to mess with the release system for their own reasons, and now that it's apparent it was a huge mistake, they want to blame external pressure for it.

KDE 4.0.0 is really what it's called. A dot-oh-oh release. Some people said that we should have waited half a year and released 4.0 as 4.1, but those don't seem to understand how the Free Software development process works.

Apparently the Free Software development process is all about scrapping working code and releasing something that isn't ready with promises that it will be finished for the next version while blaming anybody who gives you a bad review for "not understanding". That's perhaps the worst part of the mess KDE has created. They are constantly trying to use the excuse "but this is how Free Software works!" Well on behalf of everybody else writing Free Software, thanks for the bad reputation, guys.

Re:More excuses

[Anonymous Coward]

Stop crying. Free software's reputation hasn't been ruined. KDE is a huge project with many, many volunteers, and they released early for very good reasons. And they have a hell of a lot more experience with this sort of thing than you do. If you feel otherwise, then step up and volunteer to help out with release management. Oh wait, you've never written any software before, let alone managed a release of this size and scope. Never mind then.

Re:More excuses

[Anonymous Coward]

Funny how worked up anonymous internet retards get about this stuff..

Re:Too bad

[pherthyl]

Aside from the thousands you'll spend on Windows licenses, Visual Studio licenses, and pre-built closed source components and other developer tools. Don't fool yourself into thinking that developing for windows is cheap.

KDE rocks!

[Britz]

No seriously, by now there are sooo many programs for KDE for every possible use. I just checked for a gui program for creating bibtex files: kbibtex was the first one I stumbled over. KDE 4 will run under OSX as well as Windows. Personally I also dislike the MS Office / OpenOffice.org approach to Office tasks. OpenOffice.org might be great for people coming from MS Office, but I rather like the KOffice way of doing stuff. Though there are a couple features I am still missing.

The user also doesn't care about the os their programs and their guis are running on. They only care about what they are looking at while using the programs they want to use. So I think it is rather KDE vs. Gnome vs. Luna vs. (whatever Apple calls their desktop) vs. "that new thing in Vista.

Re:KDE rocks!

[JohnFluxx]

I find 'kbib' to be better than kbibtex, btw. Not much difference between them, but there you go.

The only niggle is that you have to remember to save the file. I really wish it would just automatically save after adding a record.

Re:KDE rocks!

[ByteSlicer]

[...] vs. (whatever Apple calls their desktop) vs. "that new thing in Vista.

That would be Aqua and Aero...

More video talks please

[Anonymous Coward]

Could someone create torrents for KDE 4 presentation talks that were published with limited bandwidth to planetkde.org just now and post them here and on thepiratebay please? I heard they were quite good and would love to see them without hogging servers.

Re:Too bad

[DAldredge]

Windows Vista = ~200.00 USD Visual Studio Express 2008 - 0.00 USD

Re: need to upgrade and see if it's still a bug

[pbhj]

I just got this response from OO.org for a bug I filed. I'll check when I next upgrade but in common with most users don't have time to "upgrade and see if it's still an issue".

Why I think that KDE 4 should have been released

[Anonymous Coward]

Because, after the release, the developers can get on with making a great piece of software and threads like this start to happen: http://lists.kde.org/?t=120006419200003&r=1&w=2

Good thing

[Mathness]

Good thing he didn't use the Microsoft speech recognition software, or he wouldn't have spoken to Kuegler, but Freddy who hangs around on Elm Street.

Re:Too bad

[pherthyl]

Sure, if you're a hobbyist that'll be enough. But no serious software development company uses Visual Studio Express. Then if you're building a big projects you need access to libraries, and you'll have to buy software components to accomplish certain tasks.

So yes, if you're wanting to write a little shareware utility, then Windows will be a cheaper target (not to mention that there is about zero point in writing that kind of stuff for Linux), but if you're at all serious about getting into the business, the development overhead is insignificant and about equal on the various platforms. If you're paying for Qt then you get cross platform compatibility and integration for free. If you really can't stand it, then use wxWidgets or C# or XUL or something. It will still run just fine in a KDE desktop.

Re:Too bad

[DAldredge]

What features is VSX 2008 missing?

Re:Too bad

[abigor]

A friend tells me that Visual C++ Express has no Windows app library support (MFC, ATL) or resource editors, and also no 64 bit compiler. Also something about debugging and breakpoints being crippled?

Re:Too bad

[DAldredge]

Visual Studio Express consists of the following separate products: * Visual Basic (.NET) 2008 Express Edition * Visual C# 2008 Express Edition * Visual C++ 2008 Express Edition * Visual Web Developer 2008 Express Edition * SQL Server 2008 Express Edition (to be released in the first half of 2008) Microsoft Visual J# 2005 was not updated for this release and is currently not planned. The version shipping with Visual Studio 2005 will be supported until 2015 as per the product life-cycle strategy. [edit] Visual Basic Express Despite the fact that it is a stripped-down version of Visual Studio, some improvements were made upon Visual Basic 2008 from Visual Basic 2005. Visual Basic 2008 Express includes the following improvements over Visual Basic 2005 Express: * Includes the visual Windows Presentation Foundation designer codenamed "Cider" * Debugs at runtime * Better IntelliSense support o Fixes common spelling errors o Corrects most invalid syntax o Provides suggestions to class names when specified classes are not found The Express Edition has the following limitations:[2] * No IDE support for databases other than SQL Server Express and Microsoft Access * No support for Web Applications with ASP.NET (this can instead be done with Visual Web Developer Express, though the non-Express version of Visual Basic allows both web and windows applications from the same IDE) * No support for developing for mobile devices (no templates or emulator) * No Crystal Reports * Fewer project templates (e.g. Windows services template, Excel Workbook template) * Limited options for debugging and breakpoints. [edit] Visual Web Developer Express The Visual Web Developer Express is a freeware web development tool that allows developers to evaluate the web development and editing capabilities of the other Visual Studio 2008 editions at no charge. Its main function is to create ASP.NET websites. It has a WYSIWYG interface, drag-and-drop user interface designer; enhanced HTML & code editors; a (limited) database explorer; support for other web technologies (e.g., CSS, JavaScript, XML); and integrated, design-time validation for standards including XHTML 1.0/1.1 and CSS 2.1. Visual Web Developer 2008 Express includes a new integrated HTML designer based on Microsoft Expression Web. Being an Express IDE, it lacks certain features, such as the Accessibility Checker, the ability to create standalone Class Library Projects (which can be done by the other language-specific Express Editions), the extensibility support necessary to load third-party add-ins and macros and some other features. [3] [edit] Visual C++ Express Due to the popularity of this freeware compiler, numerous popular programming libraries have been or are being modified to compile under this, including Irrlicht and Valve's Source engine.[citation needed] The Visual C++ 2008 Express Edition can be used to compile .NET as well as Win32 applications immediately after installation. However, natively compiling 64-bit applications through the IDE is not supported. If the freely available Windows SDK is installed, 64-bit applications can be built on the command line using the x64 cross-compiler (Cl.exe) supplied with the SDK. [4] Visual C++ 2008 Express does not include MFC, ATL, OpenMP support, or 64-bit compilers, nor does it include a resource editor. The higher-end commercial editions of Visual Studio, specifically the Professional and Team Suite editions have these features.[5] [edit] Visual C# Express The list of breakpoints where the user could control the breakpoint features has been removed, so that now the user can only toggle breakpoints. The following refactoring modes were also removed:[6] * Encapsulate field * Promote local to parameter * Reorder parameters * Remove parameters * Extract interface This effectively reduces the refactoring capabilities of Visual C# Express to Renaming and Extracting Methods. Developers state the reason o

Re:Too bad

[DAldredge]

Trying that again.

Visual Studio Express consists of the following separate products:

* Visual Basic (.NET) 2008 Express Edition
* Visual C# 2008 Express Edition
* Visual C++ 2008 Express Edition
* Visual Web Developer 2008 Express Edition
* SQL Server 2008 Express Edition (to be released in the first half of 2008)

Microsoft Visual J# 2005 was not updated for this release and is currently not planned. The version shipping with Visual Studio 2005 will be supported until 2015 as per the product life-cycle strategy.

[edit] Visual Basic Express

Despite the fact that it is a stripped-down version of Visual Studio, some improvements were made upon Visual Basic 2008 from Visual Basic 2005. Visual Basic 2008 Express includes the following improvements over Visual Basic 2005 Express:

* Includes the visual Windows Presentation Foundation designer codenamed "Cider"
* Debugs at runtime
* Better IntelliSense support
o Fixes common spelling errors
o Corrects most invalid syntax
o Provides suggestions to class names when specified classes are not found

The Express Edition has the following limitations:[2]

* No IDE support for databases other than SQL Server Express and Microsoft Access
* No support for Web Applications with ASP.NET (this can instead be done with Visual Web Developer Express, though the non-Express version of Visual Basic allows both web and windows applications from the same IDE)
* No support for developing for mobile devices (no templates or emulator)
* No Crystal Reports
* Fewer project templates (e.g. Windows services template, Excel Workbook template)
* Limited options for debugging and breakpoints.

[edit] Visual Web Developer Express

The Visual Web Developer Express is a freeware web development tool that allows developers to evaluate the web development and editing capabilities of the other Visual Studio 2008 editions at no charge. Its main function is to create ASP.NET websites.

It has a WYSIWYG interface, drag-and-drop user interface designer; enhanced HTML & code editors; a (limited) database explorer; support for other web technologies (e.g., CSS, JavaScript, XML); and integrated, design-time validation for standards including XHTML 1.0/1.1 and CSS 2.1. Visual Web Developer 2008 Express includes a new integrated HTML designer based on Microsoft Expression Web.

Being an Express IDE, it lacks certain features, such as the Accessibility Checker, the ability to create standalone Class Library Projects (which can be done by the other language-specific Express Editions), the extensibility support necessary to load third-party add-ins and macros and some other features. [3]

[edit] Visual C++ Express

Due to the popularity of this freeware compiler, numerous popular programming libraries have been or are being modified to compile under this, including Irrlicht and Valve's Source engine.[citation needed]

The Visual C++ 2008 Express Edition can be used to compile .NET as well as Win32 applications immediately after installation. However, natively compiling 64-bit applications through the IDE is not supported. If the freely available Windows SDK is installed, 64-bit applications can be built on the command line using the x64 cross-compiler (Cl.exe) supplied with the SDK. [4]

Visual C++ 2008 Express does not include MFC, ATL, OpenMP support,

2.0

[slapout]

I remember when I first started playing with Linux. I wanted to use KDE 2. So I had to download it and install it myself. This was when you installed Linux and got a command prompt. Of course, this was after I defragged my Windows 3.1 pagefile and used FIPS to partition the drive. I was proud of myself that I got it to work.

Re:2.0

[RedK]

I remember when I first started playing with Linux. I wanted to use KDE 2. So I had to download it and install it myself. This was when you installed Linux and got a command prompt. Of course, this was after I defragged my Windows 3.1 pagefile and used FIPS to partition the drive. I was proud of myself that I got it to work. KDE isn't that old. By the time 2.0 came out, Windows 98 was on the market. The KDE project was announced in 1996, 1 year after Windows 95 was released. By that time, most distros already had default installs that installed X and FVWM.

Re:2.0

[Anonymous Coward]

KDE2.0 came out in 23 October 2000 (as per wiki). You were using Windows 3.1 in year 2000, or are you living in an alternate universe?

Re:Too bad

[pherthyl]

You listed some of them. But also reusable software components on windows need to be purchased. You get all the KDE libraries for free once you have a Qt license. MFC and its ilk are not comparable, so then you have to go to .NET which brings its own set of restrictions. Just look at software development companies and see how much professional tools cost.

Re:Too bad

[abigor]

Right, I was only speaking to the C++ part of VS. But it looks like there's a whole bunch of crippled stuff. Still, it's probably enough for small projects and learning, which is just what MS intended it for.

Re:Too bad

[SanityInAnarchy]

Did you even read what you wrote?

Too bad that I can develop closed source commercial apps for KDE with out paying thousands. Developing closed source apps for Windows or Mac doesn't cost a dime.

Mac costs a Mac, and Windows costs a Windows license. So that's an up-front cost right there, unless you already have both. In addition, Windows, at least, is going to cost you Visual Studio, and KDE/Qt is hardly the only framework that will cost you money.

And you can always use Python -- if I remember, the Python-Qt bindings don't require that your Python app be GPL'd. Or you can use any of the other toolkits for Linux, or write your own.

However, depending on how popular your commercial app is, you have to consider TCO here. How much is it going to cost you to license Qt, versus how much development time will it save you? Adobe, Skype, Opera, et al seem happy with it. What's your hangup?

I learned "Settings" once...

[SanityInAnarchy]

Fact is, you can configure KDE to work pretty much the way GNOME does, if you really want to.

The reverse is not true. Maybe the GNOME people have better defaults, according to you. But they have a nasty habit of removing functionality because it might confuse someone. Classic example: In KDE, I can configure what clicking my title-bar does. Or double-click, or middle-click, or right-click, or mouse-wheel. In GNOME, well...

Here, Linus said it best.

Re:I learned "Settings" once...

[cbart387]

It really depends on what you prefer. Myself, I use GNOME because its defaults happen to be how I would spend the time configuring KDE to function as. It saves me time with setting up my desktop and more time doing the stuff I want to do. The GP's reason for liking it (organization of applications) is also something I like about it. I haven't tried KDE for a while, does it put all the applications in one 'start menu' dropdown by default like the GP says?

Re:I learned "Settings" once...

[SanityInAnarchy]

Yes, but again, "by default".

There are a few other things that I've had to tweak. For instance, I've now set just about all KDE apps to respond to the ctrl+M shortcut that Konqueror did already -- hides the menu. (Except Konsole, for obvious reasons.)

Basically, I tend to carry home directories around for many years. I figure, I can configure it once, and carry that home directory to my next computer, and the one after that. I do agree that sane defaults are nice, but I happen to like single-click-everywhere, and defaults just aren't as crucial to me as overall functionality.

(To a point, of course. It has to at least be somewhat usable out of the box. I'm looking at you, ratpoison.)

Goals and expectations (was Re:New processes)

[sowth]

Microsoft didn't really mess up with Vista, at least not in the way you said. Their goal is to get people to pay for the upgrade and new installs of their OS. Though they may not have the adoption level they wanted, eventually many people will likely upgrade to Vista or buy a new computer with Vista. (Sad but true) Either way Microsoft has their money, even if those people decide to go with XP. I've heard some noise about people switching to nonMS OSes, but I doubt Joe User even knows any reason to choose something besides Microsoft, so he will just buy whatever is put in front of him. ...and with the DRM, Vista has a good lock in strategy too. Maybe DRM will die, like most other severe copy protection, but who can say.

As for KDE 4.0, there is always room for improvement. I personally think both Gnome and KDE suck bad, but I have been using a few KDE apps lately. If they just make things more efficient, I might reconsider and use KDE more. I haven't tried 4.0, but it sounded like they were going in the right directon...however, I don't like how they basicly built the whole thing to be a clone of the horrid Win98. Isn't there a better model for the core structure of a GUI?

No MS Patent for the Task Bar?

[cavebison]

In a time when companies are trying to patent a mouse click, I wonder at why MS never patented the Task Bar. That is, "an interactive strip, positioned on the desktop, displaying running programs and facilitating control over program windows" or something like that.

Sounds like something that could have been be patented, since (I assume) MS first came up with it, for Windows 95.

Re:No MS Patent for the Task Bar?

[zakeria]

Software patents in the EU mean nothing anyhow and KDE being German...

Re:No MS Patent for the Task Bar?

[cavebison]

Then why does Amazon try to patent the one-click checkout? If a site in Germany can just do the same thing regardless, where's the reason for them to patent? There must be some benefit surely?

Re:No MS Patent for the Task Bar?

[arevos]

To stop companies in the US having that feature.

The one-click checkout idea sucks anyway, so I can't see a lot of sites using it even if it weren't patented.

Re:No MS Patent for the Task Bar?

[flowsnake]

Prior art. Examples of earlier operating systems and desktop environments with Task Bars similar to that in Win95 include:

• Arthur (1987) http://www.ooooooooo.net/arthur/art.html
• RISC OS (1989) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RISC_OS

There are others too that predate Win95, but suffice to say Win95 was not the first. Thankfully Microsoft did not also borrow the Arthur colour scheme!