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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.'
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.
DNA is the ultimate spaghetti code.
"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.
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
"Thanks for all the money you paid to us. We've used it to buy off ISO among other things" -Microsoft
To summarize: The closer something is to perfection, the easier it is to screw it up when trying to improve it.
Once you start despising the jerks, you become one.
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?
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
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
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?
IranAir Flight 655 never forget!
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.
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
"Not to mention all the idiots who use words like boxen."
Anonymous Coward on Monday August 04, @06:49PM
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?
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
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?
This has already been fixed: http://vizzzion.org/?blogentry=806
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.
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.
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.
Bogtha Bogtha Bogtha
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.
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.
Ignore this signature. By order.
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.
Erik Dalén
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.
IranAir Flight 655 never forget!
"Not to mention all the idiots who use words like boxen."
Anonymous Coward on Monday August 04, @06:49PM
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.
Trying that again.
.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 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
Visual C++ 2008 Express does not include MFC, ATL, OpenMP support,
... 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.
Ignore this signature. By order.
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.
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.
Sam ty sig.
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.
Stats are a funny thing. For example, the 2007 Desktop Linux survey showed more people using GNOME than KDE.
:P)), so I can't really put a lot of stock in your anecdotal evidence, either.
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
Meh, just use whatever you prefer.