Release Team Proposes Gnome 3.0 Plans

benuski writes "Today at GUADEC, the Gnome User and Developer European Conference, the gtk+ team announced their plans for gtk+ 3.0; immediately after, the Gnome release team announced their plans for Gnome 2.30 to be changed into Gnome 3.0. This would mean a release date a year and a half to a year in the future. Details are short at the moment, but the Gnome team seems to be following in KDE's footsteps, but hopefully will avoid the problems that plagued KDE 4.0's release."

Comments

Screens????

[SkankinMonkey]

Worthless without pics ;) Is there any anticipated changelist for 3 yet?

Re:Screens????

[diegocgteleline.es]

Probably clutter (http://clutter-project.org/)

Re:Screens????

[Anonymous Coward]

Woah. That craps all over the iPhone from a substantial height and makes aero look pretty silly too. Is it actually practical? Who cares!

Speed it up

[Anonymous Coward]

Just re-name 2.2 to 3.0 and you've released ahead of schedule!

All hail letter "g"

[Anonymous Coward]

Gwow, this is Great Gnews! Let's Ghope they are Gstill Going to Geep Gusing the Gletter "G".

Re:All hail letter "g"

[Elliot_Lin]

Gwow, this is Great Gnews! Let's Ghope they are Gstill Going to Geep Gusing the Gletter "G".

A kbit klike kthe kpeople kthen ksince kthey kdo kthis kfar ktoo koften. kmuch kmore koften kthan kthe kGNOME kpeople

Re:All hail letter "g"

[morgan_greywolf]

[quote]kGNOME [/quote]

KGNOME -- A version of GNOME built on the Qt toolkit and compatible with KDE and KParts and such. ;)

Re:All hail letter "g"

[Enderandrew]

I know people will think I'm crazy, but I have a vision for kGnome.

QT 4 actually has a Clearlooks engine designed to look like Gnome. Dolphin can be configured to operate largely like Natilus (except it works better these days).

If QT 4 actully really does use less memory and runs faster, why not do a test and port a small Gnome app or two over to QT 4?

The app can run with the QT 4 Clearlooks engine, and look largely like Gnome apps, except they can take advantage of many of the KDE features like Phonon, Solid, Sonnet, etc.

As for the people who prefer C to C++, aren't there language bindings for both for QT and GTK?

I'd love to see just a few small apps as a proof of concept. It could demonstrate the feasibility of a Gnome desktop built upon QT, especially considering the annoucement of Gnome 3, and the decision to break API.

If you're going to build anew, shouldn't this concept at least be considered for a moment? Both projects can have their seperate apps, desktops, defaults, window decorations, features, etc. But more common libraries and toolkits are a win for everyone.

Re:All hail letter "g"

[harry666t]

Except that the Gnome apps aren't built on top of gtk, but on top of Gnome libs. And porting the Gnome libs to QT4 is what would be the pain.

Re:All hail letter "g"

[geminidomino]

I have yet to figure out what the Apple fascination with the prefix i- on absolutely everything is supposed to signify?

The only person that matters to Steve, course.

Re:All hail letter "g"

[Per Wigren]

If that isn't enough, Trolltech will also provide QGtkStyle which will draw using native GTK widgets in the same way it uses native Cocoa/Carbon on OS X to make all Qt/KDE 4 applications have a Gnome look and feel, including things like the order of the dialog buttons.

Re:All hail letter "g"

[moosesocks]

What you describe sounds suspiciously like KDE exactly as it is, but with a gnome-like skin on top.

Come on. QT isn't "better" than GTK, nor is GTK "better" than QT.

Although it'd be nice to unify the two projects, they have extremely different mindsets. While KDE is set on becoming as feature-rich as possible (sometimes to a fault), the GNOME folks like to keep things as simple as possible (sometimes to a fault).

Also, nobody ever said that GNOME or GTK can't be lightweight. I'd personally like to see the essential parts of the GNOME suite stripped down, and incorporated into Xfce like was done when Mozilla transitioned from SeaMonkey to Firefox. XFce is easily the most noticably fast and "snappy" desktop environment I've used in years. It looks pretty nice too.

Honestly, I think its in the best benefit of both projects for the other one to exist. If you want to, you can run KDE apps in Gnome and vice versa. There's nothing terribly wrong with that, and it keeps a little competition going.

Binding one language to another is also a messy affair, and C++ isn't terribly popular for Unix apps outside of the KDE world. The two projects *have* come together on issues where the two projects already had some common ground (See freedesktop.org)

Re:All hail letter "g"

[harry666t]

> Why would apps be built on a specific desktop library?

Gtk and Qt are just widgets. You want more than that: for example, KDE3 offers kioslave, with which you can dynamically mount devices without root privileges or rip CD audio to mp3 on-the-fly. The Kpart stuff allows you, for example, to embed text-view widget in Konqueror that looks and acts in the same way as in Kwrite. And so on.

> why aren't they built on a generic library?

Take a look at the X11 API, or at some apps written in it (xcalc, xevil, etc). With the qt3 dev headers come a few examples of pure qt3 apps - they do not look nor feel like KDE. Kadu, an IM client for the network Gadu-gadu (very popular in Poland) is written in pure Qt - and it doesn't integrate well with KDE, too.

Re:All hail letter "g"

[PixelSlut]

You can try to abstract between different widget toolkits, but this always ends in disaster. This is what wxWidgets does, and their API sucks. Mono tried unsuccessfully to implement WinForms API on top of GTK, but it proved to be impossible so they started over from scratch.

I run 2.0

[Anonymous Coward]

It gets 40 rods to the hogshead and that's how I likes it.

Background

[gr8_phk]

Can Gnome 3.0 allow programs to render to the root window? Try running xplanet in gnome - you might catch a glimpse of something when you shut down. Try playing video on root with VLC - no uh uh. There are hacks to get screen savers and things to run on the background. This seems to be a fundamental design "feature" of gnome - the kind of thing you'd want to change in a major version bump. Or are they calling it 3.0 because 2.30 sounds too much like some really old software being patched over and over?

Re:Background

[jwkfs]

Gnome draws the desktop+icons on the root window. If you want to draw something else there, you need to disable this (there's a gconf key somewhere).

Re:Background

[burner]

Probably /apps/nautilus/preferences/show_desktop.

Re:Background

[techno-vampire]

No it doesn't - at least the last time I looked. What it does is ignore the root window, and create its own desktop window on top of it.

I've looked into this a little, and I've found that there would be a way to do it if the Gnome devels were willing to do what's needed. It's already possible to tell nautilus not to draw any wallpaper but you must specify a background colour and it must be opaque. All they'd have to do is allow the background to be transparent and Bob's your uncle. Granted, I'm not a graphics programmer and I've no idea how hard that is in practice, but in principle it's not that big a change.

Reverse Position

[Elliot_Lin]

Funny that this is a precise opposite of the position that the GNOME project has held for so long - perhaps the KDE people are beginning to scare them? I sincerely hope not (and doubt it)

it's all about the mindset

[l2718]

It involves a relatively smooth transition from 2.x to 3.x, a more focused and inclusive development process, long-term development cycles, and more.

In other words, at this stage this is about the development team, not about the technical issues.

Content free article

[sundarvenkata]

The link leads to a tersely worded page which captures the entire essence of the plans for GTK+3.0 :) which in turn leads to another blog with a color scheme that threatens my corneal legerdemain.

let's wait and see

[C0vardeAn0nim0]

"but hopefully will avoid the problems that plagued KDE 4.0's release."

instead they're gonna have all sorts of their own problems. it happened before, it'll happen again.

all major projects have this kind of stuff when major releases come out the door. examples ?

MacOS X 10.0
Windows Vista
Gnome 2.0
Netscape 4.0
.
.
.

maybe it'll be a set of completely diferent problems. but they'll be there. murphy is unforgiven.

Re:let's wait and see

[bigstrat2003]

murphy is unforgiven.

Damn straight he is... not one of us would ever forgive that fscker after all the trouble his stupid law has caused for us!

KDE's footsteps?

[mweather]

Luckily for Gnome, when 3.0 ships missing a lot of features, nobody will notice.

Re:KDE's footsteps?

[FlyingBishop]

I think he's implying that Gnome has no features.

Which, while not entirely true, is not entirely unfair.

Re:KDE's footsteps?

[moosesocks]

KDE3 was bloated to a fault, and had an unhealthy obsession with identical-looking blue toolbar icons. It was also due for an architectural revamp.

GNOME started going down the "less is more" minimalistic path a few years ago, encouraged by Apple's similar philosophy that seemed to go over well with consumers. Unfortunately, many feel that they stripped a bit too much out (still, I prefer this approach, and was a rabid Xfce user for quite some time).

KDE4 on the other hand, doesn't feel like it was designed with a minimalistic philosophy in mind. Granted, there was a clear and commendable goal to cut out most of the cruft from KDE3, but it currently still feels a bit incomplete

Do you think that's a fair assesment?

Re:KDE's footsteps?

[X0563511]

KDE4 is still in development, so yes it is incomplete.

That withstanding, I would say it is a fair assessment. Although I like XFCE more for its small footprint than lack-of-features (simple without being, er, simplified). But to be honest, KDE is my favorite and KDE4 is looking to be very nice (for me) once it's 'done'.

Will it be backward compatible with Web 2.0?

[VampireByte]

I don't want to upgrade to Web 3.0 yet.

Re:Problem with KDE 4

[Bluefirebird]

KDE 4 is clearly the most future-proof desktop environment out there.
In terms of graphic capabilities, it can natively suppport every feature available on OSX and in Vista, besides a few new features that are unique to KDE 4. In theory, it would be possible to create a desktop that looks-and-feels EXACTLY like OSX or Vista.
However, the best features are not those, but rather the platform independence with native API support. This means that, unlike JAVA, you can create one piece of software that compiles in Linux, OSX and Windows, using the OS-specific APIs. So, the same software compiled in OSX and in Windows look completely different and they didn't have a single line of code changed. The platform independence is not available for everything... for now, you can only compile things like Openoffice. However, the multimedia API, as well as other APIs are being developed.
The other thing great about KDE4 is that it is done with SVG instead of bitmaps. This means that scaling to very small devices like smartphones is quite simple to achieve.

Re:Problem with KDE 4

[ArcherB]

I see your $0.02 and raise you a nickel.

My problem with KDE 4 is that I can't drag a box over several desktop to select multiple desktop icons. That drives me nuts!

My problem with Gnome is the fact that I can't adjust the screen saver properties without some ugly hack.

I know, these are minor issues, but annoying nonetheless. And your post was probably the nickel's worth anyway.

Problems with KDE4? What problems?..

[mi]

will avoid the problems that plagued KDE 4.0's release.

I made the folly of installing KDE-4 on my mom's new computer (she had KDE-3.5.x before). There were no "problems". There was a total disaster.

The amount of features available in KDE-3 for years, that did not make it into KDE-4 is staggering... Add bugs to that.

And I was not entirely unprepared — I knew better, than to try KDE-4.0, when it came out with the enormous (and Google-sponsored) hoopla. I waited for 4.0.2... You can't even move widgets around on your task-bar yet — that's "scheduled" for version 4.1!

The all-new "plasma"-desktop can't show you the contents of files in ~/Desktop/ — that's still "in the works". Showing the list of files themselves is buggy — every time you login, a new set of icons (one for each of your files) is added to the desktop.

And to think, that I was getting impatient with FreeBSD KDE-team for not upgrading the KDE-ports! These guys were simply protecting me, but no, I wouldn't listen... I installed the much tauted Kubuntu and paid the price (don't even get me started on Ubuntu itself)...

Re:Problems with KDE4? What problems?..

[draugdel]

As far as I know KDE4.0 was never meant for the end user but for developers. I tried it once and told myself: "Looks promising but is not ready to use for me.[0]"

So I waited and at times looked a bit a the latest progress with packages from the svn trunk for my distribution. My impression is that the progress, that KDE4.0 to now made, is just amazing. I am currently using the svn packages more often than my old KDE3.5.9 install, simply because it is a very pleasant experience. I would have switched already, if it was not a "unstable"[1] version and I will definitly switch when 4.1 sees the light of the day.

So let's go on to your issues: Moving widgets in the panel (the task bar is only for displaying your applications) should have been added yesterday or so (according to a blog post at planetkde.org).

Showing the contents of ~/Desktop: The folderview can do that, but not only that. It can also display any folder (for instance on a remote machine as well). It will be able to show the results of nepomuk searches, but this is not ready yet. I for my part had never any icons on my old desktop, because, I think, it looks like I still have lot of work to do. Now I can easily display the folder(s) that I am currently working on and hide them when I am done. I must say, it is way better than the old system for me.

For launching applications, I never used icons (Keyboard > mouse for me) but used the old "Run command". Now there is krunner which is way better than the old system.

As another developer to the KDE team: I love what you are doing with KDE4 and I hope that you can keep the good work up.

[0] I am a developer as well.
[1] unstable as in not finished. I have not experienced lots of bugs, but instead it almost never crashes, which is quite impressive for this kind of packages (compiled directly from the latest source code).

Re:Problems with KDE4? What problems?..

[X0563511]

that a release of a major distribution

This is not the default. You specifically have to go installing the metapackages or download a specific ISO. It's not like they are throwing it all down your throat...

If you don't like it, deinstall it and stick to KDE3 (or gnome, xfce, whatever).

Re:Problems with KDE4? What problems?..

[vizZzion]

Unless you consider your mother an advanced user, I'd say it wasn't smart to install 4.0 before testing it yourself, or reading a bit about it (it's been repeated over and over that 4.0 is not for end-users). It's not specific to KDE btw.

Re:Problem with KDE 4

[Enderandrew]

There are many great advantages of KDE, such as platform independence and SVG rendering like you mentioned.

Again, I suggested the problem isn't the features.

As for making KDE 4 operate or look like OS X or Vista, that depends how much control we have over the interface. My fear/concern is that given recent discussions and posts with Aaron suggest we will have less control.

Re:Problem with KDE 4

[Anonymous Coward]

On top of that you have Aaron Segio now suggesting that users should have less control over configuration, fewer choices, and saying that end users are dumb. He also has suggested repeatedly lately that if you're not a coder, then you can't comment on UI issues.
Can you prove those 2 statements? Can you provide links to statements where he says that?

From my use of KDE 4.1, I, a user, have the exact same configuration menu in konqueror that I used to have, and I now have dolphin, with simpler configuration, that has been added which I can use standalone, or along konqueror or not.
As a user, it seems I now have more choice.

Plasmoid seems a little raw right now, but I have the feeling they are the equivalent of firefox extensions.
Basically, they are putting the desktop in the hand of the users. You will have extension, sorry, plasmoid, whith little or no configuration, and some some with heavy configuration and you will just choose and build your own personnal desktop. Just like firefox with its extensions.
So your comment about them dumbing down the desktop or removing it from the users hand is pretty much out of the picture, it's quite the opposite.

As for aseigo, I follow his blog and I can't remember him saying users can't comment on UI issues. If you'd give links to that than I might find your comment informative, right now, it seems mostly flamebait.
(My bet is that he said that as long as the underlying technology is not ready, the discussion about with or without 'insert your preferred desktop item or usability issue' are irrelevant.)

Re:Problem with KDE 4

[Enderandrew]

Community software should mean that people can easily post bug reports and get issues like these addressed.

Open a bug for each issue and hopefully they will be addressed.

I think it is beneficial to the entire community when people report these things.

Re:Problem with KDE 4

[ArcherB]

Community software should mean that people can easily post bug reports and get issues like these addressed.

Open a bug for each issue and hopefully they will be addressed.

I think it is beneficial to the entire community when people report these things.

The problem is that these don't appear to be bugs, but design choices. I believe that the gnome developers intentionally removed the option to configure each of the different screen savers and that the KDE dev's set up their horrid desktop icon system by design.

What's to file?

An Ode to the GNOME dialog box

[sundarvenkata]

GNOME HCI guidelines are one of the best I know of. Following the HCI leads to surprisingly good physical and mental health. 1) Navigating the GNOME dialog box with just the keyboard provides a rejuvenating and rigorous finger and mental exercise at the same time. 2) The font choices make pupil dilation effortless 3) The occlusion of "OK/Cancel" in elongated dialog boxes make accepting/rejecting dialog boxes into a fun hideAndSeek activity.

Re:Problem with KDE 4

[tminos]

this is one reason why I continue to use gnome or xfce instead of the new KDE. Of all things they removed one feature most important to me:

the ability to change tabs in konsole by pressing alt-# (ie, alt-1 = go to tab 1, alt-2 to tab 2 etc.)

I asked in the #kde-devel channel if it was removed intentionally or just hadn't been re-added. Aaron's first response was to claim I must not use a terminal much (I'm a systems admin and programmer, I spend nearly all day in a terminal.) He then said that terminal programs should bind as few keys as possible because terminal programs have already assumed nearly all possibly combinations.

I offered a patch that would re-insert them as an option -- not enabled by default but there for people that decided they wanted to set it. It was turned down.

Fuck it all, KDE is going the same way GNOME did. I'll stick with vim, mutt, and move back to freaking wmaker or fvwm if it's the only way to have a system that doesn't treat me like I'm five years old.

Re:Problem with KDE 4

[Enderandrew]

The KDE 4.0 icon fiasco is going out the window. In KDE 4.1, you have a folder view applet on your desktop that operates largely like a file manager window. You can change the folder it views, and even filter it with smart searches, and Nepomuk meta-data.

I hate having the applet on my desktop, but in the future supposedly it will be the desktop, and support themeing/wallpapers, etc.

Re:Problem with KDE 4

[mi]

On top of that you have Aaron Segio now suggesting that users should have less control over configuration, fewer choices, and saying that end users are dumb.

Of course, we are dumb... We want KMail to preserve the HTML-layout of the original, when we are replying to or forwarding it. The enlightened developers have been telling us for years, how stupid it is, but we continue to foolishly insist.

If that's not valid grounds for contempt towards users, I don't know, what is.

Re:Problem with KDE 4

[Randle_Revar]

On top of that you have Aaron Segio now suggesting that users should have less control over configuration, fewer choices, and saying that end users are dumb. He also has suggested repeatedly lately that if you're not a coder, then you can't comment on UI issues.

Citation needed

Re:Problem with KDE 4

[ArcherB]

Community software should mean that people can easily post bug reports and get issues like these addressed.

Open a bug for each issue and hopefully they will be addressed.

I think it is beneficial to the entire community when people report these things.

Here is the GNome developer response to the screensaver thingie:

Comment #1 from William Jon McCann (gnome-screensaver developer, points: 22)
2005-09-19 13:32 UTC [reply]

I don't have any plans to support this. My view is that any screensaver theme
that requires configuration is inherently broken.

Is developer arrogance a bug or a feature?

Pledge to stick with unencumbered technology?

[IGnatius T Foobar]

What I would really like to see from the GNOME team is a pledge to keep the framework free of unencumbered technology. Specifically, this means we need them to promise that both the framework itself, and its core applications, will not be built with .NET (Mono).

Miguel de Icaza may enjoy appeasing Microsoft, but most of the Free World does not.

Re:Pledge to stick with unencumbered technology?

[metamatic]

That and they should rip out the Mono crap that's already part of the GNOME desktop. If they did that I might go back to GNOME, given the state of KDE 4.1.

(I finally switched from KDE to GNOME just in time for them to add Mono to GNOME, so I switched back.)

Re:Pledge to stick with unencumbered technology?

[X0563511]

You could, you know, wait for them to finish KDE4. Nobody held a gun to your head and forbade you from using 3.5 did they?

Re:Problem with KDE 4

[lbbros]

It's not the case. You forget that an entire desktop shell has been rewritten from scratch, so it's not like all the features will appear magically. For me, it's already possible to do more than what I used to do with 3.5.x desktops.

Re:Problem with KDE 4

[geminidomino]

Is developer arrogance a bug or a feature?

A bug, outside of the Redmond and Cupertino areas.

Re:Problem with KDE 4

[Hatta]

The other thing great about KDE4 is that it is done with SVG instead of bitmaps. This means that scaling to very small devices like smartphones is quite simple to achieve.

SVG isn't magic. There's only so far you can scale a given design down before you start to get aliasing.

Vector graphics always look great when scaled up, scaling down is a trickier affair. You have to design your graphics in advance to look good when scaled down, i.e. not using small details or text that would get lost when scaled down.

If you have to design icons specifically for low resolutions anyway, why not just provide a bitmap version? It'll run faster that way.

Re:Problem with KDE 4

[Prototerm]

I have two problems with KDE4, only one of which is due to the KDE people.

First, I believe the development team should have kept it in Beta until it was feature-complete. Feature complete, in my mind, is at minimum the feature set of 3.x. It shouldn't even be a release candidate until "done" and stable.

Second, distros should avoid including immature projects like KDE 4 until they *are* feature complete and stable. Yeah, Kubuntu, I'm looking at you!

Hopefully, the Gnome folks (and Ubuntu) will wait until everything's ready for prime time before releasing 3.0

Re:Problem with KDE 4

[Enderandrew]

I believe KDE uses a bitmap cache of pre-scaled SVG icons.

Re:Problem with KDE 4

[Knuckles]

Here is the GNome developer response to the screensaver thingie:

Is this a troll or do you suffer from short attention span? This was his first comment, but the discussion on bugzilla was very long, and further down he identified technical issues that prevent this from being done sanely atm, wrote an FAQ on the matter, asked for help from those who see this feature, and so on. Anyone interest in the issue is well-advised not to rely on the parent but read the discussion themselves.

Re:Problem with KDE 4

[Fri13]

Can you prove those 2 statements? Can you provide links to statements where he says that?

You didn't ask that from me but what kind impression I have had from what Aaron has told, is that KDE4 is coming smarter, so there is no need for configurations, because KDE will notice what user wants and leave more easier working enviroment for user when.

Feature and Configuration are two different things.

KDE has lots of features and lots of configurations. Gnome has few features and even less configurations. Now KDE4 will move kde to direction that there will be lots of features but much less configurations. Default look will be very simple and clean so all "dumb" gnome users can use kde easily but power user who knows what wants, can turn things ON and customize whole enviroment.

Re:Problem with KDE 4

[ArcherB]

Here is the GNome developer response to the screensaver thingie:

Is this a troll or do you suffer from short attention span? This was his first comment, but the discussion on bugzilla was very long, and further down he identified technical issues that prevent this from being done sanely atm, wrote an FAQ on the matter, asked for help from those who see this feature, and so on.

Right, after about 20 posts of people ragging on him. The fact remains that he tried to weasel his way out by saying that it shouldn't have to be done because it was hard to do. I bet it is hard. That's why I'm not a programmer, much less a maintainer. If he has a problem with what the people using the product want, he should hand it off to someone who gives a damn. (not to mean that I don't appreciate his efforts, but he chose to be the maintainer for a reason.)

Anyone interest in the issue is well-advised not to rely on the parent but read the discussion themselves.

Good idea. If only had posted a link or something...

Re:Problem with KDE 4

[Anonymous Coward]

Have a look at comment 85 from the link you posted.
http://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=154535

You say this discussion suggests Aaron is trying to give users less control but he has designed plasma in a way that means it is not possible for him to have this ultimate control and this is intentional.

Plasma is flexible enough that you can implement your own desktop containment without the corner icon but the current default one is being designed with things like touch screens in mind where you can't right click to configure things. The icons presence is therefore required and people who don't like it will be able to choose a containment without it. More control!

Re:Problem with KDE 4

[Chang]

His blog was unavailable for a while but it came back online several days ago.

http://aseigo.blogspot.com/

Re:Problem with KDE 4

[Knuckles]

You know, maybe he chose to be the maintainer because nobody else stepped up and it needed one. He was (is?) a volunteer who donated his own time. You have zero right to demand anything of him. If you want a feature implemented badly, pay someone to do it.

Re:Problem with KDE 4

[bluefoxlucid]

He also has suggested repeatedly lately that if you're not a coder, then you can't comment on UI issues.

UI and programming are two different things. One is a study of ergonomics. Programmers who don't specifically have a talent or study in UI should not control UI.

.NET is standardized

[Anonymous Coward]

The way Microsoft released the specifications for the .NET it is not encumbered. Plus, there aren't really many alternatives for using C#/.NET.

It (C#) is a fine language, built on the learn lessons from earlier languages. It is more expressive, less error prone to work with, and also performs quite well. On top of that, there is a huge standard library (.net core libraries), which makes it quite easy to start implementing the features instead of re-inventing the wheel. The only mature enough language alternative that I can see is Java. The same goes for standard library support as well.

However, Java and C#/.NET are not really comparable. Microsoft built theirs learning from the mistakes of the Java as well. They did very, very well. Technologies like LINQ and WPF are good examples of awesomeness.

KDE 4.0 Is Not a Failure

[apharmdq]

The only real problem that's plaguing it is that people are assuming that it's the complete product, rather than a work-in-progress as the development team has repeatedly pointed out. Granted denoting it as "4.0" was a questionable decision, but the reasons given by the devs were logical.

The devs had the choice of either completely rewriting the KDE framework to keep it up to date, or stick with the old system and suffer the problems that are plaguing other projects, such as X. They chose the former, and thus it will take some time to reach maturity. Meanwhile, users are free to stick with KDE 3.x, which is still being maintained.

Thankfully, there are distros like Ubuntu who are refraining from making KDE 4.0 the default until it is mature. Thus, for those who are having problems with 4.0, the problem really lies with the user, as the user would have had to make the choice to move to 4.0 in the first place. (Unless it was a distro that embraced KDE 4.0, in which case the maintainers are to blame.)

If Gnome 3 also allows for some radical changes to its framework, I expect there will be similar complaints, unless it is kept in beta until a mature version is released. This, however, could result in slower development for the exact reasons that convinced the KDE team to name their latest release 4.0.

Re:KDE 4.0 Is Not a Failure

[mpyne]

With the way Aaron is running the show, every one will have to wait for 4.5 for it to be as good as 3.5.

snip

Aaron is a hell of a developer, but he is no project manager. He can't see the forest through the trees. Anyone who is in charge of a project like he is should not be coding.

Aaron is not in charge of KDE. No one person is anyways but although Aaron is a core developer he does not run KDE or choose its direction.

What he does do is a lot of interaction with the press and presentations at events and such so in that regard he has acted as the face of KDE in person.

He also maintains the Plasma program (he does not run the whole show though, there's more people than just him working on Plasma). Many people see it as the "face" of KDE 4 in that it is the most-prominent GUI in KDE.

But he does not choose when we release, what goes in KDE, who works on what, or any of that. KDE has its own Release Team for handling releases (and the Release Team chose to delay 4.0 for 2 months and then after the final RC series to release). Aaron certainly puts in a lot of work to KDE but even if you think the release was a disaster he's not the one to blame. You can blame me if you want, I argued for releasing 4.0 after the first delay in addition to Aaron. ;)

Re:KDE 4.0 Is Not a Failure

[mpyne]

I thought as KDE eV president he was the man responsible. I stand corrected. You are to blame. :-)

The KDE e.V. is a non-profit organization which is intended to handle legal and financial matters for the KDE project. So it has a lot to do with KDE but one thing it does not do is dictate the coding done or the direction the project takes. Which is just as well as many KDE contributions are not KDE e.V. members

KDE is my favorite desktop, and I think you're doing great work. I don't take issue with any of that. I just take issue with the release cycle/version numbering. I would not have released a 4.0 without the KDE killer app - KOffice - ported and ready to go. Did MS release Win95 separate from Office? No. What good is a platform release if none of the major apps are ready? Why upgrade?

Well I wouldn't say *none* were ready. :) But yes, before KOffice and for example KDE PIM (the "killer app" for a lot of people) could be ported there had to be libraries to develop on. Even right before we released 4.0 we were debating internally on whether or not it was a good idea based on the status of the applications and libraries. In the end I think the fact that only released software actually gets used (and therefore tested) won the day. We didn't release a bomb with known show stoppers and I know it was put somewhere that Plasma had some changes yet to go, but it was important to at least release something once we had something that we could release.

Think about it this way, with the release of 4.0 we got *tons* of user feedback, mostly from bleeding-edges users who don't have the time or inclination to manually build betas or release candidates. There was a corresponding large increase in code quality from 4.0 to 4.0.1 (and on to 4.0.4). In addition since the number of people routinely using 4.0 went up after the release we got a lot of feedback about where to go as far as features are concerned and right now the 4.0 to 4.1 leap is looking like one of the most impressive minor version bumps in the time I've been using and working on KDE.

Had we not released KDE 4.0 then at this point we might just be getting to a 4.0.2 quality and 4.1 would still be a ways off yet. I know people are annoyed when they install shiny new 4.0.4 and it's missing stuff they liked in 3.5 but if KDE holds onto its code forever then it risks becoming completely irrelevant. And that's all we did, a release, we didn't make people use it, we didn't put things into the release notes that didn't actually exist, and although based on the feedback we managed to oversell 4.0 that was not our intention.

I hope you understand that my interest is just in KDE succeeding.

I appreciate that, I'm just trying to stick up for Aaron when he receives undeserved criticism. I understand that he is in many ways the public face of KDE but it's still a project whose path is dictated by where the development takes it. Aaron leads by example with Plasma but there is much much more to KDE 4 than just a new taskbar and widgets.

Protip: If you're married/in a relationship then attach a "Picture Frame" plasmoid of your significant other to your desktop. It's in the background so it won't interfere with your work but when the desktop is visible so is the picture which has scored me major brownie points with my wife at least. ;)

Re:Problem with KDE 4

[not already in use]

I hear this kind of complaint all the time from linux peeps. They want two very different, conflicting things to happen at once. First of all, they want linux to evolve while maintaining all the flexibility that it is known for, while also wanting so desperately for each year to be the "year of the Linux desktop." This is an either/or situation. Gnome and KDE are both aiming to be user-friendly desktops, and therefore shouldn't be criticized because they don't meet the productivity needs of a sysadmin. Like you said, vim, mutt, and wmaker are still around and kickin'.

Re:Problem with KDE 4

[PitaBred]

Kubuntu defaults to KDE 3.5 last time I checked. Yup, running Kubuntu 8.04 right here, using KDE 3.5. The remix is KDE4, but hey, they're experimenting with it. You can OPTIONALLY install it, but you don't have to run with it if you don't want to. But they can't get feedback if no one uses it.

What was it you were bitching about again?

Re:Problem with KDE 4

[AtomicX]

> I asked in the #kde-devel channel if it
> was removed intentionally or just hadn't
> been re-added.

It just hasn't been re-implemented.

You should have been pointed at me rather than Aaron. Terminal related queries will reach me if they are sent to konsole-devel@kde.org , robertknight on #kde-devel or be filed as bugs against Konsole at http://bugs.kde.org/ . Your patch hasn't crossed my path yet and I cannot comment on it until I see it.

Where's The Story?

[segedunum]

All we have is some article that says Gnome 2.30 = Gnome 3. Nothing else. No details, nothing. No details on GTK 3, which will have to happen before Gnome 3, and I'm not sure what problems did affect KDE 4.0's release. .0 releases are what they are, and it was the same story when Gnome 2.0 came along.

Re:Problem with KDE 4

[Anonymous Coward]

KDE 4 with plasma is going to have more features, no less, they are just going to be added in a different way than what you seem to expect.

For example a lot of people have complained about the toolbox and its inability to hide and Aaron has said that he will reject any patch that changes this behavior. however you can still have this option, the only thing that you need to do is to write a different containment where the toolbox is not shown, add this containment to your desktop, drop the default containment and you are done. By 4.2 it may even be possible to have a containment with traditional desktop icons and no toolbox if someone steps up and writes it.

The bottom line here is that in plasma the "Desktop" is a plugin (called containment) and you are free to choose the containment that you like the most. The only problem right now is that there is only one containment available, but if you carefully read Aaron's comments you will notice that he actually encourage people to write and use different desktop containments.

Re:Problem with KDE 4

[mpyne]

Yet no one knows what the long term design plans for Plasma are. The users keep getting surprised, and they feel that Plasma over-promised and under-delivered.

On top of that you have Aaron Segio now suggesting that users should have less control over configuration, fewer choices, and saying that end users are dumb. He also has suggested repeatedly lately that if you're not a coder, then you can't comment on UI issues.

Why don't you ask the Plasma developer*s* (i.e. more than just Aaron)? In addition the KDE feature plans are linked to from the front page of the KDE TechBase. For things not covered there you could add Planet KDE to your news reader or subscribe to the panel-devel mailing list. Want to see all commits made just to plasma? Use the KDE commit filter.

As far as Aaron he's been under a constant heap of criticism lately because Plasma in KDE 4 is not *exactly like* kicker+kdesktop in KDE 3 so perhaps you can excuse him for being irritable. Perhaps you have examples that are not taken out of context however, instead of just claiming that he hates users? On that note was there an announcement that KDE made that you felt over-promised what Plasma would do? If that's happened we at KDE need to get that rectified.

Gnome already has a few of those problems (removing choice, treating users like they're dumb)

Have you ever thought that taking the trouble to make a program easier to use doesn't necessarily imply that the user is dumb? I'd respond to your specific comment except that you have mentioned none.

For corporate environments, or people who can't be troubled to configure things, they just want working defaults and simplicity. That isn't a flame, but rather the way things are.

A system that just works and is simple to use? Oh heavens, no! If GNOME has already achieved that (I haven't used it in awhile) then that is something to be congratulated for. Defaults that work are a good idea in general and are separate from features. Adding more checkboxes doesn't make a program more powerful.

Re:Problem with KDE 4

[mpyne]

Some people suggested removing the animation, which was a problem because it interfered with maximized windows, and he said no.

The "cashew" would cover up a window whether it's animated or not. :P

Some people suggested allowing people to move or relocate the cashew because it interfered with panels at the top, and he said no.

Not according to this email. Looks to me is that Aaron disagrees with the various methods of removing the cashew that have been proposed so far, and that ways to do so that don't suck haven't been proposed in time for KDE 4.1.

Some people suggested having the cashew disappear when the panel is locked, and he said no.

The panel cashew does disappear when the panel is locked but locking the widgets onto the desktop doesn't get rid of other activities. The way I would think to do that is to have the cashew disappear automatically if the one and only activity has its widgets locked but I don't care enough (I mean seriously, a cashew?) to submit a patch.

The worst thing is he repeatedly said everyone was too stupid to understand his design, which he had no intention of explaining. He said users can't comment on design or UI issues. That is a problem.

In all fairness I think this happened after like the third time he tried to explain the same thing and got the same comments back. You can only answer the same question to X number of different people before you too turn into an asshole. ;)

And besides (this came up later I think) I'm pretty sure the exact perjorative term used was not "stupid" but the email thread gives me emotional baggage so I'm not going to dig it up to double-check.

Anyways KDE appreciates and needs user feedback but what we don't need are personal attacks on our developers from users, which is what led to Aaron-hates-assholes-ivus. Really KDE the project kind of let Aaron down on this because he eventually came to receive quite virulent attacks even about software he doesn't write or maintain just because he's the highest profile KDE developer and no one stepped in to get it from getting out of hand.

Re:Problem with KDE 4

[Anarke_Incarnate]

I have used KDE4 and I still have no idea of the benefits of plasma. I also have no idea why people oogle over Mac OS because I see it as a different paradigm, but not superior or even inspiring. Sometimes, I actually LIKE a 2 step process in that it gives me a moment to think about the task at hand, when I have 10 to juggle at that moment. I don't MIND a taskbar.

I am all for learning a new system, but from what I have seen it looks like a circus show.

LOOK PLASMA!!! It can so so much more....

OK.....what can it do?

It can make your desktop not a desktop

Why? What benefit does it give me?

LOOK...SHINY ICONS

and nobody has given me any practical examples of how this helps. Hell, I can even understand some of the practical uses for the compiz/beryl/kwin cube, window jumping, etc.

GNOME 3.0

[buchner.johannes]

From the GNOME website:

Some GNOME hackers have discussed what form GNOME '3.0' would take, such as radically changing its user model or taking advantage of new technologies. However, the changes in this roadmap are more incremental, designed to fit within the basically stable UI and APIs we guarantee within the 2.x series. For more on the radical changes that could be in a GNOME 3.0, see the long-term ideas at ThreePointZero. And remember, even then, the GNOME 3 APIs would be available in addition to the existing GNOME 2 APIs, so there is no risk that today's applications would break in the future.

=> Further see http://live.gnome.org/ThreePointZero

I liked that idea. Maybe it's just a version bump to reflect the progress they're making.

Re:Problem with KDE 4

[ArcherB]

You know, maybe he chose to be the maintainer because nobody else stepped up and it needed one. He was (is?) a volunteer who donated his own time. You have zero right to demand anything of him. If you want a feature implemented badly, pay someone to do it.

I love the way you complete disregard the part where I said

(not to mean that I don't appreciate his efforts..)

Then again, if you have you wouldn't have your strawman if you did.

But to get back on topic, the GP said I should place a bug report and said that everyone should as it helps the maintainers know that there is a problem. I showed him what happens when people do.

I don't have a problem with maintainers. I have a problem with maintainers that don't listen to the users. Regardless of what you think of them or how whiney they are, they are the ones who use the product. Besides, isn't that the point of all this; to get more people using Linux?

How many users do you think we're going to get by saying:

You have zero right to demand anything of him. If you want a feature implemented badly, pay someone to do it.

Fuck that. I'd rather buy Windows.

Re:Problem with KDE 4

[Enderandrew]

I've seen him use the term stupid directly repeatedly. Also a recent comment of his was that non-coders on the whole shouldn't be allowed to comment on design issues.

He also repeatedly said that if you don't read the code, you can't understand the UI. That itself is a problem.

Frankly, end users should be able to pick things up and learn them intuitively. Suggesting that if you don't read the source code, you can't understand the project means there is a serious usability issue.

Re:Problem with KDE 4

[mpyne]

Also a recent comment of his was that non-coders on the whole shouldn't be allowed to comment on design issues.

Well this is not going to make it feel any better but those who do not have experience coding often do not understand why their proposed design change does not or cannot work. Not always, but if you're good enough to design it you're typically good enough to code it. Code is just transferring a design into a language syntax. Designing it in the first place to work correctly (or not... ;) is hard.

He also repeatedly said that if you don't read the code, you can't understand the UI. That itself is a problem.

Again, this is probably actually true. Of course you can *see* the UI and point out what sucks about it but sometimes a "trivial" UI change involves a large code change. This is easier to see if you understand how the UI is actually formed from the code in question (i.e. Containments, Applets, Activities, etc. in Plasma-land).

Frankly, end users should be able to pick things up and learn them intuitively. Suggesting that if you don't read the source code, you can't understand the project means there is a serious usability issue.

Sure, but there's also the type of user (and I don't know if this is true in the case you're talking about but bear with me) that does something to the effect of:

User: Hey I noticed this is going on and it sucks, fix it!

Dev: One of:

• Yeah, that sucks but it is fixed/will be fixed.
• Yeah, that sucks, but not as much as these other bugs I'm working on.
• Yeah, that sucks and I'm interested in fixing it but not sure how without breaking foo.
• Yeah, that sucks but not enough for me to actually work on it, but patches are accepted.
• No it doesn't -> WONTFIX.

User: Why don't you just do something like integrate the frobnitz?

Dev: Because it doesn't work like that.

User: No seriously, just integrate here and you're done.

Dev: No you don't get it. The code does not work like that. It cannot work because of reason foo

Now most bug reports we get are good reports and if the dev is actually here to work on it even get resolved to everyone's satisfaction. But we do get reports like these and when it turns into a pissing match between the user and the developer politeness is usually the first thing to go out the window. I've seen Aaron be ganged up on by multiple users in this fashion and it's really disheartening to see as a developer.

Hey, sometimes the developer is even wrong and it can be implemented somehow but that typically happens with a patch (oh, maybe it does work...), which you're not going to get from the same developers by pissing in his Cheerios and acting like a jerk. And in the end (at least in KDE) those who actually do the work get to decide so if Aaron is holding off on changing something because no one has presented a satisfactory technical solution (i.e. no "evil hacks" for bug fixes) then that's how it'll be.

Re:Which is actually more work?

[setagllib]

This is a noble goal, and I support a unification on top of Qt4, but it's just not going to happen as long as Qt4 is GPL. GNOME deliberately uses the LGPL to allow free proprietary development (think VMWare, or even just GPL-incompatible like SWT/Eclipse).

If GTK was abandoned, a lot of projects would have to change their license or fork the toolkit. A *lot* of the software we use is GPL incompatible. That doesn't make it non-free, it's just the way the licenses work. For me the biggest hit would be Eclipse, which is based on SWT, which can legally derive from GTK but not Qt.

Re:Problem with KDE 4

[nonmaskable]

As for aseigo, I follow his blog and I can't remember him saying users can't comment on UI issues. If you'd give links to that than I might find your comment informative, right now, it seems mostly flamebait.

Bug 154535 is a user request for the ability to optionally remove the toolbox "cashew". 154535 has the second highest number of votes of any plasma bug. Aaron marked it as WONTFIX ("that is the final resolution of this issue as per the maintainer of the project"). Here are two examples of his attitude:

#53

it would be nice, however, if in situations like this you refrained from commenting ... i don't particularly need to open my inbox, go through the bug reports and read this kind of stuff.

#84

please, please, please people: don't try and get involved in discussions of design. if you are technically capable of doing so, read the code and jump on panel-devel and discuss things with the rest of the team in a reasoned and well-informed manner.

Re:Problem with KDE 4

[ArcherB]

Whatever, you misrepresented the actual situation with this issue.

You may be right. In the sense of fairness, here is another quote from the same link as above. Also, please notice that six months have past since the previous post:

Comment #22 from William Jon McCann (gnome-screensaver developer, points: 22)
2006-03-03 14:44 UTC [reply]

Take it easy everyone. Please understand that I'm not paid to do this and it
isn't my full time job. Also understand that simply reiterating the issue
doesn't add anything. Also, unless you are motivated enough to actually write
some code or pay/convince someone else to do it for you then you are less
likely to get what you want. That's open source for you. Please try not to
make demands of me.

I've added a stub to the FAQ about directory translation.

Chris Weiss: I'm glad to see that you have actually looked into this. I'm
afraid there is probably something wrong with your system since that should
work fine. Try submitting a bug to your distro.

Miles: Looks like someone upgraded the wiki and it changed the way the URLs are
accepted. Try, http://live.gnome.org/GnomeScreensaver/FrequentlyAskedQuestions

I think was is needed here is a product manager or something that acts as a firewall/router to translate between the actual coders and the general public.

Coders are geeks. They don't deal well with people who don't understand what it is that they really do. It doesn't help that they get bombarded with stupid requests from people who don't know what the software is supposed to do. In my current position, part of my job is to act as that firewall. I take the good requests to our developers to consider and keep the stupid ones to myself. I understand coders and don't get offended when they say, "that's a stupid idea. This was never designed to do that crap and the user needs to find another way to get that done." The user would get offended and find another solution to their problem, probably from our competition (Linux's main competition is Windows). Instead, I tell them, "here, try this application. It does a better job as all it really does is what you are trying to accomplish."

Either way, users need to be treated with respect whether they are paying customers or not. When I'm deciding between upgrading my 50 office machines to Visa or switching to Ubuntu, it doesn't help when my requests are brushed off because a developer doesn't think they are necessary.