Shuttleworth Sees Possibility For a QT-based GNOME

An anonymous reader writes "derStandard.at has an extensive interview with Ubuntu-founder Mark Shuttleworth, in which he seems to be pushing for a switch to QT in the GNOME-project: 'I think it would be perfectly possible to deliver the values of GNOME on top of QT.' He goes on to talk about Apple as an 'innovation leader' and problems with Hardy Heron."

Comments

In other news

[Daimanta]

Shuttleworth sees possibility in cats and dogs living together.

Re:In other news

[MonsterTrimble]

QT and Gnome living together

Mass Hysteria!

Re:In other news

[xouumalperxe]

So? My cat and my two dogs are quite happy together. The cat loves to torment the cocker spaniel,who growls ineffectually back at him, but the labrador and the cat just love to play and mock fight and stuff together.

Re:In other news

[Mark Trade]

Well aware that you are joking, I still have to say I know places where cats and dogs are living together.

Re:In other news

[Anonymous Coward]

MASS HYSTERIA!

Re:In other news

[eno2001]

Goddamn sodomite!

Re:In other news

[benpark22]

Oh, No. This is one more confusing choice for my grandma.

No, GNOME-like values on QT

[paroneayea]

That's a pretty misleading summary. Actual quote:

derStandard.at: So you would favor GNOME to switch over to QT?

Shuttleworth: Well, I think it would be perfectly possible to deliver the values of GNOME on top of QT. There are licensing issues, GNOME is very much built on the LGPL, allowing companies to build their own products on a free software system, giving them some freedom and flexibility in their choice of licensing. That's very frankly been a huge drive for the adoption of GNOME by corporate ISVs.

He says in this article that GNOME was chosen for how easy to use it is. He's saying that the widget set doesn't dictate that, so the same thing could be done with QT, not that GNOME should be rewritten with QT.

Re:No, GNOME-like values on QT

[zootm]

Yeah, I thought that conclusion seemed suspect too. "It's possible" is different from advocating it.

Re:No, GNOME-like values on QT

[jacquesm]

not to start a flame war here, but to get KDE and Gnome somehow merged would seem to be the biggest priority for OSS in getting linux deployed to the desktop en masse. The lack of UI standardization is really making life unnecessarily hard. Getting Gnome somehow running on top of QT would be a big step in this direction.

Re:No, GNOME-like values on QT

[Darkness404]

The lack of UI standardization is really making life unnecessarily hard.

Oh yah, because they are so standarized in Windows. Let see if they all use the Windows toolkit and have the same UI for some common Windows Apps.

1. Office, nope
2. Firefox nope
3. Games nope

And many more. Just about every Linux application uses either QT or GTK. Both are good, and in just about 75% of common applications you can get either a QT version or a GTK version.

Re:No, GNOME-like values on QT

[TitusC3v5]

A misleading slashdot summary?

I'm shocked, shocked I tell you.

Re:No, GNOME-like values on QT

[paroneayea]

Oh yah, because they are so standarized in Windows. Let see if they all use the Windows toolkit and have the same UI for some common Windows Apps.

1. Office, nope
2. Firefox nope
3. Games nope

Let's be fair about number three, that's a problem with the gaming industry in general. Almost every game reinvents its own UI, on pretty much all platforms, anywhere. Yes, even on Linux.

Re:No, GNOME-like values on QT

[jabjoe]

A GUI is a GUI, they are designed to be simple to use. None of them are that radically different. There is perhaps a debate to be had about having multiple desktop environment libs loaded....... but that overhead never bothered me. I think having different GUIs is a good thing because it means there is a choice and it provides friendly competition with out any real compatibility issues (like real different platforms). The eco-system would be weaker if there was one GUI. I may not want the same GUI as my gran.....

Re:No, GNOME-like values on QT

[Allen Varney]

Let's be fair about number three, that's a problem with the gaming industry in general. Almost every game reinvents its own UI, on pretty much all platforms, anywhere.

That's not a bug, it's a feature. Part of the fun of playing a game is mastering its interface, and a unique interface can encourage unique new kinds of fun. Anyway, how would it work if every game had to use the same interface -- if you had to be able to play Halo, SimCity 4, Command & Conquer, Tetris, Line Rider, bridge, backgammon, and parcheesi on a standard chessboard?

Re:No, GNOME-like values on QT

[Anonymous Coward]

> Yeah, I thought that conclusion seemed suspect too. "It's possible" is different from advocating it.

That must be why the headline reads 'Shuttleworth Sees Possibility' instead of 'Shuttleworth Advocates'

Re:No, GNOME-like values on QT

[LWATCDR]

I don't think so.
I have no problem moving between Gnome and KDE. I have gotten to the point that I like Gnome better because it actually feels simpler to use.
I have not used KDE4 at all so things may change.
That being said I can think of a LOT more pressing needs in OSS than merging KDE and GNOME.
1. Audio. It is still a mess. Make up your minds and create a standard for that.
2. An Installer. Repositories are great if they have what you want. Yes I can deal with ./configure;make;make install just fine but not everyone can.

Re:No, GNOME-like values on QT

[Mark Trade]

As soon as you accept there are different desktop environments for Linux out there, you have to also accept that there are differences in their respective UIs. If there weren't, there just were no different desktop environments. UI standardization is for /within/ a desktop.

Re:No, GNOME-like values on QT

[AngryLlama]

you mean GTK was chosen?

Re:No, GNOME-like values on QT

[hummassa]

Why the hell shouldn't KDE swith to Gtk then? I don't like KDE and I've **NEVER** liked KDE. Ever. And its not for lack of trying or wanting to like KDE. I just can't use it for longer than 20 minutes before I get incredibly frustrated and give up. Its been that way for me for 10 years.

I'm quite content with GNOME right now, but if they switched to Qt, or tried to merge with KDE, I'd go full-time to e17 and say a pox on both their houses. But that is just me.

s/KDE/blabs/g;
s/GNOME/KDE/g;
s/blabs/GNOME/g;
s/Qt/blabs/g;
s/Gtk/Qt/g;
s/blabs/Gtk/g;

So, it's really a matter of taste. And choice.

Re:No, GNOME-like values on QT

[jedidiah]

All you need is standardized way to handle alien packages. It doesn't
even have to be a "standard" way. It just has to be consistent in
approach across distributions that do packages. The obvious way would
be to have a part of the fs dedicated to alien packages where the alien
filestructure is mimicked.

Something along the likes of /opt/alien/RPM/redhat/5.0/usr/X11/bin/xv.

Alien packages could be treated less "cleanly" for the sake of convenience
and be segregated from the other packages so that the main system is not
compromised.

The idea would be to just have a place to put ANY package and to try and
use it.

Although the Linux/Unix way of doing things still trumps the immediate competiton by far.

Re:No, GNOME-like values on QT

[zootm]

Issue isn't with headline, it's with the summary:

...he seems to be pushing for a switch to QT in the GNOME-project...

I realise misleading summaries are far from rare on Slashdot, but still.

Re:No, GNOME-like values on QT

[LWATCDR]

Okay except we don't have that.
There is alien and that does work but being able to download a file called setup or install is just intuitive And that counts for a lot when you are talking about Aunt Tillie ready.

Re:No, GNOME-like values on QT

[moosesocks]

He says in this article that GNOME was chosen for how easy to use it is. He's saying that the widget set doesn't dictate that

In my experience, that doesn't necessarily seem to be true.

The UI Paradigms used in various applications seem to be very much a function of their underlying toolkits.

Windows apps have traditionally been heavily toolbar-driven, and allow for extensive keyboard navigation. Contextual menus are also used quite often (although less so these days). Many of the UI paradigms left-over from the pre-multitasking days are still around, as many apps (eg. Photoshop) still use nestled windows, and users are encouraged to "maximize" whichever application they are using.

MacOS (X) apps have never made use of nestled windows, and there is much encouragement for applications to seamlessly interact via drag & drop, and such. Contextual menus are present, but not extensively used (no right mouse button!). Cocoa applications are easily distinguishable from Carbon apps, and applications that make use of neither stick out like a sore thumb.

Perhaps due to its perceived "weaknesses," GTK applications tend to take a minimalistic approach. In my own opinion, this has resulted in a more user-friendly environment, where apps do exactly what they need to, and nothing more. Once you learn to work within its bounds, Xfce is also a fantastic environment, simultaneously being "modern" and extremely "minimalistic" if that's the sort of thing you want.

KDE and QT both feel like they borrow many of their UI paradigms from Pre-XP windows. The underpinnings are solid (and also C++), but the apps tend to suffer from feature bloat, making them daunting to new users, and visually unappealing. (Too many toolbars, and not enough pixel artists results lots of identical blue blobs at the top of the screen!) KDE4 seems to be a step in the right direction, though I do think that the KDE folks still need to rethink their strategy.

One of Java's primary historical weaknesses has been the lack of a coherent toolkit or consistent set of UI paradigms. One commonly-heard joke is that Java's portability enables it to be equally ugly and slow on all platforms. Fortunately, SWT fixes much of this, and provides perhaps the only successful cross-platform UI library to date, though not all Java apps implement it......

Re:No, GNOME-like values on QT

[jabjoe]

Oh the amount of times I've regretted admitting something is possible to a user........they never hear anything after that about how it's not a good idea etc etc. I'm sure the software is littered with some foolish developer (like me) saying something is possible and not getting to finish the sentence before it's been committed to! ;-)

Re:No, GNOME-like values on QT

[Eli Gottlieb]

Actually, most Windows games have standardized on a single user-interface API: DirectX.

Re:No, GNOME-like values on QT

[bmcage]

The bottom line is that GNOME is LGPL, so companies embrace it, whereas KDE is just open source, and apparently users embrace it (Shuttlework admits using it himself), but not companies.

With Nokia owning QT, QT could be relicensed as LGPL by Nokia, and then QT would appear to be the best toolkit at the moment to provide the richest user interface.

I can grok his explanation for the success of GNOME.

Re:No, GNOME-like values on QT

[FictionPimp]

I agree. I have had far more stability using gtk apps then qt apps. I have also had far more stability using gnome then kde.

Truth be told, as a user, I don't care much about the technical aspects of each. I just want stable programs that look great with a feel that matches the rest of my desktop and integrates into the environment.

As a developer, I want a stable, well documented, api and good ide support.

Right now I like gtk because it meets that criteria better (in my opinion).

I'd happily switch to anything that does the job better. I do not see a point in switching to anything that does the job just as well.

Re:No, GNOME-like values on QT

[Hucko]

so when you download your deb/rpm rename it too "setup_NewProgram" and double click it? Personally I'm happy with the name+version format.

Re:No, GNOME-like values on QT

[FictionPimp]

I prefer the mac way of installing via just drag and drop the app file into your applications directory (or any other directory).

I personally think that would be a much better default for 3rd party (non-repo) provided applications.

Sure, you waste hard drive space, but right now that is not a concern.

Re:No, GNOME-like values on QT

[arth1]

not to start a flame war here, but to get KDE and Gnome somehow merged would seem to be the biggest priority for OSS in getting linux deployed to the desktop en masse

Yeah, cause FOSS is all about reducing the choices. Whoever modded you insightful must have a very strange sense of humour.

What would be helpful is if KDE, Gnome, E+, Xfce and others started cooperating on APIs, and make non-WM features use libraries that don't link in the whole window manager. There's no reason why different window managers shouldn't call the same routine for creating a thumbnail image, for example, and the user can choose the library that does that best, without changing the WM.

Choices are good.

Re:No, GNOME-like values on QT

[FishWithAHammer]

Qt is arguably a better framework than GTK+ from a technical perspective. It's also better from a developer's perspective--GTK+ is a pain in the ass to program for. (It's also written in C and while wrappers do exist, they kind of suck--and I'd think we'd want fewer people writing code in C.)

Qt can be made to look like GTK+ if you really want it to, so there's no huge issue. But suggesting that KDE move to GTK+ is silly, because GTK+ doesn't even have a good chunk of the functionality that Qt does.

Re:No, GNOME-like values on QT

[LWATCDR]

So you have never had an issue with an RPM?
You must not install anything that doesn't come with your install CD!
As I said I can manage source installs. The problem is that there isn't a Linux installer.
At best you have to find an RPM or deb for your system at worst you have to find the source tarball.
Add to that the complexity of packaging an install for the developers and you have a real mess.

Re:No, GNOME-like values on QT

[vtcodger]

***Yes I can deal with ./configure;make;make install just fine but not everyone can.***

So could I.

If it always worked. What caused me to give up on Slackware and switch to (yechh) Ubuntu was the relatively small number of applications available preconfigured for Slack. Maybe I just had a run of rotten luck, but it seemed to me that about 40% of the applications I attempted to ./configure, make, make install wouldn't install. Entirely too often I had to find and decode a README file, and/or decode the make files(), and/or spend (an) hour(s) running Google searches in order to figure out how to actually install the program. I'm too old and stupid for that. At least on the scale required.

Then there is that dependency thing ....

Don't get me wrong. It's better than Windows. But perfect it is not.

Re:No, GNOME-like values on QT

[tpierron]

Huh, what version of Firefox are you using ? There has been new version since Phoenix 0.8. Firefox has been using Win32 api for rendering its control for ages now, but that's not the point.

The point is, if you want to have an uniform look in Windows (and OS X) you only have to use the Win32 API, or a toolkit that is based on this API (a lot of them). And it will work from Win95 (okay, better NT4) to Vista. Just because some (maybe too much) vendors are doing crappy interfaces by reinventing the wheel, doesn't mean everybody has to do the same.

For Linux, if you're targeting Gnome, it will be very hard to also target KDE, since they have incompatible API, and some licensing issue (LGPL vs GPL) with their core frameworks. Thus integration will suck.

Re:No, GNOME-like values on QT

[Anonymous Coward]

Possibly in 20 years when the first real GNUStep app arrives.

Re:No, GNOME-like values on QT

[mcrh]

Is Windows really the target you want to shoot for when it comes to UI consistency?

Re:No, GNOME-like values on QT

[nekokoneko]

if you had to be able to play Halo, SimCity 4, Command & Conquer, Tetris, Line Rider, bridge, backgammon, and parcheesi on a standard chessboard?

I'm guessing playing backgammon on a standard chessboard wouldn't be so difficult...

Re:No, GNOME-like values on QT

[Clover_Kicker]

There's no reason why different window managers shouldn't call the same routine for creating a thumbnail image, for example, and the user can choose the library that does that best, without changing the WM.

No reason at all, unless you count
1) getting everyone in the world to agree to do it in the first place
2) getting everyone in the world to agree on the mechanism.

How hard could that be?

Re:No, GNOME-like values on QT

[Anonymous Coward]

Dude, that is so uncool. You know my parents are poor!!

That's the last time I'm inviting you over to play GTA4 on my second hand chess board.

Re:No, GNOME-like values on QT

[Darkness404]

No, but Windows is the most used OS. And a lot of Windows people cry when they use Linux because not everything is as good as Windows and in the list of "problems" (and 99% of the "problems" are simply differences) of Linux they cite the lack of UI standardization as a big problem to Linux adoption, yet the most used OS doesn't even have a standard UI.

Re:No, GNOME-like values on QT

[MrHanky]

It's never going to happen, for technical, social and licensing reasons, so it can't possibly be a priority. A priority is something you set first. Putting never first is never a good idea. Pipe dream, perhaps. Certainly stupid. I can't believe someone with a UID below a million would even suggest it.

Re:No, GNOME-like values on QT

[nekokoneko]

That was an incredible brain fart, I read backgammon and thought of checkers. Sorry, my bad. And I proof-read it too...

Re:No, GNOME-like values on QT

[recoiledsnake]

DirectX is not a user-interface API. It's a graphic programming API.

Re:No, GNOME-like values on QT

[gbjbaanb]

It *used* to have a standard UI. The Windows Interface Guidelines was the bible of user interface work. Once upon a time, that is.

Programming Windows used to be fine - you had Windows Controls and the standard message passing architecture. It worked, and you could write apps that all looked the same and reused the same set of windows. I think it helped Windows adoption in a time when UI development had a 'whatever you wanted' approach.

However, that was then. Now Windows is a mish-mash of Win32 controls, embedded HTML, Vista-alike pretend-browser windows, WPF, Windows Forms, Silverlight, and I'm sure there are more. Its a huge mess, and I'm not surprised considering their push for "more new stuff" to keep developers from going elsewhere.

So, yes, if Linux could point to a fast development system that provided a better user experience... businesses would have a good reason to migrate. Something about standard UI = lower TCO if I recall the Microsoft marketing machine's reasons why Windows is better (oh the irony).

Re:No, GNOME-like values on QT

[Jerry]

You do know that the GNOME and KDE dev crews are meeting this summer in a joint conference, don't you?

Some sort of merging would be nice but there are a lot of hurdles to leap over, the first being that GNOME is built using C and KDE is built using C++.

The second is that GNOME requires at least 6 separate additional apps be installed in order to do development, while KDE supplies everything that is needed in one download file.

The third is that GTK+ is a UI toolkit only, while QT4 includes both the GUI designer AND an API for database connectivity, threading, console app development, and many, many more features.

The fourth is that GNOME offers an LGPL license to facilitate the inclusion of proprietary binary files and QT requires that developers purchase a commercial developer's license in order to include proprietary binary files in a distro. That license could cost as much as $3K apiece and $1.5K/year for support. This is, no doubt, the BIG reason why ISVs prefer GNOME over KDE.

However, GNOME already includes KDE components which enable GNOME users to run KDE applications, and KDE include GNOME components that allow it run GNOME apps, so a lot of progress has been made already. I will wager that even more progress will be made at this summer's conference.

Re:No, GNOME-like values on QT

[decaheximal]

What do you mean, how would it work? The problem is these damn kids these days. No imagination whatsoever. Inform is the answer! With text based games (and I mean *text language*, none of this fancy-pants nethack/zzt/libaa hoolaballoo!) the sky is the limit. We've had the capability to make rich game experiences far beyond what graphics cards will ever be able to pump out, for decades now I tells ya! Anyone remember IF Quake? And they called it a joke! Ha! Now, granted I haven't seen IF Tetris or IF parcheesi yet, but given a sudden surge in interest... Yes, Gentlemen, this could work!

Re:No, GNOME-like values on QT

[Jason Earl]

It's been a long time since I'd heard anyone describe nethack as being "fancy." Wait, until today I had never heard anyone describe nethack as being fancy.

Re:No, GNOME-like values on QT

[shutdown -p now]

Direct3D is a graphic programming API. DirectX also includes DirectInput, which is user input API (which I think was what the GP was referring to), and other things.

Re:No, GNOME-like values on QT

[jacquesm]

thank you, that's a pile of good information.

Re:No, GNOME-like values on QT

[turbidostato]

"The lack of UI standardization is really making life unnecessarily hard. Getting Gnome somehow running on top of QT would be a big step in this direction."

How can be somebody so wrong and still being modded "+1 Insightful"?

1) What Shuttleworth said it's that Gnome's "philoshopy" (lack of -suppousedly, confusing options, lean and mean desktop) can certainly be built on top of Qt.
2) That's exactly what really differences KDE from Gnome on the user's eye. Gnome tries to be lean and mean on the understanment that the "standard user" only need a short and well chosen functionality set. KDE, on the other hand, bases it's development on the understanment that even if any given user will use 5% of the desktop possibilities, each user, or at least a significative percentage of users, will tend to use a different 5%, hence the desktop, while directly offered with a given configuration set preselected (which, theoretically could be more or less equivalent to that of a "standard" Gnome desktop, why not), should offer ample configurability.
3) Once understood that from the end-user point of view major differences between KDE and Gnome are of "philosophycal" nature, not technically based on the underlying graphical toolkit, it's both obvious that KDE could be written on top of Gtk+ and/or Gnome on top of Qt *and* that writting one desktop on top of the other's toolkit preserving their "philoshopycal" differences would do nothing in regards of "UI standardization".
4) Finally, while I understand the non-end-user related features that make Mr Shuttleworth push forward Gnome (mainly, that Gtk+ is LGPL distributed while Qt is dual-licensed, GPL and privative), I must say to him "thanks, but no thanks": I'm in favour of both the UI approach and the end-result of KDELibs being dual-licensed from KDE so, while he is absolutly free to push his money and as much people as he can towards his goals (which underneath, I bet they go more or less like "heck, the more I look at it, the more convinced I am that Qt is a much better toolkit than Gtk+... if only Qt were LGLP..."), I'm interested a zinch on Gnome's fate but I'm quite interested on KDE going into the future as it has gone since Qt became GPL for those interested.

Re:No, GNOME-like values on QT

[rlbond86]

Maybe YOU think GTK is good, but I think its "open file" dialog box is the most poorly thought design I have ever seen. I do not like GTK. Come to think of it, I don't like GNOME that much either. Too... difficult to customize. I'll stick with KDE, even if GNOME gets smart and picks up QT. Which they won't, because the FSF is too narcissistic to use someone else's software.

Re:No, GNOME-like values on QT

[Hatta]

Nethack is one of the fanciest games ever made. It's just that in this case, the fanciness is in the rich gameplay, not the graphics.

Re:No, GNOME-like values on QT

[jacquesm]

Well, I think you're missing the point entirely here.

Let me try to clear that up: For us 'geeks' there are plenty of reasons to prefer the one over the other, but for the very large number of would-be linux users it really doesn't matter one bit what license your software was produced under, what the underlying technology is and which group of programmers / advocates gets to claim they have more bragging rights.

They're confused out of their skulls when they have to navigate lots of fora with outdated information on how to get their sound card to work with their particular flavour, or why they can not play their dvd's, not to mention the instructions to find various settings that seem to apply to their setup but really apply to one of a different distro (I've fallen for that one myself once).

By making all these differences the market gets fragmented and the software becomes unstable, there are simply too many different configurations and combinations of software and environment to properly test all of them.

So, the burden of that is pushed to the end user and he/she couldn't care less about the internals and the reasons for things not working.

Re:No, GNOME-like values on QT

[AceofSpades19]

There are programs like apt and yum that find dependencies for you they have been around for awhile

Re:No, GNOME-like values on QT

[IntlHarvester]

Drag-n-drop installs really only work for a subset of Mac applications.

Apple still has a package system and installer engine for everything else. (One that's arguably not as good as Linux package managers.)

Re:No, GNOME-like values on QT

[JamesGecko]

Valve and a lot of games released on Steam have actually been pretty good about having a consistent menu system.

Re:No, GNOME-like values on QT

[LWATCDR]

Yes there are and I have had problems with them as well.
They work just fine as long as you only use what is in the repositories but if you don't you can break them.

Re:No, GNOME-like values on QT

[AceofSpades19]

Thats why you can you add repos

Re:No, GNOME-like values on QT

[w000t]

I can't decide if your trolling or not, nevertheless... I've been using KDE for the last 5 years without any stability problems at all. Actually, my experience would suggest that GTK applications crash more often than Qt's. This however is most likely related to the fact that the GTK apps I use are niche applications (for which I didn't find a suitable Qt/KDE counterpart), which generally also means less developers, less users and less mature applications which obviously leads to more crashes. I would be really surprised if you're experience were very different. The only big KDE app that I know crashes from time to time is Konqueror (and if you are a GNOME user, you probably never used it enough to see that happen).

Re:No, GNOME-like values on QT

[SomeKDEUser]

Actually, although the thumbnail generation is not standard, the location and storing thereof is. So there actually is a standard, interoperable across desktops.

Yay !

Re:No, GNOME-like values on QT

[LWATCDR]

But sometimes what you need are NOT IN THE REPOS!
That is the problem.
Try and find an RPM for the latest verison of Postgres for the latest verison of OpenSuse.
You will not find it in any REPOS. You will have to install from source.
The REPOS system means you are at the mercy of the REPOS maintainers.

Re:No, GNOME-like values on QT

[jedidiah]

You could do that with Linux too. Some apps are essentially that.

Sorting out what's what is much more transparent with Unix (than that other OS we don't need to mention).

Re:No, GNOME-like values on QT

[FictionPimp]

Very true, but once could argue that applications that complex are best handled via the distro vendor, or the software developers support staff and installer.

The majority of user apps for mac however are just dmg files with app files inside. Only huge programs like photoshop are pkg's. And those (in theory) would get support from the vendor.

Re:No, GNOME-like values on QT

[pimpimpim]

What amazes me most is that a journalist of a nationwide newspaper (not a tech journal), has a discussion about QT/GTK. Pretty decent. In a while we'll be getting linux tips in the tech section of tabloids :)

Re:No, GNOME-like values on QT

[Hucko]

I never have trouble with debs. I am believing that rpm based distros should give up and submit to the awesomeness of the Apt program. Recursively it states its purpose and its goal; and it succeeds.

Re:No, GNOME-like values on QT

[Drinking Bleach]

> There has been new version since Phoenix 0.8. Firefox has been using Win32 api for rendering its control for ages now, but that's not the point.

Only very recently (Firefox 3.0) has it been able to *pretend* that it's using the API for rendering its controls, but it's still not doing so.

Re:No, GNOME-like values on QT

[Knuckles]

But it has no effect on the GUI, so is completely OT.

Re:No, GNOME-like values on QT

[Knuckles]

What's wrong with the current "open file" dialog box, exactly?

Re:No, GNOME-like values on QT

[Knuckles]

Use checkinstall.

Re:No, GNOME-like values on QT

[dbcad7]

Baloney.. You could say that life is unnecessarily hard to have more than one OS.. There is nothing about having both KDE and Gnome as options that is stopping or slowing down anything. You can have Gnome as your primary desktop and run KDE only apps no problem, and vice-versa... You can install both (and more) window managers if you want, and run a different one each day.. no problem.

Re:No, GNOME-like values on QT

[Knuckles]

for the very large number of would-be linux users it really doesn't matter one bit what license your software was produced under

It does, as without a proper license the OS would not even exist ...

Re:No, GNOME-like values on QT

[segedunum]

He says in this article that GNOME was chosen for how easy to use it is. He's saying that the widget set doesn't dictate that

Further down, that doesn't sound like what he's saying to me, otherwise there would be no need at all to talk about Qt.

Shuttleworth: Whether we'll be able to have the FSF excited about something, have GNOME excited about something, have Nokia excited about something which makes life better for developers - that's gonna be the interesting challenge for me.

Personally, I find Mark Shuttleworth utterly confusing at the best of times.

Re:No, GNOME-like values on QT

[Drinking Bleach]

Because obviously Aunt Tillie needs the latest version of PostgreSQL.

Re:No, GNOME-like values on QT

[LWATCDR]

Nope but she might need the latest version of Gimp.
Postgres is one that I have had to do by hand.

Re:No, GNOME-like values on QT

[Ant P.]

I'm curious as to why nobody's made a wrapper library to run one toolkit's GUI natively with another one's programs, instead of just a hacked up theme.

Re:No, GNOME-like values on QT

[Anonymous Coward]

In Windows I don't have to configure my fonts at least twice depending on if the app is Qt-based, KDE-based, or GTK-based. They just fucking work, and they don't look like ass, by the way.

Re:No, GNOME-like values on QT

[tknd]

a unique interface can encourage unique new kinds of fun

So that's why it is up up down down left right left right select start!

Re:No, GNOME-like values on QT

[civilizedINTENSITY]

That is in response to his saying "if Nokia makes the QT-licenses effectively compatible with the GNOME vision,
can they embrace Qt as a platform?" So the question, in context, is really one of convergence of codebase.

In terms of how easy GNOME is to use, he means that corporations find the LGPL easier to use than the GPL. Again, this refers to a world where Nokia LGPLs Qt. One has to wonder what it would mean for GNOME to embrace Qt as a platform, if nothing in GNOME is to be written in Qt.

Re:No, GNOME-like values on QT

[civilizedINTENSITY]

If GNOME moved to QT, there would still be two different GUIs. Its not as though GNOME would suddenly look like KDE. Rather, GNOME would look just like GNOME, but it's be easier and faster for developers to code changes, and GNOME could evolve as fast as KDE. Their would also be advantages, in terms of memory usage, to converging the libs.

Re:No, GNOME-like values on QT

[azgard]

I actually like it when I cannot accidentally move my files in the open dialog.. (especially into a subdirectory, from which it is not possible to get them back)

Re:No, GNOME-like values on QT

[Burz]

You can't enforce package naming between distros, so you can't have reliable dependency checking.

Alien packages could be treated less "cleanly" for the sake of convenience
and be segregated from the other packages so that the main system is not
compromised.

Problem: There's no agreed upon line drawn between "main system" and everything else. IOW, there's no standard platform for applications to target. (There is LSB Desktop, which seems to remain unporomoted/stillborn.)

Ultimately, I think the best solution would be for the Linux Foundation to sell LSB Desktop to developers -- really push it as a target patform, and have apps with one primary dependancy: MyApp1.0 ::depends:: LSB Desktop 3.x. When downloaded directly from the author, the non-system extras would be packaged along with the app, and the package manager can replace the ones that easily match with its own repo versions.

It will never happen though. I can already hear the chorus of "Stop copying Windows!!!" rising, even though the above most closely copies the Mac. Believe me, I have heard it for years and years on this site and others.

Re:No, GNOME-like values on QT

[Anonymous Coward]

What would be helpful is if KDE, Gnome, E+, Xfce and others started cooperating on APIs, and make non-WM features use libraries that don't link in the whole window manager. There's no reason why different window managers shouldn't call the same routine for creating a thumbnail image, for example, and the user can choose the library that does that best, without changing the WM.

KDE, Gnome and Xfce already cooperate:
http://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Software
http://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Specifications?action=show&redirect=Standards

Re:No, GNOME-like values on QT

[Anonymous Coward]

Slight correction. The joint conference is not until next year. Although it was officially announced just a week or so ago.

Re:No, GNOME-like values on QT

[jacquesm]

total nonsense. The GPL is not what writes software, programmers do. If it wouldn't be for the 'proper' license there would have been another one or public domain.

Re:No, GNOME-like values on QT

[jejones]

Try using it to save or select a file in a directory with a few thousand files in it, and come back... much later... to ask again. (Even worse, do it twice; if it caches the information it gathers during that long, tedious interval, I see no evidence of it.)

Re:No, GNOME-like values on QT

[turbidostato]

"Try using it to save or select a file in a directory with a few thousand files in"

Or try to find a file under a "dot" directory.

Re:No, GNOME-like values on QT

[Knuckles]

Um, who mentioned the GPL? The guy I replied to said "for the very large number of would-be linux users it really doesn't matter one bit what license your software was produced under".

Re:No, GNOME-like values on QT

[Knuckles]

I ran this bash script to create 10,000 empty files:

for i in $(seq 1 10000); do echo -n "file${i} "; touch file${i} 2> done

Then I opened gedit, clicked File-> Open and navigated to the directory. It took ca. 2.5 seconds to list them. Selecting and opening was instant. I did say "what's wrong with the _current_ dialog box", I don't care for bugs from years ago. Next time please save my time and try it yourself first, okithx.

Re:No, GNOME-like values on QT

[Lodragandraoidh]

This is a problem for the maintainers of the code you are trying to download (e.g. latest untested code) - you need to convince them that it is worth their while to build an installable version of their application using one, or more, of the standard installers (apt, yum, rpm) for your given platform (intel, solaris, ibm etc).

Good luck with that.

If you don't like living within the walls of the distribution (and these walls are variable - e.g. Debian's three distribution model) you are now using - you have essentially two choices:

1. Find a distribution that meets your needs (I like Slackware because there is a very large and well tested selection of apps for it in their package system - slapt/tar).

2. Roll your own (I've done that too when necessary - usually on a non-Slackware system).

Otherwise - get off the bleeding edge and be happy with a stable version that may be several generations behind the state of the art.

Re:No, GNOME-like values on QT

[Lodragandraoidh]

Also - a key point -- these apps that are installed for MAC only have to deal with ONE architecture....not a bazillion architectures (and variations thereof if you include hardware and OS).

Re:No, GNOME-like values on QT

[Eli Gottlieb]

We don't need a standardized package manager for Linux. ./configure;make;make install does that in the corner case that absolutely no repo is available from anyone. What we need is a standard UNINSTALL program to remove the files that make install put there without having to keep source trees around.

Already done.

[Anonymous Coward]

I thought it was called KDE 4.0.

Re:Already done.

[betterunixthanunix]

I take it that you don't like GNOME? (For the record, I am a long time KDE user, and I am kicking myself for not sticking with KDE 3 a bit longer).

Re:Already done.

[Woy]

Kick yourself back to KDE 3.x like i did. Good thing Free software gives us such choices.

Re:Already done.

[Requiem18th]

Yes, thanks, my point exactly, KDE 4 is exactly about adding simplicity back to KDE

Re:Already done.

[Cathbard]

I've been using KDE 4.1 and it's not a lot better. I'm a long time user of KDE and I don't like the direction it's taking. The main reason most people used kde was because it wasn't dumbed down. So much for that idea! You're quite right, KDE4 is KDE trying to be Gnome. I have KDE 4.1 and Gnome on this and I find I'm prefering Gnome. It's more flexible - imagine that?

Here's hoping that a fork of KDE3 is made and most of the devs move to that instead.

Wow!

[mrbluze]

So we didn't see a sufficient level of beta-testing during the test-period and many bugs are only filed when the release has already been made. So one option that we considered was: "Let's not call 8.04 the LTS, let's call 8.04.1 the LTS", so many people would upgrade who wouldn't use a beta and you get better feedback. So that's something we might do differently with the next LTS.

Better do it differently next time. I upgraded to LTS Ubuntu on the wife's laptop when it came out and we had stability problems with it for ages. She was the last person I wanted beta-testing a linux distro! Ouch!

Re:Wow!

[norminator]

I thought it was interesting how he says that for some of the technical things, like Pulse Audio, Firefox, etc., it would be better to use the newest stuff, even if it wasn't *quite* ready, and fix it all in a service pack, so that the latest software would be there for the long haul.

But when it came to artwork, they considered changing it, but he though an LTS was the wrong time to mess with it, because then they'd be stuck with new artwork for a long time.

Does that seem backwards to anyone? I mean, the people who are using an LTS want stability and software that's proven and that will get the job done, even if it is a little older. They know they're not on the bleeding-edge. Whereas with the artwork, I would think that an LTS is a great time to start off in a new direction so that a new theme can really come to be associated with the distro. Especially given how many people complain about the brown and orange they use now (although I actually prefer the brown and orange).

Re:Wow!

[swillden]

Does that seem backwards to anyone? I mean, the people who are using an LTS want stability and software that's proven and that will get the job done, even if it is a little older.

I don't think that's an accurate characterization of the reason to use an LTS release. You use LTS because you want a platform that doesn't change (except for security fixes and bug fixes) for a long time. That means that towards the end of the LTS release's lifecycle you accept that you're using pretty outdated stuff, it doesn't mean that you necessarily want that at the beginning.

If what you want is something that's well-proven, you don't adopt any new release, LTS or not. You might pick up a year-old LTS release, after all the bugs have been worked out, but I think Debian stable would be a better choice; it's much more thoroughly stabilized after having passed through the long Debian testing phase.

Given that a new LTS release is going to be somewhat buggy, I don't think it's at all unreasonable to go with slightly unready software, expecting that it will stabilize over the first six months or so after release.

I don't know enough about the issues around desktop artwork to know what makes sense there.

Re:Wow!

[mhall119]

The choice of Firefox wasn't to have the newest, it was to have something that was still supportable in 3 years time. It's the same reason there isn't an LTS of Kubuntu, because KDE4 wasn't stable enough, and KDE 3.5 wouldn't be supportable in 3 years.

The artwork was a different issue, because upgrading artwork mid-LTS wouldn't actually be a big deal technically. Instead the choice was made because the LTS wasn't the "kick-off" of a new series, but rather the end-product of the series that started with Edgy. Ideally, Hardy will be more in common with Gutsy than with Intrepid, and thus should look more like Gutsy than Intrepid.

Re:Wow!

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, it is completely backwards for LTS to ship with beta packages but that's how he decided things should work this week.

Re:Wow!

[Anonymous Coward]

New general artwork theme should go into LTS +1 so it can then be refined until the next LTS.

Mods

[Anonymous Coward]

Mark Shuttleworth (Score:-1 Troll)

In other news, hell freezes over

[squoozer]

While I personally think it would be great if we saw the current wasteful duplication of effort come to an end (flame away) I can't see it happening any time soon. There are too many stuborn people in both camps to go for something like this.

Re:In other news, hell freezes over

[the_womble]

Wasteful duplication of effort, is also healthy competition.

Remember the Cold War? The Russians avoided duplication of effort through central planning, the west duplicated effort massively through having competition within economies.

Yes, different operating system also provide competition, but the competition between desktop environments is more immediate. I am a KDE user, but I try Gnome or XFCE every so often, and would switch is one was better. That is not true of Windows or MacOS which I have not seriously tried for much longer.

Re:In other news, hell freezes over

[the_womble]

I am being very sloppy. For Russians please read "Soviet Union and other Warsaw Pact countries".

Re:In other news, hell freezes over

[Yfrwlf]

I'm sure both are very capable libraries. All I want to see is wxWidgets being used for all GUI frontends so that they have a native feel whether you're in Gnome, KDE, Elightenment, XFCE, OS X, Windows, etc. That is, as soon as wxWidgets has KDE support.

Re:In other news, hell freezes over

[Anonymous Coward]

I think it's good to have both. There must be some competition.

Re:In other news, hell freezes over

[bmcage]

As soon as we decide to work in C or C++, all should be clear. Who best to address this minor issue though?

Re:In other news, hell freezes over

[niiler]

I'll be all for that when the auto manufacturers stop all their wasteful duplication of effort and give us some fuel efficient cars that can be correctly serviced anywhere. Heck, why stop there? Let's just have one model of printer that does everything that everyone needs.

The reason that this hasn't happened yet is because each distro, GUI toolkit, etc. has its own purpose and audience both in user space and developer space. Forget the freedom jargon, it just gets into to preferences and needs. Some people like red, and others like blue.

Re:In other news, hell freezes over

[Vancorps]

I think you're right but this is quite a problem. I recently made the switch from Windows to Ubuntu on my laptop. I still run Windows inside a VM but that's just for my management tools which are Windows only.

In these days you don't know which distro is right for you, they all provide much the same functionality and all have little differences. I tried the major distros, KDE, Gnome, and landed on Ubuntu with Gnome because everyone was ranting and raving about it and I thought it was worth a closer look.

In the end I've found that SUSE is easier for the desktop user while Ubuntu and Fedora are easier to hack out difficult functionality like fingerprint authentication using PAM which is still quite problematic, so much so I had to turn it off but that's largely due to a compatibility problem between VMWare and Ubuntu which results in me losing the ability to use my keyboard. Not all apps will work using fingerprint authentication so you still need to be able to type your elevation password.

Of course for me, I get around the issue by adding a widget to the panel which calls setxkbmap which fixes the issue so that I can type my elevation password after the failure has occurred.

Back to the original issue, it's impossible to tell which audience the major distros are targeting. They all try to cater to pretty much everyone and the result is that some distros are better at some things than others which means you have to try them all before you can pick the best one for you. That's a lot of work as you really need to use your machine to know and any machine you use on a regular basis you don't want to be installing a new distro every week on.

Re:In other news, hell freezes over

[turbidostato]

I thought about citing some text from your message and then go for dearest-to-Slashdot car analogy. But, heck, I'd need to cite the whole of your message!

Just re-read your message applied to the automotion industry. I'll start for you and you follow:

"In these days you don't know which distro is right for you, they all provide much the same functionality and all have little differences. I tried the major distros, KDE, Gnome, and landed on Ubuntu with Gnome because everyone was ranting and raving about it and I thought it was worth a closer look..."

In this days you don't know which car is right for you, they all provide much the same functionality and all have little differences. I tried the major brands, Ford, GM, and landed on BMW 318 because everyone was ranting and raving about it and I thought it was worth a closer look...

Now: everybody and his mother (except for our Soviet Russia overlords, of course) think that competition on the automotive industry is quite a good think. How is it the same doesn't applies to Linux distributions even when semantically it's clear you can substitute one for the other almost word by word?

Re:In other news, hell freezes over

[shutdown -p now]

That is, as soon as wxWidgets has KDE support.

Did wxWidgets start using the native Gtk widget for trees already, instead of its own hackish Win95-lookalike?

Re:In other news, hell freezes over

[Vancorps]

I think you missed my point, I wasn't suggesting that it was a bad thing that all the options exist. As I said, different distros have different strengths but none of the distros make any attempt to illustrate their strengths. They leave it up to every user to determine if the distro is right for them. That is the real problem, people don't know which distro to go because they don't understand how each is different without spending a month on it.

In the car world they make it very clear, this Aveo is a piece of crap that will get you good gas mileage. This CLK 63 AMG will get you laid but forget about gas mileage. It's quite clear the differences.

Personally I like the competition, but the lack of standardization is harming Linux adoption. They either need to consolidate all the distros or start making it clear why you should choose this major distro over that major distro.

I'll grant IPCop is pretty straight forward in what they are targeting, same with Smoothwall, but Ubuntu? Fedora? OpenSUSE? What are they targeting? When should a user choose one over the other? If they are indeed all the same then competition hasn't helped anything, if they are different then that should be highlighted.

Re:In other news, hell freezes over

[Nate B.]

That's a dichotomy that I've never understood. We can have all manner of multiple brands of the same product, but people seem to believe that only one brand of software is all that there should be. It doesn't bother me that multiple desktops exist, only that we can communicate.

This is what's important, just like roads and gas for cars and electricity for electronic equipment, file formats are the infrastructure that data lives in, so the battle for open and usable file formats is far more critical than the look and feel of a desktop environment.

Re:In other news, hell freezes over

[turbidostato]

"I think you missed my point"

Maybe. I must say I didn't see clear what exactly your were your point.

"They leave it up to every user to determine if the distro is right for them."

Instead of marketroid speech as in the automotive industry? You really don't believe the "Nisatra Beast All-terrain" makes you more "macho", do you?

"In the car world they make it very clear, this Aveo is a piece of crap that will get you good gas mileage. This CLK 63 AMG will get you laid but forget about gas mileage."

Yeah, you *do* believe it will make you more macho. Jokes, apart, "Ubuntu is a community developed, Linux-based operating system that is perfect for laptops, desktops and servers.", "redhat redefines automation. Replace rac in your sack and save real money. Red Hat will show you how", "SUSE Linux Enterprise. Your company needs to be ready for everything", "Debian is a free operating system (OS) for your computer.". And that just out of their respective web front page. Regarding their public image, Ubuntu is "Linux for humans", Red Hat and SUSE are "your entreprise partners", Debian is "your Linux free as in free speech". Maybe they have not the best marketing department overthere but they do try to offer an image.

I think the "problem" is on the user side: you are quite akin to cars (you have seen them from your infancy), you even "know" how a computer looks like and behave (ala Windows), and you find yourself entering on a new, unknown, market and you find yourself quite lost. Well, think for a moment about high speed trains: it is not an "amateur" niche, there are thousand of millions there but still, I bet you don't know about the glaring differences among Siemens, Dassault or THSRC products. Linux distributions are new to you an easy to get your hands on them, so you go the easy way and just start to test them without much thinking (if a single CD costed you 2000US$ you probably would get more informations about which one to choose).

Probably "enterprisy" vendors are aware of this "problem" about product discrimination and their marketing departments working hard on it; for the rest of them, it simply is not a concerning problem.

"Personally I like the competition, but the lack of standardization is harming Linux adoption."

So what?

Probably there are similitudes with prissioners dilemma. On one hand, it is not Red Hat concern "linux adoption", nor it is Novell's. Red Hat is worried about Red Hat adoption and Novell is worried about SUSE adoption, not "linux" (and Microsoft is worried about Windows adoption, for that matter); on the other hand, a concerted approach from all the "enterprisey" vendors on "linux adoption" probably would open the "linux niche" so widely that all of them would benefit, even if their direct rivals benefit too (remember Red Hat rivals are Novell and Ubuntu, not so much Microsoft).

"They either need to consolidate all the distros"

Why the heck is going Novell to consolidate towards Red Hat, or the other way around? On a capitalist free market the key is diferenciating not consolidate.

"or start making it clear why you should choose this major distro over that major distro."

They do... where it pays for. So you had problems choosing between Fedora or SUSE Open Edition? So what? There's not a penny on the table. On the other hand, surely Novell tries to make their case against Red Hat or Canonical's Ubuntu on the enterprise market (there were the money is). It's difficult, since at the same time they try to make their case and to target the same market niche (as it's real hard to choose among the offers from different makers on the same market segment on cars and so many times the consumer ends up making his head out of no relevant -and so, marketing-driven, "percieved" advantages), but they try.

"but Ubuntu?"

It targets enterprise and big ISV (as in projects for the government) vendors.

"Fedora?"

It is the growing field for the Red Hat's corporate users of tomorrow.

Re:In other news, hell freezes over

[Anonymous Coward]

no it won't, wxwidgets sucks.

Re:In other news, hell freezes over

[Anonymous Coward]

Unfortunately, I've never seen a native-feeling wxWidgets UI. There's more to feeling like you belong to the platform than just using the lowest-common-denominator subset of widgets that are shared across all platforms.

Re:In other news, hell freezes over

[Yfrwlf]

That's true, it is a hard situation to deal with, but you have to take into account that you don't have to standardize on the lowest common denominator. If done properly, the API should be able to compensate for the places in which there are differences. For example, QT does this here on this program, but when run on GTK, it can't do it, so it instead has to do this and this. Or, if there is no way to replace the feature, leave it blank until it gets adopted perhaps?

Compare it to graphics card APIs, because it's a similar concept, these APIs. A new capability comes out, the API gets extended, and eventually nvidia and ati start to support the new graphics call. If one lags far behind and refuses to add support for popular API feature X, then it will get used less and less. In the same regard, if Gnome and KDE were set up this way from the beginning, perhaps GTK would start to get used less because it may not have all the features that QT has.

In other words, it would turn things into a feature competition among other things instead of a supported application competition. Applications should be more modular so that the real competition can happen more easily where it needs to: features, ease of programming, and speed. If everyone found QT to be faster and nicer looking, and they weren't locked into a bunch of programs, everyone might switch in droves because they'd be free to do so. :)

So, more desktop APIs will serve to make things more modular and free up programs.

Re:In other news, hell freezes over

[Anonymous Coward]

Qt already has native feel cross platform. OSX, Windows, Linux, etc.

Check out Mumble on Windows and OSX. You can't even tell it's not a native OSX application that's how good it is.

Re:In other news, hell freezes over

[Yfrwlf]

So QT just needs to add a native GTK feel to that list?

Maybe GTK could just add native QT support, too. ;)

Regardless, it would be nice if someone came up with an API that any GUI could use. If GTK cannot provide several things in the API, then it has to figure out what to do in these cases when it can't provide feature X, or even better, if the program wants to use things that GTK doesn't provide, it could default to QT?

Dunno just some ideas. :)

I think standardizing desktop settings so that you can use both KDE and Gnome apps to set certain things is a bit more important than trying to come up with an API to deal with GTK and QT differences.

great idea

[nomadic]

And then they could rename Gnome to reflect the change, how about "KDE"?

Re:great idea

[betterunixthanunix]

GNOME and KDE have very different philosophies. KDE is (well, was and will be soon) based on the idea that people should configure their desktop; GNOME is based on the idea that people should only be given those configuration options that are absolutely necessary. KDE makes big leaps in its releases; GNOME makes incremental changes.

Personally, I like the idea of a Qt port of GNOME, since I feel that Qt is somewhat superior to GTK, both in terms of development and in terms of use. Others will undoubtedly disagree with that.

Re:great idea

[Anonymous Coward]

Or, how about Knome?

Re:great idea

[EvilIdler]

I personally love using KDE and hate Gnome for its minimal configuration options. But I prefer programming Gtkmm/Gnomemm apps or wxWidgets rather than using KDE libs/Qt.

There are no real differences between KDE/Qt and Gnome/Gtk+ apps per se, but the philosophy and style guidelines for each desktop project affect how people implement their interfaces. With the skins and compatibility libs in KDE3, I have to look hard to tell which app is Gnome out of my most used ones.

(Of course, when I am scratching my own itches, it's either Cocoa or PHP these days :)

eh?

[jabjoe]

Wouldn't that get rid of the original point of GNOME? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNOME#History

Re:eh?

[Jurily]

From your link:

Although KDE was free software, it relied on the then non-free Qt widget toolkit. Members of the GNU project became concerned with the use of such a toolkit for building a free software desktop environment.

I think the original point of GNOME is already moot. Just let it die, with all its braindead file selection dialogs and reversed OK and Cancel buttons too.

Re:eh?

[dbIII]

The thing with gnome is that the people that were just playing politics and breaking the gimp every week with bad code in the toolkit got bored and left. They left behind horrors like gconf but on the whole what has happened since turned out very well.

Re:eh?

[jabjoe]

Some people clearly like it, no shortage of distros with it as their main GUI. Don't think it's going anywhere.

Re:eh?

[Anonymous Coward]

that's like saying some people must like spam because it is coming into my mailbox all the time

Re:eh?

[Darkness404]

I think the original point of GNOME is already moot. Just let it die, with all its braindead file selection dialogs and reversed OK and Cancel buttons too.

Myself, I prefer GTK and GNOME to QT and KDE. First off, I don't like the KDE interface, the big K button (I think it is called the kicker...) is cluttered much like the Windows one. Whereas in GNOME its easy to make it be 3 different buttons cutting down on clutter quite a bit. Also, GNOME seems much more solid and stable to KDE, and QT applications less stable then the GNOME alternatives. But, in the end they both benefit from each other, if you want KDE stick with KDE, I prefer GNOME so I should stay with GNOME.

Re:eh?

[msuarezalvarez]

In the name of $SOMETHING, just let the `reversed OK and Cancel buttons' meme die.

Of course, you are free to define `usability' as `whatever is closest to Windows' if yu want. I, for one, prefer having the most frequently used button always be put in the same place relative to the bottom right corner.

Re:eh?

[msuarezalvarez]

Why is the code bad? Why is gconf that bad?

Generic whining like yours is sooooo 2002ish...

Re:eh?

[jedidiah]

Nope. Gnome still serves it's original intended purpose:

        The core GUI is not tied up in the interests of one
singlular for-profit corporation. Perversely enough, this
manifests most in "commercialization". Some guy that wants
to write the next "procomm" doesn't have to worry about
Troll being... well a Troll and asking for some large toll.

        Before QT can be a proper core gui library for even a
strictly commercial OS, it needs to be liberated from Troll.

        Any model that resolves to "buy our libraries" for any
class of user just isn't going to work. That's already been
tried with CDE. That model is why CDE on Linux never went
anywhere.

Re:eh?

[mrand]

Don't mistake (miss take?) lack of choices with people liking it. What else are people going to use if they want something that doesn't use the resources like KDE does, but has more features than Xfce?

      Marc

Re:eh?

[Jurily]

Of course, you are free to define `usability' as `whatever is closest to Windows' if yu want.

From the wiki:

Usability is a term used to denote the ease with which people can employ a particular tool or other human-made object in order to achieve a particular goal.

Making me click the wrong button after 10 years of Windows and KDE just because I paid more attention to what I want to do than how I do it is not "ease of use".

Ah, what's the use. It's my fault I clicked OK when it was in the (for me) wrong place. Just like Vista UAC.

Re:eh?

[chill]

Considering how QT is licensed under the GPL, how is this still relevant?

And you mean "Liberate from Nokia", since Nokia purchased Troll earlier this year.

Re:eh?

[Narishma]

KDE doesn't use much more resources than xfce. That is unless you only launch the desktop and stare at it. If you use applications I'm pretty sure KDE would use less resources.

Re:eh?

[Jurily]

I think Trolltech is doing a great job. Qt4 is awesome, and now GPL under Windows too.

Of course, if you want to liberate it, FORK IT AND SHUT UP. (You know, GPL and all that.)

Re:eh?

[Anonymous Coward]

It isnt a meme, as a programmer I do it on prompts that can be dangerous. It makes sure your paying attention, if I put okay in the same spot whos to say your not just gonna skip over the prompt "Preform 'rm -rf ~/*'" and just click okay :P some things have a use.

Re:eh?

[slashgrim]

I prefer to have the buttons in the same place all the time, not sorted by frequency (or whatever). I have a 4 year old laptop and sometimes opening a window takes a second, so I can just move the mouse to the next/close button (assuming I know what the window is going to say) and click as soon as it loads. Reading the buttons wastes so much time ;) ...and yes, I've accidentally clicked the wrong button in Ubuntu.

Popular software seems to be about change, but I prefer "if it ain't broke don't fix it." Or just give me an option to disable sorting.

Re:eh?

[Anonymous Coward]

I do find it highly ironic that, after GNOME was forked to make a "more Free desktop" that KDE has since become far more Free than GNOME is.

All KDE apps are Free software. GNOME apps? You never know.

Re:eh?

[_xeno_]

I, for one, prefer having the most frequently used button always be put in the same place relative to the bottom right corner.

And I, for one, prefer having the most frequently used option always be first in the read order. You know, left-to-right? The way English is read?

Unless you read English from right-to-left, placing the most frequently used option on the right seems a bit silly, since it means you'll always come to it last when reading through the dialog.

Re:eh?

[Anonymous Coward]

Now I'm waiting for someone to change that entry to say that the original point of GNOME was to create an alternative to KDE that also utilized QT. :)

Re:eh?

[psavo]

Is that like for real?

I've used Windows since 1994, GNOME/linux UI:s since 1999 and I can't recall a single time when I'd clicked on a wrong button _because_ of their order. Wording has been misleading on all platforms but ordering? I didn't even notice this before people started whining.

Re:eh?

[Anonymous Coward]

So wait, HOW long does it take you to read "Cancel" again?

It's six letters. You can skip over it quickly and move on to the most frequent option, which will be a command verb like "Save" or "Delete" or whatever depending on what you're doing and not a useless generic and vague "OK."

If you've done any research into UI at all, you'd know that studies have proven - repeatedly - that placing the most frequently used at the same place relative to the dialog border makes it faster to click on. You know, since that means that the button you want is NOT moving randomly around the dialog box and you can use muscle memory. It's not like GNOME decided to do this just to piss off Windows users or something, or because they don't know which way English reads.

But if you like never knowing where the most frequently used button will wind up on this specific dialog, more power to you. The rest of us just hope you never build any UIs we'll have to use, since you're apparently incapable of looking up even basic UI research.

Re:eh?

[kimvette]

Trolltech dual-licenses the libraries. Even if they discontinue the dual licensing, Qt4 and earlier will always be available due to the gpl and can be forked, so that's a red herring.

The truth is that Qt is cleaner, provides better, less limited dialogs, EASIER to use than that damned Gtk file open/save dialog, and just like Gtk is freely available.

I for one cannot stand gnome because the gnome developers' idea of making a system easier to use is to cripple the interface and treat the user like an idiot. The KDE team strives to provide all the functionality but make it intuitive enough that novices can understand it.

Re:eh?

[ericrost]

Well then, why not put it in the same place relative to the bottom left corner? That would accomplish the usability goal you keep repeating while encompassing multiple other usability goals such as readability and proper order of information relative to use frequency. Sorry you have your head so far into your own paradigm that you can't think.

Re:eh?

[EvilIdler]

If buttons are labelled with actions rather than OK/Cancel ("Yes, I want to delete these"), order shouldn't matter. However, some consistency is required. My brain hurts going from positive/negative requesters to negative/positive between apps. I don't care which is right, just agree on a standard :)

Re:eh?

[meringuoid]

Preform 'rm -rf ~/*'

I always find that when dealing with any command of the form rm -rf, it's best to check and double-check that what I have typed is exactly what I mean. These are dangerous commands, and the slightest typo can leave one feeling terribly foolish.

Re:eh?

[Anonymous Coward]

That would work for left-handed users, I suppose, but given that the majority of computer users hold the mouse in their right hand, snapping to the lower right-hand corner is faster for the vast majority of computer users.

Again, it's not like this wasn't thought through. People have done actual research on this, and research has proven every time it's been tested that people are faster at hitting the button on the lower right-hand side.

Please read up on the subject before spouting nonsense!

Re:eh?

[Anonymous Coward]

I only run a bare bones XFCE without a sound server or dbus and it's clearly less resource intensive than stock KDE. I'm also willing to bet that I use far less Qt apps (scribus -- rarely) than KDE users make use of Gtk apps. Xubuntu is a bloated POS, perhaps you're basing your comparison on that?

But the entire point is moot, I could bloat up my XFCE install and you could equally pair down your KDE. All things being equal I'd still prefer to use XFCE.

Re:eh?

[ericrost]

Its not an infinite target, its a dialog, so "snapping to it" is not a particularly valid model. Also faster != better. Do you want the user to blindly click the dialog, or do you want the user to be accustomed to reading through his options until he finds the appropriate choice? Strange that with so much research done on the topic, every other gui toolkit disagrees.

Hmm.

Re:eh?

[Kent Recal]

Why not make it a friggin config-option in the [c|k]ontrol-center under the accessibility-tab, and be done?

"Where to put the Cancel-button in dialog-windows?"

[ ] Always right-most
[ ] Always left-most
[ ] Random position
[ ] Careful mode: Enable OK-button only after a delay of [ 5 ] seconds
[ ] Super-careful mode: Ask for [ 3 ] confirmations before proceeding with any action
[X] Toggle right/left when mouse-cursor hovers
[ ] Random position and randomly swap the labels of OK/Cancel
[ ] Random position and pick a random language for the word "Cancel"
[ ] Real-Man mode (Hide the cancel button)
[ ] Wimpy mode (Turn all dialog buttons into "Cancel"-buttons)
[ ] Gambler mode (Present only a single button that performs a random action)
[ ] Mental mode (don't display any dialog buttons)
[ ] Vintage mode (display a thumbdial instead of buttons)
[ ] George W Bush mode (perform the most destructive action without even displaying a dialog)
[ ] Schroedinger mode (display two dialog windows, neither of which is clickable, at 50% opacity)
[ ] Nerdsex mode (display normal dialogs but afterwards ask: "Was it good for you, too?")
[ ] Hollywood mode (don't click me, I click you!)
[ ] Rorschach mode (let the user draw a picture, then determine action from that)
[ ] CAPTCHA/Turing mode (perform action only after user has proved that he is a human)
[ ] Windows95 mode (display normal dialog, then freeze no matter which button was clicked)
[ ] Windows98 mode (display normal dialog, then bluescreen no matter which button was clicked)
[ ] WindowsXP mode (display normal dialog, then download and run malware no matter which button was clicked)
[ ] WindowsVista mode (remember all dialogs that have ever been displayed and repeat them at random intervals while slowing down to a crawl)

OSS is about options, right?

Re:eh?

[zippthorne]

Depends on what you mean by "free" I suppose. Your description describes GNOME as more free, however.

Why should the window manager restrict the applications' licenses?

Re:eh?

[ensignyu]

Actually, there's an even stronger obligation: if Trolltech (Nokia) stops releasing new GPL versions of Qt, then all previous versions of Qt become BSD licensed. The KDE Free QT Foundation board (two Trolltech reps, two KDE reps, KDE decides ties) can vote to decide whether Trolltech is meeting its part of the agreement.

This probably won't happen for a long, long time though. Qt was bought out by Nokia which has plenty of resources and may be interested in developing mobile apps with it. KDE has an interest in Qt continuing commercial development by Trolltech, which has added lots of useful features/optimizations to Qt in coordination with KDE, that the KDE project probably couldn't do on their own on the same timescale on a purely volunteer effort.

Re:eh?

[Anonymous Coward]

Say that again after running Xfce on a Pentium 133 and enjoying it. Other than Enlightenment, it's the only thing that runs on this machine.

Re:eh?

[Anonymous Coward]

Apple does it too. See, Apple actually does UI research. Microsoft just kind of slaps everything together without thinking.

Every OS that ever bothered looking into it places the most-used option on the right.

Re:eh?

[Anonymous Coward]

Also, should Trolltech fold or stop developing/supporting Qt, the KDE Free Qt Foundation has a contract that gives them the ability to relicense it under a BSD style license.

Re:eh?

[JamesGecko]

The Gtk open/save dialog is bad? Really? Don't get me wrong, up until a year or so ago, I would have agreed that it was a pain. It's pretty decent right now though; I've started to find myself cringing when I have to use the save dialog in a QT app or on a Windows machine.

Re:eh?

[jedidiah]

Yes... the GPL: The license that no sane person licenses a shared library under.

The fact that pretty much NO OTHER LINUX LIBRARY is under the GPL is why stuff like Word Perfect, the original Star Office, Oracle and Maya can exist for Linux.

Troll uses the GPL so that Troll can be a toll troll, not to be nice.

It's their perogative for sure. But lets not try to kid ourselves here.

Re:eh?

[jedidiah]

Why bother? Someone else did that work.

That's what GNOME is for.

Your post confirms what I said earlier: The original purpose of GNOME is not yet obsolete.

Lie down with the pigs and you will get dirty.

If you like the mud, don't lash out at those of us that don't.

If you don't really like mud, then that's truely sad.

Re:eh?

[Xtifr]

People who are too stupid to figure out gconf like to pretend that it doesn't exist so they can whine about how Gnome doesn't have any options and is designed for stupid people, when exactly the opposite is true.

Gnome is designed to be easy for the newbie, while still remaining flexible enough for the advanced user. Whether it achieves that goal is open to debate, but it's a much better approach, IMO, than KDE's kitchen-sink approach, which is great for the intermediate-level user who knows there are options, but is too ignorant to find them unless they're poking up and getting in the way all the time. It's that last factor which causes my extreme dislike of KDE (not that I'm much of a Gnome fan either).

Re:eh?

[Jurily]

Your post confirms what I said earlier: The original purpose of GNOME is not yet obsolete.

The precise reason GNOME even exists is now obsolete. You can talk all you want about it, but that doesn't change the fact that GNOME was created because Qt was commercial, and now they're trying to justify GNOME, now that Qt is GPL.

Re:eh?

[dbIII]

Have you tried to do anything non-trivial (although it SHOULD be trivial) in gconf like port panel settings from one user to another? Have you seen the code in gconf? Are you on the mailing list for gconf? Have you heard about the Sabayon project to make gconf settings portable? It's very easy to be smug with little knowlege and accuse others of stupidity because they have hit major problems you are not even faintly aware of. Now while gconf is once again under heavy development the implementation from as little as a year back was an incredible mess showing the legacy of single user non-networked thought exported to where it shouldn't be and implemented by a programming newbie following the latest trends and getting them badly wrong (obfiscated XML).

The IDEA of gconf isn't completly bad but the implementation was a very different story. Unfortunately whenever I mention the problems I get responses like the above who apparently thinks I'm attacking the idea.

Re:eh?

[msuarezalvarez]

It is impossible to read tor previous message as anything but trolling. Either you were trolling or you need to re-evaluate your communication skills.

Re:eh?

[dbIII]

Reading comprehension requires context. If you read the messages in order you will see a previous poster implied I was a stupid person for being critical of gconf. Apart from that reply you should be able to extract some criticism of gconf as well. Take it as - "someone on the net that knows a bit about it thinks gconf is broken". To form your own opinion you will unfortunately have to look at the configuration files and code yourself or communicate with the developers because there is no documentation.

There are a lot of good things in gnome. The only real problem remaining from the first stumbling steps as the initial developers learnt C is gconf. Please note that I'm not talking about Miguel here - he didn't touch gconf.

Re:eh?

[msuarezalvarez]

You seem to think that you are the only one who knows about the beast around here...

Re:eh?

[dbIII]

You asked the question.

The answer got a bit distorted by a reply to an ad hominem attack that added no information. Perhaps somebody that worked on alacarte or sabayon or the rewrite of gconf could have replied here but they did not. Until then make up your own mind.

As for the 2002ish comment - unfortunately gconf was effectively abandonware from before then until late 2006 due to a lack of a developer. Now there are several.

It really does not matter - my point is that gnome has risen above the legacy of almost pure politics and poor choices from coders unfamiliar with the language and platform. An earlier poster was talking about the rough beginnings and not the far more polished collection of applications we see now.

Re:eh?

[dbIII]

Well yes, it was all over a petty misunderstanding of the qt licence when other free licences like BSD, MIT and X were too well established to go after.

However those who were only ever in it for the politics left fairly early while others that wanted to code a good desktop environment for the sake of it stayed.

really?

[nawcom]

Even though I prefer using Qt4 for my app frontends because of the great frameworks and portability it features, I would find it sad for GNOME to ditch GTK+. And since I see Ubuntu as a future (mainly) commerical Linux leader, I'm not surprised on the compliments towards Apple. (Note that I am also a Darwin/OS X user.) For some reason I highly doubt that GTK+ will be ditched. They will just have to model the future designs of it on the current features of Qt4.

He has been through the flames of re-entry :)

[dbIII]

And I admire his asbestos underpants taking on this one. A few years ago after the effort to port mozilla from motif to qt in a single day there were a few other efforts where things were ported from the gimp toolkit to qt. However it was not widely announced in the interest of not making waves - mostly due to the C vs C++ arguments more than the widget set.

Re:He has been through the flames of re-entry :)

[Anonymous Coward]

Well duh. It's much easier to convert developers to use a different API than a different language.

And no, it doesn't matter if the language is a superset of another. People who are hell-bent against C++ aren't going to happily conform and interface in a language that does things wrong in their view.

RFTA

[Anonymous Coward]

Seriously. This is going to be one of the biggest misquoted articles of the year because some Slashdot nobody editor decided to take Shuttleworth's words out of question's context.

He quite clearly says that it is possible to deliver GNOME's qualities on Qt. He didn't say that he wants to do it. He didn't say he was going to do it. He even pointed out a problem in doing it (GPL vs LGPL).

Of course, it would also be possible to deliver GNOME's qualities on Enlightenment or Tcl/Tk if you could find enough hackers to do it. There's nothing unique about GNOME's qualities that only GNOME could do it. They simply picked a different path, and it happens to be one that works incredibly well for Ubuntu. So well that they can share schedules with GNOME, that they can build a base for ISVs on GNOME, and on and on.

So please, PLEASE read the fine article before jumping to conclusions from the terrible Slashdot header.

Re:RFTA

[Tim C]

This is going to be one of the biggest misquoted articles of the year because some Slashdot nobody editor decided to take Shuttleworth's words out of question's context.

To be fair to Taco, the bit in quotes is written by the submitter, at least in theory. Assuming he didn't edit it, that misquoting is down to "an anonymous reader".

Re:RFTA

[Toby_Tyke]

Assuming he didn't edit it

Isn't that supposed to be, y'know, his job?

Re:RFTA

[Mark Trade]

RTFA yourself. Because he also says that he would like to see standardization in infrastructure and he sees exciting the FSF over this issue as a challenge. This reads to me very similiar to "yes, I'd like to do that and I have already spent some time thinking it over but it will be difficult."

Whether we'll be able to have the FSF excited about something, have GNOME excited about something, have Nokia excited about something which makes life better for developers - that's gonna be the interesting challenge for me. I'd like to see both desktops focusing on a common infrastructure.

Re:RFTA

[mhall119]

It read more of a "Gnome does not have to be GTK only", more than "Lets move Gnome over to QT". He also specifically mentioned things like HAL and D-Bus as examples of "common infrastructure", so he's not just talking about the UI toolkit.

Re:RFTA

[Anonymous Coward]

Because he also says that he would like to see standardization in infrastructure

There's this association called "FreeDesktop.Org", I wonder if you've ever heard about them? They've been working for years and years now trying to bring all Linux desktop environments to the same table, instead of reimplementing 100 proprietary components and somehow trying to mash them together. We've already seen enormous successes come out of the project, D-Bus being one of the biggest of them.

He'd also be a moron not to have thought about it. Nobody's closing their eyes to KDE, and it's hard not to acknowledge their improvements nor any other environment's progress. The important part to take away from G'Op's post is that Shuttleworth is not planning to rewrite GNOME in Qt.

Re:RFTA

[hotfireball]

Enwhere? Enlightenment? You are talking about that funny WM that looks like Unreal Tournament console? Oh no...

Re:RFTA

[Evanisincontrol]

Assuming he didn't edit it Isn't that supposed to be, y'know, his job?

Yes and no. His job as an editor of a user-submitted news site is to make sure that stories come out presentable and factually accurate. It is not necessarily the editor's job to edit submissions in a way that changes the information they convey.

In fact, I'm rather glad that he left it alone. Not because I agree with the submission -- I think it was taken out of context as well. However, I'm glad to know that Taco doesn't just spin every submission he gets in a way that makes the news comes out the way he wants it to. It would be so easy to just re-word a couple things here and there, and suddenly the story is in his favorite shade of blue.

Again, Slashdot is a user-submitted news site. Not satisfied with the quality of the news? Submit a better story yourself.

Re:RFTA

[FunkyELF]

He even pointed out a problem in doing it (GPL vs LGPL).

It is nice to have a choice in licenses. You have one framework / desktop environment in LGPL, and one in GPL. But I don't see why commercial companies don't embrace KDE.
The company needs to make a decision of framework for their application. Chances are that their application will run just fine under either KDE or Gnome whether it is written in Qt or GTK+. Their "solution" that they're selling can contain an unmodified KDE install or Gnome install...doesn't matter.

Re:RFTA

[Anonymous Coward]

my thought exactly: quoting the grandparent:

I'm an ass
- using exactly the same letters! I cut and pasted each one, for real!

Re:RFTA

[turbidostato]

"KDELibs' biggest fault is that it's GPL"

KDELibs' biggest advantage is that it's GPL.

Re:RFTA

[hav0x]

You need to get your facts straight.
http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html

Cisco, for one, uses QT in some apps i've used from them. Guess what, proprietary software.
Can't really think of anyone else right now.

Re:RFTA

[BrainInAJar]

you can buy non-GPL licenses for /Qt/. not KDELibs.

Re:RFTA

[vagabond_gr]

Well said, my Commander.

Re:RFTA

[Anonymous Coward]

I make the argument that several submissions were changed to become more sensational.

Submissions like these need little editing because they are already sensational.

A positive is that I see this preference of sensationalism to be improving (waning), especially compared to the heavy Microsoft-bashing days of 2001-2006 (post-anti-trust years to post-XP SP2 years).

Re:RFTA

[Anonymous Coward]

Well as long as Taco is just republishing anonymous flamebait, it's OK!

Re:RFTA

[ddcc]

You must be new here

Re:RFTA

[Anonymous Coward]

KDELibs is LGPL. People without a clue should just STFU.

Re:RFTA

[w000t]

You don't need them for KDElibs since it's LGPL.

Re:RFTA

[SomeKDEUser]

Actually, they are LGPL...

Re:RFTA

[SomeKDEUser]

Which is irrelevant as the KDE libs are LGPL. How do you think Apple could get away with Safari?

Re:RFTA

[Knuckles]

But it isn't factually correct. Shuttleworth does not seem to push for a Qt-based Gnome at all.

Re:RFTA

[Spy der Mann]

Assuming he didn't edit it

Isn't that supposed to be, y'know, his job?

In theory :)

Re:RFTA

[Daengbo]

More interesting is that the interviewer basically repeated my month-old sig and Shuttleworth answered in a way which basically confirms it.

... there are some questions whether or not very large scale infrastructures should immediately jump on the new release...

I feel vindicated.

Re:RFTA

[civilizedINTENSITY]

Its not out of context, your quote is out of context:

Shuttleworth: ...And separately what GNOME is going to do if Nokia makes the QT-licenses effectively compatible with the GNOME vision, can they embrace QT as a platform?

derStandard.at: So you would favor GNOME to switch over to QT?

Shuttleworth: Well, I think it would be perfectly possible to deliver the values of GNOME on top of QT

This was right after "KDE guys have a point when they say their approach has made it easier for them to make leaps forward". I'd say that the suggestion here was indeed, if Qt is lgpl-ed, shouldn't gnome consider it?

Re:RFTA

[civilizedINTENSITY]

Seems to me he desires a convergence of tech (which should include libs, as well as HAL and d-bus):

"I'm very interested in finding out, how to get those two communities working closer together, how to get more collaboration, more sharing. Both at the level of technology but also at the level of best practices / processes."

"...see both desktops focusing on a common infrastructure. And we've already seen that, a lot of the Freedesktop initiatives have been embraced by both projects - HAL, d-bus". Actually what he did was pose the question of whether or not: "if Nokia makes the QT-licenses effectively compatible with the GNOME vision, can they embrace QT as a platform?" Its a good question. Could Gnome embrace QT as a platform?

Re:RFTA

[civilizedINTENSITY]

Agreed, it wouldn't be enough to merely move Gnome to "G-Parts", while making sure G-Parts implements the K-Parts API. But that would be a start ;-)

interesting note

[nawcom]

"The KDE project and related events are frequently sponsored by individuals, universities, and businesses.[9] On 15 October 2006, it was announced that Mark Shuttleworth became the first patron of KDE, the highest level of sponsorship available."

Re:Stability...

[scorp1us]

As a Qt library user, the quality of the library itself is high. When I program correctly, it is reliable. When I don't program correctly, it is unreliable. I am left to conclude that I, not the library am responsible for the crashes. Usually, my apps only crash when I am not bounds checking. I don't remember what specific thing I did, but it's been a while.

Blame the developer, not the library.

NO NO NO NO!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

Did I say No?

Stick with the LGPL gtk+.

Apple innovation?

[thesappho]

being innovation leader for restriction maybe? you cant (normally) install a custom program or use an ipod for data storage out of the box. maybe design leader but not innovation leader oh no!

Re:Apple innovation?

[plasmacutter]

being innovation leader for restriction maybe?
you cant (normally) install a custom program or use an ipod for data storage out of the box.
maybe design leader but not innovation leader oh no!

This is just not true.

The first thing I do with any macs I lay hands on is drop mplayer SVN builds onto them, and the first thing I do after plugging in an ipod is to "enable disk use". I've had ipods since the second generation (the 10 gb brick), and still have the latest 2. 60% of both of these are occupied by normal everyday data.

Do I agree with itunes music store? no! Luckily I can go into parental controls in itunes and turn every hint of it off.

Do I wish they would remove the horrid bloat from itunes? Yes. Do I think they're moving in the wrong direction? Yes.

They're not quite where you are asserting they are yet though.

Re:Apple innovation?

[Anonymous Coward]

being innovation leader for restriction maybe? you cant (normally) install a custom program or use an ipod for data storage out of the box. maybe design leader but not innovation leader oh no!

I see we have another happy Zune owner!

Re:Apple innovation?

[abhi_beckert]

you cant (normally) install a custom program

Are you on crack? You can't install custom software on a mac? Bullshit.

or use an ipod for data storage out of the box.

Shuttleworth isn't talking about ipods, he's talking about mac os x. Same company, but a different product, different industry and different business model from ipods.

Re:Stability...

[Darkness404]

Blame the developer, not the library.

Yes, but I find it hard to believe that when so many QT applications are unstable whereas the GTK alternatives are more stable that this is just a developer problem.

Oh God no

[Anonymous Coward]

Well I for one would stop using Gnome if it switched to Qt. It's one of the reasons I hate KDE so much. That and every bloody app has to have a K in its name. It looks childish.

KDE on GTK?

[Trevelyan]

I don't mean to sound like a troll. It just I am one of those odd people that prefers to use KDE (over GNOME), and likes to write GUI apps using GTK.

So while I dislike using GNOME, mainly for its lack of configurability and the how it makes me feel, I do really like KDE. Similarly I'm not keen on QT, but I do like GTK.

So why not have KDE on GTK? As a bonus KDE apps would obey the LANG var, instead of QT out-of-band language selection. (which makes running more then one language, simultaneously, difficult)

Re:KDE on GTK?

[pembo13]

Gtk is no replacement for Qt. Not even close

Re:KDE on GTK?

[Anonymous Coward]

*same here*
I don't have a big problem with GTK apps, but well, frankely put, if KDE4 was delivering what it is supposed to in 4.2 or something *yet* i would rather use it.

At the same time, I do like coding in GTK a lot. I actually really find it very good.
I dislike coding in QT a lot. I find it cumbersome in comparison.

Let's write KDE5, k?

Re:KDE on GTK?

[morgan_greywolf]

Gtk is no replacement for Qt. Not even close

I could say the same thing in reverse about Qt. IMHO also, coding apps for Qt sucks -- GTK makes life easier. That being said, I know other guys who would say the opposite.

Who's right? Nobody. It's all a matter of preference.

Re:KDE on GTK?

[pembo13]

does gtk have support for networking, databases, etc?

Re:KDE on GTK?

[morgan_greywolf]

Does Qt need support for networking, databases, etc.?

It's all a matter of perspective.

Re:KDE on GTK?

[pembo13]

cross platform network and database abstraction? yes please.

Re:KDE on GTK?

[morgan_greywolf]

1. UNIX Philosophy: "Do one thing and do it well."

2. Windows Philosophy: "Cram in all the functionality and make it all integrated."

I'll take door #1, thanks.

Re:KDE on GTK?

[Anonymous Coward]

Hence why QT4 is modular. You don't have to load all the libraries, but you can. QT is a great toolkit for building apps on, and is just amazing considering that it's cross-platform.

The Unix Philosophy is great, but then how do you explain glibc? It does almost everything for Linux apps and is even a base for most of the libraries. QT is in the same position... it is just a base set of libraries that happen to be very useful and very easy to program for, and as a bonus, work cross-platform. They're still modular and do their thing well.

Re:KDE on GTK?

[Tweenk]

You are looking in the wrong place. GTK is not a Qt equivalent, because GTK is strictly a GUI toolkit, while Qt is a Win32-style one-in-all. The whole set of GNOME libraries is closer to being a full Qt equivalent - it has XML, database access, IPC, etc.

Re:Stability...

[nawcom]

My experience is quite the opposite of yours. Using older programs based on older gtk releases (like 2.6.9) are extremely unstable, especially when run on updated versions of today (I remember compiling it with 2.10). Even if it compiles fine there are still issues. A good example would be Sabbu. That's just one example of the many which i've helped out with due to the poor coding issues that unexpectedly cause problems. Your choice is either to update the way the app uses the framework, or statically link a copy of a compatible version of the toolkit to it. Though an app was designed under the Qt 3.1 code, I've never had issues using it under the latest Qt3 releases at all. SO I have to agree with scorp1us.

Qt nitpicking

[cronius]

For those that don't know: It's Qt, not QT. It's not an acronym, it's pronounced "cute."

One of the guys from trolltech once told me that when they created the library(-ies) they needed a prefix for all the functions. The letter 'Q' was chosen as it was the most appealing / best looking letter in emacs at the time (which was the head developers favourite editor).

Thus Qt became the name.

Re:Qt nitpicking

[nawcom]

cronius - I'm sure you know that geeks aren't too keen on correct pronunciation. I think Beastie, the FreeBSD DAYmon knows from experience. (I usually tell them that they must of eaten a little too much sea alJAY when they were young. They don't get the latin spelling link. Oh well.)

Re:Qt nitpicking

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah QT implies quicktime. The typo in the headline is the whole reason I'm here.

It was one of those moments like wait... what the hell's going on here?

Re:Qt nitpicking

[Yosho]

IT's not an acronym, it's pronounced "cute."

For what it's worth, one of the developers at TrollTech once told me that the "cute" pronunciation was an invention of their marketing department because it sounded better than "Q T", and some of their own internal developers still referred to it as that. ;-)

Re:Qt nitpicking

[jlherren]

While true, the Qt logo understandably makes people think otherwise.

Re:Qt nitpicking

[rainhill]

Not because it's the 1st key on keyboard?

Re:Qt nitpicking

[cronius]

On the newnorwegian page on Wikipedia it says "rumour has it.." regards to the Emacs story, but I've been on a couple of Trolltech presentations, and on one of them there was a developer who presented the history up til now about Trolltech, and it was in this presentation he took the time to explain the q-prefix.

So unless their marketing department has the developers conspire to make everyone believe this story, it's propably true ;-)

Re:Qt nitpicking

[rootooftheworld]

EMACS????!!!!?? Thats it, I'm switching to fluxbox.

Swiss?

[Anonymous Coward]

Or, just combine everything and get the revolutionary GNU/KDEGTKX11! The swiss army knife of desktops!

Worry about your own release cycle, buddy...

[Wdomburg]

Misleading headline aside, this is the sort of thing that makes me mostly ignore Ubuntu:

And that we don't say if GTK +3 is released it will be API/ABI-stable forever, cause it won't be perfect. So we might need to say: Lets GTK+ 3 iterate for a year or two and then make the API/ABI-commitment and drop the commitment on GTK+ 2.

A year or two of unstable interfaces is not going to win over developers or users. Thankfully the GTK+ developers actually understand the value of stable interfaces and have managed to maintain stability in the current branch even though 2.0 wasn't perfrect.

Ahhh QT

[Anonymous Coward]

From the redundant slots and signaling department. The underlying widget toolkit isn't a huge issue for end users but as a developer I personally find C++ and QT hideous to work with. Of course C and GObject is hideous too, Vala and Genie however are quite pleasant (pre-1.0 bugs notwithstanding).

I don't run the Gnome desktop but I'd be lost without stuff like GLib, Pango etc... QT doesn't have that established foothold, the libs are rarely useful outside the QT environment and it imposes it's own programming model throughout. Attempts at delivering the "Gnome experience" (whatever that may be) on top of QT would be rather pointless.

GTK

[codepunk]

Actually, one of GTK's biggest strength's lies in the fact that it is programmed in plain old C. Because
of this it is much easier to integrate with other languages that cannot handle C++ name munging. I cannot
see any significant value of doing such a conversion or fork.

Re:GTK

[EvilIdler]

One of its weaknesses is that the C functions aren't very well thought out. It's a horrid mess, even after cleaning up through the versions. Thank goodness there is Gtkmm, with its clean C++ API :)

Re:GTK

[Skinkie]

And it has bugs that exists for over 7 years: http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=56070

Re:GTK

[morgan_greywolf]

That bug's moot. It's quite easy to work around, as any competent developer using GTK knows by now.

Anybody complaining about the bug at this point is a useless whiner.

Re:GTK

[Skinkie]

Workarounds are no solutions.

Re:GTK

[codepunk]

Actually yes it is a good solution to the problem. The work around causes more round tripping to the x server this
is why it is not a acceptable method for a release. However, you as a developer can implement the work around thus
the performance hit is on you.

Developers forget that X is a network protocol and is designed to be run remotely not
just on the local machine. In this case the GTK team wants to make sure they do not
impact remote application performance by implementing this solution
so they leave it to the developer.

Re:GTK

[codepunk]

Please feel free to define horrid mess?

How about some examples instead of just trash talking?

No I am not a GTK developer but am rather curious as to you problem with the took kit and or the api that it exposes. I have
however written wrapper code around it more than once and found it the be rather flexible and well thought out.

Re:GTK

[morgan_greywolf]

More importantly, the developer can put the performance hit on the user, which is where it should be.

Simply put, the developer can put a '[X] Maximize remote display performance' or some such option in their program, with an explanation of the behavior, and allow advanced users to choose for themselves.

But, ultimately, GTK's develpers are correct in the design tradeoff they made. It's not really a bug, but a design decision.

Other Toolkits/Libraries

[pxc]

The widget toolkits (QT & GTK+) aren't the only toolkits/libraries involved in creating KDE and Gnome applications. There are libraries used for accessing files across a network (SMB shares, NFS shares, HTTP, FTP, etc.), handling sound (ARTS and eventually Phonon for KDE, GStreamer/PulseAudio on Gnome)*, etc. While completely unifying Gnome and KDE would be stupid, and IMO, counterproductive, seeing a merge between the underlying technologies would be great. It would save third-party developers the time of having to re-implement the functionality contained in those libraries, without having to commit their application to a specific desktop environment. Meanwhile, the DE developers could still maintain their philosophy and have their desktop-specific applications keep their look and feel.

*Yeah, I know those aren't completely comparable.

mind boggles

[macshit]

Geez... the gtk+ toolkit, and the other assorted infrastructure libraries, are some of the main strengths of gnome. Even if the gnome project as a whole is kind of wacky, it's got some technically pretty solid underpinnings.

Remove those, and what's left, besides the comical leadership?

Re:mind boggles

[crunzh]

Isn't the comic leadership kind of the point? Take away comic persons like RMS from the FSF and you don't have much left ;-)

There's a lot in there that scares me

[Anonymous Coward]

1) Change does not always equal innovation. I think sometimes people confuse the two and it leads to change simply for the sake of change. 2) OS X gaining ground is not simply explained by "OS X is offering things that Linux is not". The situation is much more complicated. You can BUY macs with OS X preloaded on them. That's a huge advantage. Until pre-loaded linux is truly pushed for by pc vendors (and not in the pansy way so far) I will not consider technology the only driving market force between OS X and Linux adoption. 3) One could interpret some of his words as intending to pander to the less computer savvy demographic. This is fine, so long as you don't leave the computer experts out. I see no reason why a desktop can't be suited to BOTH. I think the whole evolution of linux has been towards that goal and it's working. I see no reason why a grandma and coder can't use the same system and both be happy.

Just for the record

[Anonymous Coward]

Nooooooooo.... no QT please! It's not about looking like windows, it's about looking good...

What on earth is he getting at?

[argent]

Shuttleworth says: "And you can't run an old Windows application on a recent Windows version."

There are some applications, particularly ones that are pushing the limits of what you can do on a PC, that can't run on the most recent versions of Windows, but in general that's not true. I've got programs that I've carried around for decades that still work as far as I've been willing to take Windows.

Mind you, Vista might be an exception, but Microsoft has... up to Vista... bent over backwards to ludicrous levels to maintain backwards compatibility. The phrase "the exception that proves the rule" is a cliche, but this is a perfect example of an exception that DOES prove the rule... there's an enormous push-back against Vista simply because it's perceived as being incompatible. It's NOT a model to follow.

Re:What on earth is he getting at?

[ratboy666]

Windows back compatibility? How far back do you want to go?

Wrong - try MS Bookshelf 92. Most of the "technologies" touted for that time period are now broken. Even when implemented by Microsoft. I wonder if "MS Bob" works (I doubt it). Most other shell extensions of that era no longer work.

So we know the window of compatibility is less than 16 years.

Maybe the "era of compatibility" extends back to Windows 95... I don't know (and, really, don't care much). Windows users probably have a much better idea than I do.

Just sayin'

Re:What on earth is he getting at?

[argent]

How far back do you want to go?

I can run MS-DOS software from the '80s on Windows XP SP2. I can run some Windows software from 1992, and I can run just about any well behaved application (which rules out things like shell extensions) from 10-15 years ago.

So we know the window of compatibility is less than 16 years.

What's the window of compatibility for binary executables on Linux? Even if they only depend on glibc, and don't pull in any GUI libraries, is it as long as 10 years? When was the last time they broke glibc? If you want to run a 10 year old GUI binary on a recent Linux, would you even know where to find all the back-rev lib*.so files it needs?

For FreeBSD installing compat3x should take you back to 1998, but I don't know if compat3x (let alone compat22) is still usable on FreeBSD 7.

I don't even think the "window of compatibility" for Mac OS is as long as 15 years.

16 years of binary compatibility is pretty damn good, for a desktop OS. Servers, now, you can probably still run VMS 2.0 binaries from 1980, but that's a whole different world.

Re:What on earth is he getting at?

[ratboy666]

Hell, I didn't mention Linux, you did. And yes, *I* can run old Linux software. I also know (as do you), how to run back-level BSD stuff.

But I can't run my old Windows software. Take it as a data point. I don't know whether it's good or bad, like I said "just sayin'".

Re:What on earth is he getting at?

[argent]

Hell, I didn't mention Linux, you did.

Actually, Mark Shuttleworth did. :)

Take it as a data point.

You can't run 16 year old Windows GUI software on modern versions of Windows.

That's not a reason to agree with Mark's suggestion about breaking "old" apps on Ubuntu being OK, unless he's talking about comparably complex apps that are similarly dated. Given the state of the art of Linux in 1992 (this was the year of the Torvalds-Tannenbaum debate triggered by the increasing level of Linux discussin in comp.os.minix) I'm not sure you'll be able to find any. :)

Re:What on earth is he getting at?

[civilizedINTENSITY]

Moving from Win95 to Win98 broke my CD-Recorder. The software that came with it couldn't run under win98, and never would. The solution was 6 months later to buy new software from HP. Oh well.

Re:What on earth is he getting at?

[azgard]

And yes, *I* can run old Linux software.

I wonder how, seriously. Few years ago (2004?), I tried to run an old version of MuPAD once (from 1998 or so, it was freeware as in beer at the time), and it required libc 1.6 or something like that. In Debian unstable I had, there was only libc 2.

So if there is some repository of old _binary_ versions of shared libraries, it would be quite helpful actually.

I didn't try to compile correct version of libc, however, because I didn't wanted to mess with that so much, and I actually have doubts I would be able to compile it cleanly.

My memories can be wrong; still, it would be good to know.

Re:What on earth is he getting at?

[ratboy666]

Simple approach -- keep copies of install media of application and os. Create vmware machine, and install on that. Copy OS library files off, and create environment on modern OS.

Oldest Linux I have: yggdrasil. Oldest libraries I have running: Redhat 6.2

Now, I haven't tried installing yggdrasil into vmware (yet), but Redhat 6.2 is just fine. You can leave the whole mess in vmware (and, for business use, I would recommend it), but for personal "grins", copy the relevant files and try running on a modern version.

Re:What on earth is he getting at?

[azgard]

Oh OK, I see. That's certainly possible, however, it wouldn't help me in that particular case.

I don't save old copies of Linux I am not dependent on (I have no reason to, and keeping track on that would take a lot of effort), and the application I wanted to try was only binary older than usual Linux distribution of that era.

Yeah, but...

[Anonymous Coward]

GTK & QT are previous generation toolkit...

Isn't a toolkit comparable to WPF a better pick to start everything over again? It features a very good MVC separation and UI customization. I would be glad my linux doesn't look like windows 3.1 (everything is so static, square and gray).

Considering that could avoid the need to rewrite everything twice within 3 years.

I Second That

[Udigs]

You want to solve the linux fragmentation problem? Well, uniting the two dominant desktops is a great place to start. I've been around a long time so I understand that historic reasons for there being two toolkits. Quite simply, "in the beginning," there *was* no clear winner between Qt and Gtk. They were both immature and unproven.

But, as Bobby sez, things have changed.

Gnome moving to Qt is one of the best ideas I've heard in YEARS! Qt is commercial, better documented, and was DESIGNED to work everywhere from embedded devices to Macs. I've personally worked with both toolkits and as a Cocoa developer, well, Qt is just better.

A quick search for "Gtk Embedded" reveals that my suspicions are correct. The first result is some obscure article in Linuxjournal from 2002! The same search for Qt takes you to Qt's embedded systems portal, full of documentation articles and so on.

http://www.google.com/search?&q=Gtk+embedded
http://www.google.com/search?&q=Qt+embedded


But this isn't just with the embedded side of Qt/Gtk---it's with everything. Go on, pick a topic and do an honest comparison. Want to install your Gtk application on Windows? Get ready to install Cygwin! Want to install A Qt application on Windows, or perhaps a Windows CE phone? No problem: http://trolltech.com/products/qt/features/platforms/embedded/windowsce

I see a lot of comments doing a lot of whining about "Qt Applications are Unstable!!" Qt is easier to deploy consistently and for this developer works more like every other standard GUI toolkit. Gtk is and has always been an absolute nightmare. This anti-Qt argument is one of the stupidest things I've ever heard, something akin to how Java is evil because it is allegedly slow. Here's a tip: next time someone tells you about Java being slow, ask them if they've ever heard of SwingWorker. If they have, ask them to explain how/why it exists. :)

Re:I Second That

[trouser]

Want to install your Gtk application on Windows? Get ready to install Cygwin

Or not - GTK and Glade packages for Windows:

http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=98754

Re:I Second That

[Draek]

How about bindings for languages other than C/C++? last time I tried working with QT on Python (admittedly, many years ago), it felt like a whitespace-aware version of C++ instead of, y'know, Python. Compare that with GTK2 which feels as if it had been designed for the language from the ground-up in at least Python, Ruby and Mono, and you'd see why I strongly prefer the latter.

Plus there's the whole thing with licensing. You may feel OK with having the theoretical "one and only" toolkit under the GPL, but I, personally, feel it's a bit *too* hostile towards closed-source companies, without any advantage other than the extra cash for Trolltech/Nokia.

Re:I Second That

[Udigs]

Python:

http://www.commandprompt.com/community/pyqt/



But to be fair, Qt primarily supports C/C++ and Java. To me this is a non-issue as those are basically the de facto languages for shipping commercial applications. I mean, who ships an entire application written in Ruby/Python?

But yes, Gtk seems to support every language under the sun. But then again, adding binding support to a language, partially with IDL compilers and what not, is pretty trivial. I think Qt's decision to bind with Java and C/C++ has a lot to do with the amount of effort that has gone into standardizing those languages, which is, again, one major argument for picking Qt.

Re:Will the real Mark Shuttleworth stand up?

[dedazo]

You shouldn't be modded up after the crapflood you organized yesterday. In fact, anyone who operates 12 accounts and does things like these should be banned from Slashdot altogether.

Thankfully there are people who keep track of what you do.

I expect you'll be replying to this with the name troll account you created for me, just like you troll other legitimate Slashdot users people that way.

Spin

[NaCh0]

That is the great thing about having a popular site. Often times the same story is submitted by multiple readers. The "editors" don't need to spin the article. They just pick the version that most closely represents the overlord bias. There is no better example than the slashdot Politics section.

Re:Spin

[jandrese]

In a politics section you'll have people decrying your outright and blatent bias no matter what you do or how little bias you actually have. That's the way politics sections work, you decry their obvious bias in an effort to bias them.

As for which articles the Slashdot editors choose, it seems to be the ones designed to generate the most comment traffic. They may not be completely factual, but if they say something outrageous (Gnome is going to Qt!) then they're in. This is the same principle that most 24 hour news sites operate on, if it will draw viewers, put it on the air.

Re:Spin

[kjots]

That's the way politics sections work ...

One could argue that that's the way politics works as well.

long time what?

[Anonymous Coward]

>(For the record, I am a long time KDE user, and I >am kicking myself for not sticking with KDE 3 a >bit longer).

Funny, most long time users I know are running 3.59 and testing out 4.1.

Any 'long time KDE user' who has totally left 3 for 4.0 or 4.1 deserves kicking himself.

We can show you how to get back to 3.59 if you like. I heard that such things are possibl.

Does anybody else see a problem with this?

[Rob Y.]

>The main criticism that I've seen for Hardy were first that we shipped Firefox 3 which was a beta. That was a very conscious decision taken in partnership with Mozilla and we were very confident that Mozilla in fact would release Firefox 3 in a reasonable amount of time. And if now - after the release of Firefox 3 - we would only have Firefox 2 on the desktop for three years, people would be equally upset. So I think it was the right decision.

Ubuntu went with FF3 because they didn't want to still be stuck with FF2 3 years from now. Similarly, Mandriva said they went with FF2 because FF3 wasn't ready, and they're not going to provide an upgrade path to FF3 unless FF2 stops getting security fixes.

Why is it so hard to provide a Firefox version upgrade on these major Linux distros? Mandriva seemed to suggest that lots of other software counted on having either Gecko or XULRunner at version 2.

In a post on a previous article I was modded Troll for suggesting that Firefox has become almost as embedded in Linux distros as IE is in Windows. I assume the majority of the 8 million FF3 upgrades on upgrade day were Windows installations, where the upgrade was trivial.

Does anybody else see this as a problem? If apps are going to have dependencies on Mozilla API's, then either distros shouldn't bundle those apps, or they should include the shared bits of Mozilla in a way that allows Firefox to be upgraded without breaking any other apps. Is that so hard?

Re:Does anybody else see a problem with this?

[mhall119]

Why is it so hard to provide a Firefox version upgrade on these major Linux distros? Mandriva seemed to suggest that lots of other software counted on having either Gecko or XULRunner at version 2.

It may also be a case of the opposite, that Firefox 3 requires upgrades to too many other libraries, like cairo, that Mandriva is shipping older versions of.

Shuttleworth Sees Possibility For a QT-based GNOME

[cparker15]

Apparently so do these people.

Well. FWIW

[HiThere]

I have two applications that run on MSWind95. They are the reason that I still have an MSWind95 box...they wouldn't run correctly on MSWind98.

Somehow *I* haven't been convinced about the great MS backwards compatibility.
The two applications are:
Passport Designs Encore music score editor, and
MacroMedia Director 7
I tried upgrading to MSWind98 and timing problems were so bad that I switched back within a week.

Re:Well. FWIW

[argent]

Somehow *I* haven't been convinced about the great MS backwards compatibility.

I'm sorry, but I'm not arguing that Windows binary compatibility is "great".

Rather, I'm pointing out that no matter how bad it is, everyone else is a good deal shonkier.

Re:Well. FWIW

[i]

Talk for Yourself.

At my work we are running programs written before 1970...
(z/Arch)

Ubuntustorm?

[ypctx]

Does anyone know, where can I find the Ubuntustorm website they are talking about?

Shuttleworth sounds like a n00b

[Anonymous Coward]

Seriously.

He runs KDE on his desktop? OK, let him run it for a year or two and I guarantee he will be switched back to GNOME.

He seems to think OS X is the future. Meh, he'll need a little more time than the KDE/GNOME thing but give him 3 to 5 years with OS X and I guarantee he will be thinking the same thing most experienced users do. That is, OS X is no better or worse than any other OS out there (ie. they pretty much all suck).

Re:Thanks.

[Anonymous Coward]

Your bullshit shilling and obvious trolling get better and better every day.

GTK+ on KDE is better

[andreyvul]

than Qt on Gnome.
I have voiced my opinion.

No, this should already be the reality

[AnXa]

You know. I'd give my left arm (unable to play Quake after that) if Gnome would start using Qt since it would lead to unification of Linux Desktop and Gnome being a lot more improved.

Also lot more Linux applications would pop up and companies would only develop using Qt which would in turn lead to many cross platform applications. We all know the benefits of the one single UI widget kit.

But in the end, it would just make starting up Gnome project in past just worthless action. But since it's not really a worth a thing I wouldn't consider it a loss. Having Gnome based on Qt is a lot better thing than having Gnome based on Mono aka. .Net. Althought the two are not really comparable. :P

Nokia should also step up and make some fancy action on licensing of Qt to make move easier if it is ever going to happen. Gnome will lose it's cause but so what? It's almost not worth a thing since it's so badly designed. Who really needs 15 different sets of tools when you can have them all in one package? Who does need badly writen subsystems and old C in anyway? C++ is the way to go in future. No matter what happens. And those who stick with the C too much don't want to face the reality.

OT: .sig correction

[samjam]

to pick on your .sig:
  'The Christian concept of "free will" is the same free will that a mugger gives you in a dark alley at 3 AM.'

i.e. "I won't destroy you if you give you your money"

as a Christian I don't recognize that. Humans are already neck deep in it; the concept of "free will" that I recognize is the same free will that a rescue helicopter gives you in a flood, or a US marine gives you in an evacuation.

However I won't dispute that many so-called Christians seem to be on the take for money, but thats not Christianity, thats priest-craft and it goes beyond Christianity, even beyond religion.

Now back to the regularly scheduled program...

Re:OT: .sig correction

[Laur]

as a Christian I don't recognize that. Humans are already neck deep in it; the concept of "free will" that I recognize is the same free will that a rescue helicopter gives you in a flood, or a US marine gives you in an evacuation.

That would only be a valid analogy if the rescue helicopter also caused the flood to begin with. If you read the bible, it makes it clear that God is the one punishing mankind for sinning, it is not some amoral third party force like a flood or hurricane (act of God? ;). Of course, God also has the power to save you from His torture, that is if you do what He says. This makes it more akin to the mugger analogy in the GP post.

Problems with Hardy? How about no wifi ?!

[Anonymous Coward]

Please please someone do something so that some one some where some how for what reason it could possibly be fix this https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+bug/178530

QT

[Anonymous Coward]

QT=Quick Time
Qt=Qt

Kewl! Always interested...

[FazzMunkle]

...in reading what he has to say. I love anything that has to do with Ubuntu or Canonical/Shuttleworth. I gobble it up as soon as I see it. Reminds me of being a Mac addict back in the old System 7 to Mac OS 9 days. :D

Nothing new to add. Just had to say that. ;) lol

Software longa, hardware brevis.

[argent]

Shuttleworth sure seemed to be talking about breaking applications, not device drivers.

And count yourself lucky that you got an update. Every year when I was working as a network administrator at ABB we would have to throw out innumerable peripherals and cards that were not and never would be supported on new systems, software, and firmware... for everything from microcontrollers to mainframes.

Re:Thanks.

[Goaway]

You gotta admire the audacity of how after dedazo called him out beforehand on replying with a name troll account, he went right ahead and did it anyway. That shows some dedication to being a complete nutjob!