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Linus Switches From KDE To Gnome
An anonymous reader writes "In a recent Computerworld interview, Linus revealed that he's switched to Gnome — this despite launching a heavily critical broadside against Gnome just a few years ago. His reason? He thinks KDE 4 is a 'disaster.' Although it's improved recently, he'll find many who agree with this prognosis, and KDE 4 can be painful to use." There's quite a bit of interesting stuff in this interview, besides, regarding the current state of Linux development.
Second Post!
I first read the summary wondering why anyone cares what Linus uses, but then I noticed that he agrees with the general consensus that KDE4 isn't turning out as well as everyone had hoped...
Here's to KDE doing better with v5.
Viable Slashdot alternatives: https://pipedot.org/ and http://soylentnews.org/
Gnome doesn't get in your way. It doesn't shout "PLEASE CONFIGURE ME!" in your face as KDE does.
Linus switches from KDE to Gnome
Thus proving beyond the shadow of a doubt the weakness of arguments from authority.
Now that I think about it, I'm pretty sure everything I just said is completely wrong.
while I do think that gnome has come a long way I think that the fact that ubuntu, the most friendly (debatable) of the new big linux distro can't be ignored as a factor in this.
Yes, KDE and Gnome are pretty big names when it comes to window managers, but there are other worthy WMs out there too!
Windows, for example.
Personally, KDE and Gnome both suck. They're both heavy-weight X-Window environments. I like XFCE better because it's simple, doesn't contain all of those "extra applications" I will never use, and is lightweight (IMHO).
"Happily lived Mankind in the peaceful Valley of Ignorance." -- Hendrik Willem Van Loon
The point is, no matter what Linus, Stallman, Gates, Jobs use...that shouldn't matter for anyone else.
It's time to realise that Abble's products are the biggest abomination these days. Just say NO to the dumb iAbble way!!
Still why does anyone care? Use Gnome use KDE. Use proper sentences. It reminds me of all the other tech crap...Steve Jobs likes to scratch his ass with a matchbook cover...so Mac people start scratching their asses...Bill Gates uses the Constitution to blow his nose...you get the point. Use what works...thati s what the point of open source is. If it doesn't work try something else...but make that decision yourself.
Anonymous Coward...because I know you people and I don't want to have to hack off heads with my +1 Axe
Linus will be back. KDE 4.2 is turning out very nice and I'm sure he will give it a try. By upgrading his Fedora he was more or less forced to choose between GNOME 2 or KDE 4.0. Fedora should not have chosen KDE 4.0 over KDE 3.5. Only now with version 4.2 has KDE reached an acceptable level of quality again.
DNA is the ultimate spaghetti code.
I used to use KDE 3 (Kubuntu) and I, somewhat recently, installed the latest version of Kubuntu with KDE 4. To be as clear as possible: KDE 4 is a trainwreck. At first I took it in stride and figured that a brand new release might be a little buggy, no harm. I'm using KDE 4.2 RC1 now and it's still horrible.
Linus has plenty of other things to say in this interview. Why focus on this less important aspect of the discussion?
Because LT doesn't like how KDE is right now? That's his choice, just as it was to like KDE more than Gnome before.
Software is not perfect and it only achieves usefulness by stages, as LT himself mentions in discussing Git. A living project is a changing project. Not everyone is going to like the changes.
Rich And Stupid is not so bad as Working For Rich And Stupid.
I used to be a KDE user. I thought KDE 4.0 was such a disaster I switched to GNOME. I hate the fact that my right button doesn't do what I want it to do. But the whole "break everything" model is painful for users and they can choose to use something else.
I realise the reason for the 4.0 release, but I think they did it badly. They did so may changes it was a half-baked release. It may turn out to be the right decision in the end and I will re-try KDE, but I suspect I'm not the only person they lost.
I got the update through Fedora and there was a mismatch from KDE 3 to KDE 4.0. The desktop was not as functional and it was just a bad experience for me. I'll revisit it when I reinstall the next machine which tends to be every six to eight months.
Which isn't exactly the same thing, and probably not many people at KDE will be all that surprised. KDE4 is new, it has teething problems. It was risk, but we'll find out later if it was a risk worth taking.
As a long time (and current) supporter of KDE, I currently run a gnome only setup. Having said that...
1) I used KDE 4.1 under openSUSE, and I couldn't even remotely understand what all the fuss is about with KDE4. Maybe someone distros stabilize the desktop more than others.
2) Most importantly, had another large figure in the OSS community made such a comment about the kernel (and justifiably so I might add), I don't think he would have liked it much. As a developer on another large project, you would think that Linux of all people would understand. This is the only problem I have with Linus: He knows a large percentage of the Linux community hang on his every word, yet he still acts like he's just a guy hanging out in a chatroom. Knowing this, you would think he'd be more responsible about the comments he makes. Even though no one "owns" Linux, you'd be in denial if you said he wasn't the one person that had a claim to the throne. So when Linux finally does get on the brink of widespread usage, how do you think the goody-goodies are going to respond when someone digs up old mailing list threads of him cursing like a sailor or being a jerk?
Are you a KDE or Gnome user? For me it's Xfce or fluxbox, less is more .. :)
davecb5620@gmail.com
Linus, Gnome, and KDE in are in the title. I'm surprised no one's been compared to Hitler yet.
Linus's lack of commitment confirms it: Linux GUIs still suck.
There are six pages of interview with Linus. Him now using Gnome instead of KDE is covered in three and a half paragraphs. Come on, this is a little sensationalist, picking on this rather minor issue for the headline, isn't it? No, I'm not new here, I just like to point out how childish that seems.
Linus says KDE 4.0 was a "half baked release". Yes it was. He complains he got the update pushed through Fedora and that it "was not as functional". I'm sure it wasn't. He also might want to reconsider his choice of Linux distribution if he isn't happy with their update policy.
We've been through this a million times here and on most any other tech site on the whole of the web: KDE 4.0 wasn't ready for general use, KDE themselves said so, it might have been a mistake to release it anyway, or not, the communication could have been a lot clearer, yada yada yada.
Linus thinks so, too. Fine. Also, yawn.
How the hell is this news? Who gives a shit what WM Linus is running? What's next - updates every time he compiles something or installs a new package?
You Linux faggots really need to get a life.
Not quite. Back when Linus advocated KDE over GNOME, he was right on. KDE3.5 or so was vastly superior to GNOME in terms of features and polish. However, KDE 4.x has taken a step backwards, and shows no convincing signs of progress, which is why I've switched back to GNOME as well (having not used it since about 2.2). Linus is promoting the best option available at the time, without bias. Which is perfectly sane, and valid.
Basically, KDE has great tech. BUT core developers seem to have some sort of arrogance about listening to the community and some sort of project-deathwish which manifests in a horrible release process, minor versions that don't work until x.4 or so, and poor support for non-core developers. Moreover they've alienated some of the very groups they tried to encourage early in the KDE 4 brainstorming process. Finally, they generally seem to suffer from lack of manpower, which they have never really tried to solve. If you believed the hype the core devs were spouting, KDE 4 was going well, and no help was needed, until the product actually appeared as a release and everyone saw the real situation. KDE technology is great. If 4.4+ rocks the way 3.4+ did, and they don't make the same mistakes with 5.[0123], then they still have a chance. But for now, frankly, it's been terribly mismanaged.
I love KDE, I have done from the start, but there is no getting away from the fact that the way the switch to KDE 4 has been handled is a completely disaster (I've been using KDE 4.1 for a few months now). I can sort of see why the team directing KDE have done this but I'm sure it could have been handled a lot better than it has been.
Hind sight is a perfect science but before I radically changed KDE I would have made damn sure that the most popular software that relies on KDE was going to have a version ready about the same time KDE was released. Not having a KDE 4 version of Amarok for example is terrible.
Over all I think KDE will end up stronger for this change. The bits that are working are really nice I'm just worried that it will take 5 years to get to the point where full advantage can be taken of the effort that has been put in. In the end I think KDE will be the dominant desktop but Gnome must be seriously gaining support at the moment.
I used to have a better sig but it broke.
"End-users will do crazy things that no amount of testing infrastructure will get."
Actually TFA is quite good read about various things around Linux. The KDE vs. GNOME part is the least interesting IMO. Go read it and get modded down ;-)
A bug in TFA: the Qs and As are using the same font & color and there's no "Q:" or "A:" markers before them, so it looks like a monologue...
Colorless green Cthulhu waits dreaming furiously.
Apparently there are no other people named Linus?
I enjoy Linux as much as the next guy (maybe even more) but I don't think Torvalds is worthy of being regarded as the only Linus. Maybe if he were to win two Nobel prizes I would be more impressed. Though perhaps he could be considered the head of a religion?
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
I think Linus is right on this one. I have been using KDE based linux desktops on my primary computer for ~7 years now. KDE 4 is a huge step back. The even bigger problem is that linux distros (Kubuntu and OpenSuse) are happily pushing KDE4.1 as the default KDE desktop. In fact with Kubuntu 8.10, there is no option. For KDE 3.5 you have to use 8.04. KDE 4 takes the GNOME approach to desktops (i.e. user's IQ is equivalent to a mostly dead rodent of unusually small size and any options would confuse poor afore mentioned user and therefore options are bad). Before the GNOME loving flames begin, yes I know there exist external tools to start fiddling with options, but the amount of flexibility is not the same as KDE 3.5.10.
/rant
KDE 4 unfortunately takes the GNOME approach, and removes flexibility. Worse still, all the developer time for KDE 4 is now going into polishing the interface (which while shiny is no better or more intuitive than KDE 3.5) while not bothering fixing apps people actually use. For example, on KDE 4.2, if you add a webdav calendar from a https source which has a self signed cert, you will be prompted every time it reloads, whether you want to accept the cert or not. Yes thats right, even if you click accept cert permanently, the DE is incapable of understanding it. This has been outstanding for a while, but all recent activity seems to be towards fixing desktop effects or making the kicker work. Its ridiculous.
Legally obligatory sig : My opinions are my own... etc etc
DWM is where its at.
Here is the print version.
It's a little bit frustrating to read because you can't tell the interviewers questions and the answers apart.
May 15, 2011
In a recent CNetComputerPCWorldNews article, Linus Torvalds revealed he's recently switched to a Mac - this despite launching a heavily critical broadside against OS X just a few years ago. His reason? He thinks Linux is a 'disaster.' Although it's improved recently, he'll find many who agree with this prognosis, and Linux can be painful to use.
#DeleteChrome
AH FRIGGIN' HA!
KDE 3.x was superb! I don't know why they changed it to that an extent. Unfortunately many popular distros do not allow one to easily revert to 3.x. Too bad. http://pranavsbrain.peshwe.com/2008/05/kopy-kats.html
I was once a KDE user. I loved many aspects of it as much as Linus did. Gnome was easier to use but lacked certain features KDE offered. This was around 5 years ago. KDE4 was released and I read plenty of people's reviews who was forcing themselves liking it. I bet it was related to Linus's Love or liking for it. Today, I was about to give KDE4 another try until I ran into this article. This confirms my earlier experiences such as barfing into a bucket, headaches, nausea. I almost cried! In gnome, we have screenlets, awn, kiba-dock, compiz fusion. The posibilities are endless in creating touchpads with screenlets buttons as executables for certain applications or using awn or kiba-dock on a 65inch HD-television for navigation on your living room setup. It is way more customizable in my own opinion and very fluid at 200fps instead of plasmoids terrible animation of what looks like 3 fps.
I've used KDE 4.1 for a month. Then I switched back to KDE 3.5, and was the happiest guy in the world to have my good old desktop back! I use Kate a lot for programming C++ and Actionscript projects. In KDE 3.5, Kate rocks. In KDE 4.1, they have, on purpose (by design) ruined the search function of Kate (no whole word option, it doesn't search for the same word in the different open documents), making it unusable for programming (especially refactoring). They have totally made the file managers unusable. No proper working tree. Konqueror can have a tree, but it has the most annoying horizontal autoscroll thing ever (again by design), and you can't drag anything to it. The unzip tool (Ark) is a joke (I've never seen it working). No possibility to have two rows in your taskbar. I *need* to have one row that acts as quick launch for programs, and another row that has the buttons of open windows, one for every window, and only the windows on the current desktop of the multi desktops. Terribly annoying behaviour in file managers and file open/save dialogs, it's so extremely hard, almost an annoying computer game, to select multiple files. Anything from dragging a rectangle around multiple files, to using ctrl + clicking, are all not working properly due to various reasons (such as when beginning to drag the rectangle, it thinks you want to drag 1 file, instead of dragging something around rectangles). Filenames in such lists are clickable everywhere, instead of only on the text of the name, and are in a very wide column by default, which is a second cause for making it hard to drag a rectangle around multiple files. The non-SVG cards in the card games are rescaled in a terribly ugly way, and the SVG card decks all have an ugly design.
But the productivity loss with kate and the file managers is still the worse of all, KDE has become unproductive as hell for me, and I use KDE 3.5 as long as possible.
Actually, I think the key word is missing there. The real fallacy is "argument from false authority."
As a hypothetical example: If an recognized astrophysicist says that there's something fishy about the amount of existing dark matter, that's a real authority on the subject matter, and is certainly something to keep in mind. If Obama says it, he's just not qualified to make that kind of a judgment, and it's simply something to ignore. For all his authority in politics and law, he's as qualified to talk about astrophysics as the local barber.
In this case I don't think Linus is an authority on usability or anything even remotely relevant to KDE vs GNOME. It's his personal tastes vs yours, nothing more. Unless you happen to know that his tastes accidentally match yours to the letter, it's something to thoroughly ignore.
Of course, that won't stop people from being fashion victims and trying to imitate him anyway. That's why celebrity endorsements work. That's why you see video clips with Van Damme and whatnot saying that they play WoW, for example. Because a lot of John Does out there will try to be like monkeys imitating that celebrity. Or why you see Fatal1ty branded heatsinks, although I don't think he'd know enough physics to actually judge a design, nor the experience of having tested 100 heatsinks and picked the best. That's appeal to false authority.
I don't doubt that here too a lot of people switched to KDE just because Linus blasted GNOME, and will now hastily switch back to GNOME because Linus uses it now so it must be cool.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
For something that is so stable I am surprised that he reformats that often. I have no real insight here I just find it odd.
Sera
Slashdot, where armchair scientists get shouted down and armchair theologians get modded up.
KDE 3.0 definitely wasn't as good as 3.5 You need to give it time.
KDE 4 is not a year late, it's just being pushed out by the distros before it is ready instead of working with KDE 3.5.
KDE 3.5 still works great. KDE 4 is not yet in alpha stage, which is fine for those that like the bleeding edge. The side effect is that it is still really is slow, awkward, buggy and incomplete.
So, I'm not sure why Torvalds feels compelled to highlight this. The fault is not necessarily for KDE 4 using a long time to take form. The real mistake, perhaps an intentional one, is for distros like Ubuntu to roll out a clearly unready desktop. One really could question the intent there.
If Ubuntu, and others, were serious about helping rather than harming, they'd set up a nice KDE 3.5 as a default for options like Kubuntu or KDE-Fedora. Remember, years ago, Red Hat had tricked out both leading desktop environments with common themes, bells and whistles. I'd like to see a return to those brief moments of common sense.
A side effect of the unreadiness of KDE4, hiding of KDE 3.5 and the turds that M$-Novell is dropping in the GNOME punch bowl, is that users are discovering Xfce, Fluxbox, FVWM-crystal and many others. (Ubuntu URLS there) Speaking of running window managers without a desktop environment, Compiz can be run like that, too.
Beta is broken and the link to classic doesn't work. Stop wasting our time or there won't be anybody left here.
"After I switched from KDE to Gnome, I thought, why not take a look at OpenSolaris at the same time. I was surprised how much OpenSolaris improved since the last time I looked at SunOS many years ago."
Linus went on, "OpenSolaris is just so nicely engineered, just like somebody is thinking about the architecture before hacking code".
"As soon as I get all rights around Linux moved to Andrew Morton, I will permanently switch to OpenSolaris. Linux will then be renamed to Morox. It just takes too much of my precious time to get all these bugs and architectural failures out of Linux. Looking back, I wished OpenSolaris were released as opensource earlier. Now I wasted 20 years of my life, on something that was doomed to end as a disaster."
...Bill Gates switches from Kleenex to Puffs Plus.
Who the fuck cares.
Someone like Linus doesn't use LSF, or at least pop for the more stable official redhat release or use CentOS if he is cheap. Fedora by it's very nature and design is experimental testing, it is ALWAYS going to be full of bugs and gotchas.
"I make controversial statements without thinking a lot."
I've used kde4 and it is a disaster, 4.1 is better but still not as good as 3.5. Gnome is good but why isn't he using something like fluxbox or some other light weight wm?
Is is cynical to inherently distrust a Microsoft Web site called "getthefacts.com"?
I'm a long time KDE user, and consider KDE4.x a disaster. However, I also can't really stomach gnome - it seems to be going done the "dumb it all down" path, which I dislike. KDE just always seemed a lot more flexible and in tune with how I want my desktop to work. Plus it has some killer apps, like K3B.
So now what? KDE 3.5 will eventually no longer be shipped with distros... and I don't like either of the major choices going forward.
I'm not the only one in this boat. I have a few other former KDE using friends who are pretty upset that all the choices we liked in desktop environments seem to be dying :-(
I decided to install Kubuntu (Intrepid) with KDE4...
After a while, KDE4 began to annoy me enough, I decided what the hell, and tried out the 4.2 beta when it came out. Prior to that, bizarre display problems and a few other problems had limited my enjoyment of the system. I started using Compiz-Fusion, and found some of these things were even worse (of course, in my opinion and experience, Compiz-fusion really sucks at it's current state, when it comes to cleanliness and stability--have had to restart X way too much with it to bother any more). That's when I tried 4.2. I really do hate to say it, as I'm really not pleased with Compiz-fusion, but I was even more disappointed. I know it's beta, so I'll give it a break. But I *really* hope they can fix all of the bugs I've run into (like randomly just crashing probably 1/5 of the time within the first 2-4 hours, especially when I started up an app that used a 32bit visual for composited windows). I won't even bother loading it up if I'm going to be doing any kind of development or running anything else that isn't stable in my standing experience. So, now I'm stuck to OpenBox and if I'm playing with composited windows, xcompmgr (tried FluxBox, which I had liked more for features, but FluxBox doesn't handle 32bit visuals properly O.o). Though, I must admit... there's some other applications I've tried to use under this setup that have a number of display problems as well--the difference seems to be that it's a per-application thing, not the entire desktop.
Sadly, for me, at the current state, KDE 3 annoys me severely as it always has, and I've never really liked GNOME. Outside of my initial experience with Mandrake Linux, I "grew up" in my Linux experience on Gentoo Linux, mostly switching around between Fluxbox, Openbox, etc. and beyond that just setting up my own "desktop environment" out of my own chosen tools, some times taken from KDE or GNOME. I've only really since started actually trying KDE and GNOME since getting annoyed with the downfalls of Gentoo enough to try out another distro. And I'm not really happy. :/
Of course, what am I to say... I find Windows hard to use and a really big pain in the ass, and I haven't gotten past the initial "wtf?! How do I do anything?!" on Mac OS X--more because I've only used it in places that I had to, like on a school computer.
I'd like to take this opportunity to suggest that people try something exciting and different! The xmonad window manager!
It's a tiling-style wm like ion, ratpoison and dwm (in fact it started out as a reimplementation of dwm's features with the addition of xinerama support). xmonad is very small, very fast, very stable. Written in the Haskell programming language. And supported by a very helpful and friendly bunch on #xmonad at freenode.
Try this kind of window manager, you may just like it quite a bit more than the conventional model of dragging and sizing your life away. I went from fluxbox to xmonad last summer and use it on everything, period. It's that good.
I am using KDE 4.1.4 on Fedora 10. I love it ... It's fast, there are some bugs, but not so many ...
I am really looking into KDE 4.2. I like Amarok, Dolphin .... and I just love Garfield desklets ...
KDE is doing great work ...
hmm, maybe they should host getthefacts.com on a linux box, cuz it's definitely down.
The die-hards keep saying that the next 4.x release will be the one that fixes the bugs and provides decent features. First the pre-4.0 betas were alphas, but we were assured it'd all be much better by 4.0 (although really, 4.2 would be the first real release -- if so, THAT should be called 4.0. I mean, ffs!) Then 4.0 was alpha crap, and 4.1 would fix it. 4.1 was alpha crap (and I switched to gnome), but 4.2 would fix it... last I looked, progress on 4.2 sucked as well. I'm thinking 4.4 might be getting SOMEWHERE. Can't see me going back to KDE unless 5.0's release is handled MUCH better though.
I agree with Torvalds wholeheartedly, and I'm very disturbed by the path KDE 4 has taken. I've used KDE since 1.0, and version 4 has me really worried. Not for the bugs, but for the strategic decisions. Replacing Konqueror with Dolphin was a VERY, VERY big mistake. And the desktop and taskbar are confusing and ugly.
KDE 3.5 was a jewel. Now that my favorite distro (opensuse) has dropped support for KDE 3.5, I'm...lost.
I know you can replace Konq as the default file manager, but I simply *don't believe* you guys that tell me that Konq has not been relegated to a web browser only. (Haha - it's WORST capability in 3.5).
I am not from "the other camp". I have preached KDE and Qt since their first releases, but I can't do it for this version of KDE. It's terrible.
It works just fine from here. I mean, they -could- host it on Linux, but then it would be less stable, less secure and more expensive. You really should just get the facts.
Thank God Linux gives you choices about this kind of thing. One of the reasons I would never even consider switching from back Linux to a proprietary OS is that on Windows or MacOS, you don't get any choice about which desktop or window manager to run. Bought a Mac but don't like the Finder? Tough luck.
Personally I dislike having a screen littered with little icons representing files, and I also seem to have much higher expectations about performance than a lot of people. That's why I use fluxbox. Linus can choose kde and then switch to gnome if kde has what he feels is a bad release. I don't have to agree with Linus, Linus doesn't have to agree with me, and likewise for everyone else.
Sometimes OSS is about zero cost, sometimes it's about freedom, but sometimes it's just about being able to change something because only you know what's right for you. It's exactly like the famous story about Stallman's indignance about the closed-source laser printer at MIT. He knew what was right for him as a user. He knew that the printer was on a different floor of the building, so he needed a good way to find out the printer's state without having to go and look at it. Xerox couldn't anticipate his situation, and he didn't want them to; he simply wanted to be able to modify what his university had bought from them so that it would be appropriate for them as users.
Find free books.
Upgrading Ubuntu to Intrepid Ibex, I just tried KDE 4.1 (from using KDE 3.x for the past few years years) and found it to be REALLY slow with the fancy effects, and wasting of a lot of screen real estate with the new styles. It definately was getting in my way of trying to get stuff done.
You can't arrange files the way you like, the desktop is practically off limits except for KDE toys, the new K menu (being bulkier and over-animated) sucks, themes are gone (no way to "fix it"), etc.
Gnome may not be my choice but like KDE it Just works, maybe not as well as KDE 3 but it certainly is far better then the Fischer Price like KDE 4 interface.
"Enjoy what you're doing! If it becomes drudgery, you're doing it wrong!" - Jim Butterfield
I'm still not sure what Gnome is, or what is part of Gnome, its seems like they keep changing that definition every few years.
At one time, the definition what that is was a certain set of protocols that, and not specific applications. It was so loose that if KDE was installed with Gnome compatibility turned on, KDE was Gnome.
Oh i see , 'less is more' .
So that would be : more stable , more secure , and less expensive. :-)
Slipping shoelaces ?
So you are under the assumption that 90% of the world uses AVG? I don't get it... AVG is a terrible antivirus and, last I checked, did not have such a hold in that segment of the software market.
If we Slashdot Microsoft's getthefacts server, we'll be helping Microsoft getthefacts on their own software.
Maybe they'll give in and finally realise the best solution for hosting getthefacts would be a Beowulf cluster of KDE4 desktops, located opposite Sarah Palin's bedroom in Soviet Russia!
There's much ado about nothing really. Whatever anyone tries the good technology always will out, and I'm afraid in the open source desktop world that is KDE right now. Frok that perspective then the message is very much still 'use KDE'. There's nothing else that is able to keep up technologically with what Microsoft and Apple are doing with Windows and Mac from a presentation, developer and application perspective. If you want to stay on the equivalents of today's CDE then that's absolutely fine, but a break has been necessary to move things on. Linus even justifies the approach to a large extent:
And this is why Linux will never have mass market appeal. No consistent UI. No consistent experience. No consistency period.
How many different ways are their to install software on all of the different distributions?
Take me for an example. I've got KDE4 on my machine, none Kde/Qt 3 libs whatsoever. However I am using fluxbox. I ran startkde once to get Qt styles working for the GTK2+ apps but then that's it. Apps such as Kate, Gwenview need polishing but then why would I have Kwin running? Take what Kde/Qt 4 have to offer and use your RAM/CPU cycles for smth better.
Is is cynical to inherently distrust a Microsoft Web site called "getthefacts.com"?
We experience the opposite. We are 4:1 a Linux:Windows shop, yet spend twice as much time fixing Windows boxes. We charge for our time, so we love, and hate Windows.
The KDE team is trying to channel in the influx of new users brought in by Ubuntu with a carrot on a stick. Just search youtube for compiz and be amazed.
I just pray they don't push Gnome into following suit.
:wq
guys guys guys, look at us bickering...arguing...we never used to be like this, oh wait ...
I am a gnome use, I don't dislike KDE it just not the best choice for me with the work I do.
My work mate is a KDE user - its suits him, he fins it the best to get *his* work done.
Thats it, get over it.
"Hell has frozen over".
I am interested in how you are able to have components of both versions of KDE at the same time. Perhaps this would help ease my transition to KDE4.
I have been a die-hard KDE3 user, and all my scripts are set up with KDE3-style dcop calls. Apparently this is among the things that will have to change when I switch to KDE4, quite apart from the user interface itself.
One of the reasons I switched to Linux was so that I wouldn't be put through the upgrade treadmill. Software freedom was supposed to mean that they couldn't put forced obsolence or vendor lock-in into programs. Although it's probably simple to do a "sed -e 's/dcop/dbus/g'" to all my scripts, it still bugs me that I have to do it. I consider it unnecessary maintenance.
However, I am beginning to become resigned to the inevitability of having to upgrade. I once asked one of the developers of a well-known KDE program (but not part of the official KDE baseline set). S/he said:
Well, a couple of points:
All grumbling aside, I have some extra spare time in the coming few weeks, so I figure that this would be a good time to make the transition to KDE4. Returning to my original question, how did you make KDE3 and KDE4 overlap? Do you (or anyone else) have any recommendations for those of us who want to minimize the effort of making the transition?
404555974007725459910684486621289147856453481154 in hex is "You sank my Battleship?"
[GPG key in journal]
What is wrong with having the options?
More options means a potential for more software defects arising from unexpected interactions between options. I learned this the hard way when developing Lockjaw Tetromino Game.
And there is a very good reason why the terminal should have a separate setting for textfields: it's not a textfield and it doesn't act like one.
What is a terminal other than an 80-column-wide text field that both you and a program can write to?
Mandriva 2009 really let me down hard with the default to KDE4. While Mandriva worked remarkably well with the hardware on my Eee 1000, KDE 4 was just too bloated to really consider it.
Of course I never could stomach Gnome for some reason. It just bugs me... And don't even get me started with (*)buntu, because that crap just really ticks me off. (I think probably has something to do with their cult-like fan club.)
Eyecandy may be fun, but Linux needs to get back to being more streamline, and nowhere is that more important than on the desktop. KDE 4 Fails hard in this area.
Blessed with all the brains that God gave a duck's ass, and twice the charisma.
This hast to be the most accurate moderation ever: 50% Funny 50% Troll.
Spot on.
I'll revisit it when I reinstall the next machine which tends to be every six to eight months.
WTF? So he re-installs his computer every 6-8 months? Fuck me, you've not needed to do that with Windows for nearly a decade.
I only please one person per day. Today is not your day. Tomorrow isn't looking good either. - Scott Adams
People wonder why move away from KDE to Gnome. We all KNOW that KDE4 is a radical step... and it simply needs maturing. So why not just look at KDE4 and stay at KDE 3.5 until things are truly ready??
Simple.
Imagine if Linus gave the world a new Linux kernel. It's a radical step. It mostly works except it has no dynamic device management, most drivers aren't ported yet and networking isn't quite there. Imagine if he said that all work on the prior kernel had stopped, and only the new kernel would have the security and features needed for the future.
I imaging a lot of people wouldn't trust Linux kernel development anymore... and thus we have the state of KDE. The KDE folks could not have trumpeted KDE 4's arrival more loudly. They were(are) PROUD of it and believe it is OBVIOUS that it is so much better than KDE 3.5. So why complain? You folks who believe that KDE 3 is better than KDE 4 are just plain WRONG. Why? Because the KDE developers SAY SO. Who are you do disagree?
(you gotta admit... it makes you want to switch to Gnome... doesn't it??)
KDE 4 is unfinished. It says everywhere in the official sources. Since KDE 2 the .5 releases basically where the stable targets. It's only with 4 that with the .0 release they didn't care about finish at all, and thus provides Über-suckage. 4.5 will be the stable finished 4 release. No news here. What's the big fat hairy deal?
That said, KDE 3.5 still kicks Gnomes ass usability and integration wise. However - and this *is* true - Gnome has actually stopped sucking in 2008. For the first time in history Nautilus is usable also for non-total-fanboys, and allthough the featureset and power is no where near that of Konqueror, it also has become intuitive to use. For the first time ever since I moved from Debian, I'm using Ubuntu instead of Kubuntu (also due to the flak KDE 4 has gotten) and for the first time I didn't remove it after 10 minutes.
It is far away from the KDE featureset and I'm still convinced that a well configured KDE 3.5 is the best desktop in the world and also outperforms Mac OS X usability wise (fyi: I'm typing this on a mac), but the Ubuntu foundation work done on my Dell Volstro is so awesome, I don't really care that much about any nitpicky details. Maybe I'll dick around with E or something if I get bored by it. Both Gnome and KDE are so far beyond Windows - which I use at work - that it doesn't really matter that much to me. Especially with the improvement Gnome obviously has seen lately.
Since Linus actually cares squat about the Desktop, as long as it works, his statements actually make sence in current context. No surprise here either.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
Some might disagree but we have desktop metaphors on computers for a reason. When I use my computer I put things on the desktop, move them around, arrange them to my liking and habit. Without a true desktop metaphor I can't do that. KDE4 doesn't give me a true desktop metaphor.
KDE4 is implemented messy. They spent so much time on their start menu that they lost all sight of the desktop. The start menu needs revising even after all their work.
Putting my desktop in a tiny Window is just crazy. I have a large screen monitor for a reason.
Having such a conflict with compiz and the native compositing manager in KDE4 harms acceptance. Nothing like having my desktop slowed down because KDE won't give way to Compiz when it is installed (and I mean give way all the way).
Without a regular desktop metaphor KDE4 will continue to fail.
You can lead a man with reason but you can't make him think.
TCO isn't defined by Microsoft. Microsoft wants to define everything so everyone does it their way. TCO is just that Total Cost of Ownership. That means that you don't exclude Microsoft baggage to make it's TCO seem better.
In the long run Linux's TCO is far better than Microsoft's "any run" TCO.
That site is a Microsoft site full of inaccuracies and in many cases total baldfaced lies.
You can lead a man with reason but you can't make him think.
I rather suspect that various manufacturers send him a bright sparkling new machine every 6 months or so. There are some perks to notoriety....
All you dudes making fun of blinking cursor options have probably not seen the animations KDE 4 is providing as eye candy. They are really bad and give the impression that they were made for the sake of being there.
For example, the "preview" of windows that appear when the user hovers over taskbar entries, is moving around when the mouse points to another task bar entry ... However, nothing is moving in reality, this animation is kitsch and not giving any meaningful feedback. The opposite, it is totally confusing.
In Dolphin, the preview of files in the big icon on the right is smoothly changing from one icon to another as the user selects different files. But in fact nothing is happening with the files, tho the animation suggests so. That is again, kitsch and confusing.
The animation should support the user!
This is something Gnome got right with Compiz. Most of the animations make sense and there.
And i think the blinking cursor is important. Sometimes you need to find the cursor in a huge console window, then it should blink. Sometimes you need to concentrate and write a text, a blinking cursor is annoying then. Animation is an important part of the interface experience.
It's a step in the wrong direction as far as the desktop goes. Their desktop metaphor is terrible. Users have desktops and large monitors for a reason. They want sprawling desktops that they can organize and use according to their habit. Limiting us to a tiny box which doesn't in anyway resemble a desktop (rather it resembles an inbox on a desktop) is the wrong thing to do. KDE4 won't gain acceptance in any significant way till they put the desktop metaphor back to what we had before.
You can lead a man with reason but you can't make him think.
I gave up on both Gnome and KDE long time ago. I recently had to (AKA was forced to) look at some Gnome code, and it was beyond any description of how bad code could be. I'm currently using Icewm. It's small, fast, and it's not cancerogen like Gnome and KDE.
...zzzZZZ
Wake me up when he switches to GNUstep.
Stick Men
but they don't. So, we don't really use Linux, neither GNU/linux. We use Gnome/GNU/Linux or KDE/GNU/Linux or any other combination. That's BAD. IMHO all utilities should be common, with well defined interface (heck, just make small command line utils, that alwyas worked on linux). Gnome/KDE should be nothing more than presentation for these common utils. Having different network managers, BT managers etc. is nothing but overhead and bad design. That's one of the problems of FOSS: inefficient resource utilization (in this case, developers).
Actually, on one hand, indeed no authority is infallible or beyond questioning. That's one thing more people should remember.
On the other hand, I still think there is a very valid distinction to be made between (A) a real authority on the subject matter, and (B) an arbitrary authority on another domain, and who's probably talking out the arse.
Basically,
A) if someone whose Ph.D. is on ancient middle eastern history tells me "you should believe what I say because I am experienced and I know what I am talking about" about the Neo-Assyrian empire, chances are he _does_ know what he's talking about. He's of course not infallible and not beyond questioning, but chances are that he does have some years and many tomes that he bases his assertions on. That's a valid authority to trust, unless you have evidence to the contrary.
B) if the same claim is made by, say, someone whose whole claim to glory is having starred in some movie set in that age, then the situation is exactly reversed. I have not much reason to believe that he knows enough to make such a claim, unless he can present more credentials.
Same about any other domain. If a lawyer tells me that X is illegal, by default I trust that he's probably right. If Hans Reiser (an authority on filesystems at least) tells me about the law, I ask a lawyer too. If an eye doctor tells me I need glasses, I tend to assume that he's probably right. If an archaeologist tells me the same, no matter how famous or how much an authority on his own field, I go ask a doctor. Etc.
Lumping both extremes under "baffle them with bullshit" seems to me, sad to say, idiotic.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
Has XFCE fixed the disappearing taskbar bug yet? That one made me move to LXDE, which is pretty good these days.
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
I agree it's a disaster, starting with Dolphin. Could it be forked?
OK kids, KDE 4 may be improving slowly, but it's great potential is still there. KDE 3 is still a great desktop environment. And this is the beauty of choice! If you're not happy with the programs you use you can just switch to something that suits you better. And you can use a lot of foul language in the process without hurting more than the morale of the programmers that give you that choice. Great.
I tried KDE 4.1.3 and hurried back to 3.5.10 It was very Original-Vista-like (not just look, stability too) for my taste. Many things didn't work. This was a Kubuntu release, so maybe they screwed something up, but many applets were missing too (e.g. System Guard), so it's not just stability. I guess widgets will catch up too, but it just wasn't ready for me. I was rather surprised as it felt more like a beta than a .1.x release.
I program with kate as well.
I am not having a problem with global searches.
Try this from the command line:
find . -name '*.c' -exec grep -Hn searchtoken {} \;
I write scriptlets and pipe them into a file.
The above will search all files with a c extension
looking for searchtoken.
This way works great from within kate, run it from
the shell.
"The biggest thing Sun did with ZFS is they were good with PR and marketing." - Sour grapes? Not very elegant to say the least.
"Hey, I usually do my presentation slides in PowerPoint." - Now, that revelation should be sufficient reason to keep the Free (as in RMS/FSS) versus OSS schism for another 20 years. ;-)
"It turns out the best way to interface with it is with Java." - From my memory it's the first positive thing that Linus says of Java, ever. Perhaps now that OpenJDK offers 100% open source Java, Linux is willing to be kinder on it.
"I thought KDE 4.0 was such a disaster I switched to GNOME." - A couple years ago Linus says GNOME sucks; now, Linus says KDE sucks. We can summarize that as: Linus recognizes that Linux sucks in the desktop - period. The best one can do is moving away from the worst to the second-worst desktop at any given year... In a related note, 2009 is not going to be "year of the Linux desktop".
please, for both of them, allow the user to choose and configure if it is "OK Cancel" or "Cancel OK". Disagreeing how to solve this is one thing, forcing it down the users throat and rendering his trained automatisms not only useless but counter-productive is a crime.
KDE 4.0 was terrible. The reasons I had chosen KDE over Gnome were basically all gone. So I switched to Gnome in Fedora 9. Note that Hardy got this right, they had both KDE 4 and 3 available -- they obviously learned from the Fedora release...
However, when I upgraded to Intrepid, Gnome wasn't saving my sessions. Period. Whether I logged out, killed the session, or manually selected the "save current session" button, when I restarted it was a blank slate. I usually run with 23 open windows (a bunch of terminals in "work groups" of 4, IRC, 2 browsers, and Thunderbird).
Then I switched to Fedora 10 because of other problems I was having with Intrepid, and realized this wasn't an Intrepid problem but a Gnome problem. It was having the same problems.
So I tried KDE 4.1 and it was able to restart all of my session except Konversation (oddly enough).
In the end, I don't really care which one I'm using, I just care that it does what I need it to do. And currently, KDE 4.1 is, while not flawless, more usable to me than Gnome.
Sean
A fallacy is a logical construct that fails, or more precisely, that *can* fail, because the conclusion is not proven to follow from the premise.
The "likelihood" of correctness is not relevant in classifying fallacies. You either have proof or you don't.
Your example is a textbook case of the fallacy, because that's exactly the kind of argument that people tend to use: "this guy is an expert, therefore he must be right". A poignant counterexample is when you have two experts who disagree. They can't both be right, yet according to your "logic" they have to be.
It is also possible that Obama's intuition about dark matter turns out to be correct in the end. Then what? Hence, the converse of the fallacy is that you are discounting non-experts just because they are non-experts. If a high-schooler tells you 1+1=2, is he wrong because he got a D in Algebra?
To sum up: Logic is about truth, not expertise, or anything else.
I came to Linux from SunOS in '93, switched from FVWM2 to KDE during the betas for KDE 1.0 in 1998 and used KDE all the way until last year, 2008.
I suffered as a reviewer through the truly horrible GNOME 1.0 release and the flames that resulted from my negative review and tried GNOME over and over again through the years, always strongly preferring KDE.
Then last year I finally upgraded from Fedora 5 to Fedora 9 and with it came KDE 4. I found it to be nearly unusable but used it nonetheless, still biased against GNOME for various reasons (including nonconfigurability). 4.1 came out and it was just as unusable.
The thing that finally made me switch are the molasses-slow file previews in Dolphin/Konqueror. In combination with everything else (compatibility, slowness, problems with the nvidia drivers, instability, lack of functionality in comparison to KDE 3.x) it just pushed me over the edge. In 1991 I would never have dreamed of using a "file manager" of any kind on my SunOS+X11 desktops, but this is 2009, not 1991, and when even the file manager is too slow to use (a 5-second preview of a folder in GNOME vs a 1-hour preview of a folder in KDE) then there's just no hope.
So I switched to GNOME last year, stuck with GNOME when upgrading to Fedora 10 this year. I've continued to "check in" on KDE, but despite repeated rounds of updated packages through yum, none of the problems that drove me away appear to have been solved. :-(
STOP . AMERICA . NOW
I used to work, back in the day, at a physics research group and they used to run simulations on dec alphas with a CDE and Motif interface. It is the look with the pink/orange window borders and square widgets which makes a system look "hard core" to me :) Other flashy window managers look cool for home use, but I get into the zone quicker with the good ol' CDE/Motif.
The question of whether a computer can think is no more interesting than the question of whether a submarine can swim.
They screwed up what was a pretty useful program with their screwed up 2.0 release/deprecation of the current Production release.
Technology -- No Place For Wimps! Grateful Dead and Jerry Garcia Chatroom -- http://www.wemissjerry.org
Doesn't it bother anyone that the questions and answers are written in the same font/style?
I'm suprised he didn't just write his own.
I've experiments to run, there is research to be done on the people who are still alive.
I think KDE is great. However, when it comes to gettin shit done, instead of being entertained, I learn toward XFCE.
It's simple and fast. I find that KDE 4 is basically graphics, fancy shit. Not really what I'm looking for. My goal for my machine is max productivity, not entertainment per se.
KDE? Gnome? Real Men use and no xDE. Now he really broke my heart; he's just a pansy like the rest of you.
I run OpenSUSE so I just select the KDE packages I want in Yast. kubuntu isn't much different in that respect.
I couldn't tell you about CentOS though because I usually install only kdebase, konqueror, and kate on CentOS and haven't even checked the repositories for KDE4.
There isn't any overlap; they can be installed side-by-side.
I haven't done any dcop scripting though. The only integration I've had to do was with kate, and that has been mostly bash scripting to automate some editing tasks (mostly html tidy and sed) so I've never had the opportunity or need to work with dcop.
As far as "easing the transition" perhaps you'd prefer to stay with the KDE 3.5 desktop and just try the KDE 4.x applications? Just be aware that if you rely on ioslaves to access things like fish:, ftp:, or webdav:, you might find things a little broken or perhaps altogether absent.
The Christian Right is Neither (Christian nor right). See: Matthew 23, Matthew 25, Ezekiel 16:48-50
Actually, nope, logic is merely about whether the conclusion follows from the premises. It says nothing about truth of the conclusion. You can still reach a wrong conclusion from a false premise.
E.g., "the Earth is flat => from a tall enough tower you can see any point on Earth" is provably logical. Well, adding a couple of minor premises that have to do with geometry. But its main premise is false, so the conclusion is false too. But the inferrence is perfectly logical.
In formal logic, yes. In informal logic it's a lot fuzzier. You apply lots of things daily which _probably_ are correct.
Actually, that's your own mis-reading. I've never said that either _has_ to be 100% right.
Here again you seem to mis-understand what logic _is_. An argument like "the earth is round, therefore 1+1=2" is still false, even if the "1+1=2" conclusion is correct.
And an appeal to authority of the kind "X is an authority, he says 1+1=2, therefore 1+1=2" can be dismissed even earlier if X isn't, in fact, an authority in maths. And someone with a D in maths certainly isn't.
Basically, as formal logic goes "A => B" doesn't say anything whatsoever about B, if A is false. B could be true, or could be false, but that inference certainly didn't prove either.
Any attempt to prove B starting from a false A is doomed to be illogical. So anything that starts with "X is an expert in maths, therefore..." is a priori false if X had a D in maths. The conclusion may be right or wrong, but the "proof" is just not valid.
That was formal logic.
In informal logic we deal more with probabilities, even if most often subconsciously and without putting an exact number with lots of decimals on it. But basically most of your decisions are based on a vote in that neural network you have in your head, and fuzzy ("gut feeling") estimates of outcomes. You don't deal with "B is true" or "B is false", but with a P(B), which is a fuzzy probability of B being true. Whenever you decide whether to buy brand X or brand Y, essentially you don't have formal binary-logic proofs, you run a vote through that neural network and whichever decision seems more _likely_ to be correct, wins.
And there "X says B" ends up estimated on how likely you can trust X. If X won the Nobel Prize on that topic, then (in the absence of other data) P(B) is very high. (But again, I'm not claiming 100%, i.e., he doesn't _have_ to be right.) If X is the high-schooler with a D in maths from your example, then (in the absence of other data) P(B) can be assumed to be 50%. Basically he could be wrong, he could be right, and you'll have to use other data (even if your own experiences or knowledge) to push that probability either way.
So to sum this long rant up:
1. in formal logic, any appeal to authority is a fallacy. If he isn't an authority at all in the first place, it just makes it even funnier, but just as much a fallacy anyway. Yes.
2. in informal logic, you essentialy evaluate how _likely_ something is. It's not a proof in the formal logic sense. But if two guys advise you on what
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
A list of software that shouldn't have been rewritten:
1) Winamp (version ??? to ???, the new version was full of bugs unlike the old one)
2) Apache 1.3 -> 2.0 (I bet Slashdot is still running 1.3)
3) Netscape (huge factor in killing the company)
4) Perl 5.0 -> 6.0
I'm sure there is more. What I'm curious is can anybody name a rewrite that went *smoothly* and didn't split the userbase into two camps (apache 1 vs apache 2 is the biggest example)?
My experience. When I first tried KDE4 from a live DVD I didn't rate it much, that was 4.0 release. Eventually I bit the bullet and installed 4.1 over the KDE3 version of my latest distro update, I could thus switch back to KDE3 if I wanted.
KDE4 has a tonne of things missing, it is MUCH less customisable then KDE3, I can't change the width of the new kicker bar (I don't want 100%), useful things like kbfx do not work any more, so you're stuck with the other replacement "start" menus which ALL suck eggs. Hover over the time and you can't see the time in different time-zones any more.
Some applications have not been ported to KDE4, so the old libraries need to be kept, as much as possible I've got rid of KDE3 to avoid problems with the two code bases and various applications. My update kept both KDE3 and installed KDE4 versions of applications which is a problem in the menus with duplicates.
My biggest problem was with Amarok for KDE4 which should be an improvement, it lasted half an hour before I gave up on it. (more in my journal on it).
Take Nobody's Word For It.
So bloated desktop 'A' is better than bloated desktop 'B' but bloated desktop 'B' would be preferable to bloated desktop 'A' if it were more like the previous release?
Give us a fucking break, install XFCE and have done with it!
Use XFCE. It has the versatility of GTK without the bloat and overhead of GNOME.
Life would be easier if I had the source code.
As a consultant, I definitely have the love/hate relationship with Windows. Love it that it keeps me in cigarettes & gas money, hate it that it's such a bitch to accurately troubleshoot at times and the prefered method of repairing a Windows machine is wipe, reformat, reformat, reinstall, reinstall.
Hell, if it wasn't for Windows, I'd (and I assume a whole lot of others!) have to go get a real job..
Understanding the scope of the problem is the first step on the path to true panic.
I happen to use Gnome day-to-day, but several projects deserve more attention for their implementation of alternative and interesting UI strategies.
GNUstep is at the top of my list. There was a lot that NeXT got right that didn't translate to the ultimate end-user experience in OSX. The implementation of services allowed a lot more unix-philosophy of small, special purpose applications able to intelligently communicate. I think OSX still has it, but the OSX developers shrug it off.
Another I have found interesting is the ROX desktop, inspired by Risc OS. They made a lot more interesting use of drag and drop, and fully embracing application directory packaging.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
We experience the opposite. We are 4:1 a Linux:Windows shop, yet spend twice as much time fixing Windows boxes. We charge for our time, so we love, and hate Windows.
Of course, the reason that an average windows computer is more likely to be sent in for repairs than an average linux computer could just be that the average linux user knows a lot more about computers than the windows equivalent, so linux users are more likely to fix potential errors themselves. It doesn't (only) have to be about how errorprone each system may be.
Fair point - Microsoft are now crippled and are not in a position to offer a competitive product.
We all know KDE4 isn't cooked yet. The problem isn't KDE, it's Fedora (and like-minded distributions). Fedora 10 did away with KDE 3 while not providing a solid KDE 4 (because none exists). If for whatever reason you need to use Fedora 10, and you've been using KDE, you're in a bad position. I've been a longtime KDE user, and Fedora 10 almost forced me to convert to Gnome, but I've persevered and now I'm reasonably comfortable with KDE 4.1. That's not the same thing as "happy," but it's good enough to keep me from an even more uncomfortable (and probably shortsighted) switch to Gnome.
I don't know why it was impractical for Linus to stick with 3.5, but distributions that herd their users into this kind of decision aren't doing anyone any favors.
Have you ever tried Almeza Multiset? If you have to deal with Windows often it really is a Godsend. With Multiset I only have to install software ONE time on my test machine and it makes a nice software unattended installation. It will remember all the checkboxes I check, all the buttons I push, and all the tweaks I do to the software as I install it. Then I simply burn the software to a CD/DVD and voila! No more sitting there for hours going "clicky clicky next next next". It is WELL worth the money, believe me.
They have a trial on their website. Try it and I bet you'll like it. One piece of advice though. It was designed for single .EXEs, like what you get with FF and Opera. So if you want to install something like MS Office with it simply drag the folders off the office disc into the correct folder during CD/DVD creation. Since it simply drops the contents into a folder for you to burn later this is trivial to do. And since you can choose between having it install all the software on a CD/DVD or picking and choosing what you want you can tailor the install for the client. I cut down my Windows software installs from 3 hours to under 10 minutes with this baby. Trust me, it is REALLY worth having in your toolbox!
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
Actually, and I'm sure I'll be marked as troll or flamebait for saying this, I'm not so sure. Why? Because Windows admins are REALLY cheap and plentiful and good Linux admins? Not so much. So they can probably save a good chunk of money by hiring a Windows monkey for barely above minimum wage instead of paying the kind of salary you would have to pay to get decent Linux gurus. And that is of course if you can even FIND any decent Linux gurus in your area. The places with good Linux admins tend to not let them go and instead prefer to fire the Windows monkeys so there are a lot less plentiful in the marketplace. But you look in the local paper and you can find MSFT certified guys all day long.
So to truly figure an accurate TCO one would need to figure in the salary and the cost to retain the Linux gurus VS having disposable Windows monkeys. Would Linux win? Would Windows? I honestly don't know as I have never seen a TCO where they figured in Linux gurus VS Windows monkeys. Would be interesting to find out though. I do know that the one Linux admin I know is making about 6 times what the Windows monkeys are making, so I know they ain't cheap.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
It has a lot of potential, but I am amazed at how KDE used to go from strength to strength, then churned out this half-baked release. If it doesn't get better by the next Kubuntu release, I'm switching myself.
Being a Fedora Linux user, I wasn't too impressed with the explosion of widgets that KDE4 touted. (More than likely, jumping on the curttails of OSX and Vista's usage.) All of these fance gizmos seemed to obsfucate the entire Desktop. The convienence of having items sit on your Desktop as opposed to some Dock or Taskbar. These features is what convinced me to move away from Mac when OSX came out. As atheticly beautiful as they are, no one has figured out how to get them to conserve memory. To that extent, why not create a GUI completely made from Adobe Flash and call it a day.
The Rapture is NOT an exit strategy.
Who is Jesus Chris?
Which means he's allowed to be an idiot every now and then. I'm a FreeBSD user and don't like Linux at all, but rather than say he's an idiot I'll just say he's human. Same thing.
"KDE 4.X will be stable and secure only if and when Patrick had finally included it in Slackware!"
If you read what Linus said, he said KDE *4.0* was a disaster. He was referring to the initial release, not the latest or KDE in toto.
He also said he will be revisiting KDE when he does a new install.
The headline implied that Linus was against KDE 4.x, which does not appear to be the case in the article.
He also considers that GNOME might be re-designing things, so it could "go the other way".
Bottom line: he only switched for the same reasons most people did (or stayed with 3.5, like I did): the first release was badly done.
Richard Steven Hack - This sig is TOO GODDAMN SHORT TO DO ANYTHING USEFUL WITH! MORONS!
KDE 4 is not done, yet it's defaulted on every distro. I still use KDE3 because of this. I'm not desperate enough to use gnome, but I'd pick gnome over KDE4's eye candy and zero usefulness.
So it seems. I submitted this story in the wee hours of morning GMT time as 'Anonymous from Himalayas' since this was a great interview. Was it not fit for posting then? Looks like only submissions by regular posters are deemed worth a look.
Is slashdot becoming a clique? Oh, knowing the right people helps here too?
-Anon from Him
Bad reporting. Bad headline. Next please.
From what I see, Linus try to not break things in the system he's building and he judges other systems on this premise. But KDE 4.0 is not complete and not polished. It a structural and architectural change. So this takes time to have it pleasant to use. KDE 4.2 should be good if not great. In the article he talk about Vista and I think he make the same mistake. Vista is not polished. It's a NT4 where the architectural changes are implemented. So the core is great but the delivery is not. Wait for Windows 7 or the version after that and you will see that Microsoft has a great product. For my part I stick to XP and I'm happy with it.
It's funny... for whatever reason, KDE folks feel that they have to appease the Gnome fanboys. Gnome has constantly chastised KDE for looking too much like... that other OS.... Well... we won't compare Gnome to anything else, but why did KDE think they had to change the UI in such a radical way? Most Gnome fanboys are proud of KDE4. They herald it as the change that KDE always needed... of course, they're not switching away from Gnome.... I guess they realized that a usable desktop was more important than being different. KDE4.... for those who need something other than a usable desktop ui.
If KDE 4.0 and 4.1 are not ready for "normal" users, where are the distros which still provide KDE 3.5?!? For instance, appears that it is impossible to use KDE 3.5 with the latest release of Kubuntu and the two most recent releases of Fedora.
If KDE 4 isn't usable yet, why are the distros shoving it down our throats?
No distinction between questions and answers? They could have at least wrapped the questions in bold tags. Nice job, computerworld.
-- http://ninthagenda.com/
If you want the old style desktop back, IIRC you can get it back with a teeny bit of fishing around in the UI. Plasma easily handles that sort of interaction.
I would post a step-by-step guide but -ironically- plasma in SVN R916310 continuously crashes on login. *grumble mumble, bleeding-edge software*
Why all this flaming. Linus always has been a man who in most cases said that he will use what works best in a real situation. He also seldom spoke without respect on the solutions he disregarded, usually plainly pointing out why specifically he doesn't like it. So when he says he doesn't like the *current version of* some software, thats not the end of the world.
He will go back in............
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seconds.
less is more
I did come up with a bit of a workaround when you want to type a full path, however. Suppose you want to enter '/usr/bin/gvim' in the file chooser--since it's much faster to just type it than click, click, scroll, click all over the filesystem to find the file, but I digress--you can type 'gvim', then put the cursor at the beginning of the input field and type '/usr/bin/'. This prevents Gnome (or GTK+??) from destroying your input.
Dr Superlove 300ml. I use my powers for awesome
After an 'svn up' and build, I have instructions for you.
Right click on an empty place on the KDE desktop. Click the thing that says something like "configure desktop". A window will open that contains a pull-down menu that says something like "Type" with a value of something like "Desktop". Click that pulldown and select something like "Folder View". Click OK.
BAM. The desktop metaphor is back to what you had before. (And, in the very latest SVN revision, you can add plasmoids to this "Folder View" desktop as well. YMMV.)
KDE4 is unfinished? Another Hurd legend is getting shape. No, it is not unfinished, it is *conceptually* crap and the only sensible finishing is to dispose of it.
KDE has committed suicide but that has some positive aspects to it since it leaves just one major contender for the GNU/Linux desktop. Linus hints that GNOME is also playing deep surgery. I do hope that only means internal background workings and not wantom KDE-like destruction of the user interface.
Give KDE two years and they will have reached the distro relevance of XFCE. The practical issue is: how long will Fedora and Ubuntu take to discontinue KDE support? And how is Novell going to manage since they own both Suse (another name for KDE) amd the original GNOME authors (de Icaza et alii)?
never got told that the 4-dot-zero release was an alpha. Clearly communicated to "the world"? Uh, just who ordinarily reads the KDE website regularly other than professional KDE developers? An announcement on the KDE website =! telling "world + dog".
... but I'm not holding my breath.
Given that everyone knows that dot-zero generally means that somebody thinks (often incorrectly) that it's a release version, I'm not surprised nobody checked. A mistake I doubt anyone will ever make again with KDE where somebody primary to the project isn't quite up to the point of understanding modern software version numbering. Perhaps Bill Gates could be persuaded to explain this to whoever screwed this up, using short words and simple sentences.
So users got a big, ugly surprise when the OS many of ours depend on for the software we make a living with turned out to be a badly broken alpha.
The best I can say about 4.1 is that it works somewhat better than 4.0 did. My main desktop machine runs on Debian/KDE3.5.10, my Asus Eee PC 900 runs on Ubuntu Intrepid + Gnome... at this point. I'd love to see a 4.2 with functionality equivalent to 3.5.10. But I won't be installing it on my primary computers to test it, testing OSs-window manager combinations whose stability and reliability and functionality one does not trust is what Virtualbox is for. I suspect I'll be happy with KDE4.5
That said, the KDE 4.x desktop is IMO, a beautiful thing. I'd settle for not so pretty IF THE DAMNED THING WORKED!
Tech Public Policy stuff
one trusts the distro developers to have come up with an OS bundle that's ready for prime-time. If one does not have that level of trust with those developers, one should be running some other distro. Ubuntu's and OpenSUSE dev teams has proven themselves to be extremely competent in the past. Their mistake this time was to assume that KDE's people knew what they were doing and that dot-zero means "release" . . . unfortunately, in the case, dot-zero meant "it escaped". So KDE users used the 'download with KDE' option as one would expect them to based on trust of the Ubuntu/OpenSUSE developers and the KDE development team. Oops. . .
When I downloaded Ubuntu for my netbook, luckily, I knew better than to try KDE4.1. And it (after some hacking) works just fine. With Gnome, despite my current good experiences with KDE 3.5.10
Tech Public Policy stuff
is having a functioning system with good uptime worth? The bigger the site, the more downtime per-minute costs. The savings on labor costs based on somebody doing a TCO number based on admin salaries + license costs can be wiped out very, very quickly when a Windows glitch or an upgrade takes the system down for a few days. Of course, if the downtime is long enough, the business itself gets wiped out.
Tech Public Policy stuff
if your distro repositories only support KDE 4.x and you'd rather stay with 3.5.10 for the sake of your sanity.
Tech Public Policy stuff
I think it is a little unfair to blame Ubuntu and Fedora. Don't call a product 4.0 if it isn't ready for release. If KDE 4.0 were called Alpha-4.0 and KDE 4.1 were called Beta-4.0 there wouldn't have been the confusion. By calling the product 4.0 they were indicating a state of readiness. And yes I understand they said the opposite, so what? The conventions in software regarding version numbering are clear.
Ok. I'll begrude that, but only a eensy, weensy, itty, bitty, little unfair. But only that much. KDE 4.2 is mislabelled and should be more accurately called Pre-Alpha-KDE4-0.2. However, when selecting packages, and versions of packages, for inclusion in a distro, the team is supposed to look a little more closely than just the name and version.
Beta is broken and the link to classic doesn't work. Stop wasting our time or there won't be anybody left here.
KDE 4 maybe will be very nice if will have by default Konquerror not Dolphin :(
JMule user, enjoy it : http://www.jmule.org
Your point being...? WinZip uses the (when it was released) non-trademarked PKZIP.
I agree...
ibonette
KDE4 sux and is a doooog....Kubuntu 8.10 and up (using 9.04 alpha atm) have kde4 and it plain sux. When I use KDE it is in Debian Testing which still supports kde 3.5.x...and the diff between kde 3.5.x & 4.x is like night and day and I'll leave it as an exercise for the reader to guess which is which. The day they released kde4 is the day kde died...it's dark theme is ugly and it is a pita to use.
I was a long time user of KDE (I think, it goes back to the early 1.x releases) and never even bothered to try out GNOME. I knew, that some of the really cool apps (Mozilla, Gimp etc.) are GTK+ and the KDE and GNOME both share technology from FreeDesktop.org), but overall I always had the impression, that KDE was so flexible in configuration and the use of Qt superior to GTK+) that a change wasn't needed and not even desired. But with KDE 4.0 I had big usability problems that even KDE 4.1 did not really solve. One of the reasons was immaturity, it had fewer features than 3.5 and the remaining one were often buggy. The other reason was a change in usability that I did not understand in the beginning. GNOME is less functional even compared with KDE 4.0 but I appreciated it's stability for a while. I used it extensively with Compiz and found few stability issues. It's less configurable, but the handling is solid. In the meantime, I switched back to KDE 4.1, because it begins to look usable again. I simply appreciate Qt more than GTK+ and overall I have the impression there are more (and more really usefull) apps in KDE than in GNOME. KDE 4.2 will hopefully implement everything what was promised for 4.0.
(4.1, I think) I'll just say that smoke was coming from my ears afterwards. I'll look at 4.2 or later on something installed in virtualbox.
I didn't know Fedora had done that, too. Fedora, OpenSuse, and Ubuntu are the ones that I know of. For Debian, v4.1 is still in experimental (where it can stay forever, I'd like to see them start working on 4.2 instead... or maybe wait for 4.3) testing and unstable still use 3.5.10. There are times when a slower release cycle is an advantage. I'd rather watch a trainwreck as a spectator. I guess Linus feels the same way, though I'm surprised he didn't simply stay with KDE3.5.10. If one's regular repository no longer supports it, look for a non-official repository that's got it for your current distro version and add it to sources.list by whatever method amuses you, and lock out KDE upgrades from the regular repositories.
Though Gnome is improving, I've got it on Ubuntu in my netbook and a lot of the irritations I remember from the past just don't exist anymore and there are very nice new apps. But a netbook is used for a sufficiently different purpose than a desktop that what's cool and fun on the netbook would be a gigantic PITA for one's main machine.
Tech Public Policy stuff
You're fucking idiots.
Source: http://amarok.kde.org/blog/archives/862-KDE-Trolls,-eat-this.html
How KDE seems to have a completely different opinion about what type of monitor I have and what color depths and resolutions are supported than what X itself recognizes; KDE's control panel even ignoring what I put in the X config file.
There needs to be a mandatory configuration standard that all window managers must follow instead of doing their own thing. Annoying horse shit
OK, based on your posting history I get the impression that you use Windows but don't like it, and are constantly experimenting with Linux, which you also never like.
> Bullshit. My time is not free.
So, just don't experiment as much with Linux; wait several years between your experiments. Anyway, my impression is that the probability you're going to like it, no matter what it is, is really, really small.
Did you stop to think it might have to do with Linux users being more tech savvy than Windows'?
I'm very surprised about all negative comments. Yes, up to 4.1 a lot of things didn't work, were unstable. Currently I use the 4.2 RC2 release (on Gentoo), and to be honest, it just works really nice. Ok, in preferences I replaced conquerer for FF3 (those build in browser are horrible). But the configuration menu is easy and good (seems a copy of apple's) , dolphin also seems a copy from Apple's and is perfect if you ask me. I haven't seen any crashes with this latest release so far. I like how it looks and feels. At work we have gnome, which works fine too, but starts looking out dated, like XP. I think from 4.2 and higher it will be an attractive and useful desktop, with a lot of potential.
How about the fact that distributions all ship KDE 4 by default? If it's not done, don't release it.
That's one of those things I don't understand either. However, you have to admit that the KDE release strategy does deviate a little from the ususal usage of versioning in the FOSSS field. I presume the release managers don't care and take the path of least resistance and slap the newest stable release on to their project. They can allways point to KDE for any problems. Coming to think of it, that actually is the best tactic.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
I've always found the wonderful thing about linux is that there's no need to choose all one environment or all another; For instance I'm happily using Enlightenment (it's a better WM than the desktop-integrated ones), opera (it's a better browser than KDE's or GNOME's), liferea (it's GTK based, but that doesn't mean I have to put up with all the GNOME bloat to use it), amarok (yes, it's a KDE app and liferea is a GTK one, and yet, the world hasn't ended!), etc...
I mod down anyone who says "I will be modded down for this", regardless of the rest of their comment
Because every version of the kernel since 2.6.25 has been an unstable disaster as well.
Stick with the KDE 3.5 series.
Sure QT3 still falls under licensing issues but it works just fine.
So where does this leave people?
1. Slackware 12.2, Kubuntu 8.04, Suse 10, Debian Etch/Lenny
2. Kde developers need to port KDE 3.5 to QT4.
In the interview Linus says 4.0, all time.
The ".0" is important.
He didn't say that kde4 was a disaster, he said that 4.0 was.
It's not the same.
I used to clearly prefer kde over gnome and the only reason was that kde applications tend to have more options and also qt3 was faster and less cpu heavy than gtk2 (I hope to see more usage of fltk2 in the future). However with qt4 this is no longer the case it eats cpu usage like a fat pig eating food and also kde4 seems to be infected by the same less options is better(not) philosophy be it in a bit lesser extreme than gnome, how ever enough to drive users away.
Learn to use teh Google.
But, I wanted socialized health insurance!
Oh yeah, because WinZip invented the ZIP format.
More like *regurgitated* the ZIP format into their own mishandling of it.
But I'd have to make a DVD for each computer that comes through the door of the shop, otherwise each install will be exactly the same, with the same software, serials, etc. That's going to take time. Now, if we send that disc home with each computer, that's a customer we lose cause all they have to do is put the DVD in the drive & reboot. That means I gotta store that DVD in the shop someplace.
Why not make just one master disc you say? The advert says it remembers all software keys, so it'll keep using the same key for XP/Office/whatever Microsoft software you put on the DVD. That means when you use it on a different machine, you've just committed piracy. Remember when Microsoft had its 'Turn In Your Computer Shop' program? We don't worry about that, since we refuse to install something that the customer can't supply a key for, or sell them a new key straight from MS.
ATM, none of my clients have any kind of site licenses for their software, so this wouldn't work so good for me. But thanks for the tip.
What I use for repairs when I wipe & restore is a Knoppix disc and a 500 gig Iomega USB drive. I back up the customer's data onto the Iomega before I wipe and restore, including drivers, etc that I know I'm going to need. I use their keys and install discs (they're stored onsite, with the keys on those little stickers to put on the side of each machine for easy reference). I also have an ever-growing disc of drivers I pack with me, but hell, at 60 bucks an hour, a CD is cheap, and besides I write them off on my taxes.
Yeah, I recommend open source alternatives whenever possible, but most of my clients insist on Microsoft. Hey, they won't fire you for specifying MS. But I'll give this a look. I just don't know how much it'll help me.
Understanding the scope of the problem is the first step on the path to true panic.
Uhhhh......I wasn't actually talking about using it to make WINDOWS unattended disks. Although it has that feature so does WinXP ISO Builder, Nlite, etc. I was talking about all the OTHER software that they end up needing. All the stuff like Spybot and Adaware, Klite Codec pack, FF3 and Opera, etc. All the little crap that adds hours to a full reinstall.
But if you DID want to use it for Windows reinstalls(I would rather use a tweaked Nlite that only needs their key put in and automates the rest) then you DO know that it is trivial to change the XP Key after install, right? But like I said this tool isn't for that. It may have that feature but that isn't where it really shines. Where it shines is in installing all the crap you have to stick on after you get to that clean desktop the first time. Let me show you how much time it saves, by using it along with one of my other favorite tools-
Come up to clean desktop. Install their drivers from backup. Launch autopatcher disc and use it to run all patches, along with DirectX, Dotnet, Java, and Flash. Come back 20 minutes later and reboot. On reboot stick in Almeza disc, of which I have two(one for home users with stuff like the various messengers and one for business which just gives the basics) look at my little sheet of which programs the user had installed, add a couple I think they'd enjoy, hit go. 10 minutes later all I have to do is transfer their folders and settings and I'm done. A hell of a lot quicker than doing it the old fashioned way, huh?
With an Nlite OEM XP disc, a disc with a fully loaded autopatcher, and the Almeza disc I can get 90% of the machines that walk through my door done with just those three. Then all I need to do is let the ANTI-spyware and AV do updates and hand it over. But like I said, they have a trial that is free on their website. Use Nlite for creating unattended Windows discs, it has much more options. But for unattended software installations I have yet to find anything that even gets close.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
You've succeeded in making a statement and then spending several paragraphs talking about things that don't have anything to do with it.
You're a kubuntu user? You should be able to find an unofficial Ubuntu repository with KDE3.5.10 in it that'll keep your machine usable until KDE4.x is fixed. (hopefully, by 4.3) I think last time around, I set up a ubuntu machine and simply replaced gnome with KDE 3.5.10 .
Tech Public Policy stuff
A halfway-house would be nice - good default installation but easy tweaking via GUI as users got more advanced and confident.
Actually, this is one of the reasons that I really like Gnome. As much as many people malign it, you can tweak Gnome considerably with gconf-editor. It's not as clicky-clicky as tweaking KDE, but it's not difficult to use. There are even slick UIs for configuring things left out of the default Gnome control panels (like TweakUI is for Windows), like GConfPerf and gTweakUI.
If you want a vision of the future, imagine a youtube comments section scrolling - forever.
Unfortunately what seems to have got lost is that OSX uses shiny pixel shows to improve understanding and just for their own sake.
KDE4 seems to have a whole lot of gratuitous pixel shows that do nothing except show off the programmers' abilities to play with graphics.
I'm a KDE user since long ago and can't stomach KDE4. The pointless graphics just annoy. I'm very happy with 3.5.
Now I fully understand that the KDE folk are playing with new architectures etc and these will take a good time to stabilise. But then it should not have been rolled out in a major distro. What's broken is putting it in Kubununtu.
Most people installing a distro want the damn thing to work properly. They don't want to be guinea pigs.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
The Mac OS has only been overhauled like this once in its 25 year history.
remove kde 4.x and install 3.5.10 in its place. But back up your system first.
Tech Public Policy stuff
All sarcasm aside, what's with this big push people have to move to KDE 4.X? 3.X is no longer seeing major development, yes, but does it need to? I find the 3.5.10 maintenance release from August is plenty adequate while I wait for things to stabilize a bit. I waited about nine releases to switch to a 2.6 kernel, too, but switch I did. Stagnation is a dangerous road in technology, after all; you need look no further than Kodak for an example.
Sure, it's been a disaster for a good 50% of PR that I've seen, but I think things got overwhelming and they underestimated their timeframe. Consider the scope: "Let's discard everything we've spent the last five years working on and break all of our APIs and rebuild our desktop paradigm from the ground up." Would you have had the courage to make that call? To go along with it and spend your doubtlessly-limited time resource on a project of this magnitude? How do you estimate something like that when you have no idea if people are even going to buy into the ideas? So just this once, I will forgive the classically-clockwork-like KDE project for having a Knuth-level* estimation failure
I wonder if they could have done something like what the Python folks are doing? A 3.6 migration branch that backports some things and the 4.X development head. I think I saw talk of it at some point, but I guess it proved to be problematic (it's a bitch when no one understands how the build system works); at least it's improving rapidly.
*See: TeX. Sorry, Don!
RTFM
It sucks. I recommend everyone stick with 3.5.10, or better yet, just use GNOME. WTF. It's got a terminal, a text editor, the basic stuff. Those who want to f around all day tweaking and compositing and whatever else under the Sun - how the hell do you people get anything done? :-p
KDE 4 hurts and hurts bad. Prettiness increased slightly, usability tanked. Maybe now the allknowing KDE developers will listen.
its all marketing.
The problem is you cant release a 4.0 version as stable as they did, when instead it was an alpha or semi-beta version = a piece of shit for a garbage bettle.
Interesting. I'd never heard of Nlite, will have to check THAT out as well. Thanxx.
Understanding the scope of the problem is the first step on the path to true panic.
You can't beat Nlite for making Windows unattended discs IMHO. I have tried many programs over the years, as well as rolling them by hand, and nothing comes close. It allows you to build an unattended that still has the repair install option, allows you to set default users and groups as well as password lockout policies, allows you to turn off worthless services like remote registry(and can even remove those services completely as well as removing non needed language packs) allows you to set registry tweaks like speed of menus, allows integration of hotfixes and service packs, etc.
I'll warn you though, Nlite isn't for the newbies. It can allow you to strip the OS and rebuild it like a hot rod if that is what you choose. It is really designed for guys like you and I that do this kind of work for a living and who understand what all those various services, tweaks, programs, and policies actually do. But if you work with SOHO, SMB, or home users you can really customize the install for the client. For example many SOHO and SMBs like Windows to have all the games and media junk removed. If you are using a machine for bookkeeping or invoices it makes for a light OS with that many less attack vectors. They also have a Vlite for Vista if you have clients that use it(mine are waiting for Win7) and both Nlite and Vlite are absolutely free.
Together with Autopatcher and Almeza Multiset they really cut down the time I have to set the being an "installer monkey" which is always a good thing in my book. Every tool I named but Multiset is free and even it comes with a free trial, so the only thing it will cost you is a little time and some blank CDs. Try them and I bet you'll find you have a lot more time to spend doing what you like to do, like say, posting to Slashdot. ;-)
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
Gnome-3.0 based on qt4.5 to Kill all of them ;-)
You didn't mention Candlejack, did y
I am not devoid of humor.
So much stuff missing or broken, so many bugs in a 'stable' release, it really has me thinking of going to GNOME.
I have been running KDE since 1996 or 1997, after balking at paying for Motif/CDE on a linux workstation (though IIRC RedHat at the time bundled Motif with its desktop distro, I don't think there was a feature-complete free CDE at the time).
Migrating from KDE2 to KDE3 was painful, but not nearly this painful. At least there's no ARTS mangling this time around..
I used to think Linus was almost perfect because he camped for KDE. Now that he pitched his tent for Gnome, my opinion has changed: he is now perfect.