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.

Comments

A reasoned analysis? That's good.

[gcnaddict]

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.

Re:A reasoned analysis? That's good.

[Artraze]

Actually, it's really just more like KDE4 is turning out to be much more work than everyone expected. In less than a week, they'll be putting out 4.2 which will essentially be the first major bugfix/upgrade of KDE4. Version 4.0 was little more than a developer release, and the transition to 4.1 was aimed to include the minimum functionality necessary to actually allow it to replace 3.5. With 4.2, KDE4 should finally be (nearly) what it was intended to be, and further releases will probably focus on simply adding features.

In short, KDE4 is basically a year late.

Re:A reasoned analysis? That's good.

[jellomizer]

I still go on a who cares... If you like KDE 4 and everyone else doesn't who really cares. If you don't like GNOME who really cares.
I can't speak for everyone but what is the point of caring what Linux, RMS, ESR, Bill Gates, President Obama... personal preferences are. The same goes with changing your mind, I switched from DOS/windows 3.1 to Linux back in 1994, Then I switched from Linux to Solaris in 2000, Solaris to Mac OS X in 2002. While I was primarly using Linux and Solaris I jumped around windows managers. FVWM, MWM, CDE, Enlightment, GNome, KDE, back and forth. You know what there are also some really smart people who Like Vista!
Every software sometimes they give you tradeoffs that you don't want. But for some other people they like those tradeoffs. KDE 4 may have moved in a direction that Linus doesn't like as well as a bunch of other people. However There are some people who do like what the tradeoffs were.

Re:A reasoned analysis? That's good.

[Zephiris]

KDE 4.0, and to a lesser degree 4.1, lacked quite a few nice customization features that KDE has had for the longest time. KDE 4.2 refixes the taskbar configuration...so you can actually do something useful with it again.
KDE 4.0 and 4.1 are nowhere near as functional or customizable as 3.5, 4.2 restores virtually all of it as well as adding compelling new standard/addon features.
4.0 was supposedly 'just a developer preview', and I personally think they dropped the ball on 4.1. Everyone was expecting it to just be 'ready'.
Though, one begs the question.
If Linus is an advanced user, why was he pressured to upgrade from 3.5 to 4.x in the first place? Couldn't he have just kept using 3.5 if that's what he preferred, rather than the GNOME which he hated?
I know the 'user friendly' distros tend to be a bit aggressive about pre-planned obsolescence, but that's little excuse not to find a supported and proper way to use the software and specific versions you prefer.

Re:A reasoned analysis? That's good.

[aliquis]

I don't understand why he couldn't use KDE 3.x until 4.x was more usable?

Re:A reasoned analysis? That's good.

[yog]

"In short, KDE4 is basically a year late."

Late for what, though? I initially tried KDE4 because it came with the OpenSuse 11 upgrade and discovered it had a number of broken features. They also said that it was still in beta. I moved back to 3.5 and have had no problems. KDE 3.5 still works great and has plenty of eye candy for when you're bored.

Sometimes I get annoyed with something in Linux, and then I stop and think, wait a minute, this stuff is all free and people have volunteered their time to write a lot of it, so why should I be complaining. I'm just glad that it exists!

At this point, I use almost all open source software--browser, word processor, database, spreadsheet. I'm using H&R Taxcut this year, probably the only software I still purchase on a regular basis.

KDE (and Gnome, too, for that matter--on my Ubuntu laptop) is a fantastic system, very flexible and customizable. I find Windows annoying these days when I am forced to use it--everything's so fixed and locked down. It lacks so much stuff out of the box--you mean I can't just read pdf documents? or have virtual desktops? I need to download Firefox? I find the Mac only a bit better, but on the other hand the Mac allows you to use a nice Unix shell window and that makes everything all better :)

My next step is to extend my computing experience to the handheld, probably replacing my Palm T3 with an iPhone or Android phone over the next year or so. I have great confidence that I'll be able to synchronize and interoperate very well with a KDE/Gnome environment, less so in Windows (which will likely come with a rigid set of drivers and dependencies). But in using stuff on Linux, I find myself wrapping things up in convenient scripts and customizations that in the long run work better than Windows. Linux usually is "late" with stuff but the wait is usually worth it.

Re:A reasoned analysis? That's good.

[SanityInAnarchy]

In short, KDE4 is basically a year late.

And it is for that reason that I have such frustration with it...

It used to be, I could in good conscience make jokes about Windows, about how when Microsoft makes a "beta" release, it's what the rest of the world would call an Alpha, the release is really Beta quality, and SP1 is release candidate 1. By SP2, the product might be ready.

I could laugh about how Microsoft, and occasionally other proprietary shops, would follow that model, as opposed to the open source model, where the versioning seems to go, alpha is unstable (so beware), beta is good enough to use, release candidates are pretty solid, and release versions you can bet your business on.

But KDE4 was an alpha release. 4.1 was a beta release. Surrounding projects have done no better -- Amarok currently will not transcode automatically from flac to aac for ipods; it insists on mp3. This is a bug; it used to work. The stable Amarok won't fix the bug, because it's being depricated in favor of the kde4 version of Amarok, which doesn't yet support transcoding. WTF?

Kubuntu has done spectacularly bad as well. My mouse didn't work. Why? Because they included an update to the Bluez stack, to support a change to the kernel, but the KDE4 Bluetooth support hadn't been updated to support that new Bluez stack. Their solution? Drop bluetooth support in Kubuntu Intrepid. WTF?

It has been pretty much my own private Daily WTF as I continue to use KDE4. It's not yet so bad I'm going back to GNOME, but by this time next year, I suspect I'll be using something like Fluxbox again.

Re:A reasoned analysis? That's good.

[SanityInAnarchy]

Eum, isn't KDE a shell? Why does it need to support Bluetooth, isn't that the job for the OS?

Well, the OS supports the physical hardware. Most of the logic of managing which devices are allowed to connect and which aren't, among other things, is managed in user space by a stack called BlueZ, which mostly runs as a daemon and is controlled through arcane config files.

Now, I'm not afraid of arcane config files, but I was a bit spoiled. It was a few clicks to get my mouse working in KDE3. It would probably take me a few hours to learn enough to do it manually with BlueZ.

In KDE3, the bluetooth manager was a separate application. In KDE4, that's still true... sort of. It's also part of the "solid" system, I believe -- which is KDE4's hardware abstraction magic. It wires GUIs to potentially OS-specific backends -- looking at the config pane, it looks to support power management, network management, and bluetooth.

But the idea is that a KDE bluetooth manager should also work on Windows and OS X, neither of which will be running BlueZ. Similarly, the KDE network manager should work on Windows and OS X, neither of which will be running the Ubuntu-like NetworkManager.

Like so many parts of KDE4, it is a really good idea, and you can see how it has the potential for greatness.

Unfortunately, Ubuntu shipped incompatible versions of parts of this stack -- I believe it was that a new BlueZ was required by the new kernel, but the new BlueZ was incompatible with the old Solid. Which means that, out of the box, my mouse didn't work.

That was my introduction to KDE4: Why doesn't my fucking mouse work anymore? It's 2008, and my mouse doesn't work?!

I wish I could say it got better after that. It didn't -- it got worse.

Re:A reasoned analysis? That's good.

[arth1]

Actually, it's really just more like KDE4 is turning out to be much more work than everyone expected. In less than a week, they'll be putting out 4.2 which will essentially be the first major bugfix/upgrade of KDE4. Version 4.0 was little more than a developer release, and the transition to 4.1 was aimed to include the minimum functionality necessary to actually allow it to replace 3.5. With 4.2, KDE4 should finally be (nearly) what it was intended to be, and further releases will probably focus on simply adding features.

In short, KDE4 is basically a year late.

The mantra seems to be that it will all come together in KDE 5.
Presumably by the same people who wait for Perl 6 and Hurd.

In Real Life(tm), we have to go with what's out now. And, quite frankly, KDE in its current version just doesn't cut it. Bugs and inconsistencies, bloat, too many kitchen sink apps, and version-dependency hells. Sure, Gnome isn't a lot better, but at present it is better.

Personally, I would like to see a new WM/GUI that doesn't load 240 interdependent libraries, but still provide all the features -- when wanted and asked for, but not a millisecond before. The whole integrated approach bugs me quite a bit.

Re:A reasoned analysis? That's good.

[MrHanky]

And it is for that reason that I have such frustration with it...

It used to be, I could in good conscience make jokes about Windows, about how when Microsoft makes a "beta" release, it's what the rest of the world would call an Alpha, the release is really Beta quality, and SP1 is release candidate 1. By SP2, the product might be ready.

They all do this all the time, though. OS X 10.0? Shit. 10.1? Slowly getting there. 10.2. Almost done. 10.3 was the first OS X release that was really good. Gnome 2.0 was as unfinished as KDE 4.0, but at least Gnome removed all the half-baked parts for "usability" reasons. KDE 4.0 was just a broken mess. But I've been using it since a 4.1 alpha or beta, and I like it better with each release.

Re:A reasoned analysis? That's good.

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, he's using fedora and it doesn't have kde3 since F9.
I'm also using Fedora for several years. I've been a die hard kde fan, but switched to gnome after I had enough with kde4 as well.
The kde developers said you can always stick with kde3, but truth be told you can't.
Not to mention that kde 3.x hadn't been properly maintained since they started working on kde4, with latter updates sometimes braking things that were working fine previously.

Re:A reasoned analysis? That's good.

[644bd346996]

Microsoft shipping a PDF viewer wouldn't be that problematic. Adobe gives away their PDF viewer, so they couldn't claim any lost profits or price fixing due to Microsoft. On the other hand, any PDF reader that Microsoft ships wouldn't support all of Adobe's fancy features unless Microsoft licensed them from Adobe, so there would still be reason for some people to get Adobe's software. The only significant damage to Adobe would be that their name wouldn't show up on as many computers.

However, it's really unlikely that Microsoft would ship a PDF reader, as it would pretty much have to comply with an existing open ISO standard that Microsoft has little influence over. Microsoft would rather try (hopelessly) to supplant PDF with a proprietary format that they control. Bundling a PDF reader with Windows would be a tacit admission that even Microsoft is subject to the pressures of the market, and that's something they can't swallow right now.

Re:A reasoned analysis? That's good.

[Haeleth]

I think I'm probably in the same boat as Linus here: I really don't like Gnome, but KDE is so bad you don't have a choice.

This isn't like politics, where voting for a third party is a wasted vote. You are allowed to choose a desktop environment that isn't one of the big two.

Personally I can't stand Gnome or KDE, but I do get on well with Xfce, so I use that. (It has some nice features that neither of the big two provides, like minimise-to-desktop.)

Re:A reasoned analysis? That's good.

[TheRealMindChild]

Sometimes I get annoyed with something in Linux, and then I stop and think, wait a minute, this stuff is all free and people have volunteered their time to write a lot of it, so why should I be complaining. I'm just glad that it exists!

Think about that next time you walk through Wal-Mart looking at the average shopper. After all... $God$ gave us those "hotties" for FREE. Why SHOULD you complain?~

Re:A reasoned analysis? That's good.

[MrHanky]

Perhaps your distro treats it as second rate. I've never noticed any significant difference in the amount of bugs between Gnome and KDE. In 3.x there was a major annoyance that a few of the standard (legacy) multimedia apps were completely useless so that you had to configure it not to use Kaboodle or whatever to play music and video. Then again, Gnome's Rhythmbox felt like a garbage truck made out of Meccano the last time I used it and Amarok was very good.

In Debian, KDE and Gnome have been about on par, bugwise. I've tried Kubuntu (with KDE 3.5) and found it very poor.

Re:A reasoned analysis? That's good.

[Klaus_1250]

But KDE4 was an alpha release. 4.1 was a beta release.

The KDE dev-team clearly communicated to the world that 4.0 and the next few releases would not be a full alternative to the 3.5-series. They specifically reminded people that 4.0 would be a release for early adopters and developers, with tons of features missing, limited configuration/customization options and stability bugs. So yes, KDE4 was alpha, but everyone knew that.

Personally, I decided to wait until at least 4.3 to check it out. Why on earth, the rest of the world decided to jump on 4.0/4.1 and cry out in anger that the kde-dev team was right... No clue.

Re:A reasoned analysis? That's good.

[Lord Kano]

I'm a former Mac user. I've been through the excuse cycle before. KDE 4 is a piece of dogshit. If it wasn't ready for prime time, they shouldn't have released. I tried KDE and it sucked. I still run KDE 3.5.x just because it is a better user experience.

LK

Re:A reasoned analysis? That's good.

[Tanktalus]

I've been using KDE 4 since pretty much the day 4.0 shipped. I'm even running a KDE 4.2 snapshot (4.1.96). Generally speaking, the KDE folks have been pretty up-front about the details: when I installed 4.0, I knew full well that it wasn't intended to replace 3.5 yet. When I installed 4.1, I knew full well that functionality (especially IMPORTANT functionality like kmail) was getting there, but I shouldn't expect any polish. As I've been installing the snapshots, I knew that they were snapshots and should expect to open bug reports.

It's not like the KDE folks were hiding this. Sure, they were overly optimistic, but they didn't hide these things from the users. If your distro hid it from you, that's a different issue - they'd probably hide it from you if they were embedding unstable-as-advertised gnome or anything else. Take that up with your distro.

I expect KDE 4.2 to be a vast improvement, mostly in stability, over 4.1. But I don't expect it to be as stable as 3.5.10. I'm hoping they get there within the next 6-12 months, but I don't expect the 4.2 release to be there.

The difference, though, is that with MS, you're paying for a product to work. With open-source, you're not paying for it, and they (generally) tell you what to expect. If you can live with it, great, open bug reports as you find them. If you can't live with it, then don't use it - use the old version, use another piece of software that fills the same role (gnome as an example in this case), or go proprietary. I don't think it's quite reasonable to compare MS's .0 releases (at full price) to open source .0 releases ("release early, release often"), and thus I have no compunction against slamming MS's release policy. I instead compare it to $work's release policy, since I get paid for proprietary coding, as I think that's a much more fair comparison.

Re:A reasoned analysis? That's good.

[CarpetShark]

No, KDE is not a shell. And yes, desktop environments need to know about bluetooth. Ideally the vast majority of that would be a low-level API available across the desktop (and shell too), but that hasn't happened on Linux, and KDE is cross-platform, so the option isn't there.

p.s.: GNOME has similar bluetooth capabilities, so don't be too surprised.

Re:A reasoned analysis? That's good.

[CarpetShark]

Yes, you can use many shells on top of KDE. You're quite confused about terminology, and seem to mean "file manager" when you say shell. KDE is not a file manager either. Wikipedia should help straighten out the definitions for you.

Re:A reasoned analysis? That's good.

[4minus0]

4.0 was supposedly 'just a developer preview', and I personally think they dropped the ball on 4.1. Everyone was expecting it to just be 'ready'.

Agreed. Fortunately openSUSE still includes KDE3.5.x and I'll stick with that until KDE4 improves or KDE3 support is dropped entirely.

If Linus is an advanced user, why was he pressured to upgrade from 3.5 to 4.x in the first place? Couldn't he have just kept using 3.5 if that's what he preferred, rather than the GNOME which he hated?

I've read that Linus historically uses quite n00b friendly distros. He's never even run Debian due to its (perceived or otherwise) installation complexity. He's stated that he just wants to work on the kernel and not fiddle with the distro. See this interview.

According to the Computerworld article, Linus upgraded Fedora $version and it bumped him to KDE4 without offering a choice. I think it all boils down to Linus' desire for the distribution to Just Work(tm). I'd imagine he simply doesn't have time to fight the distribution itself to shoehorn it into something resembling a usable environment.

Cheers

Re:A reasoned analysis? That's good.

[SomeKDEUser]

yes... Of course, KDE 3.5.9 simply was never released. It vanished mysteriously one evening from all hard drives around the globe, and was never seen after that.

Now, is KDE 3.5.9 (actually, now is really a KDE 4.2-RC, but what the heck). Now is all that is released now. And the best DE is still KDE (yes I am biased), some flavour thereof at least.

Re:A reasoned analysis? That's good.

[abhi_beckert]

Mac OS X has been using PDF as one of the core technologies for drawing graphics to the screen for something like 20 years, it's integrated deep into the system and always has been.

It's a bit late now to say "you can't do that!"

Re:A reasoned analysis? That's good.

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh yeah, because WinZip invented the ZIP format.

Sheesh.

Re:A reasoned analysis? That's good.

[SLi]

Yes. There are antitrust concerns only if you actually can be considered substantially a monopoly. Basically what's illegal is using your significant monopoly power in one market (operating systems) to win market share against possibly better competing products in another market (web browsers).

Apple doesn't quite come close to it yet.

Re:A reasoned analysis? That's good.

[drinkypoo]

If Linus is an advanced user, why was he pressured to upgrade from 3.5 to 4.x in the first place? Couldn't he have just kept using 3.5 if that's what he preferred, rather than the GNOME which he hated?

Because he is running Fedora, the alpha/beta (depending on the release, but not planned in advance) for RHEL. Note that he did not complain that Fedora did this. When Red Hat Software announced that free Red Hat was going away and being replaced with Fedora, they explained that it would be bleeding-edge, and provide a testing ground for new technologies before they made it into RHEL. Linus simply said that he's not using KDE because Fedora pushed it at him, he wants to run Fedora ("for historical reasons") and that since KDE4 wasn't ready for use, he's using GNOME instead.

It's worth mentioning however that Kubuntu did this too. Fedora is supposed to be beta quality software. Kubuntu is supposed to be release quality software. But my perception (based on quite a bit of use across both desktops and servers) is that Ubuntu has been sacrificing quality for an aggressive release schedule and new features with every release.

Re:A reasoned analysis? That's good.

[anss123]

Yes, you can use many shells on top of KDE. You're quite confused about terminology, and seem to mean "file manager" when you say shell. KDE is not a file manager either. Wikipedia should help straighten out the definitions for you.

Let's see....

Wikipedia on Explorer:
The default Windows shell is called Explorer

So I was right that Explorer is a shell.

Wikipedia on Finder:
As such the Finder acts like the shell on other operating systems, but using a graphical user interface, and is described in its 'About' window as The Macintosh Desktop Experience.

Finder isn't quite a shell but is the closest equivalent on Mac OS X

Wikipedia on Desktop Environment:
However a program, or set of programs which simulate a desktop environment may sometimes themselves be referred to as a desktop environment, with a desktop environment being considered either a window manager, or a suite of programs which includes a window manager. There is some disagreement on precisely what constitutes a desktop environment, and how one distinguishes one from a window manager.

So KDE is a Window manager or a suite of programs which includes a window manager?

I'm confused now :(

Re:A reasoned analysis? That's good.

[Fallingcow]

I've never been able to figure out what all these things are that I'm missing out on by using Gnome over KDE. Any time this discussion comes up on Slashdot, someone always mentions Gnome being limited in some way--but I've never thought, "hm, I'd really like to do that, but gnome won't let me". Likewise, the times I've tried KDE over the years, I've never seen any compelling features that would make me want to stay. There was never a, "oh wow, I can do that in KDE? How cool!" moment, and I've done my share of poking around its config options.

Re:A reasoned analysis? That's good.

[TrancePhreak]

MS paid a company to license it's zip technology, and it's very basic.

Re:A reasoned analysis? That's good.

[sleigher]

start --> run --> cmd

ftp ftp.mozilla.org

user = anonymous
passwd = your@email.com

cd /pub/firefox/releases/3.0.5/$OS/en-US
bin
get Firefox Setup 3.0.5.(exe/tar.gz)
bye

That wasn't so hard was it.

Re:A reasoned analysis? That's good.

[FishWithAHammer]

Because that's not what a .0 release is. Numbering systems have an accepted meaning. Shit, even Apple calls their products 10.x.0. If they'd called it KDE4 Alpha 1, nobody would have cared. (Well, those of us who don't think that KDE went down the tubes when people started listening to aseigo, but I digress.)

People here bitched that Vista (Windows 6.0) wasn't perfect, why should KDE get a pass? If you label it ".0", you're making a claim no matter what else you say. Whether that's right or wrong, it's how it is.

Re:A reasoned analysis? That's good.

[FishWithAHammer]

Hey now! Perl 6 will come out a lot sooner than KDE 5 or Hurd! It rates only a 0.6 on the Duke Nukem Forever scale.

Re:A reasoned analysis? That's good.

[anss123]

Well read until you're less confused. This isn't rocket science.

They clearly state that they don't have a clear definition of what a Desktop Environment is. Nor do they state what makes the "shell" part of KDE. You mentioned that I confused the shell definition with a File Manager but my definition held up according to Wikipedia (ie. Finder and Explorer are shells. From what I read KDE and Gnome are considered shells too - just a bit more encompassing by apparently being a Window Manager with extra software).

Explorer can act as a file manager, so can finder. A file manager and (according to Wikipedia) a browser can act as a shell as long as it can give access to underlying services. Clearly there is no clear definition of what makes a shell or a desktop environment, they are gray definition with the understanding that they interface with humans somehow.

It's not rocket science, its human language. Guess which is harder?

Re:A reasoned analysis? That's good.

[SBFCOblivion]

This isn't like politics, where voting for a third party is a wasted vote.

Why do people say that? How is voting for someone you don't want to win not wasting your vote?

Using this logic anyone who voted for McCain wasted their vote as it was painfully obvious Obama was going to win.

Bit off-topic I know, but hearing people say that drives me crazy.

Re:A reasoned analysis? That's good.

[christurkel]

KDE does install so much in a base install--I mean, so many apps. I wish there was a way to only install the parts I want, so I could make it as lean as could be.

Re:A reasoned analysis? That's good.

[znu]

Common misconception. OS X doesn't use PDF for screen drawing. Its graphics engine (Quartz) can generate PDF data with the same commands it uses for screen drawing, and has built in support for PDF rendering. And PDF is used commonly throughout the system to store things like vector graphics elements and documents sitting in the print queue. But things that are drawn on screen by Quartz commands don't exist as PDF data anywhere along the way.

Pre-X versions of Mac OS didn't have PDF integrated at all.

NeXTSTEP did use PostScript (officially licensed from Adobe) for on-screen drawing, but PDF and PostScript are very different. PDF is data and PostScript is executable code, so the notion of doing on-screen drawing with PostScript code makes some sense, while the notion of doing on-screen drawing by generating PDF data and then rendering it doesn't make a whole lot of sense.

Anyway, PDF licensing is royalty-free.

Re:A reasoned analysis? That's good.

[FourthAge]

All you need is "xterm &"

Seriously, if you want a really lean-and-mean setup, just regard your window manager as a way to launch as many shells as you want. Then run your programs from the command line. I continue to use windowmaker for this very purpose. No shiny file managers or flashy dialogs, but all the shell-opening action one could ever desire.

The disadvantage is that your PC will be so efficient that you won't bother upgrading it for ten years, and one day you will find out that everybody on the web expects you to use Javascript now. Sites that were once fast have slowed to a crawl thanks to their "Web 2.0" features, and Flash continues to be as awful as it ever was. Finally, you gnaw through your Ethernet cable and decide never to venture online again.

Re:A reasoned analysis? That's good.

[FST777]

What I don't get (about both you and Linus) is that the choice is either KDE 4 or Gnome. I use openSUSE 11.1 on my main desktop, and it has KDE 3.5.
*Maybe* it has something to do with the fact that to install KDE 3.5 you have to click "other" when the openSUSE installation asks you what desktop you want, but I'm not so sure.

KDE 3.5 is not yet a completely dead end, newer KDE 4 / QT4 apps integrate well enough (like KTorrent and VirtualBox) and it just goes on where the old openSUSE installation left of, because you don't really "switch" your desktop. Plus, at least on openSUSE, the distribution still supports it very, very well.

I'm equally disappointed with KDE 4 as the next KDE user (I didn't even have any high hopes to begin with, but I did expect KDE 4.1 to be usable), but that didn't make me turn to Gnome. I love KDE, and I love it because of KDE 3.5. Why not keep using that?

Re:A reasoned analysis? That's good.

[tobiasly]

I'm using H&R Taxcut this year, probably the only software I still purchase on a regular basis.

Have you tried TaxAct.com? Their $17 "Ultimate" bundle includes both Federal and one State, plus e-filing for both is included! I got so sick of TaxCut and TurboTax becoming more and more expensive each year, and either charging me to e-file or else making me send in a rebate. I've used all three, and TaxAct is as good as the others.

Plus unlike the others they don't play the Vista game of offering multiple versions each with different features that try to get people to pay more out of fear they'll get stuck with the wrong one. It handles self-employment income, capital gains, deductions, etc. all in one package. I had my reservations at first since it costs about 1/3 of the others but I used it last year and was very pleased.

Re:A reasoned analysis? That's good.

[bonch]

But things that are drawn on screen by Quartz commands don't exist as PDF data anywhere along the way.

This is incorrect. Quartz models the PDF object graph. It even has the legacy bottom-left coordinate origin in its views which you must flip in your custom view (if you prefer). In the data sense, it does use PDF for screen drawing, which is why a PDF graphics context is available for any view that wishes to render one. It's also why a view can use the same drawing commands to render to a printer as it does to the screen, and why for many years, screenshots you took in OS X created PDF files on the desktop.

From Apple:

"Quartz's feature-rich drawing engine leverages the Portable Document Format (PDF) drawing model and offers Mac OS X applications professional-strength drawing functionality."

Re:A reasoned analysis? That's good.

[Anpheus]

Microsoft shipping a browser wouldn't be that problematic. Opera gives away their browser, so they couldn't...

Microsoft shipping a media player wouldn't be that problematic. [Everyone except Nero] gives away their media player, so they couldn't...

Microsoft shipping a text editor wouldn't be that problematic. [Almost no one] gives away their text editor, so they couldn't.

Three examples with different parties and wildly different legal situations. They've -been- sued for IE, they've -lost- a suit for IE, they've -lost- a suit for Windows Media Player and no one contests the fact that a useful OS requires basic components like a calculator and a notepad.

Yet every single one of those things is a free, optionally used component of their OS package. Sure, removing notepad or Windows Media Player is a lot easier than IE, but if you really want to remove more than just the outward IE application, good luck running more than a few basic programs that never make any calls to it.

Re:A reasoned analysis? That's good.

[Blakey Rat]

I don't really care about this thread, but having followed it down several layers and spending quite a bit of time reading it, I feel compelled to comment.

CarpetShark? You're a fucking jackass.

There we go, now the time is well-spent.

Re:A reasoned analysis? That's good.

[znu]

This is incorrect. Quartz models the PDF object graph. It even has the legacy bottom-left coordinate origin in its views which you must flip in your custom view (if you prefer). In the data sense, it does use PDF for screen drawing, which is why a PDF graphics context is available for any view that wishes to render one.

A PDF object graph only exists if you're drawing into a PDF context, which isn't how most on-screen drawing occurs. If you're drawing into a bitmap or window graphics context, you're using C functions to put pixels on the screen; no PDF data exists anywhere along the way.

See here. That doesn't describe a system for drawing to the screen by creating objects in a PDF object graph.

It's also why a view can use the same drawing commands to render to a printer as it does to the screen, and why for many years, screenshots you took in OS X created PDF files on the desktop.

Those PDF files simply contained (and contain; you can still enable saving screen shots in PDF) a single bitmap image of the entire screen. If the contents of the screen were represented in memory as PDF data, one would instead expect to see those files contain separate bitmaps for each bitmap displayed on the screen, vector data for text and shapes drawn via Quartz, etc.

Re:A reasoned analysis? That's good.

[SanityInAnarchy]

It's really not the trolls' fault. KDE4.0 was never intended to be actually used by the mainstream. This wasn't made sufficiently explicit

They released a dot-oh release. If that was the only thing they did, it shows that they don't know how to name their product. Just about anything else, I can clearly look at the version number -- worst case, even number stable, odd number unstable.

Perhaps more importantly, they've stopped adding new features to v3, and some projects have stopped supporting it at all. I realize Amarok is a separate project, but it's the best example -- I've seen similar things in core -- the latest kde3 version of AmaroK has transcoding broken, which won't be fixed because development on that branch has stopped. The latest kde4 version hasn't even begun to implement transcoding.

Most cases, you see the v4 version is much improved, and has actually addressed all of these issues -- but then you have to use and deal with v4. For example: I have no complaints about Okular vs KPDF, other than that there's no KDE3 version of Okular.

perhaps they felt that those who forgot the lessons of history (remember KDE 3.0? me neither

Did they make the same mistake with 3.0, I wonder?

But the point is, Kubuntu should have stuck with KDE 3.5,

It was already 4.1 by the release, not just 4.0. And 4.1 was the release that was supposed to be "so much better" and "actually ready to replace 3.5".

Now it's 4.2 that's supposed to be -- but I'm wondering if we'll get feature parity with 3.5 by the time we get 4.5.

Re:A reasoned analysis? That's good.

[Metasquares]

Microsoft would rather try (hopelessly) to supplant PDF with a proprietary format that they control.

It's called XPS and Windows 7 comes bundled with a viewer for it :)

Re:A reasoned analysis? That's good.

[honkycat]

For example: I have no complaints about Okular vs KPDF, other than that there's no KDE3 version of Okular.

Wow, am I the only one? I find that 25-50% of the files I load in Okular print incorrectly in some way. And that doesn't count the fact that I have to explicitly switch printing from A4 to US Letter *every* *single* *time* I re-open Okular. The bug reports all explain that this is due to a QT4 limitation. Great. Why is *anyone* shipping this to a US market as a standard piece of software? IMO this is a fatal bug for your standard document viewer.

I've been using KDE for a while and am a pretty advanced user, but I'm still scratching my head as to why Kubuntu has gone with KDE4.1 as its only option on 8.10. Yeah, sure, 8.04 is still supported, but ... my experience is that at least half the apps have bugs that aren't even subtle, they just flat out don't work in some fundamental way. And this includes Plasma, the fucking DESKTOP. I'm still using it because if I've worked out how to limp around its limitations and there's enough glimmer of hope that maybe it'll be nice some day, but if 4.2 doesn't just shine rainbows out its ass, I'm looking for something new.

And yeah, I know it's free, etc, etc, but it's disappointing to see such a huge step back in a distro that (for me) started off on the right track towards "just work"ing. Of course, I was transitioning from Gentoo so maybe my outlook was distorted... ;-)

Re:A reasoned analysis? That's good.

[kchrist]

That wasn't so hard was it.

Ask me that again after you've walked a new computer owner through it over the phone. Now try it with a directory structure about twice as deep.

Ah, the joys of working ISP phone support in the Win95 days, back when Windows really didn't come with a browser installed. I never understood why the Netscape FTP server directory structure was such a mess either.

Re:A reasoned analysis? That's good.

[heson]

Try LXDE. Faster than XFCE and very gnomealike, I run it on all my low end Fedora boxes.

Re:A reasoned analysis? That's good.

[CarpetShark]

Windows and OS X are operating systems, so they're a little different. They include many more API layers -- generally low-level ones (such as volume management, drivers, etc). On Unix (for KDE and GNOME), these are provided by unix kernels like Linux and BSD. On windows and OS X, kernels and low-level APIs also exist, but they are hidden, and tend to be more integrated, so it's more difficult to say "this belongs to the DE, and this doesn't". Still quite possible though. In OS X, you can look at Darwin to see what's available below the DE level. In windows, you can look to Core. However, the distinction isn't that clear between operating system and desktop environment here, because GNOME and KDE both provide a level of operating system abstraction, so that their programs can run on, say, Linux, or BSD.

In KDE and GNOME, if you take away all the apps, even the shell, you still have an entire layer of consistent software which provides a unified experience for developers, and the apps those developers create. Both of these desktops provide features like a common file access layer (local files, remote files, logins to remote servers, etc.), web downloads, consistent GUI widgets, ways to handle events, sounds, etc. The idea is that modern apps need to both look and feel similar, if the user is to work productively and efficiently with them, together. Note that feel is just as important, if not more so than the look -- it's not about window management, so much as having OK buttons in the same part of the screen when you get a dialog box, having the same way to access files on a server whether you're editing an html file in a text editor, uploading an image in a paint program, downloading security logs in a file manager, etc. This is also true (but to a lesser extent, mainly due to resources/project scope) in other desktop environments, like Enlightenment, GNUstep, XFCE, etc. When you get simpler window managers like Blackbox, they tend not to be called desktop environments, unless they grow up and get many more features later.

So this unified, consistent interface is not what a winder manager does, nor a shell, nor a graphical shell. A window manager very simply lets you manage windows, by moving them around the screen, and manages the display of those windows (primarily which one is on top of which others). This is one single aspect of the WIMP (windows, icons, mouse, pointer) metaphor, which is in turn a only one aspect of a modern DE (the others being the APIs and consistency etc. mentioned above).

A traditional textual shell lets you interface with an operating system enough to run programs and control how they should run. That's pretty much it. Even closing the program again is basically outside the scope of a shell. Anything else is done by the programs, not the shell. Occasionally, this definition is blurred a little to provide efficiency gains -- for example, commands like "if" have been built into some shells. In others, even that basic command is external though.

A graphical shell... that's a foggy concept. I don't even believe "shell" should be applied to a modern desktop environment -- it's a bit like drivign dumper trucks, moving to sports cars, and then demanding to know which part of the sportscar is the dumper ;) However, carrying the concept of a shell over to DE's as clearly as possible, it's certainly much less than the entire desktop environment. If I had to define a graphical shell in a modern desktop, I'd probably define it as the dock in OS X, or the start menu in windows, plus the DE's APIs for launching tasks. The graphical shell would be the part of the desktop that's absolutely fundamental to running another program once you're in the desktop.

Now, there *is* overlap here with usage of a file manager, in that you might have to drag icons to the dock so the dock knows to put an icon there, ready for you to click in future. However, for the most part, the file manager is a seperate application, simply making use of the DE to pr

Re:A reasoned analysis? That's good.

[Xabraxas]

The KDE dev-team clearly communicated to the world that 4.0 and the next few releases would not be a full alternative to the 3.5-series.

I don't think they were clear as evidenced by the versioning. They pretty much came out and said that more people would try a 4.0 version than a 3.99something version which seems deceitful to me. Why else would you name a developer release as .0? It really doesn't make sense any other way.

Re:A reasoned analysis? That's good.

[Jurily]

I just got enough and switched to Gnome.

The proper path to retreat from KDE is Fluxbox, not Gnome. You'll thank me one day.

Re:A reasoned analysis? That's good.

[mpaque]

znu is right. bonch is wrong.

Screenshots are all raster data. Bitmaps. Pixels. And yes, raster data can be embedded in PDF files.

Rasterization of each app's vector drawing operations occurs primarily within the application. through the app's Quartz drawing context. (OpenGL may be used there, so if someone wants to get really pedantic, the actual generation of pixels might be happening in the GL driver and GPU.)

This is getting pretty far off topic. (Welcome to /.)

Re:A reasoned analysis? That's good.

[dangitman]

Sometimes I get annoyed with something in Linux, and then I stop and think, wait a minute, this stuff is all free and people have volunteered their time to write a lot of it, so why should I be complaining. I'm just glad that it exists!

So, you talk yourself into liking something you find annoying. That could well explain why there are so many annoying things about Linux. Perhaps if we can address the above attitude, then we can really fix Linux?

It makes sense...

[rgo]

Gnome doesn't get in your way. It doesn't shout "PLEASE CONFIGURE ME!" in your face as KDE does.

Re:It makes sense...

[siride]

Yes, I am aware of and use gconf. And it helps some, but there's still some bone-headed design decision. My favorite, of course, is how they made it so that cursor blinking is a global setting. It doesn't matter if you use gconf or not, either your cursor blinks everywhere, including the terminal, or it blinks nowhere. That is, neither setting is acceptable.

Re:It makes sense...

[htnmmo]

That might be what's wrong with KDE but I think it's important to note WHY Gnome might have done things better.

Gnome has a lot more backing from big names in computing and KDE doesn't. It's not just big money, it's a lot of experience in user interfaces. Companies like Sun, Novell, IBM have helped Gnome be better suited to users.

Sun's accessibility contributions were a big plus.

Re:It makes sense...

[Bearhouse]

True, but then again, many people cite the 'ease' of configurability of KDE as being why they like it.

A halfway-house would be nice - good default installation but easy tweaking via GUI as users got more advanced and confident. A bit like - dare I say it - Windows does it. Then again, even with windows you still end up having to download stuff like TweakUi or other powertools - or directly ediing the registry - for some stuff, (or using the console, which is OK).

Re:It makes sense...

[ickpoo]

I recently switched to Gnome because KDE 4.1 whatever shipped with Fedora 10 was a cluster (wouldn't remember the position of stuff in the panel). Configuring Gnome was painful and significantly less intuitive that the previous versions of KDE.

The specific setting I wanted was focus follows mouse, don't raise. Setting this involved the configuration tool (don't know the name) and using gconf and using google to figure out what and where the configuration setting I'm looking for is. Even KDE 4.* made setting focus follows mouse easy, I'm not sure why Gnome choose to bury half the options.

Gnome is configurable, but the tool used to configure it (gconf) makes it significantly more complicated than it needs to be.

Re:It makes sense...

[onefriedrice]

My favorite, of course, is how they made it so that cursor blinking is a global setting. It doesn't matter if you use gconf or not, either your cursor blinks everywhere, including the terminal, or it blinks nowhere. That is, neither setting is acceptable.

Wow. If that is your favorite thing to complain about, I guess Gnome must be pretty good...

Re:It makes sense...

[anagama]

I used to be a KDE user spending hours tweaking my Desktop. Nothing wrong with that -- there are some cool setups out there. For the last couple years though, I've been using Gnome. Not because it's better or anything like that, it's just that I got tired of tweaking the look of my Desktop and I like Gnome's defaults better than KDE's.

I do like how Konqueror will let you just type "ssh://SOMEADDRESS" and act as nice file browser with all the drag and drop joy you get locally, and maybe Nautilus will let you do that -- it does let you set a server connection over SSH which obviates the need to type out "ssh://SOMEADDRESS" every time, but I still like Konqueror's functionality. Also, remote launching Konqueror works great, but remotely launching Nautilus is a disaster.

All that aside, I've simply grown tired of tweaking my Desktop. Half my computers still have the default wallpaper from whatever distro I installed. Luckily, the linux world has something for everyone -- KDE for tweakers, Gnome for the lazy or tired, xfce for the agile, Enlightenment for -- I dunno -- etc. etc. etc.

Use what makes you happy.

Re:It makes sense...

[ArcherB]

Yes, that's because you can't configure GNOME, and it doesn't do what you need it to do, so you just give up and accept the brown-plated shit that is given to you.

Since we are comparing Gnome to KDE, I have to call a serious BS on that. Since reading your comment, I decided to log off my Gnome desktop and log in using KDE4.1.

First, half of my "notification" icons in the kicker on the bottom are half blue. Before too long, all the icons will be gone completely.

Next, I run a dual monitor setup. My task bar is on the monitor on the left. I tried to drag it like I could in KDE3.5... nothing. I tried to right click on it like I do in Gnome. I got a menu, but "Move" was not an option. Finally, I figured out that I have to click on "Panel Settings", which put another panel on top of the first one, but still no way to move the panel. Finally, I learn through trial and error that the panel can be dragged and dropped, but only when the settings panel is open, and you can only drag the "settings" panel, not the actual panel itself. Oh, and it took three or four tries before I got it right. First it spread all my panel "widgets" all over the screen for no apparent reason. then it just moved the settings panel. The third try just moved the taskbar.... Finally, the panel moved to the right monitor, where I wanted it to begin with. It is listed as the "default" monitor, btw.

Also, there is no way to resize a panel like I could in kde3 and can still do in Gnome. There is no way to stack taskbar items like I could in KDE3 (I had it set to three rows of applications).

So, please, tell me again how KDE4.x is more configurable than Gnome.

Re:It makes sense...

[SanityInAnarchy]

You could always just grow a brain and use gconf,

Or I could be lazy and use KDE, which, instead of forcing me to use arcane commandline utilities and XML, provides me with a nice GUI and a much simpler, much more UNIX-y set of config files. KDE4 screwed it up a lot, but it's still nowhere near as bad as GNOME.

I'll remind people one of the older reasons Linus chose KDE: There's a nice GUI for configuring what each mouse button on the title bar of a window does. In GNOME, this functionality simply wasn't available. I assume it wasn't in a config file either, because Linus ended up having to write a patch. Once he wrote it, he couldn't figure out where to send it.

Now, if Linus fucking Torvalds can't figure out where to send a patch, you have a problem.

Re:It makes sense...

[siride]

What is wrong with having the options? 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. I don't want an annoying blinking box of a cursor in my terminal. It is, however, nice to have a blinking cursor in textfields.

Now on to the rest of your points. Who does it hurt to have extra config options? If the defaults are sane, then regular users don't have to touch them, but for people who care, the options are available. I mean, I thought this was the whole point of Linux and FOSS, that you wouldn't have some monolithic entity telling you how you are going to use your computer and what is "best" for you. GNOME is the anti-thesis of this. GNOME knows how things should be. GNOME knows that you only need to care about blinking cursors globally. GNOME knows that you don't want to make good use of your screen real-estate so all themes have to have huge amounts of wasted space. GNOME knows that you don't want to change settings, so they are hidden away in gconf instead of being in a useful and documented config dialog. Etc. etc. etc.

Re:It makes sense...

[ArcherB]

Yes, I am aware of and use gconf. And it helps some, but there's still some bone-headed design decision. My favorite, of course, is how they made it so that cursor blinking is a global setting. It doesn't matter if you use gconf or not, either your cursor blinks everywhere, including the terminal, or it blinks nowhere. That is, neither setting is acceptable.

Yeah. I like how I used to be able to sync my Palm based phone using KPilot. It wasn't great, but it kept my calendar and contact lists synced up with Kalendar and Kontact, which were great applications. Now, for no known reason, KPilot is no longer part of KDE since KDE4 and no other way to sync my Palm device with Kalendar and Kontact. In other words, I could do MORE in KDE 3.5 than I can do in KDE4.x! What a load of crap. Should I be able to do MORE with KDE4?

Sorry, but design decisions, I can get over and work around. If a Friggin Blinky Cursor is your biggest problem, then I'd say you got it pretty good. I lost functionality when I moved to KDE4! There are things that I simply can no longer do. I am stuck using G-Pilot and Evolution, both are Gnome apps. So again, design is simply a matter of making a desktop pretty. Functionality means that I can get stuff done. I can NOT do the things I need to do in KDE without Gnome.

Sorry, I loved KDE 3.x, but KDE4 sux and is completely unusable!

Re:It makes sense...

[RichiH]

True, Gnome simply ignores your wishes. And _if_ you want to configure Gnome stuff, it's either text files or their version of regedit.

No bad feelings, everyone should use what they want. But to claim that Gnome is easy to use is a misrepresentation in _my_ opinion.

Re:It makes sense...

[Darkk]

There is actually one tool I use alot is Ubuntu Tweak which fixes some of the gripes that we Gnome users complain about.

Features of Ubuntu Tweak

        * View of Basic System Information(Distribution, Kernel, CPU, Memory, etc.)
        * GNOME Session Control
        * Auto Start Program Control
        * Show/Hide and Change Splash screen
        * Show/Hide desktop icons or Mounted Volumes
        * Show/Hide/Rename Computer, Home, Trash icon or Network icon
        * Tweak Metacity Window Managerâ(TM)s Style and Behavior
        * Compiz Fusion settings, Screen Edge Settings, Window Effects Settings, Menu Effect Settins
        * GNOME Panel Settings
        * Nautilus Settings
        * Advanced Power Management Settings
        * System Security Settings

http://ubuntu-tweak.com/

Re:It makes sense...

[rgo]

Yes, that's because you can't configure GNOME, and it doesn't do what you need it to do, so you just give up and accept the brown-plated shit that is given to you.

I understand your position. KDE is better for power users, for people who like to fiddle with options. But for the regular public, using convoluted user intefaces with tons of configuration menus and toolbar buttons is overwhelming.

I consider myself a power user and I find KDE 3.5 a good desktop environment (except for that fucked-up kitchensink that is Konqueror), but I wouldn't recommend it to my non geek friends. And also, for power users, even the most complete user interfaces get in your way, so for advanced stuff we just use the command line. I betcha Linus does that too.

KDE 4 is another thing. They learned some things (like separating the fie manager from the web broswer), but they are using the same GUI guidelines from older KDE versions (with seem to be inspired from Netscape Communicator). They had the opportunity to make their programs more intuitive. maybe hiding advanced options using a plugin framework... but no, they had to take the eyecandy from OS X and Vista and make it impossible to use thanks for it's overconfigurability (I know that's not a word).

Re:It makes sense...

[dslbrian]

How about something like the ability to remove the "Create Folder/Create Launcher/Create Document" options out of the right-click menu.

I don't know what brain dead school of GUI design the idea came from that folders would be created with such regularity that a shortcut for them needed to be placed not only in the right-click menu, but in an unmovable position at the TOP of the right-click menu, but damn, what an annoying as hell "feature". I must have created dozens of folders by accidentally hitting that option instead of what I wanted which was to open a terminal (usually on other non-GNOME systems I worked with, I would have the terminal as the top option in the menu).

I jumped to KDE a while back to get configurability (it was before nautilus-actions existed), but as I understand it that right-click menu still can't be fully reconfigured.

There were other things at the time, such as not being able to resize a window without redrawing the contents, but I think gconf has an option for that buried somewhere.

Another one had to do with focus stealing prevention. KDE has options for that, but afaik GNOME doesn't. That would be stuff like if an app opens a window or a window takes focus on a desktop that isn't shown, GNOME would switch you over to that desktop, or worse the window would appear on the current desktop. At the time it was a circuit simulator that would update its results every 30 seconds or so (yeah imagine getting pulled to a different desktop every 30secs, not fun...)

I know that some things have changed in GNOME since I bailed, but if you think a blinking caret is the only option missing you are wrong.

Re:It makes sense...

[sfraggle]

A quick look in gconf-editor turns up this in the gconf profile settings:

/apps/gnome-terminal/profiles/Default/cursor_blink_mode
Description: The possible values are "system" to use the global cursor blinking settings, or "on" or "off" to set the mode explicitly.

Is this what you're looking for?

Re:It makes sense...

[JamesP]

Gnome doesn't get in your way.

YES IT DOES. EVERY TIME

- It does when tabs don't wrap around in gnome-terminal when they do wrap in Konsole/XFCE Terminal/Screen

- It does when some feature insists in working in a completely weird way and there is no way to change it

- It does with that weird separation of functions in the top bar

- "Start Menu" goes on bottom left for a very good USABILITY REASON

- GTK file dialog COME ON (even though it's not 100% gnome's fault)

If I need speed I go for XFCE. I can't STAND using Gnome

Definitive.

[Arthur Grumbine]

Linus switches from KDE to Gnome

Thus proving beyond the shadow of a doubt the weakness of arguments from authority.

Re:Definitive.

[LWATCDR]

Interesting. I have always wondered why anybody cared what Linus used. What Distro he used or desktop.
Just me but it seems odd to think that his needs would mirror my needs or my wife's.

What, no love for other window managers?

[BadAnalogyGuy]

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.

Re:What, no love for other window managers?

[ScrewMaster]

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.

Yes, but does it run Linux? And what about that whole Beowulf cluster thing?

Re:What, no love for other window managers?

[Haeleth]

Windows, for example.

Yes, but does it run Linux?

Yes.

Temporary measure

[oever]

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.

Re:Temporary measure

[morbuz]

well, I switched from being a long time KDE user to GNOME because of 4.2. what a train wreck!

KDE 4.2 has not been released yet.

Re:Temporary measure

[RichiH]

Yah, she is made from silicone, erm, silicium.

KDE 4 is a downgrade

[kasdaye]

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.

Re:KDE 4 is a downgrade

[go_epsilon_go]

It seems that nobody remembers the transition between KDE 1 and KDE 2. KDE 2 was a major redesign over the 1 series, and at the beginning had the same issues that KDE 4 right now has. But eventually it grew up into the beautiful 3.5 series. So I think we'll have what we're expecting from KDE 4 around 4.5 version. Go KDE! Just my 2 cents.

Re:KDE 4 is a downgrade

[Lord Lode]

The only thing I liked about KDE 4 was the graphical effects, e.g. the look of the alt+tab, composite desktop, etc... I wish that the KDE guys had made KDE 3.5 with the KDE 4 graphics, but not touched everything else with weird downgrades of once productive functionality. If they had done that (just update the graphics and using the new Qt), they'd have had less work and thus a release in time, and I would have been a LOT happier with the release to not see all my productivity broken by it.

Re:KDE 4 is a downgrade

[Darkk]

They couldn't because a decision was made to make KDE 4 more compatible with the future is to redesign it now and go from there.

KDE 4 is a major change and devs are trying to adapt to that change. So it's natural there are going to be some bumps along the way. Maybe V4.5 will be the version to use.

Some people don't like change at all and probably still running Windows 95.

Re:KDE 4 is a downgrade

[whathappenedtomonday]

Sorry to disturb you, but what you're saying is that a) they made the same mistake twice and b) it won't "grow up into something beautiful" until 5.5 - unless I misread that, in that case attribute that to significant amounts of excellent beer.

Still, looking at the way prior releases have matured is a valid point.

Re:KDE 4 is a downgrade

[mpyne]

This is just pure insanity. I'm a Linux user and I have no qualms about saying so. You are saying, "Well, it's just the initial release. I'm sure it will get better in like *5* more releases". How can you possibly justify that when the vast majority of the people here that say, "Well, Vista will be better with SP1" get flamed.

Well, how much did you pay for KDE 4.0? How much did you pay for Vista? Did KDE take all copies of 3.5.10 off the shelf when 4.0 was released? (Hint: No.)

KDE4 is literally the linux equivalent of Vista. After 5 service packs (and possibly renaming it KDE 5), it might be usable.

No, it's usable now. I'm sorry if it's not usable for the exact same sequence of tasks that 3.5.10 was but then we're not trying to make 3.5.10, we're trying to make something better.

It's a disaster and a lesson to those that would try to re-write good things because, "We know better".

LOL! Do you know how much source code is in KDE 3.5? There's no way we "rewrote" that all.

However, it does provide an interesting principle about how much change you can put into a project. This is actually the second time KDE has dealt with such a large transition (the first being KDE 1 -> 2).

Now with KDE 3.5 -> 4 our developers were able to produce quite a few positive changes to modernize KDE and take the steps necessary to keep it relevant. Yes, there were features that were dropped that still need to be added again, and some things don't work as well as they used to in KDE 3.5.

What were the alternatives? A straight port of 3.5 to Qt 4? If you seriously believe that, where do you think we started from?...

It took a lot of effort to get the 3.5 codebase onto Qt 4. Believe me, I was there. It took ages to get kdesktop to be able to display its background again, and that was hardly the largest of the broken features. And that was just from the porting process!

Any major changes we wanted to be in KDE 4 had to be there (at least architecturally) before KDE 4.0 due to source and binary compatibility concerns.

So what do you do, take a year or two to re-architect, and another year of bugfixing before you release (and meanwhile become completely irrelevant in the Internet age)?

Or do you take a year or two to re-architect, while application developers port what they can in the meantime and then try and quickly start releasing again? You'll (hopefully) stay relevant but the desktop won't be as shiny.

By releasing early we were able to get immediate user feedback. What if three years down the road we released a polished release that no user wanted to use? At least now we know that desktop icons is a REALLY BIG DEAL for lots of people. ;)

By releasing early we were able to keep developers interested. What do you want to do? Create the next generation of KDE, or do maintainence bugfixes on 3.5? You can attract some developers on the basis of Subversion code alone but at the end of the day you need to make releases, especially for application developers.

By releasing early we were also able to maintain relevance. Who on Slashdot hasn't heard of KDE 4 now, one way or the other? =D Although obviously you never want to shortchange your good name, my experience has been that the harshest comments have come from the most uninformed.

I've seen valid complaints about a feature that is missing or doesn't work as well, or how they don't like the way the desktop is handled now, etc. That's all fair enough. But there are also people who complain about KDE 4.0 being tremendously overhyped, that we said it was going to provide world peace, etc. etc. And I don't see why.

I develop for KDE and let me assure you, the 4.0 release was controversial internal to the project as well. We weren't a bunch of developers telling you that we had the best flavored Kool Aid ever, why don't you have a drink? We certainly had developers

Tempest on a mousepad

[Dystopian Rebel]

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.

Or to not quote him partially...

[pagaboy]

Linus says...

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.

Re:Or to not quote him partially...

[Hairy1]

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.

You don't roll out half baked software over the top of working software. If KDE 3.5 was working for people releasing something that would cause users significant grief is simply irresponsible. We are beyond the days where Linux users were all geeks who used Linux as a learning platform, and who wouldn't care too much about broken features.

Linux is now being used seriously by people in their day job. Yes - Linux is "free" - but it is also such a vital piece of infrastructure that there is an expectation that delivery is equal quality OR BETTER THAN commercial alternatives. Open source should be an evolutionary process - you don't expect things that were previously working to become broken.

However, this whole "start fresh" idea has occured several times. It can potentially kill a project. It is not unique to open source, and every time I've seen it done its been done badly. Is it harder to refactor an existing application into shape? Yes. However, refactoring tends to be far less painful for users who will have a working system throughout.

Some people claim that if users want to keep using the old app they can. This is true, except in open source people will tend to abaondon applications not in active development. Although a new "fresh" version is on the way a project in this state looks to the external world like an abandoned project.

I know one project that took over three years to rewrite a vital library. The old version worked, but had bugs. The bugs were going to be addressed in the new version, but it took so long to do that we were forced to find something that was actually maintained.

Open source isn't a toddler any more. It has grown up, and people now depend on it. We cannot afford to be using users as our QA department. We could afford to do this in the past, and certainly there is are still hackers who don't mind installing the latest builds, but we cannot assume that all our users are going to be grateful for whatever we ship. It must be quality.

Re:Or to not quote him partially...

[ion.simon.c]

Open source isn't a toddler any more. It has grown up, and people now depend on it.

Wonderful. Until you start paying someone to manage an OSS project, you can't expect someone to do things your way. :)

Moreover, it's up to the distros to decide whether or not they package KDE 4, or xfce or whatever. The KDE devs should (and are) free to do whatever the hell they (or their corporate overlords) please. I think that your rant would be better directed at the distro maintainers who're calling KDE 4.0/4.1 stable software, rather than the KDE team.

WRT KDE 3.5.x: bug fix releases will still be made. It's not like KDE 3 is going to go away any time soon. And, if KDE 4 never grows be more than the steaming pile that some folks claim it will always be, then one can start again with the KDE 3 codebase.

Re:Or to not quote him partially...

[centuren]

You don't roll out half baked software over the top of working software.

In this specific case, Fedora is responsible for that decision. The real question seems to be why are distributions jumping to these releases of KDE. I understand how a commercial product might want to be able to advertise having the latest version of everything, especially if it can result in some pretty screenshots (as KDE4 can), but how competitive does Fedora need to be here?

Re:Both Suck

[im_thatoneguy]

ersonally, 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).

So because a product has more features than you'll use it sucks?

I do not think that word means what you think it means.

Honestly?

[copponex]

Linus, Gnome, and KDE in are in the title. I'm surprised no one's been compared to Hitler yet.

Re:Honestly?

[G Morgan]

Don't be silly. We'd have those Godwin's law quoting Nazi's dominating the thread then.

Re:Honestly?

[db32]

Well then...

Linus choosing to switch from KDE to Gnome is like Hitler changing his plan from deporting all the Jews to executing them. Both are horrible ideas, and only one of them is rationally implemented.

What is all this about?

[VolkerLanz]

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.

No, proof of sanity

[CarpetShark]

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.

Re:No, proof of sanity

[mpyne]

Linus is promoting the best option available at the time, without bias. Which is perfectly sane, and valid.

In all fairness, "best" is one of those things that is in the eye of the beholder. When KDE 3.5 was the latest, GNOME was still "the best" for many people.

Basically, KDE has great tech. BUT core developers seem to have some sort of arrogance about listening to the community

Please elaborate, without using mailing list threads where these core developers get flamed endlessly because people don't like something in KDE 4. On the other hand we are always interested in receiving reports of what we could do better (although reasons of "KDE 3.5 did it this way" does not exactly prove the point...)

and some sort of project-deathwish which manifests in a horrible release process,

Horrible?... How so? I ask because the release process is mostly unchanged since KDE 3.5, where apparently it worked well. What do you think has regressed since then?

minor versions that don't work until x.4 or so,

So you're saying that you've had issues for both 4.0 and 4.1 not working until 4.x.4? 4.1 would have been much the same as 4.0.4, with the exception of extra features. I personally did not notice tons of trouble from 4.1 on (although obviously I'm biased ;)

and poor support for non-core developers.

No offense but this is a troll unless you have something in particular that you're talking about. The same mailing lists, API documentation, and support tools are available now as were available for KDE 3.5. In addition we now have a Wiki available instead of the crusty old KDE 2.x material, KDE TechBase, and the number of developers has only been increasing.

For instance, the latest KDE Commit Digest shows commits by 249 developers, up from 231 a year before. If we go back to the last Commit Digest from Derek Kite in October 2005 there were 195 developers. Argue about seasonal effects or whatever all you want but the data doesn't support your argument.

Moreover they've alienated some of the very groups they tried to encourage early in the KDE 4 brainstorming process.

Well there are definitely "alienated groups" but who are you talking about specifically?

Finally, they generally seem to suffer from lack of manpower, which they have never really tried to solve.

Well not only is that not true as I already mentioned, but your latter point is also not true. I know it's easy to blame the shift of focus that we employed in KDE 4 on everything, but the fact of the matter is that it actually brought in quite a few developers as well... We have people working on the art, basic desktop and games, areas which were mostly unmaintained in KDE 3. Things like the KDE TechBase I already mentioned were created as part of making it easy to develop for KDE. Again though, if you have something specifically that you have in mind then say so as developer support is a very high priority for KDE.

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.

Here's the announcement about the Development platform release where the library API was declared stable. "With a lot of issues facing KDE hackers before 4.0 is a usable desktop, all work on new features and UI is stopped, and efforts focus on fixing the inevitable, long list of bugs." Where's the hype?

Here's the Plas

Re:No, proof of sanity

[QCompson]

I agree, the release of KDE4 was horribly mismanaged, and this was due in no small part to the seeming arrogance and ineptitude of Aaron Seigo. He was at the forefront of the pre KDE4 release hype, and responded to all criticism after the inevitable disappointment following the release of KDE4 with dismissive scorn. I remember him claiming that people were having trouble understanding KDE4 because they have never been part of something so great, or some such nonsense.

He was also constantly throwing around silly marketing speak terms like "revolution" and "a new paradigm" to try and make excuses for a project which was obviously alpha quality. Not to mention he was in charge of the most incomplete part of KDE4, plasma.

Aseigo may be a great programmer, but he should be stuck in a backroom and confined to programming. His marketing and personal interaction skills are terrible. If I were in charge (which of course I'm not, just my opinion) Seigo would be fired for his instrumental part in making the release of KDE4 such a disaster.

KDE 4 is a disaster

[squoozer]

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.

Re:KDE 4 is a disaster

[kimvette]

The latest build of amaroK (2.0.1) is a heck of a lot better than the previous KDE 4.x amaroK builds. It still doesn't support syncing with MP3 players or mass storage devices but now the play list is searchable. I can live with it - if I need to sync with a player I can use the KDE3 version, but for just listening the KDE4 version is usable.

Now to be fair to the KDE team, much of it was a total rewrite and they have made it clear that KDE4 and early KDE4.1 will be missing a lot of legacy features, and that those missing features will be ported in as time goes on.

I hated KDE 4.0 - it was missing the folder view for the desktop. Ever since the Amiga and the original Mac I've expected the desktop to be a folder, and when I ran Win3x I ran Norton Desktop, which gave me a desktop folder metaphor.

I find the current KDE4 to be about as good as KDE up through 3.1 - usable, but not ideal, which made the availability of Gnome really nice. KDE 3.5 made me a diehard KDE user. I use KDE4.1 + compiz-fusion for my desktop environment, and have KDE 3.5 installed so I have access to all the apps with the kio slaves for work. I've come to hate gnome, with all of the dumbing down of the environment that has gone on for 5+ years -- ESPECIALLY the file open/save dialogs.

Also KDE isn't just for power users; I've sat novices in front of both gnome and KDE 3.5 and they invariably find their way around KDE 3.5 a lot easier. They can sit down and just use it without having to ask many questions.

Many accuse KDE of trying to be Windows, but my experience is that it has provided the best of Mac OS X and the best of Windows, a lot of additional functionality power users need (such as the kio slaves in konqueror, PLUS tabbed file management), AND provided the ability to extensively customize settings without having to recompile. On top of that, gnome uses a registry-style database for what settings you CAN tweak, and forces you to use gconf, whereas if there is a setting here or there that KDE does not provide a GUI for, you can tweak a config file and not have to recompile anything.

Linus has changed desktops before, and when KDE 4.x becomes more feature-rich expect to read remarks that he's changed back to KDE 4.x. IMHO, this is non-news. Something newsworthy from Linus would be that he's retiring from Linux kernel development, or he's decided FreeBSD is the way to go, or he's released the 3.0 version of the kernel.

KDE4 is not a disaster by any means; the current situation is the lack of understanding that the KDE team is releasing limited but stable features, and that KDE4.x is not considered feature-complete by anyone at this time.

If you're missing KDE 3.5.x functionality and need it, perhaps you need to choose KDE 3.5.x, or at least do what I am doing and run KDE 3.5.x and KDE4.x side-by-side.

There are a lot of things missing from kwin that I really like and miss, but I am using it understanding that the environment isn't complete by any stretch of the imagination.

I agree. Kde4 has issues

[quo_vadis]

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.

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.

/rant

Re:I agree. Kde4 has issues

[2t]

(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).

It is funny how everything can be so black and white. Maybe people who disagree with you on how they use the desktop might still not be stupid.

I can understand how people can value the abundance of configuration options. That's ok.

I, however, don't want to configure everything nor do I want everything to be configurable. I just want stuff to work and the defaults to be reasonable. It's a bit the same thing for me with coffee. I just want good coffee, I don't want to make 10 choices before it.

So, this is where people who don't care about choices are coming from, or atleast some of them.

Re:Both Suck

[SanityInAnarchy]

I actually got sick of having to learn and spend time on every new thing, and having people laugh at me while I was reading the iwconfig manpage, while they just clicked a menu on OS X and joined a wireless network.

With Kubuntu Hardy and KDE3, the joke was on them. Everything Just Worked, out of the box, with far more configurability than just about anything else. All those "extra applications" includes things like wifi, bluetooth, sound, and USB mass storage hotplug, as simple, intuitive GUIs that require no more learning than "Let's try right-clicking the Bluetooth icon... Oh, I get how this works."

Then came Kubuntu Intrepid and KDE4. Bluetooth didn't work. Wireless became more complex, and no longer uses kdewallet to store things. I'm taking a long, hard look at things like xfce, fluxbox, or just rolling my own.

It IS a disaster

[Lord Lode]

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...

[Moraelin]

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.

KDE 3.5 works great, Ubuntu dropped the ball

[SgtChaireBourne]

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.

Re:KDE 3.5 works great, Ubuntu dropped the ball

[jbolden]

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.

Linus is just like us!

[ClosedSource]

"I make controversial statements without thinking a lot."

Re:A good server needs a good GUI.

[quantumplacet]

hmm, maybe they should host getthefacts.com on a linux box, cuz it's definitely down.

On Linux you have choices.

[bcrowell]

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.

Re:On Linux you have choices.

[value_added]

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.

Agreed. But then I use fluxbox, too, so no surprise there.

What is surprising, and why I read these Gnome/KDE flamewars is the degree to which both sides screw up, leaving the community as a whole in disarray. On the one hand, you have Gnome, a perfectly usable desktop that could fit nicely into any corporate or home environment, but refuses to consider the user may their own preferences, or allow them to make them. On the other, you have KDE with all its features, configurability and enough bling to make a pimp blush, but has trouble working.

Lots of alternative "choices" of course. The problem is the majority of people insist on an all-singing all-dancing desktop environment, so few of those choices (except XFCE, perhaps) are viable, leaving us with the great Gnome/KDE debate.

Me too!

[JoeCommodore]

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.

Re:Yaaaay!

[cloakable]

Your sig needs to be:
"I have a friggin laser on my head"

Re:A good server needs a good GUI.

[prennix]

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.

Why switch? Impatience? I dont' think so...

[theendlessnow]

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. Officially.

[Qbertino]

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.

Re: KD4 is to Linux what Vista is to Windows

[GRW]

I run Mandriva Cooker and have been using KDE 4.2 quit a bit. I like it a lot. I am normally a Gnome user, but I have been attracted to KDE 4 much more than 3.5. 4.0 was very unstable, it is true, but I think that Mandriva KDE users will be happy with KDE 4.2 when 2009 Spring is released. The main Gnome thing that I miss in KDE 4 is the Nautilus file manager.

KDE4 Lacks A Desktop

[HermMunster]

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.

Re:Yaaaay!

[HermMunster]

He said the gnome guys are thinking about a major reworking so he may end up switching back to KDE sooner than later. But that all really has to do with how fast they implement and what they implement.

Re:Why switch? Impatience? I dont' think so...

[HermMunster]

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.

Gnome and KDE should deal just with presentation

[jernejk]

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).

SAME here, from a *longtime* Linux user

[aussersterne]

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. :-(

2 weeks

[tabby]

I'm suprised he didn't just write his own.

Re:A good server needs a good GUI.

[hairyfeet]

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!

Re:A good server needs a good GUI.

[hairyfeet]

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.

GNOME and KDE3 is to WinXP what KDE4 is to Vista

[Bushido Hacks]

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.

Re:A good server needs a good GUI.

[hairyfeet]

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.

Re:A good server needs a good GUI.

[hairyfeet]

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. ;-)