Linus Switches From KDE To Gnome

A reasoned analysis? That's good. by gcnaddict · 2009-01-24 07:23 · Score: 4, Insightful

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.

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Re:A reasoned analysis? That's good. by Artraze · 2009-01-24 07:33 · Score: 5, Interesting

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. by jellomizer · 2009-01-24 07:38 · Score: 4, Interesting

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.

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Re:A reasoned analysis? That's good. by Zephiris · 2009-01-24 07:41 · Score: 5, Informative

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.

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"A Goddess rarely smiles for she is forced by others to be an island unto herself." - Zephiris
Re:A reasoned analysis? That's good. by yog · 2009-01-24 07:47 · Score: 4, Insightful

"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.

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Re:A reasoned analysis? That's good. by SanityInAnarchy · 2009-01-24 07:50 · Score: 5, Interesting

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.

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Re:A reasoned analysis? That's good. by SanityInAnarchy · 2009-01-24 08:07 · Score: 5, Insightful

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.

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Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
Re:A reasoned analysis? That's good. by TheRealMindChild · 2009-01-24 08:55 · Score: 4, Insightful

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?~

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"When life gives you lemons, don't make lemonade. Make life take the lemons back!" -- Cave Johnson
Re:A reasoned analysis? That's good. by Klaus_1250 · 2009-01-24 08:59 · Score: 4, Insightful

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.

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Re:A reasoned analysis? That's good. by Tanktalus · 2009-01-24 09:05 · Score: 4, Insightful

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. by Anonymous Coward · 2009-01-24 09:28 · Score: 5, Funny

Oh yeah, because WinZip invented the ZIP format.
Sheesh.
Re:A reasoned analysis? That's good. by FishWithAHammer · 2009-01-24 09:51 · Score: 5, Insightful

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.

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"You can either have software quality or you can have pointer arithmetic, but you cannot have both at the same time."
Re:A reasoned analysis? That's good. by FishWithAHammer · 2009-01-24 09:54 · Score: 4, Funny

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.

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"You can either have software quality or you can have pointer arithmetic, but you cannot have both at the same time."
Re:A reasoned analysis? That's good. by znu · 2009-01-24 11:14 · Score: 4, Informative

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.

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Re:A reasoned analysis? That's good. by FourthAge · 2009-01-24 11:41 · Score: 4, Funny

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.

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The tao of democracy: the government you can vote for is not the real government.
Re:A reasoned analysis? That's good. by tobiasly · 2009-01-24 11:47 · Score: 4, Informative

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. by znu · 2009-01-24 15:33 · Score: 4, Informative

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.

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It makes sense... by rgo · 2009-01-24 07:23 · Score: 4, Interesting

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

Re:It makes sense... by siride · 2009-01-24 07:32 · Score: 4, Informative

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... by htnmmo · 2009-01-24 07:32 · Score: 5, Interesting

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... by onefriedrice · 2009-01-24 07:41 · Score: 5, Insightful

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...

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Re:It makes sense... by anagama · 2009-01-24 07:44 · Score: 5, Insightful

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.

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What changed under Obama? Nothing Good
Re:It makes sense... by SanityInAnarchy · 2009-01-24 07:55 · Score: 5, Insightful

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.

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Re:It makes sense... by siride · 2009-01-24 07:56 · Score: 5, Insightful

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... by Darkk · 2009-01-24 08:10 · Score: 4, Informative

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:What, no love for other window managers? by ScrewMaster · 2009-01-24 07:28 · Score: 4, Funny

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?

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The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.

Temporary measure by oever · 2009-01-24 07:31 · Score: 5, Insightful

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.

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DNA is the ultimate spaghetti code.

KDE 4 is a downgrade by kasdaye · 2009-01-24 07:32 · Score: 5, Informative

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 by go_epsilon_go · 2009-01-24 07:52 · Score: 5, Insightful

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 by Darkk · 2009-01-24 08:19 · Score: 4, Insightful

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.

Tempest on a mousepad by Dystopian+Rebel · 2009-01-24 07:34 · Score: 5, Insightful

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.

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Rich And Stupid is not so bad as Working For Rich And Stupid.

Or to not quote him partially... by pagaboy · 2009-01-24 07:35 · Score: 5, Informative

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... by Hairy1 · 2009-01-24 09:10 · Score: 5, Insightful

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.

Honestly? by copponex · 2009-01-24 07:40 · Score: 5, Funny

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

What is all this about? by VolkerLanz · 2009-01-24 07:41 · Score: 5, Insightful

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 by CarpetShark · 2009-01-24 07:43 · Score: 4, Insightful

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 by mpyne · 2009-01-24 09:29 · Score: 4, Informative

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

KDE 4 is a disaster by squoozer · 2009-01-24 07:45 · Score: 4, Insightful

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.

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I used to have a better sig but it broke.

I agree. Kde4 has issues by quo_vadis · 2009-01-24 07:52 · Score: 4, Insightful

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

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Legally obligatory sig : My opinions are my own... etc etc

It IS a disaster by Lord+Lode · 2009-01-24 07:59 · Score: 5, Informative

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... by Moraelin · 2009-01-24 08:04 · Score: 5, Insightful

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.

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A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.

Re:A good server needs a good GUI. by prennix · 2009-01-24 09:16 · Score: 5, Informative

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.

KDE4 Lacks A Desktop by HermMunster · 2009-01-24 10:19 · Score: 4, Interesting

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.

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You can lead a man with reason but you can't make him think.

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