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KDE Rebrands, Introduces KDE Plasma Desktop
Jiilik Oiolosse writes "The KDE community has killed the term K Desktop Environment (previously the Kool Desktop Environment). 'KDE' had previously ambiguously referred to both the community, and the complete set of programs and tools produced by the KDE community which together formed a desktop user interface. This set of tools, including the window manager, panels and configuration utilities, which KDE terms a 'workspace,' will now be shipped under the term 'KDE Plasma Desktop.' This allows KDE to ship a separate workspace called 'Plasma Netbook,' and independently market the various KDE applications as usable in any workspace, whether it be the Plasma Desktop, Windows, or XFCE."
That won't be confusing.
I say that as a KDE user.
If I were God, wouldn't I protect my churches from acts of me?
Great! Now Linux will still have two major competing desktops. But now one of them could be one of several separate versions, or some applications on a different desktop, or a version of Windows running Koffice. Thanks, clarity committee!
The ______ Agenda
A shell I can get behind, but Gnome? That dumbed down baby GUI? Get serious
You forgot "Who cares?"
jThey jstole jit jfrom java.
Now to be fair, "plasma" is the name of KDE4's new widgets engine (and widgets include everything from panels to "applets" to the desktop, in line with KDE's extensible/customisable SOP). It's not as if the term "plasma" has nothing to do with their product (arguably picking "plasma" as a name for their widget engine was a marketdroid-ish thing to do in the first place - but still preferable to "KDE Kwidgets Kengine").
You know, the KDE guys just don't get it.
They almost remind me of Commodore, during the Amiga days. They have this really cool technology, but it doesn't work as well as you want it to and has some glaring deficiencies, and their marketing department is absolutely clueless.
WTF is Aqua? WTF is Glass? WTF is Snow Leopard? WTF is Safari? WTF do I need to Access? How in the world does one lauch a Word? WTF am I supposed to Excel at? WTF is Vista? WTF is Zune? WTF is that Blue Ray? WTF is in Ex Box 360? WTF is anything without lots of marketing money?
Analogies don't equal equalities, they are merely somewhat analogous.
I've got news for you - no amount of marketing money would make a name like GIMP gain wide acceptance.
Plasma isn't just that thing for making desktop widgets of dubious usefulness. What KDE has actually done is, in my opinion, a fairly smart design move regardless of whether you like their implementation.
Desktop widgets aren't applications, they are people extending the functionality of their desktop. What the KDE folks saw was that a well-designed API could be used to write the desktop UI itself (task bar, clock, pager, whatever), the things we used to use taskbar applets for (media player control, etc) and the flashy new desktop widgets. Instead of having a basic desktop and plastering a widget API on top, they've gone and unified the whole thing so you can use the same API to write taskbar applets, widgets or write replacement taskbars or ... whatever. The various desktop elements are separate building blocks (plasmoids) that can be assembled together. They've also produced loads of bindings for this API to give folks the chance to write stuff in their favourite language.
The plasma netbook interface then takes some of the default building plasmoids, adds some new ones and then glues them together in a different way. So you can get a similar family look and similar functionality (and, fundamentally, the same desktop) but in a way that's optimised for a different form factor of device. I think that's actually pretty neat and somewhat reminiscent of the way you can configure and compile the core Linux kernel down for tiny machines or up to big iron whilst still getting the benefits of a common codebase.
There's a load of other cool stuff including a standard set of "data engines" which separate producing data from displaying it, thus making it easy to glue data sources together in interesting ways. Despite the various feature regressions that rewriting the desktop led to, it's a really neat architecture and should hopefully stand them in good stead for the future.
Question 1: To get to your applications, there is a button on the top or bottom corner of the screen. Is it a K or a foot print?
"It's a ring with three balls at the corners." Am I running Ubuntu Desktop (with GNOME Desktop) or Kubuntu Desktop (with KDE Plasma Desktop)?
After that ask questions related to KDE or Gnome. It's not that difficult. Much easier in fact than convincing someone to tell you what version of Windows they have.
"Hold the Windows key (that's the one with the flag next to Alt) and press R. Release all keys, type w i n v e r, and press Enter." Easier, but "much easier"?
You underestimate the power of the Dark Side.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
KDE folks: revert to 3.5 while you still have a user base.
I am very small, utmostly microscopic.
You can't copyright a term. Do you mean "trademarked"?
It's pretty simple. They're trying to move past "KDE is a Linux desktop environment" into "KDE is a technology platform." And it's true, the KDE desktop and its underlying pillars, and the KDE application suite, are a lot more than just another Linux desktop.
Hey, I finally got my first freak! Took you long enough!