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Does the End of KOffice Mean the End of KDE?
jfruhlinger writes "Venerable Linux office suite KOffice has been reborn as "Calligra," a name meant to evoke calligraphy but perhaps a bit too close to the neme of a deranged Roman emperor. Perhaps more importantly, Calligra seems to be cooperating with the future MeeGo mobile Linux distro. Could this be the beginning of the end of the KDE desktop, at least under its current branding?"
not just the end of KDE - but the end of all life on earth!
What a stupid headline. Page views, clicks, etc. Yeah I know.
It's hard to believe that's how Micronians are made. Why don't we see it right now by having you both kiss one another?
There is clearly a typo in the summary, this is a KDE project so it would have to be Kalligra.
Indeed, what did happen to them? If they are in the process of rebranding it would be nice if someone wrote an article about it so that we would know.
It's hard to believe that's how Micronians are made. Why don't we see it right now by having you both kiss one another?
What happened to that annoying K in all names of the K Desktop Environment?
They went to the same place all the intuitive configuration options went in GNOME.
That's right. I went there.
Just because one of the many apps built with KDE has been re-branded doesn't mean everything else will be. Re-branding an app can help them re-market and re-invet the image for KOffice and loosen the implied restriction of running only under KDE. Changing the name of KDE doesn't benefit them seeing as how Desktop environments aren't really marketed to end-users, and even in the Linux world, most either don't care or already have a preference.
I've always used KDE, but never KOffice. So what.
They're based on the same technology, but other than that, what do they have to do with each other? You can run one without the other.
So the short answer would be "No".
I enjoy KDE and use it daily. I would use KOffice more if there was a better project management tool than KPlato included but alas, there isn't.
Time to donate some more Paypal money their way so that I can close that account. Btw, what alternatives are there to paypal? You know, companies that atleast pretend to support democracy.
You are not entitled to your opinion. You are entitled to your informed opinion. -- Harlan Ellison
Let's tag this story "troll" and move on quickly.
# cat
Damn, my RAM is full of llamas.
KAbandoned, I KGuess.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Everyone complained they were annoying so know you've got Plasma, Strigi, Gwenview, Dolphin, Marble, Calligra, etc.
I also didn't understand why everyone complained when KDE did it, but not Gnome?
And it never really bothered me. A brand new user knew the difference between GCalc and KCalc. But they may be confused by Abacus.
http://blindscribblings.com - Tasty pop-culture in conceptual fashion.
The day you born you started to die. You can point any event as "the beginning of the end" of anything that is not eternal. But that one classical KDE app is renamed to something that have no K have more or less the same weight that a gnome app having a name that don't starts with g (and didnt saw any comment about the beginning of the end of gnome when one of such apps got released or renamed).
It is official; Netcraft now confirms; KDE is dying
Precisely my feeling as well. While everyone else, Microsoft included, was pushing for a cleaner desktop, KDE seemed to be pushing the messy desktop paradigm from the Windows 95-XP days. I just found it very clunky.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Yes. Totally. Because the only reason people use KDE is so they can get KOffice.
The real hint is this:
Currently all applications except Calligra Words will be maintained by their respective KOffice developers.
It's more than a renaming, they split. However, when the dust cleared only the KWord developers went with the other group, the rest of the KOffice projects joined what's now Calligra. As far as I can tell the KWord guys wanted to focus on competing with MS Office and OpenOffice for the desktop, while the Calligra Words guys wanted to focus more on mobile. With enough different agendas going on in the same project they had conflict and eventually split. That's at least as far as I've caught the story.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
Probably it's a typo, and they meant to write "name" with reference to Calligula, but what the hell is a "neme". Is that some new-fangled internet term for a name-meme? And what the hell is that supposed to mean?
Yes, I googled it, and got no satisfaction. YMMV.
Everyone complained they were annoying so know you've got Plasma, Strigi, Gwenview, Dolphin, Marble, Calligra, etc.
I also didn't understand why everyone complained when KDE did it, but not Gnome?
And it never really bothered me. A brand new user knew the difference between GCalc and KCalc. But they may be confused by Abacus.
Its annoying that they aren't there now. How am I supposed to know Plasma and Dolphin are KDE apps now?
A portmanteau of meme and name?
Also, what's a "neme"?
Ok...say what you want, but Win95 through to Win7 have perfectly clean desktops...until you litter them with icons/apps, which is totally under your own control. Same can be said for just about any other desktop, including KDE 3.x.
That said, you really should take a look at the latest KDE...or at least one of the many 4.x releases over the past couple years. It's about as clean as it gets as far as I'm concerned.
KDE has been rebranding, and not just in removing the K from all their applications. KDE is a project, and a non-profit entity (KDE e.V.). The software compilation they release is now known as KDE SC.
I don't see any reason for alarm over rebranding. KDE is getting more contributers and developers every year. Even many of the die-hard haters who railed against the 4.0 release have come back into the fold loving the current KDE releases. And for all the hate about Plasma, the Plasma framework makes it quite easy to create new activities and shells, making KDE on netbooks, tablets and phones considerably more viable.
I find it interesting that Ubuntu is trying to find a way to create one interface/shell on every device, and yet they pay so little attention to KDE, Plasma and Qt. With KDE activities, I can switch instantly between a netbook activity (which I may prefer on the tiny resolution netbook screen) and a more standard desktop activity/shell when I use the video output to use a larger display.
I can keep many of the same apps, conventions, etc. across multiple devices while still focusing on a activity/shell that is best suited to that size/resolution/device.
I'm actually really excited about the future of KDE.
http://blindscribblings.com - Tasty pop-culture in conceptual fashion.
I read that they were going to go through some re-branding pain some time ago although the reasons were not clear, at least to me. But I hardly think this qualifies as signs that KDE is going away.
Python: 'And then suddenly you have a language which says "we're all stuck with whatever the whiniest coder wants".'
* KDE was rebranded a year ago. It's now the name of the community, not the desktop.
* KDE, the community, is stronger than ever with more contributors than ever and more commits than ever.
* Calligra does not switch focus to mobile, but it *extends* the focus to mobile... and tablets... and so on.
Not according to this blog post, linked from koffice.org: http://www.valdyas.org/fading/index.cgi/2010/12/07#kde_proud
http://alternatives.rzero.com/
/dev/null ?
Self proclaimed typo king, and inventor of the bear destroying coffee table (patent not pending).
What do you mean by that?
KDE's default behavior is to have no icons on the desktop because they want to eliminate the behavior of storing files on the desktop. They wanted to eliminate clutter.
I'm not sure why someone would assume they're pushing a messy desktop, unless you mean they support widgets or plasmoids. So does Mac OS X and Windows 7, both praised for their "clean" design. I don't use plasmoids on the desktop and don't care for them, but they're entirely optional. (I do have plasmoids docked in the panel, but that is another story).
http://blindscribblings.com - Tasty pop-culture in conceptual fashion.
I know I never have, and I use KDE quite a lot. I don't know anyone that has. It's usually OpenOffice.org that's being use.
// file: mice.h
#include "frickin_lasers.h"
KOffice was just stupid name.
Hmm. And just recently I got a request to purchase kaligraphy.com from me.
:)
:) Email is in the whois data ...
Thinking that it might have been Microsoft or Apple or similar about to release a new product, I replied with an outrageously high price. I wonder if it was the KDE team
If it is indeed the KDE team, get in touch
Simon
Physicists get Hadrons!
I couldn't get past the windowing themes. Everything had super-rounded corners and had a shiny chrome look, and the icon sets were ugly and sin. My window manager should get out of the way, not be distracting.
I know I could theoretically customize it, but when I go under Google images for "KDE" every screenshot has the ugly as sin, distracting desktop icons and window borders. When I look at Google images for "Gnome desktop" ("gnome" brings up the garden variety), most of the screenshots use Clearlooks themes, while not the most attractive, it's not distracting.
we can add the iProducts to this trend too.
Actually, iThink i'Ve heard complaints about all three.
Self proclaimed typo king, and inventor of the bear destroying coffee table (patent not pending).
It bothered me to no end. Why are you even writing software that is tied to a desktop environment in the first place?
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
It makes for horrible alphabetical clustering in menus and file managers!
I can't find anything at a glance, among K* or i* - or g[????]*.
Just as bad - if not worse is the sorting on Windows machines "My" everything and "Microsoft" everything. Real visual cluster fart.
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
Kan't you see kreating names like that kan only lead to some people thinking that the projekt is not kommercial quality?
No joke - I've read comments in the past where people said they don't consider KDE suitable for business use because of the k-naming convention. Personally, I actually like it for one reason: it groups most of the KDE projects together in package managers.
The Christian Right is Neither (Christian nor right). See: Matthew 23, Matthew 25, Ezekiel 16:48-50
iThink iHave an iDea.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
You can use Amarok just fine in Gnome. It isn't "tied" to the desktop. However, running an all-Gnome or all-KDE ecosystem means you reuse the same libraries, keep a consistent look, and share certain features, such as KDE ioslaves, Akonadi resources, Strigi/Nepomuk metadata, same file dialogs, etc. across all the apps.
http://blindscribblings.com - Tasty pop-culture in conceptual fashion.
Better integration, for one. You know what is and isn't there, you can style it to fit in with the rest of the environment, etc. Plus choosing Qt or GTK can mean your app looks funny in one environment (it doesn't have to though).
SSC
This is a horrible junk news editorial. This speculation is not just wild, it is more annoying than those toads in Australia... too much of this around and we just can't kill them all.
I welcome the name change from KOffice to just about anything else including Caligula. KOffice is not the same as K-Office. KOffice sounds too much like a bronchial condition. And the propensity to name things with a K in front is just ridiculous. I know, Gnome is somewhat guilty of that but not to the same extent. Worse, K is associated n my mind with K-Mart which was the brand of K-rap. (Their shoes were cheap and only lasted for 5 minutes on my feet when I was a kid.) I know... my association with K is my problem, but still. Too much K already. At least "G" is more often silent.
Because you're probably using either GTK or Qt anyway, so you might as well go the last mile and integrate well with the corresponding DE.
On a sidenote regarding desktop integration, I was amazed recently when I wanted to send a friend an audio file (some old amiga module) and I could simply draw it from the Banshee playlist into his Pidgin chat window. I could scarcely believe my eyes.
Switch back to Slashdot's D1 system.
I feel your pain; I can't stand rounded borders on windows or buttons, and so far haven't found a single theme that uses plain-jane boxes to draw, er... boxes. Guess we're two of those weird people who apparently can't see the point in round things when they're not needed. And to my eyes, they're ugly.
And yes, the default look of 80% of the themes looking like they've just emerged from a Turtle Wax avalanche doesn't help either. It took me forever to figure out how to get rid of the damned image overlay on the taskbar, which distracted me no end when I was reading it. To my eye these themes don't look polished, to me they're so self-consciously crying out for attention that they begins to take on the look of a teenager trying to be cool by growing a wispy bumfluff moustache and smoking a woodbine he purloined from his grandmother whilst bragging to the girls about how he's totally going to get some bitchin' rims for the Ford Fiesta his mum will donate to him once he hits 17.
At the end of the day, I still use KDE because it sucks less than GNOME and XFCE. But at least in windows I can use square window borders that eat up next to no screen real estate (although it's taken me no end of reg hacking to get win7 explorer to behave how I want it to). Seems to me like most developments in the UI world over the last five years have been directed towards making the desktop more blingy and less application oriented, whilst gobbling up more screen real estate, especially vertical... despite the fact that dot pitch and vertical resolution has been dropping over the last couple of years (thanks to the almost total exclusion of TFT panels that aren't 720p or 1080p - god knows how anyone can find a 15" screen with 1368x768 acceptable), to the extent we now have to have special "netbook" editions of UI's so that we can still fit in the huge blingin' icons. That's progress! /screaming old fuddy-duddy, apparently
Moderation Total: -1 Troll, +3 Goat
Here is some more background on the split
http://lists.kde.org/?l=koffice-devel&m=128782551919625&w=2
By their descriptions. As a guy who hasn't used KDE, I can't even tell you what Plasma and Dolphin are for. Package managers are wonderful things.
Could be worse. could have been named for the son of Marcus Aurelius: Comodeus
- Minutus cantorum, minutus balorum, minutus carborata descendum pantorum.
Caligula Text editor? I am so there!
How about other cool names? I want the Loki Operating system!
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Never ask a question inspired by itworld that can be answered by simply going straight to the source.
Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
Oh, but they're everywhere!
>Btw, what alternatives are there to paypal?
http://gunpal.com/ (I kid you not.)
http://alertpay.com/
wire transfers
http://moneybookers.com/
https://www.neteller.com/
https://www.epassporte.com/
http://www.e-gold.com/
http://www.libertyreserve.com/
>You know, companies that atleast pretend to support democracy.
I don't vouch for any of the above.
I'm not a lawyer, but I play one on the Internet. Blog
KDE does not sort by company name like windows does. Everything is sorted by category. In fact, KDE defaults to sort the apps in the submenus by product description instead of name.
G is so silent, many people are not even it exists.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
With several K items in each Kategory.
Oh, Krap...
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
No, Rekonq would be sorted under W for Web Browser. The menu entry would say:
Rekonq
Web Browser
http://blindscribblings.com - Tasty pop-culture in conceptual fashion.
What happened here seems to be, from my skimming of the mailing lists, just a personality conflict. A bog-standard one, at that. The name change is more symbolic than anything else. Here's what to take away from this fiasco: One KWord developer is going to do his own thing, where some lists and code repos are hosted may change. Everything else is business as usual.
I want my Cowboyneal
That's actually just the way the companies do it, not Windows, as Windows only predetermines where apps bundled with windows should go. I usually rearrange my start menu from
program -> company -> app
to
program -> category -> app
Anyway, it doesn't change the issue, that under any given category in a the system KDE/Gnome menu, there usually ends up being a bunch of clustered 'K' apps and 'G' apps, particularly the games section
Self proclaimed typo king, and inventor of the bear destroying coffee table (patent not pending).
Still Krappy. I run "k-apps" from a Gnome or XFCE desktop. The assumption of conforming to KDE menu metadata is a false one, which obfuscates the error of naming for certain users, but breaks down in other environments - such as the Konsole. :-)
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
This makes no sense to me....maybe should lable this as nonsense?!?
At this time I use nothing but KDE....and I hope to never change. But what is koffice? I have never seen nor used this. So far just have Open Office....though not sure of the future of that suite of applications since Oracle has taken over Sun. How can the change of a name for one app. or suite of apps kill the parent environment? I do not see the relationship here. KDE is a desktop environment and I should think any one app./suite should not be central. Certainly koffice does exist but even if it were to disappear I think (to me) I would not even notice and have no effect on my installing and using KDE. /fennix
Twilight SeaQuest crossover fanfics?
Don't Gnome, XFCE, et al also have ioslaves, Akonadi resources, Strigi/Nepomuk metadata, file dialogs, etc? Desktop environments all provide a consistent set of functions and widgits for application developers, don't they?
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
I can't mod you up but thanks for the useful link.
As I'm reading this thread I'd suggest this link instead:
http://lists.kde.org/?l=koffice-devel&m=128812911619277&w=2
How am I supposed to know Plasma and Dolphin are KDE apps now?
Here's a better question. Why should I need to know whether Dolphin (I'll leave out Plasma, since it's functionality is so KDE-specific) is a KDE app? If I like it, I should be able to use it seamlessly regardless of which DE I prefer. To the extent that I can't, the 'open desktop' has failed. To the extent that it's becoming easier and easier, the OD is inching (not fast enough, IMHO) toward (the potential for) success.
Posted from my Android phone. Oh, I can change this? There, that's better...
To get features of the libraries and tight integration. Best of breed office suites (like WordPerfect's) lost to integrated suites (like Microsoft's) because of the advantages the offered for things like cut and paste of objects working across apps.
They are having a rough couple of years. OTOH Meego could be as important as Suse, Turbo, Caldera was in the early years. KDE and Linux in general is having a tough time refocusing. We'll see how this plays out. Microsoft, with the exception of XBOX has had lots of trouble expanding and is somewhat losing ground. I don't see them being as dominant on handheld office suites of say 2015.
No and yes. XFCE has none of those things. It is not a desktop/widget set like KDE and GNOME, and GNOME doesn't have akonadi resources, or ioslaves, because they refuse to use frameworks written in C++ and especially any framework written by anyone that has ever had anything to do with KDE. In stead they have different frameworks like Gnome-VFS, GStreamer or GTK file-dialogs, that sometimes does the same thing as KDE equivalents, and sometimes does something different
I just use ion3 under KDE. No floating windows at all, and certainly no rounded corners. It's as easy as setting KDEWM=/usr/bin/ion3 (I add it in $HOME/.kde/env).
I am moving to a new laptop, and I'm setting it up with i3, which is a nice replacement for ex-ion3 folk who like static tiling window managers with tabs in the frames. Both work fine with KDE, nice and easy, plasmoids run in tiles (if you like them; I personally don't), and everything is fine.
"$30 for the One True Ring. $10 each additional ring!" -- JRR "Bob" Tolkien
RedHat helped found Gnome in reaction to KDE when it first came out. They were always hostile as opposed to Caldera which was very pro-KDE.
Ubuntu was always part of Gnome, they had to pick and they picked Gnome because they agreed with the goal of interface simplicity which was part of the Gnome 2 project.
The real kick in the teeth was Suse and Mandriva/Mandrake supporting Gnome fully.
For example, with Akonadi you can have a resource that is your address book.
Fire up your email client, and it is there. Fire up a VOIP client, and it is there. Fire up a calendar, and it is there. Fire up an IM client, and it is there. They can all share the same resource if they're all KDE apps designed to work with Akonadi resources.
I *believe* the KDE devs tried getting Akonadi turned into a Free Desktop standard that Gnome used as well, but it was denied. Maybe I'm crazy and thinking of something else though.
http://blindscribblings.com - Tasty pop-culture in conceptual fashion.
I *believe* the KDE devs tried getting Akonadi turned into a Free Desktop standard that Gnome used as well, but it was denied.
So what you're saying is that there is a cross platform desktop standard but nobody is using it?
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
There are cross platform desktop standards at FreeDesktop.org
For instance, the naming conventions for icons in KDE 3 and Gnome were different, so you couldn't share an icon set. A FreeDesktop.org standard was set, and they both use it now. There are standards for menu entries, etc.
The KDE devs did try to get Akonadi recognized as a standard so resources (like an address book) would be recognized in Gnome applications as well. FreeDesktop.org did not accept it as a standard.
http://lists.kde.org/?l=kde-pim&m=118583299200650&w=2
http://blindscribblings.com - Tasty pop-culture in conceptual fashion.
True, and more and more, we see that without the big names like Red Hat, Oracle, Ubuntu, etc. paying developers to code this,it is not easy for a project like this to progress effectively.
However, we shall see what transpires with Libre Office.. If Oracle manage to muck that transition up, perhaps there is still a place for K Apps.
Maurice W. Hilarius Voice: (778) 347-9907
No wonder why everyone sees the linux community as a bunch of evil nerds up to no good.
"To prevent this day from getting any worse, I'll just read ERROR as GOOD THING" 1GJU8xLuDKDxEs4KLf8fAGyptoDsqvEsBT
ldd /usr/bin/dolphin | grep kde
HTH
we can add the iProducts to this trend too.
Actually, iThink i'Ve heard complaints about all three.
I suggest we call all that iGunK.
Ignore this signature. By order.
it still suprises me sometimes when sarcasim escapes people sometimes
I don't see Open Office dying in their space. I like the direction KDE is moving in of having Koffice go downscale to the mobile / tablet market. OpenOffice is very very heavy.
Thankfully in the console it is straightforward to set up an interface that suits you with trivial symlinks or aliases. No faffing around with endless abstraction layers, complex configuration GUIs, or overcomplicated and largely undocumented crap like GConf.
Also, KDE veteran Aaron Seigo wrote a blog entry about the split.
That post is bullshit. It calls fork what is not (only the head developer and a few others of kword stays in "the root", all the rest go to "the branch") and says that Calligra will not be associated with KDE (false, they use kdelibs and the same repos, sites bugzilla...). Basically it is one last desperate attempt to gain support by a guy that pushed away a majority of developers and split the community.
That must be your distro. That isn't the KDE default.
http://blindscribblings.com - Tasty pop-culture in conceptual fashion.
Had tried QtCurve and liked it (being one of the few saner themes by default out there), but had managed to miss that option. Thanks!
Moderation Total: -1 Troll, +3 Goat
OK I don't have any personal information. I stand corrected, what was the split really about? Where there any technical or vision issues?
Too bad f.d.o. tends to auto approve Gnome things as 'standard' without second though.
Quick way to get 30% Funny 70% Troll: defend Opera browser on
After the past 2 years of endless unstable and uselessly incomplete releases, who the heck uses KDE any more?
Me. It's a genuinely excellent desktop environment with far more polish, user-friendliness and power than GNOME. And I can't recall a "unstable and uselessly incomplete" release in the last 18 months, so yeah, your post is indeed "Flamebait".
Pirate Party UK
The KDE devs did try to get Akonadi recognized as a standard so resources (like an address book) would be recognized in Gnome applications as well. FreeDesktop.org did not accept it as a standard.
http://lists.kde.org/?l=kde-pim&m=118583299200650&w=2
No, they didn't. There isn't such a proposal anywhere on the XDG lists.
Based on that thread, it looks like they talked about it themselves and then decided it won't be accepted without even actually trying, or that there would be too much hassle.
Apple presents iFarted: Stink Different.
I write sci-fi for metalheads
I do, KDE 3.5 Trinity to be precise. It's an excellent DE; though you don't discount that, you seem to be flaming KDE 4.
"People don't want to learn linux" hasn't been a valid excuse since '03.
no
This sig. intentionally left blank.
Will people stop using KDE because Koffice changed its name from a pretty lame name that probably shouldn't have been used in the first place? Is that what your asking here? really? Or, will KDE change its name? Maybe? But does a project changing its name, probably to draw in more Gnome users, really point in that direction?