KDE's New Projects Take On Portable Devices

jrepin writes "Key KDE developers have been blogging about new projects aimed towards portable devices. As Aaron Seigo says, 'In a nutshell, Plasma Active is about getting the KDE Platform with Plasma providing a compelling user interface ready for and available on hardware devices outside the usual laptop and desktop form factors.' For us mortals, that means an interface for smartphones, tablets, and handhelds."

Comments

Path To Enlightenment

[dimethylxanthine]

Whatever happened to E mobile?

Re:Path To Enlightenment

[dimethylxanthine]

From E.org: "Enlightenment libraries already power millions of systems, from mobile phones to set top boxes..."

There's definitely not enough coverage on that then... And not only on ../

Re:Path To Enlightenment

[V!NCENT]

In fact; Enlightenment is sponsored heavily by Samsung now ;)

Re:Path To Enlightenment

[Anonymous Coward]

Or it is forked and closed, and license allows for that.

Re:Path To Enlightenment

[V!NCENT]

Yet the EFL is now passed version 1.0: http://www.enlightenment.org/p.php?p=news/show&l=en&news_id=28

Free software gets a great GUI and if forked _all_ devices will be faster.

No point in hating progress, proprietary is only extra competition. As we all know better does not mean more succesful. Take a seriously hard look at DOS and Windows. That said I think (at least technologicaly) nothing surpasses KDE 4.6 desktop iregardless if you like KDE 4.6 or not.

Re:Path To Enlightenment

[sorak]

From E.org: "Enlightenment libraries already power millions of systems, from mobile phones to set top boxes..."

There's definitely not enough coverage on that then... And not only on ../

I checked ../ and they really don't have much.

As always with posts about KDE

[Anonymous Coward]

it won't be long before someone starts explaining how they did not like KDE

Can't please everyone.

[MrEricSir]

KDE Kan't Do Everything.

I already have firefox mobile installed on mine

[Anonymous Coward]

It slows things down quite nicely. Not sure if I need a KDE clone, that would be worse than shutting it down.

Re:I already have firefox mobile installed on mine

[AvitarX]

The early beta of firefox mobile was unusable, but the release was quite good.

I find it quite fast, but it draws oddly, doing nothing then everything rnders at once.

*what* tablets?

[Anonymous Coward]

I've been looking for a Linux tablet in roughly the nook/ipad form factor for a while, but I can't find anything. What's out there? Whatever it is, it seems to hide itself really well.

I don't want an iOS or android tablet - I insist on having full control over my own computers. My requirements are:

* Roughly 7" screen, at least 1024x600 in color.
* 10 hours battery life
* Can run some Debian based distro ideally with KDE support
* Supports flash natively
* Touch screen supporting multitouch
* Less than $500
* Doesn't depend on an SD card slot to run Linux

There ought to be something, I should think, but I can't find it. The Color Nook is ruled out because it consumes the SD slot to hold Linux, it's Linux is apparently not so good (not polished), and if what I read was correct, it can be remotely wiped even if you root it since the firmware can do that behind your back.

I'm all set to give someone my money, but nobody seems too eager to sell me something.

Re:*what* tablets?

[MrEricSir]

I'm all set to give someone my money, but nobody seems too eager to sell me something.

I hate to be the guy who makes the car analogy, but if you walked into a dealership and said you wouldn't buy anything that wasn't a V8 that got 45MPG, came with an XM radio, had a sunroof, four doors, included the schematics, and cost $16k or less, I imagine they'd politely tell you to take a hike.

Don't get me wrong, it's great when you can get exactly what you want. But that's often the exception to the rule.

Re:*what* tablets?

[Anonymous Coward]

Sure, except that a 45 MPG V8 is probably beyond the current tech of the day, but what I want should be easily within it. The hardware I ask for is nothing beyond what a Nook or iPad2 already has.

I forgot to add one thing:- it needs some web browser with both adblock AND noscript. Both are 100% essential for using the modern web.

Seems like this should be perfectly possible...

Re:*what* tablets?

[Dr Max]

Linux on a tablet sounds great but it needs a lot of work before its ready. Touch is apparently implemented but it dosn't always work. Accelerated graphic is rarely implemented by any one. A new interface is needed because you can't fit the same amount on the screen any more. Maybe when this plasma active or ubuntu 11.4 comes out it will solve these problems, but at the moment your better off putting up with android. The "kno" tablet i belive runs ubuntu out of the box but it is a 13inch screen.

Re:*what* tablets?

[sltd]

The only problem is, Kno isn't making tablets anymore.

Re:*what* tablets?

[arth1]

Sure it's possible. But then it won't cost $500.
A $500 price tag is only achieved by pinching pennies here and there, and aiming for the large don't-give-a-fuck market, in order to save costs due to volume.
Add similarity to existing products so they can use existing factory processes and already written tools.

I can probably configure you a machine the way you want it. The total costs, mostly time spent, I estimate at around $12k, give or take a couple of sheets. I'd like $5000 up front, the rest upon completion.
If you're not willing to pay, either buy the shelfware marketed towards consumers who want simple, or buy a cheap unit and learn to mod it yourself.

Re:*what* tablets?

[Anonymous Coward]

> Sure it's possible. But then it won't cost $500

For sake of argument, why not, exactly? Other android tablets are about that price. All I'm asking for is that same hardware running Linux.

Your argument could be applied to desktop PCs too, but the fact is that the same hardware runs commodity OSs and is sold by the bazillions, so is very cheap. That's all I want here: the ability to buy some commodity Android tablet and get a good native version of Linux running on it in a manner that will give me full control over my own hardware rather than leave backdoors an exploits for the tablet vendor to keep controlling it.

Re:*what* tablets?

[arth1]

For sake of argument, why not, exactly?

It wouldn't sell at a volume that gave a reasonable profit without cutting into sales that are more profitable.
If it would sell, it would be made.

Re:*what* tablets?

[cflange]

Although it is not a tablet, the OpenPandora complies with all the other conditions you listed. It is quite a unique device and the fact it can be folded and fit in a pocket is an advantage over the tablet form factor. The project has taken a couple of years to take off, but you can receive your device in 7 days now, if you pay $500.

Re:*what* tablets?

[Anonymous Coward]

Not quite in your price range (but I doubt anything with those specs will be), but here is the official hardware list:

http://community.kde.org/Plasma/Active/Devices

Re:*what* tablets?

[illtud]

How is that better (or much different) than my $400 n900 that's over a year old and is neater, better supported (albeit not by Nokia so much so more!)?

power?

[mirix]

I like KDE a fair bit, an generally use it on my main rig... but it's plugged into the wall.

I think they're gonna have to do a lot of slimming down for a mobile rig, to the point where you might not recognise it as KDE...

Re:power?

[Anonymous Coward]

Isn't a "rig" something you use to shoot heroin and coke?

Re:power?

[mirix]

That would be a rig for main-lining, not a main rig. ;-)

Re:power?

[Anonymous Coward]

well your sig suggests your main rig is a PDP-11...if you can get KDE to run on that then a mobile should be more than sufficient :P

Re:power?

[Anonymous Coward]

don't shoot coke he didn't do anything to you.

Re:power?

[clang_jangle]

Silly doper. Your "main rig" should always consist of a sweet-sounding tube amplifier, a great sounding guitar, and few carefully-chosen effects.

Re:power?

[cyclomedia]

Amen, it eats the battery on my laptop and performance is a dog, but I'm too principled to revert to Windows XP.

Re:power?

[Anonymous Coward]

If you haven't done so already, try streamlining KDE a bit. Strigi's probably the biggest offender, followed by too much graphical bling, but your distro may have some other cruft that's good for desktops but bad for battery life.

My notebook gets pretty good battery life with Debian stable running KDE4 (~7 hours with wifi and compositing enabled, about an hour more than it did with Windows 7). It started as a minimal console-only install and I added the KDE packages manually, though, so I probably left out a lot of default junk.

Re:power?

[Anonymous Coward]

Use Gnome 2.x

Re:power?

[cyclomedia]

Thanks, I'm on a vanilla OpenSuse 11.X have not attempted to streamline it at all before complaining :)

Re:power?

[lwsimon]

I tried Plasma Netbook on my new eeePC, but it didn't like the 1G of RAM I have at the moment. I ended up back in Unity post-haste.

Re:power?

[KugelKurt]

I like KDE a fair bit, an generally use it on my main rig... but it's plugged into the wall.

I think they're gonna have to do a lot of slimming down for a mobile rig, to the point where you might not recognise it as KDE...

Um, that's exactly what KDE are doing:
The new shell is based on the new Qt Scene Graph technology which runs more on the GPU and uses the CPU for almost nothing. Plasma Desktop is still based on older technology. According to KDE's rough benchmarks the new shell runs more fluid on mobile devices than Plasma Desktop runs on big PCs.
Since a bunch of months they also trim down dependencies and make them optional. That means on mobile devices a vastly smaller code base will be shipped (even Canonical is looking into kdelibs-mobile for upcoming Ubuntu versions).

Oooooooooh shiney

[lanner]

That's right guys, follow that shiny thing, wherever it leads. Forget all about what you were doing before.

Re:Oooooooooh shiney

[MobileTatsu-NJG]

That's right guys, follow that shiny thing, wherever it leads. Forget all about what you were doing before.

No imagination.

Re:Oooooooooh shiney

[gier]

Yeah, well, sometimes there's nothing wrong with following the shiny, if the shiny is good.

And what do you mean about forgetting all that was done before? They're planning to expand, not stay put or contract. Sounds like a good thing to me.

Re:Oooooooooh shiney

[V!NCENT]

Like what? Using my Android interface? ROFL...

Re:Oooooooooh shiney

[Kjella]

And what do you mean about forgetting all that was done before? They're planning to expand, not stay put or contract. Sounds like a good thing to me.

Despite how much they'd like you to believe they have infinitely many resources, "expand" usually translates to "smearing the resources we have even thinner". Let's face it, Linux on the desktop/laptop isn't exactly a smashing success, at least the web browsing statistics all put it below 1%.

First there was the desktop 1.0, it never really caught on but now it's full of desktop 2.0 which is roughly as annoying as web 2.0. I think the last fad was netbooks - now we're taking the netbooks, and then the netbook remixes didn't really catch on they either. So now they're going for tablets and smartphones and whatnot. And before that works well there's probably some other new fad they've jumped on. Or if not fad, it's still trying to bolt on more functionality on something that never finished. I just sorta feel it doesn't finish a race, it's always jumped on a new one that looks better.

Re:Oooooooooh shiney

[nschubach]

I imagine it's kind of like having a sumo wrestler (Microsoft) sitting on top of you. You flail your arms and legs around looking for something to grab hold of to try to get some leverage so you can at least attempt to get out from under it. The only problem is that the wrestler keeps shifting his weight around.

Re:Oooooooooh shiney

[Anonymous Coward]

Apart from them not actually forgetting what they were doing before... Let me guess: You are 50+ years old. You probably have a mobile phone, but not one of those "smart phones", because you only need something that can make phonecalls. You have a car from the 70's, because, hey, it still works.

Re:Oooooooooh shiney

[Anonymous Coward]

That's right guys, follow that shiny thing, wherever it leads. Forget all about what you were doing before.

Yes, ignore that pile of gold nearby. You were born a woodchopper, and a woodchopper you shall stay.

Seriously, this may not be the analogue to a pile of gold, but why ignore expansion? There's time and developers enough for two projects.

Re:Oooooooooh shiney

[Anonymous Coward]

Two companies, Basyskom and Open-slx, are financially sponsoring the project. So yes, resources did increase.

Hopefully this is a good thing

[Anonymous Coward]

I see this having 3 possible outcomes :
1) Making projects that target lower speed, lower memory, lower storage devices helps them integrate more efficient code back into the core desktop KDE
2) the project dies a horrible death except for ~100 users worldwide (the developers themselves)
3) They somehow make an Android GUI (because Apple would have kittens if they targeted iStuff) that is worth using, and we start to see even more blending of "mobile" and "desktop" OS features. Win8 will have an App store, Android allows you to install any app you want(from anywhere)

Personally I'm more interested in seeing the permissions model of Android applied to a standard Linux Distro, possibly an Android x86 that allows installation through apt-get, or some other repo system. (must be script-able for sys-admin use)

My 2cents. -MAW

Re:Hopefully this is a good thing

[oever]

Personally I'm more interested in seeing the permissions model of Android applied to a standard Linux Distro, possibly an Android x86 that allows installation through apt-get, or some other repo system. (must be script-able for sys-admin use)

Indeed, the fine-grained permission model of Android should come to Linux.

- One file per application
- Easy to override permissions for application (e.g. restrict net access for an application to a certain IP address or domain or restrict access to the file system to one folder)

Such requests always meet with developers claiming that memory will be used inefficiently, yet, mobile devices work fine this way. It's time Linux was developed to meet the requirements of simple users.

Re:Hopefully this is a good thing

[i-linux123]

Try SELinux. In Fedora 15 it even has sandboxing functionality. I don't think it can get more fine-grained than SELinux.

Re:Hopefully this is a good thing

[oever]

There does not seem to be an easy UI for this. Remember: it should be easy for simple users.

Re:Hopefully this is a good thing

[i-linux123]

For sandboxing you just need the to run "sandbox somecommand" maybe with parameters.

There are GUIs for selinux, but I don't remember which because I avoid GUIs if possible, and there are tons of tools for it.

The idea with SELinux is that it's the developers of whatever app that should be providing policies and selinux booleans for fast configuration, so that the setroubleshoot GUI can directly display "This was blocked, run this line to allow.", and the sandboxing thing is already covered (As mentioned above).

For the IP traffic, it also has some labeling functionality for traffic, I haven't looked into that.

For comparison, we've all had to learn httpd.conf and other configs at some point too, it's just that users are afraid to touch SELinux in the first place.

Sort of like Android, Meego, Unity...

[Anonymous Coward]

As much as choice is Linux's greatest strength, the effort wasted on five or ten different projects with the same goals is Linux's biggest weakness.

Re:Sort of like Android, Meego, Unity...

[martin-boundary]

As much as choice is Linux's greatest strength, the effort wasted on five or ten different projects with the same goals is Linux's biggest weakness.

How is the effort "wasted"?

Let's say that Gnome was the only project to do a desktop environment. How would that be more efficient? Now everybody would be stuck with every boneheaded decision the Gnome project comes up with, and every time a new version came out, everybody would have to learn new ways to do old things.

On the other hand, if there's 5 or 10 desktop projects, then you're not stuck if your current favourite goes in a direction you don't like. The more choice the better.

Saying that putting effort into 5 or 10 desktop projects is wasted effort is like saying that free markets are a wasted effort: one single company selling things is more efficient than 5 companies competing.

Re:Sort of like Android, Meego, Unity...

[nschubach]

I'm not sure I've ever heard anyone say that consumer choice is efficient. In fact, I think I could argue that it's terribly inefficient. That's not to say that I want one company creating a particular product (because we all know how that ends up poorly.) As inefficient as it is, it's been proven that competition is always best for the consumer... and as a consumer, I support that.

Re:Sort of like Android, Meego, Unity...

[Grishnakh]

There's a such thing as too much competition. With no competition (monopoly), you get a company that sells a shitty product at an exorbitant price, just because they can. It's human nature: people are greedy assholes, and the greediest, most assholic people are always the ones who rise to the top. So you need competition to keep people on their toes, and keep them working hard to make their products better and cheaper.

However, with too much competition, you have too many people duplicating the same work, and little difference between them, and overall probably higher prices and less features, as too many small competitors can't exploit the economies of scale that larger ones can.

For this reason, it seems like things usually work out best when there's 3 or 4 big competitors in a mature industry, and that's it. The danger, however, is that they'll become an oligopoly or cartel, and that's what we need government for (as much as the libertarians hate this).

It's different with Free software projects, however. Free software projects like Linux, X11, KDE, etc. are not for-profit enterprises, they're free and Free downloads for anyone who wants them. These things work best when there's only one, or maybe two. For instance, how many of you Linux users are using anything besides x.org's X11 system? zero? There's a reason there's only one: no one sees the point in wasting effort making something that works exactly the same, so we all use the One until someone else makes something that's not exactly a competitor, but actually renders it obsolete. Wayland may become this, time will tell.

However, unlike proprietary companies, Free software projects have the property that the source code is freely available, and can be forked. 10 years ago, we were all using XFree86, which had some seriously bad management. Some people got sick of the crap, and forked the project to x.org, and now that's what we're all using, and the 2 people who still use and run XFree86 are still sitting around delusionally thinking they're relevant (with statements like "XFree86 is the premier open source X11-based desktop infrastructure" on their website). This is something that can't be done with proprietary companies (software-based or otherwise), which is why we don't really need competition so much in OSS; the licenses and ease of copying constitute a "threat" of competition.

Re:Sort of like Android, Meego, Unity...

[Anonymous Coward]

The problem isn't that there is more than one touch UI for Linux being developed, the problem is the effort wasted on making shitty versions of something that already exists. The beauty of open source is that if there's something you don't like about Android or Meego, you can fork it and make it better. As opposed to making five or ten crappy attempts at your own touch interface, wasting years of effort.

Re:Sort of like Android, Meego, Unity...

[WorBlux]

Efficiency of economics is ultimately about how well consumer demands are satisfied, not about any sort of objective quality of the product. Anything else really doesn't make any sense.

Re:Sort of like Android, Meego, Unity...

[KugelKurt]

Sort of like Android, Meego, Unity...

I'm sorry to tell you that but your comment shows you have no clue.
Plasma Active is not "like Android, MeeGo, Unity".

Unity for example is a desktop and netbook GUI. It's hardly fitting for touchscreen devices.
As for MeeGo: Intel so far only develops a relatively simple reference GUI that's not targeted to be actually used. Not even Nokia had any plans to adopt it. Nokia just like any other MeeGo adopter wanted to create a proprietary GUI on top of MeeGo Base OS.
Plasma Active is nowhere "like" MeeGo. It's FOR (!) MeeGo. So far it's the only credible attempt to create a commercial-grade, fully FOSS, community-based mobile shell.

Concerning Android: Android is no community project. It's developed behind closed doors by Google alone and in case of Android 3.0 not even the source code has been released so far.
And what you may not realize: KDE also hosts the port of Qt to Android and since Plasma is based on Qt, Plasma Active may just as well be used as shell for Android (heck, even on top of Windows!).

As far as I'm aware, the effort already has two commercial supporters with more in the pipeline.

lol amen!

[Weezul]

Maemo absolutely fucking rocks. It'll even run Android applications now using a ported VM.

Just push forward on Maemo/MeeGo and start producing phones & tablets running it. All your "synergy" should come from the Android app store, not desktop KDE applications.

Great another future unfinished project.

[Anonymous Coward]

I love free software and open source but I swear project abandonment and "works well enough" software just really keeps it out of the main stream.

Re:Great another future unfinished project.

[aix tom]

Good. That's the way I like it.

Then I can sit on my little hill above the main stream, work the way I know for years with the same software that doesn't change much, sipping rum while I watch the other guys wash downstream with their hands flaying because they drown in the main stream. ;-P

( Of course that is not really possible with KDE anymore, so I have to use something more stable and no-nonsense like LXDE. )

KDE? on a smartphone?

[Anonymous Coward]

I had to buy a 2.6GHz dual-core processor and a GeForce 240 video card before its performance on my desktop became even marginally acceptable. The entire 4.x series of qt/kde applications nearly choke doing what kde3 did smoothly on 1/2 to 1/10 the resources - which is about what you'll have in a smartphone.

Unless there's some magical -DSTOP_BEING_HORRIBLY_SLOW flag I don't know about, I can't forsee kde 4 working on a portable device in a way that won't send people screaming.

Re:KDE? on a smartphone?

[NoAkai]

Had similar problems, tried to install Kubuntu Netbook on my laptop. Really shiny interface, but *way* too heavy for my poor Atom CPU.

Re:KDE? on a smartphone?

[Anonymous Coward]

You know I've often thought that technology was getting too fast and efficient. Now if we could only port this to Windows 8 for x86 and get it running on the Windows ARM with x86 compatibility on some underpowered 1GHz ARM processor with oh say 256MB of RAM and no swap because all we have is flash memory, we could all abandon all that stupid productivity we've been seeing far too much of lately.

Re:KDE? on a smartphone?

[ocularsinister]

When KDE is built for mobiles (or tablets) lots of stuff can be compiled out because its not necessary for the mobile platform. So, yes, in a sense there is such a switch...

Re:KDE? on a smartphone?

[horza]

I run Kubuntu standard edition on my Atom CPU Samsung NC10 netbook and it runs fine. Then again I compare the speed to the pre-installed Windows, before I wiped it. I even do basic photo processing using Digikam on it. It may not be as quick as some other distributions but it is more than usable.

Phillip.

Re:KDE? on a smartphone?

[Anonymous Coward]

Blame NVIDIA. Their drivers give horrible performance also with GNOME 3.

Don't forget to install KDE >= 4.6.1. There is a massive performance bug with = 4.6.0 that was killed in 4.6.1 (maybe the -DSTOP_BEING_HORRIBLY_SLOW flag you are waiting for)

Re:KDE? on a smartphone?

[Anonymous Coward]

Really? Mine runs perfectly fine on a Socket 754 Athlon64 3200+, ~2GB of DDR1 RAM (and it ran well with only 1GB; had to get more because the wife needs Photoshop) and a GeForce 4 MX440. I believe either you or your distro are full of shit. Kubuntu is awfully slow. OpenSuse and Slackware run pretty well.

Re:KDE? on a smartphone?

[Anonymous Coward]

And I have OpenSUSE with the netbook interface running on my old IBM R40, sporting a pentiumM 1.3 GHz and 1.2 GB RAM, an old Radeon graphics card, and it just flies. Sure it uses a lot of juice, but hey, the laptop isn't exactly new, so battery life..... Anyway, the point is that it's _not_ slow and a modern smartphone should be more than a match for that old hog.

And btw, stop judging KDE by Kubuntu, I swear Kubuntu is a Canonical conspiracy to make KDE look bad.

Re:KDE? on a smartphone?

[MonsterTrimble]

While I agree wholeheartedly that KDE4.x is WAY WAY WAY too resource hungry, what really helps is disabling Nepomuk & Akonadi. Those two services are at least 50% of the problem. I have a 1.3 GHz Pentium M & 512 MB of RAM on an old laptop and it runs reasonably once those two are shutdown.

Disclaimer: I left KDE as a desktop (on my laptop) for LXDE (Kubuntu -> LXDE + Ubuntu Minimal -> Lubuntu) about a year ago and have been very happy with the result. I still use some KDE apps - Dolphin & Clementine - but otherwise I've left it behind. The LXDE + Ubuntu Minimal was because I wasn't happy with the maturity of the Lubuntu distro until 10.10.

Re:KDE? on a smartphone?

[IrquiM]

Worked great on a p4 3.2ghz with a 8600GTS(or something...) - you must be doing something wrong. Even on my 2nd gen EEE it works with tolerable performance

Re:KDE? on a smartphone?

[NoAkai]

Really? That's odd. I ran it on a Samsung N350 Netbook, with 2Gigs of RAM and the dual-core version of the Atom CPU, and I had very noticeable interface "lag".

Are you kidding me?

[maweki]

Seriously, the screenshot in TFA looks like GNOME3.


And that was what the GNOME-ppl said: "we're making a system that works on desktop and portable" and you guys rant about the new interface.
Now KDE makes one for portables that looks like GNOME3 and I sure as hell know who's going to praise it.

Will we ever be able to try those concepts out before judging them?

Re:Are you kidding me?

[Anonymous Coward]

Gnome 3 shell is just a plasma wannabe. Deal with it.

Re:Are you kidding me?

[Anonymous Coward]

And that was what the GNOME-ppl said: "we're making a system that works on desktop and portable" and you guys rant about the new interface.
Now KDE makes one for portables that looks like GNOME3 and I sure as hell know who's going to praise it.

There's a difference: GNOME3 is taking a "one size fits all" route where desktop users are expected to interact with their desktops like they're smartphones or tablets. That's where a lot of the ranting I've seen has come from.

With KDE4, Plasma (the desktop) has different operating modes that you can install and use separately. It's had a netbook interface for a while, and nobody's been required to use it. This sounds like a continuation of the same idea.

I haven't used it so I can't say whether this mobile-oriented interface is a good choice or not, but I do prefer KDE's approach of making it available without making it mandatory. Unlike KDE, GNOME3 and Unity both seem determined to turn my desktop into an oversized netbook or tablet whether I want it or not.

Re:Are you kidding me?

[KugelKurt]

Seriously, the screenshot in TFA looks like GNOME3.

No, it does not. Not by far. You obviously never used GNOME 3.

Re:Are you kidding me?

[KugelKurt]

Gnome 3 shell is just a plasma wannabe. Deal with it.

GNOME 3 is a reusable, modular, highly advanced GUI framework? Um... no.
GNOME Shell uses its own toolkit called ST that's not meant to be used by anything besides GS, whereas Plasma (the framework) has been designed from the start to be reused with little code duplication.

Nice

[Grindalf]

I've seen some "i-Poddy" android like interfaces for KDE that were downloadable for last years mandriva. If you coat KDE with then black glass effect it makes for a very neutral Feng Shuey interface. "Darth Vader's Tummy" would be a good description. Later ...

Great but.. what?

[w0mprat]

Now KDE has successfully konquered the desktop with 0.43% desktop UI market share, they are going on to tablets, smartphones and whatever else. It's always struck me that many Linux has been an OS without users, it's just not used much at all outside of an enthusiast/developer base and this fate befalls many Linux based open source projects which can persist as long as someone wants to develop even if nobody wants to use it. Without much 3rd party adoption, anything of that sort is a no-go, it just doesn't take off. Despite this, many cross-platform open source efforts have epic success, such as Firefox, then again some don't like Gimp.

How about getting things right on the desktop first and actually getting real users to use KDE? Plasma to me, doesn't feel finished even. It was easy because OSX was a niche and Windows is easy to improve on. They're going up against iOS and Android. That's going to be hard.

*totally made up but based on on linux having 2% at most of the desktop market and gnome being the most popular.

Re:Great but.. what?

[ingwa]

*totally made up but based on on linux having 2% at most of the desktop market and gnome being the most popular.

Ah, but it isn't. If you just confine yourself to the US, you may think so. But if you look around globally, you will find that KDE is actually used more. For instance, see the 24 Million(!) school kids in Brazil using the KDE desktop.

Re:Great but.. what?

[Anonymous Coward]

Has anyone actually witnessed that? Or is that the usual Linux deluded make-believe?

Re:lol amen!

[Anonymous Coward]

What's the name of the Android VM port? All I know of is the full port of Android and from google there's just been a discussion that the VM could be ported but can't find any traces of it. Thnx.

Proper fork of KDE 3.5

[Lord Lode]

My opinion about KDE is: it could use a good fork of KDE 3.5, which is converted to use Qt 4, and with some of the new composite features added on top of it.

The application suite should be a separate project rather than considered part of KDE, so that for example changes to mail or text editor programs are something independent than changes to the actual desktop and windowing system.

And all this for desktop computers of course.

My $0.02.

Re:Proper fork of KDE 3.5

[MrHanky]

Just do it, then, and stop whining.

Re:Proper fork of KDE 3.5

[marsu_k]

My opinion about KDE is: it could use a good fork of KDE 3.5, which is converted to use Qt 4, and with some of the new composite features added on top of it.

Qt4 port - not going to happen. But the 3.5-series is still being developed, see Trinity desktop

The application suite should be a separate project rather than considered part of KDE, so that for example changes to mail or text editor programs are something independent than changes to the actual desktop and windowing system.

...and this would be different from the current situation how, exactly? If your distribution lumps KDE into few huge packages, blame your distribution, but KDE itself is highly modular. Changes to Kwin have no impact on KMail, for example (other than potentially changing the way the windowing system works, which is obvious). Furthermore, due to the modular nature of KDE, changes to KatePart affect KWrite, Kate and KDevelop (and all applications that use the text editor widget).

Re:Proper fork of KDE 3.5

[Asic Eng]

There is a fork called trinity. I don't believe they are planning to use Qt4 at this point, though.

Re:Proper fork of KDE 3.5

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah cause every computer user is, or wants to be, a programmer.

Dickhead.

Re:Proper fork of KDE 3.5

[domatic]

http://www.trinitydesktop.org/wiki/bin/view/Developers/RoadMap

Though all that may turn out to be a tad ambitious in the end.

Re:Proper fork of KDE 3.5

[Lord Lode]

Well, the thing is, when KDE4 was released, I liked various changes they did to the desktop manager, but hated many things they did to the applications, they completely destroyed all usefulness and productivity that Kate had for programming by destroying the search function, its dialogs, and making it per-file. It's stupid that changing your window manager also requires changing to crippled versions of applications. Plus it also makes me wonder what the KDE developer's focus is. I care about the window manager part of KDE. But they appear to care more about the applications, when looking in the changelists. And I didn't like a single change they did to the applications ever since after the latest KDE 3.5 was released.

Re:Proper fork of KDE 3.5

[Anonymous Coward]

I would never go back to 3.5 as it is very buggy and terrible when compared to 4.5. Why there are no more like you demanding windows 95?

Re:Proper fork of KDE 3.5

[EsbenMoseHansen]

Well, the thing is, when KDE4 was released, I liked various changes they did to the desktop manager, but hated many things they did to the applications, they completely destroyed all usefulness and productivity that Kate had for programming by destroying the search function, its dialogs, and making it per-file. It's stupid that changing your window manager also requires changing to crippled versions of applications. Plus it also makes me wonder what the KDE developer's focus is. I care about the window manager part of KDE. But they appear to care more about the applications, when looking in the changelists. And I didn't like a single change they did to the applications ever since after the latest KDE 3.5 was released.

You know, it doesn't. KDE 3.5 programs work fine under KDE4, but KDE3.5 have problems with obsolete dependencies.. especially Qt3. Those problems would persist if you had stuck with KDE3 through and through.

I also find it interesting that you find Kate destroyed. I use it daily, and I haven't even noticed any significant changes. But perhaps the keyword is "by-file"... as that is how I tend to operate, I might not have noticed any mulit-file features (for C++ I use KDevelop 4.2, which also uses Kate beneath. Except the menu layout, that is another quite good KDE4 application).

Re:Proper fork of KDE 3.5

[KugelKurt]

Yeah cause every computer user is, or wants to be, a programmer.

Dickhead.

You're a retard. Whoever is no programmer but wants some software badly there still the free market approach:
Hire someone to do it for you!

1998 just called...

[Anne Honime]

... they want their meme back.

We hear the same tiring rant over and over again, and this is really becoming OLD. Plain and simple, in that case, this is bollocks. I've run every version of KDE since v. 1, and anytime there was improvements, whiners have complained they were too broke to afford the required computing power. Then, don't use it and be done with it !

But what's more, since KDE 4.5, this rant is completely delusional. I use daily a 2008 eeepc 900A (Atom powered low-end netbook w/ 1GB RAM and Intel graphics), with Fedora 13, KDE 4.5 (composite display enabled with bells and whistles), and libreoffice. This is my bread-and-butter computer. The speed of KDE is already perfectly adequate even if slowed down by the lousy 8GB SSD of the machine. All the graphics effects just work. And this from a computer that wouldn't be able to run Microsoft Aero effects.

You don't like KDE : fine. But stop smearing it for imaginary defects produced only by your incapacity to configure it properly.

Re:1998 just called...

[blackpaw]

Agreed, using KDE 4.4.5 (Kubuntu 10.04) its perfectly usable on my Atom 510, booting windows it ran at a crawl.

Re:1998 just called...

[Anonymous Coward]

If a shitty little Atom netbook from 2008 is your bread and butter machine, it's time to get off slashdot and get a fucking job. KDE always has been and always will be slow. Grow up and deal with it.

Re:1998 just called...

[Anne Honime]

I have a better machine (running KDE too) to indulge into my photography hobby, but I don't need more than the atom for my job, and it's the smallest form factor with a usable keyboard. I can can drag it everywhere, and if it breaks, I'll just buy the same again. It's a tool, and you don't need a steam powered hammer to nail upholstery tacks. As it is, the eeepc is worth a fraction of one of my billable hour, but that's exactly what I need.

Re:1998 just called...

[PercentSevenC]

I can definitely corroborate your findings. I also have an Eee 900A (with the even slower 4GB SSD) that I use to do my engineering homework when I'm away from my desktop. It can't even run Windows XP SP3 to a useful extent, but Arch + KDE 4.6 is perfectly usable with all the eye candy turned on (except blur, which is a known bug with the Intel drivers, apparently). I don't see much of a performance difference versus Gnome, either.

Re:1998 just called...

[badkarmadayaccount]

I've been looking to set up an old xp laptop with arch, but I hear it takes some tweaking, and I'm worried how much it will take. I'm not afraid of following a how to, or reading a man page, but experimenting is something I'd rather do in a VM, also, I've got 4/40 GB HDD, so booting from and using NTFS is a big plus, but only puppy linux seems to do it.

Watch out, Android

[JThaddeus]

So, my little smartphone, KDE wants your UI to lock up as often as the sessions on my openSuSE box do. And you're music player is gonna turn to junk.

Re:Watch out, Android

[AvitarX]

Kde 4.6 is a lot better than the previous.

I would call 4.4 the first useable in any way version, and 4.6 the first version that "feels" like a contender for daily use (it's the first one to survive more than 3 days of test drive, and I don't know if it will ever be switched back to gnome ot not.

Re:Watch out, Android

[KugelKurt]

Upgrade your radeon drivers.
And which music player do you mean? Juk, the SC default, hasn't changed much over the years.

A Rig ...

[bobs666]

... is what makes your sailboat go.

why?

[Osgeld]

KDE doesnt even run all that good on a 2.8ghz 4gig dual core, how do you think its going to fare on a freaking mobile

Re:why?

[Teun]

Funny install you have, I'm running it (the Kubuntu 10.10 desktop version) on a two years old HP-mini netbook with 1 GB of RAM and it's fine...

Re:why?

[suy]

KDE runs awesome in my 2.2GHz processor with a passively refrigerated graphics card (with all the graphics effects), and with about 512MB of memory used if only KDE4 apps are used (which is 95% of my time). And if you read the blogs, you have the explanation about why it runs really good on small devices if the drivers are properly set up.

Re:why?

[Osgeld]

with refrigerated video cards?

A lot depends on the details of the setup

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe the reason people bitch about the same things that they did since V1 is that the kde team perpetually builds the same problems into its DE?

I have the same (or similar) eeePC, and it also just works. But you have to remember that Asus put a lot of effort into making the eeePC work well with linux (it actually has fully functional drivers). OTOH, my machine at work is a newer, much more powerful desktop from HP (I don't know the exact specs) that (critically) also has a much bigger screen that it has to compute pixels for. The linux drivers are OK, but not great. KDE fucking sucks on it. Hard. It sucks so bad that I use the (fully and smoothly functioning) GNOME desktop to run our in-house applications that were built for QT4.

Oh, I wish that just not using a Linux desktop at work was an option. I like playing with it in my spare time, but they really suck for work. That "if you don't like it don't use it" refrain doesn't work either. The folks who built this stuff made promises about how usable it would/should be and they should stand by those promises and not just run after the shiny new stuff. My workplace drank the Linux on the desktop Koolaid based on what these people have said, we made contributions to several projects in the form of money and code, and they have pretty much abandoned us.

Re:A lot depends on the details of the setup

[Anne Honime]

my machine at work is a newer, much more powerful desktop from HP (I don't know the exact specs) that (critically) also has a much bigger screen that it has to compute pixels for. The linux drivers are OK, but not great. KDE fucking sucks on it.

It this can be of any consolation to you, my mother's computer is a fancy quad core HP, and it sucks donkey's ass under windows too (would freeze, reboot on its own in the middle of the night, and some other surprising oddities). Odd as were most HP PC I came across for years. HP is a very over rated brand.

OTOH, my home built computer made from various bits and pieces around an AMD 64 X2 and an Asus budget MB with 4GB RAM is rock stable. I just suspend it to memory at night, and almost never reboot it fully unless I need to unplug it from the wall socket. And KDE just flies on it. The only trouble I had so far were blown caps on the preceding MSI motherboard, I swapped the offender out, fiddled some time with initrd because fedora's idea of setting up LVM2 is braindead, and finally the frankenputer was back into service. Linux + KDE just work for me, YMMV.

Re:A lot depends on the details of the setup

[westyvw]

I can not even..... I have to use windows at work, fortunately I can use Linux in a VM. Windows just sucks away my time, while Linux gets work done, and done fast. I cant even fathom what you are talking about.

Re:lol amen!

[WorBlux]

It's just the standard android running on top of Quemu. Someone may have wrapped it all up together, but is shouldn't be that difficult to do yourself.