Aaron Seigo On KDE SC 5.0 — and What Getting There Means

An anonymous reader writes "After years of focusing on further improving KDE4, two weeks ago the developers of the free desktop announced the next big step for their project: KDE Frameworks 5.0. But as long-time developer — and Plasma team leader — Aaron Seigo points out in an interview with derStandard.at/web, the source-incompatible changes shall be held to a minimum. He also calls Frameworks 5.0 only the 'first step;' new Applications and Workspace releases are to follow later. Seigo goes on to talk about their chances in the mobile market with Plasma Active and further areas of collaboration with the other big free desktop: GNOME."

Comments

Printing parity with KDE3?

[Anonymous Coward]

Please please pretty pretty pretty pleeeeease with sugar on top?

Re:Printing parity with KDE3?

[icebike]

I'm not sure printing is the bailiwick of KDE.
There has been some problematic regression in CUPS of late and that may be the source of your problems.

Its critical that the the "source-incompatible" changes be held to virtually ZERO, because KDE can't stand another
debacle like the release of KDE 4.0, 4.1, 4.2, 4.3 only to have it finally become reasonably usable by 4.4.

The new KDE framework is all the work of the current team, they should have no problem supporting a few dual methods to handle current code in the current way while adding what ever "source incompatibilities" that are seen as necessary.
I understand the break from the KDE 3 baggage forced on them, but what we have here is all their own work.

It should transition smoothly. It must, or no one will be left to use it.

4.6 and 4.7 have been wonderful releases. Please lets not regress this time.

Re:Printing parity with KDE3?

[Anonymous Coward]

About that: http://www.layt.net/john/blog/odysseus/kf5_localization_and_printing_plans

it's the only good desktop left

[Anonymous Coward]

KDE is the only one. Gnome2 was OK, but Gnome3 and Unity went off the "dumb it down so far that it's useless" cliff. Windows is, well, Windows. XFCE is OK for small/lightweight systems but just doesn't provide anywhere near the level of functionality that KDE does.

So KDE is left holding the fort. I hope they manage to live up to the pressure of being the only usable Linux desktop remaining.

Also too bad KDE4.0-4.2 caused so many people to write off KDE entirely, because along about 4.6, it got really nice and they fixed most of the crap that was missing or wrong with the earlier 4.x series.

Re:it's the only good desktop left

[Anonymous Coward]

G3 and unity suck because of the emphasis on tablets.

As long as KDE doesn't do that, it'll be OK. But they sorta hint, from TFA:

"Doesn't that also mean, that the traditional desktop is losing importance?
Aaron Seigo: It's losing importance in the sense that newspapers have lost importance."

Re:it's the only good desktop left

[LordLimecat]

Windows is, well, Windows

Honestly, (and if this gets me modded down, i have the karma to burn), I find the Win7 paradigm to be about the most functional and useable one. I miss the self-sorting menus (where software sticks itself in the right place), and I cant mod the heck out of it with Compiz, but out of the box it has VERY nice keyboard shortcuts, an uncluttered "active window" space, and the menu search is excellent.

Thats not to say im in love with Windows, but the new GUI (excepting their hiding of various control panel applets) is the reason I ditched XP on my desktop for 7.

Re:it's the only good desktop left

[icebike]

Well, KDE has hidden a ton of stuff just as deeply as Windows 7 did.
But, otherwise I agree, Win 7 is quite good.
I actually prefer KDE 4.7 to Windows 7, even though I spend most of my day on Windows 7. Something about having multiple desktops, allowing you to leave one a cluttered mess of windows while you use a fresh one to handle some interruption.

I even ran into a tablet (Atom processor HP Slate) running windows 7 and it was eminently usable, in spite of all the ranting you read all over the web about windows 7 never being designed for touch screens. Not as cool as the Android tablet, but pretty close.

Re:it's the only good desktop left

[Billly Gates]

Agreed. Windows 7 is nice.

KDE sucks too. Kde 3.6 was better but I remember it feeling cluttered back in the day before KDE 4.x so it was not perfect either but at least on par to Windows XP.

If KDE wants to do well they need to take their time for a nice desktop and not rush it like Gnome 3 without extensive R&D from people who have zero experience working with UIs.

I want features that are not hidden, but rather simple to use and Windows 7 fits this fine. Autoscroll and aero preview are perfect. I feel Windows 8 has it well done with tablets and a traditional UI together and you can switch to one or the other. I pray KDE 4 puts power and functionality back in but keeps its UI simply to use in a perfect balance. I think a tile startup screen like Windows 8 is perfect.

Re:it's the only good desktop left

[lattyware]

True that.

I run KDE mainly because it's the only thing that supports my triple monitor setup. But it's also really wel done. It allows for stuff like a vertical taskbar that works well (Unity's is horrible, Gnome forces it to be wide and have text instead of just icons, KDE does it right, and supports the 'pin to taskbar' thing that windows does) - this is something that took me a while to get used to, but really is worth it. With widescreen monitors, vertical space is at a premium. I used to run the linux-traditional taskbar on top, but taskbar on left is definitely a much better solution, and KDE supports it well. With Gnome 3 - they have removed your ability to even move the taskbar (or the thing that replaced it). Not to mention gnome 3 refuses to run on many drivers, and multi-monitor setups.

KDE really does work nicely, it has a lot of good features built in, and it's a lot nicer than it used to be. I hated KDE 3.x, but 4.6 is the best desktop I can find, and I was lucky to be forced to use it.

Re:it's the only good desktop left

[lattyware]

The difference is KDE are doing it the right way - it's a choice, not a forced feature. If you want to run in a tablet-suited mode, you go for it. But you don't *have* to.

Re:it's the only good desktop left

[unixisc]

Windows 7 is fine, but once Windows 8 is out, Windows users will experience what Gnome 3 users are experiencing today. Their interface is completely tile based, which is totally different from the start menu that people have been used to since Windows 95. In short, an user experience that is now close to 20 years old is being replaced by this (there was nothing in the cited article that suggested that a Windows 8 user could use, say, the Aero interface, much less the old Windows XP or the 2000 interface.

With KDE, you can at least adopt their 'Redmond' theme that would give you the Windows look & feel. I doubt it'll be do-able w/ WIndows 8. This is what beats me - previously, Microsoft used to allow users to use older interfaces, but it's not sure that they will this time. Also, by having the same interface for both desktop & tablet, MS is doing what GNOME did rather than what KDE did. If that ends the Windows desktop, it'll probably take down the x86 CPU w/ it, since Windows is the only reason the x86 is ubiquitous (or else, everybody would be using ARM or MIPS)

Re:it's the only good desktop left

[DrXym]

G3 and unity suck because of the emphasis on tablets.

No, they suck because they're both relatively new desktops with documented missing functionality and they both have a lot of work to do before they can be considered mature. Unity is designed for Netbooks and a lot of its problems stem from that e.g. the massive icons, the global menu and launcher anchored to the left work really badly large screens. Gnome 3 has piles of missing functionality (e.g. desktop icons which have to be manually reenabled), and the activities launcher is annoying for living offscreen like it does.

Neither is especially useful tablets. I'm not even sure that either even supports touch properly, or implements stuff like onscreen keyboards.

Given the shitstorm KDE 4 got when it was released for similar reasons, one would expect some empathy with their situation even if you still prefer KDE. Neither IMO is ready but given them a point release or two and I think they'll both be fine. Personally I think Unity is a more conventional design and closer to what people expect but GNOME 3 appears better thought through and doesn't suffer from prominent positioning of Ubuntu's stupid online store at every turn.

Re:it's the only good desktop left

[Billly Gates]

From what I have seen is the tile interface is akin to the log in screen. You open the areo Windows 7 desktop to use Office and do work stuff. So in essence both interfaces are used which is an interesting twist. The betas out only have the Windows 7 aero interface as the tile is still being developed.

As long as you can choose I think that is fine. The tile interface might be sweet on tiny netbooks and pads or to check the weather or email before you open the regular desktop for work.

Re:it's the only good desktop left

[LordLimecat]

I never was really able to use more than 2 desktops on Gnome/KDE; I ended up forgetting I had the apps open, and would reopen eg firefox, and it just ended up getting in the way. Possibly I just need a Compiz / Linux GUI Guru to set me up, but nothing has really fit quite as nice as the new startbar in 7.

Re:it's the only good desktop left

[Anonymous Coward]

You seriously do not know what a taskbar and pager are, nor how to use them?

Crush GNOME. Don't collaborate with them.

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't want to see the KDE developers wasting time and effort by collaborating with GNOME. GNOME is a dying project. It is the XFree86 of the open source desktop world. The complete failure of GNOME 3 means that it'll be a dead project in, at most, a couple of years. There's no reason for the KDE devs to get involved with a dying project like GNOME. They should instead focus on making improvements to KDE, which will bring real value to all KDE users. KDE is a very lively and continually-improving software project. GNOME is not.

Re:Crush GNOME. Don't collaborate with them.

[DMiax]

WTF? If you design something with cross-desktop in mind, or even just a shared KDE-GNOME technology, it is much more likely that your work will be well engineered and will stand the test of time, even if you end up being the only one using it.

Re:Crush GNOME. Don't collaborate with them.

[Anonymous Coward]

That's utter bullshit. Good software arises from doing one thing, and only one thing, well. That's a cornerstone of the UNIX philosophy.

Supporting multiple desktops is the antithesis of that philosophy. All you end up doing is offering a shitty, compromised "solution" for everybody, rather than an optimal solution for a smaller number of users.

Hell, given the significant technical differences between KDE and GNOME, anything trying to improve interoperability between them will by necessity be very limited in ability and be useless to many users.

Like the GP says, GNOME is a failed desktop. KDE and XFCE are the future. GNOME, like CDE, is a relic of days gone by.

Re:Crush GNOME. Don't collaborate with them.

[Anonymous Coward]

No love for LXDE?

Re:Crush GNOME. Don't collaborate with them.

[Grishnakh]

That's utter bullshit. Good software arises from doing one thing, and only one thing, well. That's a cornerstone of the UNIX philosophy.

Supporting multiple desktops is the antithesis of that philosophy. All you end up doing is offering a shitty, compromised "solution" for everybody, rather than an optimal solution for a smaller number of users.

I think you meant "supporting multiple computing devices" or something like that, because having multiple virtual desktops is something most KDE users seem to appreciate.

Anyway, I disagree. KDE is more than just a UI, it's a lot of back-end systems as well; a subsystem for video/audio, a network manager, etc. Google for "KDE netbook"; KDE has another mode that's optimized for netbooks with their tiny screens, and it looks very different from regular KDE. Someone over there seems to realize that different computing devices need different UIs, and they've designed KDE to be able to change based on the device. There's no reason you can't have the same DE on different devices, but obviously it needs to be "skinned" differently: with a traditional interface for desktops with dual 30" screens, keyboards, and mice, and a totally different interface for tablets, and another interface for netbooks, etc. There's no reason these can't be combined into one DE, instead of forcing users to have a single interface that looks the same on all devices.

This is nothing new, and has always been part of KDE philosophy, and the same goes for GNOME. With KDE, the key was always configurability: you like window decorations that look like MacOS? You can choose that. You want the panel on the side or top or bottom, or ever two panels? You can choose that too. In GNOME, it's always been the opposite: we tell you what your desktop's going to look like because we know what's best for you, and you better like it. Gnome has long been removing configuration options because they're "too confusing".

So now that tablets and touchscreens are du jour, the Gnome fools think that we all need a UI that's, as you put it, a shitty, compromised solution for everybody, so that people don't get confused, whereas the KDE folks think that different devices can have different UIs, and that their users are smart enough to be able to adapt.

Re:Crush GNOME. Don't collaborate with them.

[Anonymous Coward]

Anyway, I disagree. KDE is more than just a UI, it's a lot of back-end systems as well; a subsystem for video/audio, a network manager, etc. Google for "KDE netbook"; KDE has another mode that's optimized for netbooks with their tiny screens, and it looks very different from regular KDE. Someone over there seems to realize that different computing devices need different UIs, and they've designed KDE to be able to change based on the device. There's no reason you can't have the same DE on different devices, but obviously it needs to be "skinned" differently: with a traditional interface for desktops with dual 30" screens, keyboards, and mice, and a totally different interface for tablets, and another interface for netbooks, etc. There's no reason these can't be combined into one DE, instead of forcing users to have a single interface that looks the same on all devices.

I think the technical term which you are looking for is called (by the KDE project) a "containment".

http://techbase.kde.org/Projects/Plasma/Vocabulary

KDE's Plasma can have any of several different types of containment on any given virtual desktop. Desktops, netbooks, tables and phones can all utilise different containments, each containment type can be optimised for touscreens, mice, touchpads, or even Kinnect, Wiimote or joystick as the primary HID input device.

It is all still KDE.

GNOME gets nowhere near this level of capability.

Re:Crush GNOME. Don't collaborate with them.

[maxwell demon]

Good software arises from doing one thing, and only one thing, well. That's a cornerstone of the UNIX philosophy.

Supporting multiple desktops is the antithesis of that philosophy.

Quite the opposite is the case. Your only hope to work well on several desktops is to use that principle. Because otherwise your stuff will be so deeply entrenched into one desktop that it simply won't work well on the other one.

Re:Crush GNOME. Don't collaborate with them.

[unixisc]

I don't want to see the KDE developers wasting time and effort by collaborating with GNOME. GNOME is a dying project. It is the XFree86 of the open source desktop world. The complete failure of GNOME 3 means that it'll be a dead project in, at most, a couple of years. There's no reason for the KDE devs to get involved with a dying project like GNOME. They should instead focus on making improvements to KDE, which will bring real value to all KDE users. KDE is a very lively and continually-improving software project. GNOME is not.

Yeah, while Gnome was previously dominant and it made sense to be inter-operable w/ them, that's now gone. I wonder who now pre-installs Gnome3 w/ their desktop - Fedora? Debian? Instead, KDE should work on making their own improvements, as well as seeing what they can use from GNUSTEP, and even making themselves inter-operable with them - not for any reason other than GNUSTEP is better, and provides what GNOME was originally supposed to deliver, but never did.

If Debian doesn't want to pre-load KDE on their desktops, they should offer GNUSTEP instead. I know they offer one distribution of GNUSTEP on Linux. Oh, and is Kubuntu still an option? Because if I can get a Linux w/ a KDE interface but w/ Debian update capabilities, as opposed to RH/yumm, I'm happy. Particularly if the software center is available in Kubuntu.

Incidentally, what does Debian offer on their other non-Linux OSs, such as BSD, or Hurd? Gnome?

Re:Crush GNOME. Don't collaborate with them.

[olau]

This is nothing new, and has always been part of KDE philosophy, and the same goes for GNOME. With KDE, the key was always configurability: you like window decorations that look like MacOS? You can choose that. You want the panel on the side or top or bottom, or ever two panels? You can choose that too.

Not that I disagree with you regarding philosophy, but it's interesting to note that those two examples you bring up here were both possible with GNOME until the latest release. GNOME 2 was about removing stupid configuration options, of the kind that replaced figuring out sensible defaults. But yes, GNOME 3 seems to be much more radical, as you say.

Re:Crush GNOME. Don't collaborate with them.

[badkarmadayaccount]

Kubuntu is the suckiest KDE distro around. Linux Mint Debian edition is where it's at.

well, can only hope it gets better than KDE4

[Anonymous Coward]

I am with KDE 3.5.10 and probably will stick with it for a _LOONNG_ time to come.
KDE 4 is more than ugly and useless and GNOME 3 is an unholy mess.

Re:well, can only hope it gets better than KDE4

[gatkinso]

Well, I was a KDE 3.x hold out for the longest time... but then I gave it a chance again.

I am glad I did.

It really has improved greatly since the 4.0 debacle. Try it, from one 4.0 hater to another.

Re:well, can only hope it gets better than KDE4

[smpoole7]

I'm glad to hear that, because 4.0 truly sent me to Gnome. I don't really like Gnome, but the first few KDE 4 releases were almost unusable for me.

Re:well, can only hope it gets better than KDE4

[AaronW]

I was the same way. It took until KDE 4.5 before I switched. There's still a few things I miss from 3.5.10 but it is much improved.

Re:well, can only hope it gets better than KDE4

[Anonymous Coward]

For what it's worth I totally agree with gatkinso. KDE4.0 was an epic disaster. KDE 4.6-4.7 have become really nice. I don't miss anything from KDE 3.5 any more, and 4.6+ has more polish than 3.x ever did.

Give it a fair shake, you might like it. Don't let 4.0 put you off the whole thing.

Re:well, can only hope it gets better than KDE4

[Nimey]

Eh. Recent releases are better, but I still don't like the direction KDE's gone with the user interface with 4.x; I care neither for Plasmoids (or whatever those things are) nor for the way the K-menu hides the item hierarchies.

Re:well, can only hope it gets better than KDE4

[AvitarX]

Agreed,
4.5 was the first usable
4.6 the first that felt stable
I think the changes to OpenGL make 4.7 really stable and smooth, even with crazy effects. I still miss the windows bursting into flames from Compiz though (there was something really satisfying about that, and when fast enough it wasn't distracting.

Re:well, can only hope it gets better than KDE4

[tomhudson]

I stuck with KDE 4x until the last updates, which made everything so sloooow that I'm posting this using LXDE instead. knotify4 is just one of many resource hogs.

It's insane that a desktop like KDE can kill a multi-core machine. Even Vista runs faster on the same box - which really was the last straw for me.

Re:well, can only hope it gets better than KDE4

[Anonymous Coward]

You can still use the Classic K-Menu. I always do.

Re:well, can only hope it gets better than KDE4

[crazycheetah]

Or try the Lancelot Launcher. I think it's in the kdeplasma-addons package in Kubuntu, not sure about other distributions, but it should be something like that. I actually use that pretty exclusively these days. I just really like it. It does not hide the item hierarchies like the normal K-Menu. Plus it's got small little things like the no-click interface that are kinda cool, and which I do use occasionally. It's at least worth checking out.

Re:well, can only hope it gets better than KDE4

[Grishnakh]

It's a little bit silly to complain about KDE's user interface when the things you complain about are user-configurable. Configurability has always been the hallmark of KDE; if you don't like the way it comes by default, there's probably a setting to change it under System Settings->Workspace Appearance and Behavior.

As the other posters said, there's actually three different modes for the K-menu: classic (which is probably what you want), the new one, and Lancelot. If you don't like the one set by default, try another one.

This isn't GNOME, where you're stuck with whatever the "usability experts" there think you should use, and aren't allowed to change anything. You can have it your way (with apologies to BK).

Plus, no one's forcing you to put plasmoids on your desktop. You can leave it totally blank if you want.

Re:well, can only hope it gets better than KDE4

[Nimey]

I certainly can gripe about that being non-obvious, now can't I?

Re:well, can only hope it gets better than KDE4

[Grishnakh]

How much more obvious can they make it, other than putting into the control panel (called "System Settings" in KDE, but the same thing)? What else should they do, stick a giant button on the menu itself that says "configure menu"? Who wants to see that every single time they open the menu? If they did that on every UI element, the whole desktop would be filled with configuration buttons for every little item. That's why it's all put in the control panel (or should be; KDE4 falls down a little in this area with certain things compared to 3.5).

Re:well, can only hope it gets better than KDE4

[KugelKurt]

I'm glad to hear that, because 4.0 truly sent me to Gnome. I don't really like Gnome, but the first few KDE 4 releases were almost unusable for me.

How often do we have to repeat that 4.0 and 4.1 were not meant for end users and that the 3.5.10 release (which happened AFTER 4.1) is proof of that?
4.2 was for end users. Granted, there were a few glitches in 4.2.0 but after 4.2.1 the Plasma Desktop ride was nothing but pleasant for me.

Re:well, can only hope it gets better than KDE4

[m50d]

Ok, here are my big complaints for things that were working in 3.5:

The system tray still doesn't work. KDE4 apps appear in it, but KDE3 or non-kde apps don't. So for an application that keeps running in the system tray when you close the window (e.g. skype), you then have no way to close it.

There's no way to set a default transparency for foreground windows. That was there in 3.5, I filed a bug about it, but five minor versions later it's still not there.

Re:well, can only hope it gets better than KDE4

[vurian]

Yes, it does. The skype icon on my KDE 4.7 system appears in the systemtray, just like any other systray app I've ever tried.

Re:well, can only hope it gets better than KDE4

[fwarren]

You can always switch to the classic menu.

My wife was a huge KDE 3.5 fan. She now uses KDE 4.6 and is liking it very much. That is an accomplishment. Here requirements were 1) A translucent kicker, 2) A classic menu 3) A classic desktop 4) A wallpaper rotator. KDE 4.2 and onward deliver.

Re:well, can only hope it gets better than KDE4

[Grishnakh]

I agree. In fact, I have one PC here with a relatively ancient KDE 4.5.5, and Skype works just fine with the systray on that.

Re:well, can only hope it gets better than KDE4

[Anonymous Coward]

Under Kubuntu and Gentoo, I've had to kill knotify4 twice a day to keep the OS usable; under OpenSuse, that was not a problem. Maybe you could try some other distros.

Re:well, can only hope it gets better than KDE4

[tomhudson]

Under Kubuntu and Gentoo, I've had to kill knotify4 twice a day to keep the OS usable; under OpenSuse, that was not a problem. Maybe you could try some other distros.

Unfortunately, this IS opensuse, and it's the same problem. knotify4 is a pig. There are a few other issues that don't help.

Re:well, can only hope it gets better than KDE4

[Nimey]

Look, neckbeard, I'm sorry I'm insulting your Favorite Desktop Environment, but some of us have lives.

Re:well, can only hope it gets better than KDE4

[Grishnakh]

You sound like a complete moron. You complain that KDE isn't set up exactly the way you want it, as if they're somehow supposed to be able to read your puny little mind, and then when someone shows you how to change it to be exactly the way you want it, you complain more that "it's too hard!!!" Maybe you should go buy a Mac if you're that stupid, or maybe you shouldn't even be using a computer at all.

Re:well, can only hope it gets better than KDE4

[Nimey]

You sound like a complete moron.

Who's the greater idiot: the idiot, or the one who argues with him?

You are what people complain about when they say how needlessly hostile $OPEN_SOURCE_PROJECT's fora are; you're more interested in being right than you are about solving someone's problem, and out here in the real world that's pathetic.

Take it from an older nerd: fuck off and learn some social skills.

Re:well, can only hope it gets better than KDE4

[Grishnakh]

you're more interested in being right than you are about solving someone's problem

You're the pathetic one, asshole. I told him how to solve his problem, but no, that wasn't good enough. What's the point of telling people how to solve their problems if they throw it in your face.

Fuck you.

Re:well, can only hope it gets better than KDE4

[Anonymous Coward]

Ok, here are my big complaints for things that were working in 3.5:

The system tray still doesn't work. KDE4 apps appear in it, but KDE3 or non-kde apps don't. So for an application that keeps running in the system tray when you close the window (e.g. skype), you then have no way to close it.

--

I am trolling

I hope so. I've never had this problem, and I've been using Skype and Pidgin for IM since Pidgin was Gaim and we had Gaim-vv as an exciting dead project for video. This is most likely a distro problem, or just PEBKAC.

Re:well, can only hope it gets better than KDE4

[Nimey]

Your mother's first in that line, chum.

Re:well, can only hope it gets better than KDE4

[Grishnakh]

Go suck a cock, you pathetic piece of shit.

Re:well, can only hope it gets better than KDE4

[Nimey]

Show me how, expert.

Re:well, can only hope it gets better than KDE4

[m50d]

Happens for me on two different distros. Wish I was making it up.

Re:well, can only hope it gets better than KDE4

[Anonymous Coward]

How embarassing for you both.
 
  PENIS FOREVER!!! !!! !!!

Re:well, can only hope it gets better than KDE4

[vurian]

Are you using the same home partition for both distributions? It's not unlikely it's a configuration problem in that case -- some setting in the shared .kde4 directory messes up.

Re:well, can only hope it gets better than KDE4

[Nimey]

Nah, I'm just trolling him now.

Re:well, can only hope it gets better than KDE4

[m50d]

Nope. Home machine and work machine, entirely separate.

Re:well, can only hope it gets better than KDE4

[Risen888]

Yeah. The idea that if you wanted to change the way the workspace appeared and behaved, you'd look in "Workspace Appearance and Behavior" is just so...

Oh wait, no. It's bloody obvious.

Re:well, can only hope it gets better than KDE4

[gatkinso]

>> How often do we have to repeat that 4.0 and 4.1 were not meant for end users and that the 3.5.10 release (which happened AFTER 4.1) is proof of that?

That line is some backpeddling bullshit if I ever heard it. And I have heard a lot of that sort of thing.

The KDE team royally fucked up, Don't know why they can't admit it.

Oh well it is history now.

First post..

[Anonymous Coward]

Inb4, he resigns from KDE.

Don't do it by the way. KDE is currently the best in Linux.

Tablets are a fad. They have no staying power.

[Anonymous Coward]

Like it or not, tablets are merely a fad. They have no staying power.

They're a lot like the hardware equivalent of Ruby on Rails. They get a lot of media hype, and a lot of "hip" people are really buzzed about them. They have a novelty factor that wears off with a couple of days worth of use, however. It's soon realized that they're actually pretty impractical in the real world. After the initial high has passed, any sensible person no longer uses them. Ruby on Rails programmers go back to Perl, Python or PHP, whereas tablet users go back to their desktops and their laptops.

KDE would do quite well if they ignore this tablet fad. In a couple of years, when everybody has forgotten about tablets, KDE will be a far better desktop environment than it currently is.

Re:Tablets are a fad. They have no staying power.

[Kjella]

Like it or not, tablets are merely a fad. They have no staying power.

And I assume you're basing all this wonderful market research on yourself or a small group of like-minded friends? They sold 9.25 million iPads last quarter - for comparison they sold 3.95 million Macs. It's as much a fad as the iPhone, maybe you haven't found a use for it but the market has. The problem with Gnome and KDE chasing after the tablet market is that they think they'll be a "player" along with iOS and Android. If anything I think they have less chances of succeeding there on the desktop, they're ignoring the 1% desktop market share they have and chasing 1% of the mobile market. They haven't got the resources to run in two directions with two different teams, so they'll go halfway up both roads.

Re:Tablets are a fad. They have no staying power.

[Anonymous Coward]

Having a pocket-sized supercomupter (by 1980 standards) is awesome, and has staying power. Not that it wasn't also a fad. Tablets, on the other hand are basically a laptop without a keyboard. I'm sure people feel cool walking around with them (and I'm sure they do have a few niche purposes). But they are:

1. Big. Bigger than a netbook. As big as a laptop.
2. Hard to write seriously on.
3. Much more expensive than ebook readers.

I summary, I agree with you and GP: KDE needs to ignore tablets.

Re:Tablets are a fad. They have no staying power.

[camperdave]

Like it or not, tablets are merely a fad. They have no staying power.

Don't count on it. Smart phones are tablets and they're here to stay.

Re:Tablets are a fad. They have no staying power.

[Artifakt]

I don't own an E-book reader. I do read e-books on my laptops, in fact I have an old IBM Thinkpad R32 that has 'only' 512 Meg RAM and if it wasn't for comparatively lightweight OS's like Kubuntu all it could probably still do is e-books. I may well switch to a tablet PC, but I would much prefer to go through the comparatively minor hassle of making that old Thinkpad run XFCE in a really lightweight distro like Puppy Linux if Kubuntu gets to big for the old laptop, long before I would buy any of the proprietary format e-book readers. The notebook has lasted about 9 years (I don't remember when I bought it, but C-Net reviewed one in Oct of 2002). Not that I'm planning on keeping it another nine, but I would estimate that the chance this old notebook will be around in another nine years and some form of Linux will still run on it are both far, far higher than the chance I'd be able to legally access all proprietary format e-book files I might purchase by then if I started buying in some proprietary format or other now.
            E book readers are cheap because some prices are hidden - people will pay several prices later, just like they pay the full price for their low cost printer when they have to buy ink cartridges. One of those real prices will be re-buying and re-buying any media they want to keep longterm.
I'm perfectly cool however if KDE ignores tablets. Most of what I would want one to do doesn't take a really modern operating system at all. A tablet has more than niche purposes, but it doesn't substitute for everything I would do with a laptop, let alone a desktop. Now best of all worlds might be KDE doing a bang up job of supporting things big enough to include keyboards and still finding a way to deal with tablet environments as well, but I will gladly praise KDE if the deliver far less than that, just so they don't forget desktop machines.

Re:Tablets are a fad. They have no staying power.

[Grishnakh]

KDE would do quite well if they ignore this tablet fad. In a couple of years, when everybody has forgotten about tablets, KDE will be a far better desktop environment than it currently is.

Actually, I disagree somewhat. KDE actually doesn't have only one UI, it has at least two. There's a netbook version of it, which I believe (haven't tried it myself) on the newest KDE versions you can switch to pretty easily. As you might expect, it's designed for netbooks with small screens, and looks very different from traditional KDE. However, this doesn't detract from KDE, because the traditional mode is still there and still the default. Apparently, someone over there got the bright idea that they don't need to have the exact same interface on all devices, and can instead have different interfaces, optimized for different devices, while the architecture underneath is still the same. This of course flies in the face of Unity and Gnome3, where the devs think that everything needs to be exactly the same everywhere, whether you're using a 4" smartphone or a desktop with quad 30" monitors.

So there's really no reason (if they haven't done it already) that KDE can't support tablets as well; they'd just make that a different UI mode, similar to the netbook mode but optimized for touchscreens of course. As long as it defaults to the traditional mode when you install it on a regular desktop system, users who don't want a smartphone interface on their desktop PC aren't going to complain.

Just as you use different tools for different jobs, and just as sports cars have different controls than tractor-trailers (and also different from airplanes), computing devices should have different interfaces optimized for their input/output devices.

Re:Tablets are a fad. They have no staying power.

[Grishnakh]

The problem with Gnome and KDE chasing after the tablet market is that they think they'll be a "player" along with iOS and Android. If anything I think they have less chances of succeeding there on the desktop, they're ignoring the 1% desktop market share they have and chasing 1% of the mobile market. They haven't got the resources to run in two directions with two different teams, so they'll go halfway up both roads.

Regardless of what Siego may have said, I don't see KDE chasing after the tablet market, since last time I looked, KDE still had a very traditional desktop UI. It's only Gnome3 and Unity that are chasing the tablet market. I do hope they don't change direction though.

Aside from that, you're exactly correct. The tablet market is already dominated by iOS and Android (and I'm sure Windows will try to make a play there too, no matter how badly it flops the first iteration or two). Gnome/Unity trying to get in on that is just dumb, because they've pissed off and disenfranchised all the Linux desktop users who relied on them for a stable desktop computing environment to get their work done with. No, desktop Linux users weren't a giant majority of the market, but they're probably a lot more than people realize (since you can't go by retail sales or license counts to count them), and it's still a much larger number than the number of people who really want to wipe out iOS or Android and install a Linux distro on their tablet.

Re:Tablets are a fad. They have no staying power.

[Grishnakh]

Um, not exactly. I can see how you might be confused, since the hardware is largely the same, though not exactly. There's two giant differences:
1) the tablet isn't a phone. You can't talk on it. While some of them do have 3G radios, I don't know if any of them actually allow talking on them, or if they only do data over the 3G radio. Even if you could talk on them, it'd be a little clunky, since you'd need a headset. When was the last time you saw someone holding a 10" tablet up to their head?
2) the screen is much bigger on the tablet. Because of this, it's quite impossible to put a tablet in your pocket, while that's easy with a smartphone (unless you have some giant pockets...).

Lots of computing devices these days have very similar hardware under the hood. The touchscreen terminals you use at the checkout line at the supermarket are nearly the same as smartphones: same CPU, video capabilities, touchscreen, some have 3G radios, etc. That doesn't make them a smartphone, because the physical form factor is different, and the software is different. With a whole lot of work, you might be able to get one to work as a smartphone (once you figure out how to break the encryption on the bootloader), but it's a lot easier to just buy a smartphone.

So no, smartphones aren't tablets. They're two different devices, with different uses.

Re:Tablets are a fad. They have no staying power.

[icebike]

But they are:

1. Big. Bigger than a netbook. As big as a laptop.
2. Hard to write seriously on.
3. Much more expensive than ebook readers.

I summary, I agree with you and GP: KDE needs to ignore tablets.

I have no idea what tablet you are looking at, but the ones I've seen are much smaller than most netbooks, handle standard bluetooth keyboards and mice, and the price is dropping all the time.

Ebook reading is just about the last activity that comes to mind with them.
They are the couch computer, the commuting computer, the brain trust, the portable desk, the shop floor, the shipping dock, and the GIS computer, as well as the doctors exam room computer. No they are not going away. Oh, and the funny rodent thingie with a wheel and two buttons is not going away either. They said that was a fad too.

KDE might do well on tablets, other than the fact that KDE is still a resource hog.
All you need is a touch screen driver (perhaps such exists already - backported from Android) to make
KDE viable on the more powerful Tablets.

Re:Tablets are a fad. They have no staying power.

[icebike]

Wrong on both counts.

1) Any of the current line of tablets will run CSipSimple, with which they instantly become a phone. Add the ubiquitous bluetooth headset and you don't even have to take the tablet out of your briefcase or back pack to answer it. My tablet has a phone number, and I pay exactly ZERO dollars for that service. No boot loader hacking involved. Install and run. Somewhere I had a How To on this, now slightly dated.

2) 7 inch tablets fit in a coat pocket or purse, 10 inch in your brief case.

Some Android tablets come with 3G and could handle voice anywhere, not just when near wifi.
Cellular networks are moving to LTE, and once completed, there is no distinction between data and voice.

There is really no difference between a tablet and a smartphone other than the size of the pocket it takes.

Re:Tablets are a fad. They have no staying power.

[icebike]

The netbook UI is half the battle. KDE is still pretty huge.
There is no reason it couldn't run on an Android Kernel with a little work. But it needs to go on a diet.

Re:Tablets are a fad. They have no staying power.

[Anonymous Coward]

Smartphones and tablets are members of a single continuum. Look at the Nokia N800 -- it's unambiguously a tablet, not a phone. It has a 4" display, though, and fits in a pocket easily; if it had a 3G radio it would be called a phone. Then there's the SmartQ5, I think Archos has one, and the Dell Streak 5 -- bigger than practically any modern phone, still pocketable. Moving up, 7" tablets and 5.6" UMPCs still fit in a jacket pocket, but are unquestionably not a phone, even when they have 3G radios and the ability to make phone calls. Then you get up to the unpocketable 9" and 10" tablets that are in vogue these days -- and if you ignore all the devices in the middle, it's understandable how you'd think 6x the screen area, no pocketability, and software limitations on voice calling make it a fundamentally different creature. But it's not, it's just distant points on a continuum of mobility.

Re:Tablets are a fad. They have no staying power.

[AvitarX]

The ability to (relatively) easily whip up different UIs was a large part of the major disruption of KDE4.

Plasma was designed ground-up with that in mind. In a video I watched, they spent a lot of time bragging about it, this was before 4.0 was released.

Sounded essentially like MVC type talk.

Re:Tablets are a fad. They have no staying power.

[unixisc]

Wouldn't the Netbook UI look pretty much identical to their desktop, just like Windows does? Or do they change things quite a bit?

This is actually quite a good idea, but it should be named differently so that it's clear that it's a completely different interface, something like OS-X vs iOS. The Gnome guys could have done well w/ this. As for Unity, is Ubuntu now making tablet OSs, or is Unity their all purpose UI? Some innovations, like their software center is good, but I'm not sure about Unity itself. Incidentally, is software center there in Kubuntu as well?

Re:Tablets are a fad. They have no staying power.

[KugelKurt]

The problem with Gnome and KDE chasing after the tablet market is that they think they'll be a "player" along with iOS and Android. If anything I think they have less chances of succeeding there on the desktop, they're ignoring the 1% desktop market share they have and chasing 1% of the mobile market. They haven't got the resources to run in two directions with two different teams, so they'll go halfway up both roads.

The problem is that you and the people who voted you as Informative didn't even read the interview.
Unlike iOS OSX there is no porting required to get workspace elements to work on different form factors. Apple developed two closely related code bases whereas KDE develops a single code base that works everywhere. With Plasma Active the KDE devs create a framework that's so flexible that one only needs to write a simple shell in QML and all existing QML widgets will just work. Plasma Desktop widgets usually work just fine as fullscreen widgets in smartphone form factors. That means developing Plasma with one formfactor in mind, the other formfactors automatically benefit because all improvements are shared across the code base.

What you also don't understand is that KDE is no commercial project. As a community project it doesn't matter if 1% of the population use it or 99%. Community projects do the work for themselves and as long as there are devices available to run the software on, the community members are fine with that.
In addition to that you forgot that Qt also works on Android (currently in Alpha state). So even without MeeGo devices Plasma Active will at some point be available on Android devices (MeeGo is just a mostly traditional Linux distro which makes sense to support first because the underlying toolkit Qt does not have to be completely ported first).

Re:Tablets are a fad. They have no staying power.

[morgauxo]

I hope they can at least get the geek market. I know, so many of us are already just about married to either iOS or Android but come on... think about it. What's better, two versions of the same api, one for desktop and one for mobile devices making it VERY EASY TO PORT the same app to both platforms or the current paradigm?... Virtually no effort applied towards coding a mobile app is useful on the desktop or vice versa.

And yes... KDE IS trying to go after the mobile market (tablets AND phones). KDE is based on Qt. In trying to turn it from being just a desktop GUI API into a mobile environment Qt has had a lot of the functionality added to it that KDE was originally handling itself. Now KDE is full of stuff that it does itself that Qt has it's own classes and methods for. This is supposed to be getting merged better, making KDE into more of a meta environment that can be a desktop or something else.

We would be a lot better off if Sharp had added a GSM chip to the Zaurus years ago. It would have probably started out not available in the US though. I'm not sure they could have ever come up with a reasonable agreement with any of the cellphone carriers here.

Re:Tablets are a fad. They have no staying power.

[KugelKurt]

it needs to go on a diet.

Which part of modularizing in the interview didn't you understand?

Re:Tablets are a fad. They have no staying power.

[nschubach]

Who still carries a briefcase? I've spent the last few years trying to reduce the number of things I carry. I got a keyless car system in my latest car so I stick the thing in my pocket and forget about it. I walk out of work with my sunglasses on and nothing in my hands. I don't wear a coat all year, so what do I do with the thing in the summer months?

Re:Tablets are a fad. They have no staying power.

[fwarren]

That is the genius of KDE. Here is a gross over generalization. The plasma engine runs in the background, Then there are a few "containers". Each container has rules about how plasmoids can be arranged and provide a few menu/configuration options. Then everything else is a plasmoid. For all intent and purposes consider each plasmoid a resizeable canvas using SGV and truetype fonts.

So a menu, it is plasmoid. Tasklist, it is a plasmoid. Clock, yup, it is a plasmoid as well. Throw them into any container and away you go. Consider the desktop a container, consider the taskbar a container called a panel. Now take these parts and the dozens (if not hundreds) of plasmoids and design the desktop you want.

The cool thing here is that the "laptop" or "netbook" or "tablet" or "phone" interface uses the exact same plasmoids, and even uses many of the containers. All it takes to customize to some new device type is for someone to write a new "container" that encapsulates the behavior they want, and any new plasmoids they think will be useful. As an added bonus, those plasmoids will work on all other KDE4 systems.

The majority of KDE marches ahead doing what they have always done, working on a great desktop. Very little time or energy is wasted in working on these other environments. A small team of 2 or 3 programmers could come up with their own "container" and create a new metaphor for their device environment. All without stealing away people, mind share or resources from the main KDE project.

Re:Tablets are a fad. They have no staying power.

[Grishnakh]

Conceded on #1, but I'm sorry, a briefcase doesn't equal a pocket, and neither does a purse or coat pocket. For one thing, I'm quite sure none of the coats I wear have pockets big enough to fit a 7" screen. Maybe big overcoats do, I dunno, but I never wear those. And coat-wearing is rather rare for me anyway since I live in Phoenix. And since I'm a man, I don't have a purse; as this is Slashdot, I imagine 99.9% of the other readers here are in the same boat as me on that point. As for briefcases, since I'm not a "suit", I don't generally carry one of those either. Again, this being Slashdot, I imagine 99% of other readers are like me on that point.

If I'm out in public, I need a phone that actually fits on my person, either in my pants pocket or on a belt holster. A 7-inch or worse 10-inch screen won't work; it's just too big. So maybe if you're a purse-carrier, or one of those weirdos that actually carries a briefcase around everywhere, you can get your 7-inch tablet to totally replace a phone. For the rest of us, it won't work, and we'll still have to have that regular palm-sized phone. A tablet might be a useful additional item, but not a total replacement.

Finally, I'm not understanding how you can get 3G (or 4G) cellular service on a tablet and not pay anything for it, even if you're just using data. I thought all the US carriers charged pretty high monthly fees for cellular data access per-device. Having two devices means you have to pay fees twice, unless you want to swap SIM cards every time you change devices, unless I'm missing something.

Re:Tablets are a fad. They have no staying power.

[Grishnakh]

It's not a black-and-white distinction, just like these days there's no longer a b&w distinction between cars and SUVs, with all these mini-SUVs and "crossovers" out there, to make an obligatory car analogy. But the existence of a Nissan Rogue or Honda Accord Crosstour does not suddenly make Suburbans and Tahoes equal to Lotuses. It just gives you some options in the middle.

However, I firmly object to the idea of a 7" tablet being "pocketable". I don't know what kind of jacket you wear, but no jacket I've ever owned in my life has a pocket that large. A 5.6" screen is probably the limit.

Re:Tablets are a fad. They have no staying power.

[Grishnakh]

Wouldn't the Netbook UI look pretty much identical to their desktop, just like Windows does? Or do they change things quite a bit?

Netbook screens are too small to show all the detail and small icons that a full-size desktop screen can. Here's a review of the latest Fedora with KDE, showing some screenshots of the netbook UI (on page 3). Of course, these shots aren't quite right because it looks like they took them on a standard desktop screen instead a real netbook (or least a simulation of one), but you'll get the idea. It looks quite different from the traditional desktop UI (they have screenshots of this too if you're not familiar with the latest KDE releases).

This is actually quite a good idea, but it should be named differently so that it's clear that it's a completely different interface, something like OS-X vs iOS.

Why? It can run on the exact same OS (or even a different one; KDE isn't limited to Linux), it's just a different "skin". I'm pretty sure there's actually more significant differences between iOS and OS X than just the UI.

The Gnome guys could have done well w/ this.

Except that this is absolutely contrary to their fundamental philosophy, which is to dumb down everything as much as possible. They think that having different UIs on different devices is "too confusing" for users, and that you need to have the exact same interface everywhere.

I LIKE TO WATCH T.V. !!

[Anonymous Coward]

Being There !! is better than Getting there !!

QML

[Psychotria]

Aaron spend a lot of time speaking about a transition, in the long-term, to QML (I had to look it up) in the interview. He mentioned that it makes prototyping interfaces quicker, and I assume that also means implementation of the GUI aspects would therefore be quicker also. But I am confused. Is QML just for GUI stuff, or do you write the entire application using it? What other advantages over C++ does it offer?
Cheers

Re:QML

[Anonymous Coward]

designers cook up an interface in easy-to-learn QML (presentation)
developer writes the Qt voodoo (code)

separating presentation from code, empowering the designer, making it easier to port

Re:QML

[Anonymous Coward]

it's just the gui stuff

Re:QML

[Kjella]

QML is pretty much like HTML/CSS+Javascript, except that you can do more Javascript magic to manipulate the UI. In theory the whole application can be written in Javascript, but I'd say normally just for the UI or things closely related to the UI. Personally I consider it a step backwards, to me it's more like trying to use web app tech to build a "real" app. I always thought that the only reason you'd want to use a declarative UI is because you need to send it as one big HTTP page, rather than set one and one property as you can do locally. To me at least the whole system seems way less intuitive. With an imperative system I always call setWidth() to set the width, in a declarative UI it's set in the declaration one way and I have to change that property some other way. Maybe I'm wrong but IMO it's throwing away the best part Qt has.

Re:QML

[Psychotria]

Thanks. That's what had me confused. To me if you're programming in C++ anyway, I would have thought you'd do the UI in C++ also (especially considering Qt is C++ [with the moc]). I get that using QML may make the UI design easier for designers, but I couldn't see any other real advantages. Anyway, I thought he was saying the whole application would be written in QML, so thanks for clearing that up.

Re:QML

[tangent3]

"throwing away"?

You're saying like as if writing Qt5 app in C++ will no longer be possible.

Re:QML

[Carewolf]

I think one of the points of QML is that it can access Qt objects even ones written in C++ (and vice versa). This means QML can be used to script firefox-style plugins and extensions into any Qt application.

Re:QML

[suy]

QML is just for GUI stuff, but you can add logic to the interface in JavaScript. Some people are claiming that Qt is losing its C++ roots, but, IMHO, they are wrong. QML will replace the UI files that Qt Designer created, but with lots of advantages. First, QML can be written by hand, and also with a very smart QML Designer that only modifies the lines that you change. That means that designers and coders can easily work together, and that changes to the UI are readable in the history of the project.

The other important benefit of QML, is that is really fun to use, and you can create compelling user interfaces with a fraction of the time. Then you can plug your C++ very easily to do the heavy lifting. The thing that makes Qt Quick excel, is that you can mix QML and C++ very easily throught the Qt property system and signals and slots.

Re:QML

[suy]

With QML you can do "width: parent.width / 2", or whatever other expression, and the width is now bound (not assigned) to the width of the parent. IMO is waaaay better than defining a width, and having to create a bunch of logic to make sure the width stays the amount you wanted in the first place. For user interfaces is a great thing, and other technologies are already doing it (Clutter, JavaFX). I think that the way that works in Qt is pretty good, because you integrate with imperative code in a very convenient way.

Re:QML

[Kjella]

You're saying like as if writing Qt5 app in C++ will no longer be possible.

Possible yes, but you can tell they're now pushing QML as "the next big thing" and the traditional QWidgets aren't getting nearly as much love as before. The rest of Qt will of course be there but without all the UI building blocks I'd say Qt is gutted. So you can of course be an old fart and use the widgets anyway, but I fear it'll become more of a legacy option. While I don't think Nokia is going to depreciate them, the priority of bugs and enhancements vs QML is a concern.

Re:QML

[Anonymous Coward]

Just to reinforce "suy" statements, I'm a designer i do not know C++ but i do manage with QML, as it is now I would avoid use of QML on traditional desktop applications if you are not a very good designer its a easy path to disaster. (this will change with the components stuff).
But the amount of UI freedom it gives you is amazing, you can do incredibly compelling UI's and the big advantage IMO is that a lot of different skill-sets (people) can use the same tool the same code to do their work, from the interaction designer to the c++ coder passing through the graphical and motion designer. All using the same code and more importantly, talking the same language witch is allays a big problem between designers and coders.
     

Re:QML

[EvilNTUser]

You misunderstand how QML is supposed to be used. It's nothing at all like building a web app. Its biggest problem right now is that there aren't any good books about how to use it correctly, and what your overall design philosophy should be.

If we are to stay with the web analogy, in terms of usefulness QML/C++ is to plain C++ like CSS/HTML is to plain HTML. Positioning, reacting to changes, tasteful animations etc. are all extremely simple in a declarative UI. Explaining how to use it would be too much for one post, but it's becoming so powerful you'll soon be able to manipulate your UI using shaders. I've added comments to explain the basic QML, but the original article is here.

Image { // Create a new image object
width: 180
height: 180
source: "winter.jpg"

Text { // Create a new text object parented to the image object
id: theItem // Give this object an id to refer to
anchors.fill: parent // Automatically and constantly adjust to the size of the parent
horizontalAlignment: Text.AlignHCenter
verticalAlignment: Text.AlignVCenter
font.pixelSize: 120
font.family: "Times"
color: "blue"
text: "Qt"
}

ShaderEffectItem { // Create a new ShaderEffectItem object
anchors.fill: parent // Automatically and constantly adjust to the size of the parent

property variant source: ShaderEffectSource {
sourceItem: theItem // The object that the shader will draw
smooth: true
hideSource: true
}

property real amplitude: 0.02 // Define new variables for the shader to interact with.
property real frequency: 20
property real time: 0
NumberAnimation on time { loops: Animation.Infinite; from: 0; to: Math.PI * 2; duration: 600 } // Animate the time variable. You can also make animations that automatically animate objects' size changes when you do, say, width = 300.
fragmentShader: " // Embedded fragment shader code
uniform highp float amplitude;
uniform highp float frequency;
uniform highp float time;
uniform sampler2D source;

Re:QML

[Imbrondir]

Another benefit that will come with Qt5 and QML is better performance, from rendering with an opengl based scenegraph instead of QPainter. Even compared to the opengl qpainter backend, the improvements should be pretty dramatic in many situations.

Re:QML

[gl4ss]

"You're saying like as if writing Qt5 app in C++ will no longer be possible."

well.. that's the thing, the qt folk have been pushing it as if it weren't. as the only thing on their pr agenda, heavily. somehow still a clean, simple c++ solution and qml solution side by side seems to have everything more in one place in the c++ version. qt's c++ (and helper classes etc) are the best out there, so it's a shame. not to mention following program flow from code.

it's not one or two or even five new qt pr workers(devs in qml, rather) who've already declared qwidgets obsolete and qml as the way to do things and how you can handle everything in qt, how it's a full engine for everything and how you can do blurring etc effects that then go on gpu with it. then they present an example with something you can't do with qt c++ without doing a lot of opengl stuff yourself.

and all the qml demos seem to say "fuck you" to operating system provided windows? where is the qml demo showing an excel clone?there's still a place for a traditional gui toolkit, it's just not very high on anybodys agenda since it's harder to demonstrate where you get the value from creating traditional ui's easily.

Re:QML

[Anonymous Coward]

QML gives you free hardware acceleration since the Scene Graph knows exactly what it's drawing instead of just bit blitting.

Re:QML

[Anonymous Coward]

Apart from sample gadget apps I have yet to see the appeal. I haven't seen a single native looking QML app for PC yet, the controls for doing so aren't even done yet, so how are they supposed to replace UI files? Also Nokia has clearly stated that C++ interfaces to the new features in QML are not a priority so it is pretty obvious that Qt is indeed loosing its C++ roots. With ui files you could do everything they did by hand. QML won't allow that anytime sone (possibly never if you read the nokia blogs).

Re:QML

[KugelKurt]

Apart from sample gadget apps I have yet to see the appeal. I haven't seen a single native looking QML app for PC yet, the controls for doing so aren't even done yet, so how are they supposed to replace UI files?

Of course they are not done, because Qt 5.0 is not yet done. During Qt 4.x QML was an invention mainly for smartphones. QML for desktop apps won't happen before Qt 5.0.

Re:QML

[Kjella]

You misunderstand how QML is supposed to be used. It's nothing at all like building a web app. Its biggest problem right now is that there aren't any good books about how to use it correctly

Ah, the no true Scotsman fallacy. Sorry if I'm being rude, but I don't see anything in your post that couldn't be better solved with a QShaderEffectItem instead of the ridiculous QML UI. I get it, it appeals to all the people who know HTML/CSS/JavaScript. It still sucks to everyone who knows C++/Qt, no matter how much you polish the turd.

Re:QML

[Urkki]

You misunderstand how QML is supposed to be used. It's nothing at all like building a web app. Its biggest problem right now is that there aren't any good books about how to use it correctly

Ah, the no true Scotsman fallacy. Sorry if I'm being rude, but I don't see anything in your post that couldn't be better solved with a QShaderEffectItem instead of the ridiculous QML UI. I get it, it appeals to all the people who know HTML/CSS/JavaScript. It still sucks to everyone who knows C++/Qt, no matter how much you polish the turd.

A "no true scotsman" fallacy? No, it's like saying one doesn't like a saw when felling trees, but prefers axes, then being pointed out that hey, with a saw, you don't hit the tree, you move the saw back and forth... (Note: I'm not here implying anything about superiority of either a saw or an axe.)

Also, feel free to do the example with C++, then compare the amount of code needed. Then multiply that by the number of screens/views/windows of an application.

Also, as soon as you start having for example tables which you pass to a generalised animation framework (or whatever), you're doing what you could do with QML using far less effort.

And finally, this is programming. Anybody judging a language they have not tried is IMO in the wrong field altogether... This even applies to "VB is trWTF" comments (when it's not said just as a joke, in which case it's just old). Also, QML is cross-platform open source, so not having the environment available is no excuse.

Re:QML

[suy]

Apart from sample gadget apps I have yet to see the appeal. I haven't seen a single native looking QML app for PC yet, the controls for doing so aren't even done yet, so how are they supposed to replace UI files? Also Nokia has clearly stated that C++ interfaces to the new features in QML are not a priority so it is pretty obvious that Qt is indeed loosing its C++ roots. With ui files you could do everything they did by hand. QML won't allow that anytime sone (possibly never if you read the nokia blogs).

Seems like they read Slashdot or something: Native looking QML.

You will see native applications using QML way before you see QWidgets dropped.

derp

[Anonymous Coward]

since when was gnome a big desktop ever since they released gnome 3 90% of it's users have switched back to gnome 2 or kde or xfce.

Re:derp

[Grishnakh]

Gnome was a big desktop when KDE screwed up with the great KDE4.0 debacle about 3 years ago. Tons of KDE users got pissed off (mainly because 3.5 was no longer supported by the distros, and 4.[0-4] were broken and buggy), and defected to Gnome2, and have been using it ever since.

As for Gnome3, they just released that, what?, this month? This you're talking about it like it's ancient history.

Woot for Testing!

[NotBorg]

FTA:

Also we will have a larger focus on quality, we are now requiring unit testing for changes to our core libraries.

About damned time. Maybe the Nepomuk file indexer will stop crashing every time I start a large compile. I turn it on every point release to see if it has gotten any better. I let it go for a few days before I become fed up with its constant disk access... the damned thing never stops, ever. I'm not sure what it does really... it pisses me off that Dolphin uses it for its search. If you want reliable search you still have to use grep, find, or something not built on the KDE indexer. WTF man?

It's funny that now they have this huge file indexer thing they finally (in a recent release) removed the the indexer/search feature from their "Help Center" that hadn't worked since the end of 2.x. Now that they have a brand new indexer... ??? !!! Chuckles. It's OK though no one used it anyway. *cough*Google*cough*.

I love KDE and wouldn't use anything else but sometimes I gotta wonder what's going on in the QA dept. Some of the stuff really is half baked while most of it is great. It's that 10% making the rest look bad.

Re:Woot for Testing!

[KugelKurt]

it pisses me off that Dolphin uses it for its search

Dolphin does not use Strigi if it's disabled in System Settings.

Do we really need this?

[kbrannen]

I'm really started to get burnt out on all the new versions for "mature" packages. There are multiple examples of this: MS-Windows, Firefox, KDE, even the Linux kernel (which recently rev'd major numbers just because). All of these things and others are mature; they do what they basically need to do and new major versions haven't really add anything all that useful lately. I'm tired of getting new GUIs, frameworks, etc just because the developers need to be seen as doing something. Stop it! How about fixing the existing bugs instead?

We know what OSes do and they do it well. Browsers get a bit of slack because of the new HTML5. But all the GUI changes "just because" are killing me (and a lot of others) because they force me to learn something new that doesn't give me anything to help me do my job better. Developers -- please think that thru very carefully! Please?!

When something truly new and innovative comes along, then I'll understand the new major version.

Re:Do we really need this?

[Anonymous Coward]

Then don't update. Stick to what you have. I don't see what the problem is? There are many distros that have "LTS" versions (eg long term support) you can just use that.

Re:Do we really need this?

[kbrannen]

I don't update every version, usually just every other release. However, because the developers keep working on new major versions that don't really give us anything truly useful, that means that the existing code never has obvious bugs fixed.

Software that isn't mature is exempt from my rant... :)

Re:Do we really need this?

[gweihir]

You can ignore it.

KDE? GNOME? I could not care less. I have been using fvwm for something like 20 years now and it still does everything I need. If you want to get work done, the GUI must under no circumstances get in your way. It must not hog your attention. It must not waste screen area. At the same time, it must provide what you need. I need 3x3 virtual desktops, edge-scroll, autoraiser, one icon box to the right, a clock and some mouse-menus. fvwm does this fast, efficient and in these 20 years I had to change the config-file once, when fvwm2 came out. Everything else is just a bit of cosmetics now and then.

I do not understand why people get excited about the Windows GUI either. It is decades outdated, slow, inflexible, clutters your desktop, has no virtual screens out of the box, is hard to configure and is generally a study in how to not do it. The only thing I use it for is as a game launcher and it even manages to screw that up time and again. And this is the supposedly "best" what MS has to offer, namely Win7.

I think too many people forget that the PC is a tool and should work well as a tool. It can be fun to use too, but it is not a pacifier or mobile or other toy that has distracting people as its main task. In fact, when the GUI starts distracting, then it is massively misdesigned.

Re:Do we really need this?

[Grishnakh]

There's a lot of problems with that approach. On servers, it makes sense, because if your MySQL server is working fine, then why bother updating it except for security fixes?

A desktop computer is a different matter. There's always bugs to be fixed with all the various applications you use. Maybe the printing is a little screwed up, maybe the music player has some UI problems. Also, features are added, which can be useful: maybe the music player added support for a new online store like Magnatune. Finally, browsers are changing out of necessity because of HTML5, which is still pretty new, so of course bugs and issues are getting fixed and improved there too.

If you stick with a LTS version, you're going to miss out on all of that. Firefox has already stopped support for the 3.x browsers, but if your distro is a year or so old, that's what it has, and you can't change it without having to add some different repositories (which kinda defeats the point if you're after stability). LTS versions don't fix bugs either, unless they're security-related. Finally, if your hardware is newer, an older distro won't support it as well with its older kernel version.

So, people like to have at least fairly-recent distro versions, so they can keep up with the latest features and bugfixes. But that doesn't mean they want their entire computing environment revamped every year or two, they just want a slow and steady progression of improvements and bugfixes.

To make a car analogy, how much have car UIs changed in the last 50 years? They still have a steering wheel, an accelerator pedal on the right, etc. What would happen if Chevy made a car with a tiller and an airplane-style throttle lever, saying this would "streamline the user experience" and "reduce confusion", or that "it's better for users with poor control of their feet", or whatever? There'd be an uproar. But that's exactly what the Gnome3/Unity people have done.

Re:Do we really need this?

[rastos1]

I need 3x3 virtual desktops, edge-scroll, autoraiser, one icon box to the right, a clock and some mouse-menus.

The point is that KDE is not only a window manager like FVWM. Though I don't think FVWM allows me to put a button on the title bar that makes the window "always on top". There also is a number of applications (ok, you can run them in FVWM too, but why?) and there is also lot of other useful stuff such as kioslaves, notifications, ...

Re:Do we really need this?

[mikechant]

If you stick with a LTS version, you're going to miss out on all of that. Firefox has already stopped support for the 3.x browsers, but if your distro is a year or so old, that's what it has, and you can't change it without having to add some different repositories (which kinda defeats the point if you're after stability).

I reckon I get 98% of the stability benefits by running LTS plus latest Firefox. Running the latest Firefox doesn't seem to negatively affect the stability of the OS and other programs in any way, and Firefox 6 doesn't seem significantly less stable *on my setup* than 3.6.

Re:Do we really need this?

[gweihir]

I have not looked at this as I don't need it, but I would be very much surprised if fvwm did not have that functionality.

The reason for running the occasional KDE application in fvwm is pretty simple: An application has no business being tied to a window manager and choosing your window manager not by what works best for you, but by what applications it comes with is just completely backwards and decreases efficiency. Kind of like using Windows because you want IE. And why use fvwm? Simple: It is a far better window manager than KDE and allows you to work far more efficiently and effectively. Usually I do not even notice it. That is how a window manager is supposed to work: Like an unobtrusive butler in the back. One that can easily be replaced, but once you have found the right one you stay with it for life.

The "integration" KDE tries to do is just a terminally stupid effort to imitate MS windows. It increases complexity dramatically, leads to unstable and partially defective interfaces, makes everything slow and bloated. No surprise it is still not mature and has new "features" (read: distractions) all the time. fvwm was mature 20 years ago. I really do not need a jack-of-all-trades. I need a window manager that does its job well and stays out of areas where it has no business poking its head in. And one where I can find my ideal desktop configuration once and then never, ever, ever have to change it, because it keeps working well. That also means I can spend significant effort in optimizing this configuration. It will pay off for a very long time. If I find some detail to fine-tune, I can, because the change will keep working as expected. And this is one of the primary reasons not to integrate applications with the window-manager, as the needs of the applications will compromise the integrity and stability of the window manager.

All well known. I guess some people just do not understand that "new" does not equal "better" at all. By the same token, change is only good if it accomplishes something overall positive. I think the changes in KDE have not done that in a very long time. The model they started working off (MS Windows) is just too badly broken.

smart move: including Qt developers

[Gravis Zero]

Our goal is to give us better tools for desktop app development, give our KDE mobile projects a leg up and make KDE's libraries something that Qt developers can and will use.

i'm aware that KDE's API is based on Qt but it has some big differences. including/assisting Qt people will add a large sum of people to the KDE development platform.

KDE is looking better for dev'rs but the desktop itself is not friendly enough for me right now and it doesnt help that ease of use for lay people isnt a focus.

Like Java frameworks

[renrutal]

Please correct me if I'm wrong in this analogy, Are _KDE_ Frameworks 5.0 is to QT the same as _Apache_'s many frameworks are to the Java SE/EE platforms? Really no major coupling at all?

Controversial KDE to gnome3 weirdo

[sqldr]

Am I the only person in the universe who likes gnome 3?

I'm a sysadmin, so I usually have millions of windows open at once, and I've always been looking for ways to find the bloody one I'm after. I'm often in the middle of programming something when something urgent comes up, and I'm too lazy to switch to a new desktop so I just fire up a few more windows, then I always put my computer in standby every night (to keep my code open and remind myself what I was doing the following morning) until about twice a week I go about purging windows.

People complained about KDE4 because you couldn't put icons on the desktop. Instead that panel. Well, you could make it full-screen, but to me it was never a problem. If I have screen space available, I tend to put windows in it. Linus Torvalds talking about the number of mouse clicks to open a terminal hit two nerves for me:

    1) To click an icon on the desktop, I would first have to stop using the keyboard and reach for the mouse
    2) I would then have to drag possibly more than on window out of the way, possibly into some docs in another one I might be reading whilst I'm typing into another
    3) I stopped having a backdrop image years ago for this reason.

So then there's the taskbar.

I used ION for a couple of years. I really liked it. It's a tiling window manager, but it uses "managed tiling"., KDE 4.5 gave us unmanaged tiling. It also gave us stacking, but the two don't work together. MASSIVE BUG. I want 5 windows on top of eachother in a tile, and well, people like the auto-tiling.. I don't.. it's unpredictable. it resizes your windows.

What I liked about ION is you created a tile, or at least moved your cursor to the tile you want your window in, THEN open the window, rather than opening the window and seeing where it turns up. WHY? because that 1.5 seconds of thought made me put it in the right place then it stuffed it into my short term memory and I could always remember where I put it.

Taskbar redundant.

Gnome3 tries to solve it by zooming out and clicking on the window. problem unless you have a very high res monitor is you can't tell one terminal from another. That will be resolved in time, but the taskbar has failed for me. "group windows by task" makes it worse. I'm a sysadmin. I've got 20 windows open.

I stopped using ION when the author started being a dick with the GPL and having an utterly uninformed opinion of antialiasing ("If monitors have the resolution of printers, then I would use antialiasing. If you want your fonts dragged through mud, use windows". Firstly, printers use floyd-steinburg dithering. They don't have shades of colour. They use very high resolution dithering for colour. Secondly, monitors do have shades. you increase resolution by antialiasing).

KDE 4.5 introduced stacking and tiling.

The tiling is auto-tiling. There's many who like the auto-tiling approach of WMs such as "awesome". I hate it. it's unpredictable. I would rather create the tile then put the window in it. It also has stacking, which awesome doesn't have. ION allowed you to put many windows in one tile. KDE has a MASSIVE BUG. tiling and stacking don't work together! and it forces you to put all terminals into one stack!!

KDE: either get more like ION for tiling, or allow zooming for gnome 3 users. some people like desktop icons and stuff. If I want to *click* on a terminal, I'll put it on the taskbar. I get that. So do you. Just do something for us who appreciate that the taskbar has failed. new era.

Re:Controversial KDE to gnome3 weirdo

[Osgeld]

I like it more than KDE4

Re:Controversial KDE to gnome3 weirdo

[Anonymous Coward]

Linus Torvalds talking about the number of mouse clicks to open a terminal hit two nerves for me

1) To click an icon on the desktop, I would first have to stop using the keyboard and reach for the mouse
2) I would then have to drag possibly more than on window out of the way, possibly into some docs in another one I might be reading whilst I'm typing into another

Windows+D ... best. shortcut. ever.

Alternativly, create a shortcut key or taskbar icon to open a new terminal.

Re:Controversial KDE to gnome3 weirdo

[tyrione]

You're not alone. I switched the moment GNOME 3 came out for Debian, even in it's incomplete status. I cannot stomach all the Nepomuk crap, the widgets here and there, Dolphin being a bloated pig, etc. The only apps I'm down to using are Kile and Kate. The Plasma crap I could live without.

Re:Controversial KDE to gnome3 weirdo

[Anonymous Coward]

For latex editing, look into latexila. I've used it to write my thesis last year, worked very well.

Re:Controversial KDE to gnome3 weirdo

[Tomato42]

With KDE4 exposé you can just type the window's title and it will start showing only the windows that their title match.

Re:Controversial KDE to gnome3 weirdo

[Anonymous Coward]

What is "auto-tiling" feature?

Is it that when new window is created, it gets own location to screen what is shared to tiles? And you can choose is the tiling a spiral or so on?

If so, did you know you can disable the auto-tiling feature and then just position the windows to your wanted location by dragging them to three parts of the sides?

Re:Controversial KDE to gnome3 weirdo

[TheTyrannyOfForcedRe]

Am I the only person in the universe who likes gnome 3?

Nope! I love it.

I love the increased screen real estate for applications and I love the ease with which I can find and switch to windows on other virtual desktops. I typically work with eight virtual desktops, each one having multiple windows open. Gnome 3 lets me easily (and beautifully!) fly from one window to another across my different virtual desktops.

I love that all of my windows render faster. Compared to Gnome 2, Gnome 3 flies and every frame is picture perfect. No flickering. No tearing. I used to have video tearing in mplayer. Under Gnome 2 and the latest Xorg it's completely gone.

I also love how easy and fast it is to write Gnome 3 extensions that can change and manipulate literally anything in the Gnome 3 interface. Extensions use the same language and api that Gnome 3 is written in so user extensions are truly first class Gnome 3 code. Everything is html+css+javascript. Bang out some code, drop it in ~/.local/share/gnome-shell/extensions/, hit alt-f2, type 'r', hit return. My extension is loaded and run without compiling, building packages, or even having to log out. There's even an REPL built in! You can try out Gnome 3 code snippets ala Lisp, Python, Ruby...

I don't understand the massive hate towards Gnome 3. The only things I can think of are: 1) Some people don't like change of any kind no matter how positive. 2) Some people have a strange bigotry against html, css, and javascript, viewing them as inferior "web only" technologies.

Re:Controversial KDE to gnome3 weirdo

[KugelKurt]

Am I the only person in the universe who likes gnome 3?

I'm a KDE guy but I find GNOME Shell to be the second best thing after Plasma Desktop. I really can't stand GNOME 2.x and all the other DEs that still cling to 1990s conventions two decades later. If I wanted a Windows 95 GUI, I'd just use Windows 95.
I prefer KPD's "everything is a widget" approach because I like high configurability but GS's completely new workspace approach is great, too.

Re:Controversial KDE to gnome3 weirdo

[sqldr]

WOW, I've found 3 people who like it!

I actually use gnome 3 at work (for millions of windows management) and KDE4 at home, namely because I'm a demoscener in my part time, and I think kdevelop 4 is the most innovative IDE I have ever used. The syntactic highlighting and code generation tools are genius.

Re:Controversial KDE to gnome3 weirdo

[KugelKurt]

I'm not aware of any drop in usage statistics of Fedora which ships G3 as default. So there should be a lot of people who like it, just not those who spend their time commenting on Slashdot ;-)

Re:Controversial KDE to gnome3 weirdo

[JabberWokky]

Check out http://i3wm.org/

I've used KDE since the beginning, but used ion3 for many years (long after he abandoned development). I'm currently using kwin with very custom rules, but I dabbled in, and really should look at i3 again. It's capable of being easily configured exactly like my ion3 configuration, only with a much cleaner codebase.

OK, I'm going to get in there first..

[sqldr]

"Linus Torvalds... hit two nerves with me"

1)
2)
3) ;just top save you all being smartasses!

Re:OK, I'm going to get in there first..

[Mass Overkiller]

I personally like Gnome3 and Unity. I like them both. I also really like Gnome2. On my laptop I have Ubuntu 10.10 with Gnome2 and my desktop with Gnome3 and Unity. Let me give you an example as to why I like Unity specifically. My girlfriend uses my desktop when I'm at work as I "inherited" her laptop for work purposes. I told her about Linux, Unity, Ubuntu, etc. etc. All she said to me was "does it work?" I said yes. I told her about the Unity Home launcher thing, where she can move the mouse to the upper left corner and type in what she wants to do. "Like Google?" she replied. YES! After that brief introduction, she was able to use the desktop Unity without any further instructions and has not had any problems. She said "that makes sense". She can type in Firefox and VIOLA there it is, no clicking on menus or anything. To further this, she needed to scan something and, according to her, she typed in "scanner" and VIOLA XSane opened up and she could scan whateverthehell it was she needed. She thought that typing in what you wanted was useful and she didn't have to hunt for programs in menus. So, although I am a long time Linux user, and use Gnome2 most often, for a less-than-computer-literal person using Unity, literally using the desktop like a search engine to find the program she wants (ie: no menu crawling), she was very happy and had no problems. So from a usability standpoint, Unity wins. If the target audience is a less savvy computer user. For me I'm used to Unity and Gnome3 but I can see why some people really like Gnome2 - its stable and once you are used to where your applications are, the menu system is straightforward and rarely (actually never) crashes.

Re:OK, I'm going to get in there first..

[maxwell demon]

I told her about the Unity Home launcher thing, where she can move the mouse to the upper left corner and type in what she wants to do. "Like Google?" she replied. YES!

I've got a great idea: Expand that line to a multi-line display where you can also see previous inputs. We just need a name for that ... command line?

Re:OK, I'm going to get in there first..

[richlv]

She can type in Firefox and VIOLA there it is

omfg. you just type "firefox" and somebody plays a viola ? or do you magically get flowers ?
that sounds very awesome, wondering what kind of nanotechnology assembly is used there. do you need new hardware ?

Re:OK, I'm going to get in there first..

[Anonymous Coward]

"I told her about the Unity Home launcher thing, where she can move the mouse to the upper left corner and type in what she wants to do. "Like Google?" she replied. YES! After that brief introduction, she was able to use the desktop Unity without any further instructions and has not had any problems. She said "that makes sense". She can type in Firefox and VIOLA there it is, no clicking on menus or anything. To further this, she needed to scan something and, according to her, she typed in "scanner" and VIOLA XSane opened up and she could scan whateverthehell it was she needed."

So instead just clicking "Applications > Internet > Firefox" or "Applications > Graphics > Sane" she needed still move the mouse and still type F-I-R-E-F-O-X or -S-C-A-N-N-I-N-G

Well, Alt+F2 has always been there because of that, you can even change it to metakey like windows button or Alt+Spacebar. No need to use MOUSE to summon it.
And still menu and panels are faster than those "move mouse to that corner and type what you want".

People does not even know what internet browser is but they know what firefox is.
They do not know what the scanner is but they know what is simple scan.

Unity has far most terrible usability when compared to KDE4 or even GNOME 2.x and GNOME 3.x. Even Windows wins it hands down.

Re:OK, I'm going to get in there first..

[jalefkowit]

She can type in Firefox and VIOLA there it is, no clicking on menus or anything. To further this, she needed to scan something and, according to her, she typed in "scanner" and VIOLA XSane opened up and she could scan whateverthehell it was she needed.

If only there had been some reliable, full-featured way to do this already...

Re:OK, I'm going to get in there first..

[Anonymous Coward]

Ok smartass. Go to the CLI type in "scan" and see how many scanning applications appear.

It is a search box. You don't need multiple lines and previous inputs.

By all means keep using the CLI, with Lynx and Mutt if that makes you happy. The rest of us can use nice GUIs. And really what is wrong with a GUI stealing the good bits from the CLI and combining it with graphical elements?

Re:OK, I'm going to get in there first..

[Anonymous Coward]

The Unity search is, by default, bound to the Windows key, so you don't need to drag the mouse up to the corner, you can hit the Windows key start typing "firefox" and when it is the first option hitting Enter will launch it, you can also select from the search results using the mouse or cursor keys. The Alt-F2 combo is still there as well, the difference being is the with Alt-F2 you are running a command which you have to type the name of, whereas the Unity search searches the .desktop files (which are files normally used to generate the menu as per the freedesktop standard) so it can match on the description as well as the name, but it won't match CLI programs.

IMO Unity beats GNOME2 for usability. It is clear from your ill-informed rantings that you haven't given it a fair trial, so you aren't in a position to judge. I would compare to GNOME3 and KDE4, but I haven't used GNOME3 and I only have KDE4 on my desktop where I primarily use my netbook, so unless I tried it on my netbook it probably wouldn't be a fair comparison, but I feel I would probably find Unity and KDE4 equally usable if I was to install KDE4 on my netbook.

People does not even know what internet browser is but they know what firefox is.

Perhaps, but they can type "firefox" or "browser" and get Firefox.

They do not know what the scanner is but they know what is simple scan.

People don't know what the scanner is? What fucking planet do you live on where people who use a scanner don't know what it is? And anyway, just start typing in "scan" and you get the shortcut to "Simple Scan", XSane is no longer installed by default, but if I should have it installed I'm sure that would pop up too.

Re:OK, I'm going to get in there first..

[maxwell demon]

Well, I'd type "apropos scan" instead. The word "apropos" is the equivalent to moving the mouse to the upper left corner (which isn't exactly something which you would have guessed anyway).

And I never said I'm against GUIs. Note that you can launch GUI programs from the command line. It's just the inconsistency of people constantly telling how bad/unintuitive the command line is, only to then praise the intuitiveness of a GUI feature which in essence is nothing but a command line.

Re:OK, I'm going to get in there first..

[badkarmadayaccount]

That project seems abandoned, doesn't seem they put too much focus on interoperation. And - C# - really?

Re:OK, I'm going to get in there first..

[Anonymous Coward]

$ apropos scan
alphasort - scan a directory for matching entries
awk - pattern scanning and text processing language
dpkg scanpackages - create Packages index files
dpkg scansources - create Sources index files
fc scan - scan font files or directories
fscanf - input format conversion
gamma scanimage - create a gamma table for scanimage
getkeycodes - print kernel scancode to keycode mapping table
gouldtoppm - convert Gould scanner file into a portable pixmap
hp scan - Scan Utility
HTML::Tree - pm - build and scan parse trees of HTML
HTML::Tree::Scanning - pm - article: "Scanning HTML"
lvmdiskscan - scan for all devices visible to LVM
lvscan - scan - all disks - for logical volumes
mawk - pattern scanning and text processing language
memchr - scan memory for a character
memrchr - scan memory for a character
nawk - pattern scanning and text processing language
ndiff - Utility to compare the results of Nmap scans
nmap - Network exploration tool and security / port scanner
pvscan - scan all disks for physical volumes
rawmemchr - scan memory for a character
sane - Scanner Access Now Easy: API for accessing scanners
sane abaton - SANE backend for Abaton flatbed scanners
sane agfafocus - SANE backend for AGFA Focus flatbed scanners
sane apple - SANE backend for Apple flatbed scanners
sane artec - SANE backend for Artec flatbed scanners
sane artec_eplus - u - SANE backend for the scanner Artec E+ - U and re ba...
sane as e - SANE backend for using the Artec AS E parallel port in...
sane avision - SANE backend for original Avision and Avision OEM scan...
sane bh - SANE backend for Bell+Howell Copiscan II series docume...
sane canon - SANE backend for Canon SCSI scanners
sane canon - u - SANE backend for the Canon - u USB flatbed scanner
sane canon_dr - SANE backend for Canon DR series scanners
sane canon_pp - SANE backend for Canon CanoScan Parallel Port flatbed ...
sane cardscan - SANE backend for Corex CardScan usb scanners
sane coolscan - SANE backend for Nikon film scanners
sane coolscan - SANE backend for Nikon Coolscan film scanners
sane coolscan - SANE backend for Nikon Coolscan film scanners
sane epjitsu - SANE backend for Epson based Fujitsu USB scanners.
sane epson - SANE backend for EPSON scanners
sane epson - SANE backend for EPSON scanners
sane find scanner - find SCSI and USB scanners and their device files
sane fujitsu - SANE backend for Fujitsu flatbed and ADF scanners
sane genesys - SANE backend for GL - , GL - , GL - , GL - and GL - ...
sane gt - xx - SANE backend for GT - XX based USB flatbed scanners
sane hp - SANE backend for HP ScanJet scanners
sane hp - SANE backend for Hewlett Packard ScanJet - series s...
sane hp - SANE backend for RTS - chipset based scanners
sane hp - SANE backend for Hewlett Packard - scanners
sane hp - SANE backend for Hewlett Packard - XX scanners
sane hp - SANE backend for Hewlett Packard - C/ - C/ - C/ - ...
sane hpljm - SANE backend for Hewlett Packard LaserJet M - MFP Sc...
sane hpsj s - SANE backend for HP ScanJet - S sheet fed scanner
sane hs p - SANE backend for Ricoh SCSI flatbed/ADF scanners
sane ibm - SANE backend for IBM and Ricoh SCSI flatbed scanners
sane kodak - SANE backend for big Kodak flatbed and ADF scanners
sane kvs - SANE backend for Panasonic KV S - xC USB ADF scanners.
sane kvs - xx - SANE backend for Panasonic KV S - xxC USB/SCSI ADF scan...
sane leo - SANE backend for LEO Technologies scanners
sane lexmark - SANE backend for Lexmark X - /X - Series scanners
sane ma - SANE backend for Mustek BearPaw - F USB scanner
sane magicolor - SANE backend for KONICA MINOLTA magicolor scanners
sane matsushita - SANE backend for Panasonic KV SS high speed scanners
sane microtek - SANE backend for Microtek scanners
sane microtek - SANE backend for Microtek scanners with SCSI - command...
sane mustek - SA

LOL! Look two stories above this one!

[Anonymous Coward]

LOL! Look two stories above this one on the Slashdot home page. What do you see? Yes, that's right, a submission entitled Acer CEO Declares a Tablets Bubble!

The iPad's "success" had nothing to do with its computing abilities or usefulness, but everything to do with religion and the desire of Apple fanatics have to throw away perfectly good money on useless devices. Remember, just because they bought them doesn't mean that they actually use them! Many of the iPads sold have become dust collectors, sitting unused, because they have no useful purpose.

Tablets are a fad, whether you like it or not. HP knows this. Acer knows this. You're clearly too foolish to understand this reality.

Uh huh.

[MrEricSir]

You claimed that Gnome was "dying" 3 times in only 6 sentences. Overcompensating with your rhetoric doesn't make it any more true, it just makes you sound like a fool. Or a politician.

Re:Uh huh.

[Anonymous Coward]

I agree, I think he's very wrong. GNOME isn't dying. It's dead. It's completely dead in the water. Saying that it's "dying" is wrong because it implies that it's still alive, to some small extent.

Re:Uh huh.

[MrEricSir]

Yeah, you're right. I guess all those big companies like Oracle and Red Hat are basically dead.

multi-desktop benefits

[bill_mcgonigle]

That's silly - there's plenty of work that is non-specific to any of the desktops, under the freedesktop moniker. The KDE and Gnome people are working on a wallet that works under both, but that also means it could work under XFCE and WindowMaker, etc.

Meanwhile, by not doing it all themselves (e.g. PAM integration) they have more resources to spend on KDE-specific stuff. This is a non-zero-sum game.

Who gives a rat's ass?

[tyrione]

Seriously. The software gets heavier and heavier with each release and productivity software more often than not is just a KDE interface over some set of utilities or a port from GTK+ and vice versa. KOffice will never strike a chord beyond the 1% crowd. Same goes with Amarok and many others. How about working with corporations to port a flag ship CAD/CAM or FEA, solid modeling solution to KDE?

Re:Who gives a rat's ass?

[Anonymous Coward]

KOffice will never strike a chord beyond the 1% crowd. Same goes with Amarok and many others. How about working with corporations to port a flag ship CAD/CAM or FEA, solid modeling solution to KDE?

Because such CAD app would not strike a chord beyond the %1 crowd.....

Not another 4.0 fiasco?

[Anonymous Coward]

Major distros early-adopting KDE 4.0 and 4.1 drove me away from KDE after nearly a decade of faithful use. I'm just about ready to come back and try KDE 4.6 because friends tell me it's regained most of its lost glory, and now they are about to jump ahead again. I hope distro maintainers saw the exodus a few years ago and don't make the same mistake again. Wait for 5.2 or later before changing!

Merge Gnome + GNUSTEP, and make Gnome3 tablet-only

[unixisc]

G3 and unity suck because of the emphasis on tablets.

As long as KDE doesn't do that, it'll be OK. But they sorta hint, from TFA:

"Doesn't that also mean, that the traditional desktop is losing importance? Aaron Seigo: It's losing importance in the sense that newspapers have lost importance."

If KDE wants something for tablets, they should pick a certain version of their DE that they deem provides the minimal functionality that a tablet needs, and fork it from there. That way, the tablet side of things can meet its own requirements, w/o touching the desktop.

Gnome 3 should be renamed something else for tablets altogether, and be a tablet only DE. Stop pushing it on the desktop, and in the process, making the thing look more ridiculous. Even Gnome 2 was unsatisfactory with respect to what one could or couldn't do w/o certain tweaks.

The rest of the Gnome project, as far as desktop goes, should be merged into GNUSTEP, which also seems to be more of an object model environment than Gnome was supposed to be, but never was. Maybe give the Gnome name to the GNUSTEP object model environment.

Meego

[unixisc]

Wasn't Meego already targeted @ the tablet market, granted non-KDE, but w/ the Qt tools & everything? When neither Nokia nor Intel could make it popular on tablets, how can KDE pull that off? Since Gnome 3 has made itself good for tablets only, KDE's best chance is to stay on the desktop, and not to compete for the #4 position (after Android, iOS and Blackberry)

Since Gnome 3 is there now, it may be an opportunity for any tablet vendor to try its luck outside the somewhat crowded Android market by making one with that interface. Let that project try it by all means, but drop the idea of KDE getting in there as well.

Re:Meego

[KugelKurt]

Wasn't Meego already targeted @ the tablet market, granted non-KDE, but w/ the Qt tools & everything? When neither Nokia nor Intel could make it popular on tablets, how can KDE pull that off?

You're wrong. There so far there isn't an official MeeGo release for tablets. Intel and Nokia are still working on that which is why MeeGo couldn't have been a tablet success so far. (The WeTab uses a proprietary tablet GUI.)

Wow, never knew Aron was so ghetto

[MirzaD]

That part in the interview where he called the GNOME designers a "bunch of punk-ass bitches" was a bit uncalled for, I think.

"Designers" have fucked up open source UIs.

[Anonymous Coward]

We don't want so-called "designers" anywhere near our open source UIs. We've seen what they've done to GNOME. We've seen what they've done to Firefox. They've taken what were previously usable and functional UIs, and turned them into spectacularly unusable piles of shit.

Anything that makes it harder for non-programmers to create UIs is a good thing. Why? Because it forces real programmers to create them instead, and programmers are the ones who know how to do it right.

Linux GUIs - one too many.

[aunt edna]

Gnome or KDE?
Just get rid of one of them.
Having a choice is idiotic.

Re:Linux GUIs - one too many.

[heathen_01]

Fine, consider KDE gone. Now go away and play with your Gnome buddies and leave us alone.

Re:Merge Gnome + GNUSTEP, and make Gnome3 tablet-o

[KugelKurt]

If KDE wants something for tablets, they should pick a certain version of their DE that they deem provides the minimal functionality that a tablet needs, and fork it from there. That way, the tablet side of things can meet its own requirements, w/o touching the desktop.

Your way increases the workload by 100% which is insane for a community project with very limited resources. KDE's approach is so much better because it does not need any forks.