New Qt Based Desktop Environment

aglider writes "Phoronix has an interesting piece of news about a new emerging desktop environment. And it's Qt based! From the project home page: 'Razor-Qt is an advanced, easy-to-use, and fast desktop environment based on Qt technologies. It has been tailored for users who value simplicity, speed, and an intuitive interface. Unlike most desktop environments, Razor-Qt also works fine with weak machines.' Someone has already tagged Razor-Qt as 'a KDE ripoff.' What we have so far is version 0.4, ... and ... a number of easy ways to install and test it on a few main Linux distributions. Maybe time has come for something really new in the desktop environment arena almost completely occupied by GNOME and KDE." The project site has a few screenshots, and the source is available under a mixture of the GPL and LGPL. It looks pretty pedestrian in its current form, but then XFCE wasn't much to look at in its early stages either.

Comments

It looks awesome.

[spaceplanesfan]

I for one welcome new razor-qt overlords.
Seriously though, completion is the best, and its really time to teach Gnome folks the lesson.

Re:It looks awesome.

[astropirate]

YES! I'm a huge fan of Qt but don't like any of the current DEs (including KDE) real competition = good indeed.

Re:It looks awesome.

[Fri13]

Which one you prefer, competition or alternativies?

As competition means there are no standards, no compability, no teamwork, no quality in products and less jobs
While alternatives means there are standards, compability, teamwork, better quality in products and more jobs

What competition means? http://xkcd.com/927/

Competition always means that there can only be one winner. And every competitor does everything what they can to win other(s).

You know the phrase "It isn't personal, just business"? Well...
You know the government demands to ask price offers from competitors and give job for one who is cheapest? You only end up having crap in your hands.
How about projects where your timeframe is shorter and shorter all the times and budjet is smaller and smaller? Thank competition.
Or co-determination in corporations, where corporation lays off people because expensives... thank competition again.

Next time someones kid does not win, parent should just say "Shut the fuck up and next time you crush your fuckin enemies without any reasoning, my kid does not live as a loser but as a winner so learn to cheat and use violance to solve problems if needed!" instead saying "It does not matter who wins, but that it is a fair play"?

Software patents are all about competition. Propietary is all about competition. Monopolies are results of competition. Abusive of dominant market position is all about competition. Bigger corporations are free to crush smaller ones how they like. Richer corporation has much better situation than a start up company because they can pull multiple different market share products where start up can only focus to one or smaller market.

In other hand. Open Source (GPl not the BSD) is about teamwork and possibilities to offer a alternativies if wanted. With Open Source (GPL license in this case, not the BSD) licensed software no one can build a monopoly or abuse a dominant market position (unless abusing the license). Bigger corporation can not own the products or customers. There is always a change that someone get better idea and implements it and this way product developes better one.

When you replace "Competition is good" to real meaning what it is... you get "War is good". And thats is it. How many thinks war is good for anyone? Customers are civilians and they are those who suffer most. Bad products, limited choices, less jobs, smaller payrates... Everything bad comes from competition.

There ain't KDE vs GNOME vs XFCE vs LXDE vs XYZ...
There are just KDE, GNOME, XFCE, LXDE and XYZ's.

Those are not competiting projects, they are alternatives.
Competition is hostile by nature. While alternatives are about teamwork and goal to find out best result what to use and same time research and develop a alternativies with new ideas what to choose again together what is best to be used.
Standards are great thing and they are all about teamwork, not about competition.

If we would have free markets, everything would be ruined.... If we would have free markets, we would have fucked up situation on economy... good thing is that we don't have fr..... Oh wait... what is situation on world economy? US Dollar and EUR situation is pretty bad...
What is situation on computer markets? Software patents, market positions abuse, all legal fights, poor quality on software and their support and.... And people are rised from child to prise the competition as "there is nothing wrong on competition".

Razor-Qt is good thing, because it brings one new choice for users. It use existing technology, it follows FDO standards and it is Open Source (GPL/LGPL).
It is new choice, not a new coalition for war.

Re:It looks awesome.

[Caesar Tjalbo]

and its really time to teach Gnome folks the lesson.

Nope, Kubuntu deserves its own Unity.

(disclaimer: I haven't read TFA nor know anything about Razor-qt)

Re:It looks awesome.

[hairyfeet]

Bullshit, if it weren't for competition we'd be on Windows 1.0 and System 2 running on $5k a piece machines that were slow as shit with tiny drives that cost crazy money.

The ONLY reason I have a 6 core CPU with 8Gb of RAM and 3Tb of HDD space along with a 20Mbps connection to type this on is because somebody said "Holy shit! If I don't come out with something better I'm fucking toast!" and ya know what? IT WORKS. We've seen in the past what happens with no competition, see old Ma Bell aka stagnation. Without competition you get either fixing or monopolies, either one sucks ass for the consumer.

Hell I'd argue that's why Linux is stuck dead last and going nowhere, its because there is ZERO competition! All it is is itch scratching and everybody and their dog just repacking the same shit into a different box, that's all. They ALL suffer from the same fiddliness, the same lack of features (WTF is it nearly 2012 and STILL there isn't a "find drivers" or "rollback drivers" button?) the same everything. I could load a dozen different distros and say "Quick, name them" and I doubt VERY seriously anybody would be able to name squat as long as I didn't pick the Ubuntu with Unity.

So I'd say you are about as opposite as opposite can get. Competition is what lights a fire under developers asses, competition is what lowers prices, competition is why I have an insanely overpower computer for less than $800 and competition is why we all aren't sitting in front of 8086 machine looking at DOS prompts. I'd say a little, hell no, a LOT of competition is EXACTLY what Linux needs to whip itself into shape to score big on the 2014 changeover but sadly I'm betting most will do as you say and it'll just be the same shit and bugs on a different day and the 'differences' will amount to Coke VS Pepsi.

Re:It looks awesome.

[Tubal-Cain]

It looks more like KDE's equivalent of XFCE.

Re:It looks awesome.

[Fri13]

Hell I'd argue that's why Linux is stuck dead last and going nowhere, its because there is ZERO competition!

It is nice when you quote yourself talking bullshit.

Clearly you have not heard about Linux.... Not the Linux 0.02 but Linux 2.6.x series...?

What is Linux marketshare on:
A) Supercomputers?
B) Smartphones?
C) Internet / Intranet servers?
D) Embedded systems (ADSL/Cable modems, DVB devices etc)

60%
90%
50%
80%

Can you connect those correctly?

As you only draw a marketshare on desktops.... you failt to see that Microsoft got that monopoly and has abused its dominant market position only because they are competing. There have not been alternatives (standards, teamwork, greater good) and not until now when EU and US DOJ has slapped more requirements and demands to give alternatives a change.

And check out the W3C... what Mozilla and Google has got done by following standards and working together to bring different alternativies. Opera in other hand has staid down because they want to compete. Microsoft has being competing and loosing badly, not long time ago when Microsoft was trying to force own technologies.
What happened to web when Adobe got monopoly for interactive web designing because it won competition with Adobe Flash? Everyone suffered. But now everything is going better when people are working together to push standards and especially developing HTML5.
Thanks to Apple, Google and Mozilla about that.

All great things has come from alternativies, not from competition.
All suffering and bad things comes from competition, not from alternativies.

Why did PC come success and not any other personal computer? As PC were not first personal computer, it was just IBM's first personal computer and they made open standards, open architecture.... They licensed it to every other personal computer manufacturer and software manufacturer to make a PC-compatible pheriaphels and software. They made standards and ideas that PC and PC-compatible personal computers would work together well.
Then Microsoft captured markets, thanks to Compaq who reverse engineered the PC BIOS because competition and IBM mind not to share and develop BIOS together as team. After that Microsoft got all, monopolizied market, abused their dominant market position and everyone suffered. Until now when again teamwork from Open Source side has pushed everything in better direction.

If there would be only competition, you would be using that Windows 3.33 with DOS 10.5 and setting IRQ's manually to get those DOS games working.

Haven't you seen what as well competition has done to software and computer hardware? A Apple LISA is faster to boot and start applications and even print than todays 6 core, 8GB RAM computer! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vLwntYxW4rU

If at those times companies and people would have worked together, searching and developing new techonlogies and together making standards and choosing best available option, we would have gained much better software optimization to that and even todays hardware than we have now (today we have bloated software).

Teamwork is not competition
Standards are not competition
Development and research is not competition

You always need to work together to get better results, by competition only one wins and it usually is bad one and everyone suffers from wasted time and resources:

Were it about beta vs VHS, HD DVD vs Blu-ray or anything else. Competition is bad for humans change to actually develop better technologies and avoid short and long term problems at once by working together. But some people really love competition becuse they want to stay on top or have at least change to be top dog and ripping all from people lower them. So it is better to defend competition beucase otherwise they will loose the change to abuse their possible position and gain lots because it.

 

Re:It looks awesome.

[Anonymous Coward]

He didn't say "competition," he said "completion."

Re:It looks awesome.

[epyT-R]

your post ignores the fact that competition, the desire to outdo those on a similar path, is a driving force behind 'alternatives.'

1. people need to quit buying junk and quality will go back up.

2. when playing a competitive game winning is supposed to matter. this neo-socialist everyone-should-be-friends-and-love-everyone-all-the-time routine stifles this basic human need to differentiate as individuals. for instance, some people are good at football, others are good at math, and some are somewhat good at both. occasionally you get someone who's a real overachiever. Yes, it is better that winners be held out for their outstanding performance. we can't survive as a society if losers are given the same rewards as winners just to shield their feelings, while winners who complain about that are given negative reenforcement, nanny style. feeling bad is ok! it's supposed to motivate you to do better! the parents of the losing kid should say "next time try harder kiddo, you know we'll support you". this is a fact of life that children are not being taught these days, and it shows in the culture now as histrionic disorder among young adults. they are incapable of dealing with situations where their feelings are not taken into account because of prevailing objective reality. A culture that denies reality and muffles its best and brightest so completely is doomed.

3. software patents are not competition. they're a propped up government monopoly. if the government wasn't involved here, it would be nearly impossible for any one entity to dominate eternally.

4. GPL does not prevent this.. look at sveasoft or dd-wrt. look at what redhat is doing now with its proprietary extensions.

5. ad hominem. sure war is competition, but so is a game of chess. your peace loving hippie mantra, while sounding nice initially, doesn't allow the society to be led forward by individuals with novel ideas. like everything else, competition serves a needed role. if anything we need to learn that holistically stamping out specific traits or behaviors does not create balance. it creates imbalance.

6. like competition, hostility is a component of existence for a reason. without it we'd still be single cell organisms, if that. crushing it completely under the guise of some badly thought out ideology of "if only everyone was $X" puts more stress on society, not less.

7. yes I agree. razor looks promising. competition is good.

Re:It looks awesome.

[Grishnakh]

I don't buy this; basically you're trying to redefine the term "competition" to exclude anything where standards are used. "Competition" is a fairly vague term; it doesn't preclude the usage of standards. By your weird definition, Seagate and Western Digital are not "competitors" because their drives all use the exact same standards. This is obviously false and utterly ridiculous. What's really going on is that hard drives are commodity products for the most part.

It's the same to some extent with OSS software: it's more standards-based, and the code is open so you can change it if you want. But this doesn't mean the various projects don't compete with each other; they absolutely do. When someone spends their time working on (the abomination that is) Gnome3, rather than KDE, that's pushing G3 ahead and possibly making it more attractive to users than KDE. While the monetary incentive isn't as obvious or prevalent as with commercial projects, it's still a form of competition: the two projects are competing for mindshare, and to avoid becoming utterly irrelevant and forgotten like twm or fvwm95.

People working on different DE projects, based on different toolkits, is not "teamwork" by any stretch of the imagination, it's really a case of fragmentation. It makes Linux as a whole less attractive to outsiders and newcomers because they see this fragmentation and decide they don't want to bother evaluating every different iteration of kernel+libraries+desktop etc. You don't see this fragmentation in Windows or MacOS; there's one UI, and that's it. You use the OS, you use the standard UI that comes with it, just like everyone else. Don't like it, you switch to the other OS. Not as flexible, but it's simple. However, the flip side to this is of course, if one of the components in the mainstream goes off to la-la land, like with Unity and Gnome3, the entire system is harmed or even destroyed. Imagine if Gnome was the ONLY DE available for Linux, and all the distros used the latest Gnome without question or reservation. As soon as G3 came out, there'd be a mass exodus to Windows and Macs. But instead, people have just switched to other DEs. So competition is good in most cases, to a certain extent; without it, you frequently get stagnation (or in the OSS world, you get developers going off on stupid tangents and expecting everyone to follow along and appreciate their "genius").

Re:It looks awesome.

[Anonymous Coward]

but for linux it was sometimes detrimentary to look at the competition because the competition was microsoft and sold bullshit. why copy the bullshit? in my opinion the linux sphere has limited imagination, not limited competition. now linux again is second in the row, one step behind apple and macosx. what if the gui community really stood up and created a new graphical command line shell? then nobody would stand in front of us.

Re:It looks awesome.

[hairyfeet]

Hell why didn't you bring up toasters while you were at it? See its THIS kind of total flag waving horseshit you ALWAYS get from FOSSies. I said it QUITE clearly we were talking about DESKTOPS, not what your cell phone or TV for that matter runs. Newsflash: Nobody gives a shit, hell unless its Apple nobody even knows what the fuck is on their damned cell phone! Its a screen with buttons and THAT IS ALL. Linux is used there because its FREE and with a locked down cell phone nobody gives a flying wet fart what is behind the buttons, just that the buttons work. Supercomputers? Are nothing BUT CLI, that's it. They are trying to squeeze every little drip drop of horsepower they can so no shit they are using a CLI OS. It also again is the fact its FREE and MSFT frankly has always charged assraping prices on their server products.

Now back to the subject at hand, desktops. if your driver model isn't shit then why does Dell have to run their own repos? If it is sooo good then why does a decade old Windows beat the shit out of Linux on netbooks or why has ASUS has given up on your bullshit or why did Walmart run away from linux as fast as it can?

I'll tell you why, its because its too fiddly, too unintuitive, the kernel on up is as solid and stable as the shifting sands, its a geek programmer's toy and NOTHING more ATM. Funny how all the things you mentioned are controlled by......drumroll....geek programmers! who programs cell phone OSes and writes drivers for them? Who sets up Webservers and supercomputers? Why that would be geeky ass nerd programmers! Meanwhile you can't even give the damned thing away for free to normal folks NOR to retailers NOR to OEMs. Doesn't that slap you with the cluebat? or are you too gonna give me a treaty on how "CLI is leet" like this guy?

See i'm the community's worst nightmare, i'm a retailer. i have better things to do than play 'find the fix' on weekends and i don't think staring at your beloved bash prompt is a solution for ANY problem much less EVERY problem. Frankly Windows 98 and System 9 were more polished than the current Linux distros are, and when i have people on this very forum tell me "Well just don't update it" like Linux magically is immune to ALL software exploits? Well i have to think the whole damned bunch has gone stark raving loonie.

Now you be sure to call me a "nigger faggot cocksucker" aka shill troll astroturfer because I dared to point out that after TWENTY YEARS Linux is STILL lower than JavaME. Oh BTW every single lame excuse you used? There is a whole website dedicated to those excuses such as your excuse about supercomputers? Its been there since Dec 2009 so at least try to come up with some new BS, mmmkay?

Re:It looks awesome.

[diego.viola]

You can use different toolkits in different OSs like Windows or Mac.

Nothing prevents you from installing GTK+ or Qt in OSX or Windows and develop with those toolkits.

Good or Bad thing?

[Mastadex]

Is it me, or are the people at QT trying to make QT into something more than it should be. I always though of it as a GUI library.

Next step, QT OS!

Re:Good or Bad thing?

[astropirate]

Its just you. Qt is a GUI library, just like GTK+ which is what Gnome and LXDE, and a whole bunch more are built on

Re:Good or Bad thing?

[RedK]

I think his point was how QT is much more than just a UI library. It has support for primitive types, it has a socket API, it has low level operating system abstraction. It's basically a portable framework for making rich applications with the least possible amount of platform dependant code. Quite off topic.

Re:Good or Bad thing?

[Kjella]

Well first of all this isn't Qt, it's a system built using Qt like KDE. Secondly, I don't know when Qt was ever just a GUI toolkit. It's trying to be a full on standard library - not like stdlib, but like Java, C# etc. covering GUI, file systems, networking, databases, multimedia, threads, collection classes and so on - basically you're supposed to be able to write fully functional applications without ever using anything but Qt classes.

Re:Good or Bad thing?

[Tanuki64]

basically you're supposed to be able to write fully functional applications without ever using anything but Qt classes.

Actually I am even able to do this without Qt classes. ;-)

Re:Good or Bad thing?

[3seas]

I noticed applications built using QT cannot be automated fairly easily by users with tools like autoit... and that sucks. Or perhaps I'm mistaken what computers are for. I thought they were to automate difficult things into easier to use and re-use interfaces.

Re:Good or Bad thing?

[ChipMonk]

The GLib layer contains those abstractions in the GTK+/GNOME stack.

Re:Good or Bad thing?

[msobkow]

Qt is a full application portability toolkit, not just a collection of widgets. It's Neuron Data's Open Interface concept reworked as open source and delivered on steroids. Not a new concept, but a very powerful one, and not to be confused with a basic widget library like Motif of GTK+ that only deal with widgets and have no concern for portability at their heart.

A completely different animal, despite it's lineage.

As to people claiming this new GUI is a KDE rip-off: KDE is a collection of applications and a desktop/window manager based on Qt. KDE is not the underlying Qt technology on which it's built, but an application of that technology.

Qt predates KDE by many years, and was originally delivered by Trolltech as a hybrid GPL/commercially licensed product before eventually being bought out by Nokia and released as fully LGPL open source when they opted to abandon the tiny revenue stream of Qt/Windows users who were paying for licenses in favour of wider adoption of the toolkit.

Re:Good or Bad thing?

[queBurro]

best explanation ever! and me with no mod points and you maxed out anyway

Re:Good or Bad thing?

[Fri13]

But not even Glib is part of the operating system. What is just a good thing.

Re:Good or Bad thing?

[Anonymous Coward]

I am able to do it in ASSEMBLER, oh, wait!! I am able to write directly into the memory chips using my MICROWAVE OVEN!!!

Re:Good or Bad thing?

[catmistake]

Qt predates KDE...

Does Qt have any relation to Quartz? Its the Q... and the t... makes me think maybe there was a story to be told there.

Re:Good or Bad thing?

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe your automation tools just aren't very good. I've automated plenty of Qt apps.

Re:Good or Bad thing?

[jbolden]

QT was in the mid 1990s being seriously proposed as the default widget set for Linux. Something like what Cocoa is for OSX or .NET for Windows. Yes, the idea was QT OS. LAMP would be the standard for 3 tier architecture and QT for 1 and 2 tier.

Then people went ballistic because of the QPL, Gnome started moving into that role with User Linux and Progeny. And today KDE is just a desktop environment but Linux GUI was a Suse, Turbo Linux, Caldera, Connectiva project at first with QT in a very prominent role.

Re:Good or Bad thing?

[jbolden]

Small nitpick. QT developed a GPL license because of KDE and the controversy. When KDE started it was QT-non commercial and then the QPL license.

Re:Good or Bad thing?

[Kjella]

Qt predates KDE by many years, and was originally delivered by Trolltech as a hybrid GPL/commercially licensed product before eventually being bought out by Nokia and released as fully LGPL open source when they opted to abandon the tiny revenue stream of Qt/Windows users who were paying for licenses in favour of wider adoption of the toolkit.

The dual license cash flow wasn't that tiny, when Nokia bought Qt in 2008 it was employing 250 people and AFAIK that was their only product. They even said it themselves on the developer FAQ:

As of Qt version 4.5, we license Qt under the LGPL version 2.1. Why? We have always chosen licenses that best support our goals. Following the Nokia acquisition, our goals have changed from being focused on revenue generation to supporting Nokias overall software strategy through the vision of Qt Everywhere.

As I understand it they wanted to put Qt on phones and make money on cuts from app sales, just like iPhone and Android. With that plan dead and buried, nobody has yet managed to give a sensible answer as to what Nokia hope to make money on using Qt. You get a lot of hand waving and buzzwords but no traceable cash flow of significance.

Re:Good or Bad thing?

[H0p313ss]

Qt predates KDE...

Does Qt have any relation to Quartz? Its the Q... and the t... makes me think maybe there was a story to be told there.

Does Google not exist on your planet?

Re:Good or Bad thing?

[catmistake]

Qt predates KDE...

Does Qt have any relation to Quartz? Its the Q... and the t... makes me think maybe there was a story to be told there.

Does Google not exist on your planet?

I am not inclined to entertain your ontological interrogative.

Re:Good or Bad thing?

[Anonymous Coward]

Automating something via the interface created for humans is not generally the best option. One reason that it's a bad option is that your approach, unless it's backed up by an artificial brain in a bath, is guaranteed to only work with a subset of GUIs.

Maybe someday your hack of choice will work with Qt, but in general it's a better idea to put a GUI on top of something more directly automatible.

Re:Good or Bad thing?

[Pseudonym]

Well first of all this isn't Qt, it's a system built using Qt like KDE. Secondly, I don't know when Qt was ever just a GUI toolkit. It's trying to be a full on standard library - not like stdlib, but like Java, C# etc. covering GUI, file systems, networking, databases, multimedia, threads, collection classes and so on - basically you're supposed to be able to write fully functional applications without ever using anything but Qt classes.

...which made a certain amount of sense back in the day before the ISO C++ standard, and when C++ standard libraries had widely varying performance and compliance.

Today, this decision is more of a liability than a strength. C++ now comes with some of this stuff standard, and Boost has even more. The inevitable consequence is that programmers spend a significant proportion of their time writing code to fix the impedance mismatch between Qt and standard C++ (though the STL-style iterators help).

If that weren't bad enough, Qt is still not exception-safe. It's getting better with every release, but it's still not guaranteed, and largely undocumented. I haven't looked at the Qt 4.8 codebase, but the example code is still full of the most novice of novice errors:

QSomething* something = new QSomething();

(BTW: If you don't see the problem in the above line of code, you are a C++ novice. There is no shame in this, but you probably shouldn't be developing Qt without a code reviewer looking over your shoulder.)

Re:Good or Bad thing?

[Kjella]

QSomething* something = new QSomething();

(BTW: If you don't see the problem in the above line of code, you are a C++ novice. There is no shame in this, but you probably shouldn't be developing Qt without a code reviewer looking over your shoulder.)

Actually if you're developing for the desktop you're just wasting your time trying to catch std::bad_alloc as

Most desktop operating systems overcommit memory. This means that malloc() or operator new return a valid pointer, even though there is not enough memory available at allocation time. On such systems, no exception of type std::bad_alloc is thrown.

In my experience C++ exceptions are a complete waste of time, I try-catch the call to some crappy third party library and what happens? Boom goes the application anyway. Exceptions that can't catch aren't worth having and my code uses error codes instead, works a million times better. Plus you can't throw exceptions over signal/slot boundaries, so they're not useful even when they technically work. A giant waste of time for everyone involved, too bad they've sold you the kool-aid.

Re:Good or Bad thing?

[Pseudonym]

For the record, the problem isn't what happens if that line throws an exception. It's what happens if a subsequent line throws an exception.

In my experience C++ exceptions are a complete waste of time, I try-catch the call to some crappy third party library and what happens? Boom goes the application anyway.

Even in a desktop application for which you intend the app to die should an exception to be thrown, close attention to exception handling can make the difference between a good user experience and a bad user experience.

Even desktop applications usually have objects which hold physical resources. Files are the most common case, such as temporary files which should get cleaned up or data which could be irrevocably corrupted if things die in the middle of an operation.

Exceptions that can't catch aren't worth having and my code uses error codes instead, works a million times better.

Exceptions were invented because error codes are unsafe. Unless you're using Haskell, compilers don't check to see if you've checked an error code. Plus, they don't work with constructors. Besides, pretty much all of the non-crappy libraries (e.g. Boost) that you should want to use throw exceptions. You need to deal with exception safety even if you never throw an exception.

Plus you can't throw exceptions over signal/slot boundaries, [...]

...yet. I expect that Qt5 will support this on C++0x platforms, using exception_ptr.

Re:Good or Bad thing?

[Urkki]

...which made a certain amount of sense back in the day before the ISO C++ standard, and when C++ standard libraries had widely varying performance and compliance.

Today, this decision is more of a liability than a strength. C++ now comes with some of this stuff standard, and Boost has even more. The inevitable consequence is that programmers spend a significant proportion of their time writing code to fix the impedance mismatch between Qt and standard C++ (though the STL-style iterators help).

A large part (maybe even majority) of Qt developers don't really like STL or boost or even exceptions. As one of these, I'm strongly for having an alternative to STL and Boost, and strongly against trying to make Qt code one bit more like STL or Boost code is.

And those who like STL or Boost are free to use some other GUI framework built on top of them, or start developing/improving one if open source landscape doesn't have a good choice already.

Re:Good or Bad thing?

[Pseudonym]

A large part (maybe even majority) of Qt developers don't really like STL or boost or even exceptions.

I'm not a Qt developer, I'm a C++ developer. If Qt doesn't work well with C++, then I can't use it.

That's not a problem if you can do everything in Qt. For many types of application (including most of the stuff in a base desktop environment, which is what TFA is about), the GUI is the only hard bit. Qt is a fine tool for this common case.

That's not the type of application I want to do. Qt may make moderately difficult stuff easier, but it makes complex stuff much harder than it needs to be.

The most frustrating part is that fixing it really wouldn't be that difficult. I'm not asking that Qt throw exceptions, or propagate exceptions across signal/slot boundaries. Your third-party widget isn't exception-safe? Fine, I won't use it. I can live with that. STL compatibility can be provided with just a little bit of glue code which you never pay for if you never use it.

All I'm really asking from Qt is a little more care and a little more documentation. On the "care" side, I want to make sure that Qt's internal state is sane if an exception is thrown. On the "documentation" side, I want to know that if I do this:

auto_ptr<QSomething> something(new QSomething);

...then I want to know when Qt has taken ownership of the object. This is documented nowhere (or, at least, wasn't last time I looked).

It doesn't seem that unreasonable to me.

(I should point out that the situation with KDE is even worse. Mixing C++ and Qt is hard, but mixing C++ and KDE is nigh impossible.)

Re:Good or Bad thing?

[Urkki]

Hmm, I'll comment the auto_ptr with QObjects, and docs. I'm fairly certain it's always been clearly documented, that QObject is owned by it's parent, or by nobody if parent is 0. I mean, that's one of the cornerstones of Qt framework. Also, QObjects don't get parents by accident, and as far as I can remember, every method which may change parent of an object is documented to do so. Maybe I'm reading too much between the lines, but since you say "Qt takes ownership", I'll say just in case: Qt itself doesn't take ownership of anything, it's always some specific object (at least QObjects, QGraphics stuff, and QStandardItemModel stuff do this with parent-children relationship, and then there are the smart pointer classes of course) which has ownership of another. If there's no object with ownership, then Qt doesn't magically take care of it.

And if you're mixing auto_ptr (QScopedPointer would be more Qt'ish, unless you've got some external dependency which requires auto_ptr) and QObjects which may get a parent at some point (and this is pretty much every QObject subclass in Qt framework itself, but I guess you could be using your own QObject subclasses and not set parents ever), you're doing something wrong in the first place. You seem to know auto_ptr semantics are not compatible with something which may get deleted by somebody else, so why were you even trying?

Anyway, what you wrote sounds very much like the classic case of trying to take a framework designed to be used in certain way, and use it "your way", such as use exceptions in certain way. This generally leads to bad results and frustration, which you apparently also noticed... I agree that mixing Qt with other library/framework which makes conflicting assumptions can be hard, but generally the solution is to isolate the conflicting parts (Qt has a few possible ways to do this), instead of using the parts in a way they were not meant to work.

Re:Good or Bad thing?

[Pseudonym]

Anyway, what you wrote sounds very much like the classic case of trying to take a framework designed to be used in certain way, and use it "your way", such as use exceptions in certain way.

I'll agree with everything you said with only one nit: What you call "your way" is the normal C++ way. The problem isn't that Qt has an impedance mismatch with me, it's that it has an impedance mismatch with C++. It even made sense at the time. However, given that it's nominally written in C++ and for C++, it causes problems today.

Re:Good or Bad thing?

[Urkki]

Anyway, what you wrote sounds very much like the classic case of trying to take a framework designed to be used in certain way, and use it "your way", such as use exceptions in certain way.

I'll agree with everything you said with only one nit: What you call "your way" is the normal C++ way. The problem isn't that Qt has an impedance mismatch with me, it's that it has an impedance mismatch with C++. It even made sense at the time. However, given that it's nominally written in C++ and for C++, it causes problems today.

If you care to continue, what problems are you referring to, exactly? What do you want to do, that using Qt in your application prevents you from doing easily?

Re:Good or Bad thing?

[Pseudonym]

It's probably not worth discussing details here, because any discussion will inevitably, at some point, get bogged down in details. But the short answer is: Using third-party libraries which adhere to C++ standards.

Libraries which adhere to C++ standards use collections which are concept-compatible with the STL or provide a glue layer to support it. Libraries which adhere to C++ standards throw exceptions if undesired-but-recoverable events happen, such as parse errors. I need to write more glue code than would otherwise be necessary to get Qt to work with these.

But perhaps the problem is one of perception. Writing glue code and insulation layers is inevitable in any nontrivial application (or, even more crucially, any product line of applications). Perhaps it's unrealistic to expect Qt to be infrastructure like Boost or the STL. Rather, it should be on an equal footing with any other third-party library which needs nontrivial work to successfully integrate.

Re:Good or Bad thing?

[Urkki]

I guess we basically agree, except I'd perhaps say, Qt is alternative infrstructure to something like Boost, because there are also libs furher extending Qt.

I wonder if any of the GUI frameworks are any better? Maybe wxWidgets is more pure C++, but that's just a guess.

Also, interoperatibility is little better if you have C++11, becuase then Qt containers provide consturctors taking std::initializer_list<T>. Also, with Qt5, signals can be connected to lambdas and plain functions too, not just QObject slot methods, which I think opens up a few new ways to interoperate with other libs/frameworks.

KDE ripoff?

[An Anonymous Coward]

Someone has already tagged Razor-Qt as 'a KDE ripoff.'

And KDE is just a Windows ripoff. So really, Razor-Qt is just another Windows look-alike. That was actually one of the things I liked about KDE, the interface was so familiar to what I already knew, it made transitioning easier.

Re:KDE ripoff?

[El Lobo]

And say what you want about Windows: Windows interface is to this moment unsurpassed in it's functionality and simplicity (at leat the classical 95/2000 on which KDE is based). OSXs finder with all it's annoyances and ,,so shiny/no content,, is, unfortunately gaining terrain with copycats (god save us).

Re:KDE ripoff?

[Anonymous Coward]

Windoze sucks!!!!

It is not intutative at all, it is not simple, and barely functional. Blow OSX all the crap you want, my mom can figure it out - it is unsupassed right now under version 10.6.x.

Look to NeXT, BeOS, Amiga, DragonFly, - get something new already. Look beyond the mundane. Linux people are to the point where they are hoping they can make their little linux box look like windoze. OOOOOOO - get windoze then.

I want a better OS and a better GUI - no more of the same old crap.

Re:KDE ripoff?

[Bill_the_Engineer]

OSXs finder with all it's annoyances and ,,so shiny/no content,, is, unfortunately gaining terrain with copycats (god save us).

If you can't make a point without insulting something then your point isn't that good to begin with.

At the very least learn about whatever you are insulting so you don't look stupid and we could take you seriously. I use OS X and Linux and I like my OS X desktop just fine. I don't want widgets on my desktop. The ones I do have are out of my way on the dashboard. I do not use "mission control" and I don't have to. I just click on my Applications icon on my dock as I always have and I continue business as usual. I can press command-spacebar and spotlight will help me find my relevant emails, files, and web pages visited and or googled. I can define "workflows" with applescript that perform some of my repetitive tasks that I do on a daily basis. Workspaces is nice to organize my windows. This desktop does what it is suppose to do and that is to stay out of my way.

I don't know why people obsess so much about the desktop. I spent more time in my editor and ssh terminal than I ever do on my desktop. Geez you'd think we have better topics for a fanboy war.

Anyway on the topic at hand which is "KDE is just a windows ripoff". I have to agree that KDE does its best to emulate the Windows experience on Linux (warts and all). However the real question is this a bad thing? I don't think so, since I'm not forced to use KDE if I don't like it.

Re:KDE ripoff?

[Gaygirlie]

I know this is off-topic, but I really can't help but pose you a single question: how old are you?

Re:KDE ripoff?

[mwvdlee]

I want a better OS and a better GUI - no more of the same old crap.

Then either make it yourself or keep sucking Windoze.

Re:KDE ripoff?

[mickwd]

"If you can't make a point without insulting something then your point isn't that good to begin with."

"At the very least learn about whatever you are insulting so you don't look stupid and we could take you seriously."

Interesting two sentences to write next to each other.

Re:KDE ripoff?

[Bill_the_Engineer]

There is a difference between looking stupid and being stupid. If you don't point out the consequences, how are they suppose to learn?

Re:KDE ripoff?

[GreatBunzinni]

I don't believe Razor-Qt is a KDE ripoff. As Razor-Qt doesn't force the user to run those bloated monstrocities called akonadi and nepomuk, and as it doesn't show any nasty rendering "artifacts" which plague KDE4 since the 4.0 days, it is a considerable improvement when compared to KDE.

If only it had a network/wifi manager...

Re:KDE ripoff?

[somersault]

Look to [bunch of old OSes] - get something new already

Ummmmmm. Okay. If you're that desperate for something new, how about coming up with something new?

There's also something to be said for not fixing what ain't broken. New for the sake of new is why we end up with so many bugs, and pieces of awful, incomplete, crappy window managers like Unity and Gnome Shell being used in stable release versions of popular Linux distros when they are nowhere near ready for prime time.

Re:KDE ripoff?

[fnj]

Windoze sucks!!!!

It is not intutative at all, it is not simple, and barely functional. Blow OSX all the crap you want, my mom can figure it out - it is unsupassed right now under version 10.6.x.

Look to NeXT, BeOS, Amiga, DragonFly, - get something new already. Look beyond the mundane. Linux people are to the point where they are hoping they can make their little linux box look like windoze. OOOOOOO - get windoze then.

I want a better OS and a better GUI - no more of the same old crap.

Parent should not have been modded down. He has some valid points and touches on key issues. Beating parent on the head with a stick is childish and does not improve the discussion.

I happen to disagree that OSX operations are discoverable by the novice. It seems to me by observing novices that Windows UP THROUGH XP was, with the exception of certain operations, extremely easily understood by novices. Reasonable people can disagree on this, but one thing they cannot reasonably disagree on. A huge portion of the population now has a reasonably good understanding of, and facility with, Windows. So it seems to me that sticking within the dominant desktop paradigm does have its advantages.

That does not mean it has to look exactly like Windows, or copy obvious details where Windows just flat blows it!

Re:KDE ripoff?

[realityimpaired]

It looks more like LXDE than it does KDE, anyway. And it appears to be using nm-applet for the wireless manager, in at least some of the screenshots. :)

I question the *need* for another system like that, but I don't question the work they've done. It looks pretty clean to me, and like it's a good alternative. But considering that I use E17, I'm definitely not in their target market, nor would I consider switching, when E17 will happily run on a PII-250 with 64MB of RAM and still be quite zippy, even with the bling/compositor effects turned on.

Re:KDE ripoff?

[fnj]

Well, thank you Mr. Grumpy. Actually, thank goodness, he has other options than to listen to your ultimatum. There are any number of DE's already available that break new ground and that anyone will agree (pro or con) are not "more of the same old crap."

Re:KDE ripoff?

[Anonymous Coward]

For it be a true KDE ripoff, it would have to have a useless, resource-consuming "semantic desktop" system tacked on, and at least 40% of the devs' time devoted to useless widgets at the expense of actual desktop usability.

Re:KDE ripoff?

[msobkow]

Maybe KDE was a "Windows rip-off" for 1.0, but the latest releases look nothing like Windows. Microsoft did not and never claimed to have created the concept of the window-based GUI -- even they credit Xerox/PARC with that.

I'm not a fan of KDE myself, but I am a HUGE fan of the Qt approach to applications development, having spent almost 15 years working with an older commercial product called Neuron Data Open Interface that had the same goals back when portability meant X/11 for Unix, Apple, and Microsoft implementations of the abstract widgets using the native widgets of the platforms in question.

On a side note, Java's JFC is similarly a Java-based implementation of a Qt-style widget framework, with Java itself providing the "OS API" portability. JFC has native windowing systems renderings of it's widgets, adapting it's look and feel to the native platform as best it can.

A key characteristic of Neuron Data like systems is their use of graphics primitives by the toolkit to support fully custom cross-platform widget development. You are NOT restricted to the set of common primitive widgets that are available across all platforms, but instead have the tools to implement ports of uncommon and new widgets using the graphics primitives. This slows down the rendering a bit, resulting in occasionally sluggish performance for JFC, but I haven't found native widget binding approaches used by Eclipse to perform better enough to be willing to sacrifice the ability to develop fully custom cross-platform widgets.

Neuron Data was good to me. They kept me profitably employed doing custom applications for almost 15 years of my early career. I learned a LOT about applications portability through the Neuron Data headers and macros, far more than I ever did from any other approaches I've seen to source code portability.

Yes, I'm a fan of the macro hell that some portable application programmers despise. I spent too many years working with such technology to slough it off as being a bad idea; it's a GREAT idea.

Re:KDE ripoff?

[mcgrew]

And say what you want about Windows: Windows interface is to this moment unsurpassed in it's functionality and simplicity (at leat the classical 95/2000 on which KDE is based).

What's so simple about having to reboot your computer every five minutes? You are talking about older versions of Windows, although you still need to reboot whenever you install or update anything whatever, unlike Linux.

What's so simple about having to reopen all your programs and documents after a boot? KDE opens to the same state it was in when you closed it, all open docs and apps are reopened. You can, of course, change this to mimic Windows.

What's so simple about the double click? Those of you in their twenties don't remember learning how, so it just seems natural to you, but it isn't. Back in the nineties when PCs first got Windows, the double click was the hardest part of teaching someone how to use a computer, and it's completely unnecessary. Your mouse has two buttons. KDE needs no double click. Of course, you can make this like Windows, too.

What's simple about Windows Registry? IMO they should have simply kept .ini files.

Windows is NOT simpler than KDE, and it is NOT more "user friendly." KDE is more than user friendly, it's user obedient. It does things the way you want it to, Windows insists on you doing it the Windows way.

Re:KDE ripoff?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, classic, but that is about it.

WinVis7a interface is god-awful.
Then we have the casual Office "users" claiming "RIBBON SAVED MY BABIES FROM PEDOSATAN" or other such nonsense because they are unwilling to learn simple toolbars and menus so must be spoonfed.
This leads to Microsoft thinking anyone gives a damn about Ribbon besides the casual Office kiddies.
Worse, even Microsofts own research suggests otherwise, BUT THEY IGNORE IT AND THROW MORE RIBBON IN WINDOWS 8.
"HMM, SEEMS NOBODY IS NOTICING OUR BRAND NEW SUPER COOL USEFUL RIBBON INTERFACE, WE MUST MAKE IT BIGGER AND ADD MORE OF IT, THAT SHOULD HELP!"
Someone fire that ass, seriously, he is the worst thing to have happened to Microsoft.

"Oh, you heard about our fantastic new Aero interface? It is SOOOooo shiny and sleek, we use your graphics card to run it because what's the point of having that big ol' graphics card and not using it? Stupid right?"
NO, I DON'T WANT WANT TO USE MY GPU ALL THE TIME, IT COSTS MONEY YOU KNOW.
There is an absolutely extremely tiny reason for you to ever need decent transparency in an OS, and that is for simple sliding animations, such as fade in and fade out, icons perhaps, cursors, and the odd cases where you might need to set a window transparent to, say, trace or whatever.
And those are bad, at best. Software is fine.

Classic interface is the only Windows interface. Everything else after it is for babies and people with no eyes, or those poor, tortured people being managed by the former groups.

Re:KDE ripoff?

[Fri13]

Razor-Qt is just another Windows look-alike

Yeah... looks so a like: http://www.geeky-gadgets.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/windows-8-metro-apps1.jpg

Re:KDE ripoff?

[Fri13]

Neither does KDE force to run akonadi and nepomuk. You can disable them if wanted. Only some KDE applications demand those like now kdepim applications.
But KDE Plasma, KWin and other KDE applications do not force you to run them.

Re:KDE ripoff?

[SomeKDEUser]

Trolling much? Since kmail2 (akonadi-based) imap fetching works fast. And nepomuk+krunner is awsome (yes, I know where my doc are, but why should I care: alt-F2, type their name, and there you go).

Why should I have to wait for a stupidly slow file-based system just because some idiots like you do not understand the limits of some software architectures? The data is still stored in mdir format...

Morons who would like new features, but not the computing cost of those features (and would like the features implemented in a way that suits their ignorant prejudices), and feel entitled to insult the developers years after their complaints became obsolete/irrelevant are just sad excuses for human beings. It is the same mental illness which prevents people from implementing good policies in real life, because although one would like less teen pregnancies, less drug users and less crime, this can never be at the cost of abandoning all-important law-and-order moral prejudices.

Re:KDE ripoff?

[Runaway1956]

I really don't like your attitude, that KDE is just a Windows ripoff.

Unfortunately, as time passes, it seems that you are right. I really don't like that Plasma desktop, nor do I like the way Gnome is going. I'm trying to get used to the Enlightenment desktop. Maybe I need to look at this Qt desktop. Wonder how hard it is to install and configure? Well . . . I'll know in a few days, I guess. I can't resists a challenge like that for long!

Re:KDE ripoff?

[Runaway1956]

Unsurpassed in it's functionality and simplicity. Uhhmmmm - that would be the Classic theme, right?

Re:KDE ripoff?

[Anonymous Coward]

so is Razor-qt a graphical user interface for Linux? so I can use Razor-qt instead of Gnome or KDE? I'm confused. I thought it was a windows manager / shell enhancer for Windows 7 64 bit. was about to download it, but it didn't have an exe setup program. lol

wonder if it runs on a Mac because I think Mac OS 10 is based on Unix if I remember correctly.

Re:KDE ripoff?

[jbolden]

Parent might have had points but "Windoze sucks!!!" doesn't help advance the conversation.

As for the advantages of familiar vs. better I think Gnome's comment was the best here, "You have a certain of difference points you can spend on your interface. Too different and people just hate it. So spend them carefully". The Windows interface made a lot of sense which is why even prior to KDE, Linux desktops sometimes had a windows feel. FVWM's FVWM95 was extremely popular with early distributions, RedHat even used to make that one the default.

Anyway with iOS gaining popularity, and OSX gaining popularity the days when everyone knew one or another interface are starting to pass. Further web based interfaces use entirely different toolkits and have entirely different paradigms. The computer monoculture is dying for the younger generation.

Re:KDE ripoff?

[thatbloke83]

And say what you want about Windows: Windows interface is to this moment unsurpassed in it's functionality and simplicity (at leat the classical 95/2000 on which KDE is based).

What's so simple about having to reboot your computer every five minutes? You are talking about older versions of Windows, although you still need to reboot whenever you install or update anything whatever, unlike Linux.

With Windows 7 you very rarely need to reboot when updating things now. Hell I can now even update my Graphics drivers without requirig a reboot.

What's so simple about having to reopen all your programs and documents after a boot? KDE opens to the same state it was in when you closed it, all open docs and apps are reopened. You can, of course, change this to mimic Windows.

It's called Hibernation.

What's so simple about the double click? Those of you in their twenties don't remember learning how, so it just seems natural to you, but it isn't. Back in the nineties when PCs first got Windows, the double click was the hardest part of teaching someone how to use a computer, and it's completely unnecessary. Your mouse has two buttons. KDE needs no double click. Of course, you can make this like Windows, too.

Start->Control Panel->Folder Options. Change "Click items as follows" to "Single-click to open an item (point to select)" - then select the sub-option for that mode of your choice.

What's simple about Windows Registry? IMO they should have simply kept .ini files.

You've got me on this one.

Windows is NOT simpler than KDE, and it is NOT more "user friendly." KDE is more than user friendly, it's user obedient. It does things the way you want it to, Windows insists on you doing it the Windows way.

Sorry but if KDE was simpler than Windows then many more people would use it.

Re:KDE ripoff?

[ckaminski]

*I* would rather have my email in mdir (and hence pretty much plaintext) than in some proprietary binary database prone to failure/breakage.

Re:KDE ripoff?

[HiThere]

This is also true of the early Macs. Up through at least system 3.5. They had their problems, but they were easy for novices to learn.

Thing is, there aren't many real novices around these days. Most people already have expectations based around what they have been using. (Which is possibly one reason that all OS GUIs are starting to be designed to look like phone interfaces, no matter how badly that works on a desktop.)

Re:KDE ripoff?

[westlake]

What's so simple about having to reboot your computer every five minutes?

I don't remember having to reboot Windows every five minutes when all I had to work was a mid-nineties P75 Packard Bell.

Not that this has anything to do with the Windows UI, which is what I thought we wew talking about here.

You are talking about older versions of Windows, although you still need to reboot whenever you install or update anything whatever, unlike Linux.

I have 400+ programs installed under Win 7. The reboot for patches and updates average about once a month --- and as a home user I do this when it is convenient and otherwise don't give it any thought.

What's simple about Windows Registry? IMO they should have simply kept .ini files.

I doubt I have spent two hours mucking about with Registry and configuration files in the last fifteen years. Since there hasn't been a live geek spotted within rifle shot of these suburban wilds in the last five years, that is probably just as well.

KDE is more than user friendly, it's user obedient. It does things the way you want it to, Windows insists on you doing it the Windows way.

This works for me.

It makes it much easier to explain a problem and get it fixed when I do need help.

Re:KDE ripoff?

[SomeKDEUser]

It is in mdir. Only the metadata and the cache of the data is in the database. All this trolling about akonadi is completely misinformed.

Re:KDE ripoff?

[Anonymous Coward]

If you needed to reboot your Windows every five minutes you probably had hardware/driver issues. A lot of the software that wants you to reboot doesn't really need it and even in Linux, you still have to restart the software that got updated (including X/KDE) to make use of the updates.

I definitely miss session saving in Windows, though Suspend/Hibernate does somewhat the same job (but takes longer for me than just rebooting).

Windows hasn't 'needed' double-click since Explorer 4 on Win95, although I don't think single-click was ever enabled by default. The double-click probably came about because single-click was already mapped to selecting, which is simpler than ctrl+clicking (use the keyboard and mouse at the same time?). Most people probably don't select a single icon very often, though. KDE doesn't replace double-click with right-click.

The Windows registry is a hierarchical database. So are filesystems (some more than others).

Re:KDE ripoff?

[mcgrew]

With Windows 7 you very rarely need to reboot when updating things now.

Yes, Win 7 is better about this than previous versions, but I've still had to reboot three times since I bought the notebook last month, oce for a virus definition update.

It's called Hibernation.

Yes, I have the notebook set to hibernate when I close the lid, but Linux has Hibernate, too. Hibernate doesn't help when MS or Adobe or Norton demand a reboot. I shut my Linux computer off every night; it has a hibernate mode, but doesn't really need it.

Sorry but if KDE was simpler than Windows then many more people would use it.

You have to know about something to use it. Most people are amazed when I teol them there's a free replacement for Windows (usually when their hard drive dies or their PC is completely trashed by viruses and they've lost the install disk). Most People don't even know what an operating system is; they think Windows is the computer.

Popular != better.

Re:KDE ripoff?

[Anonymous Coward]

You are a clueless fanboy. Akonadi is a centralized service to store personal information, and it relies on a full blown database engine to manage all that information. This means that anyone who wishes to use KDE is forced to run a full blown database in the background, which happens to be mysql, and all this to be able to access emails.

Moreover, Akonadi is broken. It crashes all the time and forces brand new computers to grind to a halt. This doesn't happen with decent DEs. So, try to learn a bit about akonadi before you waste your time trolling through /.

Re:KDE ripoff?

[Urkki]

WinVis7a interface is god-awful.

Win7 interface has the
1. press Win-key
2. type few letters
3. sometimes press down arrow few times/type a few more letters if what you want isn't first in the list
4. hit enter

And it works for pretty "obscure" things too... such as typing "path" will offer "edit environment variables" as the first choice. I wish modfying environment on Linux was as easy (well, apart from the environment editor itself being god-awful legacy crap from... probably Windows NT or something).

That feature alone would make Win7 interface good, no matter anything else. And anything else isn't particularly annoying about it either, so overall the interface isn't just good, it's excellent.

Featuritis will make it grow, soon

[G3ckoG33k]

"It looks pretty pedestrian in its current form, but then XFCE wasn't much to look at in its early stages either."

Wait. Featuritis will make it grow, soon... ;)

Re:Featuritis will make it grow, soon

[Anonymous Coward]

The two look nearly identical to me. Which is to say, both look like windows 95 with bigger icons. Probably best to leave the ambitious stuff to the big envs and let these two fight it out over the "everything old is new again" group. Whoa... hipster nostalgia desktop snobbery...

Re:Featuritis will make it grow, soon

[Anonymous Coward]

Pedestrian alright...it reminds me of the various linux's I tried 10 years ago when I was an avid distro-hopper. I think most people have moved on really...the basic win95 look is just old, it hurts my eyes now...

Whenever I look at xfce i can't help the feeling that its 5 years behind the curve. Razor looks closer to 10...

Re:Featuritis will make it grow, soon

[Yfrwlf]

Yeah, god forbid a Linux desktop ever do as much as Windows or OS X can. I think KDE has come the closest out of all of them, depending on the distro, to being loaded with as many features, but they all still lack in critical areas. These are areas in which Windows is still, after decades, p0wning Linux.

The biggest problem is standardized Linux packaging. All these distros think it's lovely to keep users in their walled gardens, and it's extremely sad when Linux users don't mind. Sure, it's nice to have a cute little manager connect you to their walled garden, and some gardens contain a fairly big wealth of programs, but they are still gardens with walls. This leads to fragmentation due to the same programs being customized and fucked up in different ways instead of everyone being on the same page by downloading the default program from the developers directly. Great, now I have to look on *Fedora's* forums to figure out this Apache issue, or *Ubuntu's*, or *SUSE's*, etc, instead of being able to learn and rely upon real standards. Most importantly it leads to the inability for users to share programs directly, and instead they have to grovel and rely on their service-based repository while at the same time laughing at cloud OSes and saying they will never become reality. Guess what, Linux has been mostly a cloud OS because of walled garden reliance and a lack of packaging standards for a long time now. You only own your OS once you don't rely on a repository and your software is truly mobile and modular. Sure, you can make a server archive of all the packages, but only for a specific distro and specific version. Woohoo, great flexibility there, not.

Another area is driver management. I don't care of the solution is DKMS, making Linux have actual standardized ABIs for some/most/all driver module interfaces, or what, but the fact that there isn't an existing desktop solution there sucks. It's great when you never have to fuck with things, but that's true of all OSes, until you need to. Then what is the solution? Can users share drivers to get around issues? No, you're fucked unless you're a Linux geek, you're reliant on your distro and bring the problem to them instead of taking it to the actual developers directly.

Instead of helping Linux standards and working on the key problems, Linux users seem complacent to allow distros to put in proprietary solutions. They want to use proprietary leverage to get money instead of being good neighbors in the Linux communities and competing in fair ways while upholding user freedom. Sure, some of these companies have done some good things in different areas, but you can't ignore the bad just because of that.

Until Linux is free and no one has to rely on a single point of failure, a single dictator, a single source for their livelihood, and instead can help the world and Linux community as a whole grow by utilizing and helping with real standards so that software proliferates and helps instead of gets held back and controlled due to a lack of those standards, Linux won't ever be number one on the desktop.

Hoping for a new generation of Desktop Enviroments

[VorSec]

Lets hope this is the start of a whole new set of Desktop Environments, and I don't mean the bloated, needlessly flashy, touchscreen optimised, BS that looks like children's toys.(Yes KDE, Unity, Gnome I'm looking at you.)

Video

[ens0niq]

Razor-qt desktop environment on Ubuntu 11.10:

http://youtu.be/n6Ro1Qc4UaE

Article (hungarian):

http://hup.hu/cikkek/20111219/razor-qt_qt-alapu_gyors_desktop_kornyezet_telepitese_ubuntu_11.10-re

Rip-off?

[Ardeaem]

Someone has already tagged Razor-Qt as 'a KDE ripoff.'

Oh no, someone call the police! Someone is ripping off an idea from an open source project! We must stop this "open" madness!

Re:Rip-off?

[Lemming Mark]

Indeed - it looks like it's reusing a load of artwork from KDE *which is good*. With open source there's no reason not to slot in existing professional artwork straight away in a new project. They're even planning to make it easy to contribute their patches to common code back to KDE, so they're even being actively co-operative, which is always nice to see.

If they come up with something that looks nice and is lighter-weight than KDE then I might want to install it on my ancient netbook or in virtual machines. KDE is still my preference on my desktop.

Qt is a nice toolkit and it's good to see more development based on it. There's also the Trinity Desktop Environment, for folks who want a KDE-like lightweight desktop - it actually *is* KDE 3, further developed. It looks like (https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Trinity#Trinity_Build_Dependency_PKGBUILDs) that's based on Qt 3, whereas Razor-Qt can presumably use newer Qt versions from the start. Variety is nice, it's all cool.

Re:Rip-off?

[ByOhTek]

My complaint about that is that...

A project focuses on making a new desktop environment based on a GUI toolkit used by one of the major desktop environments, but with the aim to be lightweight...

And they are calling it a KDE ripoff? Shouldn't it be an XFCE ripoff?

Re:Rip-off?

[Dcnjoe60]

My complaint about that is that...

A project focuses on making a new desktop environment based on a GUI toolkit used by one of the major desktop environments, but with the aim to be lightweight...

And they are calling it a KDE ripoff? Shouldn't it be an XFCE ripoff?

Technically, this isn't a desktop environment, any more than fluxbox is a desktop "environment." To be an environment, you have to provide additional services and functionality. Xfce is an environment, but not as feature rich as Gnome or KDE. So,if you want to be accurate, this is not a KDE ripoff, but an LXDE ripoff (which is also not a true desktop environment).

Re:Rip-off?

[Chryana]

They call it a KDE ripoff because it does look a look like KDE, because they borrowed a lot from them in terms of artwork. To be honest, looking at the screenshots, I know I could be fooled into thinking these are KDE screenshots. The only difference is in the lower left part of the taskbar, as far as I can see.

Re:Rip-off?

[Anonymous Coward]

The word you are looking for is "window manager".

Window close/minimize/maximize buttons

[psergiu]

Why the heck all the Linux Window managers are copying Windows 95-XP with the placement of the window close/minimize/maximize buttons ?

Also - why are all the GUI shortcuts With Ctrl and not Alt or Meta ?

Is Windows THAT GOOD so the purpose of all those GUIs are to become a perfect copy of it ?

Re:Window close/minimize/maximize buttons

[Tanuki64]

Why using windows at all? All computers do this. Maybe get rid of monitors after all... Content is made available by a combination of morse code and whistles.

Re:Window close/minimize/maximize buttons

[Anonymous Coward]

Because every possible alternative is worse.

Re:Window close/minimize/maximize buttons

[neokushan]

As opposed to just being different for the sake of being different?
Does it really matter what order minimise/maximise/close is? I mean, can you actually give a good logical reason why the order or placement should be anywhere else? If not, then why not just keep it the way everyone else does it?

Re:Window close/minimize/maximize buttons

[rapidreload]

Is Windows THAT GOOD so the purpose of all those GUIs are to become a perfect copy of it ?

Actually, it IS that good. I've always thought Windows XP managed to obtain a very nice interface that allowed efficient window, program and file management. Windows 7 just added extra stuff but still kept the basics because if it works well, why rock the boat? Linux doesn't have to be totally different in GUI - GNOME 3 and Unity should be enough evidence that trying something different for the sake of change isn't necessarily going to work out well.

Re:Window close/minimize/maximize buttons

[calibre-not-output]

Yes, it is. It's also what most people are used to, which is important for gaining a large userbase.

Re:Window close/minimize/maximize buttons

[obarthelemy]

1- Why not ? You have inside info on where god intended them to be ?
2- Same: why not ? Ctrl is easier to find too, on the edge of the keyboard.
3- Well, if what you're anxious about is windows control placement and shortcut key, Windows is as good as any OS. And it don't hurt to keep things familiar, changing things for the sake of changing them is pretty gratuitous. BTW, you can swap ctrl and alt via a keymap, if you're really hurting for it.

Re:Window close/minimize/maximize buttons

[xSander]

Because every possible alternative is worse.

This. IMO there is nothing wrong with the placement of close/minimize/maximize in Windows. If it ain't broke, don't fix it.

Besides, transition from Windows or other DE's with the same placement is easier that way. That goes for keyboard shortcuts too.

Re:Window close/minimize/maximize buttons

[Gaygirlie]

Is your point that they should differentiate just for the sake of differentiating? That's a terribly poor reason for doing that. If using alt instead of control for example did provide some real tangible benefits to it, then yes, it would make sense. But it doesn't: there is absolutely no benefit from just replacing control with alt in keyboard shortcuts, especially since people are already used to using control. It would be counter-intuitive and a disadvantage, not a benefit.

The Right Reason(TM) for doing something differently than what people are used to is because it provides some actual tangible benefit.

Re:Window close/minimize/maximize buttons

[tudsworth]

Hell, why use computers at all? Let's go back to smoke signals!

Re:Window close/minimize/maximize buttons

[Anonymous Coward]

Xmonad is what god intended.

Re:Window close/minimize/maximize buttons

[Anonymous Coward]

"Why the heck all the Linux Window managers are copying Windows 95-XP with the placement of the window close/minimize/maximize buttons ?"

Why not?

Re:Window close/minimize/maximize buttons

[psergiu]

Which "everyone else" ?
It's different on Motif, NeXTStep/OpenStep, Win 3.x, MacOS Classic & MacOS X.
Microsoft just copied OS/2 (and switched the buttons around)

Let me tell you a reason: "Cascading" Windows. If you have a lot of them, if you want to select one of the windows in the middle of the stack, you're likely to push the "Close Window" [X] button. Never happens when the close window button is on the left.

As all the displays are now Wide Screen, something like WM2, with the window controls on the side would be more appropriate.

Re:Window close/minimize/maximize buttons

[Anonymous Coward]

And everyone who responded to you missed the point. The CLOSE button should not be next to any other window control. It should be on the opposite corner of the window. This avoids the VERY common annoyance of overshooting the minimize/maximize button you wanted and hitting the close button instead.

Re:Window close/minimize/maximize buttons

[dpilot]

I'm not one to blindly copy Windows, but neither am I one to change simply for the sake of change. I've grown rather accustomed to the buttons on the title bar, and they've been pretty common through a lot of UIs, WMs, etc, and that even predates the "copy Win95 era".

I'd like to see someone "do the OS/2 WPS UI right" some time, even though everyone seems intent on "doing Windows right." The OS/2 WPS was the one GUI that managed to attract me away from the command line more of the time than any other. I'm using GNOME because that's the "standard platform" at work, but I spend almost all of my time at a command line. (In multiple xterms on multiple desktops) By the way, the WPS used the "standard" menu bar button placements, and that was legacy predating Win95.

Re:Window close/minimize/maximize buttons

[Coryoth]

I mean, can you actually give a good logical reason why the order or placement should be anywhere else?

Because destructive operations (like close) should be kept separated from non-destructive ones (like maximise/minimise). NeXT (and by inheritance WindowMaker) get this right. Fortunately most window managers also make it easy enough to change, which I usually do.

Re:Window close/minimize/maximize buttons

[pmontra]

Why did Windows 95 copy the placement of the X11 window manager I was using years before MS started developing Win95? Actually I remember Win95 added the X button to close a window with a single click, something I thought very dangerous back then but I never made that many misclicks on it.

Re:Window close/minimize/maximize buttons

[Tanuki64]

No, I did not.

Re:Window close/minimize/maximize buttons

[neokushan]

"Everyone else" is the majority of computer users out there, i.e. Windows. I know, it sucks but no matter what way you swing it, it does have 90%+ of the desktop market. The server market is different, but who cares for UIs on a server?

I also disagree with your cascading windows suggestion, it doesn't make a huge difference because the "Exit" button is on the side of a window, all that really differs is which side. Plus, on today's widescreen monitors, the "gap" between the left and right side of the window is absolutely huge (I just tested it with about 60 open windows). You'd have to have literally hundreds and hundreds of cascading windows for that to be an issue and by that point, a different way of switching windows is probably more ideal.

However all that said, I cannot understate how much I do agree with your latter point - having the controls at the side of the window does seem to make a lot more sense. Might take some getting used to, but I can definitely see that being useful and unobtrusive, especially as vertical screen real estate is in such high demand these days.

Re:Window close/minimize/maximize buttons

[neokushan]

Good point, I can't say I disagree with that.

Re:Window close/minimize/maximize buttons

[GreatBunzinni]

Pssst.....

Hey....

Ratpoison runs on linux.

Damn facts, getting in the way of a perfectly good sanctimonious rant.

Re:Window close/minimize/maximize buttons

[allo]

maybe you need a better mouse. or set your window controls to be bigger. I never accidentally hit the close button ...

or you need gnome3, without max/min buttons.

Re:Window close/minimize/maximize buttons

[Tanuki64]

Because destructive operations (like close) should be kept separated from non-destructive ones (like maximise/minimise).

Says who? Your opinion. A valid one, but there are different ones, which also have some merit, e.g. to be able to access all controls when the windows are stacked in a way that one corner is always covered.

Re:Window close/minimize/maximize buttons

[gl4ss]

because they're a good placement style. as opposed to osx style for example - or even beos style.

maybe they should go osx and place the buttons at upper-left corner - to be different you know. and then in their own built in apps move those to be on top of each other. and then place another fill-screen button at the right corner?

Re:Window close/minimize/maximize buttons

[fnj]

Damn right in every respect.

Re:Window close/minimize/maximize buttons

[gr8_phk]

Why the heck all the Linux Window managers are copying Windows 95-XP with the placement of the window close/minimize/maximize buttons ?

I totally agree. With the advent of wide-screen monitors the layout is all wrong. Vertical space is at a premium, so the "panel" should be to one side or the other. I have a number of ideas on how this should be laid out to make it useful. Notice that browsers have adopted "tabs" because the traditional win95 method of switching tasks sucks - or they maximize the browser because they need the vertical space. I've been meaning to do a mock-up of this layout that's stuck in my head.

Re:Window close/minimize/maximize buttons

[fnj]

Well, if you take for example, Windows 95 as the starting point, the opposite corner is the lower left. Doesn't sound very logical to me.

I understand the reasoning, but how ARE you going to arrange the buttons then? It's just as bad to put Close next to the Window Menu on the left. Would you move the Window Menu to the right where Close it now, and vice versa? I guess that would work.

Re:Window close/minimize/maximize buttons

[fnj]

Do you seriously use xterm in place of Gnome Terminal, or, better yet, konsole? Why?

Re:Window close/minimize/maximize buttons

[gbjbaanb]

I remember when Microsoft put the close button on the windows, there was a lot of wailing and gnashing of teeth as people claimed they'd always accidentally close the window instead of maximising it... and I'm sure there were, but people quickly got used to it.

Change it to something else, there will be much wailing again, but they'll get used to it readily enough again.

(I quite like the idea of moving the title bar to the side, but on the right hand side, as a 'handle' like the ones you get on all appliances that are designed for right-handed people).

Re:Window close/minimize/maximize buttons

[neokushan]

That would be a bit unfortunate for left-handed people, who already have to deal with a lot of stuff designed for right-handed people (layouts, mice, default controls, etc.), but there's no reason why it couldn't be a configurable option - it's not like the program itself has to set the placement of UI items like that.

Re:Window close/minimize/maximize buttons

[seyyah]

Why the heck all the Linux Window managers are copying Windows 95-XP with the placement of the window close/minimize/maximize buttons ?

Razor is not a Window manager. The placement of the buttons comes from kwin or OpenBox or whatever wm you chose to use it with.

Re:Window close/minimize/maximize buttons

[bill_mcgonigle]

Says who? Your opinion. A valid one, but there are different ones, which also have some merit, e.g. to be able to access all controls when the windows are stacked in a way that one corner is always covered.

Apple used to actually have human user interface engineers working on usability in a scientific way. They worked out the close-button away from the others was the least likely to cause accidental data loss.

Your point is fair: they valued the avoidance of accidental data loss over the value of window manipulation under the stacking conditions you outline.

But I think that's a reasonable default.

It's pretty well-known that Microsoft didn't copy the Macintosh behavior to avoid copying Apple ("innovation, yo"). Same reason they put the Start button in the lower left when it makes sense in the upper left for Western readers (though having menus inside windows makes an argument for bottom-dock more tenable). Menus inside windows violates Fitt's Law, though, so it's a patch on a bad design.

Anybody working on a Qt desktop that follows good usability practices? Sign me up!

Re:Window close/minimize/maximize buttons

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, it IS that good.

Actually, it isn't. No virtual desktops in the 95/2000/XP interface, unless you get 3rd-party add-ons. But worse is the "Start Menu". Instead of forcing users to move their mouse to a fixed location to access that menu, why not make it available wherever the user wants it to be? The menu should come to you, not the other way around. Windows and all the Windows interface copycats (e.g. GNOME, KDE, XFCE, LXDE) get this wrong, whereas - for example - NeXTSTEP got it right. Having a floating primary menu is a better interface, IMO. Linux window managers like WindowMaker, fvwm, Fluxbox and others do this the right way. And there are many other defects in the Windows interface design. Just because Windows is popular doesn't mean it's good; people like all sorts of terrible stuff (e.g. McDonalds).

Re:Window close/minimize/maximize buttons

[Tanuki64]

Apple used to actually have human user interface engineers working on usability in a scientific way. They worked out the close-button away from the others was the least likely to cause accidental data loss.

I am always a bit skeptical when someone claims 'usability in a scientific way'. Apple and Microsoft have absolutely no interest in best usable software. Their primary interest is best sellable software. And this is not necessarily the same. Best sellable software focuses on new users, shallow learning curve, wow-effects. Advanced users already did buy the product. Ok, the product should not suck that much that they won't ever buy again, but in usability...erm sellability studies this group is secondary.

Re:Window close/minimize/maximize buttons

[bill_mcgonigle]

Apple used to actually have real researchers, Human Interface Group, Advanced Technology Group, etc. and they did real research (which wasn't always abided by). Steve Jobs disbanded them all and announced that the product teams could always do their own research. But as you point out, that's not really the case. Jobs really just didn't want to have any people with data to override his sensibilities.

Microsoft currently has a Research Group that is similar, except they seem even less product-focus. Google has some hard-science folks, but they're more operations focused (CPU design, etc.) or doing non-Google stuff (driverless cars, solar, etc.)

Re:Window close/minimize/maximize buttons

[Anonymous Coward]

Heh, reminds me...

What goes dit-dit-dit-dit-needeep?

Morse toad!

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

Re:Window close/minimize/maximize buttons

[jbolden]

Not all Linux window managers follow those conventions. Try window managers based on non windows environments. For example WindowMaker.

Re:Window close/minimize/maximize buttons

[jbolden]

OS/2 WPS was the basis for ICEWM. DFM is a file manager based WPS.

Re:Window close/minimize/maximize buttons

[Anonymous Coward]

It would have been funnier had you posted that AC.

Re:Window close/minimize/maximize buttons

[Anonymous Coward]

No, it is simple: Most people are spineless losers who fear that if they do anything out of the ordinary, then the users won't love them anymore, and they'd be FOREVER ALONE.
Despite those same users being total retards who are not experts on user interface design, didn't study anything related to it, and complain anyway, even if they get what they think they want.

It's the exact same reason they don't have success with women.

And they always use the fake "excuse" "but they are used to this". IT. IS. STILL. WRONG! It's irrelevant what they are used to! Hey user! You learn, or you die! That's the rule of natural selection! And since it's free, I don't give a fuck about what you think anyway! I wrote it because I think it's awesome that way, and got the knowledge to prove it!

And you are indeed right: If you imitate crap, all you gonna get, is crappier crap. And if you run behind, all you ever will be, is behind.

Re:Window close/minimize/maximize buttons

[Urza9814]

Ctrl is used because people are used to using ctrl (at least in the Windows world) for keyboard shortcuts.

Meta isn't used because not everyone HAS a meta key. My current laptop does, but my desktop doesn't. Alt I would be OK with, but they had to pick one and ctrl works just as well. Plus it's easy to find, it's right there in the corner. With alt there's a greater risk of hitting the wrong key if you aren't looking. I just tried it out, could find ctrl no problem, but for alt I ended up starting at the win key, sliding over to the spacebar, and then realizing I overshot and sliding back to find alt.

Re:Window close/minimize/maximize buttons

[Anonymous Coward]

There is no need to mock anything up. KDE4 already does it all, you just need to move that main panel from bottom to any of the sides (a task easily done with just mouse).

Re:Window close/minimize/maximize buttons

[dpilot]

No, I'm using "xterm" as a generic class of "X-window with a command line."

Re:Window close/minimize/maximize buttons

[dpilot]

Last I knew, DFM was abandoned - I did use it for quite a while. Though it wasn't really object-oriented, it just faked it with an "actions table." Prompted by your response, I just did a quick search... One place I see that the last update was in 2001, which squares with my thoughts. Another place I see "0.99.9" last updated in 2005.

Just downloaded, looking at the changelog...
Even though the site where I got it said 2005, in the changelog 0.99.9 was dated April 26, 2001. Rats, I was starting to get my hopes up, a little.

Re:Window close/minimize/maximize buttons

[ardor]

You are right about virtual desktops, but wrong about the start menu.

When you use maximized application windows (which is how windows are used 90% of the time), you cannot access that nice floating menu anymore. You could turn one of the corners or edges of the screen in a zone where the menu always pops up, but what is the point of a context menu then?

In addition, the task bar shows you what's there: a start menu and the tasks. This is hidden in Windowmaker-style interfaces. Oh, and the taskbar is an efficient way of switching between tasks and having these tasks listed at the same time.

In addition, the start menu button is a fixed place, facilitating muscle memory. No matter what you are doing, you always know how to get access to the main desktop functionalities. You always have an "exit path", a way to regain control over the system.

Important things should always be visible and easily accessible. Main menu and the list of tasks are two such things.

Re:Window close/minimize/maximize buttons

[marcosdumay]

Keep the close where it is, move everything else to the top-left corner.

Re:Window close/minimize/maximize buttons

[shutdown -p now]

Also - why are all the GUI shortcuts With Ctrl and not Alt or Meta ?

Part of it might be because of CUA (even if few people still remember it).

Re:Window close/minimize/maximize buttons

[w0lo]

The start menu button/taskbar is on the bottom by default because buggy apps assume 0x0 is the top/left of the screen (workarea), see http://blogs.msdn.com/b/oldnewthing/archive/2003/09/12/54896.aspx

Re:Window close/minimize/maximize buttons

[Anonymous Coward]

What I'd like to know is why the idiot that designed Win 95 thought it would be a good idea to put icons on the desktop, where they are covered up by the open window(s)

Re:Window close/minimize/maximize buttons

[Anonymous Coward]

When you use maximized application windows (which is how windows are used 90% of the time), you cannot access that nice floating menu anymore.

Wrong. For example, in WindowMaker the floating menu can be brought up with a keyboard shortcut (F12 by default, but it can be configured to be some other key combo through the Preferences gui utility). I think clicking one key is easier than having to move the mouse to a specified point and then clicking the mouse.

As far as the task bar, I think it's a waste of vertical screen real estate, which unfortunately is at a premium now with LCDs. May Windows users even have the taskbar hidden until the mouse moves over that area. And if you have a lot of tasks then the list items get shortened to the point of being useless. In WindowMaker Alt-Tab will bring up the list of tasks, which can be easily chosen with the keyboard. Windows has that too, so I don't think the task bar is even necessary. If you really need to see everything that's running I think it's better to have a process viewer, of which there are many in Linux.

Re:Window close/minimize/maximize buttons

[lahvak]

The reason Ctrl and Alt should not be used for window manager operations is that unix applications often use key combos with Ctrl and/or Alt for their own purposes, and if these combinations are intercepted by your window manager, the applications cannot function properly. Window managers should use the "window" key for all their keybindings, after all, that's why there is a little picture of deformed window on it.

Re:Window close/minimize/maximize buttons

[lahvak]

Lot of window managers are completely configurable. In fvwm, I can place the buttons anywhere I want, and make them do anything I want. I can have title bars completely without buttons. I can simply get rid of the title bars. Or put them on the side of the window instead of the top. Number of other window managers will let you do the same.

Re:Window close/minimize/maximize buttons

[jbolden]

I agree FVWM can be configured to be like non windows environments and was configured that way in the 1990s.

Re:Window close/minimize/maximize buttons

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, the top left hand corner is preferable for right handed mouse users, as it's easier to simply push forwards than to go forward and pull across to the right

Re:Window close/minimize/maximize buttons

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh, there's plans to change that...

Re:Window close/minimize/maximize buttons

[bmo]

Does it really matter what order minimise/maximise/close is?

It's the first thing I change in every desktop where I can change it.

Close on left, minimize and maximize/restore on right.

As God and IBM intended.

--
BMO

Re:Window close/minimize/maximize buttons

[Anonymous Coward]

A true conservative in its native environment! Sadly not an endangered species (objectively that is, they are in their own minds)...

Re:Window close/minimize/maximize buttons

[arose]

So instead of bothering with window management they just let buggy apps dictate the design? Somehow this is exactly what I'd expect from Microsoft.

Re:Window close/minimize/maximize buttons

[qualityassurancedept]

I started using computers seriously with my Powerbook in like 1993 and then a sony viao that I bought for close to $1500 in 1998. These were extremely simple devices to use. These computers taught me how to find a file, open a program, create a folder... etc etc... all the basics. Now its 2011 and everyone seems to want to change the desktop for no other reason than to create marketing buzz in an environment where everyone else is changing the desktop. Honestly, a computer has become a vehicle for marketers to turn every aspect of one's interaction with the device into a revenue opportunity or a brand identity. I don't really want to look for a file in a dramatically different way than I did back in 1993. I also don't want to need a graphics card made in the last two years to be able to get a desktop environment to make a word processing program available. Computers ought to be simpler and require fewer resources as technology improves but sadly they are being turned into complicated mazes that lock the user into a paradigm and punish defection to competitor's products.

Re:Window close/minimize/maximize buttons

[Anonymous Coward]

because that's the dominant interface in use today for PCs? what's wrong with it? last I checked, use of control/alt keys for shortcuts is done on all modern systems.

Re:Window close/minimize/maximize buttons

[Compaqt]

The reason is simply that it's good enough, and there's no compelling reason to change.

Why is the steering wheel on the left in the US?

Should new car companies like Tesla change it to the right just for the sake of it?

Assume it's better on the right (for some reason). It still wouldn't make sense to change, because people are used to the left, and that's good enough.

The GUI shortcuts are arguably better with Ctrl because Ctrl on most keyboards is at the corners, thereby making it easier to access.

Note: if all the buttons had been on the left from the beginning, and shortcuts with Alt, I would have said leave it as it is.

Also: Please do answer this-- are you using the Dvorak keyboard layout? If not, why not?

Re:Window close/minimize/maximize buttons

[afgam28]

And a nice thing about the NeXT/Apple way of keyboard shortcuts is when you're in a terminal. Pressing Ctrl+C stops the current program, as it should in Unix. Option+C copies the selected text. There's no conflict between the GUI and CLI.

Re:Window close/minimize/maximize buttons

[IrquiM]

Because Ctrl has a better placement on the keyboard compared to the other buttons when the task is functioning as a "shortcut" - Unless you max out at 3 words a minute that is.

Re:Window close/minimize/maximize buttons

[diego.viola]

+1 for Wayland.

Re:Lame - pathetic windoze paradime

[stewbacca]

While I agree with your sentiment, hiring human factors engineers, in my experience, only leads to more-yet-friendlier Windows-like environments. I was in a grad program, and all it did was reinforce best-practices for desktop-metaphor based operating systems. Disappointing indeed.

Looks interesting. But....

[Tanuki64]

...one of the more important reasons I stopped using KDE and never started with GNOME was bloat. With bloat I don't mean featuritis, if it as only features, I could ignore those I don't need, but there was dependency hell. I started KDE and it started dozens (slight exaggeration) of services, which I don't need and don't want and suddenly everything looks different. Programs, which have nothing to do with KDE suddenly have a different fileselectorbox. A sluggish one. Ok, if I start KDE maybe I should not complain to get KDE style. But also suddenly some imbecile programs cluttered my console with warning messages. Made development really hard, because I hardly was able to see my own temporary debug output, as it was drowned in a mass of junk messages. And no, not all of them could be disabled. When I tried to contact the KDE and application developers about that, the started playing responsibility ping-pong.

A nice Qt based desktop environment would be fine. But only if it depends only on qt libs and only if it does not hijack the whole computer.

Any of these ported to Windows?

[neokushan]

This might be a really stupid question, but has anyone ever ported any of these UI's (KDE, Gnome, etc.) to Windows?

Now before you tell me off for being stupid, there would be a good reason for it - anyone that prefers *nix and has to use a windows machine (say at work) can at least get some of the familiarity by using their favourite GUI. For those of us, like myself, who have tried to switch from Windows so many times but got cold feet because everything is so unfamiliar and different, it'd be a great way to familiarise with it.

Sure, there's a lot more to *nix than just a different UI, it's almost a different ethos, a different way of working - but every little helps.

Re:Any of these ported to Windows?

[Hatta]

No, the problems with Window's UI go far deeper than which side of the title bar the close button is located. Someone familiar with UNIX who finds themselves on Windows would do best to just install Cygwin.

Re:Any of these ported to Windows?

[Anonymous Coward]

http://windows.kde.org/

Re:Any of these ported to Windows?

[boristhespider]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_shell_replacement
http://windows.kde.org/
etc.

Re:Any of these ported to Windows?

[Anonymous Coward]

you can configure windows XP to use a shell other than explorer by default. I did that in college and used kde running on cygwin. it worked quite well.

Re:Any of these ported to Windows?

[aztracker1]

I used LiteStep for the longest time as a shell replacement... Win7 is probably the first time I didn't even consider it. I don't recall the theme I used, but it had some really nice behaviors setup, and customizing was pretty straight forward.

Re:Any of these ported to Windows?

[nemasu]

I used bblean forever on XP (work computer).....now I've got Win7 here, and it doesn't work too well (ie. at all really). Sad.

Re:Any of these ported to Windows?

[boristhespider]

Looks quite interesting, though I don't think I'd replace my normal Windows shell with it anymore. (I would have done back on 98 or 2000, even if just for the sake of interest).

Re:Any of these ported to Windows?

[shutdown -p now]

http://www.bb4win.org/

Re:Any of these ported to Windows?

[Anonymous Coward]

I use emacs.

Re:Any of these ported to Windows?

[lahvak]

I don't know if they improved during the last few years, but my experience with those was that they were not really worth the trouble. Now when I have to use a Windows machine, I simply just install VirtuaWin and TXmouse to fix the most glaring annoyances, and some basic Cygwin environment to get a decent shell and a terminal emulator window.

Re:Any of these ported to Windows?

[boristhespider]

I must confess if I'm doing anything work-related on my Windows machine I just use MinGW and be done with it. The shell is OK and I can install most things I want, and since I typically program in Emacs I can run the native Windows version without problems.

Still, the replacement shells do interest me. I might play around a bit.

Re:Any of these ported to Windows?

[Anonymous Coward]

I second that. I am using Cygwin-X in a heterogenous environment for years now and wouldn't want to live without it. Not so much for running KDE/Gnome/IceWM in there, but a) for X-forwarding including XDMCP and b) for having lots of the wonderfull *nix tools at avail natively without having to run stuff inside a VM.

The install routine is not exactly friendly to newcomers - you will have to know what you need to install in order to get the desired results, but i suppose there's some help to be found on the web. Go ahead and try it out, if you're stuck to a Windows machine for whatever reason, but need the power of Unix to get your job done. Cygwin/X

Re:Any of these ported to Windows?

[dbcad7]

Easier to just get yourself a live CD and boot it up.. then play around to your hearts content before committing it to hard drive install.. You will be amazed that you can boot it up and do things like surf the Internet without having to find drivers.. I had a friend who's hard drive died, loaned her a live CD so she wouldn't be without the Internet until she could get her new drive.. She ended up dual booting on the new drive... I use Windows at work, and Linux at home.. It's not like my brain is twice the size of others to know how to use both systems.. there are many commonalities.. I have had visitors to my house who have used my PC to surf or check their email and never realized they were using that complicated scary Linux OS.

Re:This is awesome. No, not really

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't we have enough vehicles? I mean, you've got Chevrolet, Ford, Buick, Oldsmobile, Pontiac, Chrysler, Dodge, and seemingly endless others. Then you've got foreign-built cars from Mazda, Toyota, Honda, BMW and others. And to make matters worse you've got different types of vehicles including cars, trucks, vans, sports cars, gas guzzling super heavy duty trucks and SUVs, hatchbacks, convertibles, T-tops, luxury cars, four-wheel drive, rear-wheel drive, front-wheel drive, diesel, gasoline/electricity hybrids--you name it. And colors--not the colors! You'll see cars from white to black and every visible hue and shade in between, with different types of finishes even. It has to end--there's too much fragmentation of Chevy vs. Ford lovers, car drivers vs. truck drivers!

And that's just a car lot analogy. Step into your local supermarket, walk down an isle--any isle--and you'll see something similar. Want cereal? Plastic storage bags? Garbage bags? Games, movies, CDs? Choice can be a bitch, but it's a good thing.

Rubuntu

[jonathancarter]

Oh crap, so this means at some point someone's going to make a "Rubuntu" too? :p

Re:Hoping for a new generation of Desktop Envirome

[Dcnjoe60]

Lets hope this is the start of a whole new set of Desktop Environments, and I don't mean the bloated, needlessly flashy, touchscreen optimised, BS that looks like children's toys.(Yes KDE, Unity, Gnome I'm looking at you.)

It is the bloat that turns lean window managers into actual desktop environment. Take LXDE, it is basically openbox with a few panels. By the time you add a printing subsystem, notification subsystem, and all the other things that truly make up a desktop environment, then it is no longer so lightweight. It is not the eye-candy that makes KDE and Gnome so heavy, it is all the other services provided in the background.

Re:Lame - pathetic windoze paradime

[neokushan]

Just as an addition to the above post, I stumbled upon this site the other day and was rather impressed by it - http://www.chiptune.com/

It brought back a lot of memories of the Amiga and for those of you who have no idea what Workbench looked like, it's a quick way of playing around without having to install anything.

Re:Lame - pathetic windoze paradime

[Gaygirlie]

It's easy to just say "do something different and better!" when you're not giving a single concretic example yourself. The way Windows and most DEs and WMs work just happens to work reasonably well in conjunction with a mouse and a keyboard whereas for example gestures usually work very poorly with such input devices. There are only a limited number of ways of presenting information or interacting with it, it's not an endless pool from which to just pick what you like, especially because displays themselves are still purely 2D.

Sloppy Focus

[Anonymous Coward]

Anything without sloppy focus (Or focus follows mouse) as the standard method is not worth having. (I don't even dislike Windows 7 because you can get it with a registry hack).

I really don't get it Nextstep had this but they went backwards with Mac OS X

Re:Sloppy Focus

[gl4ss]

small popup dialog windows.

that's the reason.

arguably, they shouldn't be used. the "popup" that makes it impossible to interact with the main window should be within the main window anyways and preferably dim the main window too.

Re:Sloppy Focus

[rsun]

OSX has focus follows mouse sort of. Between X applications or between terminal instances it works fine, but outside of those two instances it's (ick) click to type. You can get it to sort of work between the browser/mail clients and terminal sessions (e.g., terminal sessions behind the browser/mail can usually be typed in by mousing over them), but it's not terribly consistent. Now if only I could fix the splat-cxv for copy/cut/paste...

Re:Sloppy Focus

[spitzak]

A modal dialog should get focus even if the mouse is pointing at it's parent.

A window that grabs focus should warp the mouse pointer to be inside it.

These would makepoint to type work. But the main wms all refuse to do this so they can continue to claim it does not work.

"paraDIME"?!?!?

[Anonymous Coward]

You have an inflated sense of the worth of your two cents.

Re:Hoping for a new generation of Desktop Envirome

[peppepz]

Still, I think that you can make a nice desktop environment without requiring a full-blown MySQL instance to be running all the time, or 4 different programming language runtimes in memory just for the core environment, or generating log files that completely fill your hard drive in a couple of hours. Graphics aside, Windows '95 had probably more features than many of the current DEs - and it ran with 4 MB of RAM.

P.S. I confess that I even *like* the graphic appearance of Windows 95, but I guess that's just me getting old.

Re:Lame - pathetic windoze paradime

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't like what I see when loading that page with NoScript enabled. A plain text button linking to https : //www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr which gets hidden by the JavaScript animation. I won't click anything in that page.

KDE is.

[Anonymous Coward]

KDE is ported to Windows. Check http://windows.kde.org/ for the installer. It works sort of like synaptic, where you pick the applications you want and it deals with dependencies for you.

Some things in it work better than others, and you'll have to download a lot of Qt and KDE dependencies at first. The applications generally work pretty well but aren't all feature-complete compared to their *nix counterparts (but Kate and IOslaves work! aweosme.)

I'm not sure about the state of Plasma itself (the desktop, widgets, etc.) but it's been available for a while. I don't think Kwin is available, so it will still use the normal Windows window management (ick)

Re:KDE is.

[boristhespider]

mod parent up, i got sidetracked reading about how to actually go about putting kde on windows and ended up posting much less info, five minutes later

Re:KDE is.

[Anonymous Coward]

'kind of ported' would be the right statement - just have a look at kgpg - btw the only reason to install that whole bunch of also in 'Wondnos' overblown libs (and that just because of there is no reliable - debian-like bug free - GPG port on that system) - and you realize its not yet beta - just uninstall that shoot again and get your fingers on the board to 'creature' better: or to not bother again about that blown stuff again

Re:KDE is.

[Anonymous Coward]

I tried KDE for Windows around 6 months ago. Unfortunately it is still a bit buggy. I tried version 4.5 and it still had dependencies on the Windows Shell (ie. you couldn't run Plasma without explorer.exe being on).

I still have KDE on my Windows computer and I use a few of the programs (KAlgebra, KmPlot, Okteta) but not Plasma.

On a side-note, I will soon be dual-booting my computer with FreeBSD, probably with KDE or Xfce installed.

Re:Hoping for a new generation of Desktop Envirome

[Tanuki64]

It is not the eye-candy that makes KDE and Gnome so heavy, it is all the other services provided in the background.

This is a consequence, which cannot easily be avoided. The only thing I'd wish for is a better modularization. The current desktop environments are close to all or nothing. You can drop the one or other service, but the minimal set is still huge and in my view very intrusive.

Lack of class and design

[rAiNsT0rm]

My biggest problem is the complete lack of actual class and design and refinement with most open source projects. They are all done by techie, mostly youngish males, without any sense of design or art. I mean, a pizza cutter? Really? Seriously, this is the kind of thing that has bugged me since the early 90s with Linux and it just never gets better. With a unified vision and goal look at where OSX was able to come in relatively short order while Linux still flounders around creating 200 desktop environments instead of one or two good ones. This is where the bazaar and the cathedral concept fails, sometimes chaos really does just fall short.

Re:Lack of class and design

[VortexCortex]

"sometimes chaos really does just fall short."

Says the being, evolved via chaotic natural selection...  Clearly, your own existence proves you wrong.

Re:Lack of class and design

[rAiNsT0rm]

Well, I sure as hell would hope that after 2.3+ million years Linux would finally have some great design. I guess that makes my 21+ years waiting seem minor in comparison.

Re:Lack of class and design

[gbjbaanb]

you do realise the goatse man was a product of this natural selection process too.... I don't think you can hold us up as an example of perfection quite yet (not until we've achieved transcendance like today's motd says)

Re:Lack of class and design

[AdamJS]

Uh...Linux and open source projects are made up of many, many different people who are building on Project A,B,C, etc. because it reflects their own personal vision or goals or accomplishes tasks they want done.

There is no "unified vision" because there is not and can not be a unified purpose/goal. Some DEs are for research environments, others are for standard workstations, others favor people that desire total flexibility, and some are geared towards trying to merge completely contradictory dichotomies, and so on. Each has their own set of maintainers and each seems to have its own specific vision, like you ask for.

This is like asking why mobile handset manufacturers don't just come up with one unified Android handset design instead of doing their own thing while retaining similar tenants/requirements.

Re:Lack of class and design

[Anonymous Coward]

Just curious, but what part(s) of the OS X interface do you think demonstrate "class and design and refinement"? It's all just a matter of taste, of course. Personally I find OS X's ultra-shiny look and feel to be pretty tacky, almost but quite as tacky as Windows' Fisher-Price look and feel. Shiny does not mean refinement; it just means shiny. While there are some Linux apps that look sloppy and amateurish, I think most of the window managers I've seen have passed the threshold for decent appearance (and most have themes that can be customized to suit your tastes).

Re:Lack of class and design

[jbolden]

OSX is essentially NeXTSTEP, which is from about '88. Linux has done well.

95% of the super computing market
60% of the server market
largest player in the embedded market
up and coming development system for the mainframe market
3rd largest player in the desktop market (though with the understanding 1 -> 2 and 2 ->3 are about 8::1 drops)

I don't consider Linux anything other than an success. The desktop world has advanced considerably from where it was in the mid 1990s and wanted things that open source isn't particularly good at.

Re:Lack of class and design

[paxcoder]

Natural *selection*. Learn it.

Re:Lack of class and design

[Anonymous Coward]

while retaining similar tenets/requirements

FTFY

Re:Lack of class and design

[rAiNsT0rm]

I've been using and contributing to OSS/Linux for over 20 years, do you think I don't get this? The problem is that while there is indeed a place for all kinds of niches that is not what actually happens, and the way it does happen is not efficient nor design minded. What I have been a proponent of since the beginning is a *foundation* which is the kernel AND a base set of the most common utilities and apps but no more. These would all be just ONE application/util per function. They would be the most mature and well designed. This is the base Linux and a solid foundation to then let be taken in any direction desired for any and every niche and project. That core functionality and base though would give everyone as well as outside publishers something stable to target. It would also draw some great talent to those core projects because everyone would want to be a part of the action. This is how the kernel has been handled for those same 20-odd years and it would be a damn disaster if not for a board with a vision and this kind of approach. Why everyone thinks it only works for the kernel and nothing else mystifies me. Sure individual projects can also be run this way, but again you lose the cohesion. I get that it is a polarizing topic and that you and others may not agree, but I have watched this go on and on with no actual progress for longer than many Linux users have been alive.

Re:Lack of class and design

[rAiNsT0rm]

Well those are a bunch of stats... however, it still points out the same core problem. The desktop, which is the focus of this article. OSX is not just NeXTSTEP. OSX has been around for less time than Linux and has made far more strides in actual usability and design. Linux is incredibly successful, I never said it wasn't. Linux is not a success on the desktop and never will be without a solid foundation and vision. The kernel is and has been handled this way, I never understand why people fight it elsewhere when it makes nothing but perfect sense.

Re:Lack of class and design

[jbolden]

I understand OSX is not just NeXTSTEP. On the other hand Ubuntu is not just SLS with a Linux 1.x kernel either. Both systems have evolved. The point is that when the Rhapsody project was starting in 1997, it was starting with huge chunks of code from NeXTSTEP and quite a bit of that code is still in OSX.

As for the kernel the kernel isn't unified at all. The kernel is a highly configurable system which allows tens of thousands of subsystems to be compiled in or not against a dozen different systems. Most major vendors (like Debian and Redhat) maintain their own kernel trees to get specialization. There are options like real time vs. performance. The kernel is designed to allow for a diversity.

But I understand your point. That was the whole idea behind User Linux and Progeny both of which failed. The Linux community simple values diversity over marketshare.

Re:Lack of class and design

[rAiNsT0rm]

Correct, but with the kernel there is a base foundation which is controlled and designed with a vision and oversight. Linux needs to be more than the kernel. The kernel and a core set of utils/apps needs to be the foundation. From there people can still strip it all the way back to the kernel and make whatever niche project they want or load it up with the kitchen sink and go that way too. Without that same care and approach on a stable foundation we will just keep running on this treadmill forever even though cool things will pop up from time to time along the way.

Re:Lack of class and design

[Anonymous Coward]

There is no 'perfect' design. OSX included, fanboy. Do stop peddling this flamebait. If you've found the One True Design, you're welcome to it. As a designer, I can safely say that I don't have my head that far up my own ass (or the late Steve Jobs' ).

Also, despite a vocal minority, the people who use linux don't give a flying fuck about the desktop market. We're not trying to win over joe and jane q. public, we're trying to get work done. The "desktop market" is two different segments: business, where your boss tells you what software to run, and the consumer market, which is moving over to the 'internet appliance' as fast as its figurative legs can carry it. The consumer desktop market is not a permanent feature, and the sooner it dies the better. The moment you join the real world we'll have a discussion of which platform is easier to administer, but clearly you haven't managed that level of cluefulness yet.

Goodbye Gnome 3 and Unity

[Anonymous Coward]

Well done for doing the open source way of if you don't like it write your own. I have mostly switched to lxde on my Linux virtual machines due to the boneheadedness of the mentioned desktops but this project looks promising too. But the desktop war has unfortunately been lost. Remember the Linux netbooks a few years ago? Now it's Windows everywhere and Android tablets are mostly for nerds while iPads get mainstream. Not even the successful on servers argument sways me anymore since servers work just as well on BSD/Proprietary Unix/Windows.

In 2021 we will be arguing about the next desktop environment of the month while Gnome 4 will be ruining peoples lives.

Re:Goodbye Gnome 3 and Unity

[AdamJS]

It would be *fucking awesome* if this outright supplanted G3 and Unity.

it built & installed and runs just fine

[FudRucker]

on Slackware 13.37

it seems to run okay (fast and stable), it makes a nice lightweight desktop, it wants to use Openbox to manage applications,

Re:it built & installed and runs just fine

[IrquiM]

That's not a surprise - everything compiles and runs just fine on a proper distro like Slackware. I'd be more surprised if it didn't!

Re:Lame - pathetic windoze paradime

[fnj]

Disappointing or not to your psyche, you might want to consider that perhaps there is a reason why human factors engineers find a lot to favor in the Windows environment (and I'm thinking of up through XP here; it has been a huge wreck in usability since then). It basically does not get better than IBM CUA, which was the real genius of the Windows 95 environment, and which was itself standing on giants in the form of Xerox PARC shoulders.

Re:Hoping for a new generation of Desktop Envirome

[FudRucker]

RE: "P.S. I confess that I even *like* the graphic appearance of Windows 95, but I guess that's just me getting old."

me too, that why i run IceWM with rox-filer drawing the desktop icons and wallpaper = basic and lightweight, but still quite usable

Re:Hoping for a new generation of Desktop Envirome

[realityimpaired]

Never used a distro with E17, have you? :) the Enlightenment libs are designed from the ground up to be modular, and to allow you to pick and choose which parts of the system you want loaded, but even with bling effects (compositor) enabled, and stuff like dancing penguins on your desktop, it can still fit in less than 128MB of RAM. It's light-weight and responsive without sacrificing the eye candy or functionality.

And thanks to the modularity, it can be shoehorned into very low RAM configurations: I have seen it fit in less than 40MB of RAM without sacrificing the compositor, or any of the functionality most users expect from their desktop, just by unloading modules that you wouldn't need.

"New"? You got to be freakin' kidding me!

[Anonymous Coward]

Is that what small-minded inside-the-box-thinking individuals think is "really new"?

It still got buttons. Menus. Icons. Windows. Task bars. Focus on being mouse-based. Monolithic applications. Is not file-based. Is not scriptable. Has dialogs, for god's sake! It still got the same crappy concept of dialogs, that was already FAIL when it was invented!

This is as much "new" as the VW Golf x+1 is "revolutionary" compared to the VW Golf x!
In other words: It's still exactly the same shit as every other "mainstream graphical desktop environment" on the planet!

Fuck this shit, I'm outta here!

Re:"New"? You got to be freakin' kidding me!

[Anonymous Coward]

We'll pay attention to you when you come up with your fancy file-based, no-dialog-having desktop and then write all the applications for it too since every application you and everybody else uses is built around menus, icons, windows, task bars and dialogs. Until then, good riddance.

Re:"New"? You got to be freakin' kidding me!

[AdamJS]

I think the advantage is that everything Qt-based will work without a single hitch.
If Qt got a decent enough port to mobile platforms, then porting basic applications would be a cinch.

Re:"New"? You got to be freakin' kidding me!

[Anonymous Coward]

The project is new, not the interface paradigm, aspie.

Re:Lame - pathetic windoze paradime

[Anonymous Coward]

Because it's a remake of an operating system, with a window manager and everything which would obviously not work without javascript? You're still free to not enable javascript and yes they could have made a better noscript element for that but that's why it looks like that.

Re:Hoping for a new generation of Desktop Envirome

[gbjbaanb]

amen to that. Perhaps it is the proliferation of programming styles that adds so much weight to a system like this, and if everything was coded in a single script language and a single compiled language the whole would be a lot lighter and faster.

That, and a good separation of concerns for all modules - the printing subsystem shouldn't even be loaded until you need to print something, which means the design needs to understand what you can send to the print subsystem without being built with it included (ie a set of protocol standards)

Re:Lame - pathetic windoze paradime

[LWATCDR]

I wouldn't call it pathetic and I never resort to using the term Windoze since I am over 12 but to me this does look a lot like Windows 98/2000. I would like to see some more challenging UIs.
You are correct in that keeping the familiar is the easiest way to create a usable UI. If the goal is a lighter faster UI then that is a good way to go. However we have more than a few light fast UIs including XFCE which is pretty good. I would also like to see some work in making trying something new.
What many people do not know is that on a modern pc floating point is as fast as integer math and often 3d graphics operations are faster than 2d. I would like to see more UIs start with 3d and vectors for the rendering.
It may not be in the scoop of this project but that doesn't mean that it is an undesirable goal.

As to this UI, I am not sure if it is incomplete or if it is a difference in the colors selected but I find it a bit inconsistant.
For example if you look at the first picture and the third picture in the top row of screen shots. The selection bar in the first picture looks a lot flatter. AKA it seems to have a different gradient fill than the one on the third picture. in general I find the dialogs just flat and unattractive. They do not seem to "go" with the rest of the GUI. I would say that the dialogs look like windows 98/2000 as does the task bar at the bottom of the screen but the Runner program and the clock look more like Windows XP to me if not 7 or OS/X.

Re:Hoping for a new generation of Desktop Envirome

[atezun]

Enlightenment and EFL seem to have some great tech, but as far I've ever seen no one of consequence bases their distro around it or uses it for development and I can't figure out why that is.

Not for KDE users

[Fujisawa Sensei]

With KDE, even KDE-4, moving the OS widgets around and even removing the useless maximize widget, is easily accomplished in the GUI--no gconf voodoo required.

Re:Hoping for a new generation of Desktop Envirome

[schroedingers_hat]

Possibly because the number users that are going to go that far with wanting a lightweight, modular desktop, but not go further into getting rid of shinies altogether is rather small.
As such you see a big bunch of users of the full-on resource hoggin jack-of-all-trades because they either like the shinies, or just don't care. Then there's a smooth spectrum of users from things like xubuntu through to more minimalist roll-your-own stuff where they piece together a light weight wm, and one or two scripts to do anything else they want.
As there are so many options (and it's quicker to make a lightweight option) people just drift to whatever suits them best rather than rallying around whatever is the 'best' technology-wise.

Re:This is awesome. No, not really

[Anonymous Coward]

> Then you've got foreign-built cars from Mazda, Toyota, Honda, BMW and others.

Nice try, but the US-market cars from those manufacturers are all built in... the USA.

Re:Hoping for a new generation of Desktop Envirome

[jbolden]

Just use one of the older ones. For example WindowMaker is still a delight after almost 20 years.

Re:Hoping for a new generation of Desktop Envirome

[jbolden]

I think you would be surprised how many features Windows 95 doesn't have that you take for granted. Go install a 95 and see what it doesn't do. OS features are like the frog cooking in the water, they get added gradually and ...

Re:Hoping for a new generation of Desktop Envirome

[jbolden]

- the printing subsystem shouldn't even be loaded until you need to print something

Why? You have virtual memory, why not load it, configure it and swap it out?

Re:Hoping for a new generation of Desktop Envirome

[jbolden]

The reason is most distributions base themselves around a GUI and E17 is a window manager not a GUI. But...

http://bodhilinux.com/
http://www.moonos.org/ (DR17 version)
http://opengeu.intilinux.com/
http://shr-project.org/trac
etc...

Re:This is awesome. No, not really

[Anonymous Coward]

Let me point the obvious difference here, Linux and GNU are ALMOST EXCLUSIVELLY community maintained projects, while Ford, Chevrolet, Buick ... release products for which they offer paid maintenance, so, people do that for living, so, if we keep fragmenting the user base, we are going to have less and worst support on each individual project. I'm not against new projects, but, lets get real here, what are the improvements on this new Desktop Environment against the ones we already have?, does things better?, it's superior in any aspect?, brings new posibilities to the community? can we do new things with it?, my guess is no, but it keeps making life worst for developers, now there's another DE you should keep in mind while developing software.
Does this new DE helps more than it hinders?

Two clocks

[Anonymous Coward]

Having two clocks on the screen is a must!

Re:Two clocks

[Chrisq]

Having two clocks on the screen is a must!

OMG.
I'm embarrassed at how I misread that. I must be spending too much time watching orgasm.com

Where is the sticky menu?

[Anonymous Coward]

Hey boys let's have a menu. We could have a hierarchical drill-down system! So the programmers think they have the best thing since sliced bread. But you silly twerps what if I want to keep using a number of tools from the same bit of the sub-menu? Then I have to click-click-click and start something and a moment later click-click-clik again to get to the same place. On the other hand why not leave the menu open so I can use the next tool immediately.

My version was written in Delphi 2, 1996 and it's awesome.

Re:Hoping for a new generation of Desktop Envirome

[marcosdumay]

Not everybody has virtual memory.

Phones, tablets and even full PCs with SSD have no space to spare on swap.

Re:Hoping for a new generation of Desktop Envirome

[Anonymous Coward]

Yep, I still use WindowMaker. To me it's the best continuation under Linux of the good and innovative ideas from NeXTSTEP. GNUstep has those good ideas also, I just wish there were more GNUstep apps. And not only is WindowMaker lightning fast but it is also easy to set up the menu to have all the apps users of DE's are used to having.

Re:Hoping for a new generation of Desktop Envirome

[jbolden]

KDE with a preloading print subsystem probably shouldn't be the GUI for a phone or tablet.

As for a PC with SSD. That's an interesting point. At least right now there are four types of systems that have SSD
1) Very low end, like a netbook. Again maybe a poor choice for KDE
2) Mid range low weight (like Macbook air), generally should have swap.
3) Very high end, in which case the system has plenty of ram.
4) Fast desktop in which case there should also be an HDD.

Re:Hoping for a new generation of Desktop Envirome

[HiThere]

My personal objections to KDE4, Gnome3, and Unity don't have much to do with how heavy they are. I'm not trying to use them in a minimal environment. My preferred system would be KDE3. But KDE4 is markedly slower *TO USE* than KDE3. (I don't know whether it's faster or slower, my system isn't minimal. But *using* it is slower.) Gnome3 is not only slower to use than Gnome2, but goes out of it's way to make doing things more difficult. And Unity appears to be designed to be only usable on tablets. (I haven't actually tried it.)

So, yes, I'm taking an interested look at all up-coming window managers. The screen shots of Razor look pretty good. LXDE is also pretty good, except that it doesn't seem to work with left-handed mice (or didn't the last time I tried it). Its got the control panels to set them up (In fact it's got two of them. In different dialogs.), but they don't (didn't) work.

Re:Lame - pathetic windoze paradime

[Gaygirlie]

I would like to see some more challenging UIs.

I do agree with that, but as I replied to another person who kept yelling about how the devs should instead use meta or alt as the key in shortcuts instead of control, the point changing things people are used to should be tangible benefits, not just change for change's sake. Change for change's sake may be fun for the developer(s) but ultimately it won't benefit anyone. You know, like changing control to alt provides no actual benefit; it isn't faster, alt key is just as reachable as control and everyone is already used to using it. That said I am too used to the traditional UI paradigms and have trouble looking out of the box in that regards so I can't really say what kind of change would be worth researching and pursuing.

Re:Hoping for a new generation of Desktop Envirome

[lahvak]

That's a good point. I am one of the "fvwm plus a few custom scripts" people. Why use E17 when I can use a setup that served me well the for some 20 years (with slow but continuous improvements)?

That does not explain why none of the main distributions ships an E17 version alongside all their Gnome, KDE, XFC, LDXE whatnot versions.

Re:Hoping for a new generation of Desktop Envirome

[peppepz]

I'm aware that Windows 95 didn't support ontologies or social desktops ;) , but here are a couple of down-to-earth things that I admired in Windows 95 and that I still look for in modern desktop environments:
- Consistent user interface across the whole system, and in particular universal application of the "click - double click - right click - drag" and "icons - folders" paradigms;
- Built-in help system, globally accessible in the same way, covering every single visual element of the user interface;
- The above help system is searchable, indexed and printable;
- Applications have a "desaturated" user interface, that doesn't try to steal the user's attention away from his work with an excessive personality of his own;
- Built-in ability to copy, move, rename, delete files *reliably*, and a completely programmable and user-customizable file interaction system allowing for file-specific actions;
- "Live" view of files and folders, with visual differentiation of hidden, compressed, encrypted files;
- Simple, but fool-proof, way of handling removable media and printers;
- Ability to preview files in-place (e.g. pictures, sounds), with an extensible plugin system to support new file types;
- Ability to abstract the shell namespace to handle compressed files (only for .CAB files, not .ZIP, but that's more a political decision than a technical one) and files over the network;
- A technical and consistent network connections manager, allowing to check the status of network interfaces at a glance (disconnected, sending, receiving...) and to change their parameters in a few clicks, using a generalized interface that does not change needlessly for different network types;
- A simple way to search for files by name, attributes or content, that can be slow but is fail-safe and yelds predictable results;
- The whole system is programmed in a object-oriented, extensible model (COM).

Perfect for Raspberry Pi?

[tiniebras]

Given that Nokia is pushing for Qt development on the Raspberry pi (http://www.raspberrypi.org/archives/369), would this be the perfect project for it?

Hip Hip Horay

[lsatenstein]

This is good news. And if it coupled with boss (www.boss.org), then wow, we are walking on air.

Oh thrill...

[Anonymous Coward]

It appears to sit on top of X like all the other window managers. It isn't really any different than what already exists. Yawn. Wake me when someone reinvents X to not suck.

Re:Oh thrill...

[diego.viola]

Yeah I was expecting something new like this would be working on Wayland already. I'm disappointed.

Wake me up when someone makes something like this work on Wayland.

Perfect for Qt developers

[Anonymous Coward]

I've just browsed some of the code and I've found that the main differences with KDE code, this desktop env. is free of agressive meta-programming(read c++ templates abuses) and seems to fit into the Qt code style and design perfectly.

Re:Hoping for a new generation of Desktop Envirome

[gbjbaanb]

why do all that work (loading, configuring, and then swapping it to disk) just so you have something that you don't use.

Its sloppy, lazy, concepts like this that may be easier for the developer, but make startup of the OS slow. Ever wondered what all all that disk activity was when starting your OS was? It was reading stuff from disk, then writing it straight back. Like the old make-work schemes that got people digging holes then filling them back in again.

The other reason is that once you develop your system like this, once you want to print, you'll end up re-loading all that print subsystem into memory, even if you decide not to print anything. Ok, that's a poor example, but you do get other apps that do lots of swapping all the time to get tiny bits of functionality loaded.

Re:Hoping for a new generation of Desktop Envirome

[jbolden]

why do all that work (loading, configuring, and then swapping it to disk) just so you have something that you don't use.

Because loading a few parts of a fully configured subsystem from virtual memory is much cheaper than loading tons of libraries, initializing them, using them, and then shutting them all down. Frequently used services should start up. Absolutely that leads to slower startup of OSes, it also leads to more responsive OSes.

Further it makes the system scale up well to the next hardware level. Getting more hardware leads to a sharp improvement in performance. A system designed to really function well at say 256mb won't likely see any difference between 4g and 8b.