Slashdot Mirror
Linus Torvalds Tries KDE, Likes It So Far
sfcrazy writes "Linus Torvalds has never been a big fan of Gnome owing [to] its extreme simplicity. Even Gnome 3.x failed to impress the father of the Linux kernel. He has now given KDE a try after a long time. Linus using your software is double edged sword, especially if Linus doesn't like it — get ready for the harshest, yet the most honest and useful criticism. Interestingly, Linus has so far liked KDE, and for one simple reason: 'But ah, the ability to configure things. And I have wobbly windows again.' This should make KDE developers a bit happier." Evidently, Linus didn't get the message that desktop UIs for Linux don't matter any more, since he keeps acting like they do.
First sentence is fail...
[Rent This Space]
On the Google+ thread there are some recommendations for Yakuake, which Linus might find useful since I'm sure he does quite a bit of work from the terminal.
AntiFA: An abbreviation for Anti First Amendment.
Grammar:
The first sentence is a fail.
See me after class.
In other news Linus Torvalds tries crunchy peanut butter, and likes it so far.
All the desktop UI need to start focusing on what users need, not flashy features that aren't really useful.
Grammer than what?
Tic-Tac-Toe, Global Thermonuclear War, and relationships all have the same winning move.
Come on Slashdot...this is NOT News For Nerds...it's news about one nerd's semi random postings. Leave the poor man alone to his own random thoughts...Please!
My school forced me to buy the 2nd edition where 'fail' is a noun.
[Rent This Space]
...make submissions about RMS, then? Are we waiting for HURD to ride his every sentence?
It seems like every other environment has decided that letting the user configure things how they want them to be is "too hard". Thus, they figure, it's better to remove every shred of choice. Because, you know, choice is hard and confusing.
KDE is one of the only environments left that doesn't treat its users like morons. It isn't a perfect piece of software, but it's one of the only remaining things that isn't after the "dumb everything down!!" mantra. The others: Windows, Gnome, Unity, OSX, IOS, Android, all seem to be chasing the other roads.
For that reason alone, I've found it worth giving them money, which you can do here: http://www.kde.org/community/donations/ - I've given them about euros 100 over the last year.
Disclaimer: I have no association with KDE except for being a user of their desktop environment.
I think we can all finally admit that GNOME 3 has become the most significant OSS project disaster to have ever occurred. It has been worse than the XFree86 licensing debacle. It is much worse than pre-EGCS GCC strife, or the Perl 6 inaction.
Never before have we seen an open source project drive away some of its most valuable users (including Linus) so quickly and so efficiently. It's like everything that possibly could have gone wrong with GNOME 3 did go excruciatingly wrong.
The user experience is absolutely terrible. GNOME Shell is universally hated. And even now, 1.5 years since GNOME 3 was first released, it isn't getting any better. In fact, it may be getting worse, as many developers and potential developers are now repulsed by it, and want nothing to do with it.
The rest of us who lead or are otherwise involved with OSS projects can learn a lot from the GNOME 3 disaster. They've made it very obvious what not to do. First of all, do not buy into hype. The hype around tablets, which are now obviously an outgoing fad, is the force behind many of the horrible UI decisions that were made. Second, don't be afraid to reject stupid UI ideas coming from failed "web designers". Third, at least have the courtesy of listening to what existing users are saying about your application or system. Fourth, don't shit down the throats of your existing users.
There absolutely no need for a GNOME 3-style debacle to take place. It can be easily avoided by just thinking a little bit, and acting sensibly. It worked well for KDE, XFCE, and the multitude of other open source desktop environment projects that are out there.
so far Xfce hits my sweet spot of the default behaves normally enough that I don't have to mess with it too much. it's very responsive too. the last 3 or 4 years was KDE->Gnome->KDE->Xfce
People need to know just how fucking horrible GNOME 3 is. People also need to know that there are alternatives. KDE is a good once, as Linus is finding out.
I think the revolution happening within the open source desktop environment space is massive news, and very worthy of Slashdot. Within the past year, we've seen GNOME go from being the most widely-used open source desktop to being utterly disgraced. Users are flocking to KDE, Xfce and other environments very rapidly.
It's not often that we see such a significant open source project die such a tragic death, but that's exactly what's happening to GNOME. It has been completely crushed, not by the efforts of outside forces, but merely by its own internal idiocy.
There are other projects facing a similar fate. Firefox is the obvious one. They're making exactly the same kind of mistakes that the GNOME project made. At least they have time to learn from what happened to GNOME. At least the Firefox developers still have a chance to turn their ship around, and return to offering software that users actually want to use.
The opinion piece (not to be confused with an article, let alone news), which makes such an entirely retarded non-argument (see bold part below), that it must be considered a fake/humor/Onion type thing, contains gems like:
Yeah, because the whole point of decoration, is to go whoring with it. It could not perhaps be, that normal people prefer to look at pretty things, and still rather look at ugly things, than staring at boring all day. And It's completely unthinkable, that other people are not completely insecure attention whores, who feel the sick need to decorate themselves to go whoring to other people. </sarcasm>
Bullshit. Linux always was laden with applications. They just didn't have a colory-clicky interface for the retards like him. They were made for people who could actually use a computer. Not for idiots who should not be allowed to use one, or a car or any kind of machinery really.
Yeah "web services" riiiiight. Not there being a bazillion applications for Linux, now with idiot-usable GUIs too. With enough deliberate wilful ignorance, it’s the clunky inconvenient featureless and slow mess that is "web services". Even though they are still pretty much meaningless. (If you use e.g. Google Docs instead of LibreOffice, you're officially insane.)
So...much...bullshit...! No argument to back it up even. Just a vague virtually meaningless statement about the most important UI element there is. He probably can't even tell when he uses a menu that doesn't look like on Windows 95 and doesn’t sit under the window title. What an idiot.
And here’s the kicker (his "conclusion"/"argument")
What the hell has any of that to do with Linux? Linux has nothing to do with touch. Nothing to do with bare-bones. And since when are there no menus or windows to resize?? Since NEVER!
Seriously... the above is really all he bases his claim on. That somehow in what can only be accounted to a grave hallucination, Linux has a extremely crippled and utterly retarded interface, and that that is exactly what people want.
Both of which being claims that couldn't be more detached from reality.
Seems that he doesn't even remotely comprehend Linux, and that the CLI, with text config files, scriptability and "everything is a file", is its strongest killer feature. (Despite Gnome and KDE actively trying to destroy the last one.)
Good job timothy. A grand piece of flying FUCK from you again. For supporting a obviously crazy person. What's next. You saying that "Evidently, X didn't get the message, that 'We're all going to die!'", because the crazy person from the street corner said that?
You're missing the point. This is important because Linus is expressing an idea that millions of other Linux users are thinking. Unlike him, they don't have a large audience, so their thoughts mostly go unnoticed. But these thoughts nevertheless have a huge impact on the entire Open Source ecosystem.
More and more people are realizing that GNOME is on its way out. Alternate desktops, like KDE and XFCE, are clearly the sensible way to go these days. Unlike GNOME, they don't treat their users like rubbish. They provide an enjoyable experience, without stupid UI shenanigans. Linus has come to realize this, as have millions of other Linux users.
It would absolutely matter. Look at what happened with FreeBSD over the past ten years; it went from being the backbone of the internet (Juniper, Yahoo, Hotmail, Netcraft all used it) to a has-been operating system that can't even properly suspend/hibernate and doesn't support video cards newer than 2007. What was the culprit? Apple bought out the development team, either through direct-hires, or by graciously dropping MacBook Pros their way. The result: a core OS development team that primarily interfaces with their end-product via Virtual Machine inside of OSX.
The end result is that nobody developing for FreeBSD actually uses FreeBSD anymore, at least, not for anything more than a hobby project. Thus we are on year six of suspend/resume not working in a multiprocessor environment. We are on year five of not being able to use a new video card (seriously, AMD and Intel are stuck on old versions that don't support KMS -- the only new video card you can use is nVidia and that's because they develop the binary blob themselves). The OS still doesn't support auto-mounting of USB devices, and relies on the deprecated HAL system for deskcop systems.
Back to this article, it is very important that Linus, as the head of the Linux development team continues to use his own product. Otherwise, the OS may as well be dead in the water. That KDE is able to rejuvenate his joy of using the OS on the desktop is huge, because it keeps the project moving forward. I remember two years ago, there was a problem with Flash player and Pulseaudio causing audio lag on Fedora. Linus himself, as an end-user, responded to the bug, and issued a patch within a day. I don't always agree him, but I absolutely respect that he puts his money where his mouth is.
Comment the subject fail is.
It is because many IT-types got into computers because they couldn't stop messing with the settings. Tweaking a computer to (personal) perfection is something many Slashdot-readers can relate to.
But in the end I agree, it's easier just to upgrade or switch seldomly, then give up a re-learn the habits.
It's still a little bloaty, but what isn't, honestly.
Plain X or Xmonad.
AccountKiller
If defaults were sane then it wouldnt be as important, but they NEVER are. I care very little about eye-candy (though it's nice to at least be able to change it to something that isnt distracting) but behaviour (focus models, keyboard shortcuts, virtual desktops and accessible controls for the things I often use) is very important.
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Friends don't let friends enable ecmascript.
I'm sorry for you, The Urban Dictionary is actually available free online.
I like the functionality of KDE, and I like the configurability, but it looks terrible. Nothing quite "fits". All the buttons look like they aren't placed/sized *quite* correctly, and the button labels look like they are just a *little* off-center.
Basically, all of the window decorations/elements aren't sized right. Still. That is apparently the "KDE look", but I can't stand it. And yes, I've tried to tweak it to my liking, but it's impossible.
By contrast, Gnome and Unity are very well put together. They look nice and clean.
Masturbating is not a crime.
Or at least tweaking it to the point where it does what you want how you want it. Then it can go untouched forever.
As for gnome/kde:
apt-get install e17 ecomp
(oh look, wobbly windows:)
I mention above bec enlightenment_remote is/was the one best feature gnome/kde lacks.
resist propaganda
more accurate to say he liked the ability to configure every little thing, but has many gripes too about overall look & feel and defaults
I'd say his post overall is why many people still go to things like xfce4, mate, cinnamon, LXDE, etc.
If you rent a ready-furnished flat, you don't move any piece of furniture? If I use a workbench for a longer time, I arrange the tools for my convenient use. Doing otherwise, accepting a choice of someone who knows nothing about me and my work, would be insane. All people are different so elevate "one size fits all" to a dogma like gnome is doing amounts to ignoring reality.
I agree with Linus, I'm back to KDE after the Gnome2 to Gnome3 transisiton. While the default KDE settings may not be optimal, some distros (such as Mint) have chosen more sane defaults for THEIR implementation of KDE. I'd suggest that Linus try Mint 13 KDE, but since he probably knows how to tweak things to his liking he can use any distro he likes. I've also tried Kubuntu, but Mint is closer to my desired configuration out of the box.
I guess I would say in answer; this is the tool I use 6 to 8 hours a day. It really should work the way I want it to do so. I don't need to cycle between windows in general, I need to be able to cycle between two very specific applications; that does not mean I don't want my mail client open, just that I go to the dock when I want it for example.
Now yes If you are spending a great deal of time customizing around your applications that exist purely for entertainment in the first place fine, that might be masturbatory but in general for folks who out of necessity, love or not, spend a large amount of time in front of their computer making the environment both pleasing and efficient for the work flow thru tweaking can add real value. This is especially true if your time in-front of the machine is disproportionately spend on a few specific tasks.
Repeal the 17th Amendment TODAY! Also Please Read http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html
Mmh. I agree, KDE is quite nice and customizable. XFCE is nice too, Unity is, etc. However the longstanding problem which seems not to go away, is the lack of general quality assurance. All of the DEs are full of little bugs here and there. Some button does nothing, some feature is not implemented, occasional crashes, settings that do not have an effect, little glitches, etc. Things like that. Maybe it requires a big company like Microsoft or Apple to get it right, but maybe also the OSS community could be arranged so that things like these could be improved. I think it's really important.
Is not always correct.
"People" keep saying Google+ is a ghost town.
"People" keep saying Linus is doomed on the UI.
"People" kept saying Linux was too hard to use and would never make it outside the server room
Common for all is that they were mostly wrong.
I think you made a very common confusion. People say Linux is doomed on the UI, and that Linus is too hard to use and would never make it outside the server room.
Actually, it's more that developers can't stop futzing around with it. Unlike many things were you can run a benchmark, how people like to organize things is largely a matter of habit. For example I like the "Windows" style of single-click to select, double-click to open/launch. It drives me nuts if I have to work on a single-click to open/launch system because I keep doing lots of things I didn't mean to do. It's one of those "I don't care if DVORAK is in theory 1% better than QWERTY, give me what I'm used to" situations. It drives me crazy every time someone wants to reinvent the start menu or file dialog or whatever, the old one worked just fine. Maybe it's 50% old fart who won't try anything new, but it's also 50% don't break what works perfectly good enough.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
more accurate to say he liked the ability to configure every little thing, but has many gripes too about overall look & feel and defaults
I'd say his post overall is why many people still go to things like xfce4, mate, cinnamon, LXDE, etc.
IIRC Linus switched *from* XFCE.
we see things not as as they are, but as we are.
-- anais nin
Suspend/hibernate is such an important feature for the backbone. Juniper still uses it and now Netflix is starting to use it, you know 30% of the backbone traffic.
I love how you use FreeBSD's position of a great OS by pointing out how it is used in critical infrastructure, then use its desktop experience as a point to show how bad of an OS it is.
Why doesn't the OS support USB auto-mounting? Well, how many sysadmins even care about that? Maybe the target audience of FreeBSD is not you.
Everything! It's the grammest of all!
But I like metroui, unity, and gnome 3(to some degree) which all three are about fast access to files and applications. The problem with windows 7 and kde start menu is that you waste your time navigating trying to find what you are looking for. Even in windows 7 i never used the menu i just pinned some apps on my taskbar and the rest on my rocketdock. in kde(dual monitor), i would just create a third taskbar with applications pinned on it and the bar placed at the top hidden. With windows 8 I could do the same, pin programs to taskbar or just re-arrange the metroui tiles the way I want for fast access. Hit windows key, fast scroll, find the icon and click. Unity is basically a windows taskbar or dock put on the side. But, the old gnome2 was actually a lot easier to navigate through than win7 and kde.
The kde menu system is a freaking confusing mess and it takes time to know where things are placed. But, it's pretty to look at same with windows 7. I think it's time for the old start button menu to die off already.
I wonder whether anyone else will actually get your joke?
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
Xfce is a great desktop if you want simplicity and productivity.
Python: 'And then suddenly you have a language which says "we're all stuck with whatever the whiniest coder wants".'
Linus using your software is double edged sword, especially if Linus doesn't like it — get ready for the harshest, yet the most honest and useful criticism.
Smooch Linus' ass much 'sfcrazy' ?
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
WTF is "wobbly windows" supposed to be? Useless eye-candy with no purpose?
Get free satoshi (Bitcoin) and Dogecoins
It's about optimizing your workflow. Make the applications you actually use accessible through the hotkeys that make sense to you. Use the focus model that you have to think about the least. Force file dialogs to "detailed" as one dimensional lists are quicker to look through than 2d tables.
Try building a desktop yourself sometime. Start with a bare bones window manager and try doing some work. Every time you think you need a feature, add it yourself in the most convenient possible way for you. The time you spend doing this pays off as before long you'll have an interface that does everything you want to do, and you know everything that it does.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
Funny that, but it is a crime in a large part of the world. [cough]Islam, Juda[/cough]
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
The grass is always greener on the other side of the fence.
There's no -1 for "I don't get it."
I have. I started with TMW. It gave you a means to launch a shell, and a shutdown option. Leave a little shell window open, and dump a few commands like "xterm &" and "firefox &" and you're done.
Why do you need transparent and wobbly windows again?
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
Dear KDE developers, please learn the lesson from Unity and Gnome 3 (and Windows 8). You will win, and win big, if you don't screw up. Keep your desktop environment the same and let people use it to get their work done. Don't change paradigms or get user interface designers involved. Just provide what you're already providing without radical changes. People are migrating off of these broken, unusable environments en masse.
1. Brian
2. ?
3. Proffitt
The reason configurability matters so much isn't that we want to change a million pointless bits of eyecandy.
It's because there are certain features we want that not everyone else does.
Simple example: When I Alt-Tab to a different window, I *require* my mouse pointer to be moved to that window as well. This is a feature whose absence drives me *nuts* - It's literally a deal-breaker for me not to have this feature available.
Other people hate their mouse being moved by a keyboard shortcut. I can understand that, whilst not agreeing with it. So the only way a WM can keep us both happy is to make this a configurable option.
When I use a dual-screen setup, I *hate* the Alt-Tab list showing me the options for both screens - I only want to be able to switch between the windows in that one particular screen. Other people want to be able to switch to any window in either screen. Still others want to be able to switch to any window on any desktop.
That's quite a range of desired behaviour just for something as simple as the alt-tab function. Not having it set to the way they like is a big problem for people who spend eight hours a day trying to Get Stuff Done. Thus the only way to make a WM that everyone can use is to make it very configurable. Not so people can get endless special effects and fiddle with window decorations; but to get the behaviour you want and expect.
I use FVWM personally, and I once worked out that the functionality I had built in to my hotkeys and preferences was worth an hour of productivity a day, just in the time saved on mundane, repetitive tasks. Configurability matters. It matters a lot.
So.. it has come to this
switched? No, he is USING xfce. he posts "I'm trying out KDE after a long absense." that's called "giving it a whirl".
He's the owner/editor of LinuxToday e-zine
http://www.linuxtoday.com/
They've been around since about as long as slashdot.
.
C|N>K
This is getting out of control.
none
So, is there some problem with posting links to G+? I saw the comment, checked his posts and read his comments...then realized the article link pointed to someone's blog....why not go straight to the source?
AB HOC POSSUM VIDERE DOMUM TUUM
I wonder whether anyone else will actually get your joke?
Is that a question or a statement?
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
Gnome used to be a desktop solution of Linux. But like Hurd it never really "got it".
KDE was the first but since it, at the time, was closed source Gnome was created as an alternative, even if it ended up as 2nd rate citizen, always choking in the dust.
Gnome had it its purpose up until KDE went GPL, i.e. more than 10 years ago. Now it is time to move on, with KDE or xfce.
Apparently you did.
That was a neat troll! You did a very good job with the BSD is dying, even throwing in references to Netcraft for confirmation.
But I figured that -- you know, since people might otherwise make the mistake of believing you -- that we should clear up a few things:
1) FreeBSD is less widely used in some areas now not because it sucks more, but because Linux sucks less. Linux getting better is a good thing for all of us (BSD and Linux users alike.) And FreeBSD has never (AFAIK) been about a mad dash to get as much marketshare as possible -- so who cares how many machines it's installed on?
2) FreeBSD is workstation/server oriented. Suspend/hibernate support isn't crucial for these machines. Sorry. It's just not a high priority. FreeBSD doesn't prioritize supporting laptops, and AFAIK and as far as I've been using it (10+ years) never has. OSs have their specialties: FreeBSD is good on things like a high-end file server, Linux is a better choice for laptops. That's all there is to it, mate.
3) Interesting theory about Apple. They must be stingy though: I, and others, are still waiting for my MacBook! Perhaps we should e-mail Tim! What you were referencing is that Apple did exactly the sort of thing that RedHat's done: hired developers of a project to improve the aspects of the project that are important to them. Most of Apple's contributions have even made it back into the OSS world, despite the BSD license not forcing them to. (Take a look at Grand Central Dispatch sometime.)
4) We in the FreeBSD world don't see binary blobs as the great Satan that must be destroyed. Sorry. In fact, part of the reason that we spend so much time providing stable interfaces and working on backwards compatibility is it makes it less like that we'll alienate companies that might otherwise help us. NVIDIA's a good example. So they don't provide an open source driver. And? So what? They ship drivers that work, and they support new hardware very quickly.
5) HAL was deprecated in the Linux world because udev, DeviceKit, etc. looked sexier. FreeBSD uses HAL because it works, is well-documented, well-tested, and now well-understood. Sorry that we haven't adopted the API flavor-of-the-week, but the game's not always played that way.
I'm pleased that you like Linux. By all means, use it. Diversity is good. I'll continue to make sure that the software I write is portable to both the BSDs and Linux. But please don't try to spread FUD about other OSs, no matter how satisfying it may be to build yourself up by knocking others down.
The real litigious bastards...
He's the one with the wallet that says "Bad Mutherfu..." Oh wait. Sorry, wrong guy. I always get Brian and Jules mixed up for some reason.
In the wise words of Joe Biden, "I'm sorry, but that's a bunch of malarkey." I've got PC-BSD running on desktop hardware only a year or two old (Intel integrated video chip, if you care: it's an AOPEN PC I bought a system76.com), and every useful internet-facing server I've built since 2008 is running FreeBSD flawlessly. You are conflating desktop systems and servers, and my servers need neither KMS, suspend/hibernate, or HAL. FreeBSD has been perfect for what they do.
I'm not a developer, so couldn't tell you if people are developing for FreeBSD or not. But I find it hard to believe the issues you cite matter much at all.
If this were Usenet, I'd killfile the lot of you.
Yes, Linus has played an important role in the ascendency of Linux over FreeBSD, but I think the GPL ought to get even more credit. Stallman is and always has been right about the BSD license. Apple is just one of many companies who have shown how easily a thriving BSD software project can essentially be taken private. Just take your wad of cash and buy out the core developers. Set them to work on your proprietary, extended version with all the security bug fixes, the slick new UI and the closed-source installer. Then get your SEO guys going and soon Google won't even be able to find the so-called "free" version. In three years, anybody who can find the BSD licensed version won't dare to use it anyway because it's so far out of date. RIP "free" version.
Same here. I helped get KDE 1.2 running on Solaris in order to replace their horrible CDE desktop (I added Solaris support to ARTS and fixed numerous issues). I stayed with KDE 3.x for quite a while until KDE 4.x was mature though.
This post is encrypted twice with ROT-13. Documenting or attempting to crack this encryption is illegal.
One thing I really dislike about KDE4 is the way icons flash up to a huge size when you get near them. It often hides things I want to see. It's not like it's hard to click on an icon at it's normal size.
N.B.: I do realize that this might be a positive feature on a palmtop, but I don't think it would even be useful on a tablet. I haven't yet found a way to turn it off. (And I still prefer KDE3. For that matter I also prefer Gnome2, though KDE3 was better.)
Xfce and LXDE are also reasonable choices. KDE4 is too flashy for my taste, and Xfce and LXDE are a bit too simple. The think that finally decided me in favor of KDE4 was that I got electricsheep to run as a screensaver under it, and I wasn't able to get it to run as a screensaver under either LXDE or Xfce. This is important to my wife. (Note that I'm not really enamored of minimalism. I don't have a system that demands it, and so it seems like a silly focus and waste of time. I recognize that this is a matter of taste, however, and sometimes of hardware constraints. And even so I found LXDE to be nearly as good as KDE4.)
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
OK, but he said FreeBSD, which isn't quite the same thing. He didn't say anything about OpenBSD, or DragonFly, either. He was quite specific.
That said, I don't really understand his point...except that clearly FreeBSD didn't fit his use-case. (As someone else said, it sounds like a laptop.)
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
do you use it as a tool to launch a browser or two, open an editor, maybe write a document? or do you (seemingly) endlessly futz with window drag effects, scrollbar pixel width, which hotkey launches your audio player, etc? There's a point where it's just masturbating.
The only thing that makes it such is your word "endlessly." I don't need to endlessly configure things to be able to appreciate the value of being able to configure things at all.
I have numerous settings modified from their default values in KDE. I can't remember the time I changed a KDE setting though. If something bothers me enough I go and fix it. With KDE that is much easier than with many of the alternatives. Otherwise I just use it.
I don't use much eye-candy beyond transparency while window dragging, and using screen corners to present all windows and things like that. Those are fairly practical improvements.
Here too. First app I fell in love with in KDE was KPPP which was the most awesomely configurable application -- something I wasn't used to in Windows 95 as Microsoft was still denying the existence of the Internet and didn't even ship a tcp/ip stack with the OS -- anyone remember trumpet winsock?
And what is really funny is how the Gnome/KDE relationship has changed over the years. Early on the criticism of KDE was that it was a toy and Gnome was the nerds choice -- and now KDE is too configurable and Gnome simplicity is the way to go. Whatever. KDE has always had the better, more organized, more focused project. I am happy to see it getting some credit.
Even better, people said Google+ was a ghost town and dismissed in it its first week of being online. Well, gee, I wonder why there aren't millions of people using it as soon as it comes out.
Google+ gets plenty of activity for me.
I wonder whether 'lightweight' is an issue for Linus as well, and if it is, then he should try out Razorqt. Uses the same Qt libraries that KDE does, but lot less the footprint. If there are any KDE apps that he likes, chances are that it should work on Razorqt.
On a different note, what is Linus' take on Wayland?
its a crime against God......
"The hands that help are better far than lips that pray." - Robert Ingersoll (1833-1899)
"Why do you need transparent and wobbly windows again?" simple.. because i can
"The hands that help are better far than lips that pray." - Robert Ingersoll (1833-1899)
Over which acronym based ui is the "best" one. I don't really work on linux at all. So a quick question. I would want an intuitive interface with some eye candy that I could hand over to my retired 60 year old mother-in-law to get her off windows xp. What desktop is the best for migrating a non-tech savvy windows user like her?
--------------
Because that's the UI you should be promoting for general desktop use. I don't even care if its technically the best one.
who prays for Satan? Who in 18 centuries has had the humanity to pray for the 1 sinner that needed it most? ~Mark Twain
I started with TMW
Never heard of that one.
http://michaelsmith.id.au
So, Torvalds is a WIMP after all.
'When the Going gets Weird, the Weird turn Pro.' - Hunter S. Thompson
terminator is awfully tough to beat. You can split one fullscreen console into as many consoles as you need ;-)
we see things not as as they are, but as we are.
-- anais nin
I respect Linus in his kernel development effort. But why should I give a rats ass about his view on a UI. He is a kernel guy not a GUI expert. It is like careing what the latest tv star likes on her pizza.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
Thank you for that, it gave me my first real laugh of the day. Just this morning I realised that I use no Microsoft products at all and haven't done so for ages and I've never noticed. Your joke and my laughter at it makes me realise that I haven't used Gnome at all this year and I've long stopped noticing its absence.
Gnome stopped be a point of disatisfaction for me and became a part of history about six months ago. It would take a massive reinvention and a reason from some other cause to ever get me to look at it again. Gnome has microsofted itself for me and while perhaps Wayland can help it, I doubt it. It's going down Nokia Alley on the greater stage too, becoming the bearded lady in the corner when it used to be centre stage.
I said - don't look Ethel!..., but it was too late..., she'd already looked.
gui 'experts' are the ones giving us stuff like gnome3, unity and windows 8. are you suuure you want to listen to them over someone getting things done with computers long before most of the 8+ digit users here knew how to get online?
If you're on one 24/7 dealing with obtuse interfaces is time consuming and frustrating. Changing a few settings here and there helps a lot, whether it's faster mouse movement, smaller icons, or different fonts. It's the difference between feeling like you're the only limiter on efficiency and having to struggle with a computer designed for someone who watches soaps.
They recently forced us at work to upgrade from Ubuntu 10.04 to 12.04. We have our choice of desktop environments (Gnome 3, KDE 4, XFCE 4, Cinnamon, Unity).
I spend my day in a combination of Chrome, the terminal, and Eclipse.
I have determined that KDE is the least bad of all of these alternatives. There are actually things that I like about it, too.
Like:
- Konsole has a lot of nice features, such as activity notification on tabs in the background
- The volume buttons on my headset actually work (this was not the case for XFCE)
- Bluetooth actually works
- I can have a traditional taskbar
- You can turn off the more flashy desktop effects
- Built-in dark color theme for the Oxygen theme (large areas of white on my 30" monitor are distracting)
- I can apply the dark Qt/KDE theme to GTK+ applications, including Eclipse
Dislike:
- General lack of polish. This is my #1 complaint about KDE, and it's everywhere. The text on my window list buttons is too low, and on the clock it's too high. The "AM" or "PM" on the clock is cut off. Text on buttons has virtually zero top/bottom padding, which looks bad. UI elements are inconsistently aligned. UI strings are often awkwardly phrased.
- Verbosity. I don't need to be notified every time I plug in a USB device, every time the power state of my machine changes, every time the network status changes, every time a file operation completes, every time a daemon crashes, or every time the desktop indexer is done. You can disable pretty much all of these notifications, but to some degree it's like playing whac-a-mole.
- Crashiness. Sometimes, daemons decide to crash randomly. Occasionally, the compositor goes crazy and locks up the entire desktop.
- Insane defaults. Preferences are nice, but they need to be set to reasonable values by default. For example, there are *way* too many global key bindings by default, the eye candy is set to an annoyingly high level by default, single-click select in file dialogs contradicts every other desktop, the default panel is huge, and a whole ton of other things.
- No good system monitor widget. GNOME 2.x had an awesome panel widget that would display CPU, network, and memory; it even displayed I/O wait CPU time in a different color, which was awesome.
- The cashew. It makes no sense, and you can't get rid of it.
If I could have GNOME 2.x back, I would. But KDE 4.x is the best of the current bunch.
A lot of you guys are missing the point. Linux only has a chance in the long term if it gets a portion of adoption by the masses. The masses are not interested in configuration, they do go by the first thing they see, and as distasteful as it is for us all, the Apple-esque Gnome look is what they seem to be happy with. If you enjoy configuration then you have the option of wiping gnome and installing KDE on almost any distro. Everyone is happy.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
One more point to add. For the common person, single click to run would be endgame in 5 minutes. It is just too bizarre.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
Do you double click the button on your radial saw to turn it on? What about your toaster? Your coffee maker? Nope, they're all single click.
Single-click is just too normal for the crowd of morons that think computers are toys.
what distro does he use?
alive to the universe, dead to the world
Hey I can adapt to it fine but your comment suggests you did not read my original post. The masses don't want to adapt to anything.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
Yes it's KDE4, and yes it's in the alternate dock. And yes it's really annoying, but not as annoying as not having that dock. I heavily use one at the top of the screen and one at the bottom. Not being able to do that would be a good reason not to use that window manager.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
Oh, but that's because everybody has their own definition of what a sane default is, and is forever complaining that everybody else has crazy requirements.
But some things are positively insane. The default settings of KDE are a great example. I guess they want to showcase how configurable the DE is, so they force you to change every setting.
Rethinking email
OK, but he said FreeBSD, which isn't quite the same thing.
Actually it is. PC-BSD is just FreeBSD with a GUI installer and changed artwork. The core is unmodified FreeBSD.
Apple is just one of many companies who have shown how easily a thriving BSD software project can essentially be taken private. Just take your wad of cash and buy out the core developers. Set them to work on your proprietary, extended version with all the security bug fixes, the slick new UI and the closed-source installer.
Remind me: Which was the thriving BSD-licensed fully featured C/C++ compiler before Apple came and released Xcode?
Last I checked it was Apple who got behind an obscure university research project named LLVM, made it real world-usable, and developed Clang on top of it and gave the FreeBSD project for the first time in its history a BSD-licensed default compiler.
The cube and others: I tend to use LXDE when I run Knoppix (off usb-stick at school so that I can run a browser with plug-ins and settings I've already set and with the correct use noscript) but I always boot it up with no3d as a boot-option so that I don't have to bother with the Compiz Fusion 3-d rotating cube and animations. The desktop switcher works nicely and I don't need the visual eye-candy to tell me I'm whooshing left or right.
.
I will admit to playing with it and putting the old sharks and whales in the center of the cube, trying the 3-gears in the cube, etc, but I got over it quiclky. But if you turn off Compiz and 3-d, then the desktop is super-responsive, even on the school computers with just 1GB of RAM. I've got a Debian setup at home (can't take the credit for picking it or setting it up, thanks Daddio) that uses KDE3.
.
I've tried the early versions of KDE4 on Knoppix (use desktop=KDE as a bootup option) and it has the ugly windows style start box micro-menu with the macro-sized-icons that requires too much scrolling left/right/up/down to get anything done easily. You can also start knoppix with desktop=gnome to try it out, but I have'nt played with it as much. Too many variables. Not enough time. or even enough time to sleep (!)
And what's wrong with masturbating? I actually use my computer to enhance masturbation experience sometimes, and I very much doubt that I'm the only one here doing that...
In capitalist USA corporations control the government.