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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.
My school forced me to buy the 2nd edition where 'fail' is a noun.
[Rent This Space]
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.
Evidently, Linus didn't get the message that desktop UIs for Linux don't matter any more, since he keeps acting like they do.
How far and fast this site has fallen that they mock their creator
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.
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.
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Friends don't let friends enable ecmascript.
I'm sorry for you, The Urban Dictionary is actually available free online.
You are speaking of a pagan religion. Those of us with the True Faith have received our OpenBSD 5.2 CDs and T-Shirt in the mail, and give thanks to our Lord Theo, even though he's a total prick.
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.
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
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".'
WTF is "wobbly windows" supposed to be? Useless eye-candy with no purpose?
Get free satoshi (Bitcoin) and Dogecoins
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
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.
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C|N>K
This is getting out of control.
none
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.
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...
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.
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.
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.