Slashdot Mirror
Pair of KDE Stories
An anonymous reader sent in a pair of articles about
KDE. The first is over at VAR Business (which
has a nice quote from Chris)
and the second is over at
ZD Net's Smart Reseller.
Both articles are about KDE 1.1.1 and neither says anything
that will surprise us, but its interesting to note that a
bug fix release is capable of generating that real press.
I thought the current version of os/2 was the last one. I guess its this next one. IBM relized that fighting ms is hopless. Everyone including all my coworkers believe the ms marketing hype that the next version of windows will be the one that kills everything and be the best os ever ....bla bla bla. MY boss thinks that NT server is faster and more stable then os/2 and windows2000 will give him finally a reason to replace linux and when it fails he will say oh well the next veriosn of windows should fix this and the next and the next and the next. Fighting the fud is hopeless. At least linux doesnt have this problem becaused its considered a server OS. Its amazing how stupid people are. I only fell for the windows thing twice with windows3.1 and then I believed the ms marketing deparmn-ent thanks to Jesse Berst in one of his articles calling windows95 more stable then unix. After this I decided to take everything from ms as a grain of salt. It is true that OS/2 is dead after verison 5. I forget where I read this. Even IBM is switching all their os/2 machines with NT server and workstation ones. IT will be the last release by IBM. I guarentee it. Perhaps IBM could get out the source code for free if they no longer plan to make money off it. IT would be great to have a os/2 gui instead of xwindows and have better win32 support.
StarOffice, although not Free, is a decent, very full-featured, if somewhat bloated, office package, and includes presentation software.
Also, Corel has ported WordPerfect, and is porting the rest of their WordPerfect Office2000 suite, as far as I know.
Then, in the Free Software world, there is Siag Office and, of course, KOffice, which, while not finished, look promising.
So, we do have usable tools now, and great Free tools on the way.
--
Get your fresh, hot kernels right here!
There are only three things that I can think of in Gnome that need work (in decreasing order of importance):
* gmc. The more I work with it, the more I get the feeling that we *have* to replace it entirely. The only thing I really like about the current version is the libvfs stuff (and the pretty icons). Currently it has (at least) the following architectural problems: singlethreaded (so one long operation bogs down the UI), poor handling of multiple selections (especially MIME type actions on them), inconsistent menus (the desktop icons behave differently from the rest of the program), and a general feeling of non-modularity and inextensibility. (see continual postings about "how do you add items to gmc right-click menus" on gnome-list..which brings me to my next topic..)
* Not modular enough. It's already pretty modular but it seems like CORBA isn't used in places where it would be useful or clever--for example, a CORBA interface for menu generators would be useful.
* Icky menu system (not that they're alone here..) A hierarchically configurable menu system was proposed on gnome-list a few months back (see "My Little Wish List for Gnome") but no-one has had time to finish it.
Once gmc gets its act together (or possibly gets rewritten) I think I'd feel fine about recommending Gnome to newer users; the rest of the core works perfectly well. It's kind of embarassing for something so central as the filemanager to feel as klunky as gmc does, though..
Daniel
Hurry up and jump on the individualist bandwagon!
Now, first of all, this is not intended as flame bait, just an comment:
The KDE 1.1.1 bug fix is probably recieving real press because right now it is the only GUI system that could probably be used, with minimal frustration, by someone whose talents do not lie in computer science. This is news worthy due to the whole "Is Linux going to topple Microsoft?" fad that is going though the media.
Now, as flame retardant, I feel thst I must add this: I am not saying "GNOME sucks" or anything similar. Just think of it as "GNOME has a ways to go yet." KDE 1.0 was pretty rough as well. GNOME may very well become as usable as KDE for non-computer oriented people in the future, I don't know. I'm just talking about the present.
And in the present, KDE is a very good and really suprisingly stable desktop. GNOME is getting better, but still has some problems.
Go to http://www.pricewatch.com and look at all the
cheapest systems with pre-installed OS. They are
mostly Linux and a lot of them are using KDE.
Even moreso, it doesn't even matter if people use the same suite (KDE or Gnome) as long as they use open file formats and can be made compatible with one another. Cooperation, and not competition, is VERY important to both KDE and Gnome. Myself, I don't care much for either, and I don't want to have to run KOffice under KDE to read someone's document any more than anyone wants to have to run MS Office under Win'98.
UNIX is great in that file formats have always been *open* and relatively easy to deal with. I mean, there's several dozen commonly-used mail programs out there, and practically all of them use the Sendmail /var/spool/mail fileformat to store everything. PINE, ELM, Mutt, mail, etc. can all read and write to my various mail folders without a problem, and so switching programs isn't a daunting task. (Wish the same could be said for Netscape Communicator, but I've not used Netscape for reading mail ever since Netscape 3.0 consistently corrupted all my messages and did other unpleasant things.)
I mean, okay, I don't need to run KDE or Gnome to use KDE or Gnome applications, but that's not the point. The point I'm trying to make is that just because a program is available now and is free doesn't mean one should be locked into that single program. It'd suck if I were stuck using PINE forever and ever, for example. (I want to try Mutt someday.)
That said, perhaps some work should be done in deciding/drafting formal document format specs. We already have a perfectly good word processing format (namely TeX) and many word processors which can use it (such as LyX/KLyX, and even some lesser-known Windows word processors such as Scientific Workplace)... but what about spreadsheets? Are the formats of GNUmeric and (whatever KOffice's spreadsheet program is) compatible? What about StarOffice? Whatever happened to 'sc'?
What about groupware programs? It's hard enough to deal with KDE/Gnome flamewars on Slashdot. What about in the workplace where the manager wants everyone to use a KDE-based groupware app but all the Gnome zealots want to use a Gnome-based one, and then all the desktop-agnostics (which I currently am) want to just use one which works under fvwm2?
(Yes, I know there's better WMs than fvwm2. But I have it setup to work nicely with my Datahand and I don't feel like learning how to configure another WM right now.)
Many things to think about.
---
"'Is not a quine' is not a quine" is a quine.
"'Is not a quine' is not a quine" is a quine.
Quine "quine?
Nice to hear that KDE so many people write about KDE. But there's still a long way to go - if you really want to compete with Microsoft on the desktop market, you do have to have a good office product. Honesty, I don't like Word Perfect (and, well peple need more than a word processor) or Applix (the ever tried to make a more complex presentation?) or StarOffice (can you spell slow?). I personally feel fine with all those command line apps (tex, gnuplot and so on), but the average user will need a fully integrated Office product. KOffice might be he way o go, it looks really good and should be ready not too far from now. This would be a good opportunity to make the KDE and the GNOME people work together - GNOME should really think about integrating such a fine office product. I personally prefer KDE, but GNOME 1.0 is really useful and it would be a pitty if users turned away from it just because of the office suite.
What you really meant is that linux has no office suites that you like since you listed 3 office programs in your troll^H^H^H^H^H post, right? Then, you go on to refuse to even look at Applix because it's commercial, and in the same breath, recommend we go back to windows/macOS/amiga (commercial OSes) it's been a while since I saw a good open-source office suite for windows... And exactly what do you mean by "lack of a modern web browser"? Is Netscape 4.5 old? Is Mozilla M5 old? Nice of you to back up your "netscape sucks" with FACTS Also, hate to bust your bubble, but Motif is not a web browser. "Linux remains a system for ... nerds to use at home." Yet you come trash it on Slashdot... does the phrase "news for nerds" ring a bell?
0 1 - just my two bits
[please excuse semi-kindling response]
I had so much trouble getting kde 1.0 to work and when it did it was very crashy and sucked troll balls. THe pics looked very familiar and 9x-esque while gnome looked oh so unfamiliar. However I I have switch to gnome and it is stable and the background pics are cool and Propaganda was so easy to get. I am using E-Mac E and GTK+ theme and it feel like i am on my old mac. IT rools.
ok that's about all i can stand to do. my point is that both DE's are far better then they once were. both have integration. both are customizable. while my personal preference lies with gnome, that's all it is. personal preference.
frankly, reading this post was worse then listening to the average born again christian. a born again KDE zealot. ouch. all the signs are there:
'gnome is more worried about flash then stability'
no, gnome is just more flashy and wasn't stable in 1.0, that's all.
so while you're wandering around themes.org as instructed by the above poster, look at GTK+ and themes for E. and Propaganda. and KDE themes. you'll see that the beauty of linux lies in it's diversity.
Ah the debate goes on.
I wonder why we can't settle on both KDE and GNOME as the standard Linux desktop. I kinda like the freedom of choice option. In fact, why not throw WindowMaker and Afterstep in the mix too. It seems to me that one of the major benefits that Linux has to offer over the commercial OS's is the freedom to tweak it into whatever you want it to be.
Newbies will do more playing than anything else when they first get a PC. One of the first things that newbies do under windows is to go in and associate sounds with certain events...Well...I think newbies would get a real blast out of being able to go in and play with several different desktops. The trick is to make it "stupid simple" for them to do that. I think we are well on our way.
Viva la choice....
--