The KDE Future

dave from Linux Today wrote in to send us a piece appearing over there where KDE developer Kurt Granroth describes some of the major features that users can expect out of KDE 2.0. Largely about KOM (the K Object Model) and KOffice.

Comments

Re:NT's not bloated???

[elflord]

I haven't used NT so much, so I'm willing to assume you're right on this point (which is somewhat peripheral to the discussion). However, this doesn't alter the fact that you *still* haven't substantiated your claims about KDE/GNOME's alleged "bloat".

What does embedding have to do with functionality?

[Anonymous Coward]

If you click on a KSpread icon you get a full version of KSpread, no matter if it is embedded or not. If you don't appreciate Corba (which is what this feature is all about), perhaps you should revert to Windows 3.1

Re:I run KDE1.1.1 on a P166/32meg

[blaine]

I personally run KDE 1.1.1 on a p166/48mb and it runs pretty nice. Netscape does suck hard though... its the only app I run that I ever have to forcibly kill.

Gnome.... well, lets just say I suspect some memory leaks are present in the Gnome/E combo. It runs fine at first, but after leaving it running for a few hours or days (which is typical for me), it becomes sluggish, unresponsive, and just plain SLOW.

Oh well. I'm sure it will (hopefully) get better.

And after all, who needs any of these? :P My favorite window manager: Civ:CTP.

On my system, there is a user called 'civ'. His .Xclients looks like this:

#!/bin/sh
exec /usr/local/games/CivCTP/civctp

Civilization: Call to Power: it is its OWN window manager dammit! :)

Re:Anyone using IE uses them

[jedidiah]

They use the interface, not the underlying facility. That sort of functionality can be had with considerably less bloat or by using other methods. Even the ST pulled off similar 'feats' and it was held together with twist-ties and bubblegum.

Re:Some Thoughts on GNOME/KDE

[Arandir]

I've spent the last couple of hours stewing in a cauldron of raw emotions. This last post just hit my "mad" button again. But I'll ignore it.

Instead, I'm thinking about why I'm being sucked into a holy war. There is nothing in GNOME that I abhor, and nothing in KDE that I would die for. So why am I getting worked up?

I like KDE. I use it daily and do real work with it. Then I see a lie about it and I get angry. It's the same thing that happens when Microsoft tells a lie about Linux. We all get mad about that. But what's different about the KDE/GNOME war, is that it's my allies that are passing out the FUD.

Linux has given me my computing freedom back. Then someone comes along and tells me that I'm not truly free as long as I use KDE. "Turn from the dark side."

I'm currently writing a free application using the Qt library. I see a message fly by during a KDE/GNOME skirmish that says what I am doing is illegal. I re-read the GPL and QPL. I can't find anything, so I reply to the author asking for details. He's of the religious belief that anything that's not GPL is unholy. And he replies using Netscape!

I want to use KDE without anyone telling me that I'm evil for doing so. I get upset when people tell me that I am not free. I get angry when they tell me I am wicked. I didn't know this was a religion. I thought we had choice with Linux. Perhaps I should migrate to BSD.

It's interesting to follow the linux-newbie mailing list. A newbie writes in asking what GNOME is, and does it work with KDE? A week later another newbie writes in asking what KDE is, and does it work with GNOME? Newbies who've tried both write in to say thanks for giving them a real choice. For the first time of their computing lives, they're free.

We can learn from the innocents.

Anyone using IE uses them

[Anonymous Coward]

hehe. Or made a chart in Office...

Re:GNOME/KDE what's the big difference?

[HarpMan]

>

That makes a BIG difference to newbies.

Re:The Road To Bloat

[Dictator For Life]

Like has been said by others, RAM is dirt-cheap today, so a little bloat can be tollorated.

Isn't this the Microsoft argument? Isn't this how they justify the horrific numbers associated with Win2000 (or any earlier version of NT)?

I hope you don't criticize M$ for bloat, since you don't seem to mind it in Linux apps. That would be rather hypocritical, don't you think?

Personally, I hate the bloat in M$ slop and I won't tolerate it in Linux either. It's ridiculous. Pentium IIs shouldn't run like 386's just because of UI crap, IMO.

Re:Too Much

[Anonymous Coward]

Most real end users don't give a damn about bloated object models and never really utilized them on Windows either. Nevermind that even under Windows it was possible to do object and applications imbedding with less than 64M of RAM (earlier versions of OLE under Win3.x).

As usual, Gnome supporters flip-flop

[Anonymous Coward]

Miguel just said yesterday that Gnome is very much like windows...are you going to trash Gnome as well?

It's interesting that when Miguel does something everyone here considers it the breath of God (even when he admits to making it like Windows), yet EVERYTHING the KDE team does is deemed by the Slashdot illuminati to be somehow too 'windows-like' and inherently evil.

Typically Slashdot.

Re:As usual, Gnome supporters flip-flop

[mill]

Where did he say he was a "gnome supporter"? He said he didn't like the way Konquerer is supposed to work (something he thought was the worst of Windows).

Everyone here doesn't consider Miguel's actions the "breath of God" and everything the KDE team do as bad. If they did you wouldn't post this, eh? Or all the others that are constantly whining about how mistreated KDE is on Slashdot or by Redhat or by Americans or by the green marsian conspirators or by ...

What's interesting is how Kurt Granroth's claim that gtk's theme support is pixmap based will go down considering how much critique Miguel got for saying "pretty much tied to C++".

/mill - the green lesbian marsian conspirator

PS. Kurt is of course not lying about GNOME/Gtk+. Probably just didn't know enough about the theme support. Seems like a fair and reasonable guy too. DS.

You're talking nonsense.

[elflord]

Tell us what is using the memory. The fact that X amount of memory is "used" ( and what does "used" mean anyway ? does cached count as "used" ? ) does not mean that KDE is using it ( probably X is swallowing a lot while KDE is running, you have a bunch cached aand your server processes are eating more ).

I have yet to see anyone back up the bloat claims with hard numbers ( ie what are the KDE processes and how much memory are they using ? )

Either get some real numbers for us or quit whining and play with twm. And leave us alone.

Re:One Final Thought

[Alex Zepeda]

What the hell are you talking about? Netscape sucks, XV hasn't been maintained in a while, etc, etc. KDE v. Gnome just spawns more infighting between you Linuxites because the desktop environment is the one thing that many have already conceeded is a Microsoft domain. This is in essence the final frontier.

Re:Computing power, and Linux apps

[cameldrv]

I understand your concern, however technology marches on. A 386 can still be used as a router or IPMasq server (in fact I am doing just that), it can still run console apps, and older X apps. I don't think further development for these machines should be a priority for the major desktop projects. If it's not too hard to make them faster by turning off features then fine, do it. Recognise though that hardly anyone on any other platform is targetting a 486 or 040 now as a viable computer. If you have such a computer, you can use apps that were developed when that computer was a modern machine. The Linux kernel, X, and older apps will probably always run fine on a 486. Especally with today's PC prices, there's no real reason to continue to use a 486 as a desktop machine if you value your time at all. If you already have a monitor (if you have a 486 you should), you can buy a $400 computer (even cheaper if you buy used or recycle some of your old parts). I really don't think that the few people who still want to use such machines for their desktop should be holding back the development of new apps.

Re: Alienating People

[Anonymous Coward]

Kde developers are not alienating people. Regardless of all the publicity GNOME has enjoyed, KDE is much more widely used. It's the standard desktop in almost every distribution but one, which has invested heavily in GNOME's marketing and development.

Kde is used by a wide variety of people. GNOME is used mostly by only one kind of user - persons who post regularly here and want to be perceived as "cool" in elitist circles. That will increasingly become a tiny minority as Linux expands its user base.

GNOME is a *commercial* product, even if it is open source. Kde is open source - and also a labor of love. There is a tremendous difference. Gnome developers like Miguel have succeeded in alienating anyone who has regard for the truth, even people who have been favourably inclined towards GNOME.

GNOME has some excellent apps, but the system sucks. It's central feature, the file manager, should be scrapped and redesigned from scratch. Miguel did a good job with Midnite Commander, but has stepped into deep shit with GMC. He's over his head. He gets the interviews only because he lives in Mexico and because of RedHat's PR bankrolling. I love Mexico, but let's face it. Mexico is close to the US, with easy accessibility to US journalists. It's percieved as a third world country, and therefore it is politically correct to write about success stories in Mexico.
You have no idea how big Kde is in Europe and in most of the world. Gnome is a fad among elitist Linux wannabes, mostly in America.

Them's the facts.

KDE is a good thing

[Chutzpah]

KDE is good for linux, it allows people who are clueless aobut computers to use linux. I find that the point of view that some people express, "if you don't know how to use it, don't" is completely unreasonable. All of us, at one point were pretty clueless and the only way er learned was to use it and get better at it.

Re:Certainly

[Anonymous Coward]

Aguably, by #include'ing a Qt header file, the
program contains Qt code.

It wasn't flamebait, just incorrect

[Anonymous Coward]

The Corba embedding is nothing like IE/Windows, that's all.

Re:The Road To Bloat

[spun]

Try running, oh say, icewm instead of GNOME or KDE. Then run top. How much RAM is your X server eating up now? Any big GUI program is going to bloat your X memory use.

Corba just provides an ORB

[Anonymous Coward]

Or Object Request Broker. It handles basic communtication and requests between processes - not say embedding one document in another.

Bad luck for notebook users then...

[Anonymous Coward]

The 'memory is cheap' mantra unfortunately doesn't apply to (small) notebooks.

Ever heard about the Sony Vaio 505? You don't want to know how much even 32MB cost...



I seriously with that the KDE folks maintain the KDE 1.x tree and try to cut down memory usage further...

Re:Uhm, providing a desktop environment

[Matts]

Well, there's Wings which is a UI library, although admittedly not particularly complete :)

And I heartily recommend anyone wanting to use KDE to dump KWM, and use WindowMaker instead - you'll save yourself a whole lot of RAM.

But then I dumped both Gnome and KDE - both starve your machine of RAM, and provide very little to the hardcore user.

perl -e 'print scalar reverse q(\)-: ,hacker Perl another Just)'

Re:Silent cries from distant places

[Anonymous Coward]

I converted to Linux for something different and don't want to see it evolve into... Windows

Get a grip. Linux evolve into windows ? When I purchase windows, do I get a *good* webserver, development tools ( ie more than you can poke a stick at ) and a pile of opensource apps and utilities all running on top of a platform that crashes between rarely and never ? BTW, why do you think this is about emulating windows anyway ? Windows isn't the only OS to include a decent level of GUI functionality ...

(Yes, I know KDE and Gnome are beyond Windows,

This is not so clear. In some ways , windows is ahead (its embedding capabilities have matured and are reasonably stable ). In some ways , its quite a way behind ( for example, remote-ability )

but the same similarities are there).

The linux developers are doing the right thing by taking the best of GUI technology and implementating it the right way.

Re:"as usual", slashdotters think they know better

[Anonymous Coward]

I, sort of, agree with you. Most of the time Slashdotters are right, unless it's about GNOME vs KDE, we seem to forget to stay rational.

Please, peace geek-brothers and sisters from this and the other side of the Ocean.

Bloat? Where?

[Threed]

Running Netscape on KDE on XFree86 on Kernel 2.2.4... Where's the bloat? NETSCAPE!

Netscape is always my largest running process, unless it's one of those rare occasions when I'm running Applixware because I had to open a Word doc file.

KDE is running thin as can be right now. Adding dynamically (un)loadable objects to it isn't going to hurt much at all. Making more components interchangeable and shared (more dynamic) can only help the situation.

--Threed

perlQT ... help !

[elflord]

I am having a really hard time getting perlQT to work. Actually, the only GUI perl binding that I have been able to get working is perlTK ( which works very nicely btw ... )

Anyway, how do you get perlQT working ? what distro/compiler/shared-libs/qt-version/perl-versio n do you have ?

how about this...

[nicedream]

Complete configurability. I like Linux because of the control I get over my computer. I do not like KDE automatically regenerating trashcans and other icons on the desktop. Yes, it is possible to change this, but it takes much hacking, and hackers are not the type of people KDE was designed for.

And that little "K" icon in the windows "start" button position. Do I HAVE to have their logo there? I want a Linux penguin, or a Redhat logo, or anything else. Although possible to change, it takes too much exploring, poking and prodding that a newbie user doesnt want/know how to do. (And this advanced user doesnt really feel like it either.)

Overall, KDE is a GREAT collaboration of software, but I have a big pet peeve with nonconfigurable things like this.

Re:how about this...

[Brian Knotts]

Sorry, but you have the source code. Therefore, everything in KDE is completely configurable.

I sure wish people would be a little more grateful for something that has been created by a Free Software project. If you don't like it, don't use it, or fix what you don't like, and contribute the changes. Or at least complain to the developers, instead of on a public forum.

Sorry. I just really get tired of the KDE developers getting raked over the coals, and I think they deserve a lot of credit for what they've done. They've invested a lot of time and energy over the past 3 years, and did not have anyone hiring them to work on it.

--
Get your fresh, hot kernels right here!
World domination: coming soon to a computer near you!

Re:how about this...

[zaks]

Frankly, your argument doesn't make sense. If you want to "take control of your computer", you HAVE to learn something about it. On the other hand if you're scared of a little "exploring, poking, and prodding", you should be thankful to graphical user environments, not opposed to them.

It's impossible to criticize KDE for being too difficult and too user friendly at the same time - in fact it's not. My 4 weeks experience with it is that it's extremely easy to use and to configure.

If you want to take real control - don't install a GUI environment. If you want to take control without "poking and exploring", you're clearly asking too much of life.

Re:how about this...

[Anonymous Coward]

If I want to take control of KDE, I DONT want
to HAVE to by modifying the C++, crossing my
fingers and recompiling.

p.s. If you don't have a decent GUI environment,
modelling complex 3D objects is rather difficult,
so if I want to take control of the environment
I use for doing 3D modelling, how does you
argument hold here?? (that said, I dont use
KDE for this)

e.g. (in GNOME's case), I've done a lot of poking
around, but I dont like the 'running whatever
as root' message, and I am NOT going to waste
time trapesing through the GNOME sources to
switch it off, just because someone inserted
a novice feature without the capability of its
being deactivated.

Re:The Road To Bloat: A Followup

[Anonymous Coward]

TO cut the bloat down, X needs to be dumped.

We have to get rid of this silly duplication of logic between the applications and X, and the overheads associated with having window and UI management outside the X server.

If you want to think about this a little more, consider the overhead in putting a simple button on the screen.

• Application calls X server and allocates a rectangle.
• Application calls X server connects events to the rectangle.
• Application sends drawing info for each and every instance of the button appearing on the screen

Err, then you cannot ship GPL Motif programs

[Anonymous Coward]

They depend on the system clause.

Re:Sure, you are free to stick with a Vt420

[jedidiah]

Except that's not at all what's going on.

It's rather more like the choice between a VT420 and a VT420 that needlessly wastes resources. There is very little in the Windows/KDE/GNOME style desktops that wasn't there in less bloated offerings 10 years ago.

Re:Some Thoughts on KDE/GNOME

[spun]

For the two AC posters: I am talking about perception, not reality. And it's my perception of what the communities perception is about the two projects, so it may not be entirely accurate, but please, did you read the last paragraph, people? That is my point, people need to stop carping and give credit and support where it is due.

Re:Too Much

[Alex Zepeda]

Well perhaps you should actually track the kde-devel mailing list. It was just recently that some non bloat inducing features were added. For instance the KConfig class was recently rewritten making it possible to store your configuration files in any format you so choose, as well as making it quite a bit faster.

Oh yes, and KDE will now "officially" check for .kdelnk and .desktop files, making a unified format for these things in the process. So what does this mean? Easier integration betweek KDE apps and Gnome panel, and between Gnome apps and the kpanel.

You think KDE is slow or bloated? Rewrite something to make it faster and leaner. The TT Trolls have managed to snarf up a lot of the useful KDE classes and perhaps improve on them. End result? Qt gets marginally bigger, kdelibs slim down.

KDE is not a corporate body!

[Anonymous Coward]

It is a collaboration of free software developers. And as far as spin, they do it much less than Gnome does.
I admit he probably should of used "Corba embedding", since may apps can use lame XReparentWindow calls, but do you know how many times I heard Miguel say KDE/Qt has no bindings while I am personally using kde-python and PerlQt...? No one is complaining about that.

Re:KDE is not a corporate body!

[scrytch]

Tried perlQt .. symbol relocation errors galore. Recompiled Qt with the same compiler perlQt used. Same errors. Tried it on linux. Core dump.

Tried python's kde bindings. segfault.

I get the feeling linkages to C++ libraries must only work for the people who develop them, if that. Not that I don't see the value in having widgets in C++ -- compare gnome's "hello world" with qt's tutorial 2 (which has the same equivalent function). I was sold on Qt immediately. But this ABI crap with C++, where you can't link anything from a foreign compiler or a compilerwith a different version or whenever it just doesn't feel like linking ... it's really getting on my last nerve. Gtk-- is looking good to me these days, but then there's the matter of the utterly pathetic state of gtk's documentation.

Re:KDE is not a corporate body!

[whoop]

As for the python bindings, there are two sets. One isn't maintained anymore, the other is pyKDE and is still maintained. I compiled pyKDE the other day with no trouble (it just takes forever). Let me know if that's the one you had trouble with, I can send you the .spec I made to compile it via rpm (pretty simple, just the standard configure/make/make install I think, not at home right now), or the binary rpm if you'd like (I make my own rpms).

Re: actually, you just need kdelibs and kdesupport

[Anonymous Coward]

.. to run kde apps. There are no shared libraries in kdebase. kdebase just consists of the foundation components ( window manager, kdm, all the stuff the wm uses such as kpanel, kaudio, etc ) To run kde apps, you just need the three sets of shared libs ( qt , kdelibs, kdesupport )

Re:Silent cries from distant places

[KaLeVR1]

Hmmm extrasolar, I understand where you are coming from and can relate, but I disagree. Most of us crossing over from Windows are not on a crusade to purge ourselves of MS or entirely displeased with the Windows interface. Speaking for myself, I'm not looking for something different. I just can't stand the danged computer crashing every time you look at it, or for that matter, crashing even if you don't look at it. I agree that we don't want to create a linux Windows 98 duplicate, but anything that can be done to minimize the learning curve for newbies only strengthens linux's userbase over the long run. The appeal of Windows is learning an interface once and being able to apply it to any application. It makes it so any idiot can sit down with a keyboard and a mouse and be productive. The way to make linux soar among the masses is to offer the same ease. Make it so any idiot can use it (think AOL). The people at GNOME and KDE know that! They are not trying to clone Windows, they are trying to win over its users. If you look at if from that perspective, KDE and GNOME can't help but have similarities to Windows. As far as a standard desktop, I hope we will continue to have choices but the different desktops should adopt specifications that allow a program written for either to run on the other. That shouldn't be too difficult if developers are flexible and think of the good of the linux community instead of making their way the standard.

Re:Redhat does not support KDE

[extrasolar]

They have two full time developers on KDE the last I heard. I feel that is very fair since i know of no other distribution that supports and develops both major desktop enviroments. But they have every right to support Gnome though, they put so much resources into GPL code. We can nothing but benefit.

--

Re:Silent cries from distant places

[Locutus]

> The appeal of Windows is learning an interface
> once and being able to apply it to any applicaiton.

Don't you mean the appeal of windows as opposed to Windows (as in MS)? There isn't much consistant in the desktops of Win3.x, Win95, and Win98 but those applications that follow CUA will be usable once you figure out how to start them.

I think it is time for the PlayStation and Nintendo to take the ball from Micros~1 and build a idiot proof system. Those who can think alittle can do use Linux. This will happen in less then 2 years IMHO. Linux needs a application installation utility that is desktop aware. That feature with the OpenLinux 2.2 install and Inet and retail application packages will take users by storm.
For the most part Linux configurations make more sense to me then what Microsoft puts out and that makes it easier to learn. Learning the MS way you have to use tons of memorization techniques because there is little applied logic can do for you.

Re:You're not paying even minimal attention.

[elflord]

It seems to me that my minimal comparison is sufficient for my point

no, it is not. X can use more or less depending on what you have going on within your desktop. If you run the pixmap themes, X will probably take up much more space. Also, KDE and GNOME do a fair bit of caching (ie the root windows). The caching will have an impact on your "free" report, but no impact on performance.

Also, idle processes (eg audio servers, dormant file managers ) impact the output of "free" , but not performance. The kind of thing that will hurt performance is active processes swapping. But this will not happen with KDE/GNOME if you have 32MB or more ( yes, I've run KDE on 32MB, and it runs fine though it takes a while to start )

I take your point that KDE and GNOME use up some space, but you are making it sound a lot worse than it really is.

Yup, all GUI users are MS people

[Anonymous Coward]

You found us out!! Damn :(

The Road To Bloat

[Dictator For Life]

The most troubling thing to me with KDE and Gnome is their astonishing bloat. Neither of these environments can reasonably be described as "lightweight." On a 64MB RH6.0 machine starting Gnome up immediately sucks all my free RAM; KDE is very little better.

This is ridiculous, in my judgment. It seems more like pandering after the Microsoft model rather than sticking with the Unix way of doing things. Yes, there's a great deal of reuse possible in all this stuff, but the genius of Unix is as much in its focus upon small, highly-specialized programs that can be combined in ways never imagined by the original developers. Where is small in KDE/Gnome? Where is "lightweight"?

I can't bear it. I know this is all my personal subjective evaluation, and I might be somewhat offbase on some of my criticisms, but I just can't bear the bloat. 64MB should be plenty for just about any moderate level of work without hitting the swap. Having it all sucked up by a silly "desktop environment" is one reason (among many) why I abandoned M$ products.

No thanks, KDE/Gnome. I'll stick to Window Maker: just enough fat to give me some nice features, while leaving over 20MB of RAM free (what are KDE/Gnome doing with it????)

Re:The Road To Bloat

[IntlHarvester]

Well, if you want similar or better functionality relative to Windows (embedded browser, object embedding), it only stands to reason that you're going to have similar system requirements. (If someone has disproved this, please let me know, because I haven't seen it.)

Take comfort in the fact that at least you have other options.
--

Re:The Road To Bloat

[gavinhall]

Posted by Moritz Moeller - Herrmann:

KDE 1.0 ran with 8MB of ram on a P100 !

Slowly, running netscape was not recommendable, but it ran.

Since then KDE has gone thru 2 revisions it is faster and smaller now. I would say the minimum ram for serious work is like 16-20 MB, if you run only light weight apps.

Re:The Road To Bloat

[Anonymous Coward]

The Macintosh circa 1988.

Component models are relatively irrelevant in a climate of 'bundle the whole thing together'. While suites like StarOffice aren't split into many parts like MSoffice is supposed to be, the result is the same due to patterns of use.

Take away that and you have essentially what was being deliverd by 68K based GUI's in the late 80's.

WM + dfm (or other DnD filemangler) + well designed apps of your choice can be as much a replacement for Windows as any of the bloatware desktops.

Re:The Road To Bloat

[Gleef]

Dictator for Life wrote:

The most troubling thing to me with KDE and Gnome is their astonishing bloat. Neither of these environments can reasonably be described as "lightweight." On a 64MB RH6.0 machine starting Gnome up immediately sucks all my free RAM; KDE is very little better.

While I certainly wouldn't call GNOME lightweight, I have a very similar setup as you (64MB RH5.9 machine), and GNOME is very nice to my RAM. Usually my X Server takes up as much memory as all my GNOME programs combined. Even running Netscape with GNOME, I've got a comfortable 15MB-20MB for disk caching. From everything I've heard, KDE's memory usage is similar. You might want to run Top to see what really is eating up your RAM.

The place where GNOME and KDE both hog space is on the hard disk. But with recent hard drive prices, that's alot less of an issue.

Re:The Road To Bloat

[Rob Parkhill]

Like has been said by others, RAM is dirt-cheap today, so a little bloat can be tollorated.

But it still boggles my mind that I was using a desktop that was as good or better than what is available today over 8 years ago, on a machine with a 25MHz chip and 8MB of RAM. In fact, I still have my NeXTstation '040 machine at home, and it still works fine. Not that bloat didn't affect that platform either, though. It ran quite well under NeXTstep 2.x, but 3.x and 4.x forced me to upgrade to 20MB of RAM.

Most coders today are more concerned with proper OO technique than they are about efficiency.

Of course, some things have suffered bloat for longer than I care to remember ([X|GNU]emacs being my favorite!)

I just hope that KDE and GNOME never, ever try to do something as insane as the Windows Registry. Yikes.

Re:The Road To Bloat

[IntlHarvester]

I suggest you boot up Macintosh System 6.0 sometime and verify that it does not have the functionality of MacOS 8.x, Windows 9x, or KDE.

Ye olde MacOS was lean, but it was also in non-portable assembly language and ROM chips.
--

Re:The Road To Bloat

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, I've found that the amount of bloat is directly tied to the _themes_ that you select to use. GTK themes are especially good at sucking up your RAM. If you are carefull at which theme you select, you'll find Gnome/Enlightenment much more usable.

I know that this is not an excuse, it should be better written and not have the memory leaks/RAM usage that it does, but give it time - I believe that it will improve.

Re:The Road To Bloat

[Anonymous Coward]

You say that the X server takes up as much as
GNOME combined -- I find that hard to believe,
since GNOME uses a lot of the X server's memory.

On the subject of bloat... X.

Why does X take up so much memory?

Re:The Road To Bloat

[CJ Hooknose]

but the genius of Unix is as much in its focus upon small, highly-specialized programs that can be combined in ways never imagined by the original developers. Where is small in KDE/Gnome? Where is "lightweight"?

The problem with the "small, highly specialized" model is that it takes a bit of skill, talent, and experience to make it work--things that are always sadly lacking in many folks. So things bloat and multiply because "it's just easier" when everything you need is integrated into one package. (EMACS, anyone?)

Other posters are right when they say Linux needs an easy-to-install-and-use GUI frontend. Bloat is not going away anytime soon, as the 128MB minimum for running Windows2000 sadly points out. At least you can run KDE with 32M, and if the disk chatters too much for your liking, go back to the % prompt.

KDE's a very widely used GUI at the moment, but it will be interesting to see how Windows users react to it in the long term. I've been using KDE for a couple of weeks now and I'm still not nearly as comfortable with it as with Mac/Win environments... I tend to follow my own advice and do most everything from a kterm session.

Re:The Road To Bloat

[tatara]

Yes, there's a great deal of reuse possible in all this stuff, but the genius of Unix is as much in its focus upon small, highly-specialized programs that can be combined in ways never imagined by the original developers. Where is small in KDE/Gnome? Where is "lightweight"?

"Lightweight" is just where you've come to expect it, from the command line, and all of the small, highly-specialized programs you've come to know and love are still there. The purpose of Desktops is that they're supposed to remove the sense that every app is a special case. This is all well and good for nice, specialized command-line utilities, and undaunting for experienced users. The integration and similarities of applications that a desktop such as KDE or Gnome introduces benefits users who don't want to feel that they're relearning something totally different with every application they run.

I think KDE and GNOME make good on what they're trying to do, even if they don't fit the old mold of specialization and uniqueness. Though perhaps I'm jaded, since I'm one of those freaks that thought that the only thing that Microsoft did right with Win95 was the UI - even if it wasn't their work.

Just my $0.02....

Re:The Road To Bloat

[Anonymous Coward]

A centralised registry is a good idea -- its just
M$'s implementation that makes it bad.

I prefer the registry to the huge mess of
differently structured conf files you get with
Linux.

It is

[Anonymous Coward]

You get the full app, menus and all.

Configurability option that I want

[BeanThere]

I'm pretty passive about most "little" things, like which icon is used where, doesn't really bother me.

But one thing that annoys the crap out of me (it's one of the main reasons I don't like to use Windows and I was horrified at a couple of "hints" that Gnome seems to be heading there) is when the system assumes I'm an ignorant moron -- when it tells me something I already know, in the form of an annoying message box. I *HATE* message boxes. (Re: Gnome, I'm referring to that message you get if you startx as root, warning you about the dangers of being "root", AAAARGH!)

Sure, it's basically impossible for the system to know what I know, and newbie users need that sh-t. But I *would* like some global "experience" setting somewhere, where you can select that you are "novice/beginner/intermediate/advanced/guru" etc .. then apps can check this before they piss you off with lame comments such as "This file is a 'program file'. If you delete it you will no longer be able to run the program".


Just my rant for the day. (On the whole I am very impressed with both KDE and Gnome, although Gnome still needs a bit more time to mature.)

Re:Which Gnome object model (vapour)

[mill]

http://www.gnome.org/screenshots/gnumeric-bonobo.j pg

I guess it is as much vapor as Qt2.0.

Oh well.

/mill

You've come a long way, baby

[Anonymous Coward]

I've been using KDE since the 1.0 release. It came out of the starting gate already matching the functionality of most of the popular window managers, while at the same time offering more. It wasn't terribly attractive, but it provided neutral ground where you could come from a *NIX/CDE environment and be equally as comfortable as a Win9x user.

1.1 was rather a rough release, and a little buggy IMO, but 1.1.1 solved those problems and I am very pleased to use it every day. The memory leaks I experience with 1.0 were gone, and I now have more control over my desktop than I had before.

Now I read about 2.0. Wow! The KDE guys have been very busy. While some of these features may not appeal to hardcore CLI fans, or folks who like a very lean X environment, they will definitely have appeal for corporate desktop use as well as the average Joe. The KOffice suite, when it is ready, is the one thing that will push me over the edge to stop using Windows NT altogether.

I am becoming increasingly of the opinion that KDE is going to become the "killer app" (when bundled with KOffice anyway) that pushes Linux over the edge.

Gnome won't ever get there. Gnome is an exclusive club. Don't get me wrong, Gnome is coming into technical excellence of its own. But from the very start, Gnome was a Gnu-only club and the attitudes of the "religious zealots" will chase away the folks outside the circle.

And the beauty of KDE over Gnome is that the developers have gone to great pain to ensure that KDE is happy on any platform. I can run it on my RS/6000 or my Sun UltraSPARC. No problem. We may very well see commerical *NIX vendors dumping CDE & Motif and bundling KDE with KOffice.

Think about it. A Sun box running KDE and KOffice for a lower price than a huge Intel box running NT Terminal Server. Having done a lot of network administration and support on both environments, I can tell you without a second thought how much I'd prefer the Sun solution provided we had quality desktop apps like KDE.

BTW - For the naysayers that call KDE a pig, it will run GREAT on a $350 computer. I use it at home every day on a Cyrix 233MHz machine with 64MB of RAM and it hauls. Take a $300 machine and toss in a 64MB chip for a little over $50 and you'll have anywhere from 80 to 96MB of RAM in your machine, which makes a $350 box that is capable of running KDE and KOffice with VERY pleasant results.

Kudos, guys, and keep up the great work!

Re:Too Much

[jedidiah]

Except KDE isn't anything new relative to ~ 1993.

Re:~/.kde/share/apps/kpanel/pics/go.xpm

[whoop]

That's still too much hacking for him, traversing directories, making your own xpms, etc. Sure the source exists, blah blah blah, but until these people can just shout at their monitor, "Put a penguin there!!" and make it work they won't be too pleased. Granted voice recognition isn't too prevelent in Linux, let alone thought recognition (for the "there" part), but still, until it does have it, Linux just isn't a real OS...

And by the time Linux does get complete mind/body/spirit recognition, it should be able to predict everything I will think/do/want to do/etc and just go with it...

:) That's the obligatory smiley for those not recognizing the sarcasm. But imagine a computer like that; would it just be a user simulator, sending out emails to your friends about the picnic planned for the next fourth of July or whatever...

Re:More than Win95

[Anonymous Coward]

The AC you responded to (I gotta get an account again)

I agree on all but the first two (got a little confused, did you accidentally delete 4:)

X provides some nice function, but it annoys me that the transperent networking has to be used all of the time, where it should be used only when needed. Many home users like me probably tried running an X app off of our ISP's, said cool, and then didn't really do anything productive with it.

I am not saying it is useless, since I know many people, hell even average people with Unix workstations benefit from it, which is good. The same goes for Apache. Sendmail however is a real nice feature, for most people, who want system wide e-mail that works with netscape to elm. Though they don't seem to be much hogs. Easy to stop too.

On berlin, they seem to be doing what windows does, which is a good thing. Windows seems to use COM wrappers and such for most of it's widgets. This allows for a lot of custimazation considering you don't have the source code available. That right click menu on text boxes for example, or the fact the they have enlightenment and windowblinds for windows. Berlin , I hear, is using CORBA on all of it's widgets. Should be nice.

Re:KDE/Gnome bloat

[elflord]

Apart from those who explicitly agree with me, I am likewise joined in my assessment by those who only managed to say "we have to endure some bloat to have a good GUI"... these folk implicitly acknowledge that there is bloat

"Bloat" as I understand it means either inefficient code or useless features. If you are saying that the code is inefficient, you need to show that it uses considerably more memory than something with comparable functionality. Your example (fvwm) does not use much less memory ( about 8MB diff at most) and doesn't have comparable functionality. On the other hand, if the features are useless for you, don't use them. But it's worth mentioning that to the mainstream desktop user, the features *are* useful.

The respondents aren't conceding that there is bloat ; they are conceding that KDE needs more memory *because* it does more . a kde session runs several processes, *including* a window manager. They are conceding that you will need more memory to run KDE because the extra processes need some memory to run in. They do not concede that KDE is woefully inefficient.

counterproductive?

[Anonymous Coward]

Themes are counterproductive for maybe
another reason: they distract. Both as
eye candy that would otherwise not catch
the eye, or just obsessive, endless desktop customization.

I don't think it has much to do with
useability concerns over remapped
keybindings, or buttons that look unusual.
That would probably only be a concern on
a machine with multiple users, and if done
right, everyone would have their own
settings...or people going from machine to
machine.

Not that I don't like interface eyecandy.
If you spend much time in front of one,
you probably want it pretty.

Re:I guess KDE is ok if you really want MS Windows

[seth_hartbecke]

But I want things to work like that!

Not really...but...

Perhaps an example would help. (This is going to sound a lot like MS Word and Outlook).

What I want is the ability to go into KMail and select via an option what I want to use as an e-mail composer/viewer. Basic options like "Built in" would be compiled (perhaps) into the program. But what would be neat is if you could change it to KWord (is that the name of the program?) so that you could do text formatting (with automatic conversion to/from text/plain or text/html).

This is kinda possiable now as KMail developers can get the code for KWord and incorporate it into the program. However this creates code duplication (bug duplication) and means that I am still restricted to using either the ones that KMail people send with the program or I must find a way to incorportate it on my own (assuming I am a good developer). And then there is the the _really_ scary possiability (from non-developer standpoint) of somebody rewriting KMail to use parts of the KWord code to get a better composer but it is released as a patch. So now I (as a simple user) must download but the correct KMail sources, and the patch, recompile and install the application.

As for myself I would not mind recompiling a program to get extra functions. But we must realize where Linux appears to be going. In order for it to become #1 people _have_ to have the ability to download pre-compiled packages from the net and run them though some sort of GUI installer. If KOM works the way I think it will I can still have KMail pick up KWords extra functions WITHOUT HAVING TO RECOMPILE. After I install KWord it registers itself saying "I can be an HTML or plain text editor" and next time I start KMail I can reconfigure it to use KWord.

Perhaps KOM cannot do all of this but I hope it can.

A few problems, as usual

[Anonymous Coward]

Article implies Gnome uses only pixmap themes, while KDE will have "superior" shared lib themes.
Bzzzzzt
Gnome uses GTK+ theme engines. Only one theme engine does pixmaps AFAIK. Theme authors, of course, tend to use the pixmap engine, because they often can't or won't write code. KDE can't change that.

It also talks about how some Proprietary apps now do KDE DnD - then it says DnD will be "standardised" in KDE 2.0 --
What does "standardised" mean, well it means XDND of course, same as Gnome 1.0
So why would a proprietary app want KDE-style DnD? Good question, and one KDE users might ask themselves...

Finally, the "Political" motivation for KDE 2.0 is that finally they will be able to re-use GPL code.
Ever wonder why "Kimp" didn't see the light of day? Because it's Gnu and can't use Qt 1.x -- Same for dozens of other products. Eventually KDE 2.0 will be able to re-use the same GPL code that GNOME has been able to use all along...

Re:KOM eh

[scrytch]

I personally pronounce it "Kay-Oh-Emm". And since KOM is built on KORBA -- er, CORBA, you get the `D' from the start. Rather unlike DCOM, which is a hack over COM, and unlike COM which is simply a linker standard (and easily duplicated elsewhere, like XPCOM)

Re: Alienating People

[Anonymous Coward]

GNOME users seem elitist because they are the elite, at least compared to likes of you..

May seem like a jerk, but it's accurate

[Anonymous Coward]

Although he may of come across badly, most of the statements do seem true.

KDE developers are not insular or unfriendly

[Anonymous Coward]

I would consider Gnome developers calling KDE a "legacy" GUI in the media unfriendly.
As far as being insular, I don't see any justification for that at all. KDE has huge mailing list traffic with people asking questions and getting answers.
As far as the underdog getting the most support, I always though free software was about the code, not silly politics. Guess I was wrong...

Re:Exactly

[jedidiah]

Enter system() and the shared library.

That sort of functionality does not require the bloat that is the modern GUI.

Another good thing

[Anonymous Coward]

Also, because of the derived plugin model all theme plugins use a similar configuration setup. This allows GUI theme designer applications that non-programmers can use that should work with all theme plugins
mosfet@kde.org

Re:QT..

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes it's available. KDE 2.0 in CVS uses it.

Re:Your 64MB figure is way off

[Dictator For Life]

I've given you the numbers elsewhere. My numbers aren't off. It's a reasonable comparison between the two, AFAICT. If anything, no-Gnome Window Maker had the disadvantage of no reboot to clear the cache, and it still came up 20MB less than Gnome.

This was on a total of about 60-65 processes, give or take. As for Apache: same number of processes in each case (I know because I'm not a web server; I run Apache for devel purposes only, so there are only connections when *I* am using it). Since I did these tests I did actually reduce the numbers of httpd processes; I didn't need them all for my purposes anyway.

I know KDE can run in less. I used to run it in 48MB (but it was sluggish).

Regardless, as I've said elsewhere the bloat is simply undeniable no matter how you parse the RAM. No one can reasonably say that Gnome or KDE is as fast as a non-Gnomified window manager. It just ain't so. The difference is distinctly obvious. If you think otherwise, you're just...wrong.

Redhat does not support KDE

[Anonymous Coward]

They are still very much behind Gnome. The only reason KDE was included at all is because Gnome was horribly broken when Stampede (The 6.0 beta) and RH6.0 came out.

Sendmail Inc. owns sendmail

[Anonymous Coward]

Sendmail Inc. owns sendmail

"Too Slick" I agree!

[Anonymous Coward]

I agree with your comment about being "Too Slick" I think KDE is great (so is GNOME). This isn't a bad thing, I just like to use "rawer" environments when I need to get work done. KDE is doing fine, as long as they keep in the "Too Slick" zone, and stay out of the "Ridiculously Stupid" zone (ala Windows 98, and their damn wizards everywhere, which aren't disable-able). KDE is targetting a wider audience I think, and kudos to them.

Too Much

[Hrunting]

Look at all the new features! Woo!

Linux in general and KDE specifically are getting to the point where you can't run them on low-end systems anymore. It's not just bloat, either. A lot of KDE's enhancements are truly necessary. Integrating CORBA and "Microsoftian" aspects of the OS are going to be required as that's what people have come to expect, but I still use Linux because it runs great on my old P120 with (only) 40 MB of RAM. KDE already uses too much memory (so does it's rival GNOME). Features should not have to be added at the price of system capability.

It seems to be a general trend in Linux application programming, the idea that more features == better. Most applications that I use are very old versions that did exactly what I needed without any extra features that I didn't particularly need. A select few, like Window Maker, I keep up-to-date only because they keep adding functionality without sacrificing performance.

Perhaps the writers of KDE and other Linux GUI managers/apps/tools should take a page out of Alfredo's book and focus on really making their programs efficient, not just working.

Re:Too Much

[Sensor]

Ok the following post is kinda off topic... but I beg to differ with the above post I've personally fitted RH5.1 onto a 486SX25 with 8mb of RAM and about 100Mb of disk space - not tiny I grant you but still not massive and that was a fully functioning system not a stripped down print server or firewall.

I've got a copy of LEM for use on my laptop which only has a 300 Mb drive (as I rember the base LEM distro is under 20Mb) and needs to win 95 partition. Why bother? well because occasionally I need to do wierd network stuff and a small linux setup is fantastic for that.

Finally I have a one floppy installation of linux - can't remember the distro name but its linked somewhere off the LEM pages. This disk is our last resort recovery tool in the office - with it I can boot any PC and mount the hard disk and get network access... ie I can ftp important documents off the harddisk and then see if the installation is savable.

Its got vfat and ntfs drivers included so I can try it with either our NT servers a standard 9x system. I'd recomend all sys-admins to have a look at these micro linux distros as they have the potential to save huge ammounts of hassle.

It might be that mainstream distros are moving away from base hardware... but thats very different from not being able to use the linux on those machines. You just got to dig a little you'll be amazed at whats out there.

Tom

Re:Too Much

[stephenb]

The truth is, whenever you add new features you have to add code. When you add code, you add overhead. This is not to say that new features can't be added without slowing down the app. But it usually means some sort of trade off. Speed vs. memory consumption is a classic one.

Perhaps the writers of KDE and other Linux GUI managers/apps/tools should take a page out of Alfredo's book and focus on really making their programs efficient, not just working.

Every programmer knows you make the program correct before you optimize it. You should, however, architect the system to be as efficient as possible, using efficient algorithms and data structures, etc. But only after the implementation is correct should you specifically tweak code for performance and memory optimization. Again, this is assuming the general architecture of the system is sound in the first place.

I think both gnome and kde are generally on the right track. After the initial ramping up of features, functionality, and stability, then the efficiency optimization can start.

Keep in mind, however, that both projects have very ambitious goals. They are huge undertakings. And huge undertakings require huge amounts of resources.

Stephen Blake

Re:I still don`t like QPL

[elflord]

The problem with the QT license is that you have to pay about 2K USD to develop a commercial app. Sorry, but that is way to much.

Firstly, a GPL'd shared library can not be used for commercial projects end of story, so for a commercial developer, the QT license is more generous than the GPL.

Secondly, what is your "too much" assesment based on ? The QT license costs less than a week of a programmer's time (btw, it's $1300). So buying a QT license for each developer on the project is cheaper than paying each developer for an extra week. Moreover, there's nothing to stop you using it to write 101 commercial apps once you buy the license. And ( unlike motif ) your users don't need licenses, just your developers.

Whether or not the price is "too much" is a question of accounting/management that could go either way, but it's certainly true that if QT is, for your purposes, substantially better than any other toolkits, it is not "too much". I'd pay developers for an extra week of work to put polish on a commercial app. And I'd pay a week's (it's less than a weeks but I'm feeling generous ) worth of man hours to use a polished toolkit.

Re:Certainly

[Per Abrahamsen]

The Qt library is a part of the KDE programs in the sense used in section 2b. It is, however, likely that Qt falls under the special exception in the GPL for "system libraries", and therefore no longer is affected by 2b.

Re:I guess KDE is ok if you really want MS Windows

[whoop]

It's not bastardized with KDE 2.0 really. Everything is replaced exept the 1 or 2 pixel frame around the window; I think the title bar also reflects the new app running. Come to think of it, the Konquerer toolbar is probably still there (it's been a few days since I played with KDE 2.0 cvs). But the point is you are running whatever application (kword, kspread, etc), no features are lost. Only a toolbar for Konq or minimal amount of the parent app remains, so you get kspread plus a little more.

18:29

[extrasolar]

I did my homework. There is that convenient topics link to the left there. There are 18 about KDE and 29 about Gnome. Not as bad as you say but it is a little one sided thought. Not enough for me to complain.

--

Re:I still don`t like QPL

[Anonymous Coward]

Firstly, you don't have to pay TT if the
program is open source -- you just have a
get-out-of-GPL option that isn't present with
a GPL's library.

Second, 100% Free is more like the BSD license
-- you cant make something that is free, but
not free to be taken advantage of.

Next time try actually configuring it ...

[LizardKing]

I don't know what WM you were using, I assume it was E. If so, then next time you try it out, configure it using e-conf.

As for the flickering, I assume you're running at
8bit colour depth. Try starting you X server up with the following:

startx -- -bpp 16

This should stop it flickering.

Chris
(KDE and Gnome fan)

Chris Wareham

Re:The real target audience for KDE

[SurfsUp]

I suspect that many will start to use Linux _because_ of KDE

There is not the slightest doubt that this is true. As soon as you can plop a CD into a PC, answer the single question "Do you want to install Linux on your PC? (yes, no, expert)" then basically sit back and wait 10 minutes for a beautiful, stable gui to pop up, there will be an incredibly massive migration to Linux that will completely eclipse last year's exponential increase. We're maybe 5-6 months away from that.
--

Lies, damned lies, statistics and free.

[Anonymous Coward]

If KDE loads 20MB extra of files, but then
frees them, then you have 20Mb extra cached,
but in real terms, no more used.

You HAVE to use top to inspect what Linux
is doing with regards to cache and buffering
if you want to have an idea of how much free
memory you have. If you want to argue about
what is causing bloat, then you HAVE to
look at what the processes are using.

To quote a number of statistical books:
"Correlation does NOT imply cause"

To quote something else:
"There are lies, damned lies... and statistics"

C bloat vs. C++ bloat

[Dictator For Life]

Uhhh...isn't Gnome basically all C? And isn't Gnome a candidate for bloat poster child?

Like it has been said, KDE and WM work fine

[Anonymous Coward]

KDE is much more than just a window manager. If you don't like kwm use WM and the rest of KDE. If you don't like desktop environments at all that is fine too.

No, of course not

[Anonymous Coward]

It is just very, very incomplete.

Re:I guess KDE is ok if you really want MS Windows

[Anonymous Coward]

Here we go again...another moan about Mictosoft.

I personally use KDE...and I think it beats the shit out of the competition. The fact about M$ is that their design of the GUI and respective programs is good...it is excellent in fact...it's just the underlining coding that is shit.

I think it's about time some members of the Linux community stopped being so petty about Microsoft.

Quit flaming

[Anonymous Coward]

Comparing GEM to KDE is an idiot comparision.

Re:The OS/2 way......

[Locutus]

Ton of stuff all over the place? Just drag a 'Folder' template over a clear spot and drop it. Now select all you icons on the desktop except the new folder then drag and drop them onto the new folder. Poof, a clean desktop where you can drag and drop the things you want and leave the rest tucked away.
I think it was 1994 when a coworker said he couldn't use OS/2 becuause his wife wouldn't know how to start her Windows-based word processor for school. I created a new folder called "Wendy", his wifes name, I created a template for here Windows-based word processor and a folder tempate in the "Wendy" folder. All the other folders on the desktop were dropped into a new desktop folder I called "System". Only 2 folders were on her desktop, one called "Wendy" and one called "System". How hard is that?
The problem today is that people don't want choices. They want to be told what to do and how to do it and Micros~1 is there to 'help' them. They haven't made Billions of Dollars selling solution, they did it selling problems. IMHO

Re:The OS/2 way......

[PHroD]

yikes i never liked the WPS in OS/2 as it is pretty damn convoluted and has a ton of stuff all over the place...*I* personally believe in the Zen of Simplicity (for the user to get werk done, and make it as complex as you want underneath, so long as the user has a good and /or easy time using it all)


"There is no spoon" - Neo, The Matrix

Re:I guess KDE is ok if you really want MS Windows

[Paul Carver]

I definitely prefer a GUI to a purely command line text only screen, and I don't want to have to remember that xls means Excel. I want Excel to launch automatically if I click on an Excel file in IE. The thing that I think is a bad idea is when I'm browsing a web site and I click on a link to an Excel file suddenly my browser morphs. It isn't quite IE and it isn't quite Excel.

To give a specific example: Yesterday I needed some information from another organization. I loaded their intranet page in IE and clicked on a link to a MS Word document. After 3-5 minutes IE had morphed into a IE-Word combo with the 99 page document displayed. I pressed Ctrl-F which in Word would have brought up the Word find dialog box. Instead it brought up the "Find Files" dialog box which searches the hard drive. I had to go back to the web page, right click and "save as" the Word document, then load the Word document from my hard drive to search for the text I needed.

It sounds like KDE views this as their goal. Since Microsoft has already achieved it why is KDE trying to do it? They ought to have some goals beyond just mimicing Microsoft.

QT..

[Anonymous Coward]

Is there a version of QT with this new OpenSource(tm) licence available anyplace yet?

I'm all for new stuff, but QT 2.0 w/ the new licence seems to be vaporware right now. Can anyone please correct me?

Re:QT..

[whoop]

As well as the CVS others have mentioned, the good folks at Troll package snapshots every night. Ftp over to ftp.troll.no, it's easy to find, something like /qt/snapshots/.

Re:KOM eh

[whoop]

For what it's worth, I pronounce it Kay-Oh-Emm and not comm. On the other hand, I pronounce Konqueror as well, conqueror, not Kay-Oh-En-Queue-Ewe-etc (I'm too tired to do the whole thing :)).

Re:I guess KDE is ok if you really want MS Windows

[jwilloug]

It's that damn file manager/web browser thing again. If I click on an Excel file in my file manager, I don't want my file manager to go away. On the other hand, if I try to open an Excel document with my web browser, I want that to work. I don't necessarily need or even want to be able to edit it, but I should be able to see it.

I still don't think it's a good idea to integrate the two. So I'll just keep using Netscape (hopefully Mozilla will add CORBA support) and bash like always.

Component GUI/Monolithic X

[Real Timer]

Why are the desktop environments so bloated? Because they have to staticly embed everything. That's why they're adding Corba, so not every applet need to embed a full file browser. It just pops up the file browser applet in place. This *is* the UNIX way of doing things, at the GUI level.

IMNSHO, its X that's the bloated pig - since I only have one machine, why do I need all that networking code in there? Not to mention the code to translate between endianesses, etc, etc.

Exactly

[Anonymous Coward]

The whole idea behind Corba and Document models is that many applications can take advantage of each other to implement functionality, instead of every app implementing everything itself.

The price to pay

[SuperAnt]

I think we as linux users are in a mindshift stage. We have come to recognize the fact that

easy to use better UI => some bloat

and many of us are beginning to accept the penalty. It a simple thing to write a small command-line tool, but to make an application easy to use, a lot more UI has to be added, and this necessarily means a bigger applications.

Is it worth it? Like I said, many of us are increasingly accepting the price.

Re:I still don`t like QPL

[Anonymous Coward]

I read the replies and have to say they are being narrow minded. The problem with the QT license is that you have to pay about 2K USD to develop a commercial app. Sorry, but that is way to much.

And then saying that is my fault and I should develop open source is not an answer. Linux is about everyone being able to develop apps.

There were examples mentioned regarding Apache and the likes. Sorry, but Apache does not charge you a cent if you use the product in a commercial endevour.

So unless the QT commercial license becomes more reasonable in fees, I will stay with GNOME...

It is beta, but available

[Anonymous Coward]

ftp.troll.no. Note KDE2.0 will be the first version to use it.

Re:Quit complaining about KDE...

[jedidiah]

Except this 'one welt, one interfact' style is not at all required to deliver any or all of what KDE promises. KDE is still covering ancient ground while requiring resources that would give someone running GEM or MacOS or NeXT a coronary thinking about.

You're assertion is just plain false. The interaction of wmfinder and dfm and WM for example rather demonstrate this. dfm itself is built with 2 widget libs and WM runs on yet a third while wmfinder uses a fourth.

Due to standards compliance (offix dnd) they can all do that spiffy DnD GUI desktop thing together.

Better standards and wider standards compliance is the answer rather than something that cripples older machines.

Even MS itself has managed to deliver similar functionality without quite so much in the way of bloat.

Re:Silent cries from distant places

[HarpMan]

Linux on the cutting edge? Linux started by making a Unix clone, instead of some fancy whiz bang micro-kernel thingy. That's part of what made Linux so stable -- instead of trying to soemthing really rad, Linus copied something that was proven.

On the desktop, Linux and Unix have some catching up to do.

At least that one is done:

[Roberto]

Edit your startkde and start kwm as "kwm -nosession"

HTH

Re:You're not paying even minimal attention.

[Dictator For Life]

It seems to me that my minimal comparison is sufficient for my point. I realize that more detailed data is available with top, but it ought to be sufficient to compare with 'free' as I did so long as conditions are the same for each contestant. I could be wrong, I readily admit -- but if I am, please explain how it is that Gnome/KDE could give higher 'used' reports with 'free' and yet not be using 20MB more than no-Gnome Window Maker. I'm not trying to be obnoxious here; if I'm wrong this discrepancy must be explained.

Hmm... What's this?

[Anonymous Coward]

This makes it the first Unix office suite (commercial or free) to support embedded application technology.

Hmm... This is not quite correct. Andrew has been able to do this since the beginning of time, and StarOffice does this as well. It would seem that the KDE team is starting to spin as well as any other corporate body.

Re:Not at all

[Ray Dassen]

Will someone stop threatening for a minute and show me chapter and verse in the GPL where it says I can't use proprietary dynamic libaries?

You can. But it means trouble for (potential) redistributors of binaries produced from your code; see the Debian analysis for chapter and verse. That analysis deals with the old Qt license, but the QPL is similarly incompatible with the GPL.

Re:I still don`t like QPL

[mill]

You can sell GPLed software, hence it is possible to have commercial GPLed software.

Say proprieraty when you mean that.

/mill

Re:More advanced software deserves less support??

[Alex Zepeda]

Something like that. Or perhaps it's "It's FUD if Microsoft says it, but the gospel truth if it tumbles out of Miguel's shithole."

It's in CVS

[Anonymous Coward]

You can get it from Troll Tech's CVS site. The beta has been in there for many months now.

See my earlier post. 32meg == no problem

[Anonymous Coward]

I am running 1.1.1 with no problems at all.

Re:Qt and KDE 2.0: WHEN?

[Roberto]

According to a message by Arnt in the qt-snapshot mailing list, it seems a feature freeze for Qt 2.0 is really close (his words were like "any bug not reported now will probably be in Qt 2.0")

I would guess KDE 2.0 to be released in usable form perhaps close to end of 1999.

It all depends on wether somebody has a really really great idea that only means "a little more hacking" (or rather how many of those will happen before everyone is bored ;-)

Re:usability

[Anonymous Coward]

About that last point, GNOME does not focus on themes, it just happens to use a widget that supports them. And little capplet they wrote to support it. I wouldn't call that focusing. And Enlightenment, it supports more of the GNOME WM spec than any other WM, that is about it (also, raster does code some of the panel, I guess a few other things). If somebody took icewm, fixed it to support GNOME a little better (it fine for me though), it might be the main WM shipped with gnome. I think it is in the debian packages.

There is plenty of news

[Anonymous Coward]

Both myself and others submit news on KDE all the time, and they are very rarely covered. Often I will later see the exact same news topic covered for Gnome.
Use the other *nix news sources if you want up to date information about KDE.
Daniel M. Duley
mosfet@jorsm.com

Not everything Microsoft does is bad.

[Anonymous Coward]

Just because MS includes this kind of functionality doesn't mean its bad. Hell, I suppose adding journaling to the file system is also "being like MS".

There are places where this kind of integration is not only useful, but *essential*. Office apps are a good example, but there are others ( cutting and pasting binary data ) MS *are* ahead of linux on the desktop. Their (desktop) technology is quite good, the main drawbacks are a lack of flexibility and a lack of robustness in the underlying OS. The linux desktop environments are providing both power and flexibility, which is a good thing. And because of the flexibility, ... well if you don't like any functionality , you can always turn it off. It's not so simple in windows ... (-;

-- AC

Internet transparency, document embedding, ...

[Anonymous Coward]

... easier application development due to a common library base, consistent look and feel, etc...

Re:Internet transparency, document embedding, ...

[HarpMan]

You can bloat in any language, including C (witness Gnome). Object oriented programming, in any language, including C, can add some bloat if you're not careful. Doing object-oriented programming in C is awkward and error-prone, and can add it's own bloat. The nice thing about C++, as opposed to other OO languages like Java, Python, and Smalltalk, is that it takes a pay when you use it approach to bloating -- only if you use a certain OO feature (like virtual functions) do you pay the performance penalty.

Re:Internet transparency, document embedding, ...

[Anonymous Coward]

You can do the same thing with C instead of C++ or other bloat enabled languages.

[Semi OT] Can anyone get KDE CVS to compile on RH6

[Anonymous Coward]

I downloaded the CVS KDE. I have RH6.0.

Q1) the autoconf that ships with RH6.0 spews up
something about non defined macros, and says
that there is a bug to be reported -- what
autoconf version do you need to make the
configure files.

Q2) Where are the KDE and QT specific autoconf
macros?

Q3) Has anyone written a decent document about
compiling the KDE CVS?

Uhm...

[Anonymous Coward]

I can embed a paint program in the spreadsheet program and just hit "Print" in SO? Cool! ;-)

KOM is nothing like OLE, Baboon is based on OLE

[Anonymous Coward]

KOM is based on OpenProjects and uses standard Corba security provided by Mico.

Re:KOM is nothing like OLE, Baboon is based on OLE

[IntlHarvester]

Could you provide a link describing how this works?

--

Actually, it's Gnome :45, KDE:18

[Anonymous Coward]

You forgot to hit the "Matches Left" URL.

Is this a big enough show of favoritism for you?

Re:Actually, it's Gnome :45, KDE:18

[extrasolar]

Yep. There is significant bias here. Or appears to be. There is the possibility that there simply isn't as much news on the KDE front. But that is circumstantial. I would be upset too if I was a KDE advocate. I will keep my eyes open on slashdot.

--

Re:The OS/2 way......Mac, Amiga...

[Anonymous Coward]

They should probably do a bunch of reasearch into all other desktop environments, and make every possible behavior optional... It would be awesome to have selectable desktop schemes, Behave Like: OS/2, Amiga, Mac, NextStep, Windows, Traditional X, BeOS...

So that whatever environment you migrate from, it can be familier. and you can pick-and-choose any feature you want.

Re:I still don`t like QPL

[elflord]

And BTW if KDE become the only Linux Desktop, we`ll get a Linux Tax

This is mor or less impossible the way QT is currently licensed.

So IMHO a core component (User Interface) of an open-source operating system like GNU/Linux should be 100% free (GPL).

(a) QT is 100% free ( even RMS said so ... )
(b) who said that anything has to be GPL'd to be free ? are you trying to say that NetBSD and FreeBSD are not free either ? Don't be so narrow minded.

Re:More than Win95

[AArthur]

Your probally forgeting some of the things (benefits) you get from Linux system that add bloat not found on Windows (Windows is bloated because of the code, Unix is bloated with optional functionality). You can definatly trim this down, since how much do you really use if you want a system the size or smaller then Windows?

1) X11 Windowing System, provides much more functionality then Windows, including remote Windowing (try that with a standard Win95 config), support for more flexable /multiple desktop enviroments on Windows (Try running a non-Microsoft desktop on Windows!) and more. X11 isn't the fastest, that's why Berlin project is under the way.

2) More Services on by default. Do you have SendMail or Apache running? It's will to bitch if you have those services enabled under Linux, but disabled under Microsoft Windows.

3) Netscape Bloat. Most of that can be blamed on Motif, although Netscape Communicator 4.5.1 is bloated on all platforms (just as bad as Internet Exploiter too)! On the Mac OS Communicator wants around 13-16 megs of RAM, and on Windows it wants about the same. OF course Mozilla is soon ushering a whole new era of speed and smallness in web surfing... Also if you are using KDE check out Kommander, the intergrated browser in the KDE file manger. It's comming along nicely, although it's not yet even close to Windows Internet Explorer.

5) OLE on a 386/486(33mhz) is a joke... it's completely unusable unless you have alot of free time (importing OLE on a 386 machine can take a half hour in Word 6).

The fact is features require memory. Linux uses a fair chunk of memory for features, Windows just wastes memory on unefficent code.

Of course disable anything you don't need in Linux, upgrade to the lastest stable versions of everything, and watch your machine run faster, more stable, and better then a Windows machine.

I tend to agree, but...

[BadlandZ]

I still long for the days of FVWM churning along on a 386, and being soo impressed with "wow, look at all the real stuff that can be done with this hardware." Insane as it might sound. I still have a 386SX20, that I keep running Linux and quite happy with it, although, now days I just don't feel like 18 hour kernel compiles and waiting 5 minutes for X. It's reserverd for console only use.

But, at the same time, I am equally impressed with both what I can do at console on a 386, and some of the really fancy new GUI stuff comming to Linux. And, I am sorry to say, and it goes against everything I have always felt, but 64M of RAM in May of 1999 just isn't a "comfort zone."

Seriously, check out PriceWatch, because I was sort of shocked with my last memory order. $82 will get you a nice 128M SDRAM DIMM that will be happy at 100MHz bus speeds. And memory is the truely unsung hero of the computer. All these people talking about how they overclocked thier Celeron to 500MHz or more, and I just tend to sit back and go "Yea, so, you spent all that money, time, and frusturation, and you have 32M RAM??! I would be happy with half that speed and 128M to 256M RAM, because that's where I feel it most."

Yea, it's a bloat. I did a test last night on this very issue. Identical systems, one with 32M of SDRAM, the other with 128M of EDO, and ran RedHat 6.0 w/KDE and Gnome, and WHAM... Light-years of differance. Well worth the $82 I spent on the test, and you can't ever find a way to convince me to go back to less than 100M. (matter of fact, I will be shifting another 64M into that box later this week).

Swap is no match what so ever for even the cheapest slowest RAM. And that is what it basically comes down to. RAM is getting affordable, and to get all the GUI bells and whistles, you need the RAM for it. If you are offended by it, there is still fvwm or wm2, and vi to fill your needs, and I am not saying that as a put-down (because I find them very useful on my 386SX20 w/ 6M)

Re:I tend to agree, but...

[MeanGene]

Memory is like an orgasm. It's a lot better if you don't have to fake it.
-- Seymour Cray commenting on virtual memory

Silent cries from distant places

[extrasolar]

This is very much one small step for Linux, one large leap for open source. But those who don't use KDE may have thoughts like: Ah gee they're winning, or How much longer till all new apps require KDE?

I know these thoughts are immature. But I can read between the lines of some of these posts.

I, at least, are critical of these improvements. The problem is, ironically, they are too good. A personal problem for me, is that both KDE, Gnome, and several Window managers are doing things a standard way. The way it is done everywhere else. I converted to Linux for something different and don't want to see it evolve into... Windows (Yes, I know KDE and Gnome are beyond Windows, but the same similarities are there).

Also the performance issue. To run KDE apps, you have to have the KDE libs and qt installed. But for low-end computers, can things like themeing and OpenParts be turned off and not create a performance hit?

I will look forward to these changes. They will definetly increase Linux's appeal for the desktop. But I have a few things I wish. That apps are created and ported to each desktop (Kinda strange since Linux is suppose to be one platform. That peformance can be increased by turning things off. That something new comes along in the Linux GUI. And that we will never have a standard desktop.

--

Re:Silent cries from distant places

[extrasolar]

True, but I want Linux on the cutting edge. It would be sad if Linux kept emulating Windows everytime MS came up with something new. Anyone see Microsoft's Neptune project? That could be Microsoft's next innovation, will we copy that too?

I guess I get tired of Windows-clones, Next-clones, and Mac-clones very easily.

--

The Road To Bloat: A Followup

[Dictator For Life]

It has been interesting to see the replies here. Essentially I can hardly tell some of you apart from Microsoft apologists, with your "throw RAM at the problem" comments, and the ol' "a CLI is just too hard" stuff.

That's not necessarily a crime -- IF you don't criticize Microsoft for THEIR bloat.

On the other hand, some folk seem to think that the bloat is necessary and/or inevitable if Linux is going to be used by the masses. They may be right. As at least one or two of you said, though: I do have a choice, because it's Linux. And I'm glad for that.

My concern (besides the issue of us being hypocritical in criticizing M$ bloat while endorsing our own) is that I'm not sure it *must* be this way. I'm not sure that the best way to position Linux is as a bloated OS[1] that just doesn't crash. I would hope that we can do better than that. Perhaps as Gnome and KDE mature they will return to look at speed/size optimizations; both are young projects after all.

I would like to think that we can do better than bloat. I would like to think that we can do better than excuse bloat with cries about cheap RAM and the rigors of the command line. But maybe I'm mistaken.

[1] I know that the GUI isn't the OS, but Joe Average (for whom these GUIs are supposedly intended) can't/won't distinguish between the GUI and the OS. When they see the bloated GUI running slow, they'll conclude that Linux isn't fast at all. They'll be wrong, but who's going to convince them?

Certainly

[Per Abrahamsen]

Section 2b.

Hope this helps.

Re:Certainly

[Arandir]

"b) You must cause any work that you distribute or publish, that in whole or in part contains or is derived from the Program or any part thereof, to be licensed as a whole at no charge to all third parties under the terms of this License."

I'm no lawyer, but this clause seems to be referring to programs derived from GPL'd programs (notice the capitalization of 'Program"). But KDE is wholly GPL. None of it's code is non-GPL. It does not take any GPL code and "unGPL" it.

For those that still point to Qt as being KDE's sin, again, reread the GPL. KDE is not derived from Qt and not one line of copywrited Qt code exists within KDE. Instead, KDE is dynamically linked to Qt. If there is KDE code within the Qt library, than that is a different story, but I do not know of any instances of this.

You may want to GPL to be backwardly viral, but it is not. It is only forwardly viral. If it were backwardly viral, then the GPL would be the antithesis of free software.

Re:Certainly

[Roberto]

No, since the "source for the program" does not include Qt sources. After all, the GPL defines the source as the preferred form for modifying the program, which means the sources *without* being processed by cpp, and thus without the Qt headers included.

Re:I guess KDE is ok if you really want MS Windows

[Alex Zepeda]

It's useful because it can make things like developing Java or Javascript support much easier and this make Konqueror into a kickass browser. Or take for instance my (perhaps unusful to you) little pet project. A kioslave for the POP3 protocol. This will let you (eventually) browse an index of your mailbox, but clicking on a message will launch whatever app is associated with that mimetype.

'Course if you don't like a specific feature of Konqueror's don't use it, or find another feature.

The beauty of Linux

[Macka]

I hear what you're saying, but read your words as an endorsement of Linux/Unix and all the desktops. It's because you (and all of us) have the choice to run KDE, GNOME, WindowMaker or whatever suits our own needs or personal preference that makes this environment so special. KDE is great for me and WindowMaker is great for you. So we are both winners.

Regards,

Macka

Embedded Applications

[IntlHarvester]

You can disable the IE/MS Office monstrosity by changing a setting in View+Options (auto launching a MS Office doc actually bypasses certain anti-macro security). Or just right click.

Speaking of security, it sounds like KDE is building a MS OLE clone. It would be interesting to hear what they are doing to prevent Melissa virus-like applications.

{Melissa worked like this: Word document was sent to Outlook user. User opened document with embedded Word. Auto-run macro in document scripted Outlook to send document to a bunch of people. }
--

Re:usability

[kip3f]

You are absolutely correct. Now that I think about it, when I am in "hack mode" the command line is definitely better. However, GUIs are nicer when you don't really want to think. GUIs are "push", and CLIs are "pull". (This analogy works pretty well, except when it comes to web browsing. Thats definitely more "pull", as the user is in total control over what content appears.) One thing that I didn't stress, but is implicitly in what I said, is that it is best to have both. For example, a sophisticated user can type ls -lat *.txt | head much faster than figuring out how to do something equivalent in a GUI.

Personally, I think that scalability is the key. The canonical example is accelerator keys. Sure, to save your work you click on the "file" menu, then click on the "save" item. But after seeing "Alt-S" next to "save" repeatedly, more advanced users can quickly use the shortcut, and not take their hands away from the keyboard (assuming that they were typing).

I was dead serious when I said that a program is a failure when you needed to consult the documentation. I resent having to type "man foo" to find out the name of an option, or to learn what options are there. When you are coding, man pages are the right thing. But GUIs are apparently useful for this - a friend of mine recently told me M$ visual C++ product is really good. He definitely knows his stuff - he recently helped me hack the redhat 6.0 install so I could install directly off my paride cd-rom.

By the way, here is some evidence:

[kip@chimera kip]$ history | cut -c 8- | cut -d" " -f1|sort | uniq -c | sort -rn|head
139 fg
115 jobs
99 ls
98 l # aliased to ls -l
73 cd
66 nls # basically nfrm
50 less
36 pine
26 cly # lynx -color + a pun ;-)

--
Man is most nearly himself when he achieves the seriousness of a child at play.

Actually,

[Roberto]

, both of you are partly right and partly wrong.

As far as I know, Red Hat employees one KDE developer, Preston Brown, but his job doesn't consist (at least solely) of working on KDE.

Red Hat has made a contract with two persons to work on speeding up the KDE port to Qt 2.0, but they are not full time Red Hat employees, but just temporary contracted programmers.

If anyone from RH is reading this, feel free to correct me.

The OS/2 way......

[Anonymous Coward]

Now that OS/2 isn't as much as a threat to Windows (due to IBM's bitchin marketing and what-not). What I suggest is that kde or gnome (or both) dump what they got. Stop doing any thing that remotly looks like windows in anyway.

What they need to do is to take a good long hard look at OS/2's WPS (workplace shell for the non OS/2 users). Take that truly object orientated desktop and apply it to a true multi-user envirment. Allow the user to make all changes tothe desktop.

Forget all this bowser "file managers". They get anoying. Let it everything be a true object. Kde and Gnome make a small hack at this. But it's nothing close to the WPS and it's abilities.

Re:The OS/2 way......

[Locutus]

Good idea but time is not a luxury. If we get the OpenDoc equivilent in KOM/OpenParts then we will finally be jumping to warp factor 1 while Windows lumbers at sub warp. Current Warp users are at warp factor 2 but the ship is wired together like a Christmas Tree and may not be able to hold that speed for very much longer.:) Data centric computing will get Linux going in the right direction and the work mentioned here(KOM/OpenParts) is the best place to start. The WPS has no equal but KOM/OpenParts might get us there without the ball/chain called IBM. Up until just 3 years ago, IBM gave OS/2 users a taste of the future years before the rest. It s&cks seeing the rest catching up and here is a chance to get on the fast train again.
IMHO

Re:The OS/2 way......

[SingleTracker]

I hope that this initiative ends up being a way to get OS/2's object-orientedness into linux, but while still being able to pick a window manager of our choice.

It's too bad we don't have it already, but at least it's a start. I got the impression from the first time I saw KDE (I use windowmaker + DFM now) that the developers have used OS/2. I hope that they play with WPS and some OS/2 apps for a bit while developing this.

The WPS is truly a beautiful thing. If we had it for linux...damn I'd be happy.

This is better then MS Windows if like OpenDoc

[Locutus]

In the OpenDoc (OpenParts?) world you don't get some half-arsed application like you do on Windows. You actually get THE application, its menu and all. The OpenDoc world one could have just a viewer of the data or you could have a editor of the data. If the web browser was a true OpenDoc container then when you clicked on that document link, and you had the editor part, you could edit just like if you clicked on a local document.
I'm so glad that OSS is taking this forward because data is what we should be concerned with. Micros~1 has us thinking application, application, application. I want to be able to tear off a template of a text object, drag it to my working folder and open it up to start writting. When I realize that a graphic may help me then I want to embed a graphic using my perferred graphic package right into the document. If a part of the graphic needs text then in goes another text object which uses the same editor as the original document. Not some slim-featured editor built into the graphic app.

This technology can change alot about computing that is bad today. This technology is what will allow me to move from OS/2 to Linux and get the same or better productivity out of it. This is not MS Windows by any means.

I had been hoping that Java would have picked up the OpenDoc ball. Think about it, you get a link to a document that you don't have the viewer to. Your system looks at a well known site and find the viewer ( a Java-based viewer ) and asks you if you want to fetch it to be run as a application or as a applet(secure/safer). Now you are viewing the data. Everybody gets equal access to viewing the data but not to creating or editing it.

I'm going to get this stuff.

Re:I still don`t like QPL

[whoop]

So, your point is, owners are evil?

Who owns sendmail? Um, I forget his name now, but sendmail is commercial now too.
Who owns apache? The Apache Group.
Who owns ncftp? Ncftp Software.

... all of which are usually included in a distribution. So they are all evil?

Hell if RMS accepts the QPL, what more is there? Is he now a fringe luncatic to GNOMErs, replaced by Miguel as head guru?

Re:What is the ratio 1:8 ???

[whoop]

Actually there is some discussions on the kde-devel list about this sort of thing, arrising from Miguel's BBC interview. KDE doesn't put out a whole lot of press releases or versions of programs and the like, so there's less coverage. And KDE developers keep things fairly quiet (in the public, feel free to brows the mail lists at lists.kde.org) until things are working very well. KDE 1.0 was a decent release, with many programs in a nice solid, stable state.

KOffice works for the most part right now, but not completely usable for the general public. So, rather than releasing anything like a version 0.1.93; they just leave it in CVS for developers/testers that know how to work CVS and there's no mentions of it on Freshmeat and the like. Some people want more releases (like Mozilla's releases), others prefer the current model.

In part, it's the modest way many KDE developers are that causes the lack of stories on KDE. They just want a solid program before going completely public.

Re:MS aren't so "bloated"

[Anonymous Coward]

Last time I ran NT on 32MB of ram, it swapped
itself to death, and in doing so corrupted the
system partition (and a few others) -- that
said, back then I thought that NTFS was reliable.

You can, and it will suck

[Anonymous Coward]

One of the main reasons KDE is developing so quickly is because it is using C++ and excellent class libraries.

Re:Some Thoughts on GNOME/KDE

[SurfsUp]

I've spent the last couple of hours stewing in a cauldron of raw emotions. This last post just hit my "mad" button again.

I think both KDE and Gnome are wonderful. I love them both. They are not the same. That's *GOOD*. One is older than the other, and more mature. That's *NORMAL*. They both beat the heck out of Windows. That's a *RELIEF*.

Why can't there be more people like me?
--

Re:Yadda yadda yadda

[Dictator For Life]

yes yes, I *know* there are some benefits. The question is whether these benefits are worth the cost in bloat.

Why do I need a browser integrated into the UI? What particular benefits does this convey? How do I benefit from being able to switch between my local files and a web page in the same window? Network transparency predates Gnome/KDE/IE; that's the whole point of NFS, right?

Document embedding: clearly this can be useful. Why does it need to be embedded in the Desktop UI, there to suck resources constantly -- even when not in use? And why should everyone be subjected to it -- including those who never need to embed documents at all?

Common libraries have nothing to do with bloat. Vi and Gnome share a common C library. One's bloated, the other isn't. Having a useful common library base does not ipso facto imply bloat -- nor should it.

Consistent look and feel: UI issues. AKA: bloat for the sake (IMO) of consistent prettiness.

Again, I'm not saying there's anything wrong with any of these things you've mentioned. You can enjoy them all you wish. But let's not pretend they are all essential, nor that they are all essential to everyone. They're not. And if you're going to suffer Linux bloat, I hope you won't be one of those complaining about M$ bloat.

programming in configurability is not trivial

[octothorpe]

I know that from my experience, you try to get a program working first with a fixed set of parameters and then add more flexibility in later revisions. I use KDE and while I would change quite a few things if possible, I'm still very impressed with what they've accomplished so far. It's fast, clean, stable, and pretty darn useful. That said I hope that with 2.0 that they let me change a few annoying things ( such as the way it saves all the applications that are open when I log out and reopens them when I log back in, very annoying). As it stands now its still way more flexible than Windows95/98/NT, just try setting windows in Win98 to maximise only vertically and not horizontally for example.

Qt and KDE 2.0: WHEN?

[Anonymous Coward]

They'll release both at the same time? It's for 1999?

Quit complaining about KDE...

[Anonymous Coward]

All of the people complaining about KDE (bloat, RAM usage, performance, Windoze similarities, etc.) really need to get a clue. Let me give you a few humble observations:

- KDE is only *one* option of many
- KDE is probably not out to rule the world
- KDE very possibly is not for you

The way I look at it, KDE is first and foremost an attempt to gain a cohesive and consistent look and feel across applications. It is also much more, because once you get a consistent look-n-feel, widget set, etc., other more advanced technologies follow that are simply not available from applications that are from different libraries, approaches, etc.

It sounds like Obi Wan, but let go of your hatred. If you don't like KDE..... GREAT!!! It has zero (nada, zip) to do with Linux, Unix or anything else you and I love about our wonderful kernel. Like much of what builds what we call a Linux system, KDE is just one *optional* component. Unlike Windoze, if you do not like the UI (or desktop environment) in Linux, you can change it--even without rebooting!!! For those of you drawing comparisons to Windoze--there is no comparison when you are not locked into KDE!!!!!!!

If you can not add anything of value to a discussion about something that you have no intention of using, then please think about the fact that you are cluttering up a discussion forum for people that actually want to use this thing!!!!

If KDE user (probably) = Linux user (and definitely != Windoze user) then you should be happy that there are people in your corner--they just may like to use different applications than you!

Re:Quit complaining about KDE...

[Vrongar]

Thank you for a sensible msg...you have articulated the 'itch' I feel every time I read these KDE vs Gnome Vs Etc strings.

Don't like it? Don't use it. Where's the problem?

and does it very well

[Anonymous Coward]

For a version 1 product, its tools are amazingly well designed. Korganizer ranks with Sidekick, Tornado Notes, and InfoSelect. These packages are best of breed.

The email client is intuitive, it doesn't need a manual.

These compliments come from a cranky DOSaholic. The architects of kde know what they are doing.

Re:Not at all

[Anonymous Coward]

Even if you can get QT covered in the "System Components" exception, that doesn't apply where the System Component and the program are shipped together : i.e. it's illegal to ship QT with a GPLed program that uses it.

(At least, that's my personal reading).

Re:I still don`t like QPL

[Roberto]

1) 2K USD was really 1300 USD last time I checked, you are off by a 35%!

2) $1300 for commercial development is peanuts. If it saves you 50 (say 75 if you're cheap) programmer/hours in the course of the whole project, it has already paid off.

3) In the wise words of Arnt Gulbrandsen: you don't have a right to be able to afford everything.

4) If you are trying to develop closed source software, why should the open software community care? I mean, you don't want to pay TT, but you want me to pay you? Why?

5) Linux may be about everyone being able to develop apps for you. For me, it's about several other things. Why should your opinion matter more?

6) Stay with GNOME. You *do* have a right to do that. You don't however, have much of a right to whine about exercising your previously mentioned right.

Re:Terminal Server WinNT

[Anonymous Coward]

Damn, many people out there must be insane! Who the hell would want to use Windows NT Terminal Server (I know, I have to use it at my university).

usability

[kip3f]

I recently installed RH6.0, and KDE 1.1.1. I am very impressed so far with the ease of use of the integrated WM, panel, taskbar, etc. I haven't even spent any time playing with any of the Kapplications yet. I would like to make a few comments on the importance of Desktop Environments:

• Ease of use for newbies. Consider the file manager/web browser. How many CLI utils does it supplant? Well letsee, theres man, ls, file, pwd, cd, pushd/popd, mkdir, cp, mv, rm, chmod, tree... (BTW: some of these are implemented in the shell, but thats not relevant to my point) True, KFM doesn't have as much functionality/configurability as these tools + scripts and aliases. I bet that 99% of the time when you use the 'ls' command, you don't use any of these functions (not counting alias ls='ls -kitcnsink'). For a linux newbie, KFM is much easier than remembering/learning:
  1. what the commands are called (btw: note cd/chdir/md/mkdir inconsistency)
  2. how to use them
  3. how to get help on them
  4. how to decipher/grep through the resulting man page
  5. how to save options (i.e. with aliases)
  6. how to do things to groups of files (if you try to figure out mv *~ tmp from the man pages, you need to wade through the bash documentation. The KDE help docs say that I can select multiple files by right clicking on each, but it doesn't say anything about the edit>>select command (where I can type in *~))
  This is all well and good for newbies, but what about the power users? well, the command line isn't going anywhere. And if you can accomplish 90% of your goals in a simple, consistent manner, more power to you. I may be a relatively sophisticated linux user, but that doesn't mean that I want to read man pages. This brings me to my second point:
• Bloat is good. Lets say it costs you, a Linux user who "knows where his towel is", $100 to upgrade your computers RAM to run KDE or Gnome. Lets assume that you spend 10 minutes a day remembering the names of common commands, reading man pages, mis-spelling 'chmod', using the wrong one-letter options (let me tell you, when I first started using gcc I figured gcc -o foo.c should do what gcc -c foo.c does. oops), reading and understanding error messages, etc. Lets further assume that these mistakes are eliminated by going to KFM, so you save the 10 mins a day. If you time is worth 10 bucks an hour, you save 10/6 = $1.6 a day. You only need 100/1.6 = 60 days to recoup your investment. After that, its pure profit, baby! This doesn't take into account subjective improvements, like ease of use.

  One more thing: one goal of user-interface design (especially GUI design) is to make the system "self-documenting", i.e. its pretty intuitive how to do simple things, and when the user wants to do more complex things, he is exposed to more stuff and it is pretty clear how to proceed. Its usually easier to mess around with a program than to read a manual (or man page, eek). In fact, if a user needs to read documentation, the program is a failure. This is just an elaboration of the 'subjective enjoyment' point above.

• KDE vs. M$ - true, the enhancements listed here already exist in M$ winblows. however, I want to point out that
  1. KDE doesn't have a marketing department (despite the tenor of the 2.0 annoucement). Therefore KDE developers can focus on the features users actually want, not what somebody thinks that the users think that they want.
  2. As KDE is opensource, incremental change is "free" and continuous. This last point is actually very important, as the little bugs are really the most annoying/disruptive.
• Finally, (and this point actually distinguishes between KDE and Gnome), it appears to me that KDE is more focused on actual usability. Take the whole 'themes' mess for example. Ok, so Gnome has better theme support right now. So what? Themes are counterproductive, IMHO. If every user has different keybindings and widgets that look and act differently, that is definite lossage, when it comes to usability. (note that I don't have experience with themability, I might be wrong about this). However, I think that we will all agree that Enlightenment's excesses are gratuitous, and, ultimately, useless eye-candy. (sweets are good...but my P 100/ 40MB ram laptop is on a diet) And another thing. Quoting Object-Oriented Software Construction (Bertrand Meyer): "Correctness is the prime quality. If a system does not do what it is supposed to do, everything else about it - whether it is fast, has a nice user interface... - matters little." If a program crashes, it is not correct. KDE appears to focus on this more than Gnome. (read this book. Even if you only read p.3 - p.20, on the definition of software quality.)

well, thats my 2 cents. Don't spend it all in one place!

(OT: this new version of lynx is great, I love being able to use emacs for doing form input. The old way truly was bletcherous.)
--
Man is most nearly himself when he achieves the seriousness of a child at play.

Re:usability

[elflord]

You were doing well, but your assumption that KFM is always a time saver is pretty silly. As an experienced linux user, I don't need to do any work memorizing commands, and I only read the manpages when I code. ( will KFM code for me ... ? ). You also discounbt the fact that moving a mouse is really pretty slow ( I can type a short command twice over faster than I can select and click once )

Moreover, there are a whole bunch of things that kfm simply can't do ( create a tarball of all files modified today, for example ) . So even with my "upgraded" computer , which has a SCSI HD, PII , and 128MB RAM, I prefer the zsh prompt ...

The WPS Way...

[SEE]

So that whatever environment you migrate from, it can be familier. and you can pick-and-choose any feature you want

But that's not the point. Getting KDE to have WPS-like behavior for the end user isn't truly valuable. The WPS advantage is in its underlying object model, which is largely independent of behavior.

As an analogy, imagine you're running Win95 with a version of command.com rewritten to use bash command names and options. You might now be writing "ls" instead of "dir", but you don't have access to the features that make Unix shells more powerful than command.com.

Re:If you can't say anything constructive...

[Paul Carver]

Gee, my post gets scored as flamebait and people accuse me of whining. Did anybody actually read my post? Or are you just looking at the subject line?

I explained a particular behavior of MS Windows/Internet Explorer that I consider to be a poor idea and I note that the article in question seems to be describing an atempt to replicate that behavior in KDE.

Where I work we encourage people to speak up when they see a questionable decision being made. Slashdot seems to be succumbing to political correctness. If the article is about KDE then anyone who doesn't think KDE is perfect and all the KDE design decisions are without flaw is accused of whining and posting flamebait.

What's the point of posting an article for discussion if political correctness requires everyone to either agree with the article or post nothing.

PS. I didn't say anything about changing icons, so I don't know where you pulled that from.

Re:I hope somebody sues them

[jedidiah]

Haven't used the predominant/mainstream microcomputubg computing hardware during the last 18 years then, eh?

Some Thoughts on KDE/GNOME

[spun]

I just love KDE or GNOME threads. Sure things have calmed down compared to six months ago, but it's still a seething cauldron of raw emotions. FUD everywhere. Why?

I sense a certain attitude from the KDE developers (why hide behind the AC?) of frustration and jealousy over the fact that GNOME is getting all the praise. It's somewhat justified, they have put a lot of hard work into writing some great software. The problem is, that attitude is alienating people, driving them further away from open support and praise of KDE.

There seems to be a feeling that the KDE folks are insular, self righteous, self aggrandizing and need to be 'taken down a notch or two.' The GNOME folks are friendlier, more open, and (perhaps more importantly) the underdogs in this 'race' and therefore more deserving of support.

People who say that the open source movement is a strict meritocracy are ignorant of human sociopolitical realities.

My point is this: as a community that is based on the freely given work of a relative few people, we need to be compassionate and supportive of the people who donate their time for all of us. Vicious, cuththroat competition and on-upsmanship have no place in the open source community.

If you look at the games and recreation of most tribal people who haven't had a lot of contact with us westerners, you will find that they aren't competative, they are cooperative. When a game has an element of competition to it, like tag, for instance, they make sure not to take it too far (if someone has been 'it' too long, the other players slow down and let themselves get tagged.)

Can we do this? Can we really try our hardest to make this fun and rewarding for all the people who contribute, despite our political ideas and our ingrained western habits of competition and disrespect? The true 'open source revolution' isn't about a product, it's about a process, an attitude, and a community.

Re:Some Thoughts on KDE/GNOME

[HarpMan]

Fair enough. But some of the posters we're complaing about Gnome people (Miguel) NOT giving credit where credit is due (like the infamous "legacy" comment, or Miguel's "Gnome is technically superior" to KDE FUD-comment -- how does more bugs and less features == technically superior?)

Also, I don't think you can call Gnome the underdog. Technically, yes, it has a long way to go before it matches KDE. But it has corporate funding from RedHat (which is partially funded by Intel, IBM, etc.). As such, Gnome does get a lot more mainstream press coverage. Until a few months ago, Gnome also got a lot more Slashdot coverage. So in that sense (resources, press coverage), Gnome has the advantage and KDE is the underdog.

Steve Molitor

Re:Some Thoughts on KDE/GNOME

[HarpMan]

Amen

Re:Some Thoughts on KDE/GNOME

[spun]

Yes, exactly my point, perceptions don't match reality, GNOME isn't really the underdog, nor are the GNOME developers necessarily nicer, yet that is the common perception. I have used both, RH 6.0 integrates them pretty nicely (well, okay, they integrate KDE into gnome and not the other way around!) but people are still missing my point, which is mostly my fault for putting it at the end, after some stuff that, after reflecting on it, is pretty easy to misinterpret as flamebait. So I'll reiterate it: Stop being such ungrateful jerks, be nice to developers, especially if you don't contribute any other way. No one is forcing you to use anything. All your complaining and flamage is only going to drive talented people away from ever wanting to contribute.

KOM is like OpenDoc not OLE!

[Anonymous Coward]

What you have stated in your original post was a personal preference. However, what Granroth was illustrating was that each application does not require specialized knowledge of a data stream to be able to manipulate it (displaying is another issue). The mimetype of the data would dicate the manipulating component. This is where KOM really is like OpenDoc whose common ancestor is CORBA.

As for the minutae of the interaction with each file type, well, I would suggest that you download and compile the code (you *DO* know how to do that?) and see just how things are done. At that point you can take up any problems/suggestions you might have with the relevant developers. However, if you are just criticizing for the sake of it, I'd suggest you wait for the working code.

As for the MS Windows comparison - it really is silly just to discard everything that MS has done as bad. MS did not discover all this stuff for themselves, most of Win95/8/NT4 interface details have a long lineage through to the Xerox Star. The KDE developers have consistently shown that they are able to take other peoples ideas and provide working open source solutions that can run on a wide variety of hardware platforms. One thing that the KDE team has also shown that it is not that hard to provide an internation desktop for free.

I am probably wasting my time trying to convince a slashdotter that perhaps some other view is even one quarter has valid as his/her view - call me quixotic.

Bruce.

irony

[kip3f]

Whoops, forgot to mention how ironic my evidence-gathering is. man, I crack myself up.
--
Man is most nearly himself when he achieves the seriousness of a child at play.

I'll skip the VT

[Dictator For Life]

I'm not saying that GUI's have no place at all. As I said, I like Window Maker (without Gnome). There has to be a middle road between no GUI and the bloated hell of Microsoft. It does not appear to me that KDE or Gnome are seeking that middle way. To the contrary, they seem to be trying to one-up Microsoft on GUI features -- something which inevitably leads to bloat.

I don't mean for this to seem like an advocacy piece, because I don't have an axe to grind about my personal choices. Window Maker is very elegant and (compared to the Gnomified/KDE alternatives) lightweight (and it's certainly faster).

Personally, I think it's, well, silly to bloat a GUI for the sake of having consistent widgets alone.

BTW: this sure sounds like Microsoft talking :-) when you say it's silly to stick with a CLI (as opposed to a bloated GUI). Do you see how your endorsement of GUI bloat has you sounding like the Borg? :-)

Re:Nice

[Brian Knotts]

AFAIK, as long as you have kdesupport, kdebase and kdelibs installed (and, naturally qt), you can run any KDE stuff under whatever wm/de you like.

"Too slick?" I don't get that; it's almost like you're saying that the KDE guys are doing too good of a job. They just can't win, I guess.

--
Get your fresh, hot kernels right here!
World domination: coming soon to a computer near you!

Re:You're not paying even minimal attention.

[elflord]

Your numbers don't mean anything, because you don't say how much GNOME/KDE are using. Saying that "57MB is used" is meaningless. You could have 57 Apache servers running for all I know and use 57MB running twm. Or you could run X at 1600x1200 at 32BPP and use 57MB running fvwm (half of that would be X)

Spout your nonsense all you like, but I have some hard facts :
Output from "top" SIZE (shared) in MB:

• kwm : 4.6 (2.8)
• kfm: 4.5 (3.1)
• kpanel 4.5 (2.9)
• kbgndwm 3.7(2.5)
• krootwm 3.6 (2.4)

In other words, KDE is sitting inside 16MB on my system, *not* 64MB.

Have fun playing with twm.

KDE uses nothing like COM, Gnome is using it

[Anonymous Coward]

The Gnome object model is COM based, the KDE one is OpenDoc based.

What I was trying to say was...

[nicedream]

That certain things are not EASILY configurable. (Yes I know you were being somewhat sarcastic, but I would just like to clarify.)

My KDE desktop is just how I like it, but it took a while to figure it out. Drag an icon to the desktop, then remove it....its not there anymore. But try it with the autostart folder...can't do it, it reappears.

Yes I changed the go.xpm. But to change your netscape icon, right click on the button in the panel to do it. To change the gimp button, do the same. Et cetera, et cetera. But now try it with the "K" button...not so easy is it?

I KNOW this is a minor gripe. Just so you dont think I'm some grumpy old man, let me say again that overall, KDE is superb. This is just my personal gripe.

Themes and The Road To Bloat

[Dictator For Life]

I've noticed this too under Window Maker (i.e., no GTK themes in use there). My findings were for the default configurations of RH6.0 Gnome/Enlightenment and KDE vs. my own custom-compiled Window Maker (I had to do this because the one included with RH6 is Gnomified and I couldn't run it without Gnome -- which is specifically what I wanted).

I agree with you that the present conditions are not set in stone. I surely hope that the Gnome/KDE folks will go back and try to optimize their stuff. Their efforts are still very young despite the amazing amount of functionality they have... I just hope that they aren't just ignoring the matter.

Nice

[schporto]

This seems great. Not getting into the licencing part, cross functionality between Gnome and KDE is good. I have both. Personally I tend to use gnome more, but only cuz I think KDE is _too_ slick. My only question is - Is Gnome gonna be able to do the same thing? I mean can I use KOffice in Gnome? I'm happy I can use my Gnome apps in KDE but I wanna be able to go the other way. I don't want to be 'required' to use KDE to run something. That bothers me.
Just my opinion.
-cpd

Re:Nice

[whoop]

You aren't "required" to use anything in this world. If you want to use KDE apps, then with that you must have appropriate libs. The same goes for GNOME. You can still even elect to use only the console modes and no graphics.

KDE things work fine in non-KDE compliant window managers, you just lose some minor functions. For the most part, you can still use the applications themselves, play KMahjongg to your heart's content. I'm sure GNOME's the same way; I just haven't spent enough time with GNOME to know just what it is dependent on.

NT's not bloated???

[Dictator For Life]

If you really think that NT isn't bloated, then you and I have more than a simple difference of opinion. We live in different universes entirely. NT in 32MB is utterly intolerable. NT in 64MB is almost intolerable. I have only found NT to be tolerably fast on a machine with 128MB of RAM.

So if you really believe what you have written, I understand how you might think that Gnome and KDE don't suffer from bloat.

And I think you're wrong.

The real target audience for KDE

[Aleatoric]

Personally, I like Gnome/E, but one of the things to keep in mind is that if we really want Linux to make significant inroads into the desktop arena, it really has to be easy for the newbies to use.

Since most desktop gains will probably be converts from windows, having an interface that is similar in behaviour to windows will ease the transition for those who choose to switch. Once they've switched, and start to become familiar with Linux, they will start to see not only the power of the platform, but also the far greater number of choices in the interface, etc.

I suspect that many will start to use Linux _because_ of KDE, and many of those will see the other WM's, like WindowMaker, Gnome/E, etc. and will discover that they have a choice that they didn't have under Windows.

Re:I guess KDE is ok if you really want MS Windows

[Anonymous Coward]

However, that doesn't require the file manager to suddenly morph into a bastardized version of appfoo. This is simple, 1983 GUI type stuff. There is no need for it to be overly complicated.

KDE is efficent for it's purpouse

[Anonymous Coward]

KDE's goal is to provide a complete desktop environment and applications suite. It does so as efficently as possible. It's goal is not to provide a bare-bones X11 environment. For that look at twm, fvwm, or afterstep.

Re:Opps I meant OpenDoc

[Anonymous Coward]

You've just introduced another one :-)

(maybe a competitor to OpenPorn, OpenPussy
or OpenArse)

More advanced software deserves less support??

[Anonymous Coward]

Geez, this must be that SlashDot logic I keep hearing about, where a more advanced and stable project deserves less community support...

Which Gnome object model (vapour)

[Anonymous Coward]

You're right that Baboon will be similar to COM (which IMHO sucks), beu let's keep in mind that Baboon is pure vapour right now.
They haven't even finished the component technology, let alone used it widely.

The most important part about KOM/OP is that is in use for over a year.
And maturity is what counts most.

Sure, you are free to stick with a Vt420

[Anonymous Coward]

It's just many users think that is, well, silly.

Opps I meant OpenDoc

[Anonymous Coward]

There are way to many OpenXXX words now!
heh

KDE2.0 widget themes

[Anonymous Coward]

All KDE2.0 widget theme plugins will be able to use pixmaps and gradients. Since KDE is written in C++, there is a base plugin that handles such things. The pixmap and gradient support is 100 lines...
If people absolutely do not want to have pixmap and gradient support, they can create a plugin that does not derive from the base plugin, but that seems a little silly since it is such a little amount of code.

Come off it already.

[Anonymous Coward]

HE never once said that GUIs are evil, bad, or otherwise undesirable. Nor did he ever say, or imply, that using a GUI makes you a "braindead windoze luser"...

Re:I guess KDE is ok if you really want MS Windows

[Anonymous Coward]

I dont really see your point. Do you want to suggest, that the only difference between Windows and Linux is that they look different? Even if somebody is perfectly happy with the way Windows works (or is meant to work), why shouldnt he wish to have all this more stable and for free? And if somebody has fun in developing something similar (or superior...) why should he stick with Windows? With Linux he can have the fun developing the system as HE (or she) likes it, with Windows he cant. YOU dont have to use it.

Your 64MB figure is way off

[elflord]

Try running top, and look how much memory you have "cached". You need to subtract that from the memory usage. What happens is if you start an app ( say NS ) and exit it, it is still cached even though it is not actively used. This way, it loads very quickly if you restart it.

Secondly, check to see if you have 101 server processes swallowing your memory. Apache on the default config can eat about 6MB ( since it starts several servers )

FYI, the whole KDE thing runs in less than 16MB (about 8MB), excluding X. kwm takes about 2MB the other components take a few MB each.

Re:Your 64MB figure is way off

[elflord]

I've given you the numbers elsewhere. My numbers aren't off.

your numbers are misleading because they say more about how much memory your running processes use ( and cache ) than anything else.

No one can reasonably say that Gnome or KDE is as fast as a non-Gnomified window manager. It just ain't so.

KDE is slower to load, but kwm hasn't been terribly slow for me *once it's running*. The CPU usage is negligeable, and the memory usage shouldn't cause any real swapping on a machine with 32MB or more ( remember not to count "cached" memory, or idle processes ... )

You may find that Netscape or X with high res/colour depth plus KDE is too much. ie it can be the straw that breaks the camels back on a machine that is running some pigs to begin with. But IMO Netscape/X are the pigs, not KDE. Currently, top shows that Netscape is using 18MB and X is using 32MB here ... KDE is using 16MB. Some of the KDE components can swap out without hurting performance, the same isn't true for Netscape or X. I'm not saying there's no bloat, but you're pointing your finger at the wrong guy^H^H^Hprocess

I want RAM to run stuff BESIDES the UI

[Dictator For Life]

This was an interesting approach to the matter, but I can tell the difference. From a cold boot, into Gnome: 60+MB used (this does NOT count swap). With KDE: 57MB or so. With Window Maker, NO reboot (just exit X and go back in): 41MB.

There may be some caching going on, but the numbers for Gnome don't go down below 60-ish. Window Maker's go up, but as I close apps it slowly returns to the 40s.

Gnome is sucking RAM. There's no getting around it. So does KDE.

Now perhaps someone might care to compare Gnome/Window Maker with Gnome/Enlightenment, which is the default Redhat setup. It may be that E is the big pig here. I didn't try Gnome under WM because I wasn't very impressed; I don't think it really added much to an already pretty elegant UI.

Because you are inaccurate.

[Anonymous Coward]

Sorry...

I'll skip the cheese

[Dictator For Life]

I don't think you can make a full featured GUI that doesn't develop into bloatware.

Nor do I. And that to me is sufficient to consider that there must be some other alternative. Why shoud a PII stagger along like a drunken sailor?

Some of us like to have more robustness than 'VI'..

I don't think "robust" has anything to do with what you think. If you think it refers to features, then you ought to try vim & gvim :-) In my understanding it has more to do with performance and stability. By these measures vi is quite robust. In contrast, Gnome/KDE's robustness suffers from bloat.

can someone clear this up?

[mikpos]

Why do KDE and GNOME need another layer of abstraction on CORBA to get an object model. I thought CORBA already provided an object model. Can someone explain this to me?

Concentrating on bloat will not get us anywhere

[cameldrv]

Although I understand the frustration in many of you who have low-end computers, think about what you want out of your computer. The primary reasons I use Linux over Windows are: XEmacs, good command line and super-stable. Although it's neat to be able to say that you can use a 486 and still run modern apps, at what cost? Some may say that writing "bloated" programs like KDE or GNOME is pandering to those of us who have fast computers. I would argue that not writing such programs is pandering to the low end. If I buy a brand new Pentium III 550, I want it to make a difference in my use of the computer. If I were using FVWM and simple apps, it probably would only make a difference on compiles, and probably a marginal one at that. Since most people have a good deal of processing power (I have a PPro 200, and I suspect that the majority of /. readers have something better), we should put that power to good use in the user's everyday experience of the computer. This means ease of use, and faster completion of everyday tasks. One poster before suggested that KDE should perhaps allow users to disable some features that take up more CPU. I think that if this is feasable that this is a very good idea. Ideally the low-end and the high-end should be able to use the same apps with varying levels of capablity. Unfortunately, there are a number of structural aspects of KDE such as CORBA which I believe will inherently slow down the system. Optimization is definitely warranted in these areas as much as is reasonable, but developers have to remember that optimizing excessively when you could be adding features is about as bad as writing slow software. Those who dislike features should stick with FVWM and their old apps. The simple fact is that if we never made programs which traded more features for less speed, we would still be running assembly language text mode programs without an operating system. Every advance comes at a price, but it is a price we can afford since computer power is increasing quickly.

Bad luck for notebook users then...

[Anonymous Coward]

The 'memory is cheap' mantra unfortunately doesn't apply to (small) notebooks.
Ever heard about the Sony Vaio 505? You don't want to know how much even 32MB cost...

I seriously with that the KDE folks maintain the KDE 1.x tree and try to cut down memory usage further...

Re:You're not paying even minimal attention.

[elflord]

From cold boot to Gnome, do a "free" and 60MB+ is "used". From cold boot to KDE, and ~55-57MB is "used". With NO reboot -- just drop out of X -- to an un-Gnomified Window Maker: 41MB. Do the math: 20MB difference between Gnome/non-Gnome.

I neglected to respond more directly : this method is flawed, because you are assuming that the extra memory is swallowed by GNOME ( it could be swallowed by X ) , and you're not taking into account that the second desktop you run could cache processes from the first. You also haven't considered that you could have more memory cached during a gnome session than a twm session, or that the gnome session could have several fairly idle jobs that are inactive 99% of the time ( so can be paged out without hurting performance ) .

You really need to run "top" and look carefully at the output to draw any meaningful conclusions.

Not at all

[Arandir]

I've read the GPL. I've read the QPL (old and new). For the life of me I can't find the clause that says free (read holy) software cannot dynamically link to proprietary (read unholy) libraries. Will someone stop threatening for a minute and show me chapter and verse in the GPL where it says I can't use proprietary dynamic libaries?

Are you saying all of those Windows and Mac versions of the standard GNU programs are all illegal? What is the difference between linking to the win32 API and linking to Qt?

I can reuse any GNU code I feel like so long as I don't make it unfree. It's in the GPL. Don't believe me? Read it yourself.

Themeing can

[Anonymous Coward]

The Filemanager used Corba, as does several other applications besides the file manager. Both Gnome and KDE require a ORB to be running.

I run KDE1.1.1 on a P166/32meg

[Anonymous Coward]

No problem whatsoever. Netscape is much worse.

Re:What is the ratio 1:8 ???

[gavinhall]

Posted by Moritz Moeller - Herrmann:

I have made the SAME experience.

KDE stories are not posted. I submitted two of them personally. Both were featured elsewhere (http://www.linuxtday.com). slashdot didn't carry them.

BTW:
Censorship SUCKS! Who ever censors this, you should better continue coding gnome. Then it might just become better than KDE.
I thought this was all about debates and discussions ? Do you want to see only praise for GNU and RMS?

Why would you want free RAM?

[Pete Bevin]

Out of interest, how much of the allocated memory in KDE/Gnome was memory-resident program, and how much was cached disk pages? Linux tends to fill RAM pretty quickly, and uses it to speed up I/O access. Unfortunately, that's sometimes confusing to people who are used to other, less efficient operating systems.

One Final Thought

[spun]

A lot of people think that it's the whole free/unfree thing that makes people attack KDE while praising GNOME. It's not. There are lots of non GPLed linux programs that no one is bashing. Netscape, Pine, XV, the latest XEvil (okay, I'll bash that one: bad Steve, bad! No Biscuit!;-). I could go on, but you get the point.

My original post is an attempt to explore some of the deeper sociopolitical motivations behind this whole ugly flamefest. I mean honestly, why should so many people who had nothing to do with writing the damn stuff have such strong opinions on the matter?

"as usual", slashdotters think they know better

[Anonymous Coward]

Speaking of re-using code, why imply (once again) that KDE is out to steal the work of others? GNOME started with this very precept...they were going to take the KDE code and build their desktop with that, without even asking the KDE team ahead of time if it was ok. But hey, all the Gnome supporters rallied and cried "but it's GPL! You can't stop us from using it because it's GPL'd code!" But ah, when the shoe is on the other foot, KDE is just evil for trying to use GPL'd code...the door is apparantly only open to Gnome fanatics.

And why not do a little research about the Kimp fiasco? It was a misunderstanding. It had nothing to do with 'theft' (although certain slashdot zealots like yourself seem to think so). Go search www.gnome.org and lists.kde.org and find out the truth for yourself.

The article does NOT imply anything 'superior', it just says they have another way of doing it. Let's talk about Miguel and how every time he makes a press release he has to bash KDE...I see no such attitude in this KDE press release at all. Too bad the head of Gnome can't open his mouth without spewing all over the place.

Ah but I forget, the Slashdot Illuminati just _KNOW BETTER_ then everyone else.

Over 60???

[Anonymous Coward]

The CVS has well over 100 write accounts!

Re:You're preaching to the wrong crowd.

[Raindog]

Actually, there have been several positive things about KDE on slashdot, and I fail to see how /. will benefit in anyway from gnome. As for redhat, their bundling and supporting both DEs now.

You're not paying even minimal attention.

[Dictator For Life]

If you read the rest of this thread, you would have seen that in another response I gave you some "numbers:" From cold boot to Gnome, do a "free" and 60MB+ is "used". From cold boot to KDE, and ~55-57MB is "used". With NO reboot -- just drop out of X -- to an un-Gnomified Window Maker: 41MB. Do the math: 20MB difference between Gnome/non-Gnome.

Aside from this, it is absurd to deny the bloat on its very face, just as it is absurd to accept Microsoft's word that their products are "fast". Gnome slows a machine down because of resource usage in comparison to the same machine without Gnome. KDE does the same. It is rather disingenuous of you to deny it. There are significant costs in terms of RAM for all the bells and whistles. There's no getting around it.

Frankly, I find your attitude to be amusing. I've already said that this is just my opinion. Things like evaluations of speed and bloatedness have their subjective components when it comes to what we're all happy to live with, and that's fine. My point (aside from my personal preferences as already stated) is that it is grossly hypocritical for Gnome and KDE users to whine about bloat in M$ products and yet ignore the bloat in what they use themselves.

I don't care what you use. You can use NT for all I care. You can use CP/M. Whatever. Just don't pretend to yourself that there's no bloat in KDE/Gnome, and don't criticize M$ bloat without admitting the bloat in what you use yourself if you use KDE/Gnome.

Re:You're not paying even minimal attention.

[gavinhall]

Posted by kenmcneil:

The "cold boot" approach is not entirely accurate. Trying using 'top' (it comes with most installations) to see *exactly* what proccess are doing what. Just to give you an idea of how my system looks here are the most "bloated" apps running...
X ~26000K
Netscape ~15000K

Re:Uhm, providing a desktop environment

[Dictator For Life]

WM is just a window manager. It provides no base UI libraries, no object model, no transparent file management API, etc...

Exactly. And what am I missing? Or rather, what do I gain by these things you mention? What do I gain by an object model? Why do I need another file management approach? I'm not suggesting that there are no benefits to be had. I am suggesting that there are frequently other ways of doing this stuff that don't require the bloat. I am suggesting that "integration" of GUI apps is so expensive in terms of resources that either the integration is superficial and limited (so as to preserve some performance), or it is extensive (and consequently bloated).

One thing I am missing when I run Gnome or KDE is lots of free RAM: it's been sucked up.

I ought to say that I personally don't care whether someone uses KDE or Gnome or fvwm or even twm (or even none of them :-). This is a matter of personal choice.

But apart from my personal predilections, there's this larger question of hypocrisy on the part of many Linux folk who bellyache about M$ bloat but who don't seem to think twice about Gnome or KDE bloat. How can you criticize M$ for bloat, for fat & slow apps, and yet rave about the wonders of Gnome or KDE? I'm no M$ lover by any stretch (my box is M$ free), but if we're going to criticize them for something then we ought to criticize ourselves for the same. The bloat is there. And it's growing. I don't want the power of my box sucked into providing UI. I want a Pentium II to BE fast, not crippled under bloatware.

I thought WPS was wonderful

[Anonymous Coward]

I thought the WPS was the best shell I've ever used. Maybe not the most beautiful, but certainly the most intuitive, once you've over your bad UI habits. I can see something like WPS functionality eventually happening in KDE possibly, because of its stronger OO roots. But GNOME? I doubt it.

OS/2?

[SingleTracker]

Sounds like with KOM, etc. they are moving towards what OS/2 has had for years with SOM and DSOM.

This is a good thing. If you have ever used OS/2, you know how a TRULY object oriented interface should work. Every app can communicate with every other app and interact with each other's container objects, settings, etc.

Can't wait to see this mature. Until then, I'm still thankful for OS/2 and the WPS. :)

Re: Alienating People

[Sir Spank-o-tron]

You're an asshole. I'm so glad that you've met every freakin' GNOME user and you can so handily classify them. Good thing KDE people aren't alienating anyone. Don't say that you're not, cuz your post says you are.
Whomever you are, you're alienating people.
Why are people running around bashing KDE?
Why are people running around bashing GNOME?

I don't use either one, but yer a jerk.

--

If you can't say anything constructive...

[Anonymous Coward]

Dude,

If you don't like KDE, don't use it. For that
matter, if you don't like Gnome, don't use that
either. Do whatever you like, only don't whine
like this.

Free software, of whatever stripe, is one of
the greatest developments in the history of
mankind. The people who write KDE/Gnome/Linux
etc are doing it simply out of the `goodness
in their hearts'. They are putting in vast amounts
of time and specialized knowledge into creating
a product that will bring them no benefit except
the satisfaction of making life easier for
people who don't have their skills.

And all you can say when you hear this is...
I cannot change the icon, so it sucks. What kind
of mentality is this? If you think that is an
issue, why don't you contact the KDE developers
with specific suggestions? Or better still, why
don't you help out by contributing whatever
skill you have to the KDE (or whatever is your
pet ) project?

Free software needs not only programmers, but also
artists, designers, tech writers and salespeople.

KDE can use GNU anyway

[Anonymous Coward]

Qt can reasonably be considered a library
normally distributed with the OS, and is
hence immune to GPL infection.

Re:MS aren't so "bloated"

[elflord]

All of MS's OSs run just fine on 32MB of RAM. Even NT. MS's problem is that they can't write reliable software. MS's (and others) "bloated" apps such as Office are actually quite lean if you do a custom install with only the comps you want, and then delete all the docs. For the people who want to keep using their 486's , the features will bring the machine to a halt. Fortunately, in linux land, you can choose to disable features that you don't want. But you can't have it both ways. The features come at a price, and the price is "bloat". And when you find the bloat more annoying than useful , use something less bloated ( I sometimes use the console because its faster ). Everything has its place, even bloat. It fulfills a need, though maybe not yours.

Could doesn't matter

[Anonymous Coward]

The question was who uses them. The answer is almost everyone.

Re:I guess KDE is ok if you really want MS Windows

[JatTDB]

I agree with your points (that's why I don't use KDE or Gnome), but, it needs to be said..."If you don't like it, don't use it."

Unfortunately, as open source OS's become mainstream, people are going to want features like that. Joe/Jane Schmoe Secretary doesn't want to remember that .xls means it's an Excel document, they just want to click on it and see it. They simply don't care about what created what or what is able to open/view/edit what.

KDE and Gnome exist primarily for the Schmoes of the world. The goal they seek has little to do with those of us who truely prefer a command line to a GUI. Heck, I only start up XF86 and FVWM to use Netscape or Gimp. 99% of the time I'm in console mode. Does that make KDE and the like less valuable or good? No. Does it make me personally not want to use KDE or Gnome? Yes. But, there's only one me and there's a whole lot of Schmoes.

CC++

[PHroD]

CC++ is cool cause its kinda what KOM is trying to do with components, but is built into the language :) www.quintessent.com (hasnt been updated in a while, but has a cool screenshot! :P)


"There is no spoon" - Neo, The Matrix

Then explain this article

[Stardate]

Either you've just forgotten that this positive-KDE article was just posted, or you're kidding. I hope you're kidding.

GNOME/KDE what's the big difference?

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't see how GNOME is any less suitable for newbies than KDE is, except that KDE is more stable. They're both too much overhead for me, they make me sad when my 400Mhz/128M machine starts running like an old 486. I'll stick with WindowMaker and be happy and fast.

Computing power, and Linux apps

[BeanThere]

The main problem I see here is that way back when Linux and all its applications ran great on 386's and 486's, the "computing power spectrum" for ppl running Linux *mainly* ranged from slow 386's to moderately fast 486's, and RAM probably ranged from about 4MB to 16MB on average. (intel platforms)

Nowadays the range is from slow 386's all the way up to (say) Quad Pentium III Xeon's, and RAM ranges from about 16MB to 512MB on average. So some of the newer applications (fat desktop environments) take advantage of the top half of that spectrum, and people probably fear that the Linux of the future (where nearly all new apps are Gnome and/or KDE) will no longer run on the bottom half of that spectrum. Some people want to utilise slower machines. Some want to utilise fast machines. Something has to give somewhere.

An "entry-level" PC can handle Gnome/KDE just fine. But all those old PC's are still hanging around, begging to be used, and the threat is that Gnome/KDE will prevent them from being usable. It's a genuine concern.

Sorry, blabbed too long.

KDE/Gnome bloat

[Dictator For Life]

I'm not going to fiddle-faddle with this anymore.

I uninstalled both Gnome and KDE within a day or two of installing RH6, because the machine was dragging. They're gone, and I'm not reinstalling them simply to satisfy your craving for numbers. If that makes you think you've won, then fine. I disagree. Sorry. :-)

Nevertheless, it hardly needs to be said that I am not alone in my assessment. Read the posts in this thread. Apart from those who explicitly agree with me, I am likewise joined in my assessment by those who only managed to say "we have to endure some bloat to have a good GUI" or "the only alternative is CLI -- no thanks" or somesuch. While I do not share their conclusions that this situation is either inevitable or necessarily superior to the CLI (don't misunderstand that as a statement of preference for the CLI), these folk implicitly acknowledge that there is bloat -- and they either don't care or don't see any way to avoid it.

By my reading, it is you who are in the minority in denying that there's bloat.

Oh well. I doubt you'll agree. It doesn't matter. Enjoy Gnome or KDE -- whichever you use. I'll enjoy no-Gnome Window Maker (and its lightweightness relative to its features).

One last note -- I read on LWN today that someone in the KDE camp is looking into ways to enhance its performance! Good for them (and an implicit admission that there IS a problem)!

What a bunch of whiners!

[Arandir]

It's simply amazing! Over sixty developers from around the world have worked their butts off trying to bring you the best desktop they can, with no prospect of monetary compensation, and all you can do is complain. Don't dump on KDE because your disagree with 1/10 of one percent of it! Linux doesn't listen to whiners. It listens to doers.

Most of these complaints are trivial. Get a life people! Learn to use your computer. So what if you don't like the "K" logo. Use another. It's just an icon. You don't have to be a programmer to make an icon. Don't like the fact that clicking on an icon opens up that icon? Don't click on the icon!

A week ago, people were compaining that KDE didn't have true themes. Now they're compaining that they're not exactly like gtk themes. They previously kvetched about lack of CORBA. Now they're concerned about embedding. Last week they ploudly proclaimed that KDE had no future. Now they're worried that it does.

And learn to think for yourselves! GNOME is not necessarily the holy grail for humanity. Not everything that isn't GNU or GNOME is evil. Freedom is about choice. This bears repeating: freedom is about choice. This means that it's okay for there to be other desktops besides GNOME. Dynamically linking to a non-GPL library does not make KDE non-GPL. Those who are complaining that KDE looks and acts just like Windows have obviously never used KDE or Windows. Those that think that GNOME is better because it doesn't have those things that makes KDE windows-like have obviously never used GNOME.

For those of you aren't whiners, my apologies. I just had to get my whine out about whiners.

~/.kde/share/apps/kpanel/pics/go.xpm

[Anonymous Coward]

There is your "K" button ;-)