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The Future of KDE
Samawi writes "linux.com has just published an interview with core KDE developer Daniel M. Duley. Topics covered include the upcoming KDE 2.0 (including links to screenshots!), Corba & TinyMico, the advanced widget theme designer, the new high-color icons for the very-soon-to-be-released KDE 1.1.2, influence of Gnome, etc. "
What are you talking about Linux is the kernel. It is possible to make a linux distro with absolutely no command line. You can say at the heart of windows 9x is the GUI but it built off of MS-DOS. Hmmm... Commandlines or GUIs are the user interfaces which are part of the OSs not the OS. I think Microsoft has brainwashed you!!
If they were really calling them "wizzards", then they would probably be infringing on Rincewind's copyright...
If you want to get rid of the bathwater, you've got to throw out a few babies.
I mean, I could swear I saw a post just like this one when RHAD labs opened (what was it, a year ago?)
I suppose either your definition of "no time" is different from mine, or your subtle irony just passed over my head.
BTW: if you wanna count how many people work full time in KDE , you need to count some places besides MandrakeSoft (which anyways accounts for about 1/3rd of RHAD labs already anyhow?)
Perhaps, but I would wager that is because C++ automatically puts you in an OOP mindset (because if you aren't going to use OOP, why use C++? Oh yeah, inline functions and const variables).
I think C++ does encourage bad OO design in many ways, unless you are wise to them. Operator overloading, multiple inheritence are things that must be handled with extreme care. Overuse of any kind of inheritence is bad. Sure, C can discourage good OO design, from where I see it mostly by making the programming constructs more unwieldy. That, and by not complaining when you access members of a struct that you shouldn't. For that, I have to go with some philosophy from Perl - you shouldn't touch something because you aren't supposed to, not because the compiler won't let you.
My point is that both C++ and C require you to have a solid understanding of OO design, and that neither stop you from doing it right.
C++ makes it a smoother process, easier on the programmer, for sure. Sometimes I think that's a really a hinderance, though.
The enemies of Democracy are
Zurk - it is clear that you don't know a thing about either C or C++ ...
/. that would probably fit you well, but do not comment on the stuff you completely don't understand - it makes you look stupid, you know ...
There are many subjects here on
If you're going to spend money, you might as well spend it on something that's enterprise ready. If you're not going to spend money, then use Linux/BSD. Don't waste it on NT.
Wah!
So the whole point is to deprecate MS Office "standards"... Corel's come back from the brink more times than I can count, anyway. I'm sure they'll be okay.
notext
Wah!
I only know gtk (for coding) because of the license issues at the time (when I decided to play w/ toolkits) However, I recently switched over to kde (1.1.1) mixed w/ debian (slink) and it is entirely too slick (in a good way) Its definitely the system to impress your friends in a functional kind of way. (in the complementary way that enlightenment was the one to impress your acid dropping friends :)) The best examples are if your SO is a mac addict, make her theme MacOS2 (okay unfortunately this one has been removed from themes.org but its still available), put the menubar at the top of the screen and it looks and acts like a mac to the T! Try doing that on a windows box! :)) It also seems that kde (and i'm sure the gnome kids are doing this as well) have realized we don't need 10zillion versions of minesweep and samegame (what on earth is that thing? :! ) and have started to put a lot of really nice utility programs.. kppp is really sweet, runs in usermode, hangs up properly runs scripts before and after.. (like setting up ddns crap) i found it much easier to set up than pon/poff (which on hanging i'd have to manually kill -9 and zap the modem on and off), kvirc is entirely too sweet w/ built in servers lists, buttons out of control, korn,kexpress are finally starting to look like newsreaders (yes I realize trn is the be all and end all of all newsreaders but!), kxicq lets you register icq (which was the first time i ever messed w/ icq) of course that was pretty much the last time :)...,kdvi is *so* much better than xdvi. But I really recommend keeping a versions of kde (and its friends) along w/ your installation just to see how it is progressing (its my default windowmanager at home now)..
:) (No menudropdown thingies tho :( ).
(Its a fantastic way of converting your skeptical gf's who make fun of you for calling latex a wordprocessor
Oh and kfm is simply the best! Not so much for the filemanager (which I suppose is cool too) but it really is a superfast easy to run web-browser that is utterly responsive , its not completely as functional as netscape but it gets the job done w/out waiting for the 20 seconds for netscape to pop up in that cludgy kind of way that is so annoying! Oh yea and the back button takes you to where you were on the previous page (not further up the page like netscape (or at least every version of netscape i've come across)) for slashdot threading alone its worth it
Seriously kde really is starting to look like a desktop that most kids think of when they think of gui apps and 'modern' computers (for better or worse)! As far as stability, I was actually having some weirdness w/ kde and 1.1 (this was a 'contrib' type debian package unofficial, not something compiled on my own).. Its definitely the one to give your nongeek friends *imho*
-avi
Now that egcs is the official compiler and KDE only compiles with gcc-2.8, this presents a slight problem.
Reminder, this is alpha quality software -- it's likely to change. I think they designed the device manger to be as similar as possible to the Windows device manger (while not messing up the interface like Microsoft), so that new users that have never used UNIX for an extended time can easily use device manger -- although name the serial ports after their Windows equvalants is just plain tacky...
The current KDE 2.0 user manger is much like the one in 1.x.x, it's quite a bit different then the Wndows version, in features and in the way it works... and it works pretty good.
KDE is an open-source, open-minded project, they don't mind reusing interface ideas from other platforms, and adding radically new ones, and tossing out several bad ones (MDI / parent child windows comes to mind).
Remember if you can write a better version of KUser or the device manger in Qt 2.0/KDE 2.0 feel free to submit it ftp://ftp.kde.org/incomming/
I'm so glad I'm not forced to use it! :-)
There is no K5 cabal.
I am not the real rusty.
Click on a Link, hold mouse button down for 2 seconds, will get you the contextual menu in either Internet Exploiter or Netscape Navigator 4.x.
Or rather like 0.8333 years, as there was slightly less than a 10 month gap, from October 16 1996 to sometime in early August 1997.
If you can write something like the machine generated C from CFront, you are not human.
Also, you are factually wrong: the generated C didn't implement private members, for example. Simply, the translator refused to generate the C to access the member that was supposed to be private, and spews an error *before* trying to implement it in C.
So, private members are feasible in C... as long as that means "I am a C programmer who can remember not to access that member!"
Yes, Mosfet is not only busy working on themes / look and feel of KDE 2.0, he is also one of the core developers of KImageshop, a flexable corba-based image editing program.
It is similar to the GIMP -- and is compatible with all GIMP plugins, making a powerful, KDE/Corbra aware Imaging program, with an interface that doesn't totally bite (although GIMP 1.1.x is getting better -- part of the GIMP are just strangely designed -- and rely on right clicking way to much!)
A good user interface is obvious to new users -- the GIMP takes experience to figure it out.
Having Mosfet working full time on these key issues is important, users like an interface that is flexable, and yet doesn't required a degree in CS to understand how to use it.
Another thing that really might be good to improve is the Minicli (the mini-command-line KDE gives when you press Alt-F2.) When it works, it works nicely, but I quit using it for anything serious because... nothing happens when the command you execute is misspelled or something. I'm thinking that they could pop up a small xterm-window that contained all text sent to stderr the first time anything sends to stderr when you exec something with minicli. (Would this be a Wretched Hack, a Good Idea, or some disgusting hybrid? Just curious.)
I'm still learning C++, otherwise I'd have done these things already. If KDE had been coded in C, I'd have "fixed" these by now :-).
Finally: Sure, the desktop screenshots are cool. But who ever has time to look at the desktop? With a GIMP window here, X11amp there, kvt there, and assorted other delights, at least 3 of the virtual desktops are completely covered, and I pay much more attention to the contents of the application windows than what's behind them. Yeah, I'm weird, but I think "themes" are the spawn of the devil and an animated Pink Panther cursor is akin to a bow tie with embedded blinking Christmas lights... cute, but you get sick of it really quickly.
Give a monkey a brain and he'll swear he's the center of the universe.
I have a P133 with 32meg notebook. Windowmaker fits in as the perfect balance in speed/functionality. I've not tried blackbox or icewm. I've heard good things about them too. Windowmaker is just really easy to setup/configure (even if you've never used it before). It looks nice and is very good for just getting work done.
KDE and GNOME are nice but unless you have a lot of RAM to throw around, I would avoid them like the plague.
This is not bad design, this is just the way it is. I really wish I could get mozilla to compile so I could avoid the memory bloat of netscape. M7 did fine but M8 just wouldn't make.... oh well..
Civ CTP is awesome! Thanks Loki!
Romans 10:9-10
KDE 2.0 is coming along nicely. Those screenshots look pretty cool. Few guys around the office can't wait to have a crack at 2.0
"Imagination is the only weapon in the war against reality." -Jules de Gautier
Think for a moment and you'll realize there's two machines involved here.
The original server ("www") is one we've been having problems with lately anyway. We simply weren't prepared. It's just a members web server.
Had we been aware of the article we would have moved Donald's site to the server that is now the mirror sooner. It's now on the commercial web server ("halley" or "www2" if you don't have a cached entry), and it's not even blinking at the load:
3:22PM up 83 days, 21:50, 2 users, load averages: 0.05, 0.07, 0.04
--
My comments and opinions completely reflect those of anyone and anything I am remotely associated with.
Thanks for the tip. I'll try since I am forced to use a Mac in the lab.
But this calls into question how intuitive Mac UI really is, given that
I couldn't find a way to do it despite looking hard.
Granted, many of the things they are doing is helpful, application interoperability, ease of use, etc. But until they get on the track of making a better desktop, people will be sticking to windows desktops.
-- these are only opinions and they might not be mine.
> I can't write Ada programs for KDE
True
> I can't write graphical perl programs for KDE
You will. The PerlQt port is lagging behind right now.. but that doesn't mean that it won't catch up again.
> I can't write python applications for KDE
Why not? Last I looked (yesterday), the python binding for KDE were quite complete.
> I can't write C applications for KDE
Would you even if there was a binding?
I think that this entire line of argument is a red herring. I hear this mostly from people who inherently don't like KDE and want to find something to pick on (now that the license issue is mostly a moot point, let's attack the lack of language support!)
The fact is that for all the talk, whenever language bindings *are* created, nobody uses them. You say you want to use perl with KDE. Okay.. a binding was created... but it fell behind since nobody used it! You say you want to use C. Fine enough. Why is it that when there *was* a C binding that nobody used it?
What it comes down to is this: if people really wanted to use other languages with KDE, then that binding would happen (e.g., python)!
A fact of life, is as software become more advanced and powerful, you are eventually going to need faster hardware. Yes, forward compatiblity exists to an extent, but running Quicktime 4 on an 68020 or running a modern Linux version + X + full featured desktop + network services demands more then a i386.
UNIX is inheritably bigger, not because it's bloated -- but because it's designed to be more flexable -- since traditional UNIX hardware makes PC's look like toys -- so you do need some RAM and speed to use a modern UNIX setup completely with advanced desktop configuration.
We will try to support old machines as much as possible -- but it's not always pratical -- you can always yourself hack the code to preform better on your machine.
In the days of 450-600 mhz processor machines, with 128 megs of RAM, and the majority of users using machines around 200mhz with 32-64 megs of RAM, the OS is going to be more optimized for this hardware -- and not as much for a 16 mhz or 33 mhz machine.
yeah...but do you have to reboot everytime you make a change :)
I think in the long run one of the benefits of Linux is going to be that the user will have a CHOICE of what desktop / WM to use. I've played with KDE and Gnome and I enjoyed both of them for different reasons. I have been using KDE for the past couple months just because I grew tired of cleaning up core dumps every day with Gnome, but I plan on trying it again with the next release.
When the level of the "average" computer user grows they will want more than what "The Man" tells them is good, they will want to make that decision for themselves. Long kive Freedom of Choice !!!!!
It's just like Mico, but 1/8th its size. They should call it....
:)
Mini-Mico!
(bows, then runs
Save the whales. Feed the hungry. Free the mallocs.
They're also COMPLETELY, TOTALLY, and UTTERLY OPTIONAL!
You can go with a stripped-down non-pixmap theme if you want to - or get the fanciest desktop out there. It's your choice.
Inheritance is a struct(the child) that has the same data and methods as some other struct(the parent), plus some new stuff. For polymporphism, a vtable would be necessary, yes. That's just an array of function pointers, or better a function pointer member of the struct, one for each function. The 'constructor' function for the struct can set that up as needed. No big deal, and _still_ all you need to do is pass the struct pointer to a function and it will use that struct's vtable. I mean, in this sense, that's not really any more difficult than in C++.
Private, protected, and public interfaces are usefull only if you don't trust people using your class. I have go with the Perl philosophy on this one -- programmers shouldn't touch class internals because they aren't supposed to, not because they aren't allowed to. Not that declaring something 'private' will keep anyone from accessing the private members if they want to. Yes, C can't do it at all, I just don't think it's an important part of good OO design.
C macros cause code bloat, but templates don't?! Sorry, but that is just craziness. Just like macros, templates generate source code, one set of it for each instantiation of the template.
Exception handling is a whole different ball of wax, not really related to OOP except that it is a feature of C++ (and a relatively new one at that), which is an OO language. setjmp/longjmp are evil, and certainly not a replacement. Exceptions could be done well in C, with way too much work on the part of the coder. This is one area where C++ wins... except that I've had so much trouble with compilers that I never use them. They are a new feature, after all, and compilers are still trying to handle the ANSI standard (which is itself not very old).
I like templates. I (guardedly) like exceptions. I like inline functions over macros, const instead of #define, and other C++ features. But OO is still very doable in C, and it isn't markedly more cumbersome.
If you really want to see how this is all done in C, then browse the gtk+ source tree.
The enemies of Democracy are
Jesus christ!!@$ what the hell is the matter with you people? "it looks too much like windows, therefore it sucks." 1) what the hell do you want it too look like? some futuristic GUI from 2067?
2) GTK is the most customizable GUI. it can be made to look like win9x, or nothing like it. quit it with the flames. it seems more than half of people using linux (or whatever) use it for the sole reason its not windows, which is pathetic. why not use something 1) because you like it 2) and helps you work better. quit worrying about what your friends think when they find out you use redhat..............AND KDE*(^*(&*( OH NO^^&*^^%$.
----------
Have FreeBSD questions?
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http://balambiris.ne.mediaone.net
Was my message not plain enough? I suggested a couple of changes to the way the Gnome and KDE interface work. Those suggestions are valid. My note was to let people know that simply copying Microsoft is not good enough. Try to make a UI that is better than Windows. If the goal is to only be as "good" as windows, then mediocrity wins again! At the current state, Gnome and KDE are simply ripoffs of a poorly designed UI from Redmond. Why would anyone copy such a design?
As I said before both Gnome and KDE suck! They could have set the bar up a bit higher, but they settled for the same crappy interface.
> See topic.
Topic seen. You: see doctor.
One mouse button? This is the thing that most annoys me about a mac, too.
Question: Is it possible to buy a three button mouse for a mac? Or a wheel mouse?
Question2: IF it is possible, do any programs take advantage of enhanced mice?
Question3: Why doesn't apple abandon its only-one-button-for-everybody mouse strategy. After all, they've dropped a lot of the cruft from the original mac (M68k, black and white only, no internal expansion)...
Remember if you can write a better version of KUser or the device manger in Qt 2.0/KDE 2.0 feel free to submit it ftp://ftp.kde.org/incomming/
I think the kde developers want it to look like windows since the help system also looks similar (it has the same icons) and the tree in the file manager is the same as explorer
Thanks alot.
Actually, the issue of KDE-GNOME interoperability is being addressed. Eventually, one should be able to do something like embed a Gnumeric spreadsheet into Kword. That's probably not something that were going to see for quite a while, maybe in the next couple years.
DNS was working fine. Just made some address and TTL changes that didn't propogate rapidly enough.
And it's FreeBSD anyway.
--
My comments and opinions completely reflect those of anyone and anything I am remotely associated with.
>
the point is, that it is all done by the compiler, not you, if you would try to implement good inheritance (multiple, public/private etc.) it would not be all that easy and not that easy to use (if you want polymorphism).
>
it's not about trust. you want to make it known, which functions/members are internal and which are for general use. objects have internal mechanizms (change with time) and external interfaces (should not change in time). you want to differentiate between these.
>
they generate one function for each different value of template parameters, the macros are simple peices of code inserted everywhere where the macro is called.
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you seem to be missing that all the programming languages generally do the same, everything that you can implement in one of them, can be implemented in machine code. yet we have different languages for different purposes. the computer languages are for people. OO is much easier to do if the language supports it (like C++) or even mandates it (like Smalltalk).
erik
...all excited, don't know why...
1) All of your arguments apply to Linux and the GPL. (Can't produce a shareware version of Linux, can't develop hybrid license version of Linux, can't distribute freeware (no source) version of linux). The difference with QT is you can buy a license to develop proprietary software.
2) If you are going to make money by selling proprietary software what is wrong with the idea of having to give back some of that money to troll tech? (How much you can argue about but surely there is nothing wrong with giving something back!).
3)KDE symbolizes a Marxist approach to software development
KDE development has no political or religious affinity. Each project can choose their own development model. Different projects contribute code under different licenses. Core development tends to be done on an anarchy/meritocracy basis.
Basically KDE development encourages Open Source development but allows proprietary development at a cost.
Microsoft will have a real run for its money if RedHat, Mandrake, Caldera, Suse and Corel ship this as the main desktop environment. Like it or not, but this will win over many newbies.
---Got Coffee?---
Actually neither should win.
This is wrong also. The correct answer is both should win. What we need to get away from is the idea that there has to be just one winner and everything else is a loser. If both KDE and Gnome develop into excellent desktop environments (and both show potential to do so), then they will both be winners. Users will be the winners if they continue to have more than one viable choice. The only losers will be those who feel they have to control everything (like Microsoft) or those who are deathly paralyzed by fear that they might have to make a decision, even if there is really no wrong choice.
Why should be trust someone who uses "your" instead of "you're"? That makes everything else you write look less reliable and professional.
John
John_Chalisque
Templates are instantiated once, not once for each use, like macros are.
find / -name "kcmdevmgr*" -exec rm {} \;
should do.
Witness the original NeXT machine, which had a two-button mouse: but they acted the same! And this same-acting was not in the toolkit or at any software level, it was in the window server, so that it was *impossible* for a program to differentiate the buttons no matter how much it wanted to (you could send a command to the window server but that would split the buttons for all the apps).
Um, maybe I have my philosophers mixed up. Which one was the communist, Ayn Rand?
Windows already does everything KDE currently does, will do, and will ever do.
I have tried multiple virtual desktop managers for Windows NT. I have yet to find one that works in the presence of Visual C++ in debug mode. KDE handles multiple desktops quite nicely.
Ooh, a sarcasm detector. Oh, that's a real useful invention.
Hehe... Doing that is the easiet thing of all in Linux. In Linux, just click the middle mouse button on a link, and presto! You have it open in another window :)
:)
Save the whales. Feed the hungry. Free the mallocs.
Vatos locos for life esse!
Windows for life too, esse?
Corndog
let me expand what you said a little bit. QT themes are faster than GTK (what you meant, even if you don't know it) "Pixmap" themes. GTK theme engines work in the same way as KDE themes, and are equally fast. There is nothing stopping anyone from writing a QT pixmap theme like the one GTK has, but it would be equally slow (Someone may very well have written it by now). The reason most GTK themes are Pixmap themes is because its several orders of magnitude easier to make than an engine.
Now that the facts are out of the way, stop spreading FUD.
All of the so called "window managers" for Win32 are nasty hacks; they install a global handler for WM_NC* messages and handle them before the normal code sees them. This breaks other apps that customize their titlebar.
Well well, who said Microsofties don't hang out at SlashDot. Worried about your stock options are you? Just think, if KDE 2.0 makes it out before the 'official' release of WinNT2K, MS will have even more egg on its face.
It would not surprise me at all if they trademarked 'Wizard' in that context, since I seem to remember competing programs having parts with identical functions but somewhat different names (not an unusual event: remember Borland's DAD vs. MS's MOM? That's as silly as Unix naming traditions...).
So call 'em Assistants, Advisors, Aides... or if you want to tweak MS at the cost of obscurity, Conjurors.
I'm actually a tad surprised they never went after StarDivision, given that StarOffice (at least early versions... 3.0-ish) looked very, *very* similar to MS Office in many, many details.
Only the dead have seen the end of war.
Actually, what most annoying me about the Mac isn't the single mouse button. That's like #2 on my list.
Things that most annoying me about the Mac:
1) The shared menubar! (I CAN'T STAND IT)
2) The one-button mouse. (It's like using a computer after being in a disfiguring accident)
3) Everything else. (When using a Mac, I feel like I want to smash it in raging fury. It won't actually let me just get stuff done.)
A-ha!!! You *ARE* a microserf!! I knew it!! Admit it, you're in the marketing department, aren't you? You're the one spamming /. with OT replies (err... not like my off topic replies *cough*)! FUD at it's best!!
:)
For a while, you had me going. I suspected a fellow linux weenie trying to make MS marketing seem worse than it is. Glad I was wrong...
(um.... sorry 'bout that. I'll stop now
"One man can change the world with a bullet in the right place."
- Mick Travis, "If..."
I think the point is that it is much easier to write object-oriented code in C++ than it is in C. I've been exposed briefly to both languages, and from what I can tell, C++ provides higher-level language structures, such as classes, which allow one to write object-oriented programs relatively straightforwardly, while C is by nature a procedural language, so that one who wishes to write object-oriented code in C must find a way to force C's language constructs into an object-oriented mold. In other words, AFAIK, if you're talking about objects and classes, it's easier to say what you mean in C++ than it is in C. This could very well make the difference between code that is easy to debug and code that isn't.
I could be wrong here, and all you real programmers out there are free to correct me.
Yeah, the same people who complain that X is trying to copy activeX and other ideas, are the same people who complain linux is lacking the functionality of Windows. You can't win! :
>Remember the benchmarks from Mindcraft, ahh you forgot about those >didn't you?
And you forgot about the Windows 2000 farce,er challege haven't you?
Microcrap products just can't hack it in the *Real World* it seems only in unrealistic benchmark testing....
Perhaps if your text is 3 or 4 pages long, but using an intellimouse to scroll down 90 pages would, in a word, SUCK.
I agree completely. I am after all a KDE developer and not impartial at all ;-)
I was just replying (perhaps too subtly) to the claim that KDE had been in development for "years" before GNOME.
In my senior year of high school, I had to fill a dual-enrollment block at the local community college. (great way to drop high-school periods.) Since there wasn't much to take, I took "Programming in VB" for the heck of it. I thought it would be easy and potentially useful to learn. I entered the class with an open mind.
I now hate VB. Coming from a background in real languages (Pascal, C, C++, etc.) I found VB frustrating. I always knew exactly what I wanted to do and how to do it. But getting VB to do it is another story. VB makes the really easy stuff easier, and makes everything else a pain in the ass.
Back in my day, we used AppleSoft Basic. It had line numbers, and "?SYNTAX ERROR" messages on perfect code! It didn't even have an editor. Any we liked it!!!!
You go on about your fancy shmancy "structured programming". Back in my day, we had so many GOTO's we could hardly figure out what we wrote!
Basic is a wonderful language for teaching little kids how to program. It should never have progressed further than maybe QBASIC. VB was an attempt to take an old language that isn't good enough for real programming, wrap it in point 'n crash garbage, and get people to use it. Once you learn a real language, you'll never touch VB.
First of all, let me clarify that I love KDE and it is what I use.
Re-arranging widgets is definitely nice. But I was trying to re-arrange the window widgets (program menu, sticky, maximize, minimize, close) and discovered that you can rearrange them a little, but not much from where they're expected to be.
Do you want to put minimize to the right of maximize? You're out of luck.
Do you want the program menu on the right side of the window? Sorry. You can click the button there but the menu still opens up on the LEFT side.
And then there's the completely arbitrary restriction that you can't have more than 3 widgets on each side of the window. I wanted to put EVERYTHING on the right side, because of the way I often lose the upper left corner of a window behind the top-left taskbar. Sorry, only 3 per side, and of course the program menu has to be on the left. But I dealt with it by getting rid of maximize, which I never use.
Anyway, I realize I'm complaining about TINY little things, but I hope that KDE 2.0 fixes these arbitrary restrictions.
--
Win dain a lotica, en vai tu ri silota
I can't help but think that if there were 'bosses' of GNOME + KDE who could make a deal (and force their programmers to accept it), we could get some co-ordination between the two projects. But if that were the case all the time, we wouldn't have Linux, there'd just be Windows.
Wah!
It's FreeBSD, and it's still up.
--
My comments and opinions completely reflect those of anyone and anything I am remotely associated with.
And several months ago, he was lamenting about how unstable Windows was, but how we had no choice, and he added in parentheses: "(Well, there's Linux, but only the weird kid next door uses that.)"
But Al has finally seen the light - he now runs many columns about Linux. Contrary to the pessimists who say Microsoft has a monopoly over our minds, this is a victory. It was pretty much his job to give advice on Windows, but he's converted to Linux anyway.
--
Win dain a lotica, en vai tu ri silota
Almost there:
1) Writing theme engines (called styles there) for Qt is a whole lot easier than doing it for GTK.
Why? OO design. You can *inherit* the, say, platinum style, and hack the widget that annoys you the most. On GTK the closest equivalent starts with "copy the sources for the GTKStep engine to that other directory".
2) Qt's user (non programmer) definable styles (the equivalent of GTK pixmap themes) are faster. One of the most used elements of those styles are gradients. In GTK you do them by stretching pixmaps, while in Qt you do them programatically (and actually, you do it from mosfet's cute designer), and they get rendered using optimized code instead of a general purpose pixmap routine.
Of course, if I am wrong, I invite anyone to correct me.
The reason that Linux isn't ready for the masses is that there aren't enough GUI applications that work together.
The great thing about UNIX is how you can get commands that process data streams and pipe them together. The problem is that there isn't a similar widely adopted standard for GUI programs on Unix. The analagous capabilities are inter app cut and paste, and object sharing (as in OLE or OpenDoc).
KDE and Gnome are addressing this issue. When you can build the functional equivalent of Office 2K (in terms of functionality, not quality) with free software, and can work easily with third party apps w/ no special rigamarole, then you have a Windows killer. It seems to me that KDE is further down this path.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
Now let me start off by saying that I love KDE, I use it on my Linux box, and I previously used it on my sparc (but I have to support CDE now and it's much easier to do so when actually running it). Bugs and all (like consistently losing all but two of my desktops) I still like it.
But the screenshots of the device manager and user manager really made me wince. These are identical copies of the windows equivalents. Know what immediate impression I get? Microsoft leads, KDE copies. This is not a reputation we deserve to get.
I've finally had it: until slashdot gets article moderation, I am not coming back.
Fine! Good for you! Use what you like - nobody's stopping you.
I happen to like using an integrated Desktop Environment - it's very convenient for me to have an integrated file manager, web browser (although I don't use it very much, I prefer Netscape), mail checker, ICQ program, MP3 player, and soon word processor. I've used WindowMaker and liked it; used E and liked it; used AfterStep and liked it; used GNOME and liked it, and used a few others and didn't like them.
It all boils down to personal choice. As long as you can still use other things, what's the problem? Stop complaining and do something USEFUL!
--
Why not? A license that read "Feel free to make as many copies as you want and give them to who ever you want for what ever price you feel like charging, as long as you don't change in any way" would be freely redistributable. GPL gives you those rights.
Windows already does everything KDE currently does, will do, and will ever do.
Your kidding right? Please tell me you are kidding? You mean your third party hacks are better than things KDE and GNOME do inherently. Try configuring hardware with out the control panel? The customizeability of *nix and KDE blows windows out of the water! Do you think people are moving to linux because linux and windows are the same? KDE and Windows are not the same thing, if you would use *nix software before making baseless comparisons you probably would not have posted that silly comment.
The point is still valid, right? Having been around longer, it would make since that it would be farther ahead. More obvious than it being more oop.
I know I will be moderated down for this, but . . . Vincent
Gotta love it.
>> you have to use dos to do everything
>> linix will go bankrupt
Beautiful. And you fooled the moderators, too. Y'oughta get bonus points for that.
But hotgrrl67532 is mine; stay away from her or else I'll send you the Good Times virus.
I think that's entirely possible. I tried it out from CVS.
It's pretty good, though somewhat buggy. Konqueror (which just might convert a old nc/mc guy like myself, quite a feat) looks great but is pretty unstable right now. It works though. Just needs some bugs fixed.
I'm confident it'll be very useable very soon. I'm currently doing a reinstall, and I'm going to try it out again.
I also tried out XFree86 3.9.15. Pretty damn slick. I only had to add *one line* to my XF86Config file: Driver "MGA". I also changed the X symlink to point to XFree86 rather than XF86_SVGA.
My only problem was that it "broke" kdm/xdm. Now it only goes into twm no matter what I select. I glanced through some documentation and went through a load of config files trying to find out what's running twm. I found some and changed twm to startkde and it's still doing it.
Ho hum, I'll figure it out.
For those old enough to remember, Doesn't the current KDE vs. GNOME debate sound a lot like the Linux vs. 386BSD one?
386BSD was always a step behind, had a very "vocal" leader (Jolitz vs. Miguil?), and eventually failed to accomplish its goals, splintered, and pretty much no one rememebrs 386BSD now.
Just a thought.
Gnome 2.0 will have a lot more things then you think. First of all the dependancies on imlib will be replaced with a libart and gdk-pixbuff which are already currently implemented. The panel will have a lot more features such as better resizing. The file manager will be replaced with a new a better one. the pager should get some improvemets also. I think that justifies a 2.0 version.
Eat that
Because ActiveX is the ripoff of CORBA/COM. It's essentially an after the fact subset, much like Gnome.
The revolution will be mocked
Or if you have a two button mouse (like myself), simply click both buttons on the link.
I find it makes Slashdot reading much less annoying in Netscape. If you click a link regularly, it's really slow coming back, and it won't be displaying the right part of the document.
Because Windows crashed one time too many for me. I will never again buy another Microsoft product. I simply do not trust them any more. I much prefer a system where I can fix it if I have the knowhow - not a completely closed system where things never get fixed.
In addition to that, I fancy myself a programmer, and I'm not exactly rolling in cash - I'd much prefer to spend my money on something useful (like hardware) than on things I can get for free.
*smack*smack*smack*
Things for you to do:
Get a life
Learn how to code
Get your head out of your ass
Stop dragging your knuckles.
The revolution will be mocked
I only use 3 of the buttons, all on the right side (which makes sense to me since that's where your scroll bar is, usually). I only have minimize, maximize, and close. For program menu, I simply right click on the titlebar, and the meu pops up wherever I click (IIRC, X is not running right now so I can't check it, and I rarely need that menu).
WordPerfect called them Coaches, and had equally tracky icons to go along with it. Wizard is a generic enough term I doubt that MS could sue "KDE" if they wanted. After all, who would they sue? If they went after individual developers they'd most likely have to take it to a German court. *grin*
The revolution will be mocked
Perhaps they learned their lesson early on that look and feel lawsuits won't hold up. Or perhaps it's because they'd have to sue a German company. Or is it the DoJ case currently pending. By not suing SO they look like they have competition.
The revolution will be mocked
Because he or she doesn't like it?
Multiple choices are good. Nothing should be mutually exclusive in the end-user market. I can use Linux; if I don't like it, I can use FreeBSD; if I don't like it, I can use HURD. If I don't like Windows, I can use Be or MacOS or anything...
More than one integrated desktop is good; more than 10 is even better, because it allows us to make all the choices we want...
Three Step Plan:
1. Take over the world.
2. Get a lot of cookies.
3. Eat the cookies.
It's a matter of choice. With Windows (which I do use BTW), you are pretty much stuck with *one* integrated desktop, and no other choices. Even apps like litestep and the like are only appearance, they don't have any real effect on the underlying interface thema.
With Linux/X, however, you get to choose whatever level of integration (or not) that you prefer. In addition, you can choose from *two* separate integrated desktop environments, and you can use the one *you* like, not the one that was provided for you.
Nunc Tutus Exitus Computarus.
Well, from what I can see, KDE still has the best chance of being the Windows killer .. lets face it, the biggest thing stopping windows sheep from using Linux is the lack of a robust, fully functional GUI. And while the vets might argue other window managers offered it, I still think its the KDE team thats going to have the best chance of bridging that gap. I work with a guy who swears by command line - what he's yet to understand is that neither command line nor GUI are in themselves better than the other. It's the proper balance, and a well thought out GUI that actually increases productivity. I think the KDE team has got the best vision so far. The increased use of CORBA in KDE 2.0 is really what has me on the edge of my seat though ....
"Old man yells at systemd"
To paraphrase the Camel: "People should stay out of my house because it's the polite thing to do, not because I have a shotgun"
I love that line!!
If only "common" sense was actually that common...
KDE2.0 really seems to be a 2.0 version, and
the interface is really starting to look
polished and integrated with the OS, from
a functionality point of view.
I really feel sorry for GNOME. It seems their
development team executes poorly. I mean,
do people really feel GNOME is at a 2.0
level? Get serious.
And isn't OSS supposed to be about sharing,
about taking the best ideas of others, etc.
So why is GNOME creating yet another component model almost a half year after both Mozilla and KDE introduced workable models that have existing applications proven to work around them?
It's like, not only have the KDE guys developed a great desktop, but they also wrote a whole bunch of nicely integrated apps around it. The GNOME guys seem to have trouble just creating a directory browser.
Maybe this is a benchmark on OO languages and development. GNOME in C, KDE in C++. And yes,
while KDE had a head start, KDE seems to progress at a faster rate and is more stable.
So either the GNOME programmers aren't as good managing their project and the KDE guys are, or, OO programming with real OO languages (and not "let's try to do OO design with C") forces a better design of the libraries which reap bigger rewards later on in the life cycle of the application maintainence?
Hmm, food for thought.
(I don't even use KDE either, but it's obvious from looking at the documentation, source, and design vis-a-vis GNOME, that it is superior, and by the quality of the final product too)
Eat that GNOME kiddies.
I'm tired of these GPL vs. BSD-ish license wars... The fact is that neither license is perfect if you want something 100% freely redistributable. The GPL was created so that you can give away source, make copies, etc., forever and requires that it always be that way... It sacrifices a teensy bit of freedom, say 1%, to protect the other 99% of freedom, by requiring that all derived works be available under the same terms. Personally, that's a sacrifice I'm willing to make to guarantee the most important aspects of freedom, the redistributability. BSD-ish licenses, however, give you full 100% redistributability with no terms whatsoever. However, it also allows some jerk down the pipeline to take that freedom away on a derived work. As unlikely as it is to happen, it is possible that the xBSD groups could fold and the only versions of BSD-derived OSes are the commercial, proprietary, closed-source ones... The GPL prevents this from happening... The BSD license does not... Pick your risks.
I disagree, the new license is pretty well thought out from a business standpoint. They get money from people who develop cross-platform apps, so why not go ahead and let the Free Software people use the toolkit gratis? Since KDE runs on a variety of OS/hardware combos, it may well be the desktop environment across Unices that CDE tried and failed to be.
Companies looking for a cross-platform toolkit can now purchase devel licenses to develop a QT app that just _happens_ to integrate with your desktop _if_ you run the full KDE environment. It's all about mind (and desktop) share. Rather than take the widget set and try to create a CDE-like desktop, they let us do it for free, distribute it for free, and ride the commercial licensing wave.
I think this (along with VA's "you write the OS and we'll make kick-ass high-end hardware for it and give back any changes we make") is an excellent example of how businesses can work _with_ the Free Software community, not against it. (even though TT _did_ start out on the wrong foot with us)
$1500 for a devel seat is not really that much for a smallish medium to large company after all. We worked on a project a while back, and in the middle of it we found some references to some libraries that we couldn't find with the source. After tracking down the company who owned those libs, we found out that they wanted several $1000 PER SEAT for just the "rights" to _negotiate_ the actual devel costs!!! Needless to say, we found some replacement libs really quick!!
If only "common" sense was actually that common...
NOTE: This is not flamebait -- it's my opinion on KDE's functionality
Okay, I'd been using KDE way back before the 1.0 releases, and I liked it. Then I got side-tracked trying to get gnome to compile (over and over and over). Finally GNOME is relatively stable, and... yeah, I've got cool themes and capplets out the wazoo.
... anyway, the other day I installed Caldera OpenLinux 2.2, and all I can say is that I was very impressed, and that's not something I say often. I would probably recommend a KDE-based desktop to a non-unix guru over GNOME at the moment for the following reasons:
1 - KDE doesn't suffer from the Desktop Environment / Windowmanager duality that GNOME does. -- yes, I know you can run differnt WM's with kde, too, but most people don't. Fact is that KDE is just plain a more cohesive desktop environemt - much similar to a newbie-friendly MacOS or Windows9X (which is what new linux users are familiar with...)
2 - while developers may still remember the stigma of the old qt license, end users don't care, and they probably don't know what a widget is, or what the difference between c++ and c is. So... for once, we finally get down to "which environment makes me more productive?". While I like gnome and use it at work on Solaris and linux, it does have a lot of funky bells and whistles, and it's arguably much slower than KDE
3 - stability. maybe it's just me, but living on the cutting edge of gnome development hurts. People tend to break fundamental pieces quite often (witness gnome-print - try getting it to work on Solaris or non-redhat 6.0) panel sometimes craps out, and combined with development versions of E, my dual xeon linux box sometimes hangs for a second or two. That's not good. My experience with the KDE cutting edge has been much more cross-platform friendly, and it seems to be a more focused and coordinated effort. Nobody comes out of left-field with a new method that only works on the latest RedHat, or worse yet, only compiles on their system.
I still use gnome at work, I prefer gtk toolkit for development projects, I prefer c to c++, and my gnome/e desktop looks really cool, but if I were setting up linux for my mom or sister, I'd probably give them a KDE desktop.
The Gnome and KDE people have made some great strides in bring a more usable GUI to X. However, they seem to fall into the same problem: "improvements" via 3D, translucent, bitmapped windows. Does this stuff help anyone? Yes, some themes are easy on the eyes, but most are glaring. The Mosfet/KDE interview does mention some of the cool CORBA plumbing in KDE 2.0, but will that make my computer user to use?
This seems to be a common problem with open source projects. Everyone wants the "glory" and that comes from either whiz-bangy graphics or sexy low-level code. These things only indirectly help Regular Users. They don't improve usability. sigh..
cpeterso
I'm looking forward to seeing KDE 1.1.2 & 2.0 !
I have to admit that the main piece of software that made the transition from Windows to Linux palatable for me (more than a year ago) was the KDE beta 3 desktop.
(And that was in my second year of a computer science major at university, I was definitely above the level of an average computer user.)
As powerful as the command line is (and I've learned some really useful items in the last year) software like KDE (and GNOME) really *are* what's needed to increase the Linux user base on the desktop. Users just don't feel comfortable in anything else... and I have to extend some congratulations to the GNOME and KDE teams for their work in this area. Keep it up, it's a Good Thing!
As for speed and high-color bitmaps, the more the better! People who don't want them don't need to use them. I would bet that a large percentage of CPU's in use out there sit idle for a lot of the time... might as well make the desktop look nice.
Go KDE! Go GNOME!
Perl is about as easy as easy gets:
you don't have to declare variables
if you go past the bounds of an array, that's just dandy! Perl will extend the array!
you can use C-type syntax or BASIC-type syntax, or even both together
you can read a whole file into a single string! Up to the limit of you systems memory!
If you use a String variable as an Integer, or an Foat as a Srting, or any other type-changing, Perl knows this and does the right thing.
What do you want?
the only thing easier would be to have the code written for you!
(oh wait. that's what VB does. I forgot.)
-geekd
The nice thing to note is that most ISPs I know would rue a user who's freebe web page got them slashdotted. What most ISPs wouldn't do is take time out of a sysadmin's day to build a mirror on a higher powered and better connected box, and arrange more bandwidth with the telco until the wave subsided.
- H
HURD is not yet finished!
Expect alpha software to be unpredictable.
Hey, I liked it all until "Eat that GNOME kiddies." Your argument was well thought out, but was the (arguably) flame bait really neccessary? In the end, you use what you like anyhow. If no one started these loyalty wars, more people would probably try /both/ of them and decide for themselves. As it stands, people tend these days to stick to their guns with which ever product they tried first.
"Old man yells at systemd"
Troll Tech is a commercial company
/.
If you are gonna make money off thier widget set, then you must pay them for it.
On the other hand, they have been kind enough to say that if you give away your software for free, then you DON'T have to pay them for thier widget set.
I may be dumb, but I don't see aproblem with this.
If you have a problem with the GPL, you aren't gonna find much sympathy on
-geekd
Uhh, if you don't want a desktop because it looks good then there are plenty of existing WM's. fvwm2,fvwm95,etc... So what was your point again?
That depends on how you define functionality. KDE runs on Unix, so it's already way more functional than Windows can ever hope to be, as far as I'm concerned.
Windows might have a reasonable interface (and KDE is right to incorporate what it can), but it's deeply rotten at the core.
Why, when a game crashes on Win98, does the OS claim I have no memory to start anything else? Even when nothing's running, and the machine has 192MB of RAM! Heh, DOS is still alive and well at the heart of it all, I can see.
Why did Windows fail to update my CD-ROM drive letter when I added a new hard drive?
Why does Windows ask me to insert a floppy when installing new drivers, and then claim that the drivers can't be found in C:\windows\system? That's just shoddy.
Why, when I upgraded a soundcard driver, did Windows lose my Glide DLLs, forcing another driver reinstall and another two reboots?
And why, when I had to replace a network card due to hardware failure, did Windows force me to reboot no less than 8 TIMES? Guess how many times I had to reboot Linux on the same machine? That's right, once.
So you can keep your bloody brain-damaged functionality. I'll keep an OS that works. Now, if only Everquest ran on Linux...
What is the point of having moderators if this
sort of crap is left untouched?
Toby
That is not a universally held opinion. I know quite a few beginners that have had no problems learning to use Perl. Perl isn't for everything, but it is a great tool for a lot things.
I would think Perl is only hard to learn for people that have no programming experience, though I personally wouldn't know. When I first started getting into Perl, I already had quite a bit of C/C++ experience. I did a man perl, and about an hour or so later I was hacking away.
So much for hard to learn.
72656B636148206C72655020726568746F6E41207473754A
I've been wondering for a while if the customization options for QT/KDE or GNOME/Gtk will allow me to place my scroll bars on the left side of all windows by default. That control alone would be worth having independent of 3d pixmaps and such. Anyone know if this property is themable?
-- This is not a signature.
The reason people don't post pro-windows posts to /. is that they tend to get rather badly flamed or told to 'get a decent operating system' in a sickeningly patronising way.
/., as it can be a very intolerant environment. There are a vocal minority (or at least I hope it's a minority) who are very open source, but not very open minded.
Also, many windows-related posts will get moderated down as 'Troll', even if it's a perfectly valid point or question.
/. is vastly biased to towards Linux, supportive of less popular alternative OSs, and very biased against Microsoft operating systems. Don't be suprised if windows users don't read
If AOL can't copywrite common phrases like "you've got mail" then I'd say the DOJ won't uphold any M$ complaints. My 2
"I want to use software that doesn't suck." - ESR
"All software that isn't free sucks." - RMS
Then don't use it. You have plenty of other choices.
Actually I agree.... both KDE and Gnome suck. They seem to both be made to emulate the Windows interface. Including some of its more stupid designs! For example, in windows the "start" button opens up menus that have nothing to do with the apps and folders on the desktop.
OS/2 has this system down pat. The menu in OS/2 Warp reflects the desktop exactly. If you add or change the desktop in any way (adding applications, moving nested folders), it reflects in the menu exactly as it appears on the desktop.
I wish if people were going to try and make a gui desktop, that they would actually improve on the Windows desktop, rather than making it a clone. Both Gnome and KDE seem to be stuck in a Windows style world. Pity, as I was hoping someone would try and do Microsoft one better. Seems all we have to look forward to is another unintuitive GUI like Windows.
Yes and no. KDE themes are faster than GTK themes since GTK only supports pixmap theming. GNOME will let you code your own widgets if you desire. It's just that pixmap themes are easier to write so that's what most themes are. KDE supports coded widgets, you can have a pixmap based widget set as well. So far they are the same. The difference is that KDE supports things like gradients etc. w/o having to write code or fall back on pixmaps. That way you can have pretty and fast widgets. Also, KDE allows you to re-arange the way widgets work (I don't know if GNOME does). This way you can have the little triangle buttons on a scroll bar right next to each other, instead of at opposite ends, which IMHO makes much more sense.
-matt
I would think Perl is only hard to learn for people that have no programming experience,
Actually, several of the biggest Perl fans I know had no programming experience prior to Perl.
though I personally wouldn't know. When I first started getting into Perl, I already had quite a bit of C/C++ experience.
I did as well... Plus I had shell scripting, sed, awk, etc... A lot of the things that Perl borrowed from. Made learning Perl even easier, but certainly not a prerequisite.
I did a man perl, and about an hour or so later I was hacking away.
Actually, I didn't even do that at first... I had about 50 or 60 Perl scripts dropped on me to document, fix, maintain and enhance... So I went out and bought a copy of the 'camel book' and basically just dug into the code and occasionally looked up things I wasn't sure of in the book.
So much for hard to learn.
No kidding... I don't think Perl is hard to learn for anyone who isn't fixed on a certain mindset.
And I'm not just saying that as flamebait (though it may be), I believe that KDE has an advantage over GNOME in many respects, and may be the largest of the various wedges that Linux is putting into the desktop market.
First of all, KDE is fast. I recently installed Red Hat on my P75 at home, and fired up X with FWVM. The speed was decent, but, frankly, it was on a par with Win95 (the previous OS). It was fully usable (though ugly), so I tried starting up GNOME/Enlightenment. Completely useless. The memory requirements and processor usage, even sitting still, were such that I couldn't even play Mp3s at 64 kbps. KDE, on the other hand, is only slightly slower than FWVM!!
KDE's also much more stable (for me, at least) than GNOME/E. GNOME's little deskbar-applets die frequently, preferences go astray, and many other annoyances crop up. KDE, so far, seems a helluva lot more stable. Am I right on this?
Add to this KOffice, and KDE's looking pretty good! While the Linux community is not known for sticking to one standard (RPM vs. deb, vi vs. Emacs ... Not that multiple programs are a -bad- thing...), I think that if it were GNOME vs. KDE... Well, you can guess my preference. If we could only convince the bright minds working on GNOME to pile their efforts onto the other bandwagon!
Wah!
All you do is click on the link and hold down for a pop up menu to appear... next?
You can get a kensington trackball - other mice will probably do it as well - which you can program the buttons to do whatever you want. For instance, you could make the left button "control-click" so that it would bring up a contextual menu in apps that supported that. Or have the button launch netscape... Whatever
Sorry folks. Had to increase mbufs.
Mirror is up at http:/www2.jorsm.com/~mosfet/screensho ts.htm.
JORSM Admin
--
My comments and opinions completely reflect those of anyone and anything I am remotely associated with.
Sorry folks. Had to increase mbufs.
Mirror is up at http://www2.jorsm.com/~mosfet/screens hots.htm.
JORSM Admin
--
My comments and opinions completely reflect those of anyone and anything I am remotely associated with.
The ISP where the screenshots are at is my ISP and they have been having problems with there server today....Of all days to get nailed with a slashdot effect.
The next one is better I promise.
--
My comments and opinions completely reflect those of anyone and anything I am remotely associated with.
I'm sure the original poster will be reading this, but perhaps he meant that he doesn't use either on a regular basis. I've used both in the recent past (but I don't use either now), and I agree with his observations.
Wah!
Slave ?? You are free to fuck up your Windows install as many times as you want. You can install GNU tools on it and make it look like a Unix box
I am not in total agreement with the KDE style of windowmangler, but it looks very intuitive. New users will certainly have fun using *nix if they try this out.
As for the GNOME project, it looks like they are moving over to better support for the power users, like me. Too bad I haven't found usage in GNOME just yet, but I'm quite sure I will. I wish that GNOME followed KDE's path in using CORBA. Wouldn't this mean that their parts would be interchangable? Just a thought
---
Rolling cows gather no moss...
-
ping -f 255.255.255.255 # if only
Does anyone know if the KDE and Gnome people are planning to make their objects compatible? It would be great if I could drag a bonobo component into a KWord document - I could blend the best components of each project.
There are great python bindings available for KDE, see developer.kde.org.
Perl is outdated, but I've read someone wants to take it up again.
Java is coming as well.
I'm pretty sure there will never be a decent C binding, as people simply don't see the need. Even if you don't like C++, you can cade in a C-style C++, leaving away most of the C++ features.
Together with code generation through GUI builders this hould be acceptable to most.
FLAMEBAIT: Say, you want a desktop that helps you work faster and easier without getting in the way? Get a Mac! :)
Hmmm...did MS actually copyright that. Of course MacOS had all sorts of wizzards. I though either WordPerfect or Lotus 1-2-3 had something they called a wizzard (perhaps not though). Was MS really the first company to use the word "wizzard" to describe these sorts of things.
Of course, it wouldn't be the first time KDE ran into a problem like this. I recall some discussion over whether KDE could continue to have a trash, because the the rights to the term trash, in the context of an icon on the desktop where you put files to be eventually deleted were owned by Apple.
Bizarre, but true.
its *not* the same. C is infinitely more flexible than C++ and most of us have years of C experience. if i moved to C++ id be a helluva less productive...Java's also superior in redgard to C++ and id rather move to Java than C++ anyday. What youre going to see is KDE slowly being ignored while gnome becomes faster and more reliable..the trend is already there folks...nothing you can do about it.
I doubt that MS can claim a copyright on Wizards if AOL can't lay claim to "buddy list", "IM", and "You've Got Mail." They certainly can't prevent someone from using the concept. If MS tries to raise a fuss, they can just call them something different, such as Gnome's Druids. -scott
"there once was a big guy named lou
Had to move around some IP's and make some DNS changes. Requests were going to the wrong server.
http://halley.jorsm.com/~mosfet/sc reenshots.html
--
My comments and opinions completely reflect those of anyone and anything I am remotely associated with.
You know that GNOME started years after KDE. That is one good reason why KDE is ahead.
I know I will be moderated down for this, but . . . Vincent
I am currently forced to use Windows at work. I've got a decent theme on there with pretty pictures and kewl sounds. It's okay, I guess, but when I use it, I tend to miss my computer at home.
I've got some really great themes for my home system. I could use a cool tiger background if I wanted to.
In all honesty, though, I can do PLENTY more with my Linux desktop than I can with my Windows desktop. I am experienced with both operating systems and I am obsessed with making my desktop look and act the way I want it to. I have come very close to this in Windows - but I've *accomplished* this (very easily) in Linux.
I will give you the fact that the Windows desktop has come a long way over the years (especially if you use something like LiteStep). However, I was doing more customization on my Linux desktop years ago than is even possible on the Windows desktop today.
-Tori
I really just don't see where you're coming from. The word is out that Linux has a great GUI and KDE is it! This is attracting people to Linux.
To have things integrated into the OS in a meaningful way is one thing. Windows simply bolts product ontop of product on top of product with no semblance to thought on what the outcome may be.
I keep seeing KDE people using "Wizards" for easy setup and such. I have a problem with this - isn't "Wizard" in this context a trademark or copyright of Microsoft? Seems like KDE people are setting themselves up as Cannon Fodder of Microsofts lawyers here if they continue to brazenly steal Microsoft's "ideas" and trademarks.
KDE has come a long way since i started using it in march. only 5 months... and KDE is better than windows98. and it's even easier to set up too. the screen shots look great, i can't wait for it come out. hopefully with KOffice, and the corel version of linux, even large non-technology companies will see the advantage of linux over windows.
http://github.com/gbook/nidb
>(Please pardon my sarcasm, the Redmond trolls have been out in full force today and I simply couldn't resist. I'm starting to suspect that the "Anti-Linux" group that Micros~1 was forming a while ago was just a bunch of script-kiddies they hired to post as AC's on Slashdot.)
I noticed that too, if that is the best they can do, we have nothing to worry about.
Hell, I would welcome alternative viewpoints if they were presented with intelligent arguments - either there are no intelligent arguments for pro-windows, or those making the comments are a bunch of vacuum-cranium doodz with nothing better to do than show their stupidity.
theyve already done that. i dont think we can bloat them any further...2 CDROMs to install the small business edition of Office2000 ???? gimme a break.
I'm currently a KDE-user (and contributer...) myself, but I'm not religious about it, and I hate it when people get their facts wrong like that. :-)
As others have said - I just wish, wish, wish the GNOME and KDE people would get their heads out of... whereever it is they keep them, and standardize on a method which would allow their objects to interact seam- lessly. I have yet to see evidence that this is really happening, except in the drag-and-drop area.
The way things are going, this looks like something they'll "kludge together" after the fact, once each group has become firmly entrenched, for better or worse, in their respective architectures. Not being familiar with the Corba technology, I'm not sure whether such a kludge will be ugly or if it's even feasable... but I am a bit worried.
Host your own websites, anywhere!
Eat that GNOME kiddies
I like the above. I like KDE's look and feel, but it is not very easy to configure. I Hate having kfm always ask if I am sure I wish to delete files and many of its other quirks. I do like kfm as an internet browser. I wish I could simply use it as such and diable the desktop icons, etc.
Gnome is nice, but I agree that not enough development is done to match the high version numbers they use.
One of the major philisophies behind Linx/OSM is giving the people a choice. I have tried both KDE and GNOME. As of now, GNOME impresses me more (I like the versatilitiy of GNOME), but that doesn't mean I hate KDE. On the contrary, I think it's an excellent desktop environment, I just like GNOME more, that's all. So to each his/her own and best of luck to GNOME and KDE.
"And now you shall learn the secret of boot to the head"
They do it because it's the feature that more people ask for than anything else. THEMES! THEMES! we scream. After years of ugly motif and ugly TK and uglier still Xaw, everyone wants their environment to be jsut a little more fun.
And it doesn't neccesarily make things much slower.
You're probably mixing up "WindowMaker" -- a very specific window _manager_, ala fvwm, twm, mwm, blackbox -- with "GUI program designer" or something like that.
VB has naught to do with window _managing_, which involves placement of windows, title bars, widget sets, and so forth. WindowMaker has naught to do with writing programs, any more so than any other WM.
To answer your Q 'tho, well: get 'Learning Perl' and it's not that bad. For GUI, consider Java or Tcl/Tk if you must have portability, and there are probably other candidates, too. C w/ XForms, 'tho, is *fast* for programs that require X...
Only the dead have seen the end of war.
You posted a lot of stuff on GNOME debate. I recognize you :-)
this is flamebait...but anyway, i use afterstep with both gnome + kde libraries. both run apps great, afterstep rocks when it comes to its default slick NeXTish look+speed and Wharf is all i ever wanted in customisability.
KDE folk are hardly going the wrong direction. Mosfet (to my knowledge) is about the only guy that's been working on theme support and pretty buttons. Everyone else is working hard on core application features and/or KOffice.
Besides, I remember a common argument about KDE 1.0. "Sure it has a lot of features but it's so ugly!" I wish you people would make up your mind!
Finally, since he's the theme developer, his screenshots are oriented at what he's working on of course. Go check out the rest of the screenshots on www.kde.org and koffice.kde.org and, more importantly, read some of the mailing lists. That way you can make an informed decision instead of basing your comments on a short interview with only one of the KDE developers.
This new feature will enable you to place your scrollbar at either the right or the left side of the screen (this was requested by our lefthanded customers who naturally look to the left for controls), it will even be possible to make the scrollbars disappear for those using Intellimice which look like becoming the standard.
This feature will be available to all applications using standard Windows controls (widgets) but applications using specialist widget sets may only display the standard way (scrollbar on right). It will also be possible for applications to have their scrollbars in a fixed position which ignores the users preferences.
As for repositioning the titlebar, our Office applications already have a removable titlebar and we hope to extend this to all other applications.
the HURD ? its GPLised.
The GTKStep and Xenophilia themes have the two scrollbar buttons together. However, the code to do this is new, and isn't quite stable (like the gnome-pager will crash when you change it's setting if you use those themes, and the gnome-font changer freezes with them). But it's possible.
I know I will be moderated down for this, but . . . Vincent
A computer with one mouse button cannot be productive or easy to use.
Example: on a Mac there is no easy way to open a link in a new window
in Netscape. That is the single most annoying thing about any computer
hardware arrangement, short of plug and pray.
http://halley.jorsm.com/~mosfet/slashdotted.gif
--
My comments and opinions completely reflect those of anyone and anything I am remotely associated with.
I use VB to make my Windows applications,
You've got my condolences, I'd rather have a root canal than program in VB.
what easy to use programming languages do you have for Linux,
What language is available on Windows that isn't available on Linux other than proprietary things like VB? Personally, I think Java (especially with a tool like VisualAge for Java) is pretty easy. Personally, I don't find C w/ GTK+ very difficult.
and no, Perl is not easy to use for the beginner.
That is not a universally held opinion. I know quite a few beginners that have had no problems learning to use Perl. Perl isn't for everything, but it is a great tool for a lot things.
There are even a couple of BASIC variants out there for Linux, including VBIX (from Halcyon Software) which is a VB clone. You might check into Python or Visual TCL for easy languages on Linux also. There are numerous others out there, those are just two that I have played with a bit.