Slashdot Mirror
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. "
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
> 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)!
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.
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.
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.
--
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.
I think it's more a benhmark on developers, not languages. Dallheimer, Ettrich, and let's not forget the Trolls who made the toolkit and ported mozilla to Qt inside a week.
All that said, I wish Qt would use the signal/slot mechanism of Gtk--. Moc is a nasty little boondoggle I could do without.
I've finally had it: until slashdot gets article moderation, I am not coming back.
Then don't use it. You have plenty of other choices.
biggest thing stopping windows sheep from using Linux is the lack of a robust, fully functional GUI.
Actually it's lack of MS applications (Office), sure we have WP/Applix/Staroffice, but these types of people "don't want to learn a new application
Of all the comments I've ever posted, this is definately one of them
I've tried Litestep, the NeXTstep desktop for Win32. It's still got too many Win32isms in it, it's just not the same as Afterstep/Window Maker
Of all the comments I've ever posted, this is definately one of them
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.
>(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.
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.