Look, here's my problem: Plasma creates a Colgate invisible shield between the Desktop and the filesystem. This disrupts opportunities for me, the user, to create my own Desktop, though it may create new opportunities that I haven't discovered yet.
In other words, back in the day, I could create a Desktop launcher in Konqueror and it would show up on the Desktop. I could create a launcher on the Desktop, and use it in Konqueror. This was great for moving back and forth between KDE and a window manager like fluxbox. Konqueror was great in a window manager, because it contained all of KDE within one application, inluding GUI application menus and the Desktop, which could be accessed in Konqueror by navigating to "~/Desktop" All the icons were there, and they were functional. Even better, I could create Desktop launchers in a hidden file, create a homepage of html links to the launchers, and use Konqueror as a custom interfaceto launch just about anything I wanted to launch.
All of that flexibilty has been disrupted, and I still don't see what is gained, other than these widget thingees. They look nice, but they don't add a single new function for all that I can see.
But I'm in the minority, or will be soon. KDE4 is here, lots of people love it, and I don't want to piss on anyone else's garden. No one else is supposed to care about my awesome homemade hybrid Desktop. As KDE4 gets more polished, I'm sure the complainers, holdouts and refugees will dwindle down to a tiny minority, but it looks more and more like I'm going to be in that group. I'm starting a KDE3 user's group on Facebook, we should get together, get over it, and support each other to assure that KDE 3 is viable for a long time.
I've installed every fucked-up beta release, and participated in every fucked-up forum discussion, I've obsessed about it, railed against it, and practiced compiling KDE3 in case I am forced to rely on my own devices. I hate and fear it, yet I really don't understand it, or know that much about where it is going. Thinking and complaining about KDE4 is making me sound like an annoying bitch, even to myself.
I hereby renounce all previous opinions on KDE4, and banish the words "KDE4" from my consciousness, until such time as "SID", the unstable version of Debian adopts it as the default KDE desktop.
To me, what seems to have been lost with KDE4 is the beautiful way KDE integrated with a Window manager. I created an awesome power desktop for myself by customizing fluxbox to run with Konqueror at the center. Konqueror used to contain all the elements of KDE in a single desktop application, including graphical application menus which I could further manipulate by editing my fluxbox files, and a functioning graphical recreation of the desktop in ~/Desktop.
But that's largely gone now. Konqueror has been weakened as a file manager, and those widgets don't show up in Konqueror ~/Desktop. In the end, these capabilitiles may be brought back, and there have been some nice improvements to some of the individual features, like the fact that konsole now says what it's running in the panel.
I have no idea what plasma is supposed to be. So no comment.
Basically, I hate KDE 4.1, more than KDE 4.0, but there are still a lot of ways that this could turn out all right for me.
I switched to Linux largely because using mice causes a lot of wrist problems for me. With Linux, I can do 90% of tasks from the keyboard, and moving to the mouse actually becomes a (somewhat) helpful break from typing. It would be more so if I didn't have to use Windows at work and get too much mouse time there. A supplemental touch screen would provide a third action, thus decreasing the strain on the muscles involved in mouse/keyboard use. However, I don't think that it would really be any better than the mouse from an ergonomic perspective. Might be better from a usability perspective, if someone redesigned my entire desktop with touchscreen / physical keyboard in mind. Still, I would prefer a redesign with keyboard only in mind, and maybe some touchscreen/mouse/stylus stuff tacked on for the unavoidable (image manipulation / gaming.)
One thing that's different is there's a keyboard in the way, so you'll have to reach a little farther. But I'm not entirely sold on the neck and upper back stuff, anyway. I wouldn't be surprised, and if you want me to volunteer for that experiment, you can pay me 300 dollars.
What bugs me is that my options for how to use the monitor dwindle down to one. I can't watch video with my friends anymore. I can't lie in bed on my side and read from the screen anymore. If I want to use two monitors at the same time, I need two tables. It's just so many kinds of ridiculous.
The mouse is comfortable, flexible, and cheap. mine cost seven dollars. Optical mouses are not new, but they are pretty awesome. I can lie in bed and use my sheets as a mousing surface, If it's cold, I can mouse under the covers. I can mouse from 12 feet away.
And another thing, no matter how precise the technology is, precision is inevitably limited by the size and shape of my finger, and the fact that I can't see through myself.
One thing I can promise you, I'm not buying one of these things, unless I start doing radically different things with the computer than I am doing now. I'll switch to the plain black unix console first.
I'm not saying that applications aren't going to be found for touchscreens, but the idea that the mouse will be obsolete in five years because of touchscreens is transparently ridicuous, and it has to make you wonder if these "experts" are really stupid, or mere PR stooges. How does something like this happen? Who paid for this?
I know lots of smart developers who have tried Linux and ported apps to it, just to expand their knowledge of the operating system and learn how to port stuff and to keep their skills up-to-date. But most of them fallback to Windows. The more pragmatic ones switch to OS X because it is just like a Unix OS, but with far greater usability.
At one point I kept a blog of all the troubles I had with using Linux. Most of the items were really simple things that made it very difficult to use. But often even constructive comments were met with disdain, so I gave up. No sense in complaining to a deaf audience.
This all comes back to the zealous Linux pragmatism where truly constructive criticism is turned into that with-us-or-against-us mentality.
You know, if I may offer you some constructive criticism, you really do sound like a dick. I'm not saying that you are a dick, but I can see where those around you may have been confused.
Here's the way it works: criticism of Linux is pretty much tolerated within the Linux community, not from without. In my favorite Linux Forum, I used to rail against Ubuntu, which happens to be what I'm using right now (turns out, I was wrong) People fiercely disagreed with me (turns out, they were right) but my sincerity was never questioned.
Next month it'll be two years since I switched. If I were to sum up my experience with Linux it would be like this: two years of unbelievable frustration, during which I went back to Windows several times, followed by four years and counting of the most fun I've ever had with my pants on, and the most important and empowering educational experience of my life, probably including my college degree. Every day I'm eight years old, and it's Christmas morning.
How do I convey that experience to another person? Is it better than Windows? Hell, yes! Is it for everyone? Hell, no!
I think the Linux community needs less evangelism and more education. Don't try to convert your parents, or anyone else who isn't curious. Go online, find someone who wants to learn and needs help, and help them.
And don't tell people they don't need the command line. Technically, it's true, but Linux without the command line sucks. It looks and feels like a cheap Windows knockoff. If you don't want to use the command line at all, you're not going to break that glass ceiling, so my best advice is don't bother. Migrating is too much of a hassle not to stop before you get to the good stuff.
The 21st Century command line isn't the unforgiving console of the 1980s. It's a versatile desktop tool. You don't have to give up your GUI, and you don't have to do everything that way.
He goes on to explain (do we know this is a male? I hate to assume) how technically it's a bad thing that Linux gets no viruses:
****You see, a virus needs to make certain assumptions about your platform. Certain libraries existing, with particular ABI's. Certain data being accessible through particular API's. In other words, a common set of core components that are available on every install of your system so that the virus's code can be small and compact and yet infect as many machines as possible.
Wait, this sounds familiar. Oh yea, that's right: real software needs that too. Why is there no proprietary software for Linux? because for all practical purposes DEPLOYMENT IS IMPOSSIBLE.****
Here's the link if you want to follow this logic further
http://linuxhaters.blogspot.com/2008/06/at-least-we-dont-have-any-viruses.html
Wait, if prorietary software is impossible, why does proprietary software exist? He's really repeating the old chest nut about how its' not worth a vendor's while to make rpm and deb packages, but he's worked out a rather convoluted way to use it denigrate the no viruses arguement. He's attacking Linux's strength. It's the Karl Rove treatment.
And, again, why does proprietary software for Linux exist if Deployment is impossible? Does the word impossible actually mean anything? When I mentioned in the comments that I had installed the same propietary Linux driver on five different distros, I was asked (by one of his fans) "Yes but how intuitive was it? That's what really matters."
So "impossible" has nothing to do with possibility, it has to do with intuitveness? I kept pressing on te fact that words mean something. I really thought I was making points. And I must have been right, because my posts have deleted out.
He's a charleton, and his adoring dittohead posters are the ultimate whiners. Typically they have tried Linux and failed with it, and they are too dull to accept it as a learning experience and not adult enough to accept responsibility for their own choices.
I'm not as knowledgable as some people, but I don't see a lot of genuine insight in these posts. I see over-abstractions, I see endless straw man arguments, and the posters are downright right morbid in their fascist conviction that an OS with a few percentage points of the desktop share is oppressing them.
There have been posts comparing Linux (or its users) to Hitler, and to a Rapist. There are creative slurs like "luser" and "Freetard" used exactly as a skinhead might use more traditional slurs like "faggot" and "nigger". If there is any insight in there, I for one don't need it that much. I don't subscribe to the idea of education through cyberbullying.-- blackbelt_jones
This is like the predictions from last year that 3D virtual reality was going to reshape the internet, and we'd be doing all our online shopping in 3D. It only took me about two minutes of dragging my avatar, Ms. JaneDoe Fonda, through a virtual shopping center to realize how cumbersome and inefficient this was.
And did anyone find any use for those rotating cubes that everybody was so mad for about a year ago? I'm thinking "no".
Now trace your finger diagonally across the screen once. Just once ought to do it. Notice how unnatural that feels comparared to the economy of motion the mouse facilitates. Just a little wrist action can span the screen. Plus you have more freedom of movement in relation to the screen. You don't have to be sitting so close.
Somebody wants somebody to invest in touch screens, so they hire analysts (named for where they keep their heads?) to back up their sales pitch. I'm seeing videos of touch screen demos of Windows 7 (Vista 2?) on You Tube. I'm guessing that as long as I'm willing to buy a mouse, someone will be willing to sell me one.
Slashdot Mirror
Look, here's my problem: Plasma creates a Colgate invisible shield between the Desktop and the filesystem. This disrupts opportunities for me, the user, to create my own Desktop, though it may create new opportunities that I haven't discovered yet.
In other words, back in the day, I could create a Desktop launcher in Konqueror and it would show up on the Desktop. I could create a launcher on the Desktop, and use it in Konqueror. This was great for moving back and forth between KDE and a window manager like fluxbox. Konqueror was great in a window manager, because it contained all of KDE within one application, inluding GUI application menus and the Desktop, which could be accessed in Konqueror by navigating to "~/Desktop" All the icons were there, and they were functional. Even better, I could create Desktop launchers in a hidden file, create a homepage of html links to the launchers, and use Konqueror as a custom interfaceto launch just about anything I wanted to launch.
All of that flexibilty has been disrupted, and I still don't see what is gained, other than these widget thingees. They look nice, but they don't add a single new function for all that I can see.
But I'm in the minority, or will be soon. KDE4 is here, lots of people love it, and I don't want to piss on anyone else's garden. No one else is supposed to care about my awesome homemade hybrid Desktop. As KDE4 gets more polished, I'm sure the complainers, holdouts and refugees will dwindle down to a tiny minority, but it looks more and more like I'm going to be in that group. I'm starting a KDE3 user's group on Facebook, we should get together, get over it, and support each other to assure that KDE 3 is viable for a long time.
I've installed every fucked-up beta release, and participated in every fucked-up forum discussion, I've obsessed about it, railed against it, and practiced compiling KDE3 in case I am forced to rely on my own devices. I hate and fear it, yet I really don't understand it, or know that much about where it is going. Thinking and complaining about KDE4 is making me sound like an annoying bitch, even to myself. I hereby renounce all previous opinions on KDE4, and banish the words "KDE4" from my consciousness, until such time as "SID", the unstable version of Debian adopts it as the default KDE desktop.
Wow, check out my scores! I suck!
To me, what seems to have been lost with KDE4 is the beautiful way KDE integrated with a Window manager. I created an awesome power desktop for myself by customizing fluxbox to run with Konqueror at the center. Konqueror used to contain all the elements of KDE in a single desktop application, including graphical application menus which I could further manipulate by editing my fluxbox files, and a functioning graphical recreation of the desktop in ~/Desktop. But that's largely gone now. Konqueror has been weakened as a file manager, and those widgets don't show up in Konqueror ~/Desktop. In the end, these capabilitiles may be brought back, and there have been some nice improvements to some of the individual features, like the fact that konsole now says what it's running in the panel. I have no idea what plasma is supposed to be. So no comment. Basically, I hate KDE 4.1, more than KDE 4.0, but there are still a lot of ways that this could turn out all right for me.
I thought I was being amusing. Shit.
heh.
I switched to Linux largely because using mice causes a lot of wrist problems for me. With Linux, I can do 90% of tasks from the keyboard, and moving to the mouse actually becomes a (somewhat) helpful break from typing. It would be more so if I didn't have to use Windows at work and get too much mouse time there. A supplemental touch screen would provide a third action, thus decreasing the strain on the muscles involved in mouse/keyboard use. However, I don't think that it would really be any better than the mouse from an ergonomic perspective. Might be better from a usability perspective, if someone redesigned my entire desktop with touchscreen / physical keyboard in mind. Still, I would prefer a redesign with keyboard only in mind, and maybe some touchscreen/mouse/stylus stuff tacked on for the unavoidable (image manipulation / gaming.)
Hey, do you fluxbox? Awesome Keybinding options!
One thing that's different is there's a keyboard in the way, so you'll have to reach a little farther. But I'm not entirely sold on the neck and upper back stuff, anyway. I wouldn't be surprised, and if you want me to volunteer for that experiment, you can pay me 300 dollars. What bugs me is that my options for how to use the monitor dwindle down to one. I can't watch video with my friends anymore. I can't lie in bed on my side and read from the screen anymore. If I want to use two monitors at the same time, I need two tables. It's just so many kinds of ridiculous. The mouse is comfortable, flexible, and cheap. mine cost seven dollars. Optical mouses are not new, but they are pretty awesome. I can lie in bed and use my sheets as a mousing surface, If it's cold, I can mouse under the covers. I can mouse from 12 feet away. And another thing, no matter how precise the technology is, precision is inevitably limited by the size and shape of my finger, and the fact that I can't see through myself. One thing I can promise you, I'm not buying one of these things, unless I start doing radically different things with the computer than I am doing now. I'll switch to the plain black unix console first. I'm not saying that applications aren't going to be found for touchscreens, but the idea that the mouse will be obsolete in five years because of touchscreens is transparently ridicuous, and it has to make you wonder if these "experts" are really stupid, or mere PR stooges. How does something like this happen? Who paid for this?
I know lots of smart developers who have tried Linux and ported apps to it, just to expand their knowledge of the operating system and learn how to port stuff and to keep their skills up-to-date. But most of them fallback to Windows. The more pragmatic ones switch to OS X because it is just like a Unix OS, but with far greater usability.
At one point I kept a blog of all the troubles I had with using Linux. Most of the items were really simple things that made it very difficult to use. But often even constructive comments were met with disdain, so I gave up. No sense in complaining to a deaf audience.
This all comes back to the zealous Linux pragmatism where truly constructive criticism is turned into that with-us-or-against-us mentality.
You know, if I may offer you some constructive criticism, you really do sound like a dick. I'm not saying that you are a dick, but I can see where those around you may have been confused.
Here's the way it works: criticism of Linux is pretty much tolerated within the Linux community, not from without. In my favorite Linux Forum, I used to rail against Ubuntu, which happens to be what I'm using right now (turns out, I was wrong) People fiercely disagreed with me (turns out, they were right) but my sincerity was never questioned.
Next month it'll be two years since I switched. If I were to sum up my experience with Linux it would be like this: two years of unbelievable frustration, during which I went back to Windows several times, followed by four years and counting of the most fun I've ever had with my pants on, and the most important and empowering educational experience of my life, probably including my college degree. Every day I'm eight years old, and it's Christmas morning.
How do I convey that experience to another person? Is it better than Windows? Hell, yes! Is it for everyone? Hell, no!
I think the Linux community needs less evangelism and more education. Don't try to convert your parents, or anyone else who isn't curious. Go online, find someone who wants to learn and needs help, and help them.
And don't tell people they don't need the command line. Technically, it's true, but Linux without the command line sucks. It looks and feels like a cheap Windows knockoff. If you don't want to use the command line at all, you're not going to break that glass ceiling, so my best advice is don't bother. Migrating is too much of a hassle not to stop before you get to the good stuff.
The 21st Century command line isn't the unforgiving console of the 1980s. It's a versatile desktop tool. You don't have to give up your GUI, and you don't have to do everything that way.
I want him to die slooooow!
He goes on to explain (do we know this is a male? I hate to assume) how technically it's a bad thing that Linux gets no viruses: ****You see, a virus needs to make certain assumptions about your platform. Certain libraries existing, with particular ABI's. Certain data being accessible through particular API's. In other words, a common set of core components that are available on every install of your system so that the virus's code can be small and compact and yet infect as many machines as possible. Wait, this sounds familiar. Oh yea, that's right: real software needs that too. Why is there no proprietary software for Linux? because for all practical purposes DEPLOYMENT IS IMPOSSIBLE.**** Here's the link if you want to follow this logic further http://linuxhaters.blogspot.com/2008/06/at-least-we-dont-have-any-viruses.html Wait, if prorietary software is impossible, why does proprietary software exist? He's really repeating the old chest nut about how its' not worth a vendor's while to make rpm and deb packages, but he's worked out a rather convoluted way to use it denigrate the no viruses arguement. He's attacking Linux's strength. It's the Karl Rove treatment. And, again, why does proprietary software for Linux exist if Deployment is impossible? Does the word impossible actually mean anything? When I mentioned in the comments that I had installed the same propietary Linux driver on five different distros, I was asked (by one of his fans) "Yes but how intuitive was it? That's what really matters." So "impossible" has nothing to do with possibility, it has to do with intuitveness? I kept pressing on te fact that words mean something. I really thought I was making points. And I must have been right, because my posts have deleted out. He's a charleton, and his adoring dittohead posters are the ultimate whiners. Typically they have tried Linux and failed with it, and they are too dull to accept it as a learning experience and not adult enough to accept responsibility for their own choices. I'm not as knowledgable as some people, but I don't see a lot of genuine insight in these posts. I see over-abstractions, I see endless straw man arguments, and the posters are downright right morbid in their fascist conviction that an OS with a few percentage points of the desktop share is oppressing them. There have been posts comparing Linux (or its users) to Hitler, and to a Rapist. There are creative slurs like "luser" and "Freetard" used exactly as a skinhead might use more traditional slurs like "faggot" and "nigger". If there is any insight in there, I for one don't need it that much. I don't subscribe to the idea of education through cyberbullying.-- blackbelt_jones
This is like the predictions from last year that 3D virtual reality was going to reshape the internet, and we'd be doing all our online shopping in 3D. It only took me about two minutes of dragging my avatar, Ms. JaneDoe Fonda, through a virtual shopping center to realize how cumbersome and inefficient this was. And did anyone find any use for those rotating cubes that everybody was so mad for about a year ago? I'm thinking "no". Now trace your finger diagonally across the screen once. Just once ought to do it. Notice how unnatural that feels comparared to the economy of motion the mouse facilitates. Just a little wrist action can span the screen. Plus you have more freedom of movement in relation to the screen. You don't have to be sitting so close. Somebody wants somebody to invest in touch screens, so they hire analysts (named for where they keep their heads?) to back up their sales pitch. I'm seeing videos of touch screen demos of Windows 7 (Vista 2?) on You Tube. I'm guessing that as long as I'm willing to buy a mouse, someone will be willing to sell me one.