Whether GNOME or KDE wins the "desktop war" (ie. which one will be used by the majority of the Linux users) has little to do with the license.
The one who wins is the one who makes the best desktop.
What is absolute most important thing that makes the best desktop? - The apps!
Most people doesn't give a damn about whether the license is QPL or GPL - they just want the best applications, and if that is what KDE gives them, then they will choose KDE.
Well until now it has been that way. KDE has been used in most distributions as the default desktop, simply because KDE has been much more stable (than GNOME) and it has generally been more mature.
The latest Helix GNOME changes a lot of that (IMNSHO: It's pretty cool) - but lets see what happens when KDE2 comes along later this year (September) - it looks pretty good.
A company called Adomo is making what I think could be the "next generation home computer network".
It will be client/server and wireless network, where all software and data is located. The clients can be everything you could imagine, a normal PC, a music player (the music is located on the server as MP3), a terminal (just for browsing and email, etc.
It is all based on Linux an other open stuff, and you are therefore free to make your own clients for whatever you would like.
My description is probably not very good, but ZDNet has a very god article here.
XFMail sounds cool, but it pretty ugly imho. Maybe I'll just use Netscape's email app. It supports Palm too, I think...
And yes, #4 was supposed to say "shouldn't cause...".
Mandrake is cool - I'm running Mandrake 7.1beta with ReiserFS. The only problem I had with it was XFree 4.0 - it crashed the install (but hey - it is a beta...). They have updated the installer, so the small issues there were with the installer in Mandrake 7.0, is gone.
I'll probably get flames for this, but here it goes...
My situation is this:
I'm in the process of switching from Windows to Linux (at least on my home computer). Right now I'm seaching for programs that can replace my existing applications or to say it better, fulfil my needs.
My needs are not very different than what most other users want (and it should be GUI apps):
1. A browser. 2. Something for handling email, contacts, notes and todo's (preferably with support for my Palm). 3. An office suite, especially wordprocessing is critical. 4. All the other stuff (player for various audio/video formats, filemanager, etc.)
#1 Doesn't exist yet, Netscape is ugly and the fonts are to small. Mozilla is looking good, but it is not stable enough yet. Konquerer looks pretty cool too, but I haven't tried it yet (but I am going to try the KDE2 betas soon).
#2 Exist, but I haven't researched it much yet. Input is very welcome.
#3 Exist, Staroffice comes to mind, but also the upcomming KOffice sounds cool, and of course there is Abiword, Gnumeric and others.
#4 Does exist, and should cause much troubly generally.
I've just installed Gnome 1.2.0. Here is my take:
The install was absolutely smooth - very cool. It looks cool and gives you a very clean desktop - much nicer than the latest KDE (version 1.1.2), but KDE2 is, OTOH, on it's way. It should be easier to install an internet connection. The start menu has to be "slower" - maybe it is just me, but I easily end up on the desktop, because I didn't guide my mouse properly (it should be easy to fix though). The control center is pretty cool, but it should only be neccesary to hit "OK" once, even if you make multible changes.
It is a "work in progress", and therefore not stable enough. With stable I mean that *all* the applications should work "out of the box". The "Slashdot applet" and the XMMS' playlist doesn't - before releasing it, they should at least check that all works! Futhermore various other apps has been crashing on me - it shouldn't when you install a total fresh Desktop Environment.
Overall Gnome 1.2.0 is a major leap forward, but it still needs some maturity, which is why I think most distributions uses KDE. It simply is generally more mature and gives the users a better overall experience.
It all fine that the kernel is rock solid, but if the desktop environment or the apps crashes all the time, then what do Windows users gain? I want it all rock solid - not just the kernel.
Konqueror looks like a really cool browser!
on
KDE 1.90 (2.0 Beta)
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· Score: 1
Take a look at what Konqueror supports:
- HTML 4.0 - JavaScriptTM - Java® - CSS-2 - SSL (Secure Socket Layer for secure communications) - Netscape Communicator® plugins (for viewing FlashTM, RealAudioTM, RealVideoTM and similar technologies)
IMHO, that is *pretty cool*
Re:Have they made it more light weight???
on
KDE 1.90 (2.0 Beta)
·
· Score: 1
According to one of the core developers, KDE 2 will with the default installation not demand more of your PC than KDE 1.xx.
Furthermore KDE 2 is extremely modular, which means that you can configure it to be pretty lightweight.
The upcomming KOffice (http://koffice.kde.org/) which is going to be released together with KDE 2.0 sometime this summer, is using XML as documentformat!
I don't think that comment is entirely fair. If you look at Mandrake 6.2 versus Mandrake 7.0, there are some really big differences.
I know Linux 2.4 kernel, Xfree 4.0 and other stuff isn't there, but instead there are:
- DrakX: Their graphical installation program. - DiskDrake: Their graphical patitioning program. - DrakConf: Their graphical configuring program.
Those are some pretty huge improvements over version 6.2 - whether they are enough for a jump to 7.0 can be discussed, but I think they are more than a jump to ex. 6.3!
I have asked RIAA in Denmark about what was legal, and what wasn't.
They practically said that copying is illegal on every digital media *because* it is a digital copy and therefore is a bit for bit copy (and will not decrease in quality). Included in this is also minidisc!
Sony and others will gladly sell me a relative expensive minidisc recorder, and at the same time they say that it is illegal to use it to take a copy of the music I bought from them!
It is only analog recordings on tape cassettes etc. which is legal (because the quality is decreasing every you play the tape).
The "problem" is that Minidisc isn't a bit for bit copy - actually minidisc cuts about 70% (or something like that) away.
It the same for MP3 - it cut a lot of details away.
Furthermore, you can make analog copies to both minidisc and onto your harddrive, then it is deffinately not a bit for bit copy.
That I used as arguments in my answer back to RIAA (named KODA in Denmark), but I didn't get an answer, allthough they asked me to reply if I had futher questions...
As long as they make it available under the GPL, I fail to see anything seriosly bad is going to happen because of this.
Maybe it is overkill to create their own distribution (and what's with that name - it has got to be the most wierd name for a Linux distro yet!), but hey we get more drivers.
What we maybe need is a central place for drivers, where hardware producers (and all the other people in the community which make drivers) can submit their drivers for Linux. They would then be sure that all distributions would get them and, if the driver is working as it should, include it in their next distribution. Furthermore, users would have a single place to go for updated drivers.
Sadly, I think it would be extremely hard to get something like that up and running, but it sure would be great.
It would be nice if they would make some kind of standard printer driver. Right now there are multible projects like this one!
One example is SUSE and Minolta, which have teamed up to create drivers for Minolta's printers etc. (http://www.suse.com/PressReleases/minoltapr.html)
I hope they will cooporate (HP, Minolta, Canon, etc.), instead of developing each their standard. Nobody will benefit from that.
Hopefully, because it is Open Source and available at SourceForge, the companies will see the advantage in joining this project and not create their own.
"To do it right this should really be a separate non-profit, but it could start out as an internal project at some large company."
The greatest thing would be if IBM, Intel, Redhat, Suse, Caldera, VA Linux etc. could get together, create and sponsor such a thing - it would be very nice, and everyone would benefit from it.
I can't see why it shouldn't be used for keybords and the likes too?
Just because it is fast, it should also be possible to use it for slower devices.
It would IMHO be nice to have one *very fast* bus for all your devices, so you all you devices can be connected in the same way. It would be much more convinient.
Of course the fast devices should not be slowed down by the slower devices...
RDRAM will NOT make your PC go much faster - sad but true! Maybe it will go a little bit faster but definately not more than you will feel from going from a 200Mhz - 550Mhz!
AGP is not a significant bottleneck as long as your video card has enough onboard RAM, and todays cards has 32MB and the next generation will have 64MB! It's quite enough, and futhermore, more and more games (which are the ones that use all this memory) will use texture compression, which will make the demand even smaller.
RDRAM has a huge bandwith, *but* it's latency "stinks" - it is worse than all the other kinds of memory, and often it is better to have memory with a lower latency than a higher bandwith. It's sad but the producents of memory hasn't been able to make memory with lower latency - the latency has been going down with a very slow rate:-(
The main thing to faster speed is to have enough RAM - there is a major difference between having to swap to the harddisk and having enough RAM and therefore not use a swapfile!
You're right about the harddisks - they have to be faster - much faster, they are the bottleneck right now.
Now, I don't know much about laws, but aren't they supposed to be good for the generel people, and as such also is sort of common sense?
Can't that be a reason to why it is easier for techies to comment on laws than for lawyers to comment on tech?
Besides that, (AFAIK) you Americans have a very special "thing" with lawyers - every second American citisen is a lawyer - you sue each other for basically everything (or so it seems overhere in Europe/Denmark). But maybe that is just the media that makes it look that way?
I completely agree with you on that, but generally the motherboards for the Athlon are not as good and stable as those for Intel CPU's - that include the ASUS motherboard.
That is what I've read on several hardware test sites (including Anandtech and Toms Hardware page).
Hopefully they will get better, because the Athlon kicks some serious ass!
Maybe the Viper 770 isn't the best card, but the cards are so cheap anyway, and it is a 21" monitor it is going to be used with, so he needs a card that can handle high resolutions in 2D.
I would suggest a Matrox G400 or something like that - it's got a much better picture quality when you move up to the high resolutions.
IMHO they shouldn't go for Atlon's, simply because there aren't good enough motherboards yet. The Intel platform er generally more supported end stable.
I don't have anything against AMD or their Athlon CPU, it is a great CPU, which kicks Intels ass! But right now the motherboards just ain't good enough, which is pretty sad!
"What does the average consumer want? A cheap, easy-to-set-up all-in-one word processor/game console/internet application."
You're right about that, but I think you are forgetting one thing - your television isn't very good when it comes to surfing the internet or for wordprocessing - the resolution simply isn't good enough - for this to happen, HDTV is needed...
Slashdot Mirror
>Want KDE to win? Make Qt free. Game over.
IMHO - not so!
Whether GNOME or KDE wins the "desktop war" (ie. which one will be used by the majority of the Linux users) has little to do with the license.
The one who wins is the one who makes the best desktop.
What is absolute most important thing that makes the best desktop? - The apps!
Most people doesn't give a damn about whether the license is QPL or GPL - they just want the best applications, and if that is what KDE gives them, then they will choose KDE.
Well until now it has been that way. KDE has been used in most distributions as the default desktop, simply because KDE has been much more stable (than GNOME) and it has generally been more mature.
The latest Helix GNOME changes a lot of that (IMNSHO: It's pretty cool) - but lets see what happens when KDE2 comes along later this year (September) - it looks pretty good.
A company called Adomo is making what I think could be the "next generation home computer network".
It will be client/server and wireless network, where all software and data is located. The clients can be everything you could imagine, a normal PC, a music player (the music is located on the server as MP3), a terminal (just for browsing and email, etc.
It is all based on Linux an other open stuff, and you are therefore free to make your own clients for whatever you would like.
My description is probably not very good, but ZDNet has a very god article here.
With Mozilla M16 just out the door, does anybody know how far KHTML are in development?
According to the press release, it supports nearly everything you could ever imagine. But is it all implemented, or is it kind of a "wishlist"?
What isn't yet working?
Thanks for the Netscape hint - I'll try that.
XFMail sounds cool, but it pretty ugly imho. Maybe I'll just use Netscape's email app. It supports Palm too, I think...
And yes, #4 was supposed to say "shouldn't cause...".
Mandrake is cool - I'm running Mandrake 7.1beta with ReiserFS. The only problem I had with it was XFree 4.0 - it crashed the install (but hey - it is a beta...).
They have updated the installer, so the small issues there were with the installer in Mandrake 7.0, is gone.
Allthough I use Google mostly, it is not the fastest engine around, that has got to be Fast (http://www.alltheweb.com)!
It is so damn fast, that it just keeps amazing me.
If you haven't tried it - you should!
Here is an example on a seach for "linux":
"3810249 documents found - 0.0051 seconds search time".
I'll probably get flames for this, but here it goes...
My situation is this:
I'm in the process of switching from Windows to Linux (at least on my home computer). Right now I'm seaching for programs that can replace my existing applications or to say it better, fulfil my needs.
My needs are not very different than what most other users want (and it should be GUI apps):
1. A browser.
2. Something for handling email, contacts, notes and todo's (preferably with support for my Palm).
3. An office suite, especially wordprocessing is critical.
4. All the other stuff (player for various audio/video formats, filemanager, etc.)
#1 Doesn't exist yet, Netscape is ugly and the fonts are to small.
Mozilla is looking good, but it is not stable enough yet.
Konquerer looks pretty cool too, but I haven't tried it yet (but I am going to try the KDE2 betas soon).
#2 Exist, but I haven't researched it much yet. Input is very welcome.
#3 Exist, Staroffice comes to mind, but also the upcomming KOffice sounds cool, and of course there is Abiword, Gnumeric and others.
#4 Does exist, and should cause much troubly generally.
I've just installed Gnome 1.2.0. Here is my take:
The install was absolutely smooth - very cool.
It looks cool and gives you a very clean desktop - much nicer than the latest KDE (version 1.1.2), but KDE2 is, OTOH, on it's way.
It should be easier to install an internet connection.
The start menu has to be "slower" - maybe it is just me, but I easily end up on the desktop, because I didn't guide my mouse properly (it should be easy to fix though).
The control center is pretty cool, but it should only be neccesary to hit "OK" once, even if you make multible changes.
It is a "work in progress", and therefore not stable enough. With stable I mean that *all* the applications should work "out of the box". The "Slashdot applet" and the XMMS' playlist doesn't - before releasing it, they should at least check that all works!
Futhermore various other apps has been crashing on me - it shouldn't when you install a total fresh Desktop Environment.
Overall Gnome 1.2.0 is a major leap forward, but it still needs some maturity, which is why I think most distributions uses KDE. It simply is generally more mature and gives the users a better overall experience.
It all fine that the kernel is rock solid, but if the desktop environment or the apps crashes all the time, then what do Windows users gain?
I want it all rock solid - not just the kernel.
Take a look at what Konqueror supports:
- HTML 4.0
- JavaScriptTM
- Java®
- CSS-2
- SSL (Secure Socket Layer for secure communications)
- Netscape Communicator® plugins (for viewing FlashTM, RealAudioTM, RealVideoTM and similar technologies)
IMHO, that is *pretty cool*
According to one of the core developers, KDE 2 will with the default installation not demand more of your PC than KDE 1.xx.
Furthermore KDE 2 is extremely modular, which means that you can configure it to be pretty lightweight.
I've tried that sort of game (I don't know if it was the one you refer to) - it shows pretty clearly how bad you're driving when drunk...
The upcomming KOffice (http://koffice.kde.org/) which is going to be released together with KDE 2.0 sometime this summer, is using XML as documentformat!
I don't think that comment is entirely fair. If you look at Mandrake 6.2 versus Mandrake 7.0, there are some really big differences.
I know Linux 2.4 kernel, Xfree 4.0 and other stuff isn't there, but instead there are:
- DrakX: Their graphical installation program.
- DiskDrake: Their graphical patitioning program.
- DrakConf: Their graphical configuring program.
Those are some pretty huge improvements over version 6.2 - whether they are enough for a jump to 7.0 can be discussed, but I think they are more than a jump to ex. 6.3!
I have asked RIAA in Denmark about what was legal, and what wasn't.
They practically said that copying is illegal on every digital media *because* it is a digital copy and therefore is a bit for bit copy (and will not decrease in quality). Included in this is also minidisc!
Sony and others will gladly sell me a relative expensive minidisc recorder, and at the same time they say that it is illegal to use it to take a copy of the music I bought from them!
It is only analog recordings on tape cassettes etc. which is legal (because the quality is decreasing every you play the tape).
The "problem" is that Minidisc isn't a bit for bit copy - actually minidisc cuts about 70% (or something like that) away.
It the same for MP3 - it cut a lot of details away.
Furthermore, you can make analog copies to both minidisc and onto your harddrive, then it is deffinately not a bit for bit copy.
That I used as arguments in my answer back to RIAA (named KODA in Denmark), but I didn't get an answer, allthough they asked me to reply if I had futher questions...
As long as they make it available under the GPL, I fail to see anything seriosly bad is going to happen because of this.
Maybe it is overkill to create their own distribution (and what's with that name - it has got to be the most wierd name for a Linux distro yet!), but hey we get more drivers.
What we maybe need is a central place for drivers, where hardware producers (and all the other people in the community which make drivers) can submit their drivers for Linux.
They would then be sure that all distributions would get them and, if the driver is working as it should, include it in their next distribution. Furthermore, users would have a single place to go for updated drivers.
Sadly, I think it would be extremely hard to get something like that up and running, but it sure would be great.
Or does something like that already exist?
It would be nice if they would make some kind of standard printer driver. Right now there are multible projects like this one!
)
One example is SUSE and Minolta, which have teamed up to create drivers for Minolta's printers etc. (http://www.suse.com/PressReleases/minoltapr.html
I hope they will cooporate (HP, Minolta, Canon, etc.), instead of developing each their standard.
Nobody will benefit from that.
Hopefully, because it is Open Source and available at SourceForge, the companies will see the advantage in joining this project and not create their own.
"To do it right this should really be a separate non-profit, but it could start out as an internal project at some large company."
The greatest thing would be if IBM, Intel, Redhat, Suse, Caldera, VA Linux etc. could get together, create and sponsor such a thing - it would be very nice, and everyone would benefit from it.
OEM's (Compaq, Dell, etc.) has got the final build since sometime in December and will roll out PC's with Win2k installed on 24. January...
I can't see why it shouldn't be used for keybords and the likes too?
Just because it is fast, it should also be possible to use it for slower devices.
It would IMHO be nice to have one *very fast* bus for all your devices, so you all you devices can be connected in the same way. It would be much more convinient.
Of course the fast devices should not be slowed down by the slower devices...
Isn't that what USB 2.0 is supposed to do?
Well, sorry about that misinformation - blame The Register.
I didn't look at Compaq's homepage, because I don't like their desktops PC's, but they are a major player anyway.
Besides, just the fact that they are supporting Firewire, is a good sign IHMO.
Compaq is going with AMD too - both on their desktops and on their laptops!
Futhermore they are using Firewire instead of USB.
This could be a serious boost for Firewire!
The story is here:
http://www.theregister.co.uk/000103-000001.html
RDRAM will NOT make your PC go much faster - sad but true! Maybe it will go a little bit faster but definately not more than you will feel from going from a 200Mhz - 550Mhz!
:-(
AGP is not a significant bottleneck as long as your video card has enough onboard RAM, and todays cards has 32MB and the next generation will have 64MB! It's quite enough, and futhermore, more and more games (which are the ones that use all this memory) will use texture compression, which will make the demand even smaller.
RDRAM has a huge bandwith, *but* it's latency "stinks" - it is worse than all the other kinds of memory, and often it is better to have memory with a lower latency than a higher bandwith.
It's sad but the producents of memory hasn't been able to make memory with lower latency - the latency has been going down with a very slow rate
The main thing to faster speed is to have enough RAM - there is a major difference between having to swap to the harddisk and having enough RAM and therefore not use a swapfile!
You're right about the harddisks - they have to be faster - much faster, they are the bottleneck right now.
Now, I don't know much about laws, but aren't they supposed to be good for the generel people, and as such also is sort of common sense?
Can't that be a reason to why it is easier for techies to comment on laws than for lawyers to comment on tech?
Besides that, (AFAIK) you Americans have a very special "thing" with lawyers - every second American citisen is a lawyer - you sue each other for basically everything (or so it seems overhere in Europe/Denmark).
But maybe that is just the media that makes it look that way?
I completely agree with you on that, but generally the motherboards for the Athlon are not as good and stable as those for Intel CPU's - that include the ASUS motherboard.
That is what I've read on several hardware test sites (including Anandtech and Toms Hardware page).
Hopefully they will get better, because the Athlon kicks some serious ass!
Maybe the Viper 770 isn't the best card, but the cards are so cheap anyway, and it is a 21" monitor it is going to be used with, so he needs a card that can handle high resolutions in 2D.
I would suggest a Matrox G400 or something like that - it's got a much better picture quality when you move up to the high resolutions.
IMHO they shouldn't go for Atlon's, simply because there aren't good enough motherboards yet. The Intel platform er generally more supported end stable.
I don't have anything against AMD or their Athlon CPU, it is a great CPU, which kicks Intels ass!
But right now the motherboards just ain't good enough, which is pretty sad!
"What does the average consumer want? A cheap, easy-to-set-up all-in-one word processor/game console/internet application."
You're right about that, but I think you are forgetting one thing - your television isn't very good when it comes to surfing the internet or for wordprocessing - the resolution simply isn't good enough - for this to happen, HDTV is needed...