I wish this article had discussed tradeoffs; for a fileserver, how much processor, memory, etc. do you need to do the job well and how much is waste (like the 3d card).
Of course, I'm using NFS so their answers might not have been too helpful.
What do you think would have happened to Java if Sun hadn't controlled it? It would have fragmented like C/C++ into a hundred dialects with a thousand extensions. Instead you can compile java into bytecode and run that on IBM's VM, HP's VM, Apples VM, Sun's VM. That is why Java is one of the most widely used languages in the history of computing.
...that most Merill Lynch analysts were yelling "buy! buy!" in 2000.
That said, I think Sun is already dead. Two billion in cash is all that is keeping the corpse from rotting.
Re:Still major usability issues...
on
Gnome 2.4 Release(d)
·
· Score: 2, Informative
KDE 3.2 has improved their "mac-style" menubar in CVS. You can now have a top panel with a menubar applet, allowing you to mix the application menubar in with system components (workspace pager, window list, etc.) so that you can get pretty close to the Mac interface.
It works great on the medium thickness carpet (as well as the wood and tile) in my home. Cleaning carpet seems to hit the battery harder than cleaning wood, so you can pretty much only get one large and one small room on a charge.
On any surface, it doesn't replace a once every few months hand cleaning with a regular vacuum, but for a once or twice a week cleaning, it really does work.
Barry DiGregorio wrote a great book discussing alternate ways to interpret the Viking results, "Mars the living planet". It presents the pro-mars-life view very clearly along with the lame NASA politics around which was formed the official declaration that Mars has no life.
If there ever was a open source project in need of a fork, it's this one. Without Keith's work over the last few years feature wise it would be utterly frozen somewhere in the 1980s, rather than sluggishly creeping forward through the 1990s.
That is my concern with KDE's licensing - that KDE may be forcing the larger developer community away through its use of Qt.
I'm a commercial developer and $3K is noise (my managers don't even notice when I renew my Qt licenses).
I agree with you that it hurts KDE big time, but only with the corporations jumping into the Linux world. Sun, HP, RedHat, and all the giant GNOME boosters don't want those costs in the free beer software future. Perhaps also because of fear that somehow TT will be in a MS like position someday - they won't get burned again.
You can evaluate the documentation for yourself - TT has it online. It is lightyears better than what Gtk (or MFC for that matter) has.
and to everyone else (except, apparently, you) they're equally free
You are misinformed. According to the stated philosophy of _their_own_ organization (the FSF) and the overall project (GNU) of which they are a part, they *are* less free. The L in LGPL stands for lesser.
From the GNU website, arguing why not to use the LGPL Proprietary software developers, seeking to deny the free competition an important advantage, will try to convince authors not to contribute libraries to the GPL-covered collection. For example, they may appeal to the ego, promising "more users for this library" if we let them use the code in proprietary software products. Popularity is tempting, and it is easy for a library developer to rationalize the idea that boosting the popularity of that one library is what the community needs above all.
"Proprietary software developers" == Funders of the GNOME foundation
I don't have a problem with their license, just their hypocrisy.
Do you want people to just give up GTK/GNOME coding?
No - I find it ironic that first GNOME was touted as better because it was more free than KDE, now it is touted as better because it is less (LGPL == Lesser GPL) free.
Some people want gnome because it makes sense license-wise (Red Hat and Sun seem to be concerned about *this* particular issue).
Considering why GNOME started, isn't it ironic that now KDE/Qt (GPL) is _too_ free for the GNOME partisans who became so addicted to corporate bucks they changed their license to LGPL?
Not that there's anything wrong with that, of course...
The KDE vs Gnome flamewar was started, battled in, and lost by the same people who bash emacs vs vi or linux vs windows : users. The Gnome developpers and project leaders never tried to "kill" KDE AFAIK
You don't know much then. Miguel personally (and he wasn't the only GNOME leader to do so) waged a personal campaign on mailling lists and IRC for _months_ calling KDE "eeeevvvvillll" along with spreading license and technical FUD.
Good point - and one that was really important to me on a project where I had do do some significant widget subclassing. It's nearly impossible without reading the Gtk and GtkMM code, something I didn't have to do with Qt.
This is another heavy burden GNOME developers have to carry that KDE developers don't.
You're forgetting a few things, like C is far, far easier to use than C++. I must have learnt ten languages in my lifetime, most of them object oriented, but I still don't know C++. It scares me. I can normally read a language I don't know and figure out what's going on with a bit of effort. C++ eludes me. It's a mess.
If I had tried to learn and use _all_ the features of C++ at once, I might have felt the same. No one forces the use of MI, generics, operator overloading, or templates (typical concerns for people on the learning curve). You can (as I did) start out by just using C++ as a better C with OO features. You won't find all the stuff in Bjarne's books in QT or KDE (and certainly not in my code). Sometimes I see a place where the fringe stuff offers value, so it'll sneak in here and there.
Unfortunately, KDE is still highly C++ centric.
Great! I hope it continues! Pick the best core language (C++) and the best scripting language (Python) and go get it done. I don't see GNOME benefiting (other than better performance with older compilers) at all from either it's C foundation or being language-agnostic (are there any core GNOME apps written in something other than C?).
But KDE benefits a lot from uniformity and building everthing off the same base without catering to every tool and language fad. Look at all the garbage (and weird social engineering hoops GNOME will have to jump through to fix it) in the GNOME baseline http://www.gnome.org/%7Echrisime/random/ui/. KDE has virtually none of that stuff because it offers developers a single best way to do things.
GTKmm/GNOMEmm bindings are more C++ish than the KDE code is. For instance, you don't need a preprocessor to do signals, and you use the STL a lot more.
I've worked with them, and they don't suck at all. I agree with the preprocessor comment, and I sure wish STL was used in Qt (they don't conflict, though). But, there is _no_ comparison to Qt and the KDE frameworks - none. IMHO, of course, but I've built several things with both.
>My guess is that, at some level, Qt really is better than GTK. I don't know if it's C vs. C++, or KParts vs. Corba, Glade vs. KDevelop
Bingo. I've worked with both on different projects over the last five years and there's no comparison - a (non-trivial) KDE app is much easier. Also, the way the framework and dev tools are designed, you have to work at it to write an app that isn't consistent with KDE environment standards. Not the case with GNOME.
Also, C++ is a much more natural fit for gui app development than C. Yeah, you can make a C library look somewhat OO, but if you've got C++ coding skills, why try to make a pig fly?
The language and framework baggage that the GNOME developers are saddled with make them work twice as hard to achieve the same thing. Thus, less time available to make things polished, bug-free, etc. Maybe this is why the GNOME leadership is pushing the super-stripped newbie desktop direction.
Yes, these are all my subjective opinions, but I've seen them played out over and over throughout the last several years of KDE and GNOME releases. Better performance (and art pre KDE 3.1) for GNOME, better consistency and integration on KDE. And every release of GNOME, more promises that the latest set of brainfarts will be fixed in the next release.
Slashdot Mirror
I wish this article had discussed tradeoffs; for a fileserver, how much processor, memory, etc. do you need to do the job well and how much is waste (like the 3d card).
Of course, I'm using NFS so their answers might not have been too helpful.
Bye, bye KDE... Ximian is going to decimate SUSE now.
Yep. Betamax, it's time to meet VHS.
What do you think would have happened to Java if Sun hadn't controlled it? It would have fragmented like C/C++ into a hundred dialects with a thousand extensions. Instead you can compile java into bytecode and run that on IBM's VM, HP's VM, Apples VM, Sun's VM. That is why Java is one of the most widely used languages in the history of computing.
Put the crack pipe down while you still can.
...that most Merill Lynch analysts were yelling "buy! buy!" in 2000.
That said, I think Sun is already dead. Two billion in cash is all that is keeping the corpse from rotting.
KDE 3.2 has improved their "mac-style" menubar in CVS. You can now have a top panel with a menubar applet, allowing you to mix the application menubar in with system components (workspace pager, window list, etc.) so that you can get pretty close to the Mac interface.
It works great on the medium thickness carpet (as well as the wood and tile) in my home. Cleaning carpet seems to hit the battery harder than cleaning wood, so you can pretty much only get one large and one small room on a charge.
On any surface, it doesn't replace a once every few months hand cleaning with a regular vacuum, but for a once or twice a week cleaning, it really does work.
First he was responsible for the Decipher "book review" (where the reviewer gave away the whole story) and now this completely incorrect article.
Isn't anybody in the Slashdot ruling class paying attention to this crap!?!?!?
"Timothy" is the same slashdot editor that posted the "Decipher" book review that turned out to be a lame retelling of the book, ending and all.
Why should Karamba be any different? The whole point of the GNOME project is to deliver a C language version of KDE functionality about a year later.
The idiots that wrote and published this should be forced to use Windows 3.1 on a 386 for a year.
This is a 9th grade book report that totally gives away the story line, incorrectly labeled as a review.
Unbelievable.
Barry DiGregorio wrote a great book discussing alternate ways to interpret the Viking results, "Mars the living planet". It presents the pro-mars-life view very clearly along with the lame NASA politics around which was formed the official declaration that Mars has no life.
First BSD, and now disks - when will the madness stop?
If there ever was a open source project in need of a fork, it's this one. Without Keith's work over the last few years feature wise it would be utterly frozen somewhere in the 1980s, rather than sluggishly creeping forward through the 1990s.
Has lots of excellent surplus junk/treasure stuff and a web store so if you don't live near one you're still in luck.
I don't know of any in the DC area (if you find out, let me know!)
But I recommend looking into fairradio.com - they sell lots of excellent junk/treasure.
That is my concern with KDE's licensing - that KDE may be forcing the larger developer community away through its use of Qt.
I'm a commercial developer and $3K is noise (my managers don't even notice when I renew my Qt licenses).
I agree with you that it hurts KDE big time, but only with the corporations jumping into the Linux world. Sun, HP, RedHat, and all the giant GNOME boosters don't want those costs in the free beer software future. Perhaps also because of fear that somehow TT will be in a MS like position someday - they won't get burned again.
You can evaluate the documentation for yourself - TT has it online. It is lightyears better than what Gtk (or MFC for that matter) has.
VHS won in the end, and GNOME probably will too.
Wow you're defensive - did I hit a nerve?
and to everyone else (except, apparently, you) they're equally free
You are misinformed. According to the stated philosophy of _their_own_ organization (the FSF) and the overall project (GNU) of which they are a part, they *are* less free. The L in LGPL stands for lesser.
From the GNU website, arguing why not to use the LGPL
Proprietary software developers, seeking to deny the free competition an important advantage, will try to convince authors not to contribute libraries to the GPL-covered collection. For example, they may appeal to the ego, promising "more users for this library" if we let them use the code in proprietary software products. Popularity is tempting, and it is easy for a library developer to rationalize the idea that boosting the popularity of that one library is what the community needs above all.
"Proprietary software developers" == Funders of the GNOME foundation
I don't have a problem with their license, just their hypocrisy.
GTK/GNOME libs were always LGPL'ed to begin with
8 37 6/1044370818/1044374726/1044379083/1044399000/1044 401985/
http://www.gnu.org/press/gnome-1.0.html
seems to imply it was GPL at release (IANL).
Do you want people to just give up GTK/GNOME coding?
No - I find it ironic that first GNOME was touted as better because it was more free than KDE, now it is touted as better because it is less (LGPL == Lesser GPL) free.
http://dot.kde.org/1044312611/1044364582/104436
Some people want gnome because it makes sense
license-wise (Red Hat and Sun seem to be concerned about *this* particular issue).
Considering why GNOME started, isn't it ironic that now KDE/Qt (GPL) is _too_ free for the GNOME partisans who became so addicted to corporate bucks they changed their license to LGPL?
Not that there's anything wrong with that, of course...
Your reading skills need some work - look at what I replied to.
No reasonable person could doubt where the bad blood between KDE and GNOME started unless revisionist history like that becomes accepted.
The KDE vs Gnome flamewar was started, battled in, and lost by the same people who bash emacs vs vi or linux vs windows : users. The Gnome developpers and project leaders never tried to "kill" KDE AFAIK
You don't know much then. Miguel personally (and he wasn't the only GNOME leader to do so) waged a personal campaign on mailling lists and IRC for _months_ calling KDE "eeeevvvvillll" along with spreading license and technical FUD.
Good point - and one that was really important to me on a project where I had do do some significant widget subclassing. It's nearly impossible without reading the Gtk and GtkMM code, something I didn't have to do with Qt.
This is another heavy burden GNOME developers have to carry that KDE developers don't.
You're forgetting a few things, like C is far, far easier to use than C++. I must have learnt ten languages in my lifetime, most of them object oriented, but I still don't know C++. It scares me. I can normally read a language I don't know and figure out what's going on with a bit of effort. C++ eludes me. It's a mess.
If I had tried to learn and use _all_ the features of C++ at once, I might have felt the same. No one forces the use of MI, generics, operator overloading, or templates (typical concerns for people on the learning curve). You can (as I did) start out by just using C++ as a better C with OO features. You won't find all the stuff in Bjarne's books in QT or KDE (and certainly not in my code). Sometimes I see a place where the fringe stuff offers value, so it'll sneak in here and there.
Unfortunately, KDE is still highly C++ centric.
Great! I hope it continues! Pick the best core language (C++) and the best scripting language (Python) and go get it done. I don't see GNOME benefiting (other than better performance with older compilers) at all from either it's C foundation or being language-agnostic (are there any core GNOME apps written in something other than C?).
But KDE benefits a lot from uniformity and building everthing off the same base without catering to every tool and language fad. Look at all the garbage (and weird social engineering hoops GNOME will have to jump through to fix it) in the GNOME baseline http://www.gnome.org/%7Echrisime/random/ui/. KDE has virtually none of that stuff because it offers developers a single best way to do things.
GTKmm/GNOMEmm bindings are more C++ish than the KDE code is. For instance, you don't need a preprocessor to do signals, and you use the STL a lot more.
I've worked with them, and they don't suck at all. I agree with the preprocessor comment, and I sure wish STL was used in Qt (they don't conflict, though). But, there is _no_ comparison to Qt and the KDE frameworks - none. IMHO, of course, but I've built several things with both.
>My guess is that, at some level, Qt really is better than GTK. I don't know if it's C vs. C++, or KParts vs. Corba, Glade vs. KDevelop
Bingo. I've worked with both on different projects over the last five years and there's no comparison - a (non-trivial) KDE app is much easier. Also, the way the framework and dev tools are designed, you have to work at it to write an app that isn't consistent with KDE environment standards. Not the case with GNOME.
Also, C++ is a much more natural fit for gui app development than C. Yeah, you can make a C library look somewhat OO, but if you've got C++ coding skills, why try to make a pig fly?
The language and framework baggage that the GNOME developers are saddled with make them work twice as hard to achieve the same thing. Thus, less time available to make things polished, bug-free, etc. Maybe this is why the GNOME leadership is pushing the super-stripped newbie desktop direction.
Yes, these are all my subjective opinions, but I've seen them played out over and over throughout the last several years of KDE and GNOME releases. Better performance (and art pre KDE 3.1) for GNOME, better consistency and integration on KDE. And every release of GNOME, more promises that the latest set of brainfarts will be fixed in the next release.
>I'm talking about stuff like a lock-down system for >administrators, a must-have in office environments!
Do you know about kiosk mode? What do you want to do that kiosk doesn't support?