I didn't find one that I liked (specifically, a Bluecurve like theme with Gnome-type icons).
Is there something stopping you from running KDE with Bluecurve and Gnome-icons? If you have a set of icons in Gnome that you like, you can use those very same icons in KDE without any problems.
The overly long menu bar and the multitude of confusing buttons on the toolbar, for one. It may sound a stupid reason to you, but it's my choice to make.
Well, I don't have a problem with the menubar. I did have a problem with the multitude of buttons in the toolbar. Which is why I removed most of them (again, takes about 20 seconds). The number of buttons is slated for reduction in future KDE's.
I'm sure that if I invested an hour I could get rid of the excess menu bars, increase the spacing between the menu headers, remove the excess buttons on the toolbar, get rid of that annoying glowing application startup notification cursor, sort out the KDE menu and change the icons and themes. But I don't want to have to screw around with every application like that.
Well, AFAIK you can't change the menubar. But you can do rest of that stuff quite easily and it doesn't take a hour to do so. Most of the settings are system-wide and you only need to do them once.
The fact that KDE is set up to be flashy like that and Gnome is set up in a way I find nice, it just shows me that Gnome's design philosophy is the one for me.
To each on his own I guess. I for one can't stand the "one size fits all" and "we know what's best for you"-philosophy that seems to infest Gnome these days.
So, you think that KDE is is just bunch of icons and Konqueror? If you drop Konqueror, you might as well drop KDE in it's entirely? Uh, OK....
If you have to wank around to get it to look simple & clean, and you're not wanting to use Konq, what else does it offer?
That "wanking around" takes few minutes. Really, it's not rocket-science to modify KDE to look exactly what you want it to look like (although it's starting to seem (from the amount of complains KDE's default-settings seem to generate) that some of the "tech-savvy" people who run Linux/*BSD are completely incapable of going through few configuration-options). And do you REALLY expect them to come up with a set of default options that will please everyone?
So, what does KDE offer besides those oh-so-annoying icons and Konqueror? Well, it has a robust printing-system, good office-suite. good email-client, good Groupware-client, lots and lots of kick-ass apps, kio-slaves, kick-ass architecture, great IDE (Kdevelop), great web-tool (Quanta) etc. etc. etc. really, there's alot more to KDE than just Konqueror and some icons!
Really, your comment is more or less similar to "if you don't run Galeon, what's the point in running Gnome?".
I'm talking about things like the gradient on the bottom panel, the KDE logo strip along the menu, the garish icons, the faux LCD clock and the overly complicated wallpaper. All of it is unecessary and clutters the screen.
this may come as a shock to you, but.... All that stuff can be turned off! You are in no shape or form required to stick to the defaults! Or do you assume that you are somehow required to stick with the defaults? If you invested just few minutes of your life, you could easily make the UI look exactly how you want it to look! Is that too much to ask?
Fact is that you can't create a default look and feel that will please everyone. That is why you have the ability to adjust the UI to your liking.
Don't get me started on the abomination that is Konq.
No, do tell me. What is wrong with Konqueror? And, again: you are not in any shape or form forced to use it. Just use Krusader for filemanagement and Firefox for web-browsing if that's your cup of tea.
but each time I've tried to switch I've been put off by the clutter and garish icons and themes.
You can't invest 5 minutes of your life and remove some of those unwanted icons, change the default style to something more toned down (like Plastik for example) and do the other things to make it more to your liking?
Unlike Gnome, KDE does not think that "one size fits all". That's why you can tweak the UI to be exactly the way you want it to be! But still, it seems that lots of people are thinking that "Waaah! KDE looks cluttered and confusing! There are too many icons in here and the style is too flashy!" when in fact the look and feel of the UI can be changed with minimal effort and time!
I find it really weird that one of the primary things people whine about is the default style of KDE. Well, some people like Keramik while others do not. And you can change it with minimal effort (that's the first thing I do when I install KDE. Takes me about *gasp* 30 seconds). And I remove some of the unwanted icons from the tasbar (taking me another 30 seconds or so).
I reckon Gnome has won the corporate heart through it's simplicity.
I haven't seen Gnome win "corporate hearts" whereas KDE has not. Both are doing just fine.
They are planning to replace Arts in 4.0. Replacing the sound-server is a major undertaking and it wont be done in a minor release. AFAIk the primary conteder for it's replacement is Gstreamer.
I don't have that problem on my Gentoo-machine. Might be SuSE-related problem, or it might just be related to your machine. Either way, it's not a KDE-problem.
No, since Finland (which is a country that enjoys a large amount of political freedom, similar to the US) has a high tax rate, it is arguably less free than the US.
We have same-sex marriage, do you? No? That's what I thought. How about real religious freedom (not that "one nation, under God"-crap)? Freedom of education (even for the poor)? Right to healthcare (even for the poor)? There seems to be awfully lot of freedoms USA does not have, yet I have them right now.
I find it rather interesting how USA is "more free" because it has lower tax-rate. But suddenly those other countries with even lower tax-rate are not as free since "Tax rate is not the only determinant of freedom.". So, how can you all of a sudden make the claim that Finland is "less free" than USA because it has higher tax-rate, when 5 seconds later you say that "Tax rate is not the only determinant of freedom"? To me, it seems like you are defining the word "freedom" in such way that it just conveniently places USA as the most free country in the world.
But, I guess according to you, all the freedoms I have in Finland that Americans do not matter, since Finland has higher tax-rate and is therefore automatically "less free". But if some other country had the same freedoms as USA did with even lower tax-rate, it would not be more free than USA since "Tax rate is not the only determinant of freedom"?
And what makes you think that USA has as much "freedom" as Finland does? I have already mentioned freedoms that I have, yet Americans do not have them. And lets look at some other facts: freedom of the press: Finland 1. in the world, USA 31.!. So what were you saying about "freedom" again? No, don't tell me: "That does not matter since Finland has higher tax-rate, and is therefore less free than USA is". Uh-huh.
And what about political freedom? I find it interesting that the candidate that gets the most votes does not necessarily win in the USA (as happened in the previous presidental elections), like he would in Finland. So it seems to me that the actual votes matter more in Finland than they do in USA.
My problem is that they don't complain when other nations do similarly stupid/arrogant/wrong things.
Sure they do. But the things USA does affect more people than actions of some smaller country would, therefore actions of USA get more attention.
But since US media does not report foreign news that much, I guess it's only understandable that you think that no-one complains when some other country than USA does some stupid things.
USA is doing the exact same thing. Hasn't Kerry been getting quite alot of flak recently, when it was discovered that he *gasp* knows how to speak French.
And this might come as a shock to you, but USA is not universally hated. At least, not in the long run. Hell, just few years ago you were admired! But you managed to ruin it all with your "either you are with us, or you are against us!"-bullshit. Any criticism USA has recently received has been well earned by the USA. And no, not everything USA does is complained about. But when you do something stupid/arrogant/wrong, people will complain.
There are countries that have lower tax-rate than the USA does, so by your logic they are more free than USA?
And those "high taxes" are not wasted. For example, I have free education (well, it's paid from the taxes, but you know what I mean), which means that I'm free to educate myself as much as I want and in high-quality schools. That is one freedom I wouldn't have in the USA (unless I had lots of money).
I'm guessing that this SCOTUS ruling is completely irrelevant to you hatred of the US. There are, of course, no perfect states of governance anywhere in the world, but don't let that stop you from making the US a special target of your frustration.
Well, it is the USA that constantly glorifies itself as the "Beacon of the Free World" and "Bastion of Freedom". So it's only natural that USA gets more flak when it's noticed that USA isn't that special in the end when it comes to the freedoms and liberties it's citizens have when compared to some other countries.
Sure, there may be a Yearly gathering from the Linux crew (I truely don't know) but there is no where near the support available from MS
Few years ago the Linux community as a whole received an award for best tech-support in the industry. And that support was done in IRC, usenet, internet, LUG-meetings and mailing-lists FOR FREE!
So apparently the free support you can get for Linux is every bit as good as the support you get for Windows. The free Linux-support might not have the flashy ads, huge conference-halls or the other bells and whistles MS-events might have, but that does not mean it's less effective!
Funny how McDonalds is the epitomy of bad fattening food, environmentally unsound, and a nasty big corporation, but when they're switching to Linux they're OK.
As far as their OS of choice is concerned: yes, they are OK. The food is still bad and they are a nasty big corporation. But what does that have to do with the subject at hand? We are not talking about the ethics or the quality of the food. we are talking about their choice of OS.
4) Wireless peripherals - the biggest usability problem with PCs these days is the rats nest behind (or on top of, in front of) the damn things. Holy shit... Some of you know what I'm talking about. This is crazy.
We are using Bluetooth-dongles here in the office. Just plug them in to a printer, and our Bluetooth-enabled laptops can print to them without any problems.
What UI were you using when you ran your test? If it was Gnome of Xfce (for example) it would give Gnome-terminal an advantage since it's toolkit (GTK+) was already loaded. Konsole would have to load Qt and KDE libraries before it could run.
Also, have you tried prelinking KDE? It gives quite significant boost in start-up times.
No it wouldn't. My father ran a test XP system back out when it was still Whistler on a 400MHz or so Pentium II system with 256MB of RAM. It ran absolutely fine.
So, because Whistler ran fine on 400Mhz P2 with 256MB of RAM, it means that it would run well on 300MHz K6-2 (a slower CPU) and 192MB of RAM? The system you tested it on was considerably faster and it had more RAM than the other machine had!
FWIW I run KDE3.2.2 on an ancient laptop which has 300Mhz P2, 320MB of RAM, dog-slow vid-card and slow as hell HD, and I can use it just fine. Sure, it's not a speed-demon, but it's usable.
seems to be getting faster and faster. Jump to 3.2 was pretty big when it comes to performance. And Qt4 brings with it even better performance (application start-up time drops by about 20%) and mem-usage (down about 15-20%). KDE has been pretty aggressive recently when it comes to performance and optimizations. Of course KDE gets more and more eye-candy, but that stuff is completely optional.
Is Linux less demanding than Windows? yes it is. If you want to, you can run the latest whiz-bang desktop from Gnome or KDE, and the performance will be roughy similar to Windows. Or you could use some lightweight UI, like Xfce. If you decide to run som graphics-heavy UI with lots of eye-candy, it's your choice, and you should expect it to be somewhat slower than some lightweight UI would be. But you have the choice.
I for one think that the progress of features and eye-candy should not be held back by that guy who still runs Linux on his 200MHz Pentium. If he wants to, he can keep on using the UI he currently uses, or switch to some lightweight UI. Or, heaven forbid: upgrade his machine! If you have the hardware, you should have the ability to put that processing-power to use by using some kick-ass UI with lots of eye-candy.
Finnish Hamina-class. Maybe not as radical as this ship, but stealth-ship regardless. And packed with high technology.
So what makes this Swedish ship "first stealth-ship", when there are already stealth-ships in use in Finland? And they have been in use for quite some time already.
Well, the PowerMac you mention is still alot more expensive than the A64-machine is, if you compare the performance. Let's see:
1.6Ghz G5 vs. 2GHz A64 (2.2Ghz if newer revision) 512MB of DDR333 RAM vs. 1GB of DDR400 RAM. 80GB HD vs. 160GB HD. GeForce 5200 Ultra vs. Ati 9800Pro
So, let's see.... You have a slower CPU, half the RAM (and it's slower as well), half the HD-space and crappier vid-card, yet your computer costs more (even with a special discount!)??? And you call that a good deal? I would say that in this case, it IS "mind-blowingly more expensive".
And I just checked the Apple store. Does a DVD-writer REALLY cost 200 bucks??? And it only burns DVD-R's! I can get multiformat (as in -R, -RW, +R, +RW) burner for under 100 bucks these days! Can you say "rip-off"?
Now, Apple laptops are more reasonably priced and they are pretty good value for the money. But your example does not help dispel the "myth" that Apple desktops are expenvice, because they are expensive.
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Still: iPod does not have a monopoly in the mp3-player-market. Come talk to me when iPod has 95% market-share.
Is there something stopping you from running KDE with Bluecurve and Gnome-icons? If you have a set of icons in Gnome that you like, you can use those very same icons in KDE without any problems.
Well, I don't have a problem with the menubar. I did have a problem with the multitude of buttons in the toolbar. Which is why I removed most of them (again, takes about 20 seconds). The number of buttons is slated for reduction in future KDE's.
Well, AFAIK you can't change the menubar. But you can do rest of that stuff quite easily and it doesn't take a hour to do so. Most of the settings are system-wide and you only need to do them once.
To each on his own I guess. I for one can't stand the "one size fits all" and "we know what's best for you"-philosophy that seems to infest Gnome these days.
So, you think that KDE is is just bunch of icons and Konqueror? If you drop Konqueror, you might as well drop KDE in it's entirely? Uh, OK....
That "wanking around" takes few minutes. Really, it's not rocket-science to modify KDE to look exactly what you want it to look like (although it's starting to seem (from the amount of complains KDE's default-settings seem to generate) that some of the "tech-savvy" people who run Linux/*BSD are completely incapable of going through few configuration-options). And do you REALLY expect them to come up with a set of default options that will please everyone?
So, what does KDE offer besides those oh-so-annoying icons and Konqueror? Well, it has a robust printing-system, good office-suite. good email-client, good Groupware-client, lots and lots of kick-ass apps, kio-slaves, kick-ass architecture, great IDE (Kdevelop), great web-tool (Quanta) etc. etc. etc. really, there's alot more to KDE than just Konqueror and some icons!
Really, your comment is more or less similar to "if you don't run Galeon, what's the point in running Gnome?".
this may come as a shock to you, but.... All that stuff can be turned off! You are in no shape or form required to stick to the defaults! Or do you assume that you are somehow required to stick with the defaults? If you invested just few minutes of your life, you could easily make the UI look exactly how you want it to look! Is that too much to ask?
Fact is that you can't create a default look and feel that will please everyone. That is why you have the ability to adjust the UI to your liking.
No, do tell me. What is wrong with Konqueror? And, again: you are not in any shape or form forced to use it. Just use Krusader for filemanagement and Firefox for web-browsing if that's your cup of tea.
You can't invest 5 minutes of your life and remove some of those unwanted icons, change the default style to something more toned down (like Plastik for example) and do the other things to make it more to your liking?
Unlike Gnome, KDE does not think that "one size fits all". That's why you can tweak the UI to be exactly the way you want it to be! But still, it seems that lots of people are thinking that "Waaah! KDE looks cluttered and confusing! There are too many icons in here and the style is too flashy!" when in fact the look and feel of the UI can be changed with minimal effort and time!
I find it really weird that one of the primary things people whine about is the default style of KDE. Well, some people like Keramik while others do not. And you can change it with minimal effort (that's the first thing I do when I install KDE. Takes me about *gasp* 30 seconds). And I remove some of the unwanted icons from the tasbar (taking me another 30 seconds or so).
I haven't seen Gnome win "corporate hearts" whereas KDE has not. Both are doing just fine.
They are planning to replace Arts in 4.0. Replacing the sound-server is a major undertaking and it wont be done in a minor release. AFAIk the primary conteder for it's replacement is Gstreamer.
I don't have that problem on my Gentoo-machine. Might be SuSE-related problem, or it might just be related to your machine. Either way, it's not a KDE-problem.
We have same-sex marriage, do you? No? That's what I thought. How about real religious freedom (not that "one nation, under God"-crap)? Freedom of education (even for the poor)? Right to healthcare (even for the poor)? There seems to be awfully lot of freedoms USA does not have, yet I have them right now.
I find it rather interesting how USA is "more free" because it has lower tax-rate. But suddenly those other countries with even lower tax-rate are not as free since "Tax rate is not the only determinant of freedom.". So, how can you all of a sudden make the claim that Finland is "less free" than USA because it has higher tax-rate, when 5 seconds later you say that "Tax rate is not the only determinant of freedom"? To me, it seems like you are defining the word "freedom" in such way that it just conveniently places USA as the most free country in the world.
But, I guess according to you, all the freedoms I have in Finland that Americans do not matter, since Finland has higher tax-rate and is therefore automatically "less free". But if some other country had the same freedoms as USA did with even lower tax-rate, it would not be more free than USA since "Tax rate is not the only determinant of freedom"?
And what makes you think that USA has as much "freedom" as Finland does? I have already mentioned freedoms that I have, yet Americans do not have them. And lets look at some other facts: freedom of the press: Finland 1. in the world, USA 31.!. So what were you saying about "freedom" again? No, don't tell me: "That does not matter since Finland has higher tax-rate, and is therefore less free than USA is". Uh-huh.
And what about political freedom? I find it interesting that the candidate that gets the most votes does not necessarily win in the USA (as happened in the previous presidental elections), like he would in Finland. So it seems to me that the actual votes matter more in Finland than they do in USA.
Sure they do. But the things USA does affect more people than actions of some smaller country would, therefore actions of USA get more attention.
But since US media does not report foreign news that much, I guess it's only understandable that you think that no-one complains when some other country than USA does some stupid things.
USA is doing the exact same thing. Hasn't Kerry been getting quite alot of flak recently, when it was discovered that he *gasp* knows how to speak French.
And this might come as a shock to you, but USA is not universally hated. At least, not in the long run. Hell, just few years ago you were admired! But you managed to ruin it all with your "either you are with us, or you are against us!"-bullshit. Any criticism USA has recently received has been well earned by the USA. And no, not everything USA does is complained about. But when you do something stupid/arrogant/wrong, people will complain.
There are countries that have lower tax-rate than the USA does, so by your logic they are more free than USA?
And those "high taxes" are not wasted. For example, I have free education (well, it's paid from the taxes, but you know what I mean), which means that I'm free to educate myself as much as I want and in high-quality schools. That is one freedom I wouldn't have in the USA (unless I had lots of money).
Well, it is the USA that constantly glorifies itself as the "Beacon of the Free World" and "Bastion of Freedom". So it's only natural that USA gets more flak when it's noticed that USA isn't that special in the end when it comes to the freedoms and liberties it's citizens have when compared to some other countries.
What makes you think that? I haven't seen Americans enjoy freedoms that I do not have as a Finnish citizen, for example. Quite the contrary.
Few years ago the Linux community as a whole received an award for best tech-support in the industry. And that support was done in IRC, usenet, internet, LUG-meetings and mailing-lists FOR FREE!
So apparently the free support you can get for Linux is every bit as good as the support you get for Windows. The free Linux-support might not have the flashy ads, huge conference-halls or the other bells and whistles MS-events might have, but that does not mean it's less effective!
As far as their OS of choice is concerned: yes, they are OK. The food is still bad and they are a nasty big corporation. But what does that have to do with the subject at hand? We are not talking about the ethics or the quality of the food. we are talking about their choice of OS.
Restaurant: A place where meals are served to the public.
Pray tell, how does McD not fit that definition? Is the food crappy? yes it is. But it's still a restaurant.
Already done
We are using Bluetooth-dongles here in the office. Just plug them in to a printer, and our Bluetooth-enabled laptops can print to them without any problems.
What UI were you using when you ran your test? If it was Gnome of Xfce (for example) it would give Gnome-terminal an advantage since it's toolkit (GTK+) was already loaded. Konsole would have to load Qt and KDE libraries before it could run.
Also, have you tried prelinking KDE? It gives quite significant boost in start-up times.
So, because Whistler ran fine on 400Mhz P2 with 256MB of RAM, it means that it would run well on 300MHz K6-2 (a slower CPU) and 192MB of RAM? The system you tested it on was considerably faster and it had more RAM than the other machine had!
FWIW I run KDE3.2.2 on an ancient laptop which has 300Mhz P2, 320MB of RAM, dog-slow vid-card and slow as hell HD, and I can use it just fine. Sure, it's not a speed-demon, but it's usable.
seems to be getting faster and faster. Jump to 3.2 was pretty big when it comes to performance. And Qt4 brings with it even better performance (application start-up time drops by about 20%) and mem-usage (down about 15-20%). KDE has been pretty aggressive recently when it comes to performance and optimizations. Of course KDE gets more and more eye-candy, but that stuff is completely optional.
Is Linux less demanding than Windows? yes it is. If you want to, you can run the latest whiz-bang desktop from Gnome or KDE, and the performance will be roughy similar to Windows. Or you could use some lightweight UI, like Xfce. If you decide to run som graphics-heavy UI with lots of eye-candy, it's your choice, and you should expect it to be somewhat slower than some lightweight UI would be. But you have the choice.
I for one think that the progress of features and eye-candy should not be held back by that guy who still runs Linux on his 200MHz Pentium. If he wants to, he can keep on using the UI he currently uses, or switch to some lightweight UI. Or, heaven forbid: upgrade his machine! If you have the hardware, you should have the ability to put that processing-power to use by using some kick-ass UI with lots of eye-candy.
Finnish Hamina-class. Maybe not as radical as this ship, but stealth-ship regardless. And packed with high technology.
So what makes this Swedish ship "first stealth-ship", when there are already stealth-ships in use in Finland? And they have been in use for quite some time already.
And Dual Opterons mop the floor with Dual Xeons.
Well, the PowerMac you mention is still alot more expensive than the A64-machine is, if you compare the performance. Let's see:
1.6Ghz G5 vs. 2GHz A64 (2.2Ghz if newer revision)
512MB of DDR333 RAM vs. 1GB of DDR400 RAM.
80GB HD vs. 160GB HD.
GeForce 5200 Ultra vs. Ati 9800Pro
So, let's see.... You have a slower CPU, half the RAM (and it's slower as well), half the HD-space and crappier vid-card, yet your computer costs more (even with a special discount!)??? And you call that a good deal? I would say that in this case, it IS "mind-blowingly more expensive".
And I just checked the Apple store. Does a DVD-writer REALLY cost 200 bucks??? And it only burns DVD-R's! I can get multiformat (as in -R, -RW, +R, +RW) burner for under 100 bucks these days! Can you say "rip-off"?
Now, Apple laptops are more reasonably priced and they are pretty good value for the money. But your example does not help dispel the "myth" that Apple desktops are expenvice, because they are expensive.
...Considering how they licensed their Gnome-based Java Desktop System. And that software was LGPL to begin with! Pray tell, what kind of god-awful monstrocity of a license are they going to come up with Solaris!?
Finland and Sweden are also frontrunners in mobile technology, and they are sparsely populated. So your logic fails.