Unfortunately, we haven't had time to build Slackware packages yet. It is on our list of things to support when we get the time.
For what it's worth, the Red Hat 6.2 RPMS seem to work fine with Slackware.
Yeah, but that perty GUI installer doesn't. And that's really all that we Slack users want anyway...
Unless I'm horribly mistaken. In which case, you should ignore everything that I say. But I know that I wanted the installer when I first heard about it... something like this occurred:
<friend> did you see the announcement about Helix GNOME and the spiffy installer?
<me> what?
<friend> some company called Helix has released a cool GUI installer for GNOME that takes care of dependencies and shit. it's pretty cool. works great on my RedHat box.
<me> awesome. I'll go check it out. (gui, eh?.... well, maybe it'll be cool)
/me downloads the go-gnome script, gets it running, and is confronted by a pretty GUI box which says "Sorry, your distribution is not supported by Helix GNOME."/me cries. Then/me says 'Screw GNOME, I liked KDE better anyway!' and/me figured out how to compile KDE from scratch.
I'm much happier now. (KDE2 betas compile VERY well on Slackware7.) And besides, I like PKGs and source better, and KDEs dependencies seem much more sane than GNOMEs any day of the week.
Did you know that Qt has already been ported to the Linux framebuffer console? I was surprised to hear it too. Did you know that it also runs on Windows (much better than the current GTK-Win32 port)? It will get ported to just as many architectures as GTK. That's not a worry. I'm going to be very VERY happy indeed to run a KDE2.x desktop on the Linux framebuffer console.
Besides, there is NOTHING in the QPL that would forbid you from porting Qt on your own to a new kernel. You only need to port Qt, and then any app that is written with Qt (and no X deps) will run fine. The BeUnited project is porting Qt to the BeOS, I believe.
As to your comment about how GTK rocks, I beg to differ. The pixmapped themes are still DOG slow, and they make your desktop suck up at least twice as much RAM as the ugly default. Qt 2.2 BETA is more stable AND is more resource-friendly than GTK+ 1.2.8, which is the version I'm running here.
We all make mistakes sometimes. oh, and if you wanted to point out the great and innovative Bonobo technology (which KDE "doesn't have!") then take a look.
Nautilus does embed a MP3 player if you view your folder as an mp3 folder (or maybe they call it a "music folder", I forgot). In other words, get your facts straight.
Ok, I went into Nautilus again today and I went into my Music directory. Then I held my mouse over an icon for an mp3 file (Tyler Durden- Welcome to Fight Club.mp3) and lo and behold, it started playing the sound! Without even having said "Play this" or telling it to use a Music view (which also works, but transforms Nautilus into a full-fledged MP3 player), Nautilus was using mpg123 to play my songs.
Have you used it? If you had, you would probably know what I was talking about. If not, then I can understand where your comments come from.
For those interested, Konqueror still holds an edge over Nautilus in some areas... Konqueror automatically detects changes to the files in the current directory, and thus hitting "Reload" to see new files is no longer necessary. Konqueror also uses a much lighter HTML engine than Gecko (which makes Nautilus' memory usage even higher than pure Mozilla alone... and the most RAM-hungry app on my system) and can split any window into several "Frames."
About the RPMS: Helix also provides Solaris support. Yet they haven't rounded out one of the EASIEST and most SIMPLE package systems yet? (TGZ packages.... gotta love them!) Slackware isn't some incredibly old version of Linux that has no recent inclusions. TGZs aren't that difficult to support. Anyway, personal feelings about the GNOME project aside, at least KDE makes it possible and simple to install their latest software on almost any UNIX that I've seen. I've seen KDE2 running on Slackware, redhat, Mandrake, Solaris, and FreeBSD.
KDE consistently puts out clean, well-thought-out code and is making a serious attempt to provide a decent desktop for UNIX workstations. So, for me at least, as long as they keep making it, I'll keep using/bugshooting/abusing it. Everybody gets a choice, and I like it that way.
What I'd like to know is why the GNOME project is making such a big deal out of the things like Bonobo. Bonobo is a great technology - IN THEORY. I'm posting this from Nautilus right now, and I can say that honestly, even if it had ALL of the features that they claim it will, I would still use KDE2.
Konqueror still boasts several features which I don't see in Nautilus, and likewise vice versa. But I don't need a filemanager that plays my MP3s when I hover over them- I'd rather have one that embeds an MP3 player when I click on them instead. KDE2 is making some great strides forward for UNIX desktops in general, not just Linux. Besides, Helix in particular seems to be pretty unfriendly to even some versions of Linux. How do they expect to take over the UNIX desktop market if they don't even have a working Slackware installer? Things like this boggle the mind...
I don't know how feasible or even ideal this is, but I think that if Corel released their WordPerfect app (or the suite) to the public as GPL or MPL, I'm pretty sure that they would have a lot more support. Look at how much good press StarOffice has gotten since Sun announced that they were going to GPL it- and at this point, it's still technically vapor. (Yes, it looks great that they're doing that- but we don't have their source yet...)
<IMHO>
A lot of people seem to forget about the experience of using StarOffice. Not to slander Sun or StarDivision (the original owners, for those who don't remember), but StarOffice 5.1 was crap. It was bloated and buggy, and it committed greivous crimes against the entire idea of a Window Manager. It had some good importing features and some crappy ones- on a Celery300A, oc'ed to 450 (who doesn't do that to a 300A?) with 128 MB of RAM, it was still slow at times; it was especially so when I was using StarCalc and importing Excel97 spreadsheets. I would never recommend it to a business for real work. Gnumeric, in my experience, has had much better memory usage and import features (except for tables, charts, and graphs.... d'oh!) as long as GNOME was running.
</IMHO>
In any event, I wasn't too surprised to see this announcement- I just hope that Corel doesn't go under, because as others have noted, they have made some great contributions to the community. Sure, they were clumsy with the licensing issues at times, but they did contribute a LOT to both WINE *and* KDE. People forget that KDE benefitted a lot from Corel's intervention in some areas.
Sorry about your solaris problems, but in case you haven't tried Beta 3, I really suggest taking another look at it. The icons for almost everything have been totally revamped and look much more 'mature', and I've heard word that the startup screen is getting a makeover as well as Konqueror's buttons.
Once the servers crawl back to some semblance of their former selves, I suggest downloading it and taking a look. If you can get it to run, that is... I could've sworn people on the mailinglist had fixed the Solaris compile probems though. Try it on Linux, it works best there (big surprise, eh? ; )
Qt only provides very bare technical support for the GTK themes - the only support that it provides is that it can load pixmapped widgets. KDE actually implements the GTK themes and displays them with Qt- so the article is not mistitled.
but that's where you're wrong. If you're the average "I need to write a book report" student, you never even notice that KWord has the frames. You just notice that it's cool word processor. And that it integrates very nicely into EVERY other part of the desktop.
However, the frames idea leaves so many possibilities open that it's just too good to pass up. You could (theoretically) embed ShockWave Flash files into your KWord documents. Or put the contents of a word document on the internet as part of a document template HTML page in real time, with updates ocurring as you change the file... it's some crazy awesome stuff. I'm excited.
You can play MP3s on a Visor, at least. Check out the Handspring home page. Or maybe you'd be more interested in the SpringBoard addon that actually does the MP3 playing.
You'd be surprised what that little PalmOS is still capable of. Especially in capable hands.
As far as Excel being "the best spreadsheet app of its type", have you really used Gnumeric? You probably should try it. I mean the latest versions, too- maybe if you're up to it, you can research Bonobo and/or KParts while you're at it, and get *really* excited. Or not.
Lets face it, Linux distributions are not ready for the mass market desktop. Certainly geeks use linux quite effectively, but 90% of the market doesn't want to remember that the way to shutdown the computer is to start a terminal, type shutdown -h now, then enter the root password. they just want an off button, and linux distro's aren't at that level of use yet.
How many times must this be repeated? It's easy to use! IT'S EASY TO USE!
It's a bitch to configure, but it can be easy to use, depending on how well you've gotten it configured...
It is entirely possible, via good system administration (or good initial setup from the distro manufacturer) to make icons in KDE or GNOME that say "Shutdown" or "Reboot" (or *gasp* both!) and have each of those run a script. Basically, either give the users permission via the group model to use init and/or shutdown, and then to link one of those buttons to "init 6" or "init 0". Or if you're paranoid about groups, you could set it up with a script which would call chat to supply the root password.
It's not easy to configure, but it's not difficult to use once it's been set up correctly. Get it right, everybody.
If you've got problems with the KDE development model, nobody's stopping you from forking the KMail code and integrating your changes. Personally, I think David's an awesome guy- he knows what's going on with the code, he has some really brilliant ideas about how to implement features in Konqueror, and he's never been rude that I've seen. Brusque, maybe, and possibly curt, but never rude. And about him getting paid- he gets money to develop KDE, sure, but it's not a fulltime job for him (yet), as he replied already.
It's not his fiefdom nor is it the fiefdom of any of the other main developers- but there is a definite centralized development model. IMHO, I have to say that this has worked very well. The KDE project consistently puts out good code and good programs.
As far as KMail goes, you might want to check out kdenonbeta/kmail2 and help out with that. It can use some new developers, and it's definitely not release status yet.
That requires your end user to know patch and have whatever compiler you used.
Perhaps, but if they're on a Linux system anyway, it's your duty as any kind of developer to make your instructions lucid and clear enough for anyone to be able to patch your version of Qt into the main one. Standard tools such as diff and patch are available with *every* Linux distro that I know of, as well as *BSD and most of the UNIX variants in existence. If your grandma can't follow simple directions such as "Download it to this directory and run these commands" then maybe your grandma doesn't speak english?
Your argument has some holes in it...
If you want to write programs that use QT and are not GPL, you must pay the man.
Not quite- your app doesn't have to be GPL, it can be GPL or QPL or a couple of the other OSI approved licenses. However, your source must be available or else yes, you do have to pay the man. What's wrong with that?
It fails on the basic, very basic, premise that an open source application should allow derivatives under the same license as the original.
All future versions and/or derivatives are going to be released under the QPL. That argument is just false.
... I cannot effectively EVER release a derivative anyone but a hacker would use.
Taking your grandma analogy farther, would you really want her to be downloading/installing unchecked versions of libraries? If she has any common sense, she should only be using the Troll Tech version of Qt- you never know what other people might try to put into the library. If you have a truly useful patch, you can submit it to Trolltech and they'll incorporate it into their main branch. If you have a cute little patch which makes all QObjects place your name in text in the lower right corner, that should not be releasable as the official Qt library and I wouldn't want you to name it that and put it on your web site.
Basically, all that I can say is that Qt provides two distinct ways to write software for people who want to use the toolkit. If you want to make money off of it, you have to pay them first. If you're going to make your product free and reusable, then you don't owe them anything. What's the matter with that?
Apparently you don't understand English well enough to figure out a joke when it is also followed by an emoticon commonly associated with joking around.
Yes, I know what full-scene antialiasing is. And honestly, I don't think that it makes *that* much of a difference; the PS2 has much more raw horsepower than the DC anyway, and I'll be buying one because of it. I want to compare it to the Dreamcast that's sitting over by the TV anyway...
If by "proprietary library" you mean Qt1.x, then you are incorrect; KDE is no longer based on Qt1.x. KDE is now based on Qt2.1; just as much as I'm sure you hate people spreading lies about GNOME, I can't stand to see it happen to KDE.
Your statement should read: KDE *WAS* based on a proprietary library.
A library that cannot be ported or forked except by its authors.
If you feel like it, you can port the Qt toolkit to MS-Win32 or to the Mac or to BeOS if you want; there is no license restriction that stops you. The only restrictions on it are that you can't close the source to your ported version, and you have to make notice that your version is not the official version. That's reasonable, is it not?
A library that reserves some rights to everything that even links to it.
The only "rights" that are extended to Qt-applications are that the user of such an application is granted the right to the source code. There is no right that is reserved for the library. Please, read the QPL thoroughly.
A library that reserves the right to take your patches and roll them into its proprietary product, all the while NEVER allowing you to distribute anything except its product with your patch separate. You have to distinguish your code from their by separately distributing it - they do not have to distringuish your contributions to their code at all.
They're a CORPORATION. They survive by MAKING MONEY. Do you understand that? They are being nice by releasing their software under an OSI-approved Open Source license; nobody REQUIRES that they use such a license. Grow up.
The QPL is about assuring a lifetime of riches for the authors of QT at the expense of the freedoms of its users.
Where did you glean this information from? I can find no evidence to support it. The QPL provides a means to preserve Free Software as Free Software. It also provides a means to make money when others don't want to be as nice as you and release their source code as well. Where does the QPL limit the freedom of the user?
How much hacking on an OS project have YOU done today?
Who really cares if the PS2 has no antialiasing capabilities? How much text are you going to really read from your TV screen anyway?;)
Seriously, though, the PS2 is the game player's dream console; Sony's doing everything right, and MS is producing what seems to be (at best) an obsolete piece of hardware with no real added value over a top-of-the-line PC.
BTW, when I say obsolete, I don't mean right now. Obviously, the X-Box wouldn't be obsolete if it came out today- but is it out today? I thought not.... by the time it gets out, you'll be able to pick up a regular PC with more horsepower and more capability for less money. I think this is going to be a BIG mistake on MS's part. I'm not buying one, and none of my friends are either; if we want DirectX, we install it on our PCs under Windows.
Here's the thing. I would never choose to use W2K, given a choice of W2K for free (as in beer/speech) or Linux (which is always free speech). As a matter of fact, I'd rather pay for Linux than deal with Windows. That's me, though. Maybe I'm just a masochist...
But I have to tell you, I like KDE. I like GNOME. I like freedom, I like learning, and I like the opportunities that Linux provides me to learn and to gain experience. You can't get this experience! When something goes wrong with Linux, I usually know what's wrong and how to fix it; if I don't know how to fix it, then I know where to find out how to fix it. And that makes the difference.
I'm not so interested in the coding aspect of it (they *will* have MS's WinCE development libraries on their side) but I am kinda interested in how it's going to work. I'm assuming that you'll probably have to pop their CD/GD into the Dreamcast and load it up, followed by removing the disc and putting in a PlayStation game. Not too difficult at all, but still... I wonder, since usually when you remove a disc the system returns to the main screen. Interesting, nonetheless, especially if they can get it to enhance games to anywhere near the quality that the PC can with Bleem!...
The only problem that I have with your post is this:
KOM/OpenParts is dead.
If I recall correctly... DCOP is the replacement for KOM, and KParts replaces OpenParts. It's more efficient, it works better, blah blah blah- net result is that you don't need an Athlon 1GHz to run KDE2 at an acceptable level of speed. I've run it on a Pentium Pro 150 with 32 MB of RAM and it ran very nicely. Not horribly fast, but not so slow that it was ridiculously unusable. I think that it's actually not totally unreasonable to believe that KDE2 will be *faster* and require less system resources than KDE1...
"They've done it because it's 'cool' and shows off the elegance of the underlying componentised design"
Wrong. They've done it because despite what you might think, it's actually USEFUL to be able to look at a word processed document with relevant information to a spreadsheet or a presentation. The frames idea also works very well- and please, do EVERYONE a favor and don't make judgments before you actually try something out. Until you have actually tried KDE2 and Konqueror, I'd appreciate it if you didn't make comments like:
"Here you've got several unrelated applications munged together in panes of one window, with one menu bar and tool bar for all of them, but one status bar for each of them, which seems unrelated to the content pane..."
Something that sadly can't be shown by regular screenshots (unless you use GIFs- and there are NO GIFs at konqueror.org) is that you DON'T have one toolbar and one menubar for all of the frames- the toolbars and menu options change depending on which window has the focus. It's one of the most impressive things I've ever seen to watch the toolbars flesh themselves out- they're "smart" enough to know what to do in most given situations. At this point, everything is NOT completely stable, but it IS stable enough to use for filemanaging and a decent amount of web browsing. It also crashes less than most of the Mozilla builds have (for me, on the same system).
I run KDE2 24/7 and I have had no strange problems with it- it has never reacted badly to my display (running on XFree86 4.0) nor has it corrupted files or done anything horrible. It's usable right now- not half what it will be when it's finally released, but it's usable. The code is there, and the design is there. This IS something to be excited about, everyone...
Slashdot Mirror
Unfortunately, we haven't had time to build Slackware packages yet. It is on our list of things to support when we get the time.
.... well, maybe it'll be cool)
/me downloads the go-gnome script, gets it running, and is confronted by a pretty GUI box which says "Sorry, your distribution is not supported by Helix GNOME." /me cries. Then /me says 'Screw GNOME, I liked KDE better anyway!' and /me figured out how to compile KDE from scratch.
For what it's worth, the Red Hat 6.2 RPMS seem to work fine with Slackware.
Yeah, but that perty GUI installer doesn't. And that's really all that we Slack users want anyway...
Unless I'm horribly mistaken. In which case, you should ignore everything that I say. But I know that I wanted the installer when I first heard about it... something like this occurred:
<friend> did you see the announcement about Helix GNOME and the spiffy installer?
<me> what?
<friend> some company called Helix has released a cool GUI installer for GNOME that takes care of dependencies and shit. it's pretty cool. works great on my RedHat box.
<me> awesome. I'll go check it out. (gui, eh?
I'm much happier now. (KDE2 betas compile VERY well on Slackware7.) And besides, I like PKGs and source better, and KDEs dependencies seem much more sane than GNOMEs any day of the week.
Did you know that Qt has already been ported to the Linux framebuffer console? I was surprised to hear it too. Did you know that it also runs on Windows (much better than the current GTK-Win32 port)? It will get ported to just as many architectures as GTK. That's not a worry. I'm going to be very VERY happy indeed to run a KDE2.x desktop on the Linux framebuffer console.
Besides, there is NOTHING in the QPL that would forbid you from porting Qt on your own to a new kernel. You only need to port Qt, and then any app that is written with Qt (and no X deps) will run fine. The BeUnited project is porting Qt to the BeOS, I believe.
As to your comment about how GTK rocks, I beg to differ. The pixmapped themes are still DOG slow, and they make your desktop suck up at least twice as much RAM as the ugly default. Qt 2.2 BETA is more stable AND is more resource-friendly than GTK+ 1.2.8, which is the version I'm running here.
Evolution : (magellan)
Gnumeric : (kspread)
Nautilus : (konqueror)
We all make mistakes sometimes. oh, and if you wanted to point out the great and innovative Bonobo technology (which KDE "doesn't have!") then take a look.
Nautilus does embed a MP3 player if you view your folder as an mp3 folder (or maybe they call it a "music folder", I forgot). In other words, get your facts straight.
Ok, I went into Nautilus again today and I went into my Music directory. Then I held my mouse over an icon for an mp3 file (Tyler Durden- Welcome to Fight Club.mp3) and lo and behold, it started playing the sound! Without even having said "Play this" or telling it to use a Music view (which also works, but transforms Nautilus into a full-fledged MP3 player), Nautilus was using mpg123 to play my songs.
Have you used it? If you had, you would probably know what I was talking about. If not, then I can understand where your comments come from.
For those interested, Konqueror still holds an edge over Nautilus in some areas... Konqueror automatically detects changes to the files in the current directory, and thus hitting "Reload" to see new files is no longer necessary. Konqueror also uses a much lighter HTML engine than Gecko (which makes Nautilus' memory usage even higher than pure Mozilla alone... and the most RAM-hungry app on my system) and can split any window into several "Frames."
About the RPMS: Helix also provides Solaris support. Yet they haven't rounded out one of the EASIEST and most SIMPLE package systems yet? (TGZ packages.... gotta love them!) Slackware isn't some incredibly old version of Linux that has no recent inclusions. TGZs aren't that difficult to support. Anyway, personal feelings about the GNOME project aside, at least KDE makes it possible and simple to install their latest software on almost any UNIX that I've seen. I've seen KDE2 running on Slackware, redhat, Mandrake, Solaris, and FreeBSD.
KDE consistently puts out clean, well-thought-out code and is making a serious attempt to provide a decent desktop for UNIX workstations. So, for me at least, as long as they keep making it, I'll keep using/bugshooting/abusing it. Everybody gets a choice, and I like it that way.
Konqueror still boasts several features which I don't see in Nautilus, and likewise vice versa. But I don't need a filemanager that plays my MP3s when I hover over them- I'd rather have one that embeds an MP3 player when I click on them instead. KDE2 is making some great strides forward for UNIX desktops in general, not just Linux. Besides, Helix in particular seems to be pretty unfriendly to even some versions of Linux. How do they expect to take over the UNIX desktop market if they don't even have a working Slackware installer? Things like this boggle the mind...
I don't know how feasible or even ideal this is, but I think that if Corel released their WordPerfect app (or the suite) to the public as GPL or MPL, I'm pretty sure that they would have a lot more support. Look at how much good press StarOffice has gotten since Sun announced that they were going to GPL it- and at this point, it's still technically vapor. (Yes, it looks great that they're doing that- but we don't have their source yet...)
<IMHO>
A lot of people seem to forget about the experience of using StarOffice. Not to slander Sun or StarDivision (the original owners, for those who don't remember), but StarOffice 5.1 was crap. It was bloated and buggy, and it committed greivous crimes against the entire idea of a Window Manager. It had some good importing features and some crappy ones- on a Celery300A, oc'ed to 450 (who doesn't do that to a 300A?) with 128 MB of RAM, it was still slow at times; it was especially so when I was using StarCalc and importing Excel97 spreadsheets. I would never recommend it to a business for real work. Gnumeric, in my experience, has had much better memory usage and import features (except for tables, charts, and graphs.... d'oh!) as long as GNOME was running.
</IMHO>
In any event, I wasn't too surprised to see this announcement- I just hope that Corel doesn't go under, because as others have noted, they have made some great contributions to the community. Sure, they were clumsy with the licensing issues at times, but they did contribute a LOT to both WINE *and* KDE. People forget that KDE benefitted a lot from Corel's intervention in some areas.
Don't you mean FORD?
/me dons the flamesuit...
Sorry about your solaris problems, but in case you haven't tried Beta 3, I really suggest taking another look at it. The icons for almost everything have been totally revamped and look much more 'mature', and I've heard word that the startup screen is getting a makeover as well as Konqueror's buttons.
Once the servers crawl back to some semblance of their former selves, I suggest downloading it and taking a look. If you can get it to run, that is... I could've sworn people on the mailinglist had fixed the Solaris compile probems though. Try it on Linux, it works best there (big surprise, eh? ; )
Qt only provides very bare technical support for the GTK themes - the only support that it provides is that it can load pixmapped widgets. KDE actually implements the GTK themes and displays them with Qt- so the article is not mistitled.
Hope that was informative.
-Chris
It's true. Try it and make your own decision- nobody's holding a gun to your head.
But be careful- you might not go back.... : )
-Chris
but that's where you're wrong. If you're the average "I need to write a book report" student, you never even notice that KWord has the frames. You just notice that it's cool word processor. And that it integrates very nicely into EVERY other part of the desktop.
However, the frames idea leaves so many possibilities open that it's just too good to pass up. You could (theoretically) embed ShockWave Flash files into your KWord documents. Or put the contents of a word document on the internet as part of a document template HTML page in real time, with updates ocurring as you change the file... it's some crazy awesome stuff. I'm excited.
You can play MP3s on a Visor, at least. Check out the Handspring home page. Or maybe you'd be more interested in the SpringBoard addon that actually does the MP3 playing.
You'd be surprised what that little PalmOS is still capable of. Especially in capable hands.
Get excited.
KOffice and GNOME Office are coming.
As far as Excel being "the best spreadsheet app of its type", have you really used Gnumeric? You probably should try it. I mean the latest versions, too- maybe if you're up to it, you can research Bonobo and/or KParts while you're at it, and get *really* excited. Or not.
Lets face it, Linux distributions are not ready for the mass market desktop. Certainly geeks use linux quite effectively, but 90% of the market doesn't want to remember that the way to shutdown the computer is to start a terminal, type shutdown -h now, then enter the root password. they just want an off button, and linux distro's aren't at that level of use yet.
How many times must this be repeated? It's easy to use! IT'S EASY TO USE!
It's a bitch to configure, but it can be easy to use, depending on how well you've gotten it configured...
It is entirely possible, via good system administration (or good initial setup from the distro manufacturer) to make icons in KDE or GNOME that say "Shutdown" or "Reboot" (or *gasp* both!) and have each of those run a script. Basically, either give the users permission via the group model to use init and/or shutdown, and then to link one of those buttons to "init 6" or "init 0". Or if you're paranoid about groups, you could set it up with a script which would call chat to supply the root password.
It's not easy to configure, but it's not difficult to use once it's been set up correctly. Get it right, everybody.
If you've got problems with the KDE development model, nobody's stopping you from forking the KMail code and integrating your changes. Personally, I think David's an awesome guy- he knows what's going on with the code, he has some really brilliant ideas about how to implement features in Konqueror, and he's never been rude that I've seen. Brusque, maybe, and possibly curt, but never rude. And about him getting paid- he gets money to develop KDE, sure, but it's not a fulltime job for him (yet), as he replied already.
It's not his fiefdom nor is it the fiefdom of any of the other main developers- but there is a definite centralized development model. IMHO, I have to say that this has worked very well. The KDE project consistently puts out good code and good programs.
As far as KMail goes, you might want to check out kdenonbeta/kmail2 and help out with that. It can use some new developers, and it's definitely not release status yet.
As far as the release cycle goes- we release when it's ready. Not when we're ready, not when there's a deadline, not when Another Desktop© releases a new major version, but when we're ready. Sorry if you've got a problem with that. Besides, nobody owes this code to you- if you don't like it, there is always GTK+ and that Other Desktop...
That requires your end user to know patch and have whatever compiler you used.
... I cannot effectively EVER release a derivative anyone but a hacker would use.
Perhaps, but if they're on a Linux system anyway, it's your duty as any kind of developer to make your instructions lucid and clear enough for anyone to be able to patch your version of Qt into the main one. Standard tools such as diff and patch are available with *every* Linux distro that I know of, as well as *BSD and most of the UNIX variants in existence. If your grandma can't follow simple directions such as "Download it to this directory and run these commands" then maybe your grandma doesn't speak english?
Your argument has some holes in it...
If you want to write programs that use QT and are not GPL, you must pay the man.
Not quite- your app doesn't have to be GPL, it can be GPL or QPL or a couple of the other OSI approved licenses. However, your source must be available or else yes, you do have to pay the man. What's wrong with that?
It fails on the basic, very basic, premise that an open source application should allow derivatives under the same license as the original.
All future versions and/or derivatives are going to be released under the QPL. That argument is just false.
Taking your grandma analogy farther, would you really want her to be downloading/installing unchecked versions of libraries? If she has any common sense, she should only be using the Troll Tech version of Qt- you never know what other people might try to put into the library. If you have a truly useful patch, you can submit it to Trolltech and they'll incorporate it into their main branch. If you have a cute little patch which makes all QObjects place your name in text in the lower right corner, that should not be releasable as the official Qt library and I wouldn't want you to name it that and put it on your web site.
Basically, all that I can say is that Qt provides two distinct ways to write software for people who want to use the toolkit. If you want to make money off of it, you have to pay them first. If you're going to make your product free and reusable, then you don't owe them anything. What's the matter with that?
Apparently you don't understand English well enough to figure out a joke when it is also followed by an emoticon commonly associated with joking around.
Yes, I know what full-scene antialiasing is. And honestly, I don't think that it makes *that* much of a difference; the PS2 has much more raw horsepower than the DC anyway, and I'll be buying one because of it. I want to compare it to the Dreamcast that's sitting over by the TV anyway...
KDE is based on a proprietary library.
Hope this clears something up for you:
If by "proprietary library" you mean Qt1.x, then you are incorrect; KDE is no longer based on Qt1.x. KDE is now based on Qt2.1; just as much as I'm sure you hate people spreading lies about GNOME, I can't stand to see it happen to KDE.
Your statement should read: KDE *WAS* based on a proprietary library.
A library that cannot be ported or forked except by its authors.
If you feel like it, you can port the Qt toolkit to MS-Win32 or to the Mac or to BeOS if you want; there is no license restriction that stops you. The only restrictions on it are that you can't close the source to your ported version, and you have to make notice that your version is not the official version. That's reasonable, is it not?
A library that reserves some rights to everything that even links to it.
The only "rights" that are extended to Qt-applications are that the user of such an application is granted the right to the source code. There is no right that is reserved for the library. Please, read the QPL thoroughly.
A library that reserves the right to take your patches and roll them into its proprietary product, all the while NEVER allowing you to distribute anything except its product with your patch separate. You have to distinguish your code from their by separately distributing it - they do not have to distringuish your contributions to their code at all.
They're a CORPORATION. They survive by MAKING MONEY. Do you understand that? They are being nice by releasing their software under an OSI-approved Open Source license; nobody REQUIRES that they use such a license. Grow up.
The QPL is about assuring a lifetime of riches for the authors of QT at the expense of the freedoms of its users.
Where did you glean this information from? I can find no evidence to support it. The QPL provides a means to preserve Free Software as Free Software. It also provides a means to make money when others don't want to be as nice as you and release their source code as well. Where does the QPL limit the freedom of the user?
How much hacking on an OS project have YOU done today?
Who really cares if the PS2 has no antialiasing capabilities? How much text are you going to really read from your TV screen anyway? ;)
Seriously, though, the PS2 is the game player's dream console; Sony's doing everything right, and MS is producing what seems to be (at best) an obsolete piece of hardware with no real added value over a top-of-the-line PC.
BTW, when I say obsolete, I don't mean right now. Obviously, the X-Box wouldn't be obsolete if it came out today- but is it out today? I thought not.... by the time it gets out, you'll be able to pick up a regular PC with more horsepower and more capability for less money. I think this is going to be a BIG mistake on MS's part. I'm not buying one, and none of my friends are either; if we want DirectX, we install it on our PCs under Windows.
I'll toss in another one- at least in Universal Soldier, the hacker kid was running some sort of a UNIX box with MWM. :)
Just like in the real world.
-Chris
Here's the thing. I would never choose to use W2K, given a choice of W2K for free (as in beer/speech) or Linux (which is always free speech). As a matter of fact, I'd rather pay for Linux than deal with Windows. That's me, though. Maybe I'm just a masochist...
But I have to tell you, I like KDE. I like GNOME. I like freedom, I like learning, and I like the opportunities that Linux provides me to learn and to gain experience. You can't get this experience! When something goes wrong with Linux, I usually know what's wrong and how to fix it; if I don't know how to fix it, then I know where to find out how to fix it. And that makes the difference.
-Chris
How long before the ACs start posting claims of their real woody-powered servers?
; )
I'm not so interested in the coding aspect of it (they *will* have MS's WinCE development libraries on their side) but I am kinda interested in how it's going to work. I'm assuming that you'll probably have to pop their CD/GD into the Dreamcast and load it up, followed by removing the disc and putting in a PlayStation game. Not too difficult at all, but still... I wonder, since usually when you remove a disc the system returns to the main screen. Interesting, nonetheless, especially if they can get it to enhance games to anywhere near the quality that the PC can with Bleem!...
The only problem that I have with your post is this:
KOM/OpenParts is dead.
If I recall correctly... DCOP is the replacement for KOM, and KParts replaces OpenParts. It's more efficient, it works better, blah blah blah- net result is that you don't need an Athlon 1GHz to run KDE2 at an acceptable level of speed. I've run it on a Pentium Pro 150 with 32 MB of RAM and it ran very nicely. Not horribly fast, but not so slow that it was ridiculously unusable. I think that it's actually not totally unreasonable to believe that KDE2 will be *faster* and require less system resources than KDE1...
"They've done it because it's 'cool' and shows off the elegance of the underlying componentised design"
Wrong. They've done it because despite what you might think, it's actually USEFUL to be able to look at a word processed document with relevant information to a spreadsheet or a presentation. The frames idea also works very well- and please, do EVERYONE a favor and don't make judgments before you actually try something out. Until you have actually tried KDE2 and Konqueror, I'd appreciate it if you didn't make comments like:
"Here you've got several unrelated applications munged together in panes of one window, with one menu bar and tool bar for all of them, but one status bar for each of them, which seems unrelated to the content pane..."
Something that sadly can't be shown by regular screenshots (unless you use GIFs- and there are NO GIFs at konqueror.org) is that you DON'T have one toolbar and one menubar for all of the frames- the toolbars and menu options change depending on which window has the focus. It's one of the most impressive things I've ever seen to watch the toolbars flesh themselves out- they're "smart" enough to know what to do in most given situations. At this point, everything is NOT completely stable, but it IS stable enough to use for filemanaging and a decent amount of web browsing. It also crashes less than most of the Mozilla builds have (for me, on the same system).
I run KDE2 24/7 and I have had no strange problems with it- it has never reacted badly to my display (running on XFree86 4.0) nor has it corrupted files or done anything horrible. It's usable right now- not half what it will be when it's finally released, but it's usable. The code is there, and the design is there. This IS something to be excited about, everyone...