Framework, check. Applications, next.
on
Five Years of KDE
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· Score: 1
KDE 1.x was okay, but it's the 2.x series which delivered a nice framework with (IMHO) great technologies (DCOP, KParts, KIO). While none of these are revolutionary by themselves, they have definitely matured a lot. While the framework can use continuous improvements, it's ready.
Next step: applications. A lot of development focus of some of the core developers is shifting from kdelibs to KOffice which indeed needs more work, but the differences between 1.0 and 1.1 are a positive sign for 1.2/2.0. With a stable API (porting from Qt2/KDE 2.x to Qt3/KDE 3.x is very little work) KDE 3 should do for applications within KDE what the 2.x series did for the framework.
I doubt much more new features will be added to the core technology of the desktop. I don't get such an impression on the mailinglists or IRC either, so I wouldn't worry too much about that.:)
If you have a Microsoft-bashing site, what on earth are you doing writing it in FrontPage and using the logo? Who will take you seriously?
This is not about anti-Microsoft sites. It's about sites that offer technical reviews such as on-line magazines or on-line publications or print magazines.
If that site happens to be built with FrontPage and uses that logo, it could be problematic to post an article trashing a Microsoft product. Not because of Microsoft, but simply because it might be a bad product. Critizing the XP Activating stuff, for example.
It's like making it illegal to *receive* SPAM, rather than making it illegal to send it.
I've seen worse laws pass, so what's your point?
Maybe I should put a small layer on the bottom of my site stating a license that if one makes use of one of the hyperlinks that point to another page on my site, one accepts the terms and conditions which state that browsing with an unauthorized browser (MSIE) entitles me to $50/pageview.
Do you have some problem with Mozilla that we should know about?
Development of KHTML started even before the Netscape code was made open source and development of the 2.x series including the Konqueror framework started at a time when Mozilla/Gecko simply wasn't as good as it is now.
1) The grocery store does not own Coca-cola. If they change what is inside, even if they notify the customer, it is food-tampering.
They don't sell 'Rum and Coca-Cola' or any other mixed drinks in your country?
Reselling is often *all about* making a few changes and enhancements to a product. Whether that be a more convenient location to buy it, services or an icon to a vastly superior and corn-flake compatible ISP.
Unless your passwords are out in the open, you're using some sort of security through obscurity as well.
It will be interesting to see what kind of authorization will exist if mind-probing would ever be an easy-to-use and reliable technique (if possible at all).
Oh, and probably a zillion other times where you've done something (not necessarily computing related) and thought it was safe just because the odds people would find out where neglectible.
Speaking of Mozilla, I doubt that they will ever support ActiveX. Mozilla is serious about web standards, and ActiveX is not a standard (Flash support can be excused as support for legacy plugin API designed by Netscape).
The khtml hackers are very concerned with standards compliance. Feed Konqueror 100% standard compliance code and it should do exactly what you want, it it does not, please file a bug report.
Supporting a non-standard feature doesn't necessarily break standard compliance. Even Mozilla has plenty of workarounds for broken pages (uncloses table/td/tr's etcetera) which make it more useable.
/me waits for KDE zealots to praise this while dissing ximian over.net... oh the irony...
Both developments has their good and bad sides.
ActiveX support can be very important in multi-OS work environments and for many on-line banking sites, for example.
On the other hand, sandboxing it and turning it off by default doesn't sound like a bad idea. But don't worry, as long as this requires Wine CVS and as long as the activexproxy is a program in kdenonbeta, it won't be installed by default on your distribution.
Same with the new Ximian developments: embracing and cooperating with SOAP sounds like a good idea.
I _would_ be very careful about.NET development since it is basically Microsoft's proprietary lock-in platform to make sure SOAP will give them _more_ control, not _less_, but cooperation is good. Even so, it is not like we KDE people are totally against SOAP support, some projects already use it.
Furthermore, I like to stress that ActiveX support originated as a proof-of-concept and "cool factor" development. The responses we received at LinuxTag confirmed this.
That has to be a lot more fun than staying in a hotel.
Yeah, it is. (posting live from the KDE booth)
Actually, this morning we encountered a few fellow geeks sleeping on the streets. Pictures will be posted as soon as I am back home - I forget the cable to transfer the images from my camera.:-/
Re:The Neverending wave of criticism of slackware.
on
Slackware 8.0 Released
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· Score: 3
Slackware is a sourcefriendly distrobution that is rock solid from the bottom up.
Amen. Could not have said it better myself.
I also like Pat Volkerding's attitude. He gives "it works and it works damn good" a higher priority than "everyone else is doing it, so should we".
While each distribution has its own flavour, Slackware is really another category of food all by itself.
And indeed, source friendly. Truly amazing how many open source zealots critizise Slackware because the preferred way of doing things is compiling source instead of copying binaries.:-)
Just because RedHat post all the security advisories and offer patches doesn't mean they are less secure than another distro who uses the same daemons but yet does not post security any advisories.
True, but not all distributions use the same versions or even flavours of package. Dillon's cron, Vixie's cron, etcetera.
Most definitely. With a terrible framework underneath. Gecko is no longer the "fits on one disk and you're happy" jewel.
I investigated it for a kiosk system and I was not happy. After untarring Mozilla (400+ MB!) and having everything set up I wanted to set up a remote app to control Gecko through XPCOM.
About 14 ns*.h includes, 30 lines of code and hours looking for documentation which was all outdated, I gave up because I couldn'y even register with XPCOM yet. Even the developerWorks tutorials at IBM.com didn't help.:-(
It took me one include file, a few lines of code and about fifteen minutes of searching on the web before I had an application talking to Konqueror.
Someone needs to take Gecko, remove XUL, remove Mozilla and add a decent, smart API (just like Netscape's plugin API, which is, what, 5 functions?) and release that browser only app. Galeon and Skipstone are nice strips of Mozilla, but they still require a lot of Moz parts unfortunately.
Pity Mozilla.org is _seriously_ undermaned (they are complete & utterly bogged down in bugs).
This will be circular, but I now know why: the entrance level of Mozilla coding is too high. Too much code, too little documentation.
Before hitting that -1, Flamebait: yes, I will admit I am a KDE developer and I am biased. But I develop KDE as a hobby and had to make an unbiased decision at work and concluded that while Gecko is a beauty in concept, the Mozilla layer surrounding it destroyed a lot.
Please, someone. Fork Gecko and make it what it was supposed to be. As long as Gecko is maintained by the Mozilla guys, I habe more trust in khtml.
Actually, the chances that DTS will be on there are about slim to none. Lucas has this little thing called THX he'd rather have you listen to.
Wouldn't a THX mastered DTS track still sound better than a THX mastered DD5.1 track?
As long as THX isn't supported by the average home cinema setup, there is no reason to not put a DTS track on it. (unless my first assumption was wrong, of course)
Noone can force me to use Microsoft products, so I won't, because they offer me nothing I desire or need that free software already offers me. So, my home will be a happy Linux/BSD/KDE/Loki camp and not worry about this rant a bit.
So what Katz is trying to say: Microsoft will dominate. So Linux et al are going to be a niche only? Fine by me. That niche has worked for me for a long time and I don't see why it should stop working.
The only problem could be when RMS wa right and compilers/debuggers/open source stuff will be forbidden sooner or later, but when we have a government so deluded that such things would happen (it looks like sometimes it is indeed close to that) we have more to worry about than Microsoft.
Microsoft is not a threat. The real threat is that we believe in certain rights, opportunities and freedom but that the average citizen doesn't even care or realize and thus allows them to be taken away. We're the witches of our era.
Slashdot Mirror
KDE 1.x was okay, but it's the 2.x series which delivered a nice framework with (IMHO) great technologies (DCOP, KParts, KIO). While none of these are revolutionary by themselves, they have definitely matured a lot. While the framework can use continuous improvements, it's ready.
:)
Next step: applications. A lot of development focus of some of the core developers is shifting from kdelibs to KOffice which indeed needs more work, but the differences between 1.0 and 1.1 are a positive sign for 1.2/2.0. With a stable API (porting from Qt2/KDE 2.x to Qt3/KDE 3.x is very little work) KDE 3 should do for applications within KDE what the 2.x series did for the framework.
I doubt much more new features will be added to the core technology of the desktop. I don't get such an impression on the mailinglists or IRC either, so I wouldn't worry too much about that.
Happy birthday KDE! Five years today (Sunday 14th).
This is not about anti-Microsoft sites. It's about sites that offer technical reviews such as on-line magazines or on-line publications or print magazines.
If that site happens to be built with FrontPage and uses that logo, it could be problematic to post an article trashing a Microsoft product. Not because of Microsoft, but simply because it might be a bad product. Critizing the XP Activating stuff, for example.
I've seen worse laws pass, so what's your point?
Maybe I should put a small layer on the bottom of my site stating a license that if one makes use of one of the hyperlinks that point to another page on my site, one accepts the terms and conditions which state that browsing with an unauthorized browser (MSIE) entitles me to $50/pageview.
No, it just gets vey hot.
Checkout this wrapup if you're interested in the events that took place at the KDE booth. Comes with many pictures.
Do you have some problem with Mozilla that we should know about?
Development of KHTML started even before the Netscape code was made open source and development of the 2.x series including the Konqueror framework started at a time when Mozilla/Gecko simply wasn't as good as it is now.
They don't sell 'Rum and Coca-Cola' or any other mixed drinks in your country?
Reselling is often *all about* making a few changes and enhancements to a product. Whether that be a more convenient location to buy it, services or an icon to a vastly superior and corn-flake compatible ISP.
It will be interesting to see what kind of authorization will exist if mind-probing would ever be an easy-to-use and reliable technique (if possible at all).
Oh, and probably a zillion other times where you've done something (not necessarily computing related) and thought it was safe just because the odds people would find out where neglectible.
No, it is not. Dude, you just posted on Slashdot, after all! :-)
The khtml hackers are very concerned with standards compliance. Feed Konqueror 100% standard compliance code and it should do exactly what you want, it it does not, please file a bug report.
Supporting a non-standard feature doesn't necessarily break standard compliance. Even Mozilla has plenty of workarounds for broken pages (uncloses table/td/tr's etcetera) which make it more useable.
Both developments has their good and bad sides.
ActiveX support can be very important in multi-OS work environments and for many on-line banking sites, for example.
On the other hand, sandboxing it and turning it off by default doesn't sound like a bad idea. But don't worry, as long as this requires Wine CVS and as long as the activexproxy is a program in kdenonbeta, it won't be installed by default on your distribution.
Same with the new Ximian developments: embracing and cooperating with SOAP sounds like a good idea.
I _would_ be very careful about .NET development since it is basically Microsoft's proprietary lock-in platform to make sure SOAP will give them _more_ control, not _less_, but cooperation is good. Even so, it is not like we KDE people are totally against SOAP support, some projects already use it.
Furthermore, I like to stress that ActiveX support originated as a proof-of-concept and "cool factor" development. The responses we received at LinuxTag confirmed this.
Konqueror/khtml != kfm, please upgrade your KDE 1.x installation.
By the way, nice website you've got, renders real slick. Thanks for being one of those 4 sites. :-)
Not lightweight, embedded. There are plenty of embedded Gecko solutions (check out OST, www.ostdev.net) but I do not think Galeon qualifies as such.
Konqueror on the iPaq is very cute though.
Yeah, it is. (posting live from the KDE booth)
Actually, this morning we encountered a few fellow geeks sleeping on the streets. Pictures will be posted as soon as I am back home - I forget the cable to transfer the images from my camera. :-/
Amen. Could not have said it better myself.
I also like Pat Volkerding's attitude. He gives "it works and it works damn good" a higher priority than "everyone else is doing it, so should we".
While each distribution has its own flavour, Slackware is really another category of food all by itself.
And indeed, source friendly. Truly amazing how many open source zealots critizise Slackware because the preferred way of doing things is compiling source instead of copying binaries. :-)
True, but not all distributions use the same versions or even flavours of package. Dillon's cron, Vixie's cron, etcetera.
We'd be sending coats, jackets and blankets to hell?
Sorry, could not resist..
Most definitely. With a terrible framework underneath. Gecko is no longer the "fits on one disk and you're happy" jewel.
I investigated it for a kiosk system and I was not happy. After untarring Mozilla (400+ MB!) and having everything set up I wanted to set up a remote app to control Gecko through XPCOM.
About 14 ns*.h includes, 30 lines of code and hours looking for documentation which was all outdated, I gave up because I couldn'y even register with XPCOM yet. Even the developerWorks tutorials at IBM.com didn't help. :-(
It took me one include file, a few lines of code and about fifteen minutes of searching on the web before I had an application talking to Konqueror.
Someone needs to take Gecko, remove XUL, remove Mozilla and add a decent, smart API (just like Netscape's plugin API, which is, what, 5 functions?) and release that browser only app. Galeon and Skipstone are nice strips of Mozilla, but they still require a lot of Moz parts unfortunately.
Pity Mozilla.org is _seriously_ undermaned (they are complete & utterly bogged down in bugs).
This will be circular, but I now know why: the entrance level of Mozilla coding is too high. Too much code, too little documentation.
Before hitting that -1, Flamebait: yes, I will admit I am a KDE developer and I am biased. But I develop KDE as a hobby and had to make an unbiased decision at work and concluded that while Gecko is a beauty in concept, the Mozilla layer surrounding it destroyed a lot.
Please, someone. Fork Gecko and make it what it was supposed to be. As long as Gecko is maintained by the Mozilla guys, I habe more trust in khtml.
It all started when they harassed a Norwegian coder, so I'll take it that as yes.
The Back To The Future announcements were no(t all) rumours, there have been several official announcements from Amblin and Universal.
But I haven't heard any story so ridiculous as the BTTF one so I guess it is very likely these discs will indeed be out this fall.
Wouldn't a THX mastered DTS track still sound better than a THX mastered DD5.1 track?
As long as THX isn't supported by the average home cinema setup, there is no reason to not put a DTS track on it. (unless my first assumption was wrong, of course)
I'd think twice before getting too excited about a DVD release announcement.
Now that Star Wars will be released, any word on the LOTR DVD boxset yet? ;-)
There will be a niche market for non-Windows hardware. Albeit the Playstation 3 or the brand new Amiga ;-) or whatever.
There *is* a market for non-Microsoft products and there always will be.
Even if you are right, no one can force me to use a computer.
Noone can force me to use Microsoft products, so I won't, because they offer me nothing I desire or need that free software already offers me. So, my home will be a happy Linux/BSD/KDE/Loki camp and not worry about this rant a bit. So what Katz is trying to say: Microsoft will dominate. So Linux et al are going to be a niche only? Fine by me. That niche has worked for me for a long time and I don't see why it should stop working. The only problem could be when RMS wa right and compilers/debuggers/open source stuff will be forbidden sooner or later, but when we have a government so deluded that such things would happen (it looks like sometimes it is indeed close to that) we have more to worry about than Microsoft. Microsoft is not a threat. The real threat is that we believe in certain rights, opportunities and freedom but that the average citizen doesn't even care or realize and thus allows them to be taken away. We're the witches of our era.