Funny, I actually preffer MDI rather than scattering up Windows all ove my taskbar. It also allwos me to focus easier because all the program's windows are in one window.
Just because you do not like it and GTK+ is too primitive to have it does not mean it is so horribly flawed. It is a very popular software design choice on Windows especially and users like it. Have you noticed that Corel, Adobe, Macromedia, ActiveState, ACDSee, Opera, Mainconcept, Lost Marble, and thousands of other developers use MDI exclusively?!
MDI is easier to program and the users like it.
GTK 2.4 hasn't changed all that much.:( And the new file selctor is still a mess and does not recognize even half as many protocols as KDE's.
GTK really is the crud-err cream of the open source crop.
You cannot delay forever software releases are hardly ever accurate, KDE 3.2 was originally on track to be released more than 3 months ago, should the distros have waited so long or was it better that they continued with their predictable release cycle?
Furthermore, there are no worries, the rock solid version of 10.0 is sure to include these packages, it will probably be released in May with more packages than you have mentioned.
It is true, however. There is not a single desktop that can match KDE in it's elegant architercture, flexibility and power. KConfig XT, DCOP, KParts, the great API documentation of the classes, Qt, etc. It beats GNOME by a mile and is second to none. GNOME is really lousy when it comes to its architecture, but it does have a nice itnerface and programs, some of which ar ebetter than KDE's such as GIMP vs Kimp;p
I thought 3.2 had some rough edges and needed better polish, but with 3.2.1 it is rock solid and quite polished. Funny that they only mention half of the changes in the changelog.
I wish they would finish the changelog from the beginning instead of adding 50 more bug fixes 2 days later.
Way to go KDE team!
BTW: Kdevelop 3.0.2 is now the undisputed king of IDEs on Linux and among the best I've seen for any platform.
It's an odd story for me. I was a long time GNOME advocate, it was fun and I never really got into KDE or wanted to. My first disitrbution was Redhat, as often seems to happen, you fall in lvoe with your first distro;p
It had its problems, I did not sue Redhat 7.2 as my full time desktop, Windows to me was a better desktop, but I still liked to ocassionally play around with it etc. and I was always on Linux and GNOME related websites even though I did not use it so much.
The more time pased, the more polished Redhat got, and than out of nowhere it seemed, GNOME 2.0 came, I was throughly dissapointed. Never had I thought that a project could go backwards so fast, I am not speaking about the architecture, amybe that was better, but from a user's point of view it was a nightmare. It crashed more often than Windows by a longshot, it was very very slow, and too many features were removed. I am all for simplifying the user interface, removing redundant options, and options nobody uses, but just too many good features were removed which could have simply been implemented better. I would rather have 3 more items clog up my menu and have the features I need instead of some haughty developer telling me what people use and making me lose 3 hours.
I did not like the new attitude of the GNOME project, it felt elitist and it was no longer fun, it didn't feel like it had a personality of it's own, it was rather molded into whatever IBM, SUN and Ximian wanted it to be, no longer what the loyal users wanted.
But, I stuck with it, I was afterall still a GNOME zealot. That is until Redhat 9 came about, I liked it, it was an improvement as a system, but GNOME felt very much the same, I didn't even notice any new features, just a lot fo bugfixes, optimizations and a few UI fixes here and there, but I expected more. So, I decided to give KDE a whirl and see how it improved since the last time I tried it which was at version 2.2. WOW, it felt a lot faster than before, even though GNOME started up faster, KDE was faster to use and it had many of the features I wanted in GNOME before, but it was also lacking soem I liekd in GNOME, such as drawers, emblems, more attractive thumbnails, and shadowed text. I liked it and I decided to spend more time with it, after spending 2 more weeks switching between the two I was using KDE more often than GNOME and I started being interested in the community. I noticed that it felt like an OSS project, like GNOME once was, it had the sense of spirit, hope, joy and passion I admired in GNOME before. Best of all, it was not in the least bit elitist, I could submit whatever I wanted to websites like KDE-LOOK and my only judge was the community, not some high and mighty elitist judge.
With KDE 3.2, and after following it's development, I am switched on it. I do not use KDE 3.2 full time as Fedora does not ship with it yet, but I did try it in a recent Mandrake Beta and I liked it very much, lots of improvements everywhere as the authors mention. THe KDE releases are meaningful, they are feature absed, not time based, that's why KDE 3.2 took a year to get out the door, due to the delays. The developers are very dedicated and made sure when they released it that it was what they wanted it to be. GNOME, since their new attitude change has made no delays, they would rather release a buggy product rather than delay it for their users.
I also like that KDE is much more moderate. GNOME is all or nothing when it comes to many issues, such as the UI. It's either remove all features practically which are not used by 80% of people or remove none, KDE carefully examines what they remove and will not remove what they don't feel is essential because they don't screw their users. They are improving their UI rapidly, NOTE IMPROVING, NOT REMOVING EVERYTHING so there is nothing to improve. The way GNOME handles it reminds me of Win2k3 which instead of improving secuirity and fixing vulnerabilities simply sht down all services with exploits.
GREAT SOLUTION GUYS!
Currently, the Qt license KDE uses will not allow it to port it to Windows, but in reality it is very much possible due to Qt's amazing portability.
Already KDE runs on Mac OS X quite well as packaged by the FINK project. Now, due to the dual license being available for Qt on Mac OS X, you can even run Konqueror, without the rest of KDE natively on it, no need for Xfree.
Why get an iPod? Rio Karma is by far the best. Unless you have more than 20 GB of songs you want to take with you, there is no contest. Only place iPod beats Rio is in capacity, the maximum for Rio is 20 GBs, or approximately 10,000 songs.
Check it out: http://www.digitalnetworksna.com/shop/_templates/i tem_main_Rio.asp?model=220&cat=53
You can get one for about $250 online.
I am usually very supportive of SUN when it comes to their softwae, I like what they've done with StarOffice 7 a lot, I like the direction they are taking Java in with 1.5, but this is a brutal dissapointment.
JDS, is despite what they have said usability, and aesthetics are definitely not its strong point. Not having icons for important and marketed applications, throwing more than 5 themes at the user, and mixing so many technologies that don't mix all that well yet (Qt, GTK+) is unacceptable. Their branding is also way out of hand, it seems nowdays any software SUN makes will be branded with a dozen Java stickers regardless of what it actually is. Just looking at the screenshots I see that the start menu has a java label, nautilus has a java label, and Mozilla too, this is going overboard and it would have helped if they at least used a consistent logo.
It also seems that this is quite a bit out of date, its using GNOME 2.2.x while now the GNOME team is already hard at work on 2.6. However, I am glad at least that the applied some useful pathces like the file selector and automatic refresh patches. Also, at least it is more recent than the latest Solaris version of GNOME. In addition to being out of date they fail to include a number of essential applications such as XMMS, GAIM, a good burning application like K3b and as Eugenia mentioned, KDE/Qt libraries. As I was fearing multimedia support isn't all that great either despite their advertising, no mpeg support is just plain sad for a modern OS.
On a more positive note, while the speed isn't great, at least it is usually a stable operating system and it has a multi-billion company behind it with a name that everybody in the industry knows. I just hope that they are serious about this, their opinions on Linux throughout history have been very contradictory and as they've said they have no REAL linux strategy and are just supporting it because the market is forcing them to.
I am very displeased with SUN's offer, I hope that maybe the final version will be far better, but I doubt it to be honest. I don't know why their product ended up this way, they have used a respectable distribution, SUSE as their base and it's already been a long time, by its release it will already be severly out of date compared to Xandros, SUSE, Mandrake, and Fedora. This definitely doesen't seem like a good choice for new users and I am even skeptical about companies using it, sure they will have system administrators and professional support, but time is money and getting this up to spec sounds like it will be a pain in the arse and $100/per year is not cheap even for companies. For a first release this is still decent and I am sure it will get much better as time passes and SUN gains some good experience in the field of Linux.
On a sidenote, I admit that I like KDE more than GNOME for a number of reasons which I will not go into here, but I also like GNOME and I think its a shame that SUN isn't showing what it can really do, 2.4 is significantly better than 2.2 in terms of speed and polish.
Also, KDE needs a lot more regognition, donations, and perhaps a real corporate sponsor. Right now it is looking pretty great for GNOME in terms of money and users, with the recent adoption of JDS by the Chinese this is a major step forward for GNOME as were the wins in schools and Mexico. They are also well backed by corporate sponsors such as SUN, Ximian, Redhat, and IBM to name a few. They are getting thousands of dollars of donations, while KDE's donations are minuscule in comparrison. This is in part KDE's fault as they are against blunt begging for donations and not too aggresive or competitive on their donations page. For example GNOME's Friends program has different levels which yield small gifts, donations are tax refundable and they have a great charter and website for it all.
While GNOME deserves this, I think KDE deserves it just a much if not more, in any case they NEED it more, only about 5 developers are actually hired to work on KDE. I
Slashdot has totally misinterpreted Eugenia. She was never complaining that KDE was not available as a desktop environment!
What she did not like was that no KDE libraries were included and the version of Qt is outdated. You may think, "Why does it matter, its a GNOME based desktop." KDE has thousands of very good applications which you have no decent GTK+ alternative for, such as K3b. apps.kde.com has a bunch of them for virtually any category if your interested. This exclusion makes it VERY difficult for one to ever sucessfully install KDE/Qt applications and installing these dependencies will automatically make you inelligeble for support.
Slashdot Mirror
What did you say in your paper. I'm guessing it was about religion, or something highly controversial of that sort.
:p
Sorry, i was born nosy
Gamespy is running a title fight between DOOM and Super Mario Bros.
1 .shtml
Vote for DOOM here: http://archive.gamespy.com/titlefight/matches/050
Don't vote for that sissy coin grabber. Besides DOOM 3 will run on Linux =)
Should checkout http://www.kde-look.org/content/show.php?content=8 179&vote=good&tan=88544815
Funny, I actually preffer MDI rather than scattering up Windows all ove my taskbar. It also allwos me to focus easier because all the program's windows are in one window. Just because you do not like it and GTK+ is too primitive to have it does not mean it is so horribly flawed. It is a very popular software design choice on Windows especially and users like it. Have you noticed that Corel, Adobe, Macromedia, ActiveState, ACDSee, Opera, Mainconcept, Lost Marble, and thousands of other developers use MDI exclusively?! MDI is easier to program and the users like it.
GTK 2.4 hasn't changed all that much. :( And the new file selctor is still a mess and does not recognize even half as many protocols as KDE's.
GTK really is the crud-err cream of the open source crop.
You cannot delay forever software releases are hardly ever accurate, KDE 3.2 was originally on track to be released more than 3 months ago, should the distros have waited so long or was it better that they continued with their predictable release cycle? Furthermore, there are no worries, the rock solid version of 10.0 is sure to include these packages, it will probably be released in May with more packages than you have mentioned.
It is true, however. There is not a single desktop that can match KDE in it's elegant architercture, flexibility and power. KConfig XT, DCOP, KParts, the great API documentation of the classes, Qt, etc. It beats GNOME by a mile and is second to none. GNOME is really lousy when it comes to its architecture, but it does have a nice itnerface and programs, some of which ar ebetter than KDE's such as GIMP vs Kimp ;p
I thought 3.2 had some rough edges and needed better polish, but with 3.2.1 it is rock solid and quite polished. Funny that they only mention half of the changes in the changelog. I wish they would finish the changelog from the beginning instead of adding 50 more bug fixes 2 days later. Way to go KDE team! BTW: Kdevelop 3.0.2 is now the undisputed king of IDEs on Linux and among the best I've seen for any platform.
It's an odd story for me. I was a long time GNOME advocate, it was fun and I never really got into KDE or wanted to. My first disitrbution was Redhat, as often seems to happen, you fall in lvoe with your first distro ;p
It had its problems, I did not sue Redhat 7.2 as my full time desktop, Windows to me was a better desktop, but I still liked to ocassionally play around with it etc. and I was always on Linux and GNOME related websites even though I did not use it so much.
The more time pased, the more polished Redhat got, and than out of nowhere it seemed, GNOME 2.0 came, I was throughly dissapointed. Never had I thought that a project could go backwards so fast, I am not speaking about the architecture, amybe that was better, but from a user's point of view it was a nightmare. It crashed more often than Windows by a longshot, it was very very slow, and too many features were removed. I am all for simplifying the user interface, removing redundant options, and options nobody uses, but just too many good features were removed which could have simply been implemented better. I would rather have 3 more items clog up my menu and have the features I need instead of some haughty developer telling me what people use and making me lose 3 hours.
I did not like the new attitude of the GNOME project, it felt elitist and it was no longer fun, it didn't feel like it had a personality of it's own, it was rather molded into whatever IBM, SUN and Ximian wanted it to be, no longer what the loyal users wanted.
But, I stuck with it, I was afterall still a GNOME zealot. That is until Redhat 9 came about, I liked it, it was an improvement as a system, but GNOME felt very much the same, I didn't even notice any new features, just a lot fo bugfixes, optimizations and a few UI fixes here and there, but I expected more. So, I decided to give KDE a whirl and see how it improved since the last time I tried it which was at version 2.2. WOW, it felt a lot faster than before, even though GNOME started up faster, KDE was faster to use and it had many of the features I wanted in GNOME before, but it was also lacking soem I liekd in GNOME, such as drawers, emblems, more attractive thumbnails, and shadowed text. I liked it and I decided to spend more time with it, after spending 2 more weeks switching between the two I was using KDE more often than GNOME and I started being interested in the community. I noticed that it felt like an OSS project, like GNOME once was, it had the sense of spirit, hope, joy and passion I admired in GNOME before. Best of all, it was not in the least bit elitist, I could submit whatever I wanted to websites like KDE-LOOK and my only judge was the community, not some high and mighty elitist judge.
With KDE 3.2, and after following it's development, I am switched on it. I do not use KDE 3.2 full time as Fedora does not ship with it yet, but I did try it in a recent Mandrake Beta and I liked it very much, lots of improvements everywhere as the authors mention. THe KDE releases are meaningful, they are feature absed, not time based, that's why KDE 3.2 took a year to get out the door, due to the delays. The developers are very dedicated and made sure when they released it that it was what they wanted it to be. GNOME, since their new attitude change has made no delays, they would rather release a buggy product rather than delay it for their users.
I also like that KDE is much more moderate. GNOME is all or nothing when it comes to many issues, such as the UI. It's either remove all features practically which are not used by 80% of people or remove none, KDE carefully examines what they remove and will not remove what they don't feel is essential because they don't screw their users. They are improving their UI rapidly, NOTE IMPROVING, NOT REMOVING EVERYTHING so there is nothing to improve. The way GNOME handles it reminds me of Win2k3 which instead of improving secuirity and fixing vulnerabilities simply sht down all services with exploits.
GREAT SOLUTION GUYS!
THe writters of the article couldn't even spell my hometown right, it's not Freemont it's Fremont!
Currently, the Qt license KDE uses will not allow it to port it to Windows, but in reality it is very much possible due to Qt's amazing portability.
Already KDE runs on Mac OS X quite well as packaged by the FINK project. Now, due to the dual license being available for Qt on Mac OS X, you can even run Konqueror, without the rest of KDE natively on it, no need for Xfree.
Why get an iPod? Rio Karma is by far the best. Unless you have more than 20 GB of songs you want to take with you, there is no contest. Only place iPod beats Rio is in capacity, the maximum for Rio is 20 GBs, or approximately 10,000 songs. Check it out: http://www.digitalnetworksna.com/shop/_templates/i tem_main_Rio.asp?model=220&cat=53
You can get one for about $250 online.
I am usually very supportive of SUN when it comes to their softwae, I like what they've done with StarOffice 7 a lot, I like the direction they are taking Java in with 1.5, but this is a brutal dissapointment.
JDS, is despite what they have said usability, and aesthetics are definitely not its strong point. Not having icons for important and marketed applications, throwing more than 5 themes at the user, and mixing so many technologies that don't mix all that well yet (Qt, GTK+) is unacceptable. Their branding is also way out of hand, it seems nowdays any software SUN makes will be branded with a dozen Java stickers regardless of what it actually is. Just looking at the screenshots I see that the start menu has a java label, nautilus has a java label, and Mozilla too, this is going overboard and it would have helped if they at least used a consistent logo.
It also seems that this is quite a bit out of date, its using GNOME 2.2.x while now the GNOME team is already hard at work on 2.6. However, I am glad at least that the applied some useful pathces like the file selector and automatic refresh patches. Also, at least it is more recent than the latest Solaris version of GNOME. In addition to being out of date they fail to include a number of essential applications such as XMMS, GAIM, a good burning application like K3b and as Eugenia mentioned, KDE/Qt libraries. As I was fearing multimedia support isn't all that great either despite their advertising, no mpeg support is just plain sad for a modern OS.
On a more positive note, while the speed isn't great, at least it is usually a stable operating system and it has a multi-billion company behind it with a name that everybody in the industry knows. I just hope that they are serious about this, their opinions on Linux throughout history have been very contradictory and as they've said they have no REAL linux strategy and are just supporting it because the market is forcing them to.
I am very displeased with SUN's offer, I hope that maybe the final version will be far better, but I doubt it to be honest. I don't know why their product ended up this way, they have used a respectable distribution, SUSE as their base and it's already been a long time, by its release it will already be severly out of date compared to Xandros, SUSE, Mandrake, and Fedora. This definitely doesen't seem like a good choice for new users and I am even skeptical about companies using it, sure they will have system administrators and professional support, but time is money and getting this up to spec sounds like it will be a pain in the arse and $100/per year is not cheap even for companies. For a first release this is still decent and I am sure it will get much better as time passes and SUN gains some good experience in the field of Linux.
On a sidenote, I admit that I like KDE more than GNOME for a number of reasons which I will not go into here, but I also like GNOME and I think its a shame that SUN isn't showing what it can really do, 2.4 is significantly better than 2.2 in terms of speed and polish.
Also, KDE needs a lot more regognition, donations, and perhaps a real corporate sponsor. Right now it is looking pretty great for GNOME in terms of money and users, with the recent adoption of JDS by the Chinese this is a major step forward for GNOME as were the wins in schools and Mexico. They are also well backed by corporate sponsors such as SUN, Ximian, Redhat, and IBM to name a few. They are getting thousands of dollars of donations, while KDE's donations are minuscule in comparrison. This is in part KDE's fault as they are against blunt begging for donations and not too aggresive or competitive on their donations page. For example GNOME's Friends program has different levels which yield small gifts, donations are tax refundable and they have a great charter and website for it all.
While GNOME deserves this, I think KDE deserves it just a much if not more, in any case they NEED it more, only about 5 developers are actually hired to work on KDE. I
Slashdot has totally misinterpreted Eugenia. She was never complaining that KDE was not available as a desktop environment! What she did not like was that no KDE libraries were included and the version of Qt is outdated. You may think, "Why does it matter, its a GNOME based desktop." KDE has thousands of very good applications which you have no decent GTK+ alternative for, such as K3b. apps.kde.com has a bunch of them for virtually any category if your interested. This exclusion makes it VERY difficult for one to ever sucessfully install KDE/Qt applications and installing these dependencies will automatically make you inelligeble for support.