I can't claim K3b is the best CD burning because as of now, it does not support burning CDs when the data comes from a network/remote machine.
Since Linux FUSE (Filesystem in Userspace) became part of the 2.6.14 mainline Linux kernel, any user (not just root) can mount remote directories set up under KDE.
The remote directories appear fixed in the local directory tree (ie./home/JoeUser/network/school_server), so applications like K3B can access those files just as they would any local file. I think Novell will include FUSE by default in the next SUSE release, and hopefully so will Kubuntu.
This is a tremendous example of good collaboration through the Free Software stack, from the kernel to the Desktop Environment, to the individual applications. It allows not only K3B to burn data coming from network/remote machine, but just about any other legacy application (shell, Motif, GTK) to do the same without being modified.
KDE has superior apps, more energetic users &
on
Torvalds Says 'Use KDE'
·
· Score: 4, Informative
Mark Shuttleworth and now Linus Torvalds seem realize the value of KDE's superior architecture, on which which many must-have KDE apps. These apps don't have any gnome equivalents that are nearly as useful and feature-rich:
AmaroK music player -- The most feature-rich and polished music player on the Free Software platform.
K3b -- Best CD and DVD authoring program with intuitive wizards, on the fly transcoding between WAV, MP3, FLAC, and Ogg Vorbis, normalization of volume levels, CDDB, DVD Ripping and DivX/XviD encoding, Save/load projects, automatic hardware detection/calibration and much more.
DigiKam -- The most feature-rich application for digital photo management.
Wireless Assistant -- Most user-friendly app for connecting to wireless networks. Managed Networks Support, WEP Encryption Support, Per Network (AP) Configuration Profiles, Automatic (DHCP, both dhcpcd and dhclient) and manual configuration options, Connection status monitoring, etc
KDE Education -- Educational (Science, Literature, Geography, etc) programs for children. Could play a big role in whether school districts decide to use Free Software in their classrooms.
Konqueror File Manager -- Embeded image/PDF/music/video viewing (via KMPlayer [kde.org]) and a tree-view arrangement of the filesystem familiar to Windows users (Nautilus doesn't come anywhere close)
KDE Control Center -- Centralized location for desktop control. Controls _all_ common aspects of the KDE applications: language, power settings, special effects, icon and window themes, shadows, shortcuts, printers, privacy, etc. This is what makes KDE so well integrated -- all KDE apps respect changes made here, so they all have the same feel. SUSE has even made YAST a module of the KDE control center so users can access distro-specific settings from here. Compare this to the dismembered approach Red Hat (and other gnome distros) have been forced to adopt in the absence of a centralized gnome control center. (ie. a bunch of individial programs named redhat-config-**** that nobody can ever remember)
MythTV -- The most advanced analog and digital TV viewer/recorder in the Free Software world (built using QT).
Baghira -- A native QT style that faithfully imitates OS X eyecandy, aimed at new users coming from the Mac world.
Klik -- Gives non-expert access to bleeding edge versions of apps without requiring any compilation or permanent installation.
KDE and QT also make up a technically superior platform for developers, drastically lowering the learning curve for programmers new to FOSS development. KDE apps can be built from the ground up using the best development tools in the Free Software world (which also happen to be built on QT/KDE):
Kdevelop for syntax highliting, application templates, and project organization.
Quanta -- Rich web development environment for PHP, CSS, DocBook, HTML, XML, etc with advanced context sensitive autocompletion, internal preview and more.
Ars Technica is reporting that Nokia 770 Internet uses Opera, but I would think it's quite possible that Nokia will offer updates containing a KHTML-based browser (some version of Konqueror) soon.
Nokia has been collaborating with KDE developers to build a browser for some of their other embeded systems, such as the Series 60 Smartphone. Nokia engineers have stated that KHTML is more resourceful than Gecko, has a cleaner architecture, and starts up faster. Also, KHTML is free (LGPL), while Opera is proprietary and therefore probably requires them to pay licensing fees and royalties.
Richard Stallman correctly predicted this was going to happen as a result of of DRM, also known as Digital Restrictions Management, Treacherous Computing, or Handcuffware. To quote from his essay "Can you trust your computer?":
...There are plans to use the same facility for email and documents--resulting in email that disappears in two weeks, or documents that can only be read on the computers in one company.
Imagine if you get an email from your boss telling you to do something that you think is risky; a month later, when it backfires, you can't use the email to show that the decision was not yours. "Getting it in writing" doesn't protect you when the order is written in disappearing ink.
Imagine if you get an email from your boss stating a policy that is illegal or morally outrageous, such as to shred your company's audit documents, or to allow a dangerous threat to your country to move forward unchecked. Today you can send this to a reporter and expose the activity. With treacherous computing, the reporter won't be able to read the document; her computer will refuse to obey her. Treacherous computing becomes a paradise for corruption...
Indeed, here are some must-have KDE apps that are certainly going to help SuSE's popularity as a desktop operating system: AmaroK music player -- Intuitive, powerful, good-looking music player. Supports transfers to/from iPods and many audio formats.
K3b -- Best CD and DVD authoring program with intuitive wizards, on the fly transcoding between WAV, MP3, FLAC, and Ogg Vorbis, normalization of volume levels, CDDB, DVD Ripping and DivX/XviD encoding, Save/load projects, automatic hardware detection/calibration and much more.
DigiKam -- The most feature-rich application for digital photo management.
Wireless Assistant -- Most user-friendly app for connecting to wireless networks. Managed Networks Support, WEP Encryption Support, Per Network (AP) Configuration Profiles, Automatic (DHCP, both dhcpcd and dhclient) and manual configuration options, Connection status monitoring, etc
KDE Education -- Educational (Science, Literature, Geography, etc) programs for children. Could play a big role in whether school districts decide to use Free Software in their classrooms.
Konqueror File Manager -- Embeded image/PDF/music/video viewing (via KMPlayer [kde.org]) and a tree-view arrangement of the filesystem familiar to Windows users (Nautilus doesn't come anywhere close)
KDE Control Center -- Centralized location for desktop control. Controls _all_ common aspects of the KDE applications: language, power settings, special effects, icon and window themes, shadows, shortcuts, printers, privacy, etc. This is what makes KDE so well integrated -- all KDE apps respect changes made here, so they all have the same feel. SUSE has even made YAST a module of the KDE control center so users can access distro-specific settings from here. Compare this to the dismembered approach Red Hat (and other gnome distros) have been forced to adopt in the absence of a centralized gnome control center. (ie. a bunch of individial programs named redhat-config-**** that nobody can ever remember)
MythTV -- The most advanced analog and digital TV viewer/recorder in the Free Software world (built using QT).
Baghira -- A native QT style that faithfully imitates OS X eyecandy, aimed at new users coming from the Mac world.
Klik -- Gives non-expert access to bleeding edge versions of apps without requiring any compilation or permanent installation.
KDE and QT also make up a technically superior platform for developers, drastically lowering the learning curve for programmers new to FOSS development. KDE apps can be built from the ground up using the best development tools in the Free Software world (which also happen to be built on QT/KDE):
Kdevelop for syntax highliting, application templates, and project organization.
Quanta -- Rich web development environment for PHP, CSS, DocBook, HTML, XML, etc with advanced context sensitive autocompletion, internal preview and more.
BKSys environment for a complete replacement of the autotool chain (libtool
Is there some license issue that's driving the KDE issue?
KDE is built on QT, a C++ framework released under the GNU General Public License (GPL), a free software license that has strong copyleft (forced sharing) protections meant to ensure that derivative code stays free.
Some corporations are raising hell against QT and KDE because the corporations want to make proprietary, non-free, closed-source software on the QT framework without compensating the makers of QT. Of course, those same corporations don't have to pay anything if their applications are free and open source. In this way, QT is actually encouraging companies to give back to the community, something beneficial for users as a whole.
The real issue is who is going to pay for the next generation of KDE development if SuSE isn't going to pay.
Mandrake, Kubuntu/Mark Shuttleworth, Trolltech seem realize the value of KDE's superior architecture, on which many must-have KDE apps have been built. These apps don't have any gnome equivalents that are nearly as useful and feature-rich:
AmaroK music player -- Steve Jobs' nightmare, the single greatest threat to Itunes on the Free Software platform.
K3b -- Best CD and DVD authoring program with intuitive wizards, on the fly transcoding between WAV, MP3, FLAC, and Ogg Vorbis, normalization of volume levels, CDDB, DVD Ripping and DivX/XviD encoding, Save/load projects, automatic hardware detection/calibration and much more.
DigiKam -- The most feature-rich application for digital photo management.
Wireless Assistant -- Most user-friendly app for connecting to wireless networks. Managed Networks Support, WEP Encryption Support, Per Network (AP) Configuration Profiles, Automatic (DHCP, both dhcpcd and dhclient) and manual configuration options, Connection status monitoring, etc
KDE Education -- Educational (Science, Literature, Geography, etc) programs for children. Could play a big role in whether school districts decide to use Free Software in their classrooms.
Konqueror File Manager -- Embeded image/PDF/music/video viewing (via KMPlayer) and a tree-view arrangement of the filesystem familiar to Windows users (Nautilus doesn't come anywhere close)
KDE Control Center -- Centralized location for desktop control. Controls _all_ common aspects of the KDE applications: language, power settings, special effects, icon and window themes, shadows, shortcuts, printers, privacy, etc. This is what makes KDE so well integrated -- all KDE apps respect changes made here, so they all have the same feel. SUSE has even made YAST a module of the KDE control center so users can access distro-specific settings from here. Compare this to the dismembered approach Red Hat (and other gnome distros) have been forced to adopt in the absence of a centralized gnome control center. (ie. a bunch of individial programs named redhat-config-**** that nobody can ever remember)
MythTV -- The most advanced analog and digital TV viewer/recorder in the Free Software world (built using QT).
Baghira -- A native QT style that faithfully imitates OS X eyecandy, aimed at new users coming from the Mac world.
Klik -- Gives non-expert access to bleeding edge versions of apps without requiring any compilation or permanent installation.
KDE and QT also make up a technically superior platform for developers, drastically lowering the learning curve for programmers new to FOSS development. KDE apps can be built from the ground up using the best development tools in the Free Software world (which also happen to be built on QT/KDE):
Kdevelop for syntax highlighting, application templates, and project organization.
KDE is simply is not going to happen as a mainstream commercial desktop as long as Qt is available only under the GPL
QT is licensed GPL. The GPL is the best Free Software license because it contains strong copyleft provisions that require derivative works to also be Free and Open Source. This is in the interest of users (like me) so I have absolutely no problems with QT or anything else licensed under the GPL.
Why exactly do you care about proprietary, closed source, non-free software anyway? So you can lock users in your product, prevent them from making modifications, restrict their rights, control what they can and can't do with their computers? Proprietary software is immoral, and if that's what you're developing, then you SHOULD be penalized by having to pay licensing fees.
K3b -- Best CD and DVD authoring program with intuitive wizards, on the fly transcoding between WAV, MP3, FLAC, and Ogg Vorbis, normalization of volume levels, CDDB, DVD Ripping and DivX/XviD encoding, Save/load projects, automatic hardware detection/calibration and much more.
Klik -- Gives non-expert access to bleeding edge versions of apps without requiring any compilation or permanent installation.
KDE Control Center -- Centralized location for desktop control. Controls _all_ common aspects of the KDE applications: language, power settings, special effects, icon and window themes, shadows, shortcuts, printers, privacy, etc. This is what makes KDE so well integrated -- all KDE apps respect changes made here, so they all have the same feel. SUSE has even made YAST a module of the KDE control center so users can access distro-specific settings from here. Compare this to the dismembered approach Red Hat (and other gnome distros) have been forced to adopt in the absence of a centralized gnome control center. (ie. a bunch of individial programs named redhat-config-**** that nobody can ever remember)
Wireless Assistant -- Most user-friendly app for connecting to wireless networks. Managed Networks Support, WEP Encryption Support, Per Network (AP) Configuration Profiles, Automatic (DHCP, both dhcpcd and dhclient) and manual configuration options, Connection status monitoring, etc
MythTV -- The most advanced analog and digital TV viewer/recorder in the Free Software world (built using QT).
KDE Education -- Educational (Science, Literature, Geography, etc) programs for children. Could play a big role in whether school districts decide to use Free Software in their classrooms.
Quanta -- Rich web development environment for PHP, CSS, DocBook, HTML, XML, etc with advanced context sensitive autocompletion, internal preview and more.
I think a lot of Suse customers will not be so pleased.
Of course SUSE customers won't be pleased. There are many must-have desktop apps built on the KDE framework that don't have any good gtk equivalents:
AmaroK music player -- Steve Jobs' nightmare, the single greatest threat to Itunes on the Free Software platform.
DigiKam -- The most feature-rich application for digital photo management.
Konqueror File Manager" -- Embeded image/PDF/music/video viewing (via KMPlayer) and a tree-view arrangement of the filesystem familiar to Windows users (Nautilus doesn't come anywhere close)
Baghira -- A native QT style that faithfully imitates OS X eyecandy, aimed at new users coming from the Mac world.
KDE and QT also make up a technically superior platform for developers, drastically lowering the learning curve for programmers new to FOSS development. KDE apps can be built from the ground up using the best development tools in the Free Software world (which also happen to be built on QT/KDE):
Kdevelop for syntax highliting, application templates, and project organization.
BKSys environmentfor a complete replacement of the autotool chain (libtool+automake+autoconf+make) that will make dependency a whole lot more simpler and efficient.
Gnome is way behind KDE with regards to these features. The only reason Redhat's doing so well with Gnome is because they're targeting geeky sysadmins who don't care about having a good-looking desktop. The other 99% of the world does care, and gnome just doesn't fit the bill.
Yes $7/share is pretty tempting, but Novel's stock will only go up if they start being profitable. Novel had it coming to them when they bought Ximian, a gnome vendor that made a hodge podge of different products that are now dead (remember RedCarpet?). Novel should stick to SUSE/KDE and re-orient all its developers towards improving _only one_ application for each particular need (ie. YAST for installation/maintenance, KDE for desktop, etc).
Novel's premier Linux distribution, SUSE, is historically based on KDE yet the individual projects that they're supporting (Beagle, Evolution) are gnome apps. I think in the long run KDE will become the de-facto standard primarily because of the tight integration among its applications and excitement in its developer and user base about KDE 4. If you don't believe me, take a look at how many more posts there are in KDE-Look than in Gnome-Look. In fact, there is KDE-Apps for independent apps built with the KDE/QT framework, while there is no such place to aggregate gnome apps.
In conclusion, Novel should get their gnome developers to work on KDE so that they have a tightly integrated system with no duplicated functionality.
KOffice is the Office suite developed as part of KDE, and from personal experience I can say that it is a whole lot snappier at boot-time, requires less memory, and needs far less hard-drive space to install.
KOffice developers are also quick to note that they find it a whole lot easier to work with a codebase that was designed from the beginning to be lean. Staroffice (the commercial, closed-source predecessor of OpenOffice.org) was initially designed to be completely self-sufficient so as to run without many dependencies. That accounts for part of OpenOffice.org's current bloat.
because the license does not allow you to use code you wrote with the free version in the paid versions.
WRONG! Please mod parent flamebait.
You're confusing paid versions with proprietary versions. You can make money selling paid versions of Free and Open Source Software.
QT is licenced under the GPL, which is a Free and Open Source Software license. It forces software vendors to share the source code, but does not prohibit vendors from selling binaries.
Anyone (ranging from independent programmers to multibllion dollar companies) can create Free and Open Source Software built on QT and can sell the resultant software without giving a penny to Trolltech. Just look at Novell SUSE Linux, Linspire, RedHat and any other commercial distro that ships with KDE. These companies (and anyone else for that matter, including you!) can sell the binaries -- all they have to do is provide the source code to the user, so that the user can customize the software for his/her needs.
If you want to keep your source code secret and build proprietary applications that lock in users, prevent them from making modifications, restrict their rights, take away control of their computers, then naturally you need to pay royalties. In the world of spyware, DRM-infestation, and Treacherous Computing no proprietary software should be trusted.
In other words: If a company does the moral thing for the users and society, the company gets a freebie. If they're unscrupulous, then they better pay up.
I noticed that the article didn't mention LUFS. This alone allows for tremenduous possibilities, not least of which is rapid development of filesystems. Do any other systems (besides GNU HURD) have userspace filesystems?
Linux-FUSE can also provide all applications on the system (even shell utilities) with access to network locations set up under KDE. There's a tutorial for how to do this, but last time I tried it did not compile:-(
These are much needed improvements to usability of the Linux desktop, because unprivileged (non-root) users shouldn't have to contact their sys. admins everytime they need to mount network locations. The KDE approach to providing network access is not complete without Linux-FUSE, because only KDE apps can open/save to network locations set up under KDE. Hopefully the KDE devs will create a GUI for mounting/unmounting FUSE shares so that all apps (GTK, Motif, even shell utilities) can access network files.
They should get in contact with KDE's Appeal Project, which has very similar goals, namely to provide:
Consistent User Experience
Breathtaking Beauty
Usability
Creativity and Innovation
and to do it all in an open, receptive, adaptive and friendly environment for contributors.
All the organizational effort companies like Novell are putting into bringing GUI developers together makes me really excited about the ever-accelerating Linux Desktop. Keep up the great work!
Please mod parent up. They bring up excellent points on why the GPL's copyleft/forced-sharing provisions are in the interest of the user and good for preventing monopolies.
But HP is not being hypocritical, because they're not asking other companies to license their closed-source apps as Open Source. Rather, HP would like to see the apps that other companies already give out as Open Source be licensed under the most popular copyleft license, the GNU GPL.
Since we're giving a laundry list of companies that have invented their own licenses to ensure their code can't be used by open source projects under the GPL (most notably Linux), why not mention Apple and their APSL.
After all, the APSL has no advantages over the GPL or the LGPL, except that (from Apple's point of view) it prevents Linux from using the goodies in Darwin (such as the fast-booting Launchd).
Mind you, as the recent problems with the 5.x FreeBSD series shows, this isn't just a linux problem. So, in my mind, the more choices we have available to us, the better off we are when the OS we use is reduced to chum in the water.
However, the more OS choices/forks there are, the less likely that all the fixes will get merged into any *single* OS. So users will encounter some errors no matter which OS they use, which is not optimal for the user.
The best solution is to stick with the FREE OS that has the best chance of survival (Linux), and if you hit a showstopper, help out and fix it:) Even if you're not a programmer, you can still email maintainers, fill bug reports, and offer to test out patches on your machine.
Slashdot Mirror
I can't claim K3b is the best CD burning because as of now, it does not support burning CDs when the data comes from a network/remote machine.
/home/JoeUser/network/school_server), so applications like K3B can access those files just as they would any local file. I think Novell will include FUSE by default in the next SUSE release, and hopefully so will Kubuntu.
Since Linux FUSE (Filesystem in Userspace) became part of the 2.6.14 mainline Linux kernel, any user (not just root) can mount remote directories set up under KDE. The remote directories appear fixed in the local directory tree (ie.
This is a tremendous example of good collaboration through the Free Software stack, from the kernel to the Desktop Environment, to the individual applications. It allows not only K3B to burn data coming from network/remote machine, but just about any other legacy application (shell, Motif, GTK) to do the same without being modified.
Mark Shuttleworth and now Linus Torvalds seem realize the value of KDE's superior architecture, on which which many must-have KDE apps. These apps don't have any gnome equivalents that are nearly as useful and feature-rich:
AmaroK music player -- The most feature-rich and polished music player on the Free Software platform.
K3b -- Best CD and DVD authoring program with intuitive wizards, on the fly transcoding between WAV, MP3, FLAC, and Ogg Vorbis, normalization of volume levels, CDDB, DVD Ripping and DivX/XviD encoding, Save/load projects, automatic hardware detection/calibration and much more.
DigiKam -- The most feature-rich application for digital photo management.
Wireless Assistant -- Most user-friendly app for connecting to wireless networks. Managed Networks Support, WEP Encryption Support, Per Network (AP) Configuration Profiles, Automatic (DHCP, both dhcpcd and dhclient) and manual configuration options, Connection status monitoring, etc
KDE Education -- Educational (Science, Literature, Geography, etc) programs for children. Could play a big role in whether school districts decide to use Free Software in their classrooms.
Konqueror File Manager -- Embeded image/PDF/music/video viewing (via KMPlayer [kde.org]) and a tree-view arrangement of the filesystem familiar to Windows users (Nautilus doesn't come anywhere close)
KDE Control Center -- Centralized location for desktop control. Controls _all_ common aspects of the KDE applications: language, power settings, special effects, icon and window themes, shadows, shortcuts, printers, privacy, etc. This is what makes KDE so well integrated -- all KDE apps respect changes made here, so they all have the same feel. SUSE has even made YAST a module of the KDE control center so users can access distro-specific settings from here. Compare this to the dismembered approach Red Hat (and other gnome distros) have been forced to adopt in the absence of a centralized gnome control center. (ie. a bunch of individial programs named redhat-config-**** that nobody can ever remember)
Seamless, transparent network file access on SMB, FTP, SSH and WebDav networks from _any_ KDE application.
Kaffeine -- The most polished FOSS movie player.
MythTV -- The most advanced analog and digital TV viewer/recorder in the Free Software world (built using QT).
Baghira -- A native QT style that faithfully imitates OS X eyecandy, aimed at new users coming from the Mac world.
Klik -- Gives non-expert access to bleeding edge versions of apps without requiring any compilation or permanent installation.
KDE and QT also make up a technically superior platform for developers, drastically lowering the learning curve for programmers new to FOSS development. KDE apps can be built from the ground up using the best development tools in the Free Software world (which also happen to be built on QT/KDE):
Kdevelop for syntax highliting, application templates, and project organization.
QT designer for GUI development
Quanta -- Rich web development environment for PHP, CSS, DocBook, HTML, XML, etc with advanced context sensitive autocompletion, internal preview and more.
Ars Technica is reporting that Nokia 770 Internet uses Opera, but I would think it's quite possible that Nokia will offer updates containing a KHTML-based browser (some version of Konqueror) soon.
Nokia has been collaborating with KDE developers to build a browser for some of their other embeded systems, such as the Series 60 Smartphone. Nokia engineers have stated that KHTML is more resourceful than Gecko, has a cleaner architecture, and starts up faster. Also, KHTML is free (LGPL), while Opera is proprietary and therefore probably requires them to pay licensing fees and royalties.
Richard Stallman correctly predicted this was going to happen as a result of of DRM, also known as Digital Restrictions Management, Treacherous Computing, or Handcuffware. To quote from his essay "Can you trust your computer?":
...There are plans to use the same facility for email and documents--resulting in email that disappears in two weeks, or documents that can only be read on the computers in one company.
Imagine if you get an email from your boss telling you to do something that you think is risky; a month later, when it backfires, you can't use the email to show that the decision was not yours. "Getting it in writing" doesn't protect you when the order is written in disappearing ink.
Imagine if you get an email from your boss stating a policy that is illegal or morally outrageous, such as to shred your company's audit documents, or to allow a dangerous threat to your country to move forward unchecked. Today you can send this to a reporter and expose the activity. With treacherous computing, the reporter won't be able to read the document; her computer will refuse to obey her. Treacherous computing becomes a paradise for corruption...
MythTV running on pcHDTV-3000 and are a killer combination for viewing and recording HDTV on Linux. Even unencrypted QAM is supported.
The pcHDTV forum is very informative if you want to set up your own PVR on Linux.
Good news all round, it would seem. :)
:
Indeed, here are some must-have KDE apps that are certainly going to help SuSE's popularity as a desktop operating system
AmaroK music player -- Intuitive, powerful, good-looking music player. Supports transfers to/from iPods and many audio formats.
K3b -- Best CD and DVD authoring program with intuitive wizards, on the fly transcoding between WAV, MP3, FLAC, and Ogg Vorbis, normalization of volume levels, CDDB, DVD Ripping and DivX/XviD encoding, Save/load projects, automatic hardware detection/calibration and much more.
DigiKam -- The most feature-rich application for digital photo management.
Wireless Assistant -- Most user-friendly app for connecting to wireless networks. Managed Networks Support, WEP Encryption Support, Per Network (AP) Configuration Profiles, Automatic (DHCP, both dhcpcd and dhclient) and manual configuration options, Connection status monitoring, etc
KDE Education -- Educational (Science, Literature, Geography, etc) programs for children. Could play a big role in whether school districts decide to use Free Software in their classrooms.
Konqueror File Manager -- Embeded image/PDF/music/video viewing (via KMPlayer [kde.org]) and a tree-view arrangement of the filesystem familiar to Windows users (Nautilus doesn't come anywhere close)
KDE Control Center -- Centralized location for desktop control. Controls _all_ common aspects of the KDE applications: language, power settings, special effects, icon and window themes, shadows, shortcuts, printers, privacy, etc. This is what makes KDE so well integrated -- all KDE apps respect changes made here, so they all have the same feel. SUSE has even made YAST a module of the KDE control center so users can access distro-specific settings from here. Compare this to the dismembered approach Red Hat (and other gnome distros) have been forced to adopt in the absence of a centralized gnome control center. (ie. a bunch of individial programs named redhat-config-**** that nobody can ever remember)
Seamless, transparent network file access on SMB, FTP, SSH and WebDav networks from _any_ KDE application.
Kaffeine -- The most polished FOSS movie player.
MythTV -- The most advanced analog and digital TV viewer/recorder in the Free Software world (built using QT).
Baghira -- A native QT style that faithfully imitates OS X eyecandy, aimed at new users coming from the Mac world.
Klik -- Gives non-expert access to bleeding edge versions of apps without requiring any compilation or permanent installation.
KDE and QT also make up a technically superior platform for developers, drastically lowering the learning curve for programmers new to FOSS development. KDE apps can be built from the ground up using the best development tools in the Free Software world (which also happen to be built on QT/KDE):
Kdevelop for syntax highliting, application templates, and project organization.
QT designer for GUI development
Quanta -- Rich web development environment for PHP, CSS, DocBook, HTML, XML, etc with advanced context sensitive autocompletion, internal preview and more.
BKSys environment for a complete replacement of the autotool chain (libtool
Is there some license issue that's driving the KDE issue?
KDE is built on QT, a C++ framework released under the GNU General Public License (GPL), a free software license that has strong copyleft (forced sharing) protections meant to ensure that derivative code stays free.
Some corporations are raising hell against QT and KDE because the corporations want to make proprietary, non-free, closed-source software on the QT framework without compensating the makers of QT. Of course, those same corporations don't have to pay anything if their applications are free and open source. In this way, QT is actually encouraging companies to give back to the community, something beneficial for users as a whole.
Debunking KDE Myths does a good job disproving the FUD against KDE and QT.
The real issue is who is going to pay for the next generation of KDE development if SuSE isn't going to pay.
Mandrake, Kubuntu/Mark Shuttleworth, Trolltech seem realize the value of KDE's superior architecture, on which many must-have KDE apps have been built. These apps don't have any gnome equivalents that are nearly as useful and feature-rich:
AmaroK music player -- Steve Jobs' nightmare, the single greatest threat to Itunes on the Free Software platform.
K3b -- Best CD and DVD authoring program with intuitive wizards, on the fly transcoding between WAV, MP3, FLAC, and Ogg Vorbis, normalization of volume levels, CDDB, DVD Ripping and DivX/XviD encoding, Save/load projects, automatic hardware detection/calibration and much more.
DigiKam -- The most feature-rich application for digital photo management.
Wireless Assistant -- Most user-friendly app for connecting to wireless networks. Managed Networks Support, WEP Encryption Support, Per Network (AP) Configuration Profiles, Automatic (DHCP, both dhcpcd and dhclient) and manual configuration options, Connection status monitoring, etc
KDE Education -- Educational (Science, Literature, Geography, etc) programs for children. Could play a big role in whether school districts decide to use Free Software in their classrooms.
Konqueror File Manager -- Embeded image/PDF/music/video viewing (via KMPlayer) and a tree-view arrangement of the filesystem familiar to Windows users (Nautilus doesn't come anywhere close)
KDE Control Center -- Centralized location for desktop control. Controls _all_ common aspects of the KDE applications: language, power settings, special effects, icon and window themes, shadows, shortcuts, printers, privacy, etc. This is what makes KDE so well integrated -- all KDE apps respect changes made here, so they all have the same feel. SUSE has even made YAST a module of the KDE control center so users can access distro-specific settings from here. Compare this to the dismembered approach Red Hat (and other gnome distros) have been forced to adopt in the absence of a centralized gnome control center. (ie. a bunch of individial programs named redhat-config-**** that nobody can ever remember)
Seamless, transparent network file access on SMB, FTP, SSH and WebDav networks from _any_ KDE application.
Kaffeine -- The most polished FOSS movie player.
MythTV -- The most advanced analog and digital TV viewer/recorder in the Free Software world (built using QT).
Baghira -- A native QT style that faithfully imitates OS X eyecandy, aimed at new users coming from the Mac world.
Klik -- Gives non-expert access to bleeding edge versions of apps without requiring any compilation or permanent installation.
KDE and QT also make up a technically superior platform for developers, drastically lowering the learning curve for programmers new to FOSS development. KDE apps can be built from the ground up using the best development tools in the Free Software world (which also happen to be built on QT/KDE):
Kdevelop for syntax highlighting, application templates, and project organization.
QT designer for GUI development
Quanta -- Rich web development environment for PHP, CSS, DocBook, HTML, XML, etc with advanced con
KDE is simply is not going to happen as a mainstream commercial desktop as long as Qt is available only under the GPL
QT is licensed GPL. The GPL is the best Free Software license because it contains strong copyleft provisions that require derivative works to also be Free and Open Source. This is in the interest of users (like me) so I have absolutely no problems with QT or anything else licensed under the GPL.
Why exactly do you care about proprietary, closed source, non-free software anyway? So you can lock users in your product, prevent them from making modifications, restrict their rights, control what they can and can't do with their computers? Proprietary software is immoral, and if that's what you're developing, then you SHOULD be penalized by having to pay licensing fees.
Some more must-have KDE/QT desktop applications:
K3b -- Best CD and DVD authoring program with intuitive wizards, on the fly transcoding between WAV, MP3, FLAC, and Ogg Vorbis, normalization of volume levels, CDDB, DVD Ripping and DivX/XviD encoding, Save/load projects, automatic hardware detection/calibration and much more.
Klik -- Gives non-expert access to bleeding edge versions of apps without requiring any compilation or permanent installation.
KDE Control Center -- Centralized location for desktop control. Controls _all_ common aspects of the KDE applications: language, power settings, special effects, icon and window themes, shadows, shortcuts, printers, privacy, etc. This is what makes KDE so well integrated -- all KDE apps respect changes made here, so they all have the same feel. SUSE has even made YAST a module of the KDE control center so users can access distro-specific settings from here. Compare this to the dismembered approach Red Hat (and other gnome distros) have been forced to adopt in the absence of a centralized gnome control center. (ie. a bunch of individial programs named redhat-config-**** that nobody can ever remember)
Wireless Assistant -- Most user-friendly app for connecting to wireless networks. Managed Networks Support, WEP Encryption Support, Per Network (AP) Configuration Profiles, Automatic (DHCP, both dhcpcd and dhclient) and manual configuration options, Connection status monitoring, etc
MythTV -- The most advanced analog and digital TV viewer/recorder in the Free Software world (built using QT).
KDE Education -- Educational (Science, Literature, Geography, etc) programs for children. Could play a big role in whether school districts decide to use Free Software in their classrooms.
Quanta -- Rich web development environment for PHP, CSS, DocBook, HTML, XML, etc with advanced context sensitive autocompletion, internal preview and more.
Cervisia -- User-friendly GUI frontend for CVS.
I think a lot of Suse customers will not be so pleased.
Of course SUSE customers won't be pleased. There are many must-have desktop apps built on the KDE framework that don't have any good gtk equivalents:
AmaroK music player -- Steve Jobs' nightmare, the single greatest threat to Itunes on the Free Software platform.
DigiKam -- The most feature-rich application for digital photo management.
Konqueror File Manager" -- Embeded image/PDF/music/video viewing (via KMPlayer) and a tree-view arrangement of the filesystem familiar to Windows users (Nautilus doesn't come anywhere close)
Seamless, transparent network file access on SMB, FTP, SSH and WebDav networks from _any_ KDE application.
Kaffeine -- The most polished FOSS movie player.
Baghira -- A native QT style that faithfully imitates OS X eyecandy, aimed at new users coming from the Mac world.
KDE and QT also make up a technically superior platform for developers, drastically lowering the learning curve for programmers new to FOSS development. KDE apps can be built from the ground up using the best development tools in the Free Software world (which also happen to be built on QT/KDE):
QT designer for GUI development
Kdevelop for syntax highliting, application templates, and project organization.
BKSys environmentfor a complete replacement of the autotool chain (libtool+automake+autoconf+make) that will make dependency a whole lot more simpler and efficient.
Gnome is way behind KDE with regards to these features. The only reason Redhat's doing so well with Gnome is because they're targeting geeky sysadmins who don't care about having a good-looking desktop. The other 99% of the world does care, and gnome just doesn't fit the bill.
this is the Times not the Post.
Quite right, sorry for this confusion!
With Melinda Gates (Bill Gate's wife) on the Washinton Post's Board of Directors, I'm not at all suprised by this attack on Google.
Yes $7/share is pretty tempting, but Novel's stock will only go up if they start being profitable. Novel had it coming to them when they bought Ximian, a gnome vendor that made a hodge podge of different products that are now dead (remember RedCarpet?). Novel should stick to SUSE/KDE and re-orient all its developers towards improving _only one_ application for each particular need (ie. YAST for installation/maintenance, KDE for desktop, etc).
Novel's premier Linux distribution, SUSE, is historically based on KDE yet the individual projects that they're supporting (Beagle, Evolution) are gnome apps. I think in the long run KDE will become the de-facto standard primarily because of the tight integration among its applications and excitement in its developer and user base about KDE 4. If you don't believe me, take a look at how many more posts there are in KDE-Look than in Gnome-Look. In fact, there is KDE-Apps for independent apps built with the KDE/QT framework, while there is no such place to aggregate gnome apps.
In conclusion, Novel should get their gnome developers to work on KDE so that they have a tightly integrated system with no duplicated functionality.
KOffice is the Office suite developed as part of KDE, and from personal experience I can say that it is a whole lot snappier at boot-time, requires less memory, and needs far less hard-drive space to install.
KOffice developers are also quick to note that they find it a whole lot easier to work with a codebase that was designed from the beginning to be lean. Staroffice (the commercial, closed-source predecessor of OpenOffice.org) was initially designed to be completely self-sufficient so as to run without many dependencies. That accounts for part of OpenOffice.org's current bloat.
because the license does not allow you to use code you wrote with the free version in the paid versions.
WRONG! Please mod parent flamebait.
You're confusing paid versions with proprietary versions. You can make money selling paid versions of Free and Open Source Software.
QT is licenced under the GPL, which is a Free and Open Source Software license. It forces software vendors to share the source code, but does not prohibit vendors from selling binaries.
Anyone (ranging from independent programmers to multibllion dollar companies) can create Free and Open Source Software built on QT and can sell the resultant software without giving a penny to Trolltech. Just look at Novell SUSE Linux, Linspire, RedHat and any other commercial distro that ships with KDE. These companies (and anyone else for that matter, including you!) can sell the binaries -- all they have to do is provide the source code to the user, so that the user can customize the software for his/her needs.
If you want to keep your source code secret and build proprietary applications that lock in users, prevent them from making modifications, restrict their rights, take away control of their computers, then naturally you need to pay royalties. In the world of spyware, DRM-infestation, and Treacherous Computing no proprietary software should be trusted.
In other words: If a company does the moral thing for the users and society, the company gets a freebie. If they're unscrupulous, then they better pay up.
I noticed that the article didn't mention LUFS. This alone allows for tremenduous possibilities, not least of which is rapid development of filesystems. Do any other systems (besides GNU HURD) have userspace filesystems?
:-(
LUFS hasn't been maintained since 2003, and is therefore almost dead. FUSE (Filesystem in Userspace) is the most promising alternative that is getting merged into the 2.6.14 mainline Linux kernel. It works with several network filesystem protocols like:
SMB for FUSE
SSH Filesystem (SSHFS)
FuseDAV (WebDAV)
Linux-FUSE can also provide all applications on the system (even shell utilities) with access to network locations set up under KDE. There's a tutorial for how to do this, but last time I tried it did not compile
These are much needed improvements to usability of the Linux desktop, because unprivileged (non-root) users shouldn't have to contact their sys. admins everytime they need to mount network locations. The KDE approach to providing network access is not complete without Linux-FUSE, because only KDE apps can open/save to network locations set up under KDE. Hopefully the KDE devs will create a GUI for mounting/unmounting FUSE shares so that all apps (GTK, Motif, even shell utilities) can access network files.
KDE with the Baghira theme is already a viable FOSS alternative to MAC OS X eyecandy.
They should get in contact with KDE's Appeal Project, which has very similar goals, namely to provide:
Consistent User Experience
Breathtaking Beauty
Usability
Creativity and Innovation
and to do it all in an open, receptive, adaptive and friendly environment for contributors.
All the organizational effort companies like Novell are putting into bringing GUI developers together makes me really excited about the ever-accelerating Linux Desktop. Keep up the great work!
Linux and the GPL hasn't forced video chip drivers out to the light of day.
Well, if X.org had enough guts to allow GPL'ed code, then we'll see NVIDIA and ATI open source they're drivers.
Reducing the license count is good, but put those apps under the BSD license instead
So that M$ can steal that code, slap on some DRM for the music/movie cartel, and sell it back without providing the improved source code to the user?
That would be like giving M$ a humangous birthday gift. I'm bringing the cake, who's bringing the sodas?
Please mod parent up. They bring up excellent points on why the GPL's copyleft/forced-sharing provisions are in the interest of the user and good for preventing monopolies.
I sympathise with your experience.
But HP is not being hypocritical, because they're not asking other companies to license their closed-source apps as Open Source. Rather, HP would like to see the apps that other companies already give out as Open Source be licensed under the most popular copyleft license, the GNU GPL.
Since we're giving a laundry list of companies that have invented their own licenses to ensure their code can't be used by open source projects under the GPL (most notably Linux), why not mention Apple and their APSL.
After all, the APSL has no advantages over the GPL or the LGPL, except that (from Apple's point of view) it prevents Linux from using the goodies in Darwin (such as the fast-booting Launchd).
Mind you, as the recent problems with the 5.x FreeBSD series shows, this isn't just a linux problem. So, in my mind, the more choices we have available to us, the better off we are when the OS we use is reduced to chum in the water.
:) Even if you're not a programmer, you can still email maintainers, fill bug reports, and offer to test out patches on your machine.
However, the more OS choices/forks there are, the less likely that all the fixes will get merged into any *single* OS. So users will encounter some errors no matter which OS they use, which is not optimal for the user.
The best solution is to stick with the FREE OS that has the best chance of survival (Linux), and if you hit a showstopper, help out and fix it