At least they believe in something that actually exists unlike the billions of nutjobs who believe in an imaginary deity.
I'd have to take issue with that; most Apple fanbois believe in the technological superiority of Apple products over everything else, which is questionable at best. Many of them also tend to proseletize quite strongly, and ignore the bad things that Apple does, much like catholics gloss over pederasty.
Still: Apple exists. Their products exists. They might feel different about the products than you do but that doesn't dispute the existence of Apple and the products.
Deities on the other hand do not exist. They are made-up explanations for natural events from pre-science times. Today it is actually known what causes thunder and rain and so on.
Even though the same brain chemistry might be triggered, fully equating passionate product users to religion is simply false. Not only is it false, it makes a point in favor of religion as in: "See, Apple exists and causes the brain chemistry as religion does. Conclusion: God must trigger the brain chemistry for religion or why would anybody have it?" Naa, that's retarded.
Die hard Apple fans might be wacky but at least they are not completely delusional as religious people who hear voices, have visions, and similar bullshit one would go to the mental hospital if she/he wasn't protected by religious freedom.
In OSS projects, the devs have free reins to play with new concepts, technologies, paradigms... whether anyone else is interested at all, or not. My take is that Gnome, KDE and Unity have evolved into cool geek research labs.
Unity is a commercial project. It just happens to be under GPL. It's controlled by Canonical alone. It is not a community project. Not at all. Qt is in a similar position, although Nokia is moving it into a community project.
GNOME and KDE, yes, they are community projects. And you know what? They don't any mere user anything. They never have and never will. Most do all their work unpaid as a hobby. And both projects never evolved into geek research labs because both projects were never ever bound to the will of their users. That's how community projects work and if you don't like it, don't use their code. Simple is that.
Right now, most users want and need a simple interface that Just Works and emulates the Windows they know
Please back up your claims with facts. Who are those "most users"? Have you any credible study that proves that "most users" want Windows-like Linux distributions? If so, how come that XPde http://xpde.holobit.net/ never gained a significant following and became dead in 2003? Considering that commercial distributors have to earn money to stay alive, it would be logical that -- if users wanted it -- XPde would have gained commercial backing.
Lindows also emulated Windows and didn't attract enough paying users to stay alive.
If "most users" prefer Windows' GUI, why is the iPad more popular than any Windows-based tablet PC?
not some buggy half-finished avant-garde stuff.
The main quality of an OS is to let me use my hardware and apps with minimum fuss.
I thought they want Windows quality which obviously means something buggy. And why are "most users" interested in your hardware?
No, I don't. So? Is there anybody forcing everyone to use the latest Ubuntu version with locked settings? No. You can still use an older release, install outdated software from a PPA, or switch distros completely.
...(s)he's not insulting you, but rather your drugs;-D
I should calm down? I wasn't insulting anyone. I just commented on the story. He makes it sound as if I am responsible for TermKit. I've just read a news item about it yesterday and I find that it's a candidate for discussion. That's all.
On a more serious note "replacing the decades old Unix pipes with a modern implementation based on JSON" (I quote you) does indeed sound like some bad-ass marketing talk, sorry to say that.
WTF? Are you serious? If I was to market TermKit I'd placed more prominently in my post, not just two short sentenced somewhere in between. If anybody is hyping it, it's you and lkcl for concentrating only on two sentences from my entire posting. I don't want to discuss it here. I'm not qualified to. Not my fault you two don't understand what "I'm hoping [it] will be discussed during the open days" means.
1 person talking about Emlightenment and it isn't a KDE and GNOME summit? LOL.
Desktop Summit started out as a collaboration between GNOME and KDE and it still mainly is, though it's not their fault representatives from most other unrelated projects are not interested in participating. This time only one Enlightenment guy and one WINE guy.
It is only the second Desktop Summit in history, so give it some time to attract more people from other projects. There mere fact that both Enlightenment and WINE are represented shows that the initiators are interested in broadening the scope from the original concept to merely co-host Akademy and GUADEC together.
Considering that the latest OpenBSD release still ships KDE 3.5 etc., I think you can be sure that old technologies you like are supported for quite some time into the future.
And in good ol' capitalist tradition you can also pay someone to support that stuff for you.
Wow, you mean they're going to replace Unix pipes with some new system based on javascript? Good riddance to old rubbish! What have Unix pipes ever done for anyone?
They? Currently it's a hobby project by a single guy and so far no backing from any big vendor. I don't know if it's good but that's why I'm hoping that TermKit will be discussed.
This is the Desktop Summit (Akademy/GUADEC) I'm looking forward the most since years. GNOME has entered a new era with GNOME 3.0 and KDE has a lot going on with Active (KDE's mobile initiative). The news about Qt 5 and a possible KDE Platform 5 is also very interesting. These higher level software are paired with the arrival and switch to Wayland.
Lot's of stuff happening in the FOSS world to shed legacy technologies that hold the entire stack back. While not officially announced, I'm hoping the newly announced TermKit http://acko.net/blog/on-termkit will be discussed during the open days. TermKit is new concept to replace the decades old Unix pipes with a modern implementation based on JSON. The Desktop Summit sounds like a perfect place to bring it to Linux and possibly FreeBSD,... as well (the current implementation is written for Mac OS X but it is not bound to it).
After years of maintaining the status quo in the FOSS stack some much needed renovating happens now. Exciting times!
PS: I'm also glad to see that this Desktop Summit is not a "KDE + GNOME and a bit of support architecture" show. Someone from Enlightenment will also be there and talk about E17 and EFL.
Before working to add new features, why not first make it so you can use it for 5 minutes without it segfaulting? How about making it so your savefiles aren't constantly becoming corrupt? Kdenlive shows great promise, but it's the least stable piece of software I've ever used.
Maybe you should get around the concept of what leading zeros in version numbers mean. If you want the project to reach stable state earlier, hire one or more of its developers. Or at least donate some money.
Gnome 3 shell is just a plasma wannabe. Deal with it.
GNOME 3 is a reusable, modular, highly advanced GUI framework? Um... no. GNOME Shell uses its own toolkit called ST that's not meant to be used by anything besides GS, whereas Plasma (the framework) has been designed from the start to be reused with little code duplication.
I like KDE a fair bit, an generally use it on my main rig... but it's plugged into the wall.
I think they're gonna have to do a lot of slimming down for a mobile rig, to the point where you might not recognise it as KDE...
Um, that's exactly what KDE are doing: The new shell is based on the new Qt Scene Graph technology which runs more on the GPU and uses the CPU for almost nothing. Plasma Desktop is still based on older technology. According to KDE's rough benchmarks the new shell runs more fluid on mobile devices than Plasma Desktop runs on big PCs. Since a bunch of months they also trim down dependencies and make them optional. That means on mobile devices a vastly smaller code base will be shipped (even Canonical is looking into kdelibs-mobile for upcoming Ubuntu versions).
I'm sorry to tell you that but your comment shows you have no clue. Plasma Active is not "like Android, MeeGo, Unity".
Unity for example is a desktop and netbook GUI. It's hardly fitting for touchscreen devices. As for MeeGo: Intel so far only develops a relatively simple reference GUI that's not targeted to be actually used. Not even Nokia had any plans to adopt it. Nokia just like any other MeeGo adopter wanted to create a proprietary GUI on top of MeeGo Base OS. Plasma Active is nowhere "like" MeeGo. It's FOR (!) MeeGo. So far it's the only credible attempt to create a commercial-grade, fully FOSS, community-based mobile shell.
Concerning Android: Android is no community project. It's developed behind closed doors by Google alone and in case of Android 3.0 not even the source code has been released so far. And what you may not realize: KDE also hosts the port of Qt to Android and since Plasma is based on Qt, Plasma Active may just as well be used as shell for Android (heck, even on top of Windows!).
As far as I'm aware, the effort already has two commercial supporters with more in the pipeline.
From the start, you're hit in the face with dozens of overlapping and redundant choices
I don't get that. What kind of choices are you referring to? Are you uncomfortable that KDE develops more than one workspace which means you have the choice between Plasma Desktop and Plasma Netbook? Of course if one develops more than one workspace their features also overlap but they are also targeted towards different form factors. Nobody would seriously suggest to use Plasma Netbook on a 30" screen, just as nobody would suggest Plasma Desktop on a 7" screen.
KDE is also a big community which is sometimes more than one application is developed to do basically the same thing. Eg music players: The Software Compilation's default is Juk but other members of the community also develop Amarok, Bangarang etc. However, all those players are by default not installed. I repeat: Only Juk is part of the SC. If you use a Linux distribution that ships with all kinds of music players by default, it's mismanagement on the distributor's side. Eg. while I'm usually a fan of openSUSE, they ship two web browsers by default: KDE's Konqueror as well as Mozilla's Firefox with FF having a desktop icon while Konqueror is in the K Menu favorites. I don't get that but that is not KDE's fault. KDE does not make openSUSE CD images. SUSE does.;-)
KWord is dead, btw. Its maintainer supposedly was a dickhead so the KOffice crew left him altogether and created Calligra Suite with a new word processor forked from KWord. It'll take a while for the first Calligra release but some GUI aspects may change especially considering that the Calligra crew is also targeting mobile devices with small screens (something the old KWord maintainer fiercely fought against because he wanted to "concentrate on desktops with big screens").
Slashdot Mirror
I'd have to take issue with that; most Apple fanbois believe in the technological superiority of Apple products over everything else, which is questionable at best. Many of them also tend to proseletize quite strongly, and ignore the bad things that Apple does, much like catholics gloss over pederasty.
Still: Apple exists. Their products exists.
They might feel different about the products than you do but that doesn't dispute the existence of Apple and the products.
Deities on the other hand do not exist. They are made-up explanations for natural events from pre-science times. Today it is actually known what causes thunder and rain and so on.
Even though the same brain chemistry might be triggered, fully equating passionate product users to religion is simply false. Not only is it false, it makes a point in favor of religion as in: "See, Apple exists and causes the brain chemistry as religion does. Conclusion: God must trigger the brain chemistry for religion or why would anybody have it?"
Naa, that's retarded.
Die hard Apple fans might be wacky but at least they are not completely delusional as religious people who hear voices, have visions, and similar bullshit one would go to the mental hospital if she/he wasn't protected by religious freedom.
I hate to break this to you... But the device that "just works" doesn't exist.
Huh? Which device? Apple is a company and it exists.
...just what exactly do they need KDE and UNITY for?
What does Unity have to do with the Desktop Summit?
In OSS projects, the devs have free reins to play with new concepts, technologies, paradigms... whether anyone else is interested at all, or not. My take is that Gnome, KDE and Unity have evolved into cool geek research labs.
Unity is a commercial project. It just happens to be under GPL. It's controlled by Canonical alone. It is not a community project. Not at all.
Qt is in a similar position, although Nokia is moving it into a community project.
GNOME and KDE, yes, they are community projects. And you know what? They don't any mere user anything. They never have and never will.
Most do all their work unpaid as a hobby.
And both projects never evolved into geek research labs because both projects were never ever bound to the will of their users.
That's how community projects work and if you don't like it, don't use their code. Simple is that.
Right now, most users want and need a simple interface that Just Works and emulates the Windows they know
Please back up your claims with facts. Who are those "most users"? Have you any credible study that proves that "most users" want Windows-like Linux distributions?
If so, how come that XPde http://xpde.holobit.net/ never gained a significant following and became dead in 2003? Considering that commercial distributors have to earn money to stay alive, it would be logical that -- if users wanted it -- XPde would have gained commercial backing.
Lindows also emulated Windows and didn't attract enough paying users to stay alive.
If "most users" prefer Windows' GUI, why is the iPad more popular than any Windows-based tablet PC?
not some buggy half-finished avant-garde stuff.
The main quality of an OS is to let me use my hardware and apps with minimum fuss.
I thought they want Windows quality which obviously means something buggy. And why are "most users" interested in your hardware?
I take it you don't run Ubuntu...
No, I don't. So? Is there anybody forcing everyone to use the latest Ubuntu version with locked settings? No.
You can still use an older release, install outdated software from a PPA, or switch distros completely.
...(s)he's not insulting you, but rather your drugs ;-D
I should calm down? I wasn't insulting anyone. I just commented on the story.
He makes it sound as if I am responsible for TermKit. I've just read a news item about it yesterday and I find that it's a candidate for discussion. That's all.
On a more serious note "replacing the decades old Unix pipes with a modern implementation based on JSON" (I quote you) does indeed sound like some bad-ass marketing talk, sorry to say that.
WTF? Are you serious? If I was to market TermKit I'd placed more prominently in my post, not just two short sentenced somewhere in between. If anybody is hyping it, it's you and lkcl for concentrating only on two sentences from my entire posting.
I don't want to discuss it here. I'm not qualified to. Not my fault you two don't understand what "I'm hoping [it] will be discussed during the open days" means.
1 person talking about Emlightenment and it isn't a KDE and GNOME summit? LOL.
Desktop Summit started out as a collaboration between GNOME and KDE and it still mainly is, though it's not their fault representatives from most other unrelated projects are not interested in participating.
This time only one Enlightenment guy and one WINE guy.
It is only the second Desktop Summit in history, so give it some time to attract more people from other projects. There mere fact that both Enlightenment and WINE are represented shows that the initiators are interested in broadening the scope from the original concept to merely co-host Akademy and GUADEC together.
Considering that the latest OpenBSD release still ships KDE 3.5 etc., I think you can be sure that old technologies you like are supported for quite some time into the future.
And in good ol' capitalist tradition you can also pay someone to support that stuff for you.
Gnome and KDE keep on REGRESSING, not PROGRESSING. The current teams couldn't be worse
for Linux than if they were paid Micro$oft agents.
Don't use them. There are plenty of FOSS alternatives around.
seriously, why weren't all the other window managers more seriously represented?
No representative of those registered for holding a talk.
I think I must be a desktop Luddite, because none of the new developments you mention appeal to me at all, with the possible exception of Wayland.
No one is going to force you to not use old technology. It's all FOSS.
so i have to ask: what the bloody hell drugs are you on??
Why do you insult me just because I am hoping to see some discussions about it happen at DS? Talking about it is not going to hurt anyone.
Wow, you mean they're going to replace Unix pipes with some new system based on javascript? Good riddance to old rubbish! What have Unix pipes ever done for anyone?
They? Currently it's a hobby project by a single guy and so far no backing from any big vendor. I don't know if it's good but that's why I'm hoping that TermKit will be discussed.
This is the Desktop Summit (Akademy/GUADEC) I'm looking forward the most since years.
GNOME has entered a new era with GNOME 3.0 and KDE has a lot going on with Active (KDE's mobile initiative). The news about Qt 5 and a possible KDE Platform 5 is also very interesting.
These higher level software are paired with the arrival and switch to Wayland.
Lot's of stuff happening in the FOSS world to shed legacy technologies that hold the entire stack back.
While not officially announced, I'm hoping the newly announced TermKit http://acko.net/blog/on-termkit will be discussed during the open days. TermKit is new concept to replace the decades old Unix pipes with a modern implementation based on JSON. The Desktop Summit sounds like a perfect place to bring it to Linux and possibly FreeBSD,... as well (the current implementation is written for Mac OS X but it is not bound to it).
After years of maintaining the status quo in the FOSS stack some much needed renovating happens now.
Exciting times!
PS: I'm also glad to see that this Desktop Summit is not a "KDE + GNOME and a bit of support architecture" show. Someone from Enlightenment will also be there and talk about E17 and EFL.
Apple fanboys are as irrational as religious folks. Who woulda thunk?
No, they are not. At least they believe in something that actually exists unlike the billions of nutjobs who believe in an imaginary deity.
I know what you mean, and I for one miss having KDE 3 in a modern distro.
openSUSE 11.4. KDE 3 is still in the repos.
Before working to add new features, why not first make it so you can use it for 5 minutes without it segfaulting? How about making it so your savefiles aren't constantly becoming corrupt? Kdenlive shows great promise, but it's the least stable piece of software I've ever used.
Maybe you should get around the concept of what leading zeros in version numbers mean.
If you want the project to reach stable state earlier, hire one or more of its developers. Or at least donate some money.
Upgrade your radeon drivers.
And which music player do you mean? Juk, the SC default, hasn't changed much over the years.
Yeah cause every computer user is, or wants to be, a programmer.
Dickhead.
You're a retard. Whoever is no programmer but wants some software badly there still the free market approach:
Hire someone to do it for you!
Gnome 3 shell is just a plasma wannabe. Deal with it.
GNOME 3 is a reusable, modular, highly advanced GUI framework? Um... no.
GNOME Shell uses its own toolkit called ST that's not meant to be used by anything besides GS, whereas Plasma (the framework) has been designed from the start to be reused with little code duplication.
Seriously, the screenshot in TFA looks like GNOME3.
No, it does not. Not by far. You obviously never used GNOME 3.
I like KDE a fair bit, an generally use it on my main rig... but it's plugged into the wall.
I think they're gonna have to do a lot of slimming down for a mobile rig, to the point where you might not recognise it as KDE...
Um, that's exactly what KDE are doing:
The new shell is based on the new Qt Scene Graph technology which runs more on the GPU and uses the CPU for almost nothing. Plasma Desktop is still based on older technology. According to KDE's rough benchmarks the new shell runs more fluid on mobile devices than Plasma Desktop runs on big PCs.
Since a bunch of months they also trim down dependencies and make them optional. That means on mobile devices a vastly smaller code base will be shipped (even Canonical is looking into kdelibs-mobile for upcoming Ubuntu versions).
Sort of like Android, Meego, Unity...
I'm sorry to tell you that but your comment shows you have no clue.
Plasma Active is not "like Android, MeeGo, Unity".
Unity for example is a desktop and netbook GUI. It's hardly fitting for touchscreen devices.
As for MeeGo: Intel so far only develops a relatively simple reference GUI that's not targeted to be actually used. Not even Nokia had any plans to adopt it. Nokia just like any other MeeGo adopter wanted to create a proprietary GUI on top of MeeGo Base OS.
Plasma Active is nowhere "like" MeeGo. It's FOR (!) MeeGo. So far it's the only credible attempt to create a commercial-grade, fully FOSS, community-based mobile shell.
Concerning Android: Android is no community project. It's developed behind closed doors by Google alone and in case of Android 3.0 not even the source code has been released so far.
And what you may not realize: KDE also hosts the port of Qt to Android and since Plasma is based on Qt, Plasma Active may just as well be used as shell for Android (heck, even on top of Windows!).
As far as I'm aware, the effort already has two commercial supporters with more in the pipeline.
From the start, you're hit in the face with dozens of overlapping and redundant choices
I don't get that. What kind of choices are you referring to?
Are you uncomfortable that KDE develops more than one workspace which means you have the choice between Plasma Desktop and Plasma Netbook? Of course if one develops more than one workspace their features also overlap but they are also targeted towards different form factors. Nobody would seriously suggest to use Plasma Netbook on a 30" screen, just as nobody would suggest Plasma Desktop on a 7" screen.
KDE is also a big community which is sometimes more than one application is developed to do basically the same thing. Eg music players: The Software Compilation's default is Juk but other members of the community also develop Amarok, Bangarang etc. ;-)
However, all those players are by default not installed. I repeat: Only Juk is part of the SC. If you use a Linux distribution that ships with all kinds of music players by default, it's mismanagement on the distributor's side. Eg. while I'm usually a fan of openSUSE, they ship two web browsers by default: KDE's Konqueror as well as Mozilla's Firefox with FF having a desktop icon while Konqueror is in the K Menu favorites. I don't get that but that is not KDE's fault. KDE does not make openSUSE CD images. SUSE does.
Use Dolphin or KWord: massive toolbars and small content area.
Good news:
Dolphin in the upcoming version will change that: http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-9ujy04d0LMc/TY-FyUfXOuI/AAAAAAAAAeA/e6QxAfTjTXM/s1600/dolphin-default-4-6.png
KWord is dead, btw. Its maintainer supposedly was a dickhead so the KOffice crew left him altogether and created Calligra Suite with a new word processor forked from KWord. It'll take a while for the first Calligra release but some GUI aspects may change especially considering that the Calligra crew is also targeting mobile devices with small screens (something the old KWord maintainer fiercely fought against because he wanted to "concentrate on desktops with big screens").