Wow, posting a dumb comment after only reading the headline -- not even the summary. The software is simply called Calligra and comes in three flavors: Calligra Suite -- complete package for desktop PCs Calligra Mobile -- smartphone version (limited feature set) Calligra Active -- tablet version (limited feature set)
KDE4 STILL hasn't caught up to KDE3 in how well it handles printing, and it's because the KDE4 team has decided to hamstring themselves by using all-Qt libraries instead of writing their own.
Well, considering that no one in his/her right mind still prints these days, I find it understandable that no KDE dev has any interest in developing that.
Which sucks, because the Qt libraries for font rendering and printing are pretty godawful for something like a word processor. Just look at the serious kerning problems in the screenshots. I would advise Calligra to take a page from Scribus--another Qt-based project that chose to implement their own font rendering libraries to work around the shortcomings of Qt.
Newsflash: The screenshots on the Calligra website are from older development releases. Since then Qt 4.8 was released which fixes the problems.
There are some very early Windows builds for Calligra, but they are alpha quality at best
It really depends on the individual application. Eg. I found Calligra Words to be quite OK (limited testing only) but apparently the format filter for old.doc files is broken under Windows and had to be disabled before release. Could be that Flow is in a better state.
if Calligra sits on top of KDE, why does it need different versions for Linux and BSD?
You must confuse KDE with some sort of VM like Java -- which KDE never was and probably never will be.
Speaking of which, while they currently offer it as a tarball, I'd like them to at some point offer it in.deb,.pbi,.ports,.rpm and other popular package managers.
Why? The Linux distributor should just ship the latest Calligra release in its repos.
While technically true, this argument does fall apart when a company such as Oracle rebrands RHEL into OEL, then goes on the offensive against RHEL/Red Hat when they don't have much of a team of developers to continue developing OEL
Um, you're wrong on this one. Yes, Oracle Linux is just rebranded RHEL, but overall Oracle has lots of capable developers. Orcale, for example, is a larger contributor to Xorg than Red Hat: https://vignatti.wordpress.com/2011/02/28/x-census-for-1-10/ btrfs is also mostly done by Oracle. Oracle could also easily transfer Solaris developers to Linux.
You may want the linux desktop to forever be a clone of Windows XP (getting asymptotically closer but always staying an inferior replica)
Except for the long-dead XPde there never was a DE that tried to imitate WinXP -- probably because XP had absolutely terrible usability! Any somewhat popular Linux DE from XP's era was vastly superior to XP.
If the problem is that the applications simply aren't communicating the way KDE expects them to, then I would ask why KDE is reinventing the wheel.
Really, you need to stop spreading bullshit. KDE did not reinvent the wheel in this case. Fact is that KDE'S KIO is around much longer than alternative solutions on Linux (eg. GNOME's GVFS). THEY reinvented the wheel.
Re:Will this be any different?
on
GNOME 3.4 Released
·
· Score: 3, Informative
KDE is beautiful, but buggy:
It won't play videos over an smb:// connection. VLC simply throws an error.
How is VLC supposed to play videos over KIO slaves when VLC is a pure Qt application that does not support KIO?
Re:Will this be any different?
on
GNOME 3.4 Released
·
· Score: 1, Troll
The font feels ugly.
Fonts are rendered by FreeType just as under GNOME. If you feel that fonts look different, you're imagining things. Either that or you are lying.
The interface feels dark.
Strange, considering that white and light gray are the default theme colors. Sure you're not lying?
The icons are too small.
Which icons? Dolphin has a slider in the status bar to resize icons. There isn't even a need to go to some options menu.
The task tray is in the wrong spot.
Move the panel
The toys in the tray are too numerous.
Which toys? If you have toys there, you have installed them on your own.
Yes, I know I can fix all of these things, but why would I want to spend hours doing it when I can just get the desktop I want with minimal effort?
Hours? Now there is no denying that you lie. Panel position and icons sizes are changed within seconds, not minutes, let alone hours.
This might make me switch from Fedora to Ubuntu. Red Hat has been sorely lacking when it comes to pushing new technologies.
What are you talking about? Red Hat is the prime technology creator for Linux. Wayland, for example, started as Red Hat project and only later did the lead developer switch employers to Intel. sysdemd, Plymouth, GNOME Shell, PulseAudio, LLVMpipe, Nouveau, GTK, etc. are all primarily created by Red Hat. What's more important: Red Hat develops those technologies in a way that they can easily be adopted by others. Canonical OTOH rarely develops technologies and when it does, it does in a way to make it as hard as possible for others to pick up -- see how openSUSE and Fedora were unable to adopt Unity.
With IE10 for Windows 8 mostly ending support for plugins anyway (keeping them only in the 'legacy desktop' variant of Win8 for x86) and Chrome for Android as well as Safari Mobile neither supporting plugins, Flash will almost certainly die and Netflix (co-author of those specs), MS, and Google will require something like that. I'm almost certain that something like that will end up in IE, Chrome, and via WebKit maybe even in Safari anyway -- whether the W3C supports that officially or not.
Given the shitty performance of, well, all of Adobe's software, I don't want their programmers anywhere near WebKit. "I come to bury HTML5, not to praise it."
tepples was referring to actively maintained sites (Weebl's Stuff, Homestar Runner, Kongregate, and Newgrounds). Wallaby (and possibly also Flash Pro CS6 or CS7) support batch operation. As soon as the conversion runs without problems, the sites' maintainers can simply throw all FLA files at the convertor.
With iOS not supporting Flash, future Android versions neither, Flash will die and site maintainers have to adapt or die with Flash.
All the existing Flash animations and games on Weebl's Stuff, Homestar Runner, Kongregate, and Newgrounds are likely to keep SWF on life support for a very long time, be it through Adobe Flash Player or through Gnash.
Did you read my post? Adobe itself is migrating to HTML5. Adobe offers a tool (currently in beta) to convert Flash animations to HTML5: http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/wallaby/ I bet it'll be part of -- at the latest -- CS7.
Flash is on its deathbed anyway. Even Adobe realized that and is migrating everything to HTML5, even employing programmers to implement HTML5/CSS3 features in WebKit. Adobe gives a 5 year migration period which is probably more that HTML5 needs to succeed widespread.
1. All toolbars are full of crap by default. Way too much icons and things. I want it clean and nice.
You are replying to someone who suggested stock KDE against Trinity. You make it sound as if Trinity was "clean and nice" which is simply untrue. SC 4.x is much cleaner by default than KDE 3.x on which Trinity is based. That said, defaults are for the distributor to decide. KDE software has the flexibility for many settings. It's for the distributor to decide which defaults to set.
3. I tried the new Activities, and so far they are totally useless for me (and yes, I did read long tutorials from net to try to get them).
They are useless for me as well which is why I simply don't use them. Under GNOME Shell you have to use Activities. Under Plasma Desktop they are completely optional.
And by default there is no virtual desktops.
Which are as useless as Activities. As with all default settings: They are for the distributor to decide.
4. Nepomuk is useless crap if you are not using those KDE applications like mail/calendar. And it cannot be easily disabled (even I disabled it everywhere, it still started up). Manually deleting executables did help.
There is lots of totally redundant cruft installed by default, at least in Ubuntu 11.10, with KDE 4.8 ppa. Why I would need two file managers for example?
How is it KDE's fault that Ubuntu's KDE packages are crap? Nepomuk is completely optional. Plasma Desktop can be compiled without it. If Ubuntu does not support KDE packages without Nepomuk, it's an Ubuntu bug. Report it there and hope for a fix or use Gentoo. The amount of file managers installed by default is also for the distributor to decide. If Ubuntu installs two, it's an Ubuntu bug. Report it there.
I'm still waiting for KDE4 to reach the dizzy usabillity heights of KDE3.
Yeah, that "great" KDE3 usability with countless checkboxes, broken Kicker, ARTS, and so on... You can wait forever. KDE won't ever go back to that crap.
Agreed, but as a typical computer user (web, email word processing ) they are a huge part of "just works"
That has nothing, absolutely nothing, to do with the topic at hand. The topic is about Linux DEs only and the supposed bloatness of Plasma Desktop. Neither Plasma Desktop, nor LXDE, Xfce, or IceWM can make Flash or media-heavy websites run well on ancient hardware.
Slashdot Mirror
do they include any database like Access?
Yes: http://kexi-project.org/
They seriously called it COCS?
Wow, posting a dumb comment after only reading the headline -- not even the summary.
The software is simply called Calligra and comes in three flavors:
Calligra Suite -- complete package for desktop PCs
Calligra Mobile -- smartphone version (limited feature set)
Calligra Active -- tablet version (limited feature set)
KDE4 STILL hasn't caught up to KDE3 in how well it handles printing, and it's because the KDE4 team has decided to hamstring themselves by using all-Qt libraries instead of writing their own.
Well, considering that no one in his/her right mind still prints these days, I find it understandable that no KDE dev has any interest in developing that.
Which sucks, because the Qt libraries for font rendering and printing are pretty godawful for something like a word processor. Just look at the serious kerning problems in the screenshots. I would advise Calligra to take a page from Scribus--another Qt-based project that chose to implement their own font rendering libraries to work around the shortcomings of Qt.
Newsflash: The screenshots on the Calligra website are from older development releases. Since then Qt 4.8 was released which fixes the problems.
There are some very early Windows builds for Calligra, but they are alpha quality at best
It really depends on the individual application. Eg. I found Calligra Words to be quite OK (limited testing only) but apparently the format filter for old .doc files is broken under Windows and had to be disabled before release.
Could be that Flow is in a better state.
Kexi didn't make sense - why not re-use the term dBase
Because dBase is still used and trademarked: http://www.dbase.com/
But Krita and Karbon both need to be renamed
Karbon was just renamed -- from Karbon14. Any other renames won't happen.
Is Kexi the equivalent of Access?
Are you capable of reading the Kexi website? http://kexi-project.org/
if Calligra sits on top of KDE, why does it need different versions for Linux and BSD?
You must confuse KDE with some sort of VM like Java -- which KDE never was and probably never will be.
Speaking of which, while they currently offer it as a tarball, I'd like them to at some point offer it in .deb, .pbi, .ports, .rpm and other popular package managers.
Why? The Linux distributor should just ship the latest Calligra release in its repos.
My standard response to your bullshit: Make KDE look exactly like Gnome 2. Otherwise, just shut up.
Why should I make it look like GNOME 2? What the fuck are you talking about?
While technically true, this argument does fall apart when a company such as Oracle rebrands RHEL into OEL, then goes on the offensive against RHEL/Red Hat when they don't have much of a team of developers to continue developing OEL
Um, you're wrong on this one. Yes, Oracle Linux is just rebranded RHEL, but overall Oracle has lots of capable developers. Orcale, for example, is a larger contributor to Xorg than Red Hat: https://vignatti.wordpress.com/2011/02/28/x-census-for-1-10/
btrfs is also mostly done by Oracle. Oracle could also easily transfer Solaris developers to Linux.
You may want the linux desktop to forever be a clone of Windows XP (getting asymptotically closer but always staying an inferior replica)
Except for the long-dead XPde there never was a DE that tried to imitate WinXP -- probably because XP had absolutely terrible usability! Any somewhat popular Linux DE from XP's era was vastly superior to XP.
Does the GNOME3 team have any plans to make their DE run on Wayland?
Yes. Clutter has already been ported and GTK is in the process of being ported.
If the problem is that the applications simply aren't communicating the way KDE expects them to, then I would ask why KDE is reinventing the wheel.
Really, you need to stop spreading bullshit. KDE did not reinvent the wheel in this case. Fact is that KDE'S KIO is around much longer than alternative solutions on Linux (eg. GNOME's GVFS). THEY reinvented the wheel.
KDE is beautiful, but buggy:
It won't play videos over an smb:// connection. VLC simply throws an error.
How is VLC supposed to play videos over KIO slaves when VLC is a pure Qt application that does not support KIO?
The font feels ugly.
Fonts are rendered by FreeType just as under GNOME. If you feel that fonts look different, you're imagining things. Either that or you are lying.
The interface feels dark.
Strange, considering that white and light gray are the default theme colors. Sure you're not lying?
The icons are too small.
Which icons? Dolphin has a slider in the status bar to resize icons. There isn't even a need to go to some options menu.
The task tray is in the wrong spot.
Move the panel
The toys in the tray are too numerous.
Which toys? If you have toys there, you have installed them on your own.
Yes, I know I can fix all of these things, but why would I want to spend hours doing it when I can just get the desktop I want with minimal effort?
Hours? Now there is no denying that you lie. Panel position and icons sizes are changed within seconds, not minutes, let alone hours.
This might make me switch from Fedora to Ubuntu. Red Hat has been sorely lacking when it comes to pushing new technologies.
What are you talking about? Red Hat is the prime technology creator for Linux. Wayland, for example, started as Red Hat project and only later did the lead developer switch employers to Intel. sysdemd, Plymouth, GNOME Shell, PulseAudio, LLVMpipe, Nouveau, GTK, etc. are all primarily created by Red Hat.
What's more important: Red Hat develops those technologies in a way that they can easily be adopted by others.
Canonical OTOH rarely develops technologies and when it does, it does in a way to make it as hard as possible for others to pick up -- see how openSUSE and Fedora were unable to adopt Unity.
With IE10 for Windows 8 mostly ending support for plugins anyway (keeping them only in the 'legacy desktop' variant of Win8 for x86) and Chrome for Android as well as Safari Mobile neither supporting plugins, Flash will almost certainly die and Netflix (co-author of those specs), MS, and Google will require something like that.
I'm almost certain that something like that will end up in IE, Chrome, and via WebKit maybe even in Safari anyway -- whether the W3C supports that officially or not.
Given the shitty performance of, well, all of Adobe's software, I don't want their programmers anywhere near WebKit. "I come to bury HTML5, not to praise it."
Too bad, Adobe already contributed quite a large amount of code to WebKit, eg. that: http://video.golem.de/handy/3973/adobe-flexible-textlayouts-mit-webkit.html
Mozilla Gecko (Firefox,...) also contain code from Adobe: The NanoJIT part of the JavaScript interpreter.
So if you dislike Adobe code in general, you better use neither products.
tepples was referring to actively maintained sites (Weebl's Stuff, Homestar Runner, Kongregate, and Newgrounds). Wallaby (and possibly also Flash Pro CS6 or CS7) support batch operation. As soon as the conversion runs without problems, the sites' maintainers can simply throw all FLA files at the convertor.
With iOS not supporting Flash, future Android versions neither, Flash will die and site maintainers have to adapt or die with Flash.
I don't consider a tool that is used for 90% of commercial video streaming, with no migration path to other tools to be "on its deathbed".
http://dvcs.w3.org/hg/html-media/raw-file/tip/encrypted-media/encrypted-media.html
All the existing Flash animations and games on Weebl's Stuff, Homestar Runner, Kongregate, and Newgrounds are likely to keep SWF on life support for a very long time, be it through Adobe Flash Player or through Gnash.
Did you read my post? Adobe itself is migrating to HTML5. Adobe offers a tool (currently in beta) to convert Flash animations to HTML5: http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/wallaby/
I bet it'll be part of -- at the latest -- CS7.
Flash is on its deathbed anyway. Even Adobe realized that and is migrating everything to HTML5, even employing programmers to implement HTML5/CSS3 features in WebKit.
Adobe gives a 5 year migration period which is probably more that HTML5 needs to succeed widespread.
1. All toolbars are full of crap by default. Way too much icons and things. I want it clean and nice.
You are replying to someone who suggested stock KDE against Trinity. You make it sound as if Trinity was "clean and nice" which is simply untrue.
SC 4.x is much cleaner by default than KDE 3.x on which Trinity is based.
That said, defaults are for the distributor to decide. KDE software has the flexibility for many settings. It's for the distributor to decide which defaults to set.
3. I tried the new Activities, and so far they are totally useless for me (and yes, I did read long tutorials from net to try to get them).
They are useless for me as well which is why I simply don't use them.
Under GNOME Shell you have to use Activities. Under Plasma Desktop they are completely optional.
And by default there is no virtual desktops.
Which are as useless as Activities.
As with all default settings: They are for the distributor to decide.
4. Nepomuk is useless crap if you are not using those KDE applications like mail/calendar. And it cannot be easily disabled (even I disabled it everywhere, it still started up). Manually deleting executables did help.
There is lots of totally redundant cruft installed by default, at least in Ubuntu 11.10, with KDE 4.8 ppa. Why I would need two file managers for example?
How is it KDE's fault that Ubuntu's KDE packages are crap?
Nepomuk is completely optional. Plasma Desktop can be compiled without it. If Ubuntu does not support KDE packages without Nepomuk, it's an Ubuntu bug. Report it there and hope for a fix or use Gentoo.
The amount of file managers installed by default is also for the distributor to decide. If Ubuntu installs two, it's an Ubuntu bug. Report it there.
I'm still waiting for KDE4 to reach the dizzy usabillity heights of KDE3.
Yeah, that "great" KDE3 usability with countless checkboxes, broken Kicker, ARTS, and so on...
You can wait forever. KDE won't ever go back to that crap.
Well, I'd be more grateful, I suppose, if the so-called solution actually worked.
It works, retard. As I wrote: logging out and then logging back in is required first.
Now piss off and annoy someone else with your incompetence.
Agreed, but as a typical computer user (web, email word processing ) they are a huge part of "just works"
That has nothing, absolutely nothing, to do with the topic at hand. The topic is about Linux DEs only and the supposed bloatness of Plasma Desktop. Neither Plasma Desktop, nor LXDE, Xfce, or IceWM can make Flash or media-heavy websites run well on ancient hardware.
I found nothing to "just work" with 512M of RAM for a while (I upgraded a while ago).
Once Flash, and Web-browsing were in the mix, it just wasn't enough.
Neither Flash nor random media-heavy websites are the responsibility of KDE.