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Pre-KDE 2.0 Progress Report

Posted by Hemos on Mon Jul 24, 2000 07:07 AM
from the gettin'-closer dept.
GUI KDE
Matthias Kalle Dalheimer writes: "Hi, just wanted to let you know that there is a progress report about the achievements made at the last KDE developer meeting in Trysil, Norway, at KDE.org "
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  • Why not NEVER trust it. What's the use in trusting it in the first place if you can ALWAYS have the applet running (and crashing) without taking the panel with it... Just a thought?

    Perhaps applets in a sandbox have a higher Memory and/or CPU consumption? Or less possibilities at all.

  • All I can say is they are certainly addressing the issues about Unix sucking. This is some fantastic news and will help to make linux a real desktop solution.

    Now if I can get KDE to turn off the upper "task bar" I may actually use it all the time.

    I like KDE but it takes a lot of screen "real estate"

    Dave

  • Re:KDE 2.0 Beta 3 Today? (Score:3)

    by Rich (9681) on Monday July 24 2000, @06:15AM (#910460) Homepage
    Beta 3 isn't quite ready yet. It is tagged in the CVS, but we have moved the tag a few times to include fixes for problems we considered serious. It will probably be a few days before it is actually released. There are some test tar balls around, but these may not correspond to the actual beta as some or all of these last few bug fixes are probably missing. Please be patient, it won't be long and I think you'll find it worth the wait.

  • I'll agree that usability by Mom is important, she's got to be able to boot the box, browse to myfamily.com, and send e-mails.

    Expert users? We don't need to support them, they'll figure out the most arcane syntax and munge through various config files until they get the box to work no matter what. (They use Linux now, don't they?)

    The intermediate user, aka my brother, is key. My brother, until recently, had never had the cover off his computer. Did I hesitate in telling him to rip that cover off and stick in a NIC to build a little home network? Not for a minute. I could help him get it configured over the phone. That is, if he needs my help at all.

    OTOH, would I even think about telling him to do that with a Linux box? Again, not for a minute. (Please don't bother to tell me how easy it really is to install a NIC. Sure, if everything goes right. But there are more potential points of failure and a lack of good feedback on the failure(s). I couldn't troubleshoot it over the phone, so I just wouldn't do it.)

    The experts need intermediates who can follow what they've discovered, and the beginners need intermediates who can swap a NIC or add a SIMM. On the whole, the GUI seems one of the least problematic areas of Linux -- its more the Gnome vs. KDE wars that stimulate effort than any real need on users parts.

  • Personally I like KDE because I can forget I'm using it.
    Exactly. In software, as with many other fields, good engineering is whatever gets the job done without calling attention to itself. KDE does just that. It's good-looking, it's fast, it's stable, it's functional, and it doesn't get in your way. It's a tool that allows the computer to work for you instead of vice-versa. Even though I'm a hacker type, I still despise having to type half a dozen shell commands when there's a program out there that'll get the same task done in two mouse clicks.

    I applaud the KDE developers and wish them every success. They deserve it.
    --
  • I love the non-skid title bars. Now I can use KDE in the shower without fear of slipping. Now if I could just waterproof my keyboard...
  • The most sensible thing in the article by far is the minimum font size in the web browser ! All web browsers should have this. Tiny fonts suck!

    Looks like they've paid some attention to the look of things this time. An improvement to be sure, as KDE1.x ,in my opinion is butt ugly. The icons they show in the filebrowser are really nice looking, crisp with good colours and still identifiable.Colorful but not garish. The same for the toolbar icons. The overall color schemes cried "Aqua" to this observer.

    Kudos to all these guys for putting all the work in to continually improve their offerings. I don't really go much for the Linux desktop environment thing, but I know plenty of people who wouldn't think of using a computer without one. The KDE and GNOME teams are doing a really important job

    But having mentioned toolbars, the spreadsheet screenshot was ludicrous ! Half the real estate seemed to be taken up by icons and toolbar widgets ! I assume these can be turned off.(GNOME suffers far too much from chunky button syndrome as well). Toolbar buttons are fine for quick shortcuts guys, but they take away space from the application itself.

  • Where did you get this information? KDE has an integrated file manager/web browser. I have GNOME and find it ridiculously bulky for the very little it does for me.

    KDE is indeed bulky and slower than a straight window manager. Both KDE and GNOME are resource hungry but you pay a price for ease of use and quite frankly I have always KDE easier to use.

    GNOME is even more difficult to install. I don't know anyone who has figured out what to download to get it working and the only "easy install tool" means you have to foolishly trust an online shell script via "lynx -source" and run it as root.

    No thank you! Until good instructions on what needs to be downloaded and what is extra are released I will stick with KDE.

    Dave

  • This looks very good for Linux (Score:3)

    by Jon Erikson (198204) on Monday July 24 2000, @03:25AM (#910475)

    Well finally people in the Linux world seem to be paying attention to what the "real world" wants from a computer rather than what the open source community does, and this can only be a good thing for everyone involved in Linux. By creating a UI that looks almost as slick as Windows 2000, and without the $$$ spent on UI R&D, the KDE team are making a step foward for Linux's penetration into the non-tech-savvy market.

    Whilst I appreciate that the GNOME team are also doing a good job of copying the whole Windows "look and feel", I have to say that what Linux needs is more distinction between its GUI and the Windows GUI, not less. Sure, it should be roughly equivalent to aid in user migration from MS to Linux, but it also needs to be distinctive to aid in brand recognition, and KDE has acheived this.

    As a top professional consultant I've worked with a lot of startups in the last few years, and the one thing that is of crucial importance in a market dominated by existing players is a distinctive brand that clearly differentiates the product in the eyes of its customers, whether or not the product is any different! Linux has been moving in this direction with its whole penguin theme, and I think that KDE should become the standard desktop in order to facilitate a distinctive brand and consumer recognition.

    As long as there is more than one desktop available a lot of the less tech-savvy out there are going to be confused about what exactly Linux is - I've had people ask whether Red Hat or Mandrake was the better operating system - which means they'll be more likely to stick with Windows, which has a very well realised brand. In order for Linux to succeed, it needs to drop all of the proliferation of choices and focus on a single, distinctive brand image.

    ---
    Jon E. Erikson

  • I had tried a beta of KDE 2.0 this earlier summer, and aside from the expected frequent crashes, what's not too love!?! They dealt with my biggest pet peeve of linux desktops -- when my family clicks on an icon, if they don't get an instant response, they click again, and again (a lot of win-d'oh-s users have this impatience). From KDE -- "If the click launches an application, a button appears in the desktop task bar immediately. If the application takes time to start up, you at least know that it is on its way. These features also apply to the rest of KDE, for consistency."
    Webmaster, City of Saint Paul
  • However, KDE is meant for a broad acceptance. The whole reason why KDE (and GNOME) have done so well is the fact that they resemble Windows. Everyone uses Windows, and the best interface is the Win98 interface simply because 300-something million people already know it.

  • Re:RMS on Qt (Score:3)

    by dvdeug (5033) <`dvdeug' `at' `email.ro'> on Monday July 24 2000, @07:49AM (#910484)
    Gee, how many errors can I see?

    (1) Debian is not a puppet of RMS. For example, RMS has asked Debian not to consider the Artistic license a free license (because of its ambiguity.) Debian disagreed.

    (2) RMS doesn't care about what licenses are considered open-source.

    (3) RMS doesn't consider the GPL the only free licence. The QPL**, the BSD license, the Netscape Public License and several others are considered free by him and the FSF. Go look at www.gnu.org - they have a nice list there, with explanations.

    (4) (IMO) RMS has earned his clout. People listen to him because they respect him, and because he has earned that respect. His opinions are usually well thought out, and clearly explained.
  • Is that Katie hot or what?
  • Who's that Dragon in the upper right hand corner there? Maybe someone could hook up her and the Mozilla mascot. I hear that guy is quite the loner.
  • In order for Linux to succeed, it needs to drop all of the proliferation of choices and focus on a single, distinctive brand image.

    That's a Pyrric victory. Give up much of what makes Linux the OS of choice for many of us, so that it can be just another Windows. If you want Windows, you know where to find it.

  • Re:Funny? Try informative (Score:3)

    by fReNeTiK (31070) on Monday July 24 2000, @07:54AM (#910493)
    You may want to check this mini-howto [linuxdoc.org] as well for more complete info on deuglyfying X, and more specifically Netscape [linuxdoc.org]...

    Can I get a +1 Informative now, too? ;)
  • Not true. All technology is born in labs, not in kitchens. If you conquer the labs (and Linux is moving pretty fast in this direction), all new features (including new desktop ideas) will be yours eventually. All concepts eventually die, and even OLE will. And why won't the Linux desktop be next?
    >>>>>>
    Huh? As far as I can see, all new technology these days seems to be coming from consumer technology. The whole reason the PC market exists is because of the PC's utility as a business machine. Increasingly, the PC market is also being driven by consumers. The technology itself is being driven by games, mainly. As for labs, I don't know of any major labratories which use Linux. However, I do know that there are more features to be found in consumer and business space than anywhere else. Looking for the most efficient interface? Dominate the business market. These people spend hours each day in front of a computer, and they're the ones who need the most efficient interface. Want the easiest interface? Dominate the newbie product market. Want the fastest 3D, dominate the games market, where the need to wring massive performance out of small budgets drives the market faster than even SGI's machines ever did. Want the best security, dominate the business market where people need transparent access to documents without other people getting access too. Almost none of the cool tech that has come out has come because of the needs of the labratory. These days, consumers drive the entire computing inudstry.

    As for Linux users attitude - that's not Linux fault. Choose better friends for yourself :)
    Same goes for your 10-years-old canned Linux myths ("no docs", "hard to install", "too many choices", etc., etc.) Believe me, every word you say here was said and proven false years ago. Please don't start this again.
    >>>>>>>
    No docs: Microsoft has beautifully done HTML help files that are easily searchable, include pictures to explain things, and cover each feature of an application. (The DirectX docs in particular are probably one of the finset examples of detailed API documentation I've seen) Linux has: README's.
    Hard to Install: This problem is related to the to many choices problem. Unless you want Mandrake installing 1.4 gigs of stuff on your harddrive, you've got to custom install packages. Then, you've got to wade through multiple redundant packages. "What the hell is the difference between gcc and egcs?" "why the hell to I need the C shell, I never USE the C shell." "Why can't I uninstall groff without man breaking?" The problem with the packages is that there is too much cruft that Linux apps depend on. Then you've got to partition your drive. Last time I installed, Win98, you didn't need to know what a partition was. Then, unless you want a ton of useless services on your machine, you've got to read up on each and disable the ones you don't need. "Samba? What they hell is this thing running Samba automatically for?" Finally, you've got to run sndconfig, which as often as not asks you for IRQs and DMAs. If you've gotten through that, you've got to go through hell everytime you want to install an app. "What do you mean this thing uses glibc2.1.2 what the hell's a glibc?" Want to upgrade your desktop? Quit out of X, download a dozen RPMS, and rpm -Ui --force --nodeps them. Why --nodeps? Because 50% of time KDE manages to depend on a package supplied within the package you're trying to install. Sure a lot of these theoretically don't happen, but
    A) They're never all in the same distro.
    B) Even if they're in the distro, it results you losing functionality. You can run Windows at 90% with no tweeking, Linux maybe 60%. Doesn't it simpy make MORE sense to let people install what they need rather than installing everything and making people wade through the mess getting rid of cruft?
  • Lost half of the post, here it is in its entirety.

    Not true. All technology is born in labs, not in kitchens. If you conquer the labs (and Linux is moving pretty fast in this direction), all new features (including new desktop ideas) will be yours eventually. All concepts eventually die, and even OLE will. And why won't the Linux desktop be next?
    >>>>>>
    Huh? As far as I can see, all new technology these days seems to be coming from consumer technology. The whole reason the PC market exists is because of the PC's utility as a business machine. Increasingly, the PC market is also being driven by consumers. The technology itself is being driven by games, mainly. As for labs, I don't know of any major labratories which use Linux. However, I do know that there are more features to be found in consumer and business space than anywhere else. Looking for the most efficient interface? Dominate the business market. These people spend hours each day in front of a computer, and they're the ones who need the most efficient interface. Want the easiest interface? Dominate the newbie product market. Want the fastest 3D, dominate the games market, where the need to wring massive performance out of small budgets drives the market faster than even SGI's machines ever did. Want the best security, dominate the business market where people need transparent access to documents without other people getting access too. Almost none of the cool tech that has come out has come because of the needs of the labratory. These days, consumers drive the entire computing inudstry.

    As for Linux users attitude - that's not Linux fault. Choose better friends for yourself :)
    Same goes for your 10-years-old canned Linux myths ("no docs", "hard to install", "too many choices", etc., etc.) Believe me, every word you say here was said and proven false years ago. Please don't start this again.
    >>>>>>>
    No docs: Microsoft has beautifully done HTML help files that are easily searchable, include pictures to explain things, and cover each feature of an application. (The DirectX docs in particular are probably one of the finset examples of detailed API documentation I've seen) Linux has: README's.
    Hard to Install: This problem is related to the to many choices problem. Unless you want Mandrake installing 1.4 gigs of stuff on your harddrive, you've got to custom install packages. Then, you've got to wade through multiple redundant packages. "What the hell is the difference between gcc and egcs?" "why the hell to I need the C shell, I never USE the C shell." "Why can't I uninstall groff without man breaking?" The problem with the packages is that there is too much cruft that Linux apps depend on. Then you've got to partition your drive. Last time I installed, Win98, you didn't need to know what a partition was. Then, unless you want a ton of useless services on your machine, you've got to read up on each and disable the ones you don't need. "Samba? What they hell is this thing running Samba automatically for?" Finally, you've got to run sndconfig, which as often as not asks you for IRQs and DMAs. If you've gotten through that, you've got to go through hell everytime you want to install an app. "What do you mean this thing uses glibc2.1.2 what the hell's a glibc?" Want to upgrade your desktop? Quit out of X, download a dozen RPMS, and rpm -Ui --force --nodeps them. Why --nodeps? Because 50% of time KDE manages to depend on a package supplied within the package you're trying to install. Sure a lot of these theoretically don't happen, but
    A) They're never all in the same distro.
    B) Even if they're in the distro, it results you losing functionality. You can run Windows at 90% with no tweeking, Linux maybe 60%. Doesn't it simpy make MORE sense to let people install what they need rather than installing everything and making people wade through the mess getting rid of cruft?
    C) It doesn't work 50% of the time. Sure KDE is supposed to install right of the bat, but ask anybody who uses the NVIDIA drivers and can't get Qt-GL to install, and they'll tell you it isn't all its cracked up to be.
    To many choices: Lets see, two major incompatible versions of KDE, GNOME, three versions (incompatible) of libc, two versions of libstdc++, motif, gawk, mawk, pgcc, gcc, C-shell, Zshell, bash, etc, etc. Even worse, all the apps require different versions of each, so I have them all loaded at the same freaking time. I don't know about you, but I'm feeling pretty overwhelmed. (And pissed at all the resource sucking redundency.) Plus, years ago, Linux didn't even have KDE or the super simple (relativly) installers. Why was it proven then?
  • In Windows you can click help, and get a nicely formatted HTML help file, with links and searchability. Some even have pictures to help you find a menu or what not. MS has innovated even more (yea, they DO do that) by having a centralized help file that manufactures can add their help files to. Now, one stop help whatever you're using. Sure it takes away the freedom to app writes to include their own style of help, but their freedom doesn't matter, now does it.
  • On lower-end machines, I usually use IceWM. It's small, and has a nice look and feel. For my main machine, however, I wouldn't use anything other than KDE. :-)

  • An applet running in it's own process adds some overhead because it needs context switches and some app specific data to be initialised. Giving you control over what happens means you can choose how you want stability to be played off against speed and memory. The default is that the most common applets (which have been tested most) run in-process, with the others (especially those downloaded from elsewhere) running out-of-process.

    Note that the applets are different from the simpler 'system tray' applets which are always out-of-process. The applets being discussed in the report are those such as the clock, task bar, pager etc. The in-process and out-of-process applets use the same API and have the same features, they don't know or care if they are actually running in the same process as the panel.

  • According to the release plan [kde.org] on the KDE homepage [kde.org], Beta 3 is due to be released today. Anyone know if this will actually happen today?

    -Karl

  • Linux has already succeeded, and because of the proliferation of choices, not in spite of it.

    Unfortunately, outside of a small group of people who follow RMS's Open Source creed and support free software, the fact is that Linux hasn't truly succeeded anywhere yet. Sure it is becoming the platform of choice for running webservers, but that is mainly because of the proliferation of small- to medium-sized net startups for whom cost is more of a factor than having a tried and tested rock solid enterprise platform such as Solaris. As these companies die out or grow Linux's share of the server market will once again fall.

    Anyway, the desktop market, both for home and business use is where true mindshare comes from. And in this arena Linux has made little headway against the Windows or Mac platforms, both of which cater far better for the average home user than the "RTFM" attitude many Linux users display when it comes to offering advice. And when the only documentation is a couple of man pages (since documentation doesn't get you any "kudos") that is of no use whatsoever.

    When the average user comes to set up their Linux box for doing all the stuff they do using Windows they are faced with a bewildering array of choices - which distribution, which window manager, which desktop, which web browser etc etc. How are they supposed to decide on which is best for them, let alone set up and configure these applications?

    The only Linux project which has even attempted to make Linux accessible to the average person is Corel Linux, and what did they get for their trouble? Irate Linux gods flaming them for "dumbing down" their operating system and making it more accessible to all.

    ---
    Jon E. Erikson

  • No, I think the only good integration between GNOME and KDE will come when both can share the same config files, are binary compatible, when I can use GIMP and KDevelop without loading two sets of very huge libraries, and when KDE objects can be embedded into a GNOME container, which is actually another object contained in KDE container and being shared via CORBA from a GNOME server running in my closet. Lastly, it has to do all this without increasing the bloat of either environment from "obscene" to "Windows 2000."
  • http://www.kde.org/news_dyn.html#964126797
  • And yet, there are still quite a few people who absolutely loathe and detest KDE. Those of you who hate KDE, could you share for us why? I'm not doubting that you have compelling reasons; I'm instead looking for some valid criticisms of KDE instead of the tired and lame "KDE looks like Windows."

    I don't loathe it, I just find it...unremarkable. Years of work, effectively starting from scratch, has gone into a GUI that doesn't begin to address the views on human/computer interaction that have come out of the last ten years. There are even excellent books by Jef Raskin and Alan Cooper on the market that cover the attitude changes. 1996's Anti-Mac article, mentioned recently on Slashdot, is another. These are in addition to dozens of more scholarly papers, of course.

    KDE and Gnome are solutions to the problem of "we don't have a slick desktop environment." Typically, a more reasonable approach is to figure out what it is that users are trying to accomplish and design an interface to assist with it. More and more, the real purpose of KDE seems to be as a way to configure and fiddle with KDE.
  • It has succeeded in higher education, despite Sun and MS trying to flood the universities with free versions of their products.

  • If you conquer the labs (and Linux is moving pretty fast in this direction), all new features (including new desktop ideas) will be yours eventually.

    But given Linux's (and other open source projects) history has borne out the fact that open source imitates rather than innovating, the lag behind development of a concept and its inclusion in open source projects will be unacceptable in the marketplace. Users don't want an open source version five years down the line, they want any version now.

    As for Linux users attitude - that's not Linux fault. Choose better friends for yourself :)

    I'm not talking about my friends - most of whom aren't involved in the computer industry in any way - I'm talking about the attitudes I see here and on newsgroups and mailing lists. It seems to be the prevalent attitude towards "newbies" (a condescending term at best).

    Same goes for your 10-years-old canned Linux myths ("no docs", "hard to install", "too many choices", etc., etc.) Believe me, every word you say here was said and proven false years ago. Please don't start this again.

    Yeah, proven true by Linux users for Linux users. I'm talking about the average person who isn't particularly literate. Joe Sixpack doesn't want to have to search through /usr/lib/X11/doc/install or whatever just to find the "Configuring X Windows HOWTO", no matter how easy it is to read - and they might be easy to read for you, but Joe doesn't want to read through some huge, poorly-formatted text file for the information he wants.

    ---
    Jon E. Erikson

  • Aren't they amazing? (Score:3)

    by Matthew Smith (201610) on Monday July 24 2000, @05:06AM (#910528)
    This thing will really take off. I have a feeling that the KDE project is definitely going somewhere. These guys have a vision and they stick to it while being pragmatic enough to actually get the coding done. Some will say that KDE is an unremarkable project because it mimics Windows interface. Whether it mimics anything or not is a whole different story (it actually encompases bits from various UIs). However, they are consistently productive and their project is progressing extremely rapidly.

    GNOME guys have this grand vision to produce the one and only desktop that will be everything to everyone. I feel they are trying to take on too much and hence the progress is very slow. I was once on a (commercial) project like this. We wanted to build the ultimate application in the industry, encompass everything and still leave plenty of room for expansion. The project grew enormously before it became usable and the initial "grand design" had to be replaced by something simpler and leaner. I think this stage is still ahead of the GNOME guys. The age old KISS rule will bite them very soon (if it's not biting them already). They may have the great plan and superb architecture but I have my own views on designing architectures before anything uses it. No offence to the GNOME team but a thought from experience. KDE has all the aces their desktop is leaner, more functional and more stable thanks to its simpler design. Bonobo may be great one day but it will take them years to get it going especially if they try to rewrite StarOffice with it.

  • The word is: no interoperability before KDE 3.0, as reported in several recent slashdot stories.

  • Re:Aesthtics improving (Score:3)

    by theHippo (28682) on Monday July 24 2000, @04:24AM (#910538)
    The most sensible thing in the article by far is the minimum font size in the web browser ! All web browsers should have this. Tiny fonts suck!
    If you're using netscape put the following in your .Xdefaults
    Netscape*documentFonts.sizeIncrement: 10
    This reduces the increment/decrement factor of fonts to 10% from the default 20%, so you don't end up with such tiny fonts.
  • Might be that I am being judgemental being a long time GNOME user, but when looking at the screenshots, especially the one of the filemanager, the icons gave me a distinctly 'for kids' feeling. It is hard to explain the reasons, but I think the combination of a cartoonish look ('simplified' and big and very distinct colours) are probably part of the explanation for this impression. If this was done on purpose by KDE, I think it is a mistake. Non-techie users probably don't want to be given an interface which inidicates that they as users are on a 'kids' level.
  • I agree that good defaults are important, but KDE's default is set to look like 95/98, thus making the transition easier for the inexperienced beginner (who has, most likely, used Windows before). It would seem to be a more likely setup, at least at first.
  • Yeah, and I really hate it when I type ls and it lists both the directories and the files together ;-)
  • Linux will truly have succeeded in the desktop world when the default install for beginners will be usable by my mother, that is to say when there will be enough easy-to-use apps with a coherent DEFAULT look-and-feel for the beginners, while still allowing advanced users to customise it all the way..

    I don't understand why each time someone talk about uniform standard look-and-feel, slashdotters there is someone replying Linux is about choice, an the like..

    Uh? Linux needs a uniform standard look-and-feel for the DEFAULT configuration, it wouldn't take away any freedom because it would still be changeable totally by advanced users..

    There are differents level of "configurability" which are not incompatible IMHO:
    a) some change doable by beginners with a easy-to-use GUI (control center).
    b) more configurability by modifying configuration files by hand, using scripts, etc.
    c) the ultimate configurability: use the source, Luke!

    Well, KDE 2.0 should be a step in the good direction.. :-)
  • people who follow RMS's Open Source creed

    Ack! No! If RMS were in the habit of going around and smacking people up side the head, then you'd have better run for cover, because RMS unambiguously hates [gnu.org] the "open source" creed.

  • Aesthtics improving (Score:4)

    by scrutty (24640) on Monday July 24 2000, @02:34AM (#910550) Homepage
    Looks like they've paid some attention to the look of things this time. An improvement to be sure, as KDE1.x ,in my opinion is butt ugly.

    The icons they show in the filebrowser are really nice looking, crisp with good colours and still identifiable.Colorful but not garish. The same for the toolbar icons. The overall color schemes cried "Aqua" to this observer.

    But having mentioned toolbars, the spreadsheet screenshot was ludicrous ! Half the real estate seemed to be taken up by icons and toolbar widgets ! I assume these can be turned off.(GNOME suffers far too much from chunky button syndrome as well). Toolbar buttons are fine for quick shortcuts guys, but they take away space from the application itself.

    The most sensible thing in the article by far is the minimum font size in the web browser ! All web browsers should have this. Tiny fonts suck!

    Kudos to all these guys for putting all the work in to continually improve their offerings. I don't really go much for the Linux desktop environment thing, but I know plenty of people who wouldn't think of using a computer without one. The KDE and GNOME teams are doing a really important job

    My compliments to the graphic design team as well. I think it looks really clean and attractive as I said.

    Now please can you sort out the licensing furore ? Thank you.

  • RMS on Qt (Score:4)

    by Otter (3800) on Monday July 24 2000, @04:33AM (#910555) Journal
    I'm ambivalent about introducing licensing issues into a discussion that's focusing on technical issues, but there's an interesting bit of news that I haven't seen mentioned outside of the kde-licensing list. Here's a post [debian.org] on a Debian mailing list in which RMS offers his view on linking apps to Qt. Basically he supports the view that GPL'd code like KDE, which is designed to link against a non-GPL library, should be considered to implicitly have permission to do so - and thus dosn't require any license modifications.

    Now, there is still the issue of GPL'd code from outside sources, but this obviously removes 99% of the problem. So is Debian reconsidering, now that RMS has addressed their primary objection? Not really, as discussed in this kde-licensing thread [kde.org].
  • They do look very nice. But I wonder... Don't icons with internal color shading make assumptions about the background color? They may not look anywhere nearly as nice against another background. Of course most folder windows do have a yellow'd extremely light gray color for their background, but I thought that this was themeable (or am I getting mixed up with Gnome?). If so, then several of the icons may need to be replaced for several of the themes. (Well, I never use colored windows anyway, but ...)

    Should icons be theme specific? (Can they be?) If the icons are themed, then they can be edited to stand out against the background specified by the theme (lots of work, but then it lets themes be more flexible), this will allow them to be more aesthetic, and also, perhaps, more confusing. If they can't be, then many of the themes will be ugly.
  • I have to disagree with this. In general the interfaces you're talking about belong to applications, not the desktop.

    If you've read the references I cited, you'll discover a few things:

    1. the separation of a GUI into dekstop and applications is generally considered to be a mistake

    2. the entire desktop metaphor was off the mark is outdated
  • I think we're looking at Linux's "success" from different perspectives. I don't care if Joe Sixpack runs Linux. I do care that monopolist "innovation" doesn't stifle the industry, and I believe that Linux, an operating system where good ideas can be reimplemented correctly and in freedom and where technical excellence is more important than marketing, moves things in a good direction. If Linux never becomes the dominant operating system, it will already have succeeded because it has already forced the "big boys" to pay more attention to the things that I value.

    If Joe Sixpack does end up going with Linux because Red Hat someday has the Swedish Bikini Team in a commercial, then more power to him. And it is quite possible that Linux will replace Windows on the desktop. I would prefer that that be enabled by a general education of the computer-using population, rather than a dumbing down of linux, and I think that that is not a completely implausible thing either.

  • Beta 3 is out, but there's no binaries yet.
    --
  • The person of whom you speak, Joe Sixpack, had better not try installing windows either. I would recommend that he get a Mac LC III and run with system 7.5.3 (possibly 7.5.5). Those are the most stable and easy to use systems with which I am familiar. Of course browsing the web was very slow...

    The only real alternative that he has is to buy a computer with the OS pre-installed. In which case Linux is just as easy as Windows.

    Or he can get someone else to install it. In which case Linux is just as easy as Windows.
  • As long as security considerations are taken, the dcop shell scripting capabilities open up a huge amount of possibilities. This looks v. v. interesting
  • A) You're point is utterly irrelevant. I'm saying that KDE and GNOME should use fully compatible object libraries so I don't have to load both at the same time. That makes the system LESS bloated, not more so. I don't care if its in X, or there is a seperate library entierly, they should be together. Also, objects are very usefull for desktop applications. The problem with the current X model is that it allows too much diversity. For those people who don't only run one application, all this diversity leads to a lot of bloat and redundency.
    B) Windows seems to have gotten the handle of objects pretty well. My point is that I want to be able to use GIMP object from within KDE apps. Its a bad idea to build up two libraries of objects, because it not only is duplicated effort, but almost always a person will need an object not availabe on their native platform, and thus have to run both GNOME AND KDE.
    C)The "old fashioned way" is what made Linux so bloated to begin with. Here is a clean kernel with top notch components, competent libraries, and some great desktop environemnts, but simply because of the traditional way of doing things and all the numerous libraries they result in, you've got something that approaches the size of Win2K. And its truly a waste. And linking the old fashioned way leads to bugs as well. Take DirectX. It has been nearly rewritten and has 8 versions, each of which introduce new features, and still it manages to stay compatible with all the different applications that use it. And not only that, it does so without resorting to kludges like compatibility libraries and wrappers. Until I see something like that on Linux, the object approach seems to have an edge.
    As for BeOS, it doesn't HAVE an object model. I'm not advocating it at all. If anything, I'm advocating COM. It might be messy to code for, but its fast, fairly easy to use once you understand it, and really redefines ways of making libraries.
  • OTOH, would I even think about telling him to do that with a Linux box? Again, not for a minute. (Please don't bother to tell me how easy it really is to install a NIC. Sure, if everything goes right. But there are more potential points of failure and a lack of good feedback on the failure(s). I couldn't troubleshoot it over the phone, so I just wouldn't do it.)

    I'm sorry, but that conclusion is completely without foundation. I have installed four different types of network card in computers running Linux and *all* of them were cleanly autodetected and worked "out of the box" without any need for manual configuration at all.

    Contrast this with installation an Intel EtherExpress Pro/100 on Windows 98: It simply refused to find the correct driver whichever of the three standard methods of device driver installation was used. I eventually gave up and after trawling Intel's support site I discovered that this is a known bug; it was necessary to go in and edit the .INF files by hand before it would install properly.

    Remember, almost from its earliest incarnation Linux has been deployed as a network services platform. Network hardware support is therefore one thing you can count on to work right.

    Consciousness is not what it thinks it is
    Thought exists only as an abstraction

  • The "for kids" impression you're getting seems to be mostly due to the over sized icons used. It's great having all those colors and design, but those icons really need to be about 2/3rds the size of what they are now.

    Then these over sized icons get used in the toolbars. What's worse, there's too much space allocated for buttons that are already too big. This gives KSpread this blocky look that an app like Excel doesn't suffer from.

    A GUI app only has just so much time on screen to lull a person into the notion that their time spent learning will be worthwhile. Certainly some apps are less affected by this, but I firmly believe that Office apps are heavily impacted. No matter how cool KSpread may turn out to be, the user has to jump this additional hurdle of having this blocky interface show up.

    Mind you, Gnome is no better in this regard. In many cases it's actually much worse. Both of these desktops really need to be making better use of the screen real estate.

    All griping aside, I'm still very much looking forward to the final release of KDE 2.0. My little 56k modem will be right there with everyone else contributing to the Slashdot effect when it comes out. I'm especially excited to see how Konqueror plays out.
  • The icon size is configurable via the control center, so if you want smaller icons you can have them. In addition you should bear in mind that the KSpread window in the screenshot is smaller than it would normally be in real use in order to make the screenshot small enough to download quickly.
  • What I liked the most is that they finally separated the close button from the others. This is really important IMHO, yet almost all the other interfaces get it wrong. Even the new Aqua blow it :-(

    Szo
  • The report focus on a lot of smaller details which have been improved, such as the minimum font size in the browser etc.

    These things may not seem very important at first, but many of them, you will be using several times every day and this "stuff" are therefore very important to the overall desktop experience.

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