Five Years of KDE

Jacek Fedorynski writes: "Looks like KDE is five years old. Five years seems like a lot of time but just look how much they've achieved in this time." I think the hard part is just beginning - KDE has got all the basics down, and now they have to resist adding too much more crap.

A great example of open-source at work.

[Starship Trooper]

In 5 years, Microsoft went from Windows 1.0 to 2.1, all of which were essentially poor-to-mediocre DOS shells.

In 5 years, KDE has gone from nothing to KDE 2.2, which is an almost enterprise-quality desktop suite, with sophisticated development tools, an included office suite, and hundreds of other tools.

Imagine where we'll be in another five years.

Matthias knew KDE was a big thing...

[shankark]

The announcement [kde.org] that Matthias made that seemed to have sparked off the KDE (and I knew only now that K stood for Kool!) gives the impression that Matthias was onto something big. He was cocksure of KDE's success, confident that it was going to be a big hit (though even Matthias mightn't have expected it to catch on like it has done). Well, thats something that's lacking in the Open Source World 5 years thence. The conviction, that what one is doing is big, and the faith in one's abilities. Guess, there are just too many bloated carcasses floating around with little support/management, and moreover no cohesive force that rallies coders around, whips up their passion into doing something new.

Way to go, Matthias. Now, if only that announcement could motivate me to getting round to completing my assignment in time.. :(

Re:Crap?

[Osty]

Five years to develop this brilliant stuff is just unbelievably short. Not even Microsoft can build their lousy Win3.1 to another lousy Win2K, that took them more than 5 years...

Please note that KDE is simply a desktop environment/object model/bunch of apps. If Microsoft only changed the interface between win3.x and win2k (or even between win3.x and win95), then that would be a valid comparison. However, the evolutions you refer to involve the core operating system as well (especially your comparison of win3.x to win2k, but even win3.x to win95 included core OS changes, such as the switch to native 32-bit protected mode, using DOS only as a boot strap, rather than being little more than a DOS shell).

KDE is a great product, and I agree that it has come far in a relatively short amount of time, but please compare apples to apples. And don't forget that KDE didn't have to do all the "difficult" research that Microsoft did. 12 years after the GUI became "mainstream" (1984, Apple Macintosh), KDE began their project. Both Apple and Microsoft had gone through numerous iterations, making mistakes on the way, and eventually coming up with paradigms that Just Work. KDE was able to use all this design that came before it. (Note that I'm not saying that's a bad thing.)

Re:A great example of open-source at work.

[Flower]

All I'm going to say regarding this analogy is from Windows 1.0 to Windows 2.1 the highest processor you were using was an Intel 286.

It was a completely different time and makes your analogy not very applicable.

The international touch

[hack0rama]

Since KDE is out of Germany and QT from Norway I was just thinking how much international connection Linux has compared to Windows or Macintosh which are completely US centric.

Linux - Finland
GNU - US
KDE - Germany
QT - Norway
GNOME - Mexico ( Miguel )
OpenOffice - Germany ( Stardivision )
Mozilla - US
SAMBA - Australia

Re:Congrats and thanks to KDE

[Ars-Fartsica]

2) integrated voice activation

This is a lame feature and thank god KDE does not attempt it. There is nothing more moronic than a bunch of people talking to their computers (no offense to Star Trekkers).

If the only thing I can do with this is launch programs, its just a joke.

3) An easy way to script out application action (like AppleScript)

There are about a thousand ways to do this on linux that are better than anything Apple has come up with itself. Perl. Python. Bourne Shell for christs sake. Apple has caught up to linux with scripting, but only on the basis of porting the GNU tools through BSD support.

7) A proper user interface

Well, supposedly Apple had the ultimate UI before OSX, yet they felt the need to scrap it. You can find numerous articles where UI folks and Apple greybeards shit all over OSX's interface.

Personally I like the OSX UI, but its more or less eye candy. Functionally almost nothing has changed that isn't purely cosmetic (and resource hungry).

8) Lots of properly integrated apps

No. KDE has plenty of apps well integrated through KParts. Apple has Classic and Cocoa, and will have these two environments for a VERY VERY VERY VERY LONG TIME. Since few people are working on any Mac code these days, Apple is going to be supporting MacOS9 apps until doomsday. Already Apple users are being humilliated on the shelves at retailers by Windows 98 and soon XP will finish the job.

Sure, there is a lot of distance for KDE to go, but as cool as OSX is, Apple has killed itself on strategy. When your userbase is as low as Apple, doing a total presto changeo on the OS, development tools, and even thr fricking monitor connection is just more motivation for Apple users to buy a PC next time around. I commend the for the Apple store concept, but it won't help at this point.

Re:Hopefully the 486'ers won't get their way

[Anonymous Coward]

At a casual glance that appears possible but the most likely way forward for KDE is in architecture - and architecture isn't optional!

For example, for KDE/QT to progress to a 4th generation display model would either involve breaking apps or putting in a compatibil^N^Nabstraction layer. The way forward is architecture.

Ten years ago we had one toolkit that was also the framebuffer and driver. Nowdays they're individual components and the developer gets to choose. What a glorious thing!

Can you imagine writing a bit of software where these abstraction layers were optional?

Move fast enough to keep your software afloat. But move slow enough to keep your hardware afloat!

Re:don't add, just tighten

[Geek Boy]

Thanks to the modular design of KDE, adding new features doesn't bloat it in any way unless you actually use those features. If you use those features, then of course you have to allocate resources too them.

KDE doesn't start up features unless you actually want to use them, and this is definitely a good thing.

Re:Congrats and thanks to KDE

[fault0]

1)proper Drag-n-Drop everywhere.

true

2) integrated voice activation

true

3) An easy way to script out application action (like AppleScript)

Uh, it's called dcop.

4) XML for everything, and a VERY organized file structure (This is more of a linux thing).

Why exactly would you want XML for everything? XML is just a buzzword for apple to capitalize on, imho. XML isn't the fastest thing to parse either. Kconfig's key=value is much faster.

5) display pdf (or postscript) which makes making PDFs trvially easy

i heard kprint would have this soon (if it doesn't already). any app that can print could make a pdf (like adobe pdfmaker).

6) for that matter, a 4th generation display engine

sorta, all widgets in qt _are_ objects.

7) A proper user interface (workflow reads like a page, except for tools that you "pick up" from teh bottom/dock)

Not sure what you mean.. but "proper" is a very subjective term.

8) Lots of properly integrated apps

KDE is very integrated. I'd say OSX is much less (Classic).

9) A proper application structure that reduces clutter yet is more powerful than any current structure.

KDE or GNOME's .desktop files?

9) A lot of other little things that OSX has in plentitude (miscellaneous coolnesses).

Uhm, with the logic used in your post, I could argue that OSX doesn't have a proper Windows-like taskbar, and MANY other features.