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KDE GUI

KDE Wins 3 awards 260

Linux Journal has just posted who won its awards this time - and KDE got 3 of them: Konqueror, KDE-2, and KDevelop. Congratulations to the KDE team and to all their supporters.
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KDE Wins 3 awards

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  • KDE2 award (Score:2, Informative)

    by Lappie ( 214857 )
    Congrats. Just installed an old SuSE that already included KDE2 and it works like a breeze
  • by gee308 ( 167706 )
    I rcently came back to using X from the command line(although its stil my favorite work place). The last time I had used kde was the kde 1.x days. Now I am using kde 2.2.1 and let me tell you, it is a thousand times better. Konqueror already beats the crap out of Netscape, I don't even see how people can call Netscape an alternative now. I also jsut bought a MAC to try out the "other" *BSD and to me, kde2 is still better than all the "eye candy" at OS X.
    There are a few small bugs I do notice sometime.
    Try to view a table with a left align in konqeuror and see the result. This 1 line of code will be messed up:
    messed up column
  • I still have yet to adopt either gnome or kde as my religion, I've been playing more sort of wait-and-see. At home I use gnome, at work I've been using kde. I'm not someone who likes to take a lot of time configuring desktops, I tend to just use the default. But I definitely like kde (this is under mandrake 8.0)--one thing I love is mouse-to-focus, click-to-top. It seems the most intuitive to me. In gnome I have mouse to focus, but I have to click on the title bar (often buried) to get top. I probably could configure it somewhere but I haven't taken the time to bother. The other thing I like is how kde reacts when I select a link--the little menu of choices is definitely what I was wanting without knowing I wanted it. I also like Konqueror a lot. Javascript doesn't always work quite right, but as with just about every browser to some degree. Nice work kde.
  • KDE has come a long ways since its inception and I applaud the developers that have worked so hard to bring it up to this point. It offers a nice UI that's intuitive for users of either macOS or windows to get used to. And it's pretty.

    Things that don't get much press, though, are the fast and efficient windowmanagers that, IMO, are able to accomplish a lot more. What about fvwm2 [fvwm.org], a completely customizable and scriptable windowmanager. Or ion, recently published on slashdot. The folks that worked on windowmaker also have done a great job.

    All in all, I think that the developers working on KDE have done a stunning job, but it's equally amazing that new linux users aren't exposed as much to the "choice" that makes the linux operating system what it is. I switch windowmanagers every so often, and each of gets things done in its own unique way. I think the cake goes to fvwm for its efficiency, though. Too bad it doesn't get press because it's not as "pretty" as other wms out there.

    • both, when i am in geek mode i prefer nothing but shell, when i have to administrate - gnome or fvwm or the others are usually just fine and cool etc.. etc...

      but when i am in office/show off mode KDE rocks hardest, it is all there, it all works terrific and the gui is an amazing flow of Mac/Win/solaris/NeXT/SGI (all of which i am familier with so it's nice and familier and never really confusing). Star and K office rock hard enough for me really. I have the MS crap on my G4 and 2K boxes so i know the differences and i really don't ever feel underpowered on my Laptop running Mandrake 8.0.

      Then when people look over my shoulder and see me working with/on KDE they are always impressed and suddenly the Linux questions come and i am an evangelist. It's better when they come to you for the gospel.

      Ximian Gnome is pretty, and mostly stable and fast and so on. but i always feel like i am locked in a room when i use it. I do think that it is another great productivity/showoff Gui but it dosent have the charm and magic of KDE.

      but hell that is what large hardrives are for, choice and impulsive morons like me.

      congrats to KDE by the way.
      • Talk about charm, go get the Liquid [mosfet.org] theme and watch all the pretty widgets and translucent menus. It's a hell of a lot better looking than WinXP's new blue and red color scheme, that's for sure. KDE is just so pretty, the widgets are responsive, and (I don't know why or how) applications written in QT just always seem to be designed better than those in GTK.
        • Now if they would just release a stable set of Perl/Qt bindings, we'd be all set! (Yes, I know there are a set of Perl/Qt bindings available, but they're far from stable, and won't compile on my Debian system =( )
          • Expect a massive number of bindings with KDE 3.0. There is now an automated system to export the Qt and KDE API to C bindings, not just for direct use, but rather to use to create bindings for other languages that are written in C. I know there was a flurry of languages that "worked" right after the announcement (i.e., individual test efforts), mostly lesser used languages like Ruby and Eiffel (Sp?).

            --
            Evan

        • Actually, I have found that the opposite is usually true. As wrong as you're not running GNOME session (which slows GNOME applications immensely) GTK+ apps are very responsive. ROX-Filer, for example, comes close to Windows Explorer. Balsa is much smoother than KMail, especially when it comes to resizing (almost all KDE apps rubber-band, few GTK+ apps aside from Galeon do so). Anjuta performs better than KDevelop, etc, etc. Sadly, though, Windows beats all of them. Even on my lowly 300MHz PII, I can resize IE quickly without bad rubberbanding. Konqi rubber-bands like hell, and Galeon acts like its possessed by the devil.
    • There's no comparison between KDE and fvwm. KDE is an application development framework, and a suite of applications, one of which is a window manager, built on that framework. fvwm is a window manager. KDE is a much bigger, and much more significant project, which is why it gets more press.

  • I can see why Konqueror won the award; I like it, too. It really makes for a nice alternative to Netscape. I eventually docked a friggin KillZilla icon on my WindowMaker desktop, for cripes sake!

    Too bad the total multimedia support isn't there for it yet, or I'd like it even more.
    • Too bad the total multimedia support isn't there for it yet, or I'd like it even more.

      I agree; Although this isn't a konq problem, kmid (the embeddable midi player) won't work with anything other than /dev/sequencer. That means I can't get my SoftOSS synth to work with it, although kmidi works just fine with SoftOSS. It's a real bitch because I'd like to get sound working with wholenote.com.

      Flash is a bitch too; I've got the netscape plugin but half the sites STILL do the double-popup begging you to buy Flash. I know that Flash is working becuase other websites work perfectly fine with it. Good site: Steltor.com. Bad sites: sissyfight.com, macromedia.com, most others. I'm stumped. Hell even the Crossover plugin doesn't seem to help here.

      I'd love to get a Voloview plugin working, but the Windows version requires IE5.5 and Crossover isn't that good yet. :-)

      • Flash is a bitch too; I've got the netscape plugin but half the sites STILL do the double-popup begging you to buy Flash.

        I'm not CERTAIN, but I think this may be due to the one place where Konqueror occasionally lets me down, and that's Javascript/ECMAscript support. I think that the sites that complain that you don't have Flash are using a javascript call to check which plugins you've got, and either that bit of javascript is bombing out or giving the "wrong" answers.

        I haven't actually confirmed this, but it's the only reason I can think of. Javascript support IS improving, and I hear the KDE3 will have a new, rewritten javascript engine, but at the moment it's still the one place where I occasionally run into limitations.

        (e.g. I can't play videos off of atomfilms.com any more, because the "play" button is linked to a javascript function to start up the play window, and it doesn't run...)

  • While Konqueror is ok, I had a bad experience with it my first time.
    Turns out I just didn't have my fonts setup in Mandrake or something silly like that.
    Now, I personally like Internet Explorer, and if they could make a browser that more closely resembles the feel of it (pressing enter when filling a form, CTRL+Enter to put www. and .com around what I typed in the address section, etc) I would be all set.
    Can't wait to reinstall and try Mandrake and Konqueror again though.
    • Your problem is that Mandrake blows. I was a diehard 'drake advocate until recently, when their quality started going downhill.

      For now I am using Red Hat, with the stock KDE 2.2 install. Although Red Hat doesn't include gazillions of applications like Mandrake does, it's much more stable and polished. Still, it's not really a desktop distro. I'm keeping a close eye on Xandros [xandros.net], which will be based on KDE, Debian and Corel Linux.
  • Installed KDevelop yesterday and created a small application in a matter of 2 hours. Its very nice if you already know C++ and have some experience from win32 api for instance. What I like about KDE is that all the K* applications use a similar interface and communicates to the user in a similar way. Gnome is just total chaos sometimes.
    • Agreed on the 2 points.

      I've used kdevelop for some string-parsing stuff, and the walk-through debugging facilities are just superb - dare I say it's a bit like using the Visual C++ IDE on Linux ;)

      Al.
  • I use KDevelop loads. It kicks arse.

    Dave
  • Much deserved (Score:4, Interesting)

    by phutureboy ( 70690 ) on Friday November 09, 2001 @04:56AM (#2542360)
    KDE 2.2 is slick as all hell. Still a few minor hiccups every now and then (many of which would probably be fixed if I upgraded to 2.2.1) but overall it's the most solid and robust *nix desktop environment I've ever used. (I've used OS X, but am not really impressed with it).

    While everyone was busy harping about Mozilla, Konqueror grew up. It's now tantalizingly close to being an IE-killer. I shit you not. It's a very pleasant browsing experience, standards compliant, and to top it all off it's a great file manager as well.

    KOffice is a great start at an integrated office suite. It's at the 'basic' stage right now. It reminds me of Clarisworks for the Mac, in that it's all integrated together and, while it doesn't support some of the fancier features, it can handle 90% of what most people want to do.

    I'm really looking forward to KDE 3.0.

    Go KDE.
    • Re:Much deserved (Score:3, Informative)

      While everyone was busy harping about Mozilla, Konqueror grew up. It's now tantalizingly close to being an IE-killer. I shit you not. It's a very pleasant browsing experience, standards compliant, and to top it all off it's a great file manager as well.

      No doubt! A year or so ago, each time I booted in to Linux I would find myself missing Internet Explorer and thinking that if Linux only ran IE everything would be great.

      Those days are over... the tables have turned. Now when I'm in Windows 2000, I find myself dying for the features of Konqueror, and even just for the Konqueror web browser component. Konqueror is my favorite browser right now among all browsers, for any platform, hands down.
      • Konqueror is very nice, I love it!!!

        The only problem is flash broke when I fix OpenGL. The docs say don't use QT with OpenGL compiled, but the version I'm using isn't! Ugh!!

        Other then that, I love it.
    • Re:Much deserved (Score:2, Interesting)

      by CyberDruid ( 201684 )
      I have no intention of starting a browser war here. Konqueror is an OK browser.

      I never understood what the /. fetish with Mozilla is about, though. To me it just looks ugly and far behind the competition in features, not really a small footprint or lightning fast rendering either. Are there any hidden features that I have missed? Guile-scriptability?

      Neverthless, let us get real here. Nothing compares to Opera. This is a browser that kicked IE's ass so badly already a few years ago, that those who knew about it changed their windows-browser, even with the hassle involved (had to find serialz for it back then ;). It is the _only_ non-Open Source app that I am currently running (I don't even have a working win-partition anymore). It has a slick download manager, stunning support for keyboard-browsing, plenty of configurability, built-in google bar (of sorts) and most important of all, the browser windows are displayed as children within the same MDI-app. I currently have 10 browser children open, just because it is so convenient. In spite of my Opera zeal, it would seem that Konqueror would be comparable if only it had the MDI-feature. How come no Open Source team takes that path?
      • I have to kind of disagree with you about the greatness of MDI apps. Sure, it keeps the taskbar un-polluted, but I can't think of many other reasons to use it. First and formost, I love to be able to Alt-Tab and find the window I want. And when I do want to use the task bar to select a window by its title (say when I'm on another virtual desktop and need to switch to a browser on another), MDI prevents me from doing that.

        Personally, I would rather open new windows when I want, and then the rest of the time use Konqueror's split-windows or Mozilla's tabs. These interfaces are IMHO much more innovative than MDI. Mozilla's tabs are a near-total substitute for MDI, and Konqueror's frames are even cooler.

        In Konqueror, right-click on the status bar and choose "split vertically" or "split horizontally". Voila, you have two windows. Granted, you can't get 10 windows this way, but 10 MDI windows are just too much for me to deal with. The best part about this, though, is dragging and dropping files. In Windows Explorer or other FM's, you have to open two windows and try to size them so that they don't overlap each other, and then tediously drag the files around. In the Konq, I can open up three different frames and D&D files around till the cows come home.
      • Re:Much deserved (Score:2, Informative)

        by DGolden ( 17848 )
        Interesting you should mention the scriptability aspect of Mozilla. No, it's not Guile-scriptable - but it is ECMAScriptable. In fact you can completely change the whole UI via ECMAScript (part of the reason the UI is slow f*cking slow is because it's written thusly - the other reason being they use the same thread to draw the (complex) UI as the page.)

        This is actually pretty cool - witness ActiveState's Perl/Python IDE that is entirely based on the Mozilla XUL UI engine...

        Really, mozilla has become yet-another-VM, like a JVM, but for ECMAScript.
      • and most important of all, the browser windows are displayed as children within the same MDI-app. I currently have 10 browser children open, just because it is so convenient. In spite of my Opera zeal, it would seem that Konqueror would be comparable if only it had the MDI-feature. How come no Open Source team takes that path?

        Possibly because it's only a niche market who considers that hideous interface a feature. Even Microsoft hates it. If Opera disabled this "feature", I might consider using it, but probably wouldn't anyway, as it really doesn't offer me much of anything IE with the appropriate extensions does not (though I could do with GetRight fixing some of their annoying bugs)
      • Are there any hidden features that I have missed?

        One thing that it does have over Konqueror is cross-platormness.

        Moz runs on Linux, Win32, OS/2, BeOS, AIX, HPUX, SunOS, MacOS 9, MaxOS X and probably a few more I've forgotten.

        Konqueror runs on any system that can run KDE, which I figure is fairly broad, but almost certainly not as broad as Moz.

        And if you took all the stuff in libs that Konqueror uses from KDE, that comes to quite a fair amount. Yes, you've already loaded a lot of it for your other apps under KDE, so on KDE it's not a big hit. But in terms of total code used by the app, it's a fair amount.

        K.
    • When I glanced at the headline, I thought it said 'KDE 3 Wins awards'. I know KDE development is fast, but still it was a bit surprising...
    • When I need to do something in a GUI, I make do with whatever I have to work with (notably Windows). But there is almost always under undercurrent of distraction. Even as dealing with the problems of a particular GUI become more reflex, often the GUI still gets in the way in thousands of tiny ways, drawing vital attention away from what you are doing. It saps small, but valuable quantities of productivity like unwanted friction in a machine.

      This is why "eye-candy" is so contemptible. The last thing I need is already distracting software copping a "hey-look-at-me" attitude.

      Recently, I installed Yellow Dog on a G4 tower we have at work, and installed KDE2 which came with it. I'd tried KDE1 and found it respectable, but after taking KDE2 for a spin I found something was missing in the eperience: the constant stream of petty irritations.

      KDE2, amazingly, doesn't suck.

      It looks good, but more importantly to me it is soothing to use. To be sure, there are still a few weak links in KDE2, particularly some of the bundled applications like KMail. But after so much continual improvement, it is as if KDE has reached a kind of usability boiling point. Below that point the improvements are marginal; at the boiling boint you have a kind of phase change in the user experience.

      The Gnome people are improving their stuff rapidly too, so perhaps they'll reach that usability boiling point soon too. I hope so. I think in the end the competition between these groups (friendly or not) has really spurred improvements.
  • Cool. (Score:2, Interesting)

    by CrayBeast ( 521458 )

    Now if only they could convince them to remove some of the sluggishness from it.

    Not that I'm criticising it, mind you, but some of those windowing apps are very processor intensive.

    • I truely believe that KDE has legitimate performance issues. I use it myself, but I've found that on the same hardware, a window manager like fvwm performs considerably better than the window manager from KDE does. And as far as web browsers go, Galeon is far, far less sluggish than Konqueror is.

      I really hope that in future versions of KDE that they start tackling the performance issue in preference to creeping featurism.Konqueror is great, but until it doesn't make my 128Mb PIII-750 machine thrash when de-iconifying a window, I'm going to be using Galeon.

  • by posmon ( 516207 ) on Friday November 09, 2001 @04:58AM (#2542366) Homepage
    kde *is* getting better, but compared to winxp's interface? forget arguments about the underlying os (it's stable, ok!) or fisher price looks (you *can* turn them off!), just the physical organisation of the various functions.

    when i first installed kde2 it took me about five minutes to work out how to change the screen resolution and then i had to reset kde before it took effect. and don't get me started on the default setup's choice of font in konqueror.

    the only thing that kde could win on is virtual desktops, but now that winxp can be patched [microsoft.com] to support these, it's getting left behind.

    but like i said, it's getting better. at least linux developers are finally getting over those fucking 'where do you want to go tommorow?' cracks and are starting to create good looking AND useable windows managers.

    still, well done to the kde team and best of luck for v3.

    • when i first installed kde2 it took me about five minutes to work out how to change the screen resolution and then i had to reset kde before it took effect. and don't get me started on the default setup's choice of font in konqueror.

      Actually, these are X related problems, and KDE can't do much about it I'm afraid :(.

      • Actually, these are X related problems

        having to restart before the screen resolution changes i can accept, the font in konqueror i'll give a maybe, but you're telling me that they couldn't have put the resolution setting in a more intuitive place (like maybe with the rest of the desktop settings)?

        • Yes, he is telling you that they couldn't put it in the same place as the rest of the desktop settings --- because it isn't a desktop setting.

          The resolution is not under control of KDE, but under the control of the particular X server you are using. They could perhaps write a configuration module for XFree86, as this is just about the only one used on free operating systems... but until now KDE have resisted writing modules for distro specific components: they consider it the job of the distribution to sort that out.
    • by Nailer ( 69468 ) on Friday November 09, 2001 @06:59AM (#2542579)
      That's true, and all your points (especially the lack of a good X setup apps - Ximian might fill this in with its own tool if only it would work). Fonts, media playing, network display, and software installation are also areas where Linux desktops currently are behind, but they're also being addressed (KFontinst, MPlayer, DXPC, and Red Carpet). However, there's many points where KDE is ahead of Windows.

      * Behaviour of Windows drag and drop depends on whether the destinatio nand source are on the same partition, a new partition, or a shell folder, and what type of application is being dragged. KDE simply asks me when i drop it - copy, move, or link?

      * The ability to support document previews is getting even better. XP, for example, don't support previewing Acrobat files (obviously, NIH). Note sure about Word files in XP, but KDE could easily preview Staroffice or KOffice files in Konq too.

      * Drag a file to the desktop and it has the brains to suggest I'd like to make that file my wallpaper. This allows me to easily change my desktop, for example, from a pictire of Christina Ricci, to er...another picture of Christina Ricci. How good is that?

      * Linux web browsers often have some very useful features their windows counterparts don't - eg, the ability to turn off annoying popups without disabling javascript, stop animation on a page, and handle privacy and cookies in a much more customizable way than IE can.

      * Xkill shits all over the windows task manager - so does ksysguard. :D

      So yeah, there's good and bad points about both (the point my seemingly inflammatory sig tries to make).

      However, in the space of a year, Linux desktops improve faster than their Windows equivalents, and are already ahead in some areas. If this continues (and it seems it will), in 2 years time KDE will blow Windows away. in almost every aspect.

      Mike
      • KDE simply asks me when i drop it - copy, move, or link

        FYI - the windows world also shows this popup with a right-click drag/drop.
      • Behaviour of Windows drag and drop depends on whether the destinatio nand source are on the same partition, a new partition, or a shell folder, and what type of application is being dragged. KDE simply asks me when i drop it - copy, move, or link?

        That's because drop targets (I always forget which one's the "client" and which one's the "server" in MS terminology) have been given the flexibility to decide what the default behavior would be. Flexibility is usually considered a good thing, even if some programmers abuse it. In any case, and as another poster already pointed out, you can always right-drag to get a context menu similar to what KDE has. Again, you have flexibility - to accept the default action or choose which action you want. Personally I always right-drag but that might not suit everyone; it would be distinctly annoying to have to go through yet another dialog every time you use drag and drop, when you know that you want the default.

        Drag a file to the desktop and it has the brains to suggest I'd like to make that file my wallpaper.

        That would be a terrible idea, as a default. If I drag a document to the desktop, I expect an icon on the desktop, not a whole new background...regardless of document type. I think most users probably share that expectation, and would be pretty pissed off to get the behavior you describe.

        Linux web browsers often have some very useful features their windows counterparts don't

        Obviously, by "windows counterparts" you mean IE. There are other browsers that run on Windows that are just as featureful in the ways you mention as anything that runs on Linux.



    • Windows98 has a better interface than XP as does Windows2000. Turn all the new features off and what you have IS windows2000.

      I prefer the interface of KDE by far, I mean WinXP copied KDEs ideas, the taskbar grouping, they stole that, As far as the Icon goes, thats KDEs main weakness.

      Gnomes Icons totally destroy KDEs, as does MacOSX and WindowsXP.

      KDE needs to copy gnome and go for SVG based Icons.
      Good icons is very important when it comes to having a nice looking desktop, good fonts is also important, XP has better fonts. KDE already has the best functionality of any interface i know of besides perhaps OSX. What KDE needs right now, is to improve certain things, the icons in KDE are crap and i hear they are planning to copy Xps icon style, thats fine for windows users who go to linux, but XPs icons are horrible compared to Gnome, Nautilus, MacOSX etc, SVG is definately the way to go for Icons.

      Fonts will take time to improve but they are getting to be at XP quality, I think we will see high quality fonts before the end of the year, The Icons in KDE hopefully will be fixed sometime in 2002 if they switch to SVG but if not, then their icons will be as crappy as Windows icons, which is fine for Windows users who havent seen anything better but not for me.

      KDR looks very nice however it still looks very plain, it needs a theme, KDE has Luna, Mac has Aqua, even Nautilus has its look, KDE however looks too plain, as if it was just thrown together, i mean theres no theme, its bland, like windows2000, while this is fine for most users, its not going to give KDE the impression that its on the level of XP because XP will have a taskbar which is beveled, has a nice color and shadows, while KDE just has plain style.

      Nautilus and Gnome have figured this out and currently looks way better than XP, but KDE and this isnt in terms of functionality, but in terms of how pretty it looks, it doesnt look as fancy as it could look.

      I also dont like the fact they took out the little icon effect where you click on it and it swirled,why? these little unique effects were what made kde KDE!

      Put it back, the highlighting is nice, windows doesnt do it but still this isnt unique to kde.

      If you get what I'm saying, KDE needs more unique features and looks to seperate itself from being too generic.
      • Why is it that you say WinXP "stole" from KDE, but KDE should "copy" from GNOME and XP? Curious choice of language. What did KDE lose when WinXP adopted the KDE taskbar grouping?

        Oops, I'm trolling, right? Ah, the hell with it, it's only karma. Mod me, I am still full of love for KDE. ;-p

      • SVG icons are a supported format for QT 3 which will of course be the toolkit for KDE 3. Expect support early next year. I have no idea what tackat is planning on the icon front and while I'm on the subject, tackat is almost the only person working on icons and 99.9% of the icons in KDE are his, its not too shabby for one guys work! I personally like the icons in KDE but you opinion is is respected.

        Sounds like you have some good ideas, if you feel like helping out please do.

        • This guy is probably doing what he can, and I owe him a big thanks ! but KDE definitly needs another set if icons, another style. KDE icons are probably it's the weakest point, this is too bad, as this is not a really difficult area, why won't KDE supporting compagnies like Suse or Mandrake hire a real graphic artist to create good looking, profesional icons !
      • I prefer the interface of KDE by far, I mean WinXP copied KDEs ideas, the taskbar grouping, they stole that

        Yeah, hmmm... I wonder where KDE got that idea from... seems familiar [be.com]!
      • Umm, BeOS had taskbar grouping long before either KDE or XP. And I don't think it was an original idea even then! Plus, I turn it off whenever possible. It is absolutely horrible to have to click twice to get that por... I mean to get to the window you want.
    • Why would you suffer for making coherent, rational points? I think your focus is skewed (as most Windows users' foci have been), but you make some good points.

      Linux (and all of its ancestors great and mini) has a set of core features that Windows needs, but will almost certainly never get. These features (a command line that's actually useful; functional concurrent multi-user support; etc) lend power to the snappy higher levels that are put on top of them. Yes, KDE is still klunkier than Windows (as is Gnome, which is what I use). But, KDE provides access to all of the underlying power of Linux.

      Try to get a Windows user to understand the concept of the init run-levels, and they'll be lost. This is pure, unadulterated power over your environment in ways that a GUI doesn't address. Now try to explain what "iptables-save | ssh -l jonesy host2 sudo iptables-restore" would do! Good luck ;-)
  • Kblah.. (Score:3, Interesting)

    by sewagemaster ( 466124 ) <sewagemaster&gmail,com> on Friday November 09, 2001 @05:34AM (#2542444) Homepage
    i just installed kdevelop for the first time yesterday and i was was pretty impressed. on the down side it only supported C/C++... even in the syntax highlighting part - when it shouldnt be too hard to have it for other languages as well... but ok it's 'an ide for c/c++ development' whatever... i'm so sure you're all thinking 'real coders use VI' ;-)

    konqueror's just awesome. it does crash from time to time, but i'm happy with the features, especially with being able to just enable cookies for just a few sites in particular - like slashdot so i dont have to relogin everytime i come here, load my prefs just to filter out all my jon katz posts...
    mozilla has that too, but it loads too slowly.. but konqueror's loading faster.. could this have anything to do with it being "integrated" with the kde desktop? man.. this thing is sounding like IE with windows... they're saying about implementing activeX in this thing in future releases... oh boy... next thing, "KDE updates" anyone?

    Koffice is nice... one great thing they can have is to include a pdf writer into it... ps2pdf isnt good enough... fonts arent always supported properly..

    i just switched from 2.1.1 to 2.2.1 or whatever it is (the one available in debian testing to one in debian stable) last night. very pleased. but so much slower. this thing does eat up a lot of RAM - eventhough i've got plenty of it.. but still...

    kde-look.org's got some great themes for 2.2.1 (despite recent random postings of ugly themes and porn...)

    check out the QNX theme. looks great.. but it's not just bells and whistles we're about right?
    • > i'm so sure you're all thinking 'real coders use VI' ;-)

      Actually, many of us are thinking 'real coders use EMACS, I'm sure there's nothing controversial there....
      • >Actually, many of us are thinking real coders use EMACS

        And real programmers don't eat quiche. They smear it over their nubile young bodies because the heatings broken again in finsbury square.
        Don't they.
    • PDF Writer? (Score:4, Informative)

      by Moritz Moeller - Her ( 3704 ) <`ten.xmg' `ta' `hmm'> on Friday November 09, 2001 @06:50AM (#2542563)
      > Koffice is nice... one great thing they can have is to include a pdf writer into it...
      > ps2pdf isnt good enough... fonts arent always supported properly..

      Well, try to print a file, every KDE-2.2.1 application has the option to print to PDF (and Postscript) by default. This is caused by the great kdeprinting system, which RULES in combination with cups.

      If the quality of ps2pdf bothers you, thius is part of ghostscript. If you still use a 5.x version, I urge you to upgradde to GPL ghostscript 6.5.2 or AFPL ghostscript 7.03. PDF support has been greatly improved.
  • Would be nice (Score:4, Insightful)

    by datazone ( 5048 ) on Friday November 09, 2001 @05:41AM (#2542453) Journal
    It would be nice if the editor showed which products he compared, and why the others did not get the award. and as far as the "Office Application
    " section goes, was he only comparing word processors? what about gnumeric? gnumeric 0.75 is at a point right now where its so sweet, it makes your teeth hurt. and did he even try galeon. as far as the browsing experience goes, its my opinion that galeon is much better designed to be a web browser.
  • This would be even more significant if the award had come from an indipendent party. That would have been a kick in Microsofts ass since KDE is everyting the Microsoft desktop should be but isn't because Microsoft is afraid the average user is too stupid to figure out how to use many Virtual Desktops on a single monitor.
  • To all of you that always say "they only care about bloat and not about speed" and "They should stop implementing features and focus on speed":

    They ARE focusing on speed! 2.1 is MUCH faster than 2.0. 2.2 is MUCH faster than 2.1 and 2.2.1 is quite a bit faster than 2.2!

    There are lot of speed-enhancing features in KDE3, for example an iconserver that serves icons to the apps. Right now all apps have to scan a lot of very big directories every time they start and load all the icons from the filesystem. With the iconserver that only has to be done once, when starting up the desktop.

    More features doesn't necessarily mean less speed!
    • For all KDE's improvements on functionality and eye candy, I could use 1.x quite easily on a 166 mhz machine, but 2.2.x is unusably slow. Runs a treat on my 350 though :)

      More features can mean less speed if poorly implemented - Mozilla's going bloat. I really hope KDE stays reasonably lean.
      • Much slower than 1.x

        Yes it is! And Windows 3.11 is faster than Windows 95... IMHO the added functionality in KDE2/3 vs KDE1 is worth it the extra RAM-requirement! KDE 2.2.1 is not much slower than KDE 1.1.2 if you have enough RAM, but it has lots and lots and lots of new functionality (especially for developers)!! RAM is dirt cheap these days!

        • Actually, I have enough RAM, and KDE-2 is MUCH, MUCH, slower than 1.1.2. The stupid linker issues are part of it, but the apps don't seem to be written for performance either. (On a tangent, I think all those desktop environment coders should be forced to memorize the ROX source before touching the keyboard!) Although, you're analogy is wrong. Win2K is to Win9x as KDE 2.2.1 is to KDE 1.1.2 is a better comparison. In that case, you're analogy is wrong since Win2K is significantly faster than Win9x, even though it has tons more features. Hell, XP is faster than 2K (if you turn off Luna), especially for app-start up times (which are going in the opposite direction from those in KDE!)
  • I usually use KDE (in case I dont use the prompt), but everytime I start it, I think of switching to GNOME because it takes that long for KDE to start. :-(
  • When I first saw this, I thought it read "KDE 3 wins awards." And I'm like "KDE 3? kick ass..." Then I read it again and was a little dissapointed.

    Damn you slashdot *shakes fist*!
  • by CMBurns ( 38993 )
    I think that KDE definitely deserves the awards, but OTOH I hope that this doesn't lead to a "we'll add even more cool features" mindset among the developers.

    KDE is nowhere near Mozilla's release problems, but I fear that they could fall in the feature-pit, just as Mozilla.

    Guys, add features thar are USEFUL TO MOST USERS, anything beyond that should be packaged as an add-on.

    Resist the featuritis temptation, use the force!
  • I followed the link to MonarchComputer.com [monarchcomputer.com] site they used to build their "Ultimate Linux Box", and what did I see?

    This site is best viewed in Internet Explorer 5.0 and above.

    Yuck.
  • KDE Release Schedule (Score:3, Informative)

    by digitaltraveller ( 167469 ) on Friday November 09, 2001 @09:01AM (#2542746) Homepage
    Stay tuned. KDE 2.2.2 [kde.org] will be released on November 12th. It is a bugfix release for 2.2. KDE 3.0 Beta 1 should be out on December 3rd.
    • Why wait that long? Do-it-yourself'ers can checkout the release from CVS right now. The release is monday because that gives the distros time to make RPMs. The KDE 2.2.2 release has been in CVS since Tuesday. Just do a cvs co -r KDE_2_2_2_RELEASE <module name> and compile. (Note: when I checked it out, I had to get the kde-common module and copy the admin directory to each module before running make -f Makefile.cvs)
  • Come on Guys! (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Garfunkel ( 3569 ) <jayNO@SPAMjayandcarissa.com> on Friday November 09, 2001 @09:21AM (#2542795) Homepage
    Why is this KDE centric?

    A lot of things won awards. Yes KDE won 3, and good for them. But why does the story only include the KDE part. All the other awardees were surely deserving too.

    So, I'm saying it. Caongratulations to ALL the entities who won awards from Linux Journal. You ALL deserve it. Keep up the good work!
  • Hmmmm.... (Score:3, Funny)

    by rjamestaylor ( 117847 ) <rjamestaylor@gmail.com> on Friday November 09, 2001 @10:49AM (#2543051) Journal
    KDE gets awards...

    Gnome gets
    RMS [slashdot.org]...

    I think I'll still with KDE....

  • by wrinkledshirt ( 228541 ) on Friday November 09, 2001 @03:12PM (#2544943) Homepage
    ...but it's high time someone started a GNOME vs KDE flame war. ;)

    Seriously, where's the beef, Miguel? What've your boys been up to?

    1- Office Suite? Still waiting.

    2- Flagship Browser? Still waiting.

    3- Dedicated components architecture fully integrated with the environment and gone through several debugging stages? Still waiting.

    4- Some sort of IDE tool above and beyond Glade? Still waiting.

    5- Database application? Still waiting.

    Meanwhile, KDE's been addressing all of these, three of them to the extent of winning awards.

    Granted, KDE's not my tool of choice for a couple of the above (currently prefer Mozilla & wouldn't use Rekall over PostgreSQL anyway), and the promise of .NET compatibility intrigues me (sorry anti-MS folks, but it does), but it's been REALLY quiet on the Ximian front.

    Anything we should know about?
  • Glad (Score:2, Interesting)

    by commonchaos ( 309500 )
    I'm personaly glad, I have been impressed with KDE... I like the clean interface... heck it looks almost as good as XP...

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