Freedesktop.org on KDE/Gnome, New Goals

fdo writes "OSNews has a long and juicy interview with the freedesktop.org developers regarding many aspects of their project, including interoperability between GNOME/KDE, the new X Server, the new Hardware Abstraction Layer library, accessibility, package management and in general, all things desktop."

Developers get to play too

[Space cowboy]

Keith Packard: "One thing I have noticed is a sudden interest in video cards with *lots* of memory. GL uses video memory mostly for simple things like textures for which it is feasible to use AGP memory. However, Composite is busy drawing to those off-screen areas, and it really won't work well to try and move those objects into AGP space"

Finally an excuse for even the most die-hard "oh no, I don't play games" programmer to go and get a decent graphics card, and not to use a Matrox G500 because it does 2 screens best :-) ... "but boss, I *need* it for the new application"...

Simon

Don't forget the users!

[gilesjuk]

It's all very well thinking of the technical considerations (and there's quite a lot to consider), but don't forget to consider users and the usability of the desktop. Why do people use Microsoft products? because they're either forced to (at work) or they they find them easy to use (at home). Microsoft spends a lot of time ensuring their products are very usable and open source desktops need to do the same. Usability labs, heuristic evaluation etc.. all should be used (yes I am studying HCI before you ask).

Implication

[Pivot]

Well, the implicaction of the effort of these guys probably means that there will be two competing X11 servers, very analogous to the Linux distributions versus the *BSDs.

Re:So I can copy and paste now?

[Anonymous Coward]

Let's see...

It's non-root for processes/users for all NT class OSes (NT/2K/XP)

Environment variables have been around since DOS days ($var vs. %var% big whoop)

And emacs? [gnu.org]

ACLs are a superior way (although logically equivalent) over the user/group semantics of POSIX. Try implementing "Payroll can read/write, HR can read, compliance can read, users can append" in an easily maintained manner using POSIX semantics.

An umbrella project for standards

[joelparker]

This question stands out to me:

• How do you feel about freedesktop.org
  becoming an "umbrella" project for
  all projects that require communication

I think this hits the nail on the head--
developers *do* need an umbrella here,
one group to push apps toward one goal.

Simple examples are needing copy and paste,
drag and drop, and consistent mime types,
all so apps can coordinate data content.

Havoc points this out, and I hope his team
can push hard for these kinds of consistency.

Cheers, Joel

Re:Don't forget the users!

[jjhlk]

Knowledge of the alternatives or not, most people barely care about their operating system, so whatever is installed when they buy it is what they stick to.

Re:Lets shorten things a little..

[Spyro VII]

Windows fanboy: "When will Linux look and behave exactly like WindowsXP and therefore be ready for the desktop?"

Hmmmm, doesn't this [xpde.com] count for something?

Try more like...

[Kjella]

Why do people use Microsoft products? because they're either forced to (at work) or they they find them easy to use (at home)

a) It came with their computer
b) It's "free" since it came with their computer
c) They don't know anything else
d) They are industry standards
e) They're the same as at work (familiarity)
f) They've had basic Windows training at work
g) Your poweruser friends likely know more Windows
h) It runs off-the-shelf software
i) It's inherently badly designed security-wise (security vs usability)

Pick any of the above, and I swear it's more of a reason than "easy to use". I bet 99%+ have never tried using a preinstalled, well configured Linux system (like the Windows install that came on their PC) at all. Without knowing the alternative, they have no basis to know that Windows is easier - they just assume so.

Kjella

GUI toolkit libraries

[3Suns]

The biggest problem I see for desktop interoperability is the fact that there are so many GUI toolkits, and there's a huge overhead to keep them all loaded. IMHO as a Gnome user, having to run a QT app is an embarassment - takes way too long to load the QT libraries an initialize the GUI for even a small window. Of course I could keep the libraries loaded, but that's a ton of memory wasted. I'd imagine the same is true for KDE users trying to load GTK2/+ apps. This applies to loading Mozilla and OpenOffice.org as well. OOo especially runs like a cow in the mud - I can't even pay attention to the impressive feature set since it's so unresponsive. I always end up shutting it down and going with Abiword instead.

There's one good thing about MS Windows GUI; it's very responsive. That's because everything uses the same widget set that is kept in memory with little extra overhead. The fact that it runs in Kernel mode doesn't hurt it, but Linux's improved job control should balance that out. Using Linux with a unified widget set, like GTK2, is very responsive. Adding others, like QT, motif, swing, XPT (mozilla), and whatever Sun crap OOo uses, makes it very much less so.

I know nobody would agree with any proposal to scrap QT and port everything to GTK2, or the reverse. What I'd like to see instead is a library similar to wxWindows [wxwindows.org], or maybe an across-the-board improvement of wxWindows. Port QT and motif to it, add bindings for everybody's favorite language, etc. You could even use translation libraries to ease the transition process. That way you could compile Gaim for QT, Mozilla for motif, Konqueror for GTK, and everything in between. Only one GUI library would need to be loaded and everyone could use their favorite. It would certainly help for Windows ports as well. Thoughts?

Re:Don't forget the users!

[acidtripp101]

I'm sorry, but people don't use windows at home because it is "easy to use."
A person once told me the best reason I've heard that people use windows:
Everybody uses windows because everybody uses windows
If Everybody used any other OS (OSX, Linux, FreeBSD, BeOS, Amiga, etc) for gaming, productivity, media, etc. Then EVERYBODY else would use the same operating system to maintain compatablitiy.
I have yet to hear a casual user say that they love windows.
The honest fact is that 90% of people don't care what OS they use, as long as they can listen to MP3s, play games (in my opinion, a MAJOR obsticle that desktop *NIX has to overcome... I was excited that I could get unreal tournament to run on my gentoo box), and open office (open/star/MS/whatever) documents.
The current state of *nix desktops is wonderful! KDE 3.x is definatly professional grade. XFCE4 is definatly ready for the desktop. Fluxbox is there for people that want the best performance with the smallist footprint. I dare ANYBODY to name something that can be done on a Windows based workgroup that can't be done on a *nix workgroup.
I'm sorry, but the ONLY area that linux is truely lacking is in the gaming department. This includes Graphics acceleration. I don't care if the drivers are closed-source (such as the nvidia drivers, which I must admit, are awesome), or open (the DRI for the ati cards isn't as good, but it's still not bad at all).
I'm willing to bet that if a company like loki got into the market now, with some big name titles, then the ammount of linux desktops would skyrocket. Sadly, the only precident of a comany like this is loki, which dipped it's feet in the water way too soon. Linux wasn't ready then. It is now.
As proof of this, I have at least 3 friends (granted, they are somewhat more computer literate than the 'average joe') that want me to install *NIX on their desktop. A year ago, there is NO way that they would have even THOUGHT about dual-booting.
I just don't believe that anyone can get away with saying that *NIX isn't ready for the desktop anymore.

Re:Actually probrably NOT a troll

[FuzzyDaddy]

A usability expert once said, "The only natural user interface is the nipple. All others must be learned."

That expert never heard of lactation consultants [ilca.org].

Re:Don't forget the users!

[gnu-generation-one]

"Why do people use Microsoft products? because they're either forced to (at work) or they they find them easy to use (at home)"

Find them easy to use? Have you ever met someone who's tried MacOS, tried KDE, tried Gnome, tried Windows, and then concluded that Windows was easiest to use, went out and bought a copy?

No? Isn't it more likely that home users were forced to use Windows just as the office users?

If they did truly choose, you could imagine people going into the computer shop and hearing"this is the computer running WindowsXP, this is the same computer but running Windows98, and this is the same computer but running Gnome, which would you like to buy"

Most of the computer shops I've been to say "this is the computer, and YOU WILL buy WindowsXP, because otherwise we won't sell you the computer". Say what you like about building your own systems, or going to an Apple shop, but in most cases, somebody buying a computer is forced to use Windows.

Usability doesn't come into it. Full-page adverts in newspapers and consumer magazines, television adverts, and yes, illegal monopolistic action against suppliers who stock alternatives, is what makes people 'choose' Windows. None of these people do so because they've decided it's easy to use, quite the opposite, many people spend their lives cursing the difficulty of using Windows.

Re:Don't forget the users!

[Joe Tie.]

What I don't like about HCI and so called usability experts is that they seem to want to lump everybody into a single catagory. I don't use a computer the same way my grandmother does, and a system that tries to force me to isn't intuitive for me. Sometimes I want a page of 80 clickable options instead of one wizard that allows a choice of five and a requirement to then go edit a registry.

Re:GNOME _still_ isn't integrated

[AntiOrganic]

Were I still a Gnome user like I was several months ago, I might pass this off as another hapless troll. But you're entirely right -- and the reality is, even with all the usability improvements and Human Interface Guidelines in Gnome, GTK2 is still even more bloated and slow than Qt, despite the fact that GTK is implemented in "faster" C and Qt is in "slow anjd bloated" C++. I can't even begin to explain the difference in responsiveness between my Gnome and KDE apps; even the memory usage of my Qt applications is significantly lower. In addition, I gain many useful abilities: I can save files from Konqueror, KWrite, or any other KDE application directly to my webspace by either FTP or WebDAV. I have a sensible file dialog (yes, I'm still complaining about that). When I drag files from JuK to a project in K3b, they're added. Konqueror doesn't stall horribly when trying to get a directory listing from an NFS share, like Nautilus does. There's so many little things that all the "usability" in the world won't help Gnome catch it.

KDE is so many worlds ahead of Gnome in terms of sensible technology that bringing it together and eventually utilizing Gnome-like human interface guidelines will really be a breeze when all is said and done.

Finally a real tech article and not opinion fluff

[bogie]

This is SO much better than anything I've seen in a long time on OSNews. After seeing "review" after review of what writers do and don't like about every distribution its really nice to see something on such a wide variety of important topics. It's also nice because its just not one person droning on subjectively. Really a nice article and doesn't make me think the site should have been named OSOpinions.com. More factual technology articles and less opinionated ones are the way to go.

DND functionality and file types

[skagin]

Havoc says "When you add drag and drop to an application you have a list of types that you support dragging or dropping, such as "text/plain". Applications simply don't agree on what these types are. So we need a registry of types documenting the type name and the format of the data transferred under that name."

Isn't this what the IANA media types registry is for? (http://www.iana.org/assignments/media-types/index .html) Why reinvent that particular wheel? Most every system has a file 'mime.types' describing some portion of the IANA media types registry.

Re:Don't forget the users!

[myc]

Actually, the reason I use Windows is it is probably the OS that takes the least effort to get working out of the box to a degree sufficient for me to accomplish work on commodity hardware. Sure, just about most everything I do can be done on a Linux box, but it would take me forever of digging through poor documentation, newsgroups, and futzing around to actually get it working reasonably well (I've tried, so don't accuse me of not trying). Even then, usability is generally poor. Sure, linux programs are generally quite powerful and flexible, but the vast majority of us just want to get things done. If that means having to put up with a few idosyncrasies of Windows, so be it. Sure, I've gotten hit with viruses, but with reasonable precautions it's not an everyday occurance, just the occasional annoyance.

The bottom line is, your time is MUCH more valuable than the cost of a windows license.

Re:GUI toolkit libraries

[Anonymous Coward]

Here's a nickel kid, go buy yourself a stick of DDR RAM. Really, GUI toolkit overhead? Do you really think it will matter in 2004, 2005, 5 years from now? GUI toolkits, GNOME, KDE, who cares. A few years from now it will all be "Linux applications" on The Desktop that is hardware compositioned on your video card and your text editor will take 8MB of video memory when double buffered. You can't just make short sighted solutions like "let's all jump on the wxWindows bandwagon", open your eyes and see where this article, Windows Longhorm and Mac OS X is going. This aint your father's X.

Re:Pfft.

[Anonymous Coward]

You're thinking of the "clitoris" device, or the eraserhead in the middle of the keyboard.

Just use Xfree86

[slashcop]

Its designed for people like you who care more about running servers.

Kdrive is for the Desktop.

Re:GUI toolkit libraries

[groomed]

The startup performance hit isn't in the size of the toolkits, its in the dependencies. Both KDE and Gnome need to start server(s) to provide basic naming/lookup services. These servers need to look in various config files, and everything needs to go through various layers of modularization/internationalization crud. So starting an application causes a storm of process forking and disk access, which slows things down considerably.

Personally I feel the principal reason for many of the problems with a lot of the GUI applications written by volunteers isn't to be found in "hard" technical givens such as library file size or scheduler efficiency, but in the "soft" philosophical commitment that many Linux developers have towards writing programs that are as "lazy" as possible, postponing important decisions as long as possible. This expresses itself in highly modular, clean designs that are very powerful and flexible, but whose flexibility doesn't support the needs of everyday practice. To put it bluntly, volunteers enjoy writing frameworks or systems that approach some platonic ideal; they don't like getting bogged down in messy practicalities.

Your proposal to add another layer of abstraction will do nothing to solve the problem -- it will only compound it.

Re:GNOME _still_ isn't integrated

[AntiOrganic]

That's something that's bothered me for awhile, as well. Gnome applications were largely similar back in the 1.4 days, with everything beginning with "G" rather than a "K", but those days seem to be long past now. I really wish KDE would take a similar route, because it's really driving me insane. Kaffeine? Kontact? aKtion? "Konqueror" I can tolerate, because it's a vital part of the desktop environment, but I really don't like the rest.

I really don't like how even when it's not replacing a C, it's affixed to the beginning of the application name, as well. KDevelop, KWrite, KPaint, KWord, KSpread, et cetera. Just stop. You think this environment will be taken seriously by corporations while the applications all have ridiculous names? Give me Pan, Totem, Epiphany and Evolution anyday over that crap.

Re:Don't forget the users!

[RighteousFunby]

Fuck that, your time is not much more valuable...

If you can't take the time to get to know your computer, and to get it the way you like it, you shouldn't be using a computer. If you don't want to learn how to use the internet, want to see which browser you like best, want to learn how not to get viruses or ads or shit like that, get off the internet, because it's as sure as shit is shit that you don't fully understand what a computer is.

A computer is a *tool*, and a way to access pretty much anything you want, not something you can only use for a predefined set of tasks (predefined by your computer maker/MS), and nothing else. Not many newbies realise that.

Re:GUI toolkit libraries

[Anonymous Coward]

Having used both gtk and Qt, I'd have to say that it really depends on whether you prefer C++ or C. I really don't see many C programmers being comfortable in Qt, or many C++ programmers being comfortable in gtk. Gtkmm really isn't a good option for many C++ GUI programmers. Most of us really have never used many features of modern C++ than gtkmm uses. Nobody else does (mfc, WxWindows, Qt, PowerPlant on classic MacOS)

If the gtkmm folks provided a Qt-like API, that would be nice.

Re:So I can copy and paste now?

[drsmithy]

One trivial and quick example: if you had never, ever, ever used a computer before this first session, how would you go about turning off the system? Would you think to click on the "Start" button to stop?

Considering that the Start menu is where pretty much all the functionality of Windows can be accessed by the user then, yes, I'd say it was a reasonable assumption. For those who like to play silly word games, the Start menu is where you "start" to do everything. Anyone who has used Windows for even a brief period of time will probably have figured out the Start menu is the first place to look for everything. Objectively, "Start" is no more or less logical a symbol than KDE's K icon, GNOME's Foot icon or MacOS's Apple icon.

Of course, most people who have never done it before will try and turn the machine off the same way they turned it on - with the power button. On modern machines this *should* at least trigger a graceful shutdown and, ideally, handle it as the Mac does, by popping up the Shutdown/Restart dialog.

However, if you're going to talk about someone who's just walked in on a Windows machine and has never used one before, then I propose locating the "Shutdown" option would be no more difficult on Windows than any other OS.

Re:Don't forget the users!

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, KDE is a very large package. That might be a big part of the problem. However, I suggest you investigate a Linux distribution called Knoppix [knopper.net]. If your 1GB system has a bootable CD-ROM drive, then none of your operating system need reside on the hard drive at all! On one CD they have the entire KDE environment, the KOffice suite of applications, OpenOffice.org suite, and many many many other useful applications. Not only that, the boot process autodetects a wide variety of hardware and automatically enables it.

Failing that, you might check out something like LNX-BBC [lnx-bbc.org], which fits an entire GNU/Linux operating system onto a bootable CD. But the point is that a very workable version of GNU/Linux most certainly can fit on a 1GB drive. but probably not Debian 3.0 or Mandrake with the KDE option selected.

Yes, both MS Windows and the average Linux distro suffer from code bloat, but when you got XP on that system, what apps were available? When you go installing something like a stock KDE environment, you're probably pulling in a lot more functionality than you would ever get from a raw Windows install.

Re:Developers get to play too

[Brandybuck]

This new X is supposed to be using OpenGL. That sure sounds like it's relying on 3D video performance to me.

It's still being investigated whether to use OpenGL or not. And even if they choose to, it will only be done for cards that have OpenGL (like in E17).

The only reason OpenGL is being considered is because it's an existing standard that has compositing and other stuff. Rendering 2D alpha-blended windows using OpenGL is like planting tomatoes with a backhoe. But if that's the only tool in your garden shed, you don't have much choice. If there were numerous video cards supporting a 2D standard that did the same thing, OpenGL probably would not be considered.

Since day one (somewhere in the early 80's) the hardcore gamers have ruled the hardware marketplace. It's not that Keith thinks OpenGL is the best solution for 2D graphics, it's that the gamers have ruled that 2D cards are irrelevant.

Re:DND functionality and file types

[Anonymous Coward]

They answer this question in the osnews.com comments, and say that's it's a more complex and wider issue than what IANA define.

Re:DND functionality and file types

[Anonymous Coward]

I think he's talking about content negotiation, not just a list of mime times. As in an app saying, "I prefer text/rtf or text/html, but I'll take text/plain." It would be obviously preferable if this was standardized on a lower level than KDE or Gnome.