Is KDE 4.0 the Holy Grail of Desktops? 511
An anonymous reader writes "With KDE 4.0 being expected some time this year, expectation runs high in the linux/unix users camp and the media read a lot between the lines of what the KDE developers say and do. In some ways KDE will provide a standard as to how a desktop should look and behave. This interesting article wonders whether KDE 4.0 will become the complete desktop which will meet the needs of a wide cross section of computer users. One of the common complaints that some Linux users have over KDE is that it is too cluttered. And by addressing this need without putting off the power users, the KDE developers could make it an all in one Desktop. Keep in mind that KDE 4.0 is based on Qt 4.0 and so can be easily ported to Windows and other OSes too which makes this thought doubly relevant."
Re:Why? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Easily ported to Windows, huh? (Score:5, Informative)
Because QT 3 isn't available under GPL for Windows or Mac, while QT 4 is. Next question?
Re:Let's Get Serios (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Let's Get Serios (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Explorer is just a shell (Score:5, Informative)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Program_Manager
Re:Why? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:They don't get it... (Score:4, Informative)
Konqueror started out as a file manager, true, but KDE tacked on web browsing to it and then spent most of the time developing that aspect of it -- now it's really more of a web browser that does file management too, rather than a file manager on steroids.
With Dolphin they appear to have recognized this and are creating an application to focus on what Konqueror was originally intended to do in the first place. This isn't exactly the same as creating a beginner's app and a power-user's app...
Re:At least, KDE developers listen (Score:4, Informative)
I haven't really used the new fonts from Vista, however, so those might actually look nicer for all I know.
Also, if you have a copy of OS X, it's always a nice idea to copy all the fonts from
Re:Why? (Score:5, Informative)
Of course, if you're using KDE on Windows as a migration step towards KDE on Linux, once you move to Linux the WIN32 API disappears along with the windows apps.
Re:Easily ported to Windows, huh? (Score:5, Informative)
In the meantime, Gnome is coming along quite nicely too. Neither gnome nor KDE is the be-all, end-all, last word in desktop environments, though. They both will continue to evolve and develop. More and more cooperation among the two camps through the freedesktop project is happening. Major problems have now been solved, including the clipboard frustrations of years past, drag-and-drop, and removable device handling through dbus. In fact with Qt4, since the glib main event loop can be used, it's becoming possible to mix gtk and qt widgets in the same app, which is handy for plugin developers. Problems yet to be solved include a common theming subsystem, a common virtual filesystem layer (a la kioslaves), and a few other things.
Re:Let's Get Serios (Score:3, Informative)
Re:KDE doesn't stand a chance until.... (Score:3, Informative)
1. standardized operation for ALL applicatation.
Windows doesn't. At all. Even MS apps aren't all the same, especially between generations.
2. cut and paste between ALL applications.
KDE does this. See a thread above.
3. Applications must ALL be uniform in operation of common functions..
I assume you mean dialog boxes. Windows doesn't guarantee it, and neither does KDE. It provides the same (and more) functionality that Windows does, though.
4. Uniform operation of input devices (mouse)..
Dunno what you mean here... Seems pretty uniform to me. (Heck, X/KDE even assumes every mouse only has 2 buttons. How much more uniform can you get?)
5. Easily customizable..
You might have something here... Too bad KDE is MUCH more customizeable than Windows, especially straight out of the box.
6. Standardized behavour on any local or remote environment..
Windows can't even touch this one.
7. Some kind of direct video support (games, etc...).
Windows doesn't do this. It provides an API for it through a non-essential set of libraries. (DirectX) Everything has OpenGL, so this point is moot.
Unless you were talking about Apple's interface... But why KDE would rule the market by only beating Apple, which doesn't rule the market, is byond me.
KDE/Qt might be great, but I'm not interested (Score:4, Informative)
Although I'm not doing anything now, the first thing I would use for a lean startup cross platform development is ACE [wustl.edu] with wxWidgets [wxwidgets.org] on Visual Studio Express [microsoft.com] or Eclipse with CDT [eclipse.org].
It is just my opinion, but I think the pricing for Qt is too high. I wonder how big the Linux Desktop "pie" could grow if we could all settle on Qt if it fell under LGPL or BSD? Trolltech's smaller piece of a bigger pie, might still be bigger than the one they have now. Putting GPL/Free Software asisde for a second, from a commercial perspective, I don't want a "new Microsoft" on the Linux Desktop. Perhaps someone with some cash could revive the Harmony Toolkit [wikipedia.org]...
Re:Windowmaker (Score:5, Informative)
WindowMaker is a window manager, not a desktop environment. A desktop environment consists of a window manager and related UI items, plus (more importantly) a development platform for applications.
Re:Why? (Score:4, Informative)
Re:KDE doesn't stand a chance until.... (Score:5, Informative)
--> It does, check out dcop or it's replacement d-bus. Through shell, perl, c++, qt... you can communicate between any application in both fore- and background.
2. cut and paste between ALL applications..
Has done that for a while now...
3. Applications must ALL be uniform in operation of common functions..
That's up to the programmers mainly, but all decent KDE applications use the standard QT library
4. Uniform operation of input devices (mouse)..
What's your problem with that? Any mouse I connect works and the mouse buttons too. Mainly an issue of configuration (which can be done from within KDE), doesn't matter which OS you use.
5. Easily customizable..
Check out kde-look.org, I think there's even a plugin into the Themes section of your configuration that automagically downloads them.
6. Standardized behavour on any local or remote environment..
That's up to the environment server. I connect through X or VNC, looks the same as my desktop at home.
7. Some kind of direct video support (games, etc...).
That's up to the Operating System, not to a desktop environment. And those solutions are available, it's called OpenGL and SDL, too bad only good game developers dare to use portable, industry standards instead of closed API's they don't even have full support for (take a look at the UT engine, Doom engine, Cube engine).
Re:KDE/Qt might be great, but I'm not interested (Score:2, Informative)
Not all commercial applications succeed or make large amounts of money and people don't want to invest in expensive tools unless their return is fairly certain. So Qt is limited to bigger companies, perhaps with existing products.
AFAIK it is also difficult for an open source product built with QT to "go commercial" and I think that this is very unattractive for those cases where a copyright holder may wish to work full-time on a project and might need to pay the bills by selling an enhanced version.
Re:Damn KDE Fanboys (Score:4, Informative)
Dynamic binding defeats CPU branch prediction regardless of how it's implemented -- if the target of a jump instruction is taken from a pointer whose value is determined at run-time, rather than compiled into the program, it can't be predicted. Ordinary C structures containing function pointers, like GNOME uses, work the same way. This isn't a problem with C++ virtual functions; it's just that current processors aren't able to accelerate a certain technique that's often used in modern software design.
As for the extraneous symbols, GCC 4.0 introduced some facilities for suppressing them, and I'm pretty sure KDE uses them now, so that should no longer be an issue.
My only real issue with KDE's programming environment is that they don't use standard C++; they use a variant of C++ that's "enhanced" with syntactic support for signals and slots, and the code gets preprocessed into standard C++ at build time. That's a bit ugly.
Re:Why? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Clutter and appearance (Score:4, Informative)
Hear hear! I've been using KDE for years, and every once in a while I experiment with Gnome. I like it, but the lack of some utility (quick and simple file operations across SFTP / SMB / local filesystems using Konqueror springs immediately to mind here) always sends me back to KDE
You know, there's no need to use KDE to use Konqueror. I use Konqueror with Fluxbox, for Chrissakes.
Re:And what about beryl? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Let's Get Serios (Score:4, Informative)
2. Alt-Tab to Firefox
3. Select the link currently in the location bar (in order to replace it)
4. You just lost because the second selection replaced the first.
On Windows I have two additional steps:
1'. Ctrl-C to copy the selected text into the clipboard
3. either Ctrl-L into the location bar or Ctrl-T open a new tab
3'. Ctrl-V the address into the location bar
Re:Let's Get Serios (Score:1, Informative)
Re: Is KDE 4.0 the Holy Grail of Desktops? (Score:3, Informative)
The replies are an example of precisely what is wrong with Linux. Take cyclop, who wrote:
These are people who don't understand the paradox of choice.
I've used Unix on the desktop. I've used KDE, Gnome, CDE, mwm, Enlightenment, Blackbox, WindowMaker, fvwm, and God only knows how many other window managers. I've learned how to tweak everything, how to get my exact favorite combination of window buttons, how to hide all the shit I don't care about, how to use it all.
And it didn't make me more productive. Honestly, I'm pretty sure that all that configurability and such caused a significant decrease in my lifetime productivity, as I'd spend hours playing with how to save 4 seconds, five times a day, and I'd do this after every single Hot New Release.
These days, I still use lots of Unix servers. Love it. But my laptop is a Mac, because although the defaults aren't perfect and there are a few things that I'd like to change, it's Good Enough.
I get more done using OS X and QuickSilver than I ever would if I had kept on chasing the Unix Desktop dream.
And all of that is just about pure productivity and ease of use. It ignores the fact that Linux desktops continuously choose visual designs that are about 5 years past their expiration date in the commercial world.
Re:Why? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Why? (Score:5, Informative)
Notice that in XP the WM is inside the kernel so in XP is just impossible to replace it.
Re:KDE's Achilles' heel (Score:5, Informative)
Well in that case, you have no problem. Qt for X11 is available under the QPL [trolltech.com], which permits applications to use a range of free software licenses, including the LGPL and BSD-style.
Guess you'll be switching now then?
Re:KDE doesn't stand a chance until.... (Score:3, Informative)
Sadly, OpenGL drivers on Linux aren't up to speed feature-wise. ATI's drivers are especially poor. For instance, you can't reliably create a buffer object on Linux without a fallback to the much slower PBuffer system.
Feature for feature, OpenGL 2.0 on Windows is sort of competing with DX9 and somewhat DX10, but on Linux you can't use any of the features required for a modern game engine. In order to ship a competitive title in 2007 you need multiple render targets, Shader model 3.0 support and floating-point buffers. UT and Doom are ancient games as far as rendering technology goes.
Re:Why? (Score:1, Informative)
Re:Let's Get Serios (Score:3, Informative)
That was a long rant. Anyway, you might want to check out Klipper, which fixes all that except the network thing and vim integration... the latter being a vim problem, I'd say, xemacs works as expected. You have to configure it correctly to get the behaviour you want... Wild guess would be synchronize, keep 200 items in your case, prevent empty clipboard. If the popup on links etc annoys you, you might want to disable action.
Problem solved :)
PS: You are wrong about the Gnome keyboard, that is an X feature. It is called PRIMARY clipboard, if I recall correctly. (The other one is SELECTION, I think).
P.P.S: Those that really want it like windows might want to disable sync, hit "ignore selection", set the history to 1, hit "prevent empty clipboard" and disable actions.
Re:Why? (Score:3, Informative)
Then kindly explain how to install and run gedit on Windows.
cygwin?
clipboards and selections (Score:4, Informative)
Sorry, but I'm going to be a bit pedantic here.
You have described one clipboard (Ctrl-C/Ctrl-V), and it's the Mac way, not the Windows way. Macs originally implemented this with Cmd-C, Cmd-V (and -X, of course) because the Apple UI people were smart enough to realize that Ctrl-C and Ctrl-X already had some important (and somewhat dangerous [kill, cancel]) standardized meanings that shouldn't be messed with. Early PCs did not have a command key, so early Windows versions decided to copy this feature, but using the Ctrl key instead, and to hell with standards.
The Linux way you describe is actually an X11 feature that predates Linux (and probably Windows cut/paste), and it's not really a clipboard at all. Middle-click copies the "primary selection", not the clipboard. The distinction is lost on many (I said I was going to be pedantic...) but technically selections are a protocol for implementing clipboards. By default there is a primary, secondary, and a clipboard selection, and those can contain many separate buffers of data. (The xclipboard client lets you manipulate the clipboard buffers, if you're curious.) But middle-click in X doesn't hit the clipboard selection at all, but rather the primary selection. You can use this to copy/paste stuff without messing with the contents of your clipboard, which might doing more important things.
So X selections are really a superset of clipboards. As with everything in Unixland, this imparts a lot of power for those who have been initiated into its mysteries, but creates confusion in those who have not, and hostility in those who think the broken Windows way is the right way.