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."
Easily ported to Windows, huh? (Score:1, Insightful)
The only thing that's "easy" is for non-programmers to say "well this toolkit is released for multiple OS's so it must be easy to port!"
Let me know when you got that working, k?
it's good slashdottes never RTFA (Score:5, Insightful)
Hope they get some click-throughs from the traffic though.
Re:Let's Get Serios (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Why? (Score:5, Insightful)
Say you want to transition your office or whatever to use all Linux and OSS. You can get them used to open office, but they still be a bit put off when you make them switch to KDE. This way they can get used to "linux" while still having access to their favorite windows apps. I think it'd be a great idea for preparing people for a transition.
Can we wait until it's even close to out first? (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm sure we can find as many blog entries about how Vista is most-bestest, or Gnome, or Xfce. Of those, I'd only ever buy the Xfce argument but to each their own.
At least, KDE developers listen (Score:3, Insightful)
I also hope that this release will make KDE fonts look sharp, crisp and beautiful by default. It is unfortunate that many times, we in the Linux community have to seek Microsoft's help on fonts in order to have a desktop that is a pleasure to look at.
Re:Why? (Score:3, Insightful)
The Holy Grail of Desktops? (Score:4, Insightful)
Don't get me wrong -- I'm a huge fan of KDE. KDE is the project that made me think "yes, I will eventually be able to learn to use Linux" -- that was back in its 1.0 days. Now I use Linux full time (I still consider myself a beginner though). KDE is a good desktop -- it's knaming konventions are a klittle kstrange, but it's still a good desktop that makes basic Linux use a lot easier while not actually preventing you from getting into the guts of everything. It's my desktop of choice (I use Kubuntu).
But the Holy Grail of Desktops? There is no such beast, and there are too many opinions about what such a beast would be. There are too many people who want too many different things in their desktop. For my part, I want to see some desktop incorporate all the OO elements from OS/2's Workplace Shell... I've yet to see it happen. That's my "Holy Grail," and I expect if it were ever implemented it would be anathema to someone else.
The very thought that it might be able to "meet the needs of a wide cross section of computer users" would automatically make it fail in the eyes of some. I know and have spoken with some usability nuts who claim that there is One True Path to usability, and anyone who wants to do things differently is simply doing things WRONG, and that they need to learn the One True Path and experience how much better it is. "Acommodation" would be a design flaw from that perspective.
All that aside, I'm looking forward to KDE 4. One thing I've come to expect from the KDE developers is that everytime they release a new version of KDE I wind up liking the new version significantly more than the older version, and I think that's the most realistic expectation you can hope to have about software...
Re:Why? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Easily ported to Windows, huh? (Score:4, Insightful)
That's mostly true. Aren't good cross-platform toolkits spiffy?
Windowmaker (Score:4, Insightful)
I use it on OpenBSd and Linux and it works nearly perfect.
Re:Let's Get Serios (Score:3, Insightful)
It is quite nifty in an office environment to copy paste a screenshot, the content of a browser window, application data
You see, alot of people whose job is not IT related need these kind of functionalities
I am not a pro-windows guy nor a MS employee, refrain from modding me from what I stated above, which is only my own and personal opinion, and, you are, of course, allowed to disagree with me.
I prefer Gnome (Score:3, Insightful)
Though, they both seem to have issues with me customizing them. Yeah, it's possible, but the options I want are always hidden in some gconfedit.cf.conf.1.3 bullcrap file somewhere.
I don't want a new window every time I click a folder. I like to store my files heirarchically, and nest directories. I don't see how this makes me a bad person. Don't bury the option to turn that shit off. It was annoying in Windows 3.1, it's just as annoying on a linux box.
And KDE really needs a "lite" checkbox somewhere, to turn off all the bling blang for those of who choose not to "keeps it real".
New low (Score:2, Insightful)
I too have inferred two things namely:
1) You are an idiot.
2) Whoever submitted this is an idiot.
Oh Not Again (Score:2, Insightful)
I want linux to succeed as much as the next kde user but articles like this just set everyone's expectations way too high. There are issues that don't have much to do with KDE, but because that's what the average user sees, they may blame it on KDE. It's the ages-old hardware issues. Printers is still an issue for home users.
Beyond that, there are glaring holes in some of the applications. (print selection for example)
My personal wish is that some of the kde projects would focus on specific types of users. For example, I bet Law Office users have some needs that outlook doesn't do well instead of being a medium-slow follower. No, I'm not talking about an "exchange killer" because trying to eat a big part of exchanges market isn't likely. (not impossible, not likely)
Power != clutter (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Juvenile 'K' Naming Jokes? Holy Grail? (Score:5, Insightful)
Right! They should behave like the serious folks in Microsoft calling everything with the full beautiful "Windows" before the app name instead of a little "K": Windows Mail, Windows Firewall, Windows Media Player. Or Apple, using a slick, minuscule "i" instead of a boasting "K": iPod, iTunes, etc. True, big companies really HAVE grown the fuck up!
[sarcasm mode off]Re:Let's Get Serios (Score:5, Insightful)
1. Disable Linux clipboard. Hell breaks loose.
2. Disable Windowsish clipboard. Hell breaks loose.
3. Merge clipboards. Hell breaks loose as Windows userrs have their clipboard contents "mysteriously" replaced.
4. Keep it as is and have slashdot trolls complain about the copy-paste system.
Re:KDE doesn't stand a chance until.... (Score:5, Insightful)
1) Nobody said anything about Windows. Why are Linux users so unable to let Linux stand on its own? You never see Mac users constantly comparing everything about OS X to Windows, instead they judge OS X on its own merits and criticize it for its own failings.
Have you ever seen those cartoons with the bulldog who's constantly being circled by the annoying yipping puppy sucking up to him? Linux is like the puppy. It's irritating.
2) If Linux wants to gain users, yes, it has to be much better than Windows. I would think that obvious.
2. cut and paste between ALL applications.
KDE does this. See a thread above.
Only for text. Try copying (say) spreadsheet cells and pasting them in a bitmap graphics program. Or try copying a few seconds of a video file and pasting it in a word processing document.
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.
Not just dialog boxes, but also:
* Keyboard shortcuts
* Menu items
* Contents and ordering of contextual menus
* Open and Print dialogs (which you mentioned)
* Button labels
* What the "Home" and "End" button do in text fields
etc.
5. Easily customizable..
You might have something here... Too bad KDE is MUCH more customizeable than Windows, especially straight out of the box.
He didn't say "more customizable" he said easily customizable. If you don't know the difference between those two statements, you really have no business critiquing a UI.
But why KDE would rule the market by only beating Apple, which doesn't rule the market, is byond me.
It would only rule the market if it:
1) Beat Apple's OS X
2) Beat Microsoft's Windows
3) Was compatible with, or had feature-complete equivalents to, all software that runs on OS X or Windows, including custom-developed programs
4) Ran on affordable hardware and was itself affordable (both in monetary cost, and in support costs)
Right now, no Linux environment (KDE included) is even remotely close.
Re:Let's Get Serios (Score:5, Insightful)
As current Linux user that mixes everyday Gnome, KDE, and desktop-agnostic apps at home and work, I can assure you the "clipboard hell" issue has not been fixed at all. And I'm not anti-Linux trolling, I'm a Debian fan and used to be a package maintainer there. But you should be able to admit where Linux is just weaker than Windows or OS X.
Here's an extract of the various "clipboards" or "yank buffers" or whatever they're called I deal with on a daily basis:
- The venerable X11 buffer - select and middle click. This works great BUT if you happen to select something by mistake whatever you had in the clipboard before has gone. This is especially annoying if you select a link from somewhere and want to *replace* the URL in the address bar of Firefox. What you intuitevely do is the following:
1. Select the link in some program
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.
- Then there is the Gnome Clipboard (I believe that's what it is called). This is the Control-C, Control-V clipboard which works like in Windows - with one subtle difference. If you close the program you have cut/copied from, the content of the clipboard is *gone*.
1. Select and copy some text in some program
2. Close the program
3. You just lost
- Then there is the vim yank buffer. Yes, you can have multiple yank buffers and probably program them and whatever. But it is totally separate from the other clipboards. Vim even stores it when you close and restart vim. Thus you can:
1. Open vim, yank some text (that's "copy" for non-vimmers)
2. Reboot your machine
3. Log in from another machine with ssh
4. Paste it back. You win!
BUT of course it doesn't work across multiple concurrently running instances of vim. Don't tell me that I should use only one vim for multiple files and splits and all that crap. I want to be able to yank and paste across vims. Which you can't.
And if you use gvim (the vim with gui) then pasting from the Gnome clipboard is as easy as...pressing (no joke)
ESC : " g P
They must be out of their mind.
- And then there's the Emacs buffers (I believe it's called the "buffer ring" or something like that) which are again similar to the ones in vim. I hope I don't offend any emacs users here since I'm not that familiar with it, but I know that they are again incompatible with everything else.
What Linux needs is ONE universal clipboard. Just ONE. It shouldn't be part of Gnome, KDE, Xfce or even X11. It should be a system service. So you can copy and paste LIKE A SANE PERSON in ALL PROGRAMS. Just like on Windows. Or a Mac.
You could throw in persistence across reboots. And maybe across different sessions (say, local X11 and remote SSH). Then it would even be better than everything else. I'm actually thinking of implementing something like that - maybe even with X11 and Gnome clipboard bindings to "unify" them finally.
There should *definitely not* be multiple buffers, rings and crap like that. 99% of the time they are just confusing.
If a program *really* needs multiple buffers - and most do not - they could still implement that ON TOP of the universal clipboard. It's ok if *that* is not compatible across programs.
Greetings from one who loves, and loves to works with Linux but just *HATES* its clipboard functionality.
Re:Clutter and appearance (Score:3, Insightful)
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. But I will give Gnome some credit: their desktop looks extremely nice, and seems particularly suited to new users. Yes, I can't stand the way Nautilus deals with remote filesystems compared to the simple address bar in Konqueror, but Gnome's default themes are smooth and uncluttered. I feel much more comfortable looking at a default Gnome desktop than a KDE one.
The Dolphin screenshot in TFA still looks cluttered to me, like a window with too many panes and toolbars to worry about. A smoother default theme could really remedy that.
Re:Windowmaker (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Windowmaker (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Konqueror (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:KDE's Achilles' heel (Score:4, Insightful)
You call it a bug, I call it a feature. People make the same complaint about the Linux kernel, GNU readline, and so on. If you want a proprietary-friendly OS, go use Windows or OS X.
Though it would have been nice if the effort expended on GNOME had instead been expended on a BSD-licensed Qt replacement... Or improving OpenStep... or pretty much anything except developing a third desktop environment and stuffing it with Microsoft patented technology.
Re:Let's Get Serios (Score:2, Insightful)
It doesn't matter if something is implemented as intended or not.
If I attempt to do something right, and I do it wrong, the result is wrong.
If I attempt to do something wrong, and I succeed in doing it wrong, the result is wrong.
If cooperation among different groups is required for something to be done right, but these groups do not cooperate, the result is wrong.
Your bit about "every user would keep both apps open when copying, just to be safe" demonstrates a fundamental misconception about how the human brain thinks. I would imagine any interface you design would be a disaster. Your mind has been so affected by years of working with badly-designed software that you can't even imagine how everyone else thinks. Don't ever EVER attempt to design a HCI. You're damaged goods.
Re:it's good slashdottes never RTFA (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:KDE's Achilles' heel (Score:4, Insightful)
I think it's great.
They are modern day Robin Hoods, except legal!
Re:Let's Get Serios (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Why? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:KDE doesn't stand a chance until.... (Score:3, Insightful)
That's all kind of beside the point. To use the horrible car analogy, you're saying that it's impossible to standardize the position of the steering wheel without also standardizing the buttons on the car stereo and amount of trunk space.
The point of standardization is that when I hit control-Z I *always* get Undo, regardless of what application I'm in. Obviously it's impossible for the OS maker to anticipate every single menu item ever created, and nobody would argue with you. But they can and should define the most basic few dozen of them. If some application over-rode control-V to make it print a page instead of paste, you'd be confused and upset (and waste a lot of paper until you figured it out!) That's what you want to avoid.
A graphics program can have as many variations of Paste as it wants, as long as the most sensible default one is set to control-P. The rest can have shortcuts like control-shift-P, or any other unused key. This is well-established in every GUI system I've used, but I don't have a ton of KDE experience.
Yet another impossible requirement. KDE isn't exactly able to just completely reverse-engineer Windows and OS X - and even if they were, various patents would mean a soon end to it.
I didn't say the requirements were possible. I'm just saying that anything labeled the "holy grail" ought to meet those requirements... which basically amounts to "no, KDE is not the holy grail, nor will there ever be one."
Re:KDE's Achilles' heel (Score:3, Insightful)
This isn't a feature. There are very good reasons why both the Linux kernel and GTK+ allow non-GPL apps to use them. This allows proprietary apps, but it also allows non-GPL FOSS apps as well. And this is one reason why the Linux kernel is so successful, and likewise GTK+. Qt is holding itself back with this licensing issue.
Re:Let's Get Serios (Score:3, Insightful)
X11 has and always has had two clipboards, short term (highlight/middle click) and long term (^C/^V). The "gnome" clipboard as you call is is just the X11 long term clipboard. And guess what? Firefox supports it, so you can ^C, ^V in to the address bar if you wish. I guess you never tried that SINCE IT WORKS FINE. Or, you can go the shor term route and simply middle click in the window. And that all works with KDE programs too. And vim, and ooffice and abiword and indeed any program which has a reasonable implementation of the now ancient and well understood ICCCM protocol for copy/paste.
As for the "closing the program" problems, this one is solved to. Run a clipboard manager and it will save the contents for you. For those of us who don't wish this to be the case, we don't have to run it.
I don't get your point about vim. The X11 clipboards are just named buffers like its own internal named buffers.
Anyway, linux has one universal working clipboard mechanism and it's called X11. Just like any system, it works between all programs that obey the protocol correctly. And X11 presents two standard clipboards, which I like. In fact, I prefer it to the single clipboard system you seem to want. And really, its only confusing because you expect X11 to behave like windows. Well it doesn't. For me, I find Windows and MacOS confusing because they don't behave like X11.
Anyway, here are the points to take away from this:
1 Copy and paste on X11 works.
2 Don't expect it to be Windows/MacOS, because it isn't.
3 Copy and paste on X11 works (I'll repeat this since no-one here seems to have a clue).
4 I'll repeat this one again, since people are really stubborn about this one: It's X11, not Windows!!!!!
Comment removed (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:I've got a few suggestions... (Score:3, Insightful)
Addressed to several people who have replied to the parent post
Most of these responses give a truly informative overview of why so many non-*nix users (MS and Apple) think we are a bunch of snot nosed arrogant kids.
When a person makes a list of complaints, bogus or not (and his/hers are well composed compared to most complaints), that person and their complaints should be respected. You know what most of my clients have complained about linux the most? Not the roughness of the OS, but the roughness of the people they run into who claim to be linux people. I often wonder about the truth of the jokes about the average slashdotter working in a closet and living in their mom's basement when I read replies like these. Being mean accomplishes nothing but ill will. That keeps people from wanting to deal with linux or OSS at all.
If you want to sell linux to others, you have to be sellable yourself first. Most people do not follow the advice of someone who acts like a self-important dweeb. That is why most companies have such a large investment in their public image. Now, please invest in your own so that we may all more easily further the world's acceptance of linux.
Rant Off
-InnerWeb