KDE SC 4.7 May Use OpenGL 3 For Compositing 187
Posted
by
timothy
from the that's-software-compilation-to-you dept.
from the that's-software-compilation-to-you dept.
An anonymous reader writes "KDE SC 4.5 is about to be released and KDE SC 4.6 is being discussed. However, Martin Graesslin has revealed some details about what they are planning for KDE 4.7. According to Martin's blog post, they are looking at OpenGL 3.0 to provide the compositing effects in KDE SC 4.7. OpenGL 3.0 provides support for frame buffer objects, hardware instancing, vertex array objects, and sRGB framebuffers."
Re:And for those older machines? (Score:5, Interesting)
No, you can turn off compositing. Unlike akonadi, which already makes KDE unusable.
Re:Interesting (Score:5, Interesting)
Seems good to me, except (Score:3, Interesting)
Wrong title (Score:1, Interesting)
The title is wrong. Is not appropiate to say that KDE SC may use OpenGL 3. Is KWin, the window manager (KDE apps don't call OpenGL directly). KWin can be used in other desktop environments [kdedevelopers.org], and other window managers can be used in KDE [kdedevelopers.org].
Re:3.0? (Score:1, Interesting)
3.3 for 'legacy' 8x00+ Nvidia hardware and HD2xxx->HD4xxx hardware
4.1 for Fermi/R800 hardware.
This would obviously take a lot of work, but 4.1 seems the more immediately useful target, followed by 3.3 if 1.5/2.1 can't do the effects needed.
But spending time on a 3.x implementation when most of the hardware running it is likely to be 4.x based on the high end and 2.x on the low end seems silly.
Re:Interesting (Score:1, Interesting)
Ever have a power outage while in the KDE? Good luck getting the DE back with your old preferences. That whole "integrated" aspect is a bitch to recover from - one thing goes wrong, and it's a slow death of cascading issues with everything else that's intertwined. Don't get me wrong, I've been a die-hard KDE user for about 8 years, and would have recommended it in a heartbeat, but it has really become a monster - trying to troubleshoot it is like trying to troubleshoot a Windows box, now. I took KDE 4.something for a quick spin not long ago, and couldn't believe how slow it had become. I've migrated to XFCE-4.1, and in many ways, it feels like KDE used to feel. I still miss Konqueror for file management, but am getting my head around Thunar. Everything else works just as well as the KDE without all that psychotic overhead, plus you can run those "needed" KDE apps in XFCE as well.
Re:And for those older machines? (Score:5, Interesting)
I can tell you that 4.5rc2 automagically loads up akonadi and all of its fluff/garbage/helpers if you have a clock plasmoid. Without option to turn it off.
Akonadi and Nepomuk are simply jokes. Enforcing them on the user, specially considering how useless both services are, is a really bad idea©.
Nepomuk can be disabled easily, not so much for Akonadi. You literally need to cheat it by giving empty path strings, or no clock.
I'm a major KDE advocate, but those two services get on my nerves way too much, specially because they are rather hefty for what they do (for me, nothing at all, for others, very limited usage).
Rant mode ON:
KDE seems exceedingly dependent on itself right now. And integration efforts (with popular apps out of KDE) are pretty much non-existent or unknown even among devs (I discovered after a friendly rant about the current "closed" state of things, that Krunner now does index Firefox bookmarks. The person who corrected me learned it by pure chance it seems, as no "user friendly media" (getting deeeeeeeeeeeep into mailing lists and all the bulk of svn commits is not user friendly, it costs more than mere minutes to check all that) reported on it at all).
I don't know who is to blame but whoever is responsible for this, is not helping the already damaged (by 4.0) reputation of KDE. Half-baked and/or mandatory apps are not helping. Neither does the silly "KDE SC" gimmick.
I can only think something in the management chain is broken, leading to absurd/rushed/experimental decisions pulled off. Either that or the exceeding majority of the 6-month release cycles is translation/bugfixing. As new features talked about during the release of "KDE 4.X" are implemented in "KDE 4.X+1" in the same state shown during the 4.X release (Look at tiled windows in the 4.5 branch. It's there, but...)
Rant mode OFF
Sorry, I really needed to put that up for discussion. Whenever Akonadi is mentioned I go berserk as I am reminded of stuff like it being a requisite for the standard clock.
The worst is that I am an enthusiastic KDE user and I follow development closely, trying betas and reporting bugs. I don't feel "betrayed" or anything like that, but some things are too annoying/habit breaking/RAM eating. Krunner, a Quicksilver/Kupfer-like launcher, can't be disabled and I was told by KDE people that it governs over logout functions (WHY THE LAUNCHER? why can't I just have my alternative of choice without option to take it out or disable it?).
Well, at least the project is dynamic and a good fix/decision changes for better can happen eventually.
Re:At some point you have to update (Score:3, Interesting)
Why not? Serious question. There are some companies and government agencies out there that still use 1960s mainframes. This idea that we should code only for new hardware is only appropriate for a certain washington based software company whose profits depend on making people buy entirely new software suites every time they upgrade their hardware.
There's not as much profit in selling a minor software upgrade that works on an older computer compared with selling a full new software version that works only on a newer computer. By deliberately making newer software unusable on old hardware, customers are forced to upgrade their hardware, and incidentally have to buy a new bundled Windows OS, which then forces them to upgrade all the otheir software that they use as well. It's a mug's game.
There's no reason why open source should follow that model. It's free, and it's intended to *help* users make the most of what they have, not just grab the most of their money. Moreover, making software run on older and different hardware is a great way for developers to find bugs, and thereby improves the quality of the code. And that means that other developers will have more confidence to reuse it for their own projects.
Open source should have a 50+ year outlook. That's how the real world works. Look around you, how many buildings, roads, bridges, companies, laws etc, are 50 years old? How would you live if you had an arbitrary rule that you couldn't enter a building or cross a bridge or drive in a car built before the year 2000, and could only do business exclusively with companies founded after 2000, etc?
Re:And for those older machines? (Score:3, Interesting)
Because i dont subscribe to upgrading just because there is new and shiny available. The old functions perfectly well, and its appalling that people code like they do today, rendering perfectably good hardware simi-functional.
Do not care (Score:4, Interesting)
about OpenGL decorating my windows.
DO care about things like "desktop works" and "can find a fast, professional theme that makes taskbar look like window title bars," neither of which is available with KDE since KDE 4 was released.
Yes, I have recently tried KDE, up to and including KDE 4.4.5 on Fedora. It continues to suck eggs. KDE 3 was professional and powerful. KDE 4 seems to have all the options I don't want, none of the options I actually used, no way to get a unified KDE/GNOME/Plasma theme (hell, you can't even get a unified kwin/plasma theme), ugly artifacting with 3D compositing off, craptacular stability and a distinct inability to remember many settings, dog-slow previews compared to Nautilus, no "compact" mode in Dolphin, either, poor dual-display support that fails to automatically handle them elegantly, and a distinct lack of KDE4-specific, complete alternate icon themes at kde-look.org to do away with the bright colors (I don't want red icons and blue icons both on my desktop at the same time; my desktop PC is not an Icee machine, it's totally unprofessional).
In short, I find KDE 4 totally considerably less usable than GNOME or KDE 3.5 and I'm fairly sure that pouring more development hours into 3D compositing is not going to make it moreso. How about just fixing the artifacting with 2D rendering? That I could actually give a damn about, though it would be one problem solved amongst many, many problems that didn't exist until KDE 4.
Re:Do not care (Score:2, Interesting)
+1, DEAD BANG ON THE MONEY. The KDE developers suffered a collective mental breakdown and completely dropped the ball professionally by not concentrating on simple real usability. Eye candy is INFANTILE and literally USELESS. Looks like the Gnome guys are in the earlyish stages of doing the same thing. Thank God for Xfce.
Re:And for those older machines? (Score:3, Interesting)
He might not be wrong, but I think his attempt is doomed. Nepomuk and Akonadi are not applications, so to the user they are meaningless. However KDE4 is generating messages about them, so that's confusing at least - usually annoying, too. On top of that there seem to be no applications which actually use them in a way which would get the user interested - he states himself that he turned off Nepomuk on his own system, so apparently he hasn't found a use for it either.
The KDE developers want these services available to applications, and that makes a certain amount of sense. However they cause problems and eat a lot of resources which leads to user complaints. Instead of starting the services by default (and using a setup which consumes lots of memory and CPU) they should default to off. Then when an application is first started which uses these services, that should start a wizard which lets you configure the services. Then you could decide which service to run and control the resource requirements. The user would understand what the services are for in this context. Right now he needs to find out what they are for by noticing the high system load and identifying the process which eats up all the resources - that's not a good experience.