Does the End of KOffice Mean the End of KDE? 233
jfruhlinger writes "Venerable Linux office suite KOffice has been reborn as "Calligra," a name meant to evoke calligraphy but perhaps a bit too close to the neme of a deranged Roman emperor. Perhaps more importantly, Calligra seems to be cooperating with the future MeeGo mobile Linux distro. Could this be the beginning of the end of the KDE desktop, at least under its current branding?"
Oh no (Score:5, Insightful)
not just the end of KDE - but the end of all life on earth!
What a stupid headline. Page views, clicks, etc. Yeah I know.
Re:Oh no (Score:5, Funny)
not just the end of KDE - but the end of all life on earth! What a stupid headline. Page views, clicks, etc. Yeah I know.
Now hold on just one minute Capt. Hyperbole. When taking into account the release delays, the infighting and the whole Mayan calender/2012 thing this just might be the first domino in the end of all life on earth!
Indeed and it misses the point in so many ways (Score:4, Informative)
* KDE, the community, is stronger than ever with more contributors than ever and more commits than ever.
* Calligra does not switch focus to mobile, but it *extends* the focus to mobile... and tablets... and so on.
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Hmmm. I switched from KDE to LXDE as part of the Lightweight Ubuntu (lubuntu) distribution. It's more memory-friendly
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>So what's KDE called now?
Well, KDE calls it "KDE Plasma Desktop" [slashdot.org].
Everyone else just calls it "KDE".
Oh, and KDE isn't a product. It's a community. A thought. A feeling.
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Thanks for the answer. I remember the announcement about the "Kool desktop environment" during the days of Caldera.
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you know, you can disable most of that stuff
With my instance of kde all I really use is the task bar for switching between applications and the alt-f2 run command.
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Then why bother? Fluxbox does that very fast and with a teensy footprint.
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good thing we have backups.
Re:Oh no (Score:4, Insightful)
Ob. SMBC [smbc-comics.com]
Maybe that should go for Slashdot headlines as well.
what is in a name? (Score:2)
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Indeed. Who uses Koffice? I have little use at home at all for an office suite, but on the rare times I do, I use OpenOffice. And tellingly (meaning "telling that TFA's authors are morons"), kubuntu comes with OO as the default rather than KO.
As to "at least under its current branding?" why should I care about branding?
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I use it when I want to do something quick. It's far more lightweight than Open Office/Libre Office.
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I use it. OpenOffice is a pig, its UI is an eyesore, its mouse cursors are weird, etc. The only thing OO is better at (for me) than KO is support for Microsoft formats.
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Back in the early 2000s I used Koffice to fork processes off from our applications. It was very nice to be able to send thousands of data points to a spreadsheet which had graphing and just pass calls and not have to write all that code.
Typo in summary (Score:5, Funny)
There is clearly a typo in the summary, this is a KDE project so it would have to be Kalligra.
Re:Typo in summary (Score:5, Funny)
no, its going to be intgrated into CDE
Re:Typo in summary (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Typo in summary (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Typo in summary (Score:5, Informative)
Here! [goatse.cx]
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There should be a separate mod for on-topic links to that particular site. Achievement unlocked.
KDE (Score:2)
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And even if KDE guys decided to rebrand it, I don't see how it would mean the End of KDE?
You're missing some details. The reason for the rebranding was, essentially, that most of the developers had decided to refocus their efforts on Nokia's FreOffice mobile office suite and had largely abandoned desktop KOffice. It had reached the point that most of their interaction with the "official" KOffice SVN trunk was just adding bug fixes for bugs found in the FreOffice development process, and all the development and testing was done on Nokia's fork of the repository and Nokia's schedule. The maintain
Why should it? (Score:2)
They're based on the same technology, but other than that, what do they have to do with each other? You can run one without the other.
So the short answer would be "No".
I enjoy KDE and use it daily. I would use KOffice more if there was a better project management tool than KPlato included but alas, there isn't.
Time to donate some more Paypal money their way so that I can close that account. Btw, what alternatives are there to paypal? You know, companies that atleast pretend to support democracy.
Paypal alternatives (Score:2)
>Btw, what alternatives are there to paypal?
http://gunpal.com/ [gunpal.com] (I kid you not.)
http://alertpay.com/ [alertpay.com]
wire transfers
http://moneybookers.com/ [moneybookers.com]
https://www.neteller.com/ [neteller.com]
https://www.epassporte.com/ [epassporte.com]
http://www.e-gold.com/ [e-gold.com]
http://www.libertyreserve.com/ [libertyreserve.com]
>You know, companies that atleast pretend to support democracy.
I don't vouch for any of the above.
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Excuse me, parent is looking for alternatives, not excuses. PayPal may just be complying with the CIA, that doesn't mean it doesn't need to be dropped.
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I'm all for government transparency and accountability
You are all for it, as long as those words mean nothing specific. Just a lofty goal "government transparency - yeah I'm for it". Reporting government wrongdoing or dubious activity, if said government would rather nobody found out ... well that would take things too far. T
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They just now started breaking the TOS? Or is PayPal just really really slow?
And what is it that they're doing that is a breach? Displaying the stolen documents? Isn't this what every journalist is supposed to do? Are all journalist organizations banned from PayPal, or just wikileaks?
And embedded media isn't a "free press". That's more of a propaganda department. Why do you think the military allows it?
That said I've been a happy customer for several years but I have to protest in some way, what other way w
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The "propoganda department" had no qualms reporting on Iraqi civilians killed by US bombings, or Abu Ghraib prison, etc.
The coverage hasn't been all positive.
As for PayPal just now enforcing their TOS, like I said, I assume PayPal was pressured into their decision.
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Wikileaks has been threatened with criminal penalties by congressmen, senators, the sitting sec of state and attorney general. While I might academically consider a case that wikileaks is not a criminal organization.... that's far more than most criminal organizations face.
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Don't you dare conflate the privacy and integrity of the civilian on the street with the secrecy of a government infested with powertripping psychopaths who are supposed to represent you, whom are employed by you, and are committing illegal acts in your name and trying to protect their own sorry asses by extensive misuse of secrecy.
I duly note that you ignored every single question I asked, especially about Ellsberg and the NYT, which speaks volumes of you and how well thought out your position is. And fran
Tag: Troll (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Tag: Troll (Score:5, Funny)
How about "Krap" ?
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Kapla!
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How about "Krap" ?
What is that? Some sort of virtual record scratching software for hip hop artists?
Beginning of the end (Score:2)
We hardly knew you... (Score:2)
It is official; Netcraft now confirms; KDE is dying
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Yeah, totally. (Score:3, Insightful)
Neme (Score:2)
Yes, I googled it, and got no satisfaction. YMMV.
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neme? (Score:3)
A portmanteau of meme and name?
Rebranding (Score:5, Informative)
KDE has been rebranding, and not just in removing the K from all their applications. KDE is a project, and a non-profit entity (KDE e.V.). The software compilation they release is now known as KDE SC.
I don't see any reason for alarm over rebranding. KDE is getting more contributers and developers every year. Even many of the die-hard haters who railed against the 4.0 release have come back into the fold loving the current KDE releases. And for all the hate about Plasma, the Plasma framework makes it quite easy to create new activities and shells, making KDE on netbooks, tablets and phones considerably more viable.
I find it interesting that Ubuntu is trying to find a way to create one interface/shell on every device, and yet they pay so little attention to KDE, Plasma and Qt. With KDE activities, I can switch instantly between a netbook activity (which I may prefer on the tiny resolution netbook screen) and a more standard desktop activity/shell when I use the video output to use a larger display.
I can keep many of the same apps, conventions, etc. across multiple devices while still focusing on a activity/shell that is best suited to that size/resolution/device.
I'm actually really excited about the future of KDE.
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I honestly think Ubuntu is going to break from Gnome soon. Gnome's direction and Ubuntu's are opposite. Ultimately KDE could use a parent distribution and Ubunto needs more clout and ain't going to get it in RedHat's DE.
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Suse is relatively neutral now. It certainly helps but its not nearly as focused as RedHat is with Gnome. In terms of upstream work, it seems like with the Wayland/Unity thing they are going to have to do lots and lots of upstream work.
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SUSE does focus on both KDE and Gnome. openSUSE lists KDE as the default, while SLED ships Gnome as the default.
openSUSE may ship the best KDE packages of any distro out there, so a lot of people associate openSUSE with KDE.
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I still think Canonical should buy SUSE. Novell was just sold, but I don't know if Attachmate wanted the Linux division particularly.
It sounds crazy to suggest because I hate a lot of things about Ubuntu and love SUSE, but I think it would be a marriage made in heaven.
Ubuntu is really trying to innovate and change desktop paradigms. They're making serious in roads, and OEMs are willing to deal with Ubuntu.
That being said they are too bleeding edge to be taken seriously in the server/enterprise department, t
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With KDE as desktop you don't have that. It is way more in your face and it simply isn't workable out of the box.
Ubunu would be using likely using a more locked down version. The whole move with Unity is they want to be simpler than Gnome.
KDE is not going anywhere (Score:2)
Did anyone actually use KOffice? (Score:5, Insightful)
I know I never have, and I use KDE quite a lot. I don't know anyone that has. It's usually OpenOffice.org that's being use.
Re:Did anyone actually use KOffice? (Score:5, Insightful)
I know I never have, and I use KDE quite a lot. I don't know anyone that has. It's usually OpenOffice.org that's being use.
I've tried to use KOffice. Lord, how I've tried. I hate OpenOffice with a passion, but I just keep coming back to it.
There's really only one thing holding KOffice back from general recognition as an Office contender: the font rendering/kerning is abysmal.
The history behind this is tragic: someone in both the KDE and KOffice projects made it a principle that these projects should always use Qt libraries whenever possible instead of re-inventing the wheel. On paper, this sounds good. The problem is that there are still areas where the current Qt libraries....well, suck. Font rendering is one, printing is another. Thus, KOffice sucks and fonts and KDE sucks at printing (KDE3 was great at this because they used their own libraries).
This is not usually a big deal because bugs can be fixed, right? Not in this case. The KDE and KOffice people point at the guiding principle (use Qt libraries) and say it's a Qt problem--ask Qt for a fix. The Qt people say that these features are not important to include in their libraries (because neither KDE nor KOffice are their bread and butter). And nobody fixes the problem.
Actually that's not entirely true. The Scribus team created their own font rendering library for their Qt-based app. Because they don't want to produce crap, even if they have to re-invent the wheel to avoid producing crap.
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Unfortunately you're correct. I tried KOffice as OpenOffice does suck in many ways, but when it couldn't render text properly on paper I had to give up.
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I know I never have, and I use KDE quite a lot. I don't know anyone that has. It's usually OpenOffice.org that's being use.
It wasn't even a KDE project. Probably the authors just decided that it was time to switch directions of the project since it was not going anywhere.
kaligraphy.com (Score:5, Interesting)
Thinking that it might have been Microsoft or Apple or similar about to release a new product, I replied with an outrageously high price. I wonder if it was the KDE team
If it is indeed the KDE team, get in touch
Simon
Wow! Total junk news (Score:4, Insightful)
This is a horrible junk news editorial. This speculation is not just wild, it is more annoying than those toads in Australia... too much of this around and we just can't kill them all.
I welcome the name change from KOffice to just about anything else including Caligula. KOffice is not the same as K-Office. KOffice sounds too much like a bronchial condition. And the propensity to name things with a K in front is just ridiculous. I know, Gnome is somewhat guilty of that but not to the same extent. Worse, K is associated n my mind with K-Mart which was the brand of K-rap. (Their shoes were cheap and only lasted for 5 minutes on my feet when I was a kid.) I know... my association with K is my problem, but still. Too much K already. At least "G" is more often silent.
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I would so use that.... (Score:2)
Caligula Text editor? I am so there!
How about other cool names? I want the Loki Operating system!
If only there was a way to find out! (Score:4, Informative)
Nothing to see here (Score:2)
What happened here seems to be, from my skimming of the mailing lists, just a personality conflict. A bog-standard one, at that. The name change is more symbolic than anything else. Here's what to take away from this fiasco: One KWord developer is going to do his own thing, where some lists and code repos are hosted may change. Everything else is business as usual.
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Indeed, what did happen to them? If they are in the process of rebranding it would be nice if someone wrote an article about it so that we would know.
Re:Kalligra (Score:5, Informative)
The real hint is this:
Currently all applications except Calligra Words will be maintained by their respective KOffice developers.
It's more than a renaming, they split. However, when the dust cleared only the KWord developers went with the other group, the rest of the KOffice projects joined what's now Calligra. As far as I can tell the KWord guys wanted to focus on competing with MS Office and OpenOffice for the desktop, while the Calligra Words guys wanted to focus more on mobile. With enough different agendas going on in the same project they had conflict and eventually split. That's at least as far as I've caught the story.
Re:Kalligra (Score:5, Informative)
Here is some more background on the split
http://lists.kde.org/?l=koffice-devel&m=128782551919625&w=2 [kde.org]
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I can't mod you up but thanks for the useful link.
Re:Kalligra (Score:5, Informative)
As I'm reading this thread I'd suggest this link instead:
http://lists.kde.org/?l=koffice-devel&m=128812911619277&w=2 [kde.org]
Re:Kalligra (Score:5, Funny)
What happened to that annoying K in all names of the K Desktop Environment?
They went to the same place all the intuitive configuration options went in GNOME.
That's right. I went there.
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/dev/null ?
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KAbandoned, I KGuess.
Re:Kalligra (Score:4, Interesting)
Everyone complained they were annoying so know you've got Plasma, Strigi, Gwenview, Dolphin, Marble, Calligra, etc.
I also didn't understand why everyone complained when KDE did it, but not Gnome?
And it never really bothered me. A brand new user knew the difference between GCalc and KCalc. But they may be confused by Abacus.
Re:Kalligra (Score:4, Funny)
we can add the iProducts to this trend too.
Actually, iThink i'Ve heard complaints about all three.
Re:Kalligra (Score:4, Insightful)
It makes for horrible alphabetical clustering in menus and file managers!
I can't find anything at a glance, among K* or i* - or g[????]*.
Just as bad - if not worse is the sorting on Windows machines "My" everything and "Microsoft" everything. Real visual cluster fart.
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KDE does not sort by company name like windows does. Everything is sorted by category. In fact, KDE defaults to sort the apps in the submenus by product description instead of name.
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With several K items in each Kategory.
Oh, Krap...
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No, Rekonq would be sorted under W for Web Browser. The menu entry would say:
Rekonq
Web Browser
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Still Krappy. I run "k-apps" from a Gnome or XFCE desktop. The assumption of conforming to KDE menu metadata is a false one, which obfuscates the error of naming for certain users, but breaks down in other environments - such as the Konsole. :-)
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That's actually just the way the companies do it, not Windows, as Windows only predetermines where apps bundled with windows should go. I usually rearrange my start menu from
program -> company -> app
to
program -> category -> app
Anyway, it doesn't change the issue, that under any given category in a the system KDE/Gnome menu, there usually ends up being a bunch of clustered 'K' apps and 'G' apps, particularly the games section
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we can add the iProducts to this trend too.
Actually, iThink i'Ve heard complaints about all three.
I suggest we call all that iGunK.
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You can use Amarok just fine in Gnome. It isn't "tied" to the desktop. However, running an all-Gnome or all-KDE ecosystem means you reuse the same libraries, keep a consistent look, and share certain features, such as KDE ioslaves, Akonadi resources, Strigi/Nepomuk metadata, same file dialogs, etc. across all the apps.
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No and yes. XFCE has none of those things. It is not a desktop/widget set like KDE and GNOME, and GNOME doesn't have akonadi resources, or ioslaves, because they refuse to use frameworks written in C++ and especially any framework written by anyone that has ever had anything to do with KDE. In stead they have different frameworks like Gnome-VFS, GStreamer or GTK file-dialogs, that sometimes does the same thing as KDE equivalents, and sometimes does something different
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For example, with Akonadi you can have a resource that is your address book.
Fire up your email client, and it is there. Fire up a VOIP client, and it is there. Fire up a calendar, and it is there. Fire up an IM client, and it is there. They can all share the same resource if they're all KDE apps designed to work with Akonadi resources.
I *believe* the KDE devs tried getting Akonadi turned into a Free Desktop standard that Gnome used as well, but it was denied. Maybe I'm crazy and thinking of something else t
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I *believe* the KDE devs tried getting Akonadi turned into a Free Desktop standard that Gnome used as well, but it was denied.
So what you're saying is that there is a cross platform desktop standard but nobody is using it?
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There are cross platform desktop standards at FreeDesktop.org
For instance, the naming conventions for icons in KDE 3 and Gnome were different, so you couldn't share an icon set. A FreeDesktop.org standard was set, and they both use it now. There are standards for menu entries, etc.
The KDE devs did try to get Akonadi recognized as a standard so resources (like an address book) would be recognized in Gnome applications as well. FreeDesktop.org did not accept it as a standard.
http://lists.kde.org/?l=kde-pim [kde.org]
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Too bad f.d.o. tends to auto approve Gnome things as 'standard' without second though.
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Because you're probably using either GTK or Qt anyway, so you might as well go the last mile and integrate well with the corresponding DE.
On a sidenote regarding desktop integration, I was amazed recently when I wanted to send a friend an audio file (some old amiga module) and I could simply draw it from the Banshee playlist into his Pidgin chat window. I could scarcely believe my eyes.
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To get features of the libraries and tight integration. Best of breed office suites (like WordPerfect's) lost to integrated suites (like Microsoft's) because of the advantages the offered for things like cut and paste of objects working across apps.
Better question... (Score:3, Insightful)
How am I supposed to know Plasma and Dolphin are KDE apps now?
Here's a better question. Why should I need to know whether Dolphin (I'll leave out Plasma, since it's functionality is so KDE-specific) is a KDE app? If I like it, I should be able to use it seamlessly regardless of which DE I prefer. To the extent that I can't, the 'open desktop' has failed. To the extent that it's becoming easier and easier, the OD is inching (not fast enough, IMHO) toward (the potential for) success.
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ldd /usr/bin/dolphin | grep kde
HTH
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Kan't you see kreating names like that kan only lead to some people thinking that the projekt is not kommercial quality?
No joke - I've read comments in the past where people said they don't consider KDE suitable for business use because of the k-naming convention. Personally, I actually like it for one reason: it groups most of the KDE projects together in package managers.
Re:Kalligra (Score:5, Funny)
iThink iHave an iDea.
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Precisely my feeling as well. While everyone else, Microsoft included, was pushing for a cleaner desktop, KDE seemed to be pushing the messy desktop paradigm from the Windows 95-XP days. I just found it very clunky.
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Ok...say what you want, but Win95 through to Win7 have perfectly clean desktops...until you litter them with icons/apps, which is totally under your own control. Same can be said for just about any other desktop, including KDE 3.x.
That said, you really should take a look at the latest KDE...or at least one of the many 4.x releases over the past couple years. It's about as clean as it gets as far as I'm concerned.
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What do you mean by that?
KDE's default behavior is to have no icons on the desktop because they want to eliminate the behavior of storing files on the desktop. They wanted to eliminate clutter.
I'm not sure why someone would assume they're pushing a messy desktop, unless you mean they support widgets or plasmoids. So does Mac OS X and Windows 7, both praised for their "clean" design. I don't use plasmoids on the desktop and don't care for them, but they're entirely optional. (I do have plasmoids docked in th
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I couldn't get past the windowing themes. Everything had super-rounded corners and had a shiny chrome look, and the icon sets were ugly and sin. My window manager should get out of the way, not be distracting.
I know I could theoretically customize it, but when I go under Google images for "KDE" every screenshot has the ugly as sin, distracting desktop icons and window borders. When I look at Google images for "Gnome desktop" ("gnome" brings up the garden variety), most of the screenshots use Clearlooks t
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I feel your pain; I can't stand rounded borders on windows or buttons, and so far haven't found a single theme that uses plain-jane boxes to draw, er... boxes. Guess we're two of those weird people who apparently can't see the point in round things when they're not needed. And to my eyes, they're ugly.
And yes, the default look of 80% of the themes looking like they've just emerged from a Turtle Wax avalanche doesn't help either. It took me forever to figure out how to get rid of the damned image overlay on
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I just use ion3 under KDE. No floating windows at all, and certainly no rounded corners. It's as easy as setting KDEWM=/usr/bin/ion3 (I add it in $HOME/.kde/env).
I am moving to a new laptop, and I'm setting it up with i3, which is a nice replacement for ex-ion3 folk who like static tiling window managers with tabs in the frames. Both work fine with KDE, nice and easy, plasmoids run in tiles (if you like them; I personally don't), and everything is fine.
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They are having a rough couple of years. OTOH Meego could be as important as Suse, Turbo, Caldera was in the early years. KDE and Linux in general is having a tough time refocusing. We'll see how this plays out. Microsoft, with the exception of XBOX has had lots of trouble expanding and is somewhat losing ground. I don't see them being as dominant on handheld office suites of say 2015.
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RedHat helped found Gnome in reaction to KDE when it first came out. They were always hostile as opposed to Caldera which was very pro-KDE.
Ubuntu was always part of Gnome, they had to pick and they picked Gnome because they agreed with the goal of interface simplicity which was part of the Gnome 2 project.
The real kick in the teeth was Suse and Mandriva/Mandrake supporting Gnome fully.
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True, and more and more, we see that without the big names like Red Hat, Oracle, Ubuntu, etc. paying developers to code this,it is not easy for a project like this to progress effectively.
However, we shall see what transpires with Libre Office.. If Oracle manage to muck that transition up, perhaps there is still a place for K Apps.