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KDE GUI

KDE 1.90 (2.0 Beta) 85

Jon347 writes: "KDE 2.0 beta has been released, and looking very slick, regular files are on kde.org's servers and rpms on people.redhat.com. This one has been delayed for a while but looks worth it. This is the first of three beta releases. "
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KDE 1.90 (2.0 Beta)

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  • (my karma whoring for the day)
    for the copy-paste disabled:
    ftp://ftp.nebsllc.com/kde2 [nebsllc.com]
    ftp://mandrakesoft.com/pub/molnarc [mandrakesoft.com]
    http://www.htw-dresden.de/~s2697 [htw-dresden.de]
    http://www.kde.org/mirrors.html [kde.org]
  • ---
    Perhaps, and it didnt bother me that he posted that information, but HOW did he post it.
    ---

    What's wrong with how he posted it? Considering that Gnome and KDE have more than a few similarities, it seems relatively on-topic (at least in the respect that people interested in a new release for one will likely be interested in the other).

    What he asked was that people refrain from flaming, as he was providing information only. What do you do? Flame.

    The irony is, erm, ironic.

    - Jeff A. Campbell
    - VelociNews (http://www.velocinews.com [velocinews.com])

  • ...but I will not allow my users...

    [snip]

    ...any software which everyone can't get at free


    Am I the only one who finds this incredibly humorous?

    I guess one man's freedom is another's control.


    - Jeff A. Campbell
    - VelociNews (http://www.velocinews.com [velocinews.com])
  • I find it remarkable that you advocate silencing automatically those people who mention GNOME on a KDE thread, yet your sig refers to a BSS entitles UNCENSORED. Ah, the irony.
    Sam TH
  • I heard rumors that KDE 2.0 could possilbe be run with out X. Is this something that KDE is working on, or is it just a rumor?
  • by Rich ( 9681 )
    It is not possible to do this currently, but Troll Tech are developing a system called Qt/Embedded. There is quite a bit of interest in porting KDE to it, so it will probably happen it's just a question of when.
  • Why do you install it on servers?


    [client] $ ssh user@server # ssh w/xauth fwding
    [server] $ kmgmt-app


    Why else?

    Your Working Boy,
  • Yeah..I used the RedHat 6.2 RPMs. I just upgraded/installed the RPMs like it said. It all works except for the missing JPEGs.
  • Oh Puhleaze!! If you want to know how something is licensed, just go look. To let you know, the libraries are under the LGPL, and the applications are either GPL, AL or BSD. A couple niggly things are under other licenses, but who cares. The whole kit and kaboodle is 100% FREE SOFTWARE.

    GNU != Free Software. Don't believe me, believe RMS. Go to www.gnu.org and look up the definition of free software. You will find 4 points, freedom to use, freedom to redistribute, freedom to modify and freedom to distribute modifications. Every component in KDE, as well as every piece of software released under any Open Source license qualifies. Every single one. Including the new Qt that KDE2 uses. Including everything released under the Artistic, MIT and BSD licenses.

    Don't be a GNU Automaton. Think for yourself. Read the licenses. If you eventually choose not to think, that if fine by me, as long as it is YOUR decision.
  • >Oh great, quit.net had this story six hours ago :)

    Um, yeah, and I knew that? :^P What the hell is quit.net? I guess I'll have to check it out now...but until now, I would have guessed that quit.net was a domain-name squatter.

    Gee, imagine if our asses were about to get wiped out by an asteroid, and 99% of us never knew because some small-ass podunk station in South Dakota carried the news, and news networks worldwide said, "Hey, we can't carry that; some podunk small-ass station in the middle of South Dakota already carried that. We'd look like morons!!!"

    Get the point? How about a blunter response, like, "Shut the hell up!"
  • >As others have pointed out, a lot of the apps and
    >API's that are coming up seem to be chasing
    >Microsoft's tail.

    >i.e. Outlook look-alikes
    >Start buttoms and menu bars

    One thing that folks aren't fond of pointing out is that it's rather a circular tail--in other words, Microsoft generally tends to take other folks' great ideas, and turn them into good ideas. :^) The 95/98 interface borrows from a number of different interfaces, such as OpenStep, MacOS and even, to some extent, CDE, to name a few.

    IE is a blatant example of ripoff; heck, Netscape was founded because folks like Andreesen(sp) couldn't sell Mosaic-aginst U of I's rules. Then, U of I sold it to Spyglass, who then sold it to Microsoft. Then Microsoft turned it into a half-assed Netscape clone with OS-specific extensions.

    Imagine it, folks, being killed by your own product.

    Let's face it, folks--the free-software world has been copying the commercial world for *years.* If it weren't for copying commercial software, the basic set of GNU utils wouldn't exist.
  • Dekster's Laboratory !!!
  • by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 12, 2000 @05:52PM (#1077156)
    I'm using kde 1.9 (2.0 beta) right now. First, the bad stuff.

    * menus are flaky - sometimes with repeated use items dissapear and then they come back. There is some kind of timeout that seems unnecessary ... this is just an annoyance and it only applies to the desktop menu - not app menus.

    * adding bookmarks to Konqueror (the web browser and file manager) amost always causes a crash. This is a severe problem. Adding bookmarks with the popup on right click might work bettter. It automatically adds all Netscape bookmarks and these work fine with Konqueror.

    * themes are awful and all look pretty much the same. On the other hand the overal graphics quality is impressive - a much better rendering engine than kde 1.x. Plese note that themeing is
    temporarily very limited due to a change in how themes are handled that won't be ready until another month or so. The icons are beautiful.

    *multimedia is missing - none of the multimedia apps are included in this beta but non-kde apps work fine with kde (like mp3 players, etc.). The arts real time synthesizer is not quite ready...

    *jpg backgrounds do not show up, but jpg images do in the web browser and elsewhere.

    *file transfers (ftp and http) of tarred and gzipped archives unzip during download, resulting in a tar file that wrongly has a .tar.gz extension. Not a serious bug, just gzip the file to get a tar.gz again, but it does waste a lot of disk space.

    * most importantly, if you already have kde 1.x installed you are strongly advised to totally remove or back up and rename (move) your .kde directory and your Desktop directory in $HOME ***before*** installing this beta. The installation tries to gently merge your existing kde 1.x settings but it doesn't get everything right. There will be duplicate icons on the desktop and other annoyances.... Also, if you have RedHat which puts kde executables in /usr/bin
    you are advised to move them somewhere else out of the path. This is not a problem with other distros that put kde in /opt. Most distros use /opt or /usr/local/kde if you build from source.

    the good stuff:

    *memory usage is a little higher than kde 1.x it seems, but speed is about the same, overall. By a little higher I mean that 32 megs. of ram is plenty and you don't need much of a swap even with that.

    *koffice apps are impressive and this alone is worth using the beta. You really don't need any commercial office suites. This is much better and uses far less memory. Note: ability to read MS office file formats is limited but if you want that then use Corel Word Perfect. For native unix, KOffice is nice.

    * the browser (konqueror) is impressive - aside from the add bookmark bug. It's much, much nicer than Mozilla in very noticeable ways. The interface works, for one thing. Compare this, a work done mostly by volunteers, to the failed Mozilla effort (flame on) backed by all the billions Netscape and AOL have had to invest in it after 2 years and all the hype.

  • yes, both at the same time - and with blackbox, not the native windowmanager of either one. They get along fine, Xlib is a nicely capable common denominator. Though I must admit that it's only kde2 whose CVS I have been tracking. I'll have to make it up to gnome now :-)
  • yeah, and 1.90 was tagged in CVS on wednesday. your point is? it takes time for mirrors and such to be straight before kde really wants to see slashdot announcing it to the world...
  • espescially because anyone who wanted it *now* in whatever state it was in could have it - see http://www.kde.org/anoncvs.html. They weren't going to call it the beta until it was ready to be, but it was already available to any interested party who wanted to poke at it. Given that it was all already out there, what would the point of rushing out a shoddy beta to meet a date have been?
  • hehe, how can you compare a desktop environment, which consists of many components, with one single window manager process? ;-)
  • What's up with their versioning scheme? If it's beta, it should be 1.9 or 2.1


    If you'd bothered to look twice, you'd see that the beta actually is versioned 1.90, aka 2.0 Beta 1.
    --

  • Go to http://www.mosfet.org for some FRESH screenshots :).
  • by grrussel ( 260 ) on Friday May 12, 2000 @04:51AM (#1077163) Homepage Journal
    Is it? Yes.

    KDElibs are LGPL

    Parts of KDE packages (net, games, graphics, pim, multimedia, utils, toys) are GPL or Artistic License, varying by program to program.

    KOffice is GPL'ed

    Qt is QPL'ed

    The DCOP IPC stuff is BSD licensed I believe.

    So the answer is yes.

    Of course, GPL bigots can't use Xfree, TeX, Perl etc as they are not GPL'ed, if they are that GPL bigoted. Free Software != Open Source, BFD.

  • My apologies for any offense ... I'm not a zealot for either desktop (indeed, until 11 months ago, I used fvwm).
    I happened to see over at Linux Today [linuxtoday.com] that both were released, and it struck me as relevant to a story on beta desktop updates.
    Christopher A. Bohn
  • By the way, I think the email program to be released with KDE 2.0 is Magellan, which looks much more slick than Evolution (which is for Gnome).

    Actually, the email app that will ship with KDE 2.0 will be the usual KMail. It has undergone severe improvements since the KDE1 version, though, and is getting much praise on presentations around.

    Magellan should be ready around the time KDE 2.0 ships (September), but the Magellan team is completely seperate from the KDE team.
    --

  • I dunno, to me this post seemed perfectly appropriate. It is after all related, KDE (a desktop environment) released a beta of their next version. GNOME (another desktop environment) also released a beta of their next version.

    Perhaps, and it didnt bother me that he posted that information, but HOW did he post it.

    I personally did not know about the GNOME beta before this post, I'm sure there are others who would also be interested.

    Actually, neither did I, and Im interested in both desktops. But the original posters lack of tact was to blame on this case.

    Perhaps a better way to post this info would have been to add (OFFTOPIC) in the subject header. Or perhaps to avoid posting it here and submitting it to Slashdot for a whole new news item.

    Just because GNOME is mentioned under a KDE thread doesn't mean it's an attempt to flame. The sad part is that you need to include disclaimers to let people know).

    Very true, and I apologize if I was unnecesarilly rude.

    YAD(yet another disclaimer): English is my second language, so please dont flame me if my grammar is not perfect. ; )

  • KDE set a release date for this BETA. As that date drew near they found it wasn't quite stable enough to call a BETA. So they didn't release one until now.

    Sure there are people who will complain about this but the fact is quality is more important than time.

    As for new features. I have been using the CVS code for a few months now and the UI improvements are truly astounding. There is evidence of this KDE being extremely fast. I haven't bench marked it but it's faster than the old one IMHO.

    KOffice is truly ambitious. I have managed to get real work done in KOffice and some people have actually begin using KPresenter at conferences, What really impresses me though is the OLE like functionality. When you embed bits and pieces of different document types into a Presentation or a KWOrd doc you can edit them in place. The menus change on cue and the whole thing prefers not to crash. It dose keel over but not surprisingly often for a beta program.

    This baby also comes in several languages already. English, German and French have nearly 100% coverage and some others come pretty close. Anyone who speaks another language natively and is fluent in one of these core languages should go join up.

    Finally KWord is in need of developers. Sure there are other programs with manpower problems, even within KDE but KWord is IMHO the most important program for which the lead developer has made a special appeal.
  • looks to be a very nice upgrade, one worthy of bumping the major version number

    It's almost a rewrite - so definitely worth the bump from 1.x to 2.x.

    The inclusion of a lightweight distributed object system is a bonus (early work with the MICO Orb showed that it was simply too heavyweight for a desktop environment), and removes a dependency on a large third party package.

    All in all, KDE seems to represent an ideological alternative to GNOME. GNOME is ideal for hackers and others who love expermentation, tweaking, etc. KDE offers a more consistent and 'monolithic' environment, reflected in their infrequent releases versus the 'release often' philosophy of GNOME.

    I reckon KDE is going to be the 'killer app' of the free software movement - not because it is better or worse than GNOME, but because it meets the needs of ordinary computer users perfectly.

    Here's to version 2.0 of both KDE and GNOME!

    Chris

    Chris Wareham
  • by Rich ( 9681 )
    Most of HTML 4.0 is done. The JavaScript interpreter is there, but not all the DOM bindings are finshed. Java support is there (and is also available via the Java plugin). SSL is there. CSS 1 support is good, CSS2 is incomplete. Netscape plugin support is in.

    Download it and try - I don't think you can call it vapourware when it's there for you to test. Pity you didn't do this before posting...

  • and the fact that just having it siiting there waiting for this kind of handy use doesn't take anything but a little disk space.
  • Uh, people, KDE Debian packages from within the last -- like -- year would be ... um ... helpful?!?!?

    Seriously,

    # apt-get install kde
    Reading Package Lists... Done
    Building Dependency Tree... Done
    E: Couldn't find package kde

    is really getting on my nerves.

    Not everybody uses Red Hat and Mandrake (remember RedHatIsNotLinux), and not everybody has the time and disk space to download and compile all the sources.

  • Maximize works great in GNOME (Helix) when used with sawmill.
  • you really should try it, it's in pretty good shape and in any case it's easy to install it alongside your existing desktop and just switch PATH around to see it.

    You're right that KDE is making a significant jump in the move from CORBA to DCOP and to kparts - but the result is very nice :-).
  • Head on over to OPN (irc.linux.com, irc.debian.org)'s #debian channel, ask apt (the resident blootbot) about kde (/msg apt kde?). /etc/apt/sources.list deb lines will follow.
  • I'm currently running 1.1.2 on my RS/6k (AIX 4.3) - took a little effort, but was amazingly easier to get working than KDE 1.1.1 or GNOME (though blackbox and iceWM worked almost straight out).

    I'll probably wait until 2.0(.x) is out, but has anyone even given any of these pre-2.0 sources a shot? I'd be interested.
  • <a href="http://kde.tdyc.com/Debian">tdyc</a>

  • Okay, if you're reading this, I dug and found something.

    Here [http] we are :-).

    But still, it would be nice if they could go in the main distribution (because KDE, Konqueror, etc. is cool and installing it should be at least as easy as running it).

  • The links listed do not even remotely lead us to the location of the beta files, which Slashdot seems to have a fetish with today (Evolution 0.0!)
  • by EngrBohn ( 5364 ) on Friday May 12, 2000 @04:27AM (#1077179)
    (whiteflag -- no desktop flamewar, please)
    GNOME 1.1.90 [gnome.org] (GNOME 1.2 Beta) also has been released.
    Christopher A. Bohn
  • Seems to be a lack of editorial control! Neither link even vaguely looks like it would lead to any specific files.

    So, are stories vetted properly before they are submitted or rejected, or is it more a case of who the submitter is?

  • Ummm yeah linkage seems to be wrong?? PrehapsMight be of interest?? [kde.org] I still prefer GNOME! (EVOLUTION YEAH!)
  • by Yarn ( 75 )
    its because its a beta. And they want to make sure no poor newbies get nuked systems when they try it. I'm sure thats it. I'd put monopoly money on it.
  • by Anonymous Coward
    I love you all KDE developers. I have been using the KDE snaps for over 1 month now and I am impressed by the speed and all the improvements.

    Once this gets stable, people will come to unix in masses.

    With your desktop project, we will finally and provably have surpassed any MS GUI.

    Now if somebody gives me kvim, the kimp and kwicken, I won't need anything else, ever.
  • Or perhaps some of the responsibility for the omission can be laid at the feet of the person who submitted the story? I agree that the editors should do at least some minimal fact-checking, following of links, etc., but story submitters should do their best to make this as minimal as possible.

  • (whiteflag -- no desktop flamewar, please)

    Then why did you post this?

    I mean, really, cant there be a news item from KDE without the GNOME zealots making propaganda?

    Also, cant there be a GNOME news item without the KDE zealots making propaganda?

    Please, my friend, lets keep the KDE comments in the KDE news items and the GNOME comments in the GNOME news items.

    disclaimer: I use BOTH KDE and GNOME

  • source: ftp://ftp.kde.org/pub/kde/unstable/distribution/

    rpms: ftp://ftp.kde.org/pub/kde/unstable/distribution/rp m/

    Better?


  • Uh... Gimp's UI is not great. It still needs a lot of work. Don't get me wrong, it's a great and powerful program, but the interface is not up to Photoshop standards yet.
  • by RPoet ( 20693 ) on Friday May 12, 2000 @04:36AM (#1077188) Journal
    Oh great, quit.net [quit.net] had this story six hours ago :)

    The announcement/press release is here [kde.org], source code here [kde.org], and binary packages (only RH/Mandrake so far) here [kde.org]. The beta also includes KOffice [kde.org]. There will be two more betas before the final release in September.
    --

  • I guess he meant http://people.redhat.com/bero/experimenta l/ [redhat.com].. but then again there must be a place where you can download the whole thing not just packages..

    Mark Papadakis, WebDeveloper

  • by Anonymous Coward

    All I can say is that the latest version of KDE looks better than ever, and that it's great to finally have a desktop that is slick and powerful. I'm downloading the rpms now, and am looking foward to installing it.

    I have to say that the KDE team have got the right idea. Rather than following some pie in the sky ivory tower ideal of what a desktop should be, they are following in the tried and tested footsteps of the most usable, powerful and popular desktop available at the moment, the Windows one. Since 99% of people who've ever used a computer have grown up using Windows I think that this is a cunning move and is more likely to help Linux than creating some fancy experimental desktop filled with novelty "features" like GNOME.

    If we ever want Linux to succeed then we need to take a big leaf out of Microsoft's book - despite their faults they knew what their customers want and knew how to deliver it, often even before the customer knew. At the moment Linux is merely placing catch-up, and it is time for us to catch up and then take the lead in creating an innovative operating system that can be used by everybody, not just the elite gurus.

  • Now I expect that the poster will get flamed for that, and be told that a monopoly on the desktop is bad, blah blah blah. Well I'm afraid he's right, they should link up, Its obviouse that there is a lot of comonality between the two systems that could be factored out to a seperate project, which can provide a unified API that bridges the gap. Then the KDE and GNOME guys can concentrate on the variablility of there respective systems. This, done right, (which is admitedly hard) would result in the benafits of compeating systems, and the benafits of single targets. App developers can concentrate on supporting the common denominator, if they don't want to support a specific paradime.

    Thad

  • by jbarnett ( 127033 ) on Friday May 12, 2000 @04:40AM (#1077192) Homepage

    Everyone loves screen shots [kde.org]
  • Competition is a good thing -- this way, they're not merely "chasing someone's tail" (from the Halloween Document), but are also driving each other to constant improvement.
    Christopher A. Bohn
  • According to one of the core developers, KDE 2 will with the default installation not demand more of your PC than KDE 1.xx.

    Furthermore KDE 2 is extremely modular, which means that you can configure it to be pretty lightweight.

  • I, for one, always deploy KDE when setting up Linux systems for my customers, be they desktop systems or server systems.

    Why do you install it on servers? Or do you not mean the sort of server that generally sits in a machine room without a monitor attached?

    One of my (many :-) ) objections to using NT as a server platform is the fact that whether it's used or not, you cannot switch off the GUI, let alone not install it.

    Surely you want as little unnescessary stuff on a server as possible?

    That said, I'll certainly be giving it a whirl on my desktop :-)

    Cheers,

    Tim
  • Take a look at what Konqueror supports:

    - HTML 4.0
    - JavaScriptTM
    - Java®
    - CSS-2
    - SSL (Secure Socket Layer for secure communications)
    - Netscape Communicator® plugins (for viewing FlashTM, RealAudioTM, RealVideoTM and similar technologies)

    IMHO, that is *pretty cool*
  • hehe, how can you compare a desktop environment, which consists of many components, with one single window manager process? ;-)

    Oh, that's easy, especially in assembler. Just use the instruction CAO (Compare Apples and Oranges). :-)
    --

  • If you have a beta release it is normally marked as 2.0bn, where you replace n with the beta revision. And as a comparison, Linux kernel 2.3.x is not a beta kernel it is a developmental kernel. Majority of free software uses b or a(for alpha). Just go browse any software archive..
  • It just has to be configured the old-fashioned way - by editing text files and restarting when finished.

    Not particularly user-friendly but you can make it look almost whatever way you want.

    And it's far faster than KWM (or just about everything else), far less bloated than Enlightenment, and can be made as pretty as WindowMaker or as butt-ugly as the now-obsolete TWM.

  • by Otter ( 3800 ) on Friday May 12, 2000 @05:18AM (#1077200) Journal
    If you want to use the KDE applications, without the overhead and screen usage of the desktop, the KDE2 snapshots have been working great in WindowMaker.

    Follow the directions [kde.org] for using KDE 1 and 2 together. Add the line:
    source /opt/kde2/bin/kde2
    to your Xsession or xinitrc or whatever before the line that starts WindowMaker.Add the line:
    kdeinit +kded
    to your autostart file, or:
    kdeinit +kded +kdesktop
    if you want desktop icons. This works with icewm, also, and probably with anything else.

    My one gripe is that kdesktop covers the real root window, which negates the greatest strength of WindowMaker -- 4,752 different Laetitia Casta themes.
  • I mean do we really need every application on our desktop to have the same style and widgets.

    For the first, the second, and the last time, YES. Computer novices have enough trouble learning the difference between, say, checkboxes and radio buttons. It only makes matters worse when there are fifty different styles of checkboxes and radio buttons. Meanwhile, most Windows and Mac applications (knock on wood) have consistent fonts, dialogs, colors, and widgets. Obviously, things aren't perfect, but X apps still have a ways to go before they're as usable as those in other environments.
  • Competition is a good thing -- this way, they're not merely "chasing someone's tail" (from the Halloween Document), but are also driving each other to constant improvement.

    As others have pointed out, a lot of the apps and API's that are coming up seem to be chasing Microsoft's tail.

    i.e. Outlook look-alikes
    Start buttoms and menu bars


    --
  • Uh, is there anything done for KDE which resembles Helixcode [helixcode.com]? Their autoupdater kicks ass. OTOH all those juicy KDE apps (Konqueror, KOffice, KDevelop) are starting to make me salivate.


    "Standing up to an evil system [pcshop.com.br] is exhilarating." --Richard Stallman
  • (replying to one's one reply to one's own comment... that's gotta be one in some big number.)

    Botched the link up.

    Here [tdyc.com].

  • It is simple mathematics. As an open source project gets larger/more features, a tiny segment of the population complains that's it isn't as small as some other program. Just don't bother with these posts. If you listen to these people, you would think KDE requires a minimum of 2GB RAM.
  • Oh Puhleaze!! If you want to know how something is licensed, just go look. To let you know, the libraries are under the LGPL, and the applications are either GPL, AL or BSD. A couple niggly things are under other licenses, but who cares. The whole kit and kaboodle is 100% FREE SOFTWARE.
    So now the QPL is GPL-compatible? Yes, Virginia, there is a difference between "open source" and "GPL-compatible". Last I checked, and this was some time ago (back when QPLv2 was first written), it was not.

    Because of the various provisions of the GPL, this means that, while I have permission to download Qt, and I have permission to download GPL-licensed software, I do not have permission to redistribute GPL-licensed binaries linked with Qt.

    This is why Debian doesn't ship KDE. Because Debian insists on being shipping binary releases, which is not allowed by the combination of GPL and QPL. For a very similar reason, Debian can't ship qmail. (DJB does not allow distribution of binaries from modified source.)

    From what I remember, Red Hat decided to ship KDE only because they believed that the KDE people and/or Troll Tech were taking care of the licensing issue Any Day Now. (Market pressure from Caldera might have had something to do with the decision as well.) This almost happened when TT released the QPLv2, which is almost GPL-compatible. Today, with Red Hat on board (and they were the only major Linux distribution other than Debian that cared much about the GPL violations of the original KDE+Qt), none of the parties involved seem at all interested in going the rest of the distance.

    Most Linux distributions sweep this particular difficulty under the rug. They know that the KDE developers intend for their software to be freely redistributable, ergo nobody is likely to complain about their minor, but very real, license violation. Debian refuses and will continue to refuse to do this, because they believe licensing details, however petty, are important -- and that, if you ignore the "inconvenient" parts, all software licenses are meaningless. You might say Debian are the "strict constitutionalists" of software licensing. (I.e. a license doesn't just mean what I want it to mean, or even what its author wanted it to mean.)

    [While I believe I share Debian's corporate opinion in this matter, I do not actually speak for them.]

  • by whoop ( 194 )
    That's an easy one, it applies to all vapor-complainers. His build is from Kde 1.1.2.
  • Both KDE and GNOME are voluntary projects. There is no Linux King. Everyone can do whatever they want. Freedom reigns within this domain. Asking them to merge is as ludicrous as asking those two neighboring liquor stores on the corner to merge. The only way you're going to do it is to destroy freedom. You'll have to rename it "slave software".
  • Don't whine, most people who use Debian are able to do some stuff themselves and not bitch about the details. Just grab the binaries (rpm or tar.gz will do) and use alien (alien ) to convert them to debs, then dpkg -i

    These are development releases, the developers have better things to do than roll packages for everyone and their dog's version of Linux, plus unless you are getting the source your probably no good to the developers. (ok, some people write docs or submit good bug reports from binaries, but very, very few.)

    Erik
  • Qt 2.1 is compiled by default without jpeg support. I don't know why. If you sit down and type "./configure", you won't get it. Apparently, this is what the RPM makers did. What you need to do is remove the Qt RPM, download Qt 2.1 source, and build it according to directions. You will need to type "./configure -system-jpeg" when configuring to get jpeg support.
  • The GNOME philosophy "release often" is better than KDE approach because developers can get feedback from users more frecuently

    I love the release often philosophy, but it does mean that the GNOME stuff is in a state of constant flux. The October GNOME release addressed this to some extent, but for the casual user upgrading must be confusing. The KDE Krash and 1.9x releases are an attempt at the release often approach by the KDE team. Given that many people see KDE as an ideal way of moving from Windows, the apparent infrequency of releases must be reassuringly like the release schedule of Windows service packs.

    On the other hand, if you download the nightly KDE 2.0 snapshots, you can get a "release very often" KDE experience!


    Chris Wareham
  • Sorry, if you've seen this interview [slashdot.org] at /., you'd know why

    # apt-get install kde

    results in

    E: Couldn't find package kde

    Short story: QPL (see #2 in the a.m. link).

  • by IGnatius T Foobar ( 4328 ) on Friday May 12, 2000 @04:41AM (#1077213) Homepage Journal
    Kudos to the KDE team for yet another job well done. KDE will be a crucial set of packages for the rise of Linux on the desktop, for two important reasons:
    • It is easy to use
    • It offers a consistent user experience. I can't stress this enough. One thing Microsoft has over us is that a user can sit down in front of any Windows machine and know where to expect to find the usual set of tools and buttons. KDE places emphasis on a consistent user experience as well, and I think this is very important if we want Linux to start showing up on more desktops.
    I, for one, always deploy KDE when setting up Linux systems for my customers, be they desktop systems or server systems. KDE 2.0 looks to be a very nice upgrade, one worthy of bumping the major version number. Viva la revolucion!

    --
  • Links

    ftp://ftp.nebsllc.com/kde2

    ftp://mandrakesoft.com/pub/molnarc

    http://www.htw-dresden.de/~s2697

    Also of interest

    http://www.kde.org/mirrors.html

    The beta is quite fast, fairly stable, and rather pretty. It has some problems, notably filemanager stability with JS, Java, and multiple windows, but it does embed its viewers for graphics and text well, is configurable, and renders slashdot, supporting cookies etc. That was of course, the important test ;-)
  • I dunno, to me this post seemed perfectly appropriate. It is after all related, KDE (a desktop environment) released a beta of their next version. GNOME (another desktop environment) also released a beta of their next version. I personally did not know about the GNOME beta before this post, I'm sure there are others who would also be interested. Just because GNOME is mentioned under a KDE thread doesn't mean it's an attempt to flame. The sad part is that you need to include disclaimers to let people know).

    -matt

  • ugh, these are horribly outdated ;-) . We should make some fresh ones :-)
  • Here's my suggestion: any comment containing the word "GNOME" in a story whose topic is "KDE" -- and vice versa -- automatically gets moderated down to -500.

    --
  • While I agree with you, I don't think that developers should just try to copy the MS look and feel.

    The most important aspect of KDE (2.0 expecially) is it's customizability. You can make the think look like windows or the mac, + power users can customize it to be more powerfull.

    We need to strive to 100% customizability in GUIs. You can have default templates that look like windows, but the best WM will be the one that is most customizable.
  • Read the site. All these features are *planned*. They aren't even done with the HTML 4.0. Most of those features are still vapor.
  • by Anonymous Coward
    Where are you comig from?

    I use a 200mhz Pentium MMX with 32 meg. of ram at home.
    Kde 1.12 (the latest stable version) runs comfortably with
    very little swap usage and several desktops and many apps
    running. Never has my swap been over 25 meg. unless doing
    HEAVY compiling in the background while also doing other
    things. Also, I use lots of graphics and it performs well with
    my cheap, onboard AGP video card at 16 bpp (800x600).

    Kde is not a window manager. Kde includes a window manger
    but can be used with almost any wm. More than anything
    it's a development system for apps, with certain optional
    desktop features if you want to use them, or use them all with
    the default kde widow manager, kwm. (now kwin in 2.0).

    If you have 192 megs of ram, what are you running in the
    background?

    Regarding the masses whining for what they want, at least
    someone is listening to the sound of that whining and trying
    to make it unnecessary. Kde has lots of superficial similarities
    to the Windows desktop, but I find it more like OS2. I'm a
    former OS2 developer who worked on the OS2 2.x product
    that led to "Warp". Also, please remember that most of the
    features the masses associate with Windows were not
    invented by MS, such as the bar at the bottom with the "start"
    menu and so on. They first appeared in Amiga, Mac, OS2 or
    even commercial X desktops long before MS implemented
    them after people complained and complained about the
    limitations of the Windows 3.x "program manager" if you are
    old enough to remember that. Actually, almost all of these
    features were implemented as contributions from IBM
    developers done in their spare time and made available
    with source long before open source became a buzz word.

    Regardless of some similarities with Windows, OS2 and Mac
    desktops, Kde is something new done from scratch for the
    unix desktop.

    I have built some of the snapshots during the past month
    leading up to this release (1.90). You can expect some bugs
    and incomplete features but the improvement in speed over
    the past month has been remarkable. It should be a fairly
    usable desktop environment even in this first beta release
    for most things and integrates nicely with an existing kde 1.x
    installation and with Gnome apps.

    thank you, kde developers!

  • I just put the RPMS on Mandrake 7.1Beta. It looks REALLY sharp and Konqueror is GREAT. One problem though. I don't seem to have JPEG support. They dont show up on web pages and I can't use JPEG files as wallpaper. Anyone else see this? Got a fix?
  • They forgot kdemultimedia?? People seem to like those mixer thingies and they forget to include it?!
  • It's sad that something as simple as maximizing is a big reason I like KDE over Gnome, but KDE 1.0 and 1.1 always always maximized correctly. Now 1.9 maximizes full screen, either covering the panel or going behind it.

    ARGH. It's great otherwise. I can't believe such an obvious bug would be left in! Is there an easy fix or does it need to be done in source?
  • Why can't the KDE/qt people and the Gnome/gtk+ people link up and stop wasting time on two competing API's for a market that is two small to support 2?

    By the way, I think the email program to be released with KDE 2.0 is Magellan, which looks much more slick than Evolution (which is for Gnome).

    Magellan: http://zamolxe.csis.ul.ie/Magellan/in dex.html [csis.ul.ie]


    --
  • I dont mean in terms of distrobution size, i mean in terms of processing power required and memory gobbled.

    Last time i used KDE i found that it was a unresponsive as compared to say twm (bad comparision, as KDE has the bars at the top and bottom &tc [perhaps i should say more features]). But i felt as a WM it was just to heavy for me to use comfortably (Celeron333 +192MB RAM) I hope that as they have progressed towards 2.0 that they have tweaked it a little.

    I know that i have the source and all that, but really i wouldn't know what to do with that source.

    Has open source turned into the masses whining for what they want and the few (big few) who impliment it?


    .sig = .plan = NULL;
    http://www.alladvantage.com/go.asp?refid=HVZ895
  • all kdelibs stuff is under LGPL. kde apps are GPL. There are some exceptions, like some MIT, BSD and Artistic licensed components.
  • by Anonymous Coward
    \quote{
    Only a KDE bigot would want to rewrite a program that has a good UI and is compatible because they want to change the name to kimp from gimp. :-)
    }

    I love the gimp. But I think the gimp would profit from a better GUI. The current one with 1000 submenues (I know you can drag them off...) is usable, but I like the simple elegance of most KDE apps. Plus: KDE Themability

    Fortunately I have just read the a gimp-compatible KDE program is planned. (kphotoshop or something like that). Maybe the gimp will become GUI-independent. (Not likely.... GTK :-) )

    BTW: The gimp saves horrible EPS files. (10 times the size of imagenagicks convert) Anyone know why?

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