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KDE GUI

KDE 2.1 Is Out 131

Posted by HeUnique from the and-it's-a-great-one dept.
Well, it's here -- the KDE 2.1 final version. You can find the official (and lengthy) press release here as well as the locations to download the various packages. I have been playing with this version for a week (took the tagged version which went to packagers) and I can definitely say that it is very stable and fast. You can also read a small review here. Good work, KDE team.Update: 02/27 12:05 AM by T : Check out the change logs, as provided by seanr, and enjoy the "major improvements" pointed to by Andrew Coles in Konqueror and KMail, as well as "the addition of the excellent IDE KDevelop, as well as the modular new multimedia player noatun."
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KDE 2.1 is out More

KDE 2.1 is out

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  • Re:I have had a fearful thought.... (Score:4)

    by Dr.Dubious DDQ ( 11968 ) on Monday February 26, 2001 @03:25PM (#400157) Homepage
    I am extremely worried about this. What is to be done for Gnome? Someone will have to bring it on quite a lot if it is to remain valid from a Prima Facie, shallow & unthinking users perspective.

    "Worried"? I can't tell if this is a troll, satire, or what, but...I'll tell you what's to be done for Gnome.

    A whole bunch of people will continue to add features, fix bugs, and optimize it, perhaps occasionally spotting something in KDE that they like which they may then, if they feel the urge, translate into something for Gnome. Meanwhile, the same thing will be going on in the KDE camp. The open competition between the two will result in two really serious, kick-butt "desktop environments" to choose from as both projects benefit.

    The alleged "war" between the two projects seems to be mostly fictional to me. I don't forsee either project harming the other in any meaningful way, any time in the near future. But then, maybe I'm just feeling happily optimistic because I just finished downloading KDE 2.1.... :-)


    ---
    "They have strategic air commands, nuclear submarines, and John Wayne. We have this"
  • I think you're missing the point. Mozilla is not _just_ a browser. It's a development platform. And thus, its taken a long time to build. Were it just a browser, you could say that it took a long time to build. In addition, Mozilla is _not_ a GNOME project. It doesn't even really use GTK.

    Instead of thinking of Mozilla as a browser, think of it as a replacement for GNOME/KDE rather than a component of them. Look at what it has:

    it's own Object Model, with its own Object Protocol
    It's own widget set
    It's own theming engine
    It's own language
    The ability to house many applications that aren't just web-browser specific

    Its a whole system to itself. Its _not_ just a browser. Now, whether or not it was a good idea to be a whole system to itself is up for debate. But don't compare Mozilla to Konqueror. If anything, compare Mozilla to GNOME or KDE.
  • You did not even bothered to read my comment, so you should be moded down!
  • Of course you can use gtk/gnome apps in kde, but then you load up whatever libraries a gtk/gnome app needs and that's just jacking up your memory usage. I do switch between KDE and GNOME (depends on my mood, how bored I am) andif i'm in GNOME, I only want to use Gtk/Gnome Apps. Same for KDE only using qt/kde apps.
  • Actually, Mozilla is usably fast, if you embed it in something else. What makes Mozilla slow is the fact that much of the web-browsing logic is written in JavaScript. So, if you use Mozilla embedded in Galeon, it is much, much faster.
  • there is still one area where gnome is leaps and bounds ahead of kde.

    every time kde comes out with a new release (and usually several times between releases) i will download it, compile it and mess areound with it for a while. on a technical basis, i agree that the kde project is astounding. it is miles ahead of gnome. but yet, every time, i end up (somewhat regretfully) going back to gnome. and it has nothing to do with how kde looks. the fact of the matter is that i just can't do what i want with kde. i would gladly use a less attractive system, if it would allow me to get my work done better. but so far kde has only hindered my work, and i have yet to find a kde setup where i can be as productive as with gnome. so here is a list of reasons why i still use gnome (and if the kde developers are listening, if you could change just a few of these, i would love to switch to kde.)

    1) there's no way around it. the window manager sucks ass. it's almost completely unconfigurable. what if i want a double click to lower the window instead of shading it? what if i want to bind window manger commands to the windows key? (that's what it's there for, isn't it? the start menu is useless, and wasting a keyboard key to activate it is even more pointless...) and half of the commands i use aren't even available to be bound... vertical maximize, anyone?

    im told that there is a kde windowmanager interoperability spec that several windowmanagers have pledged support for, but last i tried, no other window manger worked well with kde. maybe this is better now, but im not getting my hopes up.

    2) root menus. root menus are not a part of the window manager, they are a part of the 'desktop'. which i suppose conceptually makes sense somewhat, but practically, it's quite annoying. it means that if i want to use the kde file manager desktop, i also have to use the almost completely unconfigurable kde root menus. yes i realize there is a menu editor, but even ms realised in time for windows 98 that just putting files in a directory was no way to build a menu. in kde there is no way to sort items in a menu other than by the order the files appear in a directory, which means all submenu entries are in front of all application entries, and each set is sroted alphabetically. now you can kinda hack your way around the alphabetic thing by putting numbers in front of your menu items, but there's now way around the submenu thing. you see, 95% of the time i open the root menu, it's to start a terminal. which means it should only be logical that the first thing on my menu would be a terminal. the only way to do this in kde is to name the file 0_terminal, and not have any submenu 's in my root menu (which isn't really possible anyway, because kde always puts the system menus in there even if you get rid of all of your own.

    3) since i mentioned it, the whole desktop thing. what's wrong with just painting the file manager icons on the root window? why do they have to make their own desktop? this makes it almost impossible to use another window manager. as if it wasn;t hard enough already....

    4) when i select an entire line in the konsole and paste it into another konssole (or other app), why doesn;t it paste the newline? i wouldn't select the entire line if i didn't want to paste the entire line.

    5) the themes suck, they're all tacky. it's quite possible to make attractive themes without pixmaps. there are a number of very nice theme engines for gtk+ which are every bit as technically advanced as the kde theming mechanism, and they look ten times nicer. (note this isn't as big a deal. as i said, i would gladly use an ugly environment if it made me more productive)

    6) there is almost nothing i dislike about konqueror. i loved using it even after i stopped using kde in general. except that gnome's session manager would constantly give me errors. i dont know if the problem was with gnome or konqueror, but i thought the session management between the two systems was supposed to be compatible.

    but for all my complaints i think the kde developers are doing a great job. keep up the good work, and i look forward to trying out the new release.
  • >BTW, they say keep calling this a "desktop war", but can't we refer to this as a sporting event?
    >So what if we both get a little bloody... this is FUN! And tell me we both don't realize
    >that the competition is just making us stronger.

    It depends on what sports it is. For example, I'd rather think of it as a war than as NHL, or worse, XFL...
  • I'm working from gcc 2.95.2, and it does give benifit from -march=pentiumpro. Most of the ppro core(aplicable to ppro,p2,p3) changes were merged from pgcc into normal gcc a while ago. I didn't reccomend using pgcc bacause a) most people don't have it, and b) because my version dies of an internal compiler error part way through kde2. If you're willing to use regular gcc to handle the few offending files, pgcc's a good choice. Oh, and I have no clue what mandrake ships with their distro.
  • I would optomize for the version of Intel chip that the AMD chip tries to emulate. Don't use any of the -march directives, since they create intel-only instructions. I would suggest -mpentium. Oh, and there's gotta be some AMD optomized compilers out there, but I don't know anything about them. As to gcc 3.0, it hasn't shippped yet(has it?) so YMMV big time.
  • SourceForge, frigging slashdotted.

    Next mirror, please.

    --
  • set the folowing options for all qt and kde:
    -O3
    -mpentiumpro (or -march=pentiumpro for ppro only objs)
    OK, we now have what I call the Mandrake Problem. Some of us still use perfectly good 486en. So, are we now shipping two versions? Or are we rendering several tons of perfectly good hardware useless?

    One wonders what an -O3 by itself would do. Is this a good compromise? One of the things that makes Linux so popular is the fact that it runs on darn near anything. I think being architecture-exclusionary like this is a Big Mistake. (No, I don't expect something as big as KDE to run on some 286 boatanchor. But once we start down that path, the next thing you know, I'll have to run out and buy an Athlon board, or sully my network with Intel snoopware. No, thankee.)

    Yes, it's a flame. But it's a mild flame, complete with a solution, and G-rated. I've seen worse.

    --
    I'm altering the bargain. Pray I do not alter it further.

  • Oh right, because everyone knows that gcc is only used on x86 platforms... not.

    I doubt that Intel can pull off a decent C++ implementation anyway, even if it is expensive, proprietary, and platform specific. It seems no one else ever has.

    The Bible is not my book, and Christianity is not my religion.

  • Re:KDE: one of the most successful OSS projects (Score:3)

    by fishbowl ( 7759 ) on Monday February 26, 2001 @08:18PM (#400169)
    Absolutely every one of the programs you mentioned
    works fine on kde. I don't understand the attitude of "either/or" when it comes to this stuff. Just because I have Kde does not mean I can't use Gnome, gimp, any other GTK app. There
    seems to be a common misunderstanding about this,
    and it should be clarified.



  • " When connecting to: wellsfargo.com

    Send user agent string: Pick any of the Netscape4, IE4 or IE5 options. "

    It does not work. This feature is broken in the 2-21 snapshot, today's snapshot, and in the new deb's. For one thing, the ADD button stays greyed out. If you put a "*" in the match field, it doesnt save the config. I've tried to fix this but it will take a while for my build to finish.
    I submitted a bug report.

  • Competition breeds excellence (Score:5)

    by The Deep Blue Funk ( 241687 ) on Monday February 26, 2001 @08:26PM (#400171)
    I've used both Gnome and KDE. They're both very impressive although I prefer KDE myself. The two desktops have got to be the most ambitious and successful free software projects ever, up there with gcc, the Linux kernel, the various BSD OS's, Apache, Perl, and Python (among many others).

    One thing that doesn't get said often is, Gnome was probably the greatest thing to ever happen to KDE. Without the heat from the Gnome folks, would stuff like KDevelop, KOffice, KDE's component architecture, and a zillion other things ever have happened? Or would the developers have been satisfied to merely create a CDE-like thing, basically just an integrated window manager, toolbar, file manager, and help system plus a moderate collection of basic apps?

    Likewise, if the KDE developers had just stuck to the basic architecture of 1.x, would the Gnome people have been inspired to come as far as they have? I keep hearing people complain about how awful it is that we have two different major desktops, but I bet that if both groups of developers had been working together on a single desktop from day one, that the results would not be nearly as impressive as either of our choices now.

    For those who are concerned about the situation, keep in mind that this is not a situation where you have two incompatible, warring standards. Gnome and KDE are not mutually exclusive choices, as both are merely sets of libraries and apps built on top of X. Gnome-based apps run under KDE and vice-versa; the two environments easily coexist on the same system. Having this kind of a choice makes Unix systems very unique compared to Windows or MacOS. Having a choice between two very mature desktops will draw far more people than it will drive away in confusion.

  • Please, Konquerer may be very nice, but there is absolutely no way that it can be considered ahead of Mozilla.
  • To a new user they're going to pick the one that has the coolest name during the install/setup. Gnome sounds cooler then KDE. Then, once they've installed the cooler named gnome, they'll get used to it quickly, and not untill they come way more into the linux world will they realize they can chose even after the install. I personally think they should change KDEs name to something better, even "Makes Gnome bend over and take it" (Even though I don't really prefer one over the other.. I use both, and couldn't be a happier llama, it's just an idea).

  • Re:I'm confused (Score:3)

    by dfaure ( 115987 ) on Monday February 26, 2001 @03:33PM (#400174) Homepage
    No, the point is that http://ftp.kde.org automatically redirects to a mirror, most often sourceforge... which hasn't updated yet :(

    Be patient (I didn't think it would take so much time to get there :)

  • Re:Another non cross platform API/GUI (Score:3)

    by Dr.Dubious DDQ ( 11968 ) on Monday February 26, 2001 @03:34PM (#400175) Homepage
    KDE is not really cross platform

    Sure it is! It runs on BOTH operating systems, Linux and BSD! :-)

    (Sorry, "Blues Brothers" flashback. ["What kind of music to you get here?" "Oh, we got BOTH kinds, Country and Western..."])


    ---
    "They have strategic air commands, nuclear submarines, and John Wayne. We have this"
  • Huh? The link is http://www.kde.org/mirrors.html [kde.org]. Am I missing something?
  • With the -march=pentiumpro option, it's generating instructions that only i686 CPUs will understand. With -mpentiumpro, it simply arranges the instructions for optimal execution on a Ppro. As far as I'm aware, Red Hat compiles with -march=i386 -mpentiumpro so that it's optimized for Ppro, but still runs on a 386. Mandrake does -march=i586, I believe.
  • I'm new to linux, and Im a very big IE fan. I still think w98 is a better desktop os than linux, but I'm currently using kde 2.0.

    As much as I love IE, I prefer browsing in konqueror 2.0. The things it does as good as ie:

    The fonts look fine in mandrake 7.2, I can easily configure it to respond to the backspace key, it has good page history support, mouse wheel, same important key bindings, lets me have 15 browsers loaded in 128M with no swapping.

    What I like better than IE 5.5 is better autocompletion, handling of missing www, google search with ? keyword.

    The only truely annoying things missing in kde 2.0 are incomplete clipboard support, and lack of a Send to... link for files.

    Though I can appreciate your importance for loading all pages correctly, konqueror is a worthwile browser, and the only reason I'd ever bother booting into linux.
  • I use "-O2 -mpentium" on my system and the speedup with X/Q/K is amazing compared to a straight -O2
  • Do you still want the same exact default decorations that were in KDE-2.0? Just select the Laptop decorations.
  • I'm not trying to count anything against anything. I'm just pointing out the difference between a GNOME app and a GTK app. Grip compiled and ran without GNOME on my Linux From Scratch install just fine, so it really can't be called a GNOME app. On the other hand, I had to compile a statically linked Pan binary on my Mandrake install to use in LFS, since Pan uses some stuff in gnome-libs.
    A really good application would have the UI separated from the functionality, and be buildable for Qt (with/without KDE), Gtk (w/w Gnome), Motif (w/w CDE), and perhaps Xaw and tty from the same source.
    I don't see much wrong with requiring a certain toolkit, but yeah, it would be best if the UI was separate from the functionality - at least from my perspective (I'm not a programmer). A good example is the aforementioned LICQ - it defaults to a QT-based GUI, but you can ditch that in favor of a GTK or console-based UI because its UI is handled by plugins.
  • i am surfing with Konquerer right now, and have to say that i am more than impressed. it is a very mature and fast browser. but the fact is that the latest nightly builds of mozilla are faster and just feel more solid on my system. Konq has come really really far really fast, but people need to be honest, it still has a bit of catchup to do with mozilla. keep up the good work KDE people, i'm quite glad there is a strong competitive free browser out there.


  • I'd love to be able to demonstrate how wonderful KDE and OSS projects are to my disbelieving coworkers...

    Unfortunately, I can't. We all use Solaris here, and the last version of KDE that even pretended to run under Solaris was 2.0. And it does a damn poor job at that. KDE 2.0.1 looks beautiful on my Linux desktop, but we can't do that for production servers.

    So all I can do is say, lamely, "Well, it works really really well... on one platform..." And that makes my disbelieving coworkers... correct.

  • All the local mirrors are empty...anyone have a good place to dl 2.1?
  • Pan?! Pan doesn't even hold a candle to slrn! It doesn't do URL sensitisation, doesn't follow the usual news reader "spacebar does the next obvious thing" rule, and is generally a lot of work to actually use. Has promise, maybe, but it's not useful yet...
  • You make a good point. I could have just "cheered" on KDE, but there was a reason I brought up GNOME. My post was mostly a wake-up call. /. has often been referred to as pro-GNOME, which is fine I guess. However, I've watched KDE evolve so much over the past year (all the 2.0 betas, hehe.. those were fun!) yet it seems that the achievements of the KDE team are rarely acknowledged here.

    It's funny, because I've seen posts where people say they choose GNOME because of the icon style. Please tell me there is a better reason to use GNOME than that! The fact is that KDE redid most of it's underlying architecture for 2.x, and while not visually significant, it is the reason for all of the rapid development of applications. I wanted to point out that there really is a difference between KDE and GNOME.

    -Justin

  • Re:Konqueror (Score:2)

    by Anonymous Coward
    And IIRC I closed that bug report with and explanation why this not a bug, but an intentional change. But just in case I did not let me state it here as well. We no longer support blind "*" matches!! I see no reason why we should pretend to be what we are not if the web page renders prefectly fine with konqueror's default useragent setting. That is why I decided not to support such generic take all matches any longer. Of course you are welcome to change that for yourself.

    There are few very valid arguments why I did this. First, pretending to be another browser (specially IE) under some circumstances causes more problems where there would have been none (reverse breakage) if the default user-agent or any other useragent string was used. It also put us into this catch-22 where we end up encouraging website operators to ignore our existence! As you know the only other reason besides marketing that has some effect of forcing many website operators to consider supporting set standards is for them to see which clients access their servers and thus we should not encourage cloaking if we want them to notice our existence and quit their exclusions. Additionally, we also do not to loose bug reports that will actually allow us to fix any missing features :)

    BTW, if you look hard enough under kdenonbeta, there is a plugin that would make setting this values very simple on a needed-to basis. It is not yet complete hence no announcement about it yet...

    Regards,
    Dawit A.

  • The alleged "war" between the two projects seems to be mostly fictional to me.

    Except that de Icaza has gone on record saying that he thinks KDE'rs should switch to Gnome [cnet.com] and he recognizes that "the two desktops are competing." Okay, that's not exactly a "war," but I'd interpret the entirety of the statements in his interview as being slanted against KDE. If not a battle of words, then maybe a skirmish.

  • Huh ?
    Name one thing mozilla has that konqueror doesn't have - please -

    I'm writing this in Netscape - which is slow, ugly, and crashes frequently. I have been using Mozilla, which is much slower and crashes about as frequently - looks pretty though. And I have been using Konqueror 2.0, which is very fast compared to the two other monsters, but also crashes about as frequently as the old Netscape.

    I have a lot more faith in Konqueror than I have in Mozilla, and I'm really looking forward to seeing what they've been up to while I haven't been following...

    Oh, did I mention, I used Konqueror in GNOME, because while it doesn't fit into the look and feel (QT instead of GTK+), well, neither does mozilla or netscape ;)

    Please, let me know what it is that mozilla has..
  • *COUGH* Excuse me? XUL, MathML, cross platform, DOM support, and you can't exactly just cast off JavaScript as insignificant...

  • What's KDE? What's Linux?

    KDE stands for "Kid: DAMN Excellent!!"[1]
    At least it does in this release =)))

    Now if only I can get at the binaries!!! You call those mirrors?? Where's instantly indexing, synchronistically diffuse P2P [everything2.com] when you freakin' need it??!! Pshaw. In my day, we could sneaker' [everything2.com] a new rpg [everything2.com] around the earth faster than than the time it takes to get kde.org [kde.org] to freakin' resolve (yeah, I mean DNS), let alone let us peek at the dough.
    My God, what is this world coming to?

    -
    3-state.

    ps. "Linux", FYI, is a flavor of power known to the geniuses among us simply as Catharsis. You try spending seven hours of your night recompiling your kernel and tell me that doesn't get your mind off your ex. Go on. I dare ya'. I tell you, that CPU just hums smoother when it's running rock-hard code.


    [1] is "kid" for "dude" solely a Bostonism? It sounds perfectly normal to me...

  • Just a little rant from the real world:

    In our institute, KDE is installed by default on all boxes (we have SuSE ...). Nobody (well, maybe one out of ten) understands the difference between KDE and a simple window manager like fvwm, in fact most people do not even understand that a kvt is not an xterm (there is no tek support in kvt - just had to explain someone that his app will not run in an kvt for this reason ...).

    In practice, there are two camps in our institute: those who know how to replace KDE with a simple window manager, and those who don't. As for the features KDE offers, none of the two camps cares. Personally, I would rather use GNOME than KDE, just because KDE looks too much 'buissness-like', but I have no use for either of them, so it's just enlightenment 0.16 for me.

  • AFAIK: XUL. More Complete DOM and ECMAScript. MathML. Cross Platform.

    Now, I'm not trying to dis on Konquerer, but it really isnt in the same league as Mozilla.

  • I will not be writing it for the x86, I will be writing for X-Windows, which is very protable (any ways Darwin runs on X86 so they don't have to do any kernel hacking.).
  • Yea, but remote objects (in many different forms!) have been around for many many years and STILL nobody uses them. There are bad ideas, and good ideas (not to be confused with cool ideas). This is just one of the former.
  • Remote Objects are now big with the Mac OS X (aka OpenSTeP aka NeXTSTeP aka mach kernal).

    Almost of the remote objects came from research from CMU.
  • Does GNOME have any comparable programs? Star Office? Mozilla? Abiword? Those are not even GNOME programs, although they can be "GNOME-ified" (Galeon, Open Office). There is Nautilis, but that is an outside project as well. If we want to talk about outside projects, I could bring up [TheKompany], but there is no need. The core KDE team does enough work themselves to warrant this posting.

    AbiWord is a Gnome program. In fact it is shipping with Gnome 1.4 Fifth Toe, a collection of applications outside of Gnome proper that work well with Gnome. AbiWord now ships in two versions, straight gtk+ and Gnome.

    There are many successful Gnome applications out there. First of all I'd like to address your point you make about Nautilus being an "outside project." If you spent any time in #gnome or #nautilus on gimpnet you might know what I mean. Nautilus is in Gnome CVS and receives thousands of manhours outside of Eazel in terms of development, testing, and ideas. Eazel and Ximan, two companies who do Gnome development are made up of some of the best Gnome hackers around who are very much a part of the community. There are also many successful Gnome applications which receive no corporate sponsorship, though I don't see why that should be a sticking point (all the code is GPL'd and community involvement is encouraged). GStreamer, The Gimp (Gnome-ification such as using Bonobo as a component framework is planned), GnomeICU (the best ICQ client I've see yet), Gabber (the best jabber client for Linux/Unix I've seen yet, gPhoto, Gnumeric (An amazing piece of software with very elegant code), GnuCash, X-Chat, etc. Not to mention Evolution, Ximian Setup Tools, and Red Carpet, offered by Ximian. With an estimated over half-million downloads of the Ximian distribution of the Gnome 1.2 desktop, Sun and HP announcing they will Ship Gnome 2.0 (replacing the long time Unix Desktop CDE) in their Unix offerings, Dell to ship Gnome on their Linux desktops and laptops, tools falling into place rapidly to provide a full-featured Office suite (Open Office + Gnumeric, AbiWord, Sodipodi, Guppi, touxdoux and the other Gnome Office apps), system administration (XST), PIM and Groupware (Evolution) all built around an outstading architecture including a component model built around a long-time standard in the unix world (CORBA) and modeled heavily after a proven component architecture, Microsoft's COM, I'd say that's a success. Sorry, a long winded answer to a simple question. The short answer is Yes.

    There's no reason GNOME can't catch up, but at this point KDE is obviously ahead of GNOME, but that's a given since KDE started first anyway. I disagree. KDE has strengths over Gnome and vice versa. I personally use Gnome because it has the features/look&feel/applications that I want and no other desktop provides. And I'm a developer and am extremely excited about the Gnome framework, especially stuff coming down the pipes. Keep your eyes and ears open, folks. The next couple of years are going to be crazy!

    Congratulations to the KDE team for their hard work on the release. Kudos! I look forward to further cooperation between Gnome and KDE. I think a unified component architecture (like is planned for XP-COM, UNO, and Bonobo) would be particularly exciting.
    ----

  • Can somebody tell me how to feed options like this to RPM when building SRPMS? Do you have to edit the specfile?

    TIA
    DA
  • Pan is probably the best free newsreader for any platform,

    Though Pan is a great newsreader it's far from the best newsreader. Try have a look at NewRog, it doesn't get better than that!

    Grip (the best CD player/ripper combo)

    Doesn't work with dagrab on my system.

    GnomeICU

    Just plain sucks, use everybuddy instead.

    Bjarne
  • You get a bit too enthusiastic about Gnome's Corba solution. Facts and Miguels fiction are quite a bit apart.

    CORBA alone buys you nothing. However optimized, it would always be an enormous overkill for a simple IPC protocol. What's important is the object model for the 'components' aka 'parts'. Right now, there is OLE/ActiveX (on top of (D)COM), and the new CORBA object model (basically derived from Java) for CORBA. Now Mozilla has created its own object model based on shared libs, and so has KDE. In the case of KDE the developer doesn't have to learn really new interfaces, the KParts services are very easily leveraged. With GNOME, the case is different: developers have to learn a completely new interface, and adapt their programs to it. Bonobo is basically a copy of MS COM, just on top of a CORBA orb. That means, it can neither interact with the "real" CORBA object model directly (without considerable wrapping code), nor can it communicate with "real" COM, as it will probably be implemented by WINE. So, in GNOME, you get the worst of both worlds...

    KDE, in the meantime, can use their (non-distributed) object model without much effort, and use CORBA as well, in places where it makes sense (distributed server apps...). And with KDE 3.0, if the need arises, they can still introduce a distibuted (GUI) object model, preferably the one that has arisen as the most widely accepted standard. So while KDE's object model provides fast performance, GNOME's object model provides fast performance, easy network transparency, and is potentially portable to other ORBS running on other platforms.

  • KDE has many merits, and probably the reason for its success has much to do with the use of Qt. Talk about toolkit wars you want, but the KDE team chose Qt even when it wasn't GPL. The decision was clearly based on technical capability. Just visit Trolltech's site to see a small list of big companies that have invested in Qt. And the toolkit is fully cross-platform. There is clearly no toolkit of comparison.

    Cross-platform mostly means: Windows and Linux, I guess. But anyway, there is a crazy idea which keeps nagging at me. With Windows, you can change the desktop manager which you use. Default is the Windows Explorer, which give you the familiar look and feel. But you could change it for example to the Taskmanager, and do away with all the stuff the Explorer provides (like the taskbar, etc). You know what I'm aiming at: if KDE can be built using something like Cygwin, with the Windows-version of Qt, you could replace the desktop manager of Windows with KDE.

    Theoretically. Please tell me if I'm wrong. I don't know how much KDE relies on specific Linux internals.

  • it seems like linux is no more linux but merly a sum of linux and Gnome OR linux and kde. Some people forget that it having the power to choose is one of the many powers linux has(sometimes confuses new LU). It's still about the same motivation. we want someting that is good, free an for everyone Mpost of the replys that follow are nothing but why the other should use their Desktop, maybe Thinkgeek can star making TShirts with "the cops are following us because we use kde son, the use gnome"...
  • XUL-This just makes Moz more bloated and slower. Also less consistant with the rest of the desktop. Konqueror runs on Unix and that is all the cross platform that anyone needs.

    DOM-Do you have any facts that say that Moz's dom support is superior. I don't know a whole lot about Moz, but I know(from looking at code) that Konqueror is built around DOM(Supports DOM 1 and partially DOM2).

    ECMAScript-KDE2.0 had some problems, but 2.1 has very complete support. I would argue that Konqu is currently ahead of Moz.

    MathML-Sound great, but very few people care.

    Cross Platform-It runs on Unix and this is all that I need:)

    Matt Newell

  • Re:KDE: one of the most successful OSS projects (Score:3)

    by Ig0r ( 154739 ) on Monday February 26, 2001 @03:51PM (#400204)
    Personally, I like the seperate-ness of GNOME.

    KDE seems to try to be a monolithic UI that controls everything, while GNOME seems to take a more modular approach. GNOME allows me to mix-and-match the programs I prefer and still have a consistant UI (I wish mozilla would at least have an option for letting GTK/QT handle it's widgets), that allows for greater flexability/configuration but does lead to occasional conflicts and slowdowns.

    I do use KDE apps alongside GNOME though, which is nice to have that option. I use konq for light browsing/ftp stuff. I don't bother with koffice because abiword suits my wordprocessing needs.

    The friendly competition between desktop environments will ensure that both are better because of it.

    --
  • Umm, about .01% of the computing population uses remote objects. There decision seems to have been that standard communications methods based on TCP/IP are more efficient than doing networking through the object system, and that the other benifets of network objects (not having objects locally) was really outweighed by powerful clients and fast networks. So in the end, you have a lighter, more universally usable object system with less *wow* factor and no REAL disadvantages. I think it was a good decision. (BTW, COM kicks CORBA's ass. CORBA is just too much technology to be used everywhere in a desktop environment. COM (minus the MS crap) is just ABCs exported by DLLs. Can't get much simpler than that.)
  • XUL is eye candy.
    DOM might be useful, but not yet.
    ECMAScript support seems good enough on Konqueror.
    MathML: What uses it?
    Cross platform: Who cares? There are two platforms, *NIX and Windows. (BeOS is too superior to be considered in this discussion ;) If you're on *NIX, Konqueror works. If you're on Windows, you're already using IE.

  • Re:I have had a fearful thought.... (Score:4)

    by Rich ( 9681 ) on Monday February 26, 2001 @04:08PM (#400207) Homepage
    XUL is very similar to our XMLGUI and serves the same purpose. I suspect ours is actually more powerful, but if some can show a way that XUL is better we'll listen.

    MathML isn't actually part of the default Mozilla I believe, and while it is extremely useful for a small number of people it is not something people are screaming for. If there is a demand for it then I'm sure it will arrive at some point, if necessary we could simply embed that part of Mozilla using XParts as a short term solution.

    Cross-platform is a rather loose term. We support pretty much anything that runs X, and Konqueror is also available for embedded devices. We don't support Win32 or Mac though.

    I guess you haven't checked out the DOM support, or the JavaScript in 2.1 - have you actually used it at all? You'll find it pretty impressive.

    I think we support pretty much everything that that's in common use at the moment, and that we can add emerging stuff pretty quickly. We also have the advantage of having made a number of stable releases.


  • Yes, I'd like to know this too...

  • heheh... kde2.1 came at a day after i finally get kde2.0/enlightenment up on redhat 7... which came out a day after i downloaded 6.2... on a 56k modem mind you... grr... it's tuesday here this close to the international date line... all the cool stuff happens a day late ...
  • Am I correct in saying that the processor specific optimisations will do nothing on most distributions, because you need to be compiling with pgcc for it to have any effect, and that (Pentium-specific) compiler (a patch against gcc) only ships with Mandrake? Does it indeed ship with Mandrake, or do they just use it to build the packages that come with their distribution?
  • I think it would be cool to have KDE for Windows. More practically, I don't see much KDE/QT applications compiled for Windows.
  • Believe it or not, but in astronomy there are about two big standard software packages for image analysis, both open source, and at least one of them (IRAF) uses the tek as the standard device for graphs (not images, of course).

    You can bet that a HUGE fraction of all these pretty Hubble Space Telescope images are analyzed using the tek emulation in xterm.

  • Ditto there, I have given up on Mozilla and use Konqueror *MOST* of the time. Only time I have to fire up netscape is to view some sites that use 'netscape specific' frames, and the others that keep insisting I use IE/netscape! (My bank included..sheesh!)

    Only thing I need in Konq, is a frontPage like WYSIWYG HTML editor and I am all set!

  • You will be quite pleasently surprised as to what great things XUL is going to bring. Mozilla is a very real cross platform development platform, not just a browser. Its scope is really grand. Go check out XMLTerm and all the projects at mozdev.org to see the begginings of what is to come.

    DOM is essential, right now web developers have to code to 3 standards, DOM is the key out of this mess. obviously you don't know much about web design issues if you simply dismiss the DOM

    As far as ECMA, good enough isnt good enough for me... i want full standards support. I'm sure Konquerer will get there, but the facts remain that Mozilla is the most standards compliant browser ever implemented.

    Cross Platform... i care. very very much. If you think that in a world with no Mozilla Konquerer will even cause the slightest thought in the minds of 99% of web developers, you are insane. You really can't dismiss the Apple platform, which mozilla runs very nicely on. The Linux desktop is barely a blip on the map, MS knows in order to cut off its growth, it has to have the web. If it achieves this, it starts implementing proprietart "innovations" to web development that Apache and Konquerer can't touch. What is the key to cutting off microsoft from this? Strict standards compliance, and right now this is being spear headed by Mozilla.

    To be clear, i love the Konquerer exists and hope that it continues to grow, but i get sick of people spreaading fud against Mozilla as a way of promoting Konquerer.


  • How about Lotus? I have people send me Lotus formatted documents that MSOffice can't read. MANY companies use Lotus Notes and the like.

    If companies like Lotus and Corel are able to compete for the business market, why not KDE?

    Retraining? Have you used KOffice? The differences between most office applications are negligible, including KOffice. Any one with a bit of sense can make the switch.

    The fact that KDE's functionality behaves like Windows exists so that a switch would be fairly painless for who ever does it. (Business or Personal)

    And there's always the cost issue. Software costs for deploying 10,000 workstations with KDE... nil. For Windows 9x/2000 AND MSOffice, well, you get the picture.

    With all these tech companies cutting costs, I would not be surprised if the switch happens more often.
  • KDE is short for:
    The Kalle Dalheimer Experience

  • Konqueror (Score:4)

    by fishbowl ( 7759 ) on Monday February 26, 2001 @04:20PM (#400217)
    The browser is, hands down, the best feature of KDE2. It uses your JVM, your libssl, and it can
    run netscape plugins, and it is much more easy to build than Mozilla.

    The downside to Kde2 is that it can be a bitch to
    build from source. Once you setup your environment and have all the dependencies, it's not too bad. My nightly checkout and build of the whole cvs tree takes about 3 hours. I have had problems with the dpkgs, but, I stopped using them
    when I got really interested in the dev versions of kde2.

    The only reason I need Netscape at all now, is to
    connect to my bank (Wells Fargo only allows specific Keys from specific versions of Netscape.
    If I could work around this, I wouldn't need Netscape at all).

  • I think he's saying that there are fairly major changes for just an increment of the minor version number.

    --
  • Yes, conceptually Mozilla is much better. I'm sure that DOM is great, ECMAScript is essential and XML will bring lots of good things. (I still dismiss XUL as wasteful and unecessary. You need a good, font+layout sensative view management system and that's it. XUL is too performance sapping for compartively little gain.) Despite all that, what's the use *now* The web-development community is not exactly known for quick support of standards (especially since IE doesn't support much of this stuff yet) and until the minimum system becomes fast enough to run Mozilla comfortably (I'm typing this on a 500MHz PIII w/ 64MB and Mozilla is god-aweful slow. On my 300Mhz w/ 128MB it's still slow) people will not adopt these new standards. I'd say that adoption of these standards is still a year away, and that is just too far in the future to contemplate about now. So, again, what real, tangible benifets does Mozilla have NOW?
  • He he. There was a remark on the BeOS development mailing list once about how 32MB was a *LOT* of code and that BeOS's 32MB memory limit on add-ons wasn't a problem. Then Mozilla hit against it...
  • i never could get into one.
    i didn t use kde1 because it did crash my pc every session. i had not time to look for what was doing it nor for going into a "kde sucks" thing. so i used gnome a lot. i found it ugly but it worked well. i also used enlightenment alone a lot .
    then kde 2. it is just wonderfull. simply wonderfull. there are a few bugs but ,with every compilationfrom cvs , i saw one or another leaving the scene on a daily basis.
    their developpment rate is incredible. and they release good stuff!!
    mozilla is still better than khtml but too heavy. i fire it only when i know konqueror won t do the stuff.
    but i don t find myself going into a "kde rules" frenzy.
    and i m sure gnome2 will be great when it s ready.
    but there are discussions i lack which should happen here, on slashdot:
    -in the kde world, the kompany [thekompany.com] is doing a great deal of fast and efficient work for the kde project. but at the same time it s releasing closed source programms in order to finance itself. In particular, they plan to release an outlook killer [kde.org], keeping the server side closed.Also they are really sincere about giving to the community, just finding a way to fund themselves.
    -in the gnome world, there seems to be a lot of effort put into tunnelling apps into the user desktop and deals between those entities: eazel, ximian and red hat . a lot of marketing [linuxplanet.com] ...which is, as we all know it, the real evil [userfriendly.org] behind m$
    the analogy between the difficulties that compagnies related to those projects face stroke me more than the differences .
    I m sure such matters should be discussed here more often than , say, lego stories as there are plenty of solutions which could come from here to help all of them.
  • How can you possibly say that Mozilla is usably fast? I think developers should be forced to use systems comparable to the low-end of available systems. Then, jack the proc down for the inherent speedup that a programmer's mind imparts onto its own creations. I'd say if it runs tolerably on a 150MHz with 32MB of RAM, then its really ready for prime time.
  • Someone comes along and offers an excellent product for free and with no strings attached. Moreover, it's product that has consistently proved technically more mature than any other interface with the same pretentions, including commercial interfaces. The project is free of irrelevant ambitions, since they don't need to introduce gimmicky functionality to make up for shortcomings (though this doesn't preclude them from making the interface amusing to use). This approach means they can continue to develop the desktop coherently and at the right pace. The KDE people know they're on a winner and they're entitled to start making noise about it, and if I were on the KDE team myself I reckon I'd be feeling pretty pleased right now, and the last thing on my mind would be wanting to know how Gnome is getting on.
    If I were a Gnome person on the other hand, I'm pretty sure that right now I'd be feeling the spurs in my ribs and meaning to catch up in a big way.

    Even if you like the hell out of Gnome, there's no way the arrival of KDE2.1 can be considered fearful news. Be happy for everyone.
  • If everyone else is using MS word, the cost for me of not using it is high. First, the file filter are not perfect, so there is the cost of not being able to read some documents people send me. Second, if I hire new staff, they will need retraining.

    So insist on their using RTF like intelligent people are supposed to do.

  • I had forgotten that there was a little secret to making this work.

    In the "When connecting to:" field, I actually typed in *.wellsfargo.com, which enables the ADD button. Then I just removed the "*." and the ADD button remains enabled.

    I agree with the Konqueror team that we shouldn't be masking our identity unless absolutely necessary because it allows site operators to ignore Konq as a browser choice(and often standards as well) and you never know what is going to break as a result.

    On the flip side, sometimes you just want to check your freakin bank balance ;)
  • I think this is unfair, application programmers should strive for _supporting_ desktop specific features and libraries, without _requiring_ them. A really good application would have the UI separated from the functionality, and be buildable for Qt (with/without KDE), Gtk (w/w Gnome), Motif (w/w CDE), and perhaps Xaw and tty from the same source.

    That some of the Gtk/Gnome applications are closer to this ideal should not count against it.

  • This is the only Gnome thing that makes me angry these days. Nearly all of the software projects mentioned have nothing to do with Gnome. They may have been Gnomified but they are GTK projects not Gnome projects and all the apps that I have been using for years are now considered Gnome apps by virtue of the fact that the Gnome team say they are. All the KDE apps that have been mentioned in this discussion have been written from scratch (twice actually). I have trouble seeing what Gnome actually is apart from a panel and an undelying technology.
  • de Icaza recognises that the two desktops are competing. KDE on the other hand are sitting back saying "Quoi ?". You need at least two parties for a competition and KDE just can't be bothered - and not sould Miguel. At the end of the day people moved over to the free Unix clones because they didn't like being told what to buy, what software to use and so on. Mature people like choice. Choice is good. I say use what ever you want. For the record I use Gnome at work and KDE at home. In fact, I usually stick to the command line at home !

    Just chill and enjoy what ever you want to enjoy.

    Claric
    --

  • This isn't true. Any reasonably modern version of gcc (such as 2.96) can handle -mpentiumpro, -march=i686 and the likes.
  • ..sorry, couldnt resist ;-P Lispy
  • In kde2.0 it was separated from the minimalize and maximalize. Now they're together again. Why did they undo a good choice? :-(

    Szo

  • Re:KDE: one of the most successful OSS projects (Score:4)

    by Uri ( 51845 ) on Monday February 26, 2001 @04:26PM (#400232)
    KDE comes with so many other good programs as well, like KNode (News reader) and KMail (lightweight email program)... Does GNOME have any comparable programs?

    Errr... yes! Pan [superpimp.org] is probably the best free newsreader for any platform, Evolution [helixcode.com] is an incredibly well-integrated mail, calender and addressbook program, and Balsa [balsa.net] is a very decent more lightweight mail reader. For office programs, Gnumeric [gnome.org] is way more advanced than KSpread, Guppi [gnome.org] (still in CVS) is one of the only serious free graphical data analysis tools, GnuCash [gnucash.org] is very polished, and Dia [lysator.liu.se] rocks. Graphically, Sodipodi [sourceforge.net] is shaping up very nicely, gPhoto [gphoto.org] rules, and the GIMP [gimp.org] integrates better with a GNOME environment than with KDE. And then there's XMMS [xmms.org] (the best mp3/ogg/mpeg/divx Linux player), Grip [nostatic.org] (the best CD player/ripper combo) and GStreamer [gstreamer.net] for multemedia; there's GnomeICU [gdev.net], Gabber [sourceforge.net], Gaim [marko.net] and X-Chat [xchat.org] for messaging; there's Gnapster [faradic.net] for file-sharing; and there's more useful utilities (e.g. Bug Buddy), system utilities (e.g. Red Carpet), and panel applets than you could shake a stick at. And I know I've missed out quite a few more (Gnome-DB, Oregano and Dr. Genius have just spring to mind - and, yes, Galeon [sourceforge.net], which rocks and is now my primary browser). In other words, GNOME is hardly short on applications.

    If anything, I've often found it to be the other way round. While Konqueror rules, and KWord is much better featured than AbiWord (though I personally dislike the interface), I think where KDE usually excels is in the underlying desktop core, rather than the applications. But that's just my opinion.

    PS Sorry for ranting.
  • Ok, no FUD intended.

    I just look at stuff as a user who doesn't know what XUL and DOM even stands for - look at my homepage and you will see that I *really* don't ;)

    I was impressed with konqueror, but the last version I looked at had it's weaknesses (crashed too often). Maybe, if it hadn't been for my disappointment of the speed/footprint of mozilla, I would have been less impressed. I don't know.

    Also, at the time I gave up Mozilla, they didn't have proper Java support or SSL. Konqueror had all of it, out of the box, immediately. I know mozilla got SSL (but still don't proper java right ? - I mean, you need to get a plugin from somewhere in order to get it to work)

    Sure, Konqueror isn't exactly lightweight either, it's only semi-leightweight when standing next to a monster. But it's funny when you're developing software for a living and you know how much stuff you can actually fit in a megabyte, to watch *both* mozilla an konqueror consume 30+ megs.

    Anyway, I'm going to check out the K in a few hours when the compilers are done...
  • Anyone know if there's a really easy way of setting up KDevelop to do kernel development? If someone has seen a config file for KDevelop to do this, and could point me to it, that'd rock. If not, I think I'll do it myself and publish it. This would make it easy for people to jump into the action using an IDE.

  • When does ignorance turn into FUD? (Score:3)

    by adubey ( 82183 ) on Monday February 26, 2001 @05:51PM (#400240)
    Justin,

    Thanks for the informative post on KDE. However, while your information about KDE is useful, it worries me that your post got modded to +5, Informative given that you do state some things about GNOME which are at best ill researched, at worst... FUD.

    I remember a quote... "never attribute to malice what can easily be explained by ignorance." And honestly, much of the FUD ever laid against the Amiga, or OS/2, or th Mac, or Linux was not so much based on malice as it was based on ignorance.

    Now, what worries me is when FUD sligns not between big, bad, Windows, but between free software projects. Perhaps I'm over reacting, and yes - I know that people on "the other side" (ie GNOME users) do the same thing - but what I want to say is that we shouldn't think of people as one "one side" or the "other".

    Does GNOME have comparable programs? Yes, another poster mentions some. Some of these programs, such as Gnumeric, are probably more functional than their KDE equivalents. But this isn't really the point. My underlying point is this: there's a thin line between cheerleading and FUD.... just be careful of it!

    Thanks,
    Amit Dubey
  • The Wells Fargo browser issues really suck :(. My Bank United account worked great with Galeon+Mozilla+SSL, but Wells Fargo blindly claims that it's an insecure browser because it doesn't know about it. Oh well.. I hope someone from Wells Fargo's IT department does something about this..
  • Well, not exactly true -- the release statement contains links where you can (supposedly) download the pre-compiled RPMs, but the directories they link to are empty, empty, empty.

  • QT 2.3 is the bomb :-)

    This looks *really* nice.
  • Same for the Red Hat packages, by the way - we're using a patched Qt 2.2.4.
  • From a related announcement [kde.org] (There's more, but this is a taste):

    "
    This second major release of the KDE 2 series is a real improvement in terms of stability, performance and features," said David Faure, release manager for KDE 2.1 and KDE Representative at Mandrakesoft [mandrakesoft.com]. "KDE 2 has now matured into a solid, intuitive and complete desktop for daily use. Konqueror is a full-featured and robust web browser and important applications like the mail client (KMail) have greatly improved. The multimedia architecture has made great strides and this release inaugurates the new media player noatun, which has a modular, plugin design for playing the latest audio and video formats. For development, KDE 2.1 for the first time is bundled with KDevelop, an outstanding IDE/RAD which will be comfortably familiar to developers with Windows development backgrounds. In short, KDE 2.1 is a state-of-the-art desktop and development environment, and positions Linux/Unix to make significant inroads in the home and enterprise."

    "KDE 2.1 opens the door to widespread adoption of the Linux desktop and will help provide the success on the desktop that Linux already enjoys in the server space," added Dirk Hohndel, CTO of Suse AG [suse.com]. "With its intuitive interface, code maturity and excellent development tools and environment, I am confident that enterprises and third party developers will realize the enormous potential KDE offers and will migrate their workstations and applications to Linux/KDE."

    "KDE boasts an outstanding graphical design and robust functionality," said Sheila Harnett, Senior Technical Staff Member for IBM's Linux Technology Center. "KDE 2.1 significantly raises the bar for Linux desktop functionality, usability and quality in virtually every aspect of the desktop."

    "
  • KDE 2 was some really great stuff. Except, even under casual use, several bugs made themselves really clear. The Taskbar occationally went bonkers and stoped registering programs that you start. Getting that sort of thing fixed would be a whole lot more valuable to me than these features. It'll be interesting to see how they did...
  • Because users complained. They're so used to the Windows way of having "the cross" at the rightmost corner. From a usability perspective, this is very stupid, but you have to hand it to KDE that they listed to their users ;) And you can always select a different window decoration manually.
    --
  • Hehe, you have a very good point about people curring costs.

    Unfortunately, the majority of people don't have a bit of sense... But of course, with the major layoffs, maybe just the people with a little sense will be the ones that are left.

    Now all we need is a *standard* backend for the calendar and messaging :) Something GNOME would use too.

  • Optimizing the source build (Score:5)

    by darial ( 177051 ) on Monday February 26, 2001 @04:52PM (#400255)
    For those who build KDE from source, and ESPECIALLY the pacakagers at big distros, consider strongly doing the folowing:

    set the -no-g++-exceptions flag when building qt

    and set the folowing options for all qt and kde:
    -03
    -mpentiumpro (or -march=pentiumpro for ppro only objs)

    the exceptions optimization literally reduces the size of everyting related to qt by several megs a piece with no detriemntal effects. -03 is important because it turns on inlining, which is a big win for C++ code with lots of tiny functions. And optimizing for modern chips should be standard for anyone. These changes sped up my KDE load time by 50%, and made the whole thing feel much "snappier" and smoother. Don't let KDE2 get a rep for slowness just because you used lousy compiler options. (and yes, I posted something similar to the kde2.0 article, but I'm going to repeat it until the packagers get it right)
  • is Gcc 3.0 which will be the first good C++ compiler. And this will help KDE even more, as it is a C++ Project. I guess great speedups are still possible.

    Ohboyohboyohboy!
    --
  • Set up you user agent in Konqueror (can be found in the KDE control panel under web browsing) as follows:

    When connecting to: wellsfargo.com
    Send user agent string: Pick any of the Netscape4, IE4 or IE5 options.

    Enjoy!

    This message posted from Wolverine/KDE2.1
  • One of the most remarkable features of KDE2 is the support of textured themes and the ability to import Gnome themes to the KDE Desktop environment. Well, I have had an awful thought regarding this feature.

    It is well known that KDE is ahead of Gnome on the development stakes, and that Gnome looks better and is, well, 'cooler' than KDE. However, now that KDE2 has the theme importation feature this last point is wiped out.

    You may think this is nothing, but the simple fact is that the majority of users use a desktop for how good it looks and how easy it is to use. Now, through stealing the coolness of Gnome and the useability of Windows, KDE is streets ahead of the competition, from the point of view of the non-technical user.

    I am extremely worried about this. What is to be done for Gnome? Someone will have to bring it on quite a lot if it is to remain valid from a Prima Facie, shallow & unthinking users perspective.

    It is the morons who make the final decision regarding the fate of all software, and Open Source software is no different. I just hope that Gnome pull through.

    You know exactly what to do-
    Your kiss, your fingers on my thigh-

  • Maybe my staff can actually do something more productive than grab the latest snapshot of the KDE Betas... I was impressed by them, but constant messing with the upgrades was aggravating.

    I'm sure that Slashdoters will pay little attention to this, because for reasons that are beyond me the consensus here is pro-GNOME. Oh well, I think that KDE is so FAR ahead of GNOME it isn't even funny. The licensing issues were becoming a headache, so I'm glad Trolltech made them go away.

    KOffice is the best shot they got at home office desktops. I wouldn't expect corporate adoption, but if the techies eventually have a reasonable environment and can share data with the rest of the corporation, there is no reason not to allow Linux desktops.
  • Instead of concentrating on features such at automatic upgrades and automatic provision of desktop content from the Internet, the developers of KDE-2.1 concentrated on stability, bug squashing, and improvement of the underlying technology ....they point to the development tools available such as KDevelop, the IDE that with the this release has been pronounced ready for prime time.... These things, it is reasoned, will be of particular interest to the enterprise...

    While I don't doubt KDE is getting better, surely it stands little chance competing against Win 2000 in mainstream enterprises.

    What the majority of businesses use desktops for is Office applications. If the likes of StarOffice/OpenOffice cannot even effectively compete with MSOffice on windows, there is little chance of them temping users to a different OS as well as a different Office suite.

    If it can't compete in the mainstream office environment, it will never escape its niche since network effects come into play. If everyone else is using MS word, the cost for me of not using it is high. First, the file filter are not perfect, so there is the cost of not being able to read some documents people send me. Second, if I hire new staff, they will need retraining.

    The claim of being ready for prime time seems premature.

  • Probably the best way to check is by looking at the file size of your libqt.so.2.2.x file. I built mine with exceptions disabled, and the filesize is about 5.5MB. With exceptions, it was closer to 10MB.
  • Try reconfiguring the User Agent header. There should be a few premade fake User Agents for Netscape 4.7 and IE 5. I think it's in the configuration in Konqueror, or maybe under Web Browsing in the main configuration menu. I can't remember (I can't check as I'm in text mode, busy building 2.1 from source and posting this from Links).
  • The AC above is correct - I was using the cheap crack, and it should be -(Oh)3, not -(Zero)3

  • Gnome? Or GTK? (Score:4)

    by DeeKayWon ( 155842 ) on Monday February 26, 2001 @07:09PM (#400282)
    Some of those projects you mentioned, notably Grip, XMMS and XChat do not require GNOME. They just require GTK. Heck, I don't have any trace of GNOME on my computer and yet XMMS and Grip run great. If a program (LICQ is an example) uses QT, I would not call it a KDE program unless KDE has to be there. Sure, some of them can integrate into GNOME, but the same thing can go for KDE. Anyone can get either KMMS [sourceforge.net] or XMMS-KDE [sourceforge.net] and get an integrated XMMS control in their KDE panel.
  • KDE2 is a great piece of work. I've been using the 2.1 betas and I couldn't be happier now that 2.1 final is out. It is so vastly different from the old KDE1. In fact, it's almost a complete rewrite.

    KDE has many merits, and probably the reason for its success has much to do with the use of Qt. Talk about toolkit wars you want, but the KDE team chose Qt even when it wasn't GPL. The decision was clearly based on technical capability. Just visit Trolltech's site to see a small list of big companies that have invested in Qt. And the toolkit is fully cross-platform. There is clearly no toolkit of comparison.

    The KDE libs take the good design of Qt and extend it, bringing us the KParts component system and DCOP. Why not use CORBA? Because the KDE guys didn't think it was the right tool for the job. One really cool part about their DCOP system is it can be controlled from the shell, thus making the whole system fully scriptable. It is all of this well designed framework that allowed the KDE team to bring about so many applications in such a short amount of time.

    Konqueror [konqueror.org] is the most obvious of these first class apps. It is the browser everybody has been waiting for. You want IE on Linux? Here it is, just without the junk. It even has a checkbox to disable javascript window.open(). It's fast, and will manage your files like a pro as well. Also, completely transparent FTP access (IE only does partial), embeddable xterm, image/html thumbnail previews. My goodness does this program rock. I say this as an experienced Unix user, not just as a Windows convert.

    And this is just one application. KDE comes with so many other good programs as well, like KNode (News reader) and KMail (lightweight email program). Dare I mention KOffice?

    Does GNOME have any comparable programs? Star Office? Mozilla? Abiword? Those are not even GNOME programs, although they can be "GNOME-ified" (Galeon, Open Office). There is Nautilis, but that is an outside project as well. If we want to talk about outside projects, I could bring up [TheKompany], but there is no need. The core KDE team does enough work themselves to warrant this posting.

    There's no reason GNOME can't catch up, but at this point KDE is obviously ahead of GNOME, but that's a given since KDE started first anyway. Some may argue that KDE is behind Windows. Even if that is true, the rate at which the KDE team moves will answer to that quickly. In a recent LinuxPlanet review of KDE2.1 Beta, the author states that the difference between KDE 2.0 and 2.1 is comparable to the difference between Windows 95 and 98. Three years squished into three months? It will be amazing to see where the KDE project is a year from now.

    Go KDE!

    -Justin
  • Well, thats true - the ftp admin blocked the ftp/http file getting - so that mirrors would get those files first. That way, the mirrors get the files, and after that - everyone else from the main ftp and the mirrors..

  • Re:I have had a fearful thought.... (Score:3)

    by Oestergaard ( 3005 ) on Monday February 26, 2001 @03:22PM (#400285) Homepage
    Hmm... What about letting the best stuff win the largest share and be happy about it ? After all, twm is still around, so I'm sure there will be plenty of room for KDE or GNOME, whichever only gets the second largest share of users.

    I never liked using KDE, but I'm compiling my SRPMS for 2.1 now and I'm going to give it a shot. The panels and applets in GNOME are really helpful and I totally lacked that (*one* panel, and just about *one* applet too) in KDE earlier - but let's see about it now...

    Technically though, KDE is ahead, but more importantly, they are running much much faster than GNOME can ever do. Just look at it - they built Konqueror in how long time ? A year or two ? And it's ahead of Mozilla by far. And KDevelop ? For how long have people been toying with something like that for GNOME, without producing results ? Yes I know about GLADE, but take a look at www.kdevelop.org and you know what I mean. Seriously, I'm impressed with those people's skills - I just wish they could build me some panels and applets...

    I'll switch if I like it now, or wait until they get more panels - or become a left-wing tree-huggin' dropout and not worry a bit about any of this ;) We do live in interesting times - that's for sure

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