KDE 3.0 is Out 564
Emilio Hansen noted that KDE 3.0 is
on their site. There
is no official announcement yet, but this looks like the real deal. No debian
packages yet, but you can snag RPMs from various distros or src for the
do it yourself. Updated by HeUnique:Here is the announcement, enjoy.
Watch out... (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Watch out... (Score:2, Offtopic)
I wish I had a beowulf cluster of april 1st jokes.
KDE 3.0 Scoop (Score:5, Funny)
Re:KDE 3.0 Scoop (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:KDE 3.0 Scoop (Score:5, Insightful)
KDE 3.0 was tagged a couple of days ago..and they didn't want to announce it on April 1st
Re:KDE 3.0 Scoop (Score:3, Insightful)
My take on it: Much faster, much more options (very useful ones too), interesting and annoying changes to clipboard behaviour, KMail much improved, Liquid for KDE3 looks sooo sweet its unbelievable, basically just loads more of what we love!
Re:KDE 3.0 Scoop (Score:2, Funny)
Give them a chance... (Score:4, Insightful)
Give the poor sods a chance to get the distribution ready, please. Perhaps they didn't WANT people downloading it just yet... Hence no announcement, just yet??
Bandwidth and hosting costs money, as poor old distributed.net [distributed.net] is finding out. A few mirrors being updated, and then linking to the appropriate announcement would be a bit more considerate than putting up the first submission on the 3.0 release.
Re:Give them a chance... (Score:2)
Re:Give them a chance... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Give them a chance... (Score:3, Insightful)
Surely if they didn't want people to get it yet, it wouldn't be visible on the ftp site yet! There are simple ways to allow the mirrors to get hold of copies before joe public, if they wanted to.
How about giving the developers a bit of credit - I'm sute they know exactly what they are doing. I wouldn't be surprised if they leaked this "scoop" themeselves ;o)
flipflapflopflup is not insightful (Score:4, Informative)
Um, Mr. flipflapflup, there is evidently something you do not know. For a high-visibility package such as KDE, in order for everyone to get it, it has to get to the mirror sites. That's why when a release is made and put on a site, no announcement goes out: this is to allow at least a day for it to get to all the mirrors. If some dork posts an alert to Slashdot prematurely, the primary site gets hammered and the mirror sites can't get in. Everyone suffers from horrendously slow downloads from the primary site.
What's scary is that CmdrTaco evidently still does not realize this, and continues his irresponsible policy of announcing releases prematurely.
You really need to get out more (Score:5, Insightful)
No it's not. It's not even close. If I really have to explain why, it wouldn't do you any good anyway.
Re:You really need to get out more (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Give them a chance... (Score:3, Interesting)
Does the name "murphy" ring a bell ?
Re:Give them a chance... (Score:5, Funny)
So there is money in open source!
Long awaited by KDE'ers! (Score:3, Insightful)
The mirrors... (Score:5, Informative)
Germany ftp://ftp.kde.org/pub/kde/stable/3.0/
USA ftp://download.us.kde.org/pub/kde/stable/3.0/
United Kingdom ftp://download.uk.kde.org/pub/kde/stable/3.0/
Australia ftp://download.au.kde.org/pub/kde/stable/3.0/
Austria ftp://download.at.kde.org/pub/kde/stable/3.0/
Lots more at http://www.kde.org/ftpmirrors.html
ftp.kde.org mirrors (Score:5, Informative)
ftp://download
ftp://download.au.kde.org/pub
and so on, the full list here [kde.org].
Great idea! (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Great idea! (Score:2, Informative)
Eds, you really shouldnt be posting a link to their FTP site. It encourages too many people to follow that link. Didnt we learn this lesson with kernel.org? Post a link to their mirror [kde.org] page.
solution for projects' main FTP sites (Score:3, Informative)
Junkies posting stories to Slashdot use ftp.
Mirrors use rsync.
So just make it so that rsync and ftp processes access the release directory as different users on the server.
Don't allow access to the FTP user on the new release directory for some time until all mirrors update through rsync. Only then chmod the latest release directory to let anonymous ftp users in.
Chmod only takes a fraction of second to execute.
So in addition, there will be no poor soul that in a hurry would download a partially copied, uncomplete file...
How Incredibly Discourteous (Score:5, Insightful)
The editors at slashdot *know* the effect it has on a web site or ftp site when a story runs about that site. They *know* that the kde ftp site will get hammered because of this story. The *know* that the KDE developers obviously aren't ready yet BECAUSE THEY HAVE NOT ANNOUNCED THE RELEASE.
Yet, you announce the story anyway, before the actual release. Now, the ftp site will be slammed *before* the mirrors get a copy, which insures that things will be a huge mess for quiet some time.
This is the most incredibly discourteous and unprofessional behavior I've seen on a web site. Show some freaking respect towards the open source developers who create code (and give you something to write about on this site) and DO NOT ANNOUNCE A RELEASE BEFORE THE RELEASE.
Your lack of caring about the impact of your actions on this site really disgusts me.
Re:How Incredibly Discourteous (Score:4, Interesting)
Looks like this stupidity affects more than one of the editors.
Re:How Incredibly Discourteous (Score:4, Insightful)
The fact is, they are a professional website, they get paid for running it, and they should act like professionals.
Don't even get me started on how rude Michael really is, either...
Re:How Incredibly Discourteous (Score:3, Insightful)
If you don't like the lack of professionalism at Slashdot, don't go here. Don't trust it when it says "abc 1.2.3 released", ignore those stories and ignore those links. Ignore Slashdot alltogether and start/join a more professional site. Only take release announcements seriously from Freshmeat or something like that.
This should indeed be fixed on the developers side. A simple solution would be a private FTP server from where all servers including ftp.kde.org sync. Shouldn't be too hard to set up, so I'll propose that on the mailinglists tonight. As KDE developer I might not be pleased with Slashdotted servers, but the closer to the source this can be fixed, the better.
If Rob hadn't posted it, some other asshole would've placed a link on his site.
Re:How Incredibly Discourteous (Score:3, Informative)
And there won't be a mess, things *might* just slow down a bit. After all, the KDE FTP server is not a homebrewn dial-up server or shit.
I show some freaking respect towards the developers. I like their stuff that much that I couldn't wait a minute to get my hands on their newest creations.
The only thing I dislike about this story getting posted is that there is no link to the mirrors page [kde.org], which was were I looked first of course. Or a link to download.kde.org [kde.org] which shows there already ARE some FTP mirror sites having the 3.0 release.
You should've pointed towards theses URLs instead of flaming around, IMHO...
How Incredibly Discourteous (NOT) (Score:2, Informative)
If you don't want it to be downloaded, don't make it available. If you want to conserve bandwidth to, let's say, push it out to the mirrors, then MODIFY YOUR ANONYMOUS USER ACCESS LIMITS.
You have complete control of how your stuff gets posted on your public ftp servers. Don't complain too loudly if you screw up and get slashdotted.
Re:How Incredibly Discourteous (Score:2)
i've been trying to get 3.0 for a few days, (wanted to try rc3, but it wasn't available anymore), and saw it on kde's servers last night, but only the rpms, no source. i saw source this morning, but had to be persistant to get the downloads (350 of 350 anonymous users). i checked the mirrors this morning and they were a day behind. i would like to see someone from kde come out and explain why there isn't some corrdination with the main mirrors (download.us.kde.org, etc) to get them the files before the public can get them.
I almost posted about this (Re: How Incredibly...) (Score:4, Insightful)
I totally agree. Even LinuxToday, beaten up to death some time ago by /. , was respectfull of the schedule and at least up to now did not announce
anything (which by the way is natural since there was no announcement yet).
Yesterday night I saw 3.0 in ftp.kde.org, and I almost posted a story (not supposed to be published) asking the /. editors to please NOT announce anything until the release was official .
Then I thought, no, they will not do that again. Oh well ...
Re:How Incredibly Discourteous (Score:3, Interesting)
The onus is on anyone who wants to keep a secret, and steps should be taken to keep it that way until they're ready for its announcement, and IMHO this includes the KDE development team.
A possible solution? Put the distribution on a mirrors-only site, let it propogate to the mirrors, put it up on your FTP site last.
In my opinion, what the KDE group faces is the ante for participating in the information freedom, everyone collaborates, communicates and participates age.
Re:How Incredibly Discourteous (Score:5, Insightful)
I think it is much easier and simpler for slashdot to not run false stories. In fact, the kde developers have NOT announced the release of KDE 3.0, and therefore, KDE 3.0 *has* *not* *been* *released*.
Re:Yeah its always /.'s fault... (Score:3, Insightful)
Then that gives 100 people trying every 5 seconds. This averages one try every
Now try to make a better guess at the real numbers.
There are things that are wrong to do because of the effects that you can predict with fair certainty that they will have. In fact, those are the only things that are wrong to do (they are also the only things that are right to do, but that's a separate discussion).
It is fairly certain that the posting of this story will cause the distributing servers to become clogged at nearly the worst time. Causing this to happen sounds to me like an ungood thing. If you do something, and the effects of doing it are predictable, then those effects are caused by what you did. Therefore this posting is the Slashdot editors causing the KDE servers to be overloaded.
I'm not saying that the individual downloaders aren't also culpable. But that sure doesn't exonerate the Slashdot editor.
Re:Yeah its always /.'s fault... (Score:2, Insightful)
The KDE 3.0 release happens when the developers say that the release is official, and slashdot should respect that.
The KDE developers *are* being reponsible. They put the packages on the main ftp site so that the mirrors could mirror it. They were obviously going to wait until the mirrors had finished before announcing it.
This has nothing to do with violence and video games or any other half ass analogy you may try to make. This is clear cut and simple. Slashdot ran a false news story about an application that has not been released yet.
Valgrind and memory leaks (Score:3, Interesting)
oh well it is a
hopefully GNOME people will profile their code like KDE did for memory leaks
because it really stablized when it was percived that memory was something to worry about
regards
john jones
Re:Valgrind and memory leaks (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Valgrind and memory leaks (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Valgrind and memory leaks (Score:3, Insightful)
It's quite doable if you use a decent language to start with. I'd recommend Smalltalk, Lisp, ML, etc. All of these (especially ML and Lisp) can reach "good enough" speeds to compete with C/C++ in the case of most GUI app and, where they don't, a few simple C stubs (which are much easier to check for memory leaks) are usually sufficient to remedy the issue.
In short, don't excuse the difficulty of writing software on the basis of YOUR choice of poor technology.
Re:Valgrind and memory leaks (Score:2)
You've always had to pair allocate/free constructs in C and C++. The syntax being different shouldn't make them less likely to occur. Whether I allocate a bit map using new char[10000] or malloc(10000), doesn't make much difference.
Re:Valgrind and memory leaks (Score:5, Informative)
You've always had to pair allocate/free constructs in C and C++
I haven't done that for years. I just use constructs like the following:
Or, in some rare cases where the lifetime of the object is less obvious:
Add the careful use of auto-destroying and smart pointers to careful implementation of constructors and destructors and memory leaks are a complete non-issue for my C++ code. Using auto and smart pointers inside classes wastes a small amount of memory per instance, but, in many cases, makes default copy ctors and destructors do the Right Thing, reducing programmer error. Same thing works for other resources as well, like file handles, drawing contexts, etc.
Thus requiring consistent use of copy constructors, if only to print a message saying "you didn't really mean to copy me, did you?".
There's a better way. Make a class "Uncopyable", like so:
And provide *no* implementation for the copy ctor and assignment operator. Then, when you have a class that shouldn't be copied, just mix in Uncopyable like so:
There you are! Most accidental copies will be flagged by the compiler, because the copy methods of Uncopyable are private. Copies made within, for example, MyClass won't be caught by the compiler, but since there are no implementations of the Uncopyable methods, the linker will barf. This method has zero overhead; the only Uncopyable method that will ever be "called" is the default ctor, and it's empty and inlined. Uncopyable has no virtual functions, so no vtable. Any code that happens to generate calls to the copy ctor or the assignment operator is a bug that will be diagnosed by the linker.
Re:Valgrind and memory leaks (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Valgrind and memory leaks (Score:3, Insightful)
Unfortunately MicroSoft has f**ked us there, if you are interested in making portable shared libraries. It will fail to build a shared library if the implementation of the function is not there. The best this does then is that non-member functions cannot do a copy, but unfortunately member or friend functions still can. Of course you can make the function abort but that is enourmously less useful than detecting things at compile time.
I ifdef these things out on Unix but this useful thing is lost on Windows users.
Re:Valgrind and memory leaks (Score:3, Insightful)
C++ doesn't make bitwise copies of objects. The default copy constructors in C++ does a per-member assignment; that's important. And in order to avoid bad pointers, you disable the default copy constructors. That's easy to do and hard to overlook (in fact, you can grep for its occurrence).
You've always had to pair allocate/free constructs in C and C++. The syntax being different shouldn't make them less likely to occur.
It's not a question of syntax. With almost no exceptions, the only places new/delete should occur in well-written C++ code are in constructors and destructors. That, and a few other rules, ensure that you can't get memory leaks while still being able to express whatever you could in C. If KDE code calls new or delete anywhere else, it's unnecessarily inviting memory leaks.
KDE3 -pre is in Red Hat's Skipjack (Score:5, Interesting)
One of my favorite features is that the panel can optionally display the "description" of each item, rather than the "name" of the application. That's far more useful for the novice user. I suggested that the GNOME panel do that about.... 2 years ago (??) on one of the gnome mailing lists, but never got around to submitting a patch myself.
Gnome Panel and descriptions (Score:2, Informative)
-d
Re:Gnome Panel and descriptions (Score:3, Interesting)
KDE's panel can now display the comment *as the menu label* which is what I suggested to the GNOME devel group way-back-when.
Good reporting! (Score:2)
Thanks,
New KDE version? (Score:5, Funny)
- how KDE kicks GNOME's butt
- GNOME is now a dead-end for the Linux desktop
- why GNOME 2.0 will be better
- KDE looks too much like Windows
- KDE loading times
- KDE/GNOME are bloated, use iceWM/XFCE/Blackbox/whatever
- who needs a GUI? the command line is where it's at
- people making lists of expected posts
Any more?
Re:New KDE version? (Score:2, Funny)
Re:New KDE version? (Score:2)
10 posts telling the above to get a clue
and people adding to the post list
Ethics in Journalism? (Score:5, Insightful)
The way it stands now, the mirrors may be having difficulty getting a copy of the distribution, as a hoard of eager slashdotters floods the primary ftp site.
Just to recap, I have no problems with someone submitting this story as soon as they see they possibly can, but I believe the editors have a responsibility to be respectful in their decision when to post the story.
Slashdot != Professional Journalism (Score:5, Insightful)
Don't confuse Slashdot with journalism. The site is still run like a college kid's pet project. Sure they're making money and have thousands of readers but that doesn't make the staff qualified journalists/editors. They're geeks with a popular geek web-site -- nothing more.
I come here almost everyday to see what they've collected because it's usually a nice mix. It has a the right amounts of tech, science and politics to keep me coming back. But, I never read their 'editorials' or Jon Katz because it's amateurish bunk. And, usually skip or skim the comments for the same reason :).
Re:Slashdot != Professional Journalism (Score:2, Insightful)
Even so, those who disseminate information have a responsibility for the information they disseminate. The editors have a choice about whether or not to publish a story, and they should be fully aware of the repercussions of those choices, and should act in an ethical matter. Based on the facts that they know that this release has not been announced, and that web sites posted on slashdot generally get a large amount of traffic (heck, this is so prevalent that they named the phenomenon the Slashdot Effect), they should have chosen to be respectful.
Whether or not the editors are professional journalists (which I believe it could be argued), is rather irrelevant. I don't believe that professionals are the only people that should be expected to be ethical.
Re:Slashdot != Professional Journalism (Score:2)
Oh, I agree with you 100%. They should put more effort into growing as journalists/editors. I just don't expect them to make that effort. I do agree that they have a certain social responsibility to maintain a level of professionalism, I just don't think they can or are willing to make that commitment. Which is why I will never subscribe and I block ads on this site. I don't have the energy to try to push for change and I don't think they're interested.
I could go on at length about this but I don't want to get into it that much. To summarize -- I don't think the editorial policy will ever change; not through public pressure either by complaints or exodus. So, I don't worry about it. I take what I can get from the site and move on.
Re:Slashdot != Professional Journalism (Score:3)
Slashdot is journalism (journalism lies in how it is read, now how it is written), and it is professional (after all, it is for-profit)-- it's just also a tabloid for the geeks. An in the greatest tradition of tabloid, Slashdot cares not about the subjects it covers, only about getting the "scoop" for its readership and then sensationalizing it.
Re:Ethics in Journalism? (Score:5, Interesting)
No one would be complaining if some other tidbit of software was available but not announced at some other FTP site.
The sooner people start treating slashdot like the Enquirer, the fewer people will complian. This site is not much more than mental candy for nerds, and provides very little real value to its users. But it is fun, interesting, and often entertaining.
-Adam
KDE 3.11 (Score:5, Funny)
Re:KDE 3.11 (Score:5, Funny)
bbh
Re:KDE 3.11 (Score:2)
KDE For Workgroups! (Score:5, Funny)
Its' great (Score:2, Interesting)
apt-get[able] for Conectiva Linux (Score:5, Informative)
Just make sure you have the snapshot in your
rpm ftp://ftp.nl.linux.org/pub conectiva/snapshot/conectiva main extra orphan gnome experimental games kde
rpm-src ftp://ftp.nl.linux.org/pub conectiva/snapshot/conectiva main extra orphan gnome experimental games kde
then:
apt-get update
apt-get install task-kde
apt-get clean
and go for it.
of course if you are not using the snapshot version yet, you might want to:
apt-get dist-upgrade
Maybe it's not Discourtious.. (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Maybe it's not Discourtious.. (Score:2)
Maybe this is in some way
What's the correct way to upgrade my KDE? (Score:5, Interesting)
Thank you in advance.
Re:What's the correct way to upgrade my KDE? (Score:5, Informative)
I have been using the KDE3-pre that's included in RH's Skipjack and I do have to say that it appears to be well worth the upgrade. It seems slower to start initially, but once it's running, it seems just fine.
And the xrender menu transparencies finally work (semi)correctly (i.e. less/no annoying menu flicker as it grabs the image behind itself).
Re:What's the correct way to upgrade my KDE? (Score:4, Interesting)
(And no, mosfet's web page doesn't count. How about you look at the code and decide for yourself?)
Here, I'll back up the fact that it IS XRender. (code is from a CVS copy of kdelibs/kdefx/kstyle.cpp.) Now, like I was saying, where's your backup? Hell, I'll even quote mosfet's web page about this one.
(from mosfet's liquid web page [mosfet.org])
Now, mosfet has a funny position here. He says "It's not really XRender" and then he admits that we use XRender to shade the background pixmap. This is exactly what we claim. The method of transparency is chosen by the user in the KDE Control Center. There are options for Software Tint, Software Blend, and XRender Blend. Nobody claimed that these were 100% Real Translucent Menus (Just like in MacOS X!). We're still waiting for keithp and his magical X Translucency Extension before we can promise that.
But really. Don't you have anything better to do than troll about how "it's fake"?
New to Linux world (please be gentle) (Score:3, Interesting)
I feel somewhat like Homer Simpson when he tried to drum up business for the bowling alley (first reading advanced economics, then introductory economics, then finally websters dictionary).
Anyone got a link or two?
Re:New to Linux world (please be gentle) (Score:3, Informative)
Re:New to Linux world (please be gentle) (Score:4, Informative)
Correction: KDE lets the user run whichever netwm-compliant window manager he wants, but uses its own kwin window manager by default.
At least use a mirror! (Score:5, Informative)
Yay (Score:2)
Screenshots of KDE 3.0 (Score:2, Informative)
I must say that Konqueror 3.0 looks really good with antialiased fonts and great themes!
Kde 3.0 is an awesome release, that surely will help Linux to gain some users from you know who :)
Better looking.... (Score:5, Informative)
Compiling QT with XFT (Score:2)
One thing that's starting to annoy me about debian (Score:3, Interesting)
I suppose I could just grab and compile it myself.
Re:One thing that's starting to annoy me about deb (Score:3, Informative)
KDE3 won't enter sid for a while yet; not until woody is released. Don't hold your breath. The reason we do this is because KDE2.2.2 currently takes up about 2.5gig of archive space, and forking with KDE3 would not only cause havoc with the woody release, but it would also make it impossible for us to issue any 2.2.2 fixes, and bloat the archive massively. I'm not going to be a party to this.
*cough*youwillhaveanaptsourcefrommeinabout12hours
Re:One thing that's starting to annoy me about deb (Score:4, Informative)
Why not post it to Usenet? (Score:4, Interesting)
Also, it would be an important example of how usenet binaries serve and important and legal purpose.
I would really support a Slashdot code of ethics that says: you can't announce major software before the developers do unless you have already posted it to Usenet.
Edge Flipping? (Score:3)
This is the single reason that I can't use KDE for more than about five minutes before becoming totally exasperated. I use this feature CONSTANTLY in Gnome. What's the point of having four desktops if I can't move to 'em quickly? (I know I could probably do this with keyboard shortcuts, but it's not the way I work).
KDE 1.X had this feature, and when 2.X came out I switched to Gnome. Seriously, the coolness of this feature is what got me hooked on Linux desktops in the first place - it is, to me, the most useful feature of any desktop environment/window manager.
Anyone wanna code this into KDE for me?
Release Party! (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Looks like KDE won the desktop war. (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Your "o p i n i o n" but I'll reply anyway... (Score:2, Flamebait)
1. RMS decided KDE's licensing issues were'nt sufficent enough for his GNU system.
2. the KDE group was unwilling to call it GNU/KDE.
whey you come out slinging mud like this some people can call it a war. they (gnu zelots) could have been more mature about it, saying they were going to make a different desktop environment based on different technologies (.NET), but no, they start it all off with license issue mud slinging "we don't like your license so we're going to build our own replacement". childish.
Re:GNOME & KDE (Score:3, Interesting)
She understands how KDE works, because, for the most part, it's fairly intuitive. She did use linux. Not only is this a (small) proof of viability for linux in a consumer market, but it does show where even a "bloated" window manager can have it's place.
Tell me, would you rather have a bloated window manager and the linux kernel, or windows for someone you loved?
Re:Is it me or is KDE3 slow? (Score:2, Interesting)
Especially Konqueror is much faster and responsive now. Maybe the slowdown of the RC-version you installed was due to debugging features ?
Besides the faster Konqueror, I like the improved KMail most. I'm using the new KDE3 for half a day now, and it's really stable, no crashes yet, and I found no obvious bugs yet (as I did in 2.0). Congrats to the KDE folks, really good work IMHO.
Re:Screenshots anyone? (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Screenshots anyone? (Score:2)
This is my desktop [vibers.ca].
Re:Screenshots anyone? (Score:3, Funny)
The requested URL
Apache/1.3.24 Server at vibers.ca Port 80
That's a pretty unusual screenshot, kde3 looks alot like your average 404 apache message.
Re:Screenshots anyone? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Screenshots anyone? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Screenshots! (Score:2)
Unfortunately, my laptop screen is 1024x768, so I don't have a lot of real estate to show off. Note the menu transparency.
Re:Screenshots! (Score:2)
You can see my screenshot, showing off KDE3's built in translucent menus here [vibers.ca]. Warning, it is a bit over 600k (big).
Re:feature list? (Score:3, Informative)
KDE 3 is very tunable, but most of the user interface hasn't changed significantly from KDE 2.2.2 (most of the work has been in polishing the internals, to correspond to the move to Qt 3) - apart from a couple of things, like the new file selection dialogue. Your best bet to see what KDE 3 can do is to go to the KDE theme website, KDE-Look.org [kde-look.org].
About the feature list:
Here is the internal KDE 3 feature plan [kde.org]. There's also a link there to the features planned to be in KDE 3.1.
Have you installed the right font infrastructure? (Score:2)
Do you use a recent freetype2? The later the better. Earlier versions CRASH on certain fonts.
Do you use Xfree86-4.2.0? No version before that is recommended with fontaliasing.
Do you use the right qtlibs?
Re:Have they fixed the fonts? (Score:3, Informative)
It all may be moot with 3.0 anyway but if you don't feel like upgrading right now
Re:My wife uses KDE and likes it.. (Score:5, Insightful)
For some reason, he didn't like Mozilla. What bothered him is that he couldn't use the microphone to talk with his MSN Messenger Buddies, he could only type the messages. He didn't like the games much, im some games he had to use the mouse in other games he had to use the keyboard. What bothered him most in this is that he couldn't exit some games by clicking on the X, I told him that he had to press ESC.
In short, there's way too many usability problems. If KDE or GNOME had at least 1 usability expert helping them, they would get rid of most of those problems.
Re:FreeBSD packages ready? (Score:4, Informative)
There are some freeBSD packages at freebsd.kde.org [kde.org], but they are not yet right. There is at least one known problem. They will be re-generating the packages soon, but they would like experts (those who can work around the current known problems) to find any other problems that need to be fixed before a general release is done.
A general release will probably be on freebsd.kde.org long before anyplace else. I'd expect ports to be updated in a couple days though, so cvsup once in a while.
Re:Our double standards... (Score:3, Insightful)
No, it's not anywhere close. Slashdot could wait a few hours for the mirrors to get the files and for the KDE team to ACTUALLY ANNOUNCE THE RELEASE. No harm would come by waiting.
Conversely, the same argument cannot be made for your flawed Napster analogy.
Differences between Gnome and KDE? (Score:3, Interesting)
Seriously, I don't want to start a flame war, but I've tried to run KDE a couple of times, and I keep switching back to Gnome. I'm not saying that Gnome is better than KDE, but I have yet to find a compelling reason to throw out all the experience I have with the Gnome tools and way of doing things, to learn Just Another Window Manager.
My question is, what does KDE offer that Gnome doesn't? Why should I make the effort to switch?
Re:My Quick Review (Score:3, Informative)
Yes, the first startup of KDE 3 will be MUCH slower than every other startup afterwards (and the startup of KDE 2) because during that time all of your old settings from KDE 2 and related programs (KMail, etc, in the ~/.kde directory) are being migrated to their new KDE 3 settings.